We Have NOTHING "In Common" With THEM..you know...

[Bruce S]

[font=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, Sans-serif]What are the Factors, in the Culture and the Church, [/font][font=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, Sans-serif]That Have Led Us to This Crisis?[/font]




[font=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, Sans-serif]Diane Knippers[/font]

[font=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, Sans-serif]October 9, 2003
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[font=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, Sans-serif]The following address was presented to the American Anglican Council "A Place to Stand" Conference in Dallas, Texas, on October 8, 2003[/font]

[font=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, Sans-serif][size=-1][font=Arial, Helvetica]The title of my comments poses a large question, much larger than I could answer in just a few minutes. Does one start with the Enlightment? Point to the 1960s? Blame it on Bishops Spong or Pike? Blame it on reality television or “Sex in the City”?[/font] [font=Arial, Helvetica]Because I have sociological training, I naturally look to cultural factors. So, I want to talk about the cultural captivity of the Episcopal Church. Of course, it’s not a captivity to all of American culture. Television sit-coms, rap music, conservative talk radio are not the relevant cultural components![/font]

[font=Arial, Helvetica]The Episcopal Church leadership is captive to a particular type of culture. Our church is governed by upper-middle class American elites, who came of age in the 60s and 70s. Episcopal leaders go to elite universities, not community colleges. They listen to NPR rather than watching Fox News. [/font]

[font=Arial, Helvetica]Leaders of the Episcopal Church are captive to a culture. One mark of the cultural captivity is the need to put social location about theology.[/font]

[font=Arial, Helvetica]I had an “aha” moment in which I recognized this tendency when I visited a meeting of the ecumenical commission of my own diocese several months ago. I was there because I serve on the national Standing Commission on Ecumenical Relations. I wanted to report on what the national commission was doing and explore ways my diocese could interact with some new ecumenical initiatives. [/font]

[font=Arial, Helvetica]At the very beginning of the meeting, the chairman reported on one interfaith development in his own parish. It seemed he had invited a Buddhist monk to lead a quiet day service. Please understand, the monk wasn’t to lecture on Buddhism, but to lead prayers in a Christian church. I’ll admit, I nearly fell off my chair. [/font]

[font=Arial, Helvetica]Later, I gave my presentation. I told them that on the national church level, I was working to encourage Episcopal dialogue with evangelicals. One way that we might help in the Diocese of Virginia was to establish some grassroots model dialogues with Southern Baptists. My suggestion was met with a very awkward silence. One woman finally blurted out, “But we don’t have much in common with them.”[/font]

[font=Arial, Helvetica]If I had had my wits about me, I might have suggested that we ought to have Jesus in common. [/font]

[font=Arial, Helvetica]You see, Episcopalians find it easier to indulge multi-cultural and multi-faith prayer led by a Buddhist than talk to “them” – the Southern Baptists.[/font]

[font=Arial, Helvetica]As I said, the Episcopal Church is led by upper-middle class elites that came of age in the 60s and 70s. Let me make a couple of brief comments about the generational and the class distinctives.[/font]

[font=Arial, Helvetica]First, what happens when a church is led by baby boomers? My staff did some research for me. As best we can discern, nearly 90 percent of the diocesan bishops who voted on Gene Robinson’s consecration were in seminary in the 60s and 70s. I can tell you right now, that’s not a good sign. [/font]

[font=Arial, Helvetica]This generation of church leaders claims the moral authority of the civil rights movement, although most were too young to have been leaders in that moral battle. No, the movements that shaped their formative years were the anti-war movement, women’s liberation and the sexual revolution. Regardless of what you thought of the Vietnam War or the Equal Rights Amendment, these are not the pressing issues of today. [/font]

[font=Arial, Helvetica]Let’s focus on marriage. Too many boomers think that the problem with marriage is that women are stuck in abusive oppressive relationships. Let me quickly grant that some women are. But if you think that alleged 1950s repression is the big cultural problem we face, I want to know what planet you are living on. The big problem related to marriage is that many young people have no clue how to establish and maintain long-term commitments. [/font]

[font=Arial, Helvetica]The fact is that upper-middle class elites are largely protected at least from the economic ravages of the sexual revolution. Over half of the children growing up in America today will spend a significant period of their childhood living without the presence of their biological father. That’s a cultural disaster. Episcopal kids face the emotional and spiritual costs of this, but, by and large, they don’t face the poverty that so many children in single parent homes do.[/font]

