In 300 years of American Episcopal Church history, there has never been a single sign outside an Episcopal Church in the U.S. reading; "Gays not Welcome...go join the Metropolitan Community Church." You never will see one. When an Episcopal Church announces it is an "inclusive" or "rainbow church," what it is actually saying is that this parish will tolerate non-celibate homosexual relationships which is contrary to Holy Scripture, The Prayer Book, tradition and history. If a parish does not wave the flag of inclusivity, it is automatically assumed to be filled with bigots, hate-mongers, homophobes and fundamentalists. This is an outrageous lie.

Just look at what is happening in the Diocese of Colorado. A highly successful evangelical rector, with seventeen years of experience, at a church of 2,500 who has preached a clear unequivocal gospel all those years, was given an eviction notice by his bishop on grounds so thin you could skip communion wafers across a baptismal font. The Bishop, Robert O'Neill, has no more ability to build a church of that size with his "gospel" of inclusion than Jack Spong could build a diocese. In point of fact, the Diocese of Newark is falling apart so fast, and parish giving is declining so rapidly, it cannot pay its assessment to the national church!

Fr. Don Armstrong was temporarily inhibited, but he refused to roll over to the revisionist bishop. Eighty days later, when nothing had come up on the financial radar screen, (just a lot of accusations), he rode back into his church like General George Patton claiming the church he built, for Christ and His kingdom, the bishop be damned.

Such cases of ecclesiastical testosterone are rare. Most orthodox priests give up without a fight, turn the parish over to the bishop and walk away.

In some cases, where real estate law is on their side, as it is in California, parishes have successfully fought Bishop J. Jon Bruno, kept their parishes and marched on, but not before they were repeatedly sued by the diocese and the bishop with the help of the national church.

Among the exceptions, outside of California, is Fr. David L. Moyer of Church of the Church of the Good Shepherd, Rosemont, PA who refused to roll over to Charles E. Bennison, Moyer then turned the tables on the bishop and sued him for emotional distress and fraud. He is still in his parish and Bennison awaits trial before both ecclesiastic and civil authorities. Another parish in that diocese, St. James the Less, lost in a court battle, but it was a pyrrhic victory for Bennison, who got an empty cathedral-like church which he had to close. Now he must pay for maintenance and upkeep of the place.

The Bennison family has a penchant for spending other people's money. The Bennison father, also named Charles, spent over $2 million to build a cathedral in Portage, a suburb of Kalamazoo in The Diocese of Western Michigan which is now being sold off for less than the building price because the lesbian dean can't attract a new generation of Episcopalians. Hardly a surprise.

At St. Mark's cathedral atop Capitol Hill in Seattle, two women priests and an arts administrator have been severed from the staff, according to a recent newspaper report. The Lenten shake-up by Dean Robert Taylor resulted from a budget shortfall at the Episcopal cathedral. No one would dare suggest that Taylor's (who is paid $175,000 a year!) being a homosexual, living with his partner, has anything to do with fleeing parishioners and their money. This is not about pruning towards greater growth. These cathedrals are symbols of The Episcopal Church's demise.

In the Diocese of Florida, twenty-one congregations with thirty-nine clergy have fled a pseudo-conservative bishop for the "sin" of wanting to practice their sacred religion free of the revisionist encumbrances of a theologically bankrupt bishop. The bishop thinks he has won, but the truth is he has little left but a handful of small barely sustainable parishes and mission churches, that will, wither and die within a decade. No gospel, no growth.

More financially viable liberal dioceses, like Connecticut, can survive for much longer, even without the support of large conservative churches, six of which no longer recognize the bishop's ecclesiastic authority.

The Northeast corridor is rich with aging, geriatric Episcopalians. It is no wonder that when the Archbishop of Canterbury made one of his infrequent visits to this country he got a large check from this diocese at a fund-raising banquet earmarked for Episcopal political sharpies in the U.N.

In the Diocese of Massachusetts two parishes and their priests got their heads handed to them by Bishop Tom Shaw. They have moved on and started new evangelical Anglican parishes which are thriving, as a result. God will not see his people totally destroyed. They may have to go through difficult waters to arrive at the Promised Land of spiritual sanity. Suffering is a part of the total picture. No one ever said it would be a cakewalk.

