January 2007

The Rev. Lauren Stanley, the Sudan, TEC, Homophobism and Fleeing Parishes
By David W. Virtue

www.virtueonline.org

January 3rd 2007

The Rev. Lauren R. Stanley would like us to believe that in the current theological and culture wars in The Episcopal Church we could, in Virginia Bishop Peter James Lee's words, "ALL be wrong."

The former woman Episcopal missionary to the Sudan who is now temporarily in the U.S. wrote a first person article picked up by the McClatchy Tribune News Service, in which she bemoans the current crisis in the TEC, and feels it her bound and duty to blame orthodox Episcopalians for the crisis and points the finger squarely at those leaving by saying that they are not practicing God's inclusive love, and they have no business trying to take the properties with them as they leave. As a former Roman Catholic who walked away from that church taking nothing with her, she believes that Episcopalians who want to should leave the keys and check book at the front door on the way out. She even cites Archbishop Peter Akinola who declared that fleeing Episcopalians should be prepared to forfeit properties and pensions as they go.

All well and good, but Ms. Lauren who cites the evangelical Episcopal Virginia mega-churches as prime examples of "I want it all" forgets that it was the people who built those churches, not the diocese or the national church, and in the case of the Diocese of Virginia, these parishes PRECEDED the formation of the Episcopal Church, and the owners (read we the people) simply have a right, to want them back. When Ms. Lauren left the RC Church she left it as an individual not as the leader of a parish, (as a woman she could be neither a pastor nor priest) so she had absolutely no power to take anything with her except her own check book and missal. These Virginia parishes, on the other hand, were built and paid for by the people, and it was the people, who by going through a 40-day discernment, discerned that they collectively and overwhelming (by more than 90% in most cases) wanted out with their property. That is a wholly different story and not vaguely comparable to Ms. Lauren's walking away from the Roman Catholic Church where she had little say and even less power. Another factor is that Ms. Lauren clearly wanted to become the Rev. Lauren and the Roman Catholic Church would not oblige.

In her argument Ms. Lauren uses the emotionally compelling situation in the Sudan to bolster her claims that The Episcopal Church should "not be torn apart by arguments over sexuality and so-called biblical inerrancy," but should be about the business of embracing "God's inclusive love" and then publicly condemns these Virginia parishes for not doing that. Now that is just plain nonsense and wrong. I personally heard both priests - the Rev. Martyn Minns and John Yates - talk specifically about God's love, revealed so generously and graciously at the Cross, and it is precisely about God's transforming love shown at the Cross, that Ms. Lauren skips in her desire to be all inclusive. And it is the Atonement which The Episcopal Church is too embarrassed to preach that is a major factor in why Episcopalians are leaving.

In her words: "In the United States, the departing parishes lead the way in throwing up barriers of hatred and homophobism." This is utter nonsense. Never have I heard a single orthodox Episcopal preacher, "throw up barriers of hatred or homophobism." To my knowledge my own priest has never talked about homosexuality from the pulpit in all the years I have listened to him and he is not remotely homophobic or a hater of homosexuals. Our parish has well over 1,000 persons and continues to grow because he preaches a very clear understanding of what the gospel is and is not. Let me tell you a story. For years my wife and I used to take vacations in the Adirondack Mountains.

On Sunday mornings we attended a small parish called St. Mary's in Lake Luzerne, NY. The priest was a Nashotah House graduate, an evangelical Anglo-Catholic who cared deeply and passionately for every member of his parish. For 14 years he labored long and hard, and took a parish that should have died and made it into something. One Sunday morning, following Lambeth '98, he stood up and said gently, quietly and very humbly that he supported Resolution 1:10. He didn't scream about it, (he wouldn't know how), he didn't make it the subject of the whole sermon, he didn't lambaste homosexuals, he was not homophobic in his utterances, in fact he said God loves homosexuals and he would minister to them like anyone else in the parish. The sweat poured off of him as he preached. I think it was hardest few sentences he ever uttered in his whole life. The next day his best friend and senior warden announced that he and his family were leaving the church because the priest was homophobic. Recently they consecrated that priest - the Rev. Bill Love - and made him the Bishop of Albany. The Rev. Lauren says she finds no integrity in filing lawsuits. Right. Ms. Lauren has clearly been out of the country too long. The vast majority of property-related lawsuits in the U.S. are being filed by liberal and revisionist ECUSA bishops, not the orthodox parishes and their priests. They are reactive not proactive. Just ask Bishop J. Jon Bruno, or Charles E. Bennison, or the Bishop of Missouri George Wayne Smith, to name but a few. Or perhaps she should sit down with the very liberal Rev. Harold Lewis, a priest in the Diocese of Pittsburgh and ask him why he is repeatedly going after the orthodox Bishop of Pittsburgh, the Rt. Rev. Robert Duncan over property issues. Ms. Lauren has it all wrong; she simply doesn't know what she is talking about.

