Some of us who are orthodox in our Christianity feel estranged from our local parishes where the clergy are preaching and promoting a liberal theology. Where that is the case, we are caught between a rock and a hard place. We may want to worship within the church denomination that has been our home and our custom, but do not want to be part of the heresy that is being promoted as true Christianity. Imagine the difficulty in sitting and listening to a sermon that you know is leading everyone up the garden path. As an example, I will point to one by the Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church in the USA. No, I am not one of her parishioners - and thank goodness for that! - but if you wish to see what I mean by a sermon that leads people right away from the truth, here is an excellant analysis of one by David Ould:
How Not to Read the Bible

Reading from one of my favourite authors, that being George MacDonald (1824 - 1905), in an edited version by Michael R. Phillips (Knowing the Heart of God), I came across the following from The Landlady’s Master (originally titled The Elect Lady):

“I seldom go to church,” said Andrew, reddening a little, but losing no sweetness from his smile.

“I have heard that. It is wrong of you not to be regular. Why don’t you go to church?”

Andrew was silent.

“I want you to tell me,” persisted Alexa, with a peremptoriness she had inherited from the schoolmaster. She had known Andrew too as a pupil of her father’s.

“If you insist, ma’am,” replied Andrew. “I not only learn nothing from Mr Smith, but I think that much of what he says is not true.”

“Still you ought to go for the sake of example.”

“Do wrong to make other people follow my example! How could that be right?”

“Wrong to go to church! What do you mean? Wrong to pray with your fellow Christians?”

“Perhaps the time may come when I shall be able to pray with them, even though the words they use seem addressed to a tyrant, not to the Father of Jesus Christ. But at present I cannot. I might endure to hear Mr Smith say evil things concerning God, but the evil things he says to God make me quite unable to pray, and I would feel like a hypocrite to attempt it in such a setting.”

“Whatever you may think of Mr Smith’s doctrines, it is presumptuous to set yourself up as too good to go to church.”

“My difficulties with the church have nothing to do with thinking myself good, ma’am, which I do not. But I must bear the reproach. I cannot consent to be a hypocrite in order to avoid being called one.”

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“It looks as if you thought yourself better than everybody else.”

“I consider myself better than no man. Besides, if it were such that we thought, then certainly he would not be one of the gathering… His presence cannot be proved; it can only be known. One thing for certain, if we are not keeping his commandments, he is not among us. But if he does meet us, it is not necessary to the joy of his presence that we should be able to prove that he is there. If a man has the company of the Lord, he will care little whether someone else does or does not believe that he has it.”

“Your way fosters division in the church.”

“Did the Lord come to send peace on earth? My way, as you call it, would make division, but division between those who call themselves his, and those who are his. It would bring together those that love him. Company would merge with company that they might look on the Lord together. I don’t believe Jesus cares much for what is called the visible church; but he cares with his very Godhead for those what do as he tells them; they are his Father’s friends; they are his elect by whom he will save the world. It is by those who obey, and by their obedience, that he will save those who do not obey, that is, will bring them to obey. It is one by one that the world will pass to his side. There is no saving of the masses. If a thousand be converted as once, it is still every single lonely man that is converted.”

“You would make a slow process of it.”

“It is slow, yet faster than any other. All God’s processes are slow. The works of God take time and cannot be rushed.”

I can just imagine the agony (for me) of sitting listening to a liberal version of “the truth” and wanting to leap up, waving my Bible, to call out “That is not so!” from the pews. What if I did, and what kind of stir would that make? Who am I to speak out in such a situation? My own conservative understanding of New Testament Scripture has it that I should not behave that way at all. But must I sit through such torment knowing in my heart of hearts that what is said is not the traditional Biblical Christianity handed down from the Apostles and the early Church Fathers? Where we have liberal clergy, we also have hollow and deceptive philosophy arising from basic principles of this world. And so like Andrew, just for the present time I stay away.

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