A CORRUPTING INFLUENCE

Like many other Continuing Anglicans in the United States, I saw that I had no future in the Episcopal Church. Throughout the decades between the 1970s and the new millennium, it became more and more apparent that, if I were to fulfill my calling to be a priest, I had to choose between wasting my life fighting heresy or building something of value. I chose the latter, and was ordained a deacon in 1998, and then ordained a priest in 1999. Shortly thereafter I was also made a Contributing Editor of Touchstone Magazine (A Journal of Mere Christianity). Yes, I could see that political and ideological moral corruption invaded the Episcopal Church from the Left. It ruined a once fine jurisdiction of the Anglican Communion. Something I never considered in those years, because it did not cross my mind, was the possibility of moral corruption coming from the other direction. 

I spent about twenty years writing Touchstone articles that shed light on the moral evils of the Left. I stand by every word I ever wrote exposing the evils of abortion, the sexual revolution, the transgender deception, etc. I thought then, as I do now, that it was largely unnecessary for Continuing Anglicans. Our people, conservative and traditional Christians, are not in danger of being deceived by the Left. We rejected their agenda long ago. It is a major reason why we separated from the Episcopal Church in the United States, and from the official Anglican Communion in other countries. 

For example, I wrote an exhaustive article in Touchstone in 2015 that laid out why the teaching of Christ concerning marriage rules out not only same-sex “marriage,” but all marriages that are compromised by impediments, all in line with the insistence that one’s sex is that with which one was born - for purposes of valid matrimony.  I wrote most clearly that people do not come in multiple "genders;" they come in two sexes. The only exception to that is physical in nature, people who, through no fault of their own, are born as hermaphrodites (a very rare medical and biological reality that is not morally significant. As our Lord said, “Some are born eunuchs.”). People are not “assigned” a “gender,” but born naturally as they were conceived, male or female. I came across a new word a few years ago: Cisgendered. Every time it was used it appeared to be meant derogatorily, as if it were an insult. I found out that it simply refers to any person whose sex (I will not say “gender.” Gender is a word that applies to linguistics, not to biology) is a psychological factor in forming a sense of one’s own identity. In other words, it is someone who has a mentally healthy acceptance of self as God made them. On others, unhappy with their own nature, we should have compassion, and that compassion should be tempered by also acknowledging that their true need is not met by unnatural medical treatments. No one was ever more outspoken about these issues publicly than I. 

But I am concerned that if I preach and write extensively about the sins that those other people out there are committing, concentrating almost exclusively on what they do, that I am not serving the needs of our people to open their eyes to the reality of their own sins and temptations. I might even enable a dangerous self-righteous mentality: “I thank thee God that I am not as other men are.” The corruption of the Left seems to me to be much less of a danger to our people than the corruption of the Right. Our people are not tempted to be what many call “woke” about sinful practices. But many of you are already being corrupted to believe such lies as “Replacement Theory.” Many of our people are all too ready to fear and hate the stranger, and to blame the poor for their own condition. They have told me, several of them, that they believe that illegal immigrants are coming here to vote (which I know to be impossible), to replace us, and some have even repeated that ridiculous slander about the Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio (who have been in America legally since 2017). Others parrot Conspiracy Theories as if the ninth commandment, as counted in our Decalogue, no longer matters.  

I regard all such fears to be an impediment to loving our neighbor, and therefore an impediment to evangelism and church growth. So, that is what troubles me about the echo chambers of parties and ideologies. I have never at any time become Left-wing. I have not changed my positions at all. I am simply giving more thought about who I am preaching to. 

I want to communicate simply as an educated man to people who can appreciate an erudite consideration of history. I believe there is a difference between overly dramatic labeling and recognizing historical parallels. We have often heard warnings against making comparisons of a Nazi or Hitler analogy to the MAGA movement. It is called the Reductio ad Hitlerum. I avoid such comparisons because I have no reason to believe that they would perpetrate something like the Holocaust or that they would start a major war. I cannot imagine Donald Trump trying to murder millions of people in death camps (not because he is morally above it. It just wouldn’t profit him). If I have ever come close to what some see as such a “reductio,” it is really no such thing. It is instead the very indisputable historical parallel between Donald Trump and the methods whereby every fascist leader in modern history has built a movement, a base of supporters. They have used the same method to obtain power. They appeal to the fear and anger of people who are economically dissatisfied; they tell them to blame specific minority groups and to fear and hate those people; they treat every potential political opponent as an enemy, “vermin” or “enemy of the people;” they put themselves forward as the savior of the people - the “good people” the “forgotten” or “betrayed” people. Not only has Trump used this method, but, drawing from my university studies in obtaining a history degree, I recognize that he paraphrases in English the very speeches of Adolf Hitler. So does Tucker Carlson and so does Stephen Miller (who as a Jewish man really, really should know better), etc.  

