Maybe the fact that millions of GLBTQXYZs aren’t lining up around the block to toss in a few tens of millions $$$ to fix the NatCat or even show up in their churches once in a blue moon was his first clue?

Getting people to show up to a place and have a “clergy” person tell you you’re stupid for actually believing in Jesus Christ as the Son of God who rose from the dead and you just need to think happy thoughts about everyone for “salvation” from the vague deity concept is a tough nut to crack, regardless how “cool” you look in vestments.

I can feel “spiritual” enough for that in my PJs watching ESPNs NFL preview show.

I know it is fashionable, and possibly theologically correct, to say that numbers don’t tell the true story of a church’s value or fidelity

No need for circumlocution, Jim. If you had ever thought this to be the case, you would never have jumped the shark.

After all these years of trying to convince people how relevant it is, TEC is still declining? Who woulda thunk it?

Poor TEC; no real place to call home and nobody really cares much any more.

Having discarded traditional Christianity, the belly button exam is pretty much all they’ve got.

“Signs of vitality”? Where? Oh yeah. South Carolina. You guys are working on killing that right now.

“…these numbers suggest an abbreviated future for our brand of Christianity…”

To quote The Bard:

“‘Tis a consummation Devoutly to be wished.”

Why doesn’t Jim throw himself into agitating for an “Episcopalian outreach” project that will be aimed specifically and explicitly at recruiting for TE”C” disaffected liberal/modernist Catholics, such as he himself once was. In doing so, and however small “gleanings” might come of the effort, he would be doing both bodies a service – for TE”C” it would be “living into” the niche of boutique religion it has chosen for itself, a kind liturgical, sacramental, and libertine unitarianism (which can recruit members, but not propagate them); for the Catholic Church it would serve, in however small a measure, as a modern example of Edward I of England’s remark, in Anglo-Norman French, about the murder of Red Comyn of Badenoch by Robert Bruce: “Bon bosogne faict, qy de merde me livrer.”

tec has really kept these people in the dark, haven’t they!
There are comments saying things like: “How is this happening? Is it individuals, or whole congregations?”

From the sounds of it, this is the first that people have heard that their denomination is dieing.

The Episcopalians seem to have much in common with the Shakers, and will soon go the same way as they.

I’m amused that some of the commenters seem to think the answer is “Poach the Catholics!” (i.e., appeal to the progressive/younger RCs who may not agree with the Vatican).

Is it just me, or is Jim-lad coming around to the notion that church is for Christ? That running around doing all kinds of activist stuff is not the purpose? “I am hardly a sit on my hands kind of guy, but the world is full of mission opportunities that go by many names, but the church is the only place where I can worship Christ in community.”

Read the comments at the cafe. The boobs actually agree with the writer. “Amen corner” is the term used repeatedly. These clowns don’t know a hole in the ground from anything else. They use the term “good news” (no capitalization needed, it has nothing to do with anything Christian) as though it’s something they *have* and need to share with someone who lacks it. How can anyone lack….Nothing? Leaving PECUSA is the only sensible thing anyone can do. Not going there in the first place is second most. The good news is avoiding it. It makes finding the Good News that much more likely.

Does he really think he can get “people searching for meaning and transcendence in a materialistic post-modern culture” to stop examining their belly buttons?
Those are the people who find real value in belly button lint.
(Find the top ten uses for such at http://www.csittl.com/old/98list19.html)

I’m actually surprised that the comments are as sensible as they are. The days of “Good riddance! The sooner we’re rid of the Deadman’s Pedal of conservatism, the better!” are long gone, maybe because the conservatives HAVE left and the liberals are sitting triumphantly on a ruined ash-heap. One commenter even cautiously suggests that they may have gotten a little too far away from orthodox, creedal Christianity, although he prefaces it with “It’s impossible to know why people leave, or the numbers are slipping…” Actually, no, it’s not IMPOSSIBLE, and pretending that this is all some huge, inexplicable mystery falling out of the sky is just flinching from facing the truth. ASK those people who have left – they’ll tell you why. They’ve been telling you for years, but you refused to take them seriously.

