Is this Obama’s next anti-biblical church?

By Les Kinsolving

It has not yet been announced where the Barack Obamas will be worshiping after they move into the White House.

Episcopal bishop of Washington the Rt. Rev. John Chane’s Washington Cathedral has recently had such shortages in financial support that in the past two years there have been major layoffs of Cathedral staffers.

Bishop Chane is almost certainly aware of the fact that President-elect Obama’s 58-member Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transsexual Leadership Council includes New Hampshire’s self-announced homosexual prelate, the Rt. Rev. Vickie Gene Robinson.

This may explain why – in a rather astounding attempt to draw President Obama to regular worship in the financially troubled National Cathedral – Bishop Crane has decided to denounce publicly the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams.

London’s Daily Telegraph reported that Bishop Chane denounced the archbishop for “encouraging conservatives who are determined to destroy the Anglican Church – by listening to their demands for a breakaway province.”

“Dr. Williams last week met with the primates of Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya and Rwanda, who boycotted this summer’s Lambeth Conference and instead held their own conference, called Gatcon, which proposed the creation of a rival global network of traditionalists.

“They have supported moves to set up a new church in America opposed to gay clergy and led by the deposed bishop of Pittsburgh, Bob Duncan.

“It would be folly for the archbishop to even consider recognizing a non-geographical province because it would unleash chaos in the Communion, with theological minorities in every jurisdiction seeking to affiliate with likeminded Anglicans in other provinces.” said Bishop Chane.

“Unfortunately, the archbishop has contributed to the confusion and anxiety the leaders of the proposed province have sought to foster by meeting on numerous occasions with (Bob) Duncan and his allies.

“These meetings have bestowed an unwarranted sense of legitimacy on those who seek to deconstruct the Anglican Communion.”

The Episcopal magazine The Living Church reported:

Bishop Chane also criticized the New York Times and other media organizations for the prominence with which it reported last week’s launch of the new province.
“The movers of the proposed new province embarrass themselves, the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion by the self-serving media coverage they have worked so hard to achieve,” he said. “To learn that the New York Times considers the complaints of these deposed, retired and irregularly consecrated bishops to be front page news suggests a fixation on ‘culture wars’ reporting that deprives readers of a true sense of the challenges facing the church in this country.”

Will President-elect Obama opt to make Bishop Chane’s Washington Cathedral his family’s place of regular worship?

Or does he realize that by doing so he would not only seriously offend millions of Anglicans, in Africa, particularly, as well as in the United States, who are appalled by Bishop Chane’s anti-biblical defense of sodomy, this nation’s leading spreader of AIDS and syphilis?

And, how long would it take controversialist Bishop Chane to find something with which he so disagreed with the new president-in-the-pews that he roasts Barack Obama from the Cathedral’s pulpit?

Surely President-elect Obama has learned the great mistake of his 20 years as a parishioner of the Rev. Jeremiah (“God damn America!”) Wright.


Les Kinsolving

Les Kinsolving hosts a daily talk show for WCBM in Baltimore. His radio commentaries are syndicated nationally. His show can be heard on the Internet 9-11 p.m. Eastern each weekday. Before going into broadcasting, Kinsolving was a newspaper reporter and columnist – twice nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for his commentary. Kinsolving's maverick reporting style is chronicled in a book written by his daughter, Kathleen Kinsolving, titled, "Gadfly." Read more of Les Kinsolving's articles here.