Each is throwing out enough chips on the table in the hope that the other will fold so they can take the pot.

The bishop tossed out the first card by demanding to see the church's financial records and declaring the parish off limits to the evangelical priest.

Armstrong waited nearly ninety days before he raised the stakes saying the bishop's grab for power and financial books was a phony excuse to take his parish from him because Armstrong had publicly and privately disagreed with the liberal bishop for his views on the Christian faith and morality.

The bishop raised the stakes again by extending the inhibition another ninety days, hoping perhaps to use the time to wear down the vestry, put in his own man and vestry and change the church's direction.

Before he could do that, Armstrong declared his and his parish's independence from the diocese and TEC by joining another Anglican jurisdiction, CANA. At the same time he declared there was a perfectly good explanation for and defied the bishop to show his hand. Then he moved right back into his office defying the bishop to make his move.

Bishop O'Neill then filed presentment charges against Armstrong. Armstrong counter moved by filing suits in the courts to protect the church's property from the bishop and diocese.

Millions of dollars worth of chips [in property values] are now on the table. This story would be the substance of a novel if it wasn't for the human tragedy that is unfolding. This drama has all the feel of a "Show down at the Colorado Corral". On one side is the ecclesiastical firepower of a bishop who claims absolute authority over the church and its property based on a canon passed more than 25 years ago. On the other side is a "troublesome" priest who has declared that the "emperor" bishop has no ecclesiastical clothes worth wearing, declared himself independent of the bishop, and joined himself to a bishop with whom he shares a common Apostolic and biblical faith.

It is a story that will make a chapter in future history books written about the slow but inevitable demise of the American Episcopal Church as it comes unraveled over the loss of Scriptural authority, sodomy and theological promiscuity marked by the passage of resolution B001 and Spong's Twelve Theses with its rejection of Holy Scripture as normative for faith and morals.

Now it will take the civil courts to declare who has the best hand as neither side is remotely interested in backing down.

There is intrigue and more in this drama as it plays out in the media and as stories race around the world through cyber space.

A close friend of Fr. Armstrong's is the theologian priest, Dr. Ephraim Radner who heads a small parish in Pueblo in the Diocese of Colorado. Though orthodox, he has not fought the bishop publicly, preferring instead a team player approach on the Episcopal stage, more content to writing papers exposing the weak theological flank of the church, but going no further.

Radner's wife, who is also a priest and goes by the name of Annette Brownlee, was a member of the Standing Committee in Colorado. She resigned two days before Armstrong's presentment, apparently because of the bishop's failure to support his clergy, being himself more interested in defeating his conservative clergy than in being their pastor.

That Armstrong has the vast majority of the church on his side is no surprise. He has built the church up over the nearly twenty years he has been ministering there, winning the hearts, minds and loyalty of the faithful, making new converts to Christ each year, with a clear apostolic appeal to biblical authority. His gospel has been clear and his stand uncompromising; his liturgical and ecclesiastical loyalty is 100 percent Anglican to Scripture and to the Book of Common Prayer.

Division has brought with it heartbreak and pain. When the vestry announced Armstrong was returning to the pulpit without the bishop's authorization, the inevitable split occurred among the faithful. Some went with the church's two therapeutic style associate clergy to set up shop elsewhere, but most of those departing the parish (A total of about 300 out of 2500) left for other churches not under direct attack from the bishop charged with their protection who is now willing to count them merely collateral damage in his attempt to destroy Armstrong. The devastation at Grace Church is in micro what bishops of dioceses face in macro if they confront Ms. Katharine Jefferts Schori, primate of the Episcopal Church.

In divisions of this kind, there is no such thing as good or bad timing. Splits occur when situations become intolerable for priest and parish, sometimes pushed by a revisionist bishop who wants the church's assets that often include multi-million dollar endowments, which the bishop needs to run the diocese. In other cases, the departure is initiated by the priest and parish for whom the consecration of an openly practicing homoerotic priest to the episcopacy is a bridge too far. The nomenclature that the Episcopal Church is now America's foremost 'gay church' is both a mockery of the gospel and an evil they can no longer live with. They choose not to live with it.

It is a risk either way. Where litigation is concerned, the courts have ruled more in favor of the diocese and the national church than the fleeing parish. Only the State of California has been consistent in favor of parishes and priests retaining the right to keep their properties. It is uncertain how things will play out in the civil courts in Colorado. However, contrary to statements by a desperate O'Neill, the parish holds a free and clear title to its own property that predates the diocese.

