Category Archives: Christianity

Rowan does Dostoevsky

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Time to say something nice about Rowan Williams; here goes.

Rowan has written about Dostoevsky, one of my favourite authors and, in spite of Rowan’s  talent for making what is simple complicated, he does have some useful insights. From the Guardian

Why was the moment when Jesus, perhaps out of compassion for the tormented Inquisitor, kisses the man and then is allowed to slip from his cell into the Seville night, possibly never to be seen again, so important for Williams? “Dostoevsky has no easy answers, but what struck me when I first read the Grand Inquisitor episode was there is absolutely no form of words that can give a solution to suffering. Absolutely none. That’s why what ends the arraignment of the captive Jesus by the Grand Inquisitor is silence – and then Jesus kisses him. When I read it I had the dim sense that there was something very important in that what you look for in faith is not solutions but a certain relationship.” And that’s why Dostoevsky’s appeal has endured for Williams: he offers no closure, no authorial master-voice, but an endless dialogue where no one wins the argument but everyone is connected. In the book, he writes that Dostoevsky’s fiction is like divine creation, “an unexpected unfolding with no last word”. That might make divine creation sound akin to natural selection, but it’s how Williams sees God’s universe.

I thought I’d start with a bit where Rowan gets it at least partly wrong. While the Grand Inquisitor is about the problem of suffering, it also focuses on the idea that the institution of the church – and in particular the church hierarchy symbolised by the Inquisitor – sees its job as a salve to man’s chief source of suffering: his freedom. Man’s freedom is a recurrent theme in Dostoevsky and is, in his view, a major cause of human suffering. In Crime and Punishment Raskolnikov murders to demonstrate his freedom (to make himself ‘god’); we, too indulge in evil (usually less dramatic) to prove we are free – free from a God who wishes to constrain us. Even for a Christian, freedom can be a source of torment, since it is still possible for a Christian to sin. The Church will cheerfully relieve us of our God-given freedom by replacing it with an ecclesiarchy and, thus, make life – easier. Nevertheless, Jesus did come to truly set us free, not to make life easier. I suppose I can see why Rowan would not want to dwell on that.

Dostoevsky is renowned for his remark, “Without God, everything is permitted.” Does the archbishop agree? “He’s saying not so much that without God everyone would be bad, as without God we have no way of connecting one act with another, no way of developing a life that made sense. It would really be indifferent whether we did this or that. And it’s that sense of God being part of what you draw on to construct a life that makes sense.”

I agree with Rowan’s interpretation: without God life is meaningless, as are ethics, good and evil. This is a big problem for people like Dawkins and Hitchens who do not live up to their own dogma and behave as if their strutting and fretting has significance.

“In The Idiot, Prince Myshkin says, ‘When I hear atheists talk about Christianity, I don’t recognise what they’re talking about.’ I often feel when I read Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens that this isn’t quite it. I thought it might not do any harm to put down a marker about that and say: ‘Here is a form of Christian engagement with the world and with the complexities of human experience that may be radically wrong but is not cheap or glib and any critique has to deal with this just as much as it has to deal with a southern baptist.’

He also tilts in the book at the pretensions of science, and by extension scientists such as Dawkins: “Science is a set of brilliantly successful methods producing brilliantly successful hypotheses about how things work. What it’s not is a picture of reality. It will give you a very significant purchase on reality. But it’s not an ethic, not a metaphysic. To treat it like that is a kind of idolatry.”

True: science describes a mechanism, not reality. For reality one must look to religion.

So, you see, I don’t think Rowan is merely a hairy old Welsh wind-bag. He has a redeeming feature: he likes Dostoevsky

Richard Dawkins makes mincemeat of Rowan Williams

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And it’s not because Dawkins has a better argument than Rowan, it’s because Dawkins actually believes what he is saying and Rowan doesn’t. In this interview, it is quite clear that Rowan Williams, defender of the faith, is ashamed of what he is supposed to be defending. It is embarrassing. One does not expect a scientific plodder like Dawkins to have any imagination, but Williams – poet, Druid and hairy Welshman – surely should: sadly, he doesn’t. Lacking the imagination needed to defend his faith, he uses Anglican fog instead. View and weep:

At last: A Church of England vicar who is honest about his priorities.

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When I was young I remember my parents struggling to scrape up enough money to buy the house they were renting; I think it cost around £600. It was a modest terraced house with 3 bedrooms overlooking a bus-stop on a rather shabby street: not much, perhaps, but it was theirs and they were pleased to call it their own.

Here we have the Rev. David Matthews – a pseudonym for Obadiah Demurral, perhaps – who is turning up his nose at what appears to be a rather charming 4 bedroom house – which he doesn’t have to pay for! How times have changed. From the Telegraph:

A country vicar has refused to move to a new parish because the four-bedroom home he was offered with the job was ‘not big enough’.

Rev David Matthews was all set to take up his new role as a team vicar in Suffok – only to lay eyes on the £275,000 home that came with the new posting, and declare that it was too small.

He announced that he was staying where he was, leaving a diocese scrambling around for a new team vicar and his would-be new parishioners bemused.

Rev Matthews is currently rector in the Box River parishes of five villages near Sudbury, Suffolk.

He was offered and accepted the role of team vicar with the Wilford Peninsula, based at the house 40 miles away in Hollesley. The Diocese of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich said it provided him with full details of the house that came with it, which also boasts a study, two bathrooms and a large conservatory.

But Rev Matthews said he didn’t actually see the house until just before he was due to move in, and declared it unsuitable.

