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  • The ACNA’s Demographic is the Key to Understanding Why It Is a Target

    The Baptist News, of all places, makes this observation:


    Beneath the salacious headlines from     the Anglican Church in North America lies a high-stakes battle about military chaplaincy.

    Although one of the nation’s smaller Christian denominations, the ACNA endorses a disproportionately massive share of United States military chaplains. And that has been a profit center for the Jurisdiction of the Armed Forces and Chaplaincy, led by a bishop who now has fled the denomination to start his own.

    The ACNA, for all of the publicity it’s gotten lately, isn’t that large of a denomination, although it’s growth has been respectable (a concept which plays its part in this saga) in its relatively short life. But why all of the attention on this relatively small group of people, up to an including a Washington Post correspondent making a career out of its misfortunes? The answer is twofold: its own demographics and the place of the military in American society.

    One mistake Evangelicals and evangelical adjacent types repeatedly make is that it’s all about sheer numbers, that if we somehow get saved and mobilised a large enough number of people we can make our “Pickett’s Charge” big enough to overwhelm the forces of darkness and take our country back for God. The last half century should demonstrate the falsity of this concept. Anyone with an elite background knows that, it’s not getting to the large number of people that gains you control over a social system, it’s getting to the right people. Once you do that the rest will follow. This is especially true in a society where respectability is such an obsession as it is with ours.

    The ACNA’s elevated demographic–which it has in common with the Episcopal Church, including the racial makeup–has its own perils, but its presence in the upper reaches of our society (and a not inconsiderable presence in the DC area) makes it a threat to our elite. People like Joel Osteen and Kenneth Copeland may be deeply offensive to the pseudosophisticates that dominate our chattering class, but they’re a sideshow. The ACNA is a perceived threat, thus the space in the Washington Post. The fact that it has a desultory leadership structure (and the leaders to go with it) only makes it more vulnerable.

    The situation with the military itself is a little different. Ever since the days of Barack Obama elite opinion has worried about the conservative nature of military people and the possibility of them eventually doing a coup. (I was trashed for expressing this opinion in my piece Every King is Proclaimed by Soldiers, but somebody needs to live in reality.) The push for DEI in both the military and the intelligence/police apparatus is an attempt to end this threat. Although conservative denominations such as mine maintain endorsing agencies for military chaplaincy, and are more likely to see their sons and daughters join the military, again the ACNA is a greater perceived threat, especially due to the relatively large group of chaplains that the JAFC has endorsed and are serving.

    The ACNA has made its share of mistakes. The problem facing the ACNA is that its structure and the people who populate it may not be well positioned to fix them in a timely and decisive matter. From that standpoint what we are seeing is a power struggle emerge, and experience indicates that such in churches are ugly and non-beneficial to the mission that Our Lord put us on the earth to do. But there’s a reason why the ACNA is a special target, and that needs to be understood by everyone–and soon.

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  • Derek Jones and Those Wandering ACNA Bishops

    Derek Jones and Those Wandering ACNA Bishops

    As we careen from one year of artificial intelligence combined with (and to some extent born out of) real stupidity, it’s time to stop and take a look at the Anglican Church in North America, that rickety chandelier of an organisation mired with serious problems with its bishops, and three in particular. The matter of Stewart Ruch has been disposed of in a manner that makes few happy (although in the circumstances surrounding it virtually guaranteed that result.) That leaves us with Derek Jones and Steve Wood, and to avoid making this article a sprawing mess I’ll focus on Jones, as I did in my earlier post on the subject.

    In working my way around the old blogosphere on the subject, I’ve encountered a source I’ve run into before: Robin Jordan. We’ve had our sword crossings on a wide variety of subjects. With recent events he has brought to our attention some interesting posts of his from 2010 on the subject of Derek Jones in his posts Episcopi Vagantes in the Anglican Church in North America and The Sound of Silence. Another post of interest is More unanswered questions in Derek Jones’ reception as an ACNA bishop, where he crosses swords with George Conger (with whom I share a home parish) and Bill Atwood. In the course of this he makes some interesting points and conveys some valuable information:

