As a former Roman Catholic who walked away from that church taking nothing with her, she believes that Episcopalians who want to should leave the keys and check book at the front door on the way out. She even cites Archbishop Peter Akinola who declared that fleeing Episcopalians should be prepared to forfeit properties and pensions as they go.

All well and good, but Ms. Lauren who cites the evangelical Episcopal Virginia mega-churches as prime examples of "I want it all" forgets that it was the people who built those churches, not the diocese or the national church, and in the case of the Diocese of Virginia, these parishes PRECEDED the formation of the Episcopal Church, and the owners (read we the people) simply have a right, to want them back.

When Ms. Lauren left the RC Church she left it as an individual not as the leader of a parish, (as a woman she could be neither a pastor nor priest) so she had absolutely no power to take anything with her except her own check book and missal.

These Virginia parishes, on the other hand, were built and paid for by the people, and it was the people, who by going through a 40-day discernment, discerned that they collectively and overwhelming (by more than 90% in most cases) wanted out with their property. That is a wholly different story and not vaguely comparable to Ms. Lauren's walking away from the Roman Catholic Church where she had little say and even less power. Another factor is that Ms. Lauren clearly wanted to become the Rev. Lauren and the Roman Catholic Church would not oblige.

In her argument Ms. Lauren uses the emotionally compelling situation in the Sudan to bolster her claims that The Episcopal Church should "not be torn apart by arguments over sexuality and so-called biblical inerrancy," but should be about the business of embracing "God's inclusive love" and then publicly condemns these Virginia parishes for not doing that.

Now that is just plain nonsense and wrong. I personally heard both priests - the Rev. Martyn Minns and John Yates - talk specifically about God's love, revealed so generously and graciously at the Cross, and it is precisely about God's transforming love shown at the Cross, that Ms. Lauren skips in her desire to be all inclusive. And it is the Atonement which The Episcopal Church is too embarrassed to preach that is a major factor in why Episcopalians are leaving.

In her words: "In the United States, the departing parishes lead the way in throwing up barriers of hatred and homophobism."

This is utter nonsense. Never have I heard a single orthodox Episcopal preacher, "throw up barriers of hatred or homophobism." To my knowledge my own priest has never talked about homosexuality from the pulpit in all the years I have listened to him and he is not remotely homophobic or a hater of homosexuals. Our parish has well over 1,000 persons and continues to grow because he preaches a very clear understanding of what the gospel is and is not.

Let me tell you a story. For years my wife and I used to take vacations in the Adirondack Mountains. On Sunday mornings we attended a small parish called St. Mary's in Lake Luzerne, NY. The priest was a Nashotah House graduate, an evangelical Anglo-Catholic who cared deeply and passionately for every member of his parish. For 14 years he labored long and hard, and took a parish that should have died and made it into something. One Sunday morning, following Lambeth '98, he stood up and said gently, quietly and very humbly that he supported Resolution 1:10. He didn't scream about it, (he wouldn't know how), he didn't make it the subject of the whole sermon, he didn't lambaste homosexuals, he was not homophobic in his utterances, in fact he said God loves homosexuals and he would minister to them like anyone else in the parish. The sweat poured off of him as he preached. I think it was hardest few sentences he ever uttered in his whole life. The next day his best friend and senior warden announced that he and his family were leaving the church because the priest was homophobic. Recently they consecrated that priest - the Rev. Bill Love - and made him the Bishop of Albany.

The Rev. Lauren says she finds no integrity in filing lawsuits. Right. Ms. Lauren has clearly been out of the country too long. The vast majority of property-related lawsuits in the U.S. are being filed by liberal and revisionist ECUSA bishops, not the orthodox parishes and their priests. They are reactive not proactive. Just ask Bishop J. Jon Bruno, or Charles E. Bennison, or the Bishop of Missouri George Wayne Smith, to name but a few. Or perhaps she should sit down with the very liberal Rev. Harold Lewis, a priest in the Diocese of Pittsburgh and ask him why he is repeatedly going after the orthodox Bishop of Pittsburgh, the Rt. Rev. Robert Duncan over property issues. Ms. Lauren has it all wrong; she simply doesn't know what she is talking about.

