Leaders in the New Anglican Province: Fantasy and Fact

Who are the people who met in Wheaton, Illinois this week to launch a new Anglican Church in North America?

Let me get the fantasy out of the way first. An Episcopalian propaganda minister says:

"Really, they are just anti-Gay."

So, there ya go. As I said in yesterday's post, The Episcopal religion (TEC) is a single issue advocacy group now. It's all about gays, all the time.

Fact is better stated by Stephen Noll:

Most of these leaders were successful parish priests who in a better world would have been bishops in TEC. Most of them, even the Anglo-Catholics, have a strong commitment to church growth and world evangelization. Many of them and their congregations have made hard choices to leave their property behind and start over. They are risk-takers. And above all, they really do believe in the grace of God working through His Church.

A big fact in TEC's decline has been its clergy selection and deployment process. The push has been to ordain people who are politically correct, who speak the jargon, who comfort the folks who like "church" but not Christianity, who are all about "inclusion and tolerance" (e.g. homosexuality), who reassure their people that all religions (and no religion) are of equal value, etc. etc.

Meanwhile, people with years of fruitful work as evangelists, congregational leaders, ministry developers and with other important gifts are pushed to the side, isolated and passed over.

TEC winds up with little clubs of like minded people, their congregations shrinking away by attrition as they huddle with their oh-so-sophisticated priest to be assured of how much more tolerant, intelligent and just all around better they are than all the stupid Christians out there.

TEC's trash is Christ's treasure.

h/ts MCJ and robroy