Rowan cosies up to Karl

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I suppose it is only fitting that Rowan, who is almost entirely wrong about Christianity, should think Marx is partly right about capitalism. Why not find something positive to say about a man whose ideology has been the inspiration for the most murderous, oppressive and evil regimes in human history. Rowan and Karl even look a bit alike – well Rowan needs to work on the beard. From the Spectator

Face it: Marx was partly right about capitalism
Rowan Williams

Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, says that the financial world needs fresh scrutiny and regulation. In our attitude to the market, we run the risk of idolatry

[…..]

Fundamentalism is a religious word, not inappropriate to the nature of the problem. Marx long ago observed the way in which unbridled capitalism became a kind of mythology, ascribing reality, power and agency to things that had no life in themselves; he was right about that, if about little else. And ascribing independent reality to what you have in fact made yourself is a perfect definition of what the Jewish and Christian Scriptures call idolatry. What the present anxieties and disasters should be teaching us is to ‘keep ourselves from idols’, in the biblical phrase. The mythologies and abstractions, the pseudo-objects of much modern financial culture, are in urgent need of their own Dawkins or Hitchens. We need to be reacquainted with our own capacity to choose — which means acquiring some skills in discerning true faith from false, and re-learning some of the inescapable face-to-face dimensions of human trust.

The Church of England monkeys with Darwin

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If you sit enough monkeys down with typewriters, eventually they will produce the latest theological meanderings of the Anglican Church. This experiment was successfully verified at Lambeth 2008.

In the never ending quest for its own destruction, the CofE is celebrating the 150th anniversary of Darwin’s ‘On the Origin of Species’. It is a fitting tribute to Darwin’s theory of natural selection, since the Anglican Church in the West is a live demonstration of the theory’s application. The church, having adapted to its surrounding culture in all the wrong ways, has made itself irrelevant and incomprehensible (just listen to Rowan Williams) to all and sundry; very soon it will cease to exist – it will have adapted itself into extinction.

The CofE pays its homage here.

It is this need for humans to think, and love, that forms the centrepiece of a new retrospective by the Revd Dr Malcolm Brown, Director of Mission and Public Affairs for the Church of England, called ‘Good Religion Needs Good Science’. After warning of the social misapplication of Darwin’s discoveries, where natural selection justifies racism and other forms of discrimination – perhaps predicted in the “misguided” over-reaction of the Church in the 1860s – Brown writes: “Christians will want to stress, instead, the human capacity for love, for altruism, and for self-sacrifice.” He separates the biological and emotional further by pointing out the naivety of assuming a wholesale evolution of the human race: “Despite our vastly expanding technical knowledge, even a fairly cursory review of human history undermines any idea of constant moral progress.”

This is replete with the usual Anglican drivel. First, if natural selection is true, then of course it would engender ‘racism’: if one race is superior and stronger than another, the inferior will be selected out. If natural selection is true what incentive is there to indulge in the opposite – self-sacrifice. And as for ‘other forms of discrimination’, there is hardly any worse discrimination than that of the abortionist towards the unborn child; a fairly predictable result of adopting a theory which declares that the strong survive and the weak perish.

The very worst part of all this is the diabolically bad logic of attempting to believe in Christianity and natural selection simultaneously. Leaving aside the squabbling about whether the universe arrived in 6 days, minutes, millennia or a few septillion years, the fact is, natural selection depends on accident to work. This means that mankind is accidental: it would be quite possible – indeed likely –  for it not to have existed – ever. From a Christian perspective this is absurd: the Christian view is that God planned man’s existence, planned revealing himself through Jesus, planned to redeem us through Jesus’ atoning sacrifice, and eventually plans to renew all of creation. The very opposite of an accident.

So, Church of England, you can have Christ or natural selection; you can’t have both. And it seems you have made your choice.

Rule Britannia

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From the Telegraph.

We knew that sharia courts were operating in Britain even before Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury gave the lecture  in February which caused such a stir.

It was said that these courts arbitrated on marriages, as Jewish courts or Catholic marriage tribunals do. Everything was to be done with the consent of both parties. More surprisingly, it seems that sharia courts are giving judgement in criminal cases. In six cases of domestic violence, according to Sheikh Faiz-ul-Aqtab Siddiqi, of the Muslim Arbitration Tribunal, judges ordered the husbands to take anger management classes and mentoring from community elders. There was no further punishment.

Can you imagine what kind of consent wives involved in such cases have given to the sharia court’s jurisdiction?

Often, Muslim women marry in an Islamic ceremony without the ratification of a marriage in English law. This gives them no rights under the law of the land in the case of divorce. Nor would they have any claim to inherit under English law.

So we see the growth of sharia as a parallel jurisdiction to the law of the land, imposed on a sector of society that cannot resist it.

It’s fitting that this is being publicised at the same time as this piece of anti-Christian claptrap from the BBC:

A successful Christian children’s author says he was refused appearances on the BBC because it couldn’t be “seen to be promoting Jesus”.

G P Taylor’s first novel, Shadowmancer, spent 15 weeks at the top of the British book charts in 2003. His second book, Wormwood, sold 22,000 copies in one day.

Yet the author claims that invitations for appearances on the BBC stopped once producers found out he was a Christian.

“I had good relations with them until they realised that there were religious allegories in my stories,” he told The Sunday Telegraph.

“Once they had decided that I was promoting Christianity in my books I found the door firmly shut.”

Mr Taylor said his faith meant that he was not welcome on children’s programmes like Blue Peter.

He said: “A BBC producer told me ‘off the record’ that it was a matter of my faith and the fact that I was an Anglican priest. ‘We can’t be seen to be promoting Jesus’, he said with a laugh.”

A spokesman for the BBC denied the allegations. “Programme makers make their own editorial decisions about which guests to have on their shows. There is no truth in the claim that there is a BBC ban on G P Taylor.”

However, Mr Taylor said: “They weren’t turning me down because I was a bad guest, but because of who I am.

