Wednesday, February 21, 2007

[anglicans & episcopalians] dear oh dear

Fine man, noble purpose, enormous gravitas but still - is all the paraphernalia necessary?

From U.S.A Today:

The worldwide Anglican Communion and its liberal U.S. branch, the Episcopal Church, continued [their endless dispute] Tuesday after bishops released a draft "covenant" and a "communique" intended as a roadmap to mending divisions over views of the Bible, homosexuality and other questions. But the covenant, which could take years to be refined and ratified, could be used to declare that a church is so far afield that it is no longer Anglican.

Another question, of course, is that of female clergy and in particular, bishops.

It comes down to what Christianity is:

1] Narrowly, which is how I view it, one can only use the Gospels, then the Old Testament insofar as Jesus referred to it. This gives a very humanitarian or altruistic view of the faith, with all its healing, charity and so on and doesn't actually mention homosexuals and women per se although the spirit of what was said makes comment on these;

2] Together with the Acts of the Apostles, the Paulian letters are a whole new ball game, bringing in strictures against homosexuals, women in their place and so on. This version has given Christianity its bad name, certainly in the modern era and yet the question remains of whether Paul directly spoke from G-d or whether he added a few little touches of his own, as some cursed infidels [peace not be upon them] suggest Mohammed also did.

3] Then we have the whole panoply of gobbledegook, as represented in the photograph, with its consubstantiation/transubstantiation and so on.

And what Anglicanism is:

1] Born in iniquity and conceived in sin, as nationalism, banking and the United States have also been accused of, the Church of England put a man at its head who had no claims to deification but many to expediency;

2] It became the Conservative Party at prayer. I have no problem with this in itself. I'm technically an Anglican.

Having said all this, the current dispute in the Church comes from deviating from the Word little by little, under the justification of 'modernization' and 'being relevant to our times'. There is ample scriptural evidence that the faith allows of no such thing and time has zero effect on what He asked people to do. In fact, it was stated quite clearly that mankind should 'build on the rock'.

The only problem with this is that rocks eventually erode but to take the analogy too far might be mischievous.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Comments need a moniker of your choosing before or after ... no moniker, not posted, sorry.