The contentious relationship between the Episcopal Church based in the United States and the worldwide Anglican Communion is appropriately called a “civil war over homosexuality” by The New York Times. I, also, think it is an event of civil stress about love and justice. In 1966, Joseph Fletcher, an Episcopal priest on the faculty of the Episcopal Theological School, Cambridge, Massachusetts, wrote a book titled Situation Ethics in which he declared that “love is the boss principle of life” and “justice is love distributed.”
“God is love” is a fact of life some of us learned in Sunday school. We also learned that covenants, creeds, doctrines and traditions may pass away, but love endures. How, then, can a church with a responsibility of promoting love and justice adopt a policy of discrimination that prohibits homosexual people from being elected and consecrated as bishops? There is no evidence that such people cannot “love and be loved in return.” If love is the boss principle of life, arbitrary and capricious acts of discrimination against all sorts and conditions of people, including male and female people, heterosexual and homosexual people, is unjust and should cease and desist.
While other institutional systems in society — like government, the economy and education — identify principles other than love that are central to their mission, certainly love is the foundational principle of religion — all religions. It is our religious responsibility in society to remind other institutions to do what they are called to do in loving and just ways.
It is a shocking experience to see a religious institution like the Anglican Communion refuse to support gay couples and lesbian couples who wish to marry and homosexual people who wish to make a sacrificial offering of their leadership skills to serve the church as priests and bishops. It is regrettable that the church rejects such people, as if they were engaged in a demonized activity.
Another one who seems to (in the words of C.S. Lewis) “mistake love for kindness.”
God is not love and love is not God. God does love us, but this does not mean that He affirms us in everything we want to do. God calls us to modify our behavior all the time. This is pure drivel.
[blockquote] [J]ustice is love distributed. [/blockquote]
Justice is properly defined as ‘good rewarded, and evil punished.’ But the concept has been warped into little more than the primacy of autonomy. Justice no longer takes account of what we do, but now considers only what we want. It stands to reason that injustice is therefore the deprivation of what we want.
Do not look in Scripture for this principle. You will not find it. Nor will God uphold it. For the desires of man’s heart are by nature wicked. He thinks only to do evil. And it is never just to do evil.
carl
So then we “bless” and accept to orders those involved in polygamy, polyandry, with concubines, and beastialty because not to do so would be discriminating against those that have “gifts” to offer to the church? We can believe what ever we want, worship however and whatever we want because “God loves us all”? Is this the new order for our Episcopal Church?
In citing the Declaration and the Consitution thus, he is declaring that they lie at the base of the church. But they do not and cannot. No church can rest on civil law – at least, no Christian church. Such a position fundamentally falsifies Christ’s message.
He is speaking another language, the one Schori speaks. It is important and significant that he is in the Harvard Ed. School, a place so far left that it can only be seen with binoculars.
Sorry, Charlie! You’re barking up the wrong tree here!
Well…in OUR “Sunday school” (CCD) we didn’t learn that “covenants, creeds, doctrines, and traditions pass away.”
Charlie, Charlie, Charlie…
As I recall it was the Lord who said, there would be separation of the sheep and the goats. Have you corrected Him on this matter? And has He accepted correction?
By the by, how was the earth formed and made? What did the sons of God singing sound like?
Wow. Where to begin? No, it’s not about homosexuality, it’s about Scriptural Authority. No, the foundational principle of Christianity isn’t love, it’s Salvation, by grace, through belief in the lord Jesus Christ. Might I point out that he doesn’t want God to deal with him justly! If God dealt with justly – or as we deserved, none would be saved.
[i] Slightly edited by elf. [/i]
“…as if they were engaged in ademonized activity.” This is a sort of a rhetorical questions. The word “demonized” is suppopsed to make all right thinking people shudder and the thought of demonizing anyone. On the other hand, if one takes scripture at its clear word, this is a demonized activity is a rather literal sense, although we say it is sinful. ANd there you have it. Sodomy, and all the other homosexual practices, are sinful or they are not. TEC says they are not. We say they are. There is no negotiating this division, no compromise possible, nor should there be. Is this a fundamental matter for both TEC and ourselves? It should be a division over core doctrine and so beyond dispute, but at the least, the effect this subject has over all the Christian churches indicates that it is fundamental. Should the AC go to the wall over marriage, therefore? How can it do otherwise?
Our goal should not merely be the protection of ourselves, it should also be the destruction of TEC.
Now, it looks as if TEC is going to self destruct, for which we should be very glad indeed. Let us say it clearly: TEC is corrupt and corrupting. All of which makes it baffling tht no one in the AC iin the West has actually said, “We want nothing to do with you any more,” and acted upon it. LM