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Washington Diocese Grabs Soper Fund*Dioceses Could Merge Says Presiding Bishop

The Internet has become the only organ of communication to the masses that liberals in the Church cannot control. --- Michael Voris for The Vortex

Submissive humility. Submission to the authority of Scripture is *the way of personal Christian humility*. Nothing is more obnoxious in us who claim to follow Jesus Christ than arrogance, and nothing is more appropriate or attractive than humility. And an essential element in Christian humility is the willingness to hear and receive God's Word. Perhaps the greatest of all our needs is to take our place again humbly, quietly and expectantly at the feet of Jesus Christ, in order to listen attentively to his Word, and to believe and obey it. For we have no liberty to disbelieve or disobey him. --- John R.W. Stott

A religion needs a compass. Logic alone does not point the way and religion adds to the general stock of human reasonableness a new directional needle - if it adds anything at all. I cannot read the Gospels in any way other than as declaring that this was revealed to man by God through Jesus. Revelation, therefore, not logic, must lie at the core of the Church's message. You cannot pick and choose from revealed truth. --- Matthew Parrish

To walk in the righteousness of God's laws in grace is to walk in the way of the exile. Consider the lives of the prophets, of Jesus and the apostles. On the surface of things theirs were not exactly success stories. To be rejected and abandoned for righteousness sake is heaven's badge of honor. --- Brian McGregor-Foxcroft

Christians and Muslims worship the same God because there is only one God. However, the Islamic understanding of the one God is defective. ---- Fr. Dwight Longenecker

I have yet to encounter a church that can stay together when its theological framework starts separating from the central picture. Love can keep us from coming to fisticuffs over our differences, and love should keep us from going to the secular courts, but can love really keep a church together if we are loving a different gospel? --- The Underground Pewster

The church is being run like a corporation and managed like Capitol Hill and it is the faithful that is suffering for all of this. No one can remain immune from the consequences of those decisions forever. Sooner or later the music stops and those inside the church contributing to her demise ... will lose their soul. --- Michael Voris for the Vortex

Dear Brothers and Sisters
www.virtueonline.org
June 13, 2014

“The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime”, said Sir Edward Grey as war broke out in Europe. It could be said today that there is a spiritual darkness descending all over Europe that will not be lit again in our lifetime. Traditional marriage is being shredded, abortion is on the rise, gay marriage is becoming the norm, and openly practicing homogenital priests can now be found in the pulpits of state churches across Europe with transgendered priests ascending pulpits of cathedrals in the Church of England and the Episcopal Church. Who woulda thunk it?

The Episcopal Church plunged to new depths on sexuality issues this week when both TEC and the Church of England elevated transgendered priests to pulpits.

The Rev. Cameron Partridge was offered the pulpit of the Washington National Cathedral, TEC’s flagship cathedral, where it was proudly announced that he is the first transgendered priest, allowed to preach in its pulpit.

A few short years ago, such an invitation would have been unthinkable. Nobody in their right or left mind would have entertained the notion that a priest, claiming to be a man (of God) who was formerly a woman, could suddenly announce to his bishop -- in this case Massachusetts Bishop Tom Shaw, a homosexual -- that she secretly felt herself to be a woman trapped in a man’s body, obtain a sex change operation (euphemistically called sexual reassignment surgery), keep her/his job as a priest, and then go on to preach in one of the nation’s most prestigious pulpits.

Never mind that transgender surgery is a lie. It can't change the chromosomes or DNA; it can only effect a cosmetic change. Nonetheless, The Episcopal Church has raced ahead of the culture and historic Christianity and pushed this abomination right into the pulpit. A church whose deepest theological utterances have been reduced to sound bite words like “inclusion,” “diversity” and “oppression” is a church that has surgically operated on itself.

