I Take This Post

on Stephen Smuts's blog to be an acknowledgement that he is calling himself a "priest" without having gone through anything like the priestly formation that we expect from Catholic or regular Anglican Communion priests. If someone calls himself a doctor or an accountant or an engineer, and someone points out that that person doesn't have the academic or professional training or license to call himself that, the whistleblower isn't just criticizing, carping, or complaining. The whistleblower is pointing out basic dishonesty. The fact is that Stephen Smuts is calling himself a priest, when his qualifications are largely unknown, but he's clearly acknowledging that he hasn't been to seminary, and he's "ordained" in a denomination whose South African branch apparently numbers in the low to mid three digits. In the US, someone like that is a risible figure.

He points to a whopping 347 "followers". Heck, Jim Jones had more than that.