(Daily Signal)—Thank God I left the Episcopal Church.
After decades of partnering with the U.S. government to serve refugees, The Episcopal Church ended the relationship this week, because the Trump administration asked them to serve refugees whose plight contradicts the woke Left’s grand narrative.
Episcopal Migration Ministries had resettled almost 110,000 people across the U.S., and the church had touted its assistance to “undocumented immigrants”—read “illegal aliens”—but serving 59 desperate white South Africans who came to the U.S. legally was apparently a bridge too far.
Now, the Episcopal Church is finally cutting its relationship to the U.S. government, because these refugees are white and they’ve suffered at the hands of the African National Congress, the South African party of the sainted Nelson Mandela.
Only now does The Episcopal Church reject the filthy lucre of government grants.
According to Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe, serving whites who escaped danger at the hands of black South Africans would cut against the church’s “steadfast commitment to racial justice and reconciliation.”
Apparently, “racial reconciliation” only cuts one way for The Episcopal Church.
While I find the church’s double standard on immigrants utterly disgusting, I can’t exactly say I’m surprised.
In the last few decades, the Episcopal Church has proven itself one of the most flaccid and spineless of the dying mainline Protestant denominations, and I am glad to be part of the Anglican movement opposing its watered-down bastardization of Christianity.
Faithful Christians can disagree on many matters of public policy, but the Left has increasingly taken positions that are hostile not just to common sense but to good Christian doctrine. The Episcopal Church reliably positions itself with the Left, even when it means a clear rejection of the Bible.
LGBTQ Issues
The Episcopal Church first adopted a pro-homosexual declaration in 1976, then consecrated a lesbian priest in 1977, and elevated the first gay priest in 1989. In 2009, it barred discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity when elevating people to the ministry. The church consecrated its first gay bishop in 2003. It approved ordination of transgender clergy in 2012.
In 2022, the church adopted a resolution to “advocate for access to gender affirming care in all forms (social, medical, or other) and at all ages as part of our Baptismal call to ‘respect the dignity of every human being.”
Forgive me if I don’t think that pumping kids full of experimental drugs to make them resemble members of the opposite sex in a futile attempt to disavow their biological sex is a form of “respecting” a person’s “dignity.”
To call these positions antithetical to the clear teachings of scripture would be a vast understatement. The Bible clearly teaches that human beings are made male and female (Genesis 1), that marriage is between one man and one woman (Genesis 3, Matthew 19:5-6), and that homosexual activity is sinful (1 Corinthians 6:9-11, 1 Timothy 1:8-11, Romans 1:24-27). While the Bible clearly teaches that Jesus’ mercy is for everyone who repents, it does not celebrate homosexual acts or condone the idea that men can become women and vice versa.
Yet The Episcopal Church loudly champions the LGBTQ agenda. I remember listening to a sermon at the National Cathedral in which the pastor condemned “the sin of heterosexism.” If “heterosexism” is a sin, then the Bible itself is guilty.
Watering Down the Resurrection
My greatest concern about The Episcopal Church is the way its current and former leaders watered down a central teaching of the gospel: the bodily Resurrection of Jesus (1 Corinthians 15:12-19).
In the 2010s, two high-ranking Episcopal bishops—former head of the U.S. Episcopal Church Katherine Jefferts-Schori and Bishop Mariann Budde (who notoriously lectured Trump earlier this year)—suggested that belief in the physical Resurrection is not necessary.
“While we are unable to comment on the sermons from previous decades that you reference, we can confirm that The Episcopal Church affirms the bodily Resurrection of Jesus Christ,” the church’s chief of strategy, Rebecca Wilson, told The Daily Signal. She noted that Episcopalians recite and affirm The Apostle’s Creed and the Nicene Creed every week, and that all clergy must make a Declaration of Consent stating belief in the scriptures.
Jeff Walton, Anglican director at the Institute for Religion and Democracy, told The Daily Signal that “the Resurrection is somewhat loosely defined and policed within The Episcopal Church.”
While the vows require adherence to the bodily Resurrection, “you sometimes run across clergy who use a lowercase-r ‘resurrection’ and it’s possible that they are making it into some sort of allegory.”
Even Walton noted, however, that some data shows “mainline Protestant clergy today are much more likely to affirm the literal bodily Resurrection of Jesus than they were two generations ago.” He attributed this to a growing acceptance of the supernatural, aligning with post-modernity.
The Episcopal Church Weathervane
The Episcopal Church seems to resemble nothing more than a weathervane, following the leftist culture.
It echoes the Left’s rhetoric on race, suggesting “institutional racism” pervades America. The church released a “framework for anti-racism and racial reconciliation training” that implements Critical Race Theory, a lens of seeing America as inherently and institutionally racist. This Marxist lens spawns the notion of “intersectionality,” where different ostensibly oppressed groups—women, racial minorities, people who identify as LGBTQ, and more—intersect with one another, forming a hierarchy of aggrieved groups that claim a right to political power.
The church has also embraced concepts such as “environmental justice” and “environmental racism,” which tie together the notions of Critical Race Theory and climate alarmism—the belief that human burning of fossil fuels will cause a catastrophic disaster.
These ideologies coalesce to form a cohesive worldview I describe as “woke.” (I explain this more in my book, “The Woketopus: The Dark Money Cabal Manipulating the Federal Government.”) In some cases, the Left seeks to silence those who dissent from this worldview.
This worldview sees Nelson Mandela as a black hero fighting white oppression, and it refuses to acknowledge that the African National Congress in South Africa might commit or contribute to racist violence against white people. That’s why serving a comparative handful of white refugees was a bridge too far for The Episcopal Church.
I have long considered the Southern Poverty Law Center—which puts mainstream conservative and Christian groups on a “hate map” with chapters of the Ku Klux Klan—to be the tip of the spear on demonizing conservatives. My first book, “Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center,” explains why this organization has no moral credibility.
Yet the Episcopal Church’s website cites the SPLC “hate map” as a “resource” for “racial justice, healing, and reconciliation.”
My Own History With The Episcopal Church
I was baptized in an Episcopal Church in Colorado and married in an Episcopal Church in Maryland. I have fond memories of the incense and hymns at the historic church I attended growing up in Golden.
I am now a member at the Falls Church Anglican, which officially separated from The Episcopal Church in 2006. The Episcopal Church refused to allow our congregation to keep the building, and we lost the case after appealing all the way to the Supreme Court. We worshipped in a high school auditorium for many years until we could build our own church home.
A massive ideological civil war is taking place within the global Anglican Communion—with The Episcopal Church on one side and the Anglican Church in North America on the other. Yet this same ideological civil war is dividing Catholics, Lutherans, Presbyterians, and those outside Christianity, such as Jews.
Those who hold to the traditional understanding of Christianity (and Judaism), especially its sexual morality, find themselves confronted by a hostile culture, and institutions like The Episcopal Church are betraying the faithful in order to kowtow to the world.
As for me and my house, we won’t serve the woke.
