Episcopal church without gay marriage

"the current size of the Episcopal Church"

As I mentioned, the Episcopal Church is losing about the size of a diocese every single year, and has been for the last 10-15 years. There are articles that by 2040-2050, TEC will simply disappear, since the rainbow agenda has failed to attract any young people, and the old guys will simply pass on to meet God. It's no smugness, these are mathematical statistics.

To be a young Christian today is not to buy into the woke agenda, but to be a reactionary traditionalist. If you want to attract young people, you have to be a hardcore against the woke culture.

 

Lest there be any misunderstanding, I am merely stating my own preference and giving my reasons for it. I'm not condemning anyone personally. My preference is and always has been, that if I am going to be a member of something, that the local chapter/organization to which I belong be recognized by all the others. Maximal recognition and 'intercommunion', so to speak, is a legitimate goal to have. The officially recognized Anglican provinces in the United States are and always have been the Episcopal Church, and, I hope, always will be. For a number of reasons, I am also personally deeply skeptical of breakaway organizations in general, especially if they see themselves as more 'rigorous' than the parent body. In order of importance, after being Christian, I specifically desire to be Anglican (in part because of the wonderful Prayer Book tradition, and in part because we aim for maximal unity with other Christians). Therefore I am an Episcopalian.

Yeah, the statistics look pretty bad right now, for a lot of churches, not just American Anglicans. I'm not sure what else you want me to say about that. I linked to one of those articles myself, which was published by the Episcopal News Service. We're all aware of the problem, which means we can take steps to fix it. In any event, it is what it is. We'll see what happens.

I refuse - repeat, refuse - to tie the Gospel to a culture war stance (in either direction). I'm not willing to give an inch on that. Christians should be attracting people by what they're for, not what they're against. The whole 'woke' phenomenon will fade out just like every other pop culture phenomenon eventually does (typically when the next generation comes of age and decides to rebel against what they see as the prevailing 'orthodoxy'). A church that is making an effort to positively engage society and the broader culture right now is going to be affected by the interaction. And yet we're still here, reciting the Nicene Creed, singing the Gloria, hearing the Gospel proclaimed, and celebrating the Lord's Supper, every single Sunday. (And, my parish is growing, too.) To struggle and grapple with the issues of the day is a healthy thing and shows that there is vitality. It sometimes requires thinking outside the box, but it's worth the effort. So the statistics don't tell the whole story, and it's highly unlikely that they are as predictive as some want to make them out to be.

 

That just doesn't match the pattern of the apostles, or the fathers, or really anyone until today's liberal movement. You can start from the New Testament, when Simon bar Jonah stood up on a podium, and accused the Hebrews of being responsible of crucifying the messiah. "And 3000 converted on the spot." so saith the Scripture. And you have the same pattern through all of history:

The Christian saints and martyrs were adamantly against giving even a pinch of incense, even willing to die, just to not give a tiny itty bitty pinch of incense; how intolerant. They were also adamantly against exposing children, and secretly at night stole children, from the rocks where parents put them out to die.

The fathers were adamantly against heresies, willing to suffer and to inflict suffering in their wars against heretics.

The reformers were adamantly against church corruptions, and were willing to be cut up, have their intestines pulled out and be strangled with them, just to avoid giving a tiny itty bitty pinch of incense to the Bishop of Rome.

The holiest exemplars of our faith believed that the Faith, a positive assertion of it, implies a positive rejection of things that are opposed to it.

 

We're talking about apples and oranges. The Christians of the first few centuries were societal outcasts, and the Roman Empire wasn't run on public opinion. The barbarity of the time is hard to imagine. We today are in a very different position. For the Church today to take sides in the 'culture wars' is to be a pawn of larger forces that do not have the best interests of the Church at heart, and have no interest in furthering the Church's goals once their own have been met. I do not think that going totally "woke" is a wise move nor do I think that going as hard as possible in the opposite direction is a good thing, either. Neither wokeism nor anti-wokeism is motivated by anything I would recognize as even tangentially related to the Gospel. Both sides of that coin deemphasize the supreme value of the individual in favor of group identity, group rewards, and group punishments. For the Church to get caught up in something like that is to become just another group rather than presenting itself as something that transcends such divisions and retains a universal message that is relevant and necessary for all.

 

The last bishop in the Episcopal church who opposed same-sex marriage was just defrocked this year. So, no, there are no more orthodox dioceses within TEC on that front. One may find individual churches that hold out, but all their bishops (and up-and-coming new prayer book) are heterodox.

 

I don't equate a non-traditional position on a matter of discipline with heterodoxy. There is no dogma of marriage which has been violated.

 

What had he done to be defrocked? What's the gossip?

