If only more members of the Anglican Communion displayed as much humility as Rowan Williams, who signs himself endearingly in one of these letters as “an averagely muddled bishop”. And if only Dr Williams could display just a little less humility in his job of leading the Church, the current stand-off in the Communion might have more chance of being resolved.
Until now, Anglicans knew Dr Williams, in his personal views, to be a liberal on the matter of gay relationships, but the evidence rested only on a rather oblique argument, set out in an essay nearly 20 years ago. These letters, however, make a much stronger and clearer case for Christians to be accepting of homosexuality, since they challenge the very scriptural basis of the Biblical prohibitions on gay sex. Dr Williams concludes that passages describing homosexuality as sinful are referring to promiscuous homosexuality by heterosexuals, rather than committed relationships between two people who are gay by nature.
This is a respectable point for an eminent theologian to argue, and it is a great pity that he has not been brave enough to argue it as Archbishop of Canterbury. Instead he has, if anything, sided with the conservatives. “I find myself personally in a difficult situation,” he admits in the letter, “between the pressures of the clear majority view in my Church [and] my own theological convictions.”
“Should govern”?? Granted, he’s been paying lip service to traditionalists, but hasn’t he been doing just that?
Can someone tell me how the ABC can get this reading out of the actual scripture? Talk about torturing the text? Is this in fact an accurate recounting of the ABC’S position? Larry
The author of the Times Online piece writes:
Nick from Manchester wrote in, quoted the same sentence, and then added:
That’s it, Nick. I would really like it if it was just a rule in serious newspapers that you have to really understand Christianity before you report on it or write an opinion piece about it. You don’t have to be a CHristian but you do have to understand it. Imagine them permitting somebody who knows nothing about South Africa back in the 70s to write about Apartheid ; or who knows nothing about the Middle East to write about the Iraq war. They wouldn’t do it.
But the statement above shows that the author knows really nothing about Christianity: knows nothing about how it is essentially counter cultural.
[blockquote]#2 Can someone tell me how the ABC can get this reading out of the actual scripture? Talk about torturing the text?[/blockquote]
Well, Ms Pitt gives a hint in her own letter as to why she couldn’t understand either:
[blockquote][i]”I am afraid I have not read any of the books (perhaps I should read them) which promote the idea that such relationships are equal qualitatively to heterosexual ones.”[/i][/blockquote]
Yes, perhaps she should. As perhaps should more ‘conservatives’ who unjustly claim ‘liberals’ are ignoring Scripture.
Whatever one may think of ++Williams, he is not a stupid man. One does not gain a Doctor of Philosophy and an [i][b]earned[/b][/i] Doctor of Divinity from Oxford and become the youngest ever Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity there unless one has thought deeply and widely. To move from a position of opposition to, to one of approval of, permanent faithful same-sex unions was not undertaken lightly or in ignorance, but was the fruit of lengthy theological, scriptural and rational reflection. The inability by so many ‘conservatives’ to even acknowledge that what they oppose has any intellectual integrity at all is often all too telling.
Jeffrey Steele in another related piece that Kendall just posted says:
“It’s not the ‘old news’ of the ABC’s views of late that is troubling (not sure what the motive for putting this out now is all about)…”
I agree with him. It’s old news that years ago the now-ABC had reached a theological point of having some openness and sympathy to SSUs. The important thing that Rowan CORRECTLY grasped upon taking the mitre was that he needed to submit to the wisdom of the church as a whole — i.e. decision making as conciliar. He had the humility to acknowledge that his private views might be mistaken and that only when the global church as a whole had reached a certain mind should we move forward on a decision so manifestly radical.
In this Rowan Williams is to be strongly commended — it can’t be said often enough that his private views were and still are no longer relevant.
The area at which our ABC has failed abysmally is in boldly and decisively leading the conciliar process. By June 2006 he could have given great clarity to Windsor and the Primates statements, and made extremely clear what GC 2006 needed to do. By summer 2007 he could have provided clear articulation of the manifest rejection of Windsor by GC 2006 and indicated that all Windsor incompliant bishops would be disinvited to Lambeth. And so on.
