Posted on 01/23/2006 4:53:14 AM PST by .cnI redruM
Virginia's largest Episcopal parish, in a letter to the church's 2,200 members, yesterday called on Virginia's the Rt. Rev. Peter J. Lee to "repent and return to the truth" over supporting the ordination of the openly homosexual bishop of New Hampshire.
Leaders of the Falls Church Episcopal said in their eight-page, single-spaced letter that "no compromise on this issue is possible," although they refrained from specific threats. In the past, the parish's rector has threatened schism.
"A Christian leader does not approve of sin, or purport to declassify it," the letter said to Bishop Lee, who backed the 2003 consecration of the Rt. Rev. V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire. "Rather, he calls sinners to repentance and proclaims the Good News that sin can be forgiven and new life can be obtained in Christ."
(Excerpt) Read more at washtimes.com ...
Maybe this question needs to be sent forward to the church leadership that accepts ordained homsexuals.
Bwahahahahahaha, Heavens to Betsy a single spaced letter is serious. Now that's a reporter willing to unearth all issues of a story.
I'm happy to see some folks standing up for their beliefs. If the head of the churches keep going against the wishes of their members, folks will walk with their feet, and their pocketbooks. Hope it's worth it to those who support the gay marriage proposals.
Who would have thought ten years ago that queers would start bringing down churches. Its amazing.
I can't say this church didn't have it coming years beforehand.
Very odd sense of humor.
There is another ramification.
One of the reasons that denominations that "went liberal" at the leadership/national level, but didn't fail, is because the price of membership for a church is that the denomination, not the parish itself, holds the title to the land on which the church sits. If the church wants to get established, and purchase land, then the price for joining the Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Methodists, or whichever, is writing the denomination's name on the deed.
This was apparently done to keep the parish in line. If the parish tried to bail out, well they could, but the denomination would effectively own the church that the local people paid for with their tithing.
It was quite a tether. Our church in Menlo Park tried to bail from the denomination in the 1970s (getting way too liberal) but the leadership's message was, "bail and your church folds -- no building, nothing for you renamed congregation." The church secretly started fundraising in order to purchase a new facility. The split never happened -- the parish ended up just ignoring the leftist impluses of the national leadership -- but it was a sobering time for many devoted, believing Christians.
But it's all changing. In California, a court case invalidated the provision that a church MUST give up the facility. I think it was a Methodist church. This decision has sent shivers down the spines of the major, mainstream, liberal denominations because they will have lost their only remaining legal control over parishes that want to stay true to the word.
I know of congregations taking a loan against the assets, creating a separate trust fund, and then leaving, using the trust fund to buy their new land or building.
The old leverage used to be the pension fund, too. Ministers lost all rights for thinking about leaving. In one famous case a widow left the ALC and lost her benefits. When she rejoined, her benefits were still taken away. That scared the pants off of most clergy. Some still think the pension belongs to the synod, not to the person.
What you write is very true. My church (Presbyterian) went through this too, and a lot of my fellow Presbyterians banded together and sold our buildings and then started our own church. We had 250 families to start with, and now have close to 800! All in less than 5 years. The power is there, all you have to do is to use it in the right way. We had set it up so that when you "loaned" money to the church building fund, the church owed you that money back plus interest. The Presbytery (governing body of the church) was forced to sell the building to re-pay all of us who had loaned money, and they lost tons of money on the deal. They learned an expensive lesson too, that being, don't pi$$ off your fellow Presbyterians when they hold the checkbook!
It seems that Bishop Lee's attempt to "split the baby" on this issue have failed. Christ Church in Alexandria, one of the other largest parishes in the Virginia diocese, has become quite split over this as well, losing clergy, members, and hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions. They wil lose even more people to the Falls Church if the latter splits from ECUSA.
I'm not sure which "denomination" you are speaking of, but in the Episcopal Church, all parishes owned their own property from the time this nation was founded (mostly by Anglicans).
The property canon which said parishes owned their own property was illegally changed at the 1979 General Convention of the Church. According to the official record of that convention (White and Dyckman's Annotated Constitution and Canons of the Episcopal church, 1982), "there was no record of that resolution passing both houses of the convention" or words close to this. I'm quoting from memory here.
Like many secular legislatures, much legislation gets passed in the closing minutes of a legislative session of a church. Some of this is by design and so it was that the liberals in the Episcopal Church used this legislative logjam to surreptitiously pass a change in the church's property law. The new change said that from that point forward, all local parish or church property was now owned by the diocese. This meant that the bishop could now use title to the local parish's property as leverage to force (for example) conservative or traditional parishes to go along with the liberal changes such as accepting women priests or ordination of homosexuals. Unfortunately, most Episcopal parishes ceded their parish property titles to their liberal bishops and did not contest this illegal property canon change.
Many people subsequently left the church and started new congregations and began to worship in peace without the distractions of heretical bishops and unbelieving clergy. These folks did not start a new faith or church, rather, they simply continued to worship and believe in the same manner they had before except without the institutional apostasy and error.
At the same time, the liberal Episcopal quislings labeled these traditional folks as being is schism. Who really is in schism, those who've re-written the faith to accomodate themselves or those who left the apostate parent body in order to continue worshipping and believing in orthodox Anglicanism?
Anglican ping.
Your friend has a good point.
At some point a church becomes so compromised and so accomodating of the spirit of the times, that they might as well reorganize as a Rotary Club because they no longer have anything to do with the great commission and in many ways are working against it.
No offense to Rotary Clubs.
At least Rotarians claim to be what they are.
There's one hierarchy that doesn't take the Book of James' definition of "true religion" seriously.
"----To hell with the widows, we want our perks!"
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