Lack of Patience?

I suppose it is true. I have no patience when it comes to blatant dishonesty and false doctrine. I made a remark that was a bit sharp in an e-mail to one of the Reformed Episcopal seminaries and that e-mail somehow was forwarded to Bishop Royal Grote in Texas. I will post my initial e-mail and his response here:


----- Original Message -----
From: RoyalREC1@aol.com
To: CranmerHouse@aol.com
Cc: guapoduck1959@cfl.rr.com
Sent: Friday, September 02, 2005 3:38 PM
Subject: Re: Roy, who is this person? Anglo-Catholic?
In a message dated 9/2/2005 12:11:30 PM Central Daylight Time, CranmerHouse writes:

To whom it may concern:

I fail to see how the REC can continue to call itself Reformed or Anglican or even Evangelical since it has decided to go the way of union with an Anglo-Catholic denomination, APA.

While I don't prefer low church worship, my theological commitments are confessional and creedal. Anglo-Catholicism is a gross distortion of the Anglican Reformation and the 39 Articles of Religion. How the Reformed Episcopal Church can agree to such deception and compromise is beyond me, especially since the REC was founded on Evangelical Protestant principles and in protest to Anglo-Catholic triumphalistic tendencies in the Protestant Episcopal Church of that time.

The bishops of the REC should be ashamed of themselves.

Sincerely in Christ,

Charlie Ray

Bishop Grote's response:

I'm sorry you have rushed to such judgement without having all the facts and in doing so, you have embarassed yourself. ]

The REC is discussing and working on a PROCESS OF POSSIBLE MERGER with the Anglican Province of America which also holds to the 39 articles of Religion. This process is ongoing and may or may not occur depending on the outcome of the dialogue.

As to being not being Evangelical, this past July the Clerical and Lay Leadership of all the parishes in both the REC and APA were instructed in detail as to how to implement the Christiaity Explored program of evangelism in every parish. If that is not an Evangelical Emphasis, I don't know what is. Check out Christianity Explored website and you will see it is consistant with Reformed Theology and and an Evangelical posture

As to making a blanket statement that the APA is an Anglo-Catholic Province, I suggest you read the Anglican Faith and Practice document on both our websites. This document articulates the official positions of both jurisdictions in regard to essential beliefs that are commonly shared. .

As to being Reformed, I have spoken to a large number of their Clergy and know them to believe in justification by faith alone.IWhile there ae certain practices which are uncomfortable to Reformed Episcopalians and requre more dialogue with the APA, I would not call their jurisdiction Anglo-Catholic. They exhibit none of the exlusivistic attitude of the 19th Century Anglo-Catholicism. I also know on none of them that wish to become Roman Catholics. and quite frankly, I have found many of them to be more charitable in their dialogue than you, good sir.

I would suggest to you that the enemy we need to be fighting is manifested in the liberal jurisdictions which deny the Authority of Holy Scripture, the Articles of Religion, and twist the plain meaning of words.

It is always unfortunate when people who are not part of a process seek to rush to judgement rather than exhibiting patient charity.

One Bishop who is not ashamed of dialoguing with fellow Christians

Bishop Grote

• Here is my response:

I was asked to leave the APA church here because I disagreed with one of the priests there on the issue of justification by faith alone.

The trouble with Anglo-Catholcism is double talk. Redefining the 39 Articles to fit Anglo-Catholic preconceptions is disingenuous at best.

Anglo-Catholics deny the principles of the English Reformation. If not, then why was the reaction by the priest at St. Albans' Cathedral so severe?

I personally prefer high church worship. However, when the solas of the Reformation are disgarded so readily I have problems.

I can assure you I know my theology and I have read the documents you mentioned. I see equivocation and double talk coming from the APA side of it and I can't help but think that you and the other bishops in the REC are well aware of those equivocations and compromises as you indicated by the "continuing" dialogue.

Sincerely in Christ,

Charlie Ray

It seems to me that the Reformed Episcopal Church has forgotten its reason for being. Anglo-Catholicism has not changed. Anglo-Catholics still use the principles in John Henry Newman's Tract 90 to redefine the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion so as to make its Reformed and Protestant doctrines of no effect. It's no different from a theological liberal redefining sexual ethics to fit their own presuppositions and then looking to re-interpret Holy Scripture to support the innovation. Anglo-Catholics have used an extraordinary innovation to make the doctrine of justification by faith alone, explicated in Holy Scripture and in the Thirty-Nine Articles, a semi-pelagian and Romish doctrine. This is of all things totally disingenuous. I believe the bishops of the Reformed Episcopal Church are either dishonest and unfaithful to Holy Scripture and to the fathers who founded the Reformed Episcopal Church in the beginning, or they are completely ignorant regarding the track record of Anglo-Catholicism from its inception and down to the present day.

It's time for men of God to stop compromising with the enemies of the Gospel, the same Gospel for which the English Reformers were willing to give their lives to defend. Whether the threat is theological liberalism or Roman Catholic innovations or Anglo-Catholic innovations or Eastern Orthodox innovations, the true church should rightly preach the Gospel and rightly administer the sacraments. When church leaders and bishops fail to stand for the truth, the church is left to wander into apostasy and unbelief and heresy.

• Acts 20:26-32 (NIV)
  26 Therefore, I declare to you today that I am innocent of the blood of all men. 27 For I have not hesitated to proclaim to you the whole will of God. 28 Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. a Be shepherds of the church of God, b which he bought with his own blood. 29 I know that after I leave, savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock. 30 Even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them. 31 So be on your guard! Remember that for three years I never stopped warning each of you night and day with tears.
  32 “Now I commit you to God and to the word of his grace, which can build you up and give you an inheritance among all those who are sanctified. [1]
• 
  a Traditionally bishops
  b Many manuscripts of the Lord
  [1] The Holy Bible : New International Version. 1996, c1984 (electronic ed.). Grand Rapids: Zondervan.