Or alternatively, he could have clearly articulated that Canterbury was siding with TEC and Canada and moved toward helping the Anglican Communion gently dismantle itself — with the least amount of pain possible.
But instead he’s acted as a VERY BAD MARRIAGE COUNSELOR and permitted endless amounts of protracted dithering and lying and delusion to continue which has caused immense pain for everyone concerned on all sides.
[blockquote]Whatever one may think of ++Williams, he is not a stupid man.[/blockquote]
No one has ever claimed that Rowan Williams is a “stupid man.” He made his career writing about Arianism, on which he is considered an expert. That does not make him a biblical exegete. If the above quotation is indeed an accurate summary of Williams’ interpretation of what Paul is saying in Romans 1, it shows a certain carelessness. The vast majority of critical exegetes have dismissed this reading (as well as the reading that Paul is condemning male cult prostitutes or Greek pederasty) for at least two decades as without merit. If Williams is still arguing this interpretation, he is either not aware of the weight of careful exegesis, or he is deliberately ignoring it. Either stance is not worthy of the Archbishop of Canterbury. His friend Tom Wright could set him straight on this question with one simple email.
[blockquote] Williams concludes that passages describing homosexuality as sinful are referring to promiscuous homosexuality by heterosexuals, rather than committed relationships between two people who are gay by nature.[/blockquote]
I doubt that this is actually what Archbishop Rowan Williams concluded but regardless of that, this perverse understanding of the clear words of Scripture suggests that we should elevate the behavior of homosexuals “who are gay by nature†above all other sexual behavior, this is idolatry.
Mary Ann Sieghart ignores the fact that those who are recruiting LGBT’s to the Church of England as fast as they can, do not recruit only those homosexuals who are in committed relationships, they recruit Gays, Lesbians, Bi-Sexuals and Trans-Sexuals and blatantly teach the whole church, including vulnerable children of the church, that they should ignore the clear words of Scripture.
I don’t know who Mary Ann Sieghart is and how much she really knows about the selection of the ABC, but if her (and incidentally Bishop Spong’s) scenario is correct, I can understand why Prime Minister Tony Blair might regret having participated in this and decided to leave the Church of England.
Hi Larry. I agree with Micky that it’s hard to properly judge the merits of the ABC’s private views on SSUs without a thoughtful reading of a detailed case put out by him. All we have in this thread is a few soundbites, e.g. “Dr Williams concludes that passages describing homosexuality as sinful are referring to promiscuous homosexuality by heterosexuals, rather than committed relationships between two people who are gay by nature.”
So I can’t comment on whether that’s a fair summary of what may be a much more complex argument by the ABC.
But it is a fair summery of a tired argument made frequently by some Reappraisers, so it’s worth commenting on. I won’t comment much on the extraordinary oddness of imagining deeply heterosexual men engaging in “promiscuous homosexuality.” It’s like imagining hard core socialists promiscuously distributing leaflets urging low taxes and small government.
But the thing much more worth commenting on — and here is the key point in this argument — is contrasting this with “committed relationships between two people who are gay by nature.” That’s the key phrase. The idea is that these people are born this way and so can’t help it. But sin is all about is choosing with our glorious free will the bad thing — so this must not be sin, right?
Well, actually, no. This is called Pelagianism. And it, and its more seductive cousin semi-Pelagianism, were declared heresies by official church councils. They are at complete odds with the Pauline witness (e.g. Romans 7), which is that the very nature of sin is that we are BOUND sinners, born with various compulsions to sin which we can’t help. That’s why we need a Savior, someone who can absolve us from the complete mess we are without ANY merit or worthiness or works on our part.
This view of the bound sinner, and this very low view of human freedom, was reiterated in our founding document The Thirty Nine Articles.
