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The Episcopal Church is in a death spiral. Why is the Episcopal Church near collapse?Prominent bishops are pulling out. Convention-goers were told headquarters had spent $18 million suing local congregations. Members are leaving at a record rate. This is no longer George Washington’s church – once the largest denomination in the colonies. The headlines coming out of the Episcopal Church’s annual U.S. convention are stunning — endorsement of cross-dressing clergy, blessing same-sex marriage, the sale of their headquarters since they can’t afford to maintain it.The American branch of the Church of England, founded when the Vatican balked at permitting King...

At 82, retired and enjoying life, Bishop John Shelby Spong doesn’t have to be the liberal enfant terrible whose pronouncements for gay rights and against traditional dogmas once scandalized Christendom. Indeed, many of the views that once turned the Charlotte native and former Episcopal bishop of Newark into a lightning rod are now regarded as so matter-of-fact that they barely occasion much notice: Ordaining gay clergy and blessing same-sex marriages, for example, or having a female presiding bishop, Katharine Jefferts Schori, the first woman elected to lead a national church in the Anglican Communion. On a range of issues, Spong...

The Rev. Katherine Ragsdale will soon become the first female president of Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Openly lesbian, the outgoing chief of a liberal think tank that monitored the Religious Right, and best known for her abortion rights advocacy through the Washington-based Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice (RCRC), Ragsdale maybe the perfect icon for untrammeled liberal Episcopalianism. But a rather vigorous two-year-old abortion sermon by Ragsdale, assertive even by her standards, has overshadowed her recent appointment. "Abortion is a blessing and our work is not done!" she repeatedly exclaimed at a rally in defense of an abortion clinic...

WASHINGTON -- Once a flagship denomination of American mainline Protestantism, the U.S.-based Episcopal Church has for the first time in decades reported membership below two million.Self-reported statistics provided by the denomination this month show that the church has dropped from 2,006,343 members in 2009 to 1,951,907 in 2010, the most recent reporting year. The loss of 54,436 members increases the annual rate of decline from 2 percent to 3 percent, outpacing the most recently reported declines in most other mainline churches. The church's 10-year change in active members has dropped 16 percent.A branch of the otherwise fast-growing 80 million member worldwide...

When the Church of the Good Shepherd in Binghamton, N.Y., left the Episcopal Church over disagreements about what the Bible says about sexuality, the congregation offered to pay for the building in which it worshiped. In return the Episcopal Church sued to seize the building, then sold it for a fraction of the price to someone who turned it into a mosque.

Actress Kristin Chenoweth is a self-identifying Christian who has sparked controversy by speaking out about her support of the gay community in an interview with lesbian and gay publication The Advocate. The LBGT publication asked the TV and theater star: "What would you ask people who cite Christianity as their justification for passing laws that discriminate against people?" Chenoweth replied, "I would ask, 'What would Jesus do?' It sounds so cliché and Pollyanna-ish, but I have a feeling if he were on the earth today, he wouldn't be walking around saying, 'You’re going to hell' and 'You're wrong, you're wrong,...