In London, more Muslims attend Friday prayers than Anglicans attend Sunday services. Last December, on the Sunday after former Prime Minister Tony Blair was received into the Catholic Church, more Catholics than Anglicans attended services in England, an increasingly common occurrence now, five centuries after the Reformation.
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The Episcopal Church once was America's upper crust at prayer. Today it is "progressive" politics cloaked -- very thinly -- in piety. Episcopalians' discontents tell a cautionary tale for political as well as religious associations. As the church's doctrines have become more elastic, the church has contracted. It celebrates an "inclusiveness" that includes fewer and fewer members."
- George Will, Townhall.com
Wait. The Anglican Church? Don't they ordain women AND have openly gay clergy? Isn't that the Church that people WANT? Hmm..why would they lose 1.1 million people over a generation??
Maybe...just maybe...the same forces that brought "innovation" to the Anglican Church are the same forces that relegated religion to a particular disposition instead of complete world view. When you define yourself in negative terms (NOT Catholic, NOT Protestant), you have no positive affirmation to define yourself. The "Third World" Anglicans have cultural sensibilities keeping them in fidelity with their more or less Catholic heritage; the Western Anglicans, as the foundations of Christian society have dissolved away, have seen their Church turn into a hollow shell.
-Steve K.
