Hi Roger & Karen

The short answer is surely that Archbp Akinola would not share a platform with Roy Clements on the grounds that someone holding his views and living with another man in a loving relationship cannot dy definition be a christian...; on the marriage versus partnership question: do we believe that marriage is a sacrament? If so, how can one section of humanity be excluded from it genetically/biologically/by nature (however you want to put it...)? Or if it's not a sacrament, but an order in society, why should the sex of partners make a material difference to its cohesive and educative virtues? I am quite aware that grounds of faith and belief are claimed by those who oppose the sanctioning of gay relationships; where I remain suspicious is in relation to the deepest motivations that make us cling to doctrines that, in certain circumstances, are toxic (remember apartheid and its groundings in faith; or think of the state of Israel and fundamentalist understandings of the Hebrew Bible...).  I thought Roger's last remarks on the OPen Evangelicalism thread were very wise. Thank you (and good luck with the nicotine withdrawal, if that's what it is!)

Tony

Dear Karen

thanks for your response. I *think* I understand most of what you say, but I'm not sure what would be useful as a reply. I have been a member of a church that had a number of gay and lesbian couples and singles for a time. The arrival of a new vicar with one small child and the birth of two more in rapid succession changed the focus of the congregation so much that it got a lot straighter -- and it wasn't evangelical! Mind you, straight single people can be driven away by couple culture too... I guess it depends a lot on location as much as doctrine; but beyond that I don't know quite what there is to say.

Evangelicals including fulcrumby ones are (understandably) perceived as anti-gay; and as you say, it has almost become a test of loyalty. Maybe you have to leave gay people to us liberals and catholics! Perhaps that's what you mean about looking graciously towards one another. But I really sympathize withy your dilemma -- you are on the hook I posted about a while back: I think all that can be done is prayerfully to seek another way of handling the bible, that can deal with these questions of sexuality (or of different ways of being family) in the open-hearted way that some evangelicals (and catholics) have been able to change their thinking and feeling about women in priesthood or episcopate, or about usury (see various threads here and the Bishop of Bangor...) If you do find a different way of using the bible (and for my own part, I find the division into primary and secondary much too rigid) it will probably also take you out of some definitions of evangelicalist loyalty. (I wonder quite how many crunch issues there are: the 'inerrancy of scripture', the doctrine of 'penal substitution', the sinfulness of all nonhetreosexual physical intimacy -- are there any more? It's currently only the last one that matters.)

Archbishop Rowan offers a challenging example from Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his Guardian interview today: "I'm very struck by what Bonhoeffer writes in the middle-30s about the division of the church over the Aryan laws in Nazi Germany, where he says both that it's extremely important not to try and work out in advance every circumstance in which it would be necessary for the church to break. Equally, it's important to have the freedom and the clarity to know when the moment comes, and there just isn't a formula for that, I think he's saying. He felt in 1935 the moment had come, that he was faced with a context in which he just couldn't see a common Christianity between himself and the German Christians who accepted the racial laws, he just couldn't see what it meant for them to think they were a church at all. And that's, you know, that's pretty drastic, but he says you've got to have the ability to say that at some point. But once you start saying in advance - well, I think it will be this that will be the moment where it would all crack... That, he says, is trying to - trying to find large-scale reinforcements for your present positions before you're actually entering into the moment of crisis." ++Rowan's summary is a key idea, as I see it: Bonhoeffer "just couldn't see what it meant for them to think they were a church at all." I suspect that scotches all sorts of ecclesiological agonizing (pace the Windsor report and all that); but it does give us a rather stark principle. As long as I -- from my own liberal point of view -- can see what it means for fundamentalists to think they are a church at all, I suppose it is not yet time to walk apart. But the victims of the process will be friends of yours and friends of mine. I'm afraid.

in via: with kind thoughts Tony

Hi Jody. There are lots of gay and lesbian people who think that marriage is a heterosexual institution, and want nothing to do with it, so I guess thinking the same doesn't necessarily make you anti-anything. But there is a mindset question here too: You say: "If this is my perspective you might be able to see that I would be able to hold the idea of who someone is in Christ and what their sexuality is in separate places in my head." Two questions: are there other categories of christian believer who have to be thought of in double categories? I can't imagine examples, but how about celibate religious or clergy, or could there be a racial category, or maybe how people vote, or if they are monstrously rich? Would these or similar things also make you make this mental split or mental reservation? And would you expect gay christians to follow suit? My hunch is that the split is a sleight of hand -- it's like thinking about christian adulterers or christian wife-beaters... and we know that these aren't 'empty sets', alas! But it's just a version of loving the sinner and hating the 'sin', really. The bottom line is that your mental reservation undermines gay christians' understanding of their own humanity. I don't think there's a comfortable way round that.

On the other doctrinal hot spots, if you don't have some version of inerrancy and non-negotiability of the bible (except, in my view, when it suits you!), and you don't have a substitutionary doctrine of the atonement, what makes you an 'evangelical' at all? That's probably way off topic!

in via: pax et bonum  Tony

Hi again Karen: I keep trying to make this my last post! One more time: I'm sure you are right that we all need grace (and even St Paul recognizes the bad argument 'shall we continue in sin that grace may abound'). But that doesn't answer my difficulty: how are you going to persuade anyone that they need grace because of what they are? In orthodox christian belief, grace perfects nature. And if you're telling me again that gays don't necessarily have to act out who they are, I will want to know why. If their desire is more fallen than straight people's, and therefore irremediable, there isn't a gospel for them to hear from any of us who purvey it! I agree with your PS, but using inverted commas for "evangelical" all the time is a bore!

as ever Tony

I'll look forward to this! Barth and Bultmann seem a long time ago!

