Not even sitting in a sacred circle could console members of the Council of General Synod as they pondered their growing deficit: there was even talk of layoffs. Compassionate layoffs. A layoff that is “done with compassion, understanding, kindness and thankfulness” is one where the person being laid off has the compassion not to swear at his superior, the understanding that there is nothing he can do, the kindness not to sue the church for wrongful dismissal and the thankfulness that his impending unemployment is contributing to the financial well-being of his former employer.

Luckily for CoGS the Rev. Dr. Christopher Duraisingh, professor at Episcopal Divinity School, was on hand to explain that:

Jesus’s baptism was not baptism for forgiveness of sins, but an identity marker as being enlisted in the kingdom of God’s movement. We’ve turned baptism into sin-management rite. We need to put our baptism in line with Jesus’s baptism.

Perhaps it’s my not being a Rev. Dr. professor that prevents from me seeing this as anything other than a restatement of Pelagianism – the heresy that Man is born without original sin. To “put our baptism in line with Jesus’s baptism”, we would have to be sinless as he was.

Duraisingh went on to opine that “COGS must be like a midwife as this movement is born”. I fear that the only movement being born in the Anglican Church of Canada, is one that bears less resemblance to a movement of the Spirit than it does to a movement of the bowels.