HOW TO MOUNT A COUP

In his post titled "How to mount a successful coup in Anglicanism" at Not the Same Stream Paul Bagshaw reminds us that there have always been theological conflicts in the church. I offer 1 Corinthians 1:10-17 as an example of an early controversy amongst Christians:

Now I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you should be in agreement and that there should be no divisions among you, but that you should be united in the same mind and the same purpose. For it has been reported to me by Chloe’s people that there are quarrels among you, my brothers and sisters. What I mean is that each of you says, ‘I belong to Paul’, or ‘I belong to Apollos’, or ‘I belong to Cephas’, or ‘I belong to Christ.’ Has Christ been divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul? I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, so that no one can say that you were baptized in my name. (I did baptize also the household of Stephanas; beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized anyone else.) For Christ did not send me to baptize but to proclaim the gospel, and not with eloquent wisdom, so that the cross of Christ might not be emptied of its power.

We Christians quarreled amongst ourselves from earliest days. We quarreled throughout our history over two thousand years. In the midst of our present Anglican controversies, Paul reminds us that it was ever thus.

Along with being ever-present, church conflicts are complicated. In five sections and a conclusion, Paul explores both the distinctive and the common characteristics of church conflicts as related to the present controversy in the Anglican Communion.

Since Paul's words on the second characteristic of staging a coup struck me with force, I quote them here.

Second, select your focal point
Because of this complexity, the occasion of conflict is often a relatively small matter, perhaps the actions or teaching of a particular individual. Conflicts take the form of synecdoche in which small matters encapsulate and represent much greater underlying differences.

Homosexuality is a synecdoche for the big things in conflict. It was deliberately chosen (at least in the UK) as a battle ground because it united conservatives, and especially evangelical conservatives, who had been deeply divided over the ordination of women. It is an emblematic issue of the US's culture wars.

I'm not just now learning of the complexity of conflicts and that what we see on the surface does not tell the whole story, but I had an "Ah ha!" moment when I read Paul's words. The strands came together in my mind in relation to the Anglican conflicts as they had not previously, and I said, "Oh yes!".

Now please read the post in its entirety.