> Till I read this article, I hadn't realized that the Anglican
> Communion was "the world's third-largest church body after the Roman
> Catholic and Orthodox Churches." It's a wonder that such a lukewarm
> faith, whose independent career was kicked off by a gambling
> philanderer, has managed to supplant so many indigenous belief systems
> and spread itself so widely, a testament to the power of the British
> Empire.
Yeah, but we also have a smooth dignified liturgy, the Rolls-Royce of Masses, grand without all that fussy over-elaborate Italianate stuff the Papishers used to indulge in. (Now, of course, they've gone the other way, and the Catholic liturgy looks like something picked up at Wal-Mart. Quomodo ceciderunt potestates, as the man said.)
Indigenous peoples have excellent taste and know a quality product when they see it. I remember a Cambodian friend of mine telling me about boy soldiers in the Khmer Rouge comparing looted watches -- a Rolex nearly always beat an Omega but an Omega Speedmaster got extra points. And they could tell a fake at a glance.
> Empires exported homophobia along with capitalism to the rest of the
> world, and now liberals in the heartland of capitalism who have
> overcome homophobia at home are facing a blowback.
This story is a little over-simplified. What the press hasn't picked up on is the way first-world fundies and right-wingers are supporting and encouraging the anti-gay agitation of these third-world prelates (not the parish clergy, and not the laity -- but this is an old story in the Catholic church too, particularly in Latin America.)
To a pretty significant extent, the third-world Anglican bishops have become cats-paws in a homeland culture war. And this is all happening at the superstructure level -- down in the parishes, they don't give a hoot in hell. Tempest in a teapot, or rather, a tearoom -- since roughly half the Anglican clergy worldwide are gay, and have been since time immemorial, and every pew-sitter knows it.