One of our readers who goes by the handle Fr. John, namely Fr. John Roddy, has posted his analysis of the latest news about TEC.
As long as the Episcopal Church had to contend with those in their ranks who opposed their political agenda, they were kept busy ordering their own house. Now they are free to direct their energies outward, and what damage they will do. They will use all of their considerable treasure to eradicate the parishes and dioceses that managed to slip their grasp by "civil rights" and "hate crimes" initiatives. Those of us in the Anglican Continuum will be targeted as well. They have not forgotten us.
You can read the entire piece by clicking here.
13 comments:
For the most part I avoid paranoia and worry but I do believe the left is going to be empowered as society continues to degrade. While many evangelicals are distracted fighting the war on Christmas (and other acts of perceived persecution) real persecution is going to rear its head and we won't be prepared for it. Catholics still have a pretty good memory of the martyrs but our failure to evangelize is hurting us. The best defense is a good offense. The church needs to become almost fanatical in our missions, we need to be prepared for martyrdom. I will stand with my Anglican brothers and sisters and I agree that the TEC and other lefties under the disguise of religion will be coming after you and me.
I heard an ad for a book called "Sinner" which is a story about a day where Christian teaching is made hate speech. I am going to get the book.
Fr John,
Forgive me for commenting over here, but I have a question of you, David and others.
You said "Those of us in the Anglican Continuum will be targeted as well. They have not forgotten us."
Could any of you elaborate on that assertion and, in doing so, touch on two points?
Firstly, I have not lived in the United States for many years, but from what I have learned from commentary on this blog, the continuing movement hardly seems to be on the radar screen for most people there. Perhaps slightly more so for those who usurp the name Anglican, such as the TEC sect, but are we not overrating our importance in people's minds? Do correct me if I am wrong, and please do so with as much information as you can. I would find it most interesting.
The second part of my question is more direct: what actually do you see these people doing to attack us? Again, some specifics would help to give us a head start on preparing our defences.
Albion,
Blessings on your new Mission!
I will respond to your question with real world examples, and a scenario of how I believe TEC will proceed in their crusade.
But now I have to say Mass.
A very fine essay, Fr Roddy!
I must respond here, as I'm too much of a klutz to set up a "google/blogger" identity and can only post anonymously.
I have been around the Continuing Church since the week of St Louis. I remember only too well the nasty vicious unChristian things the agents of PECUSA did to us in the early years: threatening elderly impaired priests with "I'll have your pension stopped," or calling naive laity and threatening them with lawsuits just for using the word "Anglican," or having working priests fired from the secular jobs (that happened to me), or creating obstacles in rezoning land for church building. That sort of stuff was rampant across the country in the first five years of the Continuing Church.
Today TEC (the successor to PECUSA) is an enfeebled toothless tiger, which can inflict injury only on those who should have abandoned it 30 years ago. But that tiger still has claws and should be watched carefully.
Interstingly, just four years ago I encountered a woman with a camera skulking around our church late one afternoon. She said she worked for a realtor (which proved to be true). She did not tell me she was a Vestry-person with the neighboring TEC parish, which I learned upon research. Odd.
The Young Curmudgeon
I am certain that here in Easton there are TEC members on the board of a certain bank, and that they want us our of our location (two blocks from their cathedral). Nine months ago the wicked witch of the west look-a-like (Jefferts-Schori) was in town, and was shown around by the TEC "bishop." I know also that they tried to stop us getting the property in the first place, in 2005. Their archdeacon wrote a nasty letter about people who claim to be Anglican without Canterbury, but the publicity was actually good in its effects- it got people on our side, and made them look small.
I have been more than once informed that judges who ruled for TEC in property disputes had been privately approached by their lawyer friends and had it laid out to them why it would be so much better if they would rule for TEC or the local diocese. This has been especially true in places where judges are elected. And even judges have secret vices which when exposed can cost them their careers.
The recent case of hacking Sarah Palin's e-mail acount as the previous one of Newt Gingrich's telephone conversation should tell all of us just who is actually spying on us and willing to use any information so gained to forward their will to power and control. You might think yourself too small a mouse for them to be interested but that will not be so if they can use anything to ruin and wreck a continueing congreation or cleric.
I think the Episcopal Church is being given too much credit here. As a twentysomething, the revisionism of TEC today seems like a largely Baby Boomer phenomenon--the result of people who grew up when the church was a stronger cultural institution and who felt compelled to import their '60s/'70s radicalism into it as into other areas of society. The younger generations may be increasingly unchurched, but in my experience they at least have the honesty to reject Christianity outright rather than to try to reshape it in their own image. TEC may be able to do a lot of damage in the next 20 years or so, but they will have mostly died out within a generation.
The question, then, is what kind of Christianity will the next generation embrace? More and more younger (and some not-so-young) people are embracing the megachurch phenomenon, not least because of their extensive outreach programs and accessibility.
As I've said before, I think their is an unreached contingent of believing young people who would delight in the riches of traditional Anglicanism, if they only knew it existed. The future of the Anglican Continuum movement lies with those who were not alive when it was born and when the authentic Prayer Book was still in widespread use. Individuals who have been brought to the faith through Evangelical protestantism and are hungry for something deeper. These people do not care--or even know much--about the Episcopal Church and its failures. I pray that we can reach them; as TEC continues its slow decline, the opportunity will only increase.
Albion,
May God bless and protect the Mission of St. John the Evangelist. I am praying for you to get a church building.
Take a look at the legal document at the following URL and you will see a real world, happening right now, outreach activity of the New Episcopal Church or NEC. I think I will be calling that nest of vipers NEC from now on.
Any way, shape of things to come:
http://www.au.org/site/DocServer/D.C._Central_Mission_Complaint.pdf?docID=3101
Dear Fr John,
Thank you for your good wishes and prayers for St John the Evangelist.
Hopes of a church building are well premature, as I don't have more than about 10 people involved at the moment; of them only two might now be considered as genuinely interested in the possibility of joining the ACC.
I now have a small "chapel" set up at one end of my living room/dining room. However, I may be forced by poor finances to move to a smaller flat, in which case there would probably be no room for the chapel.
My, American pleadings are wordy and strange!
Two interesting facts are not revealed in the Federal Court Complaint to which Fr. John Roddy provided the link.
First, "Bishop" John Chane's own Cathedral, and the several ancilliary operations to which he makes reference therein, are built on land donated to the Protestant Episcopal Church in the USA by the US Congress. So one hopes that the Defendant District of Columbia will counterclaim, demanding that this land be returned to the Federal Government.
So, too, in filing this Complaint, "Bp." Chane is fulfilling the role of the third character to appear on the ancient Greek stage.
The second salient fact that does not appear in this Complaint, and which makes it relevant to Fr. Roddy's analysis of future PECUSA threats against other religious groups, is that the Central Mission, the wings of which "Bp." Chane seeks to clip, is supported in part by the Falls Church, one of the former PECUSA congregations in Virgina that is being sued by PECUSA. Clearly the Central Mission's principal sin was not in offering religious guidance to homeless people but in being supported by dissidents who withdrew from "Bp." Chane's organization (and took their property with them...).
John A. Hollister+
I am speaking in broader terms regarding the rise of the religious left who like the religious right baptize secular political ideology and sanctify it with a feeling of spirituality.
As an outside observer I've always been intrigued by the 'separation of church and state' in the US Constitution and what's been made of it. I am gratified to know that it doesn't preclude the grant of property for purposes of religious bodies but become dismayed once in a while to find that people try to make it into the equivalent of French secularism. And I'm thoroughly befuddled where beneficiaries of state grants try to deny the same to other religious bodies.
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