Tag Archives: Michael Curry

Finally, some good news

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In 2020, the year of COVID, we all need a little cheering up so take heart, Christmas is almost upon us, and not only will you not have to put up with your relatives visiting, we have this heartwarming news from the US Episcopal church: by 2050 the entire denomination will be gone.

Presiding Bishop Michael Curry’s All You Need is Love theology, although a resounding hit at royal weddings, doesn’t seem to work as well in more mundane settings. A smattering of truth might help but The Episcopal Church has worked hard for decades to rid themselves of such a nuisance. Now we see the result:

The Episcopal Church might soon cease to exist, according to those who describe the denomination’s future as bleak based on plummeting membership numbers.

Attendance and membership numbers at churches within the mainline Protestant denomination have dropped significantly over the last decade, having lost one-quarter of worship attendees.

In 1966, when the church was said to be at its peak in the United States, approximately 3.6 million Americans identified as Episcopalian.  The Episcopal Church’s Office of the General Convention reported that in 2018, membership in the denomination had dropped to 1.676 million.

Regular worship attendance in Episcopal churches in 2009 was approximately 724,000. By 2019, the figure was 579,000 on an average Sunday, a nearly 25% drop over a decade.

“The overall picture is dire,” the Rev. Dwight Zscheile, an Episcopal priest and professor, according to ChurchLeaders. “Not one of decline as much as demise within the next generation unless trends change significantly.”

He said that at this rate, “there will be no one in worship by around 2050 in the entire denomination.” Although offering pledges have risen, “the fact that fewer people are giving more money is not a sustainable trend over the long term,” he added.

Bishop Michael Curry still hasn’t found what he’s looking for

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The aura of celebrity that encircles Michael Curry’s head in place of a halo continued to grow brighter as he met with members of a rock band to talk about “the way of love”.

As you probably know, when they’re not busy playing rock and roll, making excessive amounts of money, and devising ways to evade paying tax,  Bono and the rest of U2 enjoy instructing star-struck bishops on the deep theological matters of the day.

From here:

Presiding Bishop Michael Curry met backstage this week with U2 and front man Bono at New York’s Madison Square Garden, where the Episcopal Church leader and the globally renowned rockers discussed Curry’s Reclaiming Jesus initiative.

The meeting happened in the evening June 25 just before the first of a series of U2 concerts in New York on the band’s Experience + Innocence tour. A photo released by the band shows the foursome posing with Curry.

“I know of no other group that has sung and witnessed more powerfully to the way of love than U2,” Curry said June 27 in a written statement to Episcopal News Service. “It was a real blessing to sit with them to talk about Jesus, the way of love, and changing our lives and the world. They are an extraordinary community gift to us all.”

Bishop Michael Curry: from Royal Wedding to Britain’s Got Talent

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If anyone has any lingering doubts about whether Bishop Michael Curry was peddling anything more than thinly disguised secular platitudes at the royal wedding, here he goes again, this time on his rent-a-bishop circuit introducing Britain’s Got Talent.

It’s all part of being in showbusiness:

When love is the way, it’s easy

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At least, Michael Curry thinks so.

The Diocese of Huron, ever willing to be sucked into the black sinkhole that lies beneath the swirling vortex that masquerades as 21st century sagacity, has retweeted the salient points of the Royal Wedding sermon:

The truly sad thing about this is that John Lennon has already said it and, even though he said it better, it was still rubbish:

Love, love, love
Love, love, love
Love, love, love

There’s nothing you can do that can’t be done

Nothing you can sing that can’t be sung

Nothing you can say but you can learn how to play the game
It’s easy
There’s nothing you can make that can’t be made
No one you can save that can’t be saved

Nothing you can do but you can learn how to be you in time
It’s easy
All you need is love
All you need is love

Presiding Bishop Michael Curry does evangelism

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There are two ways to be incoherent: say something that means nothing; say something that can mean anything. The latter technique is preferred by Anglican clergy because it gives the illusion of Deep Thinking while providing an escape route when someone tries to pin them down.

Thus, when the Diocese of Niagara embarked upon the Decade of Evangelism many years ago, it spent nine and a half of those years attempting to define “evangelism” and six months producing reports that concluded “evangelism” was just another word for “inclusion” because, obviously, God would not exclude anyone or their behaviour, sexual proclivities or path to salvation no matter how perverse or arcane. Shortly after that most Christians left the diocese.

Now it’s Presiding Bishop Michael Curry’s turn.

Curry, eager to be on the trailing edge of secular trends has been influenced by the twittering success of Donald Trump. He is tweeting his enthusiasm for evangelism; and making it mean anything – or nothing – at all:

I suspect the problem is that what motivates Curry et al is not saving souls from the fires of hell but filling emptying buildings and coffers. Such is his level of desperation, he is even willing to use the trappings of loathed fundamentalism to achieve his ends.

The Episcopal Church finally does something useful

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I know I tend to be a trifle negative about the Anglican Church of Canada and The Episcopal Church, implying, at times, that they are nothing but the sub-Christian, desiccated remains of once influential denominations that do little more than give Christianity a bad name, make a laughing stock of their congregants and bring grief and misery to anyone who questions what they see as their divinely appointed mission to empty Christianity of metaphysical coherence.

But today, all that has changed!

