Anglicans and Their Unwelcome House Guests
John Mark Reynolds
December 22, 2008
Imagine a fan so full of admiration that he takes your name and moves into your house. Your family has always tried to reach out to others and so you allow him to stay with you as an act of kindness.
Weirdly, after this fan moves in he becomes quite critical. He decides that many of your costumes and ways are unworthy of the family name and begins to demand that you change them. Your own children stop coming home, because the interloper has become so obnoxious.
At that point, charity finally exhausted, you demand that he leave. He then barricades himself in his room, which he points out you have called "his room," and refuses to leave. He calls you a false and hateful person who has missed the "spirit of the family." Neighbors who have not followed the situation wonder why you are being so mean to a family member. You simply wish that he would go form his own family and leave you in peace.
This story might help a neutral observer to understand what is happening in American Anglicanism. the rest (h/t anglican Mainstream)
posted by Pat Dague @ 9:02 AM
4 comments
4 Comments:
John Mark Reynolds has done a fine job. There are elements of the Anglican Church including the head of the Episcopal Church in the United States, which have departed from the teaching of the Holy Catholic Church. Within the Christian community there is a great deal of differences, but the Episcopal Church in the United States is teaching what Holy Scripture calls sin as something Holy.
Scott+
John Mark Reynolds' superb article indirectly speaks to one of my great pet peeves, the institutionalist-enablers who foolishly keep extending their stay and the stay of the liberal apostate terrorist hi-jacker by saying to themselves:
"We can't or won't boot the hi-jacker out of the house, after all he's now the boss of the house, and the leader of our Communion neighborhood is sympathetic to the hi-jacker and won't discipline him out of the house, so then we'll stay in the house with the hi-jacker, and satisfy ourselves by interminably writing and occupying ourselves with a toothless Covenant, and congratulate ourselves that we have sufficiently differentiated ourselves by remaining faithfully inside the house as strategists and witnesses for the glory of the Vineyard Master who owns the house, as opposed to those other unworthy piskie-anglicans who left the house . The Master will be so pleased when he returns that we have been so loving in witnessing the hi-jacker commit arson to His house. We couldn't stop it, but at least we could say that we faithfully pleaded with the arsonist as he spilled fuel around the Master's house. Not only that, but we have faithfully fulfilled the Great Commission by calling the unsaved to worship in the same burning house that has the liberal arsonist hi-jacker. Join us! We faithful piskie-anglican 815-Canterbury institutionalists are Ephraim Radner, Christopher Seitz, Kendall Harmon, Sarah Hey, Jackie Bruschi, Jill Woodliff, Rob Eaton, Phil Snyder, Bishop Mark Lawrence, Bishop John Howe, Bishop MacPherson, and all the Communion Partner rectors and bishops, et al."
I thought this a pretty interesting comment to the essay:
Note, by the way, that I'm not hiding behind a pseudonymn. I am an orthodox Lutheran of Swedish heritage who has seen the same pattern develop in my beloved Church of Sweden -- there too, the underlying problem is rejection of Scripture, and the homosexual agenda is simply the second most recent fad to emerge from a trend that began when the socialists took over the state church in the 1920s, and promptly began destroying it from within and without. Today, the "Church" of Sweden is no longer even a Christian church, though it still has a small believing remnant. In the CoS, the 'avant garde' is becoming bored with pushing homosexual agendae and is beginning to move on to radical environmentalism -- just another fad to replace and reject the Faith Once for All Time Delivered to the Saints.
"Not only that, but we[Institutionalist-Enablers] have faithfully fulfilled the Great Commission by calling the unsaved to worship in the same burning house that has the liberal arsonist hi-jacker."
From this thread, ACI writes:
"Commitment to the evangelization and teaching of those who do not follow Christ as Lord and Savior, and service to those in need and distress."
And they wrote this before:
"It is a form of delusion and disobedience to place oneself and ones friends outside the judgment God intends for the health of his church."
So according to ACI, the following commenters are experiencing and promoting a form of delusion and disobedience when they write the following:
#5 Grandmother in SC: "WHY, oh why doesn’t the ACI understand?
Do they really perfer we ALL continue down the path to Hades for the sake of “togetherness”.
In other words, we should not leave til we’re dead, or thrown out?
It breaks my heart, to see the drumbeat of these kind and intelligent folk, trying to keep people in a church that seldom preaches the Gospel of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
Please ACI folks, at least consider the children, it is hardly possible to send/take children to church, and then have to undo the damage done to their souls."
#13 William S: "we would have to constantly buffer our “seekers” and new converts from the very denomination we’re asking them to commit to. How many people have we lost physically because they eventually learned that TEC supports abortion on demand and, at the least, winks at sexual immorality and downplays the role of the Bible in the life of the Church? How many people have we lost spiritually because, as babes in Christ, they learn that the “religion” of those holding the highest offices in the Church conforms more to society’s cafeteria-style religion and excuses the carnal desires the orthodox call these babes in Christ, as well as ourselves, to forsake?
Without a doubt, the churches of the NT had their problems as St. Paul reveals, and ACNA will have its problems, but trying to make converts that come under the umbrella of an organization that looks more like one of the seven churches of Asia Minor (Rev. 2-3) is something I cannot in good conscience do."
#20 Montanan: "I would also second the point made by Grandmother, #5 - we left TEC because we could not keep explaining to our children why doctrine matters but the church (TEC, not the local one) kept violating it. I suppose we could have kept quiet ourselves and been careful never to talk over those issues when the kids were around, but that isn’t our charism. So it was simply better to leave. Children need grounding and teaching, not recurring explanations about why the church works against what they read in Scripture."
#22 State of Limbo: "I find it very difficult on a personal level to live into the Great Commission for the fact that I could not in good conscience bring a new believer into a church in the diocese and believe he/she would receive the needed spiritual nourishment that would help them to mature in their faith."
Also, on the level of educating the children within its congregations, when this has become less of a priority, and the Gospel has become so watered down, how can these children be raised up to be mature Christians? How can they possibly be looked to as the future generation from which will come effective lay leaders and clergy?"
#24 Young Joe from Old OC: "I would be happy to provide a long list of teaching from the early Church Fathers (ante-Nicene, Nicene, post-Nicene) about the need to stand-up to heretical bishops (and those bishops who sanction or provide cover for heretics) and depart from them when they are recalcitrant."
Then we have this recent bit of news:
"Today, after the service and immediately prior to the dismissal, Father Rob Hartley of St. Johns, Clearwater, announced his resignation from The Episcopal Church. The Senior Warden and remainder of the vestry also announced their resignations.
St. John's, Clearwater, was a mission of The Diocese of Upper South Carolina and had experienced steady growth since 2003.
They will be establishing a CANA congregation in North Augusta, SC, with some 60 congregants, and have acquired access to temporary facilities for offices and worship."
To all this, let's simply reiterate what ACI (Radner, Seitz, Turner) writes: "It is a form of delusion and disobedience to place oneself and ones friends outside the judgment God intends for the health of his church."
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