Episcopal Church Lost to the World

[John81]

WHAT'S MISSING FROM THIS EASTER MESSAGE?

April 5, 2012 NewsWithViews.com

By Lee Duigon

The Episcopal Church has sent me a copy of the annual Easter Message from Presiding Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schori. It’s 383 words long, in eight paragraphs.

Not once in this message has the Presiding Bishop seen fit to mention the name of Jesus Christ.

Oh, she drops hints that Easter maybe sort of, kind of, have something to do with Jesus. In the next-to-last paragraph she says, “I would encourage you to look at where you are finding new life and resurrection, where life abundant and love incarnate are springing up in your lives and the lives of your communities.” It is just conceivable that this could be a roundabout approach to Jesus—albeit an approach that never quite gets there. And she concludes, “Give thanks for Easter. Give thanks for Resurrection. Give thanks for the presence of God incarnate in our midst.” God makes it into the very last line of the message.”

When I asked why the message contained no mention of Jesus, a spokesperson for the church replied, “The Presiding Bishop talks at length about Resurrection—that is the Resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ.” It’s hardly how I would describe it. But we are talking about the bishop’s message, not the spokesperson’s.

A key phrase is, “look at where you are finding new life and resurrection.” Well, “you” could be anybody, looking anywhere, couldn’t it? So let’s go to the earlier paragraphs to see if we can tell where Bishop Schori is looking for new life and resurrection.

She opens, “One of my favorite Easter hymns is about greenness… about love coming again.” Greenness? “It’s a reminder to me of how centered our Easter images are in the Northern hemisphere.”

What? “We talk about greenness and new life and life springing forth from the earth when we talk about resurrection.” If you can find a specifically Christian perspective in any of this so far, you ought to take up dowsing.

“I often wonder what Easter images come in the Southern hemisphere, and I think that church in the south has something to teach us about that.”

What’s all this gobbledygook about the hemispheres? The quintessential Easter image is the empty tomb. In fact, it’s the only image that matters. Surely that image doesn’t change from hemisphere to hemisphere.

But here we have the presiding bishop of a mainline Protestant denomination getting all hung up on nature imagery which has nothing to do with the real sense of Easter, any more than snowmen and kids sledding have to do with Christmas. I think we have a right to expect a bishop to be more theologically focused than a greeting-card salesman.

After this we get a paragraph on Japan’s ongoing recovery from the tsunami and nuclear reactor disaster of last year, observed by the bishop on a recent visit there. That’s nice, but the concern expressed is not particularly Christian. An atheist, a Buddhist, or a worshipper of Mithras could have easily made the same comments that the bishop made. She did manage to slip in another odd remark: “The earth there is—was at that point—largely colorless, brown, in the middle of winter. No greenness.” She’s at it again.

I’m going to quote Paragraph 6 in its entirety, verbatim—otherwise you might accuse me of having made it up as a satire. Here it is.

“As we began Lent, I asked you to think about the Millenium Development Goals and our work in Lent as a re-focusing of our lives. I’m delighted to be able to tell you that the UN report this last year has shown some significant accomplishment in a couple of those goals, particularly in terms of lowering the rate of the worst poverty, and in achieving better access to drinking water and better access to primary education. We actually might reach those goals by 2015. That leaves a number of other goals as well as what moves beyond the goals to full access for all people to abundant life.”

Does this tell us why the bishop doesn’t mention Jesus? Who needs Jesus Christ? We’ve got the UN and its Millenium Development Goals!

Jesus said, “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.” (John 10:10) If He had only known that the UN would make His work redundant! Think of the trouble He might have saved Himself. Plus, He could have gotten out from under the responsibility for all those Christians re-focusing their lives on Him—just send them down the road to the Millenium Development Goals.

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In this extraordinary message, plainly labeled for us as an Easter Message, the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church reveals the object of her faith—a messianic super-state which will deliver the abundant life that Christ has always promised: deliver here and now, in this world; and without even a nod in Christ’s direction, create Utopia. All you need is government!

We have the Presbyterian Church USA with people dancing around in animal costumes as part of a worship service, an Anglican church in Canada staging “The Vagina Monologues” at the altar, and now Bishop Schori with her greenness and her hemispheres and her Christ-less Easter.

Mainline Protestantism in North America, from now on, ought to be called Flatline Protestantism.

http://www.newswithviews.com/Duigon/lee142.htm

[Oldtimer]

Her message reminds me of the Easter displays at WalMart and other stores. At least at Christmas, most of these stores will have "Christian" mercandise, that reflects the birth of Christ. Yet, what Jesus suffered for us, is no where to be found at Easter. If it ain't rabbits, eggs, and ham it ain't there.

