by Good News | Oct 28, 2009 | Magazine Articles
By B.J. Funk
If the smell of gastric juices and dead fish didn’t get to Jonah, the seaweed would. Inside the dark belly of this fish, with saltwater swirling over his nose as he gasped for air, Jonah realized he was not in the middle of some other fisherman’s large fish story! This was his story, and it was getting pretty grim.
After he refused to obey God, Jonah was thrown overboard and found his home to be the belly of a fish. This wasn’t just any old fish cruising around the Mediterranean Sea. It was a God-ordained, divinely appointed, chosen fish! Jonah 1:17 reads, “The Lord provided a great fish to swallow Jonah.”
Jonah lets us in on his desperation in Jonah 2:7 when he says, “When my life was ebbing away, I remembered you.” Jonah realized God was serious, and certainly Jonah had nowhere else to turn.
Do you have a child living in the belly of a fish? You can always tell a belly dweller because God wants him to go one way, yet he goes another. He swims in the darkness of financial distress, poor judgment, and bad choices. Alcohol or drug consumption fill in the endless holes in his life, and his environment is not anything close to what you would use to create a miracle. In fact, sometimes you want to give up. The fish smell is too musty and rank for your senses, the dampness too moldy, and the darkness too grave. Imagine, however, what God can do with your loved one in these conditions. Sometimes, we need to allow the darkness to do its work. We need to allow it to prime the pump for a miracle!
What imprisonment of darkness has God allowed to swallow your family member in order that they might pray, “When my life was ebbing away, I remembered you”? God can get our attention when he sends what appears to be impending disaster into our situations. The sailors didn’t toss Jonah into a thick bed of sweet-smelling roses. They tossed him into the frightening darkness of the sea.
What about Joseph? His brothers were jealous of him because Israel loved Joseph more than any of his other sons. Joseph was hated by his brothers. When he was seventeen, those brothers threw him into a cistern and then sold him to a caravan of Ishmaelites going to Egypt. He spent the next 13 years in prison as an Egyptian slave, but at age 30, by God’s miraculous intervention, Joseph became governor of Egypt. God used a cistern and a cell to prime the pump for a miracle in Joseph’s life. Darkness rubbed away the spoiled child, producing a giant of a man.
In 1784, reprobate Captain John Newton attempted to steer his ship to safety during a dark, violent storm. It was this storm that he later referred to as his “great deliverance.” When it seemed like his ship was doomed for certain disaster, John Newton saw his life ebbing away. In desperation he cried out, “Lord, have mercy upon us.” Grace fell upon his ship and upon his life. Later, he expressed his gratitude with words that led to the song “Amazing Grace.” The dark fear of disaster at sea brought a salvation miracle to John Newton’s life.
In each situation, God got someone’s attention through darkness. Jonah decided to obey God, Joseph grew up, and John Newton cried out to God.
Why does it take our life “ebbing away” for us to call out to God? What is it about darkness that primes the pump for an upcoming miracle? In Genesis 1:2-3, we read that in the beginning of creation, darkness was over the face of the earth; yet the Spirit of God was hovering. Out of this darkness, God said, “Let there be light.”
Creating miracles in the midst of darkness, terrible smells, and conditions that are less than perfect is nothing new for God. Look at the marvelous miracle God performs when he creates a baby in the darkness and dampness of a mother’s womb. What about the darkness and dampness of a musty stable, with donkey and sheep smells permeating the air? From this darkness came the miracle of our Savior’s birth. Then, there is the dark, damp tomb in which the crucified Christ lay. From this darkness, the living Christ arose! In each case, darkness preceded the miracle and primed the pump for new life.
If you have someone living in darkness now, whether in the belly of a fish, in a cistern, cell, or in a storm, you can know that the pump is being primed for a miracle of grace. Take encouragement in these words from Exodus 20:21: “…Moses approached the thick darkness where God was.”