It’s worth pointing all this out because CONSTANTLY in these discussions we hear people claiming (on both the right and the left) that it matters whether gay people were born this way. And so in my view it is our task as apostolic Christians to gently return them to the Gospel, to stay on message which is that man has no freedom to perform acceptable works to God and that we are truly in the words of the old Anglican liturgy “miserable sinners.” We are born into sin, bound as sinners, unable not to sin — that’s why the Good News of (say) Romans 8:1 is such good news! Our task is to stay on message about man’s true state (whether straight or gay) and the good news of the Cross.
#4 and 8, Protestant Liberal theology at Oxford, Cambridge and elsewhere in UK is laugh. Is why their churches are being closed.
[blockquote]#9 Protestant Liberal theology at Oxford, Cambridge and elsewhere in UK is laugh. Is why their churches are being closed.[/blockquote]
I take it by your grammar that you are not actually speaking from personal experience. Perhaps you should tell ++Jensen to return his laughable liberal doctorate to Oxford. Or +Nazir-Ali to return his Cambridge one.
# 8, well said, and so infrequently heard. Imagine referring to the articles in this day and age. Heres an idea, instead of spending the next 5 years working on a new covenant , that will be committeed such that it does not say anything, lets just re-affirm what brought us to the dance.
Another chestnut from both the right and the left is that sinful impulses are ok as long as they are not acted on. Not according to Mt 1-5.
He may not be a stupid man, but his theology is quite stupid.
Micky, his degrees are not a measure of insight. I know too many Ph.D’s – what they hey, I was almost one myself – to equate scholarship with insight. Moreover, all our experience -and this is meant to include you – is that The Agenda easily overrides learning, habit, custom, past experience because the True Believer subsumes all that he knows beneath the Agenda. MOreover, one of the other things we have learned is that the cloistered academic is almost universally liberal to a degree because his experience and money separate him from the exigencies of the real world. Such is the abc.
We see in him once again the worst of sins, the vanithy of the intellect. You will say not, that he is too self-effacing, too humble; but the test is what he thinks and does, not his personal mannerisms. He is diffident, but this reading of scripture is one that only be reached by starting with a conclusion and then torturing your sources until they yield the desired conclusion. I say it again, if he has indeed said what is above, then he is reading the text of his Personal Agenda, not the words i n scripture, which are transparently clear.
I might add that using Adair k’s grasp of English as a standard of his incompetence to comment is neither reasonable nor just. Besides he has said what I said about the left wing ivory tower academic. So he must be right, right? Of course right. LM
Years ago, I, too, was a graduate student and got to be around some of the top minds in the world in my particular field of research. I count it a privilege, even if it was for only a few years, to have been able to work at that level with people of that intellectual caliber. But one thing for sure, I was certainly not one of them.
There were two individuals that I had a chance to interact with during those years that have stood out as anomalies. While above average intelligent, they were by no means brilliant. What they did possess was an almost photographic memory. They could read a paper once, and then months or years later, remember it almost word for word. You would have thought by the way they were able to converse on their subject, that they were some of the smartest people you had ever meet. But if later, you had a chance to spend time working with them, you would come to realize that they had no real or deep understanding of the material at all.
I firmly believe, based on what I’ve read and heard, that Rowan Williams is in this category of intellect. A shallow intellect that has, never the less, been blessed with a photographic memory; a memory that allows him to regurgitate other people’s words and thoughts and weave them together in a way that makes it look like they are his own.
Advancement in academia is more often than not, based on a person’s publication output, rather than on the depth of their understanding. This is why people, like Rowan Williams, who are good wordsmiths, but not much else, can still rise so high in the academic world.
Thanks Jimmy D. And you are right about the specious distinction between Man’s inner life and whether he “acts” on it. That was dismantled by this fellow named “Jesus” about 2000 years ago in something called the Sermon on the Mount.
Always nice to run into somebody who heard the word of grace in a PZ or Fitz Allison kinda way. It’d be interesting someday to do an Apostolic Succession chart — not the in the laying on of hands way but in a “from whom did you first hear the Gospel?” way. I know Fitz is on PZ’s Apostolic tree — be interesting to hear Fitz’s story, where did he hear it? Amazing to think that for so many of us, even people like the Wesley boys, a lot of it traces back to Luther, and then to Augustine and Paul and our Lord.
