Orthodox in the ECUSA

The experience of being an orthodox conservative in the mainline Episcopal Church varies greatly from diocese to diocese. For example, over at Ecclesia Anglicana is a post from Taylor, a youth pastor who has serious issues with the ECUSA, to put it mildly, but stays in because his excellent diocese is orthodox and probably will be for years to come. (The post was made April 27th. Sorry, his blog format won’t allow me to link directly to the post.) And in the Episcopal form of government in which dioceses have a lot of autonomy, that’s not a trivial matter at all.

He makes a persuasive case that, like it or not, we can’t cut ourselves off from evil done in the body of Christ. And to some extent that’s true. Evil done in Christ’s name hurts the whole church and the witness of the Gospel.

But I think that’s where church discipline such as excommunication comes in. I think there comes a time when you tell a church or its leaders that they are evil unrepentant apostates and we will have nothing to do with you unless you do repent. That is the approach of Archbishop Akinola of Nigeria and one I agree with (and I suspect Taylor agrees with as well).

I don’t necessarily disagree with Taylor on staying in the ECUSA. If I were in his shoes, I probably would stay in the ECUSA, too, given his diocese. But I would do so with trepidation.

For apostasy is contagious. And orthodox dioceses and even individual orthodox bishops can catch the disease. And the consequences can be ugly. Here in sad detail is the current experience of an orthodox parish in one such diocese. I strongly recommend reading this.

Note that the bishop involved, Paul Marshall, at least once had the reputation of being orthodox and until recently gave St. Stephens parish no problems. But now?

Looking at his situation as an orthodox priest in a revisionist diocese, [St. Stephens rector] Ilgenfritz said that “the only means of protest we had was to withhold money to the diocese, and now he is going to use that to try and depose me. The bishop is a canonical fundamentalist when it comes to money, but loose on biblical standards of morality.�

Last year the bishop wrote a book lauding lesbian love.

This parish and its courageous rector, Fr. William H. Ilgenfritz, deserve our prayers. And we need to pray for all orthodox believers in the ECUSA. They all have some tough choices to make.

Please note that in the case of Taylor’s diocese, the Diocese of Ft. Worth, I think it highly unlikely that Bishop Iker would stray. I could say the same about a number of other fine bishops, such as +Stanton of Dallas. But what about his successor, and the one after and…? And how long will the ECUSA allow any diocese to be a bastion of orthodoxy?