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Consider, Brethren -
David B Taylor
September 2004
Consider, Brethren
"Brethren, I beseech you in the bowels of Christ,consider that you may be
wrong." Oliver Cromwell
The crisis that is upon us has been precipitated by some Episcopal
churches in the USA and Canada approving certain same-sex
relationships. So begins Reform's latest pamphlet, Ways Forward in the Present
Crisis for
the Church of England. But clearly they are wrong about that. Changes in
out-look in those churches are only symptoms of the crisis, not its
cause; the cause is the dramatically changing outlook of society as a
whole, a process that is probably not yet complete and will in the end be far
more
pervasive than it is at present. It is the success of the secular
campaign by homo-sexuals to persuade society that its traditionally
oppressive attitude towards them is not merely pointless by actually
immoral that has made it necessary for the church also to re-examine
its attitude.
That very admission is enough to convince some Christians that such
a re-examination demanded by the world, not by Christ's faithful followers
must for that very reason be rejected. One has only to look up the word
"world" in a concordance and to see why. This is probably the only
word in the Bible, where the New Testament references (204) vastly
out-number the Old Testament ones (48); and most of those NT references
imply an anti-pathy between the "world" and the followers of Jesus
(Johnıs gospel) or (for the epistles) the church.
A look at the concordance will also explain another puzzling feature
of the evangelical outlook. It is noticeable in all their literature
that, though they are very fond of referring to the Bible, they only
very rarely refer to the gospels, and when they do it is nearly always
to Johnıs gospel. The references to "world" in the synoptic gospels are
12 in Matthew, 4 in Mark, 6 in Luke, but a staggering 76 in the gospel
of John; and half of these (38) occur in the long discourse given at
the Last Supper in chapters xiv to xvii. So any devotee of the fourth gospel
will be convinced he is
offering service to God by refusing even to ask the question whether
the world might not occasionally be right and the Christian tradition
wrong.
And yet even to many Christians it seems obvious that precisely that has
often been the case. It was the world that convinced the Church,
initially very much against its inclination, that lending money at interest was
a
means of increasing general prosperity rather than simply grinding the
faces of the poor. The Church often denies this, but in fact it was the world
that had considerable influence in persuading the Church that the New
Testament acceptance of slavery was no longer compatible with a moral
outlook. The southern states of America continued to insist on the
biblical view; they did considerable violence to human rights, but they
did no violence to Scripture. It was the world that insisted that the account of
creation given in Genesis might still be spiritually and morally uplifting,
but was certainly not a factual account. And this is just a small
selection of the many points on which the Christian view has had to
give way to the world's view. In the battle for morality the world has often
triumphed, and in the battle for truth and honesty it has triumphed more
often than not.
It is noticeable that opposition to the change of view recommended by the
churches of America and Canada comes chiefly from parts of the world where
the new pressures are either not much felt, or else are exerted by such a
small minority that they can easily be resisted, or even repressed. Such
a repression is manifestly as worldly as the acceptance that these churches
denounce. The real choice is not between utter fidelity to Scripture
itself no guarantee of virtue, not in the case of the Pharisees of Jesus'
day, with their repressive enforcement of the Sabbath day regulations, not
in the case of the slave-owners of the southern states and a willingness
to conform to the demands of this world; it is simply a choice between two
different kinds of worldliness. The claim to scriptural obedience, even
if justified, does nothing to justify those making the claim; it simply
brings Scripture into disrepute. It is obvious to most of us that the
policy and the attitude are wicked, even if also thoroughly scriptural.
The document I have been examining sees a solution to the crisis in what
it calls "impaired communion". "It is a form of principled estangement,
where a church is no longer able to accept the 'spiritual' oversight of its
bishop on principled blblical grounds." When I was young, it was accepted
that racial discrimination was bad, but it was still largely taken for
granted that, if there was going to be such a thing, it was the
privilege of whites to discriminate against blacks; the possibility
that discrimination might work the other way never entered anyone's
head. Refor's understanding of "impaired com-munion" seems rather
like that: the parish makes difficulties for the bishop. Suppose the
bishop decides to make difficulties for the parish, is he power-less? Not, of
course, if he has
the solid support of all the other bishops but the extreme unlikelihood
of that is precisely what gives Reform the courage to rebel. But there is
also the difficulty that measures taken by the bishop against rebel
parishes will almost certainly seem petty, something which Scripture itself
warns
against:
Answer not a fool according to his folly,
lest you be like him yourself.
(Proverbs xxvi.4)
But the very next verse reminds us that this may sometimes be
necessary:
Answer a fool according to his folly,
lest he be wise in his own eyes.
ENDS
David B Taylor is a member of LGCM and lives in Wales. September 2004
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