The turmoil afflicting the Episcopal Church leads many people to assume that Anglicanism is in trouble on a global scale. This is quite untrue. The Anglican Church is going great guns in many parts of the world, notably Africa, the Indian sub–continent, and the Far East.
Anglicanism’s heady affair with New Age neo-paganism is largely confined to the Britain, America, Australia, and New Zealand branches of the worldwide Anglican Communion, which are, not coincidentally, in disarray and decline.
English, sad to relate, is rapidly becoming a minority language in the Anglican Communion. In the realm of traditional Anglicanism, it ranks only as the seventh most widely spoke language.
And the decline of English as a language of worship seems destined to continue. While attendance figures in the English speaking world are falling, converts are flocking to the church in parts of the world where orthodoxy reigns supreme.
Indeed, confirmations in many African dioceses are running at the rate of tens of thousands per year, while African bishops—scandalised by the shenanigans in America and Britain—refer, straight-faced, to their visits to England and America as ‘missionary journeys’.
All this is more than a little embarrassing for folks as concerned with ‘being proper’ as traditional Episcopalians—prompting an acquaintance recently to pose the plaintive question: ‘Where will it all end?’
There is no easy answer to this. Certainly, murmurings of rebellion among younger evangelical clergy in Virginia and the Carolinas has aroused a degree of puzzlement at the more radical end of TEC’s House of Bishops, with one prelate asking: ‘What are they complaining about? They knew what they were getting into.’
Actually, that is the problem. Most people didn’t know what they were getting into when they accepted what were presented as modest, but much needed reforms, aimed at bringing an out-dated church into the modern world. Curmudgeons who pointed out that a vital aspect of the church was the unchanging nature of its faith were condemned as reactionaries, misogynists, fundamentalists, and pretty well every other epithet in the politically–correct lexicon.
Now, 50 years on, it turns out the curmudgeons were right. The agenda was not, in fact, modest reforms but rather a full-scale revolution, encompassing not merely a radical theological revision of the church’s most fundamental doctrines, but also the advancement of a decidedly earthly political agenda with a heavy emphasis on the realm of sexuality.
Viewed from the perspective of a half century later, it is clear that, intellectually speaking, the agenda wasn’t up to much—merely a broad reflection of notions and fancies that emerged from the miasma of pot smoke that hung over the university campuses of the 1960s.
What has been truly impressive, however, is the manner of its implementation. Instead of storming the Winter Palace, the revolutionaries boiled the frog—implementing their programme incrementally over five or more decades. And, as far as one can tell, there is yet more to come.
For example a liturgy is reportedly being prepared for folks who are changing their names because they have changed their sex. ‘It’s not exactly a baptism,’ I was told, ‘But is is pretty close to it.’
How have they gotten away with it? First, the radicals didn’t allow themselves to be inhibited by a fondness for candour. They built coalitions, advancing reforms on an ‘I’ll scratch your back if you’ll scratch mine’ basis. And they took their time consolidating one gain before they launched out for another.
They were also aided by our remarkable human adaptability, by which what was once utterly unacceptable becomes the norm—something I experienced at first hand as a journalist in the late, unlamented Soviet Union.
It was amazing how swiftly I adjusted to being spied on, followed, having my mail opened, and my telephone constantly tapped. I could even accept that my East Bloc friends and acquaintances were routinely reporting on my doings to the secret police. But what alternative did they have? They needed to do so in order to survive.
It was awful and unacceptable, but it was the way it was, and the price one had to pay for a glimpse at a fascinatingly horrid and alien society. And so it has been for many Episcopalians attached by deep emotional ties to stained glass and ancient parish churches.
But for everyone there eventually comes a breaking point—a point at which the compromise of faith to cling to time-hallowed stones becomes no longer possible.
For some, it came early with the replacement of a prayer book. For others, it was the appearance of a medicine man at the altar at a national convention. For still others, it was the refusal of a diocesan convention to acknowledge Jesus as ‘the way, the truth and the life’. For others, it was the ordination of women. For others the breaking point is yet to come. But come it inevitably will. Revolutions are like that.
Some folks have retired to the golf course, the yachting marina, and the backyard, having discovered it is possible to skip church on Sunday and not be struck dead—at least not immediately.
Others have drifted off to other denominations, where they have discovered that most of the ‘mainline churches’ are afflicted with problems similar to ones afflicting the Episcopal Church.
It is, however, possible to remain both Episcopalian and uncompromised. That is by attending a parish church in communion with the vast majority of churches in the Anglican world that uphold the faith in its authentic understanding. St Stephen’s is one of them; St Alban’s in Joppa is another. And our numbers are growing. GPH✠
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