Thing is, what if that focus -- from either the right or the left -- is misplaced?
What if the future of the Anglican Communion in the North Atlantic world -- in particular, the ECUSA -- is decided not by the politics of this or that synod, but in the diverse communities of Word and Sacrament?
The question I'm asking today, in light of that General Convention vote yesterday is, is anyone listening?
Sure, lots of the news outlets seem to have been paying attention. But does anyone in the local context of parishes care?
What is interesting is that, while most of these contacts -- the people we believe God is calling to come and taste our Anglican way of being Christian -- are quite happy to be living in a "red state", many of them are not. A good percentage are for gay marriage, against the alleged "right" to bear arms. But both groups are attending our events at church and our evangelistic parties and venues out on the town and at people's homes: Fish fries, film nights, pub gatherings, Bible studies, service projects.
These people -- those on the right and those on the left -- are nothing if not cynical of "the Church". Each in their own way, they've been possessed by the zeitgeist that questions the authority of large ecclesial bodies. Many of them have walked away from "organized religion" a long, long time ago. They're hanging out with a particular band of folks -- always their own stripe -- and so have long since fractured the Body of Christ. And now, they're being drawn in -- whether to rejoice or to condemn -- out of what CS Lewis called a "good infection".
But it's an infection all the same.
Hear me say this. That's largely, in my reading, a good thing. I don't give one whiff why it is folks are drawn back to the Church. I'm glad that they are.
So, that's the good news in all this. No matter where you come down on the SCOTUS ruling earlier this week -- and, again, I'm in favor of it on legal grounds -- people are looking again to the Church to have something to say.
So what's the message they'll hear?
This is the point at which my heart breaks. Because, where once the Anglican Communion was wide enough to house so many of different varieties, the condemnations are flying both ways. Lots of Christians -- both on the right and on the left -- are looking like Pharisees, and not like Jesus.
The Church suffers thereby. The Good News we are called to proclaim suffers thereby. Until folks on the ground, where our parishes are, can trust us, we can't have much to say. That, I think, is what Jesus meant: "I in them and you in me -- so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me" (John 17.23). Folks will ultimately come to Christ, not because of a decision of General Convention, but because of something more local, more embodied, more important: A lived encounter with the love of Christ.