Five years ago, General Convention threw a match onto a gasoline-soaked garage floor, instigating a chain of events of which the secession of Quincy is now the latest link. At the very least, we are witnessing a series of rebellions that might plausibly be interpreted as one Big Rebellion in several parts. The hope of dioceses like Quincy (along with San Joaquin, Pittsburgh, and Fort Worth) is that they are part of a larger movement of realignment within Anglicanism, the end of which will result in a new Anglican province on North American soil, one that will be institutionally unconnected from both the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada. Several other Anglican provinces are cooperating with this movement: the Southern Cone, obviously, by providing a temporary insitutional haven, but also all the groups that fall under the umbrella known as GAFCON (from their initial gathering in Jerusalem this past summer, the Global Anglican Futures Conference). This big tent includes the Anglican Mission in American (AMiA, connected to Rwanda), the Convocation of Anglicans in North American (CANA, connected to Nigeria), and a smattering of parishes that have come under the aegis of Uganda.
So far, then, what we have is a rebellion in progress. But the hope of what we might call the realignment community is that it will continue to grow”“both by continuing to peel off dioceses and parishes from TEC (and its Canadian equivalent) and by growing their parishes, both in size and number”“and that TEC will continue to decline (by ongoing loss of dioceses and parishes and by stagnation in spiritual and financial vitality) to an envisaged tipping point, at which it will simply be a fait accomplait, with or without any official pronouncement from Canterbury or elsewhere, that TEC has been replaced as the holder of the Anglican franchise in this country.
My opinion: Revolution with hopes of reformation.
“Rebellion” means opposition to an authority. A Big Rebellion has been underway for years: ECUSA’s rebellion against scripture and orthodox Christian doctrine. Realigners are disentangling themselves from that rebellion.
Rebellion….disentangling….the vocabulary used by Martins and by commenters made me aware of the extent to which Americans seem to want to perceive the realignment in terms of American history (‘successful’ revolution). What about instead the image of a current flowing through wires to deliver power? What is occurring amounts to ‘unplugging’ a cable connection from a bad source (815 and all that), then re-connecting, to the One Source which believing Anglican Christians are confident can deliver the power that animates each authentic Christian life. Martins’ use of ‘unconnect’ in the quoted paragraph suggested this to me; the plug has to be pulled now, no power is getting to the system. In this imagery there is no dependence on a comparison, or allegory or whatever is the proper term, with the American Revolution, and this might open it up to those whose history does not include that particular war.
“The plug has to be pulled now, no power is getting to the system”
—TACit [#3]
Or the electrical current is corrupt—with voltage, amperage, and cycles that will ultimately destroy those who receive it.