Posted on 07/13/2012 7:09:58 AM PDT by rhema
Its numbers and coffers shrinking, the church votes for pet funerals but offers little to the traditional faithful.
Episcopalians from around the country gathered here this week for their church's 77th triennial General Convention, which ended Thursday. Although other Protestant denominations have national governing councils, the Episcopal Church's triennial gathering stands apart. For starters, it's one of the world's largest such legislative entities, with more than 1,000 members.
General Convention is also notable for its sheer ostentation and carnival atmosphere. For seven straight nights, lavish cocktail parties spilled into pricey steakhouses, where bishops could use their diocesan funds to order bottles of the finest wines.
During the day, legislators in the lower chamber, the House of Deputies, and the upper chamber, the House of Bishops, discussed such weighty topics as whether to develop funeral rites for dogs and cats, and whether to ratify resolutions condemning genetically modified foods. Both were approved by a vote, along with a resolution to "dismantle the effects of the doctrine of discovery," in effect an apology to Native Americans for exposing them to Christianity.
But the party may be over for the Episcopal Church, and so, probably, its experiment with democratic governance. Among the pieces of legislation that came before their convention was a resolution calling for a task force to study transforming the event into a unicameral—that is, a one-house—body. On Wednesday, a resolution to "re-imagine" the church's governing body passed unanimously.
Formally changing the structure of General Convention will most likely formalize the reality that many Episcopalians already know: a church in the grip of executive committees under the direct supervision of the church's secretive and authoritarian presiding bishop, Katharine Jefferts Schori. They now set the agenda and decide well in advance what kind of legislation comes before the two houses.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
The Episcopalians have become heretical apostates. Unfortunately for them and others of their ilk we have no arrived at a time where the Father is going to prune the Vine of all the unfruitful branches.
What Ails the Episcopalians: SIN
God has already provided a 24/7 hotline to Him, and Jesus is the switchboard.
Traditionally, churches ... religions ... teach stories of the Bible and hope to impart a Biblical morality on the congregation.
It seems, in these 'modern' times, people are creating their own 'morality' and desire 'religion' to accept and teach it.
Misguided clergy tend to water down the biblical morality to keep people in the pews ... either for job security, or hoping someone might get some light out of the dark.
I'm an independent, fundamental Baptist and my preacher preaches sin and salvation, heaven and hell, There's no way but by Jesus and heaven forbid! .. women should look like women.
There are a few trees, but the forest is becoming more dense and eclectic.
Man does not want to look in the mirror
It is yet another example of the poison of liberalism. Same reason people leave MSNBC, or why Air America Radio couldn’t cut it (and why PBS would fail without government subsidy). People don’t like it. I sat in the Episcopal pew most of my life, opened my eyes from prayer one day, looked and listened to the other people in the pew... Then said “who are these people?” I didn’t believe what they believed, and they changed the prayers and traditions... And it wasn’t “my” church anymore...it was alien to me. I walked away mumbling “what happened?” Liberalism, whether in government, movies, churches, media, is a poison. It eventually kills its host ... A slow death, painful for those who see what it is and is doing, but like a lethal “feel-good” drug liberals.
When they went against the Bible and started ordaining women, the road this denomination was on took a turn that is reaching the end now with a woman in the lead office.
The Apostles were all men for a reason. Men are to lead the church. Once a denomination throws out that, it will invite all manner of perversion of the true teachings of the Bible.
(I am a woman, btw.)
Therefore:
Lutheran (EL C S*A) Ping!
* as of August 19, AD 2009, a liberal protestant SECT, not part of the holy, catholic and apostolic CHURCH.
Be rooted in Christ!
In the 1940’s theologian H. Richard Niebuhr indicted liberal Protestantism for teaching “a God without wrath who brings humans without sin into a kingdom without judgment through a Christ without a cross.”
Some other wisdom, ancient and modern:
“A preaching that does not point out sin is not the preaching of the gospel. A preaching that makes sinners feel good, so that they become entrenched in their sinful state, betrays the gospel’s call. A preaching that awakens, a preaching that enlightens - as when a light turned on awakens and of course annoys a sleeper - that is the preaching of Christ, calling: Wake up! Be converted!”
by Oscar Romero. From THE VIOLENCE OF LOVE (Orbis, 2004)
+++++++++++++
“But the practical result of this principle is one on which there is no need of speculating; it works in one unvarying way. When error is admitted into the Church, it will be found that the stages of its progress are always three.
