Come back Ottomans?

A bit of a Monday morning round up ...

As we reel from news of atrocities committed in the name of extreme Islam, this article is a useful reminder that there is a way to develop the application of sharia law which takes account of modern life rather forces modern life to conform to life as it was some 1400 years ago. Although not without its own cruelties and militarism, the Ottoman Empire "for centuries, .. peaceably ruled much of the civilised world".

Speaking of the Ottoman Empire, and as a reminder of its dominance over Christianity, it happens that Bosco Peters has posted this morning on a Stylite quest to reconstruct a chapel and house on top a pillar of rock in Georgia. It had previously been used by a Stylite "until the Ottoman Empire invaded Georgia in the 15th century."

Whether we like it or not, extreme Islam is a phenomenon in the history of religions of humankind. That history continues to take its twists and turns, including the rise and fall (and rise) of human allegiances to religions, and to specific convictions within those religions. Thus today we can jump from Georgia to Scotland to reflect on their census figures re religion, posted by Thinking Anglicans here. Protestants might reflect on the statistical stability of the Roman Catholic church. For Anglicans there is an interesting twist to the figures. Meanwhile in NZ we await publication of our 2013 census figures ...

It is not unknown on this site for the faithful adherence of Episcopalians to their prayerbooks to be observed, sometimes in conjunction with observations about Kiwi Anglicans somewhat 'loose' approaches to using our prayerbooks. Thus a post by Bishop Dan Martins, via Creedal Christian, caught my eye in respect of its liturgical observations of no less than a TEC House of Bishops' meeting. Creedal Christian's post carries the provocative title "Cognitive Dissonance and Liturgical Innovation in the House of Bishops."

But the Creedal Christian re-publication of +Dan's thoughts highlights something else, which also connects with the history of religions unfolding before our eyes through these weeks, the current mission of Pope Francis. Where is Pope Francis leading his church? He is saying things which progressive Episcopalians find congenial, yet he has actually done nothing to change the conservative doctrine of the Roman church.

Bishop Dan makes an astute and poignant observation:

" I find him a remarkable man, and am both humbled and inspired by his ministry. He is frighteningly Christ-like. But I also happen to agree with most of his positions on controverted issues. 

And here's the deal: He isn't proposing any changes in either the theological or moral teaching of the Roman Catholic Church. None. 

If I were a supporter of same-sex marriage, or abortion rights, I could find nothing in the Pope's statements that would lead me to hope that a change in church teaching in these areas is imminent. So why the sudden triumph of style over substance? I not only agree with his views, I also agree with the need he has expressed to change rhetoric and reassess priorities. 

But many of the same voices that are raised in adulation of the Bishop of Rome still see Episcopalians who share his views as outliers, and benignly and charitably (more or less) consign us to the margins of TEC. Just sayin'."

I think the Ottomans and Pope Francis would get along fine. They understand the need to connect the doctrinal rock of faith with the pastoral fluidity of the world in which we live today.

(Added Tuesday) Time magazine weighs in on the Pope as a radical traditionalist:

"even if the teachings that put a kick me sign on the church could be changed by fiat, it would be self-defeating to do so. The mainline Protestant churches have all tried just that--throwing out the unwanted baby of the traditional moral code with the theological bathwater. Yet they're still drowning. Over the centuries, people have found plenty to complain about in the church's bans on abortion, contraception and extramarital sex. But that fact doesn't undermine the code's internal consistency--or its appeal to those who have found in it a tough but beautiful truth."

Too return to Islam, Cranmer poses an important question in this post. How can a religion of peace inflict brutality on its own members? Ditto, read this Telegraph post asking why we cannot call murder murder and terrorism terrorism?

Let the final word be with the Word of God, this time in the reflective hands of Fr Jonathan, as part of Anglicans keeping holy writ.

One direction for God

I heard a quote from Bonhoeffer the other night I had never heard before. A response to suggestions he join the 'German Christians':

"If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction."

One can think of directions Anglicans want to go in and make the same response ...

You won't read much this year that's better written than this

Warning: if you are grieving it might be best to leave reading this biographical essay by Walter Russell Mead a while.

If at first you do not succeed

I am very glad for Bishop David Rice, Bishop of Waiapu here, that he has been appointed Provisional Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin in California.

