Purple and orange and blue
I can sing a rainbow,
sing a rainbow,
sing a rainbow too.
San Joaquin Bishop Fights Back in Verbal Slugfest with the Episcopal Church
News Analysis
By David W. Virtue
www.virtueonline.org
1/15/2008
"I feel betrayed. This isn't Christianity. This is power politics. Whatever the American [Episcopal] Church does, doesn't apply to me. That's their laws for their people."
With these words, the Anglo-Catholic Bishop of San Joaquin kicked off what looks to become a major legal and ecclesiastical battle that will undoubtedly wind up in the secular law courts, a major public relations disaster for The Episcopal Church.
"Here I am standing up for the Bible and for the morality that comes out of the Bible and I am the one being inhibited and he [Gene Robinson] is the one being celebrated," said Schofield on public television recently. He acknowledged the potential lawsuits that will undoubtedly follow.
"This is an attempt to grab property, money and power. I think Jesus gets lost in all of that," he said.
Bishop Schofield intends to fight back at the church that cast him out. He sees a financial and legal battle looming. He and the majority of the diocese are prepared to fight.
This past week, Schofield got a letter from Mrs. Katharine Jefferts Schori, head of the Episcopal Church, and the Title IV Review Committee saying he had been inhibited and to stop preaching, saying mass and to cease all ministerial work in his diocese.
Schofield has refused. He and his diocese have voted to break with the American Episcopal Church and to align themselves with the Evangelical Anglican Province of the Southern Cone and their primate, the Most Rev. Gregory Venables.
For Schofield it is business as usual. He will not cease any of his ecclesiastical activities despite the threats, inhibitions and whatever else is thrown at him.
He is resolute because what is at stake are the souls of men and women. They supercede whatever institutional loyalties others might have.
After all, we might be called on to die for our faith. That means we lay it down for Jesus and the gospel and not for an institution like the Episcopal Church that has gone wildly astray. One would not lay down one's life for Gene Robinson or his behavior, or for Millennium Development Goals or some half-baked covenant that no one can agree on to try and keep everyone at the Anglican table.
Lukewarmness and compromise are things that St. John railed against in the Book of Revelation. He saw with clarity what happened when people abandoned their "first love", and the terrifying results, if their lampstand was removed unless they repented.
The Anglican Communion is a crossroads.
If GAFCON is the Church in Philadelphia, "I know your works, Behold I have set before you an open door which no one is able to shut...you have kept my word and have not denied my name," then LAMBETH might be the church in Sardis, "I know your works. You have the reputation of being alive, but you are dead."
"He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. The one who conquers will not be hurt by the second death," wrote St. John.
Bishop Schofield has it right. Jesus HAS been lost in all the litigation. For all its sins, The Episcopal Church is withering and slowly dying. Weekly, more parishes leave and more dioceses will depart an erring church.
Bishop Schofield is only doing what St. John asked the churches to do then as now, "hold fast what you have until I come."