“I’m an Anglican priest and sadly while it’s OK to be the next Philip Pullman, it’s not all right to be a Christian writer.”

And, one imagines, the Arch-twit of Canterbury, Rowan Williams – having explained to us why sharia law in the UK is such a good idea – will have absolutely nothing to say about this blatant discrimination against the religion he is supposed to be defending.

The Diocese of Niagara: A tale of hypocrisy and lies.

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On February 17th 2008 St. Hilda’s Anglican Church, Oakville held a vestry meeting to consider a proposal to join the Anglican Network in Canada. The vote was unanimously in favour with 1 abstention. A lot has happened since then and I thought it might be interesting to chronicle the story so far.

Immediately after the vote our pastor, Paul Charbonneau, was suspended with pay and was inhibited from ministering in the Anglican Church of Canada; shortly after, he was fired. The diocese relieved the wardens of their duties, installed a parish administrator working on behalf of the diocese and froze St. Hilda’s bank account. They attempted to take St. Hilda’s to court on Friday February 29th – clearly this move was prepared ahead of time – but, through the efforts of our legal team we were given a week of grace.

We circulated the details of our plight to all the Oakville Anglican churches in the hope of mustering some support; there were few responses, but this one from Dan Tatarnic, Assistant Curate, St. Christopher’s Church, Burlington is representative: “Dan Tatarnic here, keep your opinion to yourself, it is not worth two cents.”.  Thanks Dan.

On Sunday February 24th, the diocese held a service in St. Hilda’s building as a political statement; outsiders were invited to attend to swell the numbers which would otherwise have been close to zero. The resultant travesty is chronicled here. After this, we had our usual service . As a particularly pastorally sensitive gesture, the priest in charge for the diocesan service inflicted this on his unsuspecting victims.

On February 29th, the court ruling was that St. Hilda’s was to be given exclusive use of its building – temporarily.

On March 20th We were back in court – this time with a different judge – and the ruling handed down on May the 5th was that St. Hilda’s and the diocese had to share the building;  the diocese was given a time slot on Sundays that made it impossible for St. Hilda’s to worship in the building. We decided to conduct our Sunday worship at a local school; the first Sunday at the school was Pentecost 2008, a date that symbolised a new beginning. The diocesan service had a disappointing turnout: here is the parking lot. And here are some pictures from the real St. Hilda’s.

Since then, the diocesan service each Sunday has had no-one attending its service other than the priest, his wife and the person who sets up the altar. In an abundance of trivial irritations, it is hard to choose one to represent them all, nevertheless: the ‘priest in charge’ at St. Hilda’s (the diocesan euphemism for ‘stooge’), Brian Ruttan asked us to return the communion vessels and linen – much of which was donated or handmade by parishioners – so that he could use them for his congregation of zero. We returned them and are using plain replacements; interestingly enough, the plain replacements have acquired a special value.

In a spirit of reconciliation and to reduce court costs, St. Hilda’s has approached the diocese to settle the dispute outside the courts with an arbitrator; this has been rebuffed by the diocese who want things to be settled by the courts ‘in public’.

As of this writing (September 2008), the diocese is still holding empty services in St. Hilda’s building each Sunday and still refusing to negotiate. Which brings us to the question of why does each side of this issue want the building? St. Hilda’s wants it for ministry, including:

  • Food Drive: Food for Life Canada, together with Kerr Street Market and St. Hilda’s Church, run an outreach program for people in need in the Hopedale area.
  • “Cloz for Moz” Project: An outreach to Mozambique which delivered crates of nearly new clothes and blankets to this area of need in Africa
  • Garage Sale “Giveaway”: We have a community Garage Sale, but the items are Free! An illustration of God’s love for us.
  • Free Car Wash: We offer free car washes to passers by as an illustration of the love of Jesus.
  • Power and Light: A junior youth group where kids from the church and community meet Friday evenings for Fun and Games!
  • Freebie Friday: Freebie Friday is a drop-in for the students of Blakelock High School, which is located just a few doors away. Each Friday during the school year, St. Hilda’s Parish Hall is open from 11:00 am – 1:30 pm for the students to drop by during their lunch hour to have lunch, play games, talk to a volunteer or to go into the church to pray. We usually get more than 100 kids.
  • Artists for Africa: A fund raiser by St. Hilda’s artists to help alleviate poverty in Africa.
  • Alpha: Members of the community are invited to find out more about Christianity
  • Marriage Alpha: A marriage course open to members of the community.

Why does the Diocese of Niagara want it? Because the land it sits on is worth around a couple of million dollars.

Dr. Deborah Pitt's response to Bishop Tom Wright.

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Published with Dr. Pitt’s permission:

Dear Bishop

I was very interested to read the letter published in yesterday’s Times from you and your co-signatories. (I read the online version also) I am glad for your clarifying of the points in Dr. Williams’ letters. To be honest I found the front-page headline rather crass as well as inaccurate. I agree entirely with you about Ms Sieghart’s comments about the church. I have written to the Times about her article and I include a copy of that letter. I was glad to read the synopsis of the conclusions of the Lambeth Conference also.

You raised the issue of my motives in releasing the private correspondence. Believe me I did not do this lightly. So please allow me to give you some background.

I was extremely worried at some of the content of Dr. Williams’ letters. I did not feel I could trust him. I believed that he probably had other liberal views which  would be incompatible with my evangelical faith. I stopped attending the Church in Wales. I believed things would get worse and frankly I was dismayed at his appointment to be Archbishop of Canterbury. Since then my disquiet has grown.

To better outline my concerns at Dr. Williams views on homosexuality I will send you a copy of the letter I sent him some months after receiving his first one (see below). It is long but I hope it presents a coherent picture of someone who cares passionately about the Gospel and the Christian witness to the nation and who wrestles as best possible with the ethical struggles of living as a Christian in a post-Christian society. I hope you will at least read some of it!

