The TEC memo is in fact proposing a post modern, de-centered church joined not by mutual recognition of belief and practice but by allegiance to a common mission. So the second core message of the memo is “When Anglicans work together through the power of the Holy Spirit, we change the world.” What the memo means by this statement is made clear at several points. In Supporting Idea Three of the first core message we are told, “the reconciling work of Christ is at the heart of our common life.” This statement is absolutely true. However, the supporting point that follows immediately on indicates that reconciliation is adequately described by “justice, love, mercy, the healing of creation, and the end of poverty.” It would appear that Paul’s statement that “in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself” can be adequately rendered by the millennium goals. The memo renders reconciliation in entirely moral terms. The central issue before us is our reconciliation with God from whom we are estranged. This point is utterly missing from the memo’s account of what Anglicans do when they “work together.” Failure to address this point indicates that TEC’s leadership has failed to grasp the primary worry its critics from around the communion have. To be sure, they are offended by the consecration of Gene Robinson and by the increasingly common practice of blessing sexual unions between persons of the same gender. More fundamental, however, is a concern that TEC’s gospel message is not in the first instance one about the saving power of Christ’s death and resurrection but about a moral responsibility for the ills of the world. Their concern is that in TEC’s rendition of the gospel, the tail is wagging the dog and not the dog the tail.
The previous point is crucial to an adequate evaluation both of TEC’s goals at the present gathering of our bishops in Canterbury and the theology that lies at the base of these goals. The memo contends in the last supporting idea it offers, “the church has focused on its mission rather than its disagreements in order to remain faithful.” The implication is that the mission of the church has nothing to do with the matters that now so divide the Communion””that we can do mission while in fundamental disagreement about the content of the Christian gospel. Nothing could be further from the truth! To equate the Christian gospel with the moral agenda of peace and justice is as false as it is to say that the Christian gospel has nothing to do with peace and justice. It is precisely the nature of the church’s mission that lies at the heart of our present distress. To call for the communion to join in common mission and yet pass over divergent views of the gospel is in fact incoherent.
Those of us who look to our bishops to speak truthfully about our real circumstances can only hope and pray that the incoherence of what TEC is proposing will be pointed out in no uncertain terms….
Bishops! Speak out against this! Loudly and strongly!
Belief and practice MUST come first.
social justice issues will follow correct belief, but correct belief will not necessarily follow social justice issues! After all, how many athiests, agnostics, and members of other religions gather around social justice issues without EVER being confronted with the True Gospel Message of repentance and belief?
Bishops should be the first to speak up. What are they afraid of? Being called fundamentalists? Exclusive? Offending?
TEC belongs to the School of Nard Knocks!
Few bishops can be expected to speak out because they either a) agree with the theology represented, or b) they don’t understand the extent to which the memo departs from Christian belief.
b) they don’t understand the extent to which the memo departs from Christian belief.
How can that be?
#5, because their understanding of Christian belief in the first place is so distorted, uninformed, secularlized (any or all could apply).
[blockquote]The TEC memo is in fact proposing a post modern, de-centered church joined not by mutual recognition of belief and practice but by allegiance to a common mission.[/blockquote]
So how is it possible to have a common mission without common beliefs? What we do is a response to what we believe about the world around us.
What we are listening to is dithering, vacillating, reassessing; we are listening to the cells dying as the arteries bring them vitamin flavored water to t ake the place of real blood. This is the rattling of old age; this church has grown old, old. We have heard this all before so many times:
“There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces you will meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
A time for all the works and days for hands
T hat lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of toast and tea.
In the room, the women come and go,
Talking of Michangelo.
And indeed there will be time.
To wonder ‘Do I dare?’ and ‘Do I dare?’…”
Lambeth has very little to do with Christianity; it has everything to do with politics, the gathering of power into specific and its political application. The CofE has lived too long; the fresh arterial blood is in Africa. The whole poem needs to be read and reread. Lambeth stares at us from every line. Larry
WWJD has become a popular question in recent years. As far as the what the gospel in action should look like, I propose WDAD-what did the apostles do? Yes, they did acts of social justice (Acts 4:32, 6:1-6; Gal. 2:10), but the preaching and the teaching of the gospel ALWAYS came first and took precedence; the doing of good always flowed out of the correct preaching and teaching of the word of God, as relief, care of, and compassion for the poor and downtrodden was always a part of the teaching of the tanach and later, the NT.
