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To: miele man

You might appreciate this article, given your witness within the Episcopal Church.

Miele Man has an interesting testimoney of being in a position to watch the decline and fall of Episcopalianism. (Did I spell that right?)


4 posted on 11/24/2005 7:31:13 AM PST by Zack Nguyen
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To: Zack Nguyen

Thank you, Zack, for remember me and for pinging this article to me. It is an interesting read.

I trust you and yours will have a blessed, happy Thanksgiving.

As for my "witness" in the Episcopal Church, that was some time ago. I left that apostate body in 1987 and have been worshipping and serving in an Anglican church ever since. Meanwhile, the Episcopalians (you did spell it correctly)sink deeper and deeper into apostasy and heresy. Bishop Vicky Gene Robinson is but the latest incarnation.

Diane Knippers, mentioned in the article, passed away last year. She was a tireless worker and fervent believer in Jesus Christ. May she rest in peace.

I notice that this article did not mention renewal groups in The Episcopal Church. My experience with them was that they were heavily influenced by the liberal agenda and certainly were not attempting to "renew" faith and belief and adherence to the traditional Anglican beliefs, practices and understanding of Holy Scripture. Much of their appeal was to the emotional, touch-feely practices. Their agenda was to change the mindset of adherents to a much more liberal bent. Obviously, it worked.

I read with interest the remark by Kevin Jones, the lib who attended, incognito, the Confessing the Faith conference. Jones remarked that he was worried about the strength and dedication of "Confessing" movement and especially their "ingenuity and persistence".

I had a similar but completely opposite experience when I attended an ultra liberal movement meeting in Pittsburgh. I too attended incognito. The group was called COCU, e.g., Consultation on Church Uniting. This was an amalgamation of nine protestant churches that was trying to get these nine church bodies to merge into one mega church. Members included the Episcopal, Methodist, Presbyterian, AME, AME Zion and CME churchs (black churches), the Metropolitan Community Church and the Disciples of Christ and the Church of Christ.

During a mid-morning coffee break, I asked one of the delegates at the coffee table, "how many people are represented by these nine churches?". She represented one of the more liberal churches and her response was to me was, "Twenty three or twenty four million members, can you imagine the political power we will have"?

As I sat in this meeting for the next two days, it was extremely difficult to keep my thoughts and feelings to myself. I listened as delegate after delegate opined about the need to change denominational beliefs, practices and confessions in order to meld them into one that all of the nine bodies could accept. I almost had a stroke when I heard the discussions about the Nicene and Apostles' Creeds.

To go back to Kevin Jones' remark, my experience was the opposite of his. As I watched the liberal groups gain control of the levers of power in the Episcopal Church, it was not difficult to see the writing on the wall. So called church traditionalists and theological conservatives at the same time were reticent to speak their minds and to actually engage in battles to stop these heretical notions. I could see the evil genius behind the liberal groups' efforts. They did have the courage of their convictions wrong though they were and are. In successive General Conventions of the church, legislation was passed that changed what the Episcopal Church believed. Doctrines were watered down or outright changed. Jesus Christ was reduced to a culturally conditioned prophet who may have died for our sins and who spiritually resurrected (not bodily). The Ten Commandments became a multiple choice test and the church married the zeitgeist (spirit of the age).

Meanwhile, the Episcopal Church was losing members by the hundreds of thousands. Ditto for the Methodist and Presbyterian bodies. At one point, the Methodists were losing 54,000 members each week. The Episcopal Church declined from 3.2 million baptized members to barely over a million (1965-1987). Now they claim higher numbers but like many things in the church, there is a lot of fudging.

Yes, the Episcopal Church has been turned around but not into something I would want to believe in.








30 posted on 11/24/2005 10:31:56 AM PST by miele man
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