Tag Archives: Same Sex Marriage

Remaining in Communion

17 Sunday Jan 2016

Posted by in Anglicanism, Faith

≈ 160 Comments

Tags

, , ,

309b71c13e37ffa2772f4920d7ddcb7b

If one disagrees with friends on one thing, is that sufficient to break the friendship? In essence that is what the Primates of the Anglican Communion were discussing this week in Canterbury. To some outside my Church the answer seems to have been ‘yes’, because the issue here was homosexuality. This seems to me, as, fortunately, it did to my bishops, an overreaction.

I have seen the words of St Bernadine of Sienna quoted in part, so I looked them up and found a fuller account here:

“No sin in the world grips the soul as the accursed sodomy; this sin has always been detested by all those who live according to God.… Deviant passion is close to madness; this vice disturbs the intellect, destroys elevation and generosity of soul, brings the mind down from great thoughts to the lowliest, makes the person slothful, irascible, obstinate and obdurate, servile and soft and incapable of anything; furthermore, agitated by an insatiable craving for pleasure, the person follows not reason but frenzy.… They become blind and, when their thoughts should soar to high and great things, they are broken down and reduced to vile and useless and putrid things, which could never make them happy…. Just as people participate in the glory of God in different degrees, so also in hell some suffer more than others. He who lived with this vice of sodomy suffers more than another, for this is the greatest sin

I have gay friends, they are not ‘close to madness’, their intellects are undisturbed (indeed one is a professor at one of the best universities in the world), and I have not noticed that they are any less generous than others, or that their souls are more stunted; neither has it made them slothful, irascible, servile or any of the rest of the saint’s prejudiced nonsense. Unlike St Bernardine, most of those I know are not obsessed with pleasure, they feel they were born the way they are, and they get on with their lives. St Bernardine is welcome to his view, not uncommon in the fourteenth and fifteenth century, but just as we no longer take so many of the attitudes of that era as gospel (burning people at the stake, anyone?), neither too should be allow ourselves to be guided by them on this issue. That quotation is, to anyone with gay friends, shockingly offensive, and worse, it is a mass of prejudices which simply do not stand up to examination. Might one find gay people who match that description? No doubt, just as one might find heterosexual people who do? So what?

I have the horrid sense here I get when I see Professor Dawkins debating fundamentalists – two sets of closed minds beating each other with their prejudices. It is certainly the case that militant homosexual lobbies insist that what matters most is their sexuality, and to be honest, if my sexual preferences had been the subject of the sort of persecution and insults theirs have, I, too, might feel militant. Their equivalent on the Christian side are those who insist that ‘sodomy’ is the greatest sin. Jesus says nothing about it, and St Paul, who certainly does, numbers it among a number of sexual sins. It is the prejudice of past ages which elevated sodomy to the status some still want it to have, and their insistence brings forth from their opponents a similar heightened rhetoric. I suppose that since lesbianism is not sodomy, women ought to be left out of this, but they got included all the same. The language used by some is directed as much at the sinner as the sin, and Archbishop Justin was wise and compassionate to apologise for it. Extremist language and attitudes spawn the same on the other side, and so we go into the abyss. It seems significant that Archbishop Justin is being attached for bigotry by those who reject Church teaching, and as abandoning it by those who want to make the issue one on which to end communion. When those prone to extreme positions and language find only the love of God, they do have a tendency to react crossly; they might ask themselves whether they are really quite as right and the others as wrong, as they assume in their self-imposed rigidity?

Those who genuinely feel that this issue is so vital that they cannot stay in Communion with those who disagree with them need, I am afraid, to explain why, to them, this one issue is so important that it overcomes the ninety nine other issues on which they agree? The same is true, mutatis mutandis, of those shouting bigotry and yet who use its language about those who disagree with them.

Let me be clear as I end. My Church has stated unequivocally that it has no power to approve of same sex marriages, it acknowledges what I acknowledge, that this runs against the word of Scripture and tradition. It goes further and reminds the Episcopalians that they are sinned against good fellowship by going their own way on this. Having done this, it then does a remarkable thing, it affirms the bonds of Communion remain, and that is because:

We, as Anglican Primates, affirm together that the Church of Jesus Christ lives to bear witness to the transforming love of God in the power of the Spirit throughout the world.

And they do so because:

It is clear God’s world has never been in greater need of this resurrection love and we long to make it known.

To some, this will appear only as an attempt to hold together what cannot be held. To me, and to many Anglicans, it a Spirit-filled statement of a determination not to allow those, on both sides of the debate, obsessed with this subject, to prevent us bringing the love and knowledge of Jesus Christ, the Risen Saviour, to a world which needs him as much as, if not more than, ever,

Women as Equals? Only in Christianity.