I have tried to keep up with what is happening in the churches,  and certain events recently engaged my attention. One was the ECUSA convention in New Orleans and its outcome. Another was the homosexual ‘marriage’ in St. Bartholomew’s church. Then I heard about GAFCon and followed that, all the time getting more worried that there would be a disastrous outcome to the integrity of the Anglican communion, about which I care very much, even though I am no longer a practising member.

From time to time I have pondered on the Archbishop’s viewpoints as revealed to me and whether they should be more widely known. But I  had no desire to embarrass Dr. Williams: I didn’t want people mocking him or saying ‘If he is averagely muddled what does that say about the rest of them!’ I have respect for his authority and I appreciated his responding graciously and candidly to my enquiries. As a physician I have a high regard for the principle of confidentiality. Besides I hoped that in time it would become apparent that he had changed to more orthodox views. I also wanted to be clear before God as to my own motives, for I had at times over the years found myself quite cross with him! In fact other than sharing the correspondence with my vicar at the time I  had shown the letters only to a few people and made very little reference over the years. In a way it was all rather embarrassing and awkward and I had to just not fret about it, but hope and pray for the best. Besides, these are my Christian brothers and sisters in turmoil. How can I not be concerned?

The trigger to deciding to send the letters to the Press was this . In the Sunday Telegraph of 13th July I read an article about an interview with the Archbishop of Wales. He stated that he would be happy to ordain a homosexual bishop. It occurred to me that he would not have been so brazen if he had not known that Dr. Williams had  significant liberal views on the matter. I had also sensed that the liberal wing of the church knew far more than the GAFCon group about those views. I decided that the balance should be redressed, and that the best place for Dr. Williams’ views to be aired was at Lambeth. The best way to do that was to give any journalist who thought the matter relevant  enough the opportunity to challenge Dr. Williams or discuss with other bishops or whatever journalists usually do.

The copies of Dr. Williams’ letters along with a covering letter were mailed on 15th July. However, Ms Gledhill, who was the first to express interest in doing an article, did not get them before she left for Lambeth. This explains the delay in publication.
I enclose a copy of the covering letter. It will help explain my thinking..

It does seem that my hunch was right; from what I have gathered the GAFCon members were startled to learn  Dr. Williams’ views and the Liberals knew them anyway.

Well, it is all in the open now. You may wonder if I would have been better to have approached people in the Anglican church, and I assure you I spent much time over the years praying and reflecting on many  aspects of Dr. Williams’ ministry; painted all kinds of worst -case scenarios re what might result, and have been reflecting since on the wisdom of my course of action. But although it has created a storm of further controversy, I believe it is better for the issue of Dr. Williams’ views, past and present, on the issue of homosexuality to be aired and debated. Yes, it may give fuel to the liberals agenda, at least at first. But it is now up to the evangelical members of the Anglican communion to state their position and counteract the unbiblical beliefs of Dr. Williams and his supporters, to thoroughly understand why Dr. Williams believes as he does, and then strongly counteract them. I believe they are right and Dr. Williams is wrong. They must say from the Bible why they are right.

Will all this bring about the split that many have been predicting? Who knows? I certainly don’t; I leave such speculation to those with a lot more knowledge of the Anglican communion than I do. I care deeply and passionately about the faith delivered to the saints.

It has given me great pain to be doing this, to even care about these things. Do you think there are not a hundred other things I would rather be doing than writing these sorts of letters?! But I care most about God’s word and the authenticity of the Gospel. I have complete agreement with your desire ‘to obey God’s call to take the gospel to the whole world‘ and I wish you and your fellow bishops every God-given success in so doing. God will bring good out of all this, I believe. If I didn‘t believe this I would not have done what I did. I pray for Dr. Williams and all of you in your responsibilities. I  have my personal opinions about Dr. Williams’ position, but my greatest wish is for the best for the Anglican communion.

Feel free to do what you like with the stuff I have sent you, Dr. Wright. If it goes straight in the bin, I won’t be surprised. I know you were angry about GAFCon and no doubt you are angry with me. You have reason to be. I understand that. I haven’t set out with the intention of causing pain. That is not my metier. But facing painful truths is.

Yours very sincerely in Christ

Dr. Deborah Pitt’s response to Rowan Williams.

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The full text, published with Dr. Pitt’s permission:

Your Grace,

Thank you for your letter of 28.09.00., and for your frankness about your views on Homosexuality and how you reached them.  The topic is a huge and diverse one with many ramifications, and has given me quite a bit of food for thought.  Also, I needed to improve my own knowledge of the subject and it has taken me awhile to reply, for which I apologise. I hope you do not mind that my reply is rather longer than I anticipated.  I’ll try to respond adequately to the points you raised, with explanations of my own perspective and the concerns I have about how the liberalising of views on Homosexuality are affecting the Church and Society. Your letter was very gracious, and I hope the tone of my letter is not affected by the anxiety your views caused me.

I was interested to read that your interest in the subject was piqued by contact with homosexual professing Christians who were grappling with the morality of the matter. My own perspective has come about largely from personal contacts also, through my work as a medical doctor in both general practice and more recently Psychiatry, and having worked on both sides of the Atlantic. Yes, it is rubbing shoulders with the people personally affected by moral dilemmas that causes one to question and study one’s own presuppositions and the orthodox Christian teaching; with regard to the latter it appears that we both started from the same place, incidentally.

I started at Med. School the year the 1967 Abortion Act was passed.  When I was in G.P. training the controversy for Christians was the prescribing of the birth control pill to unmarried women.  My contact with AIDS patients was when working at a Government-funded clinic in the USA where the majority of the county’s patients were seen. The practical issues associated with departure from the Christian teaching on sexual morality have been uncomfortably real to me and have caused much agonising, made no less by my own personal struggles, throughout my career. I can relate very well to the theological and pastoral issues you have met.

