Tuesday 23 October 2012 Mrs. Schori and the English Reformation

A.S. Haley, the shrewd counselor-at-large for conservative Anglicans, comments that Scott Brister, one of the attorneys for the real Diocese of Ft. Worth (aka the jurisdiction of Bishop Iker)  "scored one of the best points of the day, when he said in the opening minutes of his argument":

[My learned opponents say that church] property in Texas belongs to the people who remain loyal to the larger church. That wasn't the rule when the Episcopal Church left the Church of England in 1789; the members who didn't remain loyal took all the property. That wasn't the rule when the Church of England left the Church of Rome in 1534; the members who weren't loyal took all the property. The Episcopal tradition is just the opposite of what they say it is, and that's the kind of distortion that is the reason we require rules regarding property to be in writing.

I of course stand with Bishop Iker and my diocese 100% and  I suspect it was a good point to make. But it does raise a bit of history, which should make conservative Anglican evangelicals a bit uneasy, although I do not really think it will.  When exactly did a small group of academic theologians with the aid of the State impose their new progressive ideas on an unwilling Church. The 16th century! The Church of England did not leave the Church of Rome; the King did and took everyone else with him. There followed a despoiling of the Church's property which makes the current land grabbing of the Episcopal Church look almost civilized. Cranmer, Ridley and Latimer were Statists. Without the power of the Prince behind them they could never have pulled off the reform of the Church, which did not think it needed to be reformed. Who are the real Anglicans? If the 16th Century Reformers are the standard, then the litigious Mrs. see-you-in-court Schori is thoroughly Anglican.