VOL: This is fiction of the first order. Statistics don't lie. TEC is in freefall (so are all the mainline Protestant denominations). Last year, TEC lost nearly 55,000 active members. TEC has slipped below 2 million members and below 700,000 ASA. It is losing financially and has forked over $2 million to date in lawsuits to keep empty properties from going to the ACNA and other Anglican jurisdictions. The only "promised land" is more wilderness until the last church closes and is sold off. It also won't be with Sufi the Rumi (a favored guru of Griswold) in a place beyond good and evil. Walter Rauschenbusch's social gospel was dying in the 20th Century and has totally failed in the 21st Century. We are entering a period of intense secularization on the one hand and vigorous evangelism (especially in the Global South) on the other.

GRISWOLD: The Episcopal Church and the Protestant mainline in America today may be going through a normal "paschal pattern" -- a dying and a rising -- that all churches go through and that is not necessarily a bad thing. There's an arrogance and a self-confidence that is shattered by things falling apart. But beneath the church's many challenges is an invitation to deeper wisdom, a hidden grace that leads to new insight, wisdom and resurrection. 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.

VOL: This presumes that TEC is still "in fact [part of] the body of Christ" as it no longer endorses the exclusive claims of Christ, his Deity and Incarnation. Its reigning Presiding Bishop denies the need for personal salvation and interprets the gospel in terms of social amelioration. The Episcopal Church has endorsed pansexuality against all biblical evidence, the testimony of history and believes that all spiritual paths (including and especially Islam) are equal and valid pathways to God.

As attorney Allan Haley put it so cogently, "This once-noble Church is being transformed, at the hands of single-minded activists, into a secular cult which will reflect only its lack of all Scripture-based grounding and tradition, and (in their place) will embody only the sacrifice to Caesar of those things which are properly God's. Nothing will then distinguish such a "Church" from its pagan predecessors. As a consequence, nothing about it will any longer have any claim to loyalty or adherence on the part of its traditional members."

F&L: You spent 43 years in active ministry. What are the lessons you learned about leading a large and complex organization?

GRISWOLD: The first is, "Where are you grounded?" That's probably the most important learning. As a parish priest, I had the fantasy that I actually controlled the congregation, that my will was God's will to some degree. But as a bishop and then as presiding bishop, I realized that the institutions I oversaw were well beyond anything I could actually manage, so several things were important.

VOL: Whatever and wherever Griswold was grounded (and he seemed to enjoy Sufi the Rumi over St. Paul), he definitely felt more at home among gay and lesbian Episcopalians. He was SUPPOSED to have been grounded in Scripture and to declare the "mighty works of God" and "sound doctrine". He did neither.

GRISWOLD: First, I had to remind myself, "What's this enterprise about? Where am I in relation to the one in whose name this institution functions?" The complexity of leadership drove me to a deeper place of prayer. I realized that I didn't have, from my own imagination and skillsets, the competency to oversee the complexity of a diocese or a national church institution.

VOL: He was such a lousy bishop in Chicago many cheered when he was pushed upstairs to become Presiding Bishop of the whole church. The diocese went downhill under him and continues to lose body mass.

GRISWOLD: The paradox was that the more elaborate my title became, the more I got in touch with my own limitation and my own interior poverty and the more I realized that what needed to be done would happen not by my efforts but by a deeper dependence on the grace of God. Spiritually, these "elevations" were an invitation to deeper intimacy with Christ in prayer.

VOL: When you are not grounded in the Word of God, but in pluriform thinking, you are bound to experience "interior poverty". Go figure.

GRISWOLD: Things could happen, and obviously I was involved and cared deeply, but at the same time all reality wasn't wrapped up in the issues I had to deal with. I could say, "There's another place I stand, which is in relation to God, who existed well before I came into the world and will exist well after I go."

VOL: Faux humility. We ALL die, that is not unique to him. If you are not standing firmly on the Word of God, but on the shifting sands of the culture and pluriform thinking, you are as confused as those you lead.

F&L: So the higher you go, the less control you have?

GRISOWLD: Right, exactly.

F&L: But isn't the temptation the opposite: the higher you go, the greater the desire to control?

GRISWOLD: But you can't do it. You have to learn how to count on other people. You have to share. Leadership is a shared reality. You can't be a solo performer. You have to know your own limits.

VOL: Griswold hated conflict. He controlled by fiat. The "other people" he chose were not orthodox in faith and morals. He chose men and women who reflected his own Affirming Catholicism and fey spirituality. If you don't hire the right people, you get what happened when Ed Browning was PB. Ex-national Episcopal Treasurer, Ellen F. Cooke looted the church to the tune of $2.2 million before she was caught. It was a wake-up call to Griswold.

