Subject: Re: The Episcopalian 'Religion'
Date: Mon, 01 Mar 1999 05:03:47 GMT
From:  (D. Stephen Heersink)
Newsgroups: alt.religion.christian.episcopal

Rowland Croucher <> writes about the “watered-down”
religion known as Episcopalian, or Anglican. There’s truth to the
proposition: Many Episcopalians are not really Christians, but theists
who see Christ as a good teacher, and therefore don’t mind the
appellation. The number of people fitting this description has
increased so much that the Episcopal Church in the U.S. lost 1/6 of
its membership in the last decade!

On the other hand, the fact that Anglicans are not “doctrinaire” or
“confessional” is also one of its strengths. Believers are not fed
this or that person’s thought or beliefs, but must encounter the risen
Christ each in his or her own existential way. That’s not to say that
Anglicans don’t believe in common tenets, rather it’s that they don’t
have a Luther, Calvin, Falwell, or some other oracle.

Instead, the true oracle in the Episcopal Church is the Church itself.
The Church is ontological, and its apostolic ministry divinely
instituted. Of these two points there is no dispute. And this is
exactly how it was in the apostolic age, well before the Bible fell
into every sages’ hands. In this apostolic sensibility, the Episcopal
Church is most like the early Church, safeguarded by episcopal
collegiality, the Scriptures that issued forth from their work.

This existential approach is very uncomfortable to dogmatists. These
individuals will never feel comfortable with the “law of freedom”
Anglicans require. And for those who still retain the ancient faith,
the “theists” are just something the Church has to put up with.

D. Stephen Heersink
San Francisco

“In things necessary, unity;
in things doubtful, liberty;
in all things, charity.”

–Augustine of Hippo

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