I’ve never been Anglican, but I notice with some interest the agonising struggles of the Episcopal Church in the USA.

Two of the most prominent and largest Episcopal parishes in Virginia voted overwhelmingly Sunday to leave The Episcopal Church and join fellow Anglican conservatives forming a rival denomination in the U.S.

Truro Church in Fairfax and The Falls Church in Falls Church plan to place themselves under the leadership of Anglican Archbishop Peter Akinola of Nigeria, who has called the growing acceptance of gay relationships a ”satanic attack” on the church.

Religious issues like this are notoriously intractable. I’d say it’s because of the non-falsifiable nature of religious belief systems. You can’t rely on observation as in the sciences; the only recourse is woefully ambiguous scripture and ‘feelings’ disguised as revelation.

There are stubborn issues that come up in the sciences, too; the nature/nurture debate and the free will/determinism debate are two that I can think of readily. And scientists do tend to split up into opposing camps over these philosophical stances. But real scientific notions are testable and falsifiable, and issues surrounding them can be settled experimentally. And scientists don’t go to war over them, or suffer the kind of schisms that the Episcopalians are undergoing.

Perhaps another reason that we see this happening over and over in religious beliefs is their non-negotiable nature. A quote from “Some Reasons Why” by Robert Ingersoll:

Whenever a man believes that he has the exact truth from God, there is in that man no spirit of compromise. He has not the modesty born of the imperfections of human nature; he has the arrogance of theological certainty and the tyranny born of ignorant assurance. Believing himself to be the slave of God, he imitates his master, and of all tyrants, the worst is a slave in power.

How could you negotiate when you think God has said ‘X’ and someone else claims she said ‘Y’? Hence the ‘satanic attack’ talk.

It’s the reason I became agnostic on the nature/nurture debate. As an atheist, I have no interest in substituting “God” in the above paragraph with “Chomsky” or anyone else. Sure, I have an opinion, but I keep reminding myself that it’s not a falsifiable area. So I try not to get too committed about it. It’s wise to hold off and say, “That’s interesting” on these unverifiable issues.

UPDATE: I’m such a naïf, I really am. Here I was assuming that this was the result of an honest but heart-wrenching struggle between good people who disagreed. It seems that six years of Bush wasn’t enough to teach me what I learned from a Morrissey lyric years ago: there are some bad people on the right. Let’s have a second read about that Nigerian archbishop who’s behind the schism.

In Virginia, the two large churches are voting on whether they want to report to the powerful archbishop of Nigeria, Peter Akinola, an outspoken opponent of homosexuality who supports legislation in his country that would make it illegal for gay men and lesbians to form organizations, read gay literature or eat together in a restaurant.

Thank the FSM he’s not in government, ahem.

And from the incomparable Digby:

[T]his highlights something that’s going on in the world of religion that I don’t think most people are aware of: the right is systematically attacking the liberal churches from within.

For instance, it so happens that the ever so mainline Episcopal church has been under assault from big money wingnuts for some time.

I recommend reading the rest.

Homosexuality is going to be more and more acceptable as time goes on. It’s going to happen, just as equal rights for people of all colours has become an ‘accepted’ (if not yet actual) cultural norm. This new conservative Episcopalian church has decided that the most important thing they could do is to fight teh Ghey, even more important than holding the church together. If that isn’t reprehensible…. As the tide of gay acceptance moves forward, liberal congregations will have less discomfort adapting, whereas these conservative ones will struggle to isolate themselves and suffer agonies of conscience before eventually changing or being swept into irrelevance. In the meantime, they’ll do real harm to people.