I'm disturbed by what seems the callous dismissal of those "now fruitless branches," and suspicious of assurances that God is behind the declining numbers.

Gosh I'm tired of this sort of nonsense analysis. Just this week a Gallup poll revealed that confidence in organized religion is at an all time low across the board, with the sex scandal being a more causal issue for Roman Catholics and parallel scandals among prominent evangelicals having an influence there. Nothing in their analysis suggested it was liberality that equated with decline. The broader view of organized religion as mean, narrow and homophobic has been well researched by the Barna group and again it had nothing to do with liberality.

It is far fairer to say that Christianity is in decline because of the authoritarian turn it has taken, from Rome's assertion of greater papal infallibility to conservative protestants' discrediting the Bible through over extension of its authority.
Liberals have hardly been ascendant in the public square throughout this Murdochian era of vituperative "journalism" despite the election of President Obama. We shall see if the country continues to skew to the right, but volume wise the voices of right wing religion far outweigh the social gospel.
Not to mention, of course, the concerted efforts of groups like the Institute for Religion and Demagoguery (oops Democracy) who are in the midst of their twenty year jihad against religious liberals, having orchestrated destructive attacks on Episcopalians, Methodists and Presbyterians. Nothing even remotely comparable has been done against conservatives, nothing.
And yet we continue to cower before this nonsense instead of standing up and boldly proclaiming that God's truth and mercy is wider than human understanding. At GC77 we finally, after six years of bowing and scraping before the wrath of the Archbishop of Canterbury, stood up and said what we meant: that All means ALL. We did not say it strongly enough about the Anglican Covenant, but we disregarded, for the first time, actually, the Windsor Moratorium on Rites for Blessings and produced a "provisional" rite.

Finally the claim that "liberals" are not attentive to spirituality is bunkum. It's just not your momma's or pappa's spirituality any more. The most liberal people in the Episcopal Church planned this event and at least on the House of Deputies side we were blessed with wonderful spiritual guidance. I doubt that they "seek" differently at home. Episcopalians and Anglicans have a deep yearning too, for comprehension, that wide and deep search for truth, understanding and union with God and others that begins with respecting the spirit in all people regardless of their religion. Even more we respect how bridges get built by shared truths that allow us to walk the same paths most often in ministry, but often in meditation too.
The apocryphal story of St. Francis and the Caliph is exemplary of this point.

What I invite us to do is to stop apologizing for who we are and cease trying to get the hatchet people to understand. They won't. What they do do is to prove the point about mean spiritedness in the mouthy conservative Christian world. We need to become bold in publicizing the contrast and bold too in our confidence in All meaning ALL.

Yea, Michael. Amen.

And Ross Douthat would do better not to try to pretend he knows what the transcendent God wants. He thinks and writes no better in his opinion of the Episcopal Church than he does on various other subjects in his columns, which I gave up reading, because they're not worth my time and attention.

June Butler

Another helpful and articulate protest to the doomsayers and trivializers:

http://peculiarfaith.com/2012/07/14/when-liberal-rhymes-with-theology-its-time-for-evangelism/

I want to thank Fr. Ohmer for recalling us to the great scriptural and necessarily spiritual idea of pruning. I believe that faithful Christians have experienced it our lives, perhaps frequently and dramatically, but always for the sake of our greater witness to the Gospel and person of Jesus Christ. Why should this beloved church of ours be any different? When the church is able to return to the unashamed presentation of Jesus, the church will grow in the Gospel. Perhaps that growth will not be in numbers, but it will be in faithfulness and love. This growth will not be because we espouse either liberal or conservative positions (which so quickly change with the age) for both are subsumed in the Gospel. If we worship the One Whom we claim is Lord of the Church, then we should know that we are always - always - come what may - in the best of hands. Carlton Kelley+

The problem with this penchant for pruning (besides the fact that it lets us off the hook for mismanagement of the Church) is that it necessarily asserts that (those awful, fruitless, institution-loving Piskies of the 1950's having been lopped off) what's left are the nice, juicy, productive branches, made up of the True Blue Christians - us. It really is an arrogant vision of the Church.

When it comes to the Episcopal Church Ross Douthat's opinions are about as credible as those of the IRD. If Douthat feels the need to criticize a branch of the church let him stick to his own: Roman Catholicism. There's more than enough subject matter to write about.

Today, by contrast, the leaders of the Episcopal Church and similar bodies often don’t seem to be offering anything you can’t already get from a purely secular liberalism.

"Right on target", my kiester.

What does he thinks happens at an Episcopal parish at 10AM on a Sunday? An organizing confab of the workers syndicate to impose mandatory abortion and gay marriage?! O_o

No, we worship God. We pray, we praise, we reverently consume the Body & Blood of Jesus Christ. We re-enter the world, thankful for refreshment and fellowship in Christ. Precisely NONE of which one can "get from a purely secular liberalism"!

JC Fisher

I'm increasingly struck by this rash of errant opinion pieces that the secular culture is as much bewildered by us as it might seem to be on the warpath.

We're not perfect, but our inadvertently confusing both the liberal cynics and the reactionary conservatives suggests to me we might just be on the path that Jesus intends...

When Michael Russell launches his 'nonsensical analysis' attack, not to mention 'bowing and scraping before the archbishop of Canterbury', my heart sinks. I wonder what Mr Russell means by spiritual yearning apart from attacking those with whom he disagrees. He is apparently called to a political career. Today in our local church, I heard a monk 'unpacking' the first chapter in Ephesians, no mention of 'rights' or 'rites', just that we should each discern how Jesus in his love calls each of us. Praise the Lord for the Good News and His Grace. On the numbers point which so upset Mr Russell, he might consider Acts 5:38-39.

Diana Butler Bass has just released a very cogent, thoughtful, and (as always) data-driven alternative to the article.

As an Episcopal priest I've been listening to and reading about all that General Conventions past and present have been doing for the last 10 years. Some of what all these writers have mentioned is true. What I liked about Douthat's article is that it calls us back to committed, costly faith as the source of our desire to change the world.

Fr. Ohmer's examples of how the church is doing this may be fine, but other than the Bible Challenge, they are inaccessible to the person in the pew or the poor country parson. Let's be as inclusive in our support of the church's leaders as we are of people who belong to other minorities in our culture.

revsalin - please sign your name when you comment. Thanks ~ed.