About two decades too late.

Is gay marriage destroying the United Methods Church:

//"Irreconcilable" disagreement over same-sex unions is once again prompting debate over splitting the historic United Methodist Church (UMC), one of America's largest denominations.

"If we are one church, we cannot act as if we are two. If, in reality, we are two churches, it may not be wise to pretend any longer that we are one," concludes a statement last month from 80 traditionalists from across the UMC, which has 7.7 million U.S. members. (An additional 4.4 million members are overseas.)

The statement says the UMC is facing a crisis in four areas because:

* Pastors have violated or said they are willing to violate the Book of Discipline ban on same-sex marriages. (The Book of Discipline is the church's most authoritative guide.)

* Pastors and other leaders realize that there are no "meaningful consequences" for violating the Book of Discipline by officiating at a same-sex union. (In one instance, two clergy were given a "24-hour suspension without pay" for marrying gay couples.)

* More church leaders believe "significant parts of the Scriptures do not provide an accurate understanding of God's heart and mind and may be discarded as uninspired and in error."

* Among top leaders, "there are dramatic differences in how personal and social holiness is lived out and taught."

"We can no longer talk about schism as something that might happen in the future. Schism has already taken place in our connection," said Maxie Dunnam, chancellor of Asbury Seminary and leader in the Good News movement for evangelical Methodists, in comments to Good News magazine.

"There are conscience-bound persons who find it impossible to live in the United Methodist Church as we presently define ourselves in relation to human sexuality," said Dunnam. "Forty years of wrestling with the issue is enough." The first disagreements among United Methodists over homosexuality began four decades ago. Back in 2004, traditionalist leaders tried, but failed, to move forward a proposal for an amicable breakup of the denomination that traces its heritage to John and Charles Wesley.

Many traditionalists say their differences with progressives are now "irreconcilable." The UMC, the largest of the historic mainline denominations, has been holding the conservative line on homosexuality for years. Two other major mainline groups, The Episcopal Church and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), permit the blessing of same-sex unions and credential openly gay clergy. The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) now allows ordination to occur without reference to its fidelity/chastity clause. In 2012, conservative PC(USA) members created the Evangelical Covenant Order of Presbyterians to uphold bans on same-sex unions and openly gay clergy.

The statement by Dunnam's group follows the controversial actions of UMC bishop Martin McLee of New York. In March, McLee announced that he was dropping formal charges against Thomas Ogletree, an 80-year-old retired pastor and former Yale Divinity dean who was accused of breaking church law by officiating at his son's same-sex wedding ceremony in 2012//

Retreat from Reason

The Anglican Mainstream on Archbishop Rowan's recent advice that Catholicism should modeled itself upon Anglicanism.

Because that model has shown itself to be so very succesful of late.

New Lutheran body to form after gay pastor vote.

The Lutherans follow the example set by the Episcopalians.

More Business Heading Our Way

The Evangelical Lutheran Church of America has tossed in with the Episcopal Church and will now permit homosexuals living in a "committed relationship" to serve in leadership positions.

No word as yet on whether the ELCA will allow polygamists living in a "committed relationship," or heterosexuals living in a "committed relationship," to serve as pastors.

That private interpretation is an amazing thing.

The Slow Moving Train Wreck

N.T. Wright from July of 2009 explains how the American Episcopal Church has repudiated the Anglican Communion. This is particularly interesting:

Granted, the TEC resolution indicates a strong willingness to remain within the Anglican Communion. But saying “we want to stay in, but we insist on rewriting the rules” is cynical double-think. We should not be fooled.

Of course, matters didn’t begin with the consecration of Gene Robinson. The floodgates opened several years before, particularly in 1996 when a church court acquitted a bishop who had ordained active homosexuals. Many in TEC have long embraced a theology in which chastity, as universally understood by the wider Christian tradition, has been optional.

That wider tradition always was counter-cultural as well as counter-intuitive. Our supposedly selfish genes crave a variety of sexual possibilities. But Jewish, Christian and Muslim teachers have always insisted that lifelong man-plus-woman marriage is the proper context for sexual intercourse. This is not (as is frequently suggested) an arbitrary rule, dualistic in overtone and killjoy in intention. It is a deep structural reflection of the belief in a creator God who has entered into covenant both with his creation and with his people (who carry forward his purposes for that creation).

