Let God Sort It Out

I find myself increasingly impatient with the controversies about the Episcopal Church and its place in the Anglican Communion.   All this fighting among ourselves isn't helping to bring the good news to non-believers.  As the Parable of the Weeds teaches, God is perfectly capable of sifting the wheat from the chaff when the time comes.  We should trust him to do that, agree to disagree, and get back to work.

Comments

[The Rev. Catherine Windsor]

Hi QC:

I agree. We need to get back to mission and the actual work that God has sent us to do in our own communities and in the larger context.

We all agreed on the MDG's at GenCon, so I say let's get with it and get started.

Catherine+

[bls]

I agree we need to get back to mission. But all this still has to go on, anyway. It is important to gay people, because the Church is still extremely hostile to us - it fights in the public square against our interests, every day, too, don't forget - and we need to do something about that. So IMO we do need to keep talking.

To me, it's analogous to the Reformation. The Church shouldn't have been given a pass to keep selling Indulgences, and to continue all its other abuses, should it have?

[D. C.]

BLS, I think the war about gay bishops and same-sex blessings is essentially over. Sure, GC2006 approved a last-minute resolution urging a kinda-sorta moratorium on bishops "whose manner of life presents a challenge to the wider church and will lead to further strains on communion." But as I observed in an earlier posting, the requested moratorium is expressly predicated on the Anglican Communion's engaging in a "process of healing and reconciliation." My guess is that the radical traditionalists won't make even a good-faith effort at such a process, which means that all bets will be off: The resolution's predicate won't be satisfied, and therefore the moratorium won't be in effect. (This is something each bishop and each standing committee will have to assess individually.)

[Terrilynn]

I agree the war is over and the gays won. We won't ever go back. However, we will continue to wrangle until we either figure out a way to co-exist or not. I hope we can. Right and Truth will out, but it's been ugly and will continue to be ugly. People are acting like wounded crazed animals, and when they strike out, it hurts themselves and everybody around them. I'm truly sorry for their pain, and I realize it may be easier for me to "get back to mission" because "my team" won. The victory is just but at times feels a bit hollow. So much anger and bitterness and hate has been spewed. It's hard to recognize that we are a Church sometimes. I compare this to post-Watergate cynicism and fear fueled by hate talk radio which has resulted in this tragically bitter partisan warfare that we have been living for at least 15 years. I just wonder how it will all play out.

[bls]

Let's not forget, either, that gay people in many parts of the world live under threat of death every single day. I'm not suggesting that we shouldn't get back to other sorts of mission; we absolutely should. But we can't forget about persecution elsewhere, either. And I'm pretty sure we're a part of a worldwide Communion for a reason. I'm glad about that.