I've designed a couple of Anglican-specific shirts for my shop. They're based on the Trinity Div shirts from this last year which were, in turn, based on a joke I made which was, in turn, based on a funny line in a really bad movie. I wore one to the St. Anne's yard sale, and it got a laugh. Nothing like Anglican humour, eh?

I know, it sounds like corporate-motivation-speak...but the irony is part of the message. Having read Pierre Berton's assessment of the Anglican Church (The Comfortable Pew, which I highly recommend...only partially outdated), I can only hope that we're becoming a church of AngliCANs. For a long while the church, in all denominations, has been an inert mass, unwilling to take action against the reigning paradigm. This is a pity, since the founding of the church was such an immense act of peaceful resistance, and we are in such dire need of bold leaders.

We ought to be speaking out against poverty, war and inequality. We should be championing civil rights and questioning the motivations of corrupt corporations and governments. The church has the moral responsibility, as well as the best position, to challenge society to reach a higher potential.

Thankfully there is a lot of that happening...the church isn't entirely owned by the establishment. In Boston an Episcopal priest filled a backpack with sandwiches and socks and spent every day pounding the pavement, helping street people in whatever way she could. She now celebrates an outdoor Eucharist in the park, open to anyone who cares to join - there may be no collection plate, but her weekly attendance is the envy of other churches. In Kentucky a parish re-tooled its worship and rebuilt its church to accommodate Spanish speaking migrant workers and to provide day care for their children. Here in Toronto there are Anglicans at the front of every march or protest for affordable housing and food. The church is waking up...but it's a slow process.

Meanwhile we've distracted ourselves, bickering about who sleeps with who. The church can't address the world because it's too busy fighting about sex. Being divided isn't the evil here...being distracted is. We've not learned from the ancient church, arguing over leavened or unleavened bread, so busy with internal strife that it hadn't the strength to fend off the rising tide of Islam.*

On the other hand, that internal struggle itself is an issue about which the church needs to speak up. There is a significant percentage of Christians who think homosexual couples ought to have every legal protection and option now available to straight couples. I know that St. Anne's is gay-friendly, as is Trinity College...not to mention Ontario and most of Canada. I'm happy to report that a large chunk of the Anglican Church, at least in Canada and the U.S., is standing up to speak with a prophetic voice.

It's just too bad we weren't there sooner, and that we're still not there together. So c'mon, stand up and make a difference...be an AngliCAN!

* An historical point usually overlooked, by the way. Yes, the crusades were brutal...but let's not forget that the lands in which the crusades were fought had all been Christian at one point. A few hundred years earlier it had been the Muslims who came with sword in hand. Earlier it was Romans killing Jews. Centuries before that it was Jews who drove out the populace. When looking at the long brutality of history, nobody can claim moral high-ground.

History is rife with violence and cruelty, both by religious zealots and secular leaders. Stalin was an atheist, Hitler made up his own odd blend of religions. Neither of them needed the church in order to be cruel. Pinning brutality on religion is a sad attack, and unfounded. Humans are going to act badly...they may use religion as a cover but they don't need it and will act badly with or without it.

This is the most rambling footnote ever.

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