The message was pleading, straightforward and from the heart: "Our beloved +John-David Schofield is under attack by +Mathes, +Bruno, +Swing & +Lamb for "abandonment" of the ECUSA. Can you please rally support for him, asking conservative priests to write to overseas bishop friends and beg them to put pressure on ++Rowan Williams to declare himself as the Alternative Primate for San Joaquin?"

Thus wrote Fr. John-Paul Wadlin of St. Michael's parish in Ridgecrest, CA in the Diocese of San Joaquin. His cry is like that of many: Is there anyone out there who will save us from these accursed, revisionist bishops?

This week, in an unprecedented, first of its kind move, four revisionist bishops said they were bringing charges against a godly orthodox bishop charging him with "Abandonment of Communion" using Canon IV.9 because they think he will take his diocese out of The Episcopal Church.

To my knowledge this has never happened in the history of The Episcopal Church.

Reaction to the action of the four bishops was swift. Three canon lawyers, one a retired bishop told VirtueOnline that the use of this Canon (IV.9), against the sitting bishop of San Joaquin had no basis, describing it as "legal balderdash," and a "bullying tactic" by the four ultra-liberal California bishops.

"It would appear that this attempt to invoke Canon IV.9 against Bishop Schofield is just another bullying tactic by revisionist bishops who think they can get a bishop deposed without a trial," said Wicks Stephens, chancellor for the Pittsburgh-based Anglican Communion Network. His views were echoed by Philadelphia attorney John H. Lewis, Jr., who said, "It is the same strategy Bishop Bennison used against traditionalist priest Fr. David Moyer. No trial - no opportunity to defend yourself. Like the red queen in Alice in Wonderland 'sentence first, verdict afterward.'"

But that was just the tip of the iceberg. The anger and action is reaching new levels all over in The Episcopal Church.

San Diego Bishop James Mathes launched into a tirade at St. John's Episcopal Church, Fallbrook, which had left the ECUSA over Robinson, and much more, accusing them of "attempting to destroy the bonds of our communion and community in order to increase their own power. He cited the Archbishop of Canterbury saying, "some mischievous forces are quite capable of using the debates over sexuality as an alibi for divisive action whose roots are in other conflicts."

That's choice. The Archbishop of Canterbury warned church leaders following General Convention that there was "no way" the Anglican Communion could survive the crisis unchanged. He said that he favored a new system where churches in the 70 million-strong communion could opt to form a "covenant" where they made a formal commitment to each other. Those unwilling to join the covenant could choose to become "churches in association" which were still bound by historic links but did not share the same constitutional structures, he suggested. The relationship between the two types of province would be not unlike that between the Church of England and the Methodist Church, he said.

Perhaps Bishop Mathes forgot that paragraph.

But he wasn't the only bishop who caught flack and gave it. Retired Iowa Bishop Walter Righter blasted Central Florida Bishop John W. Howe for wanting alternative provincial oversight, and he in turn got an earful from Bishop Ben Benitez, retired Bishop of Texas.

He positively ripped into Righter: "Walter, back off in your castigation of the Diocese of Central Florida. In the first place, they have not said that they are leaving the Episcopal Church. They are merely seeking the ministry of an alternate Primate to that of one who at GC 2003 voted for the Consent to the Consecration of Gene Robinson, - to that of one who has authorized the Blessing of Same Sex Unions in her diocese, - and to one who prays at public services to "Jesus, our mother"!

Then he took the gloves off and lit into the little thrice-married bishop: "Walter, you must know that ever since you and your cohort, Jack Spong, took to, knowingly, ordaining non celibate homosexual persons, that many people in this Church, like those who comprise the Diocese of Central Florida, and many others of us, regard you and those who have done as you do as apostate, as having abandoned some of the fundamental faith and practice of the One, Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. You have departed from the teaching of the Church that has been upheld for 2,000 years, and what is more, probably 95 % of Christians in the world, including an overwhelming majority of the members of the Anglican Communion, also regard you as having done so."

So much for Frank Griswold's call to "wage reconciliation." It, like the gospel, is dead on arrival in The Episcopal Church.

You can read the full stories on all these issues in today's digest. The Episcopal Church has gone from battle stations to open war. It is the spiritual version of the Middle East in flames. And it is only going to get worse. Mrs. Schori will preside over a self-immolating church complete with "Mother Jesus" and with her view that the TEC should be little more than a social service agency.

