Don't Fear The Schism

Not too long ago, a woman came up to me and Christina on the street and declared "you guys look like Episcopalians!" It turned out that she had attended pretty much every Episcopal church in the county except for St. Peter's in Casa Grande, where we have attended irregularly for the past six months, yet she was convinced she knew us.

I'll take that woman's Episcopalia-dar as warrant for me to pronounce on church politics. My pronouncement today is: don't fear the schism. Anglicans from other parts of the world are drawing up the battle lines to pressure the Episcopalians into backing down from their pro-equality stand. They don't appear satisfied with the US church's wishy-washy attempts to compromise by giving lip service to gay rights while placing a moratorium on practicing it. So if it comes down to it, justice is more important than friendship. Having some foreign bishops refuse to drink some wine next to you is a price worth paying for the freedom to unreservedly minister to the needs of all your members.

(Then again, I really don't get all the rules about who can give or share communion with who. It seems to take something that should be a symbol of shared base-level belief and turns it into a certification of detailed doctrinal purity.)