 

Does this mean that there is no clear Biblical view of marriage as between one man and one woman? Has the Episcopal Church perverted a clear reading of scripture on the topic of marriage? Is teaching against scripture heresy?

 

This is the definition of legalism, no?
What he said is, you cannot travel across the whole of TEC, any bishop that you will come across, who will uphold the Christian doctrine of Marriage. Isn’t that enough?

 

Who decides what is a “clear reading”, and then how it applies?

 

Well, homosexuality is plainly condemned in scripture.

 

Is there a definition of heterodoxy or not? Merely raising the question doesn’t legitimate cries of “legalism!”. If it’s a “heresy”, who is the heresiarch? Who is the proverbial Arius of gay marriage?

 

Again, according to whom? There are plenty of ways to interpret those passages, and even more ways to apply them. How does one go about determining which interpretations and applications are the correct ones? And how does one go about assigning labels like ‘heterodoxy’ to things that have never been defined in the first place? Mere disagreement on a matter of biblical interpretation or application does not amount to one or the other side being “heterodox”. There’s a great tendency to think in terms of extremes and polar opposites on this site, I’ve noticed. The truth of the matter is usually a little more interesting than that.

 

I think the burden of proof is on the person(s) trying to redefine what marriage is after centuries of having consensus on the issue. The case has not even remotely been made that homosexual "marriage" is in any way sanctioned by Scripture. And that's because Scripture clearly, plainly, and obviously does not sanction it. When an Anglican cleric "marries" two people of the same gender together, they are doing so in violation of their ordinal vows. And if the Bishop permits it (or even encourages it), then the Bishop does so in violation of his ordinal vows.

It would have been a simple matter thirty years ago to simply call a grand synod and pose the question to the college of bishops. Gain a consensus through reasoned, Scriptural argument; then write specific canon law to require conformance to the teaching. And *enforce* that canon law, upon pain of defrocking and even excommunication. We are a conciliar church, and both WO and the homosexual marriage and ordination issue should have been handled in this way.

 

I agree, this would and should have been the preferred method. It was not done that way, and that’s unfortunate.

I was EO before I was Anglican. That whole time, I’ve believed WO was completely OK. Yet I never tried to convince any EOs that we should have WO. Do you know why? - Because I didn’t know anyone who wanted it, especially among laywomen. They don’t see that as their role, yet the Orthodox have great respect for their female saints and venerate them generously and often. There’s no sense among Orthodox women, so far as I’m aware, that there’s any misogyny inherent in the status quo. It’s a non-issue. The situation is different in Anglicanism. WO is something the Episcopal Church was doing long before I came on the scene. I have no objection to it, ergo I don’t see it as a legitimate issue for churches to remain in schism over, though I can certainly understand how such a schism came about. That being said, the Episcopal Church isn’t the only member of the Anglican Communion that ordains women. Even outside that, I’m told some dioceses of the ACNA do so as well. Why is this still an issue?

 

1. Jesus Christ, our Lord and King (Matt. 19:4-6).
2. The Apostle Paul (1 Cor. 7).
3. The Apostle Peter (1 Peter 3).
4. The Church Fathers (Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Ambrose of Milan, St. John Chrysostom, and others)
5. Thomas Cranmer and nearly every other Anglican divine.
6. The Church of England and the Anglican Communion more broadly until the last few decades.

This notion that two men or two women can be married to each other is absolutely heterodox, by the very definition of term. If it isn't, then the word itself has no meaning.

 

For the very reason that it was imposed rather than gained through consensus. Nobody asked the actual Anglicans in the pews what they thought of it; the Bishops just went ahead on their own initiative and did it. ACNA "inherited" a lot of female priests after the schism, and it's remained a sore spot ever since. It was a mistake not to hash this out a decade ago in my view; the issue continues to fester, and the ACNA leadership just kicked the can down the road and left it to the bishops. I think now it just boils down to the fact that no one wants to re-open the wound and deal with the inevitable viciousness and recriminations that would follow.

Honestly, WO to me is at present a minor issue compared to the homosexual marriage and ordination issue. Some consider WO adiaphora; I don't, but I understand why many do. But ordaining practicing homosexuals to the clergy is an absolute red line, as is sanctioning the union in marriage of two people of the same gender. It is founded upon the bedrock principle of Scriptural authority.

 

I believe scripture is clear on issues such as marriage and sodomy. A wide variety of interpretations does in no way negate a clear reading of scripture.

"The sky is blue" could have many interpretations. If we can't understand what marriage is or that homosexuality is immoral from the scriptures then it is impossible to derive anything from the scriptures.

 

Cite. The. Dogmatic. Definition.

 

Most Christians walk into their Church thinking, "I can't wait to learn what scripture says." Most Episcopalians walk into their building thinking, "I can't wait to hear the priestess explain why the scriptures don't mean what the scriptures say."