An Inclusive Church vs. Losing Anglican Identity.

Oregon Public Radio interviewed the Presiding Bishop-Elect Jefferts Schori the other day and the interviewer, Christy George, mentioning the issue of gay marriage and having an openly gay bishop as driving the current conflict in the Anglican Communion, asked, "Is this the big bottom line issue for people?"

Katharine Jefferts Schori reply: I think it's the presenting issue. I don't think it's the real source of conflict. There have been gay clergy and gay bishops in the church forever. Gene Robinson's the first bishop who has been open about that before his election. I think the real root difference is that different parts of the church are interested in maintaining a particular strand of Christian identity, perhaps to the exclusion of some of the other strands. And one of the gifts of Anglicanism over the centuries has been an ability to live with difference, to comprehend a variety of understandings of how to live in the church and in the world. And if we exclude the other parts of those--those other strands--we become diminished.

And the urgency right now I think is about people's sense that their particular strand of identity will be lost, both from the African church and the conservative end of the church in this country, and the most liberal end of the church in this country. It's a struggle for identity, it's a struggle to discover where authority lies when we do differ in our approaches to questions. The Anglican Communion is kind of a hodgepodge of bodies that have grown out of British colonial history, and missionary work, both from the Church of England and from the United States church over the centuries, and we have very different identities because we exist in different contexts.

Seems like an intelligent analysis of the conflict to me. It's about more than just gay clergy, woman priests, and those issues in the forefront of media reports.