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To: meandog
Gee, I wonder how the Episcopalian church membership has been doing as of late?

Total membership of active baptized members in 2007 within the United States is 2,154,572, according to the 2008 National Council of Churches Report, which represents a 4.15% decline from the NCC's figure for 2006. The statistics for the most recent year available from the Episcopal Church itself, 2005, are 2,205,376 in the United States and 2,369,477 worldwide, which are calculated from all submitted parochial reports for 2005 – the latest year available[update].[54]

Taken from Wikipedia.

Now, I believe that homosexuality is a sin like any other. I have had addictions, and have sinned in the past. I would welcome a homosexual to church with open arms just as I would welcome a thief to church, or a drug addict, an adulterer etc... in the hopes that they will break the cycle of their addiction.

But, it's one thing to welcome a sinner to church in the hopes that they will find the power in God to stop sinning, and it's another to have a sinner who sins in his relationship with another man to lead a congregation!

I would not have the thief or the drug addict or the adulterer who does not try to abstain from his addiction preaching the Word of God either. It's madness!

Note: This applies to those who believe in Christianity obviously. If this were a secular speaker, I couldn't care less what sexual orientation the person was, but would judge the message.

Stuff like this nonsense makes me glad that we don't have a "Church of America" (which I guess since the Episcopalians were an offshoot of the Church of England -- could very well have been the Church of America)!
12 posted on 01/13/2009 12:01:01 PM PST by rom (Obama '12 slogan: Let's keep on hopin'!)
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To: rom
Now, I believe that homosexuality is a sin like any other. I have had addictions, and have sinned in the past. I would welcome a homosexual to church with open arms just as I would welcome a thief to church, or a drug addict, an adulterer etc... in the hopes that they will break the cycle of their addiction. But, it's one thing to welcome a sinner to church in the hopes that they will find the power in God to stop sinning, and it's another to have a sinner who sins in his relationship with another man to lead a congregation! I would not have the thief or the drug addict or the adulterer who does not try to abstain from his addiction preaching the Word of God either. It's madness!

Given the Episcopal philosophy that God looks at all sin as black or white (IOW, no sin greater than another) I, too, have no problem with someone in the church being gay. But I do have a problem with someone, like Vikie Gene, glorifying homosexuality as not being sinful. In my opinion Vikie Gene doesn't want to be Bishop Robinson; he wants to be Jackie Robinson!
Now I strongly suspect, just as with the Roman Church, there are probably many other unmarried Episcopal priests and bishops who are gay. But most of them, like their Roman betheren have kept their mouths shut and stayed in the closet in a "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" mentality of privacy. And that goes to really the issue here because a person's sex life is and, of right, ought to be a private matter. Yet Vikie Gene has made his a public one thereby violating, IMHO, the first requirement to be in a leadership position: A bishop must love the church.

Stuff like this nonsense makes me glad that we don't have a "Church of America" (which I guess since the Episcopalians were an offshoot of the Church of England -- could very well have been the Church of America)!

Agree...the evidence is that the Washington National Cathedral is an Episcopal church.

28 posted on 01/14/2009 6:17:38 AM PST by meandog (The two named Bush get the bird from this hand!)
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