    • He goes into the whole origin of the episcopi vagantes and their impact on the ACNA. I had never heard of such until my first Catholic parish priest mentioned them to me in passing. As Jordan points out, “What the CEEC bishops are describing as Church of England recognition may be a reference to what happened early in the last century when a group of Anglo-Catholic priests in the Church of England concerned about the validity of their Anglican orders sought re-ordination at the hands of an episcopi vagantes bishop whom they believed to have valid independent Catholic orders.” There are of course other bishops who have filled that role, and Jones was consecrated by one of them.
    • Jordan notes the lack of transparency surrounding Jones’ admission into the ACNA as a feature of the organisation, not a bug. That has come back to light in the recent conflicts.
    • Jordan makes the following statement: “Bishop Jones’ reception raises some very important questions about the future direction of the ACNA? Does Bishop Jones’ reception signal that the ACNA is no longer pursuing Anglican Communion recognition? Is the ACNA with Jones’ reception hoping to bring Convergence congregations and clergy into the ACNA fold and increasing its size through their absorption? Is the ACNA moving away from Anglicanism to become a Convergence church? What are the implications for confessional Anglicans and confessional Anglicanism in the ACNA? How will such a movement affect Anglo-Catholics in the ACNA and their commitment to Catholic order, doctrine and practice? Will the reception of a bishop from a church that ordains women further strain relations with Anglo-Catholics in the ACNA and move the ACNA closer to the consecration of a women bishop?” All of these are still very relevant with the ACNA, and are prescient points–if not entirely unique to Jordan.
    • He also stated the following back in 2010: “In the meantime, Bishop Jones’ supporters have sought to discredit those who call attention to the question of the validity and regularity of his consecration and to impugn their character. Jones’ fellow CEEC bishops, when a query was directed to them about his consecration, declined to give a straightforward answer. They claimed that Jones’ consecration had the recognition of the Church of England as well as the ACNA and referred the inquirer to Jones himself. However, they did not provide any details in regards to who in the Church of England had recognized Jones’ consecration and under what circumstances. Nor did they volunteer where documentation of this recognition of the consecration is to be found.” Jones’ supporters have always done so with gusto, and that is certainly the case today.

    I would urge my readers to take a look at Jordan’s material on the subect. That said, I have a few observations to make as follows:

    • Jordan’s question “Does Bishop Jones’ reception signal that the ACNA is no longer pursuing Anglican Communion recognition?” has largely been answered elsewhere. The new Archbishop of Canterbury (if she can get past her safeguarding woes) has done what years of stating the obvious to ACNA dreamers has not: the whole idea of the ACNA being a part of the “old” Church of England-centred Anglican Communion is dead. What will come out of the upcoming Abuja meeting will be interesting and impactful, but getting past those dreams is a step forward, and it’s unfortunate that it happened when the ACNA is mired in its internal problems.
    • Jordan’s leitmotif is that North American Anglicanism needs to get back to a more Reformed, Protestant way, and much of what he says here–and elsewhere–is directed towards that aim. Irrespective of the merits of that, I don’t see that happening. Looking at recent history, if the Reformed Episcopal Church can be moved in an Anglo-Catholic direction, how can anyone else reverse course? Catholicism has appeal for two reasons. The first is that it, like the Patriarch Nikon’s reforms vs. the Old Believers, makes people feel that they’re “keeping up with the Jonses’” (pun unintended) when in fact they’d be better off being the Jonses! And someone needs to point out that the Catholicism generally practiced in parishes (outside perhaps the Trads) today has little to do with the Anglo-Catholicism we see in Anglican/Episcopal circles. The second is that it is authoritarian in structure and administration, and the very Gothardian Boomers in the ACNA feel a strong thrill up their leg when they think about that. (This also speaks to the accountability issue.)
    • I do not believe that the ACNA’s chaplaincy should have been a separate diocese but a department of the central church. Most of the present fiasco would have been avoided if it had been constituted as a department to start with.
    • The ACNA has too many dioceses and bishops; with its “rickety chandelier” structure and authoritarian mindset amongst much of its leadership, problems are inevitable. Instead of worrying about his ordination, a more significant question regarding Derek Jones–or anyone else the ACNA has brought into its episcopal or clerical rank–is whether they are team players. We saw this play out with AMiA Bishop Chuck Murphy. The Africans expect it and the Roman Catholics expect it but lessons unlearned are lessons repeated.

    I’ve communicated with people on both sides of the Jones matter. I can’t help but think that, given the entry of the U.S. court system into the fracas–and we all know what happens with that–there will be no real winners when everything is said and done. Hopefully the ACNA, something which many of us looked at with optimism at its start, will weather the rough seas and end up safe in the harbour.

