EPISCOPAL CHURCH TO REMOVE
“HUSBAND AND WIFE” FROM MARRIAGE LITURGY
BY DAVID CLOUDSEE: https://www.wayoflife.org/friday_church_news/19-20.php; republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:
(Friday Church News Notes, May 18, 2018, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) -
The ultra-liberal Episcopal Church in the United States is planning to remove from its marriage liturgy terms deemed offensive to homosexuals. The words “union of husband and wife” will be replaced with “the union of two people” and “for the procreation of children” will be changed to “for the gift of children” (reflecting same-sex adoptions).
The Episcopal Church, which is part of the worldwide Anglican Communion, has been on this path for a long time. The denomination has never been a New Testament church by any biblical standard, and it has been increasingly permeated with theological liberalism since the early part of the 20th century. In 1960, Episcopal Bishop James Pike said the doctrine of the Trinity is “outdated, incomprehensible and nonessential” (The Christian Century, Dec. 21, 1960). After heresy charges were brought against Pike in 1967, the Episcopal Church adopted a resolution declaring that all heresy was out of date. In 1976, John Spong was ordained as the bishop of the Episcopal diocese of Newark, New Jersey, even though he denied practically every doctrine of the Christian faith. In 1985, the Jesus Seminar was founded with strong support from Episcopalians, including Marcus Borg of Oregon State University. The Seminar wickedly claimed that Jesus spoke only about 20% of the things attributed to him in the New Testament and that the Jesus described in the Bible is largely fiction. In 1993, a survey of nearly 20,000 Episcopalians showed that seventy percent believed “faithful Christians can be sexually active gays and lesbians” (Christian News, Nov. 1, 1993). Seventy-five percent approved of living with someone of the opposite sex without marriage. In his 1991 book Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism, Spong said the apostle Paul was “a self hating, repressed homosexual.” In 1998, Spong said, “I would choose to loathe rather than to worship a deity who required the sacrifice of his son” (Christianity Today, June 15, 1998). In April 2003, Episcopalian bishop Charles Bennison said that Jesus Christ was a sinner (Worthy News, April 14, 2003). Two months later, the Diocese of New Hampshire elected the first openly homosexual bishop in the history of the Episcopal Church (V. Gene Robinson). In June 2006, the national convention of the Episcopal Church in America voted overwhelmingly against a resolution stating “an unchanging commitment to Jesus Christ as the son of God, the only name by which any person may be saved.” In her first sermons after being elected as presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church in 2006, Katharine Jefferts Schori referred to “our mother Jesus.”
