The 75th General Convention of The Episcopal Church in the United States comes to an end today, or at least is scheduled to end. Today we will see whether we can deal with the Windsor Report in ways very un-American – whether we can actually humble ourselves just a bit.
I have never used this phrase before because I do not engage in Identity Politics, but now I will for a reason: “As a gay man†all that happens at General Convention is not all about me or my “tribe.†My identity as a gay man is not paramount, but as a Christian (perhaps I should say “follower of Jesus†because self-identifying as a Christian is an identity in and of itself, I know). As a Christian my call is to a life of self-denial, to love others more than myself, to even love my enemy. To find life, I am to die to this life. If I honestly love my enemy, how can I do that which only causes them harm or hurt, regardless of whether they want to harm or hurt me? What is the example of Jesus on the cross, after all? This doesn’t mean I have to accept my opponents’ interpretation of Scripture, their form of piety, or what they want to accomplish. I can be a strong advocate of my position, but when I see my brother or sister hurt and distressed by my actions or words when they specifically ask me to slow down, wait a bit, or allow their voice to be heard, how as a follower of Jesus can I say, “NO?†It is only in our hyper-individualized, arrogant American way can we simply say to world Anglicanism – those who agree with me (us) and those who don’t – “screw you,†I’m or we’re going to do what we want regardless of how it effects you.
So, we wait two years until Lambeth. So we agree to withhold the election of another gay bishop, so we wait to conduct blessings of same-gender unions, so we express our profound regret that what we did has caused such division, harm, and dismay among the vast majority of Anglicans and Christians worldwide. We humble ourselves and say we may have been wrong in how we did it, and we could be wrong in what we actually did. I can advocate for my position, but my position is not what is most important – loving my brother and sister is regardless of how they respond to me. When concepts of justice conflict with concepts of acting in love towards others, we have a profound misunderstanding of both and I believe completely miss the Gospel imperative of love and justice and how they work hand-in-hand. “As a gay man,†I’ve always been vilified, never had the opportunity of blessing, so what is two years if in those two years many people around the world may understand me a little better, my perspective, or my interpretation of Scripture, and perhaps come to see things the way I do, or at least we can come to a compromise. For the sake of crucified Jesus, I’m willing to wait. If I simply want to force others to do want I want them to do, or the hell with them, then I am not acting as a Christian, but I am certainly engaging in Identity Politics. I am certainly enslaved to the “Tyranny of NOW.â€
We have been in a limited way discussed this issue for thirty years in this Church. The clergy have done a terrible job in bringing the discussion to most parishioners. What we did three years ago has forced the issue and forced the conversation called for by Lambeth Resolution 1.10.3, so let us continue in a way that will include as many people around the world as we can. I know what it is to be excluded, and I don’t want to do to others what I have experienced myself! Pass the Commissions recommendations for Windsor as a beginning point. If in three years our opponents do not accept the conversation or do not listen, then we have gone the extra mile and we continue on as we feel we should – but we tried, again.
Below I go into this whole issue of Identity Politics a little more deeply.
Category Archives: politics/culture
The Da Vinci Code
It seems to me that if people have to protest something as “insignificant” as a popular, fictional movie in order to “protect” their faith, well there is a problem with insecurity goin’ on.
If Christianity cannot withstand criticisms and attacks, whether true or perceived, than what is its worth? Poor God, what would he do without all of us diligent people protecting him?
I can’t wait to see the movie! I enjoyed the book – and at no moment was my faith in jeopardy. Get a life people; it’s a book of fiction!
If suddenly vast numbers of people start looking to this kind of thing for answers, which seems to be the fear of the protestors, then the majority of the followers of Jesus certainly don’t live lives that demonstrate the dynamic promises of God in the Gospel.
Brian McLaren on the ‘Da Vinci Code’
A very different take on the new movie than we hear from many in the Religious Right or Roman Catholic church. This came over Sojourner’s e-mail updates.
A profound suggestion…
Man! Stop and think about this (and it has nothing to do with Socialism, Communism, or some other “ism”).
From today’s ‘On the Way’
The Option for the Poor
Gustavo Gutierrez
“If I define my neighbor as the one I must go out to look for, on the highways and byways, in the factories and slums, on the farms and in the mines – then my world changes. This is what is happening with the “option for the poor,” for in the gospel it is the poor person who is the neighbor par excellence….
