**Rowland Croucher**
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 Posted: Sat Jul 26, 2008 4:59 am Post subject: Irrelevance 'R Us: Anglicans, Lambeth, & Homosexuality |
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Another interesting essay from my (very) liberal mate Harry Cook ...
Rowland.
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Religion Works
Essays by Harry T. Cook
July 25, 2008
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To read "Irrelevance 'R Us," this weekend's essay, please scroll down.
The Anglican
Circus McGurkus came this week to jolly old England as bishops strolled
about the
closes and garths of Lambeth Palace pretending they represent something
serious
in the world. The American bishops are getting the evil eye from some of
their African
counterparts because the former include in their number V. Gene
Robinson, the Bishop
of New Hampshire, who is not welcome to sit in with his fellow prelates,
given that
he is openly gay. Would they like it better if he were still in the closet?
Harry T. Cook
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Irrelevance 'R Us
Harry T. Cook
By Harry T. Cook
Lacy vestments, priestly pear-shaped tones, prayer books with gilt-edged
pages,
solemn processions, church basements called "undercrofts," priests'
houses called
"rectories" and church lobbies called "narthexes" have not, in the end,
made Anglican
Episcopalians appear terminally ridiculous and irrelevant. Each came
close, but
neither singly nor together did they succeed.
It took the so-called "spiritual leader" of the whole Anglican
enchilada, the Most
Reverend Dr. Rowan Williams, to accomplish that by leaving undone that
which ought
to have been done, viz., issuing an official invitation to the Rt. Rev.
V. Gene
Robinson, Bishop of New Hampshire, to join all the other Anglican
diocesan bishops
at the once-a-decade assemblage known as the Lambeth Conference.
Archbishop Williams excluded Bishop Robinson because the former was
concerned that
the latter would become a distraction in that he is the first openly gay
bishop
in Anglican history. (Be so kind as to take careful note of the adverb
in the previous
sentence. It could have been "honestly" or "frankly," because any
Anglican who knows
anything knows that Bishop Robinson is far from being the first gay
bishop.) Honor
Moore took care of that by outing her late father, the Rt. Rev. Paul
Moore, sometime
Episcopal Bishop of New York.
In other words, if Paul Moore had been open and honest about his male
lover of 30
years, he would have been a candidate for exclusion from Lambeth. It is
Gene Robinson's
winning honesty that included him out.
Whatever made Rowan Williams think that deliberately excluding Robinson
would make
him invisible? Not that the New Hampshire bishop made a fuss on his own
behalf.
He didn't need to. When Williams let it be known that a full invitation
to Robinson
"would be impossible," any fool realized that Robinson would become the
story -
as he has and will be.
The history of the Lambeth Conferences is a Ph.D. dissertation waiting
to be written
by someone who loves mucking around in institutional irrelevance. It
will get more
exciting, though, as the 2008 conclave is studied and Gene Robinson is
the main
subject. Nice work, Rowan.
Williams' preoccupation is with the African bishops and their noisy
counterparts
in the United States who say they sense the sight, sound and smell of
perversion
in the prelatial personage of Milord New Hampshire. Why? Because "the
Bible says"
homosexuality is a sin against God. It says so in Exodus [sic - Rowland]
(written and edited circa
500 B.C.E.) and St. Paul appears to rail against it in his letter to
Roman Christians
(circa + 56 C.E.), though Paul may have had male prostitution on his
mind as he
dictated that passage to his scribe.
Truth be told, it isn't the homophobic American contingent that bothers
Williams.
It is such African bishops as Peter Akinola of Nigeria. African
Anglicans number
in the millions, and new dioceses are erected all the time, even as
Episcopal congregations
in the United States dwindle on down the path to extinction.
Peter Akinola is open himself - open about his utter hatred of
homosexual persons
and open about his biblical fundamentalism. Williams can count, and when
you've
got 10 million African Anglicans up against at best two million American
ones, well. . .
Members of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of
America (as we
are officially known) need to rise up in protest against the exclusion
of Gene Robinson
from Lambeth by refusing any longer to be known as "Anglicans."
Moreover, we should demand that American bishops on break from their
ponderous disputations
with the Akinolistas* over church doctrine, decline Her Majesty's
invitation to
take tea at Buckingham Palace and use the time to arrange earlier
flights back home.
On the way out, they should dump the royal tea in the nearest harbor and
declare
the independence won for them by braver men 200 and more years ago.
______________________________________________________
* Credit for this coinage goes to Robert C. Cook, Ph.D., assistant
professor of
music, University of Iowa.
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© Copyright 2008, Harry T. Cook. All rights reserved. This article may
not be used
or reproduced without proper credit.
--
Shalom/Salaam/Pax! Rowland Croucher
http://jmm.aaa.net.au/ (20,000 articles 4000 humor)
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