You used the term ‘homosexual by instinct or nature’, and you make a distinction between homosexual acts done by heterosexuals and those done by those who are exclusively homosexual, the latter being authentic in some way and the former not. I do not know whether the Bible makes such a distinction, but I do not think scientific investigation has yielded precise distinctions about the behaviours or personality traits of these two groups.  Scientific research on any behaviour, especially sexual behaviour, is extremely difficult to do accurately. The preponderance of evidence, though, is that Homosexual behaviour is socially and developmentally acquired rather than the result of genetic endowment. Sexual orientation appears to be somewhat fluid, with different varieties of expression over time.  Some homosexuals become exclusive heterosexuals, for instance (though few convert the other way.  So I think it is difficult to define accurately the term ‘homosexual by nature’. However, even if one could define the term and describe its causes scientifically the question then needs to be addressed: ‘ What are the implications for the expression of this behaviour?’ Lord Longford brought out the significance of the distinction between orientation and practice in the debate in the Lords ‘ …homosexual leanings are not sinful in themselves, but are sinful when put into practice.’ The point is not only What is my nature?, but whether it is right to express my nature.  Civilisation has largely been about training people to act contrary to their instincts or nature in a given situation. There is no absolute or automatic right to express one’s nature.  My sense though is that homosexuals think there is, and that one has an obligation to express it, or at least confess it (or else be subject to the tyranny of ‘outing ‘and being branded a hypocrite if one doesn’t).

The Biblical yardstick for sexual behaviour is, I think, the Creation story, in which I trust you and I both believe, either literally or as Myth. It talks of God creating Man and Woman, of the difficulties between them and the introduction of Sin into their relationship and the consequences thereof.  Why, I wonder, is their no provision anywhere in the Bible for homosexual inverts?  Dr. Edward Norman stated in one of his ‘meditations’ (The Times, I think) that homosexuality appears to be a gift from God, ‘an involuntary condition; it is how some are made’.  But God does not seem to have told us how that gift should be exercised.  What parameters, what constraints? There are certainly lots of constraints given us for control of our other sexual, or aggressive or acquisitive instincts. Why has God not endorsed such behaviour by giving instruction?  Why was there no marriage law for such? But there is nothing, no positive endorsement for this trait or behaviour. I think it is dangerous to conclude other than from the Bible that God endorses homosexual behaviour, loving or not.

Your third paragraph prompts me to ask, ‘Where are the liberal views on Homosexuality taking the Church?’  You don’t see yourself, Archbishop Rowan, as ‘a campaigner for a new morality’.  However, I believe that by having the views you do you will be pressured by the Lesbian and Gay Christian lobby to act on them and to endorse church or society legislation to ratify a kind of homosexual marriage, as an equivalent not just legally but qualitatively to Christian marriage. They will want to know, if you believe as you do, why you are not campaigning for a new morality.

I agree, the Church has shifted her stance on several matters.  The examples you gave, the admissibility of contraception and the rightness of lending money at interest, provoked some wry thoughts.  The latter has led to the rise of capitalism and the widespread pursuit of wealth and gain and to the rampant exploitation of the world’s resources.  I have heard that the Amazon rain forest is likely to be the next victim of this rampant greed.  The Anglican Church is caught up in this same mechanism, as are we all to some extent.  As for the BCP, this invention will change forever, probably, the world’s attitude to sex, which is now considered a commodity to be indulged at whim, a right not a permission. Perhaps the Christian Church has failed very badly in not speaking out more strongly against the temptations that the free availability of the BCP and the lending of money at interest have brought. Personal debts have risen dramatically and there are more illegitimate births than ever.  There is an accompanying tendency to throw money, or birth control pills or morning after pills, at the problems of society that arise, rather than address the deeper issues of personal responsibility and adequate education and warnings.  The darkness can never overcome the light. But if we whom Christ called the light of the world cannot ensure that the light burns on, then it will go out. And the light, the prophetic voice of the Church calling people back to God’s standards no matter how unpopular that voice, seems to get dimmer.

Truly, God loves all sinners; perhaps the greatest sinners are the ones He has the most compassion for, for they have lost so much.  But we live in a fallen world, so He gave us first the Ten Commandments for, amongst other things, our protection, I believe, and second of all Christ for our redemption.  God has seen fit to regulate sexual activity for our good, because we need protection from its excesses.  The choices He gave were chastity before marriage and fidelity within it.  Both marriage and celibacy are described as gifts. (Which is not to say that all states of such are vocations, of course.) I do not think that homosexuals are any more disadvantaged by the Bible’s proscriptions on their behaviour than are the many heterosexuals who are also denied for various reasons stable relationships, marriage and children. Surely none of us is free to violate God’s rules of behaviour or form liaisons that are outside his explicit commands.  The Christian homosexual’s dilemma and challenge is therefore not a lot different from that of the heterosexual. Admittedly, the heterosexual has the potential for marriage and family, but also the disadvantage of despair if such desires go unrequited. One other point, if I may:  The Bible distinguishes between inclination and behaviour.  One is under no obligation to indulge one’s inclinations, and one’s temptations are one’s own business before God. A frequent inclination, urge, temptation, I assess in patients is to suicide. There are degrees of inclination before one forms an intent, and degrees of intent before one acts, either impulsively or premeditatedly.  But there is no such thing as a suicidal nature! We are not, surely, defined by our particular weaknesses or temptations.  We can choose to act on them or not, or to not express even worthy attributes if a greater good calls for their denial. I seriously question the use of the term homosexual nature.    I reject Dr. Edward Norman’s idea of a gift of homosexuality.