GRISWOLD: I always described myself, both as a diocesan bishop and the presiding bishop, as a pastor of systems. My role is not to be the direct deliverer of whatever is needed, but to provide for the proper delivery of certain things in certain areas. It's important to see the care of all the churches as a ministry you share with others.

One of the difficulties in the Episcopal system is that the person chosen to be bishop has often been an effective local pastor and assumes that being a bishop is like being a local pastor, but on a larger scale, when it's completely different.

VOL: The Apostle Paul and the bishops of the Early Church would never have described themselves as a "pastor of systems". They were proclaimers of the Word and wrestled with defining great doctrines of the faith.

F&L: You were presiding bishop at a time of great controversy over the issue of gay ordination and were the subject of often-harsh criticism. How do you lead amidst such division, and how do you deal with the kinds of personal attacks you were subjected to? GRISWOLD: I've always felt that truth is embodied partially in us. Therefore, divergent points of view -- even fiercely held and seemingly contradictory points of view -- probably have some legitimacy.

VOL: Garbage. Griswold sold TEC down the river of sodomy after telling the Primates in London that he would not ordain a homosexual to the episcopacy and, then, three weeks later went right ahead and consecrated Gene Robinson. He flat out lied to them. When confronted, he said he had no option as the Diocese of New Hampshire and the whole church had decided for Gene and he was forced to go along with it. Over time, "divergent points of view" evaporated. Now we have ONE point of view embodied in resolutions like D025 and D056, to mention just a few. We have bishops like Mark Lawrence being vilified for not upholding the "doctrine and discipline of The Episcopal Church" and escaping deposition by the skin of his ecclesiastical teeth while bishops like Bob Duncan are being tossed out of TEC without a trial.

F&L: So how do you bring divergent points of view into some kind of relationship?

GRISWOLD: My focus was the House of Bishops -- trying to say, "OK, you come with your perspective and you come with your perspective, and since we are baptized into one body, we are called to engage in deep conversation."

The word "conversation" comes from the same Latin root as "convergence."

VOL: What convergence? There never was any. It was ALL about brokering sodomy and, later, a variety of pansexual behaviors into the church. The orthodox were pushed to the margins when they squawked that this violated 2000 years of church history, sound teaching and every major Christian denomination including the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church (which later broke ecumenical relations with TEC). Some bishops fled to Rome, others to form ACNA with more fleeing for spiritual cover to Nigeria, Kenya, Rwanda and South East Asia. There was no "deep conversation". It always boiled down to my way or the highway. If a bishop had stood up and said that Scripture and history said there was only one sexual pathway, namely a man and a woman in holy matrimony, Griswold would have reminded him that we live in a pluriform world with multiple pathways to God and truth and we should not be so narrow minded as to think that God has spoken finally and definitively about human sexuality. Get over it. His views deeply and profoundly offended Global South bishops and archbishops resulting, in the end, with one third of the Primates boycotting Rowan Williams gabfest in Dublin.

GRISWOLD: If you see conversation as an ascetical discipline -- not just chitchat but a costly entering into and an openness to another who may have a very different and threatening point of view -- then you may find that convergence is not that I agree with you or you with me but that I no longer see you as a threat and alien. Instead, I see you as a brother or sister in the Lord, even though there is this terrible divide between us.

VOL: "Costly entering into..." resulted in a number of orthodox bishops leaving TEC because their point of view was NOT welcome at the table. Griswold deliberately marginalized orthodox bishops and gave a pass to every heretical and pansexual poof in the HOB. Would the Council of Nicaea have tolerated the sexual trailblazing of an Otis Charles and later a Gene Robinson? The orthodox bore the "costly" brunt of Griswold's "ascetical" indiscipline.

GRISWOLD: I often found in my relations with bishops in other parts of the Anglican world that ultimately we came together in Christ even though there was this profound division. There was an affection that wasn't broken by virtue of "I can't understand how your church could have done this or that." Leaders have their own points of view, but how do they engage different points of view, and how do they use language that's inviting as opposed to barrier building?

I tried to draw people into larger, more costly conversations in hopes that they might find a level of communion or mutual affection that left the divisions intact but didn't leave them despising one another as fellow Christians.

