Why I am not an Episcopalian

Why I am not an Episcopalian

Very interesting read (albeit, quite long):

http://www.virtueonline.org/portal/modules/news/article.php?storyid=12398


From Virtue Online

Why I am not an Episcopalian

by Perry Robinson
http://energeticprocession.wordpress.com/ A
pril 12, 2010

For readers who do not know, I am a former Episcopalian. My personal
history of religious affiliation goes something like the following.

I was baptized Catholic but raised in the Episcopal church until my
teen years. From then I'd attend the Episcopal church on Sunday and
then Calvary Chapel for "Bible study" on Friday evenings with their
youth group. This was on account of a number of reasons, not the least
of which was that the youth group at the Episcopal church voted that I
should leave since I wanted to read the Bible and not have pizza
parties and such. The youth directors agreed given that the kinds of
questions I was asking really required a "professional" response. This
was after I became exasperated with the whole approach of, let's sit in
a circle and go around the room asking what each person thinks such and
so verse means "to me." At the ripe old age of 13 I blurted out, "I
don't care what it means to me, I just want to know what it means."

To sum up, I eventually ran into the Horton/Riddlebarger crowd when I
was about 17 and then became Reformed for a number of years. I then
moved towards a more high church Anglican view, returning to what I had
been raised with, ending up in the then, Anglican Catholic Church
(ACC). Fortunately I met my wife in the ACC, who was also a life long
Anglican, though her family had left the Episcopal church (TEC) earlier
than I did and joined the then forming ACC. After a few schisms in the
ACC and/or the Continuing church movement and a deepening in my grasp
of Christology through an exposure to the teaching of Maximus the
Confessor, my wife and I were received into the Orthodox Church.

Recently, I was reminded once again why I am not an Episcopalian. The
reminder doesn't explain why I am Orthodox but it does I think point to
something that is worth thinking about and discussing. So the reminder
came in a post on another blog that I saw through the WordPress blog
feature of Tag Surfer. It allows me to see other recent blog entries
across WordPress with similar topics as my own.

The post was by an apostatized Baptist of sorts who returned to
"Christianity" through the Episcopal church. The post was an expression
of his thoughts on "reformulating" the doctrine of the Trinity. What
the post was, was in fact not a reformulation, but more an expression
of his rejection of the Trinity and an expression of its perceived
uselessness. I didn't take the post to be overtly hostile, (I am sure
he's a nice fellow) but it wasn't something that amounted to Christian
thinking on the subject and that's the point. This post expresses the
typical adoptionistic Christology found among classical Unitarians and
contemporary liberals. Jesus is the man who was more open to the divine
or "Spirit" and so is a means by which one is in contact with "God" or
"Spirit" and so moved or inspired to "social justice." The other posts
on Hell and other doctrines pretty much fall into the typical liberal,
that is Unitarian teaching.

It used to be the case that, say about twenty years ago, you could meet
an Episcopalian and chances might have it that the person was a
professing Christian in the historic sense of that term. They believed
the Scriptures were divinely inspired, Christ rose from the dead and
all the other theological goodies expressed in the Creed. Now given the
exodus from TEC this is far less likely.

For the most part when I meet people who are professing Episcopalians
now I don't expect them to be professing Christians. I expect them to
think that what they are professing is Christianity, but it isn't. It
is that "other religion" that is now dominant in TEC. And this post was
a perfect example of what I mean. The terms are Christian, but the
meaning of those terms is anything but. One could hear any given sermon
in the Episcopal church using traditional terms and phrases with
absolutely no Christian content whatsoever. The content now is poured
into the wineskins of Christian terminology and rites from Left wing
political causes and academic ideologies, which are usually in one form
or another, just a repackaging of older Gnostic errors. (Just read the
exchange in the comments after the post to see what I mean.) This is
why there is a perceptible shift in the art work (and will continue to
be) and what religious art work is from the figural to the symbolic in
TEC. If the body doesn't matter (since after all the incarnation and
resurrection are "cultural symbols") then any symbol is more or less
just as good as any other, perhaps within a given range. The "other
religion" expresses itself with a modification of older images.

So when I meet professing Episcopalians now and Christianity comes up,
I usually don't argue about this or that thing TEC is doing or said is
Christian or not. The TEC is essentially now a Unitarian body. One can
be a member in good standing, clergy or laity and deny just about every
teaching of Christianity. Now I ask professing Episcopalians why should
I think that the body you are a member of counts as Christian? What is
distinctly Christian about it? Why think its Christian at all?

