Schism and heresy

It has been a while since I posted anything. I plead busy. This is the first in a sequence of several planned postings.

In the post-Civil War period (USA) or the middle 19th century (rest of the world) there arose in England, and then the US, a movement towards an increasingly catholic form of the Anglican church. Dubbed the, "Oxford Movement" led by a man who eventually left the Church of England to become a Roman Catholic (and ended his life a cardinal) the movement outraged Calvinist within the church.

In England that outrage was contained within the reality of an established church. One vestige of the way the State eventually dealt with the issue, was the emergence of a tradition that an evangelical (Calvinist) archbishop is always followed by an Anglo-catholic one and vice versa. Another was the establishment of separate seminaries for the two sides.

In America, however, there was a good deal less compromise. At first the Calvinist were ascendant. Fr. DeKoven was elected bishop of Illinois four times, and denied confirmation by "evangelical" who would not accept the most outspoken Anglo-catholic of his day as a bishop all four times. Over time, however, the balance shifted, and eventually the Reformed Episcopal Church was formed by Calvinist who could not abide the new-found Catholicism of the Episcopal church. Even though the REC never drew large numbers of Episcopalians, its leaving was an effective end to the controversy. Remaining evangelical tended towards conversion, the United Methodists offered another home, and the church was for a long time, monochomatic -- and catholic.

Nothing stays the same. Eventually, in the post WWII period, evangelical began to stage a resurgence. In part, this was aided by the conflict between liberals and conservatives within the Anglo-catholic group. Ordaining women, leading or at least participating civil rights activities, opposition or support of the Viet Nam war, all of these contributed to the resurgence of evangelical, as they divided the Anglo-Catholics.

So, now, when what can only be called a very catholic version of the prayer book is in place, when a solid majority of the bishops are either catholic or liberal evangelical, when the laity is more likely to call a liturgy a "mass" than a "service," the picture is suddenly less monochromatic.

Other factors, of course, influence the place the church as a whole, and the Episcopal corner, finds itself. One major one is mobility. Mobility of persons, it is now feasible for a bishop to start and end his day in Central America, while preaching in the US; and mobility of ideas, the internet makes publishing available to any literate person, and some rather less than literate ones too.

So, now, what happens in North Dakota is news in Nigeria. Not old news, it is immediate news. And that changes the conversation. We see the sound bytes, not the speeches. Even TV did not have that sort of impact. All of this matters because a lot of the group styling itself the "Global South" was initially the mission field of the English evangelical Calvinist. They bring a particular view to the conversation.


This is the world in which the schism we now see is taking place. Later, I shall post on why I prefer heresy.

Jim B