As perturbations in the Anglican Communion continue, focusing on England (a recent General Synod decision) and across the Ditch (also following a recent General Synod decision), we might note the following:
Bishop Christopher Cocksworth writes carefully here.
Some more vigorous responses to the CofE GS are made from within/without the CofE:
St. Helen's Bishopgate, London signals a breakdown in relationship with the CofE. Note supporting bishops from GAFCON offer a few words via video.
CEEC of the Church of England responds to the General Synod decision.
But:
Sam Wilson, an evangelical member of the CofE General Synod writes a letter to Church Times:
Of course an obvious response to such a letter is to assert that those signing are not evangelicals at all, possibly not even Christian, as Sam Margrave (also a member of General Synod)
Tweets:
Nice!?
Meanwhile, perturbations continue in Australia:
A new congregation - the fifth - joins the Diocese of the Southern Cross in Australia.
[UPDATE FROM ORIGINAL POST] The Church in Southern Africa has not been able to agree on blessings, but can on prayers, per this article.
My own tiny Twitter contribution to being Anglican in our day, segueing off a comment by our own PM:
And, that, really, is my post this week in a nutshell:
That is, there are two kinds of Anglicans in the world:
Those who will walk together with those whom they disagree with and those who will only walk with those whom they agree with.
The issue is proposed to be one of concern about homosexuality but in reality, is not the issue, or question at stake, What it means to be a (Anglican/evangelical/conservative) Christian?
Will we love, respect and serve one another, despite differences in convictions as we read Scripture, or will we judge, condemn and break apart?
Incidentally, something similar re the question of holding together or dividing because of differences in views is going on in the Roman Catholic Church as the Pope attempts to hold the Roman communion together by ... restrictions on the Traditional Latin Mass. So,
Christopher Lamb:
Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold, etc. But, isn't the centre holding critical to the future of the gospel in our world?
The Traditional Latin Mass is not God's preferred form of worship (cf. worship in Revelation involving "every tongue"). Dividing over questions of marriage, divorce, covenanted commitments between people is not something Jesus either taught or commanded.
If, to be honest, I feel somewhat despairing over differences and divisions among Christians in 2023, I am nevertheless hopeful for the following reasons:
1. There may be something deeper at stake than "differences over what it means to be Christians". Is there an insecurity in a rapidly changing world bearing less and less resemblance to the world of our sacred scriptures (whether we are Christian, Muslim etc) which is driving people of faith to seek security in the form of religion (such as the (unchanging) Latin Mass rather than the (changing) "modern" Mass or in a tight definition of holy behaviour (unchanged, it is put, since Moses and Jesus))? What if the divisions among us rest on differences in what enables us to be secure in the love of God? If so, there is always the hope of pointing people to Jesus as the only rock and anchor of our faith.
2. Focusing on differences only has so much energy. Of course for some people such energy lasts a lifetime (of an individual, of a denomination). But for many of us, we cannot live on the continual edge of conflict, and the Christ in us drives us towards peace and not war. Notwithstanding the awful state of division among us, will we see in our lifetimes some rapprochment? I am hopeful. Always!
44 comments:
"The issue is proposed to be one of concern about homosexuality but in reality, is not the issue, or question at stake, What it means to be a (Anglican/evangelical/conservative) Christian?" ~via +Peter
Bishop Peter, would you please explain this a bit more as I'm not sure I understand. In the non-Anglican evangelical world I was raised in, I understood from a young age there would be no compromise re the H issue - to go along with it was sin and essentially a rejection of Christ.
From your St. Helens link I listened to Jay talking about "sad" and "angry" feelings, that it's not a secondary issue but "central to the gospel", how it creates a confused or distorted gospel, and that its about "souls being endangered" and "eternal consequence". That exactly reflects the view I understood growing up and therefore I assume he's genuine in what he says.
I guess my Q to you is.. in what way do you *not* see H as the issue and the question at stake? Are you rather proposing that the *real* issue is a process of definition of identity i.e. what an evangelical/conservative really is? Just trying to clarify as I feel I don't understand.
"That is, there are two kinds of Anglicans in the world. Those who will walk together with those whom they disagree with and those who will only walk with those whom they agree with."
(Bishop Peter)
And what, Dear Bishop Peter, might be considered to be 'the Bottom Line', based on a strict observance of 'Sola scriptura', beyond which GAFCON-et-al (one of the parties) might choose to distinguish their own 'parting of the ways'? (When one considers that the Incarnation of 'The Word Made Flesh' - in Jesus - was designed to open minds and hearts to a clearer, more tangible access to God as both human and divine; than any words in a book that gives us 2 distinctive aspects of our relationship with God; as both Law-Giver and Redeemer, no matter how we received the twin understanding of God that presents itself in both Testaments of the Bible. What I sense as the 'message of Scripture' is that our growing relationship with God-in-Christ ('par excellence' in the sacraments of Baptism and Eucharist) is a New and Living Way - beyond that of current human speculation about God based purely on our human intellect
COME HOLY SPIRIT! RENEW WITHIN US THE FIRE OF YOUR LOVE, THROUGH CHRIST OUR LORD. AMEN
GAFCON's first 'sticking point' was their refusal to meet together at the Lambeth Eucharist with bishops who viewed the Eucharist (as a 'Sacrament of Unity in Christ' as impossible for them to share with their more liberal sacramentalists - which for me, a strong believer in the power of The Eucharist to heal wounds in the body of Christ; is the difference between a willingness to share in the pain of our difference; rather than to separate on a problem of perceived theological difference about gender and sexuality. is much more.
