Certainly, when the Episcopalians support\u201d\u201dor seem to be supporting\u201d\u201dgay marriage, it says something important about who we are as a nation and where we are going. But interest from the press is more prurient than that. Reporters haven’t covered the similar battles within the Methodist, Presbyterian, or Lutheran denominations with the same zeal, and the fact that the United Church of Christ (which has its roots in those early Puritan congregations) already ordains and promotes gay clerics and performs same-sex unions merits little attention. (Though, to be fair, those churches have also managed to keep themselves intact.) The Episcopalians matter because, small and fractious as they are, they represent the apex of WASP culture\u201d\u201dthe honorable, formal, Greatest Generation values of a bygone age. (And because, despite their dwindling numbers, they still hold more than $4 billion in investments\u201d\u201dnot including real estate\u201d\u201daccording to a 2007 Episcopal Church fact sheet. They could, in other words, fund Obama’s new education initiative.) FDR and Ronald Reagan were Episcopalian, as are Gerald Ford and George Herbert Walker Bush. Watching the Episcopalians fight amongst themselves is like watching a boozy family brawl at a genteel country club. Onlookers continue to hope that someone\u201d\u201dgrandpa or junior\u201d\u201dwill finally say what he’s really thinking and make a headline. Or that someone will step in and dramatically reconcile the warring factions, thus making the family happy once again. No such luck. Like most families, the Episcopal Church prefers to potter along. They fight, they patch things up (or not), they move on. In this saga, as in all stories about families, the drama is in questions of identity and affiliation as the world continues to change\u201d\u201dand not in carefully worded resolutions coming out of an annual convention.<\/p>\n