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Don't Ask the Episcopal Church to Repent

DON'T ASK THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH TO REPENT

Commentary

By David W. Virtue

The question that must be asked is this; would anyone worship a God who would not judge the Episcopal Church?

At first blush the question might seem offensive, but as one reflects on the actions of the last half dozen Episcopal Church general conventions - making women's ordination mandatory (leaving no room for conscience); recognition of sexual practices outside of marriage, rites for same sex blessings, openly homoerotic priests living in sexual sin with each other; the consecration of a divorced openly homoerotic bishop to the episcopacy, Wiccan worship of other gods, a not so latent anti-Semitism in the HOB, all coupled with the slow evisceration of its orthodox believers, would such a God be expected to withhold his judgment?

What sort of a God is it that winks and nods at sin? The Bible is full of God's judgment, sometimes swift, sometimes delayed. But it always comes. God's wrath and judgment is sure - but the timing is always His.

And so the question must be asked again, what sort of a God would not judge the Episcopal Church?

How many outright lies, distortions and half truths can be told before God comes in judgment against the Episcopal Church?

And what does judgment look like? Is it lightning bolts from heaven, or the earth opening up and swallowing up disobedient Israelites as in the Book of Exodus or could it be, as we are seeing, the slow withering away of a once proud denomination as it races towards extinction.

All the key indicators are that the latter is what is happening. Louie Crew recently revealed the statistical decline of the Diocese of Newark over the last 10 years, one of the most morally and spiritually corrupt diocese' in the Episcopal Church. It was Jack Spong, as its bishop, who spent his life trying to sacrifice the Christian Faith on the altar of modernity to accommodate it to the world, and now Bishop John Croneberger his successor, has publicly admitted that 40 congregations will close in the next couple of years.

Furthermore 20 published episcopal scholars of the Episcopal Church have left the Episcopal Church not because they no longer believe in Anglicanism but because they do. The latest departure being Dr. David Sumner, author, journalist and professor who left for the Episcopal last year for the Antiochean Orthodox Church.

The average age of the average Episcopalian is now in the mid 60s and the average size of the average parish is 77, and all the money, Trust Funds, mission talk, public relations programs for bringing people into the church, while pushing pansexuality is failing. God will not let it grow because divine judgment has already been passed on the Episcopal
Church.

Furthermore we should not ask the church to repent because it would only slow the inevitable process of God's judgment. What we need is clarity, no more waffling, no more "conversations" and endless "process", no more HOB meetings that end up with benign statements falsely proclaiming a unity that does not exist.

And such repentance, if it were to happen, would be phony to begin with. It would not be real. At the most it would only be regret or a fey apology for hurting God's feelings, but it would not be real repentance. Frank Griswold has made sure of that. It is not in his repertoire of pluriform truths. He no more likes talk of repentance than he could stand the bloody gore of Mel Gibson's movie, The Passion of the Christ.

No, we must no longer ask the Episcopal Church to repent it will only delay the inevitable. We want the Episcopal Church to continue on its path, keep revealing its true mind, its real intentions, its real beliefs, but under no circumstances must it repent.

We urge the Episcopal Church to formally adopt Jack Spong's 12 theses it is the logical thing to do, at the same time formally reject the creeds, the Lambeth Quadrilateral and the 39 Articles of Faith as they have already done in rejecting the resolution put up by Quincy Bishop Keith Ackerman's resolution that asked the HOB to affirm what they had sworn too when consecrated.

So we strongly urge a public burning of all works by Cranmer, Hooker, Ryle, 1662 and 1928 Prayer Books, while accepting Women's Ministries experimental liturgies as normative and morph the bread and wine into twinkies and apple juice, adopt Wiccan practices as a formal theological statement, but never, I repeat never, call the church to repent.

And to make sure that Griswold's theological DNA continues, urge the HOB to elect Pennsylvania Bishop Charles Bennison to replace Griswold when he retires, where he can reiterate that Jesus was a sinner who forgave himself and repeat that the growth of the Anglican church in Africa is like the growth of the Nazi Party. When elected he can publicly renounce the few remaining doctrines of the church that have not already been renounced and that he can no longer believe and then pass a resolution demanding that his Visigoth Rite now be made normative for all future marriages for all variety of sexual couplings undertaken in all churches. Then make it mandatory. Also pass resolutions making inclusivity and diversity formal statements of the new religious order.

And finally, any bishop who calls on the church to repent shall face formal presentment charges which will go forward to the Title IV Review Committee as a bishop who violated the unity of the church, and after a trial where he will automatically be found guilty that aforesaid bishop will be cast into outer darkness there to weep, wail and gnash his teeth for all eternity without a pension.

But under no circumstances must the church repent it would be a tsunami shock to the system as to cause it, like Jericho, to fall to the ground never to rise again. And that would be unthinkable.

END

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