The experience of these ancient generations as recorded in scripture is not necessarily normative for any living, contemporary person or Anglican on this view of the Bible. And, the Bible continues to be read only as a source of meta-narratives which may teach with insight and intuition something about spirituality but these stories as found in the collection known as the Bible do not have to have any actual basis in history to have use as sources for instruction in spirituality and as material for spiritual reflection.

In both views and uses of the Bible the Bible's history is either denied or significantly reduced in important making Christianity conceived as a historical religion less necessary. The value of the scientific biblical critical method which does treat the biblical text as historical becomes less necessary and the door is open to a highly subjective and individual selectivity as to which elements of the biblical narrative are historical.

Increasingly leaders and others in the Episcopal Church continue to buy into the skepticism of so-called biblical scholars like those found associated with the Jesus Seminar and those who often get the attention of the media. These conclude there is very little that can be definitely known about Jesus of Nazareth and leaves open the door to skepticism with respect to the church's long held views concerning Jesus as Son of God, the God-Man, the incarnate of God who came to effect human salvation and restoration of humankind to a relationship and fellowship with God.

Given such attitudes toward the Bible and skeptical conclusions regarding God, Jesus, and the Christian faith it is no wonder the vast majority of American Episcopalians will continue after the General Convention of 2006 on a trajectory from orthodox Christianity and toward a recovery of what is merely the old Gnosticism - a heretical movement of ideas found in the early centuries of Christianity's existence - simply given new dress in the twenty-first century.

Given this approach to Christianity - which ultimately is anti-Christianity - and the relative nature of the sources for Christian faith, it is also no wonder that the Episcopal Church and the vast majority of its members will continue with regard to ethical issues to merely pursue the pagan agenda of the contemporary American culture and reflect political correctness and the "spirit of the age" and embrace what have long been immoral understandings of human sexual and other behavior as no longer immoral.

Second, whatever happens at the General Convention 2006 in Columbus, Ohio, certain fundamental things that need changing will not be changed:

The non-celibate, divorced, homosexual bishop living in an active homosexual relationship will remain in office as the Bishop of New Hampshire. Unlike the way Saint Paul and fellow Christians dealt with sexual immorality in the midst of the Corinthian congregation in the first century, sexual immorality will continue to exist in the church and with the support, blessing, sanction of the majority of bishops of the American church, of the greater majority of the priests and deacons of the American church, and with the overt or tacit support of the vast majority of laity in the Episcopal Church USA.

Likewise the General Convention will do nothing to stop the future ordination of non-celibate, active homosexual persons as bishops, priests or deacons and likewise will do nothing to remove those already in orders from the orders their immorality disqualifies them from holding.

And, the General Convention of the Episcopal Church will not stop the ongoing blessing of same sex relationships. Even without sanctioning official rites for such purposes, given the mere political problem it is at present to obtain approval for these, the practice of blessing such relationships will go on as they have now for several decades across the Episcopal Church. There will be no effective disciplines put in place to hold accountable bishops or other clergy who perform such blessings. What is worst is that priests will be left to suffer the whims of discipline should their own pro-gay blessing bishop decide out of some political expediency to discipline a particular priest for performing such a blessing, particularly if the result is the action attracts enormously high media coverage. In other words, bishops in the Episcopal Church will be left to act in capricious tyrannical fashion and be left to behave hypocritically and contradictorily and without impunity, just because they are bishops.

The membership of the Episcopal Church will continue to shrink. The mission of the church will less and less entail authentic evangelism, the actual preaching of the gospel and salvation, and the rites and ceremonies of the church will continue to be emptied of their sacramental and spiritual meaning and made more and more devoid of grace as the outward aspects of rites and ceremonies will continue to be elaborate displays of catholic form and appearance but actually deny the power of the authentic sacraments of the one holy catholic and apostolic church the Episcopal Church once, with some legitimacy, could claim hold to being part of.

In the next decades, though, in contrast, among the liturgical churches, the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Churches of the East will continue to grow, while with the Episcopal Church, the liturgical churches of the Protestant mainstream, Lutheran, Presbyterian, and many of the Methodists, will continue to lose members. Conservative, orthodox denominations and congregations will continue to grow, whether liturgical [Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox] or non-liturgical, certain Baptist and evangelical groups, as long as the emphasis is placed on grounding the practice of the Christian faith in scripture and the historical traditions and teachings of Christianity, as long as there is a call to authentic discipleship and a biblical denial of self consistent with the actual teaching and call of Jesus, as long as the emphasis is more an authentic worship of God and not entertainment, and as long as the mission of the Church and of Christians is one to evangelize the world, grow in authentic spirituality and holiness, and live values different from the surrounding increasingly pagan and immoral and secular culture overtaking America. Such communities will be getting the world and themselves ready for the return of Jesus Christ at the end of the age, while much of the old, mainstream Christianity of the Episcopal, Lutheran, Presbyterian, and other Protestant world will be denying the reality of a real and historical second coming.

