2 of 2

In a message posted on his blog, Bishop of Bethlehem (Pennsylvania) Paul V. Marshall warned that the denomination's failure to uphold historic Christian teachings had made it an embarrassment.

"As a Church we are increasingly a laughing-stock … because we do not consistently proclaim a solid core, words as simple as 'all have sinned and come short of the glory of God,' yet 'God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself,'" Marshall wrote.

Thew Forrester's theological and liturgical innovations are too extreme for a majority of the Episcopal Church, said Greg Griffith, founder of the conservative Anglican website StandFirmInFaith.com. But that doesn't mean that the Episcopal Church is ready to embrace the faith once delivered to the saints, he added.

"All the Episcopal Church has done is to say that someone who is clearly not a Christian may not be one of its bishops," Griffith said. "It may be history in the making, but it's hardly a grand or noble achievement, and certainly not a signal that the Episcopal Church is returning to orthodoxy."

"In any other church—evangelical, Catholic, Orthodox, Pentecostal—this person wouldn't get to go to seminary, let alone be able to lead" an entire regional body, said Kendall Harmon, canon theologian of the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina. The fact that a diocese chose Thew Forrester and that nearly 30 standing committees have voted to confirm him is troubling, Harmon said.

Harmon and other theological conservatives also noted that the opposition to Thew Forrester is fragmented. A few oppose him because he was the only candidate for bishop on the ballot. Others say he should have gone before the proper channels before rewriting the Apostles' Creed and baptismal covenant. Only a minority oppose Thew Forrester because they believe the changes are contrary to Christian teaching, Harmon said.

"This is not something to celebrate. It's something to be sad about. It reveals a deeply, deeply unhealthy church," he said.

But Bill Carroll, rector at Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd in Athens, Ohio, says the vote may be a turning point for his denomination. "I think history will remember this as the point when the Episcopal Church began to show some backbone about basic Christian doctrine," he wrote in a comments thread at EpiscopalCafe.com. "For too long, we have allowed our respect for difference to mean anything goes. There are boundaries."

Christian leaders outside the Episcopal Church said the church's handling of Thew Forrester has implications beyond the denomination.

"If a so-called bishop does not agree with the central elements of the Christian faith, then he should not call himself a Christian, let alone a bishop—nor should a church ordain him. He is an apostate from the Faith; and a church that ordains such a one is also apostate," said George O. Wood, general superintendent of the Assemblies of God.

Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President Albert Mohler agrees.

"The difference between orthodoxy and heresy is of vital importance to every evangelical believer," he said. "We should feel grief and pain whenever we see a church that is involved in this kind of basic theological turmoil and where we hear the truth of the gospel denied, because it compromises the gospel witness of Christians around the world."

Copyright © 2009 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Frank E. Lockwood, religion editor at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, has been extensively covering the dispute over Kevin Thew Forrester at his blog, Bible Belt Blogger.

A Christianity Today article in March noted that Thew Forrester and a Muslim priest were raising questions about syncretism in the church.

More articles on the widening division in the Anglican Church are available in our full coverage area.

first page |  2 of 2

share this page

June (Web-only) 2009, Vol. 53