Tag Archives: TEC

Anglican reactions to impending supreme court abortion ruling

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The Episcopal Church has issued the following statement:

Episcopal Church statement on reports concerning Supreme Court case pertaining to abortion

May 3, 2022

Office of Government Relations

Since 1967, The Episcopal Church has maintained its “unequivocal opposition to any legislation on the part of the national or state governments which would abridge or deny the right of individuals to reach informed decisions [about the termination of pregnancy] and to act upon them.” In light of the recent report about a pending decision in the Supreme Court case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, The Episcopal Church reaffirms our commitment to “equitable access to women’s health care, including women’s reproductive health care,” which we view as “an integral part of a woman’s struggle to assert her dignity and worth as a human being.” The Office of Government Relations will continue to advocate at the federal level to protect reproductive rights.

We encourage you to read this overview of The Episcopal Church’s positions on abortion and women’s reproductive health.

Put into simple terms, removing the euphemisms and Newspeak, TEC is endorsing the murder of unborn babies. An organisation promoting such a demonically inspired abomination should not be afforded the dignity of being called a Christian Church.

The Anglican Church of Canada hierarchy, being largely populated with spineless poltroons, has remained silent on the issue. Apart, that is, from the intrepid Rev. Michael Coren who cannot resist coming down on the wrong side of an ethical conundrum whenever he has the opportunity.

Read Coren’s claptrap here:

There is nothing Christian about allowing women to die in illegal back street abortions. Nothing Christian about removing the basic right of a woman to control her own body. Nothing Christian about wanting to criminalize female equality.

[….]

But what of scripture itself? The central point is that any ancient text, even one that is central to a religious faith and certainly crucial to my life and beliefs, has to be understood and interpreted in context and with understanding.

So, for example, when opponents of abortion quote Jeremiah — “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, and before you were born, I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations” — they should grasp a few realities. First, this was written around 2,700 years ago. Second, the text is speaking of a single person, “a prophet to the nations” rather than making a sweeping comment about the beginning of life.

Or Psalm 139, “For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” This is poetry and metaphor, a beautiful testimony to God’s love but not a guide to human biology. The very idea is unbiblical.

The New Testament has Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist, meeting Mary, mother of Jesus, and “the child leaped in her womb.” Again, a lyrical description of an event that shaped history, but not scientific and not supposed to be. If we’re to take a literalist approach to the Bible we’re in all sorts of trouble. By the way, it sometimes supports abortion, something the Christian right doesn’t like to mention.

Bishops learning how to sue people

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Three bishops from Toronto have travelled to Richmond Virginia to learn how to be better bishops from TEC. It all looks quite tedious. One thing did catch my eye, though: the TEC counsel for property litigation held a session on clergy discipline. Presumably the Canadian bishops will return with a renewed zest for suing people.

Another lesson was on “Building Community”. Don’t laugh.

From here:

Bishops listen June 14 as Mary Kostel, special counsel to the presiding bishop for property litigation and discipline, explains the Episcopal Church’s clergy discipline canon, known as Title IV. The session was part of Living our Vows, the College for Bishops’ three-year formation program for new bishops.

TEC spokeswoman says Trump’s election is a betrayal of Christian values

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From here:

The election of Donald Trump has caused pain and uncertainty in The Episcopal Church (TEC), says Canon (lay) Noreen Duncan, TEC’s representative to Council of General Synod (CoGS).

Addressing CoGS on November 19, Duncan spoke of the sense of “betrayal” she feels as someone who immigrated to the United States and now sees the values she had always associated with her new home “slipping out from under us.”

In nearly a year of campaigning, Trump was frequently criticized for stirring up animosity toward immigrants, Muslims, and religious and ethnic minorities, as well as for his derogatory comments toward women.

Duncan said Trump’s victory was made more difficult for her by the fact that so many of his supporters identified as Christians. According to the Pew Research Centre, 58% of Protestants, 60% of white Catholics and 81% of white evangelicals voted for Trump.

“As part of the Jesus Movement, we are not just people of faith: we are Christians; and the people who apparently seem to have chosen [to vote for Trump], also identify as Christians,” said Duncan. “[But] the values of Christianity are not the values that have been espoused in this election, and that is part of the reason I feel so betrayed.”

