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To: sionnsar; Kolokotronis
I was perhaps more embittered sounding in my post than I really personally feel. I knew people who had their lives ruined by those folks, and others who were cowed into submission by the strong-arm tactics. But I never had it personally affect me. I can, however, say this:

Had I tried to stay in the Anglican world, I would have been eaten up and consumed by anger over what those people did and do. They are wolves in shepherd's clothing. I truly say that without the slightest feeling of rancor in my heart (I think.) Becoming Orthodox and getting away from it has allowed me to escape that, and I look on it now pretty much with dispassion, and my words, harsh as they are, are really just cold statements of fact based on observation.

In that regard, as K. says, they are pathetic, and I truly do feel sorry for them. But when you are in the Episcopalian/Anglican world, and you are bearing the brunt of having to deal with what they are doing, it is (or at least it was for me), extremely difficult to just move on. In my post, I was trying to show that I truly understand. Non-Anglican Protestants don't understand the impact that liberal theology had on Anglicans, because they are used to the idea of constant splitting and leaving -- and that's just not in the Anglican tradition. The effect on Anglicans, on the other hand, has been to basically ensure that whole generations of at least nominally Christian Anglicans completely left off going to any Church. As long as Anglicanism was intact, they were at least in the pews every Sunday, with the capability of hearing the words and teachings of Christ. Now they are on the golf course or watching Sunday morning talk shows rather than go to the local three-ring circus.

Theological illiteracy and spiritual apathy was the rule in the old Episcopal Church, and the liturgy, beautiful as it is, simply doesn't have adequate breadth to educate the man in the pew on the full range of Christian morals and dogmas, the way that the Orthodox liturgical services do.

So the vast majority of members were not spiritually or psychologically equipped to have the sophistication to get out of Anglicanism without getting out of Christianity altogether. If they were, the continuing churches, Orthodoxy, and RCism would have been flooded with exiting members. And none of us were.

Anyway, just some further thoughts, and, I hope, ones that are a little calmer and kinder.

9 posted on 03/10/2005 12:42:03 PM PST by Agrarian
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To: Agrarian
So the vast majority of members were not spiritually or psychologically equipped to have the sophistication to get out of Anglicanism without getting out of Christianity altogether.

You are so right about this. I see myself nearly numbered among them.

10 posted on 03/10/2005 3:21:09 PM PST by AlbionGirl
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To: Agrarian; sionnsar; AlbionGirl; pharmamom
This may not be as simple as I had originally thought, in regard to the anger business I mean. Evagrius the Monk wrote:

"Anger is by nature designed for waging war with the demons and for struggling with every kind of sinful pleasure. Therefore angels, arousing spiritual pleasure in us and giving us to taste its blessedness, incline us to direct our anger against the demons. But the demons, enticing us towards worldly lusts, make us use anger to fight with men, which is against nature, so that the mind, thus stupefied and darkened, should become a traitor to virtues."

So, as I asked another Freeper, has ECUSA become so demonic that personal anger is appropriate in forearming the Faithful and in fighting apostasy, or is the anger a trick of the Great Deceiver to drive people not simply from ECUSA, which might be an appropriate result, but in fact from Christianity itself as Agrarian posits?
11 posted on 03/10/2005 4:28:25 PM PST by Kolokotronis (Nuke the Cube!)
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To: Agrarian; AlbionGirl; pharmamom; Kolokotronis
So the vast majority of members were not spiritually or psychologically equipped to have the sophistication to get out of Anglicanism without getting out of Christianity altogether. If they were, the continuing churches, Orthodoxy, and RCism would have been flooded with exiting members. And none of us were.

I would suggest we be careful with the term "Anglicanism" here -- because I'm still there, if disconnected from the world-wide Anglican Communion. I think you meant something like "Episcopalianism" (which is still not exactly correct.)

I also wouldn't write off Anglicanism, even in North America, and even in ECUSA, just yet. There is some motion (in true Anglican fashion glacially slow) towards "The Day", as this blog notes.

13 posted on 03/10/2005 5:32:52 PM PST by sionnsar (†trad-anglican.faithweb.com† || Iran Azadi || Where are we going, and why are we in this handbasket?)
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