Then she repeats the mantra of Virginia Bishop Peter James Lee, "We could ALL be wrong". Nonsense. That's a cop-out. The Law of Non-Contradiction makes that impossible. If the Rev's Minns and Yates are wrong then the gospel is wrong; the cross is child abuse, repentance and faith are unnecessary, and all we have left is, in Ms. Lauren's words, "proclaiming the core of the Gospel: that God loves us, now and forever." Ms. Lauren makes a huge leap of faith without the qualifier that "God's love" was visibly manifested at Golgotha and demands a response from us, without which no man or woman will see the Lord. Her "core" is not gospel core. Her "core" could be uttered by a Hindu, a Buddhist, Frank Griswold or Mrs. Schori. Nowhere, in her tirade against the Episcopal Church's orthodox does she mention the Good News of God's redeeming love; nowhere, it is all about "the survival of our (Sudanese) people. How are we going to feed them? Educate them? Provide health care? Bring peace to a war-torn land that seems poised on the edge of yet another war?" Perhaps if Ms Lauren had bumped into Baroness Caroline Cox (the William Wilberforce of the 21st Century) while she was in the Sudan she would have heard her stories of Christ's cross lifted high among the ruins of war torn camps. Had she listened to the peripatetic British blue-blood she would have heard stories of how people were laying down their lives for the gospel, forsaking the few comforts they had because Jesus and the proclamation of His Good News means more to them than clothes on their back or food in their stomachs. The parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus comes to mind.

Ms. Lauren opines that "REAL survival is at stake, the Gospel that is preached is one of inclusiveness and love, because only inclusiveness and love can overcome the hatred that has left millions of Sudanese dead in the last 50 years." Now, no one single person has done more to realize and publicize the plight of Christians in the Sudan than Baroness Cox. I know I have interviewed her. She tells their stories, and they are nearly always the same. Muslims in the north are killing Christians in the south and its all about oil, who owns it and who profits from it. Nowhere in her spiel does Ms. Lauren make any mention of Muslim genocide against Christians. Nowhere; she blames a handful of fleeing Episcopalians for the church's woes who want to preserve an authentic gospel against the innovative theological revisionism of bishops like Schori and Shaw and a handful of pansexual clergy whining about inclusion of their immoral behavior, and who wouldn't know Jesus if he turned water into wine. Ms. Lauren wants you to believe that she and her fellow liberals carry the torch of justice and peace while nasty fundamentalist Episcopalians are fighting over doctrine. The truth is Ms. Lauren has disconnected all the theological wires and the lights have gone out.

"Hatred has no place in the Sudanese Church. It has no place in the American Church either. God's love -- and how that is lived out -- is the ONLY thing that counts," she says. True. And the hatred in The Episcopal Church is coming right down the turnpike from liberals and revisionist bishops and their pansexual acolytes...and their hatred of orthodoxy knows no bounds. Several dioceses have already said they will not give their consent to the new orthodox bishop of South Carolina...that's about hate disguised in the language of inclusivity. The damage Bishop Charles E. Bennison is inflicting on orthodox parishes and their priests in the Diocese of Pennsylvania is hate. What he did to Fr. David Ousley is pure hatred. Bennison's brother priest's vile sexual behavior would have gone unheralded if it wasn't for SNAP and VOL. The sex abuse of a child is hatred of children by ignoring their needs and boundaries.

Orris Walker, Bishop of Long Island hates orthodox parish priests with a living passion. He won't ordain them, doesn't want them in his diocese, and he has made it a life time mission of forcing almost all of them out of the diocese. He has made their lives a living hell. I know I have talked with a number of them. His is pure unadulterated hatred. No, Ms. Lauren has it all wrong. Orthodox priests and parishioners are fleeing The Episcopal Church because they fear for their souls; they have heeded the Apostle Paul's words about "another gospel" being preached and they will have none of it. They know that while Millennium Development Goals (MDG's) might be noble efforts to save humanity, it is not the "core" gospel; if it was the Province of Nigeria would be going numerically backwards like the American Episcopal Church.
Ms. Lauren concludes that God's love -- and how that is lived out -- is the ONLY thing that counts. Not exactly true. God's love is manifest at Calvary, and we live it out as we proclaim the Good News of God's redeeming love, anything less and we have sold out to something that is ultimately no gospel at all.

