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THE SLOW DISINTEGRATION OF THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH
By David W. Virtue, DD
www.virtueonline.org
May 19, 2022
Observers of Western Anglicanism cannot help but note that the more Anglicanism compromises on the 'faith once for all delivered to the saints' the more irrelevant it becomes.
With irrelevance comes decline. A lot of the decline is being blamed on Covid and aging congregations. The deeper truth is that when you shake the foundations and expect the buildings to hold up, you are deluding yourself, in fact you are living a lie.
An analogy might be a high-rise condominium that crumbled in Florida. On the outside the building looked like every other, but it was structurally flawed, and it fell killing nearly 100 people. Externally the Episcopal Church looks beautiful with its sculptured structures, red doors and strategically placed cathedrals in major cities. On the inside, coming from pulpits are a cauldron of doctrinal heresies and moral turpitude, eviscerating the Faith, even as its costume driven priests raise "holy" hands over eucharistic elements.
It was announced this week that three dioceses, Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont bishops would assist each other's dioceses. Three bishops; Maine Bishop Thomas J. Brown, (a partnered homosexual) New Hampshire Bishop A. Robert Hirschfeld (straight white male) and Vermont Bishop Shannon MacVean-Brown (black and female), would cross diocesan borders to help each other out. An ENS report said that it was "part of an effort to increase collaboration in the region." This would not affect their governance authority in the other dioceses, but the increasing loss of parishioners and money made collaboration inevitable.
This is death by a thousand cuts. When you start talking about inclusivity and diversity as ruling dogmas and pansexuality as the new sexual credo of the Church, people leave. You can get all that from Netflix; you don't need the church.
But these are not the only three dioceses "collaborating" with each other.
As the ENS report noted, the dioceses' plan continues a trend in The Episcopal Church of sharing resources among small dioceses. The leaders of Wisconsin's three dioceses -- two of which already share a bishop -- announced in October 2021 that the dioceses will take steps to combine, returning to a single Diocese of Wisconsin. Since 2018, the dioceses of Northwestern Pennsylvania and Western New York have shared a bishop, combined administrative functions and pursued joint ministries. The Dioceses of Eastern and Western Michigan share a bishop, and the Episcopal Church in North Texas is pursuing reunion with the Diocese of Texas. The Diocese of Springfield recently ordained possibly its last bishop.
The numbers speak for themselves.
2020 figures revealed the following:
CONGREGATIONS (2020)
ME: 58
NH: 48
VT: 45
COMBINED TOTAL: 151
The Diocese of Texas has 153 congregations.
Average Sunday Attendance (ASA)
ME: 3,099
NH: 3,414
VT: 1,567
COMBINED TOTAL: 8,080
In Maine this averages out at 53 persons per congregation
In New Hampshire (Gene Robinson's former diocese) the average attendance is 71.
In Vermont average parish attendance is 35.
The 18 individual dioceses with a greater ASA include: Atlanta, Central Florida, Chicago, Connecticut, Dallas, Long Island, Los Angeles, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Southeast Florida, Southwest Florida, Texas, Virginia, and Washington DC.
BAPTIZED MEMBERSHIP TO ASA: PERCENTAGE CHURCH ATTENDANCE (2020)
ME: 29.9%
NH: 30.4%
VT: 29.5%
COMBINED AVERAGE: 29.9%
BAPTISMS (2020)
ME: 20
NH: 38
VT: 9
COMBINED TOTAL: 67
CONFIRMATIONS (2020)
ME: 13
NH: 8
VT: 1
COMBINED TOTAL: 22
It should be noted that the 2020 statistics are skewered because of the pandemic and church restrictions.
Former presiding bishops, Frank Griswold, Katharine Jefferts Schori and now Michael Curry have never concerned themselves with growing the church, they were and are far more concerned that homosexuality be brokered into the church as the church's new identity; doctrine be damned. The presiding bishops may well be.
The Rt. Rev. Craig Loya, Bishop of the Episcopal Church in Minnesota, said the Episcopal church has been dying for more than 50 years. It needs to die and return to its roots in Jesus' teachings. Indeed.
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