Membership in Episcopal Church plummets

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• http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/04/us/04episcopal.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

  The Schism within the EC is well known to those of us who were raised in the church and are disgusted by its faction that disgraces the entire faith.

• And also all that generation were gathered unto their fathers: and there arose another generation after them, which knew not the LORD, nor yet the works which he had done for Israel.

• Hmmm...a church becomes a welcoming mecca for butt-pirates and sodomites and then loses members? Who could have seen that coming?

• You see... all this BS is the reason why I am not into denominations...

  • Do what I did Kimmy, I became Frisbetarian...We we go you just throw us up on the roof like an old Frisbee....:)

    • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fr3TkOGgeJY

      tried to find your high priest's ecumenical discussion. no joy notso... so here's this 'nstead. :D

• Arians?!? Really?!? Far as I know, the closest modern sect to them are the Jehovah's Witnesses. I'd suspect most Ep.s are closer to Unitarians now, that Jesus was a fine young man with some good ideas who occasionally went off the rails once in a while, and whose best ideas are voiced by John Lennon.

  • And here's the perfect example of how bad it is in the Episcopal Church:

    http://juicyecumenism.com/2013/04/02/bishop-spongs-non-literal-good-friday/

    "Less than a month after sponsoring an event for Virginia Episcopal clergy featuring a speaker who denies both the afterlife and unique divinity of Christ, Bishop Shannon Johnston of the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia has presided over a service featuring a similarly controversial figure.

    "In a Good Friday service at historic St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Richmond, retired Bishop John Shelby Spong decried the Nicene Creed as “a radical distortion of the Gospel of John,” asserted that several of the apostles were “mythological” and declared that Jesus Christ did not die to redeem humanity from its sins."

    • Be fair, Spong was largely regarded as a wack-job in his own day even by the Ep. Church, in large part, just tolerated. It's only more recently, I think, that he's regarded as more mainstream (for them.)

  • Is there a significant difference between a Unitarian and an Arian? Neither believes in the Trinity. People forget that after the Roman Catholic Church dealt with Arianism the Eastern Orthodox Church had its own confrontation, and the reason they confronted it was because they found it to be a drag on membership. It left people apathetic in the long run, just like Episcopalians now. Why go to church and throw money in the collection plate if Jesus is just a really good guy, no different than any other really good guy?

    • Hard to say about Unitarians since they don't really have much of a formal belief system anyway. Arianism, as I say, is much more like the JWs, in that Arius taught that Jesus was a kind of god, but not part and parcel of THE God, in other words, yes, he did reject the Trinity. Some at the time (and since) related his teaching to the words of Christ Himself when He said (in regard to the Law) that "Not one jot or tittle shall pass away." ("Jot" is the KJV's rendition of the Greek letter "iota," which like the English letter "i" is just a small stroke.) Now, even before the doctrine of the Trinity had been formalized, the Church was teaching that Jesus Christ the Son was "of one being" with the Father: Greek word homo-ousias, "same substance" or "same essence." Arius taught that the Son was LIKE the Father, homoi-ousias "similar substance." So the difference between orthodoxy and heresy was quite literally one jot! The extension of this was that the Son was not eternal like the Father but had a beginning in time. Oh, I guess the Mormons have somewhat the same notion, but their theology departs so radically from orthodox Christianity that it's almost apples & oranges time.

      JP, you may be a bit muddled on your chronology. Arianism was settled at the 1st Council of Nicea in 325 AD, which was when the older Apostles' Creed was expanded and clarified into more theological language to emphasise that God was a Triune Being of Three equal Persons in one Godhead, as well as defining the nature of the Holy Spirit as "proceeding" from the Father, in distinction to the Son who is "begotten" of the Father. I don't think Arianism as properly defined resurfaced as a significant movement until more recent times.

      Anyway the point being that there was no "Roman Church" or "Orthodox Church" until after the Great Schism of 1025. Even at the time of the 1st Nicene Council, even those heretics such as Arius were not splitting off and forming their own denominations, they insisted that their teachings were correct doctrine of The Church.

      Final tidbit on the Nicene Creed. Most Protestants, even if they don't specifically recite it as a statement of faith & dogma, accept it, including the idea that the Holy Spirit "proceeds from the Father and the Son." However, the phrase "and the Son," also called the Filioque, was NOT in the original edition and only crept in much later (like 500 years later) starting in Spain. To this day, the Orthodox Churches reject the Filioque as a Roman error, and recite the Creed in its original form.

      • Maybe they weren't called Orthodox yet - maybe it was strictly a geographical distinction. After the Council of Nicea the issue had to be re-settled at a later council... whose name escapes me and I'm too lazy to look it up. (Starts with a "C.") After that, the issue was still not completely settled because the guy who won the debate at Nicea (Althenius? Something like that.) was excommunicated and banished and died in disgrace because the number one advocate for Arianism became the spiritual advisor to Constantine and used his position to oppress his theological opponent. Meanwhile Arian theology was always more accepted in the east and it gradually gained more and more influence until the church hierarchy noticed the drag it created on church membership and decided to wipe it out one last time.

        What's interesting is that Arians moved into Arabia after their disgrace and banishment at Nicea and eventually influenced Mohammad, so Islam is basically little more than a Christian heresy writ large.

• Well, it's obviously a case of market saturation. If you like leftwing causes, there are plenty of places to hang out with like-minded people. You don't need a church. By analogy, if every restaurant on your block is selling crap sandwiches, you're not gonna attract a bunch of new customers by cutting out steaks and selling crap sandwiches instead. It's simple as that.

  • Seems to me that a church supporting leftwing causes, is asking to be ended.
    Leftists are anti-religion, so why would they go to church?

    • The same way liberals are anti-intellectual in their world view and took over the schools. It is about co-opting and then ruining, IMO. I fled the EC a long time ago. I have friends from college (university is owned by 12 EC dioceses) who became episcopal priests. Some do good work but others are simply leftist agitators.

    • "Leftists are anti-religion, so why would they go to church?"

      The answer is simple. To distort and corrupt it.

      If you can make EVERYONE be accepting of sin/aberration of lifestyles then everyone will be TRULY equal and either everyone gets "saved" or everyone gets "damned" equally. It is actually a very evil plan.

    • And that's pretty much how it goes. Evangelical and Pentacostal churches are thriving. Catholics are treading water here in the U.S. but thriving elsewhere (where the bishops lean more conservative, frankly). Meanwhile, mainline Protestant churches here in the U.S. are shrinking. It's sad. When I moved back to Grand Rapids I thought about revisiting the Congregational church I grew up in but when I looked at their website all I saw was crap about diversity and global warming. What am I going to do, go to church and start an argument every Sunday? It's that or shut up and swallow my disgust. Congregationalists are the original Puritans, so we're talking about the foundation of the country for crying out loud. In a similar vein I tried a United Methodist church in Reno for a while but the pastor was so flagrantly leftwing political in every sermon I thought I was going to have a stroke. The attendance was so sparse I suspect he drove anybody to the left of Mao away.