GAFCON's second 'sticking point, was when they refused to gather as fellow bishops at later meeting of the 'Instrument of Unity - an implacable judgement of others that overcomes the desire of Christ "That all may be one", a virtue of staying together in Koinonia/Fellowship subsequently evidenced by the raising up of an official breakaway Church: GAFCON, with its own 'Statement of Faith at Jerusalem' This matter alone would encourage Christians around the world (not only Anglicans) that GAFCON is the only Church to express its own 'Orthodox' branch of Anglicanism around the world which seems intent on 'converting' to that view.
It is in Scripture that Jesus said only one sin is unforgivable and that is saying what is of God is actually evil as in the Pharisees accusing Jesus of being in league with the devil. That requires quite a degree of humility in all of us, faced with things we don’t understand or else disagree with.
Hi Liz
Your point is well made: homosexuality raises a queston whether there is (a) sin to avoid (b) soul health and for eternity at stake.
The challenge I am raising, nevertheless, is what if Christians disagree on those two points?
There are other sins on which we disagree and have not split.
One way of rephrasing my question could be, Are we defined as Christian by our agreement on a list of sins? (And, if we disagree, does that give one Christian the right to call into question the genuineness of the other person’s Christian faith?)
"Be not rash with thy mouth, and let not thine heart be hasty to utter any thing before God: for God is in heaven, and thou upon earth: therefore let thy words be few." Ecclesiastes v 2
This standoff still seems to illustrate moral psychology's CAD theory. Human nature being as it is, norms can be Communal enforced with Contempt, Autonomous enforced with Anger, or Divine enforced with Disgust. That's all.
Debate on That Topic seems to be between sides favouring the Communal (eg St Helen's) and Autonomous (eg any institutional process) conceptions of morality, the Divine conception of it being oddly marginal to both of them. Those seeking authoritative Communal norms do so not for good reasons but for deep causes, and the same is true of those insisting on what they are absolutely objectively scientifically sure that Autonomous reason shows. The two cannot agree on norms because they want norms to feed different appetites.
Can't they just agree to disagree? No, because to the Communal side that sort of comity is unmoored from stable authority, and their deepest motivation is to take maximally authoritative positions, even at the cost of some friction with fact, scriptural and biological. And the Autonomous side can't do it either, because for them "agree to disagree" that is more than a tactic is no less a betrayal of their own rationalistic jacobinism. Lacking common ground in moral sentiment, they cannot stand together.
If either believed that norms were Divine, then they would just shut up and go home. In the face of novel circumstances or at least new facts, believers wait for God to give a sign in his own way and time. They do not pretend like the Communal unbelievers that nothing has changed, nor do they insist like the Autonomous unbelievers that they are in control of everything. If you believe that there is a God, then you wait for him to take the lead. If you never wait, you do not believe.
"both stuck on D but negligent of J, E. P."
D-Deuteronomy , J-Job , E-Ezekial , P-Proverbs (???)
Is that it? ~ I did look back at last week but still unsure!
Hi Liz
J, D, E, P refers to the so called Documentary Hypothesis as an explanation of the composition of the Books of Moses in respect of source materials: Jahwist (notable for references to God as “YHWH”), Deuteronomist (obviously responsible for Deuteronomy), Elohim (notable for references to God as “El or Elohim”) and P for Priestly source (material especially focussed on rites re sacrifices, holiness regulations).
It is a great pity that Our Lord did not attend a Protestant seminary in the United States in the 1950s. This would have prevented him from the error of quoting from Deuteronomy more than any other scroll in the Torah (or from thinking the Torah had anything to do with Moses or himself, John 5.46-47).
Pax et bonum
William Greenhalgh
While I respect Bishop Peter's concern to hold his ship together it is worth noting that a desire to only walk with those who they agree with comes from the progressive forces in the Anglican Communion as well as those theologically conservative.
I submit twp pieces of evidence. The first is the campaign to have putative bishop of Florioda, the twice elected Charlie Holt have his appointmnet refused by the standing committees of other dioceses because of his conservative stance on LGBTQIA issues.
A sceond is the case of Bernard randall the Chaplain sacked for giving a sermon at a CoE school. His Bishop declined to support hos appeal at a employmnet tribunal. this would seem to cast doubt on assurances that bishops will equally support clergy who use the new CoE same sex blessing prayers anf those who do not.
And you can see why progressives take tha stance against conservative teaching. If you believe it causes harm, believe there is no Scriptural warrant for it, and the justice requires equal treatment, then why have conservatives in the church.
