At the meeting, as reported by the Catholic Family & Human Rights
Institute, Paula Ettelbrick, executive director of the IGLHRC, called for
a "showdown with religion." One panel member, Princeton University
professor Anthony Appiah, called for limiting religious freedom whenever
it poses a "challenge" to the homosexual agenda. This would involve
criminalizing as "hate speech" religious teachings and Bible readings
that brand homosexuality as sinful-a measure already on the books in
Sweden and that is being considered in Canada.

Ironically, this initiative to take on religion took place the same week
that the Episcopal Church allowed its congregations to hold services
blessing same-sex unions and elected Gene Robinson bishop of New
Hampshire, the first openly noncelibate and nonrepentant homosexual
bishop in the Anglican Communion.

The United Church of Christ already allows their clergy to be practicing
homosexuals and stages gay weddings. The Methodist Church, the
Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in
America have refused to go this far but are wavering, with "study
documents" set to open the door. While the gay radicals are looking for a
"showdown" with religion, it appears that the liberal, mainline
Protestants are getting out of Dodge-or even joining up with the outlaws.

But for all of the fuss over the Episcopalians choosing a gay bishop,
what should have been an even bigger scandal has received scant
attention. For decades, the Episcopal Church and other Anglican bodies
have been electing bishops who are not even Christians.

John Shelby Spong recently retired as bishop of New Jersey. For his whole
ecclesiastical career, he wrote and preached against every tenet of the
Christian faith. Bishop Spong, author of Why Christianity Must Change or
Die, did not believe in the virgin birth, the doctrine of the
incarnation, the deity of Christ, the resurrection, or the existence of
God.

In England back in 1984, David Jenkins scorned the bodily resurrection of
Jesus Christ as "a conjuring trick with bones." This did not prevent him
from being consecrated as bishop of Durham, the fourth-highest post in
the Church of England. Richard Holloway, the former head of the Anglican
Church in Scotland, also dismissed the notion that Jesus rose from the
dead. And these were not the only bishops, entrusted to oversee their
church, who rejected even the most basic tenets of the Christian faith.

But this is old news. These particular bishops have all retired by now,
though others with similar views continue to wield authority. The point
is, the Episcopalian embrace of homosexuality happened only after decades
in which the authority of Scripture was jettisoned and Christian doctrine
became optional.

Heresy is even more harmful to a church than homosexuality. Choosing a
bishop who is gay is bad enough, but choosing a bishop who rejects
Christianity is surely even worse. And it should not be surprising that a
church that has rejected the authority and the truth of the Bible would
take the far lesser step of saying that sexual immorality is OK.

And those who no longer believe in Christ-His deity, His cross, His
resurrection-can no longer offer homosexuals and other sinners the gospel
that their sins are forgiven in Christ. Instead, they can offer them
nothing stronger than the fiction that they have no sins that need
forgiving.

There are believing Christians in the Episcopal Church, a tradition that
has given us John Donne, T.S. Eliot, and C.S. Lewis. The ruling liberals
are confident that they will not revolt, saying that the conservatives
made threats when the ordination of women was instituted but didn't do
anything about it. This time, with the support of Anglican bishops in
Africa and Asia, it may be a different story.

But such controversies all go back to the battle for the Bible. The
church bodies that rejected the inerrancy of Scripture in the 20th
century now have no basis for resisting the homosexual agenda or any
other cultural pressure. They have been sliding down the slippery slope
and now they have nothing to grab onto to stop their fall.

If the gay activists want a "showdown" with religion, those Christians
who hold to the Bible will be like Gary Cooper in High Noon, abandoned
even by their friends and family members, outnumbered and outgunned, but
refusing to back down.

END