ECUSA 'Never Likely to Face Discipline.'

Hat Tip: Christanity Today Weblog.

In case anyone has forgotten, the Episcopal Church of the United States of America, which also is the Province of America within the worldwide Anglican Communion, recently consecrated a practicing homosexual as Bishop of New Hampshire. That the Diocese of New Hampshire would stoop so low as to recommend a homosexual candidate is of a piece with John Kerry carrying the State this time around. But the Presiding Bishop of the ECUSA, in his role as Primate of America, ought never have accepted the election. But he did--and whitewashed his decision by saying that the church had no procedure for over-riding the election of an unsuitable bishop-candidate.

This is hogwash, of course. A bishop who abdicates his oversight responsibility is not a bishop anymore. The very word bishop means "an overseer," after all.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, who is the head of the worldwide Anglican Communion, has never been able to ignore the issue entirely, but has done everything to avoid dealing with it. In the process he has just about made the Anglican Communion a dead letter. Conservative Anglican primates--who, as strange as it might seem, are located in the Southern Hemisphere, not the Northern--know it and are doing a number of things about it. Chief among these things, they have opened up "missions" here in America for disaffected Anglicans, allowing them to join non-American provinces--provoking the ECUSA Presiding Bishop to cry "Foul!&qout; Whether they'll be able to do more than that remains to be seen.

Frankly, I doubt it. Then again, when the ECUSA watered down their doctrine, ordained women, and in general made it clear that they were not paying the Bible the attention it deserved, I left the ECUSA a long time ago. I am now an Independent Baptist. Stories like this should tell you why.