Reality Check

[Secundulus]

From this article in the Washington Times, we see what the Anglican Communion looks like to outsiders.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/jul/24/anglican-agonies/

From the article:

With Anglicanism's biggest family event under way - the every-10-years gathering of bishops and archbishops in England - what the world sees, accurately or not, is a family in moral and spiritual disarray.

. . .

For all that, Anglicanism's public troubles proceed from the takeover of Western Anglicanism by theological activists whose purpose is the remolding of Christianity into something less like the old-time religion than like the platform on which Barack Obama will run for president.

 

[scraparcs]

Other outsiders think this is all folly and wonder why religion specializes in being so very far behind modernity.

 

[Secundulus]

Yesterday's modernity is today's ancient history. If a religion constantly changes to accommodate itself to popular opinion, can it be said to contain any ultimate truth? Or does it become simply the opiate for the masses?

 

[Polycarp1]

Yesterday's modernity is today's ancient history. If a religion constantly changes to accommodate itself to popular opinion, can it be said to contain any ultimate truth? Or does it become simply the opiate for the masses?

Your presumptions are, to say the least, revealing of your opinion of other Anglicans who disagree with you, Secundulus.

To address, first, a small apparent misconception in your last sentence: Though no friend of religion, Marx was not being mocking in his oft-quoted "opiate for the masses" epithet. His meaning, as he made clear, was that just as opium and its derivatives such as laudanum were at the time the only known palliatives for severe pain, so, too, in a world without welfare benefits, labor laws, food stamps, retirement pensions, etc., where anyone poor was dependent on what little they could earn and anyone with problems was dependent on totally inadequate private charity, the one thing that provided 'the masses' with solace, relief, and hope, as the opiates did the painridden, was religion. Victorian faith is replete with addresses and hymns urging the faithful to persevere and not despair in hope of a heavenly reward. (I find it interesting to note how often the religiously conservative are also social conservatives as well, prepared to revert to "the good old days" both in terms of religion and in terms of sociopolitical policy.

But, more importantly, I could care less what the present zeitgeist of popular opinion might be, except perhaps to combat it where it is in error in my opinion. What I am committed to do, what the parish and diocese I belong to are committed to do, is to follow Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, and to keep His commandments in our lives and actions. Up in the stickies there is a posting of the Baptismal Covenant. I put it there. I said it and I mean it.

And I therefore wish to do what Christ commands -- to all people just as He commanded, even if letting little Gene play in the sandpile may means that Duncan and Peter, who don't like him, may take their toys and go home. I haven't said Duncan and Peter can't play; I've only said that Gene gets to play too. And no, if they decided to leave the playground, it doesn't mean that I kicked them out.

My job, as an Anglican, is to love God and my fellow man, being guided in how to do that practically by my Rector and Bishop. My commitment is to follow Jesus Christ and keep His commandments. And it doesn't matter to me what Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, or His Grace the Archbishop of Nigeria and Northern Virginia may think about it.

 

[JasonV]

If a religion constantly changes to accommodate itself to popular opinion, can it be said to contain any ultimate truth?

Distill that and you may come to realize that ultimate truth is much simpler and less wordy than you think.

 

[Fish and Bread]

Yesterday's modernity is today's ancient history. If a religion constantly changes to accommodate itself to popular opinion, can it be said to contain any ultimate truth? Or does it become simply the opiate for the masses?

Cardinal Kasper gave a really interesting speech at Lambeth (He was invited to speak as a guest) that touched on the theme of being in active communion with the Church throughout history. Did you happen to get a chance to read the transcript? You might find it worthwhile reading.

 

[Secundulus]

Cardinal Kasper gave a really interesting speech at Lambeth (He was invited to speak as a guest) that touched on the theme of being in active communion with the Church throughout history. Did you happen to get a chance to read the transcript? You might find it worthwhile reading.

I thought it was a very good speech.

He also said this, "The Catholic Church finds herself bound by the will of Jesus Christ and does not feel free to establish a new tradition alien to the tradition of the Church of all ages."

and this, " It now seems that full visible communion as the aim of our dialogue has receded further, and that our dialogue will have less ultimate goals and therefore will be altered in its character. While such a dialogue could still lead to good results, it would not be sustained by the dynamism which arises from the realistic possibility of the unity Christ asks of us, or the shared partaking of the one Lord’s table, for which we so earnestly long."

 

[jamescarvin]

All of this is very fascinating. I am still an Orthodox Christian wondering whether to convert to Anglicanism because in essence I am looking for an outward historical continuity of bishops while embracing a variety of religious expressions and ideas that might not be essentials - not something I find in Orthodoxy with a capital O. But it appears that there are those who wish to draw absolutely no lines so that what I wind up with is universalism.

