Anglicans suspend Episcopal Church because they aren't bigoted

[Boogalou]

Seriously.  Way to end up on the wrong side of history.

Quote

The Episcopal Church, long the church of the establishment in the United States, has been punished by the international Anglican Communion over its acceptance of same-sex marriage.

A pretty good reason to get kicked out of the club, if I do say so myself.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/01/14/world/episcopal-church-suspended/

[smittykins]

As a proud Episcopalian, I have one thing to say:

[Whoosh]

This almost makes me want to go back to church.  Not quite, but almost.  YAY Episcopalians!

But seriously, really Anglicans? 

[treehugger]

As a Canadian Anglican, I am profoundly disappointed in the response of the International Anglican Communion.   

I know the Anglican Church of Canada is currently discussing gay marriage at the synod level this year - and I am fervently hoping that love will win (no matter what a person's orientation).

[PennySycamore]

Fuck the Anglican Communion!  There are a bunch of churches in the developing world who absolutely get their knickers in a twist about homosexuality.  I hope that this does NOT mean that the schismatic churches somehow are recognized as part of the Anglican communion.  Some of those churches are really messed up.

[Cleopatra7]

I can't say I'm surprised by this. At this point, there are more Anglicans in the developing world than the West, and their views are going to predominate in the Anglican Communion.

[samira_catlover]

When I first heard about this, my reaction was "oh, yeah, you wanna go all Henry VIII and you don't belong here no more!"

While I appreciate that the Anglicans have to walk a delicate balance between Western-world freedoms and Olde-Fashioned/Conventional Stuffes...dumping a whole continent's worth of peoples seems *really* extreme.

Love comes in the oddest shapes, and only the Blessed Eternal can figure out why, and work off from there, maybe?

[Mercer]

So we're in trouble for being too loving, too welcoming, and too compassionate? I can live with that.

I'm confident that we're on the right side of history here.

[December]

31 minutes ago, Mercer said:

So we're in trouble for being too loving, too welcoming, and too compassionate? I can live with that.

I'm confident that we're on the right side of history here.

Exactly what I thought when I heard the news. I'm not happy that the church was suspended but I'm also glad for the decisions the ECUSA is making. 

I wonder if some members, like the USA and Canada, will end up leaving the Anglican Communion soon to form a separate group? 

[Whoosh]

It does seem to me that this will likely lead to a split from the Anglican Communion (for the USA and possibly for Canada).  I am not as familiar with what is going on in Canada, but the Episcopal Church in the USA has a longstanding history of supporting equality largely to the extent allowed by law in the jurisdiction (I may be overstating a bit).  My point is that this shouldn't be something that seems new or surprising to either "side" here.  I don't think ECUSA is going to back down and fail to support marriage equality at this time and it seems that the Anglican Communion has had plenty of time to think it over or whatever. If there was a tendency to accept the decision the ECUSA has made, this move seems rash and foolish, so I am not optimistic that the Anglican Communion will back down on their stance any time soon either.

I didn't think the entire Anglican Communion was going to rush to follow the lead of the ECUSA, but I did think they would agree to peaceably coexist under the same broad banner.  I don't see that happening now - perhaps I am just a pessimist (or optimist? IDK).

[RosyDaisy]

I hope the ECUSA wins this battle.

[lawfulevil]

Up yours, Anglicans, and you can take all the bigoted pieces of shit with you.

This got posted to a church camp alumni FB page I follow (I'm not even sure why anymore, I went for years but I have nothing in common with these people) and I'm pretty pissed off about the response.

Spoiler

Camp Crucis, Dallas/Fort Worth

 

[withaj]

8 hours ago, PennySycamore said:

Fuck the Anglican Communion!  There are a bunch of churches in the developing world who absolutely get their knickers in a twist about homosexuality.  I hope that this does NOT mean that the schismatic churches somehow are recognized as part of the Anglican communion.  Some of those churches are really messed up.

Ugh... Not only in the developing world! The South Carolina schism drives me batty with regularity. I hope they don't get reincorporated into the Anglican Communion (they're currently affiliated with a bunch of ECs in the global south, as I recall) if ECUSA goes its own way.