When asked by TIME magazine: What will be your focus as head of the U.S. church? She said this: "Our focus needs to be on feeding people who go to bed hungry, on providing primary education to girls and boys, on healing people with AIDS, on addressing tuberculosis and malaria, on sustainable development. That ought to be the primary focus."

That has got nothing to do with the proclamation of the Good News about Jesus; it has nothing to do with the Kingdom of God, it has nothing to do with evangelism, discipleship or anything remotely to do with the 'faith once delivered to the saints'. If she really believes what she said, she ought to apply to head UNICEF or OXFAM or USAID, but she has no business calling herself a shepherd of God's people's, or involved in the care and cure of souls. Instead, she will continue to spend down ECUSA's Trust Funds on a bunch of failed social programs. America is going in one direction and she is going to take the TEC in the other. What a tragedy.

Good works, done in obedience to God's commandments, are the fruits and evidences of a true and lively faith, but they should not be confused with the substance of the faith itself, said the Reformers, and that is still true. Schori has it all wrong.

And to top off the obscenity, we learned this week that it cost $9 MILLION dollars to put on the last General Convention, and all we got was B033, a half-baked attempt to appease Rowan Williams and the Global South with a ludicrously, ridiculous resolution that even the liberals later rejected. You can read all about it here. Dallas Bishop James Stanton has documented it all. http://www.virtueonline.org/portal/modules/news/article.php?storyid=4512.

But it was not just Bishop Schofield that the revisionist bishops went after last week. Two bishops, the Bishop of Oklahoma and the Bishop of Kansas, dumped a presentment on retired Bishop William Cox in a mean spirited effort to deprive the 80-year old bishop of his right to be called a bishop in his old age. The retired bishop confirmed that he faced an ecclesiastical investigation for ordaining two priests and a deacon in Overland Park, Kansas at the request of the Archbishop of Uganda Henry Luke Orombi last July. Cox is the former assisting Bishop of Oklahoma. The two priests were part of an Episcopal congregation, Christ Church, in the Diocese of Kansas which left the diocese and ECUSA after agreeing to pay the bishop and diocese $1 million over the next ten years as part of a separation agreement.

Never mind that the deal was a win-win for Kansas Bishop Dean E. Wolfe who got a pile of money to keep his diocese afloat a few more years, these bishops now want blood.

"It's amazing," observed Anglo-Catholic editor Auburn Traycik, "that Bishop Griswold has time to ask for an investigation of the Cox case, but has no time, evidently, to move forward the presentment filed against Connecticut Bishop Andrew Smith, filed A YEAR AGO. Griswold is in blatant violation of the canons on that case, on which there should have been initial action last fall."

But if one wanted undeniable proof that The Episcopal Church was intransigent, it got it this past week when the Bishop of Arkansas Larry Maze gave the nod for gay blessings. Barely a month after the Episcopal General Convention failed to answer the Windsor Report's call for a moratorium on public same-sex blessing rites; the Arkansas Bishop announced that certain congregations will "likely move forward" on gay blessings in the weeks ahead. Christian Challenge editor Traycik broke the story after Maze announced his policy supporting the exploration of same-sex blessings, on a congregation-by-congregation basis, in a letter to clergy today (July 19). It appears that the first gay blessing in the diocese could take place at St. Paul's, Fayetteville.

Is this not tangible proof for Global South leaders that U.S. liberals are NOT stopping then what is? If B033 was a brief diversionary fudge this action of Maze's gives ample evidence that it is business as usual.

But clearly liberal bishops are nervous, they see the TEC imploding and they are getting angrier by the day that they are powerless to stop the departures. Take this, from Northern California Bishop Jerry Lamb in his final Diocesan Convention speech: "We reject each other because of some litmus test we have in our minds or hearts on what it is to be a faithful disciple of the Risen Christ." Wrote one insightful observer, "Now this is the same bishop who voted for Robinson and Schori and who promotes open communion in violation of Scriptures and Canons. If anyone has abandoned the Communion, its Jerry Lamb (and the rest of that gang of four), not Bishop Schofield. On top of that, Bishop Lamb is retiring at the end of the year. He should just mind his own business and leave quietly (same with Swing). If there are charges to be brought, they should be brought against this gang of four. They have not only abandoned the Communion and the faith, but common sense as well."

IS IT any wonder that David Phillips who heads Church Society in London, an influential organization of British evangelical Anglicans called for all 38 Primates of the Anglican Communion to break formally with the Episcopal Church of the United States? You can read that story here or in today's digest. http://www.virtueonline.org/portal/modules/news/article.php?storyid=4519

ATLANTA bishop Neil Alexander has written a book eulogizing anal sex. It's called "This Far By Grace: A Bishop's Journey Through Questions About Homosexuality."

