Battling the Powers & Principalities

Until today, I had held-off from labeling our opponents as "evil." The gloves are off now. I'm now ready to say those people are evil and slimy. Certainly not all of them. God knows, there are a few people of integrity on the conservative side. But they are being led by the nose and bankrolled by slime-buckets – or what my friend Elizabeth would call bottom-feeders.

Here's how I came to that conclusion. I sat with this all day, trying to decide what I want/need to do with/about it. And I finally decided that everyone in our church needs to know about this.

Let me begin with some background, which many of you do not know. After I created the blog for The Episcopal Majority, someone created a site called The Episcopal Majority which seeks to denigrate ours. It's a pitifully lame site. I don't go there. I think it's probably the invention of one man sitting in a very badly soiled bathrobe, who gets his jollies by making fun of honest-to-God faithful Episcopalians. Do not visit his site, lest you excite him so that he further soils his already filthy bathrobe.

A couple weeks ago, we decided to create an honest-to-goodness fully-functional website, not mere blog, for The Episcopal Majority. Imagine our surprise to discover some "conservative" had gone in just ahead of us and laid claim to the domain names "episcopalmajority.org" and "episcopalmajority.com." Initially, we were ticked! But then we realized we were dealing with a lying, deceitful, and very frightened fraud. He/They thought he/they could fight us by laying claim to our name. This is exactly the tactic that +Duncan is trying: He is trying to pretend that he and his cabal are The Episcopal Church. Any sane person knows he/they are not. But these people are sufficiently sick with their power-grab that they believe their claims. So do the people who registered our name as their web domains. Friends, these are very sick people, bent on control. And they will stop at nothing. No deed is too low for them. I name them evil. They are the powers and principalities against which we must contend.

But do not be deceived, my friends. You can find us at our brand spankin' new website: The Episcopal Majority.

The liars and thieves want to take over our church and our identity. They are trying to steal our parishes and whole dioceses. Of course they would not hesitate to steal Web-addresses. Our only fault was that we made the mistake of believing we were dealing with honorable people. But these are not honorable people. They are thieves and liars. I have friends in Network dioceses who tried to tell me that. But I did not "get it" until I saw the smarmy, cheap shots that the Network crowd would resort to.

But they will not succeed. Because they are pitiful, pitiable, and despicable little people – people who have not one single new idea in their little pea-brains. They have not had a new idea since our church decided to ordain women. They are the very emblem of bottom-feeders. All they have is a desire to co-opt our strength and our ideas. Your strength and support already tells me these nay-sayers have lost.

Now for the latest chapter in this little drama.

The shriveled little pecker masquerading as "em" on the lying site decided to take a big ol' swipe at me. I'm posting that entry in full here. When I first read it, it seemed to hurt, of course. But ya know what? Having had 12 hours to think about it now, I'm proud that this little anonymous twit decided to post this. As my friend ToeWalker said, "The Darkness will only attack what it fears. Well, the Darkness is at it again. Fearing who we are and what we are about, we are now under personal attack. Rather than call into question our ideals, those who wish to do us harm are now attacking us on a very, very personal level."

As an aside: This also makes me very proud that we on The Episcopal Majority have decided to be completely transparent about who we are. You can find us and our names on our new site. But this little weenie is hiding behind a cloak of anonymity – the last, best refuge of a coward.

Let them take their best shot. All they have done is motivate me to post more often and more passionately on this blog. Obviously, I have those forces of darkness worried. May I make them more so.

As their hero said many months ago: Bring it on!

And now, without further ado, here's what the anonymous little chicken chose to say about me in the post entitled Lisa Fox—Episcopal Majority leader?

Lisa L. Fox is involved. The Senior Conservator of the Missouri State Archives is also the creator and an administrator of a blog for the organization known as The Episcopal Majority. More recently she helped create a website for the organization. She maintains her own blog—My Manner of Life and is member and Eucharistic Minister at Grace Episcopal Church, Jefferson City.

Her spot on the GPS grid brings some tensions. In the About me sidebar on her blog, she writes “I’m a progressive Episcopalian now living in the conservative Midwest and feeling a bit like a ‘stranger in a strange land.’”

The Episcopal Majority organization became vitally important to her after her deep disappointments with the Episcopal Church’s General Convention (GC) in Columbus (2006). Her grief was as deep as her joy had been high after the approval by GC 2003 of Gene Robinson to be the first person living in a gay relationship to be made a bishop for the Anglican Communion.

Her words posted on Louie Crew’s website in 2005: “My heart sang on that weekend morning when I heard of his selection by the diocese of New Hampshire, and my heart soared when I heard that GC03 had approved that consecration.” She follows with this: “But so too has my heart wept with the nasty, divisive language that has come from the minority in TEC and the (apparent?) majority of the Anglican Communion in the past almost-two years.”

It got worse for her at GC 2006. She writes in a recent post on her blog: “I started writing because I was angry and hurting about what happened during GC06, in the still-infamous B033.”

That resolution, passed under extreme pressure from the Presiding Bishop and Presiding Bishop Elect (both supporters of the gay cause in TEC) reads:

“Resolved, That the 75th General Convention receive and embrace The Windsor Report’s invitation to engage in a process of healing and reconciliation; and be it further

Resolved, That this Convention therefore call upon Standing Committees and bishops with jurisdiction to exercise restraint by not consenting to the consecration of any candidate to the episcopate whose manner of life presents a challenge to the wider church and will lead to further strains on communion.