Hope you are well.
Re: 2 & 13, it’s quite clear that there are many folks who would say the opposite: that reading the usual handful of passages as supporting the traditional view amounts to finding what one wants to find. It’s worth the effort to understand how/why. One can start from the .pdf images of the letters in question in which RW identifies published resources that he found persuasive.
Ultimately, no good can come of charaterizing either set of readings as twisted or spun. We should be considering the arguments for the various readings, whether we agree or not.
In RW’s talk late during Lambeth when he summarized the reasserter and reappraiser discussions from the indaba groups, I assume RW was giving an accurate summary of the views/arguments that had been advanced, so I found it striking that the reappraiser arguments he reported on this topic did not rest on these arguments that RW found persuasive from scripture (note article 6 of the 39 articles). It’s very interesting to me that the style of argument of the two sides should be that different. Surely a persuasive argument that the reasserter folks are mis-reading scripture passages on this topic would be more devastating from their point of view?
Thanks TGD. I would love to read the ABC’s objective summary of what the reappriaser’s were saying at the recent Lambeth. Can you help?
Re: 17 This is the RW talk that I meant.
Thanks for the link to Rowan’s summary. That was interesting.
There’s very little solid intellectual content to his summary of what Reappraisers said at Lambeth, but that strikes me as probably correct. And I mean that as gently as I can — I am not trying to be snarky or funny. I just mean that as far as I can tell most reaapraising bishops and other Christian leaders seem not to have done a lot of hard rigorous thinking, and have arrived where they are more by emoting their way there.
So there’s a lot of stuff about hurt feelings in there (we reappraisers have got some hurt feelings, we think gay people got some hurt feelings) but no serious engagement (beyond spin) with the three main issues that GC 2003 precipated:
* Are the specific acts of GC 2003 symptomatic of a larger crisis of doctrinal abandonment in TEC, something apart from and deeper than issues of sexual ethics? We get a lot of hurt feelings here… this hurts us that you should say this…. but no real grappling with the fact of Jack Spong and Marcus Borg and their books in almost every Episcopal parish bookstore and so on. No grappling with the pronouncements of KJS. No willingness to face whether a probable majority of TEC lay and ordained leaders now disbelieve in things that all the great Christians of the past (despite their many other disagreements) agreed on.
* Is Christian tradition correct in saying that homosexuality is sin? Lots of spin and smoke and diversions here: inclusion is good, welcoming is good, gay people get assaulted and that’s bad, we need to translate the gospel into the language of the culture — all true things, all irrelevant.
* Should we have gone ahead with our innovations, even if we thought they were right, when the whole Anglican world was begging us not to and in defiance of Lambeth 1998? Did we have a responsibility to go through a period of corporate discernment with the whole communion on this before jumping in? Should we pull back even now and comply with Windsor? Are we responsible to the larger family in our decision making? As far as I can tell no attempt in Rowan’s summary to address this even at all.
Rowan is probably being very fair here — he probably accurately summed up what reappraisers said. I think it’s just sad that this is all they could say.
#16 tgd says:
The problem with arguing scripture is that before you can do that, you have to agree on a hermeneutic… and the two sides are using very different hermeneutics to read scripture. Until we have that argument, it’s no use us quoting scripture at each other.
You can see this in, for instance, To Set Our Hope on Christ, which advances what is, from the reappraising side, a scripturally-based argument… and reasserters almost to a person hear it and say, “But that’s not a scripturally-based argument at all,” because they don’t share the underlying interpretive assumptions that went into it.
