Bryan Taylor Responds to Canterbury's Letter

...Voluntary has become mandatory. Windsor process has become Windsor requirements. Dialogue has become a steady diatribe of one-way shaming and judging. None of our attempts at conciliation and cooperation are being credited. Our polity is being trampled on, ignored, and wantonly insulted from every side. Our Presiding Bishop, elected by the whole church to serve and represent the whole church, is discounted, mocked, and insulted. Men who won't even receive communion from her are being treated as her equals or worse, as having the moral high ground of their self-chosen victimhood.

This is bullying. This is abuse. This is tyranny. It is time for our Executive Council to tell the Archbishop of Canterbury and the rest of the Anglican Communion, as the American colonists once did: DON'T TREAD ON ME! What is going on is a complete distortion of the Windsor Report. We cannot possibly begin discussing an Anglican Covenant under such conditions of duress--indeed that whole idea is about conformity and control, pure and simple, and ought to be rejected now. We can no longer agree to meetings ABOUT us that don't INCLUDE us. We cannot tolerate intrusions by foreign bishops in our jurisdictions any longer. All these things have proceeded despite our efforts to be conciliatory, our willingness to accept criticism, our efforts to remain open to peaceful resolutions and compromises...

...For all the holy talk, our efforts have been interpreted as weakness, and that perceived weakness is being exploited in the rawest, crudest political struggle for power. I do not say we should respond in kind, but we must wake up to the nature of the threat and defend our autonomy and independence. Other churches in the Communion would do well to think long and hard about what's going on, too, because Canada? Scotland? New Zealand? I don't know, Brazil or South Africa? YOU'RE NEXT...

You can read Bryan's complete essay here.

J.