Since then, four dioceses have left the Episcopal Church resulting in more than 120,000 Episcopalians leaving TEC with individual parishes around the country declaring their independence from what they see as a runaway church out of theological control.

This resulted in the formation of the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) with some 30 dioceses in the US and Canada, with an Average Sunday Attendance that now surpasses the Anglican Church of Canada.

TEC's apostasies lay around the authority of Scripture, and the nature and definition of the gospel, with Archbishop Robert Duncan declaring that ACNA's motivation is the transforming love of Christ for all people. By contrast, TEC saw its "gospel" aims more on Millennium Development Goals and the Five Marks of Mission that focused more on this worldly amelioration than any understanding or reflection on the world to come. For TEC, salvation is freedom from want and hunger with only a nod towards anything eternal. For the ACNA salvation is the assurance of salvation in this life for the next while at the same urging its followers to share openly of their abundance for those in need now.

The great divide, however, has not been solely in The Episcopal Church though it has affected it more deeply than almost any other mainline denomination. No American church has spent millions of dollars to fight for properties of those who have fled its apostasies as has the Episcopal Church, and the battle is not over. One or more cases may yet ascend to the Supreme Court of the United States who will determine if the Church's Dennis Canon trumps Neutral Principles in property ownership.

UNITED METHODIST CHURCH

The United Methodist Church has come to the Culture Wars with 7.4 million members in the United States. It is America's third largest church, despite having lost over 3.5 million members over the last 50 years. Now its debates over same sex marriage are threatening to fracture the denomination, writes Mark Tooley, a UMC watcher and journalist.

"United Methodism is the largest of the historically liberal mainline Protestant denominations and almost the only one that has not surrendered traditional Christian teaching on sexual behavior. It officially defines marriage as the union of one man and one woman, prohibits celebration of same-sex rites, and ordains only persons who are monogamous in natural marriage or celibate if single.

"There's one major reason United Methodists have not liberalized sexually like the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Presbyterian Church (USA), the Episcopal Church, the United Church of Christ, and the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). Its membership is global, and on top of the 7.4 million (as of 2012) members in the U.S., it has over 4.5 million members overseas, mostly in Africa, where there are more than 4 million United Methodists. Even as the U.S. church loses nearly 100,000 members annually, the African church gains over 200,000 annually, in places like Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Angola. The DRC alone has more than 2 million United Methodists, and there may be more Methodists in church on a typical Sunday in the DRC, where attendance exceeds membership, than in the U.S., where the opposite is true."

United Methodist liberals in the U.S. long assumed their denomination would follow the other liberal mainline denominations. They are exasperated that the growing African church now blocks their agenda.

In May of this year, more than 80 United Methodist pastors and theologians issued a statement: "We need to recognize the reality that we--laity, clergy and even the Council of Bishops--are divided and will remain divided."

The issue, as it had been since 1997, is how the church would define its relationship with LGBTQ people. Debate is built into the system, ideally creating a church that tolerates a variety of opinions.

As debate over homosexuality has intensified, a fight over which parts of Scripture are essential to the church has shifted from heady theological disputations to a battle over whether reason and the Bible tell Methodists to love or condemn gays (or both). The final call continues to depend upon majority interpretation and, at conference, a majority vote. Furor over the question has increased so much in recent years that schism appears imminent.

PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH USA

The battle for the faith in the PCUSA began nine years ago. Writing in the Huffington Post, David Briggs said that two churches left the Presbyterian Church in 2005, with three more congregations leaving in 2006. Since then the floodgates have lifted as decades-old tensions between liberals and conservatives have reached breaking points, he writes.

After a 2011 decision allowing gay ordinations, 270 congregations left in 2012 and 2013. Church analysts estimate upwards of another 100 churches may leave by the end of the year as presbyteries vote on a proposal to rewrite the church's constitution to refer to marriage as being between "two people" instead of the union of "a man and a woman."

EVANGLICAL LUTHERAN CHURCH in AMERICA

In the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, some 600 congregations left in 2010 and 2011 following the denomination's 2009 decision allowing the ordination of pastors in same-sex relationships.

That the denominations' changing stances on gay ordinations and same-sex marriages were a key factor in the exodus is without question. But new research into why congregations decided to leave reveal differences on sexuality issues were only part of a much larger divide, writes Briggs.

Among the broader, longstanding concerns that convinced departing congregations that they no longer had a home in their denominations that Carthage College researchers found were:

• "Bullying" tactics by denominational leaders.
• A perceived abandonment of foundational principles of Scripture and tradition.
• The devaluation of personal faith.

"The ones that left said reform was not possible," said Carthage sociologist Wayne Thompson, study leader.

Each side suffered losses in the congregational exodus, according to researchers taking an in-depth look at the process at the recent annual meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion and the Religious Research Association.

The congregations that left were larger than the typical congregation, with some having more than 1,000 members. The losses for denominations already hemorrhaging members at historic rates have been significant.

For example, the more than 70,000 members in congregations leaving the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in 2012 and 2013 accounted for more than a third of the denomination's 192,000 net membership loss for those years, researchers Joelle Kopacz, Jack Marcum, and Ida Smith reported.

In turn, many of the congregations that left faced bitter battles over church properties. A majority in the Carthage study reported at least some members left rather than switch.

