This was recognized by the Fathers/Bishops at the first Ecumenical Council of the Church at the imperial place in Nicaea in AD 325. After stating in their Creed (first edition of the Nicene Creed) that the Son of God is consubstantial and of the same essence/being as the Father (homoousios), the same Fathers added a kind of P.S. to the creed where they pointed out which contemporary doctrinal statements about the Son of God were wrong and to be anathematized (thereby anathema sit came into the language of Councils and is found right through to the Council of Trent in the 16th century and beyond-cf. St Paul in Galatians 1).

Today a real problem arises when the local church - seeking not to be confrontational and to be affirming of people and their views (as in the running of Alpha Courses, Counseling sessions for human problems, certain methods of church-planting and mission, for example) - does not point out what are the open and hidden errors contained in much of the teaching, preaching, public statements and liturgy of the mainline Churches. Without both sides of the divine coin, people develop little discrimination to see what is the difference between genuine, biblical and classic orthodoxy and general mainline assumptions about God, Christ, Salvation and Holiness.

The same kind of problem arises where in Liturgy there is use of the Two Great Commandments to love God and neighbor, but the Ten Commandments in the "thou shalt not" mode are never used. We all need to know God's holy law in its positive and as well as its negative declarations. Simply to get it in the "love" mode can so easily allow us to think that if we love God and people then we can innovate in how we express love between people and towards people. After all the practical theology endemic in the mainline is that "all love is of God" and "God is love" and this approach, in traditional terms, undergirds immorality.

Another common example of this phenomenon is where we are very keen to affirm not only natural rights and civil rights but also a whole list of human rights and relate them to the dignity of human beings and their mebing made "in the image of God." Unless this is given context by the affirmation of Christ's rights as Lord over his Church and over each Christian, female and male, then we can become so easily distorted in our doctrinal and moral sensibility.

I think it is generally true to say that, today, we have the situation where a lot of church people, who are disposed to be biblically based in a traditional sense, see that the new sexual morality is in fact a sophisticated form of immorality, but few of them connect this error either with the prevalent teaching concerning God, Christ and Salvation in the mainline or with the forms of worship (liturgical texts and rites) used also therein.

With reference to the ECUSA, I have sought in an essay within a 64 page booklet just published to demonstrate that the major innovations in worship, doctrine and discipline that have occurred since the 1960s and have , as it were, turned the ECUSA inside out and caused it to contract from a church of 4 millions to one of one million, are all intimately related to each other in that (a) they are all rejections of God's order (law) for creation and the new covenant; and (b) they are causally progressive in that one has to occur before the other can be implemented.

The essay is entitled EPISCOPAL INNOVATIONS 1960-2004.

The Board and supporters of the Prayer Book Society, together, they believe, with the Anglican Communion Network and its Common Cause partners, are desirous to see the cleansing, renewal and unifying of the Anglican Way in North America. All wish to see a maturing Anglican presence in terms of an orthodox, missionary-minded people, who engage in evangelization and are socially concerned as the servants of God, and who worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness and in spirit and truth. Reformed Catholicism on fire for God!

Further, it is well known - and this is painful - that before there can be healing and growth to maturity in faith and mission in American Anglicanism, there has to be first the diagnosis of the sickness in this family (in this case serious doctrinal error and immorality); and then the appropriate treatment has to be applied, which may mean radical surgery with much pain.

EPISCOPAL INNOVATIONS seeks to do the necessary work of diagnosis. In it there is a carefully written description - in biblical theological terms - of the spiritual and moral sickness of the Episcopal Church of the USA. This sickness (to use the medical analogy) has been caused by the deliberate inhaling into the corporate body of alien viruses which have corrupted the whole.

The PBS of the USA invites Episcopalians and Anglicans to read it carefully and ponder its analysis. The cure from our Father in heaven becomes clear when the sickness is rightly discerned and accepted.

In the belief and hope that people will want to have others read and study this essay it is being made available at reduced price for purchase of multiple copies: - 100 for $250.00; 50 for $150.00; 20 for $80.00; 10 for $45.00; and 5 for $25.00 , postage included. Please send order with check to The Prayer Book Society, P.O. Box 35220, Philadelphia, PA 19128-0220; and, if you have questions, call 1- 800- 727-1928 or 1-610-490-0648.

Finally, please visit these two websites: www.episcopalian.org/pbs1928 where the booklet may be read,

and

www.anglicanmarketplace.com from where individual copies may be ordered.

--The Revd Dr Peter Toon is President of the Prayer Book Society.
He can be reached at: petertoon@msn.com.
Website address: www.episcopalian.org/pbs1928