It's been a sad old business, but the Episcopal Church of the USA is beginning to realign now on a permanent basis. Truro Church in Fairfax and The Falls Church in Falls Church, two of the oldest and most influential in the USA have had enough of the novelties and reasonings of the current hierachy. Things have come to a head ever since Gene Robinson, an avowedly gay man in a relationship, was made Bishop of New Hampshire. Under the leadership of Mrs Katharine Jefferts Schori it is only time before many more move to a new home within Anglicanism.
My personal feeling is that the once harmonious Church that was very much the same wherever you went within the United States, became a kind of refuge for the new age zealot. Now firmly in control, they want their brand of "loose-ended" Christianity accepted. However, woe betide those that don't fall into line. Comprehensiveness? Not any more!
George Washington served as a vestry member in Truro Parish as did his father, Augustine. What would they make of it all? The creeds and confessions enable the church, as in the words of Vincent of Lerins (d. 450) "to hold fast to what has been believed everywhere, always, and by all" (Commonitores). Being told that we must believe in things so different from those that George Washington heard his rector say is not a sound practice. By that thought process, the Christian Faith will end up as if going through a version of Chinese whispers!
A lengthy and expensive legal fight is expected over those historic church properties, which are worth millions of dollars. "We fully intend to assert the church's canonical and legal rights over these properties," Bishop Peter Lee of Virginia said in a news release, calling it a "sad day for the church."
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