Well, it's formal now: the Episcopal Church has schismed, with four breakaway conservative dioceses forming a new Anglican province. Here are excerpts from the Times story I found rather revealing:
It would also result in two competing provinces on the same soil, each claiming the mantle of historical Anglican Christianity. The conservatives have named theirs the Anglican Church in North America. And for the first time, a province would be defined not by geography, but by theological orientation."We're going through Reformation times, and in Reformation times things aren't neat and clean," Bishop Robert Duncan of Pittsburgh, a conservative who led his diocese out of the Episcopal Church in October, said in an interview. "In Reformation times, new structures are emerging."
Bishop Duncan will be named the archbishop and primate of the North American church, which says it would have 100,000 members, compared with 2.3 million in the Episcopal Church.
And:
Bishop Martyn Minns, a leading figure in the formation of the new province, said of the Archbishop of Canterbury: "It's desirable that he get behind this. It's something that would bring a little more coherence to the life of the Communion. But if he doesn't, so be it."Bishop Minns, a priest who led his large, historic church in Fairfax, Va., out of the Episcopal Church two years ago and was subsequently ordained a bishop by the Anglican Archbishop of Nigeria, said in an interview: "One of the questions a number of the primates are asking is why do we still need to be operating under the rules of an English charity, which is what the Anglican Consultative Council does. Why is England still considered the center of the universe?"
No matter where you stand on the matter, that is a remarkable, remarkable sentiment. What Bp Minns is saying is, "Like it or lump it, Cantuar, we're doing what we want to do." Besides that, he's asking the reasonable but revolutionary question: If the overwhelming majority of the world's Anglicans live outside of England, why do they have to worry what England thinks?
The Church of England Without England. Crazy times we live in.
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quote: "The question is whether the resurrection is a historical event or a metaphor. Spong believes it is a metaphor and there is clearly room in the creeds for a belief in the metaphor of the resurrection as opposed to the historical truth of the event."
No, this is completely wrong. First, the history of the early church and its struggles with heresies such as Gnosticism and Arianism make it very clear that early Christians considered denying the divinity, the humanity, and the literal, physical resurrection of Christ to be a departure from the faith. The evidence on this is so overwhelming that claims to the contrary can't be taken seriously. They certainly aren't by mainstream historians such as Kelly, Chadwick, or Pelikan. Spong's views thus do not remotely correspond to those of the early Church.
Second, the idea that Christ's resurrection is a metaphor flies completely in the face of the Biblical account. See for example the Gospel of John. Paul is even more explicit about this in 1 Corinthians chapter 15 where he discusses the resurrection of Christ and of believers in Christ on the last day. Paul makes it very clear that the resurrection he is talking about is a literal physical one. I would encourage you to read the entire chapter. The "metaphorical" view is totally excluded in it. It is also a chapter full of really good news (not "metaphorical" good news) for those who believe what it teaches about Christ.
Third, the idea that Christ's resurrection is a metaphor makes no sense. It simply cannot be logically squared with Christian ideas about sin, death, and redemption, none of which are "metaphorical."
In short, historical, biblically, and logically, Spong's views simply do not fall within the parameters of basic Christian beliefs. Christians can only see Spong's views in two fashion:
1) As a doctrine of demons and a damnable heresy. And no, I don't mean this in a "metaphorical" sense. I mean damnation as in eternal separation from God in hell.
2) As true, in which case Christianity is false. Thus there is no point in going to church at all and we should all eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15: 12-19:
12 "But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? 13 If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. 14And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. 15 More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. 16 For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. 17 And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. 18 Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. 19 If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men."
I don't know about you, but I believe 1# to be the case. I hope for the sake of your soul that deep down you do as well.
rr
Thank you, rr, for writing the post I considered writing, and doing it better than I would have done.
To which I'll add a non-canonical PS from John Updike:
Seven Stanzas at Easter
Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
re-knit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall.
It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His flesh: ours.
The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart
that—pierced—died, withered, paused, and then
regathered out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose.
Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping, transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the
faded credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.
The stone is rolled back, not papier-mâché,
not a stone in a story,
but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow
grinding of time will eclipse for each of us
the wide light of day.
And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
make it a real angel,
weighty with Max Planck’s quanta, vivid with hair,
opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen
spun on a definite loom.
Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are
embarrassed by the miracle,
and crushed by remonstrance.
ScurvyOaks,
Nice stanza! I also forgot to add something about the the Spong speech Christine posted earlier. Is it just me, or did it read like he was tripping on LSD or some other mind altering drug in that speech? I knew he held a lot of wacky, incoherent, and heretical ideas. But that speech contained a lot of sentences that were just plain gibberish.
rr
Actually, rr, it might do Spong some good to drop acid.
Since he's already tripping anyway, the acid might invert that effect, and bring the poor man back around to the truth of the liturgy he spoke without believing a word for all those years as a priest.
Brother Daniel is less far gone.
Perhaps a hearty cup of magic mushrooms would do in his case.
As a cradle Episcopalian (quite lapsed) who is trying to go back, but is also considering whether I even should, I find myself agreeing with the arguments of rr, Rufus March, and Bearded Professor Guy. I am not sure my rather modest and formative arguments can match the eloquence of the previous posts (I am also late to the party), but let me try to quickly put in my two cents worth.
I agree that the issue is not about gays or women (I tend to agree with the ordination of women and think *celibate* gays should be allowed to be ordained.). Rather, it is, as many have pointed out, about the basic mindset of the Episcopal Church. Does it want to affirm the divinity of Christ, or not? John Shelby Spong is, in fact, an excellent example of the corruption in the Episcopal Church. John Spong is not a Christian in any meaningful sense of the word; as an Episcopal Bishop, Spong is an absolute travesty. Frankly, I have to question the intellectual integrity of anyone who finds him to be a normal Christian. Christine’s post was spot-on, giving just a taste of Spong’s typically incoherent drivel. Even the now largely vacillating and gushy Archbishop of Canterbury had the good sense to write of Spong in 1998 (in response to Spong’s 12 Theses) “I cannot in any way see Bishop Spong’s theses as representing a defensible or even interesting Christian future.”
Part of the problem is that, as at least one person has pointed out, the liberal wing of TEC tends to be comprised of hand-wringing Unitarians and the conservative wing of Country-Club Republicans. Both camps tend to indulge in their own form of therapeutic Gospel, though the liberal camp is by and large more loathsome. Still, that does not excuse the tendency of the conservative wing to kid themselves about their own often shallow spirituality.
The reason I have finally parted company with the liberals in TEC is that they have lost any sense of mooring in the realities of Western Civilization. The Africans, ironically, retain their moorings, at least tentatively. Today’s liberal Episcopalians do not understand these concepts of Western Civilization and the conservatives, I suspect, are about to be severely tested.
Apropos of the whole Christian/nonChristian theme, it is generally agreed (unless you are a proponent of Christian Identity politics—the Aryan Nation riff-raff) that Jesus was a Jew. How then to explain the nasty, smarmy anti-Semitism of Bishops Jefferts-Schori, Browning, Griswold, et al.? Proponents of gay rights potentially allied with anti-Semitic thugs who also beat gays to a pulp? There’s an irony for you.
That anti-Semitic mindset tore it for me. I no longer had even a vestigial loyalty to what remains of TEC. I could try to understand the rights of gays and the honest and heartfelt desire of women to play a greater role in the Church. But I draw the line at giving my allegiance to the buffoons and useful idiots who not only want to excuse the 9-11 attackers, but also excuse the murder of Jesus Christ’s own people.
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