I’ve been seeing more and more suggestions that radical traditionalists ("rad-trads") at General Convention were deliberately voting against conciliatory resolutions, and otherwise trying to push the Episcopal Church toward an internal schism. For example, my diocese’s bishop, Don Wimberly of Texas, says that:
… The House of Bishop’s vote is not public. However, I will say to you that I understand [Presiding Bishop-elect Katharine Jefferts Schori] received votes from supporters and a solid number of more conservative bishops who supposedly hope to move the split of our communion forward. Politics can make strange bedfellows.
Further, this same undercurrent is attempting to undermine the good work of the Special Committee on Windsor.
(Emphasis and extra paragraphing added.) If Bishop Wimberly — no leftist he — thinks the rad-trads were fomenting schism, there has to be something to it.
Another deputy reported earlier this week on mystifying positions taken by some of the rad-trads (via):
What has amazed me the most today has been what I have to perceive as the utter hypocrisy of those on the extreme right. Those on the extreme left can be difficult, bull-headed, etc., but the things I have seen coming out of the other side in the last day is truly amazing in it’s duplicity. Even the more conservative members of our deputation were disgusted by the time we left.
… Despite all the rhetoric about wanting the Episcopal Church to “uphold the Windsor Report,” when it came down to it they were the ones that called for a vote by orders (making the legislation more difficult to pass) and then voted AGAINST the Windsor resolutions, claiming that they were not sufficient.
Today they tried everything they could do with parliamentary procedure to avoid reconsideration of the Windsor resolution, they again moved for a vote by orders, and I’m not sure of it, but I believe they voted against it despite the strengthened language.
There’s no logical sense here – even if a resolution is not everything you want, if goes in your direction, you would think you would take it. It would only make sense if even though you claimed you wanted the Episcopal Church to comply, you didn’t REALLY want it to.
The answer to all this came literally within a couple of minutes of us passing the resolution from the House of Bishops. Two of the ER bishops released a statement saying that we had failed to comply with Windsor, that they were willing to do so, and that they were the faithful remnant of the Episcopal Church.
It is obvious to even a casual observer that this moment had been scripted since before the convention.
My suspicion is that the ER [extreme right] had planned their entire legislative agenda in order to defeat the Windsor resolutions so that they could execute their schism at the most opportune time, claiming that the Episcopal Church had shown we had no desire to stay in the Anglican Communion.
They never intended to stay with us no matter what we passed.
(Extra paragraphing added.)
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