[Firiel]

There are a few really conservative Episcopalian dioceses in the US that still don't allow gay marriage.  I wonder what will happen to those... 

[Cleopatra7]

33 minutes ago, Firiel said:

There are a few really conservative Episcopalian dioceses in the US that still don't allow gay marriage.  I wonder what will happen to those... 

It's been my experience that, while the Episcopal church has gained a reputation for being progressive, there are still many conservative country club type Episcopalians (especially in the South and Texas) who are embarrassed that their church is known for having women priests and gay bishops, but are too prejudiced against other types of Christianity to change denominations. While some conservative Episcopalians do go to Catholicism or Orthodoxy, and become very noisy converts at that, many more have deeply ingrained WASP prejudices against "ethnics" and their churches, and either find conservative Episcopal parishes or join breakaway Anglican groups.

[Firiel]

1 minute ago, Cleopatra7 said:

It's been my experience that, while the Episcopal church has gained a reputation for being progressive, there are still many conservative country club type Episcopalians (especially in the South and Texas) who are embarrassed that their church is known for having women priests and gay bishops, but are too prejudiced against other types of Christianity to change denominations. While some conservative Episcopalians do go to Catholicism or Orthodoxy, and become very noisy converts at that, many more have deeply ingrained WASP prejudices against "ethnics" and their churches, and either find conservative Episcopal parishes or join breakaway Anglican groups.

My experiences have all been with a really great diocese that is progressive but also very friendly with the other conservative religion(s) in the area.  I imagine interacting with the kind of Episcopalians you describe would be horrid.  I love the structure and liturgy of the Episcopal church, but I just could not deal with that crap.  Add that to the list of "reasons I don't want to move to the South."

[Whoosh]

I agree with Cleopatra there.  I honestly would hope that, if there is a split, individual congregations would have a choice of either staying with the Anglican Communion or staying with the ECUSA.  While I would love to see everyone support marriage equality, etc., I am pretty adamantly against forcing a religious organization to preform rights or rituals they do not believe in.  Not preforming a marriage isn't unlawful unless we are talking about the government.  I don't think the ECUSA will be supportive of churches that don't follow their way of doing things, though I may be wrong.  There was a situation over the summer that tangentially speaks to how things might go in that regard.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/06/gay-dads-baptism_n_7223744.html

[withaj]

48 minutes ago, Firiel said:

There are a few really conservative Episcopalian dioceses in the US that still don't allow gay marriage.  I wonder what will happen to those... 

Well, using South Carolina for an example, they aren't technically part of the Anglican Communion anymore, so they won't be affected by this in the short term. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Episcopal_Diocese_of_South_Carolina

ETA: This is the "breakaway" diocese in South Carolina led by the then-legimiate (within TEC/ECUSA) bishop Mark Lawrence, who basically seceded from the Church in 2012 and took a hell of a lot of churches, members, and valuable property/assets (think $500 million) with him. Lots of ongoing legal drama.

There IS, however, a fairly substantial segment of the Episcopal community in South Carolina that did not follow Lawrence, now led by a different bishop and going by the name "The Episcopal Church in South Carolina" while fighting a restraining order forbidding them from using the traditional name "Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina" that Mark Lawrence claims legal right to despite his/its departure from TEC/ECUSA.

I would not call many of the SC churches that remain affiliated with TEC/ECUSA truly progressive, and the fight here isn't really over the LGBT bishops and marriages issue -- it's about preserving the relationship with the mother church, as I understand it. 

Sorry for the essay, this just happens to be a bugbear of mine. (I'm not actually Episcopalian (though I would totally convert from nominal Methodism if I actually believed in God), but one side of my family traditionally has been, and a great-great-uncle of mine was an important bishop who was forced out of a Caribbean regime by its despot at gunpoint.

I just want TEC/ECUSA to win and get those churches back so I can go to my favorite one again when I'm nearby, which I've been boycotting in the meantime: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_the_Cross Soooo pretty.

