Last one out turn of the lights

This week marks the beginning of the final chapter of traditional belief in the Episcopal Church. Acting in the belief that the ends justify the means, the revisionist majority of the House of Bishops ignored the canons of the church and voted to depose Bishop Robert Duncan, leader of the Anglican Communion Network and Bishop of Pittsburgh. The heretic Bp. Walter Righter got a trial for his heresies, but the orthodox do not.

The vote — in anticipation of the diocese’s imminent departure from TEC — was likened by one Episcopal priest to a 2002 Tom Cruise movie:

The Presiding Bishop and her Chancellor have interpreted the canons of the church in a way that would not hold up under impartial scrutiny and so appear to have proceeded with an interpretation of the cannons that suits their desire to proceed with deposition. Expediency ruled the day. I am reminded of the movie “Minority Report” in which people are arrested before they commit crimes.

Ignoring due process sets a dangerous precedent for the church, as a few Episcopalians recognize. However, with the Stalinists firmly in charge, no further dissent will be tolerated and all the orthodox (small o) will be forced out.

Steve Wood predicts that next summer’s General Convention will sweep away any attempt at compromise, repealing all accommodations intended to hold the moderates in the church. He sees this as the logical end result of decades of revisionism in PECUSA.

I suggested that two entirely different religions, with very different languages of faith, now exist under the same name. And that The Episcopal Church as revealed at the most recent General Conventions no longer remotely resembles The Episcopal Church we once knew - which is the source of great grief and sorrow for many of us.

So the orthodox (traditionalist and evangelical) will be gone by the end of 2009. In Virginia and possibly in California, they’ll leave with their buildings, but in other cases, parishes will be forced to start from scratch. Either way, they’ll all be leaving, because the façade of compromise has been stripped away.

The good news is that this week’s developments will likely hasten US and international support for a new North American Anglican Province. So perhaps the new church is two years away, not nine years away.