Bob Duncan: Only Quitters Quit.

"They're not eyebrows - they're antennae of orthodoxy." 

 As I write these Words of inestimable wisdom, My Beloved Sinners, the Anglican Church of North America (“ACNA” or, as Bible-believing Conservative Leaders like Myself refer to it in technical theological terminology, “Little Bobby Duncan’s Sect”) is gathering to fulfill its sacred duty of picking someone to take the next turn at wearing their funny faux capo di tutti capi hat.

Obviously I have a great many opinions as to who should succeed our boy with the ‘brows, but before we come to that let us together dwell upon how deeply disappointing it is to see little Bobby quitting. After all, you don’t see god stepping down just because he’d like to get in a little more golf and spend Friday nights playing swing low sweet chariot with his pole-dancers’ fellowship. So whatever gave the world’s funniest pretend-prelate the idea that it’s ok for him??!! Or have you ever heard Jesus whining that someone else needs to have a turn at being lord and savior! No Sir! Being an Orthodox Biblical Leader is like being a dictator, or maybe the spokesman for an association of pro-gun wingnuts: having once scaled the dizzy heights to which one has been called you stay there until they prize whatever it is you’re grasping from your cold dead hands.

No, My Dearly Beloved Evildoers, there’s no denying that I’m disappointed in Bobby Duncan. I know he’s gained his sect full recognition as an Anglican province, brought every man, woman, and child, in the entire U.S.A. into a personal loving relationship with the heavenly father who will torture them for eternity, and set straight every man who’s ever thought Glee is “kinda fun”, but when you attain My degree of spiritual maturity (which you won’t, for the perfectly obvious reason that god loves Me more) you’ll realize that sort of thing is just part of doing one’s job.

Real Conservative Leadership involves holding onto power no matter who tries to snatch it away, and I’m afraid that in quitting Bobby has shown himself to be at heart just another Liberal. Although, to be fair, I have heard that there’s only so many knives a man can take in his back before taking on a kind of waxy appearance. At least we can all take heart in the fact that Bobby’s successor won’t be democratically elected by means of any fair and transparent process in which representatives of all church members (including, god forbid laymen) are entitled to vote, but will rather be “discerned” by the multitude of ACNA “bishops”.* Which I’ll admit, certainlys show ACNA’s relevance: nothing says “21st century Conservatism” like oligarchy.

I’m Father Christian and I teach the Bible.

*In retrosp I may have at this point failed to take into account ACNA’s core doctrine of the Prelacy of all believers. Given this and their consequent enthusiasm for consecrating Bishops I’m not sure if they actually even have any members not entitled to parade in purple and a pectoral cross.

How I've Spent My Sabbatical.

I’m well aware, My Beloved Sinners, that it has indeed been a terribly long time since I last Blessed any of you with My vitally important Words of Wisdom. Even so, I’m sure that even those of you home-schooled by Evangelicals will have been able to discern that I have been incredibly busy with matters far more important than the tedious task of ministering to those with whose care I have been entrusted by god.

Indeed, even the most fleeting of glances at the many recent public-relations victories of the Archbishop of Canterbury, little Justin Welby, reveals the crucial advisory capacity I have been undertaking at Anglicanism’s highest echelons. That’s right: after foolishly attacking an upright and perfectly-ethical business in which his church just happened to have invested a paltry £75,000 (that’s about $127,215.00 in Christian money: an amount so small it wouldn’t even keep Layman Jack Iker in man-lace for a season – which sheds some perspective as to what a tornado-in-a-teacup the godless liberals raised over this) Little Justin’s minders came to My Rectory Door on bended knees, much to the delight of Bishop Quinine, who as a Prelate cannot help but inevitably misread the intentions of others.

Naturally My first inclination was to turn them away: it seems like only yesterday that young Thomas a’Beckett showed Me all too well how incompetent Archbishops are when it comes to heeding My counsel. Still, when His Grace’s envoys revealed the plain brown paper bags of used unmarked currency accompanying them as an indication of their integrity the quiet still voice of the spirit began sounding more like a cross between Grover Norquist and the homeless alcoholic who stands outside our local mall every Saturday morning and screams something about shape-shifting spiders stealing his last bottle of Thunderbird. And so obviously as a Man of Faith I had no option but to accept their pleas for help.

Of course you all know by now that my piece of first advice to the most morally-consistent Etononian since Guy Burgess and Lord Lucan was followed to the letter. Little Tory Baucum – an ACNA luminary even the folks at Viagraville couldn’t bring themselves to trust completely - was appointed to sit in a beautifully-upholstered chair at Canterbury Cathedral. In a moment Godless Liberals and their traditional sparring-partners were united in a way not seen since the time I restored order to a Vestry Meeting by firing up a chainsaw and severing several Wardens’ limbs.

More recent media outings have seen My boy abandon the concise logic which in the business world enabled him to buy a charming holiday house in France (scroll to the bottom of the page here for the sort of rambling confusion only an Archbishop can deliver. Words can’t convey the pride I felt when JW (tell me it’s only coincidence that his initials are the same as those of a notoriously anti-intellectual cult) answered the question “You've said the issue of same-sex marriage is a complex one that you wrestle with every day and often in the middle of the night…” with “I have about a million questions. I think really I've said as much as I want to on that subject” (source)

Exactly as Jesus would have put it. Or maybe not.

I’m Father Christian and I teach the Bible.