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The Great Gay Schism Hits The Anglicans Anew
A long time ago, Christianity was a fragmented collection of various different religious beliefs and interpretations. With the help of the Roman Empire and the conversion of Constantine the Great, much of Europe fell under the control of the Roman Catholic Church. This was fully solidified with the Synod at Whitby where the Celtic Christian Church accepted Rome as the center of their religious identity. There were three major forms of Christianity after the solidification of Rome- Catholic, Celtic, Eastern Orthodox, and Coptic. There were, of course, other versions of Christianity, but in the early history of the faith, those four represented the majority of Christianity.
Of course, that all changed with the schism between Henry VIII and Pope Clement VII in Rome. Henry VIII, King of England, wished to divorce his wife Catherine of Aragon and marry Anne Boleyn. When Pope Clement refused, Henry VIII took control of the Church in England. While his successors have remained in control of the Church of England, Queen Elizabeth II has no actual duties regarding the Church beyond the ceremonial. The Archbishop of Canterbury is the actual head of the Church. Archbishop Rowan Williams currently serves as primate to the church. Prince Charles, who would succeed his mother the Queen has expressed a desire to end the role of the monarch as the Church’s leader.
Right now, the Anglican Church is undergoing many of the same stresses that many other churches are. Issues of modernity are causing schisms in the Church in a manner that may seem far more visible than that within the Catholic Church. The Anglican Church centered in England is afraid of the recent pulling down of a ban on openly gay bishops. The feeling among many of the more conservative bishops is that homosexuality is a sin. According to Cannon Chris Sugden “It’s not just who are sinners – we’re all sinners… but those who bless sin?” His feeling is that people will not follow such a path. Of course, it might be nice if he brushed up on his Bible in that Christ abolished a large number of sins that existed within the Jewish faith from the mandatory wearing of head scarves by women to the admonishment to not eat pork or shellfish.
Cannon Sugden believes that the move by the Episcopalian Church, the American branch of the Anglican Church, to allow openly homosexual men and women to serve as bishops will lead to a greater number of people being willing to support the Anglican Church of North America, at least within England. The Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans, of which Cannon Sugden is UK Section leader, may declare greater fellowship with the ACNA following this move, and Cannon Sugden believes that more bishops inside the C. of E. will do so as well.
Recently, Queen Elizabeth II sent a letter which has been largely seen as supportive of the FCA. In that letter, she stated that she understood their concerns about the future of the Anglican Church. This caused many LGBT rights campaigners in England to express dismay at the letter, and some even labeled Elizabeth II as homophobic. Elizabeth II has not had a necessarily comfortable relationship with Archbishop Williamson, as his views tend to be more progressive on the whole than many of those who feel that the path to Anglican glory is through an orthodox interpretation of Biblical theology.
Of course, the Church of England is battling to stay afloat numbers wise. In much of North America and Europe, church attendance is declining steadily as people drift away from organized religion. While many may describe themselves as being Anglican or Catholic, they rarely plant their backs in the church pews. In the novel Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, they wrote of the character Mr. Young that “when it came to avoiding going to church, the church he stolidly avoided going to was St. Cecil and All Angels, no nonsense C. of E., and he wouldn’t have dreamed of avoiding going to any other.” The book, which came out in 1990, described the Apocalypse, and the events of the first day after the end of the world.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/religion/5750361/Queen-sends-supportive-letters-to-leaders-of-church-movement-that-has-angered-gay-campaigners.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8149812.stm
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12 Responses to The Great Gay Schism Hits The Anglicans Anew
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Tom In El Paso
July 16, 2009 at 8:38 am
You can’t take the heat stay out of the kitchen. Only a bully will typically resort to name calling, lacking the ability to justify their conduct. Just how is any of the following considered trolling? I’d call it valid criticism as would the 4 people who have written me privately:
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Sei
July 16, 2009 at 12:03 pm
Tom,
I called Pete ignorant. You might not have noticed that he said similar to me. Now, your complaint might be considered valid if I had, say, called him a feces head, a dumkopf, a walking pile of manure, or recommended that he might enjoy a view of the world which involved sticking his head up either his or a horses behind. Somehow, raising a stink over someone calling someone else ignorant is a rather pathetic attempt to start a controversy.
Now, you might be referring to my rather insult laden conversation with the gentleman on Topix. There comes a point where the insults are more in the vein of fun than anything else since apparently that gentleman makes a habit of insulting everyone he can no matter what.
Tom, you are obsessed with not liking this blog. I am sorry that you do not like our content, but it appears that many other people do not agree with you. Take care.
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Tom In El Paso
July 15, 2009 at 5:28 pm
Just keep washing your dirty laundry on line and calling anyone who dares comment names. See how far that gets you.
