It is a most unfortunate turn of phrase: Fort Worth wishes to re-align themselves as something called “Anglican Identity” rather than remaining a part of the Episcopal Church:
Episcopal Life Online – DIOCESAN DIGEST
[Episcopal News Service] The Standing Committee of the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth announced October 1 that it will ask its upcoming diocesan convention to “take the first step needed to dissociate itself from the General Convention of The Episcopal Church and to begin the process of affiliating with another Province of the worldwide Anglican Communion.”
Really, if they’d be happier elsewhere, and if they have some kind of fair process for parishes and clergy marooned within their conservative, orthodox borders, it might be the best thing.
Other, snarkier comments come to mind, but least said, soonest mended.
[tags]Anglican Identity, Episcopal, schism[/tags]
Actually, it looks to me like the dissent provisions are as much to let the diocese kick out naysayers as to protect them.
It seems to me that this is just gallingly rude. If they want to leave, they should leave. If they want to leave en masse, I’m sure there’s a meeting hall they can gather in somewhere in the region. But to pretend to be the Diocese of Ft Worth yet somehow magically, majestically sever the bonds to the national church in which that diocese is framed, is ecclesiastical nonsense and simply part of the “we get to take the property, too, right?” movement.
Hubris is probably the term that applies best. I wonder what we’d be experiencing if the tables were turned? A small number of forward-looking dioceses and a scattering of progressive parishes, marooned in a very large, very conservative American Episcopalian church? Why, it would be remarkably unpleasant, and we would be trying to keep lines of communication open and raise consciousness (and consciences) while getting ceremoniously booted out on our arses, and Divil take the hind parts.
It’s funny… there has never been a schismatic splinter group that was MORE progressive, offering a more radical welcome, as far as I know. It’s always been deeply conservative groups fighting rear-guard actions before leaving in a huff to “continue” as the “1928 Prayerbook Real True Anglicans” or the “Even Older Prayerbook of 1592 Real True Anglicans” in addition to your “Free and Non-Gay-Loving Nor Woman-Ordaining Real True Anglicans.”