This is Life!: Revolutions Around the Cruciform Axis

With All Due Respect, This Is Not How to Repent

For the life of me, I can hardly see how the Anglican Communion, such as it now is, can hold together much longer. The Anglican churches in the U. S. and Canada were called upon to voice their regret over their part in the current schism among the provinces. So the Episcopal House of Bishops met last week, and one of them came up with this (emphasis added):

Dear All,

One point must be clearly understood: the Primates' Meeting in February will determine whether or not the Windsor Report as it stands will be what we must work with. It was quite impossible to decide anything about moratoria until that happens. The Bishops committed to engage the process outlined in the Windsor Report, insofar as our polity allows. Furthermore, there must be a reciprocal gesture from the other parties named in the Windsor Report who are to effect moratoria on crossing diocesan boundaries. Anyone who claims that the House in Salt Lake City rejected *or* accepted moratoria on blessings of same-sex unions or approvals to bishops-elect who live in committed same-sex partnerships simply wasn't there. We have to wait and see what the process at the global level looks like as things unfold before we can take any action.

The most important point is that we took the Report very very seriously as a House. There was clear consensus about our real regret at having caused deep disruption in other churches' lives, adding to what the Presiding Bishop has said on several occasions. There was also a consensus on engaging the process of reconcilitation, within the bounds of our polity as a church. The "Word to the Church" reflects I believe a genuine deeply-felt word from your bishops speaking as one. . . .

Pierre Whalon

--Bishop Pierre Whalon: The House Of Bishops Statement from Salt Lake City, and separate statement from "conservative bishops" [Via T-19]

So, according to Bishop Whalon, "we'll only repent if they do." In the meantime, instead of reconciling, we commit to continue to think about reconciling.

This is an excoriable slap in the face to the rest of the Anglican Communion, an episcopal offering of the middle finger to anyone who has less money and less political clout than America. Talk about your unilateral actions.

I'm not Anglican anymore, and here is one reason why. How could I be part of a church that so blatantly offends her sister churches again and again, then blames them for lack of reconciliation (we'll have to see what they're going to do)? How could I be part of a church that is so arrogant to believe that everyone else living and dead must be wrong? How could I be part of a church that thinks the only thing they have to regret about their actions is that the other guy got upset? In short, how could I be part of a church that no longer knows how to repent?

I feel for my brother and sister Anglicans, two of whom I am thinking of right now, who can know only the pain and frustration of trying to serve God in such a context. How can they exhort anyone to repent of their sins, when the example put on by the highest levels of the denomination is that repentance is never necessary unless the other guy does so first?

May God forgive me, and ever work in me to keep me from this sort of hardening of the heart.