VOL: That is simply not true. Global South leaders hated what Griswold was doing to the church and to Anglicanism, as they understood it. They refused repeatedly to take Holy Communion with him at several Primates meetings. The bonds of affection were broken. They have never been restored. Griswold was finally "marginalized" by Nigerian Primate Peter Akinola who said more than once that homosexuality was intolerable, salvation denying and that Western Anglicanism under Griswold had lost the plot and needed to repent. This was echoed repeatedly by Global South bishops and is still being echoed now that Jefferts Schori runs the show. "Costly conversations" ultimately meant the marginalization of the dwindling orthodox bishops in TEC and ultimately their expulsion because their point of view was not wanted. Women's Ordination was foisted on the church illegally; it was then accepted and finally mandated...where is the "costly conversation" in that? It cost Jack Iker, Keith Ackerman, Ed MacBurney, William Cox, John-David Schofield and Bob Duncan their episcopacies. It might well, in time, cost Mark Lawrence his. In addition, four Episcopal bishops fled to Rome (one returned) because they woke up one morning and discovered that the Episcopal Church had disconnected itself from the historic Christian faith and they didn't want to be associated with it any more. Griswold's fey Affirming Catholicism is a limp-wristed Anglo-Catholicism, which no one believes in except he, and a handful of smells and bells priests who hide their homosexuality behind robes and incense. When Jeffrey Steenson was the Episcopal Bishop of the Rio Grande, he saw through the whole Episcopal charade and fled to Rome convinced that TEC had gone way over the top.

GRISWOLD: As for me in all this, a Jesuit once said to me, "What other people said about you is none of your business." I've taken that seriously. If you open yourself to adulation, then you also open yourself to being devastated by someone who says you are Satan incarnate. So I've never paid much attention either to the people who praised me or the people who've said nasty things.

VOL: Avoiding what people say and think might work, but it cannot avoid the fact that under his reign TEC plummeted numerically even further than it did under Ed Browning and is now tanking under Jefferts Schori. Sticks and stones may break his bones, but the numbers are appalling.

F&L: What's your assessment of the state of the Episcopal Church and, more broadly, church in America, particularly mainline Protestantism?

GRISWOLD: If I can judge by young people in seminary these days, I'm extremely hopeful. I find them much more grounded, much more faith-based, much more able to deal with a "both-and" world rather than an "either-or" world. They're better able to make room for contrary points of view. On both sides of the sexuality debates -- and even in some instances on both sides of the ordination of women -- I find that they can get along. They've lived in a pluralistic world. It's much more familiar to them.

I'm old enough to have grown up in a world where everything was black or white -- even though it wasn't. Now it's a world in which there are many dimensions of truth; you have your take on it, but you also acknowledge that there is another point of view. That's healthy.

VOL: So entire spiritually healthy parishes like Christ Church in Plano, Texas, and Christ Church in Savannah, Georgia, and more than 100,000 Episcopalians fled TEC to safeguard their souls because they refuse to buy into Griswold's pluriform views on sexual behavior. TEC churches are dying because they are becoming indistinguishable from the culture and Evangelical Anglican churches are growing because they have a message of salvation from sin, sin that Griswold won't recognize. Nine out of 11 TEC seminaries are in trouble financially. A new generation of second career priests, mostly female, is looking for jobs. Many of them are men hating lesbians. Young people can't afford the cost of seminary when they leave with huge debt and drop into parishes of 66 with an average age of 65. Young priests that are emerging are evangelical and going into the few TEC dioceses that will accept them (but not if they have trained at TSM) or into CANA, AMIA and ACNA.

GRISWOLD: I also think that ecclesial bodies -- just as in our own life cycle -- go through a paschal pattern again and again. There's a dying and a rising, a dying and a rising. There's an arrogance and a self-confidence that is shattered by things falling apart. Usually, that is an invitation to deeper wisdom. It may be difficult and painful, but there's usually a grace hidden in that in some way, and then there's a resurrection with new insight and wisdom that comes out of suffering or loss.

VOL: This is nothing more than bad ecclesiastical Viagra, only one day there will be nothing left to rise. The Global South is experiencing massive revival and moral reformation with millions coming to Christ. Ditto for China. They are not dying because they have a clear fix on the gospel. Griswold has a clear fix on pansexuality and he and his ilk are dying.

GRISWOLD: Take the Washington Cathedral. It's the icon of a certain self-assurance in an earlier time, when many people in government were Episcopalians, and Episcopalians were at the top of the main banks, and J.P. Morgan was building the St. Paul's School chapel. Here's this great monument to Episcopal ego, you might say, though it is a church for all, and now here it is suffering $25 million worth of damage in an earthquake.

What might be the symbolic significance of this in terms of mainline ego being shattered and dislodged by events? I'm not happy that the Washington Cathedral is damaged, but is it a bad thing to be in some way forced into exile and becoming a remnant? To use an image from the Old Testament, maybe this is the desert time.