So, has the Anglican Church been wrong, as you surmise, Archbishop Rowan, about Homosexuality all these years?  No, I don’t think so. I accept that your conclusions have been reached in a spirit of honest and compassionate enquiry.   The idea that the ethics of homosexual relations should be no different from those of heterosexuals, i.e. exclusively faithful or lifelong, is an attractive and plausible one. I am afraid I have not read any of the books (perhaps I should read them) which promote the idea that such relationships are equal qualitatively to heterosexual ones. I don’t see how they can be if there is no possibility of children; how can they be anything but inferior, at least in scope? I am not saying that the quality of devotion cannot be as high, perhaps it can for all I know.  But that does not make the relationship  intrinsically right.  There are many adulterous heterosexual unions that are marked by great qualities of devotion, commitment etc.  That does not make them right, though. There is honour among thieves.  That does not make robbery all right.  Certainly not for the victims.  As for ‘ absolute covenanted faithfulness’ as a criterion for the rightness of a relationship, well, the Mafia operates by the same code. (I am not likening homosexuals to the Mafia, just that the criterion is not an absolute good). The attainment of such an ideal is less likely with homosexual relationships than with heterosexual, as has been shown so far by enquiry into the pattern of homosexual relationships, which are remarkable for their promiscuity, for some reason. .  Neither will the strong tendency to promiscuity be helped by friendly legislation for homosexual marriage or acceptability by the public. (Nothing, by the way, prohibits a homosexual couple from drawing up their own legal contract if they want to.)

Why am I so pessimistic?  Because I believe the movement for Gay Rights will not stop at promoting choice to be of either homosexual or heterosexual orientation. In a climate of increasing liberalisation of sexual mores, sexual practice will be increasingly also towards bisexuality, and eventually loosening of attitudes towards paedophilia. Why?  Because Choice as an absolute right knows no boundaries. Now bisexuality, that is real choice!!  For the nature of Choice argument is not choice to be this or that, but choice to be this or that or the other, and whenever I choose.  So the naïve gynaecologist is shocked and disillusioned when the woman he cured from infertility chooses to have an abortion when a pregnancy is inconvenient. That is the problem of absolute choice.  The nature of choice is not either- or, but both-and.  The confused young people prone to experimentation in all kinds of areas are presented increasingly with multiple choices but without guidelines as to how to discriminate good from bad choices.  I think the arguments of nature vs nurture, being and doing, being true to oneself etc. will be swept away in the next wave of liberal thinking on sexuality as both-and takes over from either –or.  If one kind of sex is no better than another, why stick with one type when all kinds are available? Fallen human nature is like that.  Adam and Eve wanted both-and, and the devil framed his temptation accordingly. ‘No, no, it’s not God (life), or knowledge acquired by disobedience (death). Has God said…?  He didn’t mean it.  You can have both. Knowledge and God’.

As for the Church, it is not hard, I think, in this Post-Modern, Post Birth Control Pill, Pro-choice, liberal age to see why she is under such pressure to change her traditional views  on homosexuality. The Gay Liberation movement is piggy-backing on the sexual libertarianism introduced mainly by the Birth Control Pill.  Premarital sex has become a right, and society demands the right to have safe sex, a pill, or abortion on demand, and treatment of any adverse consequences, including infertility. So, not surprisingly, homosexuals want the same liberties.  They are after all, GAY:  ‘good as you’. The Women’s Liberation movement in the USA promoted the idea of woman as victims of discrimination, oppression, exploitation. GAYs see themselves as needing similar liberation. Women’s Lib started, actually with high ideals. The pioneers wanted to show that women had particular roles to play in Society because they were women and by their nature had particular qualities to be used in roles other than childbearing and homemaking. There were and are definite injustices that needed to be addressed. But the movement degenerated into, or was hijacked by, another agenda; of declaring women’s innate superiority and wanting to take over or invade all areas of male culture.  Forget Calamity Jane’s cute ‘Anything you can do I can do better…’; this movement was often ugly, aggressive, arrogant and intrusive, marked by ‘on my own terms’ behaviour, and purporting to speak for all women. The promotion of so-called sexual freedom (which has liberated far more men from the adverse consequences of sex than it has women, in my opinion,) has been a social disaster for which future generations will pay a terrible price, in economic and other ways. The movement has had in my opinion some dire consequences for men (perhaps the high rate of suicide in young men, a phenomenon almost unknown when Barraclough et al wrote their seminal paper on suicide in 1974, is related in part to the increased discord.); for women, who are not necessarily more respected by men, and for many children left in the care of others or who are the innocent victims of divorce and other tragedies. Will Gay Liberation stop at being GAY? Or will they want to be Superior To You, actively promoting their lifestyle, encouraging young people into their way of life? Teenagers will be encouraged to experiment because now they have Choice.  The Gay lobby says ‘You can’t turn up your nose at it if you haven’t tried it’. After all, it is only by propaganda, not propagation, that Homosexuals can increase their numbers.  They do not want just choice, or equality; they want acceptability.  Some of their behaviour is like that of the Women’s Lib- bers; ugly, aggressive, riding roughshod over the sensibilities of others.  I found the article in the Wall Street Journal re the Gay Pride march in Rome interesting and distressing in this respect.

