We need to challenge the narrative despair, says Ian Markham
News Analysis
By David W. Virtue
www.virtueonline.org
April 30, 2013
The Dean of Virginia Theological Seminary denounced as "untrue" and a "myth" that The Episcopal Church is declining when he addressed delegates to the Diocese of Delaware Convention recently.The Rev. Dr. Ian Markham said endless stories, [told] over and over about the fact that we're part of the "mainline" and the "mainline" is getting smaller are not true.
"The picture you get in the media is that we (TEC) are among a group called 'mainline' (a very opaque word) and like other mainline churches we are in decline. The other part of this picture is that it has been going on for years. People talk that it all started in the mid-1950's when we were at three and a half million Episcopalians and we're now down to 1,951,907.
"If you really want to make yourself miserable - you can dig into these numbers and you end up with a picture where apparently, because of the age structure of our church, we would expect a natural decline of 19,000 members each year. How can I with a straight face, reassure you that this is a myth."
Markham blasted both the left and right for an inadequate picture of The Episcopal Church adding that there are people who have a real interest in talking up the decline.
He pointed to two culprits. He said that Bishop Mark Lawrence of South Carolina and Bishop John Shelby Spong, retired Bishop of Newark, gave very different contrasting talks with both acknowledging that TEC is in decline, with both having a vested interest in saying so.
"From Bishop Lawrence's point of view, The Episcopal Church is declining because we have lost our sense of identity; we've lost our Gospel commitment; we've lost our particularity as a People of God. The conservative Christians are in the ascendancy, we're struggling because we no longer have a strong Biblical identity. That was his rhetoric; that was his argument.
"Bishop Spong's argument was 'Look we live in an age where faith isn't plausible, science has made it difficult. You can't believe in the electric lights and at the same time in a God who performs miracles. So therefore we need to move beyond the God Story of an Incarnation, a Trinity, of Virgin Birth, of Resurrection ...' It was a long list, actually. 'And therefore to reach those in exile,' -- that's his favorite metaphor - 'we've got to actually adapt our faith to think differently about who we are.'"
Markham said that it was interesting that both the left and right in the church agree that we are declining but for slightly different reasons. One is that we are not religious enough and the other is that we're too religious.
"So you have the left arguing for a radical reorientation of our beliefs and you have the right arguing for a recovery of traditional beliefs."
Markham said it is time to revisit the numbers.
"The Diocese of Delaware was growing all the way through the '90s, all the way up to 2005. So actually you're sitting in a diocese that was growing until relatively recently." Markham said the overall membership statistics for The Episcopal Church are "unhelpful."
"Membership is very fluid. The Episcopal Church is a winter religion. Nobody ever comes in the summer. They all take a vacation from God. So membership is tricky."
Markham said Average Sunday Attendance grew from 1991 to 2001 - 18,000 members nationally. In 2002 ASA declined by 11,000 and then in 2003 TEC elected a [gay] bishop - you might have heard ...
END OF SEX?
The Dean said the church is coming to the end of [talk about] sex. "The data is increasingly showing that that is the case. People who are leaving The Episcopal Church aren't doing so over issues around human sexuality. In fact the bigger threat now is old-fashioned secularization. In other words, it's Starbucks, it's golf, it's the 'Church of the Holy Comforter' on a Sunday morning."
Markham said the advent of two services, Rite I and Rite II with traditional language and more contemporary language is a staple feature of many Episcopal churches, means the extra services make congregations bigger not smaller. "People are fed different types of services in different ways in different times of their lives."
"The second thing we have going for us is we encourage people to learn a skill set. The weird thing about being an Episcopalian is that it's actually quite hard work. The good thing about populous service, you know the populous service where you just sit there and it's on screens, and you can show the liturgy and everything, at least you know where to look."
Markham called the strength of our tradition a "paradox". "You have got to juggle three books, you have got to learn. We have got to train people. It's cruel to just leave them there trying to find which Eucharistic prayer they are on, and not explain at all the year, the different seasons and there is going to be a couple of sentences which aren't in there.
"All the evidence is that we are coming to the end of it. You should expect to start seeing things happen - if we get it right - it won't just happen. We'll have to be attentive; we'll have to be thoughtful ... all the factors that were working effectively for us in the '90s are going to start kicking in this decade.
"We must get away from this narrative of despair. Because the narrative despair is being used by those who have a real problem with our tradition. What we all need to start doing is saying: "Look, I don't think the 'mainline' is going to disappear. Look, I don't think The Episcopal Church is going to disappear." It's going to change, that the particular congregation I am in is not going to be there in this form, but the tradition of which I am a part is going to endure."
