Why the Next Episcopal Presiding Bishop Really Doesn't Matter

The Episcopal Church is in trouble, big trouble. It is declining faster than a street dog jumping off a meat wagon to chase a rat outside an Episcopal cathedral. The drop between 2021 and 2022 was the largest on record – 5.6%. While average Sunday attendance (ASA) “declined dramatically” during the pandemic in 2020-2021, in 2022 the church saw a brief uptick to 372,952. The age of an average Episcopalian is 69. Membership has gone from 3.4 million in 1960 to 1.58 million in 2022. Only a zombie apocalypse much like that which occurred upon the death of Jesus, when a report that tombs broke open and the saints inside were resurrected, could TEC be saved.

By limiting the church’s top slot to mostly white men, it is signaling that one of them can hopefully pull the church back from the brink. In truth they are moderate men of all shades of opinion, but united by a common belief that anything goes if you gloss it with a little creed, expensive robes, and miters, aided and abetted with shows of public piety when the occasion calls for it.

I’m sure there is an Episcopal Church out there that will give Donald Trump a sendoff when the time comes. After all TEC is still the face of the Republican Party at prayer, even if now most will vote for Biden. Just don’t tell mother.

The ongoing spate of diocesan mergers speaks volumes as do the growing numbers of columbaria housing the dead, mostly aging rich folk who desperately want to be interred in the church graveyard, hoping that at the resurrection they will get preferential treatment.

There is still some doubt as to the final destination of the late Frank (of the flexible wrist) Griswold. No matter, in TEC everyone is saved if you have been baptized. You can swing both ways, or many ways, as God loves absolutely everybody without exception, even if you are hawking a Bible for 60 bucks that you have never read. Of course, there is every reason to believe that most Episcopal bishops could not recite the 66 books of the Bible without stopping midway for a gin and tonic.

Poor old infirm Michael Curry gained a lot of public recognition for his royal wedding sermon on love, but his revivals failed to ignite the episcopal masses into a frenzy of repentance for sin, any sin, because in truth sin is no longer part of the episcopal story, unless it is about racism or any number of woke issues.

Straight or queer, The Episcopal Church is unstoppable in its decline. A conservative estimate has it the church will have mostly evaporated by 2040, if not sooner, with most of its seminaries closed, and only a handful of ordinands ready to ascend pulpits.

TEC is apparently banking on God’s winking and nodding at blatant sexual sin, and then catering to those who would reverse the binary nature of man and woman. All this to suit the needs of a handful of homoerotically inclined clergy and laity.

God’s judgement is not thunderbolts from heaven, but simply to let TEC die on the vine and to say, “I told you so.” The Church Pension Fund loaded with $17 billion can sustain retired bishops on golf courses till the Second Coming. Hell can wait.

TO READ MORE ABOUT THE CANDIDATES CLICK HERE: https://virtueonline.org/episcopal-church-presiding-bishop-nominees-announced

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Why the Next Episcopal Presiding Bishop Really Doesn’t Matter

EDITORIAL

By David W. Virtue, DD
www.virtueonline.org
April 4, 2024

Come June and The Episcopal Church will elect a new presiding bishop. Four candidates are listed; all men, three whites and one black, all straight, no women, no lesbians, or male homosexuals.

Why there has been no outcry about the lack of diversity is mind blowing. It speaks volumes about the contrarian state of the church.