Paganism ancient and modern has always found this ethic, and this belief, ridiculous and incredible. But the biblical witness is scarcely confined, as the shrill leader in yesterday’s Times suggests, to a few verses in St Paul. Jesus’s own stern denunciation of sexual immorality would certainly have carried, to his hearers, a clear implied rejection of all sexual behaviour outside heterosexual monogamy. This isn’t a matter of “private response to Scripture” but of the uniform teaching of the whole Bible, of Jesus himself, and of the entire Christian tradition.

The appeal to justice as a way of cutting the ethical knot in favour of including active homosexuals in Christian ministry simply begs the question. Nobody has a right to be ordained: it is always a gift of sheer and unmerited grace. The appeal also seriously misrepresents the notion of justice itself, not just in the Christian tradition of Augustine, Aquinas and others, but in the wider philosophical discussion from Aristotle to John Rawls. Justice never means “treating everybody the same way”, but “treating people appropriately”, which involves making distinctions between different people and situations. Justice has never meant “the right to give active expression to any and every sexual desire”.

Such a novel usage would also raise the further question of identity. It is a very recent innovation to consider sexual preferences as a marker of “identity” parallel to, say, being male or female, English or African, rich or poor. Within the “gay community” much postmodern reflection has turned away from “identity” as a modernist fiction. We simply “construct” ourselves from day to day.

We must insist, too, on the distinction between inclination and desire on the one hand and activity on the other — a distinction regularly obscured by references to “homosexual clergy” and so on. We all have all kinds of deep-rooted inclinations and desires. The question is, what shall we do with them? One of the great Prayer Book collects asks God that we may “love the thing which thou commandest, and desire that which thou dost promise”. That is always tough, for all of us. Much easier to ask God to command what we already love, and promise what we already desire. But much less like the challenge of the Gospel.

Not Another Episcopal Church Blog has a captivating post on last months trainwreck of a General Convention. That blog has this video report on the zaniness of the convention:



The zaniness includes a discussion of how the uber-liberal bishops believe that everyone has to believe them when they call a tail a leg (3 to 4 minutes), the defeat of an attempt to be inclusive by including Ishmael into a Eucharistic prayer (16 minutes) and how a debate about stripping the Blessed Virgin Mary of her virginity was defeated because of concern about public relations fallout. (17 minutes).

Now, it is fun to watch train-wrecks from the outside, but we outsiders have to stay aware of the fact that there are human beings suffering on the inside. The final minute about how one reporter had to leave a church that predated the American Revolution is worth watching, as is the fact that the liberal Episcopal had to close that church in July after it had been in continuous operation for 240 years.

Which motivates the question, just how is that "inclusiveness" working for 'ya?

Bare, ruined choirs

N.T. Wright: The American Episcopal church is choosing schism.

Collapsing Denominations

Michael Spencer links to this interactive graph/chart comparing the state of religion in 1990 and 2006.

The visuals display is nothing less than striking in showing the hemorhaging membership of Catholics in the Northeast. Catholic growth can be found in the South, undoubtedly fueled by the unprecedented immigration of Mexicans, which will probably be coming to an end.

For Protestants, the story is even more dismal.

Spencer writes:

Hispanics are the only thing floating in a sinking American Catholicism. Catholicism in the northeast is in rapid decline. Stunning, really.

Protestants are in a free fall. Evangelicals are moving to non-denominational megachurches and away from mainlines and traditional evangelicalism. Non-denominational, highly Charismatic flavored evangelicalism is on the way to domination, and you heard it here first, megachurch evangelicalism is a house of cards. If those in the pews of the megachurches think think grandchildren will be there as adults, I have a bridge I’d like to sell cheap.

While out and out atheists are still a sliver of the population, those calling themselves non-religious are growing rapidly. You ain’t seen nothin’ yet in that category. America remains a nation that says it is over 70% Christian, but Christianity as a percentage of the population is shrinking in every category except for Hispanics.

Baptists are coasting into decline, with growth far behind the total population. Generational horizons- the end of churches because no younger generation exists- are everywhere in the mainlines.

Here is the Touchstone article on the survey.

Episcopalians select first Budhist Bishop

These people make me happy to be Catholic.

Keep in mind that this is a church where Bishop Spong - who doesn't believe in the Resurrection - remains a bishop in good standing.

The Episcopalian Church violates its canon law to depose the Bishop of Pittsburgh for being too orthodox.