You can read the story here: http://tinyurl.com/pq23cmo)

In England another transgendered priest was made a minor canon at Manchester Cathedral. http://tinyurl.com/nm73g74 The first was a man who was once a woman, and in the latter case, a woman who was once a man. Of course there is no discipline by the hierarchy of these churches against these obvious blasphemies nor was there any for two men, one a clergyman, who were married and blessed in the Church of England recently. There was no discipline by his bishop despite the fact that the Church of England’s House of Bishops recently voted for traditional marriage in order to not upset the Global South, even though they apparently had no intention of doing anything about it should the law be broken. On the other hand, if any vicar votes for or joins the British National Party (BNP), a sort of Mosleyite redux party, they will automatically be disciplined and their license to preach withdrawn. So political correctness trumps Biblical prohibitions on sexual behavior. All the while, Archbishop Justin Welby keeps running around the world trumpeting reconciliation with David Porter and Philip Groves

To make the point about Europe and the pansexual takeover of the church, homosexual couples in Denmark have won the right to get married in any church they choose, even though nearly one third of the country's priests have said they would refuse to carry out the ceremonies.

Denmark has been a pioneer in gay rights since 1989 when it became the first country in the world to offer civil unions for gay couples.

The country's parliament approved the new law on same-sex marriage by a large majority, making it mandatory for all churches to conduct gay marriages.

*****

The Episcopal Church’s Presiding Bishop, Katharine Jefferts Schori in her opening remarks to the Executive Council, meeting in Phoenix, AZ, this week dropped this bombshell, “We are accounting for the costs of affiliated agencies in the budget work for the next triennium, so that we can be appropriately supportive. I still hope that TREC will consider how, as a whole Church, we can best support the local work of dioceses – and sharing resources is an essential part of that. But we need to think beyond the percentage asking from each diocese. Do current geographic boundaries make the most sense for a sustainable future for each mission unit – otherwise called diocese? Dioceses have always had these conversations about local parishes and congregations, and they make considered decisions about how to allocate personnel, financial, administrative, and building resources for the good of the whole. As a whole church, we’re being called into similarly strategic perspectives and decision-making.”

A hundred plus bishops must be quivering in their boots at the thought their dioceses might merge for the higher cause of “mission” which translates into saving the planet and reducing their carbon foot print but not necessarily saving their jobs. At a press conference she expanded on this theme and in a question by VOL about this she said, “Diocesan geographic boundaries are changing and “make no sense. The reason for particular geographic boundaries today may not make sense in the context where people are distributed," she explained. "They were drawn a long time ago, sometimes just only on state lines." You can read the full report in today’s digest.

*****

Just when you thought they would get away with it, that is not telling the Diocese of Washington’s rank and file or its priests, VOL’s Washington DC correspondent revealed this week that the diocese has managed to gain control of the late Mrs. Soper’s Millions. Through back door legal maneuvering, the Soper Trust was terminated with the diocese now controlling over $27.4 million! Without the money, the diocese would have gone belly up. Now it’s been saved by Mrs. Soper.

“For the past forty years, the Episcopal Diocese of Washington has been the beneficiary of the Ruth Gregory Soper Trust fund. Constructed as a trust handled by Riggs Bank and then its successor PNC Bank, the diocese received interest from the body of her money,” wrote Sarah Francis Ives.

“In 2010 in a bold attempt to get control of the money, the administration of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington initiated legal action against the Ruth Gregory Soper Trust and its trustee PNC bank. This bank waged a valiant battle against these Diocese of Washington officials, yet ultimately failed. Secret maneuvers and agreements sealed the fate of the Soper trust,” she wrote.

You can read the full story here or in today’s digest. http://tinyurl.com/qdttmed

*****

Who will be the next Archbishop of the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA)?

In less than two weeks, the ACNA College of Bishops will choose its next archbishop. Speculation has not run rife, but there are some front runners VOL would like to commend to its readers.

The top contenders are theologically on the same page but not necessarily ecclesiologically. Some are more “catholic” than others, some believe in the ordination of women while some do not.

