And yet I am bothered by Bishop Little's argument. Instead of saying he is fighting a rear guard action, protecting his flock, and waiting for a renewed Anglicanism to form, he tries to stake a "higher ground" based on John 17 prayer for Christian unity. This moves his argumentation, I believe, from tactical necessity to erroneous theology by reason of failed discernment and misplaced identity.

Bishop Little frames the argument in terms of letting the good "wheat" grow among "tares," and then allow for God's judgment at it proper time (Math. 13:24-29). Thus the responsibility of separating or not from an apostate church is postponed indefinitely. More to the point, as Bishop he is not looking out for the spiritual safety and security of those entrusted to him. Scripture is very clear about false prophets and teachers as danger to the immature sheep. In Mathew 7:15-19 Jesus warns us of false teachers and prophets in the strongest of terms:

Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thorn bushes, or figs from thistles? Likewise every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. (NIV)

This passage is particularly appropriate for the present situation in the Episcopal Church because those who advocate legitimizing homosexual unions posture themselves as prophets who for a while must suffer calumny, but in the future will be revealed as having pioneered a new truth form God. This delusion is based on liberal theology and its assumption that Holy Scripture is tentative, and the Holy Spirit can go contrary to the plain understanding of the Bible.

Paul reinforces Jesus' warning about such wolves with words that are equally strong, directed to his disciples at the church in Ephesus (Acts 20:28b-30):

Be shepherds of the church of God, which he bought with his own blood. I know that after I leave, savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock. Even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them. (NIV)

Every Church has tares, hypocrites and non-believers. Indeed, we must live them until God's judgments come in the last day. However, church leaders are enjoined to protect their congregations from wolves - false prophets and apostate teachers at all times.

Sadly this is now impossible to do in the Episcopal Church since the majority of Bishops have become wolves - apostate and revisionists who have accepted every "wind of teaching" that has come along in the past half century (Eph. 4:14). When I was a young man in college the current fashionable apostasy was the "death of God" theology which claimed that there was no evidence for the miraculous, and that churches should become more secular. This was followed by new waves of heresy such a Liberation theology which believed "Marxist insights" would lead the Church to a new relevancy and enhanced social justice. In the last decades we have been subject to the heresy of "pan-sexuality" in which psychology has trumped Biblical standards of sexual behavior. In all these apostate movements the Episcopal Church theologians led the way or had prominent input. In this environment, and with Bishops too timid or too unorthodox to correct, the seminaries became vehicles of heresy, rather than transmitters of Biblical truth and orthodox Christian teachings. Wave after wave of new priests entered ministry as wolf-ministers, and many have been promoted to wolf-bishops.

This has been and continues to be a source of confusion and heresy for the laypersons that we clergy are charged to protect. This was impressed upon me about a decade ago, before I was ordained into one of the Anglican "continuing" denominations. As a lay Episcopalian and Christian historian I was asked by my parish priest, a very orthodox churchman, to go as delegate to our state Episcopal convention. I went with four other laypersons and the assistant priest. Since this was the state of Georgia I assumed in that most of the liberal/revisionist theology making headlines in other parts of the country would not be strongly influential in our state. I was wrong. The public discussions, book tables, and organizational booths were predominantly revisionist/apostate.

What disturbed me most was the convention's influence on the other lay persons from our church - in particular, a wonderful elderly lady who was a very goodly person and a polite, gracious woman. She took in every brochure available, heard every argument politely and with an open mind - and was influenced by the deceitfulness of the liberal/ revisionist arguments. She never became an outright heretic, but certainly her orthodoxy was injured by that convention. I am sure similar incidents have occurred thousands of times among godly Episcopal lay persons.

I spent the next several years trying to persuade our rector to prepare to leave the Episcopal Church. He was aware of the apostasy of the church, and indeed a leader of the orthodox camp. However, like Bishop Little he chose not to prepare our church for separation (as in various legal strategies to protect or property from seizure by the Bishop) nor leave the Episcopal Church himself. The ordination of Bishop Gene Robinson was a final straw for a group of us, and we left to form an Anglican congregation under the protection of the orthodox Anglican Bishop of Bolivia.

Our rector stayed. Like Bishop Little, he claimed a loyalty to the denomination that nurtured him in his youth, that could not be betrayed. Orthodox churchmen who hold this view are clearly in error. Our principal identity must be in Christ, not in a denomination. An Episcopal orthodox priest or Bishop may have a legitimate reason for staying within the Episcopal Church to this day, as in holding out for a good settlement with the national church or local bishop. He best be extremely careful in guarding his flock against continued apostate influences. (I spent two years as Hispanic pastor at our Episcopal church meticulously screening what my flock received from national headquarters, and did we did not go to national or state wide events.) In any case, personal "warm fuzzies" about former times is not a valid reason to continue to expose the flock to heretical and revisionist influences.

They may be a darker side to Bishop Little's reasons for staying in the Episcopal Church, which unfortunately is rarely spoken of publicly, the economics of separation. When I was about to leave the Episcopal Church our rector tried to persuade me not to do so with a barrage of wrong reasons. I was taking a risk and endangering the economic security of my family. Medical insurance and pensions in ECUSA were excellent, and as Hispanic pastor in the congregation I was just beginning to accumulate a pension. Most of my congregation (of about 200) would not follow me, but stay within our Episcopal Church because it was a beautiful building, and we could only offer hotel space.

Most of that turned out to be true. God has provided for our basic economic needs, but I make less now. I have a very inadequate insurance plan and no pension. My congregation, after two years of struggle, has 70 members. But none of that is of any spiritual significance. We are free from the oppression (even the name) of the Episcopal Church and its apostate hierarchy, and our services are marked by a special presence of the Holy Spirit in healing and the other gifts of the Spirit.

The main point I am making is not our success or failure, but the "carnal" nature of the rector's argumentation. I hear echoes of it in many other Episcopal clergy who are "hanging on." To which I remind them of James' admonition: "Not many of you should presume to be teachers, my brothers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly." (Jam. 3:1, NIV) Sure, don't try to separate the wheat from the tares, but their primary responsibility to protect they flock from spiritual harm.

-- The Rev. Bill DeArtega, is the Hispanic Pastor of Light of Christ Anglican Church (Capilla San Lázaro) in Marietta, Georgia. This article first appeared in "Pneuma Review".

END