The Continuing Anglican Crisis and the Escalation of the Evangelical Crisis

Hard to know what will be the future of Anglicanism. I follow the news from time to time on VirtueOnline and Global South Anglican websites.

For those who don't know the history, in 2004 the Windsor Report was released in London, the result of ongoing issues related to the Episcopal Church's ordination of openly gay bishop V. Gene Robinson and the resulting "alternate oversight" orthodox bishops in the global south were giving to orthodox Anglicans who wished to not be associated with what they believed to be the last straw in a long history of heresy. The Windsor report recommended three small things. It suggeted there be a moratorium on consecrating new gay bishops, a moratorium on the blessing of same gender unions, and it also chastised bishops who crossed ecclesiastical boundaries and established parallel provinces. In practical effect, it solved nothing and extended the anguish.

But just a few weeks ago in Tanzania, the Episcopal Church was given something of an ultimatum, one which surprised many. In Dar Es Salaam, the Global Anglican communion embraced three key propositions with which the TEC must comply at risk of unspecified consequences. It put the focus on the radical novelties of the TEC and actually suggested that the alternate oversight provided by Global South Bishops was understandable, and should be halted only after some other alternative oversight was put in place on an interim basis. Tanzania insisted on:

Why I am Not a Calvinist - Part 8

Finally getting back to my personal resolution to the free will vs. sovereignty debate. Just one more after this and I'll move on to other things.

Back in my brief stint in seminary, I was required to read portions of Louis Berkhof’s massive Systematic Theology . In it I recall reading one particular paragraph that struck me as odd in relation to foreknowledge, which of course the Arminian, (and Romans 8:29) say precedes predestination. Said Berkhof:

"The Arminian, of course, will say that he does not believe in a foreknowledge based on a decree which renders things certain, but in a foreknowledge of facts and events which are contingent on the free will of man, and therefore indeterminate. Now such a foreknowledge of the free actions of man may be possible, if man even in his freedom acts in harmony with divinely established laws, which again bring in the element of uncertainty; but it would seem to be impossible to foreknow events which are entirely dependent on the chance decision of an unprincipled will, which can at any time, irrespective of the state of the soul, of existing conditions, and of the motives that present themselves to the mind, turn in different directions. Such events can only be foreknown as bare possibilities." (Systematic Theology, p. 107)

Seems to me that what Berkhof is saying is that if God allows any sort of contingency, any sort of possibility that creatures can actually choose from more than one option, then he cannot know the future.

Beyond Politics - sort of...

Joseph Bottom takes on the less than honest calls to go beyond politics in
Beyond Beyondism today. Key quotes:

The way to get beyond the liberal/conservative divide is for all of you on the other side to agree with me.

and the bait and switch of those who want to get beyond politics is that:

The left needs to see that the right has all the best techniques for extending and maintaining a position, while the right needs to see that the left has all the best positions. Now can’t we all get beyond our pesky divisions?

Good stuff.

Weeping with Francis Schaeffer

I've generally liked the comments of John Fischer, who has generally been solid, calm and reasonable. This week he remembers Francis Schaeffer, the American who singlehandedly preserved my faith and my sanity for much of my adult life with his writings, and inspired me to think more than any other. Fischer writes about Schaeffer's compassion. His key point, Francis was not a man who only railed about political issues as a few portray him today. He was a man who wept over a culture that was disintegrating. His political involvement was borne of compassion, not a quest for power.

Schaeffer was a man who had a temper, and descriptions of that temper have leaked out of L’Abri, partly through equally fiery son Franky. He could be unbending and hard, I’m told, from at least one source I would tend to respect. Yet he could weep with compassion - like Jesus wept with compassion over Jerusalem.

And why did Francis weep? Because, like Christ, he saw people as sheep without a shepherd, as individuals adrift in a sea of moral chaos. At the heart of Schaeffer’s theological and cultural analysis was his proverbial "line of despair", a line he defined as that place where human beings give up on finding real answers to the central questions of life.

Budziszewski on Tolerance

Jim Tonkowich, president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy has an absolute must read article on Colson's Breakpoint site.

He reports on an address by Jay Budziszewski before the Evangelical Theological Society, which addresses the very issues I have been trying to get at in recent posts about conservative evangelicals in politics, the idea that being tolerant of all views is in fact truly tolerant. Key paragraphs...

"...liberals argue that we must suspend public judgments about the nature of the good. After all, as liberal philosopher John Rawls argued, while the Christian sees the good in one way, the Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Marxist, or hedonistic pleasure-seeker each see it in other ways.

"Rawls calls each system a “comprehensive doctrine.” And since comprehensive doctrines can’t all be true, and each is more or less reasonable, the only solution for public discourse is to privatize them all, that is, ban all comprehensive doctrines from the public square. This, the argument goes, creates an environment of moral neutrality in which to make public decisions."

Those Evil Christian Conservatives - Part 2

I posted not long ago about a situation in Massachusetts where 6-yr-olds were being taught homosexuality and transgenderism and a federal judge insisted the parent had no right to pull his child out of such indoctrination.

Now comes this from a nearby suburb. Deerfield high school, just a few short minutes away from Trinity Evangelical Divinity Shool, has issued a gag order on freshman students indoctrinated in gay behavior.

Officials at Deerfield High School in Deerfield, Ill., have ordered their 14-year-old freshman class into a "gay" indoctrination seminar, after having them sign a confidentiality agreement promising not to tell their parents. the school's officials required the 14-year-olds to attend a "Gay Straight Alliance Network" panel discussion led by "gay" and "lesbian" upperclassmen during a "freshman advisory" class which "secretively featured inappropriate discussions of a sexual nature in promotion of high-risk homosexual behaviors."