The Episcopal Church positioin would seem to be the place that the CofE and perhaps the church of the Eastern Iles is heading.
Great piece, Peter.*
"Those who will walk together with those whom they disagree with and those who will only walk with those whom they agree with."
People taking stands (on both sides), sorrowfully breaking communion with their elders, throwing their voices in from the other side of the world to support their tribe in St Helens, Palm Beach, New York city etc., refusing to eat bread in the presence of the adversary....
from a human development perspective, it looks like vigorous identity formation. This is the great labour of adolescence and young adulthood. Who am I? What sort of horizon of values do I choose? What chooses me? What ego-ideal (god, gospel, 39 articles, Jerusalem Declaration, inclusive language statement) will I commit my finite life force to - so that my life can have direction, and, emphatically, a sense of truth, authenticity, connection and belongingness.
The excitement of identity formation: in this chaotic, hyper-modernity, this is who I am and these are my mirrors, elders, the people who truly have my back. My shelter. My kinship libido. It's a deep human need. Identity formation opening up into affiliation, relationship, intimacy - all of which soothes the deep existential anxiety of my soul, of this stage.
Only God - which is, the ground of the wholeness of my soul - tends to get rather chopped up in this process. But perhaps this loss is inevitable (for now).
*I'm enjoying Bowman's CAD and DJEP slices on this too.
Dear John,
There are “hardline” progressives as well as conservatives - no doubts there.
Whether your two pieces of evidence are as clear as you think is another matter (cf. Liz’s comment re the Florida situation) and the England situation: well, I don’t know about that per se, but it does seem strange that given the clear presence (still!!!) of many conservatives in the CofE (cf. Recent votes etc at GS etc) such judgment nevertheless came down as it did).
And, on the Eastern Isles of the Tasman?
OK, I am not going to get into prognostications about life in 2043: you may be vindicated :)
But in 2023 as I scout about life in our church and as I reflect on our current episcopal leadership (and, note, by the way, that we are simply not discussing these matters when we meet), I do not foresee any further changes any time soon!
Hi Liz
The Texas Legislature in Austin has not elicited expert testimony from professional biblical scholars like + Peter on the worldview of the canon of ancient Israel. If they did, such scholars would likely testify that the canon lacks an abortion statute, and that in that same worldview the Talmud permits a woman to procure an abortion in some circumstances.
Moreover, under the constitutions of the United States and of Texas, statutes can only be enacted by voting in the two houses and signature by the governor. The Bible was not written in Texas by them through that process.
Texas governance is not from the Bible. The Bible is not from Texas governance.
When I consider the phrase "biblical worldview governance," I cannot think of a reasonable and substantive meaning for it that can be applied to the abortion statute in that state. This could be a disappointment to Texans who voted for those who voted for the statute. Or not. Politicians use words in strange ways.
*
The Constitution of the United States supposes that persons have natural civil rights, and that the national and state governments exist to secure those rights and for the general welfare. The Federalist Papers, written to promote ratification of the Constitution, are still the clearest American exposition of *liberal democracy* or *limited government* with the consent of the governed.
Because self-expression (cf First Amendment) is among those secured rights, it has been thought since the founding that governments here cannot lawfully promote official worldviews, cultures, etc as a purpose of government. There have always been Americans who wanted more uniformity or less pluralism, but they have rarely had and have never kept political power. Even Utah, founded and populated by a single religion, the Mormons, stays within lawful bounds.
I am not unaware of voices on the fringe who have promoted loyalty to some other conception of civil order in America. But their dream cannot be realized unless the Constitution is either amended by action of the Congress and two thirds of the fifty state legislatures, which is extremely rare, or replaced altogether, which is militarily impossible.
We do live in interesting times, but not unprecedented ones. Some find them difficult to keep in perspective.
BW
Hey everyone,
The sun has just set behind our hills. The valley is still.
Today, a friend informed me that Father Ron has died.
Love to his family and gratitude for his joy, fire, and love. Into the heart of God...
Dear Mark and other readers,
I can confirm that Fr Ron Smith died this morning.
I will give more of a notice in my next blogpost.
Blessings to you all,
Christ is risen,
Peter.
Prayers for Ron Smith's family, that they may know the grace and love of Christ and be enfolded in the resurrection faith that conquers death and delivers us from judgment. In hoc signo vinces.
Pax et bonum,
William Greenhalgh
Hi Bowman, thanks for responding (10 Mar 4:03) and for your patience as I struggle with what's happening in the US. "Biblical worldview governance" is my own choice of words to try and get across my suspicion that the issue arises from Christian RW politicians pushing a dominionist agenda in Texas. It definitely doesn't mean I think they have a biblical basis for what they do .. I don't!
I've been reading more about it as time permits. I'm confounded by learning of the power of 2 or 3 Christian mega-donors in Texas who have enormous influence in Texan politics.. far more than I could've imagined.