There are 25 dioceses in the ACNA ranging from Ft. Worth (a very Anglo-Catholic diocese) to the Reformed Episcopal Church – a very reformed diocese -- and CANA are very evangelical dioceses. There are a lot in between.

A new Catechism is in place and there are the beginnings of a Prayer Book. The really thorny issue of the ordination of women is the elephant in the sacristy. For the moment, the issue is in a “period of reception” but one wonders how long that will continue.

Archbishop Bob Duncan is the General Patton of Anglicanism (and he has the scars to prove it). He got the bum’s rush by PB Jefferts Schori in a showdown over the Diocese of Pittsburgh when he was its bishop. When the diocese broke up over the authority of Scripture and sexuality issues, he launched the ACNA and the rest, as we say, is history. He brought together some pretty disparate and normally contentious priests and bishops; apart from a major dust-up with Bishop Chuck Murphy and the Anglican Mission in America (AMiA), he has done a magnificent job in cobbling (and keeping) together his province which is now recognized by a large number of Global South Primates.

The question now, as in all battles that have officially ended, does the ACNA need another general Patton or a Winston Churchill or a Pope Benedict or does it need someone like a Pope Francis – a pastoral type?

The following are VOL’s contenders:

Bishop John Guernsey is, I believe, the leading contender. He is bishop of the Diocese of the Mid- Atlantic and was the first to roll his handful of Ugandan parishes into the ACNA.

His education includes Yale University (New Haven, CT) B.A. (Magna Cum Laude), History, with Honors, Episcopal Divinity School (Cambridge, MA) M.Div., Biblical Studies.

Guernsey is for women’s ordination and his wife is in fact ordained clergy when they were both in The Episcopal Church. She has not exercised her priesthood since leaving TEC. He was among the first wave of Episcopalians in the 1970s who identified with the Charismatic movement and rode this wave into the Episcopal Church. His ministry has centered in Virginia and he was connected with Uganda in the early days of the realignment.

On women’s ordination he is influenced by the fact that the church in Uganda ordains women, which not all provinces do. This could be a negative fact in his winning the top slot as many dioceses, including the most influential and most powerful Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA) with its Nigerian connection, oppose the ordination of women. He is the opposite of Duncan in build and style. He is pastoral in approach, which might be a plus for following in the shoes of Archbishop Duncan.


Bishop Ray Sutton. He is Bishop Coadjutor in the Diocese of Mid-America of the Reformed Episcopal Church. He is bright, very smart and well educated and would make a good archbishop. He was born in Louisville, Kentucky. He earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts [B.F.A.] from Southern Methodist University in 1972, a Master of Theology [Th.M.] from the Dallas Theological Seminary in 1976, and a Doctor of Philosophy [Ph.D.] from Wycliffe Hall, Oxford University, in association with Coventry University in 1998.

He has served in parish ministry from 1976 until 1991; Dean and Associate Professor of New Testament at the Reformed Episcopal Seminary in Philadelphia from 1991 until 1995; and Dean and Professor of Theology at Cranmer Theological House in Shreveport, Louisiana from 1995 until 2001. He was ordained a Bishop of the Reformed Episcopal Church in 1999, and was called to the Church of the Holy Communion in 2000.

His biggest ecclesiological move is that he has moved from being a leading light amongst Christian Reconstructionists in the 1980’s to being an Anglo Catholic today. This has not endeared him to hard line RECers who see this as a betrayal of their reformed heritage. The blogs went ballistic when it was announced that the REC had made overtures to the ACNA and what was perceived as a more catholic orientation.

He is opposed to the ordination of women, but he has also embraced the “three streams” terminology of the ACNA. The rush to ecumenism with Rome and the Orthodox got a lot of REC laity up in arms. Many have still not recovered from this “betrayal.” He recently met with Pope Benedict in company with Archbishop Bob Duncan in a photo op that ran around the world. He now endorses the position of the Seventh Ecumenical Council on “reverencing” images of the saints, something that was anathema to the early Anglican Reformers.

