The church has already authorized many alternate texts, which churches can use as supplements to the Book of Common Prayer, with gender-neutral language. To address the strong demand at the conference for the lessening of male imagery for God in Episcopal services, the conference authorized more of those texts and voted to make them more widely available.
In the past, priests needed the approval of their bishops to use the supplemental texts; now, any priest can choose to use them, [the Rev. Ruth] Meyers said.
It should revise it. It doesn’t follow it anyway.
Br. Michael,
That is a cogent comment and sums a problem with TEC as an organization (I’m not discussing the Christian identity here). One of my former roles was a university credential preparation program evaluator for CA. One of the key standards regarded whether the program actually had a philosophy and prepared the credential candidates in accord with the stated philosophy. A sample of students were interviewed and if they couldn’t articulate the program values and standards the program could be put on probation. It was for the good of the program and the survival of the program that the program lived up to the standards they professed. TEC needs a new catechism also. The fatal flaw as I see it is the prime directive has become change not the monastic virtue stability. The language that could accommodate change would be so plastic as to become meaningless. It is just easier to leave the BCP behind by circumventing it with liturgical supplements.