Part II Of Sarah Hey’s Inverview of +Bruce

Read it all. I get the sense that this interview became more of a conversation, and a good one at that.

Cherie Wetzel Reports That +Bruce Chairs The Communion Partners Group

As she writes here:

Bishop Bruce McPherson of Western Louisiana, who now chairs the Communion Partners group of bishops in the US, said he was pleased to see these specific moratoria. “We need to come up with accountability if it goes forward and to provide for a way for it to be lived into.”

This is, of course, not news from a standpoint of the amount of work +Bruce has put into Communion Partners, the fact that he went with Bishop Duncan to Tanzania, and so on. However, I guess it is newsworthy from a standpoint of beginning to realize where this is all going. The real question for this fall’s Diocesan Convention in Western Louisiana is will the Diocese salute when the Communion Partners flag is raised. This, of course, is critical if the Communion Partners movement is to succeed in being an orthodox Anglican witness in North America.

Obviously, I have mixed feelings about all this. I’d rather be free of TEC and be in an orthodox Anglican province in the United States. It would just be easier – spiritually, mentally, and timewise. There are times when I think that being free of such aggravation would be worth it to even trade the unity of the Diocese. But, I don’t think that is necessarily the right thing to do.

It is, frankly, difficult to discern. Mostly, because I desperately want to leave this up to God to judge. It is also difficult because of a short conversation I had with Andrew Carey after GC2006 at an AAC dinner. He asked me “if you leave, what about all the faithful still in the Episcopal Church?” He is right; there is a lot of people in the Episcopal Church for whom Jesus Christ is Lord and Savior. That is not to say I am irreplaceable in the Episcopal Church. Frankly, no one is, no matter how important they may seem. But, being faithful to God’s call on my life has left me intertwined with the Episcopal Church against my own wishes.

More later. It should be an interesting day at Lambeth, since today is sex day.