15 Wednesday Jul 2015

Posted by in Bible, Faith, Persecution, Politics

≈ 14 Comments

Tags

, , , ,

422947030_640Marriage as we define it between one man and one woman has been taking quite a beating lately on the public square. In some ways, I’m divided, I’m not convinced that things of the First Kingdom, God’s, are any business at all of the second, the state.

And yet the state has horned its way in, with tax laws, and rules, and you shall do this, and you shan’t do that, and above all make that wedding cake, serf. And don’t talk about the $135 K fine for saying no.

Marriage, of course, is far older than the state, the very first of human institutions dating from before even the fall, and thus older than the church, and the state. But that won’t work for those who would make the state, god, and so they malign, and undermine, and dilute, and berate, and threaten, all without authentic evidence for their view.

For women’s rights flow directly, and inescapably from Christ and Christianity. Not for nothing did the resurrected Christ first appear to the Magdalene. See what Jessica had to say about this.

David J. Theroux wrote recently at the Independent Institute on the history of marriage, using actual scholarship, as opposed to making it up as he went along.

The biblical account of marriage begins with one man and one woman: “God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God blessed them.’” And, “For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh.” Jesus later called humanity back to these records (Matthew 19:4–5, Mark 10:6–8), and the Christian story is viewed as ending with the wedding of Christ with His bride, the Church, from which all Christian discussions of marriage stem.

In Christianity, marriage is hence a sacred union of the highest order. However, since the Enlightenment, secularism has defined marriage as a civil union. Many academics view traditional marriage as a patriarchy to dominate and oppress women, all supported by Christian despots. Such a narrative is based on the theory that primitive mankind was egalitarian, matrilineal, and socialist, with communal sexual relations, despite the biological and kinship basis of heterosexual pairing.

However, for thousands of years around the world, a wife was considered a husband’s property. In ancient Jewish communities, almost every adult was married. By age thirteen, a man chose a wife who was betrothed (committed legally to marriage) and, thus, considered de facto married. The man headed the family, with the wife his property. In the Greco-Roman pagan world, marriage was reserved for citizens, and a woman shared her husband’s station as mother of his children, but she and the offspring were his.

While adultery was prohibited for women, no fidelity obligation existed for men. Older men could force marriage on pre-pubescent girls and compel them to have abortions, usually certain death for not only the baby but also the girl. Moreover, according to sociologist and historian Rodney Stark in his Pulitzer-Prize Finalist book The Rise of Christianity, infanticide was a commonplace, with baby girls disproportionately abandoned, resulting in “131 males per 100 females in the city of Rome, and 140 males per 100 females in Italy, Asia Minor, and North Africa.”The Christianity’s Revolutionary Recognition of Women as Equals: Newsroom: The Independent Institute.

All true and so is this:

Stark shows that Christianity recognized women as equal to men, all sacred to God. Christian wives did not have abortions (neither did Jewish wives), and Christians opposed infanticide, polygamy, incest, divorce, and adultery—all to women’s benefit. No longer serfs to men, women had dignity, were not rushed into marriages, and served as leaders in rapidly growing Christian communities. Christian women married older than pagans and into more secure families, had better marriages, were not forced to remarry if widowed, and were given assistance when needed. Stark notes Paul’s teaching:

But because of the temptation to immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband. The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. For the wife does not rule over her own body, but the husband does; likewise the husband does not rule over his own body, but the wife does. (I Corinthians 7:2-4)

via Christianity’s Revolutionary Recognition of Women as Equals: Newsroom: The Independent Institute.

It is very important, I think, for marriage to be removed finally from the political process and back in the milieu it belongs, that of God and the family, for this truly is a matter of God and not the state. Hey guys, Ephesians 5 reminds us:

25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, 26 that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, 27 that He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish. 28 So husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies; he who loves his wife loves himself. 29 For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as the Lord does the church.

Going Forward.

01 Wednesday Jul 2015

Posted by in Faith

≈ 109 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , , ,

I was saddened and disturbed as many of you were with the decisions SCOTUS made last week. Much of my dismay with the decisions themselves has to do with definitions and the philosophy of the Common Law. What really bothered me was the indecorous celebrations led by so many including our the president. Unseemly, at the best. But it was not the best, was it?

Geoffrey and Servus did an outstanding job of speaking to how most of us feel but, still we must go forward. One of the people that I read is the Reverend Karl Hess of St. Peter Lutheran Church, and his sermon last Sunday shows why. Here’s a piece of it:

God is merciful. Thank God.

