Bah.  Both TEC and the liberal/progressives define capitulation to their point of view as moderation.  Yes, we are free to agree with them, but that is as far as their view of compromise and moderation go.

“The Anglican via media offers an understanding that we must be willing to forgive and to compromise if we are to move forward together. And the history of the via media suggests the opportunity of actual achievement…”

The achievement of progressive leftward drift is the only forward motion that recent history has shown.

Ten years too late. And—“the tiny number of Episcopalians in America - 2 percent or so of the population”: They wish: that would be one in 50. I think TEC membership peaked at about one in 85 ca. 1965. Today’s membership must be little more than half of one percent of the U.S. population.

Someone once said that colleges and universities are heavens for ideas that have slipped their earthly moorings. To be pertinent and helpful, this professor needed to ground his ideas in the history of administrative proposals of the last ten years whereby mainstream Anglicans in TEC could have been accommodated. As it is, his essay is more than a day late and—too bad for TEC—many dollars short.

Yes, David Hein is right.  We’re at about half of one percent, is my understanding.

Re: “Why We Should Do Politics like Episcopalians”

It’s as if he doesn’t know about the General Convention in which scores of “resolutions” were passed telling everybody to be Code Pink, Move-On.org style collectivists.

Where has he been?  “Doing Politics Like Episcopalians” just means we’ll all be radical leftist Dems. 

Maybe that’s what he’s wanting—who knows.  But somebody that clueless and naive and unaware of the ridiculous resolutions churned out by Episcopal General Conventions shouldn’t be handling ideas in a public setting.

Well, it’s sad and ironic, isn’t it?

“It’s as if he doesn’t know about the General Convention in which scores of “resolutions” were passed telling everybody to be Code Pink, Move-On.org style collectivists.”

I would seriously entertain the historical claim that TEC in the 1950s was intellectually and politically more diverse than TEC (at least at the GC level) today. Recent Episcopalians might not think so, but study the historical record and reach your own conclusions. Then think about why some people, seeking a truly diverse and welcoming denomination, have left.

This article is wrong on so many levels, I may have to nominate it for worst op-ed piece of the month.

Whatever else may be said - one thing is certain: Mr. Garrett knows very little about Richard Hooker, and cares less about the appropriateness of citing him to support a position which Hooker could not imagine as legitimately Christian, much less approve of.

Perhaps the title should have been “Why We Should Do Politics like Episcopalians Are Supposed To”.

Thesis: “Jesus is Lord”
Antithesis”  “Jesus is not Lord”
Synthesis:  “Jesus is sometimes Lord”
Brilliant. 

I don’t believe in silencing dissenting voices - after all, as St. Ignatius Loyola believed, if you have to silence someone to defeat them, how do you know you’re right to begin with?  But that’s a whole lot different from saying “there is merit to both viewpoints so it doesn’t matter what you believe.”  Would you go to a doctor who said “there are people who believe in vaccinations and some who don’t,  so really it doesn’t matter whether you vaccinate or not.”

While I never knew him, or even met him that I can recall, I used to work at Garrett’s university, and I remember a few things about him there.  He went through a period of depression several years ago that he wrote about and was interviewed about - this was how I first really heard of him.  He already had tenure and a good track record (had a couple of teaching awards and was a well regarded professor) so the department worked with him during the illness.  But his marriage fell apart during this time, and colleagues avoided him.  His photo in the faculty directory showed him as long-haired and a bit unkempt, completely unlike he was before (and as he looks now - if you saw his photos from say 1995 and 2010 you wouldn’t have believed he was the same man as in 2005).

All his higher education (other than the theological degree) was done in Oklahoma, and I believe he is originally from there.  Again, this is conjecture, but if he wasn’t a Baptist himself, he was certainly part of that conservative, religious culture in Oklahoma and Texas (or certainly not repulsed by it to make a career at a Baptist university).

Anyway, out of this crisis he turned to liberal Episcopalianism where he studied at the Episcopal Seminary of the Southwest (while maintaining his Baylor professorship) - for a while he was splitting time between both.

Over time, I grew to suspect that Garrett tried to be “good” within the culture he grew up in: be a “good Christian”, get married, have a family.  But at some point, he couldn’t do it anymore.  It all fell apart.  And when he came through the other side, he ran as far as he could from fundamentalism as he could and still be within the Christian world.  While I am glad he came through his episode of depression, I am a little sad to see him apparently exchange one faulty view of God with another.  It’s as if he gave up God as taskmaster and taken up a God of sentimentality.

This article contains serious errors, and, worse, it’s profoundly dishonest.

Some of the errors have been noted, but to me as an RC, it’s irritating to read that bit about excommunication.  First, bishops don’t “decree that if you don’t follow the church’s teaching ... you are outside the Church.”  The Faith of the Catholic Church is that various practices are gravely sinful.  Abortion, particularly, incurs an automatic excommunication, which means no bishop “decrees” anything. He may acknowledge it, or in the case of public scandal, he may clarify the offender’s status.  But the act itself brought about the excommunication.  More significantly, excommunication does not put one “out of the Church”.  One may be a bad Catholic, but a Catholic the excommunicate remains.

As much as the author sounds like a centrist, reconciler, and so on, the product is pure revision of the Christian Faith. As I said, the guy is just dishonest.  For my money, I prefer honest heathenism over this sort of religiosity.

All his higher education (other than the theological degree) was done in Oklahoma, and I believe he is originally from there.  Again, this is conjecture, but if he wasn’t a Baptist himself, he was certainly part of that conservative, religious culture in Oklahoma and Texas (or certainly not repulsed by it to make a career at a Baptist university).
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I think historically it’s wrong - at least about Hooker. One of aims of his Laws is to show that obedience to English church laws regarding matters adiaphora is required for all members of the English church. Thus even things that are genuinely adiaphora, when settled by the competent authority (Crown, Convocation and Parliament for Hooker), require obedience.

Or if you want to put t another way the author is mistaken to assimilate Hooker’s adiaphora to contemporary pluralism, for Hooker thinks that, in the well ordered church, there ought to be order (and so obedience) even in matters that are adiaphora. (The remnant of this sort of view is encountered in the place (once) occupied by the BCP in the Episcopal church’s worship).

Of course the author considers as things adiaphora matters that Hooker would surely have seen as being prohibited by Scripture or by the light of natural understanding. Once the law has transgressed those boundaries, Hooker’s thought offers a principled way to think about disobedience. As Hooker says, human laws “must be made according to the generall lawes of nature, and without contradiction unto any positive law in scripture. Otherwise they are ill made.”