The problem is very simple. Most of you are not vulnerable to falling for the lies of the Left. But I have observed that many of you have fallen already for the lies of the Right. Many of you not only repeat those lies, but you also spread fear, hate, and Political Messianism. The reason I wrote Kittels and Quislings in 2019 is because several clergymen had already written or stated apologetics for the atrocities that the Trump Administration was committing by stealing children from their parents (many of which children have been “lost” either by government incompetence or by human trafficking, and they are still unaccounted for), justifying the obvious attack on what we used to call “family values” with the flimsy excuse that the adults had broken the law by entering the country and applying for asylum – and by International Treaty the fact is that their presence as asylum seekers was perfectly legal anyway. Yes, you were lied to repeatedly even about their legal status.

From then until now I have seen no fruits worthy of repentance brought forth. I am aware that a clergyman serving in our churches was publicly spotted as a participant in the Madison Square Rally before the 2024 election, the rally in which the least egregious offense was the insult made by a “comedian” about Puerto Rico. The “F” word was used abundantly, slanders were profusely issued in speeches (i.e. the bearing of false witness against thy neighbor), the Vice President was referred to by the “C” word, and other various lies were the routine of the evening. I have heard crowds of alleged Christians cheering while Tucker Carlson ranted and raved in a sickening speech that encouraged violence against women, and in which he manifested his own demon possession in the form of a verbal pornographic spanking fantasy that no morally upright person could hear without being both disgusted and outraged. I have seen that many of you are ready even to abandon your pro-life principles by accepting, as Donald Trump proposed, instead of a real ban a false ban of fifteen weeks (by which time ninety-six percent of all abortions have always taken place), simply because he deceived you by calling such a pro-abortion policy a “ban.” I have witnessed that you have been willing to carry water for his pretended pro-life position despite the fact that in all four years of his administration he signed budgets that increased spending to Planned Parenthood (let me let you in something – on the issue of abortion it is not what he says that counts as much as what he does). 

I have seen and heard that many of you refuse to believe anything that is inconvenient to you. I have been accused of being Left-wing not because I am Left-wing (which I am most certainly not), but because many of you have become Right-wing to the level of lunatic extremism. You even refuse to be honest with yourselves about the attack on the Capitol that was, by all honest standards, an attempted coup on January 6, 2021 (the failed Epiphany Putsch). Americans are supposed to expect a peaceful transfer of power, not a Banana Republic revolution. Some of you are so dishonest that you believed even this absurdly transparent deception: When Kevin McCarthy gave Tucker Carlson all of the security tapes of the attack, that former FOX host was able to edit the most ridiculous piece of political propaganda ever perpetrated on that false news channel. Obviously, a building as large as the Capitol has many floors with their own halls, several offices, etc. The violence that day was at three out of four main entrances, the desperate fight to stay alive by the Capitol Hill Police was in the rotunda, and the vandalism and violence extended to areas in and around the Senate and House chambers. So, of course, the security cameras in the mostly empty portions of the building did not show the violence. I testify that those of you who argued that the attack, mostly violence against the police officers you say that you care about so much, calling it “a peaceful protest that got out of hand,” of lying every time you have repeated something that you know perfectly well to be a combination of nonsense and political propaganda. You know beyond all doubt that it was a planned strategic attack in which the Oath Keepers used military tactics to launch the initial violence against the Capitol Hill Police. If you are a Christian, then you cannot justify and excuse three hours of violence in which the police officers had to defend their lives against would be murderers. You cannot offer apologetics for a chant to “Hang Mike Pence!” You cannot defend even the vandalism, or the spreading of human manure around the building, or any of what went on. I do not need to prove what I say: If you have never watched the videos on YouTube, and refuse to know the truth, then you are not thereby excused either, because your ignorance is willful. And that makes your words dishonest. 

I know that many of you agree with me because you have never been so partisan as to look the other way. And almost all of you who live outside of the United States also know I am telling the truth. But even if I were alone, absolutely alone in my condemnation of this corruption, the indulgence in bigotry and hate, the corrupt Political Messianism extended to one very unworthy and dishonest man, I would nonetheless prophesy against you. Hear the word of the Lord! Christ’s kingdom is not of this world. To the degree that you have no king but your own Caesar, and to the degree that you choose Barabas, to the degree that you are so loyal a political partisan that you parrot and echo slanders and lies, you have no part in the Kingdom of Christ and of God. You choose to be of this world; just as the Episcopalians sold their souls to Left-wing justifications of immorality, you choose to be spiritually dead and morally compromised by the Right-wing. The only solution is to repent. You cannot be loyal to any political party or to any political figure without, at some point, betraying Christ to justify sin. All worldly attachments must not attach to you.