Posturing Imitators...

“The Presiding Bishop of this church has refused to accept the key recommendations of the Windsor Report, has failed to seek implementation of the essential requests of the Dar es Salaam Communiqué, and has denied basic tenets of the teaching of the New Testament. By her statements and actions, the course she wishes to pursue is clear: to lead TEC to walk apart from the Anglican Communion. This is a course we cannot follow. For all these reasons and others, we do not wish to be affiliated with her, nor with anyone she may appoint or designate to act on her behalf.”

My, my, isn’t Fort Worth special? Here they go again, making it clear that their boys’ club not only doesn’t want to play with the new girl but they don’t even want to be on the same block. So once again they are making a bold and broad statement that they are not only dissatisfied but they are going to do something about it. Like what? Stand around preening, patting themselves on the back and slapping each other on the butt? All in a manly way, don’t you know? Once again they have done nothing but blow pompous yet empty rhetoric.

Not only is it empty and pompous but it isn’t even accurate. What recommendations of the Windsor report has the Presiding Bishop refused to accept – the part about not crossing boundaries maybe? No, wait…that was the other guys. The part about listening? No, they already said that no clergy would be made to listen to the stories of a bunch of gays and lesbians. What essential request of the Dar es Salaam Communiqué has the Presiding Bishop failed to implement? She said she would take it to the House of Bishops and she did. There was nothing else that she could do – oh wait…I bet the people on the Standing Committee of the Diocese of Fort Worth were thinking that maybe she could make a mandate since that is the world they live in. What basic tenet of the teaching of the New Testament has she denied? Are they still foaming at the reference to “Mother” Jesus? Get a grip. Are they really that upset to think of a God so large that it is possible that someone could understand the idea of Jesus without having ever, ever heard about him?

Nitpickers…that’s what my grandmother would have called them. Picking at nits until there are festering pustules. Posturing, I call it. They are posturing, stalling for time in an attempt to take all the toys with them. It doesn’t matter how they try to change the diocesan constitution in November 2007. It doesn’t matter if they get the first vote then and the second vote in November 2008. It won’t matter because the constitution doesn’t belong to them…it belongs to the Diocese of Fort Worth and that diocese belongs to The Episcopal Church. Period.