03/29/2004: " See, Frank, it isn't just me"

Christopher Johnson at MCJ nails Frank Griswold in his extended commentary on the Presiding Bishop's recent letter to the Lambeth Commission. I particularly liked what he had to say about the paragraph quoted in my previous entry:

Pot?� This is Kettle.� Do you have any idea how black you are?�

In the entire Griswoldian oeuvre, I don't believe that Frank has ever been as remotely or as magisterially mendacious as he is in this one paragraph.�The attempt in the Episcopal Church to make homosexuals feel better about themselves has been a purely political act, with a "theology" that intellectually-serious people consider a bad joke.�

Yet, to Frank, those of us who try to defend the Christian faith from those who would rewrite it to suit the culture are "motivated by political ideologies rather than�theological convictions" and we've somehow "garnered the consciousness" of bishops around the world. Interesting, rather insulting idea and vaguely racist idea, that one, that the bishops of the Anglican Communion can have their consciousnesses "garnered" so easily.

And I really hadn't put it together when I read it the first time, but Chris is right about that last point. This is Griswold throwing in with John Spong and Barbara Harris pronouncing Third World, and especially African, bishops "superstitious primitives" who are easily bought off by American crypto-fascists tossing chicken dinners their way. It's amazing the way long-repressed racism surfaces when one doesn't get one's own way because of the opposition of one's inferiors. It surely is going to be interesting to see what kind of greeting Griswold gets the next time he has to meet with some of those same bishops.