Commentary: Behold the Anglican purse

GURAT, France, Aug. 14 (UPI) -- Could it be that Karl Marx, who despised religion as opium for the people, was not always wrong about matters of faith? In the preface to the German edition of his magnum opus, Das Kapital, he wrote:

"The English established church will more readily pardon an attack on 38 of its 39 articles (of religion) than on 1/39th of its income."

True, 120 years after Marx's death the Church of England is still not that far gone. But what about its tiny U.S. offspring, the Episcopal Church, which accounts for a mere 3 percent of the Anglican Communion?

Has its General Convention in Minneapolis not just pardoned an attack on several articles of its 16th-century statement of belief when it sanctioned the election of a divorced and openly homosexual priest as bishop of New Hampshire?

Well yes, it has. Now let's sit back and watch to see if it will just as merrily accept the ensuing attack on its income. Several Episcopal priests contacted by United Press International in the last few days report receiving e-mails and telephone calls from parishioners announcing or threatening their departure.

This even applies to theologically orthodox parishes. "These people simply tell us they have had it with the ECUSA, much as they loved their parish priests and fellow congregants," said one rector who asked that his name not be mentioned.

Where will they go? "If they are Anglo-Catholics, they might wander off to Rome or one of the 'continuing churches' (small Anglican denominations that already have seceded from the ECUSA)," he replied. "If they are evangelical, they probably join a community church."

At the same time, huge conservative congregations have begun withholding payments to denominational headquarters and their dioceses should the latter be led by liberal - in conservative Episcopal parlance, revisionist - bishops.

Truro Episcopal Church in Fairfax, Va., an extraordinarily vibrant parish of some 2,500 members, is putting pledges that would normally be destined to the national church and the diocese in escrow, according to the Rev. Richard Crocker, its associate rector.

"Our ushers report lots of checks with the provision 'Truro only,'" said Diane Knippers, president of the Washington-based Institute on Religion and Democracy, who belongs to this church with an average Sunday service attendance of more than 1,500.

The Web site of Truro's large and equally conservative sister congregation, Falls Church Episcopal, invites like-minded parishes to download a "plan for withholding funds." It offers members three options:

-- Give as usual, with some of the money going to the diocese and another share going to national church headquarters in New York;

-- Give a restricted amount to the parish and the diocese, but withholding the percentage normally slotted to go to New York.

-- Give only to the parish.

"Dioceses and parishes can indicate their approval or disapproval of (the UCUSA's) activities by giving or withholding the money necessary for its work," wrote Episcopal Church historiographer John Booty. "At crucial moments ordinary people in parishes are able to exert their power in telling ways, indicating that they of the holy community provide the basis upon which all rests."

C. Fitzsimmons Allison, the retired bishop of South Carolina, commented: "This statement is not only true historically but is theologically impeccable. There are unbounded needs in Christian witness, mission and outreach in this country and in the world that deserve support more than a bureaucracy that is seeking to accommodate Christian faith to an increasingly secularized and immoralized age."

The official ECUSA still keeps elegantly reserved about the prospect of a diminished cash flow due to its Minneapolis decision. As for Marx, UPI has failed so far to extricate a gratified comment from some of his remaining unreconstructed followers, who evidently prefer to leave the link between faith and pecuniary concerns to the long-deceased master.