Moves to redefine don't really count since the meaning of words are at
least in part established by their historical usage, representative and
authoritative sources. Regardless of what particular theory of meaning
one endorses, one just can't change the meaning of terms willy-nilly.
To illustrate, I was once in a grad seminar with another grad student
who was LDS. We were discussing some issue related to the doctrine of
God relative to analytic philosophical theology. He was irked that such
and so terms and views attached to them were privileged as Christian,
whereas his weren't. He expressed his view that his views were
Christian as well. I interjected that they weren't and he challenged my
right to exclude his views under that term.

In our Epistemology seminar earlier that day, we had been discussing
Contextualism, roughly being the thesis that the standards on knowledge
change with the context. (I am not a Contextualist btw but the Zebra
Mule is an inside joke for those who have the philosophical gnosis. )
So given a certain situation, the standards that you know something
might be low, but if you happen to meet someone who expresses skeptical
worries or doubts, the standards shift and become more difficult to
meet and then you don't know what you did. So I retorted to my LDS
friend that suppose I profess to be a Contextualist in Epistemology,
but I don't think the standards on knowledge change or anything else
associated with Contextualism. He responded that I wouldn't be a
Contextualist because that is not what the term means. And the meaning
of the term is established by those who initiated the usage and how it
is used by professional philosophers. Someone who used the term as I
had proposed simply wouldn't be a Contextualist and wouldn't know not
only what the term meant, but how natural languages work or they would
be lying. Exactly.

The same is true for Episcopalians who profess that their church is a
Christian body or that they are professing Christian. Once we define
the terms, it becomes obvious that there is semantic legerdemain going
on. The only major difference between their position and classical
Unitarianism is one of prettier accoutrements. (And of course, even
this is ceasing to be true. )

I think it is important to push this issue of Christian identity for a
variety of reasons. People who profess to be Christians in this context
need to be confronted with the idol that they have created and the
deception that they have suffered, whether they are complicit in it or
not. Apologetically they are accustomed to arguing from the other
direction, that such and so view can be interpreted differently. But
the position that they unwittingly have put themselves in is a position
where there is nothing distinctively Christian at all about their
position. Anything they profess usually along moral lines can be
professed by some other secular ideology or some other non-Christian
tradition such as Judaism, Islam, Shintoism, etc. The same is true with
respect to the place of Jesus. Jesus is just a figure of sorts and its
just a fluke that he functions in that way, since it was more or less a
fluke that he ended up being more open to "Spirit" than the other men
of his time since. Its simply parochial. Other cultural have their
figures and Episcopalians in western culture have theirs.

The employment of the Nicene Creed and various Christian rites and
symbols doesn't imply that the body is Christian since liberals have
argued that they mean something else and have imbued them with a
different meaning in order to make them more "inclusive." One can deny
all of their Christian content and use them and be a member in good
standing. But that is the hidden problem with inclusivity. Eventually
the inclusivity is so exclusive of the established meaning that
eventually the terms no longer retain their previously established
meaning and no longer imply anything Christian. There is no reason then
to take such bodies as Christian. Under such conditions, why couldn't a
member of the church of Satan be an Episcopalian?

Sooner or later reasonable people figure out that they can believe
everything in such a view without being a member of said "church" and
can sleep in on Sunday morning, giving their cash to other
organizations. They can then use their own time in ways that they find
aesthetically "fulfilling." Why after all should I maintain the
pretence of Christianity every Sunday by watching people use terms,
objects and rites from long past and I am going to give money to this?
What's the point? This is supposed to give my life "meaning?" They can
use the time in other ways and give money to established charities or
causes that lack the wasteful bureaucratic structures of "815." (Let
the reader of That Hideous Strength understand.)

And this is one reason why more liberal bodies decline. They eventually
become so inclusive like contemporary Unitarian bodies that they become
socialization groups for the extremely idiosyncratic (freaks) and lose
practically all cohesion. Such bodies do not make converts and they
don't have significant reproductive output. (It is not like Gay
"weddings" will improve this.) This is why theologically liberal
movements are parasitic on traditional bodies. They cannot go out and
create a liturgy and produce a socially cohesive body of people with a
view of the world that binds people together in a deep commitment from
scratch. They are expressions of a lack. Frankly, I wish such persons
would just be more honest about rejecting Christianity and go on down
to their local Unitarian church and save us all a lot of trouble and
heartache. What they do strikes me as seriously disingenuous.

The problem for those few in TEC who still in fact profess Christian
doctrines is more serious. Sometimes there are pockets of resistance
and people comfort themselves with the idea that at this parish, we are
professing Christian. That may be true. Your rector may be perfectly
orthodox in terms of the virgin birth, the resurrection and so forth.
The question is then, with whom does he commune?

