Posted on 12/08/2007 4:08:01 PM PST by Zakeet
FRESNO, California (Reuters) - An entire California diocese of the U.S. Episcopal Church voted to secede on Saturday in a historic split after years of disagreement over the church's expanding support for gay and women's rights.
Clergy and lay representatives of the Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin, based in Fresno in central California, voted to leave the church, which has been in turmoil since 2003 when U.S. Episcopalians consecrated their first openly gay bishop.
"We've seen a miracle here today," Bishop John-David Schofield said after the vote. "We are already outside the jurisdiction of the Episcopal Church."
The head of the U.S. Episcopal Church, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, said the church had received word of the decision "with sadness."
"We deeply regret their unwillingness or inability to live within the historical Anglican understanding of comprehensiveness," she said in a statement.
There are about 2.4 million members of the Episcopal Church, the U.S. branch of the 77-million-member global Anglican Communion, as the worldwide church is called.
Delegates voted 173-22 for secession, far more than the two-thirds majority needed.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
Wherever you have a church, you have sinners. All you can hope for is an institutional response that tries to engage in proactive prevention, as well as prompt removal and discipline of offenders.
I think that's what the Catholic Church has tried to do. We left the Episcopalians in 2003, and before we joined the Catholic Church I investigated this issue thoroughly, because like you I was very concerned by what I had read and heard.
The apostates who have seized control of the Episcopal Church of the U.S.A (ECUSA)are Godless Communists. Their embrace of buggery and feminism are merely symptoms of a much larger and more serious rot that has infested the Church. To be sure, we do not want our Priests preying on Boy Scouts and young girls, but as a matter of faith, we refuse to accept secular humanism and this is what we have been told we must do. These people hate God, they hate the U.S. and they expect that the congregations of normal people should support and subsidize their beliefs and lifestyles.
Hoorah for this diocese. Those other dioceses, if given a free choice, would do likewise. And for those Methodists and Presbyterians who are watching all of this: beware, you are next.
Gee, it’s starting to look as though I might be able to go back to an Episcopal church someday. Though I guess that even with secession, they will still be pretty liberal. But perhaps somewhere out there is an Episcopal church that isn’t too liberal. I can dream, can’t I?
I recall my Granma being up set when the Presbyterians sent money to the Angela Davis defense fund. It is like the liberals in New York City were completely disconnected from the folks out in the country.
Ya got queers, ya ain’t got church!
And we deeply regret the Episcopal Church's decision to live outside Biblical teaching. Good for this brave diocese.
Yeah, Bishop Schori, forget God's law and teachings. The "historical Anglican understanding of comprehensiveness", whatever that is, is much more important. /s
There have been plenty of homo scandals and pedophilia in the Episcopal Church. It just hasn’t gotten the press of the Catholic Church, partly because TEC has moved more aggressively against these problems to limit their financial liabilities. I think there was just recently a scandal involving a priest in the Albany, N.Y. area, for example. The Bishop of Pennsylvania knew his brother, a priest, was a pedophile and never did anything about it. He was just removed from his office.
Leviticus is there and so is Romans.
This really isn’t news. Episcopalians splintered some years ago over the ordination of an openly gay bishop. At the time, many of those Episcopalians aligned with the Anglican church.
I suppose that the only news value here is that it is CALIFORNIA Episcopalians severing ties over gay church issues.
As I understand it the property is held in the name of the diocese. That is why individual churches are being lost in the east back to the diocese.
One thing I have heard of but am unable to confirm is that the retirement system for priests are done at the national level. If so, those breaking away are putting their own financial welfare at risk. If true, we need to step up and support them.
Back in the 70’s here, a Lutheran minister abused a kid. 25 years later the kid sued the church. He ended up with the keys to the church and the congregation disbanded.
“Both sides are prepared for a protracted and expensive legal battle over church assets and other issues.”
....this is where the fight will come IMHO....we Presbyterians have has break-away churches also and technically the Presbytery owns the building, shares of stock and the minister’s retirement fund....
In red coastal county San Diego, 8 parishes in the Episcopal Diocese of San Diego left for the Anglican Comm.
There are other parishes they could also leave.
“Those of us on the coast live under the domination of the lunatic fringe.”
You are INCORRECTLY extrapolating that the entire coast is lunatic, like San Francisco area.
Factually four of the six most southern California counties voted Republican in 2004.
San Diego, Orange, Ventura and San Luis Obispo.
At the same time we plunge into libertine-ism we are imprisoned by out of control puritanism. Insanity.
... this is about control....the controllers hate and fear secessionists because they can’t control them....what the Episcopal Church ought to say to the California diocese is “go in peace”....instead we’ll have a big fight that will cost both sides.......last time the churches split was in the 1850s over slavery....I expect they’ll all split again this time over homosexuality, abortion, gun control and any number of other P.C. causes.
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