As for the professedly Christian wing of the movement, I believe it will be claiming that Jesus was homosexual, and therefore they are superior to heterosexuals; they understand Jesus better than heterosexuals do, and He has a particular affinity with them.  In fact I think there has been a play in the West End exploring this very theme.  They can claim that He was single in a culture where all the men married, and He went around with men, taking them away from their families and occupations, even.  And was not John the disciple that Jesus loved? Dr. Edward Norman (please see enclosure) seems to promote the idea of some kind of superiority, implying that homosexual relationships are superior; ‘ their moral conduct has to be observed within a separate frame of references’, by which he seems to imply that heterosexual behaviour had to be governed by marriage, but homosexual behaviour did not need constraints or conditions! I reject absolutely, by the way, his idea of homosexual nature (how exactly does he define this?) as a gift from God.  The Gay Agenda is looking for acceptability in the Church as part of the normalising process.  Their methods include, unfortunately, the kind of aggression manifested in the Gay Pride march.  Anyone disapproving is accused of homophobia, discrimination, insensitivity, and no doubt, violation of their human rights.  They take the moral high ground.  The tone of their agenda as set out in ‘Christian Homophobia’ as per the Church Times of 17.11.00. was frightening.  They want to take over the whole ethos of the Church, it seems to me. I would contend that they appear to be extremely prejudiced against heterosexuals! The LGCM are in the process, it seems to me, of imposing a tyranny on the church whereby anybody who disagrees with their opinions or agenda is dismissed with loathing.  They use the language of the victim culture and exploit the uncertainties existing in the church on issues of sexual morality. (Do I understand that the Anglican Church no longer considers living together before marriage as a sin?  If so, well, no wonder the LGCM thinks it has a case) The Word of God is dismissed as ‘biblically based homophobia’.  Well, well.

I am not afraid of or prejudiced against homosexuals. As far as I am concerned only God can say one kind of sin, or a particular sinner, is morally worse that any other. (If I am homophobic, then I am also pornophobic, kleptophobic, and a whole host of other’ phobics.’) I feel very sorry for them. They, like many of my seriously mentally ill patients, are denied the normal blessings of marriage and family life.   But I am afraid of the unChristlike attitudes and blatant distortions and accusations that they use to promote their ends.

I am worried about the Gay Agenda. It is degenerating very much like the Women’s Lib agenda did, and I think that our society is in the grip of an uncontrolled social experiment, without precedent.  Even in Greek and Roman cultures, homosexuality was not sanctioned by law. (The Ten Commandments for Today, William Barclay). I am afraid of Society’s and the Churches lack of understanding of the scientific evidence.  I cannot possible talk of the latter in detail, so I enclose a copy of the best book I know on the subject, which you are welcome to keep, if you would like, Archbishop Rowan.  I am concerned about the rise in sexual behaviour which will occur with the inevitable encouragement of young people to experiment with homosexual sex, with soap opera and other media examples showing the way.

I am concerned about the inevitable health risks. There were about two thousand new cases in Britain last year, I believe, most of them associated with homosexual sex, actually. The virus is spread far more easily by anal intercourse than by vaginal.  This is because the vagina was so created as to be far more resilient to penile thrusting than the rectum, which has a relatively thin mucosal wall, which is easily injured, thus allowing the entry of viruses and bacteria into the bloodstream.  Sorry to be so technical.  So much, incidentally, for Dr. Norman’s idea; if Homosexuality is a gift from God, homosexuals have a very important question to ask Him.

If openly gay relationships are accepted by the Church what message does that send to heterosexual unmarried Christians? ’If homosexuals are not called to chastity, neither are you’. There is little affirmation for the homosexual Christians who have struggled to remain celibate. Admittedly, heterosexuals are granted the privilege of marriage and procreation. Does that make God unfair?  Many heterosexuals are denied those same privileges for one reason or another. My premise is that God would like it all to be as He originally intended. But we live in a fallen world, and He has promised through Christ grace to bear with our trials, deficiencies, limitations, bad breaks or whatever. I struggled for many years with a condition that has ruined my prospects of many things, and was of such chronicity that one of the country’s most experienced experts said there was no hope of cure.  But gradually God made come true His promise of redemption, and delivered me and has given grace to rebuild my life, though I will never recoup the losses. It was hard, very hard at times, to keep going.  I do not consider a Christian homosexual’s struggle to live with his or her sexuality harder necessarily than what I have endured; believe me, Archbishop Rowan, I have enormous empathy with their struggles.  Countless other Christians have endured far worse for His sake.

There is hope for all those who submit to His revealed truths. But this other attitude says ‘I have a right to have sex.  And it’s up to you, Church, to accept and support and promulgate my rights. Because I am a victim of discrimination.  Otherwise you are prejudiced and homophobic. We don’t care what you believe about celibacy and chastity.  You must make way for us too have our sex. Because we have choice.  Because we are GAY —  ‘good as you.’ I ask, ‘Where is the spirit of Christ in this?’ Is it just heterosexuals who should repent of unChristlike and judgmental attitudes?  I believe, rightly or wrongly, that the pressure will increase and will take ever uglier forms, exploit any inconsistency and make more demands.  I understand Peter Tatchell is calling for the age of consent to be lowered to fourteen.  And there is no logical reason why not now the standards of chastity have been breached. I heard to day of a magazine to be published aimed at preteens encouraging sexual attractiveness and awareness.  Let’s face it, our society is no longer committed to the protection of chastity;  there are just some laws that still shore up the concept and lookto our sexualised and secularised society more and more old fashioned.  A letter-writer in the Sunday Times (Jan 14th), respnding to the Morning After pill controversy, wrote, ’The basic concept of an age of consent has become meaningless, and the time has come to abolish it’. Was he cynical, despairing, or one of Tatchell’s camp, I wonder?  If it has become meaningless it is because society and the Church, and we Christians, who should know better, have let it become meaningless.  May God have mercy on us.  If it has become meaningless, all the efforts of Christians like Josephine Butler, who fought to protect young teenage women from prostitution by the raising of the age of consent, will seem to the nonbeliever eccentric  at best. A correspondent objected to the removal of the Sophie Dahl ‘Opium’ ad;  ‘why should anyone object to this ‘21st century’ pose?, he asked.

