I link the following story and highlight a few salient points not because I am any kind of expert on the Episcopalian church (I definitely am not) but because it provides a pretty stern warning for those out there who would like the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to imitate the liberal tactics espoused by the Episcopalians (and other liberal mainline churches, which are losing members in droves).
It appears that people who go to church actually prefer churches that stand for something rather than just reflecting the pieties of the secular culture.
Read this on the collapse of the Episcopalian church.
And read this on the huge decline in membership of liberal mainline churches and why it is happening.
A few key quotations:
Among the old mainstream denominations reporting to the National Council of Churches, the Episcopal Church suffered the worst loss of membership from 1992-2002 — plunging from 3.4 million members to 2.3 million for a 32 percent loss. In the NCC’s 2012 yearbook, the Episcopal Church admitted another 2.71 percent annual membership loss.
At this year’s convention, David Virtue reported: “In all the talk about same sex this and transgender that, there is absolutely no talk about sin. A psychologist friend of mine opined that talk of ‘sin’ here would be considered psychologically damaging and offensive to a lot of people, especially gays, so it is off the radar screen. ‘No sin, please; we’re Episcopalians.’
Why are Episcopalians leaving one of the oldest denominations in America? Perhaps that can be answered by New Hampshire’s V. Gene Robinson, the openly homosexual Episcopal bishop. When he addressed the fifth annual Planned Parenthood “prayer breakfast” April 15, 2006 in Washington, D.C., he declared that “religious people” are the enemy.
Indeed, this is what we need. Religion without any actual religious people.