At the parish in TEC where I was raised, I was prepared for
confirmation by the priest who is still rector there. We spent a good
amount of time on the person of Christ and the Trinity in the context
of the Arian controversy. And the priest there of course depicted
Athanasius in such glowing terms that I was deeply attracted to the
saint. Athanasius was my teenage hero. As I grew older and more
theologically aware and educated, the problem of remaining in TEC
became more acute in light of my familiarity and esteem for Athanasius.
He not only refused to commune with open heretics but considered doing
so to make one complicit in the heresy.

This principle is not limited to the tradition of the Eastern
Christianity but has a long history in English Christianity as well,
both prior to and after the Reformation.(Not to ignore its Biblical
foundation.) Even if you are a professing Christian in such a body to
remain in communion with open heretics makes you complicit with their
heresy and immorality. If you don't agree, you are either on the side
of the "revisionists" (Scripture is more direct with the term
"apostates.") or you are living in denial.

Consequently, you need to make a choice and a very hard one. Please do
not mistake my writing here for opportunism. I've been where these
people have been. I know how hard it is to leave a tradition that had
so much good to offer. The experience is very similar to experiencing
the death of a family member. When I finally gave up the ghost on
Anglicanism, I sat in a parking lot and cried my brains out for a few
hours. People in that situation need to make a choice and in order to
do that, they have to leave Anglicanism (whatever they thought it was)
behind.

This of course assumes that there are no viable Anglican alternatives.
I don't take the Continuing churches to be so. I've spent a fair amount
of time in them at various levels. They repeat the same kinds of
problems that led to the issues in TEC to begin with or they are so
small that they are sectarian and in some cases personality cults. They
consequently attract former clergy who are not beyond reproach. This
does not imply that all or most of the clergy in such bodies are such,
but the percentages in my experience tend to be higher.

The choices are essentially these. You can go to a more conservative
Lutheran body such as the LCMS if you're inclined towards Lutheranism.
But of course the LCMS is going through it own liturgical identity
crisis right now. (Happy Clappy or a Liturgy?-The Happy Clappers seem
to be winning.) That leaves untouched the more serious distinctive
theological claims made by Lutheranism. Much the same can be said of
the Presbyterians.

Then its either Rome or Orthodoxy. I am not going to lay out the
argument for one over the other here. I've done that before. What is
important as I have noted before is that once you make a decision, you
choose to be what you convert to. It does you no good to be a
disgruntled Episcopalian in the Catholic or Orthodox Church. You have
to leave one behind and embrace an option. And this means you sincerely
need to be convinced that you would have made the same decision even if
here had been no problems in TEC. This will help give you some
stability and peace wherever you end up. And that will be good for you
and all those around you.

----Perry C. Robinson (aka Acolyte) obtained a BA in Philosophy from
California State University at Fullerton. He resides in Saint Louis, MO
with his wife of 11 years and his three children. He has been a member
of the Orthodox Church (GOARCH) for nearly 10 years.

Originally posted by leushino:

And this is one reason why more liberal bodies decline. They eventually become so inclusive like contemporary Unitarian bodies that they become socialization groups for the extremely idiosyncratic (freaks) and lose practically all cohesion. Such bodies do not make converts and they don't have significant reproductive output. (It is not like Gay "weddings" will improve this.) This is why theologically liberal movements are parasitic on traditional bodies. They cannot go out and create a liturgy and produce a socially cohesive body of people with a view of the world that binds people together in a deep commitment from scratch. They are expressions of a lack.

Historic-vs-present perspective is a cancerous concept that should be outed for what it is parasitic. We can see this happening in the political realm concerning the US constitution. There is a process that has been provided to amend the Constitution. Groups with agendas attempt to circumvent the amendment process by reinterpreting the US Constitution instead of amending the Constitution. In time the Constitution has will be reinterpreted so often that by looking at precedents no one will be sure what the constitution says because no one is reading the Constitution, people are only reading the interpretations of the Constitution.

Originally posted by leushino:

Even if you are a professing Christian in such a body to remain in communion with open heretics makes you complicit with their
heresy and immorality. If you don't agree, you are either on the side of the "revisionists" (Scripture is more direct with the term "apostates.") or you are living in denial.

The same sort of era-interpretation through the extra legal interpretation of the US Constitution, destroys various Christian sects. Christianity can only remain viable by sticking with the basics that is the Holy Scriptures. Doctrine is at times necessary for insights, discussion and understanding.