If you or your friends in The Episcopal Church are still saying, "I don't see a problem" or "Why are these conservatives picking on the nice gay people?", then you have not been paying attention. And TEC is working actively to keep you from paying attention.
In an excellent investigative piece, blogger Greg Griffith of Stand Firm exposes actual messages from TEC communications personnel, describing their desire to hide controversial information about FALSE TEACHINGS and pagan, anti-Christian clergy.
In the post called Under the Radar... and Over the Cliff, Griffith quotes Jim Naughton, the Communications officer of the Diocese of Washington (DC). Naughton, worrying about news coverage of an Episcopal Priest who is a self-proclaimed Muslim, writes:
I fervently hope that it will be possible to ignore this story until it slips back beneath the radar.
Griffith then lays out specific cases in which TEC clergy were outed as pagans, not by their own superiors but by bloggers and investigative reporters:
May 2004 - The Diocese of Michigan co-sponsors "Together in Faith," a seminar featuring workshops by a witch and a trans-gendered pagan.
October 2004 - In the Diocese of Pennsylvania, ordained Episcopal husband-and-wife priests Bill and Glyn Melnyk (who for years had moonlighted as Druid priests) ran into trouble when 815's Office for Women's Ministry published one of the couple's pagan liturgies. Bill Melnyk, known in Druid circles as "Oakwyse" (and occasionally, though inexplicably, "Bran"), left the Episcopal priesthood soon afterward, to become a full-time Druid priest.
April 2006 - Maury Johnston, an Episcopal lay leader whose articles had been published by a number of prominent blogs on the Episcopal left, turned out to be a very active pagan whose nom de coven was "Shadwynn."
May 2006 - The Episcopal Church Center Bookstore in New York was found to be offering a book titled "Love Spells," which contained "...a host of tried and tested spells, potions, and rituals that will help you find out just how to bring love into your life."
TEC church leaders are not looking out for the good of our souls. They are disciplining (and even suing) church members who hold the Biblical faith that we affirm in Baptism, Confirmation and Ordination vows, and turning a blind eye to clergy and others who publically break and disown those vows.
3 comments:
Thanks so much for posting this on your blog. I for one am fed up with everybody making this a "gay issue" when So Much More is at stake here!
This is news that needs to be spread through our home churches, especially for all those who still have their heads in the sand. Including all who "have been Episcopalian for 40 years and will never leave"!
This just makes me more fervent in my prayers for the House of Bishops when they meet in September.
Whenever I find myself in discussions about TEC, my former church of 58 years, I try to get in early that VGR is almost inconsequential compared to the depth of the other issues. Rattling off a list of things such as this, active support for abortion, Communist/atheist dictatorships of all kinds, and the response is always amazement. If TEC clergy are present, and/or their vestries, they inevitably try to divert the issue. Never underestimate the ability of people to dodge the obligations of their office when their pensions or the next mortgage payment may be at stake.
Alan - very, very, very important point you make. Homosexuals are a sympathy-generating smoke screen for TEC's apostasy from faith in God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit as revealed in the Bible. It is to substitute "more gracious strands" of personal preference (to steal a phrase from the Presiding Bishop) for the grace given us by the death of Jesus on the cross. Too many TEC people are mired in sentimentality and "being nice" (or politically correct) to see that their church is deceiving people with false teaching that will cut them off from salvation.
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