Other than the visceral pleasure afforded by watching liberals squirm over Trump’s election, there are several interesting things to be gleaned from this article.

Firstly, we can see that it is possible, after what I can only assume are hours of practice in front of a mirror and a rigorous regimen of Raja Yoga, for a spokeswoman for the ecclesiastical organisation that has gained a worldwide reputation for betraying Christian values to maintain a straight face while denouncing a secular organisation for betraying Christian values.

Secondly, Duncan cannot bring herself to countenance the thought that the 81% of evangelicals who voted for Trump are bona fide Christians. Hence, she refers to them as people who “identified as Christians” in much the same way as a man, self-identifying as a woman while inconveniently sporting Y chromosomes, isn’t quite what he claims to be.

Thirdly, Duncan appears to be very much a part of the elite liberal establishment – the counterfeit church division – whose hypocrisy, condescension, self-deception and arrogance has been their undoing.

Fourthly, anything that causes “pain and uncertainty in The Episcopal Church” can’t be all bad, can it?

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.

Has TEC been suspended from the Anglican Communion?

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Some say, “yes”:

Capture2

And some say, “no:

Capture

This is what the CofE director of communications (Arun Arora)is referring to:

So, no – the Episcopal Church has not been suspended from or by the Anglican Communion. The fact that the Primates’ approach is problematic regarding issues of human sexuality is another matter. But let us not imagine that these events make TEC “second class Anglicans,” let alone that they remove TEC members from the Communion in any way. They should have little impact on how members of TEC see themselves as part of a wider Communion, a community of Churches with a common history and with an extraordinary scope and richness.

And this is what George Conger is referring to:

An overwhelming majority of the Primates present voted that TEC should be excluded from all meetings which represent the Anglican Communion and that it should be suspended from internal decision-making bodies, initially for three years.

So is TEC suspended from the Anglican Communion or not? It depends on whether they really are disinvited from the meetings that Archbishop Eliud Wabukala is referring to above; we shall have to wait and see.

I don’t know about you, but the suspense is killing me.

That was quick

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From here:

A Montana man said Wednesday that he was inspired by last week’s U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing gay marriage to apply for a marriage license so that he can legally wed his second wife.

Nathan Collier and his wives Victoria and Christine applied at the Yellowstone County Courthouse in Billings on Tuesday in an attempt to legitimize their polygamous marriage. Montana, like all 50 states, outlaws bigamy — holding multiple marriage licenses — but Collier said he plans to sue if the application is denied.

“It’s about marriage equality,” Collier told The Associated Press Wednesday. “You can’t have this without polygamy.”

TEC and the ACoC don’t haven’t much of a generous pastoral response to offer Nathan, Victoria and Christine because so many North American Anglican clergy have been too busy legitimising their own sexual urges to worry about polygamy – although clerical polygamy may well be on the horizon; as long as it’s gay polygamy.

TEC changes the definition of marriage; Justin Welby is deeply concerned

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From here:

The Archbishop of Canterbury today expressed deep concern about the stress for the Anglican Communion following the US Episcopal Church’s House of Bishops’ resolution to change the definition of marriage in the canons so that any reference to marriage as between a man and a woman is removed.

While recognising the prerogative of The Episcopal Church to address issues appropriate to its own context, Archbishop Justin Welby said that its decision will cause distress for some and have ramifications for the Anglican Communion as a whole, as well as for its ecumenical and interfaith relationships.

Other than the fact that I am still waiting with considerable anticipation for an archbishop to voice a shallow concern, what I find most interesting about this is that Welby’s worry is not so much whether it is Biblically sound to redefine marriage, but whether TEC’s decision will hasten the demise of the pallid but still twitching carcass belonging to what used to be the Anglican Communion.

In order to remain credible, and in the absence of any more potent stricture on TEC than deep concern from Canterbury, what choice will Provinces that take the Gospel seriously have but to further distance themselves from TEC – and Canterbury?

Incidentally, does anyone doubt that the Anglican Church of Canada will follow in TEC’s footsteps? Anyone?

A Green Easter in TEC

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In Katharine Jefferts Schori’s Easter missive, the message of Jesus’ Resurrection is like the seed scattered among the thorns: it is choked by weeds – green weeds.

