Rewriting History

While skimming through the Stand Firm (Traditional Anglicanism in America) website—I do that occasionally, because even though I may not agree with these folks, I sometimes learn things from them—I stumbled across “A Timeline of the Path of the Episcopal Church: A New Online ‘Wiki.’” In her January 30th post on the Stand Firm site, Susan Hey writes:

Many Episcopalians ask me and others how they can communicate to Beloved Moderates about the serious challenges facing the Episcopal church. This timeline, developed by Andy Figueroa, is very helpful in chronicling ECUSA's path over the past 40 years, and includes links to original sources.

It is an awesome resource.

Better still, it functions as an online "Wiki", allowing registered users to contribute by editing pages, or submitting more content by creating new pages.

Check out the timeline here. Then print and pass it on to friends! And if you're interested, register to add more helpful content.

(The post and comments can be found at http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/1991/.)

So I went to take a look at “Walking Apart” (found at http://hopeanglican.us/walkingapart/tiki-index.php?page=Walking+Apart), and read the introduction, which begins:

Liturgical Innovation and Prayerbook Revision - sowing he seeds of corruption

In 1943, General Convention approved a new lectionary for the Offices of Morning and Evening Prayer of the 1928 BCP. It replaced the orginal lectionary published from 1928 until 1942. The 1943 revisions took out many sciptures which taught angainst homosexuality, such as Romans 1:22-27 (For example, see lectionary for Evening Prayer on the Seventh Sunday after Trinity in newer 1928 BCPs.), prophetically setting the stage for the 1960s and 1970s.

None of the references listed in this information section document the 1943 changes in terms of removing readings “which taught angainst [sic] homosexuality.” They do provide a reasonable overview of why many conservatives feel that the current Book of Common prayer is not a true Book of Common Prayer.

Come on, folks, the issue of homosexuality probably was not even on the radar screen for the upper class white men gathered for General Convention 1943. And even if they were aware of the issue, they almost certainly would not have been removing from the lectionary anything that condemned it. So far I have found nothing to back up Andy Figueroa's assertion that passages were removed from the lectionary because they condemned homosexual behavior. I will probably take a trip to the library to see if I can get Bayard Hale Jones' The American Lectionary, published in 1944, through interlibrary loan. Jones was one of the primary authors of the 1943 Lectionary revision. I may also email the Archives of the Episcopal Church and see what they can find for me on the 1943 change.

In the meantime, take a look for yourself.

Peace,
Jeffri

Note: All the web pages referenced in this entry were available as of February 2, 2007. The spelling and grammar of the italicized selections are as I found them on the original sites.