Visiting all 687 Taiwanese Anglicans in 13 churches (in a country with 23 million inhabitants) by 112 Episcopal bishops must have had these Chinese in awe of so many grey-haired white dudes in purple shirts descending upon them all at the same time. (That's one TEC bishop for six Taiwanese Anglicans.) The Episcopal Church, it turns out, is the smallest Christian denomination on the island. Of the 605,000 Protestants worshipping in 3,609 congregations, only 1,176 are baptized Episcopalians. Of that number, only 687 attend church on a Sunday in one of 13 churches. In 2012, the Diocese of Taiwan celebrated 79 baptisms, 59 confirmations, 20 weddings and 22 funerals. There were 186 in Sunday school.

God is calling the church in Asia to be an agent of reconciliation and a prophetic witness, three Asian Anglican archbishops told the House of Bishops. They added that the church across the world must respond to the same call. Amazing when you think that TEC is shrinking and its basic prophetic witness is ripping parishes away from orthodox priests and their congregations while paying millions of dollars to lawyers like David Booth Beers, and affirming that the Dennis Canon is inerrant and has more authority and infallibility than Holy Scripture.

Seoul Archbishop Paul Kim, who is also the primate of the Anglican Church in Korea, told the Episcopal Church House of Bishops "reconciliation should be the core message of the church not just on the Korean peninsula but in the world."

Really? Why did he not tell the Presiding Bishop to start the "reconciliation" process with the Anglican Church in North America that has overtaken the Anglican Church of Canada in average Sunday attendance? A little bit of reconciliation there would go a long way towards healing.

The big news, of course, was the announcement by Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori that she would not run for a second term even though age wise she is still eligible. She made the announcement that she would not run again, but didn't tell us much about her plans for the future. Perhaps scuba diving for squid might once again appear in her future or flying small planes over the Utah desert just for fun.

Members of the House of Bishops said they left the meeting with an expanded view of ministry by the Episcopal and Anglican churches in Asia. They are also hoping that their own church -- TEC - will come up with a formula that would jump-start their own benighted congregations. Perhaps TREC, the plan to Re-imagine the Episcopal Church before it heads off the cliff, will do the trick. We wait and see.

The occasion did afford an opportunity for the fearless Presiding Bishop to rail against capital punishment. She blasted the US and Taiwan's use of capital punishment in a sermon to her House of Bishops at St. John's Cathedral in Taipei.

Addressing the issue of injustice, the Presiding Bishop said capital punishment is the human dilemma where this comes up most urgently. "Is it just? Nation after nation has abolished the death penalty in recent years. It's been ended in most nations where The Episcopal Church is present, starting with Venezuela in 1863. Ecuador and Colombia eliminated it more than 100 years ago. Honduras in 1956. Curaçao was the latest in 2010. Only the United States and Taiwan continue to execute people."

She noted that in the last three years, the United States has executed about 40 people a year, and 30 thus far in 2014, including Lisa Coleman, a black woman, last Wednesday. Taiwan executed five people in April of this year, after putting five or six to death in each of the last three years. (She omitted to mention that Mainland China has a "shoot first, ask questions later" policy and recently executed China's Bernie Madoff without notifying his family. His crimes were illegal fundraising activities and financial fraud. Some 22 Chinese people were handed the death sentence for white-collar crime in China this year.)

Of course she also didn't mention that if people were actually converted to Christ, there might actually be far fewer murders to begin with eliminating the need to shoot, hang or needle people to death. But conversion was not on her mind. She did talk a lot about the context of doing theology and social action. Those are buzz words for "you do your thing and we'll do ours" with the common ground being that we are all God's children (by birth but not necessarily by the New Birth), but we'll make sure that when you discover pansexuality, we will send you a ton of literature on the subject along with Bishop Gene of the Big Grin to aid you in this new enlightenment.

Ironically, just 100 miles away on mainland China, there are an estimated 163 million Chinese Christians who have about as much in common with the Episcopal Church, and its House of Bishops, as Mao's Little Red Book has with the Book of Common Prayer.

"This meeting has offered abundant opportunities to expand our vision of what is possible as we engage God's mission," the Presiding Bishop said which of course does not include the Great Commission. God's mission has, of course, to do with MDGs, the Five Marks of Mission, climate change, abortion rights for women and a whole host of politically correct nostrums that are now the warp and woof of TEC's propaganda to save the world.

"We've discovered new readings of the old, old stories and new theological perspectives rooted in different parts of God's creation. With hearts and minds expanded, we know ourselves part of a body larger and with deeper bonds than we imagined," she opined, piling effluvium on effluvium.

Noticeably absent from this occasion were the archbishops of Burma and Southeast Asia along with the Bishop of Singapore; they being far too orthodox to attend this gabfest. They also made the horrible mistake of recognizing South Carolina Bishop Mark Lawrence. Mrs. Jefferts Schori becomes apoplectic at just the mention of his name with all the millions she has had to spend trying to recapture properties in South Carolina that she believes belong to the Episcopal Church.

The Episcopal Church's House of Bishops will return from the Near East smug in the knowledge that they are an international church with 16 dioceses in their back pocket, representing just a fraction of say the 20 million strong Anglican Church of Nigeria. If the slide towards ecclesiastical entropy continues, and TREC fails to provide a way forward, then The Episcopal Church may be forced to ask whether its own existence has any relevance in a world awash in pluriform truths when it has no solid rock on which to stand.

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