2009 Episcopal Year of Litigation

David Virtue of the Anglican blog VirtueOnline coined the title of our post. In one of his recent Viewpoints, which are summaries of the previous weeks Anglican events, David writes:

"2009 promises to be the Episcopal Year of Litigation with four dioceses feeling the wrath of Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori and her attorney David Booth Beers, not to mention smaller legal battles waging inside dioceses like Connecticut, Colorado, Pennsylvania to name only a few."

In December 2008, the national Episcopal leadership lost a major court decision in Virginia regarding the ownership of disputed property. The national Episcopal leadership has pledged to appeal the ruling.

David further notes:

"Last year, four retired bishops asked the Presiding Bishop where the money was coming from and never got an answer. Why make the Diocese of Dallas think they will get one? The only way to get this information is to bring a civil action to compel disclosure.

Meantime, the Presiding Bishop, fearful perhaps that she might not be able to spring money loose from the church's endowments, wrote a letter to members of the ST. IVES GUILD of the Diocese of New York asking for funds 'to litigate and defend and protect Church property against those who wish to secure the property on behalf of a foreign province.'"

For those unfamiliar with the ongoing schism among American Anglicans, David's post is a good summary of what has happened and is scheduled to take place during the coming year. Go read.

A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.
John 13:34-35

UPDATE

We wrote this post before Christmas and scheduled it for New Year's Day. Amazingly, today we read in that another Episcopal parish has left the Episcopal Church. Milwaukee Bishop Steven A. Miller has reiterated the "party line" that members can leave a parish, but parishes can't leave the diocese. Uh,yeh. Expect litigation by the diocese and national church to commence in Spring 2009. It seems the congregation owns the land and rectory but is uncertain about the church. I expect the diocese to claim it owns everything.

Looks like Kate Schori will go down in history as the Primate holding the hot potato or lacking a chair when the music stops.

Related Posts:
Episcopal Church Decline Continues
The Shrinking Church of England

Source: Viewpoints : Skeleton Dioceses Reconstitute...PB Pleads for Funds to Sue Dioceses

Episcopal Church Decline Continues

As many CAS regulars know, we read widely among the Christian blogosphere. The major news event of the past week for our Anglican and Episcopal brothers and sisters in Christ is the continuing decline of the Episcopal Church in the USA. The Episcopal Church released its 2007 membership statistics and the Anglican blogosphere is ablaze. CAS readers may not be aware that a second Episcopal diocese, Pittsburg, voted to break communion with the Episcopal Church and join with the Anglican Province of the Southern Cone in South America.

Matt Kennedy of Stand Firm penned:

"According to the latest statistics (for 2007) released last week (and now mysteriously taken down from the Episcopal Church website) only four dioceses out of 111 experienced growth."

David Virtue of Virtue Online recently stated about the Episcopal diocese of Michigan:

"The Episcopal Diocese of Michigan is in free fall.

The liberal diocese is faced with declining church attendance, and dwindling income. The diocese is going to launch a plan aimed at revitalizing the "diocesan household."

A report at their website said the diocese must face stark realities. A task force says that "the Episcopal Diocese of Michigan is in steep decline." Charts included in the document reveal that average Sunday attendance has declined by 22% since 2000. During the same time period, "pledge and plate revenues" for all congregations combined has decreased by approximately $2 million, when adjusted for inflation."

The term "death spiral" is being used with increasing regularity.

Amidst the hand wringing, various reasons for the decline are discussed. Chief among these are unbelief, ordination of an actively gay bishop, heavy handedness of the Presiding Bishop, and demographic winter. We at CAS see things more holistically and find multiple contributing causes.

That said, the largest contributing cause is likely the turn the Episcopal Church took afollowing the 1930 Lambeth Conference when Anglicans reversed centuries of doctrine and allowed artifical birth control by married couples. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Episcopal children were never born.

