Pondering in my heart: Reflections on personal experiences of ECUSA, six years ago: Bishop Harold Miller - Church of Ireland
Wednesday September 12th 2007
by Bishop Harold Miller
Bishop of Down and Dromore, Church of Ireland.

From The Church of Ireland Gazette

I should probably have said all of this six years ago, when I had just returned from being in the United States on Sabbatical, but it all seemed very subjective. What I noticed then were several trends in the Episcopal Church in the USA which have probably become more pronounced over the intervening years. Some, if not all, of these first-hand but subjective observations bring into focus key issues which are at the heart of the new ways of understanding the faith in The Episcopal Church today. These highlight the fact that the divisions we are experiencing in the Anglican Communion are not simply to do with sexuality. I write about these because it is important to note that there really is the beginning of a new kind of religion in parts of The Episcopal Church - a religion which not only re-interprets the traditional central tenets of the Christian faith, but which in fact has the potential to jettison many of them altogether.

My first observation six years ago was the gradual replacement of the word ‘Lord’ in reference to Jesus Christ. There was a perceptible change as I travelled across from the east coast to the west, from the traditional: ‘The Lord be with you’ in the liturgy, to the revised version, ‘God be with you’, and eventually, on the west coast ‘God is in you….and also in you’! The reason for the change is relatively obvious: ‘Lord’ is not only male, it is also perceived as authoritarian. But there is a great seriousness about a simplistic removal of the word, which would eventually preclude rather than necessitating the basic early Christian declaration of faith ‘Jesus Christ is Lord’ - the very declaration which all will make when every knee bows and every tongue confesses him.
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