Yesterday, the world's traditionalist Anglicans decided that they have quite had enough of modernist revisionism http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/2219151/Rowan-Williams,-the-Archbishop-of-Canterbury,-sidelined-by-new-global-Anglican-movement.html and have formed their own church within a church.
What the traditionalists have done is exactly what the modernists have done. Decided that they knew best and the current Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rt. Rev. Dr. Rowan Williams has played his fiddle while the Communion burns.
The issues are much more than human sexuality. That is the thrust of it according to the Dinosaur, Drive-By, Mainstream Media. There is so much more.
For the Anglican in the United States, the Episcopal Church, the mindlessness in mind numbing.
Take something as basic as a Christian denomination that rejects it's very purpose? Well, the Episcopal Church does just that. The official party line, if you will, is that Jesus Christ is NOT the only way, the truth and the life. No, not at all. Since at the last general convention, a seemingly innocuous reaffirmation of what it means to be a Christian, the understanding of the basics of the faith was rejected. By a vote, of course. Sort of like the "Jesus Seminar." Picking and choosing what they like or don't like.
And there is the constant changing of the Book Of Common Prayer. The last major revision was in 1979. It was divisive because it brought in contemporary language. And some wanted to jettison the Elizabethan English that had been in place since the founding of the Church of England and the Protestant Episcopal Church. But, the compromise was to have both. That should have been sufficient. But, not to the modernists. Many want "inclusive" language. You know, no He or Him for God. Just God, God and God. And forget those pesky His and Hers. No differentiation of sexes. No, no, no. And to make the Lord's Prayer something of a gobly-gook that one could not say with a straight face.
To the Anglican, the Prayer Book is as important as the Holy Bible. Unfortunately, some see it the other way around. But the importance can not be brushed away. That is why the radical changes that the modernists would want would make the Episcopal Church unrecognizable in a generation or less.
It is just an overall trend among those of us who, for some inexplicable reason, stay in the Episcopal Church and thus by extension, the Anglican Communion.
But now, we may very well have two leaders. The Archbishop of Canterbury and the head of this new group that wants very much to stay in the Anglican Communion, but is tired of being lectured to by the so-called enlightened modernists.
The numbers, and regret ably that is one of the ways to monitor trends, are not good for the Episcopal Church. Many more traditionalists will leave to join a new province in North America. Some sitting on the fence may look closely at this new grouping. Churches and whole diocese's will leave. It is very possible that when all is said and done, the Episcopal Church may be left with fewer than one million members. Ditto for the Anglican Church in Canada. The Mother Church, The Church of England would be out of existence where it not for the monarchy and the Queen, Elizabeth II, being in charge.
The traditionalists have finally taken the shot across the bow. It is time to see whether Archbishop Williams will respond, or let the bow pierce his heart, and that of the Anglican Communion.
No comments:
Post a Comment