Thus far the Archbishop of Canterbury has maintained the traditional Anglican via media with impeccable impartiality, trying to hold things together with a generous policy of being kinder to his enemies than his friends. But the truth is, the only people who now believe that Anglicanism can survive the current crisis in one piece are those holed up in Lambeth Palace. Both conservatives and liberals agree that a house divided cannot stand. The battle lines are drawn. Conservative theologians once defended slavery by refusing to accept the Bible as radically inclusive. Similarly, today’s conservative theologians are twisting the Bible into bad news for homosexuals rather than good news for all. It’s the very opposite of the gospel message of God’s generous and inclusive love.
The head of the US church, Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, has threatened the neo-confederate leadership with disciplinary action. Some US liberals hope she is leading the church to a new Gettysburg, a decisive victory over prejudice. Yet they may also recall that Gettysburg was one of the bloodiest days in US history. The fight for right is seldom cost-free. And this fight will be no exception. Glory, glory. Alleluia.
I like Mr. Fraser but this is the kind of analysis which isn’t going to get us anywhere since it is based on a fundamental mischaracterization of those with whom he disagrees. What was it the Archbishop of Canterbury said during the original Jeffrey John controversy?
Concerns over the appointment raised by evangelicals in the diocese of Oxford, [Dr. Rowan] Williams said, were “theologically serious, intelligible and by no means based on narrow party allegiance or on prejudice” and must be considered fully
I realise it is a Briticism, but Giles certainly is “on placement in All Saints, Pasedena” and how! What he writes of the liberal need for might to force through what (they conceive) as right is every bit as fearful as an earlier seeking after lebenstraum. And will be just as destructive if the liberals enforce their “gospel of inclusion” by the current means.
Read what the newly elected bishop of Chicago thinks of those opposed to the gay agenda for a blunt statement of their reality.
So, Mr. Fraser believes that those who consider active homosexual behavior to be a Scripturally proscribed sin to be guilty of “homophobia.”
To carry his logic to its obvious absurd conclusion, he must then consider those who fornication to be a sin be to ‘fornophobes,’ those who consider who consider adultery to be a sin to be ‘adulterophobes,’ those who consider pedoraphilia to be a sin to be ‘pedorophobes,’ and those who consider the use of pornography to be a sin to be ‘pornophobes.’
This man is so blatantly partisan that he ‘reeks’ of partisanship.
[blockquote] Conservative theologians once defended slavery by refusing to accept the Bible as radically inclusive. [/blockquote] I would challenge the good Dr. Fraser to come up with a single instance within the entire 19th century slavery debate where anything close to the concept of “[i]radically inclusive[/i]” was even considered.
[blockquote] Thus far the Archbishop of Canterbury has maintained the traditional Anglican via media with impeccable impartiality…[/blockquote]
Uh, not really. The “via media” describes a path steered between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism, not between whatever the Anglican Church believes today and the latest material churned out by a University Department in thrall to the latest political correctness.
Just a note: I did not say “Department in thrall to the latest political correctness.” Apparently mentioning actual programs by name within publicly-funded university systems is scandalous here.
“neo-confederate”
“Conservative theologians once defended slavery by refusing to accept the Bible as radically inclusive.”
Why is there a continued comparison to our current situation and slavery? One has nothing to do with the other.
Jeffersonian, I don’t see the need for apology. Mr. Fraser, and the other reappraisers, are motivated by political, not theological, concerns. If you lived through the 60’s and 70’s, you cannot be surprised that a so-called “liberal” movement has a tendency to favor jackboots for footwear. Sad and dismayed you may be, but not surprised.
And slavery always gets bandied about because it gives the “liberals” something about which they can feel smug. A modicum of humility would prevent them from taking the triumphant side, since they are no better able than conservatives to say which side of the slavery debate they would have endorsed if they had lived during that time. In fact, today it is the self-described liberals who echo the reasoning of the defenders of slavery when they assert that black people cannot be treated exactly the same as white people because they are not able to compete on a level playing field. Therefore, society needs to employ systems of preference of one race over another. Times change, those who receive the preferences and the burdens change, but the principle remains.
“Conservative theologians once defended slavery by refusing to accept the Bible as radically inclusive” —Giles Fraser
This is intellectually dishonest. Abolitionists were overwhelmingly Evangelical, both in Britain and the United States. Insofar as “conservative theologians” defended slavery on Biblical grounds, they were political conservatives prating “theology.”
In the decades before the American Civil War, Christian apologists for slavery made the same fundamental error as Giles Fraser. Instead of seeking to transform the world through the gospel, they preached a gospel that conformed to the world they admired: in one case, the most respectable realms of white Southern society; in the other case, culturally liberal secular humanists.
Br_er Rabbit
I would also like to see where slavery is defended in any of the main statements of faith — its not in any creed; any of the statements of faith; nor in any of the main theological treatises. It was never the policy either of the Catholic church in the many centuries where it held total control over the Christian church. I appreciate that some American theologians may have defended slavery — but I am equally certain that none did in either Australia or New Zealand, and slavery was never legal in Britain where the Anglican church had sufficient power to impose its moral code (a point Mr Fraser might like to consider further).
It is a red herring designed to work on the guilty conscience of an American audience and does not reflect any serious scholarship.
Yes, Margaret, and this seems to be the best they have to offer.
MargaretG –
Actually, slavery was legal in the United Kingdom and its overseas possessions until the 1830s. That was the abolition for which William Wilberforce and others worked and prayed.
I posted a response to another form that this old canard about slavery and homosexuality took back in 2005, a critique that applies equally to Dr Fraser’s pettifogging:
http://reader.classicalanglican.net/?p=305
#11: Slavery was never legal in the mainland of Great Britain.
Irenaeus is correct. Dr Fraser has a shaky grasp of theology and an even shakier grasp of history. Nobody of any learning takes him seriously over in the UK, where he regularly pontificates on BBC radio as rent-a-quote for lazy leftoid journalists, so I expect the little old ladies will just looove him in Pasadena.
Fraser’s willful distortion of history is matched only by his manifest contempt for historic Christianity. The tragic fact about defenders of slavery is that they came from every corner of the church’s life and beyond, conservative as much as liberal. Larry Tise’s book Proslavery (University of Georgia Press, 1987) studied that proslavery ministers and discovered, contrary to Fraserian revisionist cliche, that they came from all over the United States, not just the South, and from all religious persuasions — Baptist (only 17%), Presbyterian (c. 30%), Episcopalian (SIC! 20%) but also Unitarian, Roman Catholic, Jewish and what have you. Mr Fraser, before appealing to historical analogies be careful they don’t backfire on you.
apologies – “that” in the previous post should read “250”!
I’ll see his “house divided” and raise “what fellowship does the light have with darkness”.
“Slavery was never legal in the mainland of Great Britain” —Gordian [#11]
You could not enslave anyone in England but for many years people did bring persons enslaved abroad into England and receive services from them as if they had remained slaves:
http://www.wwnorton.com/college/english/nael/18century/topic_2/blackstone.htm
Somersett’s Case, decided by Justice Mansfield in 1772, ended this practice by declaring that any slave brought into England became free.
It’s a shame that this did not extend to the British colonies in the New World. It might have solved a lot of future problems.
Were All Saints Pasadena to wish to keep Dr. Fraser, it would be selfish of us to stand in their way.