Posted on 08/17/2005 4:52:02 PM PDT by sionnsar
[Sigh. MY apologies in advance to the ECUSAn members of the Traditional Anglican Ping List. The article in the comment has really been making its way around the blogworld, and you might as well see it posted by me first. Just remember St. James, Bill Boniface, and Abp. Peter Akinola and understand: the fight for Anglicanism is not over, not by a long shot. The article itself is from Stand Firm in Faith [WV]. --sionnsar]
The crack staff at the West Virginia branch of Stand Firm has compiled a list of some of the wacky things Episcopalians have said over the years.
Many people who support the innovations of the National Episcopal Church, claim that theological differences are simply a matter of interpretation; that both sides believe in and love the Scriptures. This is simply not true! The following public statements are from some leading clerics and theologians who all support ECUSA’s new teachings. Decide for yourself if these people really believe in the Bible or not . . . . Are they even Christian!?!?
Just simply to say that it goes against tradition and the teaching of the church and Scripture does not necessarily make it (homosexual behavior) wrong.
Gene Robinson, openly homosexual Bishop of NH
Washington Post, August 5, 2003
Charles Bennison, shortly after being invested as bishop of the Diocese of Pennsylvania in 1998, told one of his Evangelical parishes that he believed the Episcopal Church should celebrate homosexual marriages. He was asked how he squared this with clear biblical rules against such behavior. The former theology professor at Episcopal Divinity School responded:
Because we wrote the Bible and we can rewrite it. We have rewritten the Bible many times. The text of the Bible is a conveyance of the word of God but is not itself the word of God.
Some of the law needs to be kept, but not all of the law needs to be kept.
Frank T. Griswold, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church
Sermon delivered in Salt Lake City, UT, April 27, 2005
Commenting specifically on Biblical Moral Codes about sexual intimacy
Broadly speaking, the Episcopal Church is in conflict with Scripture. One would have to say that the mind of Christ operative in the church over time has led the church to, in effect, contradict the words of the Gospel.
Frank T. Griswold, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church
Interview with the Philadelphia Inquirer, 1999
At a debate on ECUSA issues held at Calvary Episcopal Church in Washington, DC on February 28, 2004, two leaders of the Episcopal Church homosexual lobbying group, Integrity, were on hand to defend the decisions made at ECUSA’s 2003 General Convention. Here is what they had to say:
There is no Scriptural justification for homosexual behavior or same-sex blessings.
Dr. Louie Crew, Rutgers University Professor
I call such passages (such as Romans 1:18-22) “clobber passages.” Our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters are now living openly in the Church, standing against these passages.
Michael Hopkins, ECUSA priest and former President of Integrity
The question is not what does the Bible say, but what do you believe the Bible is saying?
V. Gene Robinson, openly gay bishop of New Hampshire
Los Angeles Times, April 23, 2004
After quoting Carl Sagan’s theories, disputing the Bible’s claim that Jesus ascended into heaven because Jesus could not travel any faster than the speed of light, which would mean that Jesus would still be somewhere in the solar system beyond Pluto, Michael Ingham, Bishop of the Diocese of New Westminster in Canada closed his 2005 Easter message in the Diocesan Newsletter with the following:
Easter is God's laughter, God's hilarity at our systems and theories and even our serious religion.
NOTE: Under Ingham’s leadership, the Diocese of New Westminster was the first Anglican Diocese in the World to formally approve same-sex blessings.
He (Jesus) acknowledges his own sin. He knows himself to be forgiven.
Charles Bennison, Bishop of Pennsylvania
The Pennsylvania Episcopalian, April 2003, pg B
Of all the promises that God made, perhaps the most lamentable in its failure is the promise to Abraham: 'In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.' A more accurate prediction would have been: 'Shared ancestry won't prevent your claimants from waging endless war on each other and cursing the lands they occupy.'
Tom Ehrich, Episcopal Priest and Syndicated Columnist, March 2005
The death, birth and miracle narratives about Jesus of Nazareth are almost certainly confections that emerged from the collective imagination of late first-century C.E. communities of Jews and Gentiles, which had found common ground in a devotion to the ethical teachings of an itinerant street preacher from Galilee. It was apparently the radically counterculture nature of that teaching – as in “love your enemy” – that set Jesus apart from the countless other street preachers of the time, who may have been something like the first-century version of today’s pundits and talk-show hosts.
