Did somebody cry "Wolf"?

Well, well, well – there are two new suffragan Bishops in Los Angeles, but since numbers have never been a strong suite for my genitally-challenged imitators at places like Viagraville, only the Rev. Canon Glasspool’s election has received any attention.

This is a pity, because it shows that my fellow Biblical Conservatives just aren’t getting worked up about women like they used to. Time was the mere thought of someone without a penis and hat at the front of the church was enough to have us all predicting the end of Christianity faster than Chicken Little could cry “The sky is falling”. Yet nowadays unless you’re somewhere like little Peter Jensen’s Sydney, nobody blinks an eyelid about clergy who don’t stand when they pee. Even the notion of them becoming Bishops is no longer enough to get anyone seriously worked up: sure in Britain the hard-core Anglo-Catholic groups comprising more fiddlers than the Boston Pops start screaming for “alternative” oversight, but everywhere else it takes more than girl-bits for a Prelate to be deemed unacceptable by those no longer members of our Church. Now those bits need to be in loving, monogamous, and mutually-supportive relationships with similarly shaped bits before we can all be worked up to start gibbering like monkeys.

Back in the days when children were encouraged to play “Cowboys and Injuns”, and simulating attempted genocide was considered healthy clean fun, nobody considered the idea of a Right Reverend woman possible. God-fearing Biblical Anglicans could enjoy decent family racism from the comfort of their own La-Z-Boy. Little did they suspect that they’d one day be too ashamed to admit what they once blithely watched on their 12” walnut cabinet RCA. And you’d better believe one of the actors in this little shocker didn’t mention it when he later scored a part playing a priest in Cheers. But times change. No matter how hard Clergy like me try to preserve society in a state of gullible-but-nasty immaturity, history proves our lack of success: when did your parish wardens last attend a lynching? Not a metaphoric one, but a real live (at the outset) Strange Fruit event? You’d better believe that if you’d asked that question in more than a few ACNA congregations seventy years ago you’d have got a very different answer to the one they’ll give you today.

Even nasty nose doctors in Colorado have to acknowledge times change: Dr. “Robroy” McLean’s medical forebears might have believed illness resulted from an imbalance in the four humours, but I'd like to hope his understanding of anesthesia has progressed beyond giving patients a shot of whisky and sharp blow to the side of their head. Or how many of those now furious about what’s happened in L.A. were once also bitterly opposed to desegregation?

From where I sit things all fell apart when Christian evangelists stopped carrying swords and purses. After that everything else just became a matter of relativism. Speaking of which; can anyone help little Kendall Harmon find his sandals and scrip?

I’m Father Christian and I teach the Bible.