In recent weeks a significant number of Episcopalians have been calling me a “schismatic,” which is a terribly offensive accusation within the Anglican sphere. The spirit behind the word is clearly one of anger, bitterness, and contempt. Part of me finds that’s laughable since I wasn’t an Anglican till well after the split. Yet there’s another sense to which it’s true. I have aligned myself within one of the new groups after all. No doubt this reflects my newness to the Anglican tradition as much as it does my personality, but I feel no need to defend myself. I’ll tell Episcopalians exactly what they want to hear: I openly acknowledge being a schismatic, although I’d nuance that by insisting we’re all schismatics...
Check out his explanation of that thought.
2 comments:
In a sense, any tradition from the Reformation era is.
I'll tell you what schismatics are: Those so-called Episcopalians who jump around hugging one another at the 1979 BCP services and call Our Lord by his first name. That's not how Episcopalians used to act - and as far as I'm concerned it still isn't. The Episcopal Church was the Church of Beauty and Dignity when I was growing up - not the last refuge of old hippies advocating every left-wing cause in America. Episcopalians? Not hardly - High Baptists, maybe.
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