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  • Pentecostalism in Puerto Rico: A Movement Birthed by Refugees in 1916 Now Includes 25 Percent of Island Residents–Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center

    Pentecostalism in Puerto Rico: A Movement Birthed by Refugees in 1916 Now Includes 25 Percent of Island Residents

    It’s not just the Assemblies of God either; the Church of God has also been enriched by its Puerto Rican people, who on the island organise themselves as the “Mission Board.” Many have come to the continental U.S., where they have been a part of my local church and my classes at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, both geotechnical and my Fluid Mechanics Laboratory class. We are the better for them.

    One of the best stories about these people came from a friend who, before she and her husband moved to Tennessee, taught high school in central Florida. Florida public schools can be tough; one day the leader of the Puerto Rican gang at school came to her, a nice Christian woman, and said, without any prompting, “You’re Puerto Rican. We’ll protect you.” And they did! As anyone on the mission field will tell you, you never know whom God will send into your life to help you!

    One thing I reminded every Soil Mechanics class of every semester was that Puerto Ricans are Americans and of the process that got them here, which you can see in my post The Raising of the Maine, Cellular Cofferdams, Why Puerto Rico is Part of the U.S., and Why Puerto Ricans are Americans. With some of the disgusting rhetoric floating around these days, it’s something that bears repeating.

  • Because Jews Are Smart: Why Antisemitism is Re-Emerging

    The recent attack on a Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach (will our AG get the blame for it?) in Sydney is yet another tragedy of an attack on Jewish people. There are all kinds of explanation for this–and I’m sure Jewish apologists will avoid the one presented here–as to why this is taking place. It comes from an unlikely source but nothing else really fits the bill.

    Years ago I had a hijab-wearing Algerian lab assistant in my Soil Mechanics Laboratory course. She didn’t have a high opinion of the Arabs; she wanted us to know that she was Berber. I also got to know her husband, a big guy. Their child was likewise, looked like he was born for the NFL. One day he and I were talking about things and he was talking about some kind of banking thing. He was explaining it and then paused to blurt out “Because Jews are smart.”

    That, in a nutshell, is the whole reason why the world turns against God’s Chosen People. It’s the truth.  I’ll emphasise things that are signifcant to me personally, but you can add as you like.

    They were smart in the 1920’s when the WASP elites who ran the country–and certainly the Ivy League schools–changed the admission process to favour the “well-rounded person” over the real academic achiever, at the time the Jews. The fact that they used it against the Asians later should not obscure the origins of this way of admission.

    They were smart in the 1930’s when Adolf Hitler started to roll out the “Final Solution” in Germany. Race was at the centre of his platform; the Germans were the “Master Race,” the Jews were ostensibly inferior. But it was a cover-up: the Jews put the lie to the Germans being the master race, Hitler’s effort to get rid of them was necessary to eliminate competition. In the end the Allies made a final solution for Adolf Hitler a reality.

    They were smart in the 1940’s and afterwards when they took a run-down part of the Middle East (with no oil at the time, as Golda Meir noted) and made the desert bloom, fending off invasions by their neighbours who seriously outnumbered them.

    They were also smart in the 1940’s when they engaged the services of a Scots-Irish realtor named Claude Reese to call the Gentile Old Guard’s bluff and made the first large Jewish real estate purchase in Palm Beach.  The relationship between the Jews and Southerners in general and Scots-Irish in particular is a complicated one, punctuated with a string of Jewish firsts at the ballot box (first Jewish member of the House of Representatives, first Jewish U.S. Senator, first Jewish cabinet member in North America, all from the South) but suffice it to say that, if the Scots-Irish had the work and organisational ethic of the Jews, it could be a contest.

    They were smart in the 1940’s and 1950’s when the Russians developed vibratory pile driving technology, which became very important in my own field. Jewish names–and quite a few women as well–populate those who made this a reality. Before that, in 1931 an Australian Jew (something to remember with this latest tragedy) named David Victor Isaacs discovered wave propagation in driven piles, another thing that changed my field.

    They were smart in 1973 when two Jewish girls were valedictorian and salutatorian of my prep school graduating class, also when Golda Meir was Prime Minister of Israel. My mother deeply resented this, I did not. She was an exvangelical who referred to the Jews as “God’s Chosen People” and that divine validation was enough for me. (It would behoove the Jews not to minimise that reality.)

    Jews continue to be smart with Nobel prizes and other awards. I mentioned examples from my own field; it is impossible in any scientific field to find an absence of Jewish achievers. As David Hilbert told Reichserziehungsminister Bernhard Rust, who inquired of the state of mathematics at the University of Gottingen after the Jews were purged, “Suffered? It doesn’t exist any longer, does it?”

