There
Is Weeping in the Cathedral
It
is a sad day for the Episcopal Church, which has officially traded the truth for
a lie.
I don’t particularly enjoy writing obituaries. But today I hear the
solemn sound of a tolling bell—deep, somber and depressing. For whom does the
bell toll? It tolls for a denomination that has died.
I am speaking of the Episcopal Church, the American branch of the worldwide
Anglican communion. Its grand cathedrals still stand in many of our major
cities, even though membership is plummeting as its graying congregants pass
away and its Bible-honoring members jump ship as fast as they can. Our
own National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., is a part of the
Episcopal Church USA. But it, like most other Episcopal churches, is just an
ornate, hollow shell of what it once was.
There was a time when the Episcopal Church thrived. Decades ago it carried
the good news of Christ throughout the world. In the 1960s and 1970s it
experienced a miraculous charismatic renewal that was accompanied by conversions
and healings. But today it preaches another gospel and its leaders have embraced
a blasphemous delusion.
No one really knows when the church actually breathed its last.
Some say it was on a dark day in November 2003, when the denomination
consecrated a practicing homosexual, Gene Robinson, as the bishop of New
Hampshire. Others suggest that the church might still have a faint pulse—but
they compare it to the vital signs of a terminally-ill patient on
life-support.
When Episcopal bishops convened this past week in New Orleans for
yet another anguished round of discussions about how to keep their church from
splintering, they tiptoed around the issues as usual. They seem to love
to talk an issue to death without taking decisive action. Any moral backbone in
the denomination apparently turned to jelly a long time ago.
These people have deliberated, negotiated, compromised, debated and
backpedaled for four years about whether homosexual practice is compatible with
Scripture. They claimed to be “studying” whether it’s acceptable to
perform gay marriages in front of God’s holy altar. Yet in all their talking and
studying they never arrived at the truth. They exchanged it for a lie. They chose perversion rather than purity. They rejected the true
God and fashioned idols that are politically correct and
culturally relevant.
As predicted, the Episcopal House of Bishops chose to be cowards
when they met in New Orleans. They did not reconsider the mistake of ordaining
Robinson. They didn’t repent of their rebellion toward Scripture. They didn’t
renounce their apostasy.
Yes, I said apostasy. That’s an old-fashioned word that should be
reintroduced into our American vocabulary. Webster’s 1828 Dictionary defines it as “an abandonment of what one has professed; a total desertion, or
departure from one's faith or religion.”
It’s clear that the Episcopal Church achieved total desertion from
biblical faith in 2003 when they voted to thumb their nose at God. After the
church affirmed Robinson, a divorced father of two who left his wife for a gay
lover, he told reporters that he was part of a sweeping movement that would one
day introduce acceptance of homosexuality into America’s churches. And when
describing his unorthodox views, he dared to suggest that gay Christianity is
the “new thing” that was prophesied by Isaiah centuries ago.
Robinson’s arrogant words should have triggered an outcry. That any leader
in the Episcopal Church would listen to such insidious sacrilege and not demand
instant retraction—and Robinson’s dismissal—is proof that these people have gone
completely off the deep end.
Thankfully there is a ray of hope on this sad day.
Amid this chaos, God has raised up some brave leaders who not only have
challenged the Episcopal Church’s heresy but who have set up alternative
churches for those in their flocks who still honor Scripture. Three of
these leaders, Chuck Murphy, Martyn Minns and John Guernsey, were featured last
week in a front-page report in The Wall Street Journal.
What caught the attention of the mainstream media is that these men left
the Episcopal Church and have been ordained as missionary bishops to the United
States by Anglican leaders in Africa—where spiritual zeal is still hot, prayer
meetings are well-attended and Anglican bishops still honor the authority of the
Bible.
Murphy, based in South Carolina, is the leader of the Anglican Mission in
America, a newly formed group of former Episcopal churches that adheres to solid
biblical faith and plans to establish new churches here and abroad. Murphy
answers to the Anglican bishop of Rwanda. The bishop of Nigeria ordained Minns
when he bolted from the Episcopal Church. And the bishop of Uganda ordained
Guernsey.
“There’s a big realignment happening,” Murphy told the newspaper.
“We sent missionaries to Africa 150 years ago, and now Africa is returning the
favor.”
The Nigerians, Ugandans and Rwandans cannot fathom the idea of
betraying Jesus Christ. The tragic demise of the Episcopal Church USA certainly
has challenged them—and hopefully all of us—to be trustworthy stewards of the
gospel at a time when many are falling away from the faith.