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	The Rev. Lauren Stanley, the Sudan, TEC, Homophobism and Fleeing Parishes By David W. Virtue www.virtueonline.org January 3rd 2007 The Rev. Lauren R. Stanley would like us to believe that in the current theological and culture wars in The Episcopal Church we could, in Virginia Bishop Peter James Lee's words, "ALL be wrong." The former woman Episcopal missionary to the Sudan who is now temporarily in the U.S. wrote a first person article picked up by the McClatchy Tribune News Service, in which she bemoans the current crisis in the TEC, and feels it her bound and duty to blame orthodox Episcopalians for the crisis and points the finger squarely at those leaving by saying that they are not practicing God's inclusive love, and they have no business trying to take the properties with them as they leave. As a former Roman Catholic who walked away from that church taking nothing with her, she believes that Episcopalians who want to should leave the keys and check book at the front door on the way out. She even cites Archbishop Peter Akinola who declared that fleeing Episcopalians should be prepared to forfeit properties and pensions as they go. All well and good, but Ms. Lauren who cites the evangelical Episcopal Virginia mega-churches as prime examples of "I want it all" forgets that it was the people who built those churches, not the diocese or the national church, and in the case of the Diocese of Virginia, these parishes PRECEDED the formation of the Episcopal Church, and the owners (read we the people) simply have a right, to want them back. When Ms. Lauren left the RC Church she left it as an individual not as the leader of a parish, (as a woman she could be neither a pastor nor priest) so she had absolutely no power to take anything with her except her own check book and missal. These Virginia parishes, on the other hand, were built and paid for by the people, and it was the people, who by going through a 40-day discernment, discerned that they collectively and overwhelming (by more than 90% in most cases) wanted out with their property. That is a wholly different story and not vaguely comparable to Ms. Lauren's walking away from the Roman Catholic Church where she had little say and even less power. Another factor is that Ms. Lauren clearly wanted to become the Rev. Lauren and the Roman Catholic Church would not oblige. In her argument Ms. Lauren uses the emotionally compelling situation in the Sudan to bolster her claims that The Episcopal Church should "not be torn apart by arguments over sexuality and so-called biblical inerrancy," but should be about the business of embracing "God's inclusive love" and then publicly condemns these Virginia parishes for not doing that. Now that is just plain nonsense and wrong. I personally heard both priests - the Rev. Martyn Minns and John Yates - talk specifically about God's love, revealed so generously and graciously at the Cross, and it is precisely about God's transforming love shown at the Cross, that Ms. Lauren skips in her desire to be all inclusive. And it is the Atonement which The Episcopal Church is too embarrassed to preach that is a major factor in why Episcopalians are leaving. In her words: "In the United States, the departing parishes lead the way in throwing up barriers of hatred and homophobism." This is utter nonsense. Never have I heard a single orthodox Episcopal preacher, "throw up barriers of hatred or homophobism." To my knowledge my own priest has never talked about homosexuality from the pulpit in all the years I have listened to him and he is not remotely homophobic or a hater of homosexuals. Our parish has well over 1,000 persons and continues to grow because he preaches a very clear understanding of what the gospel is and is not. Let me tell you a story. For years my wife and I used to take vacations in the Adirondack Mountains. On Sunday mornings we attended a small parish called St. Mary's in Lake Luzerne, NY. The priest was a Nashotah House graduate, an evangelical Anglo-Catholic who cared deeply and passionately for every member of his parish. For 14 years he labored long and hard, and took a parish that should have died and made it into something. One Sunday morning, following Lambeth '98, he stood up and said gently, quietly and very humbly that he supported Resolution 1:10. He didn't scream about it, (he wouldn't know how), he didn't make it the subject of the whole sermon, he didn't lambaste homosexuals, he was not homophobic in his utterances, in fact he said God loves homosexuals and he would minister to them like anyone else in the parish. The sweat poured off of him as he preached. I think it was hardest few sentences he ever uttered in his whole life. The next day his best friend and senior warden announced that he and his family were leaving the church because the priest was homophobic. Recently they consecrated that priest - the Rev. Bill Love - and made him the Bishop of Albany. The Rev. Lauren says she finds no integrity in filing lawsuits. Right. Ms. Lauren has clearly been out of the country too long. The vast majority of property-related lawsuits in the U.S. are being filed by liberal and revisionist ECUSA bishops, not the orthodox parishes and their priests. They are reactive not proactive. Just ask Bishop J. Jon Bruno, or Charles E. Bennison, or