Sarah Hey at Stand Firm has posted a report generated in the Diocese of Minnesota, which frankly admits the terrible decline of the Episcopal Church there. It also seems to have a whif of the idea that Biblical Christian knowledge, spirituality and practice is the only hope for new life...but be sure and read the comments on the Stand Firm thread. Several locals express reservations about the ability of DioMinn (or any TEC entity) to use God's equipment instead of humanly invented vanities.
Hat tip: Fr. David Handy
2 comments:
Today in my World Religions class one of the students said something brilliant: "Baptists believe in the Blood of Jesus and so do Catholics. They just see the Blood under different signs."
It struck me as very profound. The Church is where the Blood of Jesus is recognized and honored. Really makes you wonder about TEC, doesn't it?
Alice,
I don't know anything about your World Religions class, i.e., where it is or who is teaching it. But I agree that the saying is striking and worth pondering. Your doubts about whether TEC would recognize or honor the Blood of Jesus are of course well founded. Another way of putting it might be that "Baptists" (or evangelical Protestants in general) and Catholics agree that there is such a thing as a need for SALVATION and that it comes through the shed Blood of Christ on the Cross. They disagree on just how that salvation is appropriated and on the role of the sacraments and the universal Church in that salvific process, but orthodox Protestants and Catholics agree that Christianity is a religion of redemption and salvation or it is not biblical Christianity at all.
Of course, that is precisely what our liberal foes in TEC (and elsewhere) deny or doubt, or simply fail to understand. They have substituted a false gospel of affirmation of people in their brokenness for the true gospel of salvation and transformation through Christ. But alas, that division between orthodoxy and heresy actually runs through ALL churches in the secular, pluralistic western world these days, even among Southern Baptists and Roman Catholics. Relativism is just in the cultural air we all breathe these days.
The difference is what is the "working theology" of the various churches. Among evangelicals and Catholics, the gospel of salvation through Christ is still the dominant working theology of the vast majority of clergy and key lay leaders. Alas, in TEC and other so-called "mainline" Protestant denominations, that is clearly not so. And our lamentably confused PB is just one of the most blatant in espousing the rampant universalism that is ubiquitous in all the groups associated with the National Council of Churches.
In my experience, universalism is now the rule among TEC clergy, rather than the exception. And ultimately, that is what this whole crisis is about, not human sexuality.
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