Drew Downs

Make a New Normal

Anglican Communion

  • Trying to Explain the Nature of the Anglican Communion to Someone Who Should Know Better As most of you already know, the primates of the Anglican Communion met last week in Canterbury. Now, it was kind of a — What’s a primate? It is the bishop chosen to represent the Anglican Church of a given…

  • Everybody thinks it is complicated. On Sunday when I announced that we would cover some of the recent primates’ meeting in our Basic Anglicanism class, one of our parishioners leaned over and said: There’s nothing basic about that. That’s Advanced Anglicanism. I couldn’t agree more! The problem is that it is splashed all over the papers…

  • Word has come tonight of sanctions on the Episcopal Church. This week, primates are gathered for a highly irregular meeting. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby is trying to hold together a divided church. He is failing. And before it began, many knew it was already lost. Lost, not because it is actually over. It isn’t. Far from…

  • We recently celebrated a renewal of ministry as we welcomed the Bishop back in our midst. It was a fun service, geared toward the ministry we all do together: proclaiming the Good News, serving the poor, working for justice in our context, and much more. Some found the timing curious. Some were interested in what…

  • They aren’t The Church of England. Those few bishops that spoke on behalf of the church the other day aren’t the church. I know what they wrote was juvenile and mean. Their logic couldn’t pass a eighth grade class in philosophy, let alone sociology, civics, or history. Even though they went out of their way to…

  • It comes down to trust.  Our current behavior demonstrates that we don’t trust the system, we simply rely on it and expect it to function.  Then when it doesn’t, we condemn it.  Sometimes we even argue that the system can’t do it.  And even then we still don’t hold the community responsible for cleaning up the mess. Perhaps this…