Bile and venom aside, if you are still in ECUSA/TEC, you might want to consider going SOMEWHERE . . . somewhere ELSE.
Posted on 09/12/2007 9:56:39 AM PDT by NYer
Chris Johnson alerts us to some deep thoughts from ECUSA's Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori.
Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori told the incoming class at Union Theological Seminary September 5 that they need to consider "how theological thinking is going to help to shape the rest of your life."
"The task of theological education really is to help us learn to do theology -- to relate our own stories, and the stories of those around us, to the great stories of our faith, so that we may be able to give an account of the faith that is within us," she said. "Theological education can bless us with the ability to see the need and hurt and injustice of the world, the ways in which God's dream is not yet being realized."
Jefferts Schori based her address, titled "Theological Education and the Dream of God," on Isaiah 61:1-9, saying that the verses sum up God's dream for humanity. "This vision of a restored world, this dream of God, is what drives me," she said.
The cant phrase "God's dreams" -- an expression as fatuous as it is precious -- is enjoying a vogue in the precincts of squish spirituality, including the Roman Catholic variety. It's a particularly annoying affectation. In theological terms, the logic behind the phrase is simple nonsense: an all-knowing, all-powerful God does not have "dreams." God wills. But God's will, in the form in which the Church claims to communicate it reliably, chafes against the desires cherished by many forward-thinking persons. Hence the invocation of God's Dreams serves as a joker in the theological deck, allowing the verbally nimble to deal themselves an escape from unwelcome doctrinal constraints -- and, moreover, to congratulate themselves that their desires would be identical to God's desires, were He only free to speak His mind.
Too harsh? Well, let's spin out a couple highly counterfactual scenarios -- "our own stories, and the stories of those around us," to use the jargon of Jefferts Schori -- in which a Christian might decide "the ways in which God's dream is not yet being realized":
Doesn't play, does it? You don't waste a joker on a trick you can take with a face-value card. Where one's future resolve is known to be consonant with traditional Christian doctrine -- and that in a way ordinary Christians would have no trouble understanding and no hesitation expounding in public -- no one ever speaks of "God's dreams." No one would ever need to.
Bile and venom aside, if you are still in ECUSA/TEC, you might want to consider going SOMEWHERE . . . somewhere ELSE.
My impression is that, for a lot of people, the situation is more like Reagan and the Democratic Party: "I didn't leave the Democratic Party. It left me."
So I think you are mistaken. Save the flames until you're sure you're over the target.
Unless you have a 'safe' parish (and the question then is - how long will it be safe? and the answer is, until you need to hire a new rector, because the ordination process has been co-opted by 815), I also think you are mistaken in clinging to ECUSA. It has been taken over by Christ- and Bible-denying apostates who believe only in the Spirit of the Age (vide The Pilgrim's Regress) and are stealing the buildings and trust funds of parishes with whom they disagree. Not the sort of unbelievers with whom anyone should be yoked.
It was not just the church of my cradle -- I was a SIXTH generation Anglican. And C.S. Lewis has been completely rejected by the "modern" ECUSA - friend of mine and I gave our former rector a syllabus for teaching a Sunday School course on Lewis. Even though they were begging for teachers, he turned us down because "I think this parish has gone beyond Lewis." Had it ever.
Don't know what pew Lewis would be parked in today, but given his position on the ordination of women, the Blessed Sacrament, and Purgatory, I'm almost certain it wouldn't be the Church of England as it exists today. Whether -- given his Belfast upbringing -- he could have managed to make his way across the Tiber is one of those questions that just can't be answered.
Flee from the wrath to come.
While I remain extremely perplexed and disappointed by the ordination and ascendancy of the Rt. Rev. V. Gene Robinson to be Bishop of N.H., I am of the hopeful opinion that he is an anomaly. I have always believed that a bishop's first duty is to love his church and, palpably, that wasn't the case here...however, with the exception of his glorification of his homosexuality and open living arrangement with his male partner, would you have discounted him based solely upon his resume'? I ask this question because, on the face of it, he would have seemed well qualified...and that brings me to my point. There have been other bishops and church leadership engaged in secret affairs and trysts with parishioners who are yet regarded as real Christian movers and shakers by their flocks. If you are fifth generation Anglican/Episcopalian then you should also know that sin, as taught by the church, is a matter of "black or white" in the eyes of God--meaning that no sin is greater than another (save blasphemy of the Holy Spirit-- or atheism). That means that a priest or bishop engaged in the sin of lust for a member of his church would be as guilty as Robinson in the eyes of God. The difference perhaps, though, is that Robinson shows little inclination of wanting to repent hence my revulsion of his election and current office (I believe him to be overwhelmed by hubris and the fact that he wants to be "Jackie" not "Gene" Robinson in making a statement). Nonetheless, I refuse to let him drive me from my religious heritage and I cannot imagine why a "fifth generation" anglican would allow it to happen?
On the matter of "stealing parishes" well, I can't entirely agree because both you and I know that under church canonical law that the property belongs to the diocese bishop, not the members.
I wish Robinson WERE an anomaly. Have you read the PB's recent speech at Union Theological? She is out in Hindu left field somewhere, and she and her buddies are running the show. Many parishes have already been sued at the insistence of the national church's chancellor. And those who are in orthodox parishes with an apostate bishop are in a serious jam -- there are far more apostate bishops than orthodox ones. The situation has been developing for years, but unfortunately Bp. Robinson is simply the most visible manifestation of rot throughout the church.
