Posted on 02/28/2005 5:36:19 PM PST by sionnsar
In a way, the recent Anglican primates statement has achieved a kind of backhanded Anglican "unity." Spin the statement any way you like, says Australia's Muriel Porter, but that cannot disguise the fact that the Anglican left lost:
But make no mistake, last week’s compromise has only postponed the inevitable. Unless the Americans and Canadians decide to abandon the cause of gay clergy and same-sex marriages by 2008 - and please God they won’t - the threatened split will still happen.
The traditionalists, championed from the sidelines by Sydney’s Anglican Archbishop, Peter Jensen, have had a major victory. Dr Jensen has issued a statement "cautiously welcoming" the temporary dismissal of the two North American churches, describing it as "disciplinary action" for "transgressing scriptural teaching".
While we're here, let's run some more "chicken dinner" smack:
Some media reports have suggested that the leading traditionalist primate at the Northern Ireland meeting, Nigerian Archbishop Peter Akinola, went even further, holding a celebratory dinner as the primates’ statement was being finalised.
New Westminster and ECUSA had every legal right to do what they did:
All this dramatic posturing has come about mainly because, in 2003, one American diocese chose a gay priest, in an open long-term same-sex partnership, as its bishop. It was no maverick act; New Hampshire’s decision to consecrate Gene Robinson was ratified by the whole Episcopal Church of the US through complex and demanding constitutional processes. At the same time, a Canadian diocese, after decades of careful consideration, decided it should offer church blessings for same-sex partnerships.
I didn't know New Westminster spent "decades" thinking about this but I'll take your word for it. Actually, Dr. Porter, ECUSA’s "complex and demanding constitutional processes" consisted of New Hampshire voting for Robbie and ECUSA’s General Convention kissing up to the secular culture agreeing. Muriel, adjusting her tin-foil hat, claims that all this controversy happened in the first place because of Richard Mellon Scaife money:
But the issue of homosexuality has become the rallying point for conservatives in a determined campaign to impose their views on the rest of the church. Traditionalist Anglican churches in Africa, Asia and South America, financed by shadowy right-wing American religious groups and supported by conservative dioceses such as Sydney, have made homosexuality the "line in the sand". Over a period of a decade and more, they have worked solidly and deliberately towards last week’s decision.
Still haven't seen any of Scaife's jack, by the way. I'm doing this for PayPal contributions and whatever I can sell at my online store, Muriel, and if you're reading this, Scaife, I haven't seen a check yet, spunky, and I could use a little help here. I work in a public library, you know. But if I'm a shadowy right-wing American religious group, I can't see sinking a lot of money into the Anglicans. I've got Africa and the Third World already, their numbers are going through the roof and the liberal Western church bleeds more members with each passing year. Seems like a waste of money but that's just me.
Under the influence of this coalition, known as the "Global South", a hardline anti-gay stance was forced at the 1998 Lambeth Conference, the 10-yearly meeting of the world’s Anglican bishops. In one of the most bitter debates in its history, the conference resolved that homosexual practice was "incompatible with Scripture", and condemned both same-sex blessing services and the ordination of gay people in same-sex partnerships. The Lambeth Conference, though influential, has no jurisdiction over the independent churches of the Anglican Communion. It can only advise.
Does that mean we don't have to listen to that resolution Lambeth 98 passed about listening to the experiences of gay and lesbian Christians, including those in "same-sex partnerships," as long as we're going nuts with the sarcasm quotes?
The real tragedy in the humiliating dismissal of the North American churches is not the behaviour of the Global South bullies. It is the failure of more reasonable and inclusive church leaders, of whom there are significant numbers in the Western church at least, to stand up to them, to refuse to give way so readily in the name of preserving church unity.
The fragile unity left to the Anglican Communion is no unity at all. It is an unworthy appeasement, bought at the price of the many gay people who are faithful, worshipping Anglicans. Numbers of them are priests, and some are even bishops; Gene Robinson is certainly not alone, though he is the only gay bishop to have declared he is not celibate.
So moderate church leaders should speak out on their behalf. They should vehemently reject the Global South’s claim that adherence to the authority of the Bible is centred in one particular interpretation of its (limited) references to homosexuality. Since when has sexual practice been the supreme test of Christian orthodoxy?
So if Gene Robinson were not a practicing homosexual but a serial adulterer who had fathered X number of children by Y number of women, you'd have no problem with ECUSA giving him a pointy hat, Muriel, since "sexual practice" has never "been the supreme test of Christian orthodoxy?" Dr. Porter, who is running out of column space, can't answer that as she has to get one more dig in at the Nazis with which she is forced to coexist:
It is a pity they have not instead publicly named the conservatives’ power trip as a form of abuse, and their bullying as a failure of Christian compassion and a form of judgementalism, against which Jesus specifically preached. This is the scriptural teaching to which they should require Anglican allegiance.
As the saying goes, evil things happen only when good people do nothing.
This may come as a bit of a surprise but I actually agree with Dr. Porter here and I am delighted that she has come around to my position, albeit from the other direction. She and I have two different religions and for both of us, the idea of remaining under the same roof is intellectually and morally intolerable. She, with her zeal for "justice"(in that vague leftist way people like her define that term) and me with my zeal for the Gospel of Jesus Christ, cannot coexist in the same church and the sooner we all realize that fact, the happier we'll all be.
Traditional Anglican ping, continued in memory of its founder Arlin Adams.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.