And for that matter, the “underlying interpretive assumptions” will naturally flow from what one conceives Holy Scripture to be — as will one’s assumptions about the authority of scripture. Is the Bible a purely human work, full stop, or is it unique among human works in being inspired by the Holy Spirit? And if the latter, in what way is it inspired? Now, speaking for myself — and for the record, many reappraisers will disagree with me — I see the Bible as a purely human work, full stop; and that of course determines how I read it and what authority I give to it. I could go on and develop exactly how I do read the Bible given that assumption — and I actually do intend to write that up formally soon, as an exercise and for my own personal satisfaction — but you can see that there’s little point discussing that part of it with reasserters; I’ve already parted company with them to such a degree in foundational assumptions.
Hey Ross. Thanks for your thoughts. I totally agree with you. One of the problems in these conversations is a lack of common ground.
So for example, two evolutionary biologists can have really heated disagreements about something — say for example Gould’s theory of “punctuated equilibria” — but they can meaningfully have a talk and even change each other’s mind precisely because there is this vast continent of OTHER stuff that they are in agreement on; and not just propositions about also ways of valid reasoning. And it’s the reason that Gould and (say) a fundamentalist Christian can’t have a meaningful exchange about biology. There’s not enough common ground.
So that’s why this idea of common ground, common areas of doctrine and so forth are so critical for these theological exchanges. I am myself an “early Luther” Reformation type — but I can have meaningful conversations with my two closest friends who are Anglo-Catholic precisely because there is such a vast amount of shared belief and tradition and Christian experience.
It’s precisely because of this that I think it would be VERY helpful if lots more Reappraisers “came out” — come out of the closet, I want to tell them! Don’t try to “pass” as traditionalists, claiming you believe the Nicene Creed when actually you reject most of it as it has been understood by almost all of the great doctors and saints of the Church. Come on out! Proudly describe your disbelief in the bodily resurrection of Jesus, in the Parousia, in the Devil, in the blood atonement for sin, in the virgin birth, in the Trinity. Go for it.
See if I think we could just be open and transparent, then we’d be able to realize that we DON’T have to fight — any more than we feel impelled to fight with Hindus (say). Our doctrinal and interpretative assumptions are just so different that we can just shake hands and wish each other well and find a way to seperate amicably.
But there’s a resistance to this, a desire to claim that we all believe the same things and that the only issue of disagreement is one narrow area of sexual ethics. And thus we end up with people talking past each other and fighting and so on. And we end up with a bunch of really bad feeling: which if we could just see each other as different religions there would be a lot less animosity.
So yeah, I love what you said and wish we could get more reappraisers to say the same thing. Come on out!
Jon, reappraisers I think start the interpretation of scripture asking how does Jesus interpret scripture? He says a few tantalizing things: “Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.†He also asks us to figure out “I desire mercy and not sacrifice.” He undermines one of the most central aspects of Creation theology by saying The Sabbath was made for man. Jesus fulfilled the law, while breaking it.
For this reason, a responsible Christian can read scripture and the creeds looking for what is true and holy, as conveying the Holy Spirit.
I appreciate the fact that we don’t always think the same things. And I don’t think that thinking the “same” gets us very far. It is, in my view, an element of perfectionism that essentially disables God’s grace. I think differently than lots of people who agree with my agnosticism and indifference about homosexual acts. And I don’t care if they think the same or not. The eucharist and the prayers are more important to do than there are things we need to believe. I will never believe correctly. I just trust god’s love is enough.
#21 Jon says:
Well, I can’t quite give you everything on that list 🙂 I do believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus, for one. I’m agnostic on the virgin birth and the devil. I’m fairly confident that whatever the parousia turns out to be, it won’t be anything like what anyone expects. I’m still sorting out my thoughts on the “blood atonement for sin.” And I think the doctrine of the Trinity is one true way of putting finite words to an ineffable truth, but not necessarily the only way.
I know that for some, this — especially coupled with my view on scripture — puts me beyond the pale of Christianity. I don’t think that, obviously, or I wouldn’t still be part of a Christian church; but I get that this matter of how much doctrinal variation a church can tolerate is a critical one for many reasserters.
