The Episcopal Church, now in its General Convention, is moving closer to full approval of sexually active homosexuals as bishops. From the NYT report:
The debates at the convention in Anaheim over the last few days have made it clear that the liberals increasingly have the upper hand within the Episcopal Church. At a debate over whether to develop formal rites for same-sex blessings, 50 people testified in favor and 6 against.A committee on Monday overwhelmingly approved a measure that would permit same-sex blessings, and the House of Bishops will take that up later this week.
The debate before the House of Deputies voted on Sunday to overturn the moratorium on gay bishops sometimes grew emotional. Sally Johnson, a lay delegate from Minnesota, who had supported the moratorium [on ordaining gay bishops] three years ago, proclaimed that she had decided now to support D025, the measure to overturn the moratorium, because it is a more accurate reflection of where the Episcopal Church stands.
"I stand before you now asking us to give D025 to the church and the communion as a gift, reflecting our messiness in our church but an authentic, truthful statement about who we are as the Episcopal Church," she said.
But speaking in opposition, the Rev. Ralph Stanwise, from the diocese of Quincy, said, "If we overturn the B033 moratorium we will in effect be urging many remaining conservatives and moderates among us and in our home dioceses, especially our most fragile ones, to search for the exit signs."
Those are remarkable quotes. Sally Johnson doesn't appear to believe TEC is theologically correct to give full approval to gay bishops, but is giving up because she believes (no doubt correctly) that her side has lost this war. What a remarkable thing to say that it's more important to be on the side of Episcopalians than on the side of God. Father Stanwise's quote is significant because it is yet another example of Episcopal conservatives who say, "If they do one more thing, I'm out of here." Really? Do you mean it this time?
It is hard for me to see that the conservatives/traditionalists have been anything but routed. All these General Conventions do is bounce the rubble, and all that remains to be negotiated is the terms of the trads is the terms of their surrender. TEC is not a church that has any interest in adhering to Scripture or Christian tradition on sexual morality. And Neuhaus' Law ("Where orthodoxy is optional, it will sooner or later be proscribed.") proceeds inexorably. This is not, I underscore, an occasion for pleasure for the rest of us, especially we who have friends who are struggling to be faithful Episcopalians within a church that is unfaithful to Christian truth. Watching the trads struggle to remain in this church is like observing a battered wife, wondering when she will finally have had enough, and get out of this broken marriage.
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In any case, you ought to apply your coruscating wit and rhetorical flair to Frank Lombard's legal defense.
This should have been quoted italicized in my post above. It is a quote, not my statement.
Jon,
What you fail to recognize -- perhaps because you don't want to do so -- is not only that the Episcopal Church is now run by people who are not Christians (by your standard), but also that in the Episcopal Church, and in every other church, it tends to be those who reject the "core" teachings who also reject what you take to be the "marginal" ones. It was no coincidence at all, for example, that it was the atheist Bishop John Shelby Spong who first ordained a non-celibate homosexual as an Episcopalian Priest. Nor was it any coincidence at all that the same Episcopal Church General Convention that just opened the sluice gates to more non-celibate homosexuals bishops and priest -- not to mention transgendered ones -- also voted down a resolution affirming Jesus Christ as the exclusive savior of humankind. Unfortunately for you -- and for Hector -- there are vanishingly few who share your awkward poise between theologically orthodoxy and leftism on moral and cultural concerns. Moral and cultural liberals are almost always theological liberals cum heretics as well, just as moral and cultural traditionalists are almost always theological ones in their respective turn. The choice that you and Hector face -- however much you would prefer not to face it -- is not one that I have manufactured just to get your goat on a blog thread. Rather, the choice is intrinsic to the basic reality you find yourself in, however painful that reality might be. Now, of course, if you would rather not compromise your politics as opposed to compromising your theology, then that's your choice. But it doesn't speak especially well about what your priorities as a Christian actually are.
PS: It's really rather rich that you find the notion of a Christian church run by non-Christians so absurd, when a recognition of that very absurdity as it manifests itself in the Episcopal Church is precisely what you have been deriding as "pharisaic" bigotry and ignorance throughout this thread. Perhaps it is simply that what is good for thee (Orthodox) is not good for they (Anglicans).
public defender,
Law schools must have lowered their standards on the verbal component of the LSAT, since you seem unable to comprehend my post in response to Jillian. I implied no similarity between Akinola and Lombard -- rather Jillian herself did. I merely pointed out that there are something like 79,999,999 Anglicans in the world in addition to Akinola, such that it is more the case that Akinola "sides with" the 79,999,999 than that the 79,999,999 "side with" Akinola. In any case, perhaps you and Jillian have hit upon a strategy for Mr. Lombard's legal defense -- that at least he's not as "bad" as one of those African "monkeys" that John Shelby Spong and other "progressives" in the The Episcopal Church have warned us about.