Saying No to Theocracy

So my nephew Troy, a Presbyterian Pastor, sends me a link to Richard Mouw's recent post A Larger View of Theocracy. Mouw writes:

“Theocrat” functions these days a lot like “pervert.” The people who think nothing of accusing other people of being perverts do not really expect the persons they are accusing to respond by saying, “Yes, I am a pervert.” “Theocrat” seems to function in pretty much the same way.

So he recognizes the negative connotations that go with the word. But Mouw is not at all uncomfortable with the term, writing "strictly speaking, anyone who believes in the God of the Bible is a theocrat."

I had to write back to my nephew that I didn't agree with Mouw on that point, but it deserves a larger context. It is hard to debate the issue, however, without some definitions.

Choice Words about Environmentalism and Population Control

I just thought this quote from Chuck Colson Breakpoint article this morning was choice.

In contrast to the Christian idea of stewardship, which “wishes to conserve and protect the natural resources of the planet for the sake of future generations,” this viewpoint “wishes to eliminate future generations for the sake of the planet.”

It illustrates the contrast between naturalism run amok and good sense stewardship, between seeing man as created in God's image and charged with caring for all of creation vs. man as merely another part of nature to be controlled. Francis Schaeffer was all for preservation of the environment (Pollution and the Death of Man). But he clearly did not see humans as a disease to be eradicated for the sake of the environment. Another reason why a Christian voice in issues of public policy is a necessity.

How Schism is Supposed to Work

Interesting article on the issue of turning around the mainline in ChristianityToday. Seems like the long habit of those who are biblically conservative to opt out of their denominations and start new ones is slightly shifting toward trying to preserve the orthodoxy of the existing denomination. A few years ago, I would have been wholly on the side of those who would vote with their feet to leave any denomination that might flirt with theological or moral nonsense such as denial of essential beliefs about God or radical sexual permissiveness.

What gives me pause is the fragmentation that exists in the Christian world. We cannot speak to society with a unified voice if every time there is a controversy we start a new organization. We become more "pluralistic" than the society, it sometimes appears. We have no credibility on major issues if we are hopelessly divided on so many things.

So I am encouraged that some are willing to fight for their denominations and try to force the new and novel ideas out, to allow those who would alter Christianity to be the ones to leave and to seek a common consensus on that which Christians have held to be true for 2000 years.

We don't know where it will end in the Presbyterian and Anglican churches, but maybe there is a new model for conflict being worked out before our eyes.

Certainty Equals Fascism

Ryan T. Anderson writes in First Things about another attack by a self-proclaimed Christian on the religious right with the subtle title American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America. You can read the article for yourselves, but two incongruous phrases were rather intriguing to me.

The key, Hedges claims, is the certainty of evangelical faith. Confidence, we are told, is a fascist ploy, while real Christians accept that we “do not understand what life is about. . . . Faith presupposes that we cannot know. We can never know.”

Has there ever been a time in all of human history when certainty has been defined as a vice and uncertainty a virtue? In light of this praise of uncertainty, one wonders about this second quote:

“Debate with the radical Religious Right is useless. . . . It cares nothing for rational thought and discussion.”

What is the point of rational thought and discussion if uncertainty is a virtue? Anderson also noted that:

By understanding faith as “an intellectual act, its object truth, and its result knowledge,” John Henry Newman must have been an anti-intellectual fascist, in Hedges’ definition.

So faith cannot deal with the intellect, truth or knowledge and if it does it becomes fascism!

And we are the ones incapable of rational thought?

Going to Chapel at College...

Having two sons of college age gives me an occasional opportunity to see firsthand what sort of influences are present on Christian College campuses. On a campus visit a number of weeks ago, I was treated to the political views of one popular author as part of the chapel experience at one college, and the captivity of the American church to the religious right was alleged. Over the weekend we visited another campus and heard, well, more politics.

I do not know much about this particular speaker, so he will go unnamed, as will the college in this case. I don’t want to misrepresent someone I don’t know much about, nor do I want to be accused of attacking persons. When I am critical of ideas on this page, I try to be critical of ideas, not people. In this case, keeping the individual anonymous might be the best path. Suffice it to say, he was a professor at a Midwest seminary, speaking at a chapel for a Midwest college. I can only state what I heard and saw.

His topic was the shifting demographics of the world wide church. His statistics I’m sure were for the most part accurate, that about 60 percent of all Christians worldwide are now in the Eastern and Southern hemisphere. His main point was that white Christians in Europe and North America need to understand this shift and recognize that the church has a multicolored face, one that is no longer “western”.

Religious Schools May Not Teach Sexual Morality

Having two sons of college age gives me an occasional opportunity to see firsthand what sort of influences are present on Christian College campuses. On a campus visit a number of weeks ago, I was treated to the political views of one popular author as part of the chapel experience at one college, and the captivity of the American church to the religious right was alleged. Over the weekend we visited another campus and heard, well, more politics.

I do not know much about this particular speaker, so he will go unnamed, as will the college in this case. I don’t want to misrepresent someone I don’t know much about, nor do I want to be accused of attacking persons. When I am critical of ideas on this page, I try to be critical of ideas, not people. In this case, keeping the individual anonymous might be the best path. Suffice it to say, he was a professor at a Midwest seminary, speaking at a chapel for a Midwest college. I can only state what I heard and saw.

His topic was the shifting demographics of the world wide church. His statistics I’m sure were for the most part accurate, that about 60 percent of all Christians worldwide are now in the Eastern and Southern hemisphere. His main point was that white Christians in Europe and North America need to understand this shift and recognize that the church has a multicolored face, one that is no longer “western”.