Read it all here including national reaction from other faith groups.Sex, politics, and poverty evidently aren't hot enough topics for The Episcopal Church's presiding bishop, Katharine Jefferts Schori. Wednesday, she threw a grenade on personal salvation, too. She even took a swipe at the "sinners prayer" -- a brief-but-intense prayer admitting to sin and submitting to Jesus. There's no agreed text for this prayer but variations of it are central to evangelical/pentecostal Protestantism. The Episcopal Church has been boiling for years in a fundamental disagreement over its theological direction ...
Saturday, July 11, 2009
USA Today: Focus on personal salvation is 'heresy', 'idolatry'
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11 comments:
I left TEC a number of years ago and am recently back in an orthodox Anglican church. Observing this convention has not been completely surprising, but I still wonder how Katharine Jefferts Schori ever become presiding Bishop of TEC?
Is it such an inane question? I left TEC because the Priest advised me not to read Revelation because, he said, it was "arcane". The degeneration of TEC started a long time ago, when "scholarly" began taking precedence over "biblical".
What have the TEC orthodox warriors of the faith been doing these past 40 years or so? How in fact did this lady become bishop? The answer must surely be revealing as to what faithful church leaders must do to protect the lambs from the wolves.
The "warriors" became civil and listened until it was too late to speak out. Glad you found your way back to a biblically centered church.
The "listening process" began in the garden of Eden and led to original sin. The "listening process" today simply allows for more of the same. The real listening process is for the still small voice. That voice says, "Get out and don't look back."
We are saved thru incorporation into the body of the Lord - not by personal efforts but by grace - found where we are gathered together - less so when we isolate ourselves - I respect solitary prayers but their path is more difficult than when we are joined with others - evangelicals have a lot to gain from traditional corporate approaches but it requires humility and discipline of pride - these are hard to come by in our society.
ettu,
For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— Eph. 2:8
Don't forget the "through faith" portion and that is not a corporate experience. We are not saved by the faith of those around us, only encouraged. St. Paul encourages us to work out our own salvation with trembling and fear.
ettu,
Respectfully, evangelicals are hardly solitary or "non-corporate". I agree we are saved by grace, but I think the rub here is that evangelicals believe we are saved as individuals, not as a corporate body. The redeemed are brought together in the body of Christ where we nurture and uplift one another to be more Christ-like.
Further discussion is difficult because of the Presiding Bishop's very weak "straw man" argument that barely qualifies as a caricature of the evangelical position in either TEC or across most of American evangelicalism.
It would appear that this article has been taken down - well, at least the link did not work> Imagine that!
Check that - my bad
Dale Matson - the line you attempt to define is very, very finite in its dimensions - more along the mathematical concept of theoretically zero. Faith and faith alone - and do we find faith when isolated - from birth - in a windowless body? Is not it nourished meaningfully by our parents and teachers? Do we not require vision and hearing and smell and touch to grow in it? Take all those away and we may still believe but we have not rreached the level available to those who are incorporated fully into a mature corporate structure. I am glad evangelicals have a structure and it is not for me to assume it is better or worse than TEC's - but I prefer one over the other and the discipline within it works for me - including the ability within that structure to allow my mind and intellect to be free to the awakenings of the Holy Spirit.
ettu - I was thinking you were being gracious until that final swipe at the end. The evangelical intellect is working just fine - working to renew my mind daily as a matter of fact. I really get tired of the canard. It smacks of the arrogance of TEC in the face of not only its last dissenters but in front of most of the world's Anglicans. If we don't come to your conclusions we're clearly not thinking?
The progressives have won their victory and they control everything. Conscience clauses give me no comfort whatsoever seeing the behavior of revisionists over the last two decades. At best, they may be willing to let some current traditionalist bishops die in place, but I don't see how any dissenter will ever be approved in the future. The radicals wouldn't stand for even a token diocese.
I'll leave my prayer book on the doorstep of the "inclusive" church that called orthodox believers like me "narrow-minded intolerant right-wingers" from the pulpit while I sat in the pews and then called on us to pass the peace.
Dear Anon (so many of you have the same name!) I assure you no "swipe" was intended! It is my honest nd grateful interpretation of TEC's belief system. I do not have any disrespect to those who wish to follow a different set of beliefs - nor do I appreciate disrespect of mine.
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