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To: BelegStrongbow

I am curious about one thing in your analysis. Are you suggesting that a good deal of blame for the current mess can be laid at the feet of the Evangelicals?


7 posted on 09/21/2006 8:08:06 AM PDT by newheart (The Truth? You can't handle the Truth. But He can handle you.)
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To: newheart

I say that the Evangelicals insisted on imposing democratic governance on a church which was founded as a monarchy. The monarchic form was never removed, just denatured (partly by Parliament) so bishops gradually lost the fervor to assert control. Exceptional ones did anyway (such as Charles Grafton, Willaim White, Samuel Seabury, Levi Ives, etc.) but the main were administrators. The two forms of government can be compatible (witness our mixed secular government), but doctrine is not something that can be submitted to majority vote. It is either true from an unimpeachable source or it is false and even dangerous. Allowing democratic church rule allowed democratic interpretation of Scripture which allowed individualistic participation and local control The result is doctrinal chaos, eventually, sort of what TEC has now.

And it came in through the Evangelicals.

Now, the Anglo-Catholics failed to continuously and intensively educate and prophesy. So they come in for blame, too. But the action was rear-guard and I suspect not a little resented by folks in the pews. Given many of them really support democratic principles, their natural affinity will be with the Evangelicals and against the Anglo-Catholics and so went many votes in GCs down the years. It was a slow erosive process but very similar to what rivers do to mountainsides.


9 posted on 09/21/2006 8:48:10 AM PDT by BelegStrongbow (www.stjosephssanford.org)
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