***But the faith once delivered is based on living the spirit, and not simply the letter of the law.***
The words of the NT are spirit. Following the NT's guidance is not legalistic.
*** For example, you speak of "repentence" as being what the church should do about homosexuals***
Let me clarify: homosexuals should be told ny the church that they need to repent.
*** The question is: what would you have the church do with respect to homosexuals?***
What did Paul counsel the Corinthians to do with the man who had taken his father's wife?
*** Lest we get too haughty here, there's no reason to demand that the church's response to this particular sin ***
This is not a "particular sin" like Anglican smoking or cheating on their taxes, (and this highlights why I find your arguments unacceptable). This is a movement, a "sexual heresy" if you will, that is threatening to consume Western Anglicicanism & Protestantism.
*** Nope. You're just so busy pounding the table that you're not listening to what I'm trying to say, ***
I'm pretty calm here.
***as it's entirely possible that our "fixes" to the problems could make things worse for the church. ***
Having a church over run with homosexuals - having a church turned ito some sort of gay dating service as we have seen in churchs where homosexual cliques gain the accendance - I can hardly see how any "fix" could be worse!
*** One thing I am not saying is that we should "compromise" with the likes of Frank Griswold, ***
I don't know you - you may be a stand up guy. But when you say, "that's precisely the sort of "gotta have it all or we won't take nothin'" mentality" does it not imply that some sort of compromise is called for?
People can screw anything up, even the words of the New Testament. See, e.g., Frank Griswold and Fred Phelps. I've seen plenty of legalistic NT stuff -- the "KJV is the only God-inspired version" folks are a good example.
What did Paul counsel the Corinthians to do with the man who had taken his father's wife?
Good point. The question is, how do you suggest the church should actually do that? Would you institute an inquisition? Would you prefer a "don't ask, don't tell" policy? Or will you simply let the folks come in, and let God deal with it in His good time? How should the church's teaching reflect all of this? Should it never be mentioned from the pulpit, or should it be mentioned at every opportunity? That's the issue here.
What the church's policy ought to be is perfectly clear (we've never disagreed on that). What the church does, however, is another matter entirely. We obviously can't take the Fred Phelps route, and we obviously can't take the Frank Griswold route. The answer is somewhere in between -- clear teaching on sexuality, and yet some sort of pastoral care for a group of folks who desperately need it.
This is a movement, a "sexual heresy" if you will, that is threatening to consume Western Anglicicanism & Protestantism.
It's not the real problem, though -- it's only one aspect of a much larger issue, which is the heresy of placing our will above God's, and replacing God's truth with our desires. Our whole culture is mired in that heresy. As the Pike matter showed in the '60s, our church had begun to lose sight of the truth long before homosexuals began their assault. If we were to encapsulate the whole gamut into individuals, I think one could point to folks like Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich, or the Enron crowd.
Having a church over run with homosexuals - having a church turned ito some sort of gay dating service as we have seen in churchs where homosexual cliques gain the accendance - I can hardly see how any "fix" could be worse!
Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church are an excellent example of a "fix" that's worse than the disease.
But when you say, "that's precisely the sort of "gotta have it all or we won't take nothin'" mentality" does it not imply that some sort of compromise is called for?
No. I'm talking strategy -- how do we get where we need to go? The point is that we conservatives are prone to going for the one-shot, instant, big-fix victories, and when we think we've got one, we forget about the whole thing. It kills us every time. The left, meanwhile, has gained ascendancy by patiently accumulating incremental victories over years. Their strategy clearly works far better than ours does, plus which it allows them to adjust their approach to suit the situation as it changes. It requires patience and focus, which we conservatives seem to lack.
In the present situation, we've gotten some significant but incremental victories, beginning even before GC '03. What has the conservative response been? For a lot of folks, it has been to bitch about not getting the utter and complete victory in one swell foop. (See, e.g., the responses to the Windsor Report.) It's "weakness" and "giving in" and other such yapping. Rather than focusing on consolidating our gains and moving ahead, we fall into recriminations, and give the whole damned thing back to the left. That is what I mean by the "gotta have it all or we won't take nothin'" mentality.