In short, social justice flowed forth FROM the teachings of the Bible, as does proper understanding and conduct in ALL spheres of living; moral, ethical, charitable, sexual, etc. A thorough understanding of the word of God was the horse, if you will, that pulled the cart of all the facets of the churches life.
I beg to differ, Hopper:
*Soup kitchens
*Orphanages
*Unwed pregnancy help centers
*Christian debt relief agencies
*The Red Cross started out as a Chrisitan mission endeavor
*The Salvation Army with all its programs
*Inner city missions such as Jesus People USA in Chicago, IL and Grace Mission in Tallahassee, FL
*Hospitals in the poorest of the poor areas of the world
*Free clinics
*Food pantries
*drug and alcohol abuse prevention and treatment programs
*The march for civil rights was well populated by Christian clergy and lay-persons
*Katrina relief and other natural disaster relief is continually led by Christian organizations
*Habitat for Humanity
*medical missions to Haiti; African countries; Cuba; etc.
The list could go on and on and on, eating up bandwidth. All done because of Jesus’ command to “do unto the least of these, my brothers, as you would do unto Me”. If you don’t “see” these in evidence, perhaps it’s because you are not looking?
Peace
Jim Elliott <><
They, the bishops, do not speak up because they have some silly idea about being polite. They have not read the Fathers who fought heresy, they were anything but polite. They should state openly as Christ said you believe this or your going to hell. Of course one problem many don’t believe in hell or sin and think everybody is going to heaven and this is not what the Lord said. So they change the wording or in the readings leave out the punishments for fear of the loss of some of their congregations that might not like to be told the truth about their sins. thus we define these bishops as what they are, cowards.
#9 Hopper, if your “social justice” issues were the real purpose that Jesus came and the pressing need of humanity for which the Gospel is good news, then why didn’t Jesus keep multiplying loaves and fishes ad infinitum, keep healing the sick and raising the dead wherever He went, crusade for equal civil rights for Samaritans, lead protest marches and peaceful demonstrations against the Romans, tell the poor to throw a hook into the sea and get the money they needed out of the mouth of the first fish they caught? If He hadn’t ticked off the authorities, but gotten them on board, and even reconciled the Romans to this better way of peace, love, joy and plenty, then they wouldn’t have excuted Him so young and there would be social justice in this life for all.
But He didn’t. He made it clear time and time again that our real problem was in each and every one of us, in our hearts, the hearts of rebels from birth at war with God, except for one only, Himself. Why did the rich young ruler, who at least by his own account treated all men well, come running to Jesus’ feet, asking Him what good thing he must do to attain eternal life? Didn’t his riches satisfy him? Didn’t his affluence dissolve any gnawings of his heart that he might not be right with God after all? Wouldn’t his benovelence toward others and his keeping of the Law be enough to open the gates of heaven? Apparently not. And Jesus, knowing him as He knew all men, told him to, in one fell swoop, help the poor grandly while cutting the chains of coveteousness that bound his soul and follow the Bread of Life which alone could satisfy his gnawing spiritual hunger.
Hopper, if we could tomorrow make every poor person rich and every sick person well and every captive person free, of course we should and would do it. But what then? They and we must all die someday. How shall we explain to God that “there is none good, no, not one” obviously doesn’t apply to us because we do good things and therefore we must be good people. Good luck with all that. There are, sadly, many who worked only for social justice while ignoring the Just One, who will say to them, “Depart from Me, for I never knew you.”
I could talk about the end of chattel slavery, women’s suffrage, desegregation, but I wouldn’t want to feed the troll.
Echolord, we can feed him the Gospel! 🙂 He will either choke on it or it will bring him to newness of life!
When Hopper says that Social Justice had not come from correct belief he is holding up his own interpretation of what social justice is as an authority over the church, rather than being informed of it through the faith of the church. What people like him want to do is to subordinate the church to a political philosophy which will then validate the moral message of the church. The idea that the church judges the morals of the culture doesn’t aqppeal to him, unless the church agrees with him.
