Posted on 02/17/2007 12:11:55 PM PST by madprof98
A Peachtree City Episcopal Church that decided to break away from its denomination over the ordination of a gay bishop is in a standoff with Atlanta's bishop over who gets the church property.
St. Andrew's in the Pines members voted 145-67 this month to break away from the Episcopal Church and join the Convocation of Anglicans in North America, a missionary branch of the Anglican Church in Nigeria, said David Wardell, the church's senior warden.
Wardell says the Episcopal Church's 2003 decision to ordain an openly gay bishop in a same-sex relationship prompted the decision.
Bishop J. Neil Alexander of the church's Atlanta diocese said that he was saddened by the St. Andrew's decision. In a letter dated Feb. 9, he ordered the church's leadership to turn over all funds to his diocese and return all property.
Wardell said the leadership will try to keep the church building and negotiate a settlement with Alexander.
Both sides are talking, and Wardell conceded that St. Andrew's could lose a legal fight for the church property.
"Georgia law is not favorable to us," Wardell said. "But we'd like to keep out church family together. We're evaluating our options."
Wardell said the Episcopal Church's action regarding gay clergy also is a symptom of a deeper conflict between "traditionalist" and "revisionist" Christians.
"The revisionists say that society determines morality. Traditionalists say that Scripture determines morality," he said.
Money was another factor, Wardell says. He says the church has lost half of its membership since 2003, and members were withholding offerings to protest the Episcopal Church's decision.
Alexander, who planned to meet with St. Andrew's members who wanted to remain in the Episcopal Church, did not deny that he was a "revisionist."
"Those who have studied the New Testament at any depth will know that Jesus was a revisionist of sorts, as was the Apostle Paul, St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther," he said. "I find that comforting company to be in."
St. Andrew's members who called the Episcopal Church's 2003 decision "illegal" were rewriting history, Alexander said.
"However you view recent decisions of the Episcopal Church, they were all done legally and within the frameworks established over two centuries," he said. "The church's recent decisions may in time turn out to be right or wrong, but they cannot be judged as illegal."
Wardell said the church decided to align with CANA because of its adherence to traditional Anglicanism.
The Anglican Church of Nigeria is headed by Bishop Peter Akinola, who has repeatedly compared gay sexual intimacy to people having sex with baboons and has supported a Nigerian law that sentences sexually active homosexuals to five years in jail.
Wardell said St. Andrew's had no theological concerns about aligning with Akinola.
"We haven't really got into that part," he said.
"The thing about CANA is that they don't dictate anything like that to us. They just want us to have traditional Anglican worship," he said.
Lucifer could be described as "a revisionist of sorts" too.
The Chicago Tribune has a story today on how the world Anglican community, led by the "southern" group of African and South Asian leaders is also refusing communion with the non-believers leading the American Episcolpal church.
So obviously, the believers left in the American Episcopal church should claim that they and the property are part of the world Anglican community.
More on the Anglican church in Peachtree City, GA.
Traditional Anglican ping, continued in memory of its founder Arlin Adams. "However you view recent decisions of the Episcopal Church, they were all done legally and within the frameworks established over two centuries," he said. "The church's recent decisions may in time turn out to be right or wrong, but they cannot be judged as illegal."
But I thought Christ died to free us from death, the result of our inherited sinful nature. Bp. Alexander, you sound just like a modern-day version of the Pharisees from Matthew 23 and Luke 6:13-15 (the "whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men's bones and everything unclean").
"Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the kingdom of heaven in men's faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to." (Matthew 23:13, NIV)
Prayers for the folks at St. Andrews-in-the-Pines in Atlanta.
Great Quote. It really and clearly sums it all up.
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