[Cleopatra7]

I recently read a book on spirituality in sub-Saharan Africa for a class, and it provided some useful information as to why many African Christians feel so strongly against homosexuality, at least as it's construed in the West (I add this qualifier, because same-sex relations have existed in all times and places, but sexual orientation as we know it is a relatively new thing, and that's what they're reacting against). Laurent Magesa, a Tanzanian African priest and author of "What is Sacred?" says:

Quote

In the experience of the African community, nothing unites one person to another, to the ancestral and divine spirits, and to the universe as a whole as much as the conjugal bond; this is where the energy that activates life in the form of conception and birth is most present. Understandably, celibacy is almost always disapproved of, even abhorred. "The single person is disobedient to the ancestors, even to God, since he or she destroys the stream of life." Permanent homosexuality, infertility, and sterility are, from this perspective, equally abhorrent as spiritual failings because they "plunge the person concerned into misery, they sever him from personal immortality, and threaten the perpetuation of the lineage.

This view is also why celibacy tends to be ignored by African Catholic priests (with the blessing of their communities), since it is considered to be just as "unnatural" as homosexuality. I think that Western Christian conservatives greatly underestimate the cultural differences that exist between themselves and Christians in sub-Saharan Africa, differences that will become more obvious as time goes on.

[Bad Wolf]

Our priest said it would be up to the individual churches regarding gay marriage. Ours is apparently 99.9% in favor. 

[December]

3 hours ago, Firiel said:

My experiences have all been with a really great diocese that is progressive but also very friendly with the other conservative religion(s) in the area.  I imagine interacting with the kind of Episcopalians you describe would be horrid.  I love the structure and liturgy of the Episcopal church, but I just could not deal with that crap.  Add that to the list of "reasons I don't want to move to the South."

Actually, when I was living in the South I was happy to find a very progressive Episcopal church. Things can be so different church-to-church. Even moving around the North, I'd always have to check out a few first to find the best fit for me. 

Also, I'm surprised to see a few other Episcopalians (though I'm not really active at the moment, I been have for much of my life) here on FJ! I almost never encounter people IRL or online who even know what the ECUSA is! Well, unless I've met them at church, I suppose 

[withaj]

8 minutes ago, December said:

Actually, when I was living in the South I was happy to find a very progressive Episcopal church. Things can be so different church-to-church. Even moving around the North, I'd always have to check out a few first to find the best fit for me. 

Also, I'm surprised to see a few other Episcopalians (though I'm not really active at the moment, I been have for much of my life) here on FJ! I almost never encounter people IRL or online who even know what the ECUSA is! Well, unless I've met them at church, I suppose 

That's odd that you rarely encounter people familiar with the Episcopal Church. Do you mean they haven't heard of it as a denomination or they aren't familiar with it beyond that?

[December]

Just now, withaj said:

That's odd that you rarely encounter people familiar with the Episcopal Church. Do you mean they haven't heard of it as a denomination or they aren't familiar with it beyond that?

Like they literally have no idea it exists. If they've heard of it by name, they generally have no idea what it's like, or have it confused with another denomination. So it's always fun to try to explain! 

[withaj]

3 minutes ago, December said:

Like they literally have no idea it exists. If they've heard of it by name, they generally have no idea what it's like, or have it confused with another denomination. So it's always fun to try to explain! 

Weird! I guess there's been a major Episcopal church or cathedral every city I've lived in (National Cathedral in DC, St. John's and All Saints, among others, in LA, and a cathedral that's a well-known local historical site in my Southern hometown, so if the church or Episcopalians have ever come up in conversation, people have generally been aware.

[docmom]

Proud to be a member of the ECUSA at this time.  As far the more conservative churches go, the Episcopal church has traditionally been pretty good about letting each church decide for themselves what to do. It's what held the church together during the abolitionist period, the great "high" vs "low" church "smells and bells" debate of the early 20th century and more recently the ending of segregation and the appointment of women priests and bishops.   The idea is that we're united by a liturgy not a set of rules.  It's to be hoped that in time, love and tolerance will prevail in all ECUSA churches.  It'll just take some a bit longer than others.