[blockquote] Social justice has, for the greatest part, been ignored by Christian denominations—certainly in America—even though the Bible is full to the brim with commands that it be carried out. [/blockquote]
It hasn’t been ignored, it’s been outsourced to the undisputed Deity of the Left: the State. Or do you think that 0.7% of 815’s budget for the MDG’s is actually going to people in need?
Is it necessary for the Anglican church to exterminate liberals? IN the present definition of liberal, the answer is , yes, of course.. And why? Because they are undertaking to subvert and corrupt even clear scripture. The text concerning homosexual acts, the texts defining marriage, are all clear. More than clear, they are relevant and will stay relevant, regardless of date in exactly the same way that Voltaire’s Candide is still relevant, and for the same reason. It speaks to the human condition sub species aeternitatis.
The perception of this continuing relevance, indeed, is what separates liberal from conservative in the present context. Liberals regard the past as shackles which they believe, given this view of the past, must be destroyed. Since there is always a past, there are always shackles to be destroyed. The past becomes a threat to freedom and to correct understanding. The conservative takes the other view. As Faulkner said, the past isn’t dead; it isn’t even past. These two views are incommensurable. For the liberal, an identity can only be made into the future. For the conservative, an identity must be rooted in the past and the continuity must be strong and clear. The liberal, in short, continues to be the cut flower generation of forty years ago. It hasn’t grown and inch or learned a thing. But then, with no roots, how can one grow?
Schori’s institutionalizing the bizarre, the abnormal, the marginal, the outre, the novel and fashionable makes her clearly one of the cut flower generation. “Inclusiveness” is after all “Do your own thing,” isn’t it? She has no grasp of what the past means. Her peculiar talent is her persistence, like poison ivy; she is special in that she has neither scent nor color. LMorse
Does Hopper always refer to Hopper-self in the 3rd person? 🙂
Hopper, you talk about social justice issues that conservatives ignore without naming even one of them. Get specific, which issue or issues are crying out for our attention instead of sticking your post-it notes of accusations all over us.
Don’t be passive-aggressive. Who are “some” and what exactly (quote, please) did we say that set us up as “the ultimate authority as to who is and isn’t a Christian.” By the way, Hopper, you are using a tired old liberal attack tactic/smokescreen: saying that we (conservatives) appeal to the authority of our own opinion when we appeal to the authority of inerrant Holy Scripture and submit ourselves to its authority in its traditional interpretation as well as hold any church that calls itself Christian to submit to that same authority (not to us!) and to support its congregants in that same submission to the Christ of the Gospels.
We weren’t. We are to put aside our own will where it conflicts with the will of God clearly expressed in Scripture. Even Jesus the Son in his humanity put aside His own will for the Father’s will, for the joy that was set before Him enduring even the cross while despising the shame.
No, they were elected leaders by canonically valid process, just like +Gene Robinson. If he is a properly-elected leader, so are these sinister figures to whom you refer! 🙂
More liberal projection that sounds far more like +KJS and her ilk. Please quote ++Akinola with sources that we can verify on his desire and plans to exterminate opposing viewpoints. Bishops swear to drive out false doctrine and defend their flock from destructive heresies. They do this not by suppressing anyone’s right to free speech, but by preaching the truth of Scripture. Private individuals can voice “opposing viewpoints” that contradict and ridicule the Gospel and the authority of Scripture all they want, but clergy have ZERO right to preach heresy and defiance.
No kidding. Conviction and confession of sin, repentance, regeneration by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, discipleship in Scripture study, prayer and action are anything but mindless. “But we have the mind of Christ.” The Sanhedrin were amazed that uneducated fishermen could speak with those from the best Rabbinical schools, and remembered that these men had been with Jesus.
Let’s define terms. In your understanding of salvation, Hopper:
1. From what does Christ save us?
2. For what does Christ save us?
3. How does He accomplish this salvation?
4. Will all humanity be saved?
5. If some are not saved, why are they not saved?
6. How do we know whatever we can know and need to know about Jesus and salvation? From what source(s)?
Hopper, these are the kinds of issues that conservatives see liberals as avoiding altogether or dismissing as oppression, not primarily the hot-button attention grabbers that make good sound bites but poor theology. Here’s your chance! Open our blind conservative eyes and melt our hard conservative hearts!