It sounds as though you're one of the folks who figure that as long as their parish is all right, everything's o.k.
It's not, as you will discover when you try to find a new rector. Our new rector said that anybody who disagreed with the MDGs or the idea that the "Holy Spirit was doing a new thing" or the consecration of Robinson was not only wrong, but EVIL. At that point, we shook the dust from our sandals. Buildings and graveyards and past donations are not worth listening to denial of the Trinity and the Bible every Sunday.
Your little analysis of sin being black and white is beyond ridiculous. Hitler did not sin greater than someone who has a single falter in their marriage? That defies absolutely all common sense. The Catholic Church has always taught that their is a hierarchy of sin. Mass murder is certainly worse than say, masturbation. Or perhaps there is no such thing as sexual sin anymore in TEC?
The more important point, though is that one cannot minister to a sinner if he does not first repent of his own sin. Gene Robinson's sin is greater than other clerical indiscretions in two ways. It is public which causes scandal. It is unrepentant. He is a textbook example of what the Catholic Church calls a notorious sinner which disqualifies one from receiving communion, much less presiding at communion and much much less serve as a bishop.
Now what is wrong with TEC is that it not only does not condemn the sin, but it now calls a notoriously sinful act holy and blesses it.
This is heresy. TEC is apostate to boot in that it no longer proclaims the uniqueness of Christ for salvation.
Heresy and apostasy condemn those in error to eternal damnation. And worse yet, as TEC is organized as if it were a church thus spreading damnation to all those who embrace it.
So, friend, you are imperiling your own soul and taking countless many with you. And, that IS a sin against the Holy Spirit!
BTW, you are fifth generation TEC. So what? are you just there for your ancestry? If I were convince that Rome were wrong, I'd leave even though my ancestors (French) have been Catholic since the 4th Century (approximately 85 to 90 generations).
He might not be parked in any pew. He might be standing in an Orthodox church instead!!!!
His beliefs were 'high' and borderline Catholic anyhow (especially wrt Purgatory). But those childhood teachings are VERY hard to shake . . . he might have wound up a Lutheran of conservative stripe, or he might have settled in a 'breakway' or continuing church.
I admire him for overcoming that reflexive anti-Catholicism as much as he did. For a Belfast child of the 1890s, his tolerance was remarkable anyhow.
Meaning absolutely no insult to my good Orthodox brethren, but a Northern Irish Protestant, English-educated, middle-class Oxford don of the early 20th century would walk stark naked on his hands down Jowett Walk before he would join the Orthodox Church!
MATT 12:31 (subsequent Scripture regarding sin and forgiveness) etc., etc., ...there is no other way to logistically look at it--if ALL SIN can be forgiven, then all sin is the ranked same in the eyes of God. And, yes, Christian philosophy claims that if Hitler, at the moment of his death, were to ask forgiveness (and do penitence, IMO) then he, too, would be forgiven.
So, friend, you are imperiling your own soul and taking countless many with you. And, that IS a sin against the Holy Spirit!
ROTFLMAO, oh holier than me! You are a perfect example of a Pharisee--go join the Southern Baptists or Pentecostals there in Georgia; those sects would seem more reflective of your version of salvation.
maryz, I went through the exact same situation *(with ECUSA) 24 years ago, and felt exactly the same ("they left me") then. It's just not easy.
I imagine it would be very hard — the craziness of our liturgy changes in the 60s and 70s (and the apparent insanity of too many priests and bishops!) was awful — disorienting, I think — as in earthquake, even the ground seemed to shift. But at least our doctrine stayed solid (even if you did have to dig for it, beneath the ubiquitous trendiness!).
The Orthodox Church is alive and well in the UK (and in Ireland), and has taken as converts Christians of English, Scottish, and both Northern and Southern Irish background. She recognizes all the major pre-schism Celtic and Anglo-Saxon saints. Given the rites and practices of the pre-schism Church of the British Isles (e.g., married priests, Byzantine-influenced iconography), and given what the Norman clergy did to the Anglo-Saxon and Irish church after the Conquest, these saints would recignize themselves as Orthodox.
If CS Lewis were alive today, and faced with the heresy and just plain weirdness of his Anglican church, he would be faced with the choice of enduring the weirdness or doing some version of the unthinkable, just as many of us are. And if he were indeed a good enough historian, he might recognize the Orthodoxy of the original Church in Great Britain and Ireland, and conclude that he should return to it.
Certainly anything is possible! (if Lewis were alive today, he’d be 109 years old!) ;-)
You might want to read this:
http://www.geocities.com/trvalentine/orthodox/ware_conversion.html
I’ll grant you that His Eminence was born in Somersetshire rather than No. Ireland and is English and not an Orangeman, but, having taken a Double First in Classics as well as reading Theology at Magdalen College, Oxford and lectured at Oxford for 35 years, during which time he converted to Orthodoxy, he is now Metr. Kallistos of Diokleia. He is not known to have walked on his hands naked anywhere. :)
I wonder sometimes if there is anybody else out there who recognizes the significance of spiritual gifts, the discernment of them as opposed to worldly institutions which are made by man, rather than those which are divinely established.
. . . . and that makes all the difference. He's also of a much younger generation than Lewis, born not in the 1890s but in the Hungry 30s, when England's doubts planted in WWI bore horrid fruit.
The splendid insularity and suspicion of the "other" inherent in a late 19th century/early 20th century Englishman pales beside the distillation of the same in a Church of Ireland Belfaster of the same vintage.
And even in the 1950s everybody His Eminence knew was trying to talk him out of converting!
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