Traditional Anglican ping, continued in memory of its founder Arlin Adams. Episcopal Church demographics are interesting. The only reason it has anything like the numbers it has is because it has attracted so many people who are on the way out of the Catholic Church; a large part of the Episcopal population today is made up of Catholic defectors.
I’ve noticed this for quite a while myself. The local ECUSA church has only two cradle Episcopalians on the vestry, the rest are RC converts. One RC convert told me she loves the Episcopal Church because they don’t tell you what to believe, you can believe whatever you want. sigh. I’m sure my ancestors are spinning in their graves.
BTW the reasons given for leaving the RC church are interesting. One left because the Sunday School teacher told her her son was too disruptive. Another’s priest told her that since she was divorced she couldn’t receive communion, she neither filed for the divorce nor has she remarried. Her ex is remarried and guess what? He receives communion even though there has been no annulment.
And this is the 800 lb guerrilla in the room right now. The Global North (for lack of a better term) holds itself as a Christian civilization. Yet we have decadence and rot approaching that of ancient Rome. This is a powerful recruitment tool for Islam.
We have to work to change that view. Shockingly, but most Christians here and in Europe live very similar lives as what their none Christian neighbors do. By embracing ultimate freedom, we have become more enslaved to sin than ever before.
This is why Islam is growing in Europe, while actually declining in Africa. Europe and the US has embraced hedonism, Africa has rejected it.l
back in 1900, Africa had 10 million Christians representing 10 percent of the population; by 2000, that was up 360 million, to 46 percent of the population. That is the largest quantitative change that has ever occurred in the history of religion. A rising tide lifts all boats, and all denominations have been booming. The Anglicans have done very well, and the Anglican Church is going to be overwhelmingly an African body in the near future.
why do you weep while you're sowing? "It's obvious," they said to me. "Whoever wrote this psalm was writing at a time of famine, like we had a couple of years ago. You've got the corn that's left, and you can do one of two things with it. You can feed your family with it, but if you do that, you're not a farmer anymore [because you have no seeds left] and you have to migrate to the city and become a beggar, and what's going to happen to your children and so on. Or you can take the corn literally out of the hands of your hungry children and use it as seed corn and sow it. That's why a farmer weeps while sowing the corn.
the split within the Anglican Communion . . . is going to hit most other denominations, certainly most liberal denominations, within the United States very soon. How soon? 2008. That is going to be the next Lambeth Conference within the Anglican world. It is also going to be the next meeting of the World Conference of the United Methodist Church. Over the last few years, most of the other denominations have had their heads up over the parapet watching what's happening in the Anglican Church and feeling increasingly nervous. They know it's going to happen within their own bodies.
If you're an Episcopalian, particularly in the [American] South, if you've got eight generations of your family buried in the local churchyard, you are not going to go off and worship in a high school gym while you build a new church.
many Episcopal churches have taken down their signs saying "Episcopal" and put instead "Episcopal (Anglican.)" Why? Because you have all these African and Caribbean people wandering around looking for a home church. "Episcopal, what's that? Oh, Anglican, that's home."
A lot of conservative [Northern] Anglicans and evangelicals are making the discovery right now that they're dealing with [Southern] people who are rock solid on morality issues, homosexuality issues, but who are way to the left of the Democratic Party on economic issues.
the growing centers of global Christianity . . . are close to the equator. If global warming is going to happen as rapidly as [is being predicted,] the closer you are to the equator, the more dramatically and the more rapidly you're going to be affected and the more of a vested interest you have in United Nations action and liberal socialist interventions.
Muslim-Christian conflict is going to be a leading factor in Africa for the foreseeable future. If you get your atlas and you trace the latitude 10 degrees north, you have a very nice, easy line of conflict between Christianity and Islam; if you like, the main battlefront.
If you're living in a society that is divided between Christianity and Islam, Christians are going to find it very tough to give ground on homosexuality. Why? Because one of the primary recruiting tools for Islam in Africa is Hollywood, American decadence, and "do you want your daughters to end up like those people you see on TV?" Christians have a vested interest not to give ground to Muslims on this issue; they must not be seen to be accepting Western decadence or Western promiscuity.
It is quite likely that by 2050 or so there will be three billion Christians in the world; the proportion of those who will be non-Latino whites, people like myself, will be somewhere between 15 and 20 percent. Imagine a map of the Christian world as of 2050: Where are the largest Christian populations? It's an interesting list. Heading the list is the United States, though, of course, a lot of the Christians will be of Latino and Asian and African descent. Where next? Brazil, Mexico, the Philippines, Nigeria, Congo, Ethiopia and China. What are the names that are not on the list? Oh, Germany, France, Italy, Spain – maybe the people in this room are old enough to remember something called Western Christianity – (laughter) – well, it died in our lifetime.
Very interesting - bookmarkable, in fact.The main point I would make relates to the term "conservative." There are no conservative Americans who call themselves conservative. In fact it is pretty nearly impossible for an American to be conservative. What goes by the name as an American "conservative" is someone who preserves the American tradition of promoting liberty - but liberty is itself not conservative but progressive. And to belive in progress is to be other than conservative.
What is in America called "progressive" is actually reaction against the capitalism and mineral extraction which are the engines of progress. What is in America called "liberalism" is opposition to actual liberty. Consequently we should not be surprised to learn that it is possible to be a conservative Christian in Africa while also being what is in America called a "progressive."