A VOL reader says he offers thought-provoking perspectives on scripture and tradition. But he offers nothing in the letter that would give parents assurances that their children and youth would be protected for learning how gay sex is the new episcopal way for "living into our baptismal covenant." If his book becomes assigned reading...

IN NEW HAMPSHIRE, St Michael's Church in Rochester (a former Redeemer ECUSA Church) opened its doors to the new St Michael's Church with average Sunday attendance of about 40 and a choir of nine. "For two years we worshipped in rented space from the local Grace Baptist Church in East Rochester. On Sunday June 4th 2006 they obtained new space in the Grange Hall 21 Charles St. (which was a former church building). "We are Anglicans and are part of the Anglican Communion network. We have obtained oversight from an overseas bishop," wrote a laywoman. Here is a bit of irony: Redeemer is now closed and the building sold off to Profile Bank (remember Robinson said when we walked new people would come) now the building stands empty. Now it will be a mortgage center in Rochester. "All this has been done in the name of protecting Gene Robinson and his lifestyle. See what happens when you go against Holy Scriptures?" Indeed we do.

The outgoing Bishop of NH, Douglas Theuner, fired the priest Fr Donald Wilson at Redeemer because he would not follow Gene Robinson. Fr Don was a retired priest who was our interim at Redeemer and a member of the parish. Now he will celebrate 50 years in the ministry with a new church faithful to Scripture and the teachings of the church, wrote Lisa Ball, a vestry member of the Anglican parish.

DEPARTURES. The numbers of Episcopalians leaving ECUSA mount by the week. Data is incomplete and we won't know the full story for another two years, but American Anglican Council President Canon David Anderson pulled some initial figures together and came up with a figure of just over 67,000 (Average Sunday Attendance) Episcopalians who have left the TEC. This includes seven dioceses and a number of parishes across the country.

TYPICAL of the many personal responses VOL receives from people leaving the TEC comes this from a Val Perkins in Bar Harbor, Maine. "The Episcopal Church has been hijacked by the ultra-left. A church that my wife and I were baptized and married in is no longer a safe place for non-radicals. The counter culturists and clergy use the Church for political agenda purposes. They are even having planned anti-war rallies in the rectory. They meet and plan rallies under the Episcopal Church's roof. Politics is now the agenda of these Maoist Red Guards. Those who do not follow the counter culturists are considered persona non grata. What a shame that hundreds of years of adherence to scriptures is being thrown out by these "anything goes" liberals. With sadness, I and many others have abandoned the Church as it no longer represents those who want to attend services and worship without leftist dogma being crammed down one's throat. We wish very much that an alternative was available to us."

IN/OUT. The 136th Convention of the DIOCESE OF CENTRAL PENNSYLVANIA elected The Rev. Dr. Nathan D. Baxter, Rector of St. James' Episcopal Church, Lancaster, PA as its bishop elect. He is African American and a former National Cathedral dean. Baxter will succeed Bishop Michael Creighton, 65, who has been bishop since January 1996 and will retire later this year. The diocese has more than 16,000 Episcopalians in 71 congregations and one mission, according to an ENS press release. But the Red Book shows it has only 68 congregations with ASA at less than 6,000. It is unknown where Baxter stands theologically but his predecessor, Creighton, was abjectly liberal and ripped apart a godly Anglo-Catholic parish as his legacy.

The Bishop of NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA politely got shown the door by the Diocesan Standing Committee this past week. The Rt. Rev. Robert D. Rowley Jr., will take early retirement with a terminal sabbatical commencing immediately. In a memo to the Standing Committee and Diocesan Council Rowley made it clear that the conversation regarding his departure was initiated by the Standing Committee over concerns they had for his health and well being. You can read that story here: http://www.virtueonline.org/portal/modules/news/article.php?storyid=4515

One wonders how long it will take the DIOCESE OF PENNSYLVANIA'S Diocesan Council to give Bishop Charles Bennison the heave-ho. The Standing Committee wants him gone, but there is little push by the Council. Diocesan staff at HQ has been virtually gutted, and word has it that Bennison will be out and about again trying to revive mandatory assessment to boost giving to his coffers. TRANSLATION: Take from the wealthy growing evangelical parishes that have a gospel to proclaim and give the money to dying liberal parishes who wouldn't know Jesus if they fell over Him.