It is right for Christians to fight for justice, freedom and other virtues.  I do not believe homosexuals should be singled out as worse sinners than the rest of us, or subjected to ‘turn or burn’ derision, or persecuted.  But we must not be naïve about the fallibility and corruptibility of human nature and of the capacity of the most idealistic aspirations to founder on the gravitational pull to corruption of our best intentions. Our society is on a slippery slope consequent to the abandonment of absolutes about sexual conduct. Try putting down one’s foot on a slippery slope! No one disputes that those absolutes are hard to uphold.  I believe that the Church, and particularly the Anglican Church, as the state church, must uphold those absolutes.  What, marry the spirits of the age– political correctness, pro choice, the victim culture, etc. etc?  I do pray for wisdom and discernment for all our Church leaders.  You have awesome responsibilities. I do hope, Archbishop Rowan, that you will continue to keep an open mind to any developments that may mean the Church is on the wrong track in conceding too much to their viewpoints.  Of course homosexuals’ difficulties should be listened to, and they should be welcomed, but as as fellow strugglers on the straight and narrow way, surely, not in the subversive role the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement insists on.

Yes, that is a hard saying, isn’t it?
People accused Jesus of ‘hard sayings’. Which causes me to wonder about His attitude to the dilemma of those who experience homosexual temptations. After all, homosexuals comprise 1% of the population, we are told. We are told of His compassion towards the adulterous woman and towards the crowds who were like sheep without a shepherd, and towards those who struggled under their burdens. In many instances he appeared to turn the Law on its head, the ceremonial laws, the Sabbath prohibitions. He accepted outcasts.  But there is nothing about homosexuals. He was accused of being demon-possessed, but no-one, despite His lifestyle, accused Him, as far as we know, of any sexual impropriety. Jesus did not address the needs of homosexuals.  I wonder why not. If the Church now thinks homosexuals need advocacy, I wonder why Jesus did not take up their cause.  Now this is probably an issue you and others far more knowledgeable about Christology have already asked yourselves. As a non-scholar I know little about the hermeneutical principles that would apply to such an issue.  It appears to me, though, that neither Jesus nor the Bible give any endorsement of homosexuality, invert or otherwise.

Archbishop Rowan, I have written far more than I originally intended. I don’t quite know where to go from here.  I could not possibly expect you to reply fully to this letter, and I apologise for any tautologies, misattributions, assumptions, presumptuousness, misconceptions, etc. I apologise also for any deficiencies of presentation; I probably could have made my points more economically. In fact, I will not be offended if I get only an acknowledgement, for I realise you are very busy and I will be adding further to your in-tray. You have shared your thoughts frankly with me, and I appreciate the spirit of goodwill with which you have written.  I am very happy to receive any comments you may have, but I don’t want to encroach on the many calls on your time.  I ask you to sift the wheat from the chaff, and I hope that what I am sending to you will be in some way useful.

It remains for me to assure you of my prayerful interest in all the work of those called to the ministry, acknowledging their very difficult task of being salt and light in these turbulent times. May the Holy Spirit enlighten us and rule in all our hearts.

Yours very sincerely

Deborah Pitt

Anti-Alpha, the liberal course for the luke-warm

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The Alpha course has reached every denomination in almost every country; it has touched the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, many of whom have found Christ through it. It started in an Anglican church (Holy Trinity, Brompton) and it begins by asking the most basic questions: why are we here; what is life about; what happens when I die. This year we have, ‘Is there more to life than this?’

Not surprisingly, it is Evangelical.

Evangelical is not good enough for liberal churches such as the United church, so they have produced their own ersatz-Alpha Handbook – and hope to export it to gullible Anglicans. Forget about the trite percontations of life and death that plague naive Evangelicals; the important stuff is in the Handbook. For example, when bringing a salad in a Jell-O mold to a potluck, don’t forget to use less water than the recipe calls for; it doesn’t get deeper than that. Order your copy now before they are all snapped up by potential church-going Jell-O mold aficionados.

From the Toronto Star:

The Handbook, at times instructional, at times irreverent, attempts to break down that intimidation factor by giving short instructions on how to act in church, from the time you walk through the door and are handed a church bulletin to the time you leave and drop the bulletin in the recycling bin.

Douglas put together the book with partner Nanette McKay after getting permission to use a similar U.S. publication as a template. Douglas and McKay have been stationed in Fiji for the past two years, working with local social justice groups on behalf of the church.

Their book describes in great detail basic churchgoing procedures: how to receive communion, pass the collection plate and hold a hymnal and what to bring to a potluck. (Casseroles and salads are good, and if you bring a salad in a Jell-O mold, use less water than the recipe calls for, the book advises.)

There are also tips on identifying the type of a minister you have depending on the type of clothes he or she is wearing. (The alb and stole represent the minister role as a servant of God, while sandals and coffee stains may show little interest in material goods.)

Some tips are meant for those who have been going to church for a while, such as how to get off a committee. (Find a replacement.)

Douglas says many of the lessons might seem obvious or even silly, but he wanted to make sure nothing was left out. “If you don’t know this stuff, you think it all matters,” he says.

While written for the United Church, Douglas says the lessons can be applied in general terms to just about any denomination. Some, such as those on potlucks and committees, might apply to any group of people.

But there are, of course, aspects that are strictly Christian, such as prayer posture, the 60 essential Bible stories and three versions of the Lord’s Prayer – the sorts of things dealt with exclusively in Bruce’s Jesus 24/7 workbook….

Workbook author David Bruce, minister at Toronto’s Leaside United Church, sees Jesus 24/7 as an alternative to the more evangelical Alpha, but one that allows readers to take a more liberal approach to the gospels than is seen in the British creation. Its intention, however, is the same: to help bring people into the fold through better understanding of basic Bible stories.