Posted on 12/26/2004 3:08:03 AM PST by Lindykim
The Christian Underground http://www.christian-underground.com READ IT - LEARN FROM IT - PRAY OVER IT - SHARE IT --- Why 85 Episcopal churches closed their doors December 25, 2004 By Les Kinsolving
New Hampshire's Episcopal bishop, the Right Rev. Vicky Gene Robinson, continues to attract extensive coverage in our nation's left-wing dominated Old Media – because he is the only known Anglican (or Episcopal) prelate who left his wife and daughter and who now lives unmarried with his sodomist lover. The decision to consecrate him a bishop has caused a worldwide rift in the 77 million-member Anglican communion. There are further consequences at home in the United States.
Already reported has been the loss of $900,000 in pledged offering to the denomination's largest diocese: Virginia. Now there are more serious reports nationwide.
Episcopal religion writer David Virtue reports the following national denominational statistics for 2003 – which are very likely to be even worse when the 2004 reports are in next December. He reports: Attendance statistics for the Episcopal Church USA in 2003 reveal a church in continued steep decline with nearly 36,000 active baptized members leaving for greener theological pastures, a significant drop from 8,000 on 2002. Another 24,000 Sunday worshippers left the ECUSA last year, more than twice the previous year.
In 2002, the church claimed a membership of 2,320,221. In 2003, it was down to 2,284,233, the church officially declared.
If this walkout of 36,000 – while evangelical denominations continue to grow – seems grim, the next statistic is horrendous: Some 85 parishes closed their doors – 7,395 in 2002 to 7,220 in 2003. How much effort and financial sacrifice in building and maintaining all those parishes is now lost?
That is more than twice the number of parishes that exist in the Diocese of New Hampshire, the majority of whose clergy and laity elected Vicky Gene without any apparent concern about what so many of their fellow Episcopalians regard as a biblical abomination.
Further statistics:
-- Average Sunday attendance in 2002 was 846,640. In 2003 it was 823,017.
-- The percentage of churches with any increase in average Sunday attendance also dropped from 39 percent to 34 percent.
-- The most startling figure was that the median average Sunday worship attendance of all Episcopal churches across the whole country is 77 members (down from 79).
Despite all this, Bishop Robinson was a special guest on National Public Radio's "Fresh Air" which program was fair enough to allow one of Robinson's fellow bishops, Robert Duncan of Pittsburgh, to appear with him.
Bishop Duncan told the nationwide broadcast: The purported statistics do not bear out vs. Gene Robinson's view that the acceptance of homosexuality would make churches grow.
In a question from Terry Gross, who asked whether gays and lesbians coming into the church were counterbalancing folks who were leaving, Duncan responded saying: "The latest statistics show we lost 36,000 members last year, three times what we lost the year before."
Les Kinsolving hosts a daily talk show for WCBM in Baltimore. His radio commentaries are syndicated nationally. He is White House correspondent for Talk Radio Network and WorldNetDaily. His show can be heard on the Internet at www.wcbm.com 8-10 p.m. Eastern each weekday. Before going into broadcasting, Kinsolving was a newspaper reporter and columnist – twice nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for his commentary.
moderator@christian-underground.com http://www.christian-underground.com/archive/read.php?sid=51 Posted to the CU: 2004-12-25 12:42:31 CST ======================================== We will Pray WHEN we want School - WHERE we want Work - The Street - The Mall - Persecute Us At Your Own Peril! The Christian Underground http://www.christian-underground.com
You are correct. There are several, and South America as well. The Anglican Mission in America (AMiA), for example, is African-based.
Whenever I have to go and pick up my wife from 8th and Pike, I feel just so "dirty".
I am a former Episcopalian (6th or 3rd generation, depending on whether you count an intervening Methodist in the line). We hung on through the prayer book changes and ordination of women, even though it was plain that secular politics had won over Scripture and Tradition.
The ordination of Vicky Gene was the last straw - sort of the public seal of approval on everything that had gone before.
We were surprised at how Scriptural, reverent, and alive our local Catholic parish is. We should have made the change long ago - everything we loved about the Episcopal Church is alive and well in the Catholic Church - plus you have rock-ribbed moral teaching and absolutely solid Apostolic Succession.
We're fortunate to have a good old-fashioned Irish rector, a young parochial vicar who is a serious, devout man, and a dynamite team of permanent deacons. I guess you do have to be a little careful about your parish, from what I read here on FR some have gone a little loopy. We have a new Archbishop which is making me nervous . . . but so far everything he's said has been strictly orthodox.
Your impressions of St Mark's cathedral in Seattle fit with mine exactly. It is the see of an apostate diocese in an apostate church. Truth in advertizing would have us emblazon above the door "Ichabod" (the glory has departed). The Divine presence has also left. That is why the place feels so cavernous. I might also mention that it was built to withstand mortar fire and other types of blasts. St. Marks's is one of Seattle's fallout shelters. Tha way things are going out here the people might need to avail themselves of it.
I have good news for you. The church you remember and love is still alive and growing. It is no longer called "Episcopal" but it carries various names from Anglican to Reformed Episcopal to Traditional Anglican. I belong to a parish within the Province of Christ the King (St Bartholomew's, Woodinville, Washington) where we use the 1928 BCP, the Hymnal 1940 and sometimes the Anglian Missal. The original Diocese of Christ the King was born in the ashes of the infamous (P)ECUSA convention that saw the promotion of women priests and the "new" (read theologically revised) prayer book, among other things. Shell shocked Episcopalians left the church in droves - some sadly never returned to any church at all, others went Roman, or Lutheran... the exodus began back then and has been increasing over the years. St Bartholomew's founders were all refugee episcopalians, but todays' membership includes many former lutherans, presbyterians, methodists and baptists. Anytime you are in or near Seattle, come visit. You will all find a welcome here.
Just a footnote: I haven't run a tally lately, but the "refugee episcopalians" in St. Bartholomew's are quite the minority now.
Why??? Ummmmm, It's just a guess, but renaming parishes, Our Patron Saint of Neverland Ranch, just didn't keep the flock coming in.....and the Flock that was 'coming out' wasn't as large they thought?
Oh great, another if you don't belong to MY church you're evil thread.
Go to the Ignatius Press website. Buy yourself a copy of the "Catechism of the Catholic Church", and while at the site, check out the myriad of books about the Church. These folks are seriously Catholic, without being overly pious.
2 good Unitarian Jokes:
What do you get when you cross a Unitarian with a Jehovah's witness? People who knock on doors for no apparent reason.....
Sign on the Unitarian tombstone.....All dressed up and no place to go.....
One b-i-l used to call Unitarians "Atheists who haven't kicked the Church habit". My Jewish b-i-l called Reform Jews, "Atheists who haven't kicked the Temple habit".
My impression of AME is that it bucks the irreligious trend of most of the others on this list. It's a black thing.
Seems to me all you need to do to destroy a religion, is to get a moral relativist in charge of it. Now where, do you suppose, could you find any one like that?
I think I did. I discussed it with a friend but I will have to look at it again to refresh my mind.
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