I'm all for having everyone be able to sit in the pew and listen to revelation and for not judging people. That is a challenge that takes practice. I'm concerned, however, that those in the pew from other faiths, such as Judaism, or who are saying that x y and z are not really sin after all, are no longer just welcome but becoming the teachers. This invalidates the previous revelation to the church. No?

 

[Albion]

All of this is very fascinating. I am still an Orthodox Christian wondering whether to convert to Anglicanism because in essence I am looking for an outward historical continuity of bishops while embracing a variety of religious expressions and ideas that might not be essentials - not something I find in Orthodoxy with a capital O. But it appears that there are those who wish to draw absolutely no lines so that what I wind up with is universalism.

I'm all for having everyone be able to sit in the pew and listen to revelation and for not judging people. That is a challenge that takes practice. I'm concerned, however, that those in the pew from other faiths, such as Judaism, or who are saying that x y and z are not really sin after all, are no longer just welcome but becoming the teachers. This invalidates the previous revelation to the church. No?

You'll earn the disapproval of my friends Polycarp and Jason V for talking like that , but you are very perceptive.

 

[JasonV]

But it appears that there are those who wish to draw absolutely no lines so that what I wind up with is universalism.

As Albion stated, I resemble that remark. But I don't see even a minority view in Anglicanism or the Episcopal Church specifically leaning toward such a "radical" viewpoint.

Not to toot my own horn, but folks like me are few and far between.

 

[Secundulus]

As Albion stated, I resemble that remark. But I don't see even a minority view in Anglicanism or the Episcopal Church specifically leaning toward such a "radical" viewpoint.

Not to toot my own horn, but folks like me are few and far between.

Except that your Presiding Bishop has adopted such a radical viewpoint.

From a Time Magazine interview with Bishop Schori:

Is belief in Jesus the only way to get to heaven?
We who practice the Christian tradition understand him as our vehicle to the divine. But for us to assume that God could not act in other ways is, I think, to put God in an awfully small box.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1211587-1,00.html

 

[JasonV]

Except that your Presiding Bishop has adopted such a radical viewpoint.

From a Time Magazine interview with Bishop Schori:

Is belief in Jesus the only way to get to heaven?
We who practice the Christian tradition understand him as our vehicle to the divine. But for us to assume that God could not act in other ways is, I think, to put God in an awfully small box.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1211587-1,00.html

Wow...who knew?

I'll tell you guys what, one of these days we'll have to start a thread on Universal Reconciliation just to hash out whether it's truly biblically sound as I believe.

 

[pmcleanj]

Other outsiders think this is all folly and wonder why religion specializes in being so very far behind modernity.

So, you made a sojourn with the Roman Catholic church, and were well aware when you began that sojourn just how conservative (a.k.a. very far behind modernity) that church is capable of being from your participation in the OBOB forum on this site.

What was it that appealed to you, at that time, about belonging to a group that specializes in being so very far behind modernity?

 

[jamescarvin]

As Albion stated, I resemble that remark. But I don't see even a minority view in Anglicanism or the Episcopal Church specifically leaning toward such a "radical" viewpoint.

Not to toot my own horn, but folks like me are few and far between.

I had asked you about your universalism in another post and what you had referred to, if I remember right, was a consistent theology that starts with the great love and mercy of God. I happen to agree wholeheartedly with that approach, though I think I had said that I did not go so far as to suggest that even the devils get saved as Isaac the Syrian and some others have suggested with respect to apokatastasis (Mt. 17:11) - the restoration of all things, which I think I had elaborated on a bit.

However, now I am starting to see something different. Your universalism in the present thread seems to provide no traditional Anglican teaching or Christian revelation at all. Jesus could have been anybody. It's all good, as people like to say. You may be rare among Anglicans, but you stretch the parameters to an extreme that in the eyes of most other Anglicans is precisely why the World Council of Churches and the Anglican Church should be rejected. You tip the boat over for the many simply by calling yourself Anglican. That is to say that if Anglicanism is nothing but Universalism then I cannot become an Anglican and I would expect many Anglicans to find other churches if that is the case. (Maybe they should consider Orthodoxy. But that would present a whole new set of problems.) Maybe the "list" of traditional churches going around will help, but it doesn't change the way the Anglican Church is perceived from the outside. And even as a person who is just testing the waters I can say that a split communion, or a schizm, is not desirable. Is there an episcopal collegium that can steer the church through a tense historical period like this?

