The Fat Lady, The Episcopal Church, And The Anglican Communion
A particularly juicy excerpt:
The Anglican Communion consists of approximately 80 million people, only 1.8 million of whom are Episcopalians (down from 3.6 million in the sixties). There are many Anglicans in the Anglophone countries, of course, but most Anglicans live in far-off lands. There are, obviously, homosexual communicants in those lands: homosexuals may constitute about 2 percent of any population. But those lands don’t do homosexual marriage. And they aren’t going to change their ways any time soon. We’ll have peace in the Middle East first.
The Archbishop of Canterbury said about homosexuals, more or less, that he felt their pain: “For me it’s a constant source of deep sadness, the number of people who are persecuted for their sexuality,” he said after encountering gay and lesbian protesters at the meeting of the primates. “I wanted to take this opportunity to say how sorry I am for the hurt and pain, in the past and present, the church has caused.”
Maybe. But as they say on the debating circuit, “Name three” — name three people in the United States who have been persecuted for their sexuality. Perhaps Jack Phillips, who was fined $135,000 because he refused to bake a wedding cake for a queer couple. No. Wait a minute. He was persecuted because he was normal and wouldn’t kowtow to the zeitgeist, which said he had to serve homosexuals.
And we can only hope the presiding bishop wasn’t feeling any pain for Susan Russell, ’scuse me, “The Rev.” Susan Russell, a senior associate rector at All Saints Church in Pasadena. She said sanctions would not change her position: “As a lifelong Episcopalian and a married lesbian priest, I think [the Episcopal Church’s suspension is] not only an acceptable cost, it’s a badge of honor in some ways.” It wasn’t reported whether she told the Anglican bishops where they could stuff their mitres.
This moment, these moments, have been long in coming. In 1960, James Pike, the Episcopal bishop of California, said the doctrine of the Trinity was “outdated, incomprehensible and nonessential.” In 1961 he said the Virgin Birth of Christ was a “primitive myth.” The Episcopal Church decided, unwisely, not to try Pike for heresy and defrock him. That was the beginning of the end. It meant that, doctrinally, anything goes. And since that time, a lot has.
The Archbishop of Canterbury may see homosexuals as persecuted individuals. But it is more accurate to see them as marauding vandals, come to destroy the icons and the tablets. The doctrine, discipline, and worship of the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion have been well established for centuries. People who want homosexual marriage to be considered normal (or don’t believe in the Virgin Birth or the Trinity) should join — should have joined — a different church. The James Pikes of the ’60s and the homosexuals of today set out to destroy the Episcopal Church. They are part of the left’s long march through the institutions. There is no reason whatsoever to feel sorry for them. And every reason to resist them.
Amin, Amin, Amin. The Episcopal Church's revolution on marriage is related to the apostasy of Pike, Spong, et al. as a child is related to his parents. And the radicals have clearly not finished their work.
If we're going to resist them, however, we're going to have to be "full on" in our resistance, and this means, among other things, that another child of Anglican radicalism, women's ordination, must also yield to the surgeon's scalpel.