is directly attributable to the C-Street Family and its Republican members/allies in Congress. There ought to be a legal way to break their hold. I'm pretty sure what they're doing usurps the function of the Federal grovernment in dealing directly with foreign governmnents and is therefore unconstitutional. ACLU and/or Lambda Legal should step in on this.

I hope Williams' piece garners a wider audience.

It is a long and involved story, but the Anglican Communion is a voluntary association of national churches, based on geographical location. Everyone minding their own business, and doing their own thing.

Until 2003, when the Diocese of New Hampshire elevated the Rev. Gene Robinson to the post of bishop. Robinson is gay.

The central African members of the Communion, headed by Peter Akinola, Archbishop of Nigeria, went nuts, tried to get the Archbishop of Canterbury to come down on the Americans, started a whole movement that included ordaining dissident conservative Americans as bishops or as churches under the wing of African churches. Because of the inaction of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the whole situation festered forever, and Nigerien and Ugandan and Rwandan Anglican churches have all set up associations. They were crossing boundaries of national churches, which is illegal but unenforced within the communion, with conservative American churches who essentially tried to leave and take Episcopal-owned property and governing structures with them. Many of these moves have been taken to court, and the conservatives have lost almost all the court cases.

But it goes on and on and on.

at least here in the US. No one has power over the Episcopal church except us.

If they kicked us out of the Communion, which will not happen, it would not make the slightest bit of real difference. There are other liberal national Anglican churches, too. I think the central African churches are the most conservative, and much of the communion is somewhere in the middle. The US, Canada, New Zealand and Australia are liberal.