The name of Ms. Fox’s blog–My Manner of Life–picks up a line of the resolution as a protest. The other step she took was to join the efforts of the Episcopal Majority organization. SeeWho are The Episcopal Majority? for the official purpose statement. Lisa Fox’s more lively purpose statement is: “…to take back our Church from the right-wing extremists.”

Lisa Fox is passionate about this cause. She writes out the reason for her visceral reactions:

Like most gay Episcopalians, I’ve been called names … stalked … attacked … beaten … all my life for being gay. I grew up (from ca. age 7) knowing I was “queer.” And I have endured verbal and physical attacks. B033 felt like another attack – and I underscore "felt"!

Lisa Fox testifies to suffering, but we must ask whether her position and way of supporting it represents the majority of Episcopalians, as her organization claims in its name. We are not going to tackle her claim (found in the post linked to above) that: “Most Episcopalians are comfortable with the full inclusion of gay people in all orders of ministry.” We don’t believe that has been established by a scientific poll. Time will tell how accurate the claim is. The reader is part of the answer.

But, we see a severe disconnect between the ideal for Christian reconciliation Lisa Fox writes about and her uniformly virulent descriptions of all those she most differs with in the Episcopal Church.

The ideal she cites, describing her Episcopal Majority co-workers: “…they are – as I am – determined that we will succeed in keeping The Episcopal Church a place that can embrace different opinions as we strive to seek and serve Christ together and in one another.”

Later in the same post she extols this ideal: “what holds us together is that we pray together and we go to the altar together while we seek the Truth together.”

Now listen to the invective; ask yourself if this fits these ideals. Ask yourself if it represents the real Episcopal majority:

-From the same post as the ideals affirmed above: “I don’t mind naming names and kickin’ butt, because those organizations personify the “whited sepulchres” Jesus condemned.” The links are to the Anglican Communion Network and the American Anglican Council.

-In a post called Passionate Hatred, she reports on finding this quotation from Eric Hoffer (the longshoreman philosopher):

Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life. Thus people haunted by the purposelessness of their lives try to find new content not only by dedicating themselves to a holy cause, but also by nursing a fanatical grievance.

To whom does she apply these words about emptiy lives?: “Yep! Now I understand what those people are saying over on the conservative blogs! Passionate hatred R them.”

Lisa Fox doesn’t have a ghost of an idea about the character and manner of Bishops Duncan, Salmon, Howe, Ackerman or a “reasserting” leader and blogger like Kendall Harmon. I can’t name another group who so consistently exemplify gentleness, grace, and Christian love more than these leaders do. Where I sense a consuming kind of hatred is in the consistent words of Lisa Fox.

- In another post, Ms. Fox writes:

I do my best to prowl the blogosphere to see what horrors and evils are attempting to destroy The Episcopal Church. This one made my blood run cold. And it typifies what is at stake in the battle between the traditional, mainstream Episcopalians and those who want to take-over The Episcopal Church and re-shape it in some sort of fundamentalist image.

The perpetrator of evil in this case is Brad Drell. Lisa Fox gives him the title: “the Knight of What It Means to Be Truly ‘Orthodox’.”

-Then, possibly to lighten up a little, we have Lisa Fox’s depiction of the Primates of the Anglican Communion

Many Episcopalians just aren’t accustomed to thinking of themselves as part of the Anglican Communion. So as we deal with Archbishops and synods and so on, there’s often some confusion. You may have read about the importance of the Primates’ Meeting, and about how the Archbishop of Canterbury can’t decide what to do about the Episcopal Church until he consults with the primates, but you don’t really know what a primate is or what one looks like. Well, here you are!

Let’s not cry “racist” and let’s admit that few of us are thrilled with the title “Primate.” But I don’t know any other way to take this photoshop effort than the obvious one—the “global south” Primates are a bunch of monkeys. It would be consistent with all you find in her blog.

Nowhere have we have found that Lisa Fox addresses conservatives (or reasserters, or whatever) who are active in supporting the historic convictions of the Anglican Communion in terms of her professed ideals of prayer and an invitation to the Lord’s Table. All is invective.

Does this leader of the organization known as The Episcopal Majority represent the real Episcopal majority? We don’t think so.

A final sadness about Lisa Fox comes from her characterization of General Convention (2006) Resolution D058, titled “Salvation Through Christ Alone.” She can only see it as a “Have you stopped beating your wife yet?” resolution. She is unable to envision that it might have had a positive motive behind it—calling to the foreground the Church’s mission of witness. She calls it a “tiresome, unnecessary resolution.”

Never mind the very bad theology and soteriology in that ill-conceived resolution. Mostly, it’s just bad because the people who took it to General Convention wanted to embarrass The Episcopal Church much more than they wanted to glorify Christ. OK, that’s their schtick. Let it be upon their heads.

Her theology and soteriology?:

I may engage a personal shopper or a personal trainer or a personal assistant, but I don’t have a personal savior. I have the same one everyone else has, and I have him by virtue of having been created through him. My salvation is my return to him, from the midst of the worst muck-ups into which I can stumble. It is not my reward for good behavior or for having the right answer when someone asked me a question about him.

The abysmal lack of awareness of the classic Christian gospel, which gospel is the engine of the Anglican Communion Network, is truly sobering. We pray that this does not represent the true Episcopal majority.

Postscript: Now in May 2007, the increasingly desperate "leaders" of the StandFirm site have sent their lackeys to this posting of mine. I'm not sure why. But it led me to notice that (in my early days of blogging) I had not paid much attention to the formatting of this post. So I've now tried to clean up the formatting. I hope this will improve the aim of the StandFirm crowd. The further we get into this whole thing, the more they make me laugh.