I'm stunned

I think we can now abandon any lingering illusions that the Episcopal Church USA is a Christian body. (Link via JYB)

Heresy is better than schism, the Episcopal bishop of Virginia said yesterday in a speech that gently chided church conservatives for imperiling the unity of the country's largest diocese over the consecration of the denomination's first homosexual bishop last November.

"If you must make a choice between heresy and schism, always choose heresy," said the Rt. Rev. Peter J. Lee to 500 Episcopalians meeting for the annual diocesan council at the Hyatt Regency in Reston.

"For as a heretic, you are only guilty of a wrong opinion," Bishop Lee said, quoting Presbyterian scholar James McCord. "As a schismatic, you have torn and divided the body of Christ. Choose heresy every time."

This is just astounding. A supposedly Christian leader urging his followers to choose heresy because if they insist on following scripture they'll be responsible for dividing the body of Christ!

Where do you begin?

Let's do this for starters: By definition heretics have removed themselves from the body. If anyone is responsible for a schism, it's the heretic. The idea that the person who points this out bears the responsibility for the division is just absurd.

I also noticed this later on in the article:

Our faith teaches that people with who we differ often have important truths to teach us.

I'll grant that people who differ with us often have something to teach us. What I want to know is where this idea makes its appearance in Christian teaching? Just where is this written?

I saw at one point that Christopher Johnson said he wasn't leaving the Episcopal Church, he was converting to Christianity. (I'm too lazy to look for the link.) I'm beginning to see what he's talking about.

Comments

[Evan]

A person is either for dogma or against it. The Episcopal bishop seems against it. What's a bible-based-dogma person to do?

[Kristin]

Turn Southern Baptist?

[JD Mays]

This kind of thing disturbs me deeply. Especially since I see the same thing happening with the Presbyterian (PCUSA) denomination.
The people like the guy you quoted are heretics who are practicing evil. I personally want nothing to do with them or any so-called Christian Church that they are a part of.
-Jim.

[jocelyn]

I can attest to the converting to Christianity as an Anglican, I grew up that way, in a very humanistic, friendly, but totally apostate Anglican church in the diocese of New Westminster, the first in Canada to bless homosexual unions. I have a huge love for the church I came out of but all I see is evil tearing apart the greatest gift that the Anglican church had as a part of the body of Christ: unity. I applaud those churches who went with their conscience and their faith and chose to part with the dioscese. It's good to remember though that not all anglicans are like this - the Irish, African and Chinese Anglican churches are vibrant and growing - and following God.