(Please note the the document quoted has already been posted earlier this week–KSH)
Anglicanism is a tradition that makes decisions on the basis of practice rather than confession. We are a church that determines membership and status by behavior rather than by belief.
–The Rev. Canon Gary R. Hall in God’s Call and Our Response
In other words, one can believe, or not believe, pretty darn much anything and still call oneself an Anglican/Episcopal Christian in good standing, so long as one’s [i]behavior[/i] conforms to whatever is currently deemed permissable.
A perfect example of the vapidity of progressive Anglican/Protestant “theology.”
I liked Bishop Michael Nazi-Ali’s answer to a question asked at Mere Anglicanis: If we are not a confessing church, then what are we?
His response was: I am surprised that anyone associated with The Episcopal Church would even need to ask that question (laughter from audience). Further response was that if we are not a confessing church then it just becomes something new age-ey.
Canon Hall states what many in the past have wanted to believe. It is what the liberals relied on in launching their take-over of the anglican church.
But it just ain’t so. Millions of Anglicans from ordinary pew dwellers to archbishops have taken their stand on *belief* as the defining aspect of being Anglican. Say hello to the dinosaurs, Ccanon Hall.
The starting point for much of the “theological” reflection in the Episcopal Church is that belief is disconnected from behavior, or that behavior is more important than belief. This presupposition actually prevents you from intellectually justifying your behavior, since it is the action and not the belief that has supremacy. This is why it is so difficult, if not impossible for the recent innovations to be justified intellectually. Rather, it is simply an appeal to experience. What is an appeal to experience if not a reflection on past behavior? An impossible circle.