He is just and righteous. He is a holy God. He is a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate Him. (Exodus 20:5-6)

But He is also merciful. The words of our Lord Jesus from today’s Gospel reading tell us, Be merciful, as your Father is merciful.

One dictionary defines mercy as “Compassion or forbearance shown to one (such as an adversary or offender) having no claim to kindness.”

That’s what God is and does. He shows compassion toward His enemies, even though they have no claim to kindness. He forbears; He holds back His wrath and judgment so that people may repent and turn to Him. He gives life and provides food and clothing, everything necessary for life, even to those who defy Him to His face. He has mercy on them.

God is merciful. But our society is not asking for mercy. It is taunting God by calling homosexual unions “marriage.” It flaunts this rejection of God as a great advance in morality. The White House makes itself the rainbow house, dying itself in the colors of the homosexual flag. How could our country proclaim more clearly that it does not believe in the God who speaks in Scripture? It has made an idol which it claims is the God of our fathers.

Our society has built a golden idol. I’m not sure what its name is, but one of its faces is same-sex marriage. And just like the golden image Nebuchadnezzar built in Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego’s day, you will be expected to bow down when you hear the harp, bagpipe, flute and every kind of music. Though voices talk a lot about tolerance, there is no tolerance for those who don’t want to bow down to this image. Do you remember the bakers who didn’t want to make a cake for a gay “wedding?” Out of business. Don’t expect mercy from the world. Our society shows no mercy to millions of its infants in the womb who are slaughtered legally every year. If it has no mercy on helpless babies in the name of “freedom”, why would it have mercy on Christians who stand up and say, “This is wrong”?

There’s a reason why we can’t expect mercy from the world. God is merciful, but his enemy, the devil, is merciless. He is like a roaring lion going about seeking whom he may devour (1 Peter). And Jesus told the people in his day who did not believe in Him that they were children of the devil. “Jesus said to them, ‘If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God…Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word. You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires” (John 8:42-44) And what Jesus taught was repeated by the apostles. Human beings are by nature children of the devil and under the power of the evil one.

Since human beings are under the power of the devil, who is merciless, by nature they don’t understand mercy. They don’t want to receive it and they won’t give it. They are completely depraved and dead to God. And this includes us by nature as well.

And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God’s decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them. Romans 1:28-32

Yet even though this is the natural state of human beings, God has mercy. He does not reckon up our sins, but instead freely deals with the world in His grace. He continues to provide us with life and everything necessary to support it. He sustains body and soul and provides food and clothing even to those who are estranged from Him and don’t want to know Him.

Continue reading at De Profundis Clamavi ad Te, Domine,

Which is all well and good, and I found Karl’s words comforting, but we sometimes have to retire to assuage our wounds, physical and mental. And that’s all right as well. Erick Erickson the editor of RedState has noticed this, also. I’m not, frankly, a huge fan of Erick’s, he’s got a bit too much ego for my taste, but still, he’s not wrong here. he spent some time on his radio show talking about this and I’ve included the of Monday’s show, which covered the topic.

And finally I would remind you of the finish of Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy.

Prudent men are accustomed to say, and not by chance or without merit, that whoever wishes to see what has to be considers what has been; for all worldly things in every time have their own counterpart in ancient times. That arises because these are the work of men, who have and always had the same passions, and they must of necessity result in the same effect. It is true that their works are more virtuous now in this province than in that, and in that more than in this, according to the form of education in which those people have taken their mode of life. To see a nation keep the same customs for a long time, being either continually avaricious or continually fraudulent or having some other such vice or virtue, also makes it easy to know future by things past. (III.43.1)

Ireland, Two Kingdoms, Enlightenment, Christ, and Equality

29 Friday May 2015

Posted by in Church/State, Consequences, Faith

≈ 43 Comments

Tags

, , , , , ,

Alexis de Tocqueville, French political thinke...

Alexis de Tocqueville, French political thinker, and historian. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

With reference to the Irish SSM referendum as usual some of the best analysis was done at All along the Watchtower, first in Geoffrey Sales’ Reality Checks for Irish Bishops, then in Chalcedon’s superb Seasonal Reflections on the Irish Referendum. Also as usual, I am late to the party but, I do have some thoughts as well.

First, and maybe least important for our concerns here, SSM has passed the tipping point, in civil society, it’s here, and the argument is over. In Christianity, it may well be a different story, I am inclined to think so, and do so believe but, by definition, the referendum was about civil society.