    What we’re seeing today is a broad-based revolt against real merit, our obsession with “meritocracy” notwithstanding. Any time this takes place the Jews get the worst of it. In this country it’s always been underneath the surface of an ethos supposedly founded on “equality” but starting in the 1960’s the broad-based revolt against real achievement–and the rewards for same–got rolling in earnest. Today we have transitioned from equality to equity, and combining that with the shame-honour ethos of the Middle East and Islam, we have an explosive situation which promises to get worse for the Jews–and the rest of us–before it gets better.

  • Against a World Government

    Against a World Government

    I’ve heard many Christian speakers–and their conspiracy theorist counterparts in non-Christian circles–rail against one world government, but this is one of those rare instances where the case against one is laid out in a simple, straightforward fashion.

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  • Dumb and Dumber: The Bizarre Case of the Nord Stream Pipeline

    This thing is almost surreal, now we are discovering the perpetrators:

    It is often said that “the first casualty when war comes is truth.” A criminal warrant just issued in Germany shows that war continues to claim its victims. However, this warrant could prove to be as great an indictment not just of the government of Volodymyr Zelensky, but also of former President Joe Biden.

    This week, a German court issued an arrest warrant for Ukrainian Serhii Kuznietsov, which may finally confirm what was long suspected: that Ukraine was responsible for the 2022 sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines in the waters near Denmark and Sweden.

    That the Ukrainians did this is unsurprising. That the Germans’ stupidity led to this action–and the Americans’ complicity in covering the truth up–is unsurprising in its own way.

    Let’s start with the Germans. Their first two mistakes were a) to shut down nuclear plants (for that they were snookered by the unscientific Americans) even in the face of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and b) to think that Russian gas would assuage their carbon footprint obsession without geopolitical consequence. In this respect the French, with their Cartesian logic in the Hexagon, were ahead of their Teutonic neighbours, having developed an extensive nuclear program in the 1970’s as a response to another unstable region, the Middle East. It never ceases to amaze how the Germans, supposedly a civilized and scientific people, get themselves into such a mess, although two World Wars and the Holocaust give us some clues.

    The Americans, and specifically the Biden administration, decided that a cover-up was necessary so not to offend the sensibilities of their bumbling European ally. Fortunately their ally’s court system has finally called everyone’s bluff; we will see what happens.

    In the meanwhile, I think that the Americans would have been better off giving Kuznietsov asylum in this country (better than some of the people we have given it to) and forced the Germans to face the reality of their attempt to play both sides of the street. Now that Trump is in the White House the Europeans are trying to make themselves heroes for Ukraine, but they may have waited too long for that to happen–in this round, at least.

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  • Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the “Old Stock Colonials”

    This is the time of year when we give thanks (well, those of us who know to whom to give thanks) and put a wrap on another liturgical year. It’s also the time of year when we commemorate the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. One of those who has done so–and deservedly–is Robert F. Kennedy Jr., his nephew and our current Secretary of Health and Human Services, who posted family pictures on X. He got a sympathetic response, which isn’t a given on social media (maybe the nastiest loudmouths have migrated to Bluesky.) I’m glad he took the risk; no matter what you think of the Kennedys, they’ve been through a lot.

    There’s a lot of other garbage on X these days. We’re regaled with antisemitism which I never though would see the comeback it has, and coming from the left, no less. We’re also seeing the comeback of racial theories on the right which I also never though would come back either. The left has made race an obsession to conceal the fact that this is a class-based crusade of theirs, and to see the right concede the point is totally disheartening. The most bizarre manifestation of this is the concept that only those who are descendants of people who came over before we became in independent republic (the “old stock colonials”) are “real Americans.”

    As someone who can trace his ancestry back to Plymouth Rock and Jamestown, I have something to say about this. At the risk of being called a “race traitor” I need to push back on this. And I’ll start by stating the obvious (which is always dangerous to do in this country): the ship has sailed on that for a long time, at least in terms of getting control of the country back. And it was RFK Jr.’s grandfather, chief among others, who got the ball rolling, as I noted in Camelot Not Quite: My Reflections on JFK, Fifty Years After:

    Turning to Jack Kennedy, to understand the political idea of Jack, Bobby, Ted and their descendants, you have to go back to their father, old Joe Kennedy.  This was a man with an axe to grind.  Growing up in Boston, he was rejected by Boston’s very WASP Brahmin aristocracy, Ivy Leaguer though he was, because he was a) Irish and b) Catholic.  That induced hatred, hatred that passed down to the sons.  His ambitions for them were in no small measure to prove that he could beat the WASP’s at their own game, and he was largely successful, although his family paid an enormous price in the process.  In some ways their signature accomplishment was Teddy’s promotion of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, when legal immigration was opened up to more than white Europeans.  My guess is they figured that, if the first wave of immigration couldn’t finish the WASPs off, the second would.

