High school students from the dioceses of Michigan and the Great Lakes gathered recently at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Lansing to learn how to work faithfully toward ending gun violence through community organizing.
At the Jan. 16-18 Youth Working to End Gun Violence Retreat, the 17 participating teenagers were surprised to learn that “there are more gun dealers in the United States than there are McDonald’s and Starbucks together,” Labron, a parishioner at the Church of the Messiah in Detroit and a high school senior, told Episcopal News Service. “That’s really disturbing.”
Labron, last name held by request, said he personally knows “a lot of” people, including former friends, who were killed by gun violence. He registered for the retreat to learn how to be an effective gun violence reduction advocate.
The Detroit-based Diocese of Michigan co-hosted the retreat with Team ENOUGH, the youth outreach wing of the nonprofit Brady: United Against Gun Violence. Adult staff from The Episcopal Church and the dioceses of Ohio and Colorado observed the retreat to potentially implement a similar churchwide program, said Michigan Bishop Bonnie Perry.
“We want to be really rooted in the context of the state of Michigan and to look at ways that kids can both explore and embody their baptismal covenants,” Perry, a co-convener of the Bishops United Against Gun Violence network, told ENS before the retreat. “We want the youth to be equipped to tell their story and understand how they might be involved in community organizing to educate adults as to how to keep them safer.”
— The Christian Post in Episcopal Church omits membership total in annual report; baptisms fell considerably in the past decade
As long as the state benefits from the church and the church benefits from the state the church, all churches unless they are explicitly anti-state, will eventually merge with the state.
Not long ago I had a quick job in a church. The elderly woman who was there to let me in to do the work kept talking about how there were only about a dozen members left and they were all over 70. So I asked why she thought there was no new blood filling in the seats. She went on with the common excuses I imagine all dying churches repeat to themselves and in doing so mentioned that they were Episcopalian. That rang a bell and I asked “wasn’t there some sort of split or divorce a few years back?”
She said, yes, there was. She wasn’t sure what it was over or why it happened. At this point I realized I knew more about her churches recent events than she did. Then she became sort of sullen and said something like “I’ve always gone to church and there are nice people at church. I don’t know why they have to make it complicated.”
So, what I gather is that churchies are a lot like voters. Most of them are mindlessly going through comfortable motions without ever given any real thought to anything they’re doing and holding no real, solid beliefs at all. Simply being led around by “shepherds” with their own agendas.
After the ‘split’, my dad realized the Episcopalian church no longer represented him, so he sought out options. See my post blow with details on what he found…
Meanwhile, Orthodox Christian art proudly glorifies the burning communist propaganda and depicts communists burning in hell. Any wonder it’s the fastest growing church in the US and one of the fastest growing in the world?
The Episcopal church went hopelessly ‘woke’ a long time back. Decades back.
If you are of the Episcopalian faith looking for a home, check out the ‘Anglican Church’.
The Anglican faith is is old-school Episcopalian, using the 1928 prayer book.
*ZERO* woke bullshit.
https://anglicanchurch.net/find-a-congregation/
My local congregation is personally heavily armed while celebrating the mass…
There are other orthodox Anglican denominations who withdrew from the Episcopal church as wekk (eg, Anglican Catholic Church, Anglican Church in America, Anglican Province of Christ the King). It’s tragic that the denomination known as “Anglican Church in North America” did not stand up to feminism at the time of the split. They retained the lady priests, and with that, the seed of their eventual demise.
Anything progressive touch
I grew up in the Episcopal Church and I just loved it. I was an acolyte for 8 years and, in college, was actively considering the ministry. Then, browsing a political magazine, I happened upon an article about the fact that an Episcopal bishop had announced that he was an atheist. The church’s hierarchy talked it over and decided that, faith or no faith, he could and should remain a bishop. That was the beginning of the end. Finally, at age 50, my wife and I (three close members of her family are Episcopal clergy) moved on. It was heartbreaking and, frankly, I miss the Episcopal liturgy every Sunday. Still, it was like breaking up with a lifelong lover.
The Episcopal Church is a non-Christian pagan cult.
VERY strange place for a Religion article But Episcopalians want to be Catholic but are afraid of the Social Stigma of being Catholic. Poor, priest-ridden, Democrat, Kennedys, etc. But then Methodists are non-Calvinist Protestants who don’t have the money to afford to be Episcopalians. Unitarians would like to be Jews but don’t like the ritual and dietary nonsense!
You have the direction right, but the decline is not slow.
How long before the abandoned churches become mosques?