The Archbishops of the World Anglican Communion convened in Canterbury, England, this week, and in a grave decision regarding the future of the Episcopal Church in the United States (ECUSA), directed Archbishop Justin Welby to relegate the American church to “observer status” for the next three years – a suspension of standing to see if the ECUSA can mend its ways. In effect, this isolates the apostate U.S. Church so that its wealth and corrupting influence can’t further diminish the Biblical foundations of the World Church. The move, which prevents Episcopal leaders from any role regarding “issues of doctrine or polity,” was expected.

The Episcopal Church was organized after the American Revolution and George Washington was an early communicant. But, as with the erosion of many other bedrock institutions by America’s elite, ECUSA’s current leaders have discarded the Church’s biblical foundation. In 2003, the “enlightened” U.S. bishops rebuffed the 85-million member World Anglican Communion, and codified their rejection of scriptural authority by ordaining Vicky Imogene Robinson, a divorced father of two, as the first openly homosexual Bishop of New Hampshire. ECUSA’s former Presiding Bishop, Katharine Jefferts Schori (the first female archbishop), embraced a broad slate of statist positions in opposition to the most basic Biblical tenets. She decreed that “gay marriage” has equal in standing with biblical marriage, in clear opposition to Jesus’s teaching on marriage. She has further offended Christians by affirming a “nuanced approach” on killing babies before birth — a “do as you please” approach. The current Presiding Bishop, Michael Curry, the first black American to serve in that position, played the “race card” in his appeal to the assembled bishops, exclaiming, “I stand before you as a descendant of African slaves, stolen from their native land, enslaved in a bitter bondage, and then even after emancipation, segregated and excluded in church and society. And this conjures that up again, and brings pain. And this [sanction for embracing homosexual marriage] will add pain on top of pain.”

ECUSA leaders have done with the Bible what their fellow secularist liberals have done with our Constitution. As a result of ECUSA’s rejection of Scriptural authority, there are now fewer than 650,000 church attendees in the U.S. — and that number continues to decline. For further reading, see my essay “Gender Identity, The Homosexual Agenda and The Christian Response.”