Ephraim Radner, who teaches at Wycliffe College, University of Toronto, posted an essay at The Anglican Communion Institute called, “How To Kill a Christian Church in Four Easy Steps.” It’s very strong worded, and directed at those who push for homosexual ordination in the Anglican/Episcopal church. Here are Dr. Radner’s four steps:
- Define the Gospel of Christ in terms of the smallest social unit and interest possible (e.g. homosexuals and their right to sexual affirmation)
- Define the episcopacy according to the smallest unit possible (e.g. New Hampshire and its gay bishop)
- Drive out anybody who has a larger vision – traditional Christians, evangelicals, Bible-readers, people who study Christian lives and thought earlier than 1968 and farther afield than NY and LA.
- Spend as much money as you can doing this instead of anything else and say this is “mission”.
Read the rest here.
Right now I am at a complete loss as to what to do. “My” priest believes it is best to stay in the Anglican church. The congregation, now that one of the wardens emeritus has passed away, rarely acknowledges that there is even a problem in the larger denomination and in the diocese. Our wanna-be Rabbi is preaching during July. There is no room for biblical truth, for church discipline–except in the case of those who defy the bishops, and the diocese wants to suck up all the giving in the local parishes with its “Our Hope Our Faith” campaign. Meanwhile, while we were looking for our priest, the interim created a situation where I realized I can no longer operate within the Anglican church as a lay person-theologian, because anyone who has a frock has more notice, power, authority, esteem and respect, no matter how imbecilic he is, if he says that he thinks it was Nietzsche who said everyone has a God-shaped vacuum and that the word “goy” is from Hebrew for dog. What’s that called? Sola episkopoi? All authority derives from the bishop and so nobody gives a damn about arguments from Scripture (otherwise, if they were interested, they would see that we shouldn’t even have a wanna-be Rabbi, a goy wearing a yarmulke, preaching on Sunday mornings–see, e.g., Galatians).
Or what if in your first sermon you spend the first five minutes reading from the Globe and Mail. For me the Anglican church has become a farce. And that’s not the main denomination. I’m talking about the evangelical charismatic local parish that I was attending–because ultimately it is the apostate bishops who are in control of the agenda, and I will not bow down and kiss the feet of Colin Johnson; I will not pledge obedience to that man.
At the Wycliffe graduation they sang a version of hymn that eschewed the masculine pronouns when referring to God the Father–To God be the glory, Great things God has done! So loved God the world that God sent us the son.” Oh my goodness. Ephrem Radner teaches at Wycliffe and the little lies creep in (don’t use the masc pronoun when refering to the Father because that might offend someone unnecessarily who believes that God is also the Mother too), little by little, it’s like the boiled frog.
“It’s very strong worded, and directed at those who push for homosexual ordination in the Anglican/Episcopal church.”
I’m not sure it’s directed at those who push for homosexual ordination per se, so much as it’s directed at those who would push for (and indeed go ahead and ordain) this at the expense of communion with those in the Anglican Communion who disagree.
@JT – that’s fair. But I also think Radner would say that another (larger) problem is the fact that the errant Episcopal church is against the plain testimony of Scripture and church tradition. A both/and not an either/or.
It seems like the decline of the Anglican church (along with other mainline denominations) was well underway long before the 1990s. To pin these very long-term trends on an issue that has emerged in the church in the last decade and a half or so seems to say more about Radner than anyone else. I’m not saying discussions about sexuality and specifically homosexuality aren’t divisive in the church, but that these seem like later developments in the larger scheme of things.
Also, Anglicans seem to have created a system with all of the drawbacks and none of the benefits of Episcopal government.
@Dan
When you speak of the decline of the Anglican church, I must ask, which Anglican church? For, while the Anglican church is indeed declining in certain parts (ACC, TEC, parts of Europe) it is also growing and quite healthy in other parts of the world (Africa, Latin America etc).
Further, Radner doesn’t seem to be addressing decline in the church generally. In many ways he would attribute this to other matters, or simply say that this is just the nature of the world we live in and the life of the church there. Rather, Radner seems to be concerned with stamping out any sort of remaining witness that existed in some parts.
Certainly Radner is concerned with the divided church, but if you read his larger body of work you’ll see that this concerns much more than sexual matters, albeit sexual matters make up an important bit nowadays.
@JT
Radner seemed focused on (North) American Anglicanism, so that was the context of my comment.
The church generally seems to rupture more on the topic of sexuality than just about anything else these days. I wrote about this a while ago: http://www.cityofgodblog.com/2008/06/is-the-church-sex-obsessed/