“I think a lot of people including myself see it as a tragedy that the Anglican community seems so split, and my heart aches having been there immediately following 2003 ”” I know what some of these congregations are going through,” said the Rev. Cynthia Baskin, a rector at St. Francis Episcopal Church in Potomac. St. Francis was affected by the rift in 2003 after Gene Robinson, the gay bishop in New Hampshire, was consecrated. The discussions that followed about the roles of gays and lesbians in the church lead to the departure of about 50 individuals from the church of about 400. “There’s a lot of grief and a lot of loss and it’s just very difficult, like watching someone in the hospital.”
While Baskin said St. Francis is more unified after the members’ departure, she said a poll of her congregants would most likely find viewpoints on the role of homosexuals in the church all over the map. The difference, she said, was that some Episcopalians use the issue as a “litmus test for faithfulness.”
“I wouldn’t go so far as to say [the individuals who left the church] didn’t want to include or reach out in some kind of way to someone who was homosexual,” Baskin said. “At the same time, they felt very strongly that homosexuality is not the way God intended human being to be, and they drew a line there, and found it difficult to be part of a community that honored homosexuals and allowed for their inclusion.”
I have this to say to Ms Baskin, and I mean no disrespect to her: When The Episcopal Church reverses every decision and every action taken during the past 20+ years, including the election and consecration of a woman as Presiding Bishop, we MAY have a chance at reconciliation, and not until then.
Unless or until that happens, that reconciliation will amount to nothing more than a pipedream.
It is the face of TEC and the AC. Why the AC? Because the official instruments of the AC will do nothing about it.
Baskin+ is the rector of St James in Potomac, not St Francis. One wonders how the reporter got it wrong.
Here we have more of the same old euphemisms masquerading as enlightenment. If truthfulness were important she could have talked about how the definition of marriage was being stretched and even changed and about how some people could not “embrace” that.
It’s a piece of real sloppy reporting. For example, the reporter states as fact that ACNA cannot become a province without the approval of KJS and the ABC:
“The province would need a nod of approval from the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church as well as the Archibishop of Canterbury, the Anglican spiritual leader.”
The reporter isn’t even quoting a liberal — she just states it as fact.
I think that’s what’s more interesting than the errors is the source. The Montgomery Gazette is one of the two surviving community papers here (the third, the Journal, cashed it in about three years back). This is just about as low in the real news journalistic print food chain as it gets. I do read the Gazette diligently, as it has the only decent (and knowledgeable) coverage of county politics; I’m really surprised that the article got written at all.
And while it’s flawed, I note that she had the nerve to tag the Diocese of Washington as “left-leaning”. The St. James/St. Francis confusion is a little careless, but OTOH I’ve just looked at the St. Francis website, and nowhere obvious does it give the name of the rector! And the subtext of the material from Baskins is fascinating. Looking at the St. James website, one gathers that they are orthodox on the fundamentals; but I gather from her comments that they are doggedly silent about issues of sexuality. I expect that this is a very common pattern in the liberal dioceses: rectors have a choice between being advocates of one faction or the other, and a lot of them would rather get on with the rest of pastoral life. So they carefully keep quiet. We will differ as to the advisability of this, but it seems to me that it is an angle on the crisis that hasn’t seen the light of day much, because it’s much more fun for the journalists to concentrate on the loudmouths and the battles they engender.
“Litmus test for faith”?
Either one is a Christian–and has Chrisian bleiefs–
Or not.
In 1 John, John reminds us that we are EITHER:
1) A child of God, or
2) A child of the devil.
It was God who wrote the “Litmus Tests” of Christianity. Not man.
bl
Empty words, Bob, unless you are going to apply the very litmus test to which she refers.