Saturday, April 05, 2008

Anglican wars rage on in Virginia

http://www.getreligion.org/?p=3359

[Get Religion] 5 Apr 2008--Here’s a quick follow-up post on the conflict free Baltimore Sun piece on the election of the amazingly controversy free bishop in the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland. You just knew that the local, regional, national and global Anglican wars couldn’t stay out of the Washington-Baltimore headlines for long.

Both Washington newspapers have newsy reports up about the latest round of the battle of Northern Virginia, which is a regional fight with national implications for a laws in a wide variety of mainline and liturgical churches. Both the Washington Post and the Washington Times jumped right on the heart of this story, which is that the Anglican wars here in the DC area are raising constitutional issues that, obviously, have national implications in all kinds of pews.

The central irony in all of this is, on this day, in the shadows: The leaders of mainline churches today are radically divided on what the ancient creeds mean, so they are left to seek unity in the tortured language of laws about property, pensions and endowments. This has, for several decades, been the larger story — the forest — among the trees of the local conflicts.

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