The Rev. Harry T. Cook, Rector
St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, Clawson, Michigan
Detroit News, February 21, 2004
Commenting on a recent survey’s findings that, while one-third of Protestant teenagers read the Bible weekly, only eight percent of Episcopal youth do the same:
Are (Protestant teenagers) more likely to be in teen Bible study groups? Well, you are if you’re a Southern Baptist. You’re probably not if you’re an Episcopalian. The Bible is very much present in our tradition, but its not the only thing we look to as authoritative. And that’s what distinguishes us from many Protestant traditions where the Bible is paramount in ethics, in everything, really.
The Rev. Mary June Nestler, Dean
Episcopal Theology School, Claremont, California
August 2004
“I am the way, and the truth and the life. No one comes to God except through me.” The first thing I want you to explore with me is this: I simply refuse to hold the doctrine that there is no access to God except through Jesus. I personally reject the claim that Christianity has the truth and all other religions are in error. . . . I think it is a mistaken view to say Christianity is superior to Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, and Judaism and that Christ is the only way to God and salvation.
The Rev. Dr. George F. Regas, Rector Emeritus
All Saints Episcopal Church, Pasadena, California
April 24, 2005, Guest Sermon at Washington National Cathedral
It should be noted that, Rev. Dr. Regas was the first guest preacher invited to the National Cathedral by its new dean, the Very Rev. Samuel Lloyd, who had been installed as dean of the cathedral on the previous day. The first scripture reading for the Saturday April 23 installation service was from the Holy Koran and the Sunday April 24 service included readings from the Koran, the Torah and also allowed for open communion. It is plain to see the direction in which Rev. Lloyd plans to take “America’s Church.”
EXAMPLES OF GENERALLY ACCEPTED
ECUSA THEOLOGICAL POSITIONS
From John Spong’s (former Bishop of Newark) 12 Theses:
3. The biblical story of the perfect and finished creation from which human beings fell into sin is pre-Darwinian mythology and post-Darwinian nonsense.
4. The virgin birth, understood as literal biology, makes Christ's divinity, as traditionally understood, impossible.
6. The view of the cross as the sacrifice for the sins of the world is a barbarian idea based on primitive concepts of God and must be dismissed.
7. Resurrection is an action of God. Jesus was raised into the meaning of God. It therefore cannot be a physical resuscitation occurring inside human history.
John Bryson Chane, Bishop of Washington, DC who has already published and conducted rites of same-sex blessings, taught, in his Christmas Eve 2003 sermon at the National Cathedral, that Christianity, Judaism and Islam are equivalent in the eyes of God. Here is an excerpt from that sermon.
And what was God thinking . . . when the Angel Gabriel was sent by God to reveal the Law to Moses?
And what was God thinking . . . when the Angel Gabriel was sent by God to reveal the sacred Quran to the prophet Muhammad?
And what was God thinking . . . when the Angel Gabriel was sent by God to reveal the birth of Jesus Christ, the Son of God?
Were these just random acts of association and coincidence or was the Angel Gabriel who appears as the named messenger of God in the Jewish Old Testament, the Christian New Testament Gospels, and the Quran of Islam, really the same miraculous messenger of God who proclaimed to a then emerging religious, global community and to us this morning that we are ALL children of the living God? And as such we are called to acknowledge that as Christians, Jews and Muslims we share a common God and the same divine messenger.
The really sad part about Bishop Chane’s sermon is that Chane insulted all three faiths that he was trying to reconcile. First of all, there is no mention in any Scripture from any faith about the Angel Gabriel talking to Moses. Christians and Jews believe that Moses talked to God Himself on Mt. Sinai. While Islam does in fact claim that the Angel Gabriel revealed the Koran to Mohammed, the Koran itself claims that Jesus is no more than a prophet. If, as Christians believe, the Angel Gabriel really did reveal that Jesus is the Son of God, then the Koran’s claims of being revealed by that same Angel could not be true. If the Koran’s claims about being revealed by the Angel Gabriel are true, then the Bible’s claim about what the Angel Gabriel revealed about Christ cannot be true. In one fell swoop, Bishop Chane managed to insult all three faith communities by casting doubt and/or aspersions on all three.
