Wheaton College in Illinois has long been a hard, rocky bed of fundamentalist religion and biblical literalism.So, it's appropriate that a bunch of fundamentalist Episcopalians, who consider themselves the "real" Christians of the Episcopal communion, decided to meet on December 3 at Wheaton College to begin the process of developing a brand-new "real" Christian Episcopal Church in the United States, which they will call an "Anglican" church, the better to pretend to be historical and right. The process begins by writing a constitution, naturally.
Over the past several years, a number of Episcopal parishes and Episcopal dioceses have broken from the Protestant Episcopal Church of America, mainly because of the "liberal" attitude of mother church toward homosexuality. I mean the Episcopal Church actually ordains gays and has actually ordained as bishop! And "real" Christians know what god thinks about that! How can you stay in a church which is condemned by god?
Other matters of controversy that have boiled up in this usually staid group of mostly Republican Christians, have to do with biblical interpretation -- the Bible must be interpreted literally and is inerrant which means that god hates the whole gay thing, and forbids anyone to have an abortion. God also said to keep the Sabbath, but they forgot about that!
It is truly a loss for the Episcopal church in terms of monetary and other resources. At the same time, however, it is not all that big a loss. Who needs a bunch of fundamentalist monkeys climbing over the pews crabbing about "God said this, and God said that, and God's gonna get you"?
Sadly, too, is the fact that this new "Anglican" group has associated itself with a bunch of self-righteous African bishops who happen to be extremely homophobic and fundamentalistic in their treatment of the Bible.
Quite frankly, I don't see why these people just don't up and join the Roman Catholics. They'd fit in perfectly. Of course they might lose their bishopricks.
1 comment:
Dear Hatey McHate-ster,
How can you write about Episcopalians without referencing their favorite bible verse:
"O Lord, bless this Thy hand grenade that with it Thou mayest blow Thine enemies to tiny bits, in Thy mercy." And the Lord did grin and the people did feast upon the lambs and sloths and carp and anchovies and orangutans and breakfast cereals, and fruit bats. And the Lord spake, saying, "First shalt thou take out the Holy Pin, then shalt thou count to three, no more, no less. Three shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the third number, be reached, then lobbest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch towards thy foe, who being naughty in my sight, shall snuff it." Amen.
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