B.J. Funk (bjfunk@bellsouth.net) is associate pastor of Central United Methodist Church in Fitzgerald, Georgia. She is the author of The Dance of Life: Invitation to a Father Daughter Dance, a regular contributor to the South Georgia Advocate, and a frequent speaker at women’s retreats.
by Good News | Oct 28, 2009 | Magazine Articles
By Rob Renfroe
The United Methodist News Service has published an article declaring that the 23 proposed amendments regarding the Worldwide Nature of the Church and the proposed Amendment 1 regarding membership eligibility have all failed. Though not all of the annual conferences have released their tallies, there are not enough votes in the unreporting conferences to change the outcome.
What do these results mean? Something unusual and important, that’s for sure.
Rarely have proposed constitutional amendments adopted by General Conference failed to garner the necessary two-thirds endorsement of the annual conferences. Yet, the 24 referenced above did not even come close to passage.
Proposed Amendment 1. This amendment would have removed the pastor’s responsibility to discern a person’s readiness for membership. Clergy would have been required to receive any person willing to recite our membership vows even if the pastor knew that he/she did not hold to the Christian faith or had no desire to live a Christian lifestyle.
When all the votes are tabulated, proposed Amendment 1 is likely to end up very close to 50 percent for and 50 percent against—far short of the 66.67 percent necessary for ratification. No doubt, some will use these results to make the same case they tried to make in Fort Worth—that we are a divided church when it comes to the practice of homosexuality and we should no longer say that it is incompatible with Christian teaching; and that we should admit how divided we are as a church and state that good people can differ on this issue.
It will be most interesting (actually humorous) if groups like the Reconciling Movement try to make that case on the basis of Amendment 1. Why? Because in every annual conference we were told by advocates that this amendment was not about homosexuality—that it was simply offering a warm welcome to those who wanted to be received into the church.
So, which is it? Was Amendment 1 not about the practice of homosexuality? Or was it a cleverly written piece of legislation, claiming to be about one thing when in reality it was pushing an agenda that the church has explicitly rejected for almost 40 years?
What does the failure of Amendment 1 mean for us? First, that important matters having to do with the church’s constitution deserve more time at General Conference. This amendment received less than five minutes of debate on the last day of the conference, as delegates were rushing to finish their deliberations. Later, some delegates reported that they had no idea about the true agenda behind this amendment.
Second, United Methodists trust their pastors. Radicals have created a myth that there are pastors who are using their authority in the most capricious and unkind ways, preventing sincere seekers from the ministry and the membership of the church. But persons in the pew, not motivated by a political agenda, know differently. They know their pastors to be principled and compassionate persons who can be trusted to open the doors of the church to all who come in good faith.
Third, laypersons want membership to matter. Membership is not reserved for the sinless or those who have “gone on to perfection.” But the vows of membership do call for a commitment to the Christian faith as revealed in the Scriptures. And the person in the pew knows that once the vows can mean whatever any person wants them to mean, in actuality, they come to mean nothing—and so does church membership.
Fourth, the defeat of this amendment means that many people organized and worked and were willing to take a controversial stand publicly—many in conferences where there might be a heavy price to pay for speaking out. We owe them our deepest gratitude.
The proposed Worldwide Nature of the Church amendments. It appears that these 23 amendments will be defeated by a margin of 60 percent against and 40 percent for. What their defeat does not mean is that those promoting these amendments were ill-intentioned. Many of those behind these proposals were motivated by a sincere desire to help the church in the developing world to be more effective in its ministry. And neither does their defeat mean that we should not revisit the question of how the church should be structured in the future. We should.
But to fail by such a large margin means that clergy and laypersons, conservatives and liberals, northerners and southerners all found the proposed amendments unacceptable. Some, no doubt, voted against them because they feared the additional bureaucracy and costs required by the new structure. Others questioned why this strategy was being proposed by a mainly American committee, rather than originating with leaders in Africa and Asia. Still others simply could not grasp why we were being asked to approve a structure that had not been fully spelled out—a study committee will make its recommendation at General Conference 2012. We were being asked to pre-authorize the General Conference to adopt a structure without knowing what that structure would be—or what it would do to the church. In essence, we were being asked to sign a blank check. And you simply don’t do that unless you have complete trust in the person to whom you’re giving the check.
