New bishop has feeble following
By MICHAEL COREN


Pass another cup of tea and a cucumber sandwich, please. Better still, make it a sherry because, darling, the Anglicans are in a spin.
Last week the U.S. Episcopalian Church, the American equivalent of Canada's Anglicans or the Church of England, chose Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori as the new leader of its 2.3-million-member denomination.
The lady bishop is an oceanographer by training and thinks that, "the great message of Jesus is to include the excluded."
Golly, who knew? I thought the great message of Jesus might have been what Jesus said was the great message of Jesus. Something along the lines of loving God and our neighbours, but also hating sin and sticking hard and fast to moral laws and godly purity.
Asked if homosexuality was a sin, the good lady replied that she didn't think so.
"I believe that God creates us with different gifts. Each one of us comes into this world with a different collection of things that challenge us and things that give us joy and allow us to bless the world around us."
As for all those references to sexual sin and God's detestation for homosexuality in that Bible thing that some people read, the bish said that it was written "in a different historical context by people asking different questions."
Oh I see. Different time, different people. So turning the other cheek, helping the poor and loving those who are hard to love don't apply any longer because we now ask different questions.
Poor Bishop Schori, she really is rather out of her depth. Which is ironic, in that she's an oceanographer.
Thing is, none of it really matters. Her church boasts 2.3 million members but the vast majority of them are over the age of 60 and the denomination is in a terrifying decline.
The diocese of Newark for example, the centre of liberal Protestant Christianity in America, has lost 46% of its members since 1972. Put simply, it will cease to exist within a generation.
The numbers in Canada for the Anglicans are similarly disastrous. Between 1961 and 2001, the church lost 53% of its members, slimming down from 1.36 million to a mere 642,000.
In the period between 1981 and 1991, Anglican church membership decreased by 13%. Between 1991 and 2001, the numbers dropped by more than 20%. In other words, 13,000 people are leaving every year.
It will virtually disappear within the lifetime of most people reading this column. The same is true of every mainline Protestant denomination, including the Presbyterians and the United Church. Overwhelmingly white, overwhelmingly old and, let's be clear here, overwhelmingly liberal.
Theirs is a liberalism that says that the Bible has to be edited rather than followed, that we can ordain homosexuals and that sin is whatever someone like Michael Moore says it is.
In case you believe that all churches are in such trouble, there are 60 million evangelicals in the U.S. -- and the numbers grow each year. There is similar success for such churches in Canada, Europe, Africa and Asia.
Roman Catholicism lost people in the more liberal 1960s and '70s, but the numbers are climbing exponentially because of Pope John Paul and a newly empowered orthodoxy.
The causes of the failure are obvious, but the solutions would require people to put Christianity before fashionable politics. Not going to happen. Better make that sherry a double.