Spiritual Battle

Something that my partner and I see in our church-property litigation is the odd way in which the theologically liberal, uber-tolerant hierarchies literally demonize the conservative local churches who insist on holding to moral and faith positions that were mainstream not less than a decade ago.

Normally, though, you don't see it put as baldly as Washington's D.C. Bishop Chane puts it:

A leading Anglican bishop has condemned conservatives as "demonic" for using his church as a punch bag.

The Bishop of Washington, the Right Rev John Chane, a leading liberal in the Episcopal Church in the United States, accused conservatives of leading the church in a "dangerous" direction.

Bishop Chane, whose diocese covers the American capital, said: "I think it's really very dangerous when someone stands up and says, 'I have the way and I have the truth and I know how to interpret holy scripture and you are following what is the right way.'

"I think it's really very, very dangerous and I think it's demonic ... the Episcopal Church has been demonised. It has been a punching bag and I'm sick of being a punching bag as a Bishop and I'm sick of my church, my province being a punching bag. Do we deserve criticism, absolutely. No question about it."

This is funny in part because I'd bet that Chane doesn't believe in "demons" - given that he thinks that the Resurrection is largely unimportant to his Christian witness, although he is open to the idea that the Koran is the inspired word of God.

The only part of Chane's hilarious sermon that I excerpted was this:

To be an Easter people means claiming a relationship with Jesus Christ that is based very little on history and a lot on the intangibles of relationships, the unknown mystery of unconditional love and the active presence of God in our current world. It means, "fessing" up to not having all the answers, theologically or otherwise. It means standing up and saying, "I don't have a clear understanding of the resurrection…how it happened or what, ultimately, did occur."

So, according to Chane, we can be very open minded about the Resurrection and not be overly concerned with history, but if you don't accept the most current interpretation offered by liberal Bishops like Chane that active homosexual practice is perfectly consistent with Christianity, then you are "demonic."

Weird. Don't these people ever listen to themselves.

On the other hand, Paul VI's Humanae Vitae is really standing the test of time according to First Thing's Mary Eberstadt. Paul predicted that normalizing contraception would break apart the traditional connection between procreation, marriage, the family, sexual activity and sexual morality.

As Eberstadt points out, Paul's prophetic encyclical is 10 for 10. Ironically, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Wilson could not make the prophetic insight of Humanae Vitae any clearer:

However, in an exchange of letters with an evangelical Christian, written eight years ago when he was Archbishop of Wales, he described his belief that biblical passages criticising homosexual sex were not aimed at people who were gay by nature...In his 1989 essay The Body’s Grace, Dr Williams argued that the Church’s acceptance of contraception meant that it acknowledged the validity of nonprocreative sex. This could be taken as a green light for gay sex.

Paul VI's encyclical looks more inspired all the time, which in its own way, to my surprise, attests to something more significant.

Of course, Paul was villified at the time. Those bad things weren't going to happen. We are all too smart for that.

But it happened, and it was obvious now that it would happen, which leads me to ask again, why is "two" so special when it comes to the number of "spouses"?

Bare ruined Choirs

Jody Bottums at First Things has an insightful essay on the self-immolation of mainstream Protestantism.

When I first started doing "church disaffiliation" cases around 10 years ago, I was surprised at how the mainstream Protestant churches have hemorraged members over the last 30 years. At the time, the data was found only in samizdat mimeographed sheets circulated by the dissatisfied lay underground, but since then the fact that the mainstream Protestant churches have been bleeding members through the death of a thousand self-inflicted cuts has gone public.

Although I am a religious by-stander to the immolation of American mainstream Protestantism, I regret the loss of a vital national asset. The mainstream Protestant churches played a role as one of the vital connecting fibers between the regions and classes that make up our diverse country. For example, I believe that Methodists make up around 25% of the Congress, far exceeding their actual percentage of the population. That shared culture has to provide some common ground in a culture that officially believes that the primary virtue of American society is that "people can disagree with each other."

Therefore, I look at the destruction that the last two generations of mainstream Protestants leaders have wreaked on their traditions in the same way that I would look at a prodigal selling off the family heirlooms to buy crystal meth.

Lessons that I have learned from my practice include:

1. The drive for "inclusiveness" is self-defeating. The UMC, PCUSA and Episcopalians have distorted their traditions with the idea that if they just "tweak" their doctrine and traditions a bit, then they will bring in the 3 to 4% who are "disenfranchised."

