The Questioning Christian

Sexuality Discussion at Salty Vicar Blog

The Salty Vicar has a fascinating post on sexuality and theology, which has triggered a cordial debate between some traditionalists some modernists.  It's well worth reading.

An English Liberal Weighs In

From today’s Independent (hat tip to TitusOneNine):

Sir: The spectacle of the traditionally latitudinarian Church of England being lined up by the liberal Rowan Williams with conservative Third World churches against the American Episcopalians is frankly bizarre. What about the majority of low-profile woolly Anglican liberals in England; don’t we have a say? Are we supposed to support bigoted evangelicals and self- righteous African prelates against liberal North American Christians with whom most of us agree?

Gavin Turner
Gunton, Norfolk

Scriptural Supremacy: It's Time for a Decision

The Anglican Communion's disputes about homosexual practice seem to boil down to a fundamental issue that splits traditionalists from modernists:

• Is it permissible for us to regard the Bible as our most important written source of moral guidance, but not more than that? 
• Or must we go further, and treat Scripture as immutable law that may never be amended and must always be obeyed?   

As a polity, the Episcopal Church seems to have been dancing around this issue for decades.  Those days now appear to be over; we will have to come to grips with the issue

"There IS No Revisionist Agenda" -- the Salty Vicar

I'm late in noting a thoughtful essay by the Salty Vicar, one of the most graceful writers in the liberal camp.  Excerpts:

Orthodoxy may or may not prohibit homosexuality.  However, is always against innovation, except for the innovation of the cross.  Alas, that orthodoxy is against innovation says nothing about its relationship to politics, to God or to Truth.

*  *  *

A progressive must never say he is for innovation. Let him simply tell the story; may he speak accurately and sincerely. ... .

There is no revisionist agenda.  We merely do not see gay people, and the pastoral theology that roots our ministry to, with and of them, as fundamentally destructive or dissonant to the trinitarian faith or to church polity.   Our agenda is not to force people to become gay, to force heterosexuals into gay marriage.   

(Emphasis in original.)

Anti-Gay Primates Should Remove The Planks From Their Own Eyes

Canadian Bishop Michael Ingraham, whose diocese of New Westminster is one of the focal points of conservative rage over same-sex blessings, forthrightly confronts some important issues in the primates' communique (hat tip to TitusOneNine):

[The Primates] have called for genuine international consultations to be held on the subject of human sexuality - a call first made by the Lambeth Conference of 1978 but unheeded until now. ...  The Primates’ call for the Canadian and American churches “to consider voluntary withdrawal” from the next three meetings from the ACC [Anglican Consultative Council] is carefully worded, and intended to appease the angriest voices in the Communion, but it should be firmly resisted by both churches. ACC is the one place where the provinces are fully represented and where the broadest consultations can and should occur.

To place the Canadian and American delegations in the position of explaining to the ACC why homosexual Christians should receive equal treatment in the church is invidious and unsatisfactory. It continues the Primates’ policy of ignoring homosexual persons themselves ....

(Emphasis added.)

Keeping the Primates' Country Club Together

It's being reported in the British press that the Archbishop of Canterbury is going along with the conservative primates in ostracizing the U.S. and Canadian churches, even though he personally believes the North Americans are right:

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, is understood to have backed the uncompromising stance after week-long talks in Northern Ireland failed to achieve reconciliation.

Though privately sympathetic with the liberals, he has fought to preserve unity because he does not want to be the archbishop who presides over the break-up of the international Communion.

One never knows how much credence to give reports like this (although it's consistent with other things I've read in the past few years).  If it is true, it's a tragedy.   This report would indicate that ++Williams deems it more important to keep the primates' country club together -- I'm sorry, that's uncharitable, I mean "more important to try to stay in the good graces of his Global South colleagues" -- than it is to do what he himself believes to be the right thing for a marginalized and often-oppressed minority.   

I don't think anyone would question that the ABC's heart is in the right place.  But we would have every reason to be terribly disappointed in his judgment.   

Primates' Communique: My Two Cents

Apropos of the Primates' communique, a friend of mine put it best a few months ago:  "I'm not an Anglican, I'm an Episcopalian." On the subject of homosexuality -- as on other issues -- we in the Episcopal Church have a moral obligation to do what we prayerfully think is best.   

To be sure, we can and should consult with other churches, because all of us together are likely to be smarter than any one of us.

But ultimately, it's each church's responsibility to decide how it will treat its homosexual brothers and sisters. 

If some churches are so opposed to what we in the American church decide, that they're no longer able to regard themselves as in fellowship with us, then so be it.

Primates' Communique is Out

The primates of the Anglican Communion issued this communique at the close of their meeting in Northern Ireland.   See also the TItusOneNine blog for a roundup of related news reports and opinion.

Here are some excerpts in the communique that caught my eye.  Bracketed numbers refer to paragraphs in the communique.  Links to other documents are mine.

Chronological Snobbery vs. Ancestor Worship

Some traditionalist Christians seem to think that in New Testament times, God made humanity a final gift of theological knowledge -- like a father giving his children a set of school books and telling them it was the last they were ever going to get.   Other traditionalists take a more nuanced view, but can still be quick to accuse modernists of "chronological snobbery," to use C.S. Lewis's term for "the uncritical acceptance of the intellectual climate common to your own age and the assumption that whatever has gone out of date is on that account discredited."   Bishop Paul Marshall of the Diocese of Bethlehem was recently branded as a chronological snob for having said:

We must be clear that we cannot understand the Bible the way our ancestors did, and that there is as much for the world to learn from western biblical study as there is from any other western technology. This is not to claim the corner on all biblical truth, but it is to say that we have learned what we have learned, and that we have much to share."

(Emphasis added.)  The key word in Lewis's above-quoted definition of chronological snobbery is “the uncritical acceptance of the intellectual climate common to your own age.” Bishop Marshall appears to be fully mindful of the distinction -- and of the dangers of categorically rejecting the possibility of new learning and even new revelation.

A Question of Priorities

When I find myself wondering what next to write for this blog, I often find "inspiration" by checking out the traditionalist blogs I follow.    It worked again today.

Homosexuality:  More Important than AIDS or World Poverty?

The TitusOneNine blog (which should be on your must-read list) quotes a report in the London Times that traditionalist African archbishops have managed to seize control of the agenda of the primates' meeting in Northern Ireland this week and to insist that the entire week be spent arguing about homosexuality:

[C]onservative archbishops won the first round in the battle for the soul of the Anglican Church yesterday when they “tore up” the agenda of the week-long meeting.

Led by the primate of Nigeria, Dr Peter Akinola and primate of Central Africa, Dr Bernard Malango, the anti-gay evangelicals used their numerical strength to force the meeting to put subjects such as Aids and world poverty on the back burner and to spend all week debating the threatened schism over homosexuality.

(The TitusOneNine moderator, the estimable Rev. Dr. Kendall Harmon, points out that the primates' meeting is closed and that the emerging rumors are just that.) 

 In response to this news report, one of the blog's regular traditionalist commenters, Kenneth Jones, neatly sums up (perhaps unknowingly) a fundamental difference in priorities between traditionalists and modernists:

AIDS and world poverty are certainly important enough issues, but they are ones that should be left to science and governments to deal with.  The Communion should, and must, deal with the issues most immediately and most directly affecting us all, since they affect the future of the Communion. I think the Conservative Primates are absolutely right in chucking the agenda, and forcing these issues to come to the fore!

(Emphasis added.)  In other words, let someone else tackle the problems that actually impoverish -- or end -- peoples' lives, because conservative Anglican archbishops have more important things to worry about.   Good grief.