Here is the web link to the "Midwest Conservative Journal" (which in turn has lots of links to other useful sites), followed by commentary by Fr. Geoffrey Kirk of FiF in England on the failure of so-called "conservatives" in the PECUSA.
From the Midwest Conservative Journal:
PIPE DREAM II - Those of us who hope that the October meetings of conservative Episcopalians and Anglican primates will figure out a way for us to remain Episcopalians, should, according to the Rev. Dr. Geoffrey Kirk, Anglican Vicar of St Stephen's, Lewisham in the diocese of Southwark in Britain, stop wasting our time and start looking for new churches immediately:
Will a separate province emerge for Anglican traditionalists in America? It does not appear so. The reasons are many, and the time has come to list them. ECUSA traditionalists are, to put it succinctly, few, divided and, in the strictest sense, unprincipled.
Isn't that a bit harsh? Not really, says Dr. Kirk. The unfortunate truth is that conservative and evangelical Anglican numbers in the United States are small and are only going to get smaller:
American traditionalists are, self-evidently, a small group in a declining church. It is true that the confirmation of Gene Robinson as Coadjutor Bishop in New Hampshire passed by only nine votes in the House of Bishops, and that over forty voted against it. But that state of affairs will not long persist. Just as the number of bishops opposed to women's ordination dwindled rapidly to the present three, so will opposition to gay bishops quickly wither. And, like those opposed to women priests, once gone they will not be replaceable.
And let's just say that conservative Episcopal relations with other conservative Christian denominations have been considerably less than cordial:
ECUSA traditionalists are, if that were possible, even more attached than the liberals to this overweening institution. They are simultaneously afflicted by Anglophilia, and Tudoritis. They have, until very recently, viewed their co-belligerents who left the Episcopal church in the late seventies to form 'continuing' Anglican bodies, as second class citizens. They have conspicuously failed to make common cause with the small but robust Polish National Catholic Church. They share the scarcely veiled contempt with which WASP Anglicans generally view the Roman Catholic Church. And they find the Orthodox inexcusably ethnic. In short, they are an embattled minority simply because they have consistently refused to make common cause with the majority.
The same can be said for their relations with each other:
All this would not be so bad were the traditionalists not also fatally divided amongst themselves. The epitome of that division is the tiny but significant Anglican Mission in America. This group of (mainly evangelical) parishes has grown into an ecclesial entity which claims oversight from the Primates of Rwanda and South East Asia. But structural and ecclesiological problems dog AMiA at every step. Rwanda is a province which ordains women to the priesthood; SE Asia is a province which does not. What should be the attitude of AMiA (which has from its inception included both women priests and their opponents) to the innovation?
A wide-ranging process of consultation has begun, at the end of which it is envisaged that a binding decision will be taken. It is significant that hardly anyone (even those in FiF/NA who have soldiered on for twenty years and borne the heat of the day) has had the courage to explain to the leadership of AMiA the manifest absurdity of a splinter of a splinter, depending for its authority and authenticity on the good will of two other splinters, deciding the nature of orders in the Universal Church. Nor, it appears, has either Primate explained what must undoubtedly be the case - that whatever decision is reached one or other of them will be obliged to withdraw, since neither is competent to act contrary to the canons of his own province.
Then Dr. Kirk slides in the stiletto:
Finally the ECUSA traditionalists are unprincipled. That is to say that they have never defined the basis of their rejection of the authority of the 'National Church'.
Is it scriptural? In which case why was the confirmation of a Gay Bishop, rather than the continuation in office of an heresiarch like Spong, the defining issue? And why have so many 'traditionalists' in ECUSA accepted with little or no question the divorce culture which is now normative for Episcopalians?
Is it ecclesial? In which case why has the demand for alternative oversight of those opposed to women's ordination been so muted and so ineffective? And why has repudiation of the authority of the diocesan, when it has come (as in the leafy Philadelphia suburb of Rosemont), been complicated by so many other attendant issues?
There is almost nothing to argue with here. Rev. Kirk has brilliantly described the Achilles heel of conservative Episcopalians. What, an Episcopal liberal might justifiably ask, is all the fuss about? The Episcopal Church has tolerated bishops who have explicitly denied the faith for forty years, refusing to take any action against them. What is the difference between the church refusing to excommunicate John Shelby Spong and confirming Gene Robinson?
One is forced to admit that there is none. We Episcopal conservatives have a great deal to answer for. We stayed in the Episcopal Church, tolerating heretics rather than demanding that the church expel them. We stayed while the Book of Common Prayer was ground into gruel and forced down our throats. We stayed through the politically-correct rape of the Hymnal. We stayed as the church's imprimatur was granted to one secular liberal political stance after another.
Given that track record, why in the name of common sense should Gene Robinson surprise anyone? And why should American conservatives be granted their own province? I will still wait and see what emerges from the October meetings; with God, all things are possible. But I am looking around. And I put my chances of remaining an Episcopalian after October at no better than 10%.
The Rev'd Dr. Peter Toon M.A., D.Phil. (Oxon.)
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