Congratulations, guys, by going after the 3 to 4% who by nature are not oriented toward the production of children, you managed to drive off the 90%+ of church-goers who by the nature of things will have children and, therefore, represent growth and continuity.

In other words, embrace the culture of death and you die.

2. The Catholic church should not follow the nostrums repeatedly offered of married, women and gay priests, particularly women priests.

I have no emotional commitment against women priests whatsoever. It seems entirely logical to me that tapping the 50% of "manpower" and talent represented by one half of the population is an eminently sensible, but....

...let's look at the data. Every denomination that has adopted women priests/ministers has declined since the 1970s.

Maybe, just maybe, the Church is right and there is something about maleness in the priesthood.

I think the answer may lie in unintended consequences. If the women that were ordained were orthodox and traditional, then the ordination of women wouldn't have resulted in tipping the mainstream Protestant denominations into the religiously distracting irrelevance of extremist political causes - what Bottums calls "the National Organization of Women at prayer."

But, by definition, the women who get ordained aren't traditionalist and conservative; those women don't seek to get ordained.

And, so, liberal political agendas result in the ordination of women which drives off conservatives which tilts the denominations to the left which drives off conservatives which tilts the denomination left, etc., etc.

Finally, the mainstream denominations are left with nothing but child-hating drones, which is not the recipe for growth.

3. In the future, the American religious landscape will be independent churches from sea to shining sea, anchored by massifs of Catholicism and Mormonism.

Encouraging the modern tendency to insularity and division documented in Bowling Alone just can't be healthy. From Bottums' essay:

But the death of Protestant America really has weakened both Christianity and public life in the ­United States—for when the Mainline died, it took with it to the grave the vocabulary in which both criticism and support of the nation could be effective.

That vocabulary was incomplete in many ways, and the churches often failed to provide true Christian witness. But in its everyday practice, Protestantism nonetheless gave America something vital: a social unity and cultural definition that did not derive entirely from political arrangements and economic relations. And America gave Protestantism something in return: a chance to flourish without state interference, a freedom to fulfill the human desire for what lies beyond the material world.

Among conservative Christians, much attention is devoted to the question of whether the hole in public life can be filled by either Catholicism or the evangelical churches. I have my doubts. The evangelicals may have too little church organization, and the Catholics may have too much. Besides, both are minorities in the nation’s population, and they arrive at our current moment with a history of being outsiders—the objects of a long record of American suspicion, which hasn’t gone away despite the decline of the churches that gave the suspicion its modern form.

Perhaps some joining of Catholics and evangelicals, in morals and manners, could achieve the social unity in theological difference that characterized the old Mainline. But the vast intellectual resources of Catholicism still sound a little odd in the American ear, just as the enormous reservoir of evangelical faith has been unable, thus far, to provide a widely accepted moral rhetoric.

Well, let's hope something can be done - a nation whose primary shared tradition is disagreement and protest cannot long endure.

Woohoo!!! More business

Good news for those of us who practice the developing area of "church disaffiliation" law, the PCUSA has taken steps to eliminate the idea of "marital fidelity" and "chastity" from its ordination standards.

According to this PCUSA report on the actions of the 218th General Assembly (and let's not forget the 217th GA's yeoman efforts to change the baptismal formula to "Mother, Daughter and Holy Womb"):

Assembly proposes amendment to delete G-6.0106b and replace it with a new version

Paragraph covers “fidelity and chastity” ordination standards
by Jerry L. Van Marter

Commissioners and advisory delegates lined up behind Katherine Boswell, a youth advisory delegate from Western New York Presbytery, to speak during discussion of the Committee on Church Orders and Ministry report on Thursday morning. voted today (June 27) 380-325 to send a proposed amendment to the denomination’s 173 presbyteries that would delete the current paragraph G-6.0106b in the Book of Order — which requires church officers to live in “fidelity within the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman or chastity in singleness” — and replace it with a new G-6.0106b.

The proposed new G-6.0106b ties ordination decisions more closely to assent to the ordination vows currently in the church’s Book of Order without singling out a sexual conduct standard.

In the same action, the Assembly issued a new authoritative interpretation of the Book of Order declaring that interpretive statements related to sexual standards for ordination that predate the adoption of G-6.0106b in 1996 “have no further force or effect.”