Thanks for the Constitution info - it made me sit up and take notice when I read they're working hard to get the necessary support to make major changes to that too e.g. "wants to give states the power to overturn federal laws, such as environmental regulations, and Supreme Court decisions on issues like abortion and same-sex marriage"
"Nelson diocese or Sydney diocese could no longer rmain evangelical"
So from what you said John, I gather that if a bishop is required to accept partnered gay clergy to work in the diocese then that's the absolute line in the sand, the point at which the diocese is no longer evangelical.
Interesting.. because I didn't know what that line might be.
Thanks for the link to the committee report, I've saved a copy. I'd thought it might be a bit much tbh but.. it's more readable than I expected.
MsLiz,
Our Host is an example of an essentially evangelical Bishop who has happily accepted same sex blessings in his diocese. So we need to recognise there are shades of opinion. But I think I can say with some confidence that Sydney and nelson and many other doiceses would see the imposition of hacving to accept non celibate LG clergy as undermining their evangelical identity. Peter, sorry if I have mislabelled you!
Whther or no, uphiolding traditional marriage is an emerging marker of evangelical idenity is a question worth more than an online soundbite. I suspect it will end up that way. But who decides?
"It may be that TEC does not want to have evangelical dioceses."
"... the absolute line in the sand, the point at which the diocese is no longer evangelical."
The religion in the streets in most of the United States has always been evangelical. Evangelicalism is well adapted to the society and culture of the heartland, and has no real rival there but Pentecostalism. Independent institutions important to the global Evangelical family are thriving in Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Texas, and even coastal California and Massachusetts. The influential Black churches have always been evangelical. This cultural geography is as easy to bend as the Rocky Mountains or the Mississippi River. Fish swim in water; inland dioceses of every church swim in evangelicalism.
However, American evangelicalism is not just agitated moderate Calvinism. There are plenty of Baptists and Presbyterians, of course, but there are also far more Wesleyan, Lutheran, and Anabaptist voices in the countryside than seems to be the case down under. Episcopalian competence requires a certain ecumenism even in evangelical terrain.
Whether parsons, parishioners, or parishes embrace their surrounding culture, temper it in a latitudinarian spirit, or react against it to higher churchmanship is a very local matter. There are many dioceses that feel evangelical in rural areas and small towns, have socially edgy parishes alongside universities, and have a smoky high church and a feisty evangelical church in the largest city.
"If this were to apply in NZ or Australia, conservatives would be forced to leave the church. Nelson diocese or Sydney diocese could no longer remain evangelical."
By the early C20, American dioceses with evangelical traditions and populations had latitudinarian policies. The Virginia Theological Seminary was teaching critical scholarship on the Bible. The bishops of say South Carolina and Virginia and Washington were founding Anglp-Catholic and Liberal parishes. Nevertheless, they themselves were indubitably Evangelicals, often with warm personal ties to evangelical bishops in England.
So The Episcopal Church will have many evangelical dioceses for all foreseeable time to come. But they will not be armadillos or porcupines living in opposition to other sorts of Anglican churchmanship. We matured beyond that a century ago.
"upholding traditional marriage"
Episcopalians uphold traditional marriage and the law of the land.
BW
Dear John
You are very kind - many evangelicals [as you know] no longer use that descriptor of me because (for them) "evangelical" now equals "a specific view of Bible/sin/etc" so any demurral from that view equals "not so" QED!!
I offer the following observations:
1. TEC is complicated: I met evangelical TEC bishops at Lambeth and did not form an impression they would lack evangelical succession. But, who knows?
2. It is not possible to envisage ACANZP getting to a point where our church as church imposes on dioceses that they "must" ordain/appoint non-celeibate LGBTQi clergy.
3. It is possible to envisage a point where NZ human rights legislation does so impose ... though perhaps that is too much imagination because any such legislation would also need to press upon Islam, and that is unimaginable.
4. I continue to find ways (on this matter and more generally) in which ACANZP, despite certain GAFCONesque voices confining/defining us as beyond the pale, is a remarkably conservative church in respect of creed, teaching, social engagement.
5. In nearly five years since the 2018 GS, only one blessing has been formally approved hereabouts in the Chch diocese.
I found this interesting, and reassuring, re TEC bishops (in an article about the Florida Diocese election report):
"Some bishops, even extremely liberal bishops, have declared that conservative bishops play an important role in the church, which could incline them to let a conservative diocese pick a conservative bishop..."
https://livingchurch.org/2023/02/23/bp-howard-accused-of-pattern-practice-of-discrimination/
"that descriptor"
In the C21, what is Evangelicalism and who are Anglican evangelicals? This could be interesting to discuss.
"extremely liberal bishops, have declared that conservative bishops play an important role"
Also, the sun has declared that the rain plays an important role.
“But the Church cannot be, in any political sense, either conservative or liberal, or revolutionary. Conservatism is too often conservation of the wrong things: liberalism a relaxation of discipline; revolution a denial of the permanent things.”
