Robinson is upset, and so are some of his fellow Episcopal clerics. So what if the guy is violating one of the central tenets of Christian teaching? The attitude seems to be: since when is orthodoxy a big deal among Episcopalians?

The snub to Bishop Minns is a more serious matter. His group of churches has "gone Nigerian" because it wants to maintain traditional Anglican teaching and morality. Bishop Katharine Schori, the leading Episcopal bishop in America, accuses Minns of breaking with tradition, but as a supporter of ordaining gays and other innovations she is not exactly known as a upholder of tradition.

Archbishop Peter Akinola of Nigeria has said that he would regard Minns' exclusion as "withholding invitation to the entire House of Bishops of the Church of Nigeria." Akinola is one of the most important figures in the Anglican church worldwide. He leads the largest of 38 Anglican provinces with 17 million members. The entire American wing of the Anglican church has 2 million members.

The merits of the case are that it is Robinson, not Minns, who has divided the Anglican Church. But put aside the merits. Can't Archbishop Wiliams count? He doesn't lose much by excluding the most liberal wing of American Episcopalians. (They will find solace, most of them, on the golf course.) He is risking the future of the Anglican communion itself by alienating Peter Akinola.

No wonder they say that the only thing you find on the middle of the road are white lines and dead armadillos. Perhaps someone should acquaint the English archbishop with this American aphorism.

---Dinesh D'Souza is the Rishwain Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University His blog can accessed here: http://newsbloggers.aol.com/2007/05/23/does-archbishop-williams-know-how-to-count/