It's as if Episcopal Church leaders had stood in front of statues of Cranmer, Hooker, Ryle and many other orthodox bishops, tied ropes around their necks and hauled them down, stamped and spat on them and then kicked them to the curb of history.

The long descent of The Episcopal Church begun in earnest under Browning reached its low point under Katherine Jefferts Schori who publicly rejected any notion of individual or personal salvation and could not affirm the bodily resurrection of Jesus, both of which views are essential to a serious soteriology of conversion.

Loaded down with more views on a whole host of social issues that would make even Fidel Castro roll his eyes; and further weighted down with allegations of racism, and charges of white guilt, cowed beneath the bed linen of sodomite inclusion, The Episcopal Church began its long Gadarene slide towards irrelevancy.

As it scaled the "heights" of social justice rhetoric and approval, while decimating core doctrine, its ranks aged and thinned as its pulpits ran out of spiritual steam, evangelistic fervor and biblical teaching.

Reaching for new-fangled "doctrines" of inclusion, diversity and progressivism, and with seminaries barely opening the Bible for instruction in the Faith; Episcopal Church leadership resorted more and more to going along with the culture like some latter day dispensational fundamentalist in fear of being left behind unraptured.

It became the sine qua non for The Episcopal Church to be in the vanguard of progressivism built on the model of President Barack Obama's 'hope and change' rather than on what should have been the church's true message of 'sin and salvation'.

We were no longer sinners by nature and acts, we are sinners by our lack of understanding about race, or in danger of being declared homophobic if we dared raise our heads above the ramparts and declare to be sin what God had clearly forbidden and said was eternity denying, bullied into accepting that perhaps St. Paul himself was a self-loathing homosexual bereft of human understanding and compassion.

The (Episcopal) masses, emptied of Bible teaching and Scripture's affirmation about what was right and wrong, quickly fell into line, listening to their priests and bishops tell than what to believe, even if in their heart of hearts, they knew it was wrong.

Those who still had a conscience and a knowledge of Scripture, realized over time that nothing would change, despite much 'prayer and hope' and came out from among them and formed a new North American Anglican Church.

It was the dawn of a new day for Anglicanism in North America.

But still the myth persisted that with time, trust funds, and accumulated wealth from dead men's wills along with property sales; the lies and half-truths could be made to persist even as pews and pulpits emptied.

There was always the Global South to aim its homoerotic guns and hope for change. Money is the great aphrodisiac to manipulate if not the most "vilest offender" certainly bishops who huddle in all expenses paid trips to talk of "reconciliation" in the hope that it will lead to compromise and compromise to acquiescence. Throw in a black face with a good education and a western salary and hey presto, nothing is impossible.

Unlike John Bunyan who encountered wise shepherds warning of the treacherous mountains of Error and Caution, where previous pilgrims have died; Episcopal Church leaders have heeded no such warning and have continued on their Gadarene pathway to destruction. In Pilgrim's Progress, travelers were warned to beware of shortcuts, which may be paths to hell, the Episcopal Church has taken every shortcut imaginable in the hope that their progressive views will shape the future of North American Christianity and perhaps the world.

It is not happening. The TEC ship is sinking, ably assisted by the downward pull of Bishop John Shelby Spong's Manifesto of Unbelief, the pluriform views of Frank Griswold and countless general convention resolutions on sexuality.

The latest figures reveal a Church that, within two decades, (perhaps even sooner), without revival, will see most Episcopalians dead, its pulpits empty as clergy retire and head to Continuing Care institutions unaware of the spiritual wasteland they both created and left behind.

Mene, mene, tekel upharson will be the epitaph of The Episcopal Church when Episcopal leaders come to plead their case for inclusion at the divine bar of justice, only to hear the terrifying words of Jesus, "depart from me I never knew you," resounding in their ears.

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