The following bullet points are used on The Episcopal Majority blog to describe their position and that of so-called moderate Episcopalians. I will fisk between the points as warranted. ed.
* Jesus Christ is Lord – everything else is commentary
Actually, if Jesus Christ is indeed Lord than everything is under His authority and everything else is a bit more than "commentary." Since Jesus is Lord we are to subject all our beliefs to Him and reject those beliefs that He rejects. You would think that this would go without saying, but as we see in the "commentary" above, for some people you have to spell some things out.
* Belief in a Trinitarian God
Of course.
* Commitment to the Nicene Creed
Excellent, and while we're at it, why not add the Apostles' Creed since we use it in baptismal services?
* Holy Scripture contains all things necessary for salvation
Of course.
* The Book of Common Prayer (and its teachings)
Now this one can get tricky. I assume that TEM is speaking about the 1979 American version, and many of us would be happy if Episcopalians actually did believe and support its teachings, but we know that this isn't the case in many places in pecusa. Can we presume that the liturgical use or doctrinal adherence to the 1979 BCP is what we will find in most pecusa churches these days? I'm skeptical on this, but TEM states it as if it is fact.
* Adherence to the Constitutions and Canons of the Episcopal Church
Yes, except when we're the Presiding Bishop and we want to twist them to our purposes. Or when we want to ignore parts like being a constituent member of the Anglican Communion. Or...
* More comfortable with questions than with answers
Gee, this is a shame, since Jesus was fairly comfortable with giving answers (and He's Lord - see above). Now, Jesus often phrases His answers in ways that really make us thing, but in the end He does seem to believe that He has something to say and that we should respond in obedience, not with questions.
* Listen carefully for where other people are in their faith journeys
Good.
* Listen carefully for other people’s passions
Also good, but if they're passions are misdirected by that Answer Guy (see above), it might be beneficial for us to do some loving redirection.
* Respond to the deep spiritual yearnings of people, not to their initial verbalization
Good, and I'm hoping that TEM understands that the deep spiritual yearnings of people will only be met through Christ.
* The primary qualification for participation in the Church is that the individual is a sinner
Duh, really?
* Everyone who comes to the Church is led there by Christ
We certainly hope so, but sometimes I wonder whether some folks go to certain churches on a mission with political means and ends.
* When people come to the Church we have to explore why … the gifts the Church has that they need to bring them closer to a saving relationship with Christ, and the gifts they bring that the Church needs to enlarge our understanding of Christ
????
* God is large – a lot larger than any of us can comprehend
We might even say that God is infinite, transcendent, holy, wholly other, beyond our greatest imaginings or understandings.
* We are to plumb the depths and riches of Christ
Good.
* God is a God of variety; the Church should reflect that variety
Yes, given that the Church variety is a godly variety.
* Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life: He acts with us in the Church; He acts without us outside the Church
And He also wants to act with us outside the Church (see the Great Commission, Matthew 25, etc.)
* Walls are not a particularly good thing
Really? I thought that they kept a place tidy, blocked wind and other natural elements that tend to untidy a place.
* I don’t agree with everyone else (I don’t even agree with myself sometimes), but that doesn’t make either of us wrong (or right, for that matter).
Another really? I think we see where this so-called TEM is coming from - they're your basic liberal relativists. So, when we look at what TEM says about themselves, we find that they're just your garden-variety moderate liberals, which doesn't make them true moderates at all.
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