Anglicans Face Wider Split Over Policy on Gays

A dying newspaper industry views a Christian denomination that's growing, and breaking away from its colonial masters, and disapproves.

The NY Times is in critical condition and may soon be on life support, but as part of it's death struggle it has time to view an anti-colonial development with disdain.

JERUSALEM — Anglican conservatives, frustrated by the continuing stalemate over homosexuality in the Anglican Communion, declared Sunday that they would defy historic lines of authority and create a new power bloc within the communion led by a council predominantly of African archbishops.

The announcement came at the close of an unprecedented weeklong meeting in Jerusalem of Anglican conservatives who contend that they represent a majority of the 77 million members of the Anglican Communion.

The Times has two reporters on this story but note the use of the term "contend." It's used by the press to suggest that the claim is false without actually saying so. It should be fairly easy to determine how much of the Anglican church was represented at this conference, but that would spoil the pretense.

They depicted their efforts as the culmination of an anti-colonial struggle against the communion’s seat of power in Britain, from which missionaries first carried Anglican Christianity to the developing world. The conservatives say many of the descendants of those Anglican missionaries in Britain and North America are following a “false gospel” that allows a malleable interpretation of Scripture.

Note also the use of qualifiers like "they depict" to imply that there may be another agenda. And what's with the description of the conference members as "conservative?" In "Timespeak" conservative is a term used to demonize the enemy; a Times reader knows that "conservatives" are the evil ones. It seems to me that a group threatening a break-up of a major religion may be called many things, but "conservative" is not one of them.

After more than 1,000 delegates to the meeting — mostly Africans, Australians, South Americans and Indians — affirmed their platform statement at a hotel here, they gathered for prayer, dancing and swaying to a Swahili hymn and shouting full-throated hallelujahs.

So here we have a real rainbow coalition: Africa, Australia, South America, India. Under-represented perhaps is Europe and North America; areas of the Anglican Communion that is either moribund (North America) or dead (England). And note that snarky reference to "full-throated hallelujahs." You can be sure that the word never escapes the lips of a NY Times writer, full throated or otherwise.

Keep in mind that the Anglican church is a creation of the English Parliament which followed the break from the Roman Catholic church initiated by Henry VIII. Today, the established Anglican church is full of empty pews

The statement the delegates released said it was time to create a new ecclesiastical province in the United States and Canada to absorb the parishes that have been outraged by the American church’s consecration of an openly gay bishop in 2003 and the Canadian church’s blessing of same-sex unions.

Bishop Anderson said a new province would unite believers in North America who had abandoned the Episcopal Church in recent decades because they disagreed with the ordination of female priests and bishops, its interpretation of Scripture or its acceptance of homosexuality.

It is a supreme irony that churches that were established by missionaries from Europe and America should not be in the position of sending missionaries to the Europe and America to "convert the heathen."