My *objective* take on the VA Episcopal Church situation

[acroyear]

The Island of Doubt: comment written by me:

I was about to say the same as The Ridger. Science has never been a problem for the Episcopal church to my knowledge, and in fact the Church was the second (right behind the Catholics under JP2) to re-iterate a commitment to science as knowledge and to evolution (in a vaguely theistic-evolution interpretation - much like JP2, the assertion is that God creates the individual soul; this is, of course, an easy cop-out since the "soul" is such a vague entity as to not even be scientifically definable, much less testable).

Really, this all comes down to "morality", bigotry, and community "standards".

The Episcopal church is generally a moderate one bouncing between somewhat-liberal and somewhat-conservative directions but generally staying the course with the movement of the nation as a whole. Generally, most Episcopalians are apathetic about politics. That the churches in question got 92 and 90 %s voting to leave implies to me that most of the people who would have voted to stay left those churches already just because the vote idea was even proposed in the first place.

It's not like there's a shortage. There's at least 30 Episcopal/Anglican churches in Fairfax/Alexandria/Arlington, most within 5 miles of another, some much closer. The Falls Church has 4 within 3 miles (Arlington and Annandale); Truro has 3 within 3 miles Fairfax and Burke.

Liberals and moderates likely had already left those two large conservative churches and moved to nearby ones, and in most cases, they did so years ago, long before the gay bishop problem ever showed up. Similarly, conservatives have left moderate churches in the area continuously over the years, often trying to turn a new church project like St. Peters in the Woods (Burke) or Potomac Falls (Sterling) into more conservative directions while their membership numbers are just starting out. If those efforts fail (as in St. Peters in the Woods), they end up just moving on to the conservative churches of Truro, Falls Church, or Apostles (which is voting on this issue as well) anyways.

In the case of Potomac Falls, a splinter from Sterling's first Episcopal Church (and still residing in an elementary school as most churches do in their early years), it appears they've succeeded.

In effect, they formed their conservative majority in those places out of dissatisfaction with being the minority anywhere else they went. The split was inevitable; that it was a gay bishop that was the final straw is almost a foot note in the politics of the church.

Disclaimer: I came from one of those more liberal churches, Good Shepherd, Burke, which is the place where current VA Suffragan

I'll post my personal statement later when I have the time. Just this comment alone took me half an hour to write because I needed to verify facts and spellings and all that crap on the 'net.