A Split Episcopal Church

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rev-astrid-storm/a-split-episcopal-church_b_47368.html

[Huffington Post] 2 Mar 2007--Those missives came to mind recently when I read in last Saturday's The New York Times that Peter Akinola is coming to the U.S. later this week to install those bishops. Looks like he's just in time to wreck some summer family reunions, I thought to myself, and perhaps he'll come armed with a passage from Scripture: "Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple." It would certainly suit the occasion, though I must say it seems a little strange that this text is so fitting in the family-values Bible belt.

In my Hudson Valley church, on the contrary, we prefer a different passage from Scripture: "The eye cannot say to the hand, 'I have no need of you,' nor again the head to the feet, 'I have no need of you.'" At our Christmas service, a row of fully decked-out cadets from nearby West Point worshipped alongside an ardent pacifist, a gay couple exchanged the peace with a homophobe, and I communed an older woman who doesn't think I, a woman priest, should even be there.

Astrid Storm is misapplying Paul's words. Paul was speaking of local bodies of believers and not the whole Church as body, much less denominations or communions or other networks of churches.