[Cincinatus]

You're still missing my point. The vast majority of Episcopal clergy believe in the Bible exactly as this guy does. Should they not also be removed, as you advocate for Robinson? And if so, is not his homosexuality then irrelevant?

[governsleastgovernsbest]

I'm not Episcopalian, and am not aware of how the majority of Episcopal clergy believe. But if they see the Bible as man-made and open to "modern" interpretation, then I would think that Episcopalians should call for their removal.

[Wilhelm Tell]

You're still missing my point. The vast majority of Episcopal clergy believe in the Bible exactly as this guy does. Should they not also be removed, as you advocate for Robinson? And if so, is not his homosexuality then irrelevant?

I think you have identified the bigger issue. They have rejected the Word and the Lordship of Christ -- everything follows from this.

[CatoRenasci]

Exactly. I daresay one would be hard-pressed to find any significant number of Episcopal clergy or laity (or in any mainline Protestant denomination for that matter) that believes in the inerrancy of the Bible. There is probably no more clear line dividing the traditional mainline Protestant denominations (Episcopal, Congregational (United Church of Christ), Presbyterian, Lutheran (ELCA)) from what they term fundamentalist denominations, beginning with the almost mainstream Methodists and Baptists, and moving on to the right through the Lutheran (Missouri Synod) towards the various evangelical churches, where many people still think (as one mainliner puts it) 'every jot and tittle of the Authorized Version (King James) is literally true.'

The mainliners have been Biblical relativists to one degree or another since the early 19th century, with the development of philology and the 'higher criticism'. Their clergy gave up on King James before the end of the 19th Century with the American Standard revision and continued with the Revised Standard by the mid-20th century. Many mainliners, the more conservative ones, believe the Bible to have been divinely inspired, but subject to the ministrations of human scribes, and hence not possibly inerrant. Others just think the Bible is how the Jews and early Christians decided (quite consiously as humans) to tell their stories, and given the machinations in the first four centuries AD over what would and would not make the final cut of the Canon, quite subject to error and politics.

In mainstream educated thought, the view of the Bible as literally true has not been respectable since 1925, when Clarence Darrow made such a fool of William Jennings Bryan.