    The “old stockers” I see aren’t up to the standard of the Boston Brahmins that were sickened by Joe Kennedy, and are not always up to the pedigree I ran with while living in Palm Beach. But this last group–sybaritic and insouciant–were more part of the problem than part of the solution. If you’re on top of a society and you–and the society–want to stay there, you have an ethic of work and service, so that those under you will respond in kind. Today our elite opinion is that they deserve the loyalty while giving little in return; they’ve found out that their idea isn’t shared by many of us.

    Complicating this issue is the fact that a large part of the “old stock” is Scots-Irish, whose concept of life is at odds in many ways with the WASPs that came to settle closer to the coast. Trying to put the two together is like mixing oil and water, but that’s another hard lesson from living on the earth. Today the Scots-Irish at the top of the list is JD Vance, but he has to live with the fact that his Indian wife’s family has, relatively speaking, accomplished more in 25 years that his has in 250.

    Turning back to RFK, Jr.:

    Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will probably be the last Kennedy to take on the establishment the way his grandfather, father and uncle did. The rest of the clan is satisfied to trash him while integrating themselves into the current oligarchy. 

    I think it’s sad that a family who came to prominence in breaking the “Establishment” (to use an old 1960’s term) has settled into sycophancy and trashing those in the family who won’t go along it. I can’t say I agree with everything he’s doing, but, in a country whose medical costs continue to soar concomitantly with a decline in life expectancy, something isn’t right and needs to be fixed, and some of his proposals make sense. We experienced a pandemic where the chief goal of Big Pharma was to insure that no drug to counter it–vaccine or remedy–was not covered by a U.S. Patent is simply disgusting.

    In the meanwhile, Happy Thanksgiving.

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  • The Fathers of the Church Come to a Pentecostal University

    The Fathers of the Church Come to a Pentecostal University

    As some of you know, I teach at Lee University in their new Engineering program. Recently I reserved a computer lab to administer a test, and was regaled with the above, from St. John Chrystostom’s Pascal Homily. It was written on the white board (the students were amazed it was in cursive, I guess I should have been, too.) This, mind you, was in the Science and Math Complex.

    It’s not every day that a Pentecostal university such as Lee gets to look at one of the Fathers of the Church, but here we are. It’s not a singular event either: Lee gives out student awards, and one of the nominees last year had in her cv the fact that she had translated a work of Lucifer of Cagliari, a name I hadn’t heard in years (yes, I had heard of him through my studies of Jerome, the patron saint of social media.)

    Long time readers of this blog know that I am a supporter of Patristic studies and even of the Patristic hermeneutic of the Scriptures. Even without that, it’s becoming evident to more Evangelicals and Evangelical-adjacents that the Patristic witness is crucial to demonstrating the continuity of the faith from New Testament times through the Roman Empire and beyond. The Patristic period, being the closest in time to the New Testament, is a) crucial to understanding what came immediately before and b) does not neatly fit into the various paradigms of Christianity that are competing today.

    That last point is the “trout in the milk” for broader acceptance of Patristic studies.

    Roman Catholicism, armed as it is with its own concept of being an infallible church lead by an infallible pope, is mostly content these days with relying on these and its own institutional continuity to proclaim its own authority. Its best retort to “we’re trying to get back to a more authentic form of Christianity by going back to the Fathers” is that of Bossuet: where do we draw the line? But as I have observed, “A Roman Catholicism which is more like Bossuet envisions it–conscious of Scripture, independent of the state, Augustinian in theology–would be a better entity to adhere to than the one that he had then and we have now.” That is a way back to a more Patristic view of things.

    Reformed types, having turned Augustinianism on its head, have closed the door to the way back and are, as King James’ men would put it, led “…by self-conceited Brethren, who run their own ways, and give liking unto nothing, but what is framed by themselves, and hammered on their anvil…”

    The Anglican world has a golden opportunity to step into this void, but is too lost in stuff like this to really take advantage of it.

    I’m not sure where the real forward-moving initiative is going to come for this, but I’m grateful to see signs of it at Lee.

