The Connecticut Six again

More on the inhibition of the Rev. Mark Hansen: Episcopal bishop suspends one of six embattled priests. This episode does not speak well for an episcopal polity in which there are no effective checks on rogue bishops. At least the Roman Catholic Church has the Pope to keep its bishops in line. By contrast, the Anglican communion appears to enshrine the potential for heresy and sectarianism right in its polity by placing no real constraints on the actions of its bishops. Watch for proposals for reform to come forward from one or more Anglican provinces, or perhaps even from Canterbury itself.

So what will happen once the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada are permanently detached from the worldwide Anglican communion? Both will split down the middle, with the more confessionally orthodox forming another province in communion with Canterbury. The liberal remnant of the original churches will then have no reason to exist. They will have abandoned any pretence to institutional catholicity and they will certainly have no confessional distinctives worth maintaining. In Canada the ACC will petition to join the United Church of Canada. In the US ECUSA will merge with the United Methodist Church or, if the latter is judged too conservative, the United Church of Christ. Those, at any rate, are my predictions.

Incidentally, here is a blog devoted to the Connecticut Six.