“Today in this country, there are few priests I know living in a same-sex relationship. It is hard to measure but my suspicion is that there are many fewer gay people in the church today compared to when I was in my 20s. They seem to have given up on institutional religion and certainly the Christian church.”
David’s story is one of four that was related in an emotional audio presentation to leaders of the Australian Anglican Church this week.
All spoke on the condition of anonymity, their statements read by volunteers. Attendance was compulsory at this “listening process” mandated by the Lambeth Conference in 1998 in its call for dialogue between the church and lesbian and gay Christians.
But as Australia’s Anglican leader, the Archbishop of Brisbane, Dr Phillip Aspinall, lamented this week it has been hard to get cool, rational debate on the vexed issue of homosexuality.
Since the US Episcopal Church consecrated Robinson in 2003, the Anglican Communion has been teetering on the brink of schism. Rival wings of the church are now brawling over the fine details of the US church’s latest promise not to approve any more gay bishops or authorise the blessing of same-sex marriages for at least the next two years.
The Archbishop of Sydney, Dr Peter Jensen, and his five bishops have not responded to the Archbishop of Canterbury’s invitation to Lambeth next year, a gathering of church leaders held every decade to plot the global church’s future. At its heart, Jensen says, the gay debate is a contest over the authority and reading of scripture.
“Nobody is saying we should throw gays out of the church,” says Mark Thompson, president of the Anglican Church League, which opposes same-sex blessings and gay clergy because it says homosexual practice is incompatible with Scripture.
“We want gay people to hear about Jesus as we want others to hear about Jesus. The Bible calls on gay people to change their behaviour, just as it calls on me to turn away from temptations, whatever they are,” he says.
The anonymous “former Anglican minister living in a long term partnership” is quoted in the article as saying:
[blockquote]I would be a lonely man, personally unfulfilled.[/blockquote]
I don’t recall a single thing about personal fulfillment in Holy Scripture, however there is a bit about fulfillment of God’s will and plans, including this:
Psalm 119:123
My eyes long for your salvation
and for the fulfillment of your righteous promise. (ESV)
[i]Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.[/i]
Connie
Connie, I think “fulfillment” is used in the context of Joy. It is also fairly clear, at least from the Old Testament, that abundance is part of what God wants for his People. Perhaps he should have said, he wouldn’t have felt the abundance of God’s love, which is pretty scriptural.
John, I respectfully disagree. In the context of “[b]personal[/b] fulfillment”, it’s all about the speaker, not about the Messianic nature of the fulfillment of God’s promises for us.
My interpretation is based on the quotations in the story from the “former Anglican minister”, the cultural trend toward “it’s all about me and what makes [i]me[/i] feel good and fulfilled” which has infected so much of the Church, and the contrast with Holy Scripture, which never, ever promises personal fulfillment, but Salvation and Eternal Joy by our willing repentance and unification with the Savior.
I don’t doubt that this man has felt joy, even Joy, but it is so much less than what God has demonstrated that He wants for His Bride, the Church. I have compassion for the gentleman, but recognize that he has chose his own ways, not God’s way/Way.
All of the above is my personal opinion, of course.
Time to trot out one of my favorite CSL quotes:
“The moment you have a self at all, there is a possibility of putting yourself first–wanting to be the center–wanting to be God, in fact. That was the sin of Satan: and that was the sin he taught the human race. Some people think the fall of man had something to do with sex, but that is a mistake. (The story in the Book of Genesis rather suggests that some corruption in our sexual nature followed the fall and was its result, not its cause.) What Satan put into the heads of our remote ancestors was the idea that they could ‘be like gods’–could be their own masters–invent some sort of happiness for themselves outside God, apart from God. And out of that hopeless attempt has come nearly all that we call human history–money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery–the long, terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.”
–C. S. Lewis, from Mere Christianity
We have indeed reached this point, where self-absorbtion has become a fundamental belief, that our self-satisfaction is a civil right. ” Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness…” has become dogma. The notion that we are assured by eternal verities “the pursuit of happiness” is surely one of the most troublesome and unrealistic phrases ever coined, to match, perhaps, “all men are created equal…” These are the paradigmatic “inclusive” phrases, the very stuff from which TEC is made, whose vagueness is called a statement of ideals and which, because these phrases can neither be demonstrated or falsified, will go on causing endless trouble because they are the very roots of the liberal self-centered solipsism. These phrases can, as you well know, mean anything you want them to mean and the little list in the preamble is in fact made more unrealistic because of, “And among these are…” What a curse this preamble has turned out to be, for it tells all the True Believers” that they can do and be whatever they want, and that there are no standards except self-satisfaction.
WE were all taught, back when the world was young, that the postponement of gratification was integral to self restraint, and that these two were the skeleton of all good character, the frameworkl on which we fleshed out our civil and spiritual being. But now the preamble has come back to bite us, and the culture will bleed and bleed as narcissism keeps the wound from healing. What silly beast tiptoes in pointy Italian shoes toward Bethlehem to be born? LM
Larry, all men *are* created equal before the law, and the founding fathers were writing legal documents for a government coming into being. Do you believe we should not be equal before the law? And the “pursuit of happiness” is about government not interfering with people’s lives (from which we have come a long way, for better or worse) – it is not meant to be a guarantee of happiness. Sorry, while I agree with some of what you are saying, I don’t see a need to attack the foundations of our goverment.