[Gaylin Schemeling, the president of Bethany Lutheran Seminary, graduated from one of her seminaries: Nashotah House.]
LIBERAL HYPOCRISY IN THE EPISCOPAL HOUSE OF BISHOPS
Making the canons mean what you want them to mean
Commentary
By David W. Virtue
www.virtueonline.org
9/23/2008
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean-neither more nor less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master-that's all."
Last week in Salt Lake City at the HOB meeting, Mrs. Katharine Jefferts Schori, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church proved to be the "master" of the language of the canons of The Episcopal Church. She deposed a godly, faithful, Bible-believing bishop by castrating a canon and using it to filibuster it through the House of Bishops.She declared Bishop Robert Duncan guilty first and then held a vote to confirm what she had already decided. "Sentence first, verdict afterwards" said the queen in Alice in Wonderland. Jefferts Schori deftly skirted Roberts Rules of Order, but as Alice might have said, "I can make the canons mean whatever I want them to mean." Indeed.
She succeeded by a two to one vote even though the canons require a majority of all bishops entitled to vote (as Mrs. Jefferts Schori conceded in signing the "deposition") not merely a majority of those present. A majority of the bishops (150) were absent, only 127 were present. Within two hours, the Presiding Bishop claimed he was no longer the Bishop of Pittsburgh. Consider the irony of this situation.
This House of Bishops refuses to bring to trial one John Shelby Spong, former Bishop of Newark, for numerous heresies over the years culminating in his 12 Theses which is an open and public denial of most of the Christian Faith.
They would not, nor could not, in conscience because most of the bishops believe in Spong's "theology" and are unable to uphold 'the faith once for all delivered to the saints'. No presentment charges would ever hold up because the Episcopal Church has no "core doctrine" it can uphold or believe in. The Righter "trial" was evidence enough of that.
So consider the multiple statements of at least two Presiding Bishops' as well as resolutions passed at one General Convention after another that have chipped away at the faith. There is now no apparent turning back.
In 1979, Presiding Bishop Edmond Browning declared that he would "not obey or enforce the church's official traditional teaching on sexuality." The rot was already setting in. As Bishop Thad Barnum noted in his book, Never Silent, "His declared rebellion became the driving force behind the church's new morality."
Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold in 1997 stated publicly, without blushing and without shame, that the Episcopal Church was intentionally, and by God's decree, living in contradiction to the words of the Bible. "Broadly speaking, the Episcopal Church is in conflict with Scripture. The only way to justify it is to say, well, Jesus talks about the Spirit guiding the church and guiding believers and bringing to their awareness things they cannot deal with yet...this has led the church to in effect contradict the words of the Gospel," said Griswold.
Resolutions rejecting the church's received teaching on sexuality have flowed thick and fast over the years, enabled by the growing number of LGBT priests and activist lay persons all led by the indomitable first sodomite emeritus Dr. Louie Crew.
At GC2006 with Resolution A161, the church rejected any hint of a "moratorium" on ordaining more gay bishops or blessing gay marriages. Instead, they passed Resolution B033, which promised "to exercise restraint" for anyone "whose manner of life presents a challenge to the wider church." The resolution meant nothing. Within weeks, the Diocese of Newark put forward a gay candidate for bishop.
Resolution D058 asked that Episcopalians believe that through Christ alone, "the only name by which any person may be saved." It never made it out of committee, being vetoed by a 70 percent majority.
When Katharine Jefferts Schori, the successor to Frank Griswold, activist supporter of Gene Robinson and a campaigner for same-sex blessings was asked where she stood on the issues, she said, "Homosexuals were created by God," but when pressed about how blatantly she contradicted Scripture on Salvation, she replied: "I think, (it is) to put God in an awfully small box". Pressed on her views about the Bible she said, "The Bible was written in a very different historical context by people asking different questions." For her, the Bible no longer matters. When the church passed resolution D039 stating that sex outside of marriage was now acceptable to the church, clergy and senior leaders failed to inform their dioceses and congregations so great was the sin and even greater would have been the backlash by mostly sexually conservative Episcopalians had they known.
To this day, congregations are being kept in the dark about the resolutions passed at general conventions and sexual behaviors committed by priests and bishops. What would thousands of laity think and do if they knew that Jefferts Schori said she knew of a number of cases where homogenital bishops are living in same-sex partnered relationships (she wouldn't say who)? It is not just Gene Robinson, the Bishop of New Hampshire. He is carrying the freight for those who won't declare themselves in public. How many laity would be shocked to know that their own bishop was secretly gay with a partner? Is it any wonder that when Quincy Bishop Keith Ackerman introduced Resolution B001 asking that General Convention affirm "Holy Scripture as the foundation of authority in our Church" they could not do so. If they had, they would have had to reject Gene Robinson's consecration, so the sovereign authority of Scripture went out the window. The Lambeth Resolution 1:10, affirming heterosexual marriage and rejecting homosexuality, was deep-sixed. At that moment, it was over for The Episcopal Church. As the tables slowly turned on faithful Episcopalians, they became more and more the brunt of angry, aggrieved and vicious pansexualists who made it clear that the church was going in their direction and to hell with you.
