Game playing: everyone loses

I don't remember church notices being received quite like this in any church I've been in.



Though I note a slight difference in terminology between the speakers: the Anglican Church or a new Anglican church?

I'm sure they'll all be on message soon enough.

I think several games are being played at once:

1. Bids continue to be made for the Anglican brand. Yet it is clear that the TEC official structures will remain the Anglican Church in the USA - irrespective or 'traditional' or 'continuing' or 'Jerusalem' or any other version. Just like baked beans really.
2. The numbers game: 100,000 disaffected Anglicans? Certainly not - Mark Harris is a much better guide to the real numbers, and to the whole affair.
3. The legitimacy game. Will the new Province be recognised by the rest of the Anglican Communion? Not unless the deal has already been struck and no-one's leaked it. So that's a 'No'.
4. The legitimacy game II. But it doesn't matter whether they are recognised by the Communion - they are the future anyway. They are the new reformation (and the only way to reform the church is to say you want to move backwards, so that bit at least they've got right).
5. The property game. It is, after all, important when you know you are (a) going to be recognised as legitimate anyway, or (b) the future, or (c) following God's will (delete as applicable) to take as much real and movable property with you as you can. Shame about Fort Worth but as I understand it the law varies State by State so some place will do better than others. (As in, Q: what do you call homelessness in Florida? A: the sign of a bad divorce lawyer.)
6. The game to bend the Anglican Communion to the conservative will. They lost. Or there would be no need for a new province.

Who loses? Pretty well everyone not on a power trip (note the nodding heads in the video clip). But, and I'm genuinely sad to say this, I think now that the rest of us will be better off without the conservatives.

There's a story I heard long ago about a hapless member of the Archbishop's staff during the last interregnum laughing on the phone to someone that Michael Nazir-Ali was so certain the job of ABC was his that he was already measuring up for curtains and carpets when, just as the man was speaking, the Bishop himself appeared through the door.

Then imagine if (perhaps with a different Prime Minister) Rochester had got the job.

.