Right now there is a wave of change hitting the high churches. From Anglican to Lutheran to Presbyterian and beyond, churches are throwing in their lot with either progressive or traditional leanings. Those who want to bend tradition and conform to modern morales and values have adopted rainbow colors while the more conservative use a navy or cobalt blue cross. The division in the high churches has bled into schisms and left those who have attended their local parish and home town church to ask some very tough questions.
When these churches were founded , there principle masters and founders would have vehemently denounced the modern concessions to culture and the views of those who seek reforms that verge on sacrilege and are in defiance of both Scripture and tradition. Martin Luther, Zwingli, John Knox, and John Calvin would have ardently opposed such reforms with a vigor of a firebrand. It then is betwixing to watch the churches who carry their names and traditions defy the teachings of Scripture and their founders in order to appease the sensibilities of the times.
Luther probably would have aptly said, “there is reform and then there is conform, the former routes error and leads us closer to God’s grace, while the latter taints our church with the stye of the world and leads us out of the Garden of Grace into disgrace.” This tendency to conform in the High Churches threatens to make null and void the purpose of the church on earth, to be a light in the darkness, to be a community that lets Christ shine to the nations.
One of the pressing reasons the high churches are coaxed into conformance is simply empty coffers and empty pews.
Attendance of services is at an all time low across the world. In order to preserve against ruination, and the near constant closing of churches, parishes and diocese have endeavored to appeal to the young generation by relaxing standards and traditions that hold contempt for modern morality. This relaxation is not merely ordination of same sex priests, but greater ‘tolerance’ of cohabitation outside of the sacrament of marriage, silence on drugs and other addictive substances and their consequences. This new programme of ‘tolerance’ promises more coin in the coffer and more people in the pews at the expense of Scripture, God’s Spirit, and Genuine Christianity. The short term gain through conformity is a long term loss in sound doctrine and truth.
The second motivation for this conform movement in high churches is to garner greater influence over society. Back in the Reformation Times churches had greater influence on society, even being promoted by monarchs and those in public offices of power. A hallmark since the times of Constantine the Great was an inclusion of Church and State. The church had sway on the lives of people and the government. Protestant Churches have since lost this and in an attempt to gain a seat at the table of power, they sacrifice to the gods and ideas of the day, failing to see that what meager and little influence they obtain, is ruined by the fact that they undermine their own principles and traditions and in effect make when they should achieve a voice, one that It hollow and no longer can advocate for their values and beliefs since they sold them cheaply to the world to gain their seat.
The crisis in the high churches will not be self contained. The waves will and already have spread like ripples to the Catholic, Charismatic, Orthodox and even Evangelical pools. Each diocese and congregation will have to give an answer, will they conform or reform; will they sacrifice scripture and principles for short term gains or will they preserve the true faith and let Christ shine before the nations?
The High Stakes the High Churches are waging is a fulfillment of scripture, “For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine and teaching. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear,” (2 Timothy 4:3), and “They will act religious, but they will reject the power that could make them godly. Stay away from people like that!: having a form of godliness but denying its power” (2 Timothy 3:5 NLT). They exchange sound doctrine for solid numbers in the pews.
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