Anglican Thoughts

Father Jake, whose last name I don’t know, writes a regular blog from a liberal point of view. He’s a graduate of Nashotah House which makes his consistent attacks on orthodox Episcopalians the more odd.

Today he reports on a meeting between the clergy in Fr. Jake’s diocese and our Presiding Bishop and Primate. Fr. Jake reports that +Katharine uses the two accounts of Creation in Genesis to differentiate between the God of love and acceptance of the first story and the God of sin and retribution in the second account. Some have written in saying they have heard this speech in their areas as the PB moves around. The first account is supposed to be embraced by liberals and the second by traditionalists.

Now I am quite prepared to hear that this account is a biased version of what the PB said. Fr. Jake suggests that those who oppose what +Katharine says do so because she is a woman or supports the Bishop of New Hampshire. The first is a political shot. Call a traditionalist a bigot and one doesn’t have to hear what is said. As for the second shot, the PB has an obligation by her office to “support” all her comprovincial bishops whether they are left, right or center. I suppose Fr. Jake means those who do not accept the rightness of the Bishop of New Hampshire’s consents and consecration are also bigots and so talk nonsense. Ah!

I wrote in comment:

“I’m not sure that one would have to object to +Katharine’s being a woman or her support of Bishop Robinson (do you mean his election/consecration?) to disagree with her on some points. But perhaps that section was hyperbole?

Why give alternatives based on the Creation stories? Again one is offered supposedly conflicting possibilities which up until now the church seems to have harmonized. Why always the “either/or”. I suspect it must have something to do with Republicans versus Democrats or football, making it impossible to contemplate symbiosis?

Does not God look at all God made and say, “It is good”. Is it not true that our response, to want to be “as god(s)” rendered us, in the words of the Articles NOT totally depraved, but “very far gone from original righteousness”? Does not the Creed we profess speak of “baptism for the remission of sins” and of God’s continued loving kindness in that God adopts us through Christ’s death and passion and resurrection, and restores us to that gracious relationship which was “In the beginning”?

So one remembers, the Liturgy, which is our primary source of faith and doctrine, speaks Anglican orthodoxy. Why divide us up on something which should surely be the coin of the realm?”

One apologizes for using the word “God” so much in the above comment but if one uses “He” one is not pc despite the Lord’s Prayer and I’ll write their jargon to get over the church’s teachings.

I hope I am not getting the PB right. It was the Gnostics who spoke of a good god who created everything and an evil lesser god who corrupted the earth and humans. But the Gnostics tended to be Puritans when it came to sexuality, perhaps wishing that God had devised a purer method of procreation, as do many schismatic sects and odd amalgams of religions which the Gnostics were as reflected in their “Gospels.” It is passing strange that many find the Gnostics and their Gospels so affirming, but like Thomas Jefferson and his New Testament, they manage the manuscripts with a handy pair of scissors.

Filed under: Uncategorized |