public defender,
Law schools must have lowered their standards on the verbal component of the LSAT, since you seem unable to comprehend my post in response to Jillian. I implied no similarity between Akinola and Lombard -- rather Jillian herself did. I merely pointed out that there are something like 79,999,999 Anglicans in the world in addition to Akinola, such that it is more the case that Akinola "sides with" the 79,999,999 than that the 79,999,999 "side with" Akinola. In any case, perhaps you and Jillian have hit upon a strategy for Mr. Lombard's legal defense -- that at least he's not as "bad" as one of those African "monkeys" that John Shelby Spong and other "progressives" in the The Episcopal Church have warned us about.
Nor was it any coincidence at all that the same Episcopal Church General Convention that just opened the sluice gates to more non-celibate homosexuals bishops and priest -- not to mention transgendered ones -- also voted down a resolution affirming Jesus Christ as the exclusive savior of humankind.
Actually the resolution was killed in committee, but regardless, I had not heard about this before so I googled it. It's really interesting, more so (to me) than the gay issue, important though that is.
The defeated resolution would have read, in part:
"Resolved, That the 75th General Convention of the Episcopal Church declares its unchanging commitment to Jesus Christ as the Son of God, the only name by which any person may be saved (Article XVIII [Note--Articles of Religion—back of BCP]); and be it further
"Resolved, That we acknowledge the solemn responsibility placed upon us to share Christ with all persons when we hear His words, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No-one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6); and be it further …
Resolved, That we renew our dedication to be faithful witnesses to all persons of the saving love of God perfectly and uniquely revealed in Jesus and upheld by the full testimony of Holy Scripture......"
Among reasons given for not approving this language was "insensitivity to other faiths."
Here's the nub of the issue, people. As I've been pointing out here and on other recent threads, if you're going to claim to be following the Bible, it makes little sense to lament a Christian group's embrace of gay bishops while ignoring what should be a much bigger issue for you: the fact that many other groups -- Jewish communities, for starters -- have rejected Christ altogether. As the resolution above says, the Bible is quite clear on this: Jesus is THE Way, Truth, and Life, you are not saved outside of faith in him, and it is therefore incumbent on Christians to try actively to convert everyone in the world.
Modern Christians, conservatives and liberals alike, don’t really believe any of that. They think it’s great that some people are Jewish or hold to other faiths, particularly if that leads them to build good communities and families on the basis of good, solid values. Rod Dreher himself joined in celebrating just such a Jewish community on this blog just a couple of days ago.
So it appears that a group of conservative Episcopalians basically tried to call the church's bluff and get TEC to state plainly that it accepts the Bible’s clear teachings on this matter of absolutely central importance -- whether faith in Christ is or is not essential for every human being, and whether Jews and others should therefore be actively evangelized. One could say (and conservatives are saying) that TEC was expressing typical liberal hypocrisy in voting this down, that they’re expressing the same faithlessness to Scripture on this point that they’re expressing when they vote to accept gay bishops.
But in fact, what’s apparently happening is that liberal Christians are at last struggling toward something like intellectual consistency: If you’re not actually going to make a serious, urgent effort to convert Jews, Muslims and Buddhists (and no significant Christian group will), then don’t claim to believe that Christ or Christianity is the only path to becoming right with God. The real inconsistency is on the side of (most) conservatives, who will go on making that very claim -- as part of a general claim to be following the Bible to the letter -- yet who have no intention at all of making asses of themselves by going around telling good, God-fearing Jews and others that they are lost souls who are damned for all eternity if they don’t convert.
And this, I believe, is the logical contradiction that is going to destroy conservative Christianity in the end. It’s not just that it’s fighting rearguard actions on gay rights, creationism and the other marquee issues. It’s that it has accepted the basic tenet of modern liberalism, i.e. that the world is big and diverse and multicultural, and that a particular religious faith that arose in the ancient Near East, and that held sway for a long time in the West, is not necessarily right or essential for every other culture or person on earth. There are many paths to God, or higher Truth, or spiritual wholeness, or whatever we want to call it, and it’s just arrogant for any one culture to claim an eclusive lock on those things, regardless of what it says in some sacred book.
The liberal Christians being criticized in TEC and elsewhere are engaged in a search for a new accommodation to these realities, one that preserves Christianity in some meaningful way within a diverse world whose diversity we now, finally, understand is not a problem but part of its greatness. Conservative Christians, meanwhile (other than the hardy band that offered that resolution), are in deep denial, imagining that they can somehow maintain the exclusivist Christianity of an older, much more provincial and unipolar world even in the face of the world’s diversity, which is not going to go away.
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