If I recall correctly, Yousseff is the pastor of something that calls itself an "independent Anglican church." A look at the church's website fails to reveal anything particularly Anglican about it.

@Bill, I was looking at that today and got a little lost, too. The only thing I could find was in the description of themselves:

The “Anglican” part is that we stand in the Anglican tradition, specifically, in the pattern of church government as well as various practices of worship.

Seemed pretty mingy to me.

Though for what it's worth, at least by title, they do have a rector, a Vestry, etc.

Torey Lightcap

I have to ask Bill and Torey, what would you say makes someone "really" Anglican/Episcopalian? I've been trying for months to get an answer and being non-dogmatic, willing to change one's doctrine/beliefs and believing in social justice and saving the planet seem to be all anyone can agree on. Going over to the post "Episcopal 101" on Daily Episcopalian and looking at the comments seems to prove that you can't get anyone to agree on pretty much anything, even among liberals in the church. So how do you decide what story to tell or what "Episcopalian" means? Having the BCP but not believing it? Saying the Creeds whether you believe them or not? Or is being "real" Episcopalian being baptized as an infant and just sitting in a pew on an occasional Sunday in a building associated with TEC no matter what or if you believe? I'm not trying to be snide. I'd very much like a real definition.

Chris Harwood

Christians vote their conscience and they're not embarrassed about it. Michael Youssef is from Egypt, & Lebanon, so he certainly has a unique perspective on Western civilization, and the US Constitution. I respect his opinion born from persecution & hardship. He has a worldwide ministry: 'Leading the Way' which serves 200 countries.

The problem of defining Episcopalian is derived from that of defining Anglicanism in general, and indeed the Church of England itself. O have found the most telling description in Kate Fox's "Watching the English" (an English anthropologist's view of the English) in the chapter about the religion, in particular the Church of England:

"In any case, the Church of England is the least religious church on Earth. It is notoriously woolly-minded, tolerant to a fault and amiably non-prescriptive. To put yourself down as ‘C of E’ (we prefer to use this abbreviation whenever possible, in speech as well as on forms, as the word ‘church’ sounds a bit religious, and ‘England’ might seem a bit patriotic) on a census or application form, as is customary, does not imply any religious observance or beliefs whatsoever – not even a belief in the existence of God. Alan Bennett once observed, in a speech to the Prayer Book Society, that in the Anglican Church ‘whether or not one believes in God tends to be sidestepped. It’s not quite in good taste. Someone said that the Church of England is so constituted that its members can really believe anything at all, but of course almost none of them do’."

So make of that what you will, that is the distillation of an anthropologist with no axe to grind, who totally nails it. If the CofE can't be defined with any great precision, then how can Anglicanism in general and Episcopalianism in particular be any easier?

"He has a worldwide ministry: 'Leading the Way' which serves 200 countries. "

At the risk of invoking Godwin's law, Hitler had a pretty good following for a time...

Number of followers is not necessarily a good indication of worthiness of being followed. Oh, and Ashton Kutcher says hi, too.

Chris H:

I'm trying to square

I'm not trying to be snide. I'd very much like a real definition.

with

Having the BCP but not believing it? Saying the Creeds whether you believe them or not? Or is being "real" Episcopalian being baptized as an infant and just sitting in a pew on an occasional Sunday in a building associated with TEC no matter what or if you believe?

[ALL of which seem to involve (contra Elizabeth I) "making windows into souls"]

and failing.

*God* gets to decide whether someone "believes what they say/purport/park their pew-sit they believe. Accept no substitutes!

JC Fisher

[Smart-aleck wags will note that, above, I fail my very own standard. Not the first time, and surely (Kyrie eleison!) not the last. My bad! JC Fisher.]

Chris, I would expect that a congregation calling itself Anglican would at the very least have an episcopal structure, affirm the historic Creeds, and use some version of the Book of Common Prayer. As far as I can tell, Church of the Apostles does none of these. Yousseff seems to have been ordained by the Sydney diocese but if he or his church is in any current relationship with ++Jensen or any other bishop it doesn't come across on the website. As far as I can tell, an "Independent Anglican" congregation is self-describing using an oxymoron. I'm also old fashioned enough to think that being Anglican has to do with being in communion with the See of Canterbury, but in this day of "continuing" bodies and illegal boundary crossings that seems to have dropped away.

Your question seems to have less to do with corporate Anglicanism, though, and more to do with what individual Episcopalians believe. I'm afraid I can't be of much help there. I would point out that this is not the first time in Anglican history that there seemed to be a gap between the affirmed corporate faith of the Church at large and what individuals in the Church believed.

Chris,

I found the "What we Believe" section at http://www.episcopalchurch.org/ and all its contents to provide a more comprehensive explanation about what is means to be an Anglican (Episcopalian) in America.

