Has the Church of England Finally Kicked the Bucket?

Source: Virtueonline

COMMENTARY

By David W. Virtue
December 17, 2014

"Is the Church of England busted flush," writes an Anglican priest.

"Of course the Church of England is busted flush and it has been so for decades: from the 1960s when it gave up believing the New Testament, the Resurrection, the Virgin Birth and Our Lord's miracles; through the 1970s and 1980s when it replaced the matchless liturgy of the English Church with trash and doggerel," writes the Rev. Dr. Peter Mullen.

Continuing into the 21st century and Archbishop Rowan Williams' last sermon before he retired wherein he stated, "The Church has a lot of catching up to do with secular mores."

Whatever happened to 'Be ye not conformed to this world...' as St. Paul urges. But of course the Apostle would be deemed homophobic by today's theological and ecclesiastical standards, deemed also hate-filled and more.

According to Mullen's First Law of Ecclesiastical Polity, which states that every succeeding Archbishop of Canterbury is bound to be worse than his predecessor, Justin "Oil" Welby has cancelled the 2018 Lambeth Conference of all the bishops from the Anglican Church worldwide.

Why?

"Because he can't face the prospect of all those wonderful, faithful, orthodox, devout and true bishops from Africa coming to London and telling him that he's got it all wrong about homosexuality and women in the episcopate."

So what will happen?

VOL believes that the Church of England is following the same disastrous trajectory as The Episcopal Church, which having brokered women and sodomy into the Church in all its forms, is now, as a result, shrinking. It will vanish within a generation.

TEC is now little more than a progressive version of a Country Club with a creed held together by a bunch of mainly upwardly mobile rich and very rich folk who keep it afloat by endowing buildings and kneelers unto the next and possibly last generation.

Witness the latest manifestation of its own decline by a group picked to tell us all about where TEC is now and where it might be going. It's an admission of failure but couched in episcobabble.

Members of a Task Force for Reimagining the Episcopal Church (TREC) recently presented a 73-page report, which says that the Church's structures and governance processes have not yet responded to the profound changes occurring across the country and around the world.

INTERPRETATION. We are out of touch with the country and world (and reality), but didn't mention the fact that they are also out of touch with "the faith once for all delivered to the saints." That never arose. No mention of sin and salvation, no mention of Scripture's authority. Nope, none of the above.

Then they made the shocking revelation that a shrinking church no longer requires two bodies to govern it; just one. The HOB and the HOD would become one voice. The fancy word is unicameral.

Then it fessed up that vast numbers of parishes are no longer financially self-sufficient with many disconnected from neighbors housed in expensive buildings. They also confessed that ordinands leaving seminary cannot find fulltime stipended parishes and face a mountain of debt. A church salary will not be enough to pay back loans or to live on, especially if the priest has a wife and a couple of kids.

Then came the Great Admission -- the inclusive church has failed to address what it calls "pressing issues." Really. The high and mighty church of inclusivity, diversity, and sodomy hasn't been able to attract new members! All the hoped for hype about gays mincing and dancing into Episcopal churches has not materialized. Oh, Crew (or is that Clay), wherefore art thou? What hath gone wrong? Speak up. Tell us please what hath sodomy wrought or done to fill empty pews! Oh Gene, Oh Otis, Oh Frank, tell us please.

And the Church of England wants to follow in the footsteps of TEC! What fools! Women priests and women bishops have not led a soul to Christ in TEC and won't in the C of E, either.

Meantime TEC and the Archbishop of Canterbury want to tell the rest of the Anglican Communion how to behave, how to be nicer to gays, and to include them in everything because the culture demands it.

Accommodating to the world is precisely what we as Christians are told not to do,.."Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is--his good, pleasing and perfect will." -- Romans 12:2 (NIV)

What, if anything, about the Episcopal Church pleases God and does His will? Not much, if anything.

The Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) is now the new reality with over 100,000 members.

As Mullen observes of the CofE...it has now become a shameful, politically-correct, utterly secularized, completely compromised hypocritical, PC soft left, time-serving, contemptible shambles.

The sad truth is he only had to look across the Atlantic 20 years ago to see it coming. It's been staring the CofE in the face all that time. The Episcopal Church -- and now the C. of E. - are frankly apostate -- and proud of it.

END