ECUSA - More about The Sopranos than the Bible

With word that ECUSA and the Diocese of Virginia are now seeking to include volunteer laypeople in its lawsuit against 11 breakaway Anglican churches, we have truly reached a point where mafia-inspired tactics are now the acceptable norm in mainline circles. Granted, seeking to sue everyone under the sun is not exactly the same as Tony Soprano executing an informant or Paulie Walnuts capping somebody who didn't pay up. ECUSA, with its embrace of the UN Charter, would have a difficult time being this brazen in its intimidation and enforcement tactics. So instead, they've taken this mob mentality and employed more sophisticated means of shaking people down - they've threatened lawsuits. Intimidating people through legal action is the clean, high-tech way of bringing the mafia into the church, and turning the church into a robed mafia.

I am admittedly making some harsh accusations here. I don't mean to imply that ECUSA has no right to fight for the church property that is at issue here. For all I know, ECUSA may have a legitimate case for gaining the property. But that is a dispute between ECUSA and the individual (or collective) rectors and paid vestry of the congregation who, with the flock's approval, have led the flock out of ECUSA.

But the idea that ECUSA would see fit to target volunteer laypeople in these churches for civil litigation doesn't merely ignore 1 Corinthians 6, it actively militates against it. Paul's excursus on lawsuits among believers in 1C 6 comes within a larger section devoted to discussing immorality in the church. It is clear from 1C 6.9 that Paul had not abandoned the topic of immorality in discussing lawsuits between Christians. To the contrary, it seems clear that Paul considered the reality of Christians going to secular authorities to resolve legal disputes among themselves to be characteristic of great corruption in the church. In fact, it's not a stretch at all to suggest that these kind of lawsuits were simply one manifestation of the same problem Paul discusses in chapter 5 - a weak doctrine of the church. How ironic it is that ECUSA, a 'high-churchy' denomination if ever there was one, is the denomination most exhibiting a weak doctrine of the church by scuttling Scriptural teaching in favor of Soprano-style tactics of intimidation. Of course, maybe it's not ironic at all, but simply very telling. Whatever it is, it's hard to see how any of this speaks well of ECUSA's moral and ecclesiastical compass. One only hopes that PCUSA will not demonstrate itself to be as far gone as ECUSA in the coming months as the fruit of the New Wineskins movement starts to take tangible shape.