V. Gene Robinson was installed as bishop on Sunday and today's daily office epistle was the reading from 1 Cor.5: 1-8:
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
The Rev. Kevin Martin, executive director of Vital Church Ministries says the Episcopal Church will lose around 100,000 persons in the coming year.
Read moreThe Most Rev. Peter Akinola, speaking from Lagos, turned down an invitation to attend a meeting of church leaders and wrote Peterson saying he was baffled that the ACO continues to act as if ECUSA's [actions] did not really matter.
The Nigerian primate led the opposition from churches in Africa condemning last year's decision by the US Episcopal Church to consecrate Canon Gene Robinson, an avowed homosexual, as Bishop coadjutor of New Hampshire.
Read moreVirtuosity has been told that it will likely be in the form of a "no
voice, no vote" for Griswold. What this means is that at any future
primatial gatherings Griswold will not be permitted to speak on anything
at all and will not be permitted to vote. It will be a humbling, perhaps
even humiliating experience for the ECUSA Presiding Bishop, but it does
mean that ECUSA will stay in the club, whatever that means. It may well
The revisionists will do whatever it takes to win. They will employ every sleazy tactic in the book to get their man or woman elected. Consider what they did in the Diocese of North Dakota, Rio Grande, Colorado and more.
The worst case is currently going in the diocese of the Rio Grande, where the godly Terence Kelshaw retires in 2005 and a single revisionist priest got hold of the entire diocesan mailing list and used it to promote his revisionist cause.
Read moreThe latest buzzwords from Lambeth Palace are "interpretive charity", with such lines as the "debate about the interpretation of biblical texts has to be understood in the wider context of the societal shifts that have caused attitudes towards sexuality and sexual behavior to change in the modern era."
Read moreThis is in direct contradiction to what Frank Griswold said in an interview with Beliefnet.
Dr. Williams, addressing the General Synod of the Church of England said that he had been following "sympathetically" the discussions about setting up a network to operate within the Episcopal Church of the United States.
Read more"The actions of ECUSA in the election, confirmation, and consecration of
Canon Gene Robinson have created a situation of grave concern for the
entire Anglican Communion and beyond. Their actions are a direct
repudiation of the clear teaching of the Holy Scriptures, historic faith
and order of the church", the Primates write.
Funds are being withheld at record levels: They are down $1.2 million in Nth. Carolina; $900,000 in Virginia, $950,000 in D.C. and a senior warden said that the cathedral of St. John the Divine in NYC is down $3 million in pledges for 2004 and so on. This takes two forms. The first is a deliberate withholding of funds to the diocese by wealthy parishes, and secondly those parishes that are not taking in enough to pay their diocesan pledge over and above their assessment.
Read moreYou can go to bed with whomever - gay, lesbian, transgendered or BI-sexual, but how you can have a committed relationship in the latter defies the human imagination. But if you say you are THINKING of leaving ECUSA as the parish in Versailles Kentucky did recently, or you actually do leave, or threaten to withhold funds, the diocesan bishop will behave like a prison guard with a baseball bat.
Read moreAs a small symbol of that fallout, money is now being used or withheld as a protest to the ECUSA's growing apostasy. One example, (and there are dozens more like it), St. Phillip's Cathedral in Atlanta is having all kinds of financial problems since General Convention 2003. A Virtuosity reader sent their 12/22/2003 church bulletin, which revealed they were down $500,000 on pledges for 2003 and down a $1 million for 2004!
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