At ECUSA’s triennial convention in July/August 2003, most of the media information centered on the resolutions that dealt with homosexuality. However, another very important event was the House of Bishops’ refusal to pass Resolution B001. This resolution asked ECUSA to re-affirm basic Christian and Anglican beliefs including the historic creeds and the authority of Scripture. This resolution failed by an overwhelming vote of 84-66 with 8 abstentions. Obviously, the bishops knew that the other resolutions allowing for the blessings of same-sex unions and affirming the election of an openly homosexual man to the episcopate were in conflict with Scripture and 2000 years of church teachings.
OTHER EXAMPLES OF NON-CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY/PRACTICE
The following events and quotes are just plain silly, but, sadly, they are all also real. While some of them may not contradict Scripture directly, they clearly indicate that the theology and worship of the Episcopal Church is no longer consistent with traditional, orthodox Christianity.
The Rev. Kevin Pearson, Rector of San Francisco’s St. John the Evangelist Episcopal Church directs the church choir to chant the Hindu mantra “Om” instead of the Nicene Creed during the Sunday liturgies.
Washington Post, February 22, 2003, Pg B09
Let me be specific. The creeds of the Church were hammered out in ecclesiastical conventions in a very political way. They represent compromise and political bargaining. There were not dictated by God. They do not thus capture divine truth.
John Shelby Spong, Retired Bishop of Newark, June 2003
FACT: ECUSA’s “Gallaher Trust” (Trust #779) annually supports a national pro-abortion rally and march on Washington, DC.
Just because there are millions of conservative Christians who rally around issues like homosexuality, that doesn’t mean they’re right. Adolf Hitler, he says, had many followers as well.
Charles E. Bennison, Bishop of Pennsylvania
National Public Radio Transcript of February 2003 Interview
In the autumn of 2004, ECUSA’s Office of Women’s Ministries posted on the official ECUSA website, a druid pagan rite called, “A Women’s Eucharist: A Celebration of the Divine Feminine.” This liturgy, which included the use of milk, honey and raisin cakes in place of the traditional bread and wine was recommended for use in all Episcopal Churches despite the fact that these symbolic foods are associated with rituals honoring the pagan god Baal and are specifically banned in the Book of Hosea. While the “raisin cake” liturgy was soon removed, the website still recommends and sells books about Sophia, the pagan goddess of wisdom.
At New York’s Cathedral of St. John the Divine, the 1993 St. Francis Day communion service invoked the names of the following gods: Yemanja (an Afro-Brazilian goddess of the sea); Ra (the Egyptian sun god); Ausar (the Egyptian god of life and death – also known as Osiris and the Green Man); and Obatala (the Voodoo “Father of Wisdom”). The celebrant was Episcopal Bishop of New York Richard Grein, but the then dean of the Cathedral, The Very Rev. James Parks Morton, organized the event. Rev. Morton once said:
The language of the “Sacred Earth” has got to become mainline.
In 1979, James Lovelock first proclaimed his “Gaia Theory” from the pulpit of the New York Cathedral
at Rev. Morton’s invitation. (The “Gaia Theory” holds that the earth as a whole is a living, conscious organism.) It should also be noted that other Sunday services at the Cathedral have included Sufi and Lakota ceremonies, and, for the past 25 years, the Cathedral has hosted New York’s Winter and Summer Solstice celebration concerts including secular and pagan music as well as new age symbols.
On April 16, 2005, at Grace Episcopal Church in Syracuse, NY, the Rev. James Knowles, dipped an eagle feather into cedar ashes and brushed the smoke towards worshippers who had gathered to honor a Native American saint, Oakerhater. Oakerhater had been baptized at Grace Church after converting to Christianity in 1878. Knowles asked the crowd to face the four different directions as he read a prayer praising the sun, the moon, the alligator and the turtle. Afterwards, Knowles commented on the use of smoke in the ceremony as:
It’s just a way to recognize cleansing.
