I'm an Episcopalian, which as Empire mentioned is the American branch of the Anglican Church aka Church of England. At least for now. The issues surrounding homosexuality (and even gender, as we now have a woman as our Presiding Bishop while most of the African Anglican national churches don't even let women be priests) are threatening to tear our denomination apart.

Church politics follows! Do not read if you don't like talking about this crap!

The African bishops are the loudest opponents of any homosexual progressiveness. Not because they have any sound theology to support them (they have not actually quoted Scripture in any of the missives they've sent to us except those passages about disciplining other Christians), but because they see this as an opportunity to get more power and money. How? They have taken American ultraconservative parishes under their wing as extionsions of their own dioceses instead of the ones they are geographically part of, thus gaining power and tithes from the rich Americans. They have higher numbers than we do, and more corruption than the Inquisition. My sister almost lost her faith when she was in Africa because of the rampant corruption she saw there, and how hard it struk her.

So these loud African bishops are causing such a stir, and we are not fully yeilding (we have put in only temporary bans of consecrating gay bishops, no firm ban on gay marriage rites -that's up to the dioceses... kinda-, we are still ordaining gay priests, and women priests -though that one is usually left unsaid as they lost that battle with us last century-) so they are driving us ever closer to schism. The poor Archbishop of Canterbury (the head of the Anglican Communion, not a "pope") is trying desperately to hold us all together, but it's not working too well.

Since the member parishes of the Episcopal Church are deeply divided on these issues themselves, a schism would be devistating to us. We are becomming more and more polarized in a process that is literally killing congregations. And you end up with all the inflexible, ultraconservative traditionalists on one side, and all the crazed unitarian liberals on the other, and most of those with brains just give up and leave. If we were to fracture in the next few years, those would be the dividing lines, and then there would come the legal battles over church property and lost donation revenues (many of which have already begun).

This is why, as I search for a seminary so I can persue my calling to the priesthood in said schizophrenic church, I am trying to find a school that is not directly part of the EC. That way they won't be directly damaged by the fallout from the impending explosion. Of course, that's just one more stumbling block in finding a suitable seminary, but that is a rant for another time.

Thanks for listening to me rant, and now back to you regularly scheduled ...ranting.

In Christ,
~CSL