Thursday, September 10, 2009

The Anglican Covenant: making the Anglican Communion an agent of the US right wing

Remember when TEC used to be called "The Republican Party at Prayer"? That was back when Republicans were sensible fiscal conservatives, before they were highjacked by teabagging, religious wingers, and the ignorant wing of the conservative movement. Jim Naughton nails it in the Guardian:
The Anglican Covenant may never come to pass. Or its doctrinal statements may be so unobjectionable, and its enforcement mechanisms so weak, that every church in the communion will hastily sign on. Or the gay-friendly churches threatened with diminished status may realise that they will always have more opportunities than resources for mission within the communion, and happily agree to run their trains on track number two.

Yet if Rowan Williams succeeds in his misguided effort to establish a single-issue magisterium that determines a church's influence within the communion, a significant risk remains. That risk is run not by the Anglican left, which has nothing practical to lose, nor by the Anglican right, whose leaders embarrass less easily than Donald Trump and don't fear public opprobrium. Rather, the parties at risk are the Church of England and the office of the Archbishop of Canterbury, which may find themselves at the head of a communion synonymous with the agenda of the American right.

If Americans, Canadians and other gay-friendly churches are deemed insufficiently Anglican, the struggle to determine who speaks for the communion will be waged between the dozy dons and preening peacocks who lead the Church of England, and Episcopal schismatics whose public relations are handled by the folks who operated the Swift Boat Veterans campaign against John Kerry in 2004.....

[A}warding the Anglican brand in North America to the schismatics would ....[hand] the American right the opportunity to wrap its agenda in the endorsement of a major mainstream religious organisation.
....

The loudest and most frequently-quoted voices in the Anglican communion, then, would be stridently anti-gay and anti-Islamic; supportive of American military adventurism; against a two-state solution in the Middle East; in favour of teaching creationism or intelligent design to school children; sceptical about climate change; and adamant that homosexuality can be cured.

If the Archbishop gets his covenant, he will no longer be portrayed as the harried peacemaking father of an argumentative clan just trying to get everyone to sit down for dinner. He and his church will be the most visible symbols of a communion that has traded its good name to the American right and Peter Akinola simply to avoid admitting the possibility that people in loving, committed gay relationships can preach the Gospel and serve the church.

I suspect there will be consequences.

This isn't just about one denomination. This is about much much more than that.

Emphasis mine. H/T Madpriest.

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