Ackerman blasted what he called the cavalier nature of our province which "disregards the very tender unity that exists between us and many who laid their lives on the line daily just for professing that they are Christians."

"It is not our mission to force martyrdom, nor is it our mission to place those in our global Church in situations that may result in their harm. The health of Anglicanism worldwide is great, and along with you I wait upon the Lord for His guidance, which will not come from our anger or our self-righteousness or our sociological self-martyrdoms, that pale in comparison to our brothers and sisters who are dying daily for their faith in Jesus Christ."

Ackerman said the Church is long past the luxury of renewal. "The Church must be engaged in the reclamation of the world, not in the pretentious sense of being 'co-creators' with God, but as servants who are obliged to live under the Lordship of Jesus Christ, who came 'not to be served but to serve'," he said.

"In terms of Anglicanism in general and the American Province of the Anglican Communion, called the Episcopal Church, the lines seem to be drawn. Unfortunately the lines change, and each new issue results in more fractures, more divisions and more hemorrhaging of the Church. With each new issue there are another set of enemies."

Ackerman said there were those who analyzed these ruptures in terms of political realities, but these are the symptoms and we will have more generations of conflict that result in decreased membership with no resolution to the underlying issues.

"The underlying issues are ecclesiological - what do we believe the Church is, Biblical - what is the authority of the Word of God, Spiritual - what is the relationship between God and Satan (spiritual warfare) and finally what do we mean when we say 'God'."

Ackerman blasted efforts to rename God. "It would appear that the more appealing we make our construction of God, the less enthusiastic the vast majority of people are to our new hypothetical construct. To alter the root metaphor that has transcended all time and cultures is to offer a reversal of the Creation Story, where we as people now have the democratic authority to vote in a God of our own creation, one who is created in our own limited ethnocentric realities."

END