Eric

Bill, so it IS just parking yourself in a pew that pays tupence to Canterbury. And an ACNA church that follows the BCP isn't. OK. A clear definition at last.
JCF, it's become quite common to hear both liberal and conservative sides say they are the "real" deal. But when I hear a liberal go on about how they love TEC because of the BCP or the mystery and sacrament of the Eucharist and then hear the same person,often a priest or bishop, go on about how the resurrection was just metaphor, the BCP needs changing, isn't inclusive enough, needs more Goddess, or that traditionalists are bigots for agreeing with the BCP on the whole ss marriage bit, I wonder what exactly is so wonderful about a faith and book they think is so wrong. Why get up on Sunday to recite fairy tales, even inspiring ones? The article mentions kingmaking, is the lure of the priesthood, right and left, really just controlling others' faith?

As for the original story, the fact the evangelicals can't agree is a good thing for Obama and shows just how bad the Republican lineup is this year. Good luck getting influence in universities, though.

Chris Harwood

Chris, I don't think there is any way of knowing what the people in any denomination actually believe. You are probably familiar with the mountains of survey data indicating all the different issues on which American Catholics disagree with the Pope. Yet people always speak as though there is a very clear standard about what Catholics believe, and then contrast that to the wishy-washy (cake or death) Anglicans. There is a very clear standard about what the Catholic hierarchy says Catholics should believe. After that, not so much.

I think most people in most churches believe things other than what the leaders of their churches tell them they should believe, and that in many instances they are unaware of what their church teaches on a particular issue. This is just the nature of things. There isn't anything particularly Anglican about it.

Also, it feels to me that "parking yourself in a pew" is not to be scoffed at as fewer and fewer people do it.

Chris, you may have found what you were looking for, but you seem to have done so by ignoring the parts of my comment you couldn't use to your advantage.

Chris - be careful with sweeping generalizations of people who are liberal and assuming they believe everything you wrote in your last comment. I know many people in my congregation would be considered "liberal" but believe in a real resurrection, love the BCP, and think it is way more inclusive than, say, the old 1928 book. Goddesses??

Also, I know many people personally who sit in the pews of conservative congregations who have viewpoints that are in direct conflict with their denominations. I know Pentecostals, Catholics, Missouri Synod Lutherans, Presbyterians who have confided in me that if their inner beliefs were exposed to their leadership that they may get expelled from their church. Yet they attend each week and see no conflict. My assumption is if such people were as free to talk about their faith in the open, as they are in the Episcopal Church, you would also be judging them harshly. Thank God they are expected to "keep quiet".

Eric

Chris, Eric makes excellent points in both of his comments. The "What We Believe" tab at www.episcopalchurch.org DOES do an excellent job of setting forth what the Episcopal Church teaches. How closely an individual hews to those teachings is something beyond my pay grade.

And sweeping generalizations about what groups of people believe ARE tricky. I would suggest that they are especially tricky when based on what a small number of people say; at the Episcopal 101 post on Daily Episcopalian I counted only 5 participants in the thread. I don't think that makes for a wide sampling of the thought and belief of Episcopalians as a whole. And it would be a mistake to assume that someone who adheres to a "liberal" line when it comes to one aspect of Christian faith and practice necessarily adopts a "liberal" view in all areas. The same holds true for someone holding "conservative" views in one area.

UPDATE on story: Santorum seems to have won Iowa.

I am old enough to remember when evangelicals would never cast a vote for a Roman Catholic candidate.

Eric said: "I know many people in my congregation would be considered "liberal" but believe in a real resurrection, love the BCP..."

I am one of those people.

Chris Harwood, if you don't mean to be snide, then you paint with far too broad a brush. I'm thankful that in the Episcopal Church, we don't make it a practice to examine what's in people's hearts before we allow them into our pews.

June Butler

"I am old enough to remember when evangelicals would never cast a vote for a Roman Catholic candidate."

Not just evangelicals - my parents left the Presbyterians (diapered me in tow) because one Sunday during the Kennedy-Nixon contest the minister announced from the pulpit that no Protestant should ever vote for a Catholic. And that was in Texas, where voting Democrat was the law...

Bill, then it was worse than I knew back in the olden days. How times change.

June Butler

David Neff says right at the top of the column that he wasn't invited to the meeting.

Yousseff began his church while still a TEC minister in the Atnada diocese. He told me that his bishop originally gave him permission to plant his church. Later the Bishop withdrew permission to plant - but by that time Youseff had already had a congregation of 400 and left TEC. Church of the Apostles now has a membership of 3,000.

(Obadiah Slope = John Sandeman)

That's odd - the website doesn't say he was ever associated with the Episcopal Church as far as I can tell. When was this?

Bill,

possibly 1987, in Atlanta. I am sure either the diocese or Church of the Apostles could tell you for sure.
John Sandeman

Not snide, heartbroken. And it's not the pews, but the pulpit that really bugs me. For both of my parents refuse to have anything to do with the church because of priests that didn't believe what they preached or what the website above says they do. My mother, the conservative who was crushed when the priest she went to for marriage counselling mocked her literalist faith. Many liberal blogs sound very much like that priest. And my father is an agnostic after talking to several different priests and deciding they were all church leaders because they wanted to control people, or get a bishop's hat, not because they had faith,since no particular faith is required. I can't help thinking that if the church wasn't going in so many different directions, my parents would have been more willing to look elsewhere than to simply say, "It's all a lie."

