Anglican Communion: RIP?

It may be over at the end of the month. Click the link for a modestly-worded MSM description, or paste this link into your browser for a triumphalist shout from the Anglican right: http://www.virtueonline.org/portal/modules/news/article.php?storyid=6749

In this case, we think the triumphalists have probably got it, err, right. A formal schism has been coming for years, courtesy of the global south primates, led by Peter Akinola, a friend of freedom everywhere -- if by friend you mean "enemy." Rightly or wrongly (and we think wrongly), the PECUSA was given a deadline to formally abjure a set of convictions and practices to which it is clearly committed. The deadline will expire shortly, and there is no realistic hope of a change on either side of the table. Frankly, both parties have too much at stake.

An Episcopal Church that suddenly drew a hard line on gay issues would shrivel and die within months. People would leave in droves, an exodus compared to which the mild present schism would look irrelevant.

Meanwhile, the bishops of the developing world have simply never exercised the sort of power that this debate gives them. They are prominent as never before, their names in the news and their words attended closely by arrogant northern-hemishere types who never took them seriously.

Nobody will budge, and so, late next week, the worldwide Anglican Communion wil probably be a thing of the past.