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  • The Africans Take the Communion: At the End of the Quest, Victory

    It’s done:

    In the absence of such repentance, we have been prayerfully advancing towards a future for faithful Anglicans, where the Bible is restored to the heart of the Communion.

    Today, that future has arrived.

    Our Gafcon Primates gathered this hour to fulfil our mandate to reform the Anglican Communion, as expressed in the Jerusalem Statement of 2008.

    Ever since this site became involved in the “Anglican Revolt” one of the objectives has been to dethrone Canterbury and recentre the Communion where it belongs, primarily with the Africans but also with others. In a sense it’s a fulfilment of posts such as Message of the Africans: It’s Our Communion Now and Forget About the Guilt March. Just Give Them the Communion. Now the old Communion, at once revisionist and colonialist, is done.

    With this event those in the ACNA who have, secretly or openly, pined for reunion with Canterbury need to take that off their bucket list and turn to bringing to resolution many of the dissonances that have been resident in the organisation (such as it is) from its inception and even before. May they humbly seek God’s help in making that a reality.

    P.S. As far as the title is concerned, see below. I used that phrase when, after five years of tumult, I received my PhD.

  • The Stephen Wood Chaplaincy Case Just Gets Stranger and Stranger

    And more acrimonious too:

    It’s getting downright nasty and legal. ACNA bishops led by Bishop Phil Ashey contend that the charges of misconduct (but not of a sexual nature) laid at the feet of Bishop Derek Jones of the Special Jurisdiction of the Armed Forces and Chaplaincy (SJAFC) are grounds for an inhibition.

    The complaints include allegations of ecclesiastical power abuse, wrongful use of disciplinary processes, backdating or fabrication of church documents, interference with external employment opportunities, wrongful release of a priest from orders, and infliction of financial, emotional, and psychological stress upon persons in Jones’ care.

    As someone who has worked for a denominational chaplains’ accrediting agency (the Church of God Chaplain’s Commission) in a denomination which, like the ACNA (supposedly,) has a centralised episcopal government, this whole thing is bizzare. (I also am on a board which oversees the COGCC.)

    The purpose of accrediting agencies like the SJAFC and the COGCC is to give denominational accreditation to chaplains who then serve in institutions. The principal institution for our Commission is the military, but it also applies to prisons, hospitals and other institutions as well. These institutions need to know that the person being recommended by the denomination has valid ministerial credentials, the requisite education and is of good quality (and in our case that means men and women, because most institutions these days will accept either.) The key here is “denominational:” these chaplains represent their denomination to the institution, not a rogue agency that one day had affiliation but the next didn’t.

    If the Executive Director of the COGCC would, by some process, try to do the same thing as Derek Jones is, I have no doubt that either the Divisional Director (our church departments are in divisions,) the Executive Committee or both would fire him and find another to take his place. I am happy to report that both of the Executive Directors I have known (both military men) loved their church more and had more respect for those over them in the Lord than to try something like that.

    Additionally, full-time chaplains are required to regularly report to the Commission on their activity and to contribute a “fair share” contribution to the Commission, which includes ongoing education and training activities. The Church of God is very strong that the tithe goes to the local church.

    Unfortunately this situation has arisen because of two things, one which antedates the ACNA and the other a by-product of the ACNA’s own “loosey-goosey” structure.

    The first is the Egos Inflatable to Any Size phenomenon which seems to ooze out of the purple shirts and mitres which Anglican bishops wear. This has been a plague on the “Anglican Revolt” since the days of AMiA Bishop Chuck Murphy’s Moment of Truth and TAC Archbishop John Hepworth’s Tough Trip to the Bottom and before that in the Continuing movement.

    The second is the ACNA’s aforementioned “loosey-goosey” structure, which like Sun Yat-Sen’s characterisation of post-Ching dynasty China is a “sheet of loose sand.” Sheets of loose sand, as pointed out in my book Soils in Construction, have no strength. Most of the energy around this problem is focused on WO (which is misplaced,) but this fiasco exposes the weakness of the ACNA’s basic structure. The accrediting agency for the denomination should have been under the control of the Archbishop, but like every other diocese it is not. Jones claims that the SJAFC has a special status based on its initial formation; if he is right, that was a mistake.

    I am worried about the future course of the ACNA, an institution that I lauded when it was launched (although I was aware of the “unresolved problems segment” as Bill O’Reilly would say.) Caught between its loose structure and the rise of Gothardian “little Caesars,” it’s turning into a rough ride that will eventually manifest itself down the line.

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