In Canada, this reporter has watched for years, the slow, painful migration of faithful priests in the Diocese of New Westminster who have suffered under THE most bullying bishop in the Canadian Anglican Church - The Rt. Rev. Michael Ingham. These faithful priests have suffered public humiliation, ostracism, financial loss, an unsympathetic liberal media and scornful liberal priests who have accused them of being schismatic. All they want to do is uphold the faith once delivered to the saints. They were not permitted to do so. They left. Slowly but surely they are rebuilding their churches and personal lives. They will reap what they sow. They will reap a harvest of souls for the kingdom.

The question must be asked, politely but firmly, do you think that the AMiA or CANA would even exist if orthodox priests and parishes felt safe in The Episcopal Church? The answer has to be a resounding "NO!". As one retired orthodox Episcopal bishop once said to me, "Where are these fleeing parishes going to go to, they NEED a place..." and so the Anglican Mission in America was born.

Don't blame the messengers. The fault lies squarely in the court of the Episcopal magi.

Some priests believe the current crisis in the Anglican Communion is all about power, not sexuality. The Rev. Michael Mayor, rector of All Saints Episcopal Church in Salt Lake City, believes that, and he blames "a power grab by one faction" of the primates, namely Nigerian Primate Peter Akinola, the rest of the African primates and perhaps Southeast Asia and the Southern Cone primates, though he doesn't name the latter two. The inference is clear.

According to Mayor, "The communion is a coalition of 38 independent churches which have a common heritage with the Church of England. Each of those churches over the past 250 years has developed independently in their own cultural context, which has created within Anglicanism a rich diversity unlike any other worldwide church." What he doesn't say is that the Communion has had a common body of truth enshrined first in Holy Scripture and then in the Book of Common Prayer, which includes three creeds and more!

Mayor talks about "unity in diversity" as a principle called the Via Media - "the middle way." For 400 years Anglicans have agreed that what is essential is not a unity of thought, but a healthy respect for all points of view balanced with generally agreed-upon forms of worship and a commitment to God-given reason, he writes.

The true meaning of Via Media never held that pan sexuality or the "pluriform truths" of a Frank Griswold or a Charles Bennison, (the latter has publicly denied the faith) could be held in tension. In other words, apostasy and orthodoxy were never envisaged as living in the same liturgical or ecclesiastic bed with one another. That is a misreading of Via Media.

As a result, dissenting parishes and priests who don't believe what their bishops are now selling them are being accused of being schismatic. It is the bishops, by failure to uphold the faith, who are being schismatic. In order to keep the reins on their parishes and priests, they exercise a feudal power unknown since the Middle Ages!

To cap this insanity, the Episcopal Church's House of Bishops at Camp Allen presented a firm 'nyet' to the Primates deadline and the Archbishop of Canterbury, arguing that dialogue and conversation within the Anglican Communion was the only way forward. After repudiating the Tanzania demands the U.S. bishops had the gall to say they wanted to stay in communion with Canterbury while exercising their autonomy and resetting the terms of debate!

That is like an 18-year old living at home, demanding to be allowed the family car, to smoke pot, to sleep with whomever in his room, to drink and stay out until 2am, to snub his parents demands that he obey household rules, and ignoring the fact that it is their home, not his. He must live by their principles and rules, not his own. If he cannot, he should leave and live elsewhere.

There is no "middle way" in this household and there is no middle way in Anglicanism for the kind of theological and moral misbehavior going on at the present time and what the majority of the HoB are forcing down orthodox throats.

To argue, as liberals do, that it is just too easy to walk away from people with whom we disagree, rather than to do the hard work of living with our differences, begs the question, who has walked away from whom? The orthodox argue they have never moved; it is the liberals and revisionists who have moved away from the faith. If they want "unity in diversity" then they need to return to the table, repentant of their actions. They are not willing to do that. To make their point they are now turning on the handful of orthodox priests and parishes that remain in their dioceses and are ripping them apart.

The liberals have isolated themselves from the Anglican mainstream. Then they have the gall to turn around and blame the orthodox for the problems they have created!

It is right up there with the movie "For the Bible Tells Me So", concerning homosexuality. The message of the movie was clear: it is orthodox Christians who must overcome their bigotry and reinterpret Scripture to suit practitioners of homoerotic behavior. V. Gene Robinson is right there to help them overcome their alleged homophobia. God help us all.

What we are seeing played out is the Great Liberal Spiritual Death Wish - of theologically inclusive mitered termites eating into the ecclesiastical fabric and dry rot of empty churches. In the beginning was the Word and the Word became Eros, and in the end it consumed us.

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