So that would be a go for consensual incest,right?

I’m truly sorry to see you giving publicity to such a blatantly prejudiced piece of discriminatory rabble-rousing, Christopher.

“Two adult persons”? Two? So the polyamorous get short shrift again! And what of the bisexuals amongst their congregations? They still have to hang their heads in shame and pretend that they’re either exclusively straight or exclusively gay! Oh yes, Virginian parishes will be very welcoming if Bill shows up with either Tony or Angie as his partner, but let Bill show up with both Tony *and* Angie and we’ll soon see the worth of these fine words.

It’s just not good enough in this 21st century!

Jesus weeps…Lot turns and runs from Sodom.
Intercessor

There’s that darn Baptismal Covenant again – I’m beginning to think that is one of the most grievous pieces of mischief done to the Anglican Church.

So how’s that inside strategy working for you?

This was supposedly a moderate/conservative diocese going all in for SSBs right before GC2009?????

Anaheim is going to be a bloodbath.

CJ: “If you don’t get it by now, if you think there is still something to talk about and if you seriously believe that an Anglican Covenant will do anything about this, then I can’t help you anymore because you are criminally delusional.”

ACI to Christopher Johnson and others: “It is a form of delusion and disobedience to place oneself and ones friends outside the judgment God intends for the health of his church.”

Hilarious. Two sides pointing at each other and calling each other delusional.

For a good post about ACI, go read Fr. Gibson’s commentary ACI and the Gospel of Blah, Blah, Blah.

My thoughts exactly Michael.

I’m glad I’m out of TEC, but I have family and friends who still belong. I wonder how they feel now.

Peter Lee’s decision to retire earlier than expected is supposed to save the diocese $63,000 in salary, housing, travel,and benefits this year. I expect those savings will be more than offset by lost contributions from those who finally wake up and realize that the inside strategy they pursued has failed miserably.

Meanwhile, I expect the Washington Compost Heap and the Falls Church News-Depression will be celebrating this development and praising the diocese’s “progressive” views. Some “progress.”

“And lose all their chips and walk away broke if necessary. After all, what does it profit a man if he gains Lambeth Palace approval but loses his own soul?”

Spoken like Thomas More!

Michael D, absolutely. The change to the baptismal service was a grievous wound to the church. Many evangelicals, previously gung-ho 1979, now acknowledge this.

The resolutions may be found here:

http://www.thediocese.net/Councils/214Council/resolutions_submitted.html#R4

Why limit it to two adults? Sheesh, I thought these people were inclusive.

I don’t think we Papists have a baptismal covenant; I’m open to correction on this, particularly from Americans in enlightened and progressive parishes

It’s been a while since I was at a baptism, so all I’m going by are the renewal of the baptismal promises at the Easter Vigil, and those are:

“V. Do you reject Satan?
R. I do.
V. And all his works?
R. I do.
V. And all his empty promises?
R. I do.
V. Do you believe in God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth?
R. I do.

V. Do you believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was born of the Virgin Mary was crucified, died, and was buried, rose from the dead, and is now seated at the right hand of the Father?
R. I do.

V. Do you believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Catholic church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting?
R. I do.

V. God, the all-powerful Father of our Lord Jesus Christ has given us a new birth by water and the Holy Spirit, and forgiven all our sins. May he also keep us faithful to our Lord Jesus Christ for ever and ever.

R. Amen.”

And that’s all I know about it. Do we have the social justice and equality bit, only us backwards Paddies haven’t got around to adding it in yet? Seriously, I’d like to know.

Fuinseoig, that’s basically what we used to have, before the Baptismal Covenant. I don’t think American Catholics have been burdened with a Covenant, but I’m open to correction.

Fuinseoig, you guys -and the rest of the world’s Christians, including the Anglican Communion- are so woefully behind that the elite gnostics of the ECUSA/TEC/GCC/EO-PAC doubt you’ll ever catch up!

They had all that folderol you bring up in some variant form, but the spirit of (OUR)Age got them to add the only really right and true and important question in the whole of creation which everyone else has missed, to wit,

“Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?
I will, with God’s help.”

THAT is the only phrase in the whole baptismal covenant that really counts, but -truth be told- there is a canon within this canon which requires only that the candidate “respect the dignity of every human being” – which phrase means whatever the gnostic elite have decided it needs to mean.

At the moment its the gay corp application for which I refer you to the multitudinous citations of this canon by all the pro-homosexualists-in-every-position-of authority-and ministry by so many persons that the brain reels. You might try Susan Russell, el presidente of the misnamed “Integrity”, or his world-travelerness-the-simple-country-bishop-of-somewhere-he-never-is, Vickie Gene Robinson, or any carbon dioxide ehhancing emission of the General Convention 2006 or HOB or any Diocesan Convention of the High-Church-of-Error-and-Misapplication.