Earlier this year he was a publicly named candidate for election to another TEC diocese and that was a signal to his diocese that he felt it was time to move on. Now he will move on and the diocese can work on securing the certainties it needs for its future direction with the election of a new bishop.

What is God up to?

Addition: pointed and poignant article here in the Telegraph.

Quite a bit of gloomy news this week, with disturbing terrorist attacks on Christians, a devastating earthquake in Pakistan, and NZ in danger of mass hysteria, probably leading to depression rather than manic celebration.

But all is not doomed.

Thinking Anglicans reports the election of a woman to be a bishop in the Church of South India.

Out of Egypt comes a strong conviction that Egypt Will Not Implode. Ramez Atallah, General Director of the Bible Society of Egypt argues that,

"Egypt is not on the verge of civil war! On the contrary, most Egyptian Muslims and Christians are more united than ever in their common vision for the future, as together they have rejected extremist “Political Islam,” and are working towards the noble task of establishing a civil society which recognizes all Egyptians as equal citizens."

The God of Jesus Christ is up to good work in the world!

Of course not everyone believes that God exists. For a nifty argument that the lack of scientific evidence for God's existence is no reason to be an atheist head to NZ blog M & M which offers a lovely argument cunningly titled There are probably no duties. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life here. 

I wish Reform Ireland would tell us what they really think

A woman, the Reverend Pat Storey, has been elected bishop in the Church of Ireland, for the Diocese of Meath and Kildare. Naturally this is always a possibility if one has canons permitting such elections. Logically the time to protest and then to shut up is when such canons are being considered. Charitably the election of any bishop is a time to express prayerful support that the appointee might be well-prepared to take up this important office.

Sadly, I suggest, Reform Ireland is in no mood for acting either logically or charitably. Here is their press release (more accurately, their press blast, H/T Thinking Anglicans):

"The Church of Ireland, in common with the Anglican Communion worldwide, has always prized doing things ‘decently and in order’ (1Corinthians 14:40). With the appointment of the first woman bishop in Britain and Ireland, it has furthered the disorder in God’s church that it originally initiated with the decision to appoint women as presbyters and bishops by an act of Synod in 1990.

God’s order for the family and for his church is male headship, a loving, Christ-like, self-sacrificing leadership for the purpose of leading others into maturity and fellowship in Christ. This ordering, initiated by God at the creation of man and woman, is not based upon or designed to produce any inferiority or inequality of woman to man. Rather, it is based upon the very nature and purpose of relationships within the Trinity itself.

As God’s Word makes clear, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are co-equal persons of the eternal Trinity, ‘One God world without end.’ Yet, the Son is eternally submissive to the Father (1Cor.11:3), who is described as his ‘head’, and similarly the Holy Spirit’s role in the economy of God is to serve the Father and the Son. Such headship of the Father does not imply the inferiority of the Son or the Spirit. Rather, the submissiveness of the Son within the Trinity is for the purpose of a perfect loving fellowship where there is mutual glorification of the other.

In 1 Corinthians 11, the NT teaches that the principle of male headship in the family and the church is modelled upon the relationship of the Father and the Son. Male and female are equal in status (Galatians 3:28) but woman is called to be submissive to God’s design for male headship in the church. This voluntary acceptance by a co-equal of her role in the church is her Christ-like service of God, and like Christ does not imply any inferiority or inequality. On the contrary, like the voluntary submissive relationships within the Trinity, the purpose of the woman and the man in playing such complimentary roles is for the purpose of mutual glorification of the other in Christ.

This complementarian approach is creational, biblical and crucial for our sanctification in Christ. To ignore God’s design for man and woman is to bring disharmony and disorder into Christ’s body. The Church of Ireland, by its recent appointment of a woman to be Bishop, has not only brought more disharmony and disorder into God’s church, but it has also side-lined Christ in his own church. If God’s Word does not rule his body, the church, then Christ is a mere figure-head and not the captain of his people.

By ignoring God’s equality agenda and role for man and woman and substituting it with a ‘spirit-of-the-age’ equality agenda, the Church of Ireland has in effect discriminated against those who hold to a biblical position. This decision will not only prevent those who believe in God’s agenda for man and woman being able to serve in Meath diocese, but also impair fellowship throughout the Church of Ireland. The appointment to Meath is therefore a sad day for many in the Church of Ireland because it is one more indication that the Church of Ireland is no longer listening to God’s purposes for his church.

