If you'd like to learn just what's at stake in the current conflict raging in Episcopalian circles over the acceptance of homosexuality, same-sex marriage, ordination of homosexuals, etc., then I suggest reading this excellent summation of the crisis as described by the Society for the Propagation of Reformed Evangelical Anglican Doctrine. Indeed, much of what you read in this report will be of direct relevance to what's happening in the general culture, perhaps even in your own churches.The Society is devoted to an orthodox theology, one determined by the Holy Scriptures rather than the irresponsible whims of a secularized society. As they describe themselves, the Society is dedicated to the preservation and propagation of the Anglican Faith, as defined by the Anglican Formularies comprised of the Church of England's Articles of Religion, 1662 Book of Common Prayer and Ordinal.
The entire article, "Counterfeit Communion and the Truth that Sets Free" is contained in this 11-page PDF file) but I've printed a few of the most illuminating passages below:
We humbly offer this paper in the conviction that the only adequate response to this crisis is the clear and decisive separation of participating Churches and leaders from the See of Canterbury and the present Anglican Communion to form a new Communion that is truly global in scope and truly Anglican in doctrine.
Anything less will leave faithful Anglicans throughout the world as unwilling collaborators in a counterfeit Communion which makes a virtue out of the toleration of teaching contrary to scripture, is rife and ingrained with such false teaching and is led by an Archbishop of Canterbury who himself so teaches. Freedom from the hegemony of the Anglican Communion’s pretended fellowship, with all the compromises and distractions it entails, is imperative if those Churches of the Communion which have not abandoned the sovereign authority of Scripture are to be free to develop that true communion and fellowship which has at its heart the transforming power of the gospel...
So it should be no surprise that within the Anglican Communion today there exist two different religions – on the one hand, a revisionist Anglicanism which has adopted contemporary Western humanism and its sceptical assumptions about the Bible while retaining a veneer of religiosity; and on the other hand the Anglican reformed catholic faith, wrought in the Church of England during the Protestant Reformation and defined by the Church of England’s Articles of Religion, 1662 Book of Common Prayer and the 1662 Ordinal, which has flourished remarkably in the varied cultures to which it was brought during the era of British global expansion....
The aim of Thomas Cranmer and the English Reformers was to reform the Western Catholic tradition, not to found a new form of Christianity, but their vision was nonetheless radical in being built upon the recovery of the conviction that Scripture, as God’s Word written, is true and authoritative for all matters of teaching and conduct. Article XX of the Articles of Religion states that ‘it is not lawful for the Church. to ordain anything contrary to God’s Word written’ and the 1662 Ordinal requires all bishops and priests/presbyters ‘to banish and drive away from the Church all erroneous and strange doctrines contrary to God’s Word.’ Hence the Church lives under the sovereign authority of Scripture and must not ordain or permit teaching contrary to God’s Word. The guiding principle of the Anglican Reformers was that the Bible must be received on its own terms, as God’s Word written. In a passage of clear contemporary relevance which powerfully illuminates the principle of Article XX and the Ordinal’s requirement of bishops and priests/presbyters, Cranmer recognizes that once the foundations of revealed biblical truth are removed, human speculation will subvert the Church:
‘If there were any word of God beside the Scripture, we could never be certain of God's Word; and if we be uncertain of God's Word, the devil might bring in among us a new word, a new doctrine, a new faith, a new Church, a new god, yea himself to be a god. If the Church and the Christian faith did not stay itself upon the Word of God certain, as upon a sure and strong foundation, no man could know whether he had a right faith, and whether he were in the true Church of Christ, or in the synagogue of Satan’...
The particular political and social trend which has so painfully laid bare the doctrinal confusion of the Anglican Communion is the movement to win approval of same gender sexual relationships. The abandonment of biblical sexual morality is not a minor ethical aberration, as recently claimed by the Archbishop of York,3 but a growth now visible having been rooted in many years of doctrinal decay....
Then in 2003 the radical rejection of God’s Word was further entrenched when the General Convention not only approved the selection of Gene Robinson to be the Bishop of New Hampshire and the blessing of same sex unions, but also voted down a resolution intended to re-affirm Holy Scripture as the foundation of authority in the Church and that no member of the Church should be forced to practice anything contrary to the clear meaning of Scripture.6 So no-one should have been surprised when three years later, the 2006 General Convention refused even to consider a resolution affirming salvation through Christ alone.7 Accordingly, there has been no restraint on the growing practice of multi-faith worship, to the extent that the consecration service of the Bishop of Nevada, the Rt. Rev. Dan Thomas Edwards on 5th January 2008, attended by the Presiding Bishop, included blessings by a Hindu chaplain, a Muslim Imam, a Jewish Rabbi, and a Bahai leader....
A survey in 2002 found that a third of the Church's clergy doubted or disbelieved in the physical resurrection and only half were convinced of the truth of the virgin birth.8 And, as the recent history of North American Anglicanism all too clearly demonstrates, once the creeds have been emptied of shared meaning, biblical morality shares a similar fate....
For Rowan Williams the Bible is not to be relied upon; the Word of God has to be untangled from human misunderstanding and so inevitably the interpreter stands in a superior position to the original writers used by God. Hence, without any trace of embarrassment, Williams can describe the parable of the Unjust Steward as ‘a story which St Luke does not seem to have understood particularly well.’ 10 In fact, he sees all Scripture as potentially ambiguous, describing the human writers as those ‘caught up in the blazing fire of God’s gift who yet struggle with it, misapprehend it, and misread it.’ And this approach to Scripture can only encourage those who think they can improve upon the original, even to the extent of substantially rewriting it. So when John C. Henson’s Good As New: A Radical Retelling of the Scriptures was published in 2004 it carried an enthusiastic foreword in which Williams, as the Archbishop of Canterbury, expressed the hope that it would spread in ‘epidemic profusion’, notwithstanding that this so-called ‘Bible’ includes the gnostic ‘Gospel of Thomas;’ omits Revelation and seven other books of the New Testament, eliminates the masculinity of God the Father and God the Son, makes the Holy Spirit feminine, removes reference to same gender sexual relationships as sin and refuses to acknowledge the existence of demons...
The Scriptural response to this imminent danger is that there must be a walking apart which mirrors the underlying doctrinal incompatibility. This is not a new principle. Anglican faith must take precedence over Anglican order when the two clash...
All the evidence points to the fact that these painful divisions are not primarily pastoral – in which case there would be an urgent need for reconciliation, nor are they focused on secondary doctrinal issues – in which case patient dialogue of the kind urged by the Windsor Report would be appropriate. At the heart of the struggle within the Anglican Communion is the essential Reformation principle of the sovereign authority of Scripture and therefore the answer to the question of how we know what is Christian and what is not...
To remain in communion is to legitimize, or at least to hold as something indifferent, that which imperils eternal salvation by treating same gender sexual relationships as consecrated – ordaining as priests/presbyters and consecrating as bishops those engaged in such conduct and blessing same sex unions. Many church leaders seem to have lost their capacity to recognize this shocking reversal for what it really is; the exchange of natural sexual relationships for unnatural, is nothing less than the mark of a culture which is under divine judgment because it has radically rejected the Creator God (Romans 1:26). And this is the practice false teachers seek to sanctify...
