Episcopal Majority Mulls Name Change

Stand Firm ^ | 11/29/2006 | Greg Griffith

[sionnsar]

Interestingly, it appeared from a report of the communications workshop that the name Episcopal Majority may not stick, as some participants thought it may be too reminiscent of the Moral Majority or Silent Majority. And at least a few attendees apparently wondered how TEM could confirm that it indeed represents "the majority for the mainstream."

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Somehow I missed this story from a few weeks ago at the Christian Challenge:

A friend's question - "What are you going to do about it?" - spurred a "conversation" between Fr. Coats and himself about a possible nationwide organization, which led to a "manifesto" sent to friends around the church, and their responses. The pace was quickened by the establishment of a "blogspot" in August (episcopalmajorityonline.org ), which Fly said got 7,000 hits in the first three weeks, and had had 30,000 as of November 3. (This, despite the fact that other versions of the Episcopal Majority domain name were quickly secured by those deemed to be from "the dark side" - conservatives.)

Let's give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they mean "visits" instead of "hits," which is a completely different thing. 7,000 visits in 3 weeks. To put TEM's web traffic in perspective, Drell's Descants gets 7,000 visits in 10 days. Stand Firm gets that many in 2 days. TitusOneNine gets that many every 36 hours.

To put an even finer point on it, according to this page at their site, there are 325 people who have signed up as "members" of the organization. This means that during its first three weeks, the site got fewer visits per day than there are people who claim to be a member. To put it another way, if each member of the group would visit the site just once a day, it would nearly double its current daily traffic average.

The group then set up this site, with the easy-to-remember(!) URL "episcopalmajorityonline.org," but a notice at the top of that site says it's been out of commission since November 4th.

Back at the original site, traffic has dropped almost 50% since its launch. A check of its SiteMeter statistics tonight shows a daily average of only 173, and glances at its monthly¹ and yearly² trends show a steadily declining number of visits (that spike on November 20th neatly corresponds with our entry from that day linking their letter to Archbishop Williams objecting to APO).

Then theres this:

Asked why The Episcopal Majority movement did not channel itself into the pre-existing Via Media group, which has chapters in 12 dioceses, Fr. Fly acknowledged that the two bodies both aim to support TEC, and that Episcopal Majority was receiving some backing from Via Media, whose facilitator, Christopher Wilkins, was at the Washington meeting. But he said that TEM is trying to deal with broader issues confronting the church, and will also attempt to build some international coalitions; some at the D.C. meeting specifically called for the new group to reach out to likeminded Anglican provinces around the world.

It astounds me that between Integrity, Oasis, Via Media, Claiming the Blessing, EVN, and the many other such organizations on the Episcopal left, it can't find one whose mission includes the "broader issues" Fly says the group wants to address.

And this:

Interestingly, it appeared from a report of the communications workshop that the name Episcopal Majority may not stick, as some participants thought it may be too reminiscent of the Moral Majority or Silent Majority. And at least a few attendees apparently wondered how TEM could confirm that it indeed represents "the majority for the mainstream."

Indeed. In fact, the "dark side" has been wondering the same thing for a couple of months now.

And finally there's this:

The latter objective is noteworthy, in light of signs at General Convention that TEC, if excluded from the Communion, may be poised to become the nucleus of a rival communion that might include others in the minority of liberal Anglican provinces, such as Brazil and Southern Africa. TEC itself includes 15 other countries besides the U.S., it was stressed at the convention.

Let me see if I have this straight: "Most in the workshop agreed that it would not be such a "bad thing" to "walk apart" from the Communion - if they were not placed in that position against their free will." But Bishop Jon Bruno, commenting on whether or not Katharine Schori will get an invitation to Dar es Salaam in February, proclaims that she "better damn well have a seat at that table." But if it happens that she doesn't get that invitation, who do you think will be the first to declare that a seat at the table isn't required to be in the communion anyway, and that the archbishop has no authority to exclude her in the first place?

If there's anything keeping Coats, Fly, Russell, Kaeton, and the rest of the usual suspects up at night, I'm guessing it's their fear that the turnout in Washington, and the interest in the "Episcopal Majority" web site, is an indication of what the turnout for a "rival communion" might look like.

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¹ In case TEM's SiteMeter disappears, here's the monthly report...

² ... and here's the yearly report.

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