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"Sexual liberation is the prosperity gospel of progressive Christianity" -- Rod Dreher

"Sexual liberation is the prosperity gospel of progressive Christianity" -- Rod Dreher
The Anglican Church of Canada's unofficial acceptance of homosexual marriage will be its death knell
Report says ACoC is only one generation away from extinction

PHOTO: New Canadian Anglican Primate Linda Nicholls participating in a "gay" parade

By David W. Virtue, DD
www.virtueonline.org
August 2, 2019

The orgiastic outpouring of faux outrage at the decision of Anglican Church of Canada (ACoC) bishops not to change the biblical understanding on marriage between a man and a woman and not just two persons, brought forth a wild rebellion from many of the Church's progressive bishops, including the new Primate of the ACoC, one Linda Nicholls.

The ink was barely dry on a resolution affirming clear scriptural teaching on marriage, when progressive bishops launched ecclesiastical hand grenades in all directions, announcing that they would stand together, whine together, demand full marital inclusion and then defy the resolution and marry queers anyway. They would do this in the name of something called A Word to the Church, a consensus by the Council of General Synod to approve sodomy, a year earlier.

The secular media ate it all up. There's nothing like a good fight among Christians to keep the front pages lit up with homosexual and lesbian couples gazing adoringly into each other's eyes as they tie the knot, embrace each other and then head off into the sunset never to darken the door of an Anglican Church again.

Now, if the boot was on the other foot (as it was in the Episcopal Church) where queer marriages are the norm, opposition to such "marriages" was met with the harshest of punishments. Just ask the Bishop of Albany, William Love, about the hell he is being put through for defying Resolution B012, by refusing to allow such "marriages" to take place. He has been partially inhibited, resulting in he and his diocese suffering deeply as a consequence. Coupled with this has been the betrayal by fellow Communion Partner bishops who, we quickly discovered, had the ecclesiastical balls of Lilliputians.

The milquetoast former primate of the ACoC, Fred Hiltz, is now mercifully history. He went out in a blaze of dying cigarette butts, whining and apologizing for his Church allegedly destroying the spirituality of indigenous native Americans, even though most Native Americans were and are decidedly orthodox in their Christian faith and morals. Most Native Americans eschew sodomite marriage and are quite happy to believe that Christianity had liberated them from the bondage of false gods.

Enter Linda Nicholls whose resume included a line about her time with Bible-believing Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship while in University, but who now had happily sacrificed her orthodox theology on the altar of pansexuality. She hailed the new sexual liberation with these faux words:

"We have a unique opportunity to witness within the Anglican Communion to what it means to live together in faith. In a world of increasing polarization where differences become reasons to hate, we are a Church that gathers first around our call in Jesus Christ. We have differences -- language, culture, race, sexual orientation, liturgical preferences, theological preferences -- and we could divide on any or all of these. Yet, our beloved Church seeks a unity in God built on respect, dignity of every person, and the humility grounded in our need for each other as we each seek to be faithful to the Gospel and need to hear how God is speaking to each of us and to the whole Church. Despite the sometimes pain of our differences -- we are family in Christ."

Conservative Anglican blogger David of Samizdat had this to say; "As you can see, Nicholls is living in a fantasy world, where a fantasy church is undivided, unified and all live in harmony together. In our world, the Anglican Church of Canada divided in 2008 when parishes left en masse to join the Southern Cone and later ANiC. Those who remain are even less unified than in 2008 and, as we could see from the last General Synod, there was crying, wailing and people rolling on the floor in anguish. Delegates were not getting along with each other."

This is not about unity, but a false harmony, with two dioceses, Arctic and Athabasca saying that will not permit these unholy unions to be legitimized. Where's the unity, pray tell?

At a deeper level this betrayal of revealed religion is not working to the benefit of the Church. A new report in The Globe and Mail says the Anglican Church faces the threat of extinction. Published in April of 2018, the report said the Anglican Church may be only a generation away from extinction.

The report, prepared for the Anglican Diocese of British Columbia, calls Canada a post-Christian society in which Anglicanism is declining faster than any other denomination. It says the church has been "moved to the far margins of public life."

According to the report, the diocese - "like most across Canada" - is in crisis. The report repeats, without qualification or question, the results of a controversial study presented to Anglican bishops five years ago that said that at the present rate of decline - a loss of 13,000 members per year - only one Anglican would be left in Canada by 2061.

It points out that just half a century ago, 40 per cent of Vancouver Island's population was Anglican; now the figure is 1.2 per cent. Nationally, between 1961 and 2001, the church lost 53 per cent of its membership, declining to 642,000 from 1.36 million. Between 1991 and 2001 alone, it declined by 20 per cent.

Regular attendance is declining at all Canadian Christian churches, except for the Roman Catholic Church, whose small increase is attributed to immigration.

An academic report opined that Anglicanism's problem is aggravated because it is primarily a tribal church, the offspring of the Church of England. It has traditionally been home to Canadians of Anglo-Saxon descent who increasingly have no ethnic identification with the church, said religious studies professor David Seljak of St. Jerome's University in Waterloo, Ont.

Congregations have been told to abandon their sedate, clubby Anglican culture and get their behinds off pews to evangelize in shopping malls, homes and workplaces. "The status quo is not an option," the report says. With a preponderance of Anglicans being 60 or older, the church is "one generation away from extinction," it says.

But the truth is deeper than that. It is the apostasy of a Church that no longer believes in the gospel; its priests are too embarrassed to tell people that they are sinners in need of salvation. The ANiC and the ACNA are living proof that Anglican churches can grow if the gospel is presented lovingly, but uncompromisingly. The ACoC has capitulated before the culture and worships the creature rather than the creator, as it has done with marriage, and that, as history is now showing, is spiritual and demographic suicide.

END

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