Episcopalians on the Breach: U.S. Church in Battle with the Anglican Communion (New York Daily News)
July 10th, 2006 by Peter Frank
There’s a new spin on an old joke making the rounds. It’s about a beachcomber who finds a bottle in the sand and opens it, freeing a genie who gratefully grants one wish. The beachcomber asks for peace in the Middle East.
The genie calls that an impossible task and asks for an alternative wish. “Okay,” says the beachcomber, “restore harmony to the Anglican Communion.” The genie thinks for several seconds and then says, “Let’s go back to that Middle East thing.”
But for millions of Anglicans, and especially Episcopalians - the American branch of the global Anglican community - it’s no joke. The challenge now is to restore peace and unity or to at least keep the Episcopal Church a full-fledged member of a denomination with 77 million faithful in 160 countries.
In a way, it is a dispute that pits the Episcopal Church - with its 2.3 million members divided into 111 national jurisdictions (dioceses) - against Anglicans nearly everywhere else. Of the 37 other provinces, or church territories, around the world, 22 already describe their relationship with the Episcopal Church as “broken” or “impaired.”