San Joaquin Episcopalians Not Episcopalians

Well folks, life gets stranger by the moment here in the Central Valley. Now, in fairness, this really hit me raw -- I am and Episcopalian and to the best of my knowledge, maintained that even in the depths of the semi-grand-tuffti stealing the silver and going south of the border. But, hold on to your mitres and croziers 'cause here it comes.

There was an event in Fresno, training if you will and here is the upshot of the training:

At our recent “Strength for the Journey” conference in the diocese, Dr. Glen Kreiner of Penn State University presented some of the findings from the Episcopal Identity Project “Around One Table.” The entire report is available at www.episcopalchurch.org/AroundOneTable/. This project is now six years old, and has involved input from over 3,000 people in the church. The reason why this study and the results are important was summed up by The Rt. Rev. Ian Douglas (Bishop of Connecticut): “If we have a sense of who we are . . . then we can be more fully who God has called us to be.”

I find this statement and training to be a little patronizing but that is not really what rankled me. Canon Hall writes further in his reflection for the San Joaquin diocese:

Why is this important for us? As a “continuing” and rebuilding diocese we desire to reclaim our identity as Episcopalians.

Now, I cannot reclaim something I never gave up. I cannot find something I did not lose and I will not admit that John David Schofield took anything from me. I remained Christ-centered and grounded in the "three-legged stool". I did not permit myself to be fooled for one second by the guy trying to sneak out the southern border with all the property. I belong to a parish that never waivered and never lost it's way and those I spoke with during that time felt exactly like I did. Please, now we begin to rewrite history? We are not victims, we are those who brought San Joaquin out of darkness into light. We refused to give up or give in even when the National Church sputtered and spewed and lost it's way in terms of support for our diocese we never lost faith with them. Now, they send us this tripe? Please, we are better and we are smarter than that.

How about some real help?