[font=Arial, Helvetica]It’s not that the innovative moral teaching regarding sexuality that the Episcopal Church now peddles is cutting edge. It’s that it is depressingly dated. It’s a straight-line development from the 60’s “free love” mentality.[/font]

[font=Arial, Helvetica]What is cutting edge is the new social science data on marriage, family, and our children. What we aging boomers need to recognize is that love isn’t free. [/font]

[font=Arial, Helvetica]In early August, the Episcopal Church cut its ties from the doctrine of marriage, from basic Christian teaching about sexuality, from our core sources of authority. It was a stunning display of the prevalent social values of American campuses 40 years ago. [/font]

[font=Arial, Helvetica]One month later a prestigious groups of behavioral research scientists, pediatric physicians, and mental health professionals released a new paper (see www.americanvalues.org). They outline a genuine social problem in our society – the crisis facing our young people. Here are some excerpts from this new report:[/font]

[font=Arial, Helvetica]Despite a decade of unprecedented economic growth that resulted in fewer children living in poverty, large and growing numbers of American children and adolescents are suffering from mental health problems. Scholars at the National Research Council in 2002 estimated that at least one of every four adolescents in the U.S. is currently at serious risk of not achieving productive adulthood. Twenty-one percent of U.S. children ages 9 to 17 have a diagnosable mental disorder or addiction, 8 percent of high school students suffer from clinical depression, and 20 percent of students report seriously having considered suicide in the past year. By the 1980s, U.S. children as a group were reporting more anxiety than did children who were psychiatric patients in the 1950s, according to one study.[/font]


[font=Arial, Helvetica]The Commission is calling upon all U.S. citizens to help strengthen what it calls “authoritative communities” as likely to be the best strategy for improving children's lives, in its report, [/font][font=Arial, Helvetica]Hardwired to Connect: The Case for Authoritative Communities[/font][font=Arial, Helvetica]. Authoritative communities are groups of people who are committed to one another over time and who exhibit and are able to pass on what it means to be a good person. These groups provide the types of connectedness our children increasingly lack. [/font]

[font=Arial, Helvetica]Authoritative communities can be families with children and all civic, educational, recreational, community service, business, culture, and religious groups that serve or include persons under the age of 18 that exhibit certain characteristics. These characteristics are: 1) it is a social institution that includes children and youth; 2) it treats children as ends in themselves; 3) it is warm and nurturing; 4) it establishes clear boundaries and limits; 5) it is defined and guided at least partly by non-specialists; 6) it is multi-generational; 7) it has a long-term focus; 8) it encourages spiritual and religious development; 9) it reflects and transmits a shared understanding of what it means to be a good person; 10) it is philosophically oriented to the equal dignity of all persons and to the principle of love of neighbor.[/font]


​

[font=Arial, Helvetica]Cutting edge researchers tell his that our children desperately need what the church is supposed to offer! The action of our General Convention is a betrayal on many levels – a betrayal of Christian orthodoxy, of the Anglican Communion, of scriptural authority, of the sexually confused. But it’s a betrayal that’s also very close to home – a betrayal of our own children.


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[Bruce S]

That description applies to a LOT of the posters I've encountered here on this site too...

"They listen to NPR, not Fox News..."

INSIGHTFUL COMMENT. I think I like this guy.

 

[Lotar]

Hey, I listen to NPR and I watch FOX News

Did anyone hear that interview with O'Reilly on NPR? I thought it was pretty funny.

 

[Bruce S]

[font=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, Sans-serif]Griswold Still in Denial About General Convention[/font]

[font=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, Sans-serif]Erik Nelson[/font]




[font=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, Sans-serif][size=-1][font=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][font=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Nearly two months after the Episcopal Church General Convention elected an openly practicing homosexual man as bishop and approved the blessing of same-sex unions, its Presiding Bishop still seems in denial about what happened.[/font]

[font=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]In an Associated Press interview this week, the Most Rev. Frank Griswold states: “[/font][font=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]I wasn't settling the question of sexuality. I was affirming the choice of a diocese.”[/font]

[font=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]This has been a common argument. In reality, however, it is a cop-out. Griswold has long supported openly homosexual clergy, in spite of the fact that church teaching and tradition has always opposed it. That Griswold would claim his decision was made primarily due to a procedural argument simply defies reason.[/font]

