PECUSA's Future

One of the interesting things about the Episcopal Church, and it prides itself far too much in my view in this, is, you know, we're the leader, we're in the vanguard. Well, it's an interesting matter of debate as to just how much we are the leader. There are only two churches in all of North American in mainline Christianity that have gone over the edge and decided to ordain non-celibate people in same sex unions. One is the United Church of Canada; the other is the United Church of Christ. The United Church of Christ did it first; the United Church of Canada which since it's in Canada almost no Americans know it even exists, was the second, and the Episcopal Church in 2003 is the third. It's a wide open question as to what will happen from here forward. You may know that the Methodists, the Presbyterians, the Lutherans, among others, are all in hugely significant discussion about this issue. But one of the things that might happen is that the Episcopal Church might go down the same road as the United Church of Christ and the United Church of Canada. And guess what that road is? Cataclysmic, systemic, institutional decline. If you think things in the Episcopal Church are bad take a moment and look at the United Church of Canada. I lived in Canada for two years. It is one of the saddest stories I know in North American Christendom. And the reality is if you go based on the facts on the ground so far, the two churches that have gone this route have lost an even greater sense of their Christian identity, lost an even greater amount of their membership, and gone even farther into maintenance and survival mode than they were before. Now that may be the route that we go. On the other hand it may be the case that us being the third, we may be the tipping point and after us may come the Lutherans and the Presbyterians, in which case, in my view, we'd be leading them over the cliff.

... In fact in the Methodist debate one of the things that are regularly said is, "I don't want to end up like those Episcopalians. That was terrible the way that they went about it." We're such a great negative example that we're actually slowing the chances of some of the other denominations, particularly the Methodists.

So what if, for example, God simply takes the Episcopal Church and we slowly go the route of the two denominations that have gone this route, and people look at us and say this is what happens to a church that capitulates to culture. Do you know great Dean W. R. Inge, St. Paul's, London, beginning of the 20th century, do you know his great statement: "He who becomes married to the spirit of this age becomes its widower in the next?" This was a profound (in my view), prophetic statement at the time, and one of the indictments of Anglicanism, historically. Maybe one of the things that's happening is the Episcopal Church may have to die like the United Church of Christ is dying and the United Church of Canada is dying in order for some of the other people to look at it and say, "This is what a church fully under judgment that God will not bless looks like." Now look, I don't want that for the Episcopal Church but part of what I had to realize is if that's what God wants to do in history because He's God and I'm not, it's His prerogative and its okay because He's working out His purpose in history. I must nevertheless still live faithfully in the midst of God working that out in history.


By Kendall Harmon - from "Self-Criticism & a Crisis of Leadership"