Michael Curry, presiding Bishop of TEC, has truly seen into the mind of God and is forging a new path to a future glowing brightly with the transcendent luminosity of harmony, truth and justice. He has signed an amicus brief urging the high court to allow men to use women’s toilets and vice versa. The New Jerusalem is upon is.

Read it all here:

Presiding Bishop Michael Curry and House of Deputies President the Rev. Gay Clark Jennings are the lead signers on an amicus brief filed March 2 by 1,800 clergy and religious leaders in a U.S. Supreme Court case involving transgender-bathroom use policies.

The “friend of the court” brief comes in the case of G.G. v. Gloucester County School Board, which the American Civil Liberties Union and its Virginia chapter filed on behalf of Gavin Grimm and his mother, Deirdre Grimm, in June 2015.

The signers urge the high court to see that the ability to live in a country that guarantees transgender equality is a religious freedom issue. They said their faith communities have approached issues related to gender identity in different ways, but are “united in believing that the fundamental human dignity shared by all persons requires treating transgender students like Respondent Gavin Grimm in a manner consistent with their gender identity.”

The Anglican problem condensed into two words – for me

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Michael Curry, Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church, tells us that marrying same-sex couples will continue in TEC because it is not contrary to the core doctrine of the church.

More specifically, he says that “For me, marriage is not part of core doctrine”. Therein lies the problem: he is unconcerned whether marriage is actually part of core doctrine or not because for him it isn’t. Truth is relative, doctrine is solipsistic, what is doctrine for me may not be for you. Objective truth doesn’t exist or is, at best unknowable and irrelevant – at least, it is for him.

No matter how heavily they disguise it as piety, the fact remains that TEC and the Anglican Church of Canada have constructed their own perverse doctrinal house of cards; it is already falling about their ears and the faster if falls, the more furiously the bishops, like demented gargoyles, hack at the foundations.

To look on the bright side, though: But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD

From here (my emphasis):

Many believed that marriage is part of core doctrine.  No individual church can change core doctrine.  Many felt that the expansion of who may be married on our part was a change in church doctrine.  Therefore it was in part on that basis that many felt that we had overstepped our authority as a province. I didn’t agree with that but I respect that that was the understanding of many.  For me, marriage is not part of core doctrine. The doctrine of the Holy Trinity is core doctrine.  The doctrine of who Jesus Christ is – wholly God and wholly human – is doctrine.  The articles of the Creeds are doctrine.  The Holy Scriptures and the Old and New Testament are core doctrine.  Other sections of the Chicago– Lambeth Quadrilateral are core doctrine. Marriage is a sacramental right, it is a solemn and sacred matter of faith and practice.  But it is not core doctrine.

Justin Welby and the Dead Parrot

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There have been numerous articles – here is an example – written about Justin Welby’s attempt to inject an illusory aura of unity into something that has been decomposing since it expired in 2003: the Anglican Communion. Rowan Williams tried to do this too by channelling Hegel; he failed miserably – does anyone remember the Covenant? – and retreated to academia.

Justin Welby is inviting the Anglican primates to a “special gathering” in January 2016 to “look afresh at our ways of working as a Communion”.

The Anglican Church of Canada has its own parochial perspective on all this. In a 2012 visit to see Justin Welby, Fred Hiltz expressed his “ongoing concern about efforts by the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) to be recognized by the Church of England”. The last thing the rapidly dwindling Anglican Church of Canada needs is more competition from another Anglican Province in North America – one that is recognised by Canterbury. Hiltz’s worst fears may be coming to a nail-biting climax since ACNA’s Foley Beach has been invited to the January 2016 gathering; it looks likely that he will attend. The Anglican Journal sees this as “fuelling the controversy”, omitting the obvious fact that the controversy was ignited by Hiltz and Jefferts-Shori in the first place when they decided to promote same-sex blessings in spite of strenuous protests from the rest of the Communion:

Fuelling the controversy was an invitation extended by Welby to Archbishop Foley Beach, head bishop of the Anglican Church in North America, to be present for part of the meeting.

Welby points out:

We each live in a different context.

“The difference between our societies and cultures, as well as the speed of cultural change in much of the global north, tempts us to divide as Christians: when the command of scripture, the prayer of Jesus, the tradition of the church and our theological understanding urges unity. A 21st-century Anglican family must have space for deep disagreement, and even mutual criticism, so long as we are faithful to the revelation of Jesus Christ, together.

If that sounds like the old familiar Anglican Fudge it’s probably because it is. The ACoC and TEC are not “faithful to the revelation of Jesus Christ”. That has always been the problem, is still the problem and unless Jesus returns before January will almost certainly continue to be the problem.

Happily, the GAFCON primates, having already been fed Anglican Fudge to the point of gagging, see what is going on perfectly clearly and have issued something that is quite unfamiliar to Western Anglicans: a lucid statement. It contains this:

It is on this basis that the GAFCON Primates will prayerfully consider their response to the Archbishop of Canterbury’s letter. They recognize that the crisis in the Communion is not primarily a problem of relationships and cultural context, but of false teaching which continues without repentance or discipline.

For my part, I am somewhat indifferent to the outcome of the “special gathering”. My main interest is to be a part of an institution that is easily identifiable as a Christian Church, something that, while sober, I could not accuse the Anglican Church of Canada of.

I just wish I could be in the room when the GAFCON primates tell Fred Hiltz and Michael Curry that they must repent of their false teaching.