Anglicans Fearing Permanent Split Over Gay Marriage as Bishops Threaten to Walk Out

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ComplineSanFran said:
No, I don’t believe that asking you to affirm personal belief in Christ, in prayer, in Sacraments, etc, means that you are closed and exclusive.
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Bingo: it comes down to a question of where you draw a line, not whether you draw one or not.
 
Graceful_Lamb said:
Another Episcopalian chiming in. I refuse to be associated with the approval of SSM and bishops who are allowed to bless abortion providers.

I attend Catholic Mass every week. I haven’t been to an Episcopal church in over three years and have no intention of going back.
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And yet there are many practicing Catholics who DO associate themselves with same sex marriage, are publicly gay and lesbian, often with spouses and families, and see abortion as part of women’s health, among other things. Do you know the intimate details of everyone in your parish? I do not mean to challenge you at all, and I do recognize that the RC Church takes strong stands on such issues, but not every person has those beliefs/practices, and yet are part of Christ’s Church as I am.
 
ComplineSanFran said:
And yet there are many practicing Catholics who DO associate themselves with same sex marriage, are publicly gay and lesbian, often with spouses and families, and see abortion as part of women’s health, among other things. Do you know the intimate details of everyone in your parish? I do not mean to challenge you at all, and I do recognize that the RC Church takes strong stands on such issues, but not every person has those beliefs/practices, and yet are part of Christ’s Church as I am.
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My Episcopal “home” parish is out of state, so I don’t know. I just don’t like that TEC susbcribes to those beliefs.

I am registered under my husband at the Catholic church that I attend.
 
Graceful_Lamb said:
Another Episcopalian chiming in. I refuse to be associated with the approval of SSM and bishops who are allowed to bless abortion providers.

I attend Catholic Mass every week. I haven’t been to an Episcopal church in over three years and have no intention of going back.
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You took my place. Except I haven’t been to Mass for 20 mos.
 
ComplineSanFran said:
I recently went to a service in the Episcopal Church that was Confirmation and Reception into the Church - people who were choosing to be sacramentally part of the Body of Christ via the Episcopal branch (many being received, btw, were Roman Catholics). In that laying on of hands, the Bishop asked them to affirm many things, firstly through the Apostles Creed, and then in numerous questions:
Do you believe in Jesus Christ?

Will you continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers?

Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?

Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being? etc, etc. (See the BCP if you want the liturgical text.)

Never once did I hear the Bishop ask: Will you oppose same sex marriage? Do you believe abortion is wrong? Are you a voting Republican? What is your moral opinion on hot button issues? I have never seen that check list in any church I have been in, although it has come pretty close, in my opinion.

Jesus Christ and His Church is, for me, an open and inclusive Body. Even Bishop Jack Spong is welcome to think, reflect, wrestle with and write about his theology. Some love him and some roll their eyes, but he is ours and he is welcome.

No one. NO ONE can judge who Jesus loves and cares for as a part of His Church on earth.
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:clapping:
 
Graceful_Lamb said:
My Episcopal “home” parish is out of state, so I don’t know. I just don’t like that TEC susbcribes to those beliefs.

I am registered under my husband at the Catholic church that I attend.
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Do you miss taking Communion?
 
Peter_J said:
Let’s all hope that they do better at presenting their position than we US-conservatives did. In particular, making it clear that what they’re saying to SS-couples who want to marry is (hopefully this won’t be oversimplifying): “We’re not going to stop you from doing what you like, but we as a country will not recognize your union as a marriage.”
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I don’t know why you think folks in the US did a bad job. I also don’t know what is objectionable about stopping people from doing what they want to do. The tens of thousands of laws we have exist for that exact purpose.
ComplineSanFran said:
I recently went to a service in the Episcopal Church that was Confirmation and Reception into the Church - people who were choosing to be sacramentally part of the Body of Christ via the Episcopal branch (many being received, btw, were Roman Catholics). In that laying on of hands, the Bishop asked them to affirm many things, firstly through the Apostles Creed, and then in numerous questions:
Do you believe in Jesus Christ?

Will you continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers?

Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?

Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being? etc, etc. (See the BCP if you want the liturgical text.)…

…Jesus Christ and His Church is, for me, an open and inclusive Body. Even Bishop Jack Spong is welcome to think, reflect, wrestle with and write about his theology. Some love him and some roll their eyes, but he is ours and he is welcome.

