When one ponders the reasons the Episcopal Church is hemorrhaging there are symptoms and causal factors. I suspect that disputes over issues like ordination of women and gays are symptoms. In turn, causation can be found in essays like those offered by Katharine Jefferts Schori, Presiding Bishop and Primate of the Episcopal Church in the United States, who writes:
Our mission as a Church is the reconciliation of the world. We will continue to feed the hungry, house the homeless, educate children, heal the sick, minister to those in prison, and speak good news to those who have only heard the world's bad news. That is the work to which Jesus calls us, and that is the work we shall continue - with a priority of peace and justice work framed by the Millennium Development Goals. May God bless that which seeks to unite and build up and heal this broken world.
Notice several things. First, "reconciliation of the world." Reconciliation means bringing two people back together. Yet, Bishop Schori apparently is afraid to speak the name of He to whom the world must be reconciled. Second, compare the Bishop's mission statement to that of Christ:
Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.
The tasks outlined by Bishop Schori are indeed tasks assigned to all believers, but the Church's core mission as defined in the Great Commission is conspicuously lacking from her statement of mission. At beast, it's buried in the single reference to spreading good news. The increasingly routine shattering of millenia old traditions by the northern hemisphere branches of the Anglican - Episcopalian church are but mere symptoms of this larger falling away by the Church of Sardis.