The Advisory Committee on the Constitution has repeatedly said that clearing the way for ordination of sexually active gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered Presbyterians requires the deletion of G-6.0106b and the removal of the authoritative interpretations that undergirded Assembly policy statements of 1978 and 1979 prohibiting the ordination of practicing homosexuals.

The proposed new G-6.0106b reads:

“Those who are called to ordained service in the church, by their assent to the constitutional questions for ordination and installation (W-4.4003), pledge themselves to live lives obedient to Jesus Christ the Head of the Church, striving to follow where he leads through the witness of the Scriptures, and to understand the Scriptures through the instruction of the Confessions. In so doing, they declare their fidelity to the standards of the Church. Each governing body charged with examination for ordination and/or installation (G-14.0240 and G-14.0450) establishes the candidate’s sincere efforts to adhere to these standards.”

The debate now moves to the denomination’s presbyteries, which in 1997 and 2000 rejected proposals to delete G-6.0106b. At a press conference following the vote, the Rev. Dan Holloway of Providence Presbytery, who moderated the Assembly Committee on Church Orders and Ministries that brought the recommendation to the Assembly, said, “It is important to say that at this point our Constitution has not been changed. As we move forward it is essential that we have conversations that are gracious and loving and welcoming, since we are not all of one mind.”

The Assembly’s debate on the issue was briefer than in previous years.

Minister commissioner the Rev. William Stepp of Tropical Florida Presbytery opposed the deletion, saying the PC(USA) “needs a continuing strong witness to biblical standards for sexuality” and warned that the proposal will “destabilize the denomination, obliterate trust and reduce funding for the church. Don’t send a shock wave through the church.”

Notice that the "conservative" opponent of the movement knows exactly where this is going - more hemorraging of members.

Progessive theology - it's a gift that keeps on giving.

Know 'Magic Mushrooms', Know God; No 'Magic Mushrooms', No God

Those whacky Presbyterians.

After affirming that adultery is consistent with the Gospel, the PCUSA news agency runs this favorable story on the spiritual benefits of psychotropic mushrooms:

‘Magic’ mushrooms have spiritual benefits, study says
by Tim Murphy

Religion News Service

Hallucinogenic mushrooms, long valued by Central American cultures for their mystical qualities, may enhance the spirituality of people of faith, according to a new study in the Journal of Psychopharmacology.

Volunteer subjects reported conversing with God, experiencing “ultimate transcendence,” and being suspended in a “tactile field of light.”

And:

Some proponents of the drug argue that psilocybin and other psychoactive substances used in religious ceremonies — known as entheogens — produce chemical changes no different from severe illness or prolonged fasting, which have been known to produce spiritual awakenings.

The Rev. Ken Barnes, a California United Church of Christ pastor and former director of the Council on Spiritual Practices, said bans on psychoactive drugs are part of a larger problem.

“I believe that in our secular society, we’ve moved away from primary religious experiences,” said Barnes. “Entheogens can introduce the spirit in a very dramatic way. I see them mainly as inductors into the spiritual world.”

While Barnes expressed optimism that psilocybin would some someday follow the same path to legalization as peyote, a hallucinogen found in cactuses which was legalized for religious use in 1994, widespread acceptance within the Christian faith is another story.

“We have oftentimes for higher reasons broken the law, in (the cause of) civil rights and in other ways,” Barnes said. “And yet in this area of mysticism, the church has always been uneasy with it.”

Makes you wonder what's next on the PCUSA's agenda.

Mirror Image

A lot of my posts have to do with the break-up of denominations in the Protestant world. My interests are essentially professional in that the Penner & Bradley megafirm represents local Protestant churches who want to have done with the luch of their denominations into Gnosticism.

But equal time for the other side of the Tiber. Cosmos-Liturgy-Sex has a post on a local Catholic church that has used its corporate status to attempt to leave the control of the Catholic Bishop of St. Louis.

It appears that this local church has gone further than the intent of its original members and has started to embrace Gnosticism.

Bare, ruined choirs, Canadian division.

One congregation in Canada's United Church has taken Christian liberalism to its logical conclusion - they have completely eliminated Christ from their Christianity:

That triumphal barnburner of an Easter hymn, Jesus Christ Has Risen Today – Hallelujah, this morning will rock the walls of Toronto's West Hill United Church as it will in most Christian churches across the country.