No one. NO ONE can judge who Jesus loves and cares for as a part of His Church on earth.
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The existence of questions necessitates that some are in the Church and some are out. The Episcopal Church is setting itself up as a judge of whether someone is in the Church. If a man answered no to those questions he would not be in the Church by the standard presented by the Episcopal Church. If the questions are irrelevant then it is just empty ritual. If there is no distinction of who is in the Church and who is out then being in the Church is a meaningless concept.
 
Peter_J said:
Let’s all hope that they do better at presenting their position than we US-conservatives did. In particular, making it clear that what they’re saying to SS-couples who want to marry is (hopefully this won’t be oversimplifying): “We’re not going to stop you from doing what you like, but we as a country will not recognize your union as a marriage.”
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“We as a church” that would have to be. England, as a country, does recognise such unions as marriages.
 
ComplineSanFran said:
No one. NO ONE can judge who Jesus loves and cares for as a part of His Church on earth.
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True, we can’t judge individuals. We don’t know their upbringing, experiences, knowledge, temptations or what spiritual insights graces they have received. The individual who is in Jehovah’s Witnesses may be a better Christian than I am. There are other groups even farther removed from the Catholic Faith with Christian individuals.

The Catholic Church has a term, “ecumenism”, for relationships among Christian faith communities. The Church has another term, “interreligious”, for relationships among Christian and *non-Christian *faith communities. This includes groups that self-identify with Christ, but whose doctrines and practices are now moved so far from Catholicism, the Church no longer regards them - the organizations - as Christian, though they previously were so included. This does not judge the individuals but the church as non Christian.

RC bishops meet with local Anglican and Mormon leaders. They try to build common ground wherever possible. It may be that the Mormon church in one country may be coming closer to being a “Christian church”; perhaps they now omit certain doctrines incompatible with Catholicism and become trinitarian. There was a cult founded by Herbert Armstrong that has since embraced standard evangelical doctrines. Change can happen in both directions.
or,
It may be that the Episcopal Church, or a given diocese, is now so far removed from Catholic Faith that it is no longer a Christian church. I would argue some mainline denominations, farther along than TEC, have abandoned Christianity; one of them is introducing new gospels into the canon of the NT. TEC has not done that.

One can argue the TEC has not yet crossed that boundary. But it is moving, and there is a boundary.
 
Peter_J said:
Let’s all hope that they do better at presenting their position than we US-conservatives did. In particular, making it clear that what they’re saying to SS-couples who want to marry is (hopefully this won’t be oversimplifying): “We’re not going to stop you from doing what you like, but we as a country will not recognize your union as a marriage.”
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Picky_Picky said:
“We as a church” that would have to be.
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I know what I said. My post was about national recognition of SSMs, not church recognition of SSMs.
 
IgnatianPhilo said:
If Mr Spong’s reflections are a legitimate view within anglicanism I stand by my original statement. The churches leaving communion with the episcopal Church USA and COE are better for not giving into the type of subjectivity expressed in this post. They are moving closer to Christ, not further.

If no one can judge who is and who is not part of the church, then the Anglican church stands for nothing except a bunch of words which mean anything the individual wants them to, not historic Christianity.
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I don’t think you’ll find many even in the Episcopal Church that believe Bishop Spong’s reflections are a legitimate view to have, particularly for a credal Christian church. No one in my diocese I’ve heard espouses anything of the sort in the vein of what he does.
 
commenter said:
True, we can’t judge individuals. We don’t know their upbringing, experiences, knowledge, temptations or what spiritual insights graces they have received. The individual who is in Jehovah’s Witnesses may be a better Christian than I am. There are other groups even farther removed from the Catholic Faith with Christian individuals.

The Catholic Church has a term, “ecumenism”, for relationships among Christian faith communities. The Church has another term, “interreligious”, for relationships among Christian and *non-Christian *faith communities. This includes groups that self-identify with Christ, but whose doctrines and practices are now moved so far from Catholicism, the Church no longer regards them - the organizations - as Christian, though they previously were so included. This does not judge the individuals but the church as non Christian.