In a speech before a pro-choice rally in Colorado on the eve of the 31st anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the Reverend Katherine Ragsdale, an Episcopal priest from Massachusetts, made the following statement referring to medical practitioners who, based on their conscience, refuse to provide abortion services:
We believe in conscience, but if you can't provide the full range (of services), choose another field.
Early embryos remaining after [in vitro fertilization] procedures have ended could morally be donated for embryonic stem cell research.
ECUSA’s Ethics and the New Genetics Task Force
Final report submitted to 2003 General Convention
This report served as the basis for Resolution A014, supporting stem cell research, which GC03 passed.
While dominant society has embraced a binary gender system (male-female), Ms. Mouse believes this is only a construction. Gender is a fluid and mutable category, open to a range of emotion and identity. We cross the boundaries of the traditoinal binary gender system all the time in our daily lives. In short, Ms.
Mouse is a transgendered mouse. She believes that what you look like to others doesn't matter, it's how you identify that counts.
Chapelle (nee Chap) Mouse, January 2005
NOTE: “Ms. Mouse” is a transgendered puppet used to promote chapel activities at Episcopal Divinity School (Cambridge, MA). Ms. Mouse "came out" in a column in Common Fare: The Newsletter of the Episcopal Divinity School, where she was promoting the upcoming Queer Week at the school.
Traditional Anglican ping, continued in memory of its founder Arlin Adams. I take back the episode suggestions that I made yesterday for the upcoming "Daniel" tv show. Based on the examples in this post, they were clearly much too traditionalist. The ECUSA has clearly exceeded my abilities in the satire dept.
That would take some doing...
...but I wouldn't say these people are ECUSA just yet.
(Speaking as one who left 22+ years ago? But whether it's a reformed ECUSA or a re-formed Anglican Communion, hope lives on.)
Satire is a dead art. Reality is always ahead, these days.
Oh man. Unpleasant flashback. It's Good Friday, 2004, I'm sitting with my aunt and uncle in (what is now my former) church, and this sweet-looking old retired bishop named Richard Grein is about to give the homily. He promptly launches into a rant againt "The Passion of the Christ", which he sees as simplistic and fundamentalist.
This explains a lot.
I may have been at St. John the Divine for this event. We were there for one St. Frances Feast back in the early 90's. The circus-like atmosphere (plus an infant and a toddler) made it hard to make out all that was said, but as I recall, music was performed by the Paul Winter Consort, there were taped recordings of Whales and Wolves, and many live animals (including at least one elephant) paraded down the central aisle. As I also recall, at the time, they were planning on converting the roof of the cathedral into some sort of greenhouse/bio-preserve.
I didn't feel compelled to return any time soon.
Agreed. In the interim, the more sunlight that can be shone on these pagans and deists, the better!
Wacka-doo!
I was not attending any church at the time, hadn't for decades---I was in the neighborhood visiting a friend who had just moved into a new apartment two blocks away from the cathedral, and we decided to walk over and see the flower gardens. After a while we had a whim to walk inside.
There seemed to be an inordinate number of "other gods" on display. I remember a Buddha, some sort of female fertility figure, a large prayer wheel/dreamcatcher-type construction, and a big rainbow banner that looked like it had been put together by children. There were a lot more objects that I can't remember now. The point is, it all made me very uncomfortable, even back then in my very-irreligious state.
I recall thinking "Well, maybe they're hosting an art exhibit or something" but it just didn't seem like the right place for it. I had been to Catholic churches on occasion, for weddings and funerals, and knew that where they kept their statues of saints was where St. John was displaying...other things...
The circus-like atmosphere (plus an infant and a toddler) made it hard to make out all that was said
But I bet you would have remembered hearing an Episcopal priest invoke Ra and Yemanja and Obatala! LOL
By the way, one of the words used by ret. bishop Grein in reference to the movie was "unnuanced".
Kerry had already used that word to excess, so being the political junkie that I am, that's when I threw down the penalty flag on Grein's entire sermon.
No.
What year was this exactly? That might have been me.
Are you fat and headless? :D
You're too young for that.
Not headless, no. And I prefer "robust" or "bodacious"!
Maybe you're confusing "around the bend" with "over the hill"? Anyway, I plan to come back, eventually.
Possibly. It's still early here...
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