Posted on 08/20/2009 9:48:18 PM PDT by nickcarraway
The general convention of the Episcopal Church ended last month in Anaheim, Calif., with a whimper, despite these rather staggering announcements: it would, after years of internal battling, continue to elevate gay priests to bishops, and it would consider blessing same-sex unions in the states that allow gays and lesbians to marry. The convention—and these announcements—received a fair amount of obligatory coverage, but the news cycle quickly moved on. In the wake of that coverage I received the following e-mail from an editor: "I've been following this story and trying, without success, to think of an interesting line of argument. It's been in the news a lot lately." Right. It's hard to think of an interesting story about the Episcopal Church in America because what happens within the Episcopal Church is—frankly, and with deep apologies to all my Episcopalian friends—just not that interesting.
After years of dominance, Episcopalians have become a minority religion in America. There are just 2.4 million Episcopalians in the United States, down from 3.5 million in 2001—a 31 percent falloff. (The Episcopal Church is the American branch of the Anglican Communion, a worldwide church that has 80 million members.) By comparison, there are 8 million nondenominational Christians (a low estimate), up from 2.5 million—an explosion of 220 percent over the same period. Thanks to the Great Awakenings and the waves of immigration over the past hundred years there are exponentially more Roman Catholics, Baptists, and Methodists in America than Episcopalians. There are also—surprisingly—more Mormons, more Pentecostals, and slightly more Jews. (This last is especially interesting because at the height of 20th-century anti-Semitism, American Jews who wanted access to the highest levels of status and power would sometimes become Episcopalian.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsweek.com ...
Yeah, very very low, laughably low. Newsweek reporters should get out of NYC once in awhile. Or out of Starbucks on Sunday morning. Talk about a parochial viewpoint....
A colleague who is Episcopalian describes the rift thus: "Here we have the faith of the Founding Fathers, the religion that is the purest representation of old-line American power and money, tearing itself apart before our very eyes over … homosexuality. How embarrassing! How publicly humiliating—this for a faith and culture that abhors nothing more than public humiliation."
The Episcopal Church is not the first formerly-Chirstian group to go pagan. Choices must be made every day and some people make the wrong ones. The difference is that the Christians used to be influential enough to maintain some control.
I thought the Anglican Communion severed its ties to the Episcopal Church in the US over this? I know several parishes here in VA have split from the Episcopal Church USA and joined with an archdiocese in Africa. I can’t keep up with it. We long since left.
“Only after the Revolution did the states agree to separate their governments from religion—an agreement reflected in Establishment Clause of the Constitution.”
The author is completely wrong about this. The establishment clause did NOT limit the states. It limited Congress.
The establishment clause was inserted to protect states against the feds either mandating or prohibiting an established church in the state. Thus, states who had an official religion got to keep theirs. States who did not were protected against the feds forcing them to have one.
It is only in the topsy turvy world of modern, living, constitutional law that the establishment clause has been interpreted to mean exactly the opposite of what the founders meant.
This is a very badly written article as usual from Newsweek.
What’s old is new again. Churches that tolerate sex perversion date back to bible times. Amazingly, the Lord did not zap them immediately.
Thanks. I seem to recall there was a big to-do a year or so ago about whether the Mother Church wanted the ECUSA in its communion. It really is a shame it’s fallen so low.
The Episcopal Church’s actions have negatively affected the whole Anglican Communion, which has about 100 million members.
The Queen and the Royal Family are not in communion with the Episcopal Church. Her Majesty has given several indications she does not agree with what the Episcopalians are doing.
And Prince Charles infuriated the Episcopalians by attending Presbyterian church services the last time he was in the US, rather than Episcopal services, the first time that has ever happened. (The royals are also members of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland by virtue of being the hereditary monarchs of Scotland, although they generally only attend Presbyterian services when they are in Scotland.)
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