Compared To What

In 7 Va. Episcopal Parishes Vote to Sever Ties, reporters Bill Turque and Michelle Boorstein keep referring to a conservative association of Episcopalians as a "splinter group," which utterly misses the point of how these parishes see themselves and why they've decided to separate themselves from the American version of Anglicanism. They may be a splinter in the American context, but the current leadership of the Episcopal Church itself is the splinter group worldwide.

That's the key this story doesn't drive home. And, let me add, in a report that respectfully treats the American sources they're quoting. But, you know, act locally, think globally, eh?

The lede:

At least seven Virginia Episcopal parishes, opposed to the consecration of a gay bishop and the blessing of same-sex unions, have voted overwhelmingly to break from the U.S. church in a dramatic demonstration of widening rifts within the denomination.

Two of the congregations are among the state's largest and most historic: Truro Church in Fairfax City and The Falls Church in Falls Church, which have roots in the 1700s. Their leaders have been in the vanguard of a national effort to establish a conservative alternative to the Episcopal Church, the U.S. wing of the 77 million-member worldwide Anglican Communion....

Yes, they mention the 77 million Anglicans running around but don't quite explain how everything fits together. So you get a sentence like this:

The departure is regrettable [Joan Gundersen, president of Progressive Episcopalians of Pittsburgh.] said, adding: "Every time one of these churches leaves, their voice becomes an even smaller minority....

Inside the American branch of Anglicanism, sure, but they're joining the much larger global chorus-it's the Gundersens that are the "small minority" when all Anglicans are counted. And while it's understandable that even a front-page story doesn't have the time to explain all the details of this clash, the story stops just short of providing some helpful information:

The votes are fresh evidence of an increasingly bitter split within the U.S. Episcopal Church. Seven of its 111 dioceses have rejected the authority of Presiding U.S. Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, installed in November as the first woman to head an Anglican church. Schori supports V. Gene Robinson, an openly gay man elected bishop of New Hampshire in 2003.

Schori is a liberal liberal, and was elected not long after the Episcopal Church rejected a call to halt the ordination of gay bishops for a time. That was an attempt by figures like the Archbishop of Canterbury to prevent the schism that's happening now. Much of the rest of Anglicanism, from Canterbury to Truro to Nigeria, concluded that the Episcopal Church was going to do whatever the heck it wanted to. The final provocations.

And so, speaking of Nigeria, the story cites probably the most damaging aspect of the CANA parishes' new planned association with the Nigerian church:

Truro and The Falls Church, with a combined membership of more than 3,000, will form the core of what is envisioned as a new Fairfax-based mission of the conservative Episcopal Church of Nigeria. The head of the Nigerian church, Archbishop Peter Akinola, has voiced support for a pending law in that country that includes prison sentences for gay sexual activity.

All of which must seem a bit bizarre to Americans who don't realize that the Anglican church isn't growing in Canterbury or Truro, but in Africa--just part of a trend in which Christianity is gaining remarkable strength and membership in the third world.

Why Akinola? He's been a prominent critic of the Episcopal Church's leftward tilt and--since parishes have to associate with some bishop somewhere--was thought to be a secure harbor when it comes to traditional Christian teaching. Akinola's support for the law regulating gays sounds bad, and I think it's going to be difficult to downplay it. But it's a late development, and focusing on that to explain what's going on with conservative Episcopals is a distortion--it's just poor reporting.

In this post I'm a Catholic talking about Episcopalians, so the usual caveats apply. Titus One Nine and Midwest Conservative Journal, being actual Episcopalians, are on firmer ground.

Update: A long post by (Catholic) Amy Welborn, one of my favorite bloggers, includes this handy statistic that helps explain my passing reference as to why conservative Episcopalians are working to associate themselves with a Nigerian diocese:

Did you know that there are 50 million people in England? And that there are less than 900,000 worshipers in Anglican churches? 34% of whom are members of evangellically-minded Anglicans, who, via their representatives, confronted Archbishop Williams last week?