Sorry, the above is Chris Harwood.

Chris, I am really sorry for what happened to your mother. And I don't want to turn your personal story into a debate. So I ask with all respect whether her deeply regrettable treatment wasn't more a complete failure in pastoral care, more than it was a question of the priest's ideology. Any competent priest ought to be able to counsel someone whose views of their scripture differ from that of the priest. I am sorry your mother had to deal with someone who wasn't up to that.

I want to affirm what Jim N just said, Chris H.

I hope you can see, however re

Many liberal blogs sound very much like that priest.

that ANY kind of blog, and a counseling relationship, are COMPLETELY different contexts.

For better or worse, a blog (inc responses thereon) is more like an unrestrained Id. Whereas counseling requires an (ego-restraining) Superego!

My prayers for you and your family.

JC Fisher

Some time ago, but not so long as to be "obsolete," I felt that my knowledge of "charismatic evangelical fundamentalists" and what they'd been doing in the past few years needed updating. I'd been aware of their beginnings, development, spread, knew a few of their leaders, but hadn't looked in on them for some time.

So, I did.

Now, I am - and there are those here who've noted it with some dismay - not the first horse to leap whichever fence one might point me at.

Oh, I'm a grand jumper, nicely educated, trained well, got talent, mileage and experience to spare. But before you'll get spellbinding flight out of me, you'll surely put in time and pay dues... because I must, I mean, I simply MUST understand you first, then agree to the whole notion that this jump's worthwhile for YOU and the Faith and the Church and for me (which truly isn't arrogance, but just a matter of my having a soul to look out for, too!) Then, I'll find the very best path to approach that fence, get set just right, and... well, it can be glorious!

But if you need an easy hack-ride to go walloping around a course of fences haphazardly, you do not want me for your horse; plain fact.

So, knowing that, you may find it easier to imagine me clomping off like "Crusader Rabbit," intending to discover just what the "charismatic fundamentalist evangelicals" had been doing while I was otherwise occupied. And you may also get a faster picture of my chagrin when I wandered into their precincts.

Wow. No exclamation point. Just Wow.

Understanding them wasn't as difficult as their convoluted sermonizing made the task seem. Choking down their precepts and recognizing that millions of people mistook them for Christianity was like drinking Drain-O. Spending time around the people drawn to those ideas was a variable experience since they were 100% human, and people vary greatly.

Some truly believe that God and The Lord condone the vitriol and bile which they pass along and call "scripture." Others try to overlook the nastier bits and rationalize their membership as continuing a family tradition in what many would term "simple faith." And a few simply enjoy the political power, the "gospel of prosperity" nastiness, and the liberality of loathing which tends to characterize their supposedly "religious" discourse.

Reading through the responses above, seeing the warp and weft of thinking and viewpoints, I am struck by certain differences between those responses and their trends, and what I experienced of discussions among those whose election of Santorum as their candidate began this thread. First, demons have not arisen, either figuratively or as possible culprits of anything. Be advised, according to those "leaders" who voted Santorum into prominence amongst their "faithful," demons are everywhere - literally. I'm not being snide or sarcastic. Those "leaders" and their followers have more "demons on the brain" than the Spanish Inquisition.

Overall, the responses here trend towards helpfulness. Within the precincts of those "leaders," condemnation rules all things. Here, a single priest is thought to have been perhaps incompetent, and sorrow is expressed for the sad results of that lack. There, the "failing of faith" is the first cause of the disaster, assigned to the lady in question, her guilt descended of Eve's, a wrought-iron construction of gall and vinegar forced down the faithful's throat with Old Testament verses twisted into whips for lashing such "failed" fodder, and that fodder surely bound to be burned in Hell.

"Un-Christian"?

Well, yes. That's my point. Although I was familiar with their beginnings and foundations, even knew quite well the foibles upon which they were built, the fixation upon demons seemed more a matter of "projection" than anything else!

And no, it's certainly not surprising that millions of people are repelled by any mention of anything that they equate with such sheer wickedness - and it is indeed very wicked. Their "fear and loathing" of all who call themselves Christians is in no small measure caused by just such wickedness as that.

Are we Anglicans "wooly," in our outlook upon such things?

No, and articles that chop the forest down, looking for some mythical "sprig of truth," are opinions without stewardship, overblown to emphasize another point entirely, careless of the real threats that the whole Church faces. And please understand, the Church does face a very real threat now.

According to those "leaders," whose new campaign is "To Change the Whole Church and Christianity!," there are demons involved. Having spoken with some of those "leaders" not that long ago, there are days when I'm not quite entirely sure... but I think, I just might believe them, too.

Yet maybe, if we can just hold on long enough, just hang onto that helpful desire firmly enough, just maintain energy enough to be able to say, every time, every place, "I know, I know, dear. But that's not really us," then in the end, we'll be all right. After all, it's not the first time that we've stood against an "Inquisition," and upheld the Faith while doing it!

What Anglican was back then, at our beginning, Anglican and Episcopal still are, even now.

Blessings! Rev. CW Brockenbrough