It has been the long journey of the new religious Magi, setting out, not on a course to Bethlehem but to New York City there to worship The Pluriform One whose largess knows no boundaries and who shall not let himself be offended by African outrage, people yet to come of age in this new post-Christian Episcopal Church that warms to Wiccans, lesbians, sodomites, transgendered deacons, same-sex blessings, rites for same, homoerotic bishops, assorted lesbitransgays and those who would deny 'the faith once delivered' (resolution B001).

If it wasn't true, it is doubtful that late Punch magazine editor Malcolm Muggeridge could have dreamed up such a risable set of scenarios.

Sitting in the living room of his Robertsbridge, Sussex home in the late 60s he laughingly told me the occasion in which he as editor had come up with the scenario of an Anglican bishop announcing that the kingdom of heaven had arrived on earth in the person of Joseph Stalin and the New Socialist Order, fulfilling the collectivist hopes of mankind, ushering in a new peaceable kingdom of love and joy.

"Dear boy, we were blindsided by the possibility that it might actually happen. The week before we went to press the Dean of Canterbury Hewlett Johnson known infamously as the "Red Dean" proclaimed it so, thus taking the wind completely out of our sails. It was no longer funny."

These days the revisionists are way ahead of the game loudly proclaiming their apostasies, trying to outdo each other with the latest in avant garde theological and moral thinking. And they are no longer funny, if they ever were.

If Jack Spong did not exist he would have to be invented for such a time as this. Men like Spong see themselves as "prophets" in their own minds, bringing about a new world sexual order, aided by the culture, and abetted by bishops like Charles Bennison, William Swing, Tom Shaw and the Pluriform One himself.

One can only imagine what an Augustine or an Athanasius, an Origen or a Calvin, a Luther or a Cranmer would say were they to rise from the dead. The cleansing of the Temple would look like a mild exercise in flagellation compared to what say John Calvin would do. Servitus redux.

The Episcopal Church is no longer a safe place for true believers. Abandon hope all ye who enter here could now be written over most of the major Episcopal cathedrals in the land.

An Imam serving Holy Communion in Denver, a Buddhist priest conducting a spiritual retreat for Episcopal clergy, a transgendered deacon whose voice still sounding forth the chords of his previous sexuality now ritualizingly removed, preaching in the cathedral in Oklahoma City, and rites being intoned for miss and miss or Mr. and Mr. at any number of ecclesiastical weigh stations across the nation, all done with the benevolent and beatific smile of a theologically vacuous bishop bent on obeying the dictates of culture rather than the dictates of Jesus Christ, the Ten Commandments of Moses forever replaced by the Twelve Theses of Jack Spong.

It is doubtful that Hollywood script writers could come up with scenarios that outdo Episcopal Church absurdities. Could The Daily Show and Jon Stewart come up with anything as absurd as an overweight lesbian priest offering a communion wafer to a pet Dalmatian, or a Gay Bingo night in a parish in Connecticut? One doubts it.

Can one doubt then, that in time, cathedrals that once sounded forth the creeds and confessions of the Book of Common Prayer, where great hymns of the faith were once sung, expository sermons from Holy Scripture sounded forth, now being sold to keep the diocese afloat, as the faithful leave for greener pastures, their money going with them. Just ask the Bishop of Western Michigan.

From the Lord Christ to Lord and Taylor, from the sounds of Christus Victor come the smells of Christian Dior, a naked cross is transformed into a T bar draped in the latest from Nordstrom's, the Apostles Creed replaced by Amani suits advertising, The Prayer Book replaced by Women's Wear Daily, The Psalms of David replaced by Danskin, Jesus Christ by JCrew.

And Jesus would once again weep as he did over Jerusalem.

And you wonder why the Global South bishops are so outraged, and why shouldn't they be? They couch their outrage in high ecclesiastical language and calls for repentance, offering oversight for fleeing parishes, but they would need to be Neanderthals not to know that nothing is ever going to change in what passes for Christianity in the North American Episcopal/Anglican Church. There is no going back short of a major Damascus Road experience for an entire denomination, or that lightening should strike and the whole lot be wiped out. But that is only the stuff of tidal wave and nuked cities movies.

Followers of the Mohammed have only to wait in the wings, sipping bad tea, sucking on water pipes, and wait for the whole thing to fall to the ground. No guns needed. A $5 million Episcopal Church in Germantown, Philadelphia awaits the first Imam who will offer $5.00 for the lot. Oh please take it. The next day street corner drug dealers mysteriously disappear and some sort of order, albeit quasi-Fascist is in place.

The Episcopal Church can rightly claim to be ahead of the bell curve of cultural accommodation even as the United Methodist Church pulls back from the brink and Presbyterians cautiously ask, 'do we want to go there', while the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) heads with gadarene like swiftness towards the edge, neck and neck with the ECUSA hoping perhaps that someone will toss them a parachute as they head off the cliff together.

The Episcopal Church is unreformable, it has nowhere to go but down, and the only question faithful, orthodox clergy and laity must now ask themselves is what course of action best suits them.

There are no easy answers. As once orthodox diocesan bishops are replaced by liberals and revisionist bishops (San Diego and Florida, for example) who view collegiality and "unity" as more important than the content of the faith itself, clergy and laity must now weigh their options.

To leave perchance to dream. But what about properties, pensions, kids in college, future job prospects, fearful wives or wives saying they will no longer worship with this bishop or that?

Will it be the AMIA, TAC, REC or an orthodox Global South Archbishop that they run too? Or is to Rome or Orthodoxy that they must now flee? There are no simple or easy answers.

Do we all wait till the Primates have spoken in Ireland next February? But this is the ecclesiastical home of Robin Eames himself, and this writer knows, from history, that African Archbishops will never offend the Primate of a country whose hospitality they are enjoying. That is culturally unacceptable. Will they politely decline and quietly leave when the Eucharist is passed to them? One can only admire the brilliance and the gall of the Anglican Consultative Council mandarins that pulled this one off.

To stay and fight is clearly one option. To put up a good fight for the properties seems to be in order. History is full of occasions where battles were won by good strategy, not always by the book or by the numbers. The war is rarely won in a day or a year, but accumulating battles can seriously dent trust funds and endowments, and even the most brain dead bishop knows there is no future in protracted fights; it seriously diminishes the church's mission, even if they think mission has to do with affirming UN resolutions looking for the kingdom of heaven to miraculously appear on earth.

The day is not far hence when we shall know all, and we shall know it, even as we will be known…and it won't be pleasant, but then spiritual warfare never is. Against the true church the gates of Hell will never prevail, for that is an irreversible promise made by the greatest Promise Keeper who ever lived.

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