Especially given that the Church of England now ordains women as bishops it’s not unlikely we’ll seen a female Archbishop of Canterbury in a few decades. That will cause all kinds of issues with the more conservative churches.
I suspect what we will see is something like we have seen within the Episcopalian Church in the United States of America; a split between the more conservative and more understanding/Christian congregations. Possibly the development of two distinct governing bodies. In the US, not all congregations were happy with the “national” decision but -------- worldwide not every congregation is against same-sex marriage.
The Anglican church is between a rock and hard place between the Episcopal church and the African church. The African church is against homosexuality full stop any move to make same sex marriage legal within the church will cause a massive division. I think that the suspension may have been agreed to give breathing space on a thorny subject. The church needs time to bring more people on side so as to lessen the division when it comes.
Where do I stand I am straight and in full agreement that same sex marriages should take place
This hasn’t happened in the Catholic church, because:
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They have a more clear line of command from the Pope down, and
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The Popes (even the Hitler Youth one, Benedict) never took serious action to rein in the liberal branches, like in America, because – that’s where most of the donations come from. They keep a close eye on that.
Do the American Episcopal churches send any money off to the main Anglican church?
I know that many locsl Epispocal churches funr the growth that is occurring in Lagos, Nairobi, etc. with their mission funds. Will this growth continue if these Episcopal funds are cut off?
The liberal Protestant churches have very little enthusiasm for actual missionary work as opposed to works of charity.
Let me just say that, as a Catholic, I find this absolutely hilarious. You see, The Catholic church is probably the strictest sect of Christianity when it comes to considering other denominations “in communion” with us… and yet, the Catholic church finds the Episcopalians to be at least compatible. That is to say, the Episcopalians as a whole are not in communion with the Catholic Church, but there is enough leeway in the Episcopalian theology of the Eucharist that it’s possible for a good Episcopalian to hold views consistent with the Catholic Church’s, and so to be in communion with the Catholic Church on a case-by-case basis. In other words, with this move by the Anglican Communion, the Episcopalians are now actually closer to the Catholics than to the Anglicans, despite the Catholic Church also being one of the dwindling number that doesn’t recognize gay marriage.
Chronos, you have heard the joke that the ECUSA is “Catholic Lite” right?
I’m a member of the Episcopal church but not born there. I was originally Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, a very conservative denomination, that just recently accepted women as voting members. Given that heritage, I’d tell the AC to go jump in the lake. That’s where I stand, couldn’t do anything else!
Weird, I could swear Chronos has argued for atheism before. My poor memory.
Nope, I’ve argued for secularism before, and I’ve argued in favor of atheists. Maybe that’s what you’re remembering?
As someone who grew up attending an Episcopal church regularly, I’m sort of the inverse of Baker. I agree with Chronos to an extent. Liturgically they’re very close, perhaps the closest among protestant religions. A lot of the ritual details are the same, to the pattern of standing/kneeling/sitting. Heck, they’re close enough that it’s jarring when little details are different, like a word or two differing in translation of the Lord’s Prayer. (That being said, I once went to an Episcopal service that was more jarringly different than what I grew up with than the few Catholic services I’ve seen, so your mileage may vary)
However, the whole Pope thing is a fundamental difference, not just in things like infallibility and such, but more fundamentally a belief that there should be a hierarchy in the church. Many Episcopalians hold this to be a fundamental difference between the churches, not merely based on a dislike of any given Pope, but of whether such authority should be accorded to any person. By rejecting even the much looser and nebulous hierarchy of the Anglican church I would argue takes them a step even farther away from the Catholic church on this important theological issue of hierarchy.
Hmmm…“I know! Let’s us African bishops who advocate for Kill-The-Gays laws censure a branch of the church that actually shows love, compassion and inclusion! We’re perfectly not a bunch of mitered hypocrites for doing that!”
And Mr. Welby is showing a severe lack of spine in the face of that good old GAFCON bullshit. At least Rowan tried to keep things under the boiling point.
Here in Ireland, Church of Ireland Anglican churches usually have a noticeboard outside that notes they’re Anglican/Episcopalian. Possibly somebody will have to go around with a paintbrush painting over the Episcopalian bit.
