Below are two questions asked of Presiding Bishop Frank Griswald appearing on Christianity Today’s website. I like the responses.
Q: Here in Kentucky, members of three Episcopal churches have voted to leave the denomination. They said that the church has departed from historic Christianity. What would you say to these people?
A: We all claim the authority of scripture. The ancient creeds, the doctrine of the trinity, the nature of Christ — all these things are not up for negotiation. … I would say if sexuality becomes the ground on which division occurs, then it means that sex is more important than the doctrine of the holy trinity and the divinity of Christ, which is a very sorry situation to find oneself in. Isn’t it ironic that people can overlook Jesus’ words about divorce and remarriage and claim biblical orthodoxy and become hysterical over a reference in the letter to the Romans about homosexual behaviour? The Bible, of course, didn’t understand homosexuality as an orientation. It only understood it as a behaviour. Clearly, the biblical writers presumed that everyone was naturally heterosexual.
Q: What would you want people in Kentucky to know about the Episcopal church?
A: The Episcopal Church is a questioning community. … It’s confident that Christ is at its centre, and that gives it the courage to look at things that are difficult. It also is a church which has lived with open-ended questions. It doesn’t need to reduce things to absolutes. We can deal with shades of grey, we can deal with paradox and ambiguity without feeling that we are being unfaithful.
The War on Terror
I moved to New York City 10 months after 9/11 and the City was still shaken. (I was actually here on 9/14 and a few days thereafter.) Every morning my train arrives at Penn Station in Manhattan and I walk through the station under Madison Square Garden and exit on 7th Ave. Walking through the station, I still have a hard time accepting the presence of all the soldiers with automatic rifles, gasmasks, body armor, and I’m not counting the NYC police, Amtrak police, Port Authority police, and security personnel.
Three years after arriving in NYC the city seems to be generally back to “normal” – economic activity, tourism, and the like – but the police and the army (and I’m sure other policing entities) are now randomly searching personal bags in the subways and stations. It isn’t like the airports, it’s just, “I need to check you bag!” as you’re walking to an exit or entering a station.
How can I believe we are winning the “War on Terror” when I look around me and it seems we are “progressing” towards a police-state. How can I believe that our foreign and domestic policies are making us safer? Seeing an every increasing police and military presence “protecting” us (and that isn’t meant to be pejorative) does not make me feel safer. It makes me feel as if the situation is only getting worse. Why else over the span of three years is the police and military presence so much more pronounced? Is this how we are to judge success?
One more thing about Emergent…
From an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer (when, I have no idea):
“This new flavor of evangelicalism, with echoes of the Jesus Movement of the 1960s and 1970s and a dash of medieval ritual, is especially popular among young urban adults. It stresses tolerance, inclusiveness, social justice and environmental stewardship, and it shifts the theological focus from individual salvation to helping one’s earthly neighbors.
“This blows away the assumption of what church should be,” said Jayne Wilcox, 36, of Levittown, after the service, as son Kobe, 4, clung to her leg and Seth, 6, headed for the door. “It attracts the college age and young families… it catches the ones that other churches miss.”
Emergent blog is where this came from. Read the whole thing below…
Emergent Church and Misunderstanding
Much has been and is being said about the Emergent Church conversation/movement and especially Brian McLaren, its primary conversant. A lot of incorrect things have been written and said, which is typical of critique of any “new thing.” (… there is nothing new under the sun) I resonate with a good bit of what is being said within the conversation, especially as they engage Post-modern thought. (It really doesn’t matter what I or anyone thinks about Post-moderism – a whole generation – and following – are being raised on it and will be regardless of what we may want or demand!)
To answer some of his critics, Brian has begun a serious of three essays on an Emergent blog detailing his life. I think it would be good for anyone interested on new religious/Christian developments in the U.S., especially as this conversation changes the face of American Christianity (and it will, for good and for bad).
Here is the link: target=”_blank”>Brian McLaren on “Becoming Convergent” – Part 1 of 3
A New Way
This op-ed by Jim Wallis is reprinted from a recent edition of The New York Times.
The Message Thing
By JIM WALLIS
Since the 2004 election, there has been much soul-searching and hand-wringing, especially among Democrats, about how to “frame” political messages. The loss to George W. Bush was painful enough, but the Republicans’ post-election claims of mandate, and their triumphal promises to relegate the Democrats to permanent minority status, left political liberals in a state of panic.
So the minority party has been searching, some would say desperately, for the right “narrative”: the best story line, metaphors, even magic words to bring back electoral success. The operative term among Democratic politicians and strategists has become “framing.” How to tell the story has become more important than the story itself. And that could be a bigger mistake for the Democrats than the ones they made during the election.
Boredom
Boredom is not something I have the luxury of being inflicted with at the moment. Depression? – maybe, disillusionment? – possibly, but not boredom.
St. Paul’s has a summer book club and now we are reading The Diary of a Country Priest, by Georges Bernanos. The book takes place in France after WWII and before Vatican II and is written by a young priest in his first parish. I wonder how much more applicable today are this priest’s thoughts on boredom then even then.