Discussing the low Episcopalian birth rate, Presiding Bishop Katharine Schori has previously opined that Episcopalians are not much interested in breeding. Mrs. Schori said:

"[Episcopalians] tend to be better-educated and tend to reproduce at lower rates than some other denominations. Roman Catholics and Mormons both have theological reasons for producing lots of children. We encourage people to pay attention to the stewardship of the earth and not use more than their portion."

Decisions have consequences, as countries and now ecclesial communities are discovering long after the unintended results.

CAS would like to remind readers that this is not the time for un-Christian triumphalism. Please pray for your Anglican brothers and sisters in Christ.

Related Posts:
The Shrinking Church of England
Why More Catholics Than Protestants
Demographic Winter


Source: The Shrinking Episcopal Church

Book of Common Prayer for E-Sword

CAS receives a steady stream of Anglican visitors seeking a digitized copy of the Book of Common Prayer for e-Sword Bible software. "The Book of Common Prayer is one of the major works of English literature. Since its introduction in the mid-1500's it has exerted enormous influence on the religious and literary lives of all who speak the English language."

The Book of Common Prayer is on many e-Sword users' wish lists. While I don't recall seeing a complete copy in e-Sword format, part does exist.

1662 Lectionary from the Book of Common Prayer

Andrew on Esnips offers the 1662 Lectionary from the Book of Common Prayer. Andrew doesn't offer much of a description, so that's about the limit of our knowledge on his file.

Converting the Book of Common Prayer to E-Sword

As the Book of Common Prayer already exists in in digital text form, no one needs to scan and spell check the Book of Common Prayer. All one really needs to do is start with a blank e-Sword topical (.top) file and copy an existing version of the Book of Common Prayer into it and format the text as desired. Its not an overnight project, but it is possible, especially since there are 70 million Anglicans worldwide and 2 million are here in the United States. Surely there is one dedicated Anglican or a small group of Anglicans willing to transform the Book of Common Prayer into e-Sword format.

There's about 360 pages in the version of the Book of Common Prayer I reviewed online, so that means a lone dedicated Anglican could convert the entire Book of Common Prayer into e-Sword format in one year at a rate of one finished page per day. Up the standard to two finished pages per day and the project is done in six months. Throw a small team at it and the project could be done in a month or less.

e-Sword files are simply Microsoft Access databases with the .mdb extension changed to one of the many e-Sword file extensions. Using Access one can easily import and append tables. If every one on a team had clear understanding of their start and end points, each member could work on their own portion. One team member could be responsible for importing and completing the assembly of the final file.

I will leave comments open on this post to facilitate anyone wishing to undertake the holy quest of converting the Book of Common Prayer into e-Sword format.

Source: Book of Common Prayer

God Pie

Thanks to the Anglican blog Stand Firm, I was made aware of a very good video that effectively demonstrates how we treat the "pie" that God has gifted to us. Please watch and tell others.



Source: http://youtube.com/watch?v=upmyrinWq64

The Shrinking Church of England

The Rev. Lee Proudlove, chief muser at Anselmic’s Place, has written a ery good post entitled The Shrinking Church of England. Rev. Proudlove has delved into past COE statistics, done some analysis in Excel, and presents some astounding figures and trends. The chart at the left depicts the downward trend in Sunday attendance in the Church of England, from 1968 to 2006.

Rev. Proudlove discusses three trends in the Church of England,:

1) Declining Sunday attendance, at least since 1970.

2) The ratio of Anglicans to the rest of the population.

3) The graying of the Church of England, the decline about to get worse.

While reading the Rev. Proudlove's timely post, I am reminded of a passage in the Gospel of Matthew...

And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
Matthew 16:18

So, if the gates of hell should prevail and the Church of England becomes no more, what does that say about the Church of England and King Henry's disobediance and schism from the ancient Church?

