ECUSA “must fall and be destroyed if the Lord is to be restored to it,” the Bishop told a gathering of bishops, priests at laity from England, Canada and the United States, including many from continuing Anglican bodies. The same holds for the Church of England, he added.

Anglican Catholics must not also lose sight of the fact that the ultimate goal goes beyond recapturing what was lost. “The end game is the conversion of America and England. Jesus did not die on the cross to establish Anglicans, Lutherans, Methodists, and so on, but to bring us salvation,” Broadhurst said.

The Festival of Faith included worship services at St. Mary’s Anglican Church in Wilmington and luncheon and lectures at the Wyndham Hotel. It attracted more than 150 participants, many of which were in Wilmington to attend the Fellowship of Concerned Churchmen, held the prior two days.

Bishop Broadhurst’s address was welcomed by a number of bishops and priests from various Anglican bodies. One bishop from a continuing church said that if it would help the cause of unity, he would give up his position as bishop.

Speaking in language of a parable, Bishop Broadhurst described the original unified Anglican church in England, Canada and America that existed two generations ago as “a city where our Lord was King.” While the people did not yet know it, “Many who called Him Lord and King were working to depose Him,” the bishop said.

As the official church bodies engaged in innovations that undermined the Catholic faith – such as the ordination of women – groups of people “fled to the forest and built little fortresses and citadels.”

“Quite a lot of us remained in the in the city believing the Lord is King, trying to fight to reassert that the Lord is King of the city,” the bishop continued with his analogy. “From time to time one of us would go to the forest to build another citadel,” he said.

Broadhurst urged those inside and outside the “city” to recognize that the people in the official institutions, although corrupt, must be rescued, along with the institution, after it inevitably fails. “I can say the Church of England or ECUSA is apostate,” Broadhurst said. “I cannot say it does not matter to the Lord. It was His and it is destined to be His.”

Broadhurst said the battle to recapture an apostate church is complicated by the fact that those who have gained sway are not claiming to be atheists. “They are claiming to speak for Jesus.” This false message is spreading and must be countered by an authentic Christian message. For this reason, one should not yield to the temptation to no longer care about what happens to ECUSA, Broadhurst said.

“We have to be concerned about ECUSA. They are sending out missionaries to our people, spokesman of a false Christ are undermining our Lord.” Broadhurst said.

Anglican Catholics have to fight the wider battle for what is happening to society outside the church. “We can not try to create a pure sect in the middle of a heretical desert. There’s a battle to be fought and won.”

Broadhurst reported that in England there is a substantial body of Anglican Catholics to wage the battle. He found it encouraging that Forward in Faith parishes are producing a lot of new young ordinands to carry on the battle to new generations.

The history of Anglican Catholicism in the last several decades, however, is not an encouraging one, he said. Battles have been fought, followed by retrenchments, fewer troops, then further retrenchments. This experience rightly calls for a new look at how the battle is to be fought, the bishop said.

“If you were in the Titanic and sailed across the Atlantic and hit an iceberg, you wouldn’t go back to England and build another smaller version of the same vessel,” Broadhurst said.

“The truth is that the enemy got into the city because there was a weakness there that enabled the city to be penetrated,” he said.

Broadhurst said that it was not enough to go back to the doctrinal standards that existed before we noticed the enemy had entered the church. “If we don’t move beyond those debates, we will inevitably fail again.”

He pointed to the various protest movements that have emerged in Christian history. “The movements very often ended up more liberal than the body they left” he said after two generations. He cited the experience of major American Protestant denominations as an example.

The bishop warned against making the innovations that led to separation from official church bodies into Gospel issues, citing women’s ordination and the embrace of homosexuality as morally neutral.

“The truth is we’re here for the Lordship of the Christ, the uniqueness of Christ, because he died to save us all. Our opposition to women priests and the gay thing is a consequence of our convictions,” he said. “They are not our convictions.”

END