“Does Hopper always refer to Hopper-self in the 3rd person?”
He reminds me of Gollum.
I noticed that Hopper did not apologize for his comments about the Church NOT sponsoring or being involved with social justice concerns and issues after being proved (proven?) incorrect.
Peace
Jim Elliott <><
“proved (proven?) incorrect” – ah, but what is truth? A question heard on occasion(s) of some import.
Well, Hopper, you are a good dancer, because you danced around all the specifics I asked you for, preferring instead to lob verbal rotten tomatoes and then run for understated cover of just understanding each other implicitly and never asking for feedback to confirm whether we have truly understood each other.
Neither I not other commenters asked you for the definitive eternal truth as to what are social issues. I asked what social issues do you, Hopper, think orthodox conservative Anglicans are neglecting or refusing to work towards. You do, I trust, understand the difference.
Duh!!! I don’t know any conservatives, including myself, who said that or believes it or lives it out. Your implied accusation to conservatives is on the lines of: “And when exactly did you stop beating your wife?” A liberal sociology professor recently published a study (referred to on a T19 post maybe 6 mos. ago) that demonstrated unmistakably a result that surprised him greatly but that he was honest enough to publish – that religious and political conservatives far outgive in money and time to social causes including helping the poor compared to religious and political liberals, most of who gave a tiny fraction of their resources.
Yes, we must listen for the voice of the Holy Spirit. And He speaks to our hearts, but He will never contradict what He inspired men to write in Holy Scripture, as St. Peter attests.
2 Peter 1: 20-21 20But know this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation,
21for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.
Actually, Hopper, the Nicene Creed (whose wording the Baptismal Covenant closely mirrors) answers only a couple of my questions regarding your understanding of salvation. That is not surprising, since all creeds, including the Nicene, are meant as concise statements of the elements of faith, not a fleshed-out theology. “He was crucified for us” at least strongly implies Substitutionary Atonement as the accomplishment of our salvation (3). “the remission of sins; we look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.” implies that for which we are saved (2). “he shall come again, with glory, to judge the quick and the dead;” implies an answer to (1), that we are saved from being condemned in judgment when Jesus returns. Likely you will hasten to remind me of the phrase, “we acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins”. Baptism is a public and logically following acknowledgment of our salvation. If baptism were necessary and sufficient for our salvation, then why did Jesus not baptise anyone in the record of Scripture? What He did do as He predicted and as He said Scripture foretold was to die for our sins and to rise bodily on the 3rd day to show us that we too will live even though we die. Baptism without confession and repentance from sin simply results in a pagan who has taken a bath. Certainly my questions (4) and (5) are not answered in the Nicene Creed, but Jesus answers them several places in the Gospels. The answers He gives are: (4) No, and (5) Because many prefer their own will to God’s will, essentially.
No, it is not always, but as many Bible teachers point out, Jesus thought it important enough to warn us far more against being cast into Hell than He did paint glorious pictures of Heaven. One example:
Luke 12:4-6 (New American Standard Bible)
New American Standard Bible (NASB)
4″I say to you, (A)My friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body and after that have no more that they can do.
5″But I will warn you whom to fear: (B)fear the One who, after He has killed, has authority to cast into (C)hell; yes, I tell you, fear Him!
No argument from me there. (For once!) Only remember St. Paul’s caveat against antinomianism.
Oh, Hopper! Jesus gives us many solid reasons for well-grounded faith in Him as well as the reliability of Scripture. He quoted from nearly every book of the Old Testament in the Gospel record. Do a Google search for Scriptural reliability accuracy and you will find a host of objective reasons for assurance that the Bible is truly the Word of God revelaed to humanity.
OK, to annoy you again…, specifically which issue(s) do you wish I or others would change our minds on and to which of the many sides of the issue(s) do you refer? Do me (us) the honor of at least being able to consider your position and be moved to at least wrestling with the issue itself, rather than with fog, as I have tried to do in my comments to you.
I do hope you don’t mean final approach literally, unless you have sworn off air travel! 😉
I hope you can see that I am not judging you (not my job, thank the Lord!) in this exchange. But it is rather difficult to engage in a “listening process” if you never say anything in particular or specific about anything for me to listen to and consider. Clue me in a little!
