From the article: "After praying, the primate presented each of them with a staff of office and a bible."

I suppose this is the crozier - which is also the symbol of territorial jurisdiction. Exactly of which Diocese is Martyn Minns now bishop? If he's a missionary bishop without a specific diocese - then I would expect him to not put his staff high on any spec of grouind in the USA, particularly in his home parish.

Many years ago, when I was a very young and holy college student, I went to a local Episcopal priest in New Haven, Connecticut, and asked about some burning theological issue. I had had a nasty argument with a friend over something, and was shocked by his heterodoxy. I was defending the faith. The priest wisely told me not to defend the faith, but to wrap myself up in it so well that it defended me.

Since then, I have often wondered why people believe that they must defend the faith. It usually makes them act like self-righteous college students.

In one of the great ironies of the story, that lovely and wise priest became a RC Dominican, Fr. Carleton Jones, O.P., now active in a movement called "Anglican Use".

I continue to let my faith defend me in the regular old Anglican Communion, full of women and LGBT people and feminists, all of whom espouse the faith delivered to the apostles.

Either Mrs. Minns has really odd taste in hats and how they do or don't mesh w/ outfits and flatter one (presuming she chose that one in advance, stateside) or it hadn't occurred to her that the Pauline injunction about keeping one's head covered still apparently has some traction in her husband's new diocese, and she procured that one in a hurry. Wonder what other surprises all parties are in for?

I like Alison's priest's quote.

My spin is "which faith? The one that stops at Leviticus, Romans and 1 Corinthians, or the one that includes the whole thing AND people?"...

Question: Were there any non-African bishops as consecrators? Non-Nigerian bishops from other African provinces? Is there a list of consecrating bishops?

Thanks Allison for a wonderful blessing story.

"Defending the faith" is a catchy and heroic statement that is loaded with pride and ego-driven shallowness as I try to ponder what kind of a REAL "faith" community could possibly defend and love heterosexual folk more than their homosexuals/GLBT neighbors.

Should I "defend" a "faith" community populated with some feardriven and "closed" (closeted?) conservative thinkers who are "terrified" of more/newer truth being revealed in their already "faithful" and well ordered lives? Should I only "defend" MY faith in order to keep the "faith" open to the newer Biblical understanding/enlightenments that Church members of the "center" and "liberal" accept and truly believe?

My "faith" believing doesn't include excluding other "faithful" even though some folks would INSIST and DEMAND that I believe heterosexual sinners are different than GLBT sinners within my "faith"...sinners are all the same to me and my God in the "faith" community.

Wouldn't it be arrogant of me to publicly "show off" by righteously and LOUDLY defending a God who doesn't need or WANT my grandstanding while I defend ONLY people like ME!

God doesn't need/want my defending while I promote exclusivity.

I think God wants to be worshiped by everyone faithfully!

Father Jones delivered an interesting speech at the recent Anglican Use Conference in Scranton. I have a dead-tree copy, but one can order a cassette from the Thomas More Society of St. Clare's Parish, Scranton if one is interested.

I've met Father Jones twice, and he struck me as a friendly, spiritual man. No doubt, Father Jones is right that one should normally internalize the faith before battling for the faith. On the other hand, Father Jones is/was no relativist and would recognize that principles matter and are worth fighting for. Not everyone is called to be a "defender of the faith" - including many of the self-proclaimed ones. On the other hand, the United States doesn't require 18 year old Army recruits to fully interiorize "the meaning of being an American" before waging war against her enemies, nor should she.

Finally, there is something a little disconcerting about demanding that one's opponents stop "defending their faith" when one is doing the very same thing, while pretending not to. It is as if, Alison, you are insisting that the nasty-wasty conservatives fight under Marquis of Queensbury Rules while you fight freestyle.

In another part of this site the interview with Archbishop Williams includes this quote: "I don't especially want to see the Anglican Church becoming like the Orthodox Church, where in some American cities you see the Greek Orthodox Church, the Russian Orthodox Church and the Romanian Orthodox Church. I don't want to see in the cities of America the American Anglican Church, the Nigerian Anglican Church, the Egyptian Anglican Church and the English Anglican Church in the same street."

These actions on the part of Nigeria are the latest step toward this result the Archbishop Williams so fears, but it's hardly the first. Here in middle America in Kansas City (close to both the geographic center of the contiguous 48 states, and the population center of all 50 states) there is already an AMiA congregation, a congregation in communion with Uganda, an Anglican Church in America congregation, one of the Anglican Catholic Church, of the Holy Catholic Church (Anglican Rite), and probably several others I haven't found yet.

The Orthodox Churches, divided in America by ethnic tradition, still manage to recognize one another as Orthodox (as in, representing that tradition within Christianity). They still manage to acknowledge some primacy of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople. Their bishops still manage to talk to one another about those concerns that they do share. And with time they are beginning to come out of their ethnic pigeonholes. We also have in Kansas City a congreation of the Serbian Orthodox Church whose members are African American converts.

The Archbishop may regret it, but we could do worse. To hear that he can't accept it calls into question his vision of the church as institution.

Well, Akinola's oh so pious "you cannot serve God and Mammon" statement made me snort my coffee!