“But the poor person does not exist as an inescapable fact of destiny. His or her existence is not politically neutral, and it is not ethically innocent. The poor are a by-product of the system in which we live and for which we are responsible. They are marginalized by our social and cultural world. They are the oppressed, exploited proletariat, robbed of the fruit of their labor and despoiled of their humanity. Hence the poverty of the poor is not a call to generous relief action, but a demand that we go and build a different social order.”
Source: The Power of the Poor in History
New Music
Loss of Community and Self
Here are the last few paragraphs from this week’s ‘My Turn’ essay from Newsweek, written by Carolyn V. Egan and entitled, “Sidewalks Can Make a Town a Neighborhood.”
“Parents have become slaves to their children’s schedules, terrified to let their offspring out of sight. New houses are huge, enclosing all of life. They’re connected by technological portals to the outside world, making an abstract of everything beyond their walls.
“We worry about the safety of our children if we let them loose to wander sidewalks, even while we hear more and more stories of predators on the highways and byways of the Internet. We have forgotten that we cannot protect our children by telling them to hop in and buckle up. Our children do not develop the instincts to discern and avoid danger from the back seat of an automobile. We deprive them of self-mastery by insulating them from very cold and very hot temperatures, from rain, from wind. They do not know who they are without a plan, without a ride. While we encourage dependence in our children by chauffeuring them everywhere, we also encourage in them habits of selfishness and parochialism.†[Interesting thought!] “Adult maturity is rooted in the unstructured roaming of childhood.
“Sidewalks are becoming nostalgic artifacts of a time before three- or four-car families. To me, their absence represents disturbing changes in the way we connect to one another – and the habits, values, and capacities we bequeath to our children…”
What are we trying to accomplish? What kind of people are we trying to form as we deal with our children? How many of our decisions concerning our children are based solely on fear?
I truly believe we do ourselves and our children no good by trying to remove from their lives all hardships, all inconveniences, all failures, all responsibilities, all things that might impinge upon their self-esteem, all the things that build character, sense of self, understanding of their true potential born of experience rather than psycho-babble, understanding of their limitations… We do them no good by making them, even unintentionally, as neurotic, self-absorbed, and over-burdened by planned-activities, as ourselves.
We do our children no good when we make excuses for our own laziness and apathy when we don’t get up on Sunday mornings for church and say things like, “I don’t take my children to church because I want them to have the freedom to choose their own religion.” I have experienced far too many new college students who arrive on campus with no ability to make good and rational judgments about what is a legitimate form of religious expression and devotion and what is not – they are prime targets of the cults. They’ve been taught nothing and do not know how to judge or discern – they have no foundation.
So, what is the answer to a world that is, in fact, dangerous? Part of the answer is rediscovering the very real experience of community, which also means the rediscovery that the ‘other’ is at least as equally important as the self. We are increasingly loosing our ability to understand the experiential necessity of living in tactile neighborhoods (communities) where the other adults and older children are engaged with one another and are looking after the younger children for their safety and formation. While this is a very loaded phrase, it really does take a village to raise a child, at least as well-adjusted child.
Offensive (or not?)
The politic of “affirmation” and politically correct assertions that to offend is the paramount sin continue to march through the Church.
An article caught my attention from the Christian Science Monitor on the newly released “Gospel of Judas,” the early Gnostic writings determined to be heresy well over a millennia ago. I first saw reference to this article on Kendall Harmon’s weblog, Titusonenine.
The article mentions that many progressive Christians are taking this newly released gospel and using it to buttress their claim that “diversity” has always been a hallmark of Christianity. They are using the fact that there were various communities and theologies during the beginning centuries of Christian development to justify their own variant views of Christian belief and practice.
Now, I am the first to agree that we change and our understanding of God, the Gospel, and the way we live it out in the world change. I don’t believe this means that God changes! Likewise, as an Anglican I support the vigorous debate of different ideas, but there comes a point when one stops believing in much of the traditional and orthodox Christian tenants at which point one stops being a Christian, despite what one wants to call one’s self. To use the early controversies as a justification for the chaos in theology and practice that is present today is not right, since during those early days many of those variants of Christian belief and practice were declared to be heretical, especially the Gnostic forms of all this stuff.
“To think that noncanonical texts legitimizes diversity today ‘is to ignore the fact that that diversity was not accepted [in the early church],’ says Ronald Simkins, director of the Kripke Center for the Study of Religion & Society at Creighton University in Omaha, Neb. “It’s a naive use of history.'” Amen.
