The Death of the Episcopal Church is Near

Rexlion · Apr 19, 2022

Schofield said: ↑

And which Gospel is that? Methodist or Anglican? Calvinist or Arminian? Socinian or Trinitarian? Arian or Nicene?
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Friend, there is only one Gospel. All of the groupings you just mentioned are in agreement on this Gospel, which can be boiled down to this:

All humans sin and fall short of God's glory

The wages of sin is death (after physical death, eternal separation from God)

The gift of God's undeserved, unearnable grace is offered to all who accept it by faith in Jesus Christ the Redeemer

It is the easiest thing to do, and yet it is the hardest thing to do.

Carolinian · Apr 20, 2022

There certainly are several unique people on this forum, but I never expected to encounter a self-described agnostic "trickster" who derives pleasure from "stirring the pot" at his local CoE parish. At least he is transparent with his intentions.

mark fisher · Sep 26, 2022

ScatterTheAshes said: ↑

I will say from my perspective as a young but life-long attendant of the Anglican Church of Canada (TEC's sister), I've always heard bleak things about the Anglican Church in this country. Data about how the Church is dying, it's just old people now, etc. The boomer generation, silent generation, and generation X were all more religious than Generation Z are, but eventually, all of those generations will pass from the Earth. While the data has always been grim, there are a couple of things I find comforting.

The first is that the number of actual true-believing Anglicans in this country has always been massively over-inflated. To quote C.S. Lewis' essay "The Decline of Religion": "The ‘decline of religion’ so often lamented (or welcomed) is held to be shown by empty chapels. Now it is quite true that chapels which were full in 1900 are empty in 1946. But this change was not gradual. It occurred at the precise moment when chapel ceased to be compulsory… The withdrawal of compulsion did not create a new religious situation, but only revealed the situation which had long existed. And this is typical of the ‘decline in religion’ all over England. [...] One way of putting the truth would be that the religion which has declined was not Christianity. It was a vague Theism with a strong and virile ethical code, which, far from standing over against the ‘World’, was absorbed into the whole fabric of English institutions…
The decline of ‘religion’, thus understood, seems to me in some ways a blessing."
Because English Christianity in Ontario and much of the rest of English Canada was enforced from the top down and to reject it was to shun oneself from participation in civic life, a large part of the population merely participated because it was mandatory to do so with little genuine attachment to Christ or Christianity. Removing this pressure has simply allowed the reduction of the Anglican population to those of us who are actually Anglican. If this theory is correct, at some point the Anglican Church's population in Canada will eventually plateau, albeit at a much lower proportion than it once claimed to be.

The second thing is that I am a committed Anglican. I am a graduate student at a Canadian university, and there is a thriving community of young Anglicans on campus who attend church regularly. As long as I'm alive, and as long as many of my friends and colleagues remain alive, the Anglican Church of Canada is not going anywhere. If I can help it, my children will be Anglican as will their children.

We should thank God for even the small number of faithful living today. Even though Anglicanism is contracting, it is not going extinct.
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dont lose hope the younger generation are dissatisfied with bleak atheism

Nosegay of Virtues · Mar 14, 2023

Schofield said: ↑

I don't need (or claim) to know the truth any of those things you listed. Unlike the faithful (and the tiresome philosopher), I don't pretend to need answers to questions that don't matter. Whether the world is real, life has meaning, the senses are informative, choice is neurons or spirit, etc., is useless pondering. Your philosophy of optics or willpower won't change daily realities. Nobody needs a reason to be getting on with their breakfast. Life is practice.

Even if these queries did matter, we can't know the answers, but Christians insist they know the key to the doors of life, when they clearly don't. 40,000+ denominations, endless schisms, religious wars, etc., speak to this. My contention isn't that Christianity is untrue, I hope you'll have noticed, but that it's impossible to know whether it is. Same with free will and all that. I'm fine with this, but Christians aren't and it leads to all sorts of silliness.
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I'm new here and I'm really enjoying your comments. I used to say that if I didn't believe in God I would probably go to Church anyway as I just enjoy it. Nevertheless, even if you have now thrown in the towel you were obviously a seeker in the past. The thing is, it's all about you and God. Have you never felt God's presence? All the other crap is ultimately unimportant. Who cares about the Church fathers, or Constantine, or denominations, etc. I truly believe if you quietly look for God in your heart God will find you. You would be fun to get drunk with.

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The Death of the Episcopal Church is Near

Rexlion Well-Known Member

Carolinian Active Member Anglican

mark fisher Member Anglican

Nosegay of Virtues New Member