The Episcopal Church General Convention

Joe Roberts writes what is pretty much the "everything you need to know" summary of what the Episcopalians are up to at their Gen-Con.

To this point no major decisions have been made but that will begin changing over the next few days. From what I take from the reports of the activity in the Legislative Committee meetings, the stage is being set for a rather dramatic lunge leftward. My sense is that at the end of the day we are likely to see one or more of the following significant developments, and probably all of them in some shape or fashion:

1) A statement to the wider Anglican Communion that says essentially, we love you and we want to "be Anglicans" but, we intend to do it on our own terms so, whether you like it or not, we are going to decide for ourselves what it means to be Anglican and, if we feel like it, we'll let you know what we've done - - after the fact;

2) Canonical and Prayer Book revisions that remove any gender impediments to any aspect of Episcopal life and particularly access to holy orders and the episcopate (moving beyond BO33); and

3) Constitutional and Canonical revisions designed to ensure bishop and clergy compliance with the full inclusion provisions mentioned in #2.

For traditional, orthodox, Episcopalians the next ten days appear likely to very clearly reveal the permanent and very visible change of the face of The Episcopal Church. At least from the actions of the majority elected deputies to General Convention (actually, the vocal one's at this point), I see the following as a description of what The Episcopal Church is preparing to admit that it has become (and I hasten to state that I pray that I am over reacting and wrong):

First, its Mission, is no longer about telling God's story but, rather, it is about sharing and celebrating human stories (and celebrating them strictly by human standards). Stated slightly differently, The Episcopal Church seems to be less concerned about presenting God's self-revealing story as recorded in Holy Scripture and in serving as the vessel through which we, as fallen creatures, worship God and learn to live holy and godly lives and thereby become "Christ like" and worthy of God's grace and redemption. Instead, The Episcopal Church appears ready to say that it is comfortable saying that we no longer need to be worried about the redemptive power of Christ's death because God has already redeemed us; our ticket to heaven has been punched. As such, we no longer need to learn to be holy and we no longer need be bothered with Christ's Great Commission to make disciples because God loves us just as we are and only wants us to love each other and take care of our world. In short, our focus is about us and our earthly lives and not upon heavenly things and most importantly, worshipping God.

Read it all at his blog.

For the record, as bad as this is (and it's about as bad as you can get), there is a silver lining in this cloud. It is called clarity. Heresy openly declared for all the world to see and beyond any possible obfuscation is preferable to heresy that is hidden and thinly disguised just enough to keep the sheep in line. Some time ago on another blog I opined that with much (perhaps most) of the conservative wing of TEC now gone or packing their baggage there would be nothing to serve even as a speed bump for the radicals running the show. One prediction of a more specific nature was that at Gen-Con they would drive a stake through the heart of the Windsor Report which called for restraint on activities that the wider Anglican Communion was not prepared to go along with. This is going to force the issue. The rest of the AC is now going to have to decide if this is something they can live with or not.

Which is to say the slow motion train wreck that is the Anglican Communion is about to pick up pace sharply. When the dust settles I think TEC will be largely isolated from most of the rest of the Communion.

All of this of course is cold comfort for those still wandering about the ruins of what was once their spiritual home. There is nothing in the Good Book that promises our time in this world will be painless. In fact quite the contrary. We need to keep in mind the enormous pain that conservative Episcopalians are going through as they are forced to grasp what their church has become. Let us keep them in our prayers and let them know that if and when they decide (and some of them are) that it is no longer possible to remain in good conscience in an overtly heretical church, that the welcome mat is out and we are leaving the light on for them.