Q Toon: Walk Together

Last week, the Anglican Communion -- the church that broke off from Roman Catholicism so that Henry VIII could divorce Catherine of Aragon and marry Anne Boleyn -- voted to punish its American outlet, the Episcopalian Church. "Global South" Anglicans, particularly those in former British colonies in Africa, have been eager to expel the Episcopalian Church for its acceptance of marriage equality for same-sex couples (and for allowing an openly gay man to serve as bishop).

Nigeria alone has more Anglicans than the U.S., Canada and Great Britain combined. When Anglican leaders from the global South insisted on punishing the U.S. church for same-sex marriage, they had the votes to get most of what they wanted. A joint statement said U.S. church's policy on same-sex marriage represented a fundamental departure from the faith and teaching held by the majority of the Anglican provinces.

The punishment, shutting the American church out of doctrinal meetings of the Anglican Communion for the next three years, was not enough for the Ugandan Primate, Archbishop Stanley Ntagali, who stalked out of the meeting. Ntagali had been pushing for a stronger resolution calling upon the American and Canadian churches to "voluntarily withdraw from the meeting and other Anglican Communion activities until they repented of their decisions that have torn the fabric of the Anglican Communion at its deepest level."

After the vote, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, issued a statement attempting to mitigate the schism.  “It’s a constant source of deep sadness that people are persecuted for their sexuality," he wrote. "I want to take this opportunity personally to say how sorry I am for the hurt and pain, in the past and present, that the church has caused and the love that we at times completely failed to show, and still do, in many parts of the world including in this country.”

As for the still divided church, Welby hopes that the primates will continue to "walk together," a phrase taken from Amos 3:3: "Can two walk together, except they be agreed?" (KJV)

The feelings of LGBT Christians aside, Giles Fraser in The Guardian takes a look at the bright side:

For three years the American church will be banned from various doctrinal and ecumenical meetings of the communion. Given that such meetings are about as interesting at watching paint dry, one might conclude that the Americans have been rewarded rather than punished.

Speaking of Gay Bishops

If the election of The Rev. Dr. R. Guy Erwin as bishop of the Southern California Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America hasn't made the front page of your RSS feed, perhaps it's because we've been there before.

Here's a cartoon about what it was like ten years ago when the Episcopalians crossed that threshold:

Conservative Episcopalians had conniption fits (they're called Episconniptions) over Robinson's election, and several U.S. churches went so far as to break away and join the Nigerian Anglican Church.

The bishop received death threats, and was pointedly not invited to the 2008 Lambeth Conference of the Anglican Communion. (This cartoon, however, was drawn three years earlier.)

He was invited to deliver an invocation at President Obama's first inaugural. If you didn't notice, it may be because he was omitted from the live broadcast on HBO and NPR and from the Presidential Inauguration Committee's official live blog.

Bishop V. Gene Robinson retired in January.

As for the Lutheran Church, before Bishop Erwin's election, The Rev. Eva Brunne was elected as Bishop of the Diocese of Stockholm, Sweden, in 2009. And of course, the Catholic Church had gay bishops long before Protestants got all worked up about theirs -- but I wasn't cartooning way back then.