Lots of Episcopal bishops are blogging from the Lambeth Conference, and one of them, Stephen Lane of Maine, wrote a post today that includes the following paragraph, wherein one of the most important reasons for the decline of the mainline denominations as a whole is neatly encapsulated. He wrote:
This morning there was a small explosion in my Indaba group. What exploded was widespread frustration that all the talk about our disagreements distracts from mission and undermines the Communion’s credibility. The real issues, the real priorities of the Anglican Communion, need to be poverty, hunger, HIV/AIDS, the oppression of women and children, the oppression of the Dalits in India, war, refugees, care for creation, etc. (Indeed, if there is a consensus at this Lambeth it is that global warming is the most important matter facing humankind and that care for creation must be a first priority for the Church.) Most of the members of my group shared in some part of this frustration.
On the basis of this statement, I feel secure in saying that Bishop Lane and many of his colleagues, like so many mainline leaders, don’t actually want to be Christian leaders. They want to be congresscritters or senators, or United Nations bureaucrats.
They have no interest in the central mission of the Church–”Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you”–a mission for which they are entirely unequipped, and for which they find no basis in their ideology. Nor are they really all that interested in actually doing anything about the issues about which they wring their hands so piously, so instead we get stuff like the Garden Party Hunger March, which accomplished absolutely nothing, but got them all kinds of flattery from the British Prime Minister. Reading stuff like this, I don’t think that there can be any doubt that organizations like the Episcopal Church are sliding into utter pointlessness, incapable of carrying out Christ’s commission at the same time they are completely ignored by the world.
(Via T19.)
Correction: Commenter Daniel Muller alerted me to the fact that I had conflated the names of Maine’s two bishops. The actual writer was Bishop Stephen Lane, and I’ve obviously fixed it in the post. Thanks, Daniel.
July 31, 2008 at 11:00 pm
Psst. The name is “Stephen Lane.”
Otherwise, my reaction was the same as yours.
August 1, 2008 at 12:07 am
I agree with you. “Utter pointlessness” describes the Episcopal church. The sooner they affiliate with the Universalist Unitarians the better!
August 1, 2008 at 8:38 am
Your are right in saying the Episcopal Church is sliding into utter pointlessness.
On countless occasions I have tried to illustrate the wayward actions of the Episcopalian leadership to family and friends who are diehard Episcopalian pew sitters.
Almost without exception the first words from the mouths of these pew sitters is: “My church would never……”
When the active pew sitters are willing to let MDG’s become the Great Commission of the Episcopal Church, there is little anyone can do stop the trend.
August 1, 2008 at 4:15 pm
This is what happens when Christianity becomes primarily about Ethics and not about Salvation.
August 1, 2008 at 8:14 pm
What Bp. Lane has said is entirely consistent with Kate’s Easter message about excessive methane emisions from too many cows with the result that sea levels were rising and people in the island nations were being flooded out of their homes. You can see that Bp. Lane is in the correct church, it is just not a Christian Church because it has no time nor interest in Jesus Christ.
August 5, 2008 at 3:35 pm
And they continue to wonder if they’re relevant?
An outsider would say that such social matters can be taken care of by the federal government- not a bunch of cantankerous church leaders.