Posted by
KsReaganite on Thursday, October 29, 2009 8:05:13 PM
Last week Pope Benedict moved to welcome traditional Anglicans/Episcopalians into the Roman Catholic Church with their liturgies and episcopates largely intact. Whether the pontiff’s initiative is a genuine reflection of his concern for greater Christian unity or cynical ploy for ‘expanding market share’ when the ‘competition’ is in disarray, it does serve to put in glaring light the abyss, spiritual and temporal, that is the American Episcopal Church (ECUSA). Some would argue that calling New York based ECUSA a ‘church’ is stretching the definition of the word too much.
Indeed, today’s rapidly declining ECUSA is better known for liberal activism on behalf of any number of colorful causes like global poverty, climate change, hate speech legislation, and gay marriage rather than for sublime spirituality or substantive theology. Leading ECUSA bishops openly question the most basic Christian precepts and creeds. The result has been a heaemmoraghe of members from an organization which, a mere generation ago, was considered the premier church of America counting amongst its congregants any number of Presidents, CEO, chancellors, cabinet members, and theologians. The marriage of the ECUSA with the equally theologically irrelevant ELCA Lutherans some years ago has done nothing to stanch the flow of orthodox Episcopalians and Lutherans to the more substantive branches of their own heritage (or to the various evangelical denominations).
The Pope’s gambit, as one East Coast journalist called it, should serve as another impetus in the continuing task of consolidating the several strands of non-ECUSA Anglicanism in North America which began this summer with the launch of the Anglican Church of North America (ACNA). Seeking ultimately to become a full fledged province of the global Anglican Communion, ACNA is ambitiously bringing together and diligently organizing disparate elements of disaffected ECUSA parishes, Anglo-Catholic and Anglo-Evangelical congregations, and small outposts of reformed Anglicans across Canada and the United States. It is a gigantic task but a noble one with the ultimate aim of bringing under one umbrella the millions of Christians who devoutly hold to both Biblical precepts and their Anglican heritage as enshrined in the 39 Articles of Faith that have served as the anchor of Anglican Christianity since the sixteenth century.
The extent of the decline of ECUSA is evident at parishes and dioceses nationwide, save for a few scattered outposts where traditional theology has not given way to Leftist activism and the parishioner hope against hope to regain their beloved church. A vast majority of communities are, however , like my own where splendid Episcopal buildings have Sunday services that could fit in a small room. Of the six active parishes in my city, three are headed by pastors who are Biblically unqualified and one is on temporary assignment; none of them upholds the bedrock Christian beliefs that made Anglicanism the via media between iconic Roman Catholicism and iconoclastic Protestantism.
This is not the Episcopal Church or Anglicanism that gave faith to men like George Washington, James Madison, and James Monroe. The ECUSA today is nothing more than a decaying, radicalized, ireelevant ecclesiatical cover for the far left of the Democratic National Committee. What a pity.