Now we are seeing the spectacle of truth turned so entirely on its head that orthodox believers are now being told that their leaving TEC is nothing more than a pure power play for properties. Jesus said nothing about homosexuality and women's ordination is not enough of an issue to leave (or destroy) the Episcopal Church over. All our desires are mixed. We are all sinners. Why split the church over a couple of issues? Get over it.
"Then too one does question bishops and priests who try to gain power among their flocks like demagogues by promulgating simple, single-issue concepts like their objection to the ordination of women or their disapproval of homosexual practices," wrote an activist layman in the Diocese of Pittsburgh who is ready with his priest, the Rev. Harold Lewis, to pounce on diocesan properties once the diocese declares itself under the Province of the Southern Cone.
Liberal activists tell us that the people taking over this diocese will be as impure and driven by mixed motives and sin as those who are leaving. That is true, but they are not denying the faith once for all delivered to the saints. Being a sinner and publicly denying the gospel are two entirely different things. Peter was a sinner who denied his Lord and repented. Judas betrayed his Lord and killed himself.
Such people don't get it.
What is happening at the very deepest level is a suborning of Scripture, the rewriting of sacred text to suit our needs. Said Charles Bennison, the inhibited Bishop of Pennsylvania, "The Church wrote the Bible and the Church can rewrite the Bible". It comes as no surprise that Bennison is a close friend of Spong. It is about the bastardization of the texts of Scripture to suit our own devices and desires; it is not about a handful of biblical texts against sodomy. It is the total rejection of Scripture as "God's word written"...of its authority over us, not we over it.
What we are seeing now is the wholesale abandonment of the historic Christian Faith by a denomination that is slowly withering and dying, even as it eulogizes and plays up social activism in the form of Millennium Development Goals to cover its deficient theology of salvation. Secular salvation is the new mantra as spiritual salvation is devalued and killed off.
The liberals and revisionists laugh at the new "vagante orthodox" who leave TEC labeling them as just schismatics who can't get their act together. They may ridicule a new Anglican Province in North America, and think GAFCON is just about a lot of disgruntled orthodox Anglicans who don't like Rowan Williams. The liberals and revisionists certainly have no fear of the Archbishop of Canterbury who they and we know is with them in heart, soul, mind and theology.
When the Episcopal Church had only 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. Just look at the damage they are now doing. They are using the Trust funds, held in sacred trust to spread the true mission of God, to eradicate parishes and dioceses that are slipping from their grasp citing "civil rights" and "hate crimes" initiatives.
Even some orthodox clergy tells us, that TEC is just another side show in the Culture Wars and we will win if we stay. That, too, is a failure to see the true spiritual condition of TEC. We are in a SPIRITUAL WAR with godly laity, priests and a number of bishops fighting for their very spiritual lives. They are paying the price with defrocking, lost properties, truncated pensions, and smaller salaries...all for the sake of the cross of Christ. "For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places," wrote the Apostle Paul.
The once clandestine takeover of The Episcopal Church is now out there for all to see. It is now a public war being played out in the media and on the Internet. It will not be covered up, spun, nor made to disappear because the "principalities and powers" would like it so.
The action of deposing Bishop Robert Duncan is a watershed, or turning point, like Stalingrad and Gettysburg were...make no mistake about it, wrote one blogger. He is right. This IS a war and it will have repercussions for all faithful Christians.
Absolute power is now in the hands of these phony Christian radicals. They have made it clear that their intention is to clean house, TEC's own version of the "Night of the Long Knives," wrote another Anglican blogger.
"For all intents and purposes, the battle for the possession of the Episcopal Church is over except for a few mopping up operations here and there. Remaining issues, such as whether or not the Diocese of San Joaquin will be able to keep their property and money in the conduct of their fighting retreat, are inconsequential. The forces that have retreated, whatever may become of them, are not coming back to retake the lost ground. The National Cathedral is lost, the University of the South is lost, and the Cathedral in Atlanta is lost, to the organized homosexuals and their allies who slugged it out in the "long march" to take over the Episcopal Church. They won completely and utterly."
He might have added the seven Episcopal seminaries, with the noted exception of two, the cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City, millions of dollars in properties, some 450 clergy, reduced income to liberal dioceses and the hemorrhaging that will continue for years to come.
The Episcopal Church has sown to the wind and it is reaping the whirlwind. The Episcopal Church with its $10 billion in assets will not save it "in that day". David Booth Beers will die rich, but he will die and he won't be able to take it with him. He will be answerable for his actions. God is never mocked, never.
Jefferts Schori and her cronies are not merely heretics and apostates; they are traitors to the cause of Christ and His gospel. They have ripped the heart of repentance right out of the gospel and now laugh and mock it.
With the flight of yet more dioceses, we are seeing the slow end of the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion as we know it. At the end of the day, the Jefferts Schori's, Rowan Williams's, et al will have only themselves to blame.
Even so come Lord Jesus.
