Media Misunderstandings

Media Frame Distorts Anglican-Episcopal Dispute
by Lezley McDouall

There's a delicious irony in the historically hide-bound, elite Episcopalians suddenly becoming known for taking a radical stance on any issue whatsoever. How many Episcopalians does it take to change a light bulb? The answer is, and always has been, a blank look and a wary question, "Change?" And yet, every time I see Episcopalians in the news these days, we are being cast as wild-eyed liberals.

How did America's painstakingly unadventurous Church of the Gentry suddenly become a free-for-all GLBT haven? When did this miraculous transformation occur? To be quite honest, it didn't. Episcopalians haven’t actually changed any more than donkeys have flown. I might personally long for the day that my parish is known throughout the land for its integration and inclusiveness, but that day is still a shining speck on the horizon. However the news media may spin it, changes in the Episcopal Church take place more slowly than glaciers advance.

Still, the general misconception of what's going on with the Anglicans is perfectly understandable. Heaven knows, if I were a journalist reporting on this brouhaha, it would be easy to make the same category errors as every article I've read. Because, let's face it, phrases like "imminent schism" and "practicing homosexual" will always sell more papers than lead balloons like "church polity" and "canon law."

So, an ambitious reporter coveting a by-line naturally frames the story as a pitched battle between "conservative Bible-adherent traditionalists" and "left-leaning gay-friendly liberals." That frame allows one to use a dichotomy that is already familiar to American readers, and it spares everyone the tedium of explanations that can make even Episcopalian eyes glaze over. The problem is that, while this is the easy, sexy, profitable way, it is not the accurate, fair, or truthful way.

The breathless coverage doesn't make clear that the Episcopal Church has been deliberating about issues of sexuality at diocesan, provincial, and national levels for well over twenty years now. When I say the pace of change is glacial, I'm not joking. It requires true grit, persistence, a super-majority, and the Holy Ghost to pass any change whatsoever.

The changes being portrayed as sudden are actually the end result of a dreadfully deliberate process undertaken by the least wild-eyed members of any parish. By the time the Right Reverend V. Gene Robinson was consecrated as bishop of the diocese of New Hampshire, the mind of the national church had been mulling over the idea of such an event for decades.

Potentially dry digression into Episcopal Church structure and tradition overcome, an accurate article on the brouhaha could quickly regain effervescence, highlighting the delicious irony of supposedly "radical" Episcopalians standing firmly on the bedrock of canon law and traditional Anglican ecclesiastical structure. Irony might be piled upon irony by examining the novelties being promulgated by those who cast themselves as "orthodox traditionalists."

Far from inventive, the so-called "liberals" are digging in their heels to defend the historical prerogative of every Episcopal diocese to elect its own bishops without coercive interference from other quarters. Many of these parishioners, to be honest, aren't as gay-friendly as our GLBT brethren and sistren would wish, but they know in their hearts that once the bishops of other dioceses begin meddling in their prayerful deliberations concerning leadership, a vital aspect of Episcopalian identity has been corrupted.

Such meddling goes against what, for your truly traditional Episcopalian, is as foundational as the U.S. Constitution. Perhaps it is even more foundational, for the Church is a "Body" in a way a nation is not and constitutionally cannot be. The seemly separation of Church and State rightly prevents legislators from making theological statements about the nature of what "Unum" the "Pluribus" become in America, but the Body of Christ is an identity that goes deeper, for many, than nationality. Meddling with denominational ecclesiology is meddling with our understanding of our very selves.

The "orthodox" innovators only get away with calling themselves "traditionalists" because most folks don't know what makes Anglicans Anglican. Church polity discussions may cure insomnia, but there is as much reason that Anglicans are not Baptists as vice versa. Different denominations have different enough theologies of sacrament, salvation, and church to create different denominations. Reporters thus far have pretended these important differences don't exist, rather than making them clear. This insults both the reader and those misrepresented.

It's truly galling to watch the innovators call themselves the orthodox and get away with it because reporters can't be bothered to learn what makes Episcopalians different from Lutherans or Roman Catholics. If the differences were trivial, or easily ignored, the Body of Christ would be a unitary behemoth (for better or for worse).

Three glaring novelties might be discussed in a well-researched article. First, neo-fundamentalists make a mockery of the "three-legged stool" every Episcopalian learns about in Sunday School, insisting that their interpretation of Scripture takes primacy over both ecclesial Tradition and Reason. In Anglicanism, these three fundamental resources are meant to balance one another; we have not, historically, been the sola scriptura crowd.

Secondly, the ostensibly "orthodox" schismatics discard the cherished independence of national churches in the Anglican Communion and assert that a gathering of bishops from across the Communion may dictate church policy to one church within the Communion. If the "orthodox" folks want a foreign bishop to have sovereignty over their spiritual lives, they might easily join another, older church I could name.

Instead, the so-called "traditionalists" threw a third tradition out the window when they ordained history's first bishops without any geographical boundaries. These go traipsing about, ministering to the inclusion-challenged wherever they find them, and preaching a gospel of Biblically-mandated intolerance.

I am a peace-loving person, cautioned by my rector to avoid inflaming an already tense situation, so I will say little about the slippery nature of biblical inerrancy. I will say this: even the Amish make some exceptions. The neo-fundamentalist Anglicans leaning so hard upon selected passages of the Epistles display no angst about the epidemic flouting of the letter of certain other passages of Scripture.

Where is their sustained outrage and political pressure to end usury, concentrated wealth, or the exploitation and mistreatment of foreign workers? If they want to rely solely on scripture for an argument, I dare any rational adult, having read all four Gospels, to make a case that the Savior portrayed there ever takes the side of the proudly pure against a social outcast.

Episcopalians love tradition, and we can be pretty stubborn when someone messes with the way we've always done things. If keeping our Church traditions makes us gay-friendly, I say, so be it.

About the Author: Lezley McDouall is a graduate of Church Divinity School of the Pacific, with graduate degrees in Church History and Ministry from the Graduate Theological Union and Oxford University. She is a licensed lay preacher, Christian Formation teacher, and chorister at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Durham, North Carolina. Lezley’s husband, Ken, works at the Chapel Hill Public Library. Her step-son, Alex, is active in two choirs and in Habitat for Humanity. The McDoualls have three cats who patiently teach them the art of living well.