[font=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]There is little doubt that the questions over human sexuality within the Episcopal Church were in some fundamental sense settled by the two votes at General Convention this summer. While Griswold and others claim they want to continue dialogue, their actions at Convention send a different message. [/font]

[font=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]For decades, the liberal establishment of the Episcopal Church has not taken dialogue over sexuality issues seriously. Dialogue was seen as a price to be paid on the road to the endorsement of homosexual behavior. At General Convention this summer, liberal activists decided that enough had been paid, and they were there to collect the goods.[/font]

[font=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]For those that opposed the endorsement of homosexual behavior, such votes were a betrayal of the dialogue process. As Kendall Harmon and others noted repeatedly at General Convention, the Episcopal Church has no theology to undergird either the blessing of same-sex unions, or the election of an openly homosexual bishop. The work necessary even to make sense of such actions simply had not been done.[/font]

[font=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]All of the divisions that existed over the issue of human sexuality before the votes at Convention still exist now, after the votes. Except now there is something more – a sense of betrayal. Betrayal of honest dialogue. A betrayal of Anglican unity. Indeed, all four “instruments” of Anglican unity – the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Anglican Consultative Council, the Primates, and the Lambeth Conference – made clear that such actions were not advisable.[/font]

[font=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Any trust that orthodox Episcopalians had that the attempts for dialogue and reconciliation were sincere was destroyed on August 5, when the final vote for Gene Robinson went through. Any trust the Global South Primates had that the Episcopal Church was interested in their concerns also disappeared. [/font]

[font=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]The Primates issued a statement just a few months prior to Convention stating that the blessing of same-sex unions was unacceptable. It was a statement which Griswold himself signed.[/font]

[font=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Just one week prior to Convention, a group of Primates, bishops, priests and lay leaders met in Fairfax, Virginia to issue a statement which warned that either the passage of same-sex blessings or the confirmation of Gene Robinson as bishop would shatter the Anglican Communion.[/font]

[font=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Despite all these warnings, Griswold continues to view the actions of General Convention as matters internal only to the U.S. Episcopal Church.[/font]

[font=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Conservatives also warned that interfaith dialogue would be damaged severely by these actions. Perhaps it was a surprise for Griswold when Islamic scholars from Al-Azhar University in Cairo stepped out of ongoing interfaith dialogue with Anglicans in September, specifically noting the actions of General Convention as a barrier to further talks. It should not have been a surprise for Griswold when he had been warned by bishops with first-hand experience of Islam, like the Rt. Rev. Mouneer Anis from Egypt, about the consequences for him and other Christians if Convention moved forward with these actions.[/font]

[font=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Either Griswold wasn’t listening, or chose to ignore those warnings.[/font]

[font=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Perhaps Griswold is sincere. Perhaps he really thinks he was voting on procedural grounds and not to settle the questions over sexuality. But that only demonstrates how utterly and completely disconnected he has become not only from his own church members, but also from his fellow bishops in the Anglican Communion around the world.[/font]

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[jbarcher]

Cool. Will read this in detail later on in the week. If I have time, anyway.

I know...probably next to nothing about the other churches and whatnot.

 

[Foundthelight]

Any time that satan hears the word dialogue he must smile. Dialouge is a thin disguise for changing the Word to please man.

GAL 1:6 I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you by the grace of Christ, for a different gospel;

GAL 1:7 which is really not another; only there are some who are disturbing you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.

GAL 1:8 But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed!

GAL 1:9 As we have said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, he is to be accursed!

GAL 1:10 For am I now seeking the favor of men, or of God? Or am I striving to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a bond-servant of Christ.

2000 years ago a group of men and women walked with and received the Good News from our Lord. Saul of Tarsus received the Good News by way of a Revelation from the Lord. Those who walked with the Lord accepted the fact of this Revelation to the one re-named Paul.

Are we to listen to those who would say, "times have changed, we have modern science, we understand things better today, He couldn't really have meant that, abortion and divorce are O.K., sexual preference is not a choice"?

Or are we to listen to those who walked with the Lord?

I thank the Lord for those who walked with him and gave us his Word. I pray for those who have been led astray, that the Holy Spirit may touch them and lead them back to the truth.