Then she repeats the mantra of Virginia Bishop Peter James Lee, "We could ALL be wrong". Nonsense. That's a cop-out. The Law of Non-Contradiction makes that impossible. If the Rev's Minns and Yates are wrong then the gospel is wrong; the cross is child abuse, repentance and faith are unnecessary, and all we have left is, in Ms. Lauren's words, "proclaiming the core of the Gospel: that God loves us, now and forever." Ms. Lauren makes a huge leap of faith without the qualifier that "God's love" was visibly manifested at Golgotha and demands a response from us, without which no man or woman will see the Lord. Her "core" is not gospel core. Her "core" could be uttered by a Hindu, a Buddhist, Frank Griswold or Mrs. Schori.

Nowhere, in her tirade against the Episcopal Church's orthodox does she mention the Good News of God's redeeming love; nowhere, it is all about "the survival of our (Sudanese) people. How are we going to feed them? Educate them? Provide health care? Bring peace to a war-torn land that seems poised on the edge of yet another war?"

Perhaps if Ms Lauren had bumped into Baroness Caroline Cox (the William Wilberforce of the 21st Century) while she was in the Sudan she would have heard her stories of Christ's cross lifted high among the ruins of war torn camps. Had she listened to the peripatetic British blue-blood she would have heard stories of how people were laying down their lives for the gospel, forsaking the few comforts they had because Jesus and the proclamation of His Good News means more to them than clothes on their back or food in their stomachs. The parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus comes to mind.

Ms. Lauren opines that "REAL survival is at stake, the Gospel that is preached is one of inclusiveness and love, because only inclusiveness and love can overcome the hatred that has left millions of Sudanese dead in the last 50 years."

Now, no one single person has done more to realize and publicize the plight of Christians in the Sudan than Baroness Cox. I know I have interviewed her. She tells their stories, and they are nearly always the same. Muslims in the north are killing Christians in the south and its all about oil, who owns it and who profits from it. Nowhere in her spiel does Ms. Lauren make any mention of Muslim genocide against Christians. Nowhere; she blames a handful of fleeing Episcopalians for the church's woes who want to preserve an authentic gospel against the innovative theological revisionism of bishops like Schori and Shaw and a handful of pansexual clergy whining about inclusion of their immoral behavior, and who wouldn't know Jesus if he turned water into wine. Ms. Lauren wants you to believe that she and her fellow liberals carry the torch of justice and peace while nasty fundamentalist Episcopalians are fighting over doctrine. The truth is Ms. Lauren has disconnected all the theological wires and the lights have gone out.

"Hatred has no place in the Sudanese Church. It has no place in the American Church either. God's love -- and how that is lived out -- is the ONLY thing that counts," she says.

True. And the hatred in The Episcopal Church is coming right down the turnpike from liberals and revisionist bishops and their pansexual acolytes...and their hatred of orthodoxy knows no bounds. Several dioceses have already said they will not give their consent to the new orthodox bishop of South Carolina...that's about hate disguised in the language of inclusivity. The damage Bishop Charles E. Bennison is inflicting on orthodox parishes and their priests in the Diocese of Pennsylvania is hate. What he did to Fr. David Ousley is pure hatred. Bennison's brother priest's vile sexual behavior would have gone unheralded if it wasn't for SNAP and VOL. The sex abuse of a child is hatred of children by ignoring their needs and boundaries. Orris Walker, Bishop of Long Island hates orthodox parish priests with a living passion. He won't ordain them, doesn't want them in his diocese, and he has made it a life time mission of forcing almost all of them out of the diocese. He has made their lives a living hell. I know I have talked with a number of them. His is pure unadulterated hatred.

No, Ms. Lauren has it all wrong. Orthodox priests and parishioners are fleeing The Episcopal Church because they fear for their souls; they have heeded the Apostle Paul's words about "another gospel" being preached and they will have none of it. They know that while Millennium Development Goals (MDG's) might be noble efforts to save humanity, it is not the "core" gospel; if it was the Province of Nigeria would be going numerically backwards like the American Episcopal Church.

Ms. Lauren concludes that God's love -- and how that is lived out -- is the ONLY thing that counts. Not exactly true. God's love is manifest at Calvary, and we live it out as we proclaim the Good News of God's redeeming love, anything less and we have sold out to something that is ultimately no gospel at all.

END

Church dispute gets in the way of God's love

By LAUREN R. STANLEY
MCCLATCHY-TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICE
December 23, 2006

For the last year and a half, I have lived in South Sudan, seeing first-hand what it means to be a Christian in that divided land where death is a daily occurrence. I have served with faithful Episcopalians, trying to help the Church there move from the survival mode it endured during 21 years of civil war to self-reliance and care for its people in this time of uneasy peace.