Fleeing parishes is apparently no longer exclusively an American phenomenon. In the DIOCESE OF EUROPE last week, St. Vincent's Anglican Church in the Algarve, Portugal, confirmed that the Rev. Eric Britt is no longer licensed to officiate as a clergyman within the Diocese in Europe. Reports from various newspapers and Blogs out of England say the Anglican congregation in the Algarve is urgently seeking alternative Episcopal oversight after its minister was subjected to a campaign of harassment amid claims that the diocese of Europe pushed him out of his ministry. The diocese is terminally liberal of course, and Mr. Britt was one of those rare species of bird - an evangelical - and much loved by his people. He got a decent severance, left the church taking most of the people with him. The Suffragan Bishop in Europe, the Right Reverend David Hamid and the Archdeacon of Gibraltar, the Venerable Alan Woods visited the Algarve and concluded, in their understated way that there was a "pastoral breakdown." Really. The new congregation will not be a constituent part of the jurisdiction of any bishop in the Anglican Communion and can therefore not claim to be an Anglican church, sniffed the Bishop in Europe, the Right Reverend Geoffrey Rowell, who wrote to Britt expressing his shock and sadness "at the underhand and subversive manner in which the breakaway church was planned before any attempt at final resolution of the difficulties." Odds are the parish will thrive quite nicely thank you with all the ex-pats fleeing the UK's iniquitous tax system and liberal Anglicanism.

AS IF the Church of England wasn't in enough trouble over the possibility of women bishops, gay priests and more, traditionalists in the Mother Church are preparing for a possible breakaway over women bishops by taking legal advice on whether they could claim property worth more than £1 billion. John Broadhurst, Bishop of Fulham and leader of the traditionalist group Forward in Faith, has commissioned a QC to assess the implications of the move. Poor old Rowan Williams must be spending a lot of time on his knees these days trying to figure out the will of God for the Anglican Communion. One hopes he comes up with an answer soon. If he doesn't, Nigerian Archbishop Peter Akinola might just do it for him.

AND THIS from Dr. Paul Zahl Dean and president of Trinity School for Ministry: "The faculty of Trinity are moving along one line, one touching and consecrated line, to speak for real Christianity in the Anglican and Episcopal tradition? These teachers are not triflers, they are not looking for title and prestige, and they have given up worldly advancement in what was once a Trollopian church. They love the Lord and that is why they are doing something with their lives." Well said.

The Anglican Communion Network announced they will hold their annual Council Meeting, July 31-Aug. 2 in Pittsburgh, PA. Over 80 representatives from the dioceses and convocations of the Anglican Communion Network will gather at Trinity Cathedral in downtown Pittsburgh from 1:00 p.m. July 31 through 1:00 p.m. on August 2. This will be the third meeting of its kind since the birth of the Network in January 2004. Delegations are composed of two clergy and two lay representatives as well as the diocesan bishop or convocational dean from each of the Network's ten dioceses and six convocations. Other invited guests will include representatives from the Network's missionary organizations, nine Common Cause Roundtable partners, the ACN Steering Committee and the Moderator's Cabinet. "The focus of our time together will primarily be on our mission and ministry as a new day dawns for orthodox Anglicans in the United States," said Bishop Robert Duncan, Moderator of the Network.

As an aside, the word "Episcopal" has now been removed from the sign in front of Christ Church, Plano, Texas, the largest attended parish in the TEC. We will see more of this in the coming months.

World Methodists to sign up to Lutheran-Catholic agreement. A global gathering of Methodist churches is set to sign up to a groundbreaking agreement between Lutherans and Roman Catholics on the doctrine of justification, a key doctrinal question at the time of the 16th century Protestant Reformation "This was one of the issues that created the split that formed the Protestant church," said the Rev. George H. Freeman, general secretary of the World Methodist Council. (Source ENI).

In today's stories you can read how the largest parish in San Antonio, West Texas, Christ Episcopal Church, said it plans to disassociate itself from The Episcopal Church as soon as the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Primates provide a way for doing so. In an update on that story, a vestry meeting at Christ Episcopal Church voted last night to join the Anglican Communion Network.

DEAR FRIENDS, the next time I write to you all (Internet connections permitting) it will be from Africa. Next week Fr. Jerry Kramer (Annunciation in New Orleans) and I will visit Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania to see what healthy churches, that are Bible-believing, gospel affirming. Fr. Kramer was a missionary in Tanzania before returning to the US and taking a parish in the diocese of Louisiana. Within days his parish was swept away by Katrina. Your prayers are solicited.

All Blessings,

David W. Virtue DD

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