― T.S. Eliot, Christianity and Culture: The Idea of a Christian Society and Notes Towards the Definition of Culture
BW
"Also, the sun has declared that the rain plays an important role."
Whatever labels are used we naturally form like-minded groups and in conflict situations differences go on show that look fairly ugly sometimes.
For me it's encouraging to see the writer of the article I quoted in 8:23 describing "extremely liberal bishops" some of whom evidently have the grace to publicly affirm the important role of other bishops who hold a very different perspective.
"For we are God’s coworkers, working together" 1 Cor 3:9(pt)
"only God who gives the growth" (from a nearby verse)
Yin: stewardship of the future's past.
Yang: intentional adaptation to kaleidoscopic change.
Yesterday, I woke in the middle of the night with the happy thought that someday Liz, + Peter, and John might discuss Evangelicalism for Anglicans in the C21.
BW
A Thought for the Aeon
"It is the very essence of the Christian faith that we live in a kind of rhythm — leaving, abandoning, denying the world, and yet at the same time always returning to it; living in time by that which is beyond time; living by that which is not yet come, but which we already know and possess."
-- Alexander Schmemann (1985) Liturgy and Eschatology, Sobornost 7, 6-14.
BW
Liking your description BW.. the pattern imagery works for me
plus everything's brighter when there's a kaleidoscope in the mix
It's gonna be a bright Sun-Shiny day :)
Hi Liz
Fun Fact: The OP to which you link mentions the influence of The Federalist Society on American jurisprudence. "In US legal circles, FedSoc is the gorilla in the room." Indeed. In the case of Obergefell v Hodges, Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the majority opinion that recognized in American law a constitutional right to same sex marriage. He is a member of The Federalist Society and was appointed to the Supreme Court by Donald J Trump. QED ;-)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Gorsuch
However, the overall argument implies that God is not with us, Christ is not Emmanuel, and the Lord has no Body among his "groaning" creatures (Romans viii 22). Rather we have myriad exegetes wandering the earth, each testing the others' solipsistic interpretations of words that Jesus and his apostles read with the memory and hope of Israel.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solipsism
Everything is better down under, of course, so why not assume the best of your authors? I do not know them and will not speak of them here. Let us attend to the argument we see.
For a few centuries here up yonder, the proponents of arguments somewhat like that one have been too fissiparous to be plausibly the Body that Jesus founded. If they are his members, they infer surprisingly little from that. Presumably, he loves all that he has made and uses even them for his glory as far as their confusion allows (cf St Luke ix 49).
Whence came that confusion? Up here, we have seen that such reasoning projects our culture's Enlightenment notions of interpretation and authority (cf The Federalist Society, constitutional law) into the scriptures and then reads them back out again in a more or less arbitrary ventriloquism. Understandably, the aspiration is that scriptural truth might be fixed in place, labeled and pinned down like the wings of butterflies.
But believers read as they live in God's eventful providence between two aeons. Joshua x 13 meant something subtly different before Copernicus, and Philemon more than ever after the abolition of slavery. Even in simpler reading, like that of a conservative judge with a supreme law, surprises sometimes flutter out from under the glass.
Understandably, when postmoderns read ancient texts as the texts of the ancients they do not find any anachronistic modern constructs in them. Which is excellent. As Protestants, should we not stand with Luther (cf Heidelberg Disputation) in placing no scholastic filters between ourselves and the mind of holy writ?
Such reading would conserve the NT *paradosis* that we have discussed here in recent months and years (cf Edith Humphrey, my Thomas Oden, Bryden's William Abraham, America's Robert Jenson). Is it not merely Anglican to acknowledge that our God-given episcopate, and perhaps other churches' forms of *episkope*, are led nearer the truth? A lively pneumatology recognizes the proper work of the Holy Spirit in the Body with gratitude.
Evangelical faith that the justifying word can precede its visible signs does not require that humans erect a high authoritarian ziggurat that overshadows the down-to-earth Body that the incarnate Lord founded and rules. And as even Calvin-- maybe especially Calvin-- says in Institutes III, 1, i, all the fruits of justification flow from union with Christ, which is surely not rationalistic but ontological, not an opinion but a life. We see this faith once delivered to the saints in the conserving work of delightful evangelicals like Donald Fairbairn--
https://www.etsjets.org/files/JETS-PDFs/50/50-2/JETS_50-2_289-310_Fairbairn.pdf
https://www.scribd.com/book/410869422/Life-in-the-Trinity-An-Introduction-to-Theology-with-the-Help-of-the-Church-Fathers
About solipsists, Liz, "let not your heart be troubled." Those who fixedly distrust the Body exclude only themselves. In is in, out is out; the Body carries treasure in broken vessels. When confused sheep return to the fold of our merciful Lord, we should welcome them with joy.
BW
Funnier Fact: Obergefell v. Hodges was decided in 2015. Neil Gorsuch did not become an Associate Justice until he was appointed by President Donald J. Trump in 2017. I'm not an American but even I know this :-)
.
