SCREWTAPE PROPOSES AN EPISCOPAL TOAST - (9)
With apologies to C.S. Lewis
By David W. Virtue
www.virtueonline.org
August 7, 2009
My dear Wormwood,
Your successes keep piling on top of each other like so much excrement following a gay pride parade day.
The Council of Hades met this past week in emergency session and was positively stunned to learn of your new initiatives in The Church of England.
The momentum gained at the recent Episcopal General Convention for full pansexual acceptance is now being carried over into open spiritual warfare in the Church of England. Well done.
What fools the British have become. Their society is slowly sinking beneath the waves of political correctness, assisted suicide, moral laxity, family disintegration, the rehashing of old socialist theories, and, slow but sure, invasion by Islam and Sharia Law. Now the full acceptance of pansexual behavior has hit the Church of England, courtesy of its American counterpart. This surely ranks as the high point of the week and, hopefully, can be made to fester for months to come. The final undermining of Western Christianity, particularly in the Anglican Communion, has begun in earnest.
I must confess to you that the Council is in total awe of your achievements and was reduced to stunned silence observing two minutes of evil thoughts to commemorate your gains. Evil shouts and cries of glee were later heard all over Hell.
It seems to us that the alliance of sodomite organizations in England, led by that Changing Attitude crowd (I doubt we could have achieved such nomenclature) , was brilliant in and of itself but that you forced disarray among evangelicals who could not totally agree on the issue or find a strategy or counter-offensive was masterful. FULCRUM writers have become the masters of evangelical agit-prop. Disarray is a brilliant strategy. Dividing over who should run what and where and the final drafting of this or that statement with more caveats than tooth fillings is a stroke of genius.
Make sure Church of England evangelical bishops keep silent, sow the seeds of clubbiness and containment so they won't feel the cold winds of rejection by their fellow bishops should they actually have to stand up and say that sodomy defiles the body and casts them out of their vile kingdom and into outer darkness...and into our embrace. Under no circumstances must they coalesce into a formidable body that challenges the status quo.
I must tell you, however, that the council is very worried by this Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (FCA) crowd. They even got the Queen's endorsement though that might be just a pro forma matter. It does indicate that the spiritual war is heating up and you must undermine it, Wormwood. The Queen must never say what she really thinks, only to offer platitudes about being committed to the Anglican Church etc. etc.
Any notion of a real coalition of those vile Global South fundamentalist bishops and archbishops from GAFCON and that new vile coalition in North America (AC-NA), led by that bushy-eyed geek Duncan, with FCA coming up the rear (I wish it was so) poses a major road block. If they form a super structure next to Rowan and Lambeth Palace, all our work will be for naught.
It is important that the academic evangelicals start raising road blocks and focusing on minutiae, Wormwood. Let them parse the meaning of words and sentences from statements that might otherwise be clear to ordinary lay folk. Let them pick the Ridley-Cambridge Draft to death and keep parsing Article 4 till it falls off the table. Ephraim Radner is totally incomprehensible after the second sentence. Make sure he works on the final draft. Absolutely no one will know what he is talking about, neither will we, but who the hell cares, if you'll pardon the pun.
Alarm bells went off here when the Bishop of Durham, Tom Wright almost achieved clarity with a statement following the American general convention. He was actually comprehensible, not only to his fellow bishops, but to the church's clergy and laity. This was a disastrous moment. His words are still reverberating around the communion and ordinary people are catching on. He even caught the Archbishop of Canterbury off guard.
At the end of the day, Wormwood, he must offer palliative words of comfort to Rowan. Under no circumstances can there be a rift between these two men. The loss of Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali indicated a potentially a major rift in their HOB. Now you must move to silence him forever. No more media coverage. He must sink without trace.
Whatever happens now, Wormwood, there must be no courageous clarity from Evangelicals, and all the orthodox. There are evangelical leaders, including evangelical bishops, who want to "resist" the erosion of orthodox faith and practice, but they must be made to believe in the institution above all else. Keep many of them thinking that a House of Lords appointment awaits some of them...that Queen and country and keeping the CofE together is a higher notion than all that talk of sin and judgment, redemption and grace and a kingdom yet to come and G-d dwelling in temples (read cathedrals) not made with hands. Focus them on the visible, on the here and now. Under no circumstances are they to catch a glimpse of something far greater; that would undermine everything.
It is they, above all, who have the power to steady the ship and, (to mix metaphors), settle the flock. That must not happen.
Those horrid uninclusive words "Choose you this day ..." works for our side too, Wormwood. Never forget that.
The Council embraces you. Our father embraces you,
I remain your affectionate uncle,
Screwtape