It begins by asking toleration. Its friends say to the majority: You need not be afraid of us; we are few and weak; only let us alone; we shall not disturb the faith of others. The Church has her standards of doctrine; of course we shall never interfere with them; we only ask for ourselves to be spared interference with our private opinions.
Indulged in this for a time, error goes on to assert equal rights. Truth and error are two balancing forces. The Church shall do nothing which looks like deciding between them; that would be partiality. It is bigotry to assert any superior right for the truth. We are to agree to differ and any favoring of the truth, because it is truth, is partisanship. What the friends of truth and error hold in common is fundamental. Anything on which they differ is “ipso facto” non-essential. Anybody who makes account of such a thing is a disturber of the peace of the church. Truth and error are two co-ordinate powers, and the great secret of church-statesmanship is to preserve the balance between them.
From this point error soon goes on to its natural end, which is to assert supremacy. Truth started with tolerating; it comes to be merely tolerated and that only for a time. Error claims a preference for its judgments on all disputed points. It puts men into position, not as at first in spite of their departure from the Church’s faith, but in consequence of it. Their recommendation is that they repudiate that faith, and position is given them to teach others to repudiate it, and make them skillful in combating it.” (pp. 195-196)
From: “THE CONSERVATIVE REFORMATION AND ITS THEOLOGY as represented in the Augsburg Confession and in the history and literature of the Evangelical Lutheran Church” by Charles P. Krauth, D.D. (1871). [Note date]
++++++++
““The poison of heresy is not too dangerous when it is preached only from outside the Church. Many times more perilous is that poison which is gradually introduced into the organism in larger and larger doses by those who, in virtue of their position, should not be poisoners but spiritual physicians.”
Met. Philaret
+++++++
+John Chrysostomos taught that it is not only heretics who are enemies of God, but also those in communion with them. And always remember the words of the Holy Fathers of the 7th Ecumenical Council:
“He that saith not ‘Anathema’ to those in heresy, let him be anathema!”
++++++
Pope Saint Felix III
“Not to oppose error is to approve it; and not to defend truth is to suppress it; and indeed to neglect to confound evil men, when we can do it, is no less a sin than to encourage them.”
+++++
As +Theodore the Studite reminds us:
“Even if one should give away all his possessions in the world, and yet be in communion with heresy, he cannot be a friend of God, but is rather an enemy.”
+++++
“Just as the fishermen hide the hook with bait and covertly hook the fish, similarly, the crafty allies of the heresies cover their evil teachings and corrupt understanding with pietism and hook the more simple, bringing them to spiritual death.”
+Isidore of Pelusium.
+++++
St. Anthony of the Desert:
“There will come a time when people will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad they will say, ‘You are mad; you are not like us.’”
Buggery? Dykes? Lack of moral leadership? Syncretism? Greed?
Romans 1:27
And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.
1Cor 14:34-35
34Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law. 35 And if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church.
1Tim 2:12-15
12But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. 13 For Adam was first formed, then Eve. 14 And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression. 15 Notwithstanding she shall be saved in childbearing, if they continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety.
Anglican Church in North America
Lutheran bodies list by order of size and age
Lutheran Church Missouri Synod
Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ
North American Lutheran Church
Not just the Church. Krauth (1871) seems to have outlined accurately the steps used by “gay liberation” in the political world starting a century later.
B I N G O !
He was truly prophetic.
You are so right. Liberalism kills every host they infect. They are poisonous parasites. Unfortunately, they also kill whole societies. They must be stamped out and forced back into tiny enclaves. This could take a 100 years but the process needs to begin and continue relentless until they are totally marginalized and colleges teach courses on the evils of socialism and Marxism as a course requirment.
I guess if that continues, and to avoid confusion with the AME Church, they could call themselves the African Non-Methodist Episcopal Church.
Please include WELS on your list.
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