Markham said the church needs a more accurate head count including those who go to an Episcopal liturgical experience in the 1,200 Episcopal schools in the United States. "We are probably, as a result, not counting over 38,000 people a week who participate in a liturgy in an Episcopal school. We don't count them. They are invisible." Markham also pointed to 156 retirement complexes with over 16,000 persons linked with the Episcopal Church. "We under count our numbers by over 50,000 in total."
VOL RESPONDS
The myth of TEC in decline is not a myth; it is an actuality, a reality.
Since 2005, the Diocese of Delaware has significantly declined. The number of baptized has gone from 12,921 in 2001 to 11,169 in 2009 with numbers dropping still further to 10,418 in 2010.
There are only 36 congregations with a total ASA of 3614. Last year they closed the cathedral in downtown Wilmington for lack of interest. http://tinyurl.com/cgm4e56 (Death of a Cathedral) There is not a single orthodox parish left in the Diocese of Delaware; all have sold out to revisionism and the pansexual agenda of The Episcopal Church. (Orthodox Anglicans actually travel from Delaware each week to Pennsylvania to attend an evangelical or Anglo-Catholic parish.) There were almost three times more burials than marriages in the diocese last year. The numbers are: Marriages 76, burials 205. Adult baptisms were a paltry 14, child confirmations 55 and adult confirmations 39. A mere 15 were received into the church. Overall losses were 308, and as a percentage 3.6%. ASA was down 24 a loss of 2%. ASA in 2001 was 4392; in 2009 it was 3778.
The Diocese of Delaware is in good company. Nearly all dioceses have suffered losses, with several Midwest dioceses on the brink of collapse. Only the dioceses of Albany and South Carolina are growing, both of those are orthodox in faith and morals. South Carolina has since left TEC.
In a recent New York Times editorial, columnist and author Ross Douthat tackled the "looming extinction" of liberal Christianity, adding that: "Practically every denomination - Methodist, Lutheran, Presbyterian - that has tried to adapt itself to contemporary liberal values has seen an Episcopal-style plunge in church attendance." Since 2000, the Episcopal Church has lost more than 16 percent of its membership. This decrease reflects a wider trend across most other Protestant denominations, he said.
Canon Phil Ashey of the American Anglican Council has done significant research on the future of The Episcopal Church. He paints a grim future for TEC. He recently wrote, "A lot of dioceses will wait until it is too late and eat up their endowments before they merge: Delaware, Easton, and Maryland; Long Island and New York; Connecticut and Rhode Island. One could easily make the case that all the dioceses in upstate New York (Western New York, Rochester, Central New York, and Albany) ought to merge. The Episcopal landscape is going to look a lot different in the coming years. But, based on my estimates (taking into account the average age of Episcopalians, no conversion growth, low birthrate, and poor retention of young people), things start imploding at an alarming rate after about 2018--and that's only six years from now."
Ashey went on to say that by 2050 TEC will be out of business but not every last Episcopal church will close its doors. "Trinity, Wall Street, has enough money (now valued at over $2 billion with its holdings) to operate in some form until the Eschaton. All Saints, Pasadena, (an openly gay parish) will continue to survive as long as there are liberals in Los Angeles who need religious validation of their lifestyles and political views. The same can be said for Grace Cathedral, San Francisco, although they will probably never have another dean who will succeed in pulling that off with such an unusual combination of gravitas and panache as Alan Jones."
What it means for the Episcopal Church to exist as a denomination will change radically, writes Ashey. "For people in many parts of the country, the Episcopal Church will simply cease to exist as part of the religious landscape."
In none of these cases has the gospel got anything to do with those that survive, as Dean Markham hopes. It's all about money. "The Proctor and Gamble endowments in Southern Ohio and the Eli Lilly endowments in Indianapolis, and a number of other examples elsewhere, will insure that Episcopal parishes will survive in various places. Increasingly, the Episcopal Church will be a network of wealthy (but not necessarily well attended) parishes in various metropolises with very little in between. Thanks to the Consortium of Endowed Episcopal Parishes, these churches already have their network," wrote Ashey.