Hopper, you do seem impervious to tongue-in-cheek comments – of course I didn’t think you meant that literally and I was familiar with the term – hence the winking smiley.
Maybe the Mormon bible tells you that dark skin is the curse of God but the Holy Bible does not. Moses’ 2nd wife was black, that is what was meant by “he had married a Cushite woman”, presumably Zipporah had died since Moses was 80 yrs. old when the Israelites left Egypt. When Aaron and Miriam took offense at Moses for this, the LORD showed what He thouight of racial prejudice. He called the three to the tent of meeting and, ironically enough, made Miriam white with leprosy for a week. Solomon had a black wife of whom he writes with much passion. Simon of Cyrene, who helped Jesus carry his cross, was black according to reliable interpreters. Certainly the Bible has often been wrongly and wilfully interpreted to justify all manner of injustice,…as well as some kinds of sin…
If you really want to know what reasserters believe was previously accepted, written by one who many consider one of the great theologians of the 20th century and an Anglican to boot, read a modestly-sized volume by C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity. You will likely decline, but I am sure you will be rewarded richly if you do read it, if only to know what makes reasserters tick. For Anglicans of the past, try actually reading Hooker instead of what others say he wrote. You will not find a 3-legged stool anywhere in his writings, and you will find much that may surprise you.
Obviously re your #27 I don’t expect an answer from you, especially with your implied statement that I have not been listening to you (still waiting for specifics to my ?s), but only talking. You’re welcome in advance, and enjoy being in separate churches, pursuing your new religion, as FOCA or GAFCON or whatever you wish to call it re-evangelizes North America and Britain and Europe.
Milton, what Hopper is referring to is the “Hamitic Curse” theory, which was popular in the post-bellum South.
What’s really ironic here is that the one thing that sticks in 815’s craw worse than anything else these days is that the “Hamites” have come in and taken command of formerly Episcopal parishes, with or without property.
methinks Hopper does not understand social justice issues at all.
His definitions have little grounding in reality: hand out, stop-gap, etc. What would you suggest? taking money from those who make a decent living and spreading it around in a socialist manner? That bankrupt so many societies, who now rely on ‘superpower nations’ for handouts.
The examples I listed were the results of CHRISTIANS following Jesus words of ‘feeding the poor, clothing the naked, caring for widows and orphans, visiting the prisoner, healing the sick — for as you do to the least of these, my brothers, you do unto me’ and above all ‘taking the Gospel to all nations, teaching them all I have commanded you, making disciples of all ….” etc. THAT is the heart of my definition of social justice.
An apt description/contrasting of our views may be:
Hopper: give a man a fish, and feed him for a day.
Jim: Teach a man to fish and feed him for a lifetime.
Albert Brooks did a magnificient book recently based on a study that found conservative religious people donated more money, time, and of themselves to social causes than their liberal counterparts, who rely on higher taxes and government handouts to fund social justice causes. In fact, liberal religious, when they do give, are more likely to give to art and humanities causes rather than to charities that actually HELP people (which is where conservatives give their money) I would recommend Hopper get a copy of that book.
Peace
Jim Elliott <><
You still haven’t said what YOU consider ‘social justice’ programs, just cut down my list and say ‘conservatives don’t get it’.
Well? Put up or shut up.
PS, for someone who doesn’t consider himself a liberal, you sure spend a lot of time denigrating those who consider themselves conservatives. Your condescending remarks show your true colors more than you realize. I hear the Democrats SAYING a lot about equality, but not DOING a lot. They seem content to keep people where they are and encourage class warfare (they are the ones who keep harping on “red vs blue states”).
Flat earth society, indeed. Do some [url=http://www.christiananswers.net/q-aig/aig-c034.html]homework[/url]. This is a myth perpetrated by 19th century ‘enlightened’ evolutionists to show how misguided religious people were. Christians never believed in a ‘flat earth’, and in fact, very few ancient civilizations did, either.
WHICH creationists? That is a put down that has no meaning, since ALL Christians believe that “in Christ God created all that is, and without Him, nothing exists that is”.
Hopper, you are a very difficult person with whom to hold a conversation. You spout a lot of unsupported claims, don’t go into detail, and condemn those who have both support for their claims and detail in their messages. 🙂
Peace
Jim E. <><