“Well, as I was saying, the world is eaten up by boredom. To perceive this needs a little preliminary thought: you can’t see it all at once. It is like dust. You go about and never notice, you breathe it in, you eat and drink it. It is sifted so fine, it doesn’t even grit on your teeth. But stand still for an instant and there it is, coating your face and hands. To shake off this drizzle of ashes you must be for ever on the go. And so people are always ‘on the go.’ Perhaps the answer would be that the world has long been familiar with boredom, that such is the true condition of man. No doubt the seed was scattered all over life, and here and there found fertile soil to take root; but I wonder if man has ever before experienced this contagion, this leprosy of boredom: an aborted despair, a shameful form of despair in some way like the fermentation of Christian decay.
“Naturally I keep these thoughts to myself…” (pp. 2-3)
Anthropolical Heresy?
Another post on the House of Bishops/House of Deputies Listserv takes an interesting turn with the following comment. I like this idea, and it well sums up a way of looking at this issue of homosexuality and the current controversies in the Church and in society. Although he says he is a Traditionalist Anglican, he takes a position on partriarchy that most “traditionalists” would not share. Here is the post –
What strikes fear into the hearts of traditionalists, of which I count myself one, is the possibility that it is not just people who are challenging our impeccable opinions, but God. If we have learned anything about tradition over the centuries it is that tradition is flexible, and interrupted and altered sometimes by the God who is alive and well. That can be both comforting and threatening to us who love God but wish that He (…or She. Why is there not a non-genderous pronoun for God?) would stop giving us new information about truth, just when we thought we had it right.
What now?
I was informed yesterday that the data-research position at the Medical Trust is not going to be filled, which means the direction I thought the next year would go, will not. I’ve been working in the position for the last three months and had planned on going full-time and working at St. Paul’s in Brooklyn for the coming year. This will not happen, as it seems now.
All I have to do is remember the summer I looked for work after finishing my firsts master’s degree to know that very good things can be at the end of a long wait. I have never known a time when God has not provided for me – not the way I wanted or thought it should be done, not when I wanted Him to, but God has always made a way for me in thick and thin.
All I need to do is remember two of my friends in Cleveland, skilled professionals, who went through a period of over a year each searching for a job. I cannot imagine what that was like, especially for one of them.
All I need to do is to do what I can – plan, seek, be diligent, pray, and be open to what I may or may not be doing correctly. Of course, this wait may not at all be “all about me!” I just don’t like it.
I find interesting
While I’ve been doing some data-mining at the Church Medical Trust this past week, I’ve had time to catch up on some of the House of Bishops/House of Deputies Listserv posts that keeps piling up on me. Through those posts, a couple of new ideas have come through that I find interesting.
First, one person asked whether those in the forefront of the opposition to the two controversial decisions at General Convention 2003 and those most stringent in demanding all of Anglicanism bend to their particular social and theological positions, are in fact going down the old warn path of the old Rigorists. This thought really struck me! Yes, in many ways, if not most ways, they are “Neo-Rigorists!” The person then went on to posit that they will come to the same fate as the old Rigorists – schism and then disappearance.
Second, the following excerpt comes from a comment to a post on the weblog The Propaganda Box.
“What strikes me is that we used to brag about how diverse we were…but it wasn’t real diversity. It was purposeful, if benign, avoidance. What would a truly diverse Church look like? I’d sure like to find out.”
The person who wrote the above commented that the liberals cannot accommodate “traditionalists,” but demand the traditionalists bend to the liberals’ demands. The same accusation many liberals are making against the present-day conservatives/reactionaries. He is right – this can be seen in political and social liberal circles as well. A good many liberals claim to be all welcoming of diverse opinion until the opinions disagree with their own, especially conservative opinions. I worked at Kent State University where political-correctness runs amuck – all one has to do is read what goes on at our universities to see this kind of thing happening. It always amazes me when I read about demonstrations among self-identified liberal students demanding a university keep certain people off their campus because they espouse a conservative perspective!
Anyway, the traditionalists and conservatives within the Episcopal Church have been on the short-end-of-the-stick for a long time now. While I do not agree with current tactics of many of the conservatives, they have a point. Yet, what would our church look like if we had true diversity? We don’t now, really, we just ignore one another as much as possible – Evangelical and Anglo-Catholic, liberal and conservative, etc.
I hope for and will for work for such a day. Their must be room in our church, within Anglicanism, for time honored and hard-fought positions: a male only priesthood, partnered gays receiving Holy Orders, open communion, lay presidency, the position and authority of Scripture, etc.
Moving Day
I am moving out of the seminary, today. Moving to a place for a job and home is one thing. Yes, all of us will miss Chelsea Square – our home for three years and all of our experiences. That’s normal. Moving away to a temporary place in a relatively unknown place without the assurance of anything is quite another thing. Leaving Chelsea Square isn’t about fond memories and saying good-bye to close friends for the sake of great adventures, but leaving a place where at least I know the lay of the land and people and that helps calm the anxiety of professional limbo.
So, I’m leaving. I am very fortunate for my job at the Church Medical Trust, for a place to move to, and knowing that I have friends and family that will help at any moment if I need it. I cannot imagine what it is like for those who truly having nothing, no where to go, and no one to depend on or fall back upon. I can complain and feel all the feelings inside, but I do not really know the anguish of those who truly have nothing and no one. I am profoundly privileged in this world of heartache and pain. Perspective. It’s all about perspective.