If the Episcopal Church thinks its Gay bishop is so great, why are they fudging facts about his impact on the church?

You might have heard the trailer for the Angelina Jolie flic, Wanted. She purrs to a recruit for her secret unit, "Kill one, save a thousand."

The Episcopal Church ordained one actively homosexual bishop in 2003. They seem to have said, "Entitle one, lose a few thousand."

At TitusOneNine, commenters have been analyzing TEC's 1997 - 2007 attendance numbers.

An important observation is at comment #33, by our sometime visitor robroy:

I have been looking at this table for a couple of weeks. I just noted that they calculated the 10 year drop between 1997 to 2007 and the four year change between 2003 and 2007. Why didn’t they calculate the five year drop between 2002 and 2007? In the 1996 to 2006 table, they did calculate the 10 and 5 year drops, er, changes. Very strange.

Since the 2006 data is inflated, the 1997 - 2006 change will be not as bleak as the 1997 to 2007 change.

I checked the

membership page and they seem to have gotten the 10 year drop calculations correctly but they again calculate the past 4 year rather than 5 year drop.

By lopping off 2002 from the drop spread, TEC softens the impact of 2003 (the gay bishop consecration). As I pointed out in my first post on Monday, the stats for just South Dakota show a slow, steady decline over 10 years, with a less severe decline using TEC's chosen focus on '03-'07. When you bring 2002 into focus, you see that the most precipitous decline began with 2003.

By the way, the diocese that elected the gay bishop (New Hampshire) lost almost 1,000 Sunday attenders from 2002-07. Even excluding 2002, the loss since his consecration has been 12%.