ERASTIAN-A-PALOOZA 2010!!

from Midwest Conservative Journal by The Editor

Will Great Britain’s new “conservative” Prime Minister David Cameron make Jeffrey John a bishop anyway?

John’s supporters called for David Cameron to demonstrate his gay-friendly credentials by overruling the Crown Nominations Commission and insisting that John’s name be considered further. They accused the archbishop of betraying his old friend a second time.

One senior cleric said: “The time of reckoning has come for Rowan. The events of seven years ago have bitten him hard in the very week women bishops comes to the crunch. He should realise there are greater considerations, like truth, justice, openness, fidelity to the rules and all those things the church proclaims. Many are dismayed by his constant capitulation to the fringe noisemakers.

“He could recover some credibility if he went mitre in hand to the PM and asked him to intervene and use his constitutional prerogative to consider the second name, whoever that is, and then to reject both if he so chooses.”

The Guardian thinks that would be a splendid idea.

Meanwhile, away from the synod, the archbishop has become embroiled in a row about the prospect of a gay man presiding in the Southwark diocese. Canon Jeffrey John was under consideration for the high-profile south London bishopric until his name was leaked. His candidacy was then effectively derailed by conservative evangelicals. Dr Williams has too often submerged his own liberal inclinations in what he sees as a higher duty to preserve institutional unity. Now, surely, his priorities should change.

Most of Britain has accepted that women can assume positions of authority and that homosexuality is a quite ordinary part of human experience. The explicit discrimination practised by the church is unacceptable in most non-religious settings and would be illegal if expressed by any other employer. There are, meanwhile, ample theological grounds for accepting that women are not created subordinate to men and that homosexuality is not hateful in the eyes of God.

To illiterate secularists perhaps.

The problem is that if Cameron were to pull the trigger, he would kill two birds with one stone, effectively destroying both the archiepiscopacy of Rowan Williams as well as the Anglican Communion itself. Were Cameron to take such a step, I don’t see how Dr. Williams could do anything other than resign.

If my gracious lord of Canterbury objects but cannot stop the appointment, he becomes nothing more than a British civil servant who dresses funny once a week. If he passively acquiesces, then the last remaining conservative Anglican rationale for maintaining a connection to the See of Canterbury is dynamited.

None of that may figure in Cameron’s thinking. And maybe it’s about time to pull the plug; the Anglican Communion is, after all, a little more than a century old. Maybe it would be better for all concerned if liberal and conservative Anglicans would just stop pretending that they share anything at all.