SEXUALITY
Dr. Markham believes, quite wrongly, that sexuality issues are coming to an end. If only. Gay bishop Gene Robinson is writing books, racing around America, appearing on every radio and TV talk show that will have him, pushing sodomy, gay rights and gay marriage. He is leaving no pansexual stone unturned in search of affirmation of his lifestyle. Prop 8 is still under consideration in California and states are working on gay marriage laws even as I write. There is a massive cultural shift (read war) in America sparked by the push for homosexual acceptance that is far from abating. Since 2003 the US Episcopal Church has jumped on every culture war issue affirming what the world believes and is paying for its sins with emptying and dying parishes. They more TEC accommodates to the culture, the faster its decline continues.
THE MESSAGE
What is missing in Dr. Markham's analysis is the message or lack of it coming from the nation's episcopal pulpits. Churches are hearing constantly about issues - sex, the environment, poverty, nuclear threats, bioethical issues, the Middle East, fear of war here and there, with little or no mention of the gospel of Jesus Christ that can radically transform lives. There is little or no preaching of the great doctrines of the faith, while TEC has endless opinions about border crossing control, refugees, immigration, the sins of big banks and the corporate destruction of the environment but with little or no interest in the saving of souls. Most of what TEC believes can be found in the pages of the New York Times. So why go to church, especially an Episcopal Church?
True, secularization is the new big issue. With Nones making up the growing and largest group of people with no interest in Christianity, though many show an interest in "spirituality" and a whole panoply of New Age stuff. Protestantism is no longer the central driving force in America because mainline liberal Christianity has lost its theological soul and killed off the message leaving a pale reflection of the messenger. What message do TEC priests have for a whole generation of disenfranchised and disillusioned young men and women who have no interest in church but who might have an interest in Jesus Christ if they were told about Him.
THE BIG ANGLICAN PICTURE
Dr. Markham also overlooks the wider picture of the growing realignment in the Anglican Communion. The Episcopal Church's non acceptance by the vast, overwhelming evangelically driven Anglican Global South and their anathematization of Katharine Jefferts Schori with their non-appearance at primatial gatherings, their flouting of rules over boundary crossings and much more, seems to elude him. He also overlooks the fact that TEC is tiny by comparison to say The Anglican province of Nigeria. You could fit the entire North American Episcopal and Anglican provinces into one Diocese of Nigeria.
Did he neglect to mention the formation of the FCA/GAFCON that embraces the vast majority of Global South Anglicans who stand in opposition to the liberally driven Anglican Consultative Council?
ACNA
Dr. Markham also overlooks, or did he deliberately ignore, the growing presence of the elephant in the Narthex namely the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) that now has over 700 parishes and 100,000 congregants in the US and Canada. New orthodox parishes are sprouting up like daylilies across the country, with new bishops being consecrated and dioceses forming and opening every few months. Just last week, bishops from across the globe laid hands on Clark Lowenfield and made him Bishop of the new Anglican Diocese of the Western Gulf Coast. The newly formed diocese only has a dozen churches throughout Louisiana and Texas, but you can be sure in the mostly conservative south these will only grow.
At his consecration last week inside The Woodlands United Methodist Church, priests, bishops and deacons from around the world gathered to celebrate and welcome Lowenfield as a leading member in the Anglican congregation. Among those in attendance included Robert Duncan, archbishop of the Anglican Church in North America, and chief consecrator Rev. Nathan Gasatura, representing the Most Rev. Onesphore Rwaje as the archbishop of the Anglican Church of Rwanda. Lowenfield will focus on planting healthy churches that will benefit the congregations and the communities they call home. "My hope is that we plant churches in communities where people will be safe to come and seek God and honor Jesus Christ. That's the thing I focus on every day of my life," said Lowenfield.
Episcopal dioceses will go on withering on the vine. No Episcopal bishop talks like that except the odd bishop like Greg Brewer in Central Florida, Bill Love in Albany and Bruce McPherson in Western Louisiana and perhaps a small handful of others.
The thrust of TEC's leadership and the Episcopal churches they influence is inclusion not conversion, diversity instead of uniformity of belief, Islamists are seen as our fellow brothers, not as people who need converting to Christ. The Episcopal Church talks about interfaith, ACNA talks about saving faith.
Dr. Markham's worldview of TEC and its future is head in the sand politics and ecclesiology. It is delusionary. There is no evidence or possibility of a revival of the Episcopal Church without a revival of the faith and teaching of the church by the power of the Holy Spirit and that is not going to happen when the present leader herself has abandoned key doctrines of the faith including the need for a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, the bed rock of the faith she swore to uphold and which for the most part she and her fellow bishops have now abandoned.
END