And that’s what it comes down to—trust. Many of us simply could not trust that our permission to re-structure the church would not be used by a political faction to promote their single-issue agenda. Though perhaps not intended by the originators of these amendments, there was the suspicion that the creation of separate regional conferences, each with the authority to amend The Book of Discipline, would lead to the exclusion of the international delegates’ input regarding the most controversial and divisive matters before the church.
Radicals, who once thought that the marginalized around the world would adopt their liberal positions, have found that African and Asian delegates are more motivated by biblical faithfulness than what progressives think of as political correctness. And the progressives have become tired of these developing world delegates impeding their agenda of ordaining practicing gays and marrying homosexual couples.
Many of us in the reform and renewal movements feel certain that radicals would attempt to use this new structure to lessen the voice and the vote of delegates where the church is uncompromisingly biblical, most diverse, and actually growing by leaps and bounds. We felt, and still do, that the church in the United States will be better with their full inclusion and input, not worse.
What does it all mean? It means your prayers, your giving, your organizing, and your faithfulness made a difference—and it will be needed again. You can be sure of that.
Rob Renfroe is the new president and publisher of Good News. He is the pastor of adult discipleship at The Woodlands United Methodist Church in The Woodlands, Texas, and is the former president of The Confessing Movement within the United Methodist Church.
by Good News | Oct 28, 2009 | Magazine Articles
By Riley B. Case
Did we miss something or did the Episcopal General Convention, meeting in mid-July, just thumb its nose at the rest of the Christian world?
The week started off with Episcopal Presiding Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schori declaring it is “heresy” to believe that an individual can be saved through a sinner’s prayer of repentance. In her opening address to the conference, Jefferts asserted that it is “the great Western heresy: that we can be saved as individuals, that any of us alone can be in right relationship with God.”
That particular remark would wipe out most Protesants of the world, including almost all of the United Methodists. Indeed, it declares as unacceptable almost all the rest of Christianity. That is, of course, assuming that “heresy” conveys its traditional meaning as teaching opposed to the authorized doctrinal standards of the church. This is from the denomination that gave us Bishop James Pike and Bishop John Shelby Spong, real-for-sure heretics who found it difficult to affirm anything true in historic Christianity. One wonders what Schori appeals to as “authorized doctrinal standards.”
But there was more. Having put down (through the presiding bishop) Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, Nazarenes, Pentecostals, Lutherans, and all who believe that persons can be born again individually and reconciled to God through Jesus Christ, the convention then set itself on a course in opposition to the stated convictions of the world-wide Anglican communion by a forthright declaration that gays and lesbians were now eligible for “any ordained ministry,” including the office of bishop (Resolution D025). Anglican archbishops across the world, meeting in special session this past February, had specifically pled with churches (notably the American and Canadian churches) to maintain a moratorium on consecrating any more openly gay bishops. This followed the uproar caused by the election of Gene Robinson of New Hampshire to bishop in 2003. That election caused a serious disruption in the relationship of Anglican provinces and spurred four American dioceses and dozens of congregations, with the encouragement of overseas bishops, to separate themselves from The Episcopal Church.
The action to approve gays and lesbians for “any ordained ministry” also revoked the self-imposed Episcopal pledge to use “restraint” in approving another bishop in a same-sex relationship. The American bishops then sought to justify the action by arguing in a letter to the Anglican spiritual leader, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, that the action to open all offices to gays and lesbians was not a repudiation to earlier pledges for restraint, but only a description of where the American church stood at the moment.
In response the Rt. Rev. Tom Wright, Bishop of Durham in the Church of England, wrote in the United Kingdom’s The Times that the American bishops’ letter was “double-speak” and that the Episcopal Church’s action marked a clean break with the rest of the Anglican Communion.