The Gospel of Jesus calls for real transformation, recognizes the real existence of sin, and is not merely about affirming a person where she or he is. The Gospel of Jesus does make demands, has some things that are sometimes uncomfortable and challenging to human existence which if left unchallenged tends to the lowest common denominator. The Gospel does uphold moral responsibility and moral behavior necessary to realizing a civil and just world. On the other hand the new religion of the liberal, revisionist "Christian" is a religion that preaches "tolerance" but is actually sanctioning license. Under the guise of "tolerance" its practice is actually a kind of tyranny: accept the new definition of old immoralities as now moral [homosexuality, abortion, divorce, remarriage, contraception, etc.] or be deemed intolerant. The new religion preaches "freedom" but fails to realize that real freedom entails limits. Freedom is never freedom to do whatever one wants or whatever feels good. The new religion preaches "relationships" but never real commitment and real responsibility.

The new religion preaches a liberal social policy but then does nothing really effective to help the poor, the starving, the disadvantaged, the people the corporate and business culture of America seeks merely to dispense with, dispose of, and ignore. The new religion only works for those with large egos, an over healthy self-esteem, and whose lives are essentially blessed materially and otherwise comfortable and with minimal discomforts or failures; it is a religion for the highly successful or for those who would like to be like the highly successful in worldly terms.

The new religion does nothing for the masses of humankind, human beings made in the image and likeness of God and who are each one authentically and fully and completely loved by God though they are the despised and rejected of the world. The new religion preaches "happiness" and "fulfillment" without ever defining them. The new religion preaches "the right to choose" but without completing the sentence; without allowing any testing of what is to be chosen and whether one really has a right to chose it. It hides murder under some supposed woman's right "to choose."

The new religion is essentially wholly and entirely subjective and denies any objectivity in matters of truth, history, faith, knowledge, etc. The new religion, of course, thus leaves people without any real hope. How could there be hope when hope is merely another highly subjective and individual category of human experience and ultimately without any justification according to the foundations of the new religion?

Religion by definition is meant to bring together two realities and bind them to each other. This new religion ultimately fails to be even religion because it lacks the very thing that religion has always done, bring together the real and objective God and humankind and bind them together.

Without a real and objective God all that this new "religion" is binding together are the wounds all human beings carry as a result of living at all and do so without any real power to heal them. Why would anyone want to accept and participate in such a "religion"? Probably in many cases because they do not know the facts about the "religion" they have signed up for.

And many in the new religion would just as well prefer that the ordinary members not know the truth about the "religion" as it actually is at its core. Using the language of the old religion, orthodox Christianity, the new religion can fool a lot of people into thinking they are participating in and are part of the old religion, the authentic Christian faith, just dressed down a bit to eliminate some of the harder bits of the old. What is not realized by quite a few is that the old religion has been entirely thrown out by the new, there is nothing really left of the old, it just appears as if there is the old orthodox Christianity left in place somewhere under the dress one experiences.

Also, the new "religion" means not having to deal with real guilt and other uncomfortable realities of life and which the old religion addressed. Instead of seeing oneself as a sinner, one can see oneself as someone essentially alright and with no need to change anything unless one decides for one's self to want to change something. The new "religion" is high on affirmation of one exactly where one is.

The new religion of course has to exist on a lot of fuzzy and contradictory thinking in order to not appear to overstep itself and give authentic moral teaching and leadership. Increasingly it speaks in vaguer and vaguer language and appears to say less and less while continuing to speak a lot of verbiage.

Welcome to the new state of the Episcopal Church USA. Welcome to the newest Gnostic cult and a religion perfectly fit for the valueless world of secular America where "tolerance" and personal "choose" are the only values and can be appropriated only so long as by "tolerance" one does not mean what it says it means in the dictionary, and so long as by "choose" one does not actually finish the sentence so the object of the verb can be tested for its worthiness and rightness to be chosen. Welcome to the religion which will enable to assist you in learning the doublespeak of "1984." It's a brave new world, this Episcopal Church.

--The Rev. Bruce Flickenger resides in the Diocese of Florida.

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