“Jon Meacham parodies himself,” says the Episcopalian friend who sent to me Meacham’s essay from Time, in which he praises Barack Obama’s HHS rule compromise in historical religious terms. Writes Meacham:

My own view is that conservatives who think Obama’s (admittedly poor) performance on the issue is a source of hope for deposing the President in November are probably wrong.

But then I would think that. I am an Episcopalian, an American adherent to the Anglican tradition, and Obama’s compromise is decidedly Anglican. The President’s solution of having insurers, not the Catholic institutions, provide the coverage separately is a wise discover [sic] of the via media, or middle way, which Anglican divines have long defined as a central strength of the Church of England’s Protestant tradition.

Given the undeniable fact that the Episcopal Church is in steep demographic decline, and the Anglican Communion is strained to the breaking point over the inability of its progressive and orthodox factions to agree on basic Christian sexual morality, I’m not sure the comparison is as complimentary to Obama as Meacham thinks it is.