But the convention was not yet through. Anglican archbishops had also pled with the Americans and Canadians not to develop prayers and liturgy for same-sex unions. Rowan Williams had specifically appealed to delegates before the Anaheim convocation: “I hope and pray there won’t be decisions in the coming days that could push us farther apart.”
But by a bishops’ vote of 104-30, the convention authorized the preparation of prayers and liturgy for same-sex unions.
And then finally, to show just how much they wished to identify themselves with far-left causes, the convention debated resolutions condemning the United States and Israel.
Special kinship. United Methodists have a special kinship with the Anglican Church. The Wesleys were Anglican until the day they died. Methodism takes much of its ritual from Anglican rituals and, of course, the Articles of Religion are taken from the Anglican Articles of Religion. We have more hymns in our hymnal by Anglicans than any other denomination (including Methodists). We need the Anglicans.
And America needs a strong Episcopal Church. The American Anglicans (they became “Episcopalian” after the Revolutionary War) were the first church in America. Even after it was decimated by the Revolutionary War because of its British connections, the Episcopal Church was still, with the Baptists, the third largest church in America.
Since then it has been the church of the presidents and of the leaders of the nation. It has been a prestigous church and a church of great wealth. It has the potential for a great spiritual impact for good.
The impact, however, has been severely compromised and the glory is more in the past than in the present. Episcopalians (at least bishops and clergy) in recent times have bought into theological and political liberalism. According to a recent study by Public Religion Research, only United Church of Christ clergy are more liberal than Episcopalians. In the survey, 72 percent of the Episcopalian clergy support the ordination of practicing gays and lesbians (compared with only 32 percent of United Methodist clergy).
In the question of whether or not the Bible is inerrent, a higher percent of Episcopalian clergy said no than any other denomination.
ACNA. In June, the former Episcopal churches who have felt betrayed by a church in denial of biblical authority formed themselves into the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA). A number of overseas Anglican churches have indicated they will recognize ACNA. This, of course, can only wreak more havoc in the worldwide Anglican communion for whom any kind of schism is the worst of all travesties. Meanwhile the Episcopal Church has initiated dozens of lawsuits over church properties.
So instead of being a force for spiritual stability in America, the Episcopal Church is becoming known for its infighting, its lawsuits, and its shrinking membership (in the past two years the Episcopal Church has lost nearly 4 percent of its members). From its standing as the 3rd largest denomination in America, the Episcopal Church has slipped to 15th. Its U.S. membership of 2 million pales in comparison to the 77 million Anglican members worldwide. It is now a minor player on the world scene.
And so the question is: did we miss something or did the Episcopal General Convention just disconnect itself from the rest of the Christian world? And, do the United Methodists have something to learn from this fiasco?
Stay tuned.
Riley B. Case is a retired member of the North Indiana Conference, assistant executive director of the Confessing Movement, and a member of the Good News Board of Directors. He is also the author of Evangelical and Methodist: A Popular History (Abingdon). This article was originally written for “We Confess,” the Confessing Movement’s e-mail newsletter. It was adapted and reprinted by permission.
by Good News | Oct 28, 2009 | Magazine Articles
By Riley B. Case
One of the best friends of evangelical United Methodists is The Book of Discipline. It serves as the church’s law book, but it is much more. It also serves as the constitution not only for the denomination but for each local church. The constitution contains our doctrine, our General Rules (designed to give guidance in conduct), and sets forth the principles by which church actions are to be judged.
It was the Discipline that protected us against the liberalism of the early 20th century that wanted to either abolish or re-write the Articles of Religion to reflect “modern times.” A restrictive clause in the Discipline guards the church against just such action. The same issue arose again in 1968 at the time of the Methodist merger with the Evangelical United Brethren Church, when liberals clamored for a re-write of the doctrinal standards. Because of the Discipline, this was not possible.