Tony

Dear David and Jody: David's post seems to me to be an example of Bishop Richard's point rather than a comment on it. The idea that the documents of the Bible are 'perspicuous' is itself an interpretative claim, not a secure base-line! If we could deal with plain sense, just like that, no doubt all of you here would be as implacably opposed to the ordination of women as Reform and Forward in Faith are. The Bible is clear enough about women keeping quiet and only asking their husbands for clarification. But you don't think that, do you? The problem Bishop Richard refers to seems to me to lie with the education of lay people -- not for nothing were we traditionally referred to as 'the simple' -- and with the fact that the trained & ordained don't usually pass on what they have presumably been taught at their Colleges (except when it maybe 'suits their application' and they have already made a decision about meaning!) I've found Walter Brueggemann's work on the Hebrew Bible tremendously illuminating, for instance, and my parish priest recommended him -- but I've also got the impression that Brueggemann would be excluded from reading lists and probably frowned upon in conservative colleges like Wycliffe or Oak Hill. A really useful starting place is the introductory material in the full editions of the Jerusalem Bible, too. I don't think that the scriptures are at all too difficult for us simple lay folk, but I do think that you need to be interested enough in their history and background if you want to hear the Spirit speaking in such a rich and strange collection of texts! And that's when they become exciting again: otherwise the Bible only ever seems to be used to re-apply or confirm what we have always already known! More along Jody's lines, you'd be hard pressed to find any 'doctrines' in most of the Hebrew Bible, the gospels, or even quite a lot of S. Paul (leaving aside a formulary like the start of 1 Cor 15) who is often engaged in argument or exploration. The breath of Spirit is there moving us along in our struggle to understand. I love the phrase from Iona Abbey: For the Word of God in Scripture -- for the word of God within us -- for the word of God among us, Thanks be to God!

Incidentally, don't you think that people worry a great deal too much about the Postmodern? It's abit like Q or the Cheshire at, it keeps disappearing -- the V&A and Tate Modern are taking us back to modernism at the moment. Let's take Nietzsche seriously by all means, but postmodern was invented by a bunch of American culture critics and theorists.

On the Way: Tony

Dunno! _Is_ Tom a heretic? Maybe the issue is the possibility of the question -- that and how amnay angels dance on the proverbial pin-head.

Dear Graham. Apologies if this is a longer version of a previous post -- it went before I meant it to!

It seems a bit premature to identify 4 quite different articles from The Times, the Church Times, & The Guardian (one of them from Andrew Brown's mostly untheological helminthoblog!) as a 'liberal offensive'. Linzey's piece  complains that the theological response of 22 UK & US theologians to Windsor has been ignored. I seem to recall similar complaints being voiced about the Sainted Andrew's Day statement... Has it struck no one that the blogging world is dominated by conservatives and not-quite-so-conservatives like yourselves? I find the suggestion of an organized liberal attack pretty offensive!

 Meanwhile the Archbishop whom I admire and revere has apparently compared the position of conservatives in ECUSA to the Bekennende Kirche and invoked Bonhoeffer's authority from the moment when the Confessing Church became necessary in the face of the imposition and acceptance of Nazi law in the church. In Bethge's biography, it was the decision that the German Christians would no longer ordain Jewish Christians to the ministry that signalled the need to break with apostasy. Maybe Rowan's point was the other way round, and those who believe the Gospel requires a fully inclusive church and a fully inclusive ordained ministry and episcopate are the ones modelled by the Confessing Church. The parallel seems unavoidable. I think Ephraim Radner sees that in an earlier text of his posted here, in which he contemplates a future in which ECUSA 'repented' or for the time being abandoned its pursuit of gospel inclusivity: what, he seemed to be asking his co-religionists, would we do then? How could there be a dialogue once the conservatives had got their way? How can we begin to 'listen ' if  it is a foregone conclusion that listening can have no possible consequences? (It reminded me of the end of James Blish's novel, Black Easter.) once more:

pax et bonum

The inescapable thing, though, Karen is that it is inconveivable that the Spirit would lead people into what is not the truth; and by any usable standards, this 'creationist' teaching does not lead people there. It may well be a matter of the heart, but that makes it irrational even if it is not downright stupid! My feal is the signing-up impulse described in an earlier post -- if you reaally really believe the Bible you'll accept some more or less literal version of Genesis -- and it's that purity-driven, are-you- inside-or-outside feeling that the need for fellowship in some cirles produces. yet another way of defining exclusivity! in via Tony

Dear Graham -- apologies for anonymity. My name is Tony Phelan. I realize that you didn't use the word 'organized'. Mind you, it's hard to see how you could have an 'offensive' that wasn't in some sense organized. The resourcing of conservative 'evangelical' groups in the U.S. is raised in the Church Times again today, I think -- and that is why it is also And I'd still like to know what easy for faithful but powerless lay people like me (I've never made it beyond Deanery Synod) to feel that in England and in this diocese, as Dr Goddard will tell you, all the cards are stacked very heavily on one side! And I'd still like to know what will happen in the way of 'listening' when 'evangelicals' have had their own way. Why on earth should you bother when the process can lead to no conceivable result? I am much in despair, but on the Way: Tony

The New York Times is very clear about the issue facing us: 'The Epicopal Church', it notes, 'and the Anglican Communion to which it belongs have been shaken by a dispute over the inclusion of gay men and lesbians'. It's a relief to hear the truth without the fudges we are always hearing about! On we go...

Tony