A look leftward: Episcopal Church disciplines Akinola Anglicans

From Talk to Action [boldface mine]:

The Episcopal Church is getting tough with an openly schismatic bishop who has been one of the Akinola Anglicans cheered and supported by the neoconservative Institute on Religion and Democracy. Similarly, local breakaway parishes are discovering that they can leave the church, but they can't take it with them. (For those who are not familiar, Nigerian Anglican Archbishop Peter Akinola is a rightwing, vehemently antigay prelate with whom a number of renegade American Episcopal churches are affiliating.)

The Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, Katharine Jefferts Schori warned Pittsburgh Bishop Robert W. Duncan Jr. that he would face civil suits and possible expulsion as bishop if a proposed resolution enabling the diocese to leave the denomination passed during a diocesan convention the other day. But he and the Anglican confederates, voted to secede anyway. . .

The IRD and its affiliates, notably the American Anglican Council have made signficant headway in their decade long march to foment internal factional fighting and secession from the Episcopal Church. So much so, that the IRD now describes its Episcopal program as "Anglican." Here is the first sentence of the IRD's Anglican Action program description.

Anglican Action seeks to promote orthodox teaching and practice within the Episcopal Church.

And there is the rub.

While the IRD trumpets the loss of church members and blames it on liberalism, it similtaneously organizes to pull members, whole congregations and even whole diocese out of the denomination. It is remarkable the double speak they have gotten away with. How can one pretend to be advocating for internal reform, when -- as the IRD has done -- advocate and organize for schism? Or collaborate with those who do? Reform and schism are just are not the same thing. Perhaps epitomizing the IRD approach -- even the staffer for the Anglican Action program is a member of a schismatic church in Virginia. Of course that would be consistent with what the IRD has always been about, as the board and advisory board have always had plurlalities of neo-conservative Catholics, as Andrew Weaver has detailed, as well as been fueled by outside, neoconservative financial interests with no actual interest in the life and health of these churches -- other than that the churches were obstacles to the agendas of their, conservative, neonconservative and religous right grantees. . .

Reporting on the state of the American Episcopal Church and its internal disagreements rarely shines a spotlight on the IRD and Archbishop Akinola, tending to treat the tiny minority conservative dissidents as somehow the victims of deviance from the true orthodoxy at the hands of diabolical liberals. But these matters are about much more than mudpies flung by the factions in an all too human institution. At stake is the generally progressive tradition of the Episcopal Church in America and its capacity to act on that tradition, not to mention billions of dollars in assets -- land, buildings, pension funds, and more. The Episcopal Church is making news today. But as we have frequently discussed here at Talk to Action -- there are similar struggles in all of the major Protestant denominations.

Read it all to get a glimpse of how "reappraisers" view the situation. (And how big are those IRD checks to Stand Firm and Chris Johnson anyway, huummm???)