Why We Left the Episcopal Church

I read an interesting piece at Virtue Online yesterday (an Anglican publication). It was written by Rev. John Yates and Os Guinness, two men who belong to a church in Virginia (one of several churches) that left the Episcopal denomination over the leadership's devotion to liberalism over the Bible.

They get right to the heart of why many churches are leaving the Episcopal denomination, and while some may be surprised, the ordination of a homosexual bishop isn't really at the heart of it:

It is not a "leftward" drift in the church. It is not even primarily ethical -- though the ordination of a practicing homosexual as bishop was the flash point that showed how far the repudiation of Christian orthodoxy had gone. The core issue for us is theological: the intellectual integrity of faith in the modern world. It is thus a matter of faithfulness to the lordship of Jesus, whom we worship and follow.

This really gets to the heart of the issue: a failure to remain true to their faith. If they had, then they would have never embraced a position that says homosexuality is normal, natural and health...and that God approves of it. The Bible is as clear as it can be that this is a practice God finds abhorrent--it radically violates His design for human sexuality.

The authors of this piece have an interesting term to describe the plague infecting many denominations, churches, and Christian individuals today:

Episcopal revisionism negates the authority of faith. The "sola scriptura" ("by the scriptures alone") doctrine of the Reformation church has been abandoned for the "sola cultura" (by the culture alone) way of the modern church. No longer under authority, the Episcopal Church today is either its own authority or finds its authority in the shifting winds of intellectual and social fashion -- which is to say it has no authority.

Sola Cultura. A very apt term for what is going on. Christians who should look to the Scriptures as the determiner of what is right and wrong, instead looking to culture for the answers.

How upside down can these mixed-up people be??? The church is supposed to guide and enlighten culture, not the other way around. Remember the term about the blind leading the blind? That's what you have now, and these morally bankrupt people who call themselves Christians have no idea that they're being led around by the nose by the very people they should be helping to find the truth.

When denominations, churches or individuals turn away from the Bible and look to anything else for truth--especially the fickle, shallow culture--they're going to end up with the sad state of moral anarchy that is looming over our culture today. A state of anarchy that will certainly destroy everything that makes Western civilization the stable, successful thing it has been.