Tec And Acna: A Tale Of Two Evangelisms

According to a report in the Living Church, ACNA’s new archbishop, Steve Wood is, “passionate for evangelism.”

“Roughly 130 million people in America do not know Jesus Christ,” Wood told the press conference. “That is the most animated aspect of who I am: I want everyone to come to a saving faith in Jesus Christ.”

Outgoing ACNA Archbishop Foley Beach emphasized that Wood has a “proven track record” and that “this guy is bearing fruit.”

Unlike Episcopal General Convention, ACNA Assembly is chiefly a mission conference with daily Bible studies (led by former Singapore Archbishop Rennis Ponniah), preaching by Church of England clergyman Vaughan Edward Roberts, rector of St. Ebbe’s, Oxford, and plenary speakers including ACNA Deacon John Stonestreet of the Chuck Colson Center for Christian Worldview.

Archbishop Beach said that the denomination has tried to remain focused on issues “directly related to our life in the ACNA” and that, “We are about leading people into this transforming relationship; let us not forget this.”

By contrast, the new Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church the Rt. Rev. Sean W. Rowe is bishop provisional of Western New York in 2019. He previously served as bishop provisional of the Diocese of Bethlehem (PA), from 2014 until 2018. His diocese is small and probably will not be around in five years. Like nearly all Episcopal dioceses it is shrinking.

Unlike his predecessors Rowe attended one of the best evangelical colleges on the East Coast, namely Grove City College, which has such evangelical luminaries on the faculty as Dr. Gillis Harp, historian and Dr. Carl Trueman who teaches Civilization and the Biblical Revelation. (You can see my interview with him here: https://virtueonline.org/theologian-pushes-christians-ask-what-it-means-be-human-growing-trans-human-world)

So what went wrong? His predecessors had little or no exposure to evangelical Anglicanism. They attended liberal Episcopal seminaries and the church reaped the “rewards” in their failed leadership. PB Michael Curry’s repeated calls to love failed to stir the masses. ‘Love is love’ is tautological nonsense; his revivals focused on the racism of unnamed others, though no one could ever prove that the Episcopal Church harbored tens of thousands of aging racists rapidly heading to columbaria as their checkbooks closed.

Historically revivals focused on our own sin bringing about repentance and faith in Jesus Christ. Proponents view revivals as the restoration of the church to a vital and fervent relationship with God after a period of moral decline. This never happened under Curry. The moral decline only heightened under his leadership with homosexual marriage finally approved by General Convention.

Curry used the word revival, a well-documented word, but alien to the thinking of most stiff upper lip Episcopalians more concerned with a fifth of Scotch than a spiritual fit of the Holy Spirit.

Words like “evangelize” and “evangelism” have a particular meaning which are anathema to most Episcopal bishops. When they hear these words, they think of Aimee Semple McPherson or a Billy Graham and Trinity (now Anglican) School for Ministry, and they do their best to make sure their ordinands never end up there for fear they might contaminate their dioceses with such narrow views of the gospel excluding various groups that now occupy center stage, like LGBTQII and transgender types for whom hearts must now bleed in open wounds of contrition. The Episcopal Church would henceforth be the (Episcopal branch) of the Jesus Movement.

Nor had Jesus often crossed the lips of his predecessor, Katharine Jefferts Schori except to expel from the church bishops and priests who actually did believe in Jesus and the salvation he offered. Jefferts Schori had excoriated the notion of personal salvation as a modern-day heresy, preferring to dance to the sounds of Indaba, inclusivity, diversity and let’s make nice with Islam.

The bewilderment did not last long when it became clear that what Michael Curry meant by the Jesus Movement was not quite the evangelism of say a John Wesley, Billy Graham or that preached by thousands of black American preachers who weekly rail against sin, calling folk to repentance and faith in Jesus Christ.

As it slowly transpired, Curry’s understanding and agenda of the Jesus Movement was really about racism and its attendant “sin” — White Privilege. Racism lay at the heart of his call to evangelize and he had a built-in audience of 98 percent whites in The Episcopal Church. With less than 600,000 whites, he could rail at them and charge them with white privilege, hoping that, loaded down with guilt, they would atone with large gifts for their hidden racism.

Efforts to grow the church over the last decade have only failed. The 2020 call to double The Episcopal Church was a significant flop. TEC continued to shrink. Attempts to re-vision and renew the church have not been successful.

Rowe believes the Episcopal Church is much like the church in Ephesus, “small, countercultural. We’re not struggling to survive in the cult of Artemis, but there are other cults in our midst.”

“We are standing firm in the face of those. We’re holding fast to our promise to uphold the full inclusion of LGBTQI+ persons as children of God. We’re proclaiming and investing in our longing to become a Beloved Community. We’re committing to caring for God’s creation and respecting the dignity of every human being.”

Proclaiming the dignity of every human being, does not mean embracing the behavior of every human being.

According to Rowe, those who choose not to believe in pansexuality are cultists, which means that if you do not imbibe the poisoned chalice of homosexual behavior including homosexual marriage you are on the outside looking in. Does this make the Communion Partner bishops cultists? It would appear so. It would also explain why former Albany Episcopal Bishop Bill Love is out of TEC.

“We are not backing down in our proclamation of the Gospel just because other people who understand it differently are bigger or think they’re more powerful or louder or have a vision that denies humanity.”

This begs the question, what gospel exactly is Rowe proclaiming? It is certainly notthe Good News of Jesus Christ, that liberates from sin, all sin. It is a truncated “gospel,” a neutered gospel of selectively chosen sins (mainly aimed at white privilege, of which he is part), and for which he must daily intone his mea culpas.

Rowe went on to talk about “our idolatry of structures and practices that exclude and diminish our witness? We have to get it together. That’s going to mean laying some things down. The struggle ahead will require a tolerance for uncertainty, a willingness to make real sacrifices. We’ll actually need to let go of some of our grievances and hold more lightly our beliefs about how the church should work and who has a voice.”

Now what “structures” is he planning on ridding the church of exactly? Anglicanism is riddled with structure. It is the sine qua non of Anglicanism to have structure.

“Make no mistake: Reorienting our structures, our budgets, and our relationships will only matter if we do it for the sake of the gospel, for the sake of Jesus Christ, says Rowe. “Our goal must be to invest more fully in creation care, evangelism, and racial reconciliation at every level of the church.”

Based on past performance, nothing much will change. The Episcopal Church will continue with more merging dioceses, shrinking budgets, and ‘for sale’ signs on parish doors. Nothing can stop the rot. The cancer of revisionism is deeply embedded in the warp and woof of the church. Church demographers give TEC till 2040 when most of the doors of parishes will be closed. There is little evidence to the contrary.

END

TEC AND ACNA: A TALE OF TWO EVANGELISMS

COMMENTARY

By David W. Virtue, DD
www.virtueonline.org
July 8, 2024

The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) recently elected two new leaders to run their denominations.

Both churches had been hurt by Covid and saw their numbers briefly depleted. Since Covid the ACNA has rebounded, but TEC not so much. There is a “rebounding attendance” but overall, in 2020, the TEC reported a 3.1% decline, in 2021 that increased slightly to 3.3%. The drop between 2021 and 2022 was the largest on record – 5.6%.

The ACNA reported a 12 percent growth in attendance in 2023.