The Battle for The Episcopal Church is over...

July 21, 2009

Paraphrasing
The Battle for The Episcopal Church is over; I expect that the Battle for North American Anglicanism is about to begin. As with the aftermath of the fall of France in 1940, we are left with a messy situation for which there’s no tidy solution. The fall of France left not only Occupied France, but Vichy France and the Free French resistance. Not everyone who lived in Occupied or Vichy France was a collaborator, and not everyone serving General De Gaulle was a hero. The Western Powers and the Soviet Union both sponsored resistance cells in Occupied and Vichy France, and they sometimes worked together and sometimes were at odds. Nothing was simple then. Nothing is simple now.

The governance of The Episcopal Church is, for now, completely in the hands of heterodox modernists, but scattered throughout that body are dioceses, parishes, and individuals who remain faithful to the life giving Word. As this conflict moves into its next phase (and a conflict it is, of no trivial importance), no solution, no provision, which does not take these brothers and sisters into loving consideration can hope to prosper.

As we look ahead to the next stages in this conflict, it will be essential to not be too fine-grained in our plans. Often enough, God will show us the next step to take, but not the step after that. Whatever the Archbishop of Canterbury says, and whenever he chooses to say it, in response to the General Convention now ended, the tasks before us will remain the same: building new and healthier Anglican Christian communities, worshiping the Lord, witnessing to His saving actions. We can use the handy reference table in Galatians 5:16-26 as a guide for assessing our actions. the rest