The Special Relationship, Church-Style

Diarmaid MacCulloch, scholar of the Reformation and biographer of Thomas Cranmer, weighs the consequences of the Anglican church (in England, that is) rejecting the Anglican Covenant, which was aimed, most observers agree, at punishing the The Episcopal Church and Canadian Anglicans for extending full sacramental status to gays and lesbians:

Anglicanism could be seen as a family: in families, you don't expect everyone to think in exactly the same way. You listen, you shout, cry, talk, compromise. You do not show the door to one member of the family, just because you don't agree with them. Now Anglicans can start listening afresh. The present archbishop of Canterbury has their warm good wishes, as he prepares to use his many talents and graces in a different setting. They should ask the next man or woman in the job to reconnect with the church and the nation.

As MacCulloch notes, while British bishops favored the proposed covenant by a wide margin, priests and the laity opposed it.

Striving For Harmony Between Peoples

Andrew Sullivan seconds this tribute by a British politician to Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, who announced his resignation today:

In the last three years I have grown to appreciate more and more the fine qualities of Archbishop Rowan - his kindness, his sharp intellect, his dedication to striving for harmony between peoples, especially within the Christian family, his courage and his friendship.

He's shown here during a 2009 visit to the Episcopal Church of the Messiah in Santa Ana, California.

Desmond Schools Rowan

Archbishop Desmond Tutu talks tough to Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and the Anglican Church (in England, that is) because of their equivocation on granting full sacramental status for gays and lesbians. He saves his most withering criticism for those who still insist that homosexuality is a lifestyle:

It is a perversion if you say to me that a person chooses to be homosexual. You must be crazy to choose a way of life that exposes you to a kind of hatred. It's like saying you choose to be black in a race-infected society.

Hat tip to Norris Battin

Editor's note: Barry Fernelius, who read the BBC article more carefully than The Episconixonian did, notes that it was published in 2007.

Christopher Among The Saints

As the sad news comes of the death of the world's most famous atheist, I recall what Christopher Hitchens wrote in his memoir, Hitch-22, about the pious but pliable pastor he encountered after his mother and her lover committed suicide in Greece in 1973:

I was myself rather astounded, when dealing with the Anglican chaplain at the Protestant cemetery in Athens (which was the only resting place consistent with her wishes), to find that... [t]he sheep-faced Reverend didn't really want to perform his office at all. He muttered a bit about the difficulty of suicides being interred in consecrated ground, and he may have had something to say about my mother having been taken in adultery... At any rate I shoved some money in his direction and he became sulkily compliant, as the priesthood generally does. It was fortunate for him, though, that I couldn't feel any more dislike and contempt for him and his sickly religion that I already did.

Hitchens assured friends and critics that if he was reported to have experienced a deathbed conversion, it would be a consequence not of grace but cancer altering his brain. In the days before his death in Houston, nothing along those lines occurred. God was waiting for a more opportune time.

Stealing Shepherds

Five Anglican bishops in England, staking their vocations on a bizarre and illogical insistence that female priests should be banned from the episcopacy, go to Rome, which is, at least, consistent in its medievalism.

War Is Peace

A bishop quitting the Anglican Church for Rome calls the Church of England "fascist" for disrespecting those who oppose ordaining women as bishops.

It's Not Fair. We're Reactionaries, Too!

Conservative British Anglican Peter Hitchens (Christopher's brother) covets the opprobrium being heaped on the pope by secularists he calls "68ers."

English Bishop Stands Up For Christmas

Pilgrim at Jesus's traditional birthplace, Bethlehem, 2009

The Rt. Rev. Jonathan Gledhill, bishop of Litchfield, isn't going to take it anymore, according to the London Telegraph:

“Companies’ sacking those who want to wear a cross or fish lapel badge and councils rebranding Christmas out of fear of offending ethnic minorities are decisions made out of sheer ignorance.

“I think it wouldn’t be a bad thing if in December all Christians wore a fish badge or cross necklace and sent out a loud message that Christians aren’t going to disappear quietly from the Christmas market place.”

His intervention has been welcomed by other bishops and comes only one week after the European Court of Human Rights ruled that crucifixes should not be displayed in Italy’s schools.

The landmark judgment could force a Europe-wide review of the use of religious symbols in state-run schools. A panel of seven judges in Strasbourg said the display of Christian crosses violated the principle of secular education.

Only last week Dundee City Council renamed its Christmas Lights switch-on the ‘Dundee Winter Light Night’ in apparent fear of offending members of other religions. The traditional telling of the Christmas story has also been dropped from the council’s festive programme.