Now, you will have noted, no doubt, that this respect for the dignity of every human being does not apply to traditionalists, those opposed to women’s ordination, those opposed to ordination of non-celibate gays of either sex, or tho those who oppose any innovation of the gnostic elites. But, you shouldn’t let that bother you, apparently because the truthiness of what they know is better than even what God Himself/Herself?Itself?Godself? decreed.

All the rest of the Christian world is in error on this matter and only the ECUSA/TEC/GCC/EO-PAC and its dominatrix and dominatrickettes have the “true” truthiness. For this you can cycle through virtually any search engine and find diocese after diocese falling into line. Poor, poor other “Christians” – all under the influence of the Holy Spirit – so misled by The Faith Once Delivered MUST be delivered by this “baptismal covenant”.

Do you believe, Brother? Would you be delivered from your bondage to misogeny and homophobia and ignorant bondage in darkness? Kneel and kiss the “baptismal covenant canon faith” proclaimed by the ECUSA/TEC/GCC/EO-PAC. You might have to trmple on the faith of history, of billions of ‘Christians’ and even on the crucifix, but -if and only if- you do this can you be saved from the depths of your errors?

Do you believe? Will you recant your fixation on the Christian Faith and turn to our only correct understanding after 2000 years and be saved from the pit of ignorance? If not, well, look out for the law suit and your property – because those are the only other things in the proper trinity of belief that are demonstrable elements of the Episcopal trinity: sex, lawsuits, property.

All respect to your outdated and errant and fallible and wrong understanding of the Christian faith, of course. You and the Pope, the Patriarchs, the billions of faithful in history and now on earth are all wrong, Wrong, WRong, WROng, WRONg, WRONG!!! Repent your error and be baptized in this true gnosticism, do you hear! Do it today! Or you may enter into the most obscene depths of hell ever described – the hell of the not-with-it-at-the-moment!

Dare you risk such an evil fate?

Repent! Now! Or face the wrath of the mighty insignificant Church of WhazUp! Or, at least, a major whine like Obama got for Rick Warren and the affliction of a specifically non-Christian prayer by VGR who (obviously) prays to a different god than Rick!

The problem isn’t “the Baptismal Covenant”, but the heretics importing into it current cultural fads and folk beliefs (that’s what they really are, if somewhat more sophisticated in tone). The problems are universalism (in so far as they believe in eternal life at all) and homosexualist ideology, which posits “being gay” as a normal variant of human experience, in the same category as race and sex. Bad Christology and probably other heresies feed in as well.

Baptism does indeed extend the Covenent that God has made with His people to the newly baptised. They indeed are made His children and inheritors of the Kingdom. It does indeed make us one with them. What the baptismal covenent is NOT is a get out of hell free card. The baptized retain a human will that can make bad choices, believe wrong things, and engage in evil acts. The consequence of such things is eternal separation from God and His people.

And, of course, the heretics talk a good game, but watch how they behave toward the baptized who don’t accept their theological and anthropological deviancies.

I’ve asked this before, so forgive the repeition: Was the 1979 Prayer Book revision a clever and nefarious plot to destroy traditional Christian doctrine? Or was it merely a serendipitous event that is being capitalized on by the revisionists?

If TEO still had the 1928 Prayer Book, what would the revisionists be using now to support their man-made credo?

JM, there were certainly some revisionists on the committee which produced the 1979, and I think they slipped some things in deliberately. However, there were also some high-church types who got taken in by some of the more Catholic-style revisions. So I think it’s some of both of your possibilities.

It would be a whole lot harder to support the modern and post-modern ideas using the ’28 or the 1662, wouldn’t it?

Look for TEC, freed from its few remaining pesky believers, to revise its liturgy out into left field and over the fence soon.

JM has asked the question that had been floating around in my mind (in a far less clear form than JM was able to put it)

I don’t think it was serendipity

And off to hell they go…in a rather beautiful hand basket. Enjoy the show.

“And off to hell they go…in a rather beautiful hand basket. Enjoy the show.”

Are the Institutionalist-Idolator-Enablers of soul-destroying apostasy and heresy in the same beautiful hand basket too since they are united and yoked with the apostate-heretics by being in full Sacramental Communion with them?

ACI is like Robin Williams’ comment about British policemen: “Stop! Or I will say ‘Stop’ again!”

