Suzanne Schwank: Split in church is tragically real, thanks to two opposing messages

Recent opinion pieces published in the Gazette about divisions in the Episcopal Church reveal more than intended.

One writes that only “four bishops” have left the church and that “the vast majority of Episcopal churches” don’t want to leave. This is the Episcopal Church’s oft repeated mantra — division in the church is numerically minor, therefore wildly overblown. This rhetoric fuels the crisis it seeks to deny. It isn’t helpful to claim that there is some smoke but no fire when there are flames everywhere.

It’s not simply four bishops but four dioceses that have left following arduous discernment processes that spanned two annual conventions. While only a small percentage of individual parishes have left, it’s a “figure’s lie and liar’s figure” argument.

The denomination’s membership has dropped by double digits annually in the last decade. By 2007, the average Sunday attendance had fallen to 103, the median attendance to only 69 people.

Read it all.