Bishop Foley Beach. He is bishop of the Anglican Diocese of the South. He is the newest and youngest candidate for the position, but then so was Archbishop Justyn Welby who held the position as Bishop of Durham for only two years before becoming Archbishop of Canterbury. It does not rule him out as a serious contender.

Bishop Beach is opposed to women’s ordination. One blogger noted that picking him would be something of a “next generation” move that would pass over the crop of older bishops who are TEC veterans and have long histories with each other. Bishop Beach may be the only contender who has a blog: http://bishopfoleybeach.blogspot.com/

According to his online biography:

The Rt. Rev. Dr. Foley Beach served as the Rector and Pastor of Holy Cross Anglican Church in Loganville, Georgia from its founding in February 2004 until December, 2013. On October 9, 2010, he was consecrated as the first Bishop of the Anglican Diocese of the South in the Anglican Church of North America.

Dr. Beach is a graduate of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, the School of Theology at the University of the South, and Georgia State University. He has served in ministry with Young Life, the Episcopal Church, and the Anglican Church. His passion is to share the Word of God in such a way as to help others discover the incredible living Jesus. Married for more than 30 years, he and his wife, Allison, have two grown children and make their home in the Metro-Atlanta area.

“While church planting is critically important, I also believe that every existing parish already has similar growing edges that can be identified and supported. Each parish has a calling to have an impact for the Kingdom of God and can grow.

“We also need to have an entrepreneurial approach to planting new parishes. While church planting is difficult, expensive and risky, it is still one of the most effective ways to reach the unchurched. Even when such churches fail (and many do), they have still succeeded in bringing new members into the Kingdom of God. Church planting is essential.”

Other possible contenders include Bishop Jack Iker, Ft. Worth, Texas, a strong Anglo-Catholic and vigorous opponent of women’s ordination. He is a no nonsense bishop still bitterly caught up in the “property wars” with TEC and so would probably not have enough time to devote being archbishop of the ACNA.

What is unclear is if the winner will locate the headquarters in his home town or move to Pittsburgh the de facto Canterbury of ACNA.

The person elected as Archbishop will hold office for a term of five years concluding at the end of the meeting of the College of Bishops which elects the next Archbishop. An Archbishop who has served one term of office may be elected for a second term of office but not a third. Initially, the Moderator of the Common Cause Partnership shall serve as Archbishop and Primate of the Province.

Whoever wins, that person will be heavily vetted by the Global South Primates which might be the hardest and toughest hurdle of all.

*****

Archbishop of Canterbury inspires RAP song about scourge of payday loans. A rap combo has penned a song about the scourge of payday loans - inspired by the unlikely figure of the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Music producer Charles Bailey recruited rapper Question Musiq to create “We Need A Union On The Streets” after the Most Rev Justin Welby's efforts to expand Britain's network of credit unions.

The track tells the story of young people who get into debt because of payday loans and features the words of personal finance guru Martin Lewis in which he warns that "payday loans gone wrong are a horrendous thing".

The song has the chorus "What we need is a union, we need a union on the streets/Everybody hand in hand, people can't you understand" and the verse "Yeah it's unfair/But they don't care/The rich get richer/While poor get less".

The release comes after a national network, aimed at offering an alternative to payday lenders, was launched last month by Sir Hector Sants, who is heading a task group for the Archbishop on promoting credit unions.

*****

You will recall California Episcopal Bishop Marc Andrus went rounds with San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone (IX San Francisco), and stormed off in a huff after being seated in the basement at the installation of Roman Catholic Archdiocese of San Francisco Archbishop-designate. A statement from the diocese said that Andrus “was escorted to a basement room at St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Cathedral and detained by an usher until the time the service began, whereupon Bishop Andrus left the cathedral.” Pathetic. When they went to retrieve him, he had already left. The Archdiocese said the Episcopal bishop was spoiling for a fight.