That confrontation consisting of traditonal Anglicans announcing they would not recognize liberal bishops. Lots of clashes coming to a head.

Oh, and Nigerian Anglican Church  has 17 million members, according to this article from 2003 and a couple of other references out there. Some splinter.

 

Comments

[Michael]

>>They may be a splinter in the American context, but the current leadership of the Episcopal Church itself is the splinter group worldwide.<<

True, but why does an American paper covering the rifts in the American version of the Anglican church bother you so? By your own numbers the worldwide Anglican church these days is overwhelmingly African, but this is a new (and, oh, by the way, gay-hating) constituency. It's not the mother church from which American Episcopaleanism sprung, it's a different offshoot in apparently very fertile ground.

Times and churches change. The American Episcopal church has been exhibiting tension between liberal reform and "Pope-less Catholicism" for decades.

Two of the most liberal Protestant denominations, Unitarian Universalists and Congegationalists, are the descendants of the not very liberal Puritan church. Whither American Episcopaleanism is an interesting question, as is "what's up with all those African Anglicans", but I don't think it's bias or blindness to focus on the former.

[Ken Shepherd]

Good post. I wrote about something similar at NewsBusters.org today, but about ABC's coverage by Laura Marquez on "World News Sunday."

[Christopher Fotos]

Thanks Ken.

As for my friend Michael, I am not "bothered" by an American paper covering an American rift, except to the extent that it leaves its readers largely ignorant that the rift goes far beyond America. In other words, I hate lame reporting. It isn't just the case that what we call conservative Episcopalians are rejecting the quite liberal leadership (and a great many liberal churches) of the U.S.--the liberal Episcopal Church has rejected the great majority of worldwide Anglicans and the compromise attempted by the Archbishop of Canterbury in the Land of the Mother Church to prevent a schism.

The validity of Anglicanism, just as with the authority of Catholicism or any other Christian church with a missionary history, is pointedly not based on the color of your skin or GPS coordinates but, to use the short version, your fidelity to the truth. That's what this battle is about--competing claims about what is true. To describe the American conservatives as a "splinter" when they have most fellow Anglicans agreeing with their claims is pretty amusing. And since Nigerian conversion was started by the Mother Church, starting in the mid-19th century, they're every bit as Anglican as anyone else. I am assuming that the Nigerian Anglicans were never informed by Canterbury or anyone that they were welcome to become Anglican Christians as long as it was understood they were an alien "offshoot."

Your reference to the origins of Unitarians and the like is very appropriate--I don't know much about the Congregationalists--since they descended from a sect that plainly insisted on the divinity of the resurrected Jesus Christ. Unitarian Universalists obviously don't, which among other things means they aren't Puritans. Something like that that may well be the fate of Episcopalians following the leadership of Bishop Schori--cutting themselves off from the root of their faith to the point where a century from now they won't be recognizable as Anglican. From what I understand Schori has been unperturbed by a prominent Episcopalian or two who are pretty hazy on whether Jesus is God, so maybe they won't even be Christian in the end.

[Christopher Fotos]

This comment at Discriminations captures part of what I'm talking about:

It is not for me, however, to give theological, Scripture-interpreting advice to Episcopalians, or anyone else.

But not to be totally deterred from commenting, I would like to say that there is one element of the Episcopal schism that deserves more comment than it has received. Before the recent secessions (these in Virginia are not the only ones), the U.S. Episcopal church had about 2.2 million members, not much weightier than a fly on the back of the camel of the international Anglican Communion, which has about 77 million members. A substantial majority of those 77 million communicants around the world regard the emerging orthodoxies of the U.S. Episcopal Church (not just the ordaining of gay bishops) to be heresies, and yet, so far as I know, we’ve heard not a peep from those who usually miss no opportunity to criticize the United States for “ignoring world opinion,” “going it alone,” “insisting on a morality the rest of the world rejects,” etc. ...

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