It is the Discipline that on the one hand allows the church to file charges against wayward pastors and lay persons, and on the other hand protects pastors and lay persons from the system’s abuses of power. There are still abuses of power in the system but, at least theoretically, these can be corrected by appeals to due process as outlined in the Discipline.
It is the Discipline that outlines and guards the church’s positions on matters such as the practice of homosexuality. Otherwise, United Methodists would be like the United Church of Christ or the Episcopal Church, which, at the present time, are simply imploding.
Proposed constitutional amendments
Because of the Discipline, the procedures and practices that have guided United Methodism for the past 135 years cannot be overturned or ignored just because bishops or anyone else think they ought to be overturned or ignored. When the Rev. Ed Johnson of Virginia delayed the membership of a practicing homosexual several years ago, he was relieved of his pulpit by the bishop who based her decision on the argument that “inclusiveness” is the bedrock of Methodism (so much for the New Birth, the doctrinal standards and everything else that has been a part of United Methodism); therefore the pastor did not have the authority to deny (or actually delay) membership. However, not only did the bishop and the conference fail to follow due process in removing Pastor Johnson from his pulpit, but their actions were in violation of the Discipline, as upheld by a subsequent ruling of the Judicial Council.
Liberals were irate. The Council of Bishops stood in solidarity with the bishop of Virginia and issued a statement on behalf of “inclusiveness” that raised questions not only about the Judicial Council but the Discipline itself. The bishops followed that by making sure that any person on the Judicial Council who voted to reinstate Ed Johnson would not be re-elected by the General Conference (they pointedly did not even make the courtesy nominations for incumbents, an action unprecedented in the history of the church).
The next step on the part of “progressives” was to seek to change Paragraph IV of the church’s constitution so that “inclusiveness” would be mandated; “all” were to be welcomed and could join the church and participate in the church’s activities. The implications of this are that there would no longer be moral or doctrinal or behavior standards required of church members (or perhaps, even ministers).
With a minimum of debate, the General Conference approved the “no standards” amendment by the necessary 2/3 majority required of any change in the constitution. But, thanks to the Discipline, constitutional amendments must not only be approved by the General Conference (a body that tends to be more liberal than the rest of the church) but also by a 2/3 vote of the members of the annual conferences. So the amendment was sent to the annual conferences this year (2009). The amendment was supported by the General Conference, all the liberal caucuses, a number of the boards and agencies, and the bishops.
Surprise! Common, ordinary delegates to annual conferences simply did not buy the “progressive’s” argument that the constitution must be amended to mandate inclusiveness. After almost all the votes have been taken in the annual conferences (a few overseas conferences have yet to vote), and most have reported the results, Amendment 1 (abolishment of standards by mandated inclusiveness) has been soundly defeated. Needing a 2/3 confirming vote, at the moment the amendment has not even garnered 50 percent of the vote.
The conferences’ votes reveal how dramatic is the church’s liberal-conservative divide. Indeed, it might be possible to rank the conferences on a scale of the most radical to the most orthodox on the basis of its vote. The most liberal conferences which approved proposed Amendment 1 by the required 2/3 vote are: Oregon-Idaho (95 percent); Desert Southwest (94 percent); Pacific Northwest (86 percent); Yellowstone (86 percent); Wyoming (83 percent); California-Nevada (82 percent); California-Pacific (81 percent); Troy (77 percent), Missouri (67 percent), Wisconsin (79 percent), and Minnesota (75 percent). New England, New York, and Rocky Mountain have not yet reported their votes but they will surely also be in this category.
The conferences where the amendment did not garner even a majority of the vote are: Indiana, Virginia, Tennessee, North Georgia, South Georgia, Holston, Western Pennsylvania, Western North Carolina, West Virginia, West Ohio, Peninsula-Delaware, North Carolina, Northwest Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Southwest Texas, Alabama-West Florida, North Texas, Northern Alabama, Kentucky, Illinois Great River, Memphis, Texas, South Carolina, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Florida. Conferences not mentioned received more than 50 percent “yes” votes but fewer than 67 percent. None of the missionary conferences or central conferences is included in this tally.
