TAKING YES FOR AN ANSWER

from Midwest Conservative Journal by The Editor

If the Church of England doesn’t select an openly-homosexual bishop and damned soon, the aptly-named Colin Coward is going to start screaming and throwing things:

Last week, a leaked memorandum

Which I still don’t believe.

revealed that the deliberations of the group appointed to select a new bishop of Southwark were marked by acrimony and manipulation. The same day the House of Bishops’ meeting in York failed to agree new guidelines to evaluate whether a gay priest was fit to be appointed bishop, guidelines seemingly designed to prevent Jeffrey John from being appointed.

There are in the House of Bishops five who are gay.

Did Colin say five just now? Because he meant thirteen.

The Church of England has 13 bishops who are gay. None are publicly open about their sexuality and, as far as I know, none have been open about their sexuality in the process of being appointed bishop.

I have in my hand a list of [INSERT NUMBER HERE] bishops in the Church of England who are homosexuals.

The church has created an impossible dilemma for itself. No candidate who is gay or has been involved in a same-sex relationship in the past is going to willingly volunteer this information. It is rightly a personal matter and in secular society, irrelevant to someone’s capacity to perform their work.

Then here’s a thought. Don’t bring it up. Ever.

The church has allowed itself to become infected by the prejudice and homophobia which drives conservative pressure groups.

All rise, the straw man has entered the blog post.

They are dripping a poison, which is infecting the church at every level.

Makes one wonder why you stick around.

At the extreme conservative end of the spectrum, both evangelical and Catholic, are people who don’t believe in the existence of homosexual identity.

Yeah, pretty much.

The liberal churches of the western Anglican Communion are probably the most gay-friendly churches in the world. So the implicit suggestion the aptly-named Coward makes here, that the Church of England is hostile to homosexuals, is so stupid as to be laughable.

Are there efforts being made to ensure that an openly-homosexual person never becomes a bishop in the C of E? Maybe. If they exist, are these efforts being made to ensure that conservatives stay in? No doubt. Will these efforts succeed?

No.

Push comes to shove, a lot of Anglicans are kind of, well, gutless. The aptly-named Coward hates conservative Anglicans with a passion yet intentionally remains part of a church with a faction that he considers to be evil.

Chris? Can’t conservative Anglicans be accused of the same thing? Yup. There are conservative Anglicans in Europe and here in America who are disgusted with the idea of making bishops out of unrepentant sinners yet refuse to leave the very institution that deliberately took this step.

Each side thinks the other needs to go away. Each side thinks that Something Ought To Be Done but refuses to cut ties even if nothing is done at all.

What to do about it? There’s a possible solution; it’s a long shot, it won’t save everyone but it will keep lots of Anglicans on board. But it involves revolutionary thinking, something the C of E has never been particularly good at.

First off, Rowan Williams needs to face facts. There are two mutually-exclusive and mutually-hostile Anglicanisms in the Anglican Communion that cannot be reconciled.

The second thing Dr. Williams needs to do is to open the doors of Lambeth Palace to anyone who wants to come in. Since you’re an Anglican if the Archbishop of Canterbury decides you are, recognize as Anglican anyone who wants such recognition.

ACNA, the various networks, the Continuers, whatever situation eventually develops in Britain, all of it. Basically, every church in the world that calls itself Anglican and that wants “official” recognition gets it.

All will profess at least a nominal allegiance to the Archbishop of Canterbury as “leader” of the Anglican world. I don’t know how this will affect future Lambeth Conferences. There may have to be several “Lambeth Conferences” for each of the various groupings in the Anglican world.

As I said before, this won’t keep everyone onside. But if Rowan Williams wants to keep the idea of a unified Anglican Communion alive, this is probably the only chance he has.