WHATEVER

from Midwest Conservative Journal by The Editor

Newsweek’s Lisa Miller wonders why the election of a lesbian Episcopal bishop isn’t causing more controversy:

"Last month, for the second time in its history, the Episcopal Church in America elected an openly gay person as a bishop. The Rev. Canon Mary D. Glasspool—an experienced administrator and human-rights advocate from Maryland—will be consecrated as Los Angeles Bishop Suffragan at a ceremony in May. To date, her election has generated astonishingly few headlines. “People have in a caring way asked if I’ve received any hate mail,” says Glasspool. “I really haven’t.”"

Miller thinks it’s because we’re all enlightened and civilized and stuff.

"The Catholic news explosion can’t take all the blame for the Americans’ disinterest in Glasspool. Their disinterest—in her sexuality at least—is genuine. In 2003, Gene Robinson, a gay man, became the Bishop of New Hampshire—an event still credited with triggering schisms within the Episcopalian denomination and causing the defection of thousands of devout churchgoers to more conservative corners of Christendom. In seven short years, attitudes have changed—dramatically. Polls show that support for gays in the military, gay marriage, and civil unions has been, for most of this decade, steadily rising. Even diehard conservatives concede that the battle over gay rights (if not gay marriage) is more or less over. Half of Americans have a close friend or a family member who is gay, according to a 2009 CNN poll. “A human face always makes harsh judgment more difficult,” wrote Michael Gerson last month in The Washington Post."

Possibly. There’s also the novelty factor. One unrepentant sinner with a pointy hat? News. Two unrepentant sinners with pointy hats? Whatever.

Plus, the Episcopalians lost the shock factor a long time ago. Non-Christian bishop? Check. Practicing homosexual bishop? Check. A bishop who’s been divorced twice and married three times? Check. Lesbian? Done it.

I don’t know about you but the local Lions or Optimist Clubs don’t interest me that much. I’ve got nothing against them, I just don’t follow their activities at all. And the leader of Glasspool’s “church” just admitted that that was precisely what the Episcopal Organization had become.

"Jefferts Schori won’t call herself a feminist or a gay-rights activist—only a Christian. “We claim a faith that has a vision of what civilization ought to look like, called the reign of God, or the kingdom of God. When current reality is dramatically divergent from that vision, most of us feel it’s our responsibility to advocate for a different vision,” she told me. And it was, perhaps, this Christian vision that allowed her—and those who elected Glasspool—to overlook a warning that came from their superior, the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, back in December. Glasspool’s election, he wrote, “poses very serious questions not just for the Episcopal Church and its place in the Anglican Communion, but for the Communion as a whole.”"

With an ASA of under 700 grand and dropping, Christians who formally cared about this institution have fled or are in the process of fleeing it, have found actual churches and now have far more important things to worry about than who some dying, high-church, universalist sect gives a pointy hat to.