Anglican Thoughts

I think what I want to say is that my comments on my friend’s list of popular mantras -if only I could say who he is! – isn’t the sort of blither that I find when discussing the faith with the parsons I meet around TEC in everyday life. That, I believe, is the injustice of the whole thing. TEC isn’t what some of its leadership and most vocal “sound byte” parsons, purple or not, would have the world believe it to be. It isn’t even that which its House of Bishops sound as if it well could be. The tragedy is that so many have been cowed by the suggestion that to oppose those who advance an odd religion is to be a bigot or a moral coward. The peddlers of the new religion have not won their battles by using cogent argument and logical deduction let alone Holy Scripture, but by serving a diet of sentimental twaddle and moral blandishment.

Yet if surveys are to be believed 70% of our communicants have no part or parcel in this agenda. They love their parish church and the name “Episcopal”, distrust the diocese, largely because dioceses are often run by purveyors of packaged programs which seldom work and of regulation upon regulation which have no basis in Canon Law – ask a search committee – and disown many of the policies of HQ. The term “815” is not often looked upon with devotion.

The tragedy is, as I say, that the faith and devotion of our parishioners, the ones who keep the doors open and pay the bills is discounted and the sound and fury of a small elite is judged by Anglicans abroad to be that which ordinary Episcopalians believe. It ain’t so, except perhaps in hot house parishes to be found largely on the East and West coast of this country.