Nothing caused St. Augustine of Canterbury to cease from consecrating bishops among the Celts where Celtic bishops already were in place; and nothing stopped Samuel Seabury from receiving consecration from non-juring Scottish bishops in Scotland in defiance of the English Church. One might be tempted to cry foul at offences to courtesy in the incursion of African bishops in the United States, but that is not nearly the moral equivalent of the defiance of some in the leadership of The Episcopal Church regarding what has been believed always, everywhere, and by all; not only in some of the General Convention Resolutions of 2009, but more importantly in the clear, continual disavowal of the authority and teaching of Scripture and two thousand years of Christian tradition and history.<\/p>\n
The revisionists in the Episcopal Church have been told quite clearly that they are in defiance of Scripture and tradition. I don\u2019t think stupidity is the issue, but rather willfulness. They know what the large majority of the Anglican Communion thinks about these things, but they really don\u2019t care.
Theirs is the deliberate twisting of truth in favour of their own self-satisfaction; they suffer the disintegrity of the intellect, the justification to oneself of error and evil. As St. Paul says, \u201cThough they know God’s decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.\u201d\u009d They willingly and gladly believe the lie that they have made because it is their lie and precious to them….<\/p>\n
What complicates things is not the incursion of African bishops in an increasingly apostate church, nor even the flight of the faithful from dioceses where they are clearly not welcome unless they apostatize. But while that extreme circumstance does exist in some dioceses, it is not reflected everywhere in The Episcopal Church. What we do see, even in a basically conservative and orthodox diocese is the flight of some, but not all Evangelicals, Charismatics, and Anglo Catholics, from the faithful Body of Christ of which they were previously a part. This new but by nature shallow coalition signals the rising of an old, but perhaps lesser heresy in a new garb. It is the failure to understand the nature of the Church, the Body of Christ; and this failure and flight may well be a departure from the Head Who will not Himself be separated from His Body. On the surface this new conservative coalition confesses the words of a common faith, but a serious question must be raised as to whether or not they all understand those wonderful words in the same way; certainly they don\u2019t when they confess that they \u201cbelieve in one holy catholic and apostolic church,\u201d\u009d and at the same time in practice take an essentially congregationalist stance on a practical level. That is to say they confess one holy catholic and apostolic church and immediately break it up into pieces that agree, or don\u2019t agree with their views. Even conservatives need to hear Jeremiah, \u201cThus says the LORD: \u201d\u02dcStand by the roads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls.\u2019 But they said, \u201d\u02dcWe will not walk in it.\u2019\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n