Source: The Shrinking Church of England

Pew and the U.S. Religious Landscape

Like most religious bloggers, I read numerous articles on the recent U.S. Religious Landscape Survey by The Pew Forum. I also dug into some of the underlying data and examined all the pertinent charts, graphs, and maps. While the press release is accurate and makes some "astonishing" claims, particularly in regards to the Catholic faith, I've noted some peculiarities as well.

1) "Evangelicals are the largest single group of American Christians (26.3 percent)." Not surprising as Appendix 2 states that Evangelicals consist of people from not less than 112 different Protestant sects. Also, this one big family of Evangelicals contains Seventh Day Adventists (Saturday sabbath), Southern baptists (Sunday sabbath), Oneness Pentacostals (non-Trinitarian, no sacraments) and Orthodox Anglican Church (Trinity, sacraments). Clearly a very distinct, homogenous group of Christians, don't you think?

2) "Catholics are the second largest group of Christians, representing roughly 24 percent of the population." As noted earlier, it takes 112 Protestant sects to equal Catholics. While the Pew survey broke down the various Protestant sects into specific sects of Baptists, Episcopalians, Methodists, etc., the Pew folks did not provide a similar breakdown for Catholics. Yes, Roman Catholics comprise the majority of U.S. Catholics, but it would have been nice to get some numbers on Byzantine Catholics, like Melkite Catholics and Chaldean Catholics. For example, the Iraq war has unsettled large numbers of Chaldean Catholics. It would be interesting to see if there has been any measureable influx of Chaldean Catholic refugees into the U.S. The Melkite Catholic Church has been growing in recent years; it would have been nice to know by how much.

3) "The Catholic Church has lost more members than any other religious group" Well, yeah. If more Americans are Catholic than any other Christian group, one would expect the Catholic Church to lose more members. What most news accounts seem to omit is the Catholic Church in the U.S. has a higher retention rate (68%) than Baptists (60%), Methodists and Pentacostals (47%) or any other major Protestant sect. Only Mormons and Jews retain a higher proportion of members than Catholics. Catholics are losing members? So what! Protestants are losing them faster and proportions matter.

4) "...this means roughly 10% of all Americans are former Catholics." So, if the Catholic Church can reclaim that 10%, then the U.S. population jumps to 35% Catholic? Interesting. More interesting was the bottom of page 4 in chapter 2 which stated "8.3% of the U.S. adult population was raised Baptist but is no longer Baptist, and 4.4% of the adult population was raised Methodist but has since moved away." 24 million is a lot of ex-Baptists. If the SBC could reclaim most of those ex-Baptists, the SBC could double in size. Ditto for the Methodists.

5) "These losses would have been even more pronounced were it not for the offsetting impact of immigration." Good to know that my family is offsetting Catholic losses. Both of my children are foreign-born immigrants, as are a brother and a sister. Everyone is a U.S. citizen by birth, but they are Catholic immigrants nonetheless. Just like great-grandfather who immigrated from Germany about 1870 and helped take the U.S. from 5% Catholic to 12% Catholic a few decades later.

6) "Although Latinos represent just one-in-eight U.S. Catholics age 70 and older (12%), they account for nearly half of all Catholics ages 18-29 (45%)." While I'm perfectly willing to accept that at least 57% of Latinos are Catholic, a Pew survey of Latinos in 2006 had 68% of Latinos as Catholic. While 10% of Latinos could have left the Catholic Church in the last year or two, its not very probable. To be fair, Pew conducted a follow-up survey for comparison in January 2008. This new poll confirmed that the “U.S. Religious Landscape Survey” had indeed underestimated Latino Catholic affiliation. So while the “U.S. Religious Landscape Survey” is one of the best sources of information on religion in the U.S., the Pew Forum does acknowledge that the survey undercounts Catholics.

Part of what makes blogs interesting to read is the opinions and insights of the blogger. What's my take? The Pew survey seems to confirm my hypothesis that Jesus is reunifying His Church. Mainline Protestant sects are rapidly declining. The Reformation seems to have lost it steam. The gravitas of the Catholic Church is attracting more and more people. The Pew survey states 2.6% of Americans are converts to the Catholic faith. Something big is occuring in the Catholic Church and the 21st century is poised to become the Catholic Century in American history.