There’s still the Scottish Episcopal Church.
These comparative religion questions are always interesting to me. Any given pair of churches will, of course, have differences, some more significant than others. But the interesting part is, the two churches usually won’t agree on which parts are the significant ones. For example, it’s true that the Catholic church has a pope, and the Anglican church does not (though you do have the monarch, for whatever that’s worth). That’s a difference, yes. But in the Catholic view, the most important part of the hierarchy is the apostolic succession of bishops: That is to say, every priest was ordained by a bishop who was ordained by a bishop … who, eventually at the top of the chain, was ordained by one of the Apostles. And that’s something that’s actually shared by Catholics, Anglicans, and Lutherans (though the Catholic church holds that the succession has been marred in the Anglican and Lutheran churches by the ordination of women). Many Protestant churches don’t care about apostolic succession. So in that regard, a Catholic views Catholics and Anglicans as being relatively similar in hierarchy.
I’ve seen this claim too, and have no reason to doubt it, but it may be simply that the progression is from religious dogmatic to religious tolerant to religious liberal to nonreligious. American evangelism is, among religions, a newborn baby and simply may not have aged into the top of its curve (speaking of babies). I haven’t seen anything indicating that the growth of evangelical congregations is due to anything but parents claiming their own children into the fold.
In the suburbs, where I grew up, Episcopalianism was sort of a belief-optional social club. Baptists couldn’t drink, Catholics were allowed to, Episcopalians were encouraged to.
Being in a part of the country where this is overwhelming true, I don’t think the fact in and of itself means much. Why? Because those people have no staying power. I know, I was one. Almost without fail, they have no sticking power behind their convictions because everything, and I mean almost literally everything, is based on emotions. And since those are ephemeral, once the butterflies are gone, so are they shortly thereafter.
So yeah, there’s a spike, but when the latest round of fear mongering is over, they won’t quite be at their former glory. For a less personal anecdote, think of the vast Jesus freak revivals of the 70s.
On topic… good for the Episcopals.
That is silly considering that American evangelical denominations are of varying ages-some such as the Assemblies of God and the non-denominational churches were founded fairly recently but others such as the Southern Baptist Convention have long histories. Additionally, evangelical denominations generally count only adult members (especially the ones which practice credobaptism)-if anything counting children as members artificially inflates the liberal denominations which generally include anyone baptized as an infant regardless of how active they are.
And the experience of Russia and China should make clear to you that there is no inevitable “arc of history” leading to unbelief.
And I could just as easily google Christian sites to find hundreds of “conversion testimonies” that say otherwise.
You seem to think that the entirety of the American evangelical tradition is to be found in the crude emotionalism of the Elmer Gantrys, Jack Hyles, and prosperity preachers when it runs the gamut from the highly scholastic traditions of the orthodox Calvinists to the more popular practices of the non-denominational churches. I don’t deny there might be some dents in evangelical numbers (Southern Baptist numbers for example have declined) but they certainly will hold up better then the mainliners.
I’m not saying that either. For example, on this board, lots of people believe that one particular political candidate is a shoe-in for the presidency. However, in other areas of the US, they feel the exact same way about the opposition. It all all depends on what you know, where you are at and what your perceptions / biases are. And I’m telling you, despite my “conversion testimony,” this cycle has repeated itself various time throughout history. The only difference now, is that church attendance overall is down and continues to steady decline. That will be steady no matter what upticks we see in various pockets of circumstances.
In that case, your logic applies just as much to the smug secular bourgeoisie of America’s big cities and college campuses as it does to the smug fundamentalist of the Bible Belt.
I acknowledge that church attendance has gone through cycles-for example the masses of 18th Century England were often quite irreligious due to the indifference of the Church of England before the evangelical revival of the early 19th Century established piety of the Victorian era. However, that goes against your theory that somehow this time it will be different and that it will lead to the final extinction of religion. More likely, I suspect deconversion will stabilize a few decades down the line with the mainline denominations utterly annihilated as a factor and evangelical denominations probably down a little bit but still fairly robust thanks to higher birth-rates compared to the general population, immigration, and some conversion.