Conservative critics of the American church, especially bishops from the so-called Global South, protest that Episcopalians are allowing their faith to be adulterated by the culture. But the conservative bishops who abhor homosexuality are themselves acting in a cultural context. Experts on Christianity in Africa note that some bishops there don’t want to seem “soft” on homosexuality for fear of losing converts to Islam.
In its long history, Christianity repeatedly has been divided and subdivided, and most of the issues that led one group to part company with another were “inside” issues of theology — the authority of the Bible versus that of the pope, the role of “faith” and “works” in salvation, the nature of the sacraments. But others, like the dispute over American slavery that divided Northern from Southern Presbyterians in the 19th century, raged and resonated outside church walls. That is the case with the Anglican argument over gays, which is why so many non-Episcopalians — and non-Christians — are paying attention.
The statistics of the Bp “not in my diocese” Bruno’s, including the 2006 statistics are [url=http://12.0.101.92/reports/PR_ChartsDemo/exports/ParishRPT_930200740610PM.pdf]here[/url], which shows their continued slide to oblivion. One should note as well the [url=http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/6500/#120078 ]following[/url]:
[blockquote]They’ve done it again to [url=http://12.0.101.92/reports/PR_ChartsDemo/exports/ParishRPT_930200740610PM.pdf ]All Saints’, Long Beach[/url] (and probably to [url=http://12.0.101.92/reports/PR_ChartsDemo/exports/ParishRPT_930200740610PM.pdf]St. James’ Newport Beach[/url], and [url=http://12.0.101.92/reports/PR_ChartsDemo/exports/ParishRPT_930200740610PM.pdf ]St. David’s, North Hollywood[/url]). The 2003 figures have been copied and pasted into 2004, 2005, and now, 2006. The last year they could possible have any numbers for our churches was 2003, since we left ECUSA in 2004. However, the property dispute is in the courts, so they don’t want to let go. What they don’t want the public to know is that the real membership of All Saints Episcopal Church is TWO. How can they lie like that and get away with it?[/blockquote]
They also have kept the carried over stats on [url=http://12.0.101.92/reports/PR_ChartsDemo/exports/ParishRPT_930200740610PM.pdf ]St. Luke’s of the Mountain, La Crescenta[/url] as well.
All four churches have left the diocese. There is actually some slight variation of the membership and plate totals but ASA is fixed. Makes you wonder who is cooking the numbers.
Of course, nobody expects integrity from the capital of Integrity-land.
An opinion piece from the LA Times, good heavens…
“Likewise, the drive for full inclusion of gays and lesbians in all American churches has tracked a more general decline in homophobia.”
I utterly reject the false dichotomy implicit here. “If one disagrees with the “full inclusion of gays and lesbians” then one is “homophobic”.
I love my kids unconditionally, I do not love everything they do and I love them enough to tell them when their behavior is potentially destructive. Likewise, I am a sinner. I do not expect my church leadership to revel in, celebrate, condone or accept anyones sin to include my own for any reason, to include social expediency.
What the paper says is of the utmost importance, that the nonChristian world is tracking the events around TEC with real attention. This blog pays no attention to the outside world, as if it were blotted out by a fog and therefore invisible. But it is time that this blog and the rest of the AC looked outside its internal combustions, for what happens here will effect a lage number of people who are not raving liberals but who are at play in the culture, a culture that presently is intensively homophiliac. Will TEC be seen as the avatar of the Right Thinking People, and the rest of the AC as an atavism? Or will TEC be seen as the failing proponent of fin de siecle decadence? Will the AC speak clearly and persuasively about the right place of homosexuality inside Christianity so that its speech is just and fair but rightly grounded in proper belief? Will we show an America that believes in almost nothing except what is au courant, what is novel, that there are real standards, that we will hold them in spite of the contemporary pressure from the left to abandon all standards? This is all in play right now, for the issue of whether the people will support legislation defining marriage as one man and one woman is very much up in the air, and, make no mistake, the events and the language surrounding TEC and the AC will have a real and substantial effect on what the voters say to their representatives and what legislation those representatives propose.
I tell you, the real world is out there, watching, and we had better pay attention to how we project ourselves to them all. This is not simply an internal dispute, byzantine and insular, between Big Endians and Little Endings. We had better be warned and wake up. Larry
The presumed writer of this ‘editorial’ is the religious writer for the Times, who prides herself on having Bp. Bruno’s cell phone number. She does not grasp the full panoply of AC events, in my opinion, but sees through a glass held by Bruno.