The Cross Of Anglican Unity

George Pitcher, who spent ten months as Rowan Williams' media strategist, sums up:

Rowan subsumes his own opinions, prejudices and preferences, even substantially his personality, in the service of his archiepiscopacy. It's what characterizes the decade of his incumbency of the See of Canterbury. The cross he bears is Anglican unity at whatever cost to himself. It's why he has disappointed both liberals (where his heart lies) and conservatives (whom his heart encompasses), why his friendship with the ambitious gay campaigner Canon Jeffrey John turned to dust and why he has tried to push through an Anglican Communion Covenant, a code of conduct for the faithful that his own Church has all but rejected for being essentially un-Anglican.

A Divine Comparison

Go and say, as Episcopalian journalist and historian Jon Meacham did, that Barack Obama's birth control compromise was classically Anglican, and you will bring all the armchair politico-theologians out of the pews -- including me, disputing the assertion by Rod Dreher that Meacham's claim was ironic because The Episcopal Church is said to be losing numbers:

Anglicanism was never a majority position in the church. In Elizabeth I’s day there were far more Roman Catholics and Protestants; so too today. The classical Anglican is a little like the political moderate. His or her views are rarely represented in elite debates, in the same way that “middle way” Christians feel left out when the media portrays a conversation between Rick Warren and the local archbishop as being theologically diverse. What makes Obama’s birth control decision Anglican is that it stakes out a position between two ideological absolutes: Religious freedom vs. health care equity. Will it satisfy the unspoken-for middle in the electorate (I’m straining not to use Mr. Nixon’s term)? I suspect so.

Go Ahead. Click. He's Watching.

When President Bush's critics lambasted him for talking about God's Providence, I had trouble joining in, since almost every morning, I pray, right out of The Book Of Common Prayer, "In all we do, direct us to the fulfilling of your purpose." Which bring us to Tim Tebow, about whom theology professor Owen Strachan sounds, well, Anglican:

I believe that God is overseeing all of Tebow's passes, but he's also overseeing the typing and reading of this paragraph. He's overseeing the Denver Broncos, but he's also overseeing the Boston Celtics (much as it may seem otherwise at present), the Museum of Modern Art, and the playtime of your nephew. He's in control of all things. In this sense, which is called "secondary" causation (God's oversight of all things), the Lord is directing Tebow's life.

But is God directly intervening on the football field in the same way that, for example, he did to cause the virgin birth of Luke 2 (in what is called "primary causation")? That I don't know. It's not clear to my human eyes how this all shakes out. I do know that the Lord is working everything out according to his wise and mysterious counsel which, try as we might, we cannot fully understand.

Speed Traps: An Anglican Hermeneutic

The Episconixonian has obtained this link to a national speed trap registry. As regards so many things, my views are mixed. If you stay at the speed limit, you'll never get a ticket, and our streets will be safer for men, women, children, and small animals. For seven years I've commuted an hour a day round trip on a toll road with a CHP officer waiting around every scenic curve. I put the cruise control on, other cars thunder by, and I don't worry about nothing, gliding past the black and whites, the mighty Saturn registering a rock-solid "65" on the readout of their radar guns.

I take some pride from the idea that some of the guys actually recognize me after all these years. "Drives like a little old lady," maybe they mutter. We all know that traffic tickets are about governmental revenue as well as safety. So while we rolling ATMs are entitled to know where the danger lies, while using this resource please heed the comment on the very first listing for my home town of Yorba Linda: "Nothing on this street, or in this town for that matter, is a TRAP. Just drive the darned speed limit! A child was killed on Lakeview many years ago, by a speeding driver. Slow down for gosh sake!"