R. Andrew Newman, a freelance journalist in western Nebraska, reports on the Evangelical church's recent general convention:

    The Episcopal Church's fight over gay marriage and its strained relations with a sizeable swath of the Anglican Communion will dominate the headlines for yet another General Convention.

    That, I'm afraid, is old news. The battle's been decided, only a matter of when, not if, same-sex ceremonies receive the national church's imprimatur. For the meantime, American bishops will continue to offer bafflegab (pluriform truth, I believe the Presiding Bishop calls it) and expressions of "regret" to the outraged Anglicans of Africa and Asia.

    Reading through the resolutions and reports for this year's triennial convention, which opened Tuesday and concludes June 21, something else struck me.

    In Olympian fashion, resolutions and reports call for an end to global poverty, Israel to halt its "occupation" and stop oppressing the Palestinians, full civil rights for same-sex couples, making it easier to cast a ballot for President of the United States than to write a check at the Piggly Wiggly, support for sustainable agriculture, the elimination of racism, and waging peace in Iraq.

    The Committee on the Status of Women proposes all clergy and lay professionals receive at least six hours of domestic-abuse training by 2012. The training would focus upon "the power differential between men and women that continues in society and in our theology, how to address this in pre-marital counseling and couple counseling ..." Men, then, comprise the oppressor class, women the oppressed class.

    Gender is only one member of the trinity. The other two are economic class and race. The Social and Urban Affairs Committee demands the "Episcopal Church acknowledge its history and the deep and lasting injury which the institution of slavery and its aftermath have inflicted on society and on the Church ... (and) express our most profound regret that ... the Episcopal Church lent the institution of slavery its support and justification based on Scripture, and ... after slavery was formally abolished, the Episcopal Church continued for at least a century to support de jure and de facto segregation and discrimination ..."

    Tellingly, the Standing Commission on Domestic Missions and Evangelism defines evangelism as "reconciliation with the Other and reconciliation with God....God's mission of reconciliation calls us to leave behind comfortable communities where people look, sound, act and dress like us, to turn away from our circle of friends at coffee hour and to seek the outsider. In our rapidly shrinking and wonderfully multicultural world, the Church is called to be the presence and agent of God's reconciling love in the world..."

    There's no talk of sin, redemption, Christ's work on the cross. The Other apparently doesn't need to be saved, only embraced and celebrated.


It sounds to me like the Episcopal Church has thrown out the Bible in favor of a philosophy of economic and social engineering.

Someone should remind them of a few passages from the Bible such as, "And do not conform to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God," Romans 12:2, or "Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good," Romans 12:21.