Episcopal Church Needs Evangelicals

Richard Mouw , President of Fuller Seminary encourages conservatives to stay as a witness.

This is a complicated issue for many of us who worry about the theological direction of the Episcopal Church in the USA (ECUSA). For one thing, I hate to see conservatives leave over women's ordination. What that means, among other things, is that they are abandoning many dedicated women clergy who are themselves conservative on the other two issues: biblical authority and homosexuality.

But we do have to be clear that it is not enough to say that the departing conservatives are simply setting up "a separate denomination." In this case they are aligning themselves with the growing majority of Anglican churches around the world--an alignment that liberal Episcopalians are choosing to abandon by their recent actions. For me, though, there is a further complication.

The evangelical seminary that I lead was founded six decades ago to counter the "separatism" of much of the evangelicalism of the day. One of the founding purposes, then, was to prepare persons for evangelical ministries in mainline denominations. While I respect and support those who sense God's call to depart from a denomination like ECUSA, I also want to respect the call of those evangelicals who choose to hang in there. I don't want to see ECUSA left without an evangelical presence.

http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/richard_mouw/2008/12/wrong_to_leave_episcopal_churc.html