Woke Episcopal bishop pleads with Trump on Tuesday to be merciful to transgenders after he on Monday proclaims liberty to the Jan 6th captives instead

 

                                                                      No! Not like that you namby-pamby!

 

Trump and Vance ambushed by bishop pleading for ‘mercy’ on trans children: President attacked in sermon at inauguration service for making trans people 'scared'

 "F--k it: Release 'em all": Why Trump embraced broad Jan. 6 pardons

Trump orders reflect his promises to roll back transgender protections and end DEI programs

 

The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me to bring good tidings to the afflicted; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound; to proclaim the year of the LORD's favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn;

-- Isaiah 61:1f. 

I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. 

-- Romans 9:15

 

Queer Jesus has gone "mainstream" because 13.7 million sane people have already left the formerly mainstream churches

Queer Jesus Goes Mainstream at Churches, Divinity Schools

John Murawski, RCI

 

United Church of Christ membership is down 64% to 0.8 million from 2.2 million. The queer-affirming church performs nuptials for polyamorists where multiple partners marry each other.

United Methodist Church membership is down 47% to 5.7 million from 10.7 million. The church aims to be the first to ordain a drag queen.

Presbyterian Church USA membership is down 74% to 1.1 million from 4.25 million. In Iowa they worship the god of trans being, the great they/them.

Evangelical Lutheran Church in America membership is down 42% to 3 million from 5.2 million. It elected a transgender bishop two years ago.

The Episcopal Church in the United States is down 53% to 1.7 million from 3.6 million. It has a priest who maintains that promiscuous people are simply being hospitable. The real sinner at Sodom was Lot, who refused the hospitality of the rapists trying to break down his door.

There's nothing mainstream about the 12 million still left in these churches.

Millions of Americans have fled into non-denominational Protestantism. And there are at least 30 million Baptists of one kind or another, while Roman Catholics number 70 million.

The USA has 210 million nominally Christian people. But Africa has 685 million. Latin America about 601 million. Europe 571 million.

America is fast on the road to becoming a Christian backwater. The main show is elsewhere.

Some results from the decadal Religion Census of the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies for 2010-2020

 As reported here in The Economist:

the ranks of all religious Americans rose by 10.6m (7%) ...

overall population grew by 7.5% ...

the number of Episcopalians and Methodists dropped by 19% each ...

the Lutherans plunged by 25% ...

Presbyterians lost nearly 1m (40%) ...

The Southern Baptist Convention shrank 11% ...

non-denominational Christian churches recruited 9m new members ...

Catholics claim they gained nearly 3m members (a 5% increase) despite closing over 1,100 churches. 

      

Color me skeptical.

Start with the big number.

Average population grew 7.1% or 22 million over the period, according to POPTHM, which is the data of the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, not 7.5% as stated in the story.

The data of the U.S. Census, as shown by POP, shows average population grew by even less over the period: 6.97% or 21.6 million, not 7.5% as stated in the story.

Obviously these are estimates, not counts, but the reported overall population growth claim in the story is up to a half-point larger than these big baseline numbers reported by the official organs of the U.S. government.

One half point of 310 million is 1.55 million people. One false move and you've just wiped out the entire denomination of the American Baptist Churches USA. When you study religion in America, you are discussing a bewildering number of splinter groups, many of which are simply microscopic in size.

It's extremely difficult to get data about groups like that right. Fully 40% are left out of even good surveys.

We are then confidently given to believe that hardly half the population growth went on to affiliate with a religion over the period: 10.6 million out of something north of 22 million, but by the end of the story you then have to believe also that 9 million new non-denoms plus 3 million new Catholics still equals 10.6 million.

Hello, is there an economist in the house?

Separately, there is the recent claim, supported by Pew, that Mormonism is the fastest reproducing American religious group, the implications of which go wholly unaddressed by the story.

On the other hand, reported Mormon membership in the U.S. grew by fewer than 700k 2011-2023, according to the latest Mormon data.

As pointed out previously, Christians themselves variously and significantly exaggerate how much money they give to their churches. Relying on their statements of membership in surveys even such as this one is . . . problematic.

They resemble in these respects nothing so much as the wider culture of exaggeration.

I'm doing great. Everything is fine. Awesome, in fact.

57% can't afford a $1,000 emergency. 85% say the country is headed in the wrong direction. The world is going to end in 2031 if we don't address climate change.

2.3 million Methodists expected to flee United Methodism by the end of 2023 over LGBT and become independent to avoid the fate of the Episcopalians

 Unsurprisingly, the liberal denominations of the old Mainline Protestant world are the fastest to decline. The Episcopal Church just announced that in 2021 it lost 56,314 members while attendance dropped 36 percent from 2020. Sixty-two congregations were permanently closed. Average worship dropped from 55 to 21 persons. Ninety percent of Episcopal churches have fewer than 100 attendees on Sunday. 

Many Methodist congregations seek to escape this grim fate. And who can blame them?

More.