Source: U.S. Religious Landscape Survey

1611 King James Bible

Being an online apologist, I have been slowly acquiring various Bibles and denominational books for my reference. One of the Bibles I have been most interested in is a reproduction of the 1611 King James Bible. The main reasons I'm interested in this version of the KJV are that allegedly this Bible contains margin notes from the KJV translators and that it is a "complete" Bible. In the centuries following 1611, more and more of the original material in the KJV was ommitted by publishers, including whole books of the Old Testament.

Prior to committing to an online purchase. I thought I'd see if a copy was available locally. So, the wife and I visited our local Lifeway. My wife promptly busied her self among Lifeway's selection of "graven images". (They're starting to look more and more like a Catholic gift shop.) I headed off to the shelves and shelves of Bibles. After a fruitless search, an employee confirmed by computer that there were two copies of the 1611 KJV somewhere in the store. Many minutes later I found a copy. Apparently there is not a historical shelf with Geneva, Vulgate and other such translations. Baptists seem to love their Bibles, but not their Bible history.

Thumbing through the 1611 reprint I was both surprised and disappointed:

1) The margins do contain "notes", but these consist merely of a single Bible passage and the quantity of cross references is sparse. Many pages have only one passage in the margins.

2) The margins of the deuterocanonicals (1 & 2 Maccabees, Tobit, etc.) do contain corresponding passages in the New Testament. However, checking the corresponding NT pages shows that the 1611 translators did not make the margin notes two-way. You can follow the margin passages from Tobit to Matthew, but once in Matthew, you won't find a single passage note back to Tobit.

3) The introductory materials include a table of the Liturgy of the Hours giving all the feast days of the Saints and the Marian observances. December 8 clearly reads Conception of Mary. (Pulse starts to race. Blood pressure rises.)

4) Browsing the included Liturgy of the Hours, it appears that deuterocanonicals like Esdras were read and prayed by the early English Protestants. (Feeling light headed. May faint.)

Being mentally confused by the long search and the discovery of the "Catholic" contents of the original 1611 KJV, I shelved the 1611 KJV Bible until I could mull things over for a few days. The little woman was sitting over in the graven images section. Seems she was disappointed not to find Saint Patrick among the many knick-knacks.

Source: 1611 King James Bible

Christianity in Eastern Kentucky

My apologies for the delay in posting lately. I've been on the road most of the past two weeks. Both for business and for pleasure. In the pursuit of pleasure, I spent a week driving to, through, and from eastern Kentucky with my father of 77 years. After many years of research by myself and others into the origins of my paternal ancestors, we discovered a rich history of pioneer life in the hills of Appalachia. Dad wanted to see the terrain and topography before departing this world for the next.

In my reading on area history, I had learned that Christianity entered Kentucky through settlers, mostly Episcopal, and the circuit riders, mostly Methodist. Thus, Kentucky began and eastern Kentucky remained a staunchly Protestant Christian territory. Driving along creeks and up over mountains seemed only to confirm the areas history. Numerous small white churches, usually Baptist or Church of God, dotted the landscapes. Larger towns might harbor a brick or stone Methodist church.

While exploring the bigger towns like Middlesboro, Pineville, Harlan, Prestonburg, and Salyersville, I was amazed to find Catholic churches. Not new catholic churches, but old Catholic churches. That had not been in my reading. Turns out that had I bothered to check with the Diocese of Lexington beforehand, I need not have been surprised. Nearly every community of size in eastern Kentucky has a Catholic Church.

