THE EPISCOPALIAN DILEMMA

Another recent religious headline was “Episcopalians Shaken by Division in Church”. Episcopalians, you may recall, are the liberal ones; the ones that elected a gay Bishop, a woman leader and perform gay marriages. Well I guess not all of them are that happy with the direction the Church is taking and has been taking.

Historically, the Episcopalians in the United States are the same, or at least similar to the Anglicans in England. Their nominal spiritual leader is the Archbishop of Canterbury (London). Anglicans exist all over the world, mainly where the British Empire once reigned supreme but are concentrated in Africa – remember Desmond Tutu, the Anglican Bishop that helped end apartheid in South Africa.

Going back even further in history, England was Roman Catholic under the Pope in Rome during the reign of King Henry VIII. You remember him as the king that could not seem to get a male heir so he kept either divorcing or beheading his wives until he got one that would produce a prince.

Henry wanted to do all this according to Catholic law and asked the Pope at that time for an annulment (divorce). The Pope was feeling his oats and wanting to show how he is more powerful than some mere king, denied Henry.

Henry told the Pope to shove it and took over the Catholic Church in England making himself the head of the new Anglican Church. Henry also took over all the Church property and the property of all the monasteries in England; a tidy some of money.

I am of course simplifying everything as you may gather. The Anglicans were called Catholics without a Roman Pope as their head but actually their religion is not identical to Catholicism even though there has been a Vatican Commission trying to unite the two faiths together for quite a few years. When the Vatican heard they elected a woman as Bishop they told the Anglicans forgetaboutit.

American Episcopalians are divided on the issue of homosexuality, homosexual priests and bishops and the sanctioning of gay marriage; basically conservatives against the liberals with the liberals being in the majority.

To complicate things a little further let me add the African Anglicans. These are definitely arch conservatives who oppose homosexuality but on the other hand they believe each male can have sex with any female he meets and that condoms do not prevent AIDS and debase a man’s masculinity if he has to wear one.

So you have this world Anglican Communion which the Archbishop of Canterbury is trying to keep together. He recently issued a “theological reflection” where he will try to find a theological path to bring both sides together. This, all sides agree, will not happen because a bridge that both sides can live with does not exist and cannot exist.

I don’t pretend to know everything about the Episcopalian / Anglican religion but I know that I have always admired their liberalism, flexibility and dedication to social issues and social ills. They were a truly progressive religion, to me, that also truly represented the essence of Christianity and of Jesus in their treatment of people, no matter whom they were or where they came from (Christian love and Christian justice).

Obviously, these American Christians found a way to practice their religion in a compassionate manner without some of the fundamentalist, discriminatory views of other Christians in this country. I have to believe that the way they treat the Bible has to play a role. I know they consider scripture as the foundation of their religion but why do they not read the Bible in the same way that homophobic fundamentalists do?

The story with the Episcopalians is unfolding just like our entire society is. We are being divided into Right and Left with no apparent room in the middle – why?

I think a good start on the road to recovery would be to tell the African Anglicans and the American Episcopalian Conservatives to form their own religion because clearly they are not true followers of Jesus; more on this later.

Janusz