Maybe you've noticed a new group of feeds I added to my bloglist (it's over there on my sidebar) last week: "Blogs from Around the Church."
Not that I've gotten any more religious in the last week (especially since I missed church this morning), but the denomination that our family moved to about a year ago has been in the news a lot lately:
Schism and rumors of schism have troubled the Episcopal Church for more than three decades. But talk of the venerable church being split into different camps has never been more serious than now.
Fallout began last month when the Episcopal Church elected Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori of Nevada as its new presiding bishop. When she is installed in November, she will become the first woman to lead a national church in the Anglican Communion. [...]
[Fort Worth Bishop Jack] Iker and other conservatives say Schori's election flies in the face of leaders of those Anglican Communion provinces -- or national churches -- who have called for discipline, and possible ouster, of the U.S. church from the Anglican Communion if it doesn't put a moratorium on authorizing liturgies for same-sex unions and ordaining gay bishops with same-sex partners.
We joined the Episcopal Church last year because we liked the openness and acceptance of our local church and we liked that individual churches were given plenty of leeway on how they would be run, two things we never saw in Roman Catholicism.
Now (in the past few years, actually), the fact that there is room for these different views - namely liberal and conservative social views - have come to a head, and the word schism is being thrown around.
I don't think that a schism will happen (at least in the American Church, the relationship between us and the non-Western Episcopal world is much rockier), but I feel that I should keep abreast of what's going on. Ergo, the additions to my blog feeds.
One more thing: I'm sure that a lot of long-time Episcopalians aren't real happy with all this turmoil. But for me, after years of watching Rome stifle any dissent within the Catholic Church, it's kind of neat to be a part of a denomination that allows - and even encourages - discussion of differing thoughts on what the Church should be.
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