By Rob Kerby
The headlines coming out of the Episcopal Church’s annual U.S. convention are stunning — endorsement of cross-dressing clergy, blessing same-sex marriage, the sale of their headquarters since they can’t afford to maintain it.
The American branch of the Church of England, founded when the Vatican balked at permitting King Henry VIII to continue annulling marriages to any wife who failed to bear him sons, is in trouble.
Somehow slipping out of the headlines is a harsh reality that the denomination has been deserted in droves by an angry or ambivalent membership. Six prominent bishops are ready to take their large dioceses out of the American church and align with conservative Anglican groups in Africa and South America.
“An interesting moment came at a press conference on Saturday,” reports convention attendee David Virtue, “when I asked Bonnie Anderson, president of the House of Deputies, if she saw the irony in that the House of Deputies would like to see the Church Center at 815 2nd Avenue in New York sold (it has a $37.5 million mortgage debt and needs $8.5 million to maintain yearly) while at the same time the national church spent $18 million litigating for properties, many of which will lie fallow at the end of the day.”
This is no longer George Washington’s Episcopal Church – in 1776 the largest denomination in the rebellious British colonies. Membership has dropped so dramatically that today there are 20 times more Baptists than Episcopalians.
Read more at http://theaquilareport.com/why-is-the-episcopal-church-near-collapse/
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In terms of demographic and population trends the PCUSA is about 5 to 7 years behind where the ECUSA finds itself now. Theological traditionalists and conservatives will always say it is a theological drift, apostasy and simply a slide into pagan-godlessness. While all true, does not really explain the full reasons for the slow motion collapse of the structure.
The root goes to the matters of decades of poor to ineffective leadership, feckless church management policies, and simply an arrogance of power and cultural elitism. As witnessed by the bloody and very expensive fights over church property and assets. Finding security in legalisms and polity, vice the grace and blessings of faith and the Holy Spirit. An object lesson for the OGA and Detroit as they seek to impose some similar programs and policies on matters such as Board of Pensions and Per Capita. The lesson for the PCUSA as well as the ECUSA, pride does go before the fall. And fall they will.