The death knell of the Episcopal Church

So the latest parochial report from the Episcopal Church shows what everyone already knew: it will be dead within a generation or so.  That is keeping pace with most mainline Protestant denominations.  It's also keeping pace with most Protestant Evangelical traditions as well, though not all.  

Southern Baptists have been in a serious tailspin, but that could be bad timing. Contrary to pop culture narratives, the Southern Baptists weren't 'the pro-slavery ones.'  The main fight was over accepting money for missions from slave holders.  Some felt that the slave issue was sin, and accepting funds from those who bought and sold in the slave trade were therefore providing 'dirty money.'  On the other hand, others felt money was money, that most could be traced to ill-gotten gain, and so why set one batch apart?  That would be the Southern Baptists.

Not that there weren't zealously pro-slavery Southern Baptists, just as there were likely non-Southern Baptists who by our standards were quite racist.  It's just that it was more simple than merely 'Southern Baptists supported slavery.'  But then, that requires a nuance and an examination of facts and details that has long passed its sell by date in our nation today.  Southern Baptists, South, Slavery, Nazi, America as Nazi, that's it.  With that around their necks, there isn't much hope.  Add to that the emerging leadership of some like Russell Moore, who clearly want to take it closer to the side of the Episcopalians and the United Church of Christ types, and it's hurting.

Of course this news from the Episcopal Church means Gene Robinson was wrong.  It also once more shows that Ross Douthat was correct.   Robinson famously told Matt Lauer that by ordaining an openly gay man, the Episcopal Church would be swamped by the tidal waves of eager converts just itching to join such an open and tolerant church.  Well, no.  It didn't.  What Douthat observed once more proved true: you can't combine the traditional monotheistic faiths with modern liberalism.  You can't bake kosher ham.  Try as they might, each time a tradition tries, it dies.  That's because the two are antithetical at the most foundational levels.  And in an already secular, atheistic, non-believing world, the ball is in the court of the godless liberal to come out ahead of the conflict.

Which is why I can't figure out Catholics and their eagerness to copy what has failed so many times in other traditions.  Then again, Orthodox are now beginning to fight that fight too.  After a couple decades of being free of Communist terror and oppression, many are beginning to echo the old mantras that the remnant faithful have heard all too many times: reexamine ages of sexism, open ourselves to our LGBTQ brothers and sisters, reach out and embrace other religious beliefs.  Each one sounds good on the surface.  And yet, each one became a nail in an ever enlarging coffin that seems destined to cover those Christian traditions that attempt to play both sides of the modern street.