23th Sep 2013"

What is wrong with this statement? Let me count some of the ways.

1. It is absolutist about the consequence choosing women both as presbyters and bishops: the church is brought into 'disharmony and disorder'. The position of Reform Ireland is both that this is so and that there is no other view. However a disordered church (fullstop, tout simple) is no church to belong to. The statement begs the question why Reform Ireland exists within the disordered Church of Ireland. The disordered Church of Ireland has been so since 1990: why has Reform Ireland remained part of such a church? There is an alternative approach, namely that a variety of views exist within the Church of Ireland about the ordering of ministry and thus the ordered and disordered state of the church. Reform Ireland could have taken the opportunity to remind the church that this variety of views co-exists within the church without blasting the church, dioceses and Pat Storey with the above denial of the possibility of her ministry being ordered.

2. It states as an accomplished theological fact that the idea of male headship of family and church is "based upon the very nature and purpose of relationships within the Trinity itself." This is misleading. The idea of male headship of family and church is based on some passages in Scripture. Some theologians argue that it is also based on the very nature and purpose of relationships within the Trinity itself but this is much controverted (e.g. in the writings of Australian theologian Kevin Giles) particularly on the matter of whether the Son is eternally subordinate to the Father, to say nothing of the matter of whether such subordination within the Godhead is directly applicable to relationship between husband and wife. (1 Corinthians 11:3, 'the head of Christ is God' is potentially a reading in this direction but not definitively as this is not 'Father-Son' language).

3. It makes a declaratory judgment that the Church of Ireland has permitted women presbyters and bishops because of "a ‘spirit-of-the-age’ equality agenda." Is this true? Many people support women in all orders of Anglican ministry for reasons other than an 'equality agenda', let alone one driven by the 'spirit-of-the-age'. For example, we support the ordination of women because we recognise spiritual gifts of ministry leadership within women which we also see in men (as we believe the NT church also did) and/or because we understand the ordained ministry of the church to be the ministry of Christ expressed through those called from among those who are 'in Christ', men and women both being equally and fully 'in Christ.' But the Reform Ireland allows no recognition that it belongs to a church which is not enslaved to the spirit-of-the-age.

4.  It makes a definitive statement about the future which is not underpinned by reality elsewhere in the Anglican Communion: "This decision will not only prevent those who believe in God’s agenda for man and woman being able to serve in Meath diocese, but also impair fellowship throughout the Church of Ireland." Well, there is a diocese not far from where I write, actually right where I write, in which it is simply not true that people holding to a complementarian view of headship cannot 'serve' in a diocese with a woman bishop. And I write from within a church with one and soon to be two women bishops in which fellowship throughout the whole of our church is not 'impaired.'

A note to readers: I have no wish to 'relitigate' the question of women being ordained presbyters and bishops, nor do I wish to argue (or to be misunderstood as arguing) that there is no place in 21st century Anglicanism for those who in good biblical conscience do not support the ordination of presbyters and bishops (there is such a place). But women in the life of the Church of Ireland, and in the Anglican Communion deserve better than the statement issued by Reform Ireland.

Crisis in global Christianity

There is an urgent crisis for Christians in a great sweep of countries across the middle of the earth. None can feel safe in many countries and especially not in Syria, Iraq, Egypt, and Pakistan (also here). The terrorist rampage in the Westgate Mall in Kenya may have targeted 'non-Muslims' rather than Christians specifically, but that grievous action will ripple through the extensive Christian community in that country.

Violence is not intrinsic to the way of life lived by the vast majority of Muslims, but violence, both against fellow Muslims and against Christians, is intrinsic to the terrorism which seeks to impose one or more forms of a rigorously pure Islam.

Readers of Western blogs such as this one will mostly live far from the threat of terror. We can discuss our issues in freedom and peace. Meanwhile our brothers and sisters in Christ face issues of a different kind and lack our freedom and peace with which to contemplate resolution. Stay and face death by terrorism? Leave for a safer country and concomitantly shrink the church of their homeland?

If we take ecclesiology seriously then the massacres of Christians in Syria and the bombing of Christians in Peshawar are the amputations of members of the one body of Christ. The crisis for Christians in countries threatened by terrorism is a crisis for global Christianity.