Now Bishop Andrus might truly be wetting his pink cassock. The archbishop of America’s most liberal city is scheduled to speak at a massive anti-gay rally later this month, prompting more than 80 political and religious leaders to demand in a letter that he cancel his participation.

San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone (IX San Francisco), a leading supporter of California’s Prop. 8 to ban same-sex marriage in 2008, will speak June 19 at Washington D.C.’s March for Marriage, an event organized by the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) and the Family Research Council -- two groups that have taken some of the most hostile stances against same-sex marriage.

The Family Research Council, which is co-sponsoring the event, has been designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center because of their vitriolic rhetoric. Recently, a spokesperson for FRC blamed the Isla Vista mass shootings on the growing acceptance of marriage for same sex couples.

*****

Satanists support abortion and gay marriage.

From here:

Whenever the American people try to curtail abortion or maintain marriage laws, the followers of Satan will be there to fight back, promises the national spokesman for the Satanic Temple.

“Lucien Greaves” told Detroit's Metro Times that he would like to help women avoid complying with pro-life laws by saying abortion restrictions violate their Satanic religious beliefs. He added that gay “marriage” is a Satanic “sacrament.”

That means that the Anglican Church of Canada and The Episcopal Church have the same view as Satanists on two of the most import social issues of our day. The question is: will Anglicans or Satanists be more upset over this?

*****

The General Council of the Reformed Episcopal Church (ACNA) elected the Rt. Rev. Royal U. Grote, Jr. as Presiding Bishop June 11. He succeeds The Rt. Rev. Leonard W. Riches.

Grote was born in 1946 and spent most of his formative years in Hatboro/Horsham, Pennsylvania where he played football, sang in the choir and attended Horsham Bible Church where his father was the pastor. In 1971 he began attending Reformed Episcopal Seminary in Philadelphia and was ordained to the Presbyterate in 1975. He served as a local parish priest at St. Philip Reformed Episcopal Church in Warminster, Pennsylvania. In 1978 he accepted a call to St. Luke's Reformed Episcopal Church in New Providence, New Jersey and served as rector and, later, Bishop until moving to Houston, TX in 1991. In 1984 he was consecrated Bishop and served as assistant Bishop to the Presiding Bishop of the Reformed Episcopal Church, The Rt. Rev. Leonard W. Riches.

In 1990 the General Council of the Reformed Episcopal Church created the Special Jurisdiction of North America (SJNA) to develop and care for parishes west of the Mississippi River. That same General Council called Bishop Grote to be a Missionary Bishop planting parishes in the Central and Western United States. That territory assigned covered 27 States. Bishop Grote and his family moved to Houston, TX in July of 1991 and began his ministry.

At that time there were 5 missions and 1 parish in the Special Jurisdiction. In 1996, the SJNA was merged with the Synod of Chicago (The oldest Diocese in the REC) and was renamed the Diocese of Mid-America (DMA). Bishop Grote serves as the Bishop Ordinary of the Diocese of Mid-America. Since that time, the DMA has divided twice by creating the Missionary Diocese of Central States and the Diocese of the West. At the present time, the DMA covers 18 states. The headquarters of the Diocese is located at St. Matthias in Katy, TX and, in 2004, Bishop Grote designated St. Matthias as the Cathedral Parish of the Diocese.

*****

Southern Baptist Convention votes to oppose “sex change” operations. Approximately 5,000 representatives of Southern Baptist Convention affiliates approved a resolution this week in Baltimore, MD, opposing the normalization of sex-change operations for people who identify as transgender.

One of nine resolutions considered on the second day of the Southern Baptist Convention's annual gathering, the resolution urged transgendered people to "trust in Christ and to experience renewal in the Gospel." The delegates also affirmed "God's good design that gender identity is determined by biological sex and not by one's self-perception."