However, Bowman, you may have been thinking of Gorsuch's role in voting with the majority to throw out Roe v. Wade. IIRC, that opinion was written by Associate Justice Alito (and leaked by law clerks of Justice Kagan).
Btw, I read that decision carefully and it is utterly compelling,
Nonetheless, it does seem to me that you dear Americans fall into the trap of treating your Constitution as if it were Holy Writ - and then, like the weirdest of 17th century Ranters and Fifth Monarchy Men, going to endless expense using your priesthood aka lawyers to get it to mean whatever you want it to. No doubt a clever lawyer will discover the "right" of 12 year olds to have gender affirming surgery - yes, that is coming down the pike soon, after that great Catholic Theologian Joseph R. Biden called Tennessee's new law "almost a sin".
Bishop Biden understands these things well because he is guided by the lived experience of that sweet little colleen Dylan Mulvanity.
Pax et bonum
William Greenhalgh
You testing me BW ;) Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote the majority opinion for Obergefell v Hodges however he was a mentor to Gorsuch who clerked for him. But I take your point.. Gorsuch upheld gay and transgender workers' rights (siding with four liberal judges and Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and wrote for the majority).
Thanks for responding btw.. it'll take some time for me to work through!
Yes, Liz. In my haste to get on with it, I conflated Justice Neil Gorsuch's vote in Pavan v Smith with his majority opinion in Bostock v Clayton County. In the former, the Supreme Court reaffirmed *per curiam* the constitutional right to same sex marriage elaborated in Obergefell. In the latter, Gorsuch construed the word "sex" in the 1964 Civil Rights Act as protecting gay and transgendered persons.
Gorsuch is a conservative judge exceptionally committed to such interpretive principles of the Federalist Society as *originalism* and *textualism*. But some Society members have been disquieted to see their jurisprudence produce such surprising results.
https://www.cnn.com/2017/03/18/politics/neil-gorsuch-religion/index.html
BW
Bownan, it just goes to show that even a good judge like Gorsuch (he has an Oxford doctorate) can get things seriously wrong at times. His reasoning in Bostock was quite screwy ('sex' couldn't possibly have that meaning in the 1964 Civil Rights Act). But I am sure you agree he got it right in siding with Alito's opinion in Dodge,
Originalism - championed by the great Justice Scalia, one of the sharpest (and wittiest) minds in the Court's history - is of course how any constitutional court should proceed; and if you don't like the Constitution, change it constitutionally, not by political activism disguised as jurisprudence, which is what happened in Roe v Wade. For over 40 years even uber-liberals agreed that Roe v Wade was a nonsense reading of the Constitution. Now of course you have abortion up to birth aka infanticide in New York and other blue states. Are you happy with that, Bowman?
Originalism simply means you understand the text of a law in the same way that it was understood by those who composed and ratified it. If you don't do that, you have an absolute recipe for mischief, the Humpty Dumpty school of legal interpretation - which is basically how secular liberals proceed.
Scalia was correct in what he predicted would follow from Lawrence v Texas in 2003. There is no "constitutional right" to same-sex marriage in the US Constitution - the Constitution says nothing at all about marriage - but if you torture it enough, you can get it to say anything. Think of Dred Scott.
Incidentally, the historical science of originalism or textualism is also how responsible biblical interpretation proceeds: what did these words mean when the writers used them to their first readers and hearers? The law, like correct biblical interpretation, is about correctly understanding the lawgiver. It is not an exercise in the creative imagination.
Bowman, what do you think of Joe Biden's grasp of Catholic theology? Your Catholic President says the Catholic Church is wrong about the morality of abortion and wrong to oppose transgender surgery (aka castration and mastectomies) and puberty suppressing drugs for children. Is your Catholic President correct in his magisterium?
Pax et bonum,
William Greenhalgh
I now know who both of the people are who're involved with the website where I found my article. I imagine therefore that it pretty much reflects evangelicalism per Sydney, and I'm still stunned by the similarity to what I grew up with. The Jensen brothers, Peter/Phillip, both credit the 1959 Billy Graham crusade for their profession of faith so perhaps I shouldn't be surprised.. his name was spoken with much respect when I was young. If anyone cares to comment on the influence of Billy Graham on evangelicalism in Australia/NZ I'd be interested to know if this might be a factor (in the similarity).
"It'll take some time for me to work through!"
Why does each of the two usual sides of That Topic handle the scriptures as it does? Why does it find the other's reading of them incomprehensible or worse?
So far as I know, nobody has written an irenic, methodical, lucid answer that situates the alternate ways of reading the scriptures in their native ways of living in Christ. My 5:28 is suggestive rather than articulate or complete.
The authors at your link seem to be trying to erect a human authority to stand over against the concrete presence of God in the world. Are they suspicious of the presence itself? Do they hope that authority can purify contamination?
From one Christian perspective not rare up here, such projects approach disbelief in the Incarnation and Pentecost, and just so undermine Jesus's mission from Galilee to the ends of the earth. Indeed, from that side, one of a few roads to greater empathy with authoritarian biblicism passes through interfaith dialogue with Jews and Muslims who have likewise retrieved from the ancient Near East a spirituality of law-bound purity to more faithfully resist postmodern contamination.
