The Diocese of South Carolina Officially Decides to Join ACNA

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What a bunch of cucks.

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I swear the only place I've ever heard about this "Spong" guy is from #triggered religious conservatives on this forum. After quasi-associating with the Episcopals for over 5 years in real life, I've never once heard a thing about him - I doubt many rank-and-file Episcopals have idea who he is.

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While I'm pleased to see conservative groups leaving the mainline churches for more orthodox groups, I have to ask, what took them so long?

Groups like TEC and PCUSA have long since lost the marks of being a true church in the classic Protestant sense of the word. The mainlines have been compromising on much more fundamental issues than gay rights for a long time. If someone like Bishop Spong in TEC or Bill Phipps in the United Church of Canada can deny the Gospel with no sanction, that ought to be a final straw.

That was always my question, too.  I know a few ACNA people, and I asked them, "Oh, so Bishop Spong can deny the Gospel and keep his job back in the early 90s, but you ordain just one gay man, and now it's the end of the world?"

I'm more familiar with Presbyterian history than Episcopal so I'll try to explain it that way:

First, there just aren't a lot of theological conservatives left in the PCUSA. Since the 1930's there have been four denominations formed by PCUSA walkouts, plus a few waves of churches walking out to join established conservative denominations. So it's not that no one cares about the Gospel more than gay rights, its just that most already worship in conservative denominations.

Second, my understanding is that there have been some fairly nasty property fights in the Lutheran, Episcopal and Presbyterian churches, so some congregations are reluctant to leave until something like gay rights acts as the straw that breaks the camel's back.

Lastly, Presbyterians are notoriously schism happy and Episcopals are not. Combine that with the lack of denominational knowledge that Harry mentioned (which btw is certainly not a good thing) and it's harder to get a decent break away movement going.

Why? We're talking about some guy who retired from being a bishop (and remember, there are over 100 bishops in the Episcopal Church) 17 years ago and is now dead.

You're expecting people to keep up with every bishop across the whole country, hear about every controversial sentence they say, and then remember it two decades later?

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You keep saying this like conservatives are upset about an after dinner address he gave in 1995. Spong has made a multi-decade career of denying the Gospel, is a very active writer, to this day and TEC still hasn't disciplined him.

Because who cares? 20 years ago, less than 1% of Episcopal mid-level leadership had some unusual beliefs. Rank-and-file Episcopals don't care today (and probably didn't then, although I wasn't going to Episcopal mass back then so I can't say for sure) -- only #triggered Internet conservatives do.

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As an agnostic with no "horse in this race", I have to say that I have no clue why Spong and people of similar beliefs can't just leave their Church and found their own thing, when it's pretty clear they don't believe in even its most basic tenets. I mean, it's one thing when you're committed to a Church but feel it's misguided on some specific points, but what's the point of still calling yourself Anglican, Presbyterian or whatnot, when you just don't fit the definition in any way?

Probably because everyone has the attitude of "I'm the one who's right, so they can leave, not me."

I mean, I'd love it if all the minority of Catholics who are anti-gay and anti-abortion rights would leave for some other church, and then the remainder could merge with the Episcopals (minus these weirdo South Cucklinians) into an "all liberal, all the time" One True Church. But that's not happening -- that minority thinks think we should be the ones to leave.