So, thanks to the Discipline and the democratic process, the middle holds and the church will live for another day.
Worldwide Nature of the Church.
A series of 23 amendments would have radically changed the structure of the church so that many of the issues now discussed by General Conference would be assigned to “regions.” These new regions would deal with matters of “regional” interest while the General Conference would deal with matters of “general interest.” The amendments would authorize the structure now and leave the details to be worked out later.
These amendments sought to address what is a real problem in the church, and particularly in the General Conference; namely, that the United Methodist Church is so U.S.-centric that non-Americans have a difficult time relating to the issues that seem to be specific to the churches in the United States. Not only that, but language translation and cultural barriers make the very processes of General Conference difficult to follow. The proposed solution, which required drastic changes to the constitution, would have retained a General Conference to deal with issues of a global nature, and “regional” conferences to deal with issues that are regional in nature.
But another agenda seemed also to be operating: progressives are arguing these days that issues relating to homosexuality are culturally influenced and therefore that these issues should be dealt with in regional conferences and not the General Conference. To put it another way, if the Africans were removed from discussions about homosexuality in America, there might someday be enough liberal votes in the United States to change the church’s stance.
In addition, the amendments were presented before details regarding cost and how the new structure would actually function could be worked out.
The amendments have been solidly defeated by the annual conferences. Needing a vote of 2/3 of all delegates to pass, the amendments have received only about half the necessary votes. Once again, the church divided on this issue basically along liberal-evangelical lines. On one side were the bishops, the Connectional Table, most of the boards and agencies, the liberal caucuses, and the liberal conferences. On the other side were the more conservative conferences, a number of the overseas conferences, Good News, and the other evangelical renewal groups.
This proposal is not yet finished. It will be studied and come back in a different form. Meanwhile, the membership figures continue to shift so that the overseas churches (growing in membership) will soon have more than 1/3 of the total number of General Conference delegates. But for the time being, the middle holds and the church will live to see another day.
Granting local pastors full rights in the conference.
When Good News was organized more than 40 years ago, one of the first issues it addressed was a call to stop discrimination against local pastors and supply pastors. The reasons for this can be explained in a perceptive article that appeared years ago in the historically liberal Christian Century. The article, entitled “What Is Disturbing the Methodists?” (May 20, 1926), argues that Methodists would be much more disturbed about modern thinking (as in theological modernism) except for its system of governance.
According to the Century article, Methodist preachers come in three grades:
• The first grade consisted of bishops, seminary graduates, “men in agencies,” and pastors of large churches. These “men” had no problems with modernism and believed that it was the future of the church.
• The second grade consisted of preachers, most of whom gain conference membership by the Course of Study. They served the medium-size churches and aspired to be in grade one.
• The low grade consisted of those with limited education who served churches with the slimmest of resources. They were the lay pastors and “pastors of rural areas.” Their numbers were not small. According to the article, 4,000 of these pastors made up the bulk of the Methodist ministry in 1926. The gist of the Century article was that those in the lowest grade are the ones most dissatisfied with modernism and cause the dissension in the church. While their numbers were great, their influence was not.
Even though the situation has changed since 1926, the contemporary United Methodist Church still reflects much of the same corporate culture as described in the article. An elite few are in positions of authority and feel they are best qualified to speak to and for the church. A large middle group would aspire to be a part of the elite few but for various reasons must content themselves to be followers rather than leaders. Local pastors (and others) who serve heroically in difficult and out-of-the-way places are loyal to the church but are treated as second-class citizens.
Up until now, they have not been allowed to vote for delegates to General Conference, or to be delegates to General Conference. However, it is not true anymore, as it might once have been, that these persons are uneducated or unqualified. A church that claims to be “inclusive” and open to others has until now reflected its own class system. There were reasons why, in the beginning of the church, that only “traveling elders” made decisions for the church and others were excluded. But those reasons no longer exist. In this case the Discipline does need to be updated.