Your readership will readily reflect the fact that you have absolutely no respect for their opinion and as a result no respect for them. You can have it your way all you wish but ultimately you’re being your own worse enemy.
Delete comments away all you wish but I’ll guarantee you a lot more people will know how you wish to conduct your forums once you choose to delete fair criticism.
Sei
July 15, 2009 at 5:32 pm
Tom,
I have yet to call you what is in my mind. You, however, are not happy with our site. I have heard these threats before and we have had far more problems with our site thanks to technical server difficulties and that has driven far more people away than anything I have said.
You see, calling someone ‘ignorant’ is hardly an insult. You, however, have a problem with our site. Any further attempt to continue this will result in your comments being deleted because they are not ‘fair criticism’, and are not intended to discuss what this article was about. In fact, neither was Pete’s comment. Right now, Tom, you’re lurking in order to have a fight.
You are starting to remind me of a Monty Python skit. “I want to have an argument!”
Tom In El Paso
July 15, 2009 at 4:41 pm
Unprofessional is just that. From both of you.
Sei
July 15, 2009 at 5:11 pm
Tom,
Professional would be for us to have deleted the comment, and banned both of you. Would you like us to do that? You see, I’m tired of bullies coming onto our site. Pete did not come in to do much more than throw an intellectually dishonest attack on an article he did not like but could not actually attack. Thus, he attacked my article on something that is not actually even worth attacking.
The only way to stand up to a bully is to stand up to a bully. I have hardly abused Pete. You see, if I wanted to actually abuse and attack Pete, I would have said a lot of other things.
Oh, yes, and I’ve heard THIS one before. Say something even REMOTELY critical of someone who has attacked you personally, and it is ‘unprofessional’. I am sorry, Tom, that you do not like our site, and you do not like the fact that we are on a public site promoting our articles. However, if you do not like our site, articles, or how we react to bullies, you are more than welcome to go somewhere else.
I hear that Queerity is looking for people to hang out and be nasty to their writers.
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Pete
July 15, 2009 at 11:38 am
Wow…good grief…you didn’t get ANY details of early Christianity right in your first paragraph. To repeat, none of your “facts” are correct. Was this done on purpose or in ignorance? What in the world were your primiary sources of information?
Sei
July 15, 2009 at 12:03 pm
Pete,
I have fifteen books on the early days of Christianity, and those do not include the general histories. This is a thumbnail. It’s broad, sweeping, and general. If you would like to discuss the details of the formation of the Catholic Church, then please do so on a blog catering to that subject. Sorry I did not go into nitpicky little detail over how the Archbishop of Rome forced the consolidation of the Bible, or how the Eastern Orthodox Church came into being through a fight with the Roman Church over idolatry.
To answer your question, yes, it was done on purpose for expediency. No, it was not done out of ignorance. However, the fact that you cannot seem to grasp that condensing a thousand years worth of history into a paragraph does show your ignorance. What is worse, a PRIMARY source is a document written at the TIME. I actually do own three of those, and three volumes of gathered primary sources. My SECONDARY sources are fairly numerous. My TERTIARY sources are far more than that.
To reiterate, I was doing a broad, general condensing of a thousand years of Christian history in, what, five or six sentences? If you would like a detailed history of the Christian faith, I recommend looking elsewhere.
Tom In El Paso
July 15, 2009 at 12:38 pm
WTF!
Yours is the ONLY publication that I’ve ever seen that would even dare say a commenter was showing their ignorance. You people have absolutely NO respect for your readers or anyone who would DARE question a word you wrote.
Frankly you’d best sit down as a group and develop some policies for your responses to commentary on your articles. It certainly appears that you willingly go after anyone who dares comment about your writings. Keep that up and you’ll be gone for lack of readership. Such unprofessional behavior indicates a schism between publisher and reader that causes a lack of any respect. And rightly so.
Sei
July 15, 2009 at 12:52 pm
TomInElPaso,
If those who wish to engage in intellectual dishonesty in their attacks do not wish to be abused by me or anyone else on the staff (incidentally, the publisher and I talk all the time, and incidentally, we two write quite a lot of the politics on this site), then my recommendation to them is not to engage in intellectual dishonest attacks and stick to either disagreeing with specifics or not commenting at all. Oh, yes, and Tom, if you have read some of the things I have said on Topix, then you know by far my calling a reader ignorant is mild. I have said some things which are, quite honestly, far more incendiary than that. I believe I once compared a Topix commentator a member of the Bill O’Reilly brigade of hate mongers.
Of course, I’ll ask my managing editor if she wants me to not abuse readers after she’s done abusing you, Tom.