I don't mean to say anything unkind by saying any of this. I hope you can sense somehow in my writing my genuine goodwill towards you, which I doubt will come across having said what I just said above. But if I am going to get into the Anglican boat I have to pay the price of excommunication by the Orthodox and lose a lot of long-time friends and acquaintances. So I have to consider whether it is worth the price. An all-religions-are-equal mentality is fine for all religions, but as I see it it is not a place for Anglicanism, which is the Christian faith specifically.

In short, if you are that type of universalist you are precisely what gives Anglicanism a bad name viewing it from the outside. You are probably a wonderful saint. I love your vision of God. I admire your courage. You are probably a much better man than I am personally in God's eyes. But I see you doing much harm to a great historical church by attaching your name to it. Are you aware of this?

Maybe you feel the Anglican Church would be better off without me or with many leaving it because it no longer seemed to say anything definite beyond God is love. Err wait, some pagans (black witches and satanists and such) don't necessarily believe that. So can they become Anglican Bishops too? (This is an entirely serious question, BTW).

In Orthodoxy I can think of a thousand things I could get excommunicated for. Here, it seems, anything goes. Is that true? Is there anything at all that can get a person excommunicated here? Do you have to believe that Jesus Christ was a historical person? Do you have to believe he was the Son of God? Suppose you run around as a bishop saying he was not? Would that get you defrocked?

Please help me. Are there any lines? Are there any defining parameters at all? Do you have to believe that God is good? I am not asking this fecetiously or sarcastically. These are not rhetorical questions. I am genuinely new to Anglicanism, genuinely considering becoming an Anglican at this time. I attended my first Anglican service just this Sunday. I suppose you would have considered it a "high" church. To me it was a Western Rite, not my favorite, actually it was considerably lower than what I am used to and love most.

If I have misunderstood your universalism I apologize in advance. I do not mean to single you out. I am more interested at this time in exactly what is Anglican and what is not so I can figure out what I'm contemplating diving into. I also have an interest in Church unity so while I am doing this I am measuring what might be required to bring the Orthodox Church into full communion with the Anglican Church. I haven't rejected Orthodoxy. I'm just looking for a less sectarian Christian mindset.

If anything I have said has offended you please forgive me. I have appreciated and value comments of yours I have seen elsewhere. Please try to understand my own experience which is that of being criticized for being too open to other faiths and being warned about the Anglican Church. It is not comforting to find that those warnings were not exaggerations. What is needed from my perspective is a middle ground that is authentically Christian, and a Christianity that is all that it can be.

 

[Secundulus]

Do you have to believe that Jesus Christ was a historical person? Do you have to believe he was the Son of God? Suppose you run around as a bishop saying he was not? Would that get you defrocked?

No, It would not. Bishops Pike and Spong both said this. Bishop Spong, while retired, is still saying this while wearing the Purple.

Here is what Bishop Spong says. Note that this is posted on the Episcopal Diocese of Newark's website. http://www.dioceseofnewark.org/jsspong/reform.html

1. Theism, as a way of defining God, is dead. So most theological God-talk is today meaningless. A new way to speak of God must be found.
2. Since God can no longer be conceived in theistic terms, it becomes nonsensical to seek to understand Jesus as the incarnation of the theistic deity. So the Christology of the ages is bankrupt.
3. The biblical story of the perfect and finished creation from which human beings fell into sin is pre-Darwinian mythology and post-Darwinian nonsense.
4. The virgin birth, understood as literal biology, makes Christ's divinity, as traditionally understood, impossible.
5. The miracle stories of the New Testament can no longer be interpreted in a post-Newtonian world as supernatural events performed by an incarnate deity.
6. The view of the cross as the sacrifice for the sins of the world is a barbarian idea based on primitive concepts of God and must be dismissed.
7. Resurrection is an action of God. Jesus was raised into the meaning of God. It therefore cannot be a physical resuscitation occurring inside human history.
8. The story of the Ascension assumed a three-tiered universe and is therefore not capable of being translated into the concepts of a post-Copernican space age.
9. There is no external, objective, revealed standard writ in scripture or on tablets of stone that will govern our ethical behavior for all time.
10. Prayer cannot be a request made to a theistic deity to act in human history in a particular way.
11. The hope for life after death must be separated forever from the behavior control mentality of reward and punishment. The Church must abandon, therefore, its reliance on guilt as a motivator of behavior.
12. All human beings bear God's image and must be respected for what each person is. Therefore, no external description of one's being, whether based on race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation, can properly be used as the basis for either rejection or discrimination.
​

THIS IS NOT CHRISTIANITY.

 

[RedneckAnglican]

dude...was Lambeth THIS year?...I guess my invite got lost in the mail...

