Bishop Business and Basics

In the wake of the recent controversy over the Sacred Order of Bishops unnecessarily unleashed by the Church of England on the world media, two most interesting articles have arisen online from diametrically opposite perspectives.

In one hand, a simply daft writer for the Guardian intentionally disfigures the teaching of Holy Scripture and two-thousand years of universal Christian tradition and calls for the elimination of the episcopate altogether (he will soon be getting his wish where the Church of England is concerned).

On the other hand, segments of a Christian sectarian religious movement founded in opposition to the sacred hierarchy and Holy Orders are moving back towards Scripture and Tradition, and in some places, are recapturing at least the outward form and titular style of the episcopate, if not its sacramental reality.

Let us be reminded of the Sacred Scriptures and what they teach:

Bishops: the word Bishop, episkopos in Greek, means 'overseer' or 'supervisor', and refers to those men ordained by the Apostles to be their Successors and to govern the local Churches they founded...

Philippians 1.1
Paul and Timotheus, the servants of Jesus Christ, to all the saints in Christ Jesus which are at Philippi, with the BISHOPS and deacons:

1 Timothy 3.1-2
This is a true saying, If a man desire the office of a BISHOP, he desireth a good work. A BISHOP then must be blameless, the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, of good behaviour, given to hospitality, apt to teach;

Titus 1.7
For a BISHOP must be blameless, as the steward of God; not selfwilled, not soon angry, not given to wine, no striker, not given to filthy lucre;