{"id":861,"date":"2006-11-16T09:04:31","date_gmt":"2006-11-16T09:04:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hypersync.net\/wordpress\/?p=861"},"modified":"2006-11-16T09:04:31","modified_gmt":"2006-11-16T09:04:31","slug":"adventures_in_anglicanism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hypersync.net\/wordpress\/?p=861","title":{"rendered":"Adventures in Anglicanism"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bishop Scofield of the Diocese of San Joaquin has issued a letter to his diocese leading up to their diocesan convention. My take on the leader is that the resolutions before convention will remove those in the diocese from The Episcopal Church. Perhaps the presentment against Bishop Scofield by the other bishops of California, which was found to be without merit at the time, was premature. You can read the letter here<\/a>.
\nHere is a response by Father Jake Stops the World<\/a>
\nThere is a lot of discussion of this letter at Titusonenine<\/a>. I responded to an earlier comment that decried the attitudes typically associated with Californians of a social permissiveness or post-modernist way that says that all beliefs are equal, thusly:
\nBrain wrote:<\/p>\n

So over time, what shapes what? Does the church remain a focal point of faithfulness amid \u00e2\u20ac\u0153live and let live\u00e2\u20ac\u009d or does a 97% unchurched population influence the church to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153believe whatever ya want\u00e2\u20ac\u009d? As far as mainline synods and denominations, the data is there for all to see.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Faithfulness to what? A very particular way of interpreting Scripture? A checklist of does and don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ts? A litmus test of theological principles? The two greatest commands given to us by Jesus? From the perspective of the unchurched people around us, I posit that it isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t what we may think. They want to see people who actually live what they say \u00e2\u20ac\u201c like Mother Teresa, like the Amish in Pennsylvania. Like Bishop Scofield? Life you or me? Like liberals or conservatives?
\nYou know, with regard to the “believe what ya want” and the ethos behind post-modernism or its cousin \u00e2\u20ac\u0153relativism\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, the way we respond to people, the way we engage one another in disagreements, the way we speak and convey our principles and beliefs, the way we DO<\/strong> all these things become paramount. Talk is cheap. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153They will know you are Christians by your love\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6\u00e2\u20ac\u009d There ain\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t a whole lot of lovin’ goin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 on.
\nAnyone can say anything and believe anything \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Christian or non-Christian, liberal or conservative. It is only when the post-modernist and unchurched people see such a difference in our lives that they cannot deny that there is something profoundly significant in what we proclaim, expressed through our actions so as to not be found to be hypocrites. We can demand that post-modernism be rejected, but it isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t going away. Our words must match our actions, and most non-Christians believe that we are a bunch of hypocrites in that regard \u00e2\u20ac\u201c conservative or liberal, it doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t matter.
\nWe as Christians will now have to honestly live lives of significant difference (as the Gospel calls us to do), and that is not just in our profession of beliefs or some demand that people stop behaving in certain ways. The unchurched look and see huge logs sticking out of our eyes. I think this is a problematic point in much of what I read from reasserters over some of the moral issues we are struggling over. I have no doubt that Bishop Scofield is a godly man who seeks after God\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s will, but his description of all other Episcopalians who do not agree with his way of living out the Anglican\/Christian life is problematic. Again, in a culture where anyone can believe whatever they want with equal regard, it is a demonstratably different life that will attract them and will prove to them that there is something different about THIS Gospel.
\nAn example of this is how the liberal news media was bending over backwards to report on and trying to explain the profoundly different way the Amish responded to the murder of their children in Pennsylvania. In the Amish, they saw lived out the command to forgive and to love without hypocrisy. They look at us in all our pronouncements and infighting and accusations as nothing more than a bunch of hypocrites \u00e2\u20ac\u201c ala Ted Haggard.
\nIn a post-modernism world, we have to get off the pot! How often do we step back and really think of how the unchurched see us?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bishop Scofield of the Diocese of San Joaquin has issued a letter to his diocese leading up to their diocesan convention. My take on the leader is that the resolutions before convention will remove those in the diocese from The … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anglican"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hypersync.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hypersync.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hypersync.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hypersync.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hypersync.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=861"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hypersync.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/861\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hypersync.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hypersync.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hypersync.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}