RC bishops meet with local Anglican and Mormon leaders. They try to build common ground wherever possible. It may be that the Mormon church in one country may be coming closer to being a “Christian church”; perhaps they now omit certain doctrines incompatible with Catholicism and become trinitarian. There was a cult founded by Herbert Armstrong that has since embraced standard evangelical doctrines. Change can happen in both directions.
or,
It may be that the Episcopal Church, or a given diocese, is now so far removed from Catholic Faith that it is no longer a Christian church. I would argue some mainline denominations, farther along than TEC, have abandoned Christianity; one of them is introducing new gospels into the canon of the NT. TEC has not done that.

One can argue the TEC has not yet crossed that boundary. But it is moving, and there is a boundary.
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Which church out of curiousity is trying to add to the Gospels?

And I’d agree that there is a boundary. What that boundary is of course can be debated. But I’d say that despite differences of opinion on social issues like SSM, abortion, and theological issues like female ordination and open communion it’s hard to argue a creedal Christian church that professes pretty much all the same core beliefs of the RCC and other creedal Christian churches, isn’t Christian.

Now if the ECUSA, or any other church for that matter, started to abandon the doctrine of the trinity, the divinity of Christ, started playing “add some books” to the bible, denied the power of the Holy Spirit, denied the basic idea of prayer to God… yeah then we could argue that a church is no longer Christian and I’d be right there with you making that argument.
 
Padres1969 said:
I don’t think you’ll find many even in the Episcopal Church that believe Bishop Spong’s reflections are a legitimate view to have, particularly for a credal Christian church. No one in my diocese I’ve heard espouses anything of the sort in the vein of what he does.
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👍
 
Padres1969 said:
Which church out of curiousity is trying to add to the Gospels?

And I’d agree that there is a boundary. What that boundary is of course can be debated. But I’d say that despite differences of opinion on social issues like SSM, abortion, and theological issues like female ordination and open communion it’s hard to argue a creedal Christian church that professes pretty much all the same core beliefs of the RCC and other creedal Christian churches, isn’t Christian.

Now if the ECUSA, or any other church for that matter, started to abandon the doctrine of the trinity, the divinity of Christ, started playing “add some books” to the bible, denied the power of the Holy Spirit, denied the basic idea of prayer to God… yeah then we could argue that a church is no longer Christian and I’d be right there with you making that argument.
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Agree. There has not been one instance where the Episcopal Church has moved to abandon the doctrine of the Trinity, or of the divinity of Jesus, etc, etc. It is still a Christian Church, a liturgical and sacramental Church. Where we perhaps frustrate people is the social and theological issues/practices, as you said. But those changes, or moving the boundaries, have come out of deep prayer and the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Perhaps the question should be how is it that people - and churches - hear the Holy Spirit in different ways? I think that is the question that the Primates will be asking when they meet next week.

I wonder what the new US Presiding Bishop will have to say on that to his African colleagues. He is not often at a loss for words.
 
Padres1969 said:
I don’t think you’ll find many even in the Episcopal Church that believe Bishop Spong’s reflections are a legitimate view to have, particularly for a credal Christian church. No one in my diocese I’ve heard espouses anything of the sort in the vein of what he does.
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Yet I know personally of people who continue to be practicing Christians BECAUSE of Bishop Spong. He is one theologian writing his own theology. Many people don’t like it, but they don’t have to like it. One nice thing about the Anglican Church is that we can have two Bishops - Jack Spong and Tom Wright - both writing very different books, and that is just fine. There is room for them both.
 
ComplineSanFran said:
Agree. There has not been one instance where the Episcopal Church has moved to abandon the doctrine of the Trinity, or of the divinity of Jesus, etc, etc. It is still a Christian Church, a liturgical and sacramental Church. Where we perhaps frustrate people is the social and theological issues/practices, as you said. But those changes, or moving the boundaries, have come out of deep prayer and the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
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Would you say that about e.g. Vatican I’s decision concerning Papal Infallibility and Papal Supremacy?

Hmmm
 
Peter_J said:
Would you say that about e.g. Vatican I’s decision concerning Papal Infallibility and Papal Supremacy?

Hmmm
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I’m not Roman Catholic. It doesn’t impact me. If that is the way the Romans want to decide things, they have every right to make that call.
 
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