And I will be tempted to quit the Episcopal Church once and for all ”¦ as I did during my “sabbatical from TEC” in July 2006, after B033. If the bishops of TEC choose schismatic bullies like Akinola over me, then I will have to look elsewhere. I do not want to be “tolerated” or “accepted on sufferance.” I recognize what I experienced back in 2006: that no other church has the theology and liturgy that drew me to TEC. I tried them all: Romans, UCC, Disciples, ELCA. In this part of the world, they are all spooky-conservative and/or liturgically impoverished. Having made those explorations in 2006, I know I won’t find another church home in this place. I’ll just join the increasing number of Americans who worship at St. Arbucks on Sundays.
I love this church. The Episcopal Church has challenged me again and again to wrestle with my baptismal covenant and forces me ”“ Sunday after Sunday ”“ to consider whether I am living the holiness of life personally and in community. If I have to leave this church, it will be as painful as the most painful divorce.
Yes, I love the EC if it does what I want it to do…but if it holds true to Holy Scripture and catholic Teaching, I want no part of it…
Sad really…
Worship at St Arbucks? Ironically, another failing institution. I welcome her efforts to evangelize. Tell me , what Gospel do you have to share, exactly?
Maybe it was a “typo”. I read it as “Starbucks”. I don’t drink Starbucks coffee so is this what she meant?
Meanwhile from the sandpit: If I don’t get my own way, I’m going to, I’m going to…ooh…throw my toys out of the pram….again.
Like I did last week with Matt Kennedy’s press accreditation.
That’s the meaning of Ubuntu. Shalom.
It is interesting that people are trying to remake the church to conform to their image and not God’s. This is the easy church, no sacrifice, no pain. Sort of like picking a new car, is this the model I want, does it have all the cup holders I desire.
The church has failed in its mission when people see it as a fulfillment of their desires.
I hate to mention this, but it’s not about us. It’s about Jesus. Really, it’s that simple.
#5. Jim of Lapeer,
Could some of this attitude have come out of the “marketing” strategy of church growth efforts? It is about the benefits of membership not the cost of discipleship. Just think what will happen if the current mantra is adopted “total access for all the baptized”.
WHEN CHILDREN ARE TOLD THEY CANNOT DO SOMETHING, THEY HAVE TWO REACTIONS: 1) CRY AND SCREAM, AND/OR 2) RUN TO THEIR ROOMS AND PRETEND THE AUTHORITY FIGURE NEVER SAID WHAT WAS SAID.
WHEN TEC IS “TOLD” BY THE COMMUNION THAT THEY ARE OFF TRACK WITH THEIR REVISIONIST THEOLOGY, THEY REACT BY: 1) SCREAMING AND CRYING, AND 2) CREATING AN IDENTITY THAT ESTABLISHES THEIR OWN “ROOM”, WHICH THEY CALL THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH…THE “NEW” REVISED ANGLICAN COMMUNION! THERE THEY WILL STAY PRETENDING THAT THE ANGLICAN COMMUNION NEVER REPROACHED THEIR ACTIONS, AND ASSURED THAT IT WILL “GO AWAY”!
1, 4 & 7
Talk about irony! Perhaps you are forgetting all of the little kids who have picked up their toys and left TEC. Oh, that’s showing faithfulness and integrity. I forgot. Guess it has to be seen through hypocritical lenses.
Yes, Brian (#8) there are two sides to this metaphor. The comment was more specifically about Lisa Fox’s complete article, but there’s a funny thing about a lens: it sometimes casts a reflection on the viewer, as well as focusing on the subject! I accept your criticism, for we at St. Clement’s “left with our toys”, sure enough….and glad we did, when we did! We wait with anxious anticipation for the recognition of the ACNA Province!
My point was, though: The problem with the general tone of “complaint” within TEC leadership (as seen at the GC 2009) over the Anglican Communion’s Windsor and Covenant processes is that they, who love authority when it suits them, do not want authority when it doesn’t.
Homosexualist first, Episcopalian second, Christian third.
Nice. Good Christians using that gospel tactic of ridicule and mocking another when they express their pain.
Not that I have a problem with mocking and derision. I use it toward your side all of the time. But I don’t make the claims of special holiness that your side do.
Glad to see you all living up to your own standards.
Pathetic.
St. Arbucks for Lisa Fox? How about the already disgusted and disillusioned MAJORITY of Episcopalians who worship at St. Mattresses every Sunday? We hear very little about the majority of this Church who have gotten so disgusted with the trends of 40 years that they just don’t bother. We had better start thinking more about losing more of this majority rather than pandering to a miniscule movement that gained power by simply bothering people incessantly.
The comments below Ms. Fox’s piece are worth reading. Pretty much all of them consist of kind and generous (albeit admittedly ideologically slanted) words. I see there as little evidence of snarkiness as of sound theology – another relevant matter. These people are consistently lousy theologians, their movement has little or no intellectual merit, their hermeneutics is pathetic, their understanding of the Sacraments, history, Ecclesiology, science, and philosophy is virtually nonexistent.
But they have large hearts and that counts for something – to the God they have offended and the Church they have wounded. There’s something to be said for a church – or some branch of the Church – that can offer such simple, ideologically wounded people some sense of a saving relationship with the God of Israel. Anglicanism was never a particularly good fit for such folk – it’s too heirarchical, intellectually serious, and Catholic. You simply can’t be a good Anglican and spit in the eye of 2000 years’ worth of saints, sages, prophets, apostles, and martyrs. Nor is it good enough to execute a take-over of one of the Houses of General Convention.