But at West Hill on the faith's holiest day, it will be done with a huge difference. The words “Jesus Christ” will be excised from what the congregation sings and replaced with “Glorious hope.”

Thus, it will be hope that is declared to be resurrected – an expression of renewal of optimism and the human spirit – but not Jesus, contrary to Christianity's central tenet about the return to life on Easter morning of the crucified divine son of God.

Generally speaking, no divine anybody makes an appearance in West Hill's Sunday service liturgy.

There is no authoritative Big-Godism, as Rev. Gretta Vosper, West Hill's minister for the past 10 years, puts it. No petitionary prayers (“Dear God, step into the world and do good things about global warming and the poor”). No miracles-performing magic Jesus given birth by a virgin and coming back to life. No references to salvation, Christianity's teaching of the final victory over death through belief in Jesus's death as an atonement for sin and the omnipotent love of God. For that matter, no omnipotent God, or god.

And:

She wants salvation redefined to mean new life through removing the causes of suffering in the world. She wants the church to define resurrection as “starting over,” “new chances.” She wants an end to the image of God as an intervening all-powerful authority who must be appeased to avoid divine wrath; rather she would have congregations work together as communities to define God – or god – according to their own worked-out definitions of what is holy and sacred. She wants the eucharist – the symbolic eating and drinking of Jesus's body and blood to make the congregation part of Jesus's body – to be instead a symbolic experience of community love.

Right...because nothing replaces the eternal yearning for the transcendent - what St. Augustine described as the reason for why "we have no rest until we rest in thee" - quite like placing one's faith in finite, created goods that will eventually pass away.

And good luck on the whole "perfectibility of man through changing society" idea. That's really quite a novel idea, although I understand that the Soviets were this close to getting it right when Communism collapsed in 1989.

Ultimately, once everything is reduced to feeling good about oneself, the question has to be asked why not find that good feeling of community at a football game on Sunday rather than a church?

May we at least remember that hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue...

...which means that there are such things as "virtue" and "vice."

MCJ offers up this incredible post by an Episcopalian priestess who justifies her extra-marital sex with an undesirable sperm donor leading to an abortion of the little valueless product of her coitus...all while she was studying to become an Episcopalian priestess.

Apparently, her experience did not cause her to rethink whether she had a vocation to Holy Orders, or, it seems, the prudence or justice of her lifestyle.

"Top officials of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) have come to the conclusion that they cannot continue "doing church" the way they have been."

"It is as if a tsunami of change has hit us," said Joan Gray, moderator of the General Assembly during a Sept. 17-21 GAC (General Assembly Council) meeting in Louisville, Ky., according to the Presbyterian News Service. "I recently spent time in the Midwest, and these areas are drying up. The people are not there any more. In Detroit, 3,000 people a day are leaving to emigrate elsewhere. That is just the tip of the iceberg.”

Wow! Tell us what you really think.

Times must be hard for the liberal Episcopalianism. They've spent the last thirty or so years demonizing their "conservative" opponents. They've justified their take no prisoner approach on the grounds that (a) their opponents were hateful bigots and (b) they were the ones opening up their church to the disenfranchised.

But, then, they find out that some folks really don't think that it is a good idea to jettison traditional Christian doctrine in favor of the multicultural secular playbook.

The result is stuff like this:

But the largest adjustments are coming on the religious left. For decades it has preached multiculturalism, but now, on further acquaintance, it doesn't seem to like other cultures very much. Episcopal leaders complain of the threat of "foreign prelates," echoing anti-Catholic rhetoric of the 19th century. An activist at one Episcopal meeting urged the African bishops to "go back to the jungle where you came from." Not since Victorians hunted tigers on elephants has the condescension been this raw.

Jeepers.

This was precious:

This month, Archbishop Peter Akinola, shepherd of 18 million fervent Nigerian Anglicans, reached the end of his patience and installed a missionary bishop to America. The installation ceremony included boisterous hymns and Africans dressed in bright robes dancing before the altar -- an Anglican worship style more common in Kampala, Uganda, than in Woodbridge.

The American presiding bishop, Katharine Jefferts Schori, condemned this poaching of souls on her turf as a violation of the "ancient customs of the church." To which the archbishop replied, in essence: Since when have you American liberals given a fig about the ancient customs of the church?

[Via Mark Shea.]