As mentioned in a previous post, conservatives in the worldwide Anglican church have protested some of the immorality and unorthodoxy pervasive in the Anglican church, and in particular, in the American Episcopal branch. Specific debate surrounded the issues of women priests, homosexual priests and gay marriage. The feud resulted in many Anglican provinces (especially in Africa) threatening expulsion of the Episcopal church from the Anglican communion, or possibly a return of the orthodox Anglican church to Rome.

After much heated debate, the Anglican church decided to ‘work things out’ internally, by way of an international congress.

First Things now reports that the American Episcopal Church’s House of Bishops released a logorrheic statement of several thousand words, which for all intents and purposes, tells the worldwide Anglican church to go to… well, to go to Hell. In defiance of all threats that their actions would lead to schism within the Anglican order, the Episcopalian bishops flatly rejected participating in a ‘Pastoral Council’ that would be designed to reestablish orthodoxy within the church — or at least create a ‘church within a church’ for conservatives. With breathtaking arrogance, they effectively announced that “what it means to be Anglican, what it means to be in communion with Canterbury, what it means to be a part of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church and hold to the historic Christian faith — that all of this is to be decided solely by the democratic vote of clergy and laypeople once every two years in a Marriott hotel convention room, with reference to nothing and nobody”.

After telling the rest of the world off, the Episcopalian bishops then have the audacity to say it’s everyone else’s fault:

The bishops’ third resolution is a long, churlish, and supercilious explanation of their actions, nominally addressed as a statement to their own American church but really meant as a jab at the rest of the Anglican world. With an assumed innocence that by this time ought to convince no one, the bishops proclaim the “deep longing of their hearts” to remain within the Anglican Communion, while feigning surprise at the notion that their continued defiance of the rest of that communion might somehow be a problem.

Stunningly, rather than admit that the Episcopal Church’s actions may perhaps have had something to do with the crisis that has nearly driven the entire communion off a cliff, the bishops actually point the finger of blame at the primates, who, the bishops allege, in their attempt to set boundaries and work with the Episcopal Church to provide a safe space for conservatives, are in fact encouraging “one of the worst tendencies of our Western culture, which is to break relationships when we find them difficult instead of doing the hard work necessary to repair them.”

And so we see that arrogance — the root of all evil — is not limited to the American bishops of the Catholic Church, but shared in full force by their Episcopalian brothers, too.

What is to come of this has yet to be seen: Despite its harsh words, the Episcopal church has not exactly declared its independence from the Anglican church; to the contrary, it is refusing to be expelled. Will the African provinces secede? Will the orthodox remnant return to Rome?