About Bishops Who Remoan

I’ve oft stated that bishops and other church leaders should be very selective and careful in making political pronouncements.  The most important reason is that most political questions are ones on which faithful Christians can and do disagree. Therefore for a church leader to use their position to take sides on such political positions is a sin against church unity.

That also can harm evangelism.  Now as St. Paul and I pointed out yesterday, we do not water down truth for the sake of evangelism.  But we also do not dilute our message or repel people with questionable political posturing.

So to frequently pontificate on political matters on which faithful Christians can and do disagree asks for division, people simply walking away, and ineffective evangelism.  Combine that with the more grievous  sin of wimping out on Gospel truth or departing from it altogether, and you are asking for the collapse of a church.

Well, all of these sins have been committed by most bishops of the Church of England in recent decades, and, sure enough, that august institution is in slow motion collapse.  (Yes, I freely concede that rampant apostasy is a far more important factor in this than rampant political pontificating.)

The public pitiful remoaning of C of E bishops gives us an example of the foolishness of such political pontification.  A majority of those voting in the Brexit referendum voted for Brexit.  And many of those who did not now want just to get it done with.  And after Teresa May’s years of dithering, who can blame them? 

Yet, instead of keeping their own counsel (as I would as a church leader – I very much am for Brexit but realize faithful Christians very much disagree on that question as Christian teaching addresses that only in a tangential manner if at all), C of E bishops are opposing their people. And when they seem more exercised against Brexit than they are against false teaching and when, further, they are often sources of false teaching, well what is to attract and keep people other than the beautiful buildings and choirs?

Instead, political remoaning and often apostate bishops are surely driving people away much as the Leftist and apostatizing mainline Presbyterian Church drove me away.

So the remoaning bishops not only seem a bit silly, they are actively harming the church.  Likewise for all church leaders who abuse their positions to push for political causes on which faithful Christians can disagree.