ANDREW PEARSON JOINS
ANGLICAN CHURCH IN NORTH AMERICA
Andrew Pearson has been accepted as a priest in the Anglican Church in North America. This is according to Lauren Saddler Pearson, his wife. She posted this notice on her Facebook page this morning, 20 May:
"This week, Archbishop and Primate Foley Beach welcomed my husband into the priesthood of the Anglican Church in North America.
I love their core values: serving the marginalized, fostering diversity, partnering globally, planting churches, cultivating generosity and developing leaders.
Aslan is on the move! Luke 14:23"
OK, a couple points here. Is she talking about the Anglican Church in North America that we all know? "Serving the marginalized, fostering diversity"?
Memo to Mrs. Pearson: The ACNA was set up in 2010 by homophobic bishops of equatorial Africa and fellow travelers in America in order to keep non-celibate homosexuals out of the church and to keep women in submission to men. This is the opposite of serving the marginalized and fostering diversity. So, perhaps she is talking about another group under the same name and led by the same "archbishop".
Aslan, in the C.S. Lewis books, is a stand in for Jesus Christ. What does she mean by "Aslan is on the move"? Surely she is not referring to her husband as being Aslan.
So, on Monday, Pearson left as dean of the Episcopal Cathedral Church of the Advent, in Birmingham. Same day he applied for a Release and Removal from Holy Orders in the Episcopal Church. On Wednesday, Bishop Glenda Curry officially granted the Release and Removal. Somewhere in these three days, Foley Beach, archbishop of the ACNA, granted Holy Orders to Andrew Pearson. So now Pearson is officially a priest in the ACNA. That was fast.
Interesting that Lauren, rather than Andrew, Pearson would announce this to the world. If one noticed, in Andrew Pearson's letter of 17 May to his "Friends" inviting them to follow him into a new church, the pronoun was almost always "We." Although Pearson himself signed the letter alone, the text was all about "we" and "us" and "our." Lauren was mentioned by name three times. When Pearson invited friends to meet weekly and one-on-one, it was with Andrew and Lauren together, as if this will be a mom-and-pop church. Lauren featured as prominently in the letter as Andrew.
Not knowing the Pearsons, I did a little Googling and found that she is quite a successful businesswoman in Birmingham. She is a Certified Financial Planner and "Managing Director, Partner" of Somerset Advisory, a financial advisory service that apparently caters to moneyed clients. Find their website here . The Pearsons have a million dollar house in Mountain Brook, per capita the wealthiest municipality in Alabama.
So, Andrew Pearson is now in the Anglican Church in North America, the reactionary faction set against rights for and inclusion of gays and women in the church. According to his letter of the 17th, he will set up a new church (presumably an ACNA one) in the Birmingham metro area (1.5m pop.). He and Lauren have appealed for their "friends" at the Advent to follow them. I suppose only time will tell us how many of them will.
