The end is nigh
Few opening paragraphs are so ominous as this one from the New York Times:
Bishops of the Episcopal Church on Tuesday rejected demands by leaders of the worldwide Anglican Communion to roll back the church’s liberal stance on homosexuality, increasing the possibility of fracture within the communion and the Episcopal Church itself.What do you think? Should Archbishop Rowan Williams finally abandon his mission to keep the Anglical Communion together? Should TEC be left to go its own way?
Comments
In any case, it looks like things are starting to spiral down quickly.
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On the other hand, I really am in no position to offer any practical advice to Williams and the rest of the Anglican leadership. Unity may in fact be impossible. I do hope that it doesn' result in a wider schism.
Of course a few dioceses and scattered congregations COULD/MIGHT leave TEC. TEC would likely sell them the church properties and never recover in these areas. But the splinter and African-influenced dioceses in U.S. will not have the critical mass necessary to sustain a claim as a necessary expression of a global communion. They would be as compelling an alternative as the Cumberland Presbyterians. For that reason I think no diocese will leave TEC. Plus clergy want their pensions.
And the only difference now for the global church will be less money going from TEC to the African churches as it will now go instead to secular NGO's in Africa.
As for TEC, average Sunday attendance is 750,000 for the entire denomination. It is graying and will virtually collapse anyway, a decade before a few other mailnliners.
That's the way I see it anyway,
Stan