ECUSA: LEADING LAYMAN SEES 'UGLY AMERICAN' IMAGE AS THE ISSUE

News Analysis | By David W. Virtue

The Episcopal Church's leading lay revisionist thinker believes that primatial road rage against the ECUSA is a vicarious way of getting back at the ugly American image, and is not primarily about homosexuality at all.

Dr. Louie Crew, the Episcopal Church's pioneer homosexualist, says some of their primatial disengagement "stems from an over-identification of TEC with the US Government and more specifically with the American Empire, whom the world rightly resents." It's easy to get into an 'anti-American' mindset, especially when TEC, like the USA, comes across as some sort of "Super Power" or "Super Church," he said.

Writing on the House of Bishops/Deputies listserv, Dr. Crew said he also believes the Episcopal Church will not voluntarily leave the Communion on its own initiative "unless the terms of remaining become intolerable, such as yielding any part of our jurisdiction."

The Integrity founder also said that the TEC will probably participate less and less in forums where abuse occurs, and "collaborate where we are welcome."

Painting ECUSA as the victim in Christ like categories, Crew said the TEC is investing its considerable resources in sharing the stigma of a despised and rejected minority. That is not new in Christianity: Jesus experienced his own first successful missions with outcasts in Samaria, he said.

"I think TEC will be patient, but to a limit yet to be determined. If the mud-slingers don't slack off in time, I cannot imagine TEC remaining a willing target of abuse indefinitely. We are funding right at 30% of the bureaucracy to manage the bilge, and we could spend that money much better in meeting the material needs of people whose bishops are neglecting them by spending time and money attacking us."

Dr. Crew couldn't be more wrong.

First of all no one has done more to disparage the United States to the world and the Anglican Communion than Frank T. Griswold, ECUSA's Presiding Bishop. He brought the wrath of former U.S. President George Bush down on his head by blaming the tragic events of 911 on American foreign policy and Islamophobia.

Furthermore it is the height of arrogance to think that the Global South has now or ever has had that much respect for the Episcopal Church to regard it as a "super power" or "super church." If it held it in any kind of respect those days are long gone.

The ECUSA might be financially rich but numerically it is a pin prick in terms of the greater Anglican Communion. Its influence is considerably greater than its numbers warrant, and with its fading glory, the Africans are now saying, "your money perish with you."

The respect African and Asian bishops have had for the West was strictly in relationship to the gospel western missionaries brought to their lands and for whom they gave their lives. There is still enormous respect for these men and women whose portraits often line the walls of African bishops' studies.

The rejection of The Episcopal Church, the Diocese of New Westminster and specifically the New Hampshire bishop has nothing to do with a post colonial angst, money, power or anything else; it is the total betrayal and reversal of Holy Scripture and 2,000 years of church teaching on faith and morals that has done ECUSA in with the CAPA bishops.

No, what Crew calls an 'anti-American' mindset is an 'anti-ECUSA' mindset brought about by the American church's sellout of the gospel to pansexual behavior and its failure to affirm major doctrines of the faith at its last General Convention.

The sad truth is that the Primates have had more personal communication than they can stomach from Western bishops talking about sodomy. They are sick and tired of it. They have had enough. They want to see the salvation of souls, not the sickness of sodomy talked about. They believe in regeneration not degradation, salvation not salivation, sanctification not perversity.

"We are never going to capitulate to those who do not have jurisdiction here, and if the Communion reconstitutes itself to seize the powers of a Curia, few Episcopalians will want to be a part of it," says Crew.

They won't need to, because the Global South IS the majority, and the West are the minority who have no gospel except inclusion, and they are heading right over the edge of the cliff and into the abyss.