This means that the primates are asking the Episcopal church to stop doing something it has never officially approved of doing.

My statement that the denomination is lost to me is hyperbole. If, ultimately, the primates push the ECUSA farther than they it feels it can go, I suspect that the Episcopal church will simply leave the Anglican Communion. After all, the Anglican church survived for 400 years without an Anglican Communion. I greatly hope that doesn’t happen, but I suspect it will if the ECUSA perceives itself as being asked to change its polity in such a fundamental way.

I also wanted to make it clear that I was NOT endorsing what has gone on with bishops from other provinces trampling on TEC. I am one who espouses following the rules until they are changed, if they are changed. I was, however, wondering aloud something akin to what the ABC had suggested after TEC’s last GC as well as considering some of the technological opportunities, economic issues, etc. that we have discussed on blogs in the past only now with respect to church polity.

For the record, this too is my second denomination. I don’t know that it is lost to me or you, whatever our individual views are.

Second, I was not implying that all moderates were in favor of these things. As a moderate, I think that the church should not have ordained Robinson, due to the affect it was going to have on other provinces. But some moderates do approve of these things. My point was that it is not just liberals who agreed to this path.

Finally, I would agree that our understanding of communion can change. Perhaps we should abandon what has made us distinct for over 400 years. But if we are going to do so, shouldn’t this be decided by everyone? Seems to me that abandoning one of our distinctives is something that we would need a supermajority of the people to agree to.

If we are going to change and start saying that bishops can cross geographical bounds, this should be done by consent. It is not enough for a few parishes or dioceses to say that they want to abandon this rule. The church as a whole should decide.

What is happening is that we are in the process of forming the Anglican Communion. The Communion is a very recent idea. We still need to hammer out the details of what communion means. But it seems to me that some conservative provinces that don’t accept the historical polity of the church are calling the shots.

If the Communion is going to work, all provinces are going to have to respect the rights of other provinces to structure themselves by their own rules. In the US, we have a church where the laity have a say in the decisions. This is not the case in Nigeria, for instance, where all decisions are made by bishops. We are not telling them they need to change before we will be in communion with them, but they are demanding that we do.

That is somewhat disingenuous since blessing same sex unions (leaving aside consecrations) is not exactly “following the rules.” I would also point out that there are plenty of “moderates” who are not in favor of blessing same sex unions or allow ordination and consecration of gay members of the community.

As for what makes us Anglican, I will defer since I do not know the Settlement well, but my guess from Hooker is that these matters would be considered serious enough to be address by the Communion. Also, if we can make the argument that society has progressed such that our views on sexuality can change perhaps we have progressed enough socially that our view of the Communion can change? Given modern means of transport and communication does the EC need to be USA? Why must we be bound by our geography? And other such questions were never possible for the community 150+ years ago.

And I wouldn’t despair yet. I seriously doubt that the conservatives have stolen your denomination.