Posted on 01/23/2007 7:03:24 PM PST by Huber
The leadership of the Episcopal Church in America may have trouble deciding what they believe, but here in Bakersfield the local diocese isn't afraid to call sin a sin.
The Diocese of San Joaquin, which oversees Episcopal churches in Bakersfield, joined eight others last week in asking church leadership to give them a new boss. Their grounds? The one they have now - the newly elected presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori - doesn't know squat about Scripture.
They were actually not quite so succinct. But the election of Shori - a theological liberal who, at the Episcopal General Convention in Ohio last month said she is "fully committed to the full inclusion of gays and lesbian Christians in this church" - was clearly over the top.
The Very Rev. Mark Lawrence met with a number of his congregants Thursday at St. Paul's Episcopal Parish to explain why the diocese requested the new leadership, a first step toward secession from the national church. After going over some of the legislative decision made by the convention - decisions every good Episcopalian is expected to support - the need for separation became clear.
In an alarming departure from orthodox Christianity, the convention refused to consider a resolution affirming Jesus Christ as "the only name by which any person may be saved. "
"This type of language," the convention decided, ""was used in the 1920s and 1930s to alienate the type of people who were executed. It was called the Holocaust."
There you have it - the Bible as hate speech.
Other legislative decisions made by the convention included the opposition of any state or federal constitutional amendment prohibiting same-sex civil marriage or civil unions; the affirmation that global warming threatens the future of God's creation and that "an acceptance of evolution is entirely compatible with an authentic and living Christian faith."
The convention also called upon all Epicopalians to "oppose and resist through advocacy, protest adn electoral action the continuation of the war in Iraq."
It's an agenda traditional Episcopalians like the Rev. John Galagan of St. Jude's In-The -Mountains Episcopal Church in Tehachapi can't accept.
"This convention had difficulty approving the Bible as the word of God," Galagan said. "They can't even adknowledge that Jesus is Lord. We can't buy into that or their inclusive agenda."
Galagan, who celebrated 50 years as a priest in December, said the church rift may be unavoidable and irreconcilable.
"It upsets me because I just see the church slowly being ripped apart," he said. "I think what offends most of us is we have all this stuff we're supposed to deal with from the pulpit when we should be preaching the Gospel and planting churches."
Instead, the church chose to reject sound biblical doctrine and their own 500-year history to elect Schori, a woman priest who not only voted to confirm Bishop V. Gene Robinson, the openly gay clegyman who left his wife and two daughters to live with his gay lover, she also approved same-sex unions as biship of Nevada.
The San Joaquin Diocese was right to take a stand, for the biblical truths on which its church was build are absolute. Opinion-poll preaching may not offend, but neither does it satisfy. Episcopal leaders who adhere to such empty doctrine may one day fine themselves preaching to empty pews.
Traditional Anglican ping, continued in memory of its founder Arlin Adams. Since Jewish tradition revolves around the denial of the divinity of Christ and that God has no son - who gives a rats rear end if the non-believers were offended?
Nazis didn't use Christian dogma to offend Jews. Nazis had their Thule society superman race theories driving their hatreds of Christian and jew alike.
And what "God" do we thank for that?
AMEN!!! Come on over to AMIA! That's what we do .. preach the gospel and plant churches.. It's wonderful to be free of the burden of ECUSA and be focused on serving people and reaching to lost.
reaching to lost = reaching THE lost (duh)
The same one who has always existed, and will always exist.
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