Yesterday, I did hear one "Have a Blessed Easter" from a store clerk. :sSig_praiseGod:

[John81]

This goes along with the churches today which held easter egg hunts, passed out easter candy at services and generally diminished the resurrection of Christ.

[Wilchbla]

A real godforsaken mess.

[Doc Flay]

Taking Christ out of Easter is like is the same as taking him out of Christianity altogether; What's the point of attending Church at all. Without me, Jesus said, ye can do nothing; on-the-other-hand, I can do all things through Christ which strengtheth me!

[Covenanter]

What a dreadful Easter message - a message with only false hope, like the prophets of Jeremiah's time:

6:

13

For from the least of them even u

nt

o the greatest of them every one is given to covetousness; and from the prophet even u

nt

o the priest every one dealeth falsely.

14

They have healed also the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly, saying, Peace, peace; when there is no peace.

The Easter song alluded to is sung to the beautiful16th C French tune Noel Nouvelet. It is based on our Lord's words in John 12:

23

And Jesus answered them, saying, The hour is come, that the Son of man should be glorified.

24

Verily, verily, I say u

nt

o you, Except a corn of wheat fall i

nt

o the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.

Now the green blade rises from the buried grain,
Wheat that in the dark earth many days has lain;
Love lives again, that with the dead has been:
Love is come again, like wheat that springs up green.

In the grave they laid Him, Love Whom men had slain,
Thinking that He’d never wake to life again,
Laid in the earth like grain that sleeps unseen:
Love is come again, like wheat that springs up green.

Up He sprang at Easter, like the risen grain,
He that for three days in the grave had lain;
Up from the dead my risen Lord is seen:
Love is come again, like wheat that springs up green.

When our hearts are wintry, grieving or in pain,
By Your touch You call us back to life again;
Fields of our hearts that dead and bare have been:
Love is come again, like wheat that springs up green.

To focus on the hymn, rather than the risen Lord Jesus Christ, & the Scripture to which the hymn alludes, is seriously misleading.

[Invicta]

Rowan Williams' easter message

The Archbishop began his final Easter sermon arguing that young people's hostility towards faith is not as extreme as society perceives it to be.
He said that many young people take the issue of religion seriously, despite not attending Church.
He warned that now was the "worst possible moment" to downgrade the importance of teaching religion in secondary schools.

There is ple

nt

y to suggest that younger people, while still statistically deeply unlikely to be churchgoers, don't have the hostility to faith that one might expect. They at least share some sense that there is something here to take seriously when they have a chance to learn about it. It is about the worst possible mome

nt

to downgrade the status and professional excellence of religious education in secondary schools.

– ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY ROWAN WILLIAMS
Dr Williams, who will take up a post at Cambridge University in January, also told followers that the ultimate test of the Christian religion is not whether it is useful or helpful to society but whether or not its central claim - the resurrection of Jesus Christ - actually happened.

We are n

ot

told that Jesus 'survived death'; we are n

ot

told that the story of the empty tomb is a beautiful imaginative creation that offers inspiration to all sorts of people; we are n

ot

told that the message of Jesus lives on. We are told that God did something

– ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY ROWAN WILLIAMS
Dr Williams' ministry has been challenging at times. Under his leadership, the Church of England nearly split over the ordination of gay clergy and women bishops.
Dr Williams has shown no resistance to the appointment of openly gay bishops, as well as showing continued support for the ordination of women.
He will continue to carry out all the duties and responsibilities of the Archbishop of Canterbury, both for the Church of England and the Anglican Communion, until the end of the year, Lambeth Palace said.

http://www.itv.com/n...-easter-sermon/ Edited April 9, 2012 by Invicta

[John81]

When I think of what was going on with the Church of England at the time of J.C. Ryle and how he deplored that while still holding out hope, even as he said certain steps further to the bad would be cause to separate, I can only imagine the response he would have to what the Church of England is today.

Unfortunately, Christian America is going the same way as Christian England has gone.

[Covenanter]

As the Pope said in his Easter message :
"The resurrection ... is a historical reality
'the resurrection of Christ is our hope ...."



Sadly he continues:
"Today the church calls on Mary, the 'star of hope' asking her to guide humanity toward the safe haven which is the heart of Christ ..."


'