It would be a triumph of the first order for Mrs. Schori, guaranteeing her a place in the pantheon of world heroes to be worshipped and adored, with Nobel prizes for Peace on Earth and goodwill towards gender free, sexually variable men and women for whom there are no limits to personal exploration, presuming, of course that they are, in some sense, committed.

Social engineering, the utopian vision of 60s hippies with free love for all, tolerance, sympathy, and openness to all views is the order of the day. In the words of one writer, an oceanic love for Mother Earth and all her suffering children, is now being recast in terms of .07% of Episcopal budgets to save humanity.

Just as the 60s devolved into narcissism, an adamant belief in radical solutions to endemic problems, the reigning rectitude of self-righteous Episcopal liberals is little more than a re-casting of First Century Pharisaism wherein external behavior and "appearances" are more important than heart change. The ethical side was more important than the theological side. They were far more concerned with orthopraxy than with orthodoxy. The truth is they didn't practice what they preached!

Episcopal Church liberals have this down to an art form. Salvation is no longer defined by the Great Commission and the Great Commandment, but in terms of Good Works, namely MDGs and their ability to save humanity from its darkest self. Salvation is subsumed in baptism, not in public faith commitment to Jesus as Lord.

What we are seeing in Episcopal Church leaders is a new narcissism, an unwavering belief in our leaders' moral rectitude and ecclesiastical dogmatism and with it an attendant lack of tolerance for any one, specifically people of orthodox faith who do not endorse their views.

The new Episcopal elites have become a cohort of rampant self-righteous prigs, so utterly convinced of their own righteousness and the rightness of their cause to save humanity that they are blind to their own spiritual blindness, even as the church they adhere to slowly implodes with fleeing parishes and parishioners.

It is a colossal example of hubris of the first order. It is the blind leading the blind even as they head Gadarene-like off the cliff edge onto the rocks below.

Consider the words of Mrs. Schori in an Interview in Vancouver "the Episcopal Church unflinchingly predicts the high decibel back-and-forth currently pre-occupying the top level of international church may well go on for another decade or more." She concluded by saying that she calculates the disgruntled at one half of one per cent of her 2.4 million-member church and calculates the international disgruntlement at a similar level.

This is a complete denial and a total failure to realize that the issues at stake are spiritual life and death. (In reality there are not 2.4 million members, barely 800,000 practicing Episcopalians on any given Sunday.)

She fails to see that this is not just about "issues" but the very nature of truth itself, the veracity of gospel proclamation that calls men and women out of darkness into newness of life.

"I think the best outcome would be to ratchet down the level of conflict several notches. We have some very anxious people who need to have this resolved structurally right now," she said.

This total inability to see that this issue is not about "structure" reveals a raw blindness. It is about the very nature of the faith once delivered to the saints that is in question. Some sort of faux unity will not cover over the widening fissures in the Anglican Communion and especially the Episcopal Church.

What is even worse is the fury with which the Episcopal Left now treats its minority dissident orthodox. You see they dare to believe what she does not believe. In so doing, they invite her and her fellow revisionist bishops wrath against them. It is hubris beyond all understanding.

The intellectual historian Isaiah Berlin has described what was and is a central problem of liberalism. His view of the state could apply equally to the Episcopal Church. He writes: "The liberal state's job is to hold different world-views in balance, but it cannot resolve conflicts between them. It cannot, for example, say to Muslims "You are wrong" and to Christians "You are right", because it then ceases to be liberal. At its most effective, it holds back the instinct of humanity to form itself into competing tribes. But the liberal state is perpetually threatened by - and will, over time, surely be overthrown by - an unusually aggressive tribe."

We see a classic example of this in the recent pronouncement by an Episcopal theologian Ann Holmes Redding who said she had converted to Islam but retained her right to call herself a Christian. She saw no contradiction in holding both views in tension even though the two religions are fundamentally and diametrically opposed to each other at a very base faith claim level.

Such syncretism gives orthodox American Episcopalians and African Evangelical Anglicans apoplectic fits especially when you consider that northern Nigeria, where the headquarters of the Anglican Province of Nigeria is located is also the heart of an expanding Islam demanding Shari'a law be the law of the land. Archbishop Peter Akinola believes the answer is to convert millions of animists and Muslims to Christ to prevent or at least reverse growing lawlessness and the slaughter of Christians, while Western elite Anglican leaders like Dr. Rowan Williams and others want to sit down and parley with Islamists in the name of a "higher" religious ecumenicity and a faux peace. Even the Pope won't go along with that.

What in fact we are seeing now is a growing spiritual and ecclesiastical lawlessness in The Episcopal Church that is leading to anything goes, believe anything you want, and do with your body whatever pleases you.

We had a vision of this in Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece "A Clockwork Orange" (1971). His film is set in the future where chaos reigns and there are no rules. Psychologists and thugs run the state. The main character is a gang leader who engages in "ultra-violence." Change the metaphor ever so slightly. The Episcopal Church has fewer and fewer rules, "open communion" is now being practiced and something called "open source worship" is on its way. The church is being run by revisionist bishops (thugs) who spend their waking hours ripping and tearing at orthodox priests and parishioners with multiple lawsuits, a form of "ultra-violence" that is leaving them stunned, with some dying prematurely, many more deprived of jobs and driven to despair. Mel Gibson could write the script with the title, "The Clockwork Church - abandon hope all ye who enter here."

American Episcopalianism is little more than agnostic liberalism writ large. The vacuity of our Episcopal leaders say they don't want to impose their religious ways on people but have no difficulty whatever in hammering into the ground that remnant of Episcopalians who DO actually have a faith to proclaim and who want to share it with others!

Said Mrs. Schori, "I hope that he [Rowan Williams] can hear and believe the church is far less divided than he believes it is."

The truth is, it is more divided now than at any point in its history. It is fundamentally divided over truth, Jesus, the gospel and morality. The parts are scattered all over the ground with millions of dollars being spent on lawyers trying to hold it together, or to put the genie back in the bottle. It won't happen.

Leaders of the Episcopal elite have brought about an ecclesiastical disaster with their ideological revisionism. They have virtually no spiritual restraints upon their own beliefs and behavior. They are now demanding a dwindling orthodox remnant to conform or else.

It is the worst sort of demagoguery and it will lead eventually to the church's own demise.

END