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Former TEC Bishop William Love Makes First Appearance as an Anglican Bishop at ACNA Diocesan Synod
Bishop William Love with his wife Karen at the ADLW Synod- PHOTO
By David W. Virtue, DD
www.virtueonline.org
June 20, 2021
Standing alongside ACNA/ADLW Bishop Julian Dobbs, and full of smiles, former Episcopal Bishop William Love of Albany now assisting bishop of the Anglican Diocese of the Living Word, received a standing ovation as a newly minted Anglican bishop. This same bishop had been found guilty of failing to support a resolution demanding that homosexual marriage be recognized and normalized in The Episcopal Church. He upped and left TEC, taking early retirement, thereby relieving Presiding Bishop Michael Curry from outright deposing him from the Church.
The woke Left in TEC claimed a victory in getting rid of Bishop Love, even though the Standing Committee said they supported him., But that was little more than virtue signaling a lost cause.
More than half a dozen parishes have since left the TEC diocese and gone to two ACNA dioceses, more may yet follow.
The TEC win will show itself to be entirely pyrrhic, the decline in Average Sunday Attendance and money will only get worse, hastening the diocese's decline and ultimately its demise. Legitimizing sin never works, never.
It is amazing and unthinkable that a few short years ago an Anglican province would have been raised up on North American soil challenging the Episcopal Church. The Archbishop of Canterbury still thinks it's an illegitimate "ginger group." He will not recognize it, but that's his problem. The vast majority of global Anglicans do recognize the ACNA and they have found a home in GAFCON.
This is not just a win for bishop Julian Dobbs and the ADLW and ACNA, it is a triumph for orthodoxy and a reminder to Archbishop Justin Welby that he is on the wrong side of Scripture and history.
It is also a reminder that evil only wins in the short term, never the long term. TEC is playing fast and loose with Scripture over sex, but history has shown us that the consciences of the few outweigh the heresies of the many and that the legacy of their individual consciences ultimately win the battle. Think St. Paul, think Thomas Cranmer, think Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the thousands who have laid down their lives for the cause of Christ, resisting the siren call of the majority.
TEC still has millions of dollars at its disposal along with the richest church on earth - Trinity Wall Street; but it's vaunted millions are nothing compared to the conscience of one bishop who stood up and said NO. Bishop Love's stand will go down in the history books.
One day, Trinity Wall Street will be sold off to a developer or become a museum piece when the last person has gone, and it will soon be forgotten. 815 2nd Avenue, TEC's headquarters will also be gone, even sooner.
But one man with God is a majority, and Bishop William Love has shown us the way.
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