THE AFTERMATH AND REASONS

So why did the congregations break away? Why have thousands left The Episcopal Church? Evangelical sociologist Dr. Os Guinness and mega church Anglican rector the Rev. John Yates say the core issue is theological: the intellectual integrity of faith in the modern world. "It is thus a matter of faithfulness to the lordship of Jesus, whom we worship and follow. The American Episcopal Church no longer believes the historic, orthodox Christian faith common to all believers. Some leaders expressly deny the central articles of the faith -- saying that traditional theism is 'dead,' the incarnation is 'nonsense,' the resurrection of Jesus is a fiction, the understanding of the cross is 'a barbarous idea,' the Bible is 'pure propaganda'. Others simply say the creed as poetry or with their fingers crossed.

"Episcopal revisionism abandons the fidelity of faith. The Hebrew scriptures link matters of truth to a relationship with God. They speak of apostasy as adultery -- a form of betrayal as treacherous as a husband cheating on his wife. Second, Episcopal revisionism negates the authority of faith. The "sola scriptura" ("by the scriptures alone") doctrine of the Reformation church has been abandoned for the "sola cultura" (by the culture alone) way of the modern church. No longer under authority, the Episcopal Church today is either its own authority or finds its authority in the shifting winds of intellectual and social fashion -- which is to say it has no authority.

"Third, Episcopal revisionism severs the continuity of faith. Cutting itself off from the universal faith that spans the centuries and the continents, it becomes culturally captive to one culture and one time. While professing tolerance and inclusiveness, certain Episcopal attitudes toward fellow believers around the world, who make up a majority of the Anglican family, have been arrogant and even racist.

"Fourth, Episcopal revisionism destroys the credibility of faith. There is so little that is distinctively Christian left in the theology of some Episcopal leaders, such as the former bishop of Newark, that a skeptic can say, as Oscar Wilde said to a cleric of his time, "I not only follow you, I precede you." It is no accident that orthodox churches are growing and that almost all the great converts to the Christian faith in the past century, such as G.K. Chesterton and C.S. Lewis, have been attracted to full-blooded orthodoxy, not to revisionism. The prospect for the Episcopal Church, already evident in many dioceses, is inevitable withering and decline.

"Fifth, Episcopal revisionism obliterates the very identity of faith. When the great truths of the Bible and the creeds are abandoned and there is no limit to what can be believed in their place, then the point is reached when there is little identifiably Christian in Episcopal revisionism. Would that Episcopal leaders showed the same zeal for their faith that they do for their property. If the present decline continues, all that will remain of a once strong church will be empty buildings, kept going by the finances, though not the faith, of the fathers. These are the outrages we protest. These are the infidelities that drive us to separate. These are the real issues to be debated."

Leaders of churches departing from the ELCA said that along with the policy on gay ordinations, the denomination is no longer a good fit for their churches and it is important for them to disassociate with the reputation of their former governing body.

More specific reasons included claims that some ELCA leaders were "dictatorial" and that the denomination was undermining the authority of scripture and was more interested in social justice work than traditional ministry, Carthage researchers John Augustine and Brian Hansen reported.

Departing Presbyterian leaders also characterized the policy on gay ordinations as "the straw that broke the camel's back," but far from the sole reason.

Their concerns included claims that the denomination was overly politicized and weakening biblical authority and traditional teaching on the divinity of Jesus.

"The situation in the PC (U.S.A.) was hopeless as I see it," said one Presbyterian pastor who left with his congregation to join the Covenant Order of Evangelical Presbyterians.

"Our new presbytery is ... trying to help us be successful without being bullied by a denomination that has turned its back on the Gospel of Jesus Christ."

NEW THEOLOGICAL PASTURES

Episcopalians leaving TEC now have a home in the Anglican Church in North America. Start-up parishes and new church plants are forming across the country.

It's more of a mixed bag with other denominations.

The great majority of congregations leaving the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) chose to join the Evangelical Presbyterian Church or the Covenant Order of Evangelical Presbyterians. Few chose to join the larger Presbyterian Church in America, which does not permit women clergy, notes Briggs.

Similarly, congregations leaving the ELCA overwhelmingly bypassed the more conservative Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod and Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod denominations for the new Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ and the North American Lutheran Church.

For all these breakaway churches, there is little hope of reconciliation, most analysts note. The Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby is a major proponent of reconciliation, but recently noted that it may be impossible for Anglicans who differ to ever reach agreement on essential issues. He remains hopeful, but he sees little that encourages him to think there will be future meetings of global Anglican leaders who are so bitterly divided over theological and moral issues.

Exhaustion has set in. Global South Primates will no longer waste time and money sitting down with pro pansexual Primates of the West. The decades' war is over. The good guys have left.

Leaders of congregations departing their former mainline Protestant denominations told Carthage researchers they were happy to be in a new place.

When the church leaders were asked if they had any regrets about their decision to leave, "The only thing they'd ever say is we should have left sooner."

One senses that to be the case for former Episcopalians, "what took you so long" is now the cry of many. Loyalties die hard, however, and in the Diocese of South Carolina where ties go back nearly 230 years (1785), The Episcopal Church is deeply entrenched as are family and friendship ties. These are not easily undone or broken. Loyalties and emotions run deep over many generations.

The Diocese embraces the theology, morality and policies that have united Anglicans for centuries, notes Bishop Mark Lawrence. "Many in TEC have broken with these positions that guide 80 million members of the world Anglican Communion. It is no longer the church we helped to establish more than 200 years ago. Today, we differ on the most fundamental cornerstone of Christianity: As good Anglicans we in the Diocese believe a moral life comes from the transforming power of faith in Christ alone."

That theme of the transforming love of Christ is now the marching theme of the ACNA and they will not be turned back, now or ever. The die has been cast.

END