Some Mississippi Episcopalians Distancing Themselves from ECUSA

by Jim Brown
November 6, 2003

(AgapePress) - Members of an Episcopal parish in Mississippi are being praised for leaving the national church.

Angered by their denomination's disregard for biblical authority, Holy Cross Episcopal Church in Vicksburg has cut all ties with the Episcopal Church USA and joined the Traditional Episcopal Church, a group of about 75,000 Episcopalians who have parted ways with ECUSA since the 1970s.

The pastor of Holy Cross, Bishop Scott DeHart, believes his congregants acted biblically -- and explains they can now come to church with no encumbrances.

"For the first time in many years, they are able to meet on a Sunday, to kneel down, to pray, to hear a sermon, [and] to receive communion without their conscience being afflicted by either heresy from the pulpit or an agenda imposed by the leaders over them," DeHart says. "They can ... just simply come to church for the reasons people go to church."

The pastor also is critical of the state's bishop for his muddled stand on the denomination's consecration of an openly homosexual bishop. Mississippi Episcopal Bishop Duncan Gray has twice changed his stance on his denomination's approval of Vicki Gene Robinson, most recently voicing opposition to it. The Mississippi pastor maintains that Duncan has failed to shun unbiblical teaching.

"I don't think that Bishop Gray will find that traditionalists will return to the church until he's prepared to hold to the old consecration vows to drive and banish away all strange and erroneous doctrines, and to uphold the teachings of the church and morality within it," DeHart says. "When he does that, traditionalists will come to his support."

DeHart says for the past 30 years, the Episcopal Church has been trying to accommodate everybody on the basis that truth is relative. In addition, he says, the church is no longer a place where people who hold to the integrity of scripture can feel comfortable. Those factors, he says, have prompted two million people to leave the denomination.

DeHart is also rector of St. Stephen's Traditional Episcopal Church in Jackson, Mississippi.