Frankly, I’d like to see a splinter group be allowed to go its way in peace with what goods they can manage and such churchly trappings as will remind them that there is a larger spiritual realm beyond their little world – and that even if the future (not to mention the Holy Spirit) isn’t all that hip on your political agenda, there’s some solace in the Presence. Maybe that’s how these things will go. God is greater than we can ask or imagine and it may well be that He will call TEC back from the brink and we can bid the ideologues and true believers (who may well be Believers – at least of a sort) godspeed and please take some of the family silver with you; it will remind you of what we ought to be. It seems at the moment to be up to our bishops. Perhaps enough of them will rise to the virtue of their calling. Miracles have happened before.
I mean, why not exchange the liturgy for a Grande Decaf Mocha with a squirt of vanilla? Ms. Fox is only willing to accept made-to-order fare on Sundays anyway, so St. Arbucks doesn’t seem to be very different from what she’s getting now plus the java’s better.
Plaigarizing the sandbox, eh.
Really this is rather like all the “stars” who “left” the country when GWB was re-elected – a pathetically bathetic adult whinging and promising but renigging promptly.
St. Arbucks? Talk about false choices – you can’t go anywhere but ECUSA? There are dozens of churches in Jefferson City, MO., why don’t you try one out if ECUSA no longer suits your needs?
it’s as if Christianity has been reduced to so minor a role that the alternative to ECUSA is no church at all. Very sad.
[blockquote]no other church has the theology and liturgy that drew me to TEC[/blockquote]
TEC has abandoned the doctrine, discipline and worship of Christ as received, which is what drew me to the PECUSA over 50 years ago. There are, fortunately, other Christian Churches which have been faithful to the received faith. I don’t ask them to remake themselves in my image.
[blockquote]Perhaps you are forgetting all of the little kids who have picked up their toys and left TEC. Oh, that’s showing faithfulness and integrity.[/blockquote]
I didn’t leave TEC, TEC left me. I choose to remain faithful to my baptismal promise to follow Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. That is showing faithfulness and integrety. Creating a god in my own image shows neither faithfulness nor integrety — rather it is dangerous folly.
At last an honest woman. It makes perfect sense to not attend when you don’t believe. And there has been so very little preached for her *to* believe. In fact the doctrinal teaching of the coffee shop is identical to what she’s heard. Coffee hour just starts an hour earlier and goes all day. Eventually she’ll discover the recipe for coffee is water and grounds. She’ll make it at home. There will be as much reason to object to that as there is by ECUSA to doing a eucharist at home in the kitchen. By becoming ever more relevant they become completely irrelevant.
I hope she stays. I’m always very humbled when I find myself hoping that someone will just leave the church and stop bothering me and my preferred way of doing things; it just points to the many reasons that God is God and I am not God. I would be terrible at it, clearly, throwing out people who need grace almost every bit as much as I do. I halfway suspect many of them are supposed to be instruments of grace in my own life, which annoys me to no end.
I found many of the comments on her blog post to be quite reasonable, especially the ones about allowing things time to work out. That said, I started off kind of jazzed about VGR, but clearly the church has not been blessed over the past six years, and I am at the end of my rope watching all of our energy and resources being frittered away while the walls come down around us. I’ve stopped inviting people to my church because I’m embarrassed by its antics, and my own attendance and financial support is not where it was. I am part of the problem, and I don’t know how to be part of the solution.
I take note of Daniel’s perceptive comment. I would say that Ms Fox is most definitely a nice person committed to what she is committed to.
I did read the comments. The commentators are correct that Ms Fox should hang in there. If the HoB does hold back ever so slightly, it is only to carry on their successful pretense of be “mostly Windsor compliant” all the while moving forward with their revisions.
But I don’t retract my comment #10.
The ACNA-ers are Christian first, Episcopalians second. Hence, when the gospel of Christ suffered by their association with the likes of Bruno, Andrus, Schori, Robinson, they left. In contrast, most of the revisionist chose the TEClub precisely because it provided a forum from which they could advance their secular causes. This where their primary allegiance lies.
In contrast, they would not be part of church such as Wellspring Anglican in Denver (where I had the good fortune of attending again last weekend) where the Gospel of Christ – including the social Gospel or charge to take care of the outcast – is far more effectively being carried out.
“The Episcopal Church has challenged me again and again to wrestle with my baptismal covenant and forces me – Sunday after Sunday – to consider whether I am living the holiness of life personally and in community.”
This passage leaped out in my reading of Lisa Fox’s piece. She *wants* to be challenged by her baptismal covenant. Granted, her idea of being challenged appears to be skewed towards only some challenges. (Labelling Akinola a schismatic bully, for instance, indicates he and those who think as he does cannot be a source of beneficial challenge to her at the moment.) But I have to see her statement as a complex expression on two levels. The first level is a statement of protest. The deeper level — and one she might not be fully aware of herself — is a yearning to hear more than she does hear, even from those against whom she makes her statement of protest. I see hope here, but fear things have become too polarized and the exchanges too driven by formulaic pronouncements on both sides for that hope to have much of a chance. And I hope I’m wrong.