I do suspect that "narcissistic personality disorder" is at work among many of the current disputes in the Anglican Communion and Episcopal Church. If so, all the issues under discussion are quite secondary. What methods, then, are workable toward reconciliation and resolutions?

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/narcissistic-personality-disorder/DS00652

From a property point of view, Akinola coming now cuts both ways. The Virgina churches need Akinola to install Minns to establish that CANA Churches are not just breakaway churches but represent a split off within the AC. But if they are hoping to establish the AC as the overall structure, Akinola's rebuff of the ABC's request shows that the AC is merely a federation of autonomous churches.

Psychological issues aside, I suspect that ++Akinola (and his supporters in England) may be prey to believing his press, and that of those who support his view. Their actual experience of the Episcopal Church is minimal, and relies for information on a rather small but vocal minority. This grouping gives the impression that there is a huge groundswell of support for division, "orthodoxy" or realignment; in fact, even in the most fervently conservative dioceses the situation is far from unanimous, and those dioceses represent a minority of the church.

The recent court decisions in South Carolina and Florida will be a further check on the enthusiasm some have expressed for independence, as it is very likely this will be the outcome in most states other than California.

Akinola's action is the decisive act; after all, the Episcopalians were given a sort of deadline (even if they were not going to meet it) and that time has not yet arrived. Akinola has jumped the gun, rendering the whole communiqué dead in the water. It is indeed now a federation, and the action to be taken after 30 September is precisely nothing, which was probably how it was going to be. So then will come Lambeth 2008, many words and attempted declarations from this group and that, and likely nothing as a result. What matters is the Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion) going into territories, and the kinds of greetings going to that, and the kinds of support going to TEC and other invaded spaces from many of the provinces.

Akinola and Minns are all about the conservative realignment campaign. As somebody has posted, three bishops is a magic number because they can pancake other bishops to be like glial cells, nurturing and fostering the much vaunted and much bandied emergence of the extremely conservative new USA Anglican province and its implicit nervous systems. Bishop Duncan may rightly be worrying about his high place in all that emergence. Is he front lobe tissue? Or just a needed part of the motor cortex? Or an even farther removed nexus in the reflexive spinal cord?

These issues are obviously not at all limited to the keen wedge of the gay issues/controversies, though that has so far been very handy to rightwing religious movements.

Problem is, if provincial big tent Anglicanism collapses with everybody encouraged to do their own thing - Akinola or Duncan or Rightwing Whomever says I'm in so I'm in - then the worldwide communion federation based on the Chicago-Lambeth Quad collapses, too. Any or all provinces are at risk of even more extreme conservative incursions.

Incursion? Home Invasion? Conservative Gospel refreshment? Take your pick?

Akinola has let his funders - Ahmanson, Scaife, others probably on the far USA right - persuade him that he is the new Canterbury.

The wedge gay issues cut back on the rightwing believers, because they cannot really accurately construe that any straight person at all, really, accepts gay folks as an equal human being of effectively equal dignity and worth. The traditional grasp of the dignity and worth of gay folks is largely based on the deep expectation that those same gay folks will precisely demonstrate dignity and worth by changing - or at least wanting to change, with great anguish and anticipation - into straight folks, speedily.

The more public the campaigning becomes, the more obvious that it represents a certain, bald-faced failure of equality, empathy, and leeway for preserving old-fashioned big tent Anglican fellowship.

There is hard a better sign that empire is done, besides other great pushes to empire build from closed and conservative directions. Many of the power brokers in Nigeria do not actually believe that empire is done, you see. They more likely believe, Now it is my turn to rule.

The new conservative Anglican campaign is a clear bid for empire in the most overt guises. The clue? Most conservative believers will only know for sure that they are in power when they get to police the rest of us, quite finely.

Kendall Harmon is live blogging from the scene. BabyBlueOnline has videos and sermon audio.
http://titusonenine.classicalanglican.net/
http://babybluecafe.blogspot.com/

Tobias --

Not even sure about California, actually.

Many of the "reasserters" are saying that Bishop Minns' installation is no big deal since he is already a bishop. In one sense this is true, but in another it is startlingly disingenuous -- in part because an Anglican primate is entering another province to perform episcopal acts without permission of the existing authority, but also because the acronym CANA has shifted from "Convocation of Anglican Nigerians in America" to "Convocation of Anglicans in North America" -- a significant change!

Shame on you, Michael Nazir-Ali and George Cassidy, shame on you. Whatever your personal feelings in this, it cannot be helpful to openly support this outrageous challenge of episcopal authority.

I think Dave Walker has it wrong. Archbishop Akinola has a shredder.

Yes, Prior A, I may be mistaken about California in the long run. The lower court has ruled against the dioceses, but that may well not stand once it gets to the next stage.

Drdanfee wrote: "The new conservative Anglican campaign is a clear bid for empire in the most overt guises. The clue? Most conservative believers will only know for sure that they are in power when they get to police the rest of us, quite finely."

Indeed so. But, Thanks to God! the Age of Empire is gone.

(and, mercifully, Emperor Louis the Pious who started all this Empire Evil in Europe is not a direct ancestor but only a great grandfather of 1st cousins ;=)