The above is what happens when there is no core doctrine, and by this I mean a set of definitive declarations which all must affirm who wish to be included in the company of those who so declare. Inclusiveness and diversity in religion are pieces of jargon whose primary purpose is to destroy the bonds with the past so that those who propose “inclusiveness” will be free to establish the in-group. The existence of a core doctrine inevitably is exclusive for there are always many who will not espouse it. Now, in theory, there exists a core doctrine to which all can agree. In practice, no such thing can exist until all men think alike and share the same values – but in that case, inclusiveness is a merely truism and diversity non-existent.
The arguments by the commenters above are trivial because none can bear on a central proposition – which would, in this case, be the common ground for argumentation. In practice the common ground should be scripture, even though the gospels carry contradictory propositions and postures. The homophiles use this obvious fact to argue that one may read into the gospels what one will. This is a stalking horse of course, a device to make those who wish to use the gospels pursue the issue of the Bible as the Word of God, which must, by a their definition, be perfectly articulated and coherent in all its parts if ANY of it is to be true. They argue that any weakness in a part makes the whole defective and therefore not trustworthy; in such a case, no part can be the word of God.
No one seems to remember that we do not have an articulated life of Christ, only bits and pieces transmitted orally,in all probability, and so cannot have a perfectly articulated Word, even if such an articulation is possible if only we had historical evidence for all that is missing. But is it possible for God to speak one truth today and another tomorrow? Of course, this should be quite obvious. God’s word may be unvarying, but man’s context, his understanding and his needs vary constantly, and what was true yesterday may require a different truth tomorrow; however, this is so is not the same thing at all as saying that yesterday’s truth in invalidated by tomorrow’s.
Can apparently contradictory truths be both true? You know well that they can, because man is “undulant” to use Montaigne’s word. As to truths going out of fashion and the reverse, see Robert Frost’s “The Black Cottage.”
Hence the need for core doctrine. The problem is not God’s Word, but mankind’s vacillating mind, his manipulation by context, and his physical ephemerality. To be able to hold apparently contradictory truths as equals is a sign of an intellect of quality, for the better minds know that all contradictions are resolved in the Great Truth which no man can know in this life. Can people REALLY hold contradictory truths equally? Of course. If it were impossible, no scientist could ever function, for contradictory hypotheses in science are as common as hypocrites are in TEC. You all know, but cannot prove, that the truths of science and those of religion are at last pieces of the same loaf. So core doctrine, which must hold us in freely accepted bonds while we await a resolution we know will come. Well, but can we have core doctrine in which homosexual acts are an abomination because the text plainly says so? Of course, and we have good reason to reach that conclusion. Do the John Wilkins and Susan Russells of the world disagree? Of course, but so what? We choose to root core doctrine in scripture, even when there is apparent contradiction in parts. But let us all be clear for the sake of the Pooh-Poohs: There is MUCH that is not contradictory and that is clear indeed.
In short, why argue with the coyotes over the value of carrion, when it is not carrion that makes up one’s diet? Who would win that debate; and why not leave them to a meal we would not eat, even if we could drive them away? Larry
I believe that the ABoC, never himself a biblical exegete, may have been learning from those who are, and growing out of some immature opinions over the past few years. I want to give him the benefit of the doubt in this and other matters. It remains the case that all the texts that we can muster are merely corroborative of what we all know about same-sex desire and physical relations. We don’t really need any texts to arrive at sane, civilised and Christian conclusions about them. And that is 50% of what St. Paul is saying about the matter in Rom. 1. O for a ‘sticky’ in this forum to that effect. Not to mention another for the ‘Jesus said nothing’ falsehood.
Is someone trying to push Rowan into a corner, republishing this old stuff?
This may be “old stuff”, but do we have any clear indication from him that he has grown out of it?
I suspect I may not have been understood completely. I did not have a reappraiser approach in mind. There are many with a reasserter hermeneutic who would say that “reading the usual handful of passages as supporting the traditional view [prohibiting a same-sex relationship] amounts to finding what one wants to find.” In other words, that this, and a few other hot points, made their way into the traditional teachings via the viewpoints of the cultures in which the faith arose rather than via a solid case from scripture. As a result of taking that approach, there are (for example) many prohibitions from Leviticus that even the most conservative folks do not subscribe themselves as holding.
