"To use an image from the Old Testament, maybe this is the desert time. The desert was a period of purification and self-knowledge in order that they were prepared to enter the Promised Land. If we are in fact the body of Christ, limbs of Christ's risen body, we're OK," he said.

The irony should not be missed. If "purification" is on his mind, he might reflect on his being chief consecrator at the ordination of the openly homogenital Gene Robinson Bishop of New Hampshire in 2003. Griswold served as presiding bishop from 1997 to 2006. That action brought about the second largest mass exodus from the Episcopal Church since 1977.

Charles E. Bennison, Bishop of Pennsylvania who is known to blush when he is overcome by moments of truthiness, was less pluriform and Sufi like when he told delegates to the 228th Diocesan Convention recently that "We must adapt, or die."

In a rare moment of luminosity he said, "The rate of the Episcopal Church's decline, moreover, is accelerating, especially for small churches, and even more especially if they are worshipping in a large, older building that is costly to heat and maintain. We are facing an unprecedented number of churches that can no longer afford a full-time priest. More and more either share a priest, or are served by a retired priest or a part-time priest who has secular employment, or are closing their building and uniting with another church nearby."

Bennison recently closed five black churches in Philadelphia.

"Some churches are spending down their endowment principal in order to maintain the inherited model of parish ministry long after it becomes obvious that doing so will not reverse their decline. The result is that when the church closes, the diocese inherits a property which, in a region where Philadelphia alone now has more than 300 vacant religious buildings, will possibly take years, if ever, to sell, and on which the diocese must pay the taxes, security, maintenance, and insurance with monies that otherwise could be used for mission. I ask any parish that is depleting its endowment in this way to stop doing so immediately."

This moment of honesty comes from a bishop who has systematically denied or repudiated fundamental doctrines of the faith, rejects the need for personal salvation, allows Wiccan priests to function in the diocese, not to mention embracing a gaggle of gay and lesbian priests who have no ability to make a parish grow, while Bennison himself embraces Bishop John Shelby Spong as a theological hero of the faith.

The Diocese of Rhode Island is on the brink of extinction. It has lost 30% of its attendees in the last 10 years. It is presently closing churches at an alarming rate, emptying endowments and putting off maintenance. There are virtually no young people coming forward and no next generation to fill emptying pews.

The Diocese is at a crucial tipping point in relation to its long‐term health, vitality, and growth. It is a diocese of fifty‐three churches, down from sixty‐five less than ten years ago. Several more churches face closure in the next two to three years.

In 2009, twenty‐five of the fifty‐three churches in the diocese used more than 5% of their investment accounts for operating expenses. Diocesan officials admitted that the financial crisis is also matched by a crisis in membership. In 2009, only seven churches in the diocese had an average Sunday attendance above 150. Many of the churches are too small to provide for a full‐time priest; they often cannot afford the ministries, programs, and staff that are mainstays of healthy, growing churches of all denominations.

A resolution stated, "Church attendance in the Diocese of Rhode Island continues to follow the decreases experienced in all the dioceses of the Episcopal Church."

Churches continue to rely on endowments to plug the gap between revenue and expenses, with decreasing effectiveness, as investment losses reduce available principle and income. This has a negative impact on the long-term survival of these churches. When church endowments decrease, there is less money available for local ministry, and fewer financial resources for diocesan ministry and operations.

In the Diocese of Vermont, Bishop Tom Ely admitted that Vermont Episcopalians do not feel connected enough to the Diocese. While the U.S. Census Bureau's figures for Vermont reveal a population that grew from 608,827 in 2000 to 621,760 in 2009, the diocese of Vermont went from Average Sunday Attendance (or ASA) of 3,280 in 1998 to 2,765 in 2008. This represents an ASA decline of about 16% over this ten-year period. The bishop failed in a bid to raise millions of dollars to keep the diocese going for any long-term period.

In the Diocese of Connecticut, Bishop Ian Douglas publicly admitted to delegates at the 227th Diocesan Convention that God is pruning His Church based on St. John Chapter 15: "I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine grower..." while he himself is litigating and "pruning" the Venerable Ronald S. Gauss along with his evangelical parish of Bishop Seabury, one of the largest most successful parishes in the Northeast US, right out of the diocese.

While performing this parishectomy, Douglas announced the sale of the diocesan house, the reduction of his diocesan budget by $600,000, and the firing of six staff members at Church House. It was also revealed that the number of clergy serving full time in parish positions across the diocese has declined in the last five years from 180 positions to 123 - a thirty percent decrease. "Clearly, business as usual can't continue," the bishop bemoaned.

When his predecessor, Bishop Andrew Smith "pruned" the "Ct Six", the most prosperous and orthodox parishes, as they were called, he cut off their spiritual life and financial supply line to the diocese. The chickens have come home to roost. With the income gone from the departure of the CT Six, the diocese is going into major decline. Bishop Douglas had to finally admit that. "He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to bear more fruit." (John 15: 1-2) That's quite a message for a Church Convention." said Douglas. The tragic truth here is that Douglas is pruning a good branch that is bearing fruit and leaving the half dead to remain and die. The latest word is that St. Paul's Darien might be the next parish to feel the Damoclean sword of Douglas's ecclesiastical wrath.

Across the country, nearly every diocese is in some sort of decline, only the dioceses of Dallas, Texas and South Carolina seemed to be spared the worst of God's wrath.

Griswold opined that the The Episcopal Church and the Protestant mainline in America today may be going through a normal "paschal pattern" -- a dying and a rising. The real truth is that there is not a hint of "rising" now or in the foreseeable future for TEC or other mainline Protestant denominations. They are in the grip of a theological death wish enabled by religious pluralism having sold their spiritual birthright for a 'social gospel' and a mess of ecumenical and interfaith pottage that is incapable of announcing the Good News of God's liberating message of salvation. That work is being done by the rising up of AMIA, CANA, ACNA and other Anglican jurisdictions without which the stones would cry out.

END