I’m really surprised some of our people haven’t introduced the likes of a Baptismal Covenant. It sounds perfectly in tune with the Spirit of Vatican II

Though of course, what happens in any given parish can be a lucky dip, so I wouldn’t fall down with the shock of hearing that Fr. So-and-So (or more likely the Liturgical Committee Co-ordinator) has introduced something where the ecological, justice, equality, and recycling addenda are longer than the statement of belief.

Regarding the revisions to the Prayer Book, as a non-Anglican I can’t comment. I would just say that, even back then, there was criticism of the proposed revision to the Prayer Book:

G. K. Chesterton, “The Well and the Shallows”, 1935:

“For the Anglicans cannot do the trick now, any more than anybody else. Modern prayers, and theirs perhaps more than any, seem to be perfectly incapable of avoiding journalese. And the Prayer-Book prose seems to follow them like a derisive echo.

Lambeth or Convocation will publish a prayer saying something like, “Guide us, O Lord, to the solution of our social problems”; and the great organ of old will groan in the background… “All who are desolate and oppressed.” The first Anglicans asked for peace and happiness, truth and justice; but nothing can stop the latest Anglicans, and many others, from the horrid
habit of asking for improvement in international relations.”

dwstroudmd –

A most magnificent rant! You have pretty much said it all!

My answer to JM’s question: I think the revisionists on the SCLM (Standing Committee on Liturgy & Music) had major mischief in mind with the 1979 revision. The entire focus of worship was changed from being humbly repentant for our sins to an attitude of smugness for being an Episcopalian. The shift to a universalist outlook was very subtle (although I am sure there were those theologically versed people who saw it coming) so that the average pew sitter would not notice.

But after 30 years, look at the damage that has been wrought!

JM: I suppose all this unitarian stuff would have been just as possible without the 1979 Prayer Book, but the fact that it is quoted so much suggests that it is at least useful for the apostates. For example when a faithful parishioner raises their hand (as GG did recently with Schori) to say “excuse me but that doesn’t seem right” then someone can always say “remember your baptismal covenant” as if they had signed-away their freedom to have a dissenting opinion.

Fuinseoig: excellent Chesterton quote. It seems to me, based on quotes such as this and similar from CS Lewis, that the Christian thinkers have been hip to the liberal strategies for nigh-on a century now, and have been exposing it in very clear prose. Obviously, as Duane points out, fore-warned was not fore-armed. Which suggests to me that there is devilry afoot.

TUAD: We are working our way through Ephesians in Sunday sermons, and today was Ephesians 5: 1-14, which includes the following word for the institutional enablers “…God’s wrath comes on those who are disobedient. Therefore do not be partners with them.” (vv 6,7)

TU&D – If the IIE’s do not jump ship soon….they’ll be on the same “fabulous” journey.

MidwestNorwegian: “And off to hell they go…in a rather beautiful hand basket. Enjoy the show.”

TUAD: “Are the Institutionalist-Idolator-Enablers of soul-destroying apostasy and heresy in the same beautiful hand basket too since they are united and yoked with the apostate-heretics by being in full Sacramental Communion with them?”

MidwestNorwegian: “TU&D – If the IIE’s do not jump ship soon….they’ll be on the same “fabulous” journey.”

——————–

Thanks for helpful clarity MidwestNorwegian.

And by definition, an Institutionalist-Idolator-Enabler is anyone who is formally and officially a member of TEc.

And the following people don’t have the excuse of ignorance: Ephraim Radner, Christopher Seitz, Philip Turner, Kendall Harmon, +Mark Lawrence, Bishop John Howe, Sarah Hey, Jackie Bruschi, Deacon Phil Snyder, Fr. Rob Eaton, Fr. Russell Levenson, and all the Communion Partner Rectors and Bishops. And any other TEc member who knows of the blatant, unrepentant, gross heresies and who then knowingly and deliberately chooses to tacitly endorse the soul-destroying heresy and apostasy by remaining in TEc’s communion membership.

regarding bad influence of 1979 BCP….I don’t buy that as the cause…come on…if their loophole to avoid Commandments, Bible is some phrase in the BCP, your goose is already cooked…..that is, the phrase is only a symptom, not the cause

JM, KC, Katherine,

The late ECUSA clergyman and “liturgucal reformer” Urban T. Holmes (who was involved in the making of the 1979 BCP) wrote an essay shortly before his unexpectedly early death (? in the early 1980s) in which he stated clearly and explicitly that the revisers deliberately introduced new theological ideas, at odds with that of the Anglican tradition, into the new BCP and were delighted that nobody knew what they were doing.

I remember reading a book in the 70s by Holmes in which he advocated that the priest-of-the-future should take “the shaman” as his model and “creative weirdness” as the theme of his ministry.