"It'll take some time..."
Decades thus far. Maybe centuries.
BW
Hi Liz
I don’t think there is any necessary connection between conversion at a 1959 Bill Graham Crusade in Oz/NZ and a specific type of evangelicalism many years later (thinking about life journeys of some folk here).
Hi Bowman
We have an “Awaken” conference in our city this weekend (i.e. An NZ LGBTQi Christians’ conference) and I had the privilege of being with some of the attendees for a pastors’ lunch on Friday, and thus meeting with some old friends and meeting new people. I cannot see how we can be “church” on any reckoning, including your observations above about incarnation etc, and build a wall between “us” and “them”; thus exegesis and exposition from exegesis which builds such a wall is doing something (e.g. Enabling people to be more secure in their understanding of what God requires) but raises the question whether that something is an ecclesiastical demand of God in Christ about Christ’s body.
Bowman, why do you refer to homosexuality as "That Topic"? That sounds like someone's mythical Victorian aunt!
But I don't find any of the so-called "readings" incomprehensible, just accurate or not. I am sure you have read Luke Timothy Johnson, Walter Wink, Walter Brueggemann and a host of others as I have.
And they all say the same thing, viz. that the New Testament uniformly rejects homosexual relations - and that here at least the NT is wrong, because it is not guided by the Holy Spirit here. No mystery there at all. That's simply how liberal Protestantism works: for the Liberal Protestant,
the Bible is a worthy but mistake-filled testimony to the human encounter with the divine and the task of reading is to sift the truth from error. That isn't difficult to understand, it's really what Ron Smith said many times over the years and it's exactly what you'll read time and again in "Thinking Anglicans ".
And on the other side, Robert Gagnon, John Stott and a host of evangelical and Catholic writers declare that the New Testament uniformly rejects homosexual relations - and that it is correct, because it is guided by the Holy Spirit here and everywhere else. No mystery there. That's simply traditional orthodoxy about the Bible.
What is difficult to understand about this? Pretty much all the stuff I have read is "irenic, methodical and lucid."
But I really don't know what you mean by "alternate ways of reading the scriptures in their native ways of living in Christ". The Bible wasn't written by the modern tribes of New York or to be a plaything for creative reading classes in a community college.
Where do *you* find "the concrete presence of God in the world"? These words are just meaningless reification unless you have some concept of clear authority and communication of the will of God. Otherwise interpretation becomes a subjective joke and serious people wil go and study maths or horticulture instead. (It is no wonder, by the way, that the humanities are nosediving in American universities and English enrolments have halved in 20 years - the kids only want to hear their own ideas reflected back to them).
I encourage you not to spend any more time speculating about people's mental states and motives (which you couldn't possibly know in any case) and instead tell us what *you* think the Bible says on the subject of homosexuality- and whether *you* think the texts are true or false.
Speculating about othes' motives (or suggesting they are really insecure or trying to control others - e.g. accusing them of "authoritarian biblicism" - is just Bulverism. As C. S. Lewis said, you must first show THAT a man is wrong before you can suggest WHY he is wrong.
Pax et bonum
William Greenhalgh
Thanks +Peter, I was curious, having noticed much similarity between the complementarian SBC, Open Brethren, and Sydney Anglicans. (Pretty sure Dad was a counsellor at the Auckland crusade and I imagine he and his peers would've done training through the Billy Graham crusade folks).
From your post: "But, isn't the centre holding critical to the future of the gospel in our world?"
~from knowing the rigid attitudes in the church system I grew up in, and then reading the article I mentioned above, yes, I think you've got that just right.
I've persevered with trying to understand this divide re That Topic because the majority view I encountered at TEC is completely at odds with the teaching I grew up with and it's very troubling to me.
Now I'm 100% certain there's no reconciliation between the two views. The conservative side have made their case.. they've warned, they've called for 'revisionist' bishops to 'repent' and their call is unheeded. They've recently expressed no confidence in the ABC. The only thing left for them is to separate.. that's how I see it anyway.
It's all laid out in an article called 'The Limits Of Fellowship' published 14 March, 2008 in an 'Address given by the Dean of Sydney, Phillip Jensen, at the Sydney Lambeth Decision Briefing'. I can't see anything's changed in their stance since then (but the rest of you would know much better than me).
BW, there's no comfort to be found in these words but there's a clear statement of their position and reasoning.
Once you get further down in the content there's some very strong statements, so much so that I've decided against providing any examples.
Link: https://phillipjensen.com/resources/the-limits-of-fellowship/
Thank you for the link, Liz. Someday, it may be useful. But those seeking power seldom have the clearest perceptions or the most persuasive arguments.
BW
Should people separate or stay? It is undoubtedly intriguing that all the Sydney Anglicans MSLizmentions have remained in the Anglican Communion. Conservatives have left when their local province has accepted same-sex blessings or officially enacted a non-discrimination clause against same-gender clergy. So the conservatives who have left host Peter's diocese are of the same views as those in the Sydney Diocese who have stayed in the Anglican Communion.