 

[JasonV]

James,

Perhaps I should offer a disclaimer each and every time I post that my views are not representative of Anglicanism or the Episcopal Church in whole or in part. But really, is that necessary?

I am not qualified to answer all your questions. But if "correct" theology is what saves us, then most people are doomed to hell, even belonging to the "right" church. I challenge anyone on this board to find two people whose theological beliefs are identical in every respect. It cannot be done. I reject outright any theory that theology saves. It is not theology that saves, it is Jesus.

You recall when Jesus spoke of the children saying of such is the kingdom of heaven. Are children generally theologians? If being 100% correct on theology was important, don't you think He would have said as much? Shouldn't Jesus have pointed to some Rabbi's as opposed to children and made that comment if theology was half as important as so many make it out to be?

If God is love, then God will extend love and mercy to all who deserve it. I believe everyone deserves the love of God, therefore God will be merciful to all.

 

[Albion]

James,

Perhaps I should offer a disclaimer each and every time I post that my views are not representative of Anglicanism or the Episcopal Church in whole or in part. But really, is that necessary?

I am not qualified to answer all your questions. But if "correct" theology is what saves us, then most people are doomed to hell, even belonging to the "right" church. I challenge anyone on this board to find two people whose theological beliefs are identical in every respect. It cannot be done. I reject outright any theory that theology saves. It is not theology that saves, it is Jesus.

But if that's so (and it is), a seeker has no reason to choose one church over another. They all preach Jesus.

Obviously, I'd say, the rest of that which each one stands for is to be taken into consideration. The other doctrines and practices do matter. You did the same when moving from the LCC to TEC. You didn't choose to become a Baptist or Nazarene, and you didn't do so because you cared about other issues about which you deemed TEC correct, not just that TEC teaches that Jesus saves.

 

[jamescarvin]

James,

Perhaps I should offer a disclaimer each and every time I post that my views are not representative of Anglicanism or the Episcopal Church in whole or in part. But really, is that necessary?

I am not qualified to answer all your questions. But if "correct" theology is what saves us, then most people are doomed to hell, even belonging to the "right" church. I challenge anyone on this board to find two people whose theological beliefs are identical in every respect. It cannot be done. I reject outright any theory that theology saves. It is not theology that saves, it is Jesus.

You recall when Jesus spoke of the children saying of such is the kingdom of heaven. Are children generally theologians? If being 100% correct on theology was important, don't you think He would have said as much? Shouldn't Jesus have pointed to some Rabbi's as opposed to children and made that comment if theology was half as important as so many make it out to be?

If God is love, then God will extend love and mercy to all who deserve it. I believe everyone deserves the love of God, therefore God will be merciful to all.

Jason, when it came to the question of judgment I was in full agreement with you, or at least partial. But as I mentioned, the type of universalism you were referring to changed so that now we were talking about what we were teaching or who we were allowing to teach.

We can never overestimate the mercy and love of God. But we also have a revelation of God to share and teach, which is the good news of salvation. When Bishop Spong rejects essentially everything that has been revealed in Christ the teachers are no longer teaching anything, that I can define.

I'll shift my attention over to him, rather than you, as I once again reiterate my great respect for your wisdom and kind thinking. As I see it, the way to avert a crisis in Anglicanism is to get this man defrocked if he does not repent of his words mentioned in Albion's post and to have a vocal episcopate that will deny what he has said as belonging to the truth of Anglicanism.

If this doesn't happen I can't join it and many will leave it, so that it will become a haven for universalists and atheists and the one group that won't be welcome is that group that seeks to hold on to ancient revelation or other more recent tradition.

I am wondering what the difficulty of defrocking those who espouse his teaching is at this point. It would avert a schizm. Those who wish to believe in univeralism in the sense of all-religions-are-equal have the whole world to turn to to enjoy such a belief. Why should the Episcopal Church be forced to tell the world that this is also its own belief by not drawing a line as to what it does hold true and what it doesn't. The proper way to make such a statement is to defrock this bishop and make official statements of some sort.

Intolerance and judgmentalism are not the same thing.

 

[JasonV]

But if that's so (and it is), a seeker has no reason to choose one church over another. They all preach Jesus.

Obviously, I'd say, the rest of that which each one stands for is to be taken into consideration. The other doctrines and practices do matter. You did the same when moving from the LCC to TEC. You didn't choose to become a Baptist or Nazarene, and you didn't do so because you cared about other issues about which you deemed TEC correct, not just that TEC teaches that Jesus saves.

You are right in that I choose TEC for reasons I deem "correct". God wants me there, so I went there. That's good enough of a reason IMO.