Make Up Your Minds!

Good luck on that leaving-with-your-property plea. Katharine Schori isn’t the only power-hungry, money-grubbing apostate in charge of a major denomination.

Amen to that #1.

Agree with 1 and 2.  Somehow I don’t see TEC/815/+KJS or DBB implementing that sort of gracious leave-with-your-property policy anytime soon. 

I still think the best possibility for TEC would be to honestly realize that what we all really know and that is- every bishop does what they think is best for their diocese (we can hope). So admit that reality and just dissolve the union of dioceses known as TEC. Simple. The dioceses that are left can either come together and form another union or do whatever their people decide to do as individual convention.

My grandmother always said Episcopalians are really congregationalist at heart!! Many just don’t care what happens outside their parish.

There is a reason why Greg is right in #1.  The reason is that if the mainline denominations make their “bold stance” and then keep the door graciously open, they fear that a large number of people would leave.  And that would undermine the liberal agenda.  I think that deep down liberals know that they only have the power of destruction and that they need to leech on to a living organism in order to survive.  If they let the living organism escape, they have no ability to survive.

I have never considered the RCA to be a mainline denomination.

If every RCA parish closed up this week, no one would notice.

Oh, wait.

James, RCA is mainline by virtue of its membership in the National and World Councils of Churches. It is in general more conservative than other mainline denominations, but has had to deal with the homosexual issue nonetheless.

I’m sure DeYoung recognizes that it’s unlikely that in the denominations that have made the most vicious efforts to take property aren’t going to stop. He’s simply saying what should happen, not what will happen. It is possible, however, that if smaller mainline denominations (the RCA, say, or the Cumberland Presbyterian) will learn from TEC and PCUSA, and if they start seeing defections, will recognize that taking the go-to-court route will only lead to even greater defections, and poison their wells beyond all possible recovery.

There is an implicit tolerance in DeYoung’s proposal that is anaethema to the liberals. They are convinced that non-liberals are evil (they have been taught this ad-nauseum) and thus are convinced we must not be offered any succour.  They don’t see “Bodies will rearrange. Parts will realign.” as a good thing,  but rather as a failure on their part to destroy the conservative church.

Jamesw in #4 is spot-on.  DeYoung doesn’t realize it, but these denominations **have** made up their minds, it’s just that they know their frog boiling.

Clarity is too honest a thing for most lefties.  Of course it’s about either voluntarily deceiving folks who would flee if they were totally honest about the end-game, or they think it’s possible to “educate” folks to come around to their post-modern schlock if they lead the poor dears slowly enough that they don’t scare off.

In my pre-ACNA mainline church, I remember the run-up to our Biennial Convention, and the knowledge that there was going to be a vote on homosexuality.

A group of pastors brought in some newsletter by the gay lobby for the gay lobby, nationally, and it included a strategy on mainline denominations.  It specifically urged that homosexuals use the political structures of each denomination to push votes enacting the gay agenda, or to split or destroy the denomination politically if it failed to endorse their platform.  They then went beyond the idea of simple votes, but talked about how it was a win if the vote didn’t outright condemn homosexuality, even if it only said “we’ll pray over and discuss the matter”, since the camel’s nose was under the tent and in the coming few years they could wear the denomination down.  Only a few years though, there was an impatience and a desire to punish a church that didn’t endorse their lifestyle.

In that denomination I observed that, for the most part, men and women with a heart for ministry were content to stay near home and do the work of the church.  Those who had a political agenda, like this one, were strongly drawn to the political hierarchy of the denomination, desiring to use it’s ‘bully pulpit’ to further their ideology.

So, yes, as long as a denomination fails to observe that homosexuality is clearly contradictory to Biblical teaching, it will have to contend with a steady political onslaught from within.  It is doubly hard since the mainstream media seem to delight in abusing conservatives, but then Christ did not promise that following Him would be easy.

I wonder how much money Gene Robinson, Susan Russell and the PB have cost the church?

It’s nice to dream.  There are a few in the HOB of TEC that would agree with DeYoung.  You don’t hear much from them because they would instantly be notified that they are invited to the Title IV disciplinary…err…pastoral process. 

The problem is that the strongest parishes are made of of center-right to right people.  815 knows that it cannot survive without these people.  Eventually it will have to do without them, because they will not be able to find anything other than far left clergy.  Then, they will leave because it will affect them directly.  It’s been playing out in a great many parishes for years now. 

The result is that, in order to hold on to the institution as long as possible, 815 is going to strangle the center and right hoping that by some miraculous turn of events, people start buying what they are selling. 

But again, it is nice to dream.