It does not require any particular hermeneutic to recognize that Paul was writing to particular people, at a particular time, about their actual issues, and then for us to ask questions such as, “What was Paul writing about?” and “What did he intend to say about it?”
If the case from scripture is flimsy, then we are into the territory of article six of the thirty-nine articles, and the reasserter wing of the body may find itself changing.
#22… hi John. Just for clarity, when certain of us talk about the need for core doctrine, there are two things we do NOT mean:
(1) We are not asking for a church in which (in your words) we “always think the same things.” That’s why we call it “core” doctrine. It means that there will be LOTS of room for difference and debate on many things, but on certain core questions our church leaders (deputies to GC, Sunday school teachers, bishops, deacons, priests, etc.) will be generally united and speak with mostly one voice. So for example, although me and my two Anglo-Catholic friends would love to see TEC move toward a place of core doctrine, we understand that to mean a big tent which would include (for example) believers in the Real Presence and persons who are pure memorialists regarding what actually happens to the bread and wine during holy communion. Likewise it would give room to people who pray to the Virgin Mary and also to those who would feel wrong if they ever prayed to any saint. And so on. Lots of room to disagree on lots of things, but general agreement on the core theological claims that united nearly all of the great saints and doctors of the church.
(2) It does not mean that any person who wishes to attend the church must believe every piece of the core doctrine. One reason not to do that is because of the Great Commission! We WANT to provide an environment where skeptics or the uncertain are welcomed and loved — the same for people who are conspicuous sinners of one kind or another. So to retiterate, advocates of a move toward core doctrine want parishes where everyone is welcomed — everyone full stop. Where the need for agreement to the doctrine is important is when we start talking about church leadership. It’s easy to see if you think about it in terms of something other than the church. The ACLU, for example, welcomes all kinds of people — anybody can be a member. But if you want to become an official leader or spokesperson for the group, then you can’t be a person who opposes the First Amendment, is interested in increased censorship, etc. There might be a case for censorship, but if you think that you shouldn’t be trying to be the president of the ACLU. The same thing applies for tons of groups: the National Abortion Rights Action League, Focus on the Family, the KKK, the National Organization for Women, golly even the local bowling club. So the point here is that I am not saying that a person who has doubts about Jesus’ bodily resurrection can’t attend a “core doctrine” church. Of course he can. We’d love it if he came. What we will have trouble with is when a guy like that wants to be a priest or a Sunday School teacher.
Jpn, the issue of core doctrine must be addressed clearly and transparently before the diverse wings of Anglicanism can enter genuine argument. But I am not including TEC in the class of “diverse wings of Anglicanism” because there is no core doctrine that we and they could subscribe to. For this reason, no common ground is possible for argument. Bbut in a way it is simpler than that. TEC is a despoiler, a destroyer, for all its pink colored words, for it seek to break our connection with the past in order to establish a inflexible doctrine of its own. WE call them liberal, but they are, like every fanatic, utterly inflexible, and many here have so observed. Core doctrine in our case belongs to those for whom core doctrine is readily conceivable. But this means excluding all sorts of people who will not give assent. From what you have written, my sense of Core and yours are probably different, but we must open this debate because we DO agree that core docttine is essential and possible.
Larry
Jon, post 28,
Thanks for bringing some common sense to this debate, I thought your analogy regarding the ACLU was very appropriate.
This is just an afterthought but can anyone tell me who Mary Ann Sieghart is?
Thanks Betty See! The text below is the opening paragraph of Mary Ann Sieghart’s Wikipedia biography. You can read the whole thing here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Ann_Sieghart
===========================
Mary Ann Sieghart (born August 6, 1961) is a former assistant editor of The Times, where she wrote columns about politics, social affairs and life generally. She also wrote leaders, features and analytical pieces both for the main paper and for Times2. On 28 June 2007[1] it was announced that Sieghart is leaving The Times to write a book on contemporary Britain.