VOL: VOL's reporter on the spot, Sarah Frances Ives reported the theological decline of the Washington Cathedral not because of the earthquake but the New Age nonsense being preached by the new bishop Mariann Budde from the pulpit. It was pure Aquarian rubbish. She totally embarrassed herself and everyone present by revealing her own use of autosuggestion, a mental technique discovered in the late 19th century. Budde's self-revelation about her mantra and dependence on New Age guru David Whyte came quickly in the sermon. You can read it all here. http://tinyurl.com/79vckyx and http://tinyurl.com/72bjv9y and here http://tinyurl.com/74dl55p

GRISWOLD: The desert was a period of purification and self-knowledge in order that they were prepared to enter the Promised Land. All the things that happened in the wilderness, the struggle and the suffering, were part of being shaped and formed and being made ready to enter the promised land, especially where they could receive it as gift rather than acquisition. Maybe we're obese. Maybe it's ecclesial obesity, and we have to go through a training program or a weight-loss program. These things are painful but necessary.

VOL: If purification is the objective, TEC has a lot of repenting to do. One doubts that Griswold could or would lead that.

F&L: What's on the other side of the wilderness? What will church look like in the future?

GRISWOLD: I think it's going to be much more flexible in its institutional manifestations. There's going to be a greater parity between clergy and laity. I find laity hungry for theological literacy. The Episcopal Church's Education for Ministry program, for example, is a real commitment. It's a four-year course of study, and I'm amazed how many people do it.

VOL: If the laity are hungry for theological literacy, as Griswold suggests, they won't find it in their average Sunday pulpit where the "gospel" of inclusivity, diversity and pluriform truths are more likely to be heard. Judging by what is coming out of liberal seminaries these days, an ALPHA course has more to offer on basic truths that anything you will get from say the Massachusetts based Episcopal Divinity School where orthodoxy is totally scorned in favor of lesbian Dean Katherine Hancock Ragsdale who thinks that the people who run abortion clinics are good and who said, "Abortion is a blessing and our work is not done ..."

F&L: What's the future of theological education?

GRISWOLD: The future is ecumenical, and that's a good thing, because we can become awfully insular in our several traditions. Being stretched by other takes on theology, on other ways of articulating liturgy and church life, can be life giving. It helps us to appropriate our own tradition at a deeper level, because we have to be able to explicate it.

"Why do you all do this?" Well, if you're in an Episcopal seminary, we do this because we're Episcopalians. But if you're in an ecumenical context, then you've got to be more developed in how you perceive your tradition.

Ecumenical theological education can offer a useful critique, and it can help you see where your singularity really isn't that singular. Anglicans talk about Scripture, reason and tradition. Well, so do the Lutherans. Being in an ecumenical setting helps overcome the egotistical dimensions of denominationalism.

VOL: In which case, why be an Episcopalian or Anglican? The moment TEC's pansexual "theology" pops up on the ecumenical radar screen it will be shot down by orthodox and catholic forces..., which, come to think of it, might not be such a bad idea.

GRISWOLD: People are hungry for meaning. Meaning making is a primary function of a religious leader, and it comes out of how they've appropriated their tradition and connected it with what is going on in the world.

VOL: And where will you find answers to "meaning" in your average Episcopal pulpit?

F&L: There must have been moments of desolation in your time as presiding bishop.

GRISWOLD: Sure. Absolutely. The most painful thing is betrayal. When someone you've trusted has maligned you or turned against you in a way that you know is not grounded in reality. When someone you trust puts out some rumor that they know is not true and you know is not true, and the painfulness of that... I think Judas, to Jesus, must've been the most painful element of the passion. That's the most painful cross in leadership, the possibility or the reality of betrayal by people you've trusted.

VOL: Griswold betrayed TEC and the whole Anglican Communion with his bankrupt Affirming Catholicism by upholding false teaching on sexuality and much more. His theology was out of sync with 98% of the Anglican Communion. He has no one to blame but himself. If his alleged "betrayers" were orthodox bishops, he stands as their betrayer. "My door is open to everyone," he said in Philadelphia at the time of his ascension to PB. At the end, it was only open to those who upheld his views.

F&L: Any other thoughts?

GRISWOLD: I think the struggles of the Anglican Communion are a gift, because they've really raised the question, "What does it mean to be in communion? What does it mean to be limbs and members of Christ's risen body?" Paul says clearly that if all the body parts were the same, there'd be no coherence to the body -- "the eye cannot say of the hand, 'I have no need of you.'" Distinction is part of the mystery of the body of Christ. How do we live with those distinctions gracefully?

VOL: The communion's "struggles" are not a "gift"; they have become divisive and schismatic. There would be no "struggles" if TEC and most of Western pan Anglicanism had adhered to Scripture instead of the made-for-TEC theology of the organization Integrity and inclusivity. There is no coherence in the [Anglican] body because it has two very different gospels that some say reflect two different religions at work. One (the Global South) is rising from the ashes of animism, polytheism and polygamy with a clear fix on the gospel. The West, by contrast, is dying. That it would seem is the true "Paschal pattern" and the deeper truth is it is no mystery at all.

END