Tipping points are funny things, usually we can only find them in retrospect.

For instance actual, overt racism, and segregation was doomed, not when the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965 were passed (mostly because of Republicans, I note). It was doomed when a Fifteenth Air Force bomber crash landed on the beach in Italy and the crew was picked up of by members of the Red Tail squadron, the recognized best escort squadron in the AAF, who never lost a bomber they were escorting. That squadron is usually called the Tuskegee Airmen, and every member of it from Colonel Davis to the newest recruit doing KP was black. The rest is history.

The same is true, you’ve all heard me say the cold war was won not in the 1980s but in 13 days in October 1962. that doesn’t mean you can sit back and wait, one has to keep on keeping on, but the weight of history shifts at such times, usually on a quite small pivot.

Someplace in the last 15 years we will someday find the tipping point on SSM, and then we will realize it. But we can see some broad outlines already.

I firmly believe that it doesn’t really matter what the state does, to us as Christians, with the sole proviso that the state must protect out rights, as it does all people’s. That’s a pretty American concept, flowing from our revolutionary past, and the separation we imposed between the institutional church and the state.

I’ve often said that the US is a continuation of English history, and broadly that’s true. But its mostly a continuation of two sectors of English society, the Puritans, who formed most of the parliamentary army in the English Civil War, they’re actually pretty close to Geoffrey’s bunch, and the Anglican low church, formed from the second sons and daughters of the minor aristocracy that became the ‘First Families of Virginia’, as well as a good measure of what have come to be called the Scots-Irish, not to be confused with the later Irish-Catholics Where all agreed was in the leveling tendencies, and to that we owe our lack of an aristocracy.

In addition, we might throw in the Germans in Pennsylvania, who while not Lutheran, had picked up some of Dr. Luther’s ideas as well, such as the “Two Kingdoms”, which I think forms one of the bases of the separation of church and state, as implemented, if not strictly as written.

In an article from February 2014, Damon Linker said that

But things aren’t quite so simple. Just flip through the opeing pages of everyone’s favorite work of secular prophesy — Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America (1835–1840) — and you’ll find a provocative alternative interpretation of Christianity’s indispensable role in the creation of the revolutionary ideal of human equality. The stunningly rapid rise of support for gay marriage over the past two decades is just the latest in a very long line of victories for that consummately Christian ideal — and it’s unlikely to be the last.

Tocqueville begins the introduction to his two-volume study of American democracy by noting that “a great democratic revolution is taking place among us.”
For Tocqueville, the march of equality was upending age-old institutions and moral habits “in all the Christian world.” It was a “providential fact,” by which he meant that there was nothing anybody could do to stop it.

The ultimate source of the democratic revolution — the motor behind its inexorable unfolding — is the figure of Jesus Christ, who taught the equal dignity of all persons, and declared in the Sermon on the Mount that the last shall be first and the first shall be last, and that the meek shall inherit the earth.”

Continue reading How Christianity gave us gay marriage

I think he makes a fair case. We believe what we believe about homosexual sex, and SSM, and indeed what we believe is what Christ and the Apostle’s taught. But neither did they believe in the equality of women, or at least they didn’t say so, clearly and definitively, but we do, even though we do believe they are not the same, we do believe they should have equal opportunity to use their God-given gifts.

The enlightenment is this context is, of course, the beginning of the modern world when we began to question pretty much everything, and yes, I do think that to be a very good thing. As I and many others always say, the thing about the truth is that it stands on its own, it doesn’t need all the support and force to support it.

As an aside, I suspect Islam, specifically ISIS is going to find this out some day, that in this world, truth and equality always win, not because America says so, but because history does, in the meantime, we’d be wise to do our best to limit the damage they are allowed to do, one Thirty Years War was bad enough, we don’t need another, with or without nuclear weapons.

In some ways, Ireland is and always has been the cockpit where two worlds attempt to live together, it’s the place where Rome and its traditional temporal power intersected violently with England and the Common Law, built up on precedent instead of the traditional top-down Roman model. It seems that the Irish people have decided, for good or ill, to firmly plant themselves in the secular world, with all its pitfalls for the spirit, and all its opportunities for the advancement of the human race as well.

What happens next? I haven’t a clue.

But, I do know this, Equality always wins, so if we want to ever win, we must claim equality in at least some of its forms, say ‘equality of opportunity’ as opposed to ‘equality of outcome’ as our own and stick to being for something rather than against everything. Even with my ingrained distrust of novelty, I know that our world is much better, in so many ways than what has gone before, that it’s not even conceivable to think of returning.