Then, there is the whole thing about being offensive!
“At the Episcopal Cathedral of St. Paul in Boston, the congregation has stripped Holy Week observances of traditional content that strikes members as offensive. On Palm Sunday last weekend, for instance, parishioners heard an adapted Passion narrative that removes biblical language seen as blaming Jews for Jesus’ crucifixion. And the hundreds who observe Good Friday won’t pray for those who haven’t yet received ‘the Gospel of Christ’ but for those untouched by ‘the grace of God’…”
The Gospel is patently offensive to this world, whether a conservative or a liberal world. There is no possible way to remove the offense without completely gutting the teachings of Jesus! It does none of us any favors by attempting to strip the Gospel of its offense and of its power, except that there are too many people who do not want to be held to account for who and what they really are – all of us! We have all sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
To attempt to strip the Gospel or the Bible of offensive things will end in having none of it remaining, because offense will be found by some in all of it! So, just stop. Deal with it as it is. Let it challenge us, enrage us, reform us, save us, transform us, convict us, enliven us, instruct us, and lead us into relationship with the God who desires that we be reconciled to Himself, to one another, and to His good creation! To do otherwise is to be so very paternalistic by believing that people can’t handle the Truth, which may cause them some sort of discomfort or amendment of life. How sad. How shortsighted. How immature. How untrusting.
“God and the Founders”
Here are a couple paragraphs from the excerpt appearing in last week’s edition of Newsweek from Jon Meacham’s new book “American Gospel.” Jon Meacham is the managing editor of Newsweek, an Episcopalian, and I’ve heard him speak on a number of television and radio programs. He is good, despite my disagreement with a few of his theological perspectives.
He is commenting on the current issues of faith in public life, the culture wars, and the animosity that seems to inflict much of our current and common life.
“Understanding the past may help us move forward. When the subject is faith in the public square, secularists reflexively point to the Jeffersonian ‘wall of separation between church and state’ as though the conversation should end there; many conservative Christians defend their forays into the political arena by citing the Founders, as through Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Franklin were cheerful Christian soldiers. Yet to claim that religion has only recently become a political force in the United States is uniformed and unhistorical; in practice, the ‘wall’ of separation is not a very tall one. Equally wrongheaded is the tendency of conservative believers to portray the Founding Fathers as apostles in knee britches.
“The great good news about America – the American Gospel, if you will – is that religion shapes the life of the nation without strangling it. Driven by a sense of providence and an acute appreciation of the fallibility of humankind, the Founders made a nation in which faith should not be singled out for special help or particular harm. The balance between the promise of the Declaration of Independence, with its evocation of divine origins and destiny, and the practicalities of the Constitution, with its checks on extremis, remains the most brilliant American successes.”
(Newsweek, April 10, 2006, Vol. CXLVII, No. 15, p.54)
The new “Ten Commandments”
An interesting perspective on the new ABC mini-series “The Ten Commandments” from Jewsweek.
Christ Among the Partisans
This Op-ed piece appeared in Sunday’s New York Times. I have said many a time that neither the Republicans nor Democrats are God’s way. The social-gospel liberals who inhabit the Democratic Party are not the way as the Religious Right conservatives of the Republican Party are not the way. The way of Jesus is always a third way. We all need to hear what Wills wrote, else we as those who follow Jesus as the Christ will forever be taken down a path that does not lead to God’s will being done on earth as it is in heaven, but down a failed attempt to accomplish the vain efforts of man. I particularly like Wills’ references to things being of “different orders.” I discovered this article by way of Titusonenine.
Gary Wills writes:
The New York Times
April 9, 2006
Op-Ed Contributor
Christ Among the Partisans
By GARRY WILLS
THERE is no such thing as a “Christian politics.” If it is a politics, it cannot be Christian. Jesus told Pilate: “My reign is not of this present order. If my reign were of this present order, my supporters would have fought against my being turned over to the Jews. But my reign is not here” (John 18:36). Jesus brought no political message or program.
This is a truth that needs emphasis at a time when some Democrats, fearing that the Republicans have advanced over them by the use of religion, want to respond with a claim that Jesus is really on their side. He is not. He avoided those who would trap him into taking sides for or against the Roman occupation of Judea. He paid his taxes to the occupying power but said only, “Let Caesar have what belongs to him, and God have what belongs to him” (Matthew 22:21). He was the original proponent of a separation of church and state.