The Washington Post’s February 21st coverage of the Anglican Communion communiqué to the U.S. Episcopal Church, instructing liberal Episcopalians to stop blessing homosexual unions and inducting homosexual bishops, reads more like a pro-secession treatise than a news story.
The headline “Some U.S. Bishops Reject Anglican Gay Rights Edict” sets up the 13-paragraph story to be a sympathetic platform for the liberals. The lead paragraph says it all: “Several leading liberal Episcopalians said yesterday that they would rather accept a schism than accede to a demand from leaders of the worldwide Anglican Communion for what they view as an unconscionable rollback of the U.S. church’s position on gay rights.”
Reporter Alan Cooperman gives five liberal Episcopalian leaders space to assert that they’ve been “skillfully painted into a corner,” that schism is preferable to being a “part of a flawed communion,” and that agreeing “down the line on doctrinal points” is never how the Anglican church has operated. The sense that conservatives are persecuting the liberals is palpable.
Cooperman respectfully identifies the five liberal Episcopalians as a “Bishop,” two “the Revs.” and two diocesan “spokesmen,” but omits the title for the sole conservative Episcopalian he quotes, identified as “Martyn Minns of Truro Church in Fairfax.”
The Rev. Martyn Minns, pastor of Truro Church in Fairfax, Virginia, and now a bishop of the Nigerian Anglican church, says the communiqué gives the U.S. church “one last chance” and “says that the American church is invited to be part of the Anglican Communion, but if it chooses not to, it can walk its own way.”
Cooperman devotes only four paragraphs to the conservative - and arguably majority - viewpoint. The 77-million member Anglican Communion overwhelmingly agrees that homosexual activity is “incompatible with Scripture.” The liberal wing of the 2.3 million-member U.S. Episcopal Church is only a fraction of the broader communion.
Reporters often leave their mark on their stories by how they choose to end the piece. Cooperman concludes by quoting the Rev. Mark Harris, a “retired priest and liberal blogger”: “Part of the courage needed for the future is to stand by what we believe is right, and stand by the consequences.”
Kristen Fyfe is senior writer for the Culture and Media Institute (www.cultureandmediainstitute.org), a division of the Media Research Center.
