For all that, Anglicanism's public troubles proceed from the takeover of Western Anglicanism by theological activists whose purpose is the remolding of Christianity into something less like the old-time religion than like the platform on which Barack Obama will run for president.

Whereas orthodox Christianity insists on the salvational role of the second person of the trinity — more popularly called Jesus — activist orthodoxy calls for supporting climate change and advancing women's rights. And for establishing homosexuality as a sexual "preference" equivalent to heterosexuality.

It was the Episcopal Church's consecration of a gay man, V. Gene Robinson, as bishop of New Hampshire that, for many Anglicans, here and abroad, finally ignited the gasoline on the brush pile. American conservatives blasted the consecration; foreign heads of overseas Anglican churches promised to support their brothers' stand for God-given, as they saw it, moral norms. Great ugliness ensued: ungenerous words spoken on all sides; declarations of independence from the church; lawsuits levied by the church against rebels seeking to take their churches with them; the Gospel made a token of strife and mutual accusation.

A fourth-century father of the church, speaking of his own time, pronounced on ours: "We are making war upon one another, " said Gregory of Nazianzus, "and almost upon those of the same household. Or if you will, we the members of the same body, are consuming and being consumed by one another."

Meanwhile, in Australia, addressing 350,00 Roman Catholic pilgrims, not to mention millions watching on television, Pope Benedict XVI drew attention to the "spiritual desert" spreading through the world — "an interior emptiness, an unnamed fear, a quiet sense of despair," being the product of de-spiritualization.

Anglicans would be right in saying it's not just us. It's one of those seasons when spiritual sails — to extend the pope's metaphor — dangle in exhaustion, waiting for a breeze. The quasi-secular liberals who operate Anglicanism talk as though some or all of the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals — e.g., "halve extreme poverty," "ensure environmental sustainability," "promote gender equality and empower women" — are the tickets to renewal.

One problem arises: By and large, working through secular questions is what secular entities like governments equip themselves to do. Religious institutions, for all their great works of mercy, have a still larger function; namely, the presentation of reality — the truths, permanent in character, about who these crazy humans are and what they need to do about it.

What they don't need to do is attempt to reorder reality on their own: the reality of relationships, the reality of joy and satisfactions achieved within a grand design not of human authorship. Or so Anglicans used to understand the matter before the Millennium Development Goals came along and sighs of joy arose in high places.

William Murchison is a senior fellow of the Texas Public Policy Foundation. To find out more about William Murchison and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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