Churches are made of people

Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.  Matthew 7:1-2

I will be the first to admit that I am judgemental. I tend to note several things about people, and make snap judgements about what kind of people they seem to be, and whether or not I want to have anything to do with them.  


I do not, on the other hand, make value judgements: "That behavior is bad, and you're going to hell!"  It's above my pay grade--I'm not clergy.  


However, it is the job that the clergy in pretty much any church is supposed to be doing.  Refusing to do it, like the Episcopal Church has just done, removes any legitimacy as a Christian church.  

Whether they like it or not, the Bible does have very clear statements on homosexuality, and they're not just in Leviticus.  The New Testament also makes it clear, in Romans (1: 26-27), I Corinthians (6: 9-11), and Timothy (1: 8-10), that it is not behavior that God is happy with.  Nowhere is the condemnation as clear as it is in Leviticus (most of which is focused on health codes, not just moral, by the way), but it's pretty apparent that the laws against homosexuality were carried forward.


Again, I don't care who's screwing whom or how--that's way above my pay grade.  It's above the pay grade of most of the people who say hateful things about people.


It is not above the pay grade of the clergy.  They are supposed to remind us of the rules we are supposed to be following.  The Episcopal Church started hemmorhaging members when they started to tell us that all choices and paths were equally valid.  


They're not.  The people know that, and really were disappointed in their church.  So they left the church in droves.  


The current bishop, Katherine Jefferts Schori, just drove the nail in the coffin of the dying denomination.  According to one attendee at her July 8 sermon:

“Jefferts Schori then proclaims that she has the answer for this. We all need the ‘act of crossing boundaries’ to become God after which our hands become a ‘sacrament of mission.’

“In this sermon, Jefferts Schori continued her mission of destroying the Christian faith through her rhetorical device of dismissive ridicule.

“Jefferts Schori leaves a wide wake of destruction behind with this sermon: the eternal triune God has been torn down, human beings are to boldly claim our place as God, and the sacraments of the Eucharist and Baptism have been turned into things our hands make. In other words, Jefferts Schori accepts that now humanity, animals and God are one undifferentiated blob. This is essentially a form of solipsism, the belief that self is all that is known to exist. Anyone can see that this is both pure heresy and utter nonsense."

You know, the last time I heard that assertion ("Thou art God") was in a science fiction novel.  Not any kind of church, and definitely not in a Christian church.


I cannot condone this.  I will not condone this.  I will not stand for this.  


Ladies and gentlemen, I repudiate the American Episcopal Church.  God is not there.  They've kicked Him out.  I don't want to stay anywhere He isn't welcome.