[Gene] Robinson said. “`It’s not about your experience and credentials, but about whether a gay or lesbian person is fit to be a bishop.”‘
In a majority of the Anglican Communion, the answer is a resounding no. Several times since Robinson’s election, Anglican leaders, including Williams, have asked Episcopalians to “exercise restraint” by not consecrating any more gay bishops. Williams reiterated that request on Sunday in his strongest language to date.
“The Archbishop of Canterbury seems to me to have been pushed over the tipping point,” said David Steinmetz, a professor Christian history at Duke Divinity School in Durham, N.C. “That’s very hard to say about him; he’s such a gentle man. On the other hand, they really have thumbed their collective noses at him.”
[Mary] Glasspool, though, said the Episcopal Church held a moratorium on gay bishops from 2006-2009, and that’s long enough.
“We have waited, we have held back,” Glasspool said. “And now we need to get on with the mission and ministry of Jesus Christ, and proclaim who we are: an open and inclusive church.”
I’d say that living in defiance of God’s design for sexual relationships is a huge disqualifier. All church leaders are sinners (who else is there), but God’s plan is for us to forsake our sins, not glory in them.
From today’s Daily Office readings:
[blockquote]Revelation 2:18-29 18 “To the angel of the church in Thyatira write: These are the words of the Son of God, whose eyes are like blazing fire and whose feet are like burnished bronze. 19 I know your deeds, your love and faith, your service and perseverance, and that you are now doing more than you did at first. 20 Nevertheless, I have this against you: You tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess. By her teaching she misleads my servants into sexual immorality and the eating of food sacrificed to idols. 21 I have given her time to repent of her immorality, but she is unwilling. 22 So I will cast her on a bed of suffering, and I will make those who commit adultery with her suffer intensely, unless they repent of her ways. 23 I will strike her children dead. Then all the churches will know that I am he who searches hearts and minds, and I will repay each of you according to your deeds. 24 Now I say to the rest of you in Thyatira, to you who do not hold to her teaching and have not learned Satan’s so-called deep secrets (I will not impose any other burden on you): 25 Only hold on to what you have until I come. 26 To him who overcomes and does my will to the end, I will give authority over the nations– 27 ‘He will rule them with an iron scepter; he will dash them to pieces like pottery’–just as I have received authority from my Father. 28 I will also give him the morning star. 29 He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.[/blockquote]
Over the tipping point, eh? So says the tea-leaf reader from North Carolina. Are there any tea-leaf readers in Wales?
1. “You’ve always said the Holy Spirit is in charge. Your job is to follow where [b]it[/b] leads”. I guess folks in TEC no longer see God the Holy Spirit as the third Person of the Trinitiy.
2. Bruno’s comment: [blockquote]I will do my best to serve Jesus Christ and I’m not gong to strong-arm anybody,[/blockquote]
Didn’t he offer a veiled threat to those who would vote “No”?
best to serve Jesus….without actually obeying church teaching when you dont like it. This raises another issue for me. Glasspool has spent her life willfully disobeying Church teaching- how does this fit her for office, sexuality aside?
Touching this concern for church “teaching” – which makes the major assumptions of definitions of ‘church,’ ‘teaching,’ and a ‘candidate fitting the canons’ – but, really, now, it is ALL about “me”.
[blockquote] “We have waited, we have held back,” Glasspool said. “And now we need to get on with the mission and ministry of Jesus Christ, and proclaim who we are: an open and inclusive church.”[/blockquote]
This illustrates, once again, the problem… the mission and ministry of Jesus Christ are NOT about proclaiming anything about who WE are. The mission and ministry of Jesus Christ are about proclaiming HIS Lordship and the salvation from sin and reconciliation to God that is offered through him. It’s not now, nor has it ever been about us.