Nonetheless, dad was very happy to have seen Stinking Creek, stood atop the Cumberland Gap, traversed the length of Martin's Fork, toured Prater's Fort, and visited Hazel Green, the alleged birthplace of his father. Dad also discovered that if one wants homestyle cooking one need only visit the closest Cracker Barrel restaurant. The national chains and Chinese buffets have taken over Appalachia. God bless and preserve Jerry's Restaurant in Prestonsburg. They at least offered a vegetable plate.

Source: The Roman Catholic Diocese of Lexington

Apologetics - Holy Eucharist

A Christian group blog that I monitor once a month has started a podcast series on the Seven Sacraments. Segment 2, entitled Holy Eucharist, recently went up, so I decided to listen to the whole episode.

This group of devout Christians had accessed a catechism on the Eucharist from an Episcopal website. The group would read a question from the catechism, read the written answer, and then discuss both.

It was clear in the first few moments that what promised to be a honest, open look at the Eucharist was doomed from the start. One of the first errors, which set the tone for the evening, was the attempt at defining the Eucharist by one of the non-Episcopal Christians, who used the terms "symbol" and "rememberance". These two words served as flags that selective filtering was already in place. In apologetics, this is often referred to as looking through the "glasses" or "lens" of your faith tradition. A Baptist wears Baptist lenses and sees things in a Baptist light. Similarly, a Muslim sees things through an Islamic lens.

It was also clear from listening that the group was attempting to understand the Episcopal catechism. The group knew that early Church writers had long written that the Eucharist was considered to be the actual body and blood of Christ, but the group didn't know why the early Church fathers had consistently taught that doctrine.

Passages on the Last Supper in Mark and Luke were read. Unfortunately, the discussion focused on the word "rememberance" and the conversation returned to the earlier theme of the Eucharist being a symbol. The group failed to recognize the significance of the words "Jesus said"

If you've spent any time watching the scripture memorization feature at the top of the CAS blog, you've read:

"So shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; It shall not return to Me void, But it shall accomplish what I please, And it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it." (Isaiah 55:11)

If you flip through Genesis you'll find numerous examples of the truth of Isaiah 55:11. Among many others, you'll find:

"Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light." (Gen 1:3)

"So the LORD God said to the serpent, "Because you have done this, "Cursed are you above all the livestock and all the wild animals! You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life." Gen 3:14

Note that "God said" and it happened. God spoke and things considered "impossible" happened. Planets were created. Life was created. Man was created. All because God said. Christians, including our podcast group, believe that all these impossibilities occured because "God said." Our God is an awesome God.

We also find examples of Isaiah 55:11 throughout the four Gospels. Among them are these well known verses:

"For Jesus had said to him, "Come out of this man, you evil spirit!" Mark 5:8

"Jesus said to the woman, "Your faith has saved you; go in peace." Luke 7:50

Note that "Jesus said" and it happened. Jesus spoke and things considered "impossible" happened. The lame cured. People raised from the dead. Sins forgiven. All because Jesus said. Christians, including our podcast group, believe that all these impossibilities occured because "Jesus said." Our God is an awesome God.

But for some reason, when our group of podcasting Christians read...

"And as they did eat, Jesus took bread, and blessed, and brake it, and gave to them, and said, Take, eat: this is my body" Mark 14:22

"And he took bread, and gave thanks, and brake it, and gave unto them, saying, This is my body which is given for you: this do in remembrance of me." Luke 22:19

...they failed to note that the Lord God, in the second person of Jesus, was holding bread in His hands and SAID the words "This is my body".

Knowing that God's Word does not return void, what awesome thing, according to Isaiah 55:11 and dozens of Old and New Testament precedents, happened?

This is the reason why this particular group of Christians, and many other Christians, fail to understand the Eucharist and its centrality in Christ's Church.

A classic case of being "... in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God." (Matthew 22:29)

UPDATE (4/25/07): Its looks like Bible Truth Online is interested in anything but Bible truth. Checking the status of my comment, largely the above text, I found the following:

Comment deleted
This post has been removed by the blog administrator.
6:52 PM