That's My Church!

The Arch-Bish of Canterbury on the State of the Communion and the ECUSA's place in it:

The requests to the American Church for further clarification and a moratorium on certain actions while the covenant process is going forward are essentially requests to show that their desire to stay with the Communion is strong enough to cope with a halt for the sake of continuing to move and work together. The suggestion of a structure in America to care for the minority tries to remove any need for external intervention.

Whether it can all come together remains to be seen. But the leaders of the Communion thought it worth trying - not because enforced unanimity matters more than anything, but because the relations and common work of the Communion, especially in the developing world, matter massively. And also because the idea that there might be a worldwide Christian Church that could balance unity and consent seems worth holding on to, for the sake of the whole Christian family and even for the sake of human society itself.

I think that those who gathered in Tanzania believed that their vocation was to look for a way of embodying this balance. Losing that possibility is not a small matter. Working for it (when I think back to the painful intensity of some of our discussions) is not looking for an easy option.

Emphasis added. A friend of mine from church emailed wondering why this alternative oversight proposal isn't getting more attention. This friend is of the opinion that we are definitely on our way toward a split, with the ECUSA going off on the liberal track and a rump conservative body, essentially an American Anglican Church forming as an alternative. As I believe I was saying as long ago as last summer, this will force every single parish (and every single parishioner) to decide which path to take, a choice the vast majority of us have been able to put off hitherto.

I'd also note something else Dr. Williams says:

To digress for just a moment: one of the hardest things in all this has been to keep insisting on the absolute moral imperative of combating bigotry and violence against gay people, and the need to secure appropriate civic and legal protection for couples who have chosen to share their lives. These are different matters from whether the Church has the freedom to bless same-sex unions. A negative or agnostic answer to this latter question is frequently heard as a negative attitude to the imperatives of care and respect - and sometimes that perception is sadly accurate, judging from the postbag that arrives here. Yet they are different, and quite a lot of Christians know it and try to act accordingly.

Hear, hear. I get very tired of the assumption that some of my more liberal friends make that just because I am opposed to same-sex marriages and the election of Bishop Robinson, I also think gays ought to be tied to fence-posts and beaten to death, which is of course complete rot. As a matter of fact, I don't even have any particular problem with the concept of civil unions. But as the Arch-Bish points out, these are very different matters from the debate going on within the Church.

FRIDAY AFTERNOON UPDATE: Oh, what the hell.....