On a stormy Sunday morning in Charlotte, N.C., latecomers were still shaking off wet umbrellas and streaming into a rented chapel at a local Catholic high school as Anglican minister Filmore Strunk led the congregation in reading Psalm 19: "The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, more than much fine gold."
For this congregation, those words ring especially true: Less than 15 months ago, the 300-member group was worshipping with more than 1,000 other parishioners in a 22,000-square-foot, gothic-style sanctuary on a prime piece of property in a growing suburb. Strunk had been pastor of St. Margaret's Episcopal Church for 12 years, and the congregation was growing. Also growing: Strunk's conviction that he couldn't stay in a denomination abandoning orthodox Christian faith.
Strunk had long been part of what he calls "the resistance" to the liberal spiral in the 2-million-member Episcopal Church (The denomination comprises the American province of the 77-million-member worldwide Anglican Communion.) In 2003, the Episcopal Church ordained its first openly homosexual bishop, but the denomination's problems ran deeper: For years, church leaders had questioned basic Christian doctrines like the resurrection of Jesus and salvation through Christ alone.
Strunk hoped church leaders would repent, but when they refused to put a moratorium on ordaining gay clergy in October 2007, he walked away: "At bottom I left the Episcopal Church because I don't believe it's a Christian entity anymore."
http://www.worldmag.com/articles/15195
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