According to Andrew Walker, director of policy studies for the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, who authored the resolution, the vote took place because "we have concern about surgical remedies in aiding transgender experiences simply because it cements, medically, a worldview that Southern Baptists are not prepared, nor biblically warranted, to accept."

"Surgical alteration signals society's full embrace of a condition that we believe isn't remedied through surgical means, but through compassionately understanding what it means to be created in the Image of God," explained Walker. He said that this "means embracing one's biological sex as normative to their whole identity. We are wary of positions that create 'Body-Self' dualisms that end up making the body an instrument of the will."

*****

Defending marriage topped the agenda on first day of US Conference of Catholic Bishops spring meeting. Much of the opening day of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops 2014 Spring General Assembly meeting in New Orleans this week was devoted to the defense and promotion of marriage.

Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone of San Francisco, chairman of the USCCB Subcommittee on the Promotion and Defense of Marriage, led the charge by telling his brother bishops, “We are at a critical point in this country as it comes to defense of marriage in the law.”

Archbishop Cordileone outlined the grave situation for the defense of traditional marriage and resulting threats to religious freedom. He noted that if the Supreme Court takes up one of the state marriage amendment cases, by next June 2015 we could have a decision.

“A negative decision by the Supreme Court would undoubtedly have a profound impact on the nation,” he said. The archbishop ended by promoting the March for Marriage in Washington, DC on June 19.

*****

Ironically a self-proclaimed UK gay man, atheist and media pundit and former conservative, MP Michael Parrish says No, God would not have approved of gay bishops in the Church of England. “Anglican evangelicals are right. Knowingly to appoint gay bishops robs Christianity of meaning. It is time that convinced Christians stopped trying to reconcile their spiritual beliefs with the modern age and understood that if one thing comes clearly through every account we have of Jesus's teaching, it is that His followers are not urged to accommodate themselves to their age, but to the mind of God. Christianity is not supposed to be comfortable or feel "natural".

The mind of God, contemplating the behavior of man, is not expected to be suffused with a spirit of "whatever".

“As it happens I do not believe in the mind of God. But Christians do and must strive to know more of it. Nothing they read in the Old and New Testaments gives a scintilla of support to the view that the God of Israel was an inclusive God, or inclined to go with the grain of human nature; much they read suggests a righteous going against the grain.

“Certainly it is true that Jesus departed from conventional Judaic teaching in the emphasis He put on forgiveness, but neither the story (for example) of the woman taken in adultery, nor the parable of the prodigal son suggest that He countenanced a continuation of the sins of either. What these stories teach is that repentance is acceptable to God however late it comes, and that the virtuous should not behave in a vindictive manner towards sinners. That is a very different thing from a shoulder-shrugging chuckle of "different strokes for different folks".

You can read his take here or in today’s digest. http://tinyurl.com/q9emgvs

*****

Gay pride flag flies over US Embassy in Tel Aviv. Welcome to Sodom's new headquarters
The U.S. Ambassador to Israel, Dan Shapiro, has hoisted the gay pride flag over the embassy building in Tel Aviv. Todd Starnes grabbed the pic from the embassy’s Facebook page.

“Proudly flying the colors,” Ambassador Dan Shapiro wrote on the embassy’s Facebook page. “For the first time in history, the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv has raised the Pride flag together with our American flag,” Shapiro wrote. “We are proud to join with the municipality of Tel Aviv-Yafo and its residents in celebrating LGBT Pride Week.”

This is not the first time the rainbow colors have flown over a U.S. embassy. On May 15, it was flown over the Madrid embassy in Spain. This is the new trend: the values the Obama administration projects to the world as “American” are increasingly out of touch with Americans.

Yet, in our military, Bibles are banned; at the Air Force Academy, Bible verses are erased from cadet white boards; while Christian bakers are sent for re-education for not bowing to gay marriage. A president for all the people? Hardly.

*****

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