004 Cathedral Ruins

Trinity Episcopal School for ministry’s State of the Church blog had this to say about the Bishop elections in the diocese of Tennessee:

LL Cool J and the Diocese of Tennessee

There is an amazing line at the end of LL Cool J’s song “We’re gonna make it.” This song can be found on the CD for Madea’s Family Reunion, which was the top-ranking movie in the USA for two weeks recently.

The line, from this once (and future) king of rap, is as follows:

“We need less fake rappers

And more real pastors.”

What a thing to say on a record, a record, incidentally, that is a best seller. (Just go to Best Buy and ask…).

This line burned into me when I first heard it. It burned into me this morning, as I thought about the election in the Diocese of Tennessee last weekend. Or rather, that first round of an election.

The clergy voted a clear majority in the direction of “revisionism,” while the laity voted a clear majority in the direction of “reassertion.” And the laity wouldn’t give an inch. The lay delegates were like General Jackson, “standing like a stone wall.” And now the clergy are angry with the laity for being stubborn.

The problem here is that our seminaries have been turning out hundreds of men and women who are touched with the Zeitgeist more than they are with the Bible. I am not speaking without experience, 35 years of it. Mary and I had to flee to England in order to receive Bible based ordination training in the early 1970s. And we could not send our beloved friends and students to an ECUSA seminary without fearing for their theological and hence pastoral future, until Trinity was founded. And even then, nothing is perfect. But at least there was a safe haven.

{Read it all}

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