Thursday, May 06, 2010

An Episcopalian's Creed


This from a blog post I found via a link on Perry Robinson's blog (blame him!). I am going to repost the entire "creed"as I believe it is worth reading. Caution: Put down your coffee cup before proceeding.
I believe in One God: God that was First Cause and God that continues to be, running through all of creation. I believe God created all through scientific and natural laws, which God created as well. I call the aspect of God that runs through all Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit is what activates the image of God that already exists in all of us when we allow it into us; Holy Spirit allows us to bring the good of God out of us and into the world where it can transform other people and situations. I believe that some of us are more open and receptive to Spirit; the prime example to me of one who was so open to Spirit that the line between the humanity of that person and the divinity of God blurred into One is Jesus Christ.

I believe I am to follow Jesus and live as he taught. In Jesus I found my entry-point to the wholeness and trueness of One God and as such I have a responsibility to seek Justice, love mercy, and walk in kindness. I am to seek Christ in the heart of the poor, the homeless, the outcast, the rejected, and the unloved—I am to spread the love of God to all I interact with and I am to seek to transform this world into a more just and fair world in whatever ways that I can.

I believe the Bible is a human attempt at understanding God and the meaning of life in relationship with God. I believe that in certain moments of private reflection and meditation and in communal readings scripture from the Bible can become the Word of God when they touch our soul and awaken in us a deeper love for God and neighbor and stronger thirst for justice. Although I believe other texts from other traditions can become the Word of God for those respective traditions, as one with roots in Christianity I most often find that Word in the Hebrew and Christian testaments.

I believe that sin occurs when we act in ways that damage our relationship with God or neighbor. I believe these actions occur in us all, but that we all can be forgiven and redeemed from them daily as we try to follow more closely in the ways of love for God and neighbor.

I believe we live in a broken world but we must live as if it can be restored, redeemed, and renewed and that we must live so as to make this world as it ought to be—I believe the Church cab be the primary institution in bringing about this global, temporal yet eternal, transformation and salvation. I believe our personal salvation occurs when we place our faith and trust in a proper place and we thus are free from the chains of greed, apathy, failure, pain, death, and sin so that we can move forward with acts of mercy.

I believe the Christian faith best exemplifies for me the way to live—personally and communally, but I do not discount other ways for other people whose roots are in their own traditions. I believe that as we move deeper into the 21st century, we must all—Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, and Atheist—find ways to work together for the betterment of all humankind. We must have respect for our differences, security for our individualism, and love for each other and ourselves.
Source

In some of my darker moments I have wondered if the current state of the Episcopal Organization (TEO) is not a consequence of God's amusement (or lack thereof) at the old cliche about Episcopalians being the Republican Party at prayer.

I apologize in advance to any of my Episcopal readers (I do have some). I am fairly certain that what I am about to write will be hurtful to you. But I think it needs to be said.

On a side note; this tends to reinforce the conviction that has been growing in me for a few years now, that the time has come for the various Orthodox churches to end the policy of giving more or less automatic "close enough" status to Episcopal baptisms among converts. The simple truth is that we just don't know what is going on among the "clergy" of that body anymore. Perry Robinson is correct in his observations that the Episcopal Organization is not a Christian body in any sense that could be accepted by the Church Fathers. Mormons have a stronger claim to that title.

This is not to say that here are no Christians left in TEO. But they are a rapidly diminishing minority. And if they are in TEO they are also in full communion with bishops that are so far gone in heresy or outright apostasy as to be beyond the pale. I hardly need to point out that TEO is a body with no real doctrine to speak of, beyond the Left Wing flavor of the week socio-political cause. I think it is sufficient to point out that when we accept an Episcopal baptism from the last 25 years or so, we are accepting a baptism performed by someone who was in full communion with John Shelby Spong.

If we are going to accept theirs, on what grounds do we reject anyone's?

3 comments:

Anam Cara said...

How about an apology to Republicans for that statement?

Anonymous said...

You would need to set a "sell-by" date for accepting baptized Episcopalians. In my case, I was baptized under the 1928 BCP, so I'm given to understand my baptism is considered valid. (I'm a catechumen.)

Chris said...

Ad Orientem,

You wrote: "I think it is sufficient to point out that when we accept an Episcopal baptism from the last 25 years or so, we are accepting a baptism performed by someone who was in full communion with John Shelby Spong."

I'm not trying to be cute or clever or witty, but the Orthodox Church was in communion with iconoclasts, monotheletes, though these movements and their adherents were denounced to be heretics eventually. Still, there was never doubt then that if someone were baptized even by an Orthodox clergyman that his baptism would be considered suspect because monotheletism and iconoclasm persisted and survived for a time.

I hope the TEC will renounce its ways, though I doubt they will, but I'm very hesitant to get into a debate or argument or even hint that someone's baptism in the TEC is invalid (unless it was done in any other way except in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit) just because that particular clergyman has some connection, sacramentally or otherwise to a person like Spong who is out of his mind.