Countdown To Doomsday?

The Bishops of the Episcopal Church will gather for their meeting toward the end of September. This meeting has been on the calendar for a considerable length of time--probably even before the Primates met in Dar es Salaam. Theoretically, they will have a more in-depth response to the Dar es Salaam ultimatum, and the Anglican World awaits with bated breath. In fact, some of the self-proclaimed reasserters (among others) have put clocks on their blogs counting down to the ultimatum's September 30th deadline.

The first of these clocks I saw actually went up on The Connecticut Six shortly after the Dar es Salaam meeting, and it immediately reminded me of the Doomsday Clock counting down to nuclear Armageddon. BabyBlue, put one up at the proverbial 40 day mark. Forty Days of Anglican Prayer has taken a slightly different tack by setting up a prayer calendar.

So what happens when the countdown reach the "zero hour" and the bishops do not submit to the ultimatum? Given the current climate, I strongly doubt that the Primates would attempt to suspend or expel the Episcopal Church from the Anglican Communion. That would set a precedent they really do not want to put in place.

What if the bishops do? Well, quite frankly it might cause a backlash the reasserters and the Primates will not want to see--including the potential of the convening of a special General Convention. The ramifications of that are not something they really want to contend with given the actions of the last few regular conventions.

Or what if the bishops find themselves close to evenly split on their response? That pretty much leaves us in the same position as the first case.

Quite honestly, on October 1st the vast majority of Anglicans will continue on as they have, either unaware of or ignoring the bishops, the Primates, and the whole tempest in a teapot. Nothing much will have changed. The sexuality issue will not have disappeared. The reasserters will continue to harangue and generally attempt to raise everyone's anxiety level. Primates will continue to threaten. Conservative and liberal Episcopal/Anglican blogs will send yet another set of verbal volleys across the world wide web.

With that in mind, tune in during October for reasserter countdowns to the Lambeth Crash and Burn...

Peace,
Jeffri