For all that, Anglicanism’s public troubles proceed from the takeover of Western Anglicanism by theological activists whose purpose is the remolding of Christianity into something less like the old-time religion than like the platform on which Barack Obama will run for president.<\/p>\n
Whereas orthodox Christianity insists on the salvational role of the second person of the trinity – more popularly called Jesus – activist orthodoxy calls for supporting climate change and advancing women’s rights. And for establishing homosexuality as a sexual “preference” equivalent to heterosexuality.<\/p>\n
It was the Episcopal Church’s consecration of a gay man, V. Gene Robinson, as bishop of New Hampshire that, for many Anglicans, here and abroad, finally ignited the gasoline on the brush pile. American conservatives blasted the consecration; foreign heads of overseas Anglican churches promised to support their brothers’ stand for God-given, as they saw it, moral norms. Great ugliness ensued: ungenerous words spoken on all sides; declarations of independence from the church; lawsuits levied by the church against rebels seeking to take their churches with them; the Gospel made a token of strife and mutual accusation.<\/p>\n
A fourth-century father of the church, speaking of his own time, pronounced on ours: “We are making war upon one another,” said Gregory of Nazianzus, “and almost upon those of the same household. Or if you will, we the members of the same body, are consuming and being consumed by one another.”<\/p>\n