Mission Congregation Dissolves Without Notice (an Internet Archive version | here is a printed version Internet Archive link updated and printed article copy added 2021-July-09)
Christ Our Lord Anglican Church (an Internet Archive version of the site, which at the time had a different press release rebutting some of in the above press release | printed version of the same Internet Archive link updated and printed article copy added 2021-July-09)
Washington Post article that prompted this post link updated 2021-July-09
There was a time I would have identified myself as an Episcopal. To be honest, the Episcopal Church (of the USA) has been in trouble for years. My wife, coming from a different Christian background, and I settled on a local Lutheran church (ELCA), but that is another story. She became one of the youth leaders, and we went to a retreat at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. They had the youth play out various animals (why I’m not sure), but they started imitating snakes, and although before then I was still reconciling faith with the world, I had no problem seeing evil there. And it got worse through the night. I was glad and relieved that I was no longer a part of the Episcopal Church.
The part about this conflict that is regularly ignored, is that this go-it-alone spirit is quite typical of the ECUSA. Here come the tension, however, as an American, I, too, have some of that same spirit. Americans, on the whole, seem to have more of that than others, though we all have that issue because of our sins. That’s great to a point, but when you are part of a Communion (as the ECUSA says it is) you don’t go off on your own. Unless you are willing to really mess things up.
On of the current trial balloons being floated is to have two separate U.S. “Parental” organizations, the ECUSA, and some “orthodox” one. Bad idea! The Anglican Communion needs to simultaneously formally sever ties with the ECUSA, and create a union that adheres to the acknowledged doctrines of the universal church, and the doctrines of the Anglican church, setting forth the requirement that admission into it means adherence and acceptance of them.