the Bishop of Missouri George Wayne Smith, to name but a few. Or perhaps she should sit down with the very liberal Rev. Harold Lewis, a priest in the Diocese of Pittsburgh and ask him why he is repeatedly going after the orthodox Bishop of Pittsburgh, the Rt. Rev. Robert Duncan over property issues. Ms. Lauren has it all wrong; she simply doesn't know what she is talking about. Then she repeats the mantra of Virginia Bishop Peter James Lee, "We could ALL be wrong". Nonsense. That's a cop-out. The Law of Non-Contradiction makes that impossible. If the Rev's Minns and Yates are wrong then the gospel is wrong; the cross is child abuse, repentance and faith are unnecessary, and all we have left is, in Ms. Lauren's words, "proclaiming the core of the Gospel: that God loves us, now and forever." Ms. Lauren makes a huge leap of faith without the qualifier that "God's love" was visibly manifested at Golgotha and demands a response from us, without which no man or woman will see the Lord. Her "core" is not gospel core. Her "core" could be uttered by a Hindu, a Buddhist, Frank Griswold or Mrs. Schori. Nowhere, in her tirade against the Episcopal Church's orthodox does she mention the Good News of God's redeeming love; nowhere, it is all about "the survival of our (Sudanese) people. How are we going to feed them? Educate them? Provide health care? Bring peace to a war-torn land that seems poised on the edge of yet another war?" Perhaps if Ms Lauren had bumped into Baroness Caroline Cox (the William Wilberforce of the 21st Century) while she was in the Sudan she would have heard her stories of Christ's cross lifted high among the ruins of war torn camps. Had she listened to the peripatetic British blue-blood she would have heard stories of how people were laying down their lives for the gospel, forsaking the few comforts they had because Jesus and the proclamation of His Good News means more to them than clothes on their back or food in their stomachs. The parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus comes to mind. Ms. Lauren opines that "REAL survival is at stake, the Gospel that is preached is one of inclusiveness and love, because only inclusiveness and love can overcome the hatred that has left millions of Sudanese dead in the last 50 years." Now, no one single person has done more to realize and publicize the plight of Christians in the Sudan than Baroness Cox. I know I have interviewed her. She tells their stories, and they are nearly always the same. Muslims in the north are killing Christians in the south and its all about oil, who owns it and who profits from it. Nowhere in her spiel does Ms. Lauren make any mention of Muslim genocide against Christians. Nowhere; she blames a handful of fleeing Episcopalians for the church's woes who want to preserve an authentic gospel against the innovative theological revisionism of bishops like Schori and Shaw and a handful of pansexual clergy whining about inclusion of their immoral behavior, and who wouldn't know Jesus if he turned water into wine. Ms. Lauren wants you to believe that she and her fellow liberals carry the torch of justice and peace while nasty fundamentalist Episcopalians are fighting over doctrine. The truth is Ms. Lauren has disconnected all the theological wires and the lights have gone out. "Hatred has no place in the Sudanese Church. It has no place in the American Church either. God's love -- and how that is lived out -- is the ONLY thing that counts," she says. True. And the hatred in The Episcopal Church is coming right down the turnpike from liberals and revisionist bishops and their pansexual acolytes...and their hatred of orthodoxy knows no bounds. Several dioceses have already said they will not give their consent to the new orthodox bishop of South Carolina...that's about hate disguised in the language of inclusivity. The damage Bishop Charles E. Bennison is inflicting on orthodox parishes and their priests in the Diocese of Pennsylvania is hate. What he did to Fr. David Ousley is pure hatred. Bennison's brother priest's vile sexual behavior would have gone unheralded if it wasn't for SNAP and VOL. The sex abuse of a child is hatred of children by ignoring their needs and boundaries. Orris Walker, Bishop of Long Island hates orthodox parish priests with a living passion. He won't ordain them, doesn't want them in his diocese, and he has made it a life time mission of forcing almost all of them out of the diocese. He has made their lives a living hell. I know I have talked with a number of them. His is pure unadulterated hatred. No, Ms. Lauren has it all wrong. Orthodox priests and parishioners are fleeing The Episcopal Church because they fear for their souls; they have heeded the Apostle Paul's words about "another gospel" being preached and they will have none of it. They know that while Millennium Development Goals (MDG's) might be noble efforts to save humanity, it is not the "core" gospel; if it was the Province of Nigeria would be going numerically backwards like the American Episcopal Church. Ms. Lauren concludes that God's love -- and how that is lived out -- is the ONLY thing that counts. Not exactly true. God's love is manifest at Calvary, and we live it out as we proclaim the Good News of God's redeeming love, anything less and we have sold out to something that is ultimately no gospel at all. Back up