In reading her Easter guide to spring planting, I remain uncertain as to whether or not the gardener is Jesus. I note the lack of a capital “G”. He himself is planted and then spring[s] up green, so my abiding suspicion is that this is nothing other than a roundabout way of encouraging churches to enhance their electrical plant by installing more rooftop solar panels.

Meaning does occasionally struggle defiantly to raise its head in this epistle, but it is ruthlessly suppressed by the keen mind of the Presiding Bishop.

You can read the whole panegyric to Easter shrubbery here:

She peers in once more – who are these, so bold appearing? “Fear not, woman… why do you weep?” She turns away and meets another, who says the same – why do you weep, who are you looking for? This gardener has himself been planted and now springs up green and vibrant, still rising into greater life. He challenges her to go and share that rising, great news of green and life, with those who have fled.

Still rising, still seeking union with Creator, making tender offering to beloved friends – briefly I am with you, I am on my way. Go and you will find me if you look.

The risen one still offers life to those who will look for evidence of his gardening – hope, friendship, healing, reunion, restoration – to all who have been uprooted, cut off, to those who are parched and withered, to those who lie wasting in the desert. Why do we weep or run away when that promise abides?

We can find that green one, still rising, if we will go stand with the grieving Marys of this world, if we will draw out the terrified who have retreated to their holes, if we will walk the Emmaus road with the lost and confused, if we will search out the hungry in the neighborhood called Galilee. We will find him already there before us, bringing new and verdant life. The only place we will not find him is in the tomb.

Episcopal Church of Cuba votes to return to TEC

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Presently it is affiliated with the Anglican Church of Canada.

From here:

Members of synod for the Episcopal Church of Cuba narrowly voted in favour of returning to the church’s former affiliation with The Episcopal Church at their recent meeting last month in Cardenas, Cuba.

The move came two months after the historic decision by the United States and Cuba to re-establish diplomatic relations after a 54-year hiatus. The Cuban church had been part of a province in The Episcopal Church until the 1959 revolution, which made travel and communication between the two churches difficult. The Metropolitan Council of Cuba (MCC)—which includes primates of the Anglican Church of Canada, the Province of West Indies and The Episcopal Church—was subsequently created to provide support and oversight.

Archbishop Fred Hiltz, primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, and Archdeacon Michael Thompson, general secretary, attended the synod—which ran from Feb. 19 to 22—as representatives of the MCC.

This will mean a big change for Cuban Anglicans: they will move from a Province that is radically liberal, blesses same-sex unions, boasts practising gay clergy, believes dogma is redundant, and is losing people faster than Obama is losing votes to a Province that that is radically liberal, blesses same-sex unions, boasts practising gay clergy, believes dogma is redundant, and is losing people faster than Obama is losing votes.

The decision was made, it seems, largely so Cuban clergy could retrieve their pension funds, proving that, no matter how vehemently they may protest otherwise, when it comes to their livelihood, Cuban clergy are just like their North American brothers: capitalist running dogs:

Hiltz went on to explain that one of the significant factors behind the drafting of the substitute resolution is “the frustration of a number of people in the church in Cuba with the fact that since the break with The Episcopal Church and the political situation between Cuba and U.S., the pension fund for clergy has just basically been frozen [in the U.S.].”

Washington Cathedral worships moon god

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I could talk at length about whether TEC’s shift from Gaia worship to Allah worship represents a drifting away from the manic inclusion that grips the imagination of its hierarchy – but I won’t. I will simply note that, while the place was chock-a-block with people whose religion denies the deity of Jesus, the only person to be ejected was a woman who affirmed it.

From here:

In a corner of Washington National Cathedral, several hundred Muslim worshipers and other invited guests gathered Friday afternoon for a first-ever recitation of weekly Muslim prayers at the iconic Christian sanctuary and to hear leaders of both faiths call for religious unity in the face of extremist violence and hate.

[….]

the carefully scripted ceremony was marred once when one well-dressed, middle-age woman in the audience suddenly rose and began shouting that “America was founded on Christian principles. . . . Leave our church alone!” She was swiftly ushered out by security aides, and the service continued.