What has muddied the waters in Colorado is the strange bedfellow of alliances that has emerged as the two sides' war with each other.

The charges, all financially related, have brought out the best and worst in people. Money is the root of all kinds of evil says the apostle James, and it is being trumpeted here as the root cause of the inhibition of the priest. Fr Armstrong believes this is a smokescreen to hide the bishop's real agenda and beliefs; that it is in fact a confrontation of two very different gospels that cannot coexist in the same diocese.

The Steering Committee of an orthodox group calling itself 'The Communion Laity And Clergy Of Colorado (CLC),' of which Fr. Armstrong was a member, found itself with two of its conservative members also being on the bishop's Standing Committee. This conflict of interest forced them to release a statement saying that the Bishop and Standing Committee were being falsely accused of intentionally "crippling, defaming, silencing or otherwise taking over an orthodox priest and parish." They said they were being falsely accused of animus and bias against Fr. Armstrong; nonetheless the two conservative priests on the Standing Committee strongly supported the bishop's presentment against the priest, even though they themselves have voted twice not to hear Armstrong's side of the argument!

Armstrong screamed betrayal, saying the CLC is a group about which he could cast a good deal of doubt, especially concerning a very conflicted Colorado College Professor, Timothy Fuller, who sits on the CLC board. Armstrong wouldn't discuss Fuller when asked, declaring that debates among conservatives only serve the devil's purposes. "What is required in these difficult days is strong people, rightly focused, operating in service to truth, not self-protection-energized by a missionary vision and not stuck in temporal disputes-and that is how I plan to continue to serve Christ in his church."

A local newspaper wondered aloud if a man's enemies might truly be of his own household, but the damage is done. In an effort to ameliorate the situation, Dr. Radner issued a statement saying he wanted to correct the false impression left by the newspaper article defending the integrity of the two Standing Committee members and then offered that the CLC took no position on the presentment itself or on the details surrounding it. "We presume Don to be innocent," he said, and then went on to say that personally he believed "a presentment premature at best." He then offered up that as Armstrong had joined CANA - the Nigerian branch of the Anglican Communion in the U.S. - it was probably a moot point.

One can understand if Armstrong felt that this was nothing short of betrayal by a group of people he thought were his theological friends. Betrayals and cowardice are not new in The Episcopal Church. Many an orthodox priest has rolled over when threats by a revisionist bishop, loss of salary and pension, possible advancement or even a bishopric might be in their crystal ball.

Armstrong is a no nonsense, tough, take-no-prisoners, and non-compromising evangelical. He is made of the right stuff and takes betrayal hard.

His vestry is defending him in these charges of financial chicanery, by inviting in auditors, the IRS, and anyone else who wants to take a look at the books. They and Armstrong will defend the expenditures.

A staunch defender of Armstrong has been vestryman Keith W. Stampher, M.D. When the bishop attacked the vestry, the doctor fired back at the bishop: "Your words, Your Grace, belie a serious disingenuousness and blatant ignorance of our commitment to Christian service, as has been the case for much of these last several months. Your indictment, designed to give basis to your action to remove this vestry, is a lie. That you and the Diocese, without charitable effort of seeking assistance or confirmation our vestry and staff in congenial conversation and mutual endeavor, have sought to unilaterally defame and implicate Father Armstrong in wrongdoing; and that you and your investigators have relied upon the hearsay and invective of a few disenfranchised and disenchanted "goats of the congregation" at Grace Church in your presentment of our rector is apparent and demonstrable."

He then ripped the bishop: "It is one thing to implicate our clergy in a crime, but to include eleven vestry men and women by implication and complicity in an ongoing scheme to defraud our parish of over a million dollars during the last ten to fifteen years of voluntary Christian service is pure vilification and libel."

On May 20 Armstrong's congregation will vote to affiliate with CANA. Armstrong has said that if only a minority votes to leave TEC and join CANA, he will not fight to retain the property. It is a risky but honorable play. Time will tell. The pot will go to the best poker hand.

For Armstrong it will be a public vindication of how he has spent his money as well as his style of ministry. For O'Neill, if he loses, it will be a public humiliation of the first order and the truth that revisionist bishops' truly now have only one agenda - to get rid of faithful orthodox priests in The Episcopal Church.

If he really believes Armstrong is guilty, O'Neill should have gone immediately to the civil courts. He didn't. If he wins, he will get to keep the property but he will lose 90 percent of the congregation and all their offerings. If he loses, he should resign, as it is the only honorable thing to do - but then honor is only to be known among thieves, not among liberal bishops.

END