Two years ago, The Episcopal Church and Bishop Adams' offered a settlement to the dilemma that would have allowed the 35 breakaway parishes to keep roughly $500 million in church properties in exchange for the national church keeping the diocesan name and identifying marks, along with St. Christopher Camp and other assets. Bishop Mark Lawrence and the Diocese of South Carolina, which broke with the national church, rejected the deal.
So the situation has gone from one side to the other with both sides expressing moral indignation. In the end there was no resolution, only loss. But the fight was never over an absolute. The Diocese of South Carolina did not want a reformed Episcopal Church, just one rolled back a decade or two before some of the more outrageous stances were taken by that body. Same sex marriage and the full legitimacy of homosexuality within the church and its ministry were the issues that broke the back of the Episcopal Church AND the ELCA. Those who broke away from both churches ended up keeping the ordination of women and everything except the LGBTQ issue.
So far will some go and not any further. Both communions might have found rescue in break offs willing to review the whole history of things gone wrong but in the end certain lines were drawn that could not be traversed. So, although I am encouraged by the ACNA, NALC, and even the LCMC, I do not hold great hope that courage will rise to give faithful review to what began the decline. There are no detours around such confrontation. Without it, these groups will only be biding time. Maybe for some it is enough. It should not be.
4 comments:
Sadly, since ACNA, NALC and LCMC appear to only want to roll back the clock a decade or two, they are proving to be rather homophobic. Because if they were serious about the Bible and understanding Scripture, they wouldn't be doing half of what they practice.
Anglicans started out on the wrong premise when they formed (temporal; reasons rather than Scriptural) so it is baked into their DNA. Sure they have often been liturgical, but I could never understand the coziness Lutherans would want with them. I see them part of the Protestant grouping that I have no use for.
LCMC is rank with an unhealthy pietism to be hyper-congregantionalist. So they are unfortunate with their "I'll do it my way" attitude. (they probably don't even realize what their weakness is) And the recent decisions by NALC sadly shows the are riddle with higher criticism and do not have the fortitude to abandon women's ordination and other things. So I do not see any value in continued discussions with these two 'Lutheran' denominations.
Jason Kiefer
Yet European and African church bodies with a similar XXXA-lite history and with not an iota of interest in stopping its ordination of women, are still being wooed (and funded) by the LCMS, including one in formal fellowship talks with the LCMS.
But there's always an angle to be played in pulling the wool over the eyes of the pewsitters, like having A&P fellowship with a church body in which the head bishop promised not to ordain women, despite the fact the church body's constitution, for over a decade, officially allowed the ordination of women to occur.
"The Diocese of South Carolina did not want a reformed Episcopal Church, just one rolled back a decade or two before some of the more outrageous stances were taken by that body. Same sex marriage and the full legitimacy of homosexuality within the church and its ministry were the issues that broke the back of the Episcopal Church AND the ELCA."
I disagree with this claim, absolutely and totally. After some shilly-shallying, the "separatist" Diocese of South Carolina has resumed the practice of women's pretended "ordination" to the presbyterate (a practice which they adopted not long after The Episcopal "Church" approved that "development" in 1978); they have always practiced the pretended ordination of women to the diaconate. So the DSC (like ACNA) does wish, in fact, to "roll the clock back" but about three decades, rather than one or two.
More generally, I cannot understand why the LC-MS wishes to carry on "making nice" with these bodies, when in fact their logical "Lutheran partner" is a body like the NALC, since both the NALC and the ACNA/DSC seem to operate on much the same "clock roll-back time setting."
Sorry, now I see that my comment rests on a misreading of the part of this posting that I quoted. Apologies.
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