Posted on 02/28/2005 7:18:42 AM PST by dead
Early indications are that despite the Anglican penchant for irresolution having bought more time to talk around the issue of homosexuality and the church, neither conservatives nor liberals in this debate are ultimately prepared to give substantive ground.
At their meeting in Northern Ireland last week, the primates of the various Anglican provinces called on the church in the United States (which has consecrated an openly gay man as a bishop) and in Canada (which has approved the blessing of same-sex unions) to withdraw voluntarily from the Anglican Consultative Council for three years and to explain their views on homosexuality at an international meeting in June.
The head of the US church, Bishop Frank Griswold, welcomed the result, saying it provided an opportunity "to speak out of the truth of our experience". The US church, he added, "has sought to act with integrity in response to the Spirit" and will continue to work "to honour the different perspectives very much present within our church".
In a similar tone, Archbishop Andrew Hutchinson has said that at last week's meeting "the views of the Canadian church were thoroughly heard and understood, and it will be a matter of time that will determine to what extent they're received".
Neither of those responses suggests the North American churches are about to admit they were wrong or that they are likely to reverse the decisions they have made.
A formal schism in the Anglican Communion is looming but so is something more profound: a challenge to the commonly understood notion of the universal church.
It is true that all Anglican bishops declared homosexuality "incompatible with scripture" at the last Lambeth Conference in 1998 and agreed not to ordain practising homosexuals or bless same-sex unions. It is also an open secret that many North American bishops who attended that conference privately opposed its decision and had no intention of applying it within their jurisdictions.
Why? The answer is simply that by fully including homosexuals in the life of their churches, Anglicans in North America are responding to the generally greater acceptance of homosexual practices in their cultures. Likewise, African and Asian Anglicans are leading the attack on liberal views of homosexuality due in large part to the abhorrence with which it is regarded in their countries.
The Catholic Church faces a similar challenge although its more hierarchical structure has so far managed to contain the pressure for change.
At a series of regional synods held in the 1990s, the Vatican heard from bishops in Asia, Africa, the Americas and Oceania that the church needed to be more receptive to the local social, economic and cultural forces that were shaping it at a grassroots level.
For some this meant the need for decentralised decision-making, for others an openness to a married clergy, for yet more a greater sensitivity to the way Western church teachings on issues such as humanity's proneness to sin and need for redemption played to a non-Western psyche. At times the concerns have been far more mundane: it has been pointed out, for instance, that the Vatican's insistence that communion wafers be made of wheat makes little sense for those Catholics - Asians and Pacific islanders in particular - whose diet traditionally doesn't include wheat.
In a book Mary and Human Liberation, published in 1990, the Sri Lankan Catholic theologian Father Tissa Balasuriya earned temporary excommunication by developing the argument that "all the teachings of a religion do not merit the same type of faith. Some of them are directly from the founder; others are elaborations by successive generations who are members of the religious community."
It is important to determine, Balasuriya continued, what "is incumbent on all in Christian theology as the message of Jesus and what is its particular clothing in Jewish and European world views, philosophy, culture and popular religiosity". One could add, and the impending Anglican declension illustrates the point, that it is also necessary to determine whether a one-size-fits-all approach applies to morality.
A church that insists its universality is expressed by all its members following the same rules in the same way may simply invite its own fragmentation; one that allows variation in the way its moral principles are interpreted in particular contexts may ensure its sustainability.
The latter kind of universal church, however, requires an imagination that is in perilously short supply.
Chris McGillion is the author of The Chosen Ones: the politics of salvation in the Anglican Church to be published by Allen & Unwin next month.
I think the conservative churches in the US and Canada should write to the convention and state that they are being left out of the decision. They should state that they are in disagreement with the US and Canadian leadership and their voices are not being heard. Why should they be punished when they are not in disagreement?
Catholicity <> Universality.
We do not profess belief in one Holy Universal and Apostolic Church because that would an oxymoron. "I come not to bring peace but a sword"
Notwithstanding this Anglican spat, the Church has not been jurisdictionally "universal" for, oh, well more than a millennium. The only thing required for spiritual universality is avowal of the Nicene Creed, and that's been true for a very long time. This dispute has nothing to do with the Nicene Creed.
Riddle going around about gay bishops in Episcopal Church:
Why are Episcopalians always poor chess players?
Because they cant tell the bishops from the queen!
Line from an old poem I heard: "A god of infinite mercy is a god of no justice."
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Speak the truth in love. Eph 4:15
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Wow, and here I thought all we "had" to accept was that Jesus Christ is our Lord and Savior and that he is the divine son of God.
Granted, 8 out of 10 Anglicans probably have no clue what the Nicene Creed is, but anyhow!
Completely and totally wrong. If the Anglican Communion attempts the latter, it will die.
Yes, I do -- or at least, he could have been, in a revisionist diocese. What's important to the revisionists is, of course, the correct politics. Robinson has the right politics -- he'd be a viable candidate.
now situational ethics has become situational morals... wonderful
There is one truth, there is one morality. The very concept of a diversity of morals is anti-God as He is sovereign and the sole arbiter of what is moral.
Those who dispute with this are disagreeing with God. In His mercy He gives them the free will to do so. If they do not repent, in His justice they will be confronted with His truth when they stand before Him.
"The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,..." - Psalm 111:10
As long as they all use the proper spoon, what's a little thing like morals? If they can have atheist bishops, why not homosexual bishops?
We see this phrase a lot from ECUSA. The call is raised to "fully include 'x' in the life of the church". What this means is that group "x" must be able to fill any leadership role in the church. Now, surely, sinners must become part of the church, as we are all sinners and there would be no way to have a church otherwise. But what this call fails to allow for is that group "x" may be defined, as a result of their very membership in group "x", as UNREPENTANT sinners. Such should never be admitted as leaders in the church.
Of course, in this case, the leaders of the ECUSA refuse to recognize sexually active homosexuals as unrepentant sinners. And so their call to have them included as leaders in the Church.
I had a Bishop tell me, "Do you expect priests and bishops to be better people than people in the church as a whole?" He was not preprated for my vehement "Of course!".
"'A church that insists its universality is expressed by all its members following the same rules in the same way may simply invite its own fragmentation; one that allows variation in the way its moral principles are interpreted in particular contexts may ensure its sustainability.'"
"Completely and totally wrong. If the Anglican Communion attempts the latter, it will die."
IF?
"'A church that insists its universality is expressed by all its members following the same rules in the same way may simply invite its own fragmentation; one that allows variation in the way its moral principles are interpreted in particular contexts may ensure its sustainability.'"
"Completely and totally wrong. If the Anglican Communion attempts the latter, it will die."
IF?
The US Bishops refused to affirm the creed. It has everything do to with the creed.
Which part of the Creed do you think they refused to affirm?
All of it. And its not think.
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