Catholic Marc Thiessen understands for the first time how the Reformation happened

Commentary: Suddenly I understand how Reformation happened:

For the first time, I understand how the Reformation happened. ... If Vigano is right, it means the corruption in the Catholic Church has reached not just the highest levels of Roman Curia but the papacy itself. Vigano last week effectively nailed his 95 theses to the door of St. Peter’s. ... He got no response. ... Vigano is courageously sacrificing his own episcopal career to expose the truth. Now is the time for others with inside knowledge to step forward and do the same. ...  Five hundred years ago, faithful Catholics waited too long to root out corruption in the Vatican – with disastrous consequences. We can’t make the same mistake again.

Two gather for the 5:15 PM Sunday service at St. Luke's Episcopal Cathedral, Portland, ME, and one of them was the priest

A female priest, and the male reporter, who was feeling "adrift".

From his story here:

The wide, empty nave was dark except for the light coming in through the stained-glass windows. My footsteps had never sounded louder as I walked toward the little octagonal chapel at the back, where the Rev. Anne Fowler sat alone by the altar.

“Oh,” she said. “I guess it’ll just be us tonight.”

I was the only one who’d shown up for the 5:15 service.

Too bad Eleanor Rigby wasn't there.

Why "Roman Catholic" is an oxymoron

There is no such thing as a "Roman" universal church.

There is a Roman church. There is a church of Jerusalem, of Alexandria, of Damascus and Antioch on the Orontes. There is a Constantinopolitan church. There is a Church of the Augsburg Confession in Slovakia, another in Poland. There is a Church of England. There is a Wisconsin Synod Lutheran Church, a Missouri Synod Lutheran Church, an Episcopal Church United States, a First Baptist Church of Dallas, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Anglican Communion excludes the tiny homosexual-inclusive USA Episcopal Church for three years

It's about time:

"The decision in England will have little impact on Episcopalians in the pews, who have grown increasingly liberal after the 2003 consecration of the openly gay priest Gene Robinson as the bishop of New Hampshire. That action prompted dozens of U.S. churches to break off and declare their allegiance to conservative rival groups. ... The constituent churches, which preside over a membership of about 85 million, are self-governing. ... Like other mainline denominations, the Episcopal Church, home to U.S. presidents and the nation’s elite, has struggled to fill its pews in recent years. It has lost more than 20 percent of its members since it consecrated Robinson, and new statistics suggest that membership continues to fall, dropping 2.7 percent from 2013 to about 1.8 million U.S. members in 2014."

Read more at the link.

Rachel Held Evans joins the enemies of Christ

Quoted here:

"I felt drawn to the Episcopal church because it offered some practices I felt were missing in my evangelical experience, like space for silence and reflection, a focus on Christ’s presence at the communion table as the climax and center of every worship service, opportunities for women in leadership, and the inclusion of LGBT people."

The formerly pro-slavery denomination has blessed same-sex unions since December 2012.

"Methodist": Another Way To Spell "Pest"

I'll never forget the reaction of an earnest Methodist when I began what was to be but a brief sojourn among the Methodists some years ago: "You mean you like us?"

In the end I didn't, but not because of the history of Methodism's political advocacy per se, with which I was already intimately familiar. What I found wanting was the theological basis for it: grace so predominating as a doctrinal force that it excludes almost all talk of sin and judgment, a monstrous form of Christianity similar to others in America which end up emphasizing just one feature of themselves in an exaggerated fashion. The latest version of this phenomenon abandons the concept of hell. As we used to say in Greek class, orthodoxy is my doxy. Heterodoxy is another man's doxy.

If theocracies are wrong because in the end they conclude that human beings are essentially evil and need to be ruled, liberal democracies are wrong because they believe that people are essentially good and can be trusted to their own devices. The basis for American style limited government, by contrast, is a moral conclusion derived from long experience on English soil which believes that men are first and foremost always at war in themselves.

"The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together: our virtues would be proud if our faults whipped them not; and our crimes would despair if they were not cherished by our own virtues."

-- William Shakespeare, All's Well That Ends Well, 4.3.84

From William Murchison, here:

From the Methodist standpoint, as it evolved in the late 20th century, the Lord was calling his people to adopt pretty much the social and political programs of the Democratic Party. ...

A poll at the church’s 1996 General Conference found that 60 percent of clergy delegates took the liberal side on social and political questions. The laity lagged only slightly behind, with 51 percent making the same affirmation. ...

Methodists, Episcopalians, Presbyterians - that is how it goes in the old mainline denominations. Leaders tug leftward; the path to the right leads often enough straight out the church door - to bodies with conservative commitments, or just to religious inertia. ...

Americans saw readily enough, as the dark night of Prohibition descended, that the Methodists and their allies had quit preaching and gone to meddling. Something deeper was wanted - an engagement with the high and serious purposes of God, first in creating man and woman, then in saving them.

The Four Fags of the Poxeclipse

Your Pastor Could Be a Fudgepacker if . . .

. . . "he" is from the Presbyterian Church USA, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the United Church of Christ, or the Episcopal Church.

Of course, she could be a rugmuncher, on the other hand.

The PCUSA voted Tuesday to allow gay ordinations, according to the story (here) from Reuters, which states that in the last five years about only 100 congregations have separated from the 11,000 strong denomination over the issue.

The only upside is it's getting easier and easier to eliminate the choices from the Sunday menu.

"Getting saved" is quickly being re-defined as escaping from liberal Protestantism.