The former presiding bishop of The Episcopal Church, the Rt. Rev. Frank Griswold believes that our church may be entering the desert time.
Frank Griswold: Maybe this is the desert time
For the Episcopal Church and mainline Protestantism, this may be a wilderness period, a time of being shaped, formed and made ready to enter the promised land, says a former presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church.
The Episcopal Church and the Protestant mainline in America today may be going through a normal “paschal pattern” — a dying and a rising — that all churches go through, said Bishop Frank T. Griswold. And that is not necessarily a bad thing.
“There’s an arrogance and a self-confidence that is shattered by things falling apart,” said Griswold, former presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church. But beneath the church’s many challenges is an invitation to deeper wisdom, a hidden grace that leads to new insight, wisdom and resurrection.
“To use an image from the Old Testament, maybe this is the desert time,” Griswold said. “The desert was a period of purification and self-knowledge in order that they were prepared to enter the promised land.”
“If we are in fact the body of Christ, limbs of Christ’s risen body, we’re OK,” he said.