Finally, after all these years, the matter of full inclusion of local pastors has come before the church. Most United Methodists now see the wisdom in the granting them full rights. Some groups, like some conference boards of ordained ministry, liberal caucuses like the Methodist Federation for Social Action, and persons associated with a few seminaries, opposed inclusion for the local pastors—but the support from the rest of the church has been overwhelming.
Full rights for local pastors required a constitutional amendment. That amendment passed the General Conference by the required 2/3 vote and has now been ratified by annual conferences by a vote far in excess of the required 2/3. We can now claim an ironic victory for the cause of “inclusion.” So, justice rules and the church will live for another day.
Riley B. Case is a retired member of the North Indiana Conference, assistant executive director of the Confessing Movement, and a member of the Good News Board of Directors. He is also the author of Evangelical and Methodist: A Popular History (Abingdon).
by Good News | Oct 28, 2009 | Magazine Articles
By Steve Beard
“In the slow-moving train crash of international Anglicanism, a decision taken in California has finally brought a large coach off the rails altogether,” observed distinguished biblical scholar and Anglican Bishop N.T. Wright of Durham. He was responding to The Episcopal Church’s (TEC) July 14 decisive vote to “allow in principle the appointment, to all orders of ministry, of persons in active same-sex relationships”—a decision Wright described as making a “clear break with the rest of the Anglican Communion.”
In a column for The Times after the vote, Wright says the Episcopal bishops “knew exactly what they were doing” and characterized the move as a rejection of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s and other Anglicans’ moratorium on consecrating practicing homosexuals as bishops. “They were formalizing the schism they initiated six years ago when they consecrated as bishop a divorced man in an active same-sex relationship, against the [Anglican] Primates’ unanimous statement that this would ‘tear the fabric of the Communion at its deepest level.’”
“Many in TEC have long embraced a theology in which chastity, as universally understood by the wider Christian tradition, has been optional,” Wright observed. “That wider tradition always was counter-cultural as well as counter-intuitive.”
“Jewish, Christian, and Muslim teachers have always insisted that lifelong man-plus-woman marriage is the proper context for sexual intercourse,” he explained. “This is not (as is frequently suggested) an arbitrary rule, dualistic in overtone and killjoy in intention. It is a deep structural reflection of the belief in a creator God who has entered into covenant both with his creation and with his people (who carry forward his purposes for that creation).”
Noting that ancient and modern paganism has always found this “ridiculous and incredible,” he said the biblical sexual ethic of heterosexual monogamy is consistently taught throughout the entire Bible, the teaching of Jesus, and Church tradition. Wright pointed out that scriptural sexual ethics are not confined to a few verses from St. Paul. “Jesus’s own stern denunciation of sexual immorality would certainly have carried, to his hearers, a clear implied rejection of all sexual behavior outside heterosexual monogamy,” he wrote.
Appeals to justice from Episcopal leaders, Wright says, are misguided. “Nobody has a right to be ordained: it is always a gift of sheer and unmerited grace.” The ordination appeal “seriously misrepresents the notion of justice itself,” he writes, “not just in the Christian tradition of Augustine, Aquinas and others, but in the wider philosophical discussion from Aristotle to John Rawls.” Further, justice means not “treating people the same way” but “treating people appropriately” and making distinctions.
“Justice has never meant ‘the right to give active expression to any and every sexual desire,’” Wright added.
Noting that everyone has “deep-rooted inclinations and desires,” he said the question remains, what shall we do with them? “One of the great Prayer Book collects asks God that we may ‘love the thing which thou commandest, and desire that which thou dost promise,’” he concludes. “That is always tough, for all of us. Much easier to ask God to command what we already love, and promise what we already desire. But much less like the challenge of the Gospel.”
Steve Beard is the editor of Good News.
