Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Bishop Lawrence's Minorities

The expiration date on victim/minority status for DioSC’s Angricans ran out as soon as Lawrence presided over the wrongly deciding diocesan conventions and wrote those quitclaim letters. Granted, TEC contains no Supreme Court as a protection for the minorities the decisions GenCon "creates."  The impact of change being moderated by meeting triennially and requiring two readings for enforceable matters of canon or liturgy is some protection. But as far as the minorities Lawrence's decisions create, I think the inhibition should have happened much earlier. 
Maybe the solution then is to cast lots when decisions like TEC’s A049 AND DioSC's “Corporation” are made. Until Lawrence is willing to protect the minorities his votes create then I guess we’ll just have to pray for mercy and a consistent application of the standing TEC canons.  

Friday, October 19, 2012

Reckless Mormonism

Spiritually, I have a lot in common with Frank Schaeffer. So I offer this link less to make a pretty much unavoidably partisan statement and more to encourage some thoughts on the role of religion in politics and even more importantly on the relationship of our Episcopal version of Christian faith -- carefully practiced -- as it hopes to provide some of the benefits to a civil society our first amendment intended. I know what I mean by the euphemism "carefully practiced." The shortest way to explain my use of the phrase in this context is to say that Mormonism is mostly a reckless (read "not carefully practiced") and outlandish "midrash" imagined by Joseph Smith in upstate New York whose thinking was accelerated by the same kind of "Great Awakening" ego that empowered Mary Baker Eddy, William Miller, and more lately L. Ron Hubbard. Read Harold Bloom's The American Religion for more on where this opinion gets it's start. Regardless, I think Schaeffer is onto something important about how religion ought to inform citizenship and ultimately the Presidency.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/frankschaeffer/2012/10/warning-romneys-mormon-neoconservative-jingoism-may-kill-your-child/