GAFCON has stayed in while welcoming dissident churches that have left. This seeming inconsistency makes sense if the conservative movement is seen as a realignment within the Anglican Communion rather than a simple separation.
Yes, viewed from Bowman's perch, it looks like a separation. Viewed from Sydney or Nigeria, it is a realignment, with new networks taking over from the old instruments of communion. Peter will see things differently, of course.
Dear John
What you are calling a realignment will be a separation and the separation will be between those who believe in a unitary Anglicanism which permits no diversity of viewpoint and an inclusive Anglicanism which is willing to live with diversity of viewpoints.
Sydney is encouraging congregations in other dioceses in Australia to separate from their host dioceses and join a Sydney aligned diocese: do those diocese feel part of a great realignment or part of a fracturing church?
Viewed from Bowman's perch, it looks like realpolitik. Or disintegration.
Can it be squared with faith in Christ? Clearly, broken communion cannot be because the unity of the Body is a sign of the Son's proper work. So much so that St John makes the startling claim that those who leave it never belonged to it in the first place.
It sounds as though John views broken communion as the cost of exchanging old leaders for new ones. Perhaps he does, but I doubt that.
The Councils of Nicaea and Constantinople forbade far less radical maneuvers when greater matters were surely at stake. The Orthodox would coolly call this one an innovation.
What churchly cultures would result from it? I do not know.
The many schisms from TEC here up yonder have been negligible in the American landscape. The identities formed in these breaks have often conserved what they were meant to conserve, but they have also frozen churches in moments of the receding past like insects in amber. The REC left TEC in 1873 but still comments on every General Convention. Why? Out is out.
The worst scenario that I can imagine-- from here, this is only imagination-- is that two thin monocultures could limp away from the splits. In one, the insects in amber. In the other, the fidgety rootlessness of the Way Forward report. In neither, the theological breadth and depth required to engage C21 life Down Under in a way that shines the gospel into dark corners, elicits conversion, and fosters holiness and growth.
In fairness to both sides, applying a critical understanding of the scriptures to homosexuality as even prudent, evidence-based people now understand that is not easy. Doing that in synods asks for more than they can or should do.
The scriptural but unpopular Anglican understanding of marriage as a non-sacramental "condition of life" is a further complication. The proposals before most churches are doubly challenging, departing from both that understanding and from a view of homosexuality that dates from medieval speculation on the nature of usury.
As we have seen during the pandemic, more people are more cynical about more institutions than we knew. The drumbeat to make up a "theology" to justify same sex weddings unthinkable just a few years ago must have made many in and out of churches deeply cynical about their claims to believe in a living God who reveals Himself. If you can manufacture faith for gay marriage, then why not do it for other things we like?
All were trying to do some right thing. Both sides got something right and something wrong.
Proponents of SSM usually understood such facts as we know and the pastoral situation that they pose. But they extravagantly underestimated their duty to God and man to be seen to be responding to it from well within received tradition. Indeed, the authors of the Way Forward report seem not to have known enough about that tradition to write for a church.
Opponents understood how polarizing SSM could be, and that proponents were making it worse by choosing a sexual minority over a social one. But when they could have stayed to correct this error, they instead chose to exploit it to engineer a communion they liked better by realpolitik. They chose the pleasures of religion about the reconciling Son over the labors of actual reconciling in the actual Son.
*
When Fulcrum was young, commenters more conservative but far less traditionalist than I am used to debate the location of the holy red line. What wicked thing, if liberals finally did it, would give exasperated evangelicals permission to leave the Church of England for something new? Much of the time, they discussed SSM less as a ritual than as an answer that they could easily defend from Romans i 32.
I have a red... zone. When a church does not, as easily as breathing and as consciously as feasting, relate some good christology to its own embodiment, it's a fake. If you truly want to do the Father's will in the world, the Holy Spirit will not lead you to it.
There are at least a few good ways to the solidarity that is this aeon's sign of God's ultimate, gracious intention for his creation, but none of them are unintentional, unconscious, accidental, haphazard, careless, faithless about the relation of Christ to the material Body of Christ. A church can be wrong about so much, but not his or our own flesh and bones.
Those who have exploited the confusion about homosexuality to break communion and rearrange churches appear to be in that red zone. I do like many of these lovely people, but not without the premonition that they are about some strange machiavellian business that is not the Father's.
BW
Thanks BW - supported in some very recent conversations I have been having in which convo partners just do not get splitting over this issue (so long as no one is compelled to act against their conscience).
There is a lot at stake theologically but it is so much (and so much more than certain "red line" approaches propose) that it requires us to be in the same room of discussion, not in different tents shouting through the canvas to or at each other.
Perhaps too, picking up an earlier point you made above, we also need to see this as a matter which runs for decades (even centuries?) to come, and not to be sorted in a couple of Synods' time.
"some strange machiavellian business that is not the Father's"
100%.
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