It has not been easy for Episcopalians in Sudan for many, many years. The Church has been clinging by its very fingertips to its existence. War, famine, drought, disease, oppression -- none of those could stop the Church from proclaiming the core of the Gospel: that God loves us, now and forever.

So it has been with a heavy heart that having returned recently to the United States, I see my own Church, the one that has nurtured and nourished me for the last 15 years, the one that sent me forth as a missionary to Sudan, torn apart by arguments over sexuality and so-called biblical inerrancy.

In the week, nine parishes in the Diocese of Virginia alone have decided to leave the Episcopal Church. The leaders of those congregations claim that the national Church has erred and strayed too far from what they claim is the unvarnished and clear truth. After periods of "discernment," these congregations, totaling only 7 percent of the Diocese of Virginia, and a minute number of Episcopalians nationwide, have made big splashes in the media for leaving. Most are claiming to align themselves with African bishops, whom they believe are better, more faithful leaders.

To complicate matters, the parishes that are leaving also want to take all their property with them, some of it quite valuable. It is theirs, they claim, because they are the only ones who being true to the Scriptures.

Church law says otherwise, meaning that long, brutal legal battles in civil courts are in the offing.

Not only do their arguments not make sense, they also miss the core of the Gospel of Jesus Christ they are supposed to be preaching. The departing parishes never talk about God's inclusive love, only their own exclusion of those who disagree with them.

In Sudan, as in much of Africa, we argue over Scriptures with as much vehemence as any American. But those arguments are not the ones that dominate our lives; in Sudan, we worry more -- much more -- about the survival of our people. How are we going to feed them? Educate them? Provide health care? Bring peace to a war-torn land that seems poised on the edge of yet another war?

In Sudan, we are fighting for our very lives.

In the United States, we are fighting over how to interpret words written by mere mortal's centuries ago.

In Sudan, people battle hunger, disease, land mines left over from the war, militias and bandits who pull people off buses and shoot them dead in broad daylight.

In the United States, people battle over who knows the mind of Christ the best.

In Sudan, the Church leads the way in breaking down the barriers of tribalism and ethnic hatred.

In the United States, the departing parishes lead the way in throwing up barriers of hatred and homophobism.

To be clear: I know very well what it means to be in disagreement with my Church. I was born and bred to the Roman Catholic faith; even after deciding I would have to leave the Church of my birth, it took years before I had the courage to actually do so. But when I left, I did so cleanly and without attempting to take anything with me. I could not change what Rome promulgated as the faith, so I did the only thing I could to maintain my own integrity: I left behind all I knew and had been taught, even though schism is one of the worst heresies to commit in the Roman Catholic Church.

If the Episcopalians who have voted to leave feel they must do so, I honor their commitment. I know their pain, and pray that they can find holiness in another setting.

But I cannot for the life of me understand why these parishes think they can take everything with them. I cannot understand why these parishes feel it is fine to call into question the salvation of those who remain in the Church.

I cannot find any integrity in filing lawsuits. I cannot understand why those leaving have not heeded the advice of Nigerian Archbishop Peter Akinola, with whom many are aligning and who told them last year that if they were to leave, they were to do so cleanly, forsaking their pay, their pensions and their buildings.

Most of all, I cannot understand how anyone can ignore the truth of what Virginia Bishop Peter James Lee has said all along in this dispute: We could ALL be wrong.

Even the Episcopal Church in Sudan, which disagrees with actions taken in the American Church in the last three years, understands this last part. In January, the Sudanese Church said that although it condemned some actions of the American Church, it wanted both churches to continue to walk together, because we are all sinners. More important to the Sudanese was the fact that the American Church had walked with it throughout the long, deadly national civil war. Now, in its time of need, the Sudanese said, they would walk with us through our own small version of a church civil war. Because there is a chance that indeed, we could all be wrong.

Those leaving the Episcopal Church claim they must do so to survive.

They seem to forget that in many parts of the world, the Church is concerned with REAL survival.

And in those areas where REAL survival is at stake, the Gospel that is preached is one of inclusiveness and love, because only inclusiveness and love can overcome the hatred that has left millions of Sudanese dead in the last 50 years.

Hatred has no place in the Sudanese Church.

It has no place in the American Church either.

God's love -- and how that is lived out -- is the ONLY thing that counts.

---The Rev. Lauren R. Stanley is an appointed missionary serving in the Diocese of Renk in the Episcopal Church of Sudan. She is temporarily serving in the United States. This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page B6.