@Dr. Mabuse,

You wrote:

ASK those people who have left – they’ll tell you why.

Excellent suggestion. A few of us who left even wrote a letter to the Rector and Vestry (cc to the Bishop(s)) explaining why we were resigning from the whole organization (can’t honestly call it a church any longer—it’s even a bit of a stretch to use Vatican II’s terminology, ecclesial community for much of what remains).

So, at least some of the answers are out there, and in (virtual) black and white.

Pax et bonum,
Keith Töpfer

Keith,
“So, at least some of the answers are out there, and in (virtual) black and white.”

But to read those letter, or talk to the ex-piskies would be to acknowledge there may actually be reasons for people leaving.

tec is like the drunk who is on all fours on Main street, searching under a street light for the keys he lost on 3rd — “Because the light is better over here.”

“people searching for meaning and transcendence in a materialistic post-modern culture …”

Episcopal theology is ashes in the mouth of anyone who wants anything like “meaning” or “transcendence”. It’s the stench of death and futility.

And Episcopal theology is based on reducing all of Christianity to the material aspects of life (socialism, environmentalism, homosexual rights), so how is it not materialistic? It depends fundamentally on postmodernism and deconstruction in order to rewrite the Bible into something that supports their own agenda. So how is it not postmodern? But as long as Jim and his friends live in their own little dream world, the damage they can do will be limited by the fact that they do not comprehend what is really going on. So perhaps this blurb of his is cause for hope in a roundabout way.

Somenone named Clint Davis in the Comments at the E-Café has nailed it. I have added emphasis…

“Do we really and honestly believe we have a great treasure and a duty to add to this treasure and share it, or is our association with this treasure more of a way to validate whatever it is we feel like doing? For example: the 82 Hymnal is great art and I’m glad we have it, but I don’t really want to sing that stuff, it’s not “popular”. Or: The Book of Common Prayer is such fabulous literature, but really, who uses that old stuffy thing at church, just the grannies at 8 am? Or: the Nicene Creed, it’s so ancient and venerable, but I like my own affirmation of faith better, I would rather start with that than with the Creed. Or: I’m glad we have priests and bishops, that makes us so high church, but I would rather be able to participate and have a say in every part of the liturgy, and I don’t want to feel left out at all, so why don’t we just all say this prayer together, it’s so much more community oriented when we do, lay power!”

There you have it, folks.

@TLM -
That is as perfect an example of what TEC has turned itself into: The Divine Church of Me, Myself, and I. Has a kind of Trinitarian ring to it, does it not?

Clint is honest. Honestly, sadly wrong and deluded, but honest in a James Pike sort of way. Clint might agree with the idea of “A Time For Christian Candor” even if it isn’t remotely Christian in PECUSA. He doesn’t believe and admits it.
Why he gets up on Sunday instead of sleeping in…I wouldn’t if I thought I could just write my own “creed”. Clint hasn’t yet realized that if he decided to “do” his own pseudo eucharist those clergy he mentions would have no idea on earth how to object to it. They have no function at all. It’s waffling almost-laymen who now form PECUSA. They go to laughable post graduate schools to become not-remotely-clergy. Garbage in, garbage out.

Well I’m embarrassed. If I’d read the poor thing a little closer I’d have seen he made those points himself….

“And bit by bit, those who just want to rest in the beauty of holiness and not be run off by the doctrine nazis in other churches, well, they figure out that Nature herself is completely authentic and just does what she does without apology, and how about just sleeping in on Sunday and when I feel religious, read a little Marianne Williamson and take a walk in the park on an afternoon and See what I See? I would get a more authentic, accepting welcome from the squirrels and cardinals and the sun or moon than I do at that frozen fake-fest coffee hour at St. Barnabas Church, and see more of the life-giving sacrifice in the natural cycles than attending the Holy Eucharist.”

I wonder why he bothers to blog to others. A church of one saves a lot of time and is much cheaper. When you capitalize “nature” it’s something of a giveaway isn’t it? This man is bishop material if only he were a she.