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MISSOURI: A Layman responds to Bishop's letter to Good Shepherd

AS EYE SEE IT: A Layman responds to Missouri Bishop's letter to Good
Shepherd

28 February, 2004

The Rt. Rev. George Wayne Smith
Bishop of Missouri
1210 Locust Street
Saint Louis, Missouri 63103

Bishop Smith,

As with your letter of 26 February, I write to you with deep sadness in
the aftermath of recent events. With the receipt of your letter,
however, I feel that I must now make my voice heard and respond to the
issues you have raised. As you have chosen to address only the symptoms
of the sickness, which has invaded the Body of Christ, I must
prayerfully remind you of their cause.

I would bring to your attention the words of the Apostle Paul to his son
Titus:

"For a Bishop must be blameless, as the steward of God, just, holy,
temperate; holding fast the faithful word he has been taught." (Titus
1:7-9).

When the House of Bishops, with your blessing, confirmed the election of
Gene Robinson to be a Bishop of Christ's Church they did not merely
express a loving acceptance of homosexuals, as Christ would have done.
What they did was endorse homosexuality, adultery, and the violation of
the sacred vows of marriage as exemplary expressions of faith in
accordance with God's word. Yet God's word is abundantly and
indisputably clear on this subject. Adultery and homosexuality are not
blameless, just, holy, or temperate; they are sins. These opposing views
cannot be reconciled. To appoint as a steward of God a man who is openly
and unrepentantly guilty of these sins is to deny and abandon the power
and authority of God's word, as given to us in scripture. This,
tragically, is just what the House of Bishops has done. And I would ask
you, if the church is no longer firmly founded upon the rock of God's
word, what is it founded upon? Where does it derive its authority? The
answer appears to be that you, and many of your fellow bishops, have
chosen to found it upon the ever-shifting sands of popular culture. But
a church that does not abide by the word of God clearly cannot be God's
church, so who's church has the Episcopal Church of the United States
Become? I saw an interview with Gene Robinson in which he said that if
people chose to leave his church because of his election, that was their
problem. I think that statement, aside from revealing the actual depth
of his spiritual commitment, encompasses the truth of the matter. The
Episcopal Church has now become Gene Robinson's church, a church of man,
not of God.

You say in your letter that the Episcopal Church is spacious enough to
encompass vastly divergent opinions and that we need not assent to
exactly the same theologies. Indeed, the Episcopal Church, in seeking to
accommodate the fickle desires of men, has now become so spacious, and
encompasses such vastly divergent opinions, that it is no longer
possible to find within it the theology contained in the gospel of
Christ. Again, I commend to your attention the words of the Apostle
Paul, to the Churches of Galatia:

"As we said before so say I now again, if any man preach any other
gospel than that you have received, let him be accursed. For do I now
persuade men, or God? Or do I seek to please men? For if I yet pleased
men, I should not be the servant of Christ" (Galatians 1:9-10).

Also consider Paul's admonition to the Colossians:

"As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him:
Rooted and built up in him, and stabilized in the faith, as ye have been
taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving. Beware lest any man spoil
you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the traditions of men,
after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ" (Colossians 2:6-8).

The breadth of theology that the Episcopal Church is now willing to
embrace is precisely why it continues to diminish. Those who are in
search of God seek a rock upon which to anchor their lives, not a
weathervane to show them which way the wind blows. That rock is the
unchanging word of God, as given to us in his scriptures. The Episcopal
Church has become a weathervane.

Throughout your letter runs an undercurrent, the implication that we are
being blindly and reluctantly herded down a path by a priest and wardens
who are acting without our knowledge or consent. You say that the
leaders of the Church of the Good Shepherd have taken us from the fold
of the Episcopal Church. I tell you in all truth that they have not
taken us anywhere.

We have remained steadfastly where we were, and they have remained with
us. It is the small and ever-shrinking Episcopal Church that has left
us. You have left the Church of the Good Shepherd, the much vaster fold
of the vibrant and growing Anglican Communion, and the body of Christ's
wider church on Earth.

Having denied the authority of scripture, having deviated from 2,000
years of Christian tradition, and having ignored the pleadings of Godly
men from around the world, the Episcopal Church has been justly and
widely rebuked and condemned for it's faithless actions by those who
still remain true to the word and works of God. When the House of
Bishops chose to abandon adherence to scripture, they also abandoned any
pretense of godly authority.

Yet you would have it otherwise, you would admonish us not to break with
an Episcopal Church that has been admonished for breaking with the
teachings of God, and with the accepted doctrines of the Anglican
Communion. Bishop Smith, unlike the Episcopal Church, we choose to
remain faithful to those doctrines, and within that communion. You
enjoin us from doing what you yourself have done. You urge us to
acquiesce, to come along, and to join the Episcopal Church in its
retreat from Gods teachings. But we have other guidance:

"Look to yourselves, that we lose not those things which we have
wrought, but that we receive a full reward. Whosoever transgresseth, and
abideth not in the doctrine of Christ, hath not God. He that abideth in
the doctrine of Christ, he hath both Father and the Son. If there come
any unto you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your
house, neither bid him God speed: For he that biddeth him God speed is
partaker of his evil deeds" (2 John 1:8-11).

Goodbye, I say, but not God speed.

You tell us that you offered to allow us pastoral oversight by a bishop
acceptable to both you and Father Paul. I tell you that Paul was right,
and wise to reject this compromise, for it reduces the momentous issues
with which we are wrestling to a personal dispute between you and our
rector, a dispute which ends whenever either of you eventually retires
from the stage. But this is not an issue of personalities; it is an
issue of faith, an issue of doctrine. Paul may retire, you may retire,
but the actions of the General Council, and the repudiation of the word
of God by the Episcopal Church, will remain. A temporary accommodation
does not alter this fact in any way, and it would be to our eternal
disgrace if we allowed ourselves to be tempted from the difficult path
of truth by such an empty solution. You warn us of anger, but we act not
in anger, rather in steadfast faith, and though anger does not sustain
(look to yourself as well, Bishop Smith), faith surely does, as it
surely will.

You warn us of the consequences of severing our ties with the Episcopal
Church, the ill that has befallen those who have gone before. You tempt
us with the sweet prospect that we can avoid the dissent, the disunity,
and the inevitable collapse which you predict, and which you do not wish
to see befall us. That all will be forgiven if we, and Father Paul,
simply recant. All we need do to avoid these evils is accept the actions
of the House of Bishops, deny the authority of scripture, ignore the
tenets of the Anglican Communion, and agree to remain within the grasp
of a church that has abandoned God in favor of men. In short, we only
need accept heresy as gospel. As Jesus said to Peter:" Get thee behind
me, Satan: thou art an offense to me: for thou savorest not the things
that be of God, but those that be of men" (Matthew 16:23).

Finally, I was so struck by something about your letter that I could not
in good faith close without pointing it out to you. You refer to
Constitutions, to charters, and to canons, but never once to Scripture.
Indeed, your entire tone is more that of a corporate executive than of a
Steward of God. I beg you to prayerfully reflect upon this, and consider
God's will as I leave you with one final passage:

"And if it seem evil unto you to serve the Lord, choose you this day
whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were
on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose
land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.

And the people answered and said, God forbid that we should forsake the
LORD, to serve other gods." (Joshua 24:15-16)

Yours in Christ

Erik H White
Parishioner, Church of the Good Shepherd
St. Louis, MO.

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