Every major paper covered the formation of the Anglican Church of North America, comprised of 100,000 now-former members of the 2.3 million strong — make that 2.2 million — Episcopal Church in the United States. But only evangelical magazine Christianity Today, gushingly enthusiastic about the split — the breakaway Anglicans seem motivated chiefly by anger over the Episcopal Church’s acceptance of gays and lesbians and women priests, none of which are approved by most evangelicals — notes that the new church declared its creation by blasting a shofar, a Jewish ritual instrument made out of a ram’s horn, traditionally blown on certain holidays — or, as in the Book of Joshua, as a sort of battlecry. Why did the mainstream press ignore this unusual detail? Did it strike the NYT as too absurd? The Washington Post as simply confusing? I suspect this may be a case of the press neatening up some strange religion for broad public consumption.

Shofars have become popular in evangelical circles in recent years, and with them some very muddled notions about Judaism, Israel, and the role of the ram’s horn in Hebrew Bible wars. The shofar blast that heralded the new Anglican Church doesn’t align them with Jews, or, for that matter, conservatism, since there’s nothing conservative about schism. Rather, it marks the breakaway church as part of a new religious movement within evangelicalism. Just as these Anglicans are drawn to the cultural politics and political theology of evangelicalism, many evangelicals are increasingly attracted by the pomp and mystery of high church services, and the intellectual traditions inherent in Anglicanism and Roman Catholicism. There’s a slow merger going on, but to achieve it, all sides will have to abandon a lot of tradition — a big sacrifice for believers who see themselves as hewing to tradition against the currents of liberalism. That’s where the shofar — one of the oldest instruments of religious mediation — comes in. I saw it — heard it, rather — a few years ago at another schismatic event, a gathering of ultra-right Christians from around the country who blew the shofar as a summons to spiritual war against what they viewed as a liberal conspiracy to write Christianity out of history. The shofar, one of history’s most enduring instruments, was a symbol of their determination to claim history as on their side. So it seems to be here. Even as these Anglicans create something new — a church actually founded on its rejection of queers, a movement opposed to the marriage of two men growing out of a denomination built on a divorce — they declare themselves part of something very, very old, as if Joshua’s men blew their horns outside Jericho because they foresaw Bishop Gene Robinson several thousand years down the road.

–Jeff Sharlet