So browsing about in Anglican Land's Internet world I came upon the following"
Bishop Nazir-Ali, formerly bishop of Rochester, now working in South Carolina with the free floating Mark Lawrence, late bishop of South Carolina, is reported to have had this to say about the gay marriage debate in England. Pink News, a UK gay news service, headlines "Senior Anglican warns equal marriage could force the Queen to break ‘the laws of God’" They report that,
"He later told the Mail: “ Christians are told in the Bible to obey their rulers,
unless the ruler tells us to do something God forbids.
“Happily in this country we have a monarchy that has taken an oath of
upholding God’s laws, and the present Queen has for years been faithful
to that. We are praying that she continues to be faithful.”
“That puts the onus on the prime minister not to put the Queen into a
position where she may have to go against the sovereign promises she
has made. We hope that she is not put in that position.”
Ho ho ho.... Really? Thank you Dr. Nazir Ali. Glad you are ready to come to the aid of the Queen. But "The idea of a constitutional monarchy comes
from the Bible." Really? And that the Queen is (or ought to be) a theocratic ruler?
Come on, Bishop. You can do better than that. Really.
And then there is a sermon in The Living Church by G. Willcox Brown, titled, "Jesus Defeats Dionysus. I don't know what possessed TLC's editors to publish this sermon, but they pulled the following quote from the sermon to use as the come-on line, "Christ dies once for all, to bring about our flourishing by delivering us from slavery to our lusts."
The sermon is just plain awful, being more of the same sort of piety that gave rise to the line lifted from it. It is hard to imagine just how the three phrases get linked as he links them:
Christ dies once for all
to bring about our flourishing
by delivering us from slavery to our lusts.
What? Really?
Well, Brown ends the sermon with this observation:
"As a culture, if we choose Dionysus, we must be prepared for more and
more Sandy Hooks and Auroras and Columbines and Virginia Techs. Or we can choose the Crucified; we can submit our lives to him and find in his government a life transformed by the power of the only true God, who not only is alive but who is life itself.
In him alone, as St. Paul bears witness in Acts, in Christ alone,
crucified and risen, are we delivered from threats and murder; in Christ
alone will we find illumination, strength, and life abundant."
Really? Brown says, "we are delivered from threats and murder" in Christ alone. And if everyone is not Christian? Well, you know, "more Sandy Hooks and Auroras and Columbines and Virginia Techs." I don't know how well this sells in some parts of this country, but down here, even in lower Delaware it sounds like a hustle for a theocratic state, in which submission to the "only true God" is the ticket to the end of violence.
Some days I can't help but wonder if some of the guys in the Anglican bus have been smoking a bit of trashy dope, the sort that makes them think that God has a preference for Christian order and government.
God wants, as I recall, that we do justice and love mercy. Different I think from the visions of Bishop Nazir Ali and Fr.Brown.
6/04/2013
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Is Nazir-Ali still with the Charleston breakaways, I wonder? In January he warned a conference of Diocese of Mark Lawrence clergy that neither they nor Robert Duncan's "province" are members of the Anglican Communion, nor are they likely to become members in the foreseeable future.
ReplyDeleteIt's all tosh. The Queen is expected to uphold and protect the basic tenets of the Church of England and there are very few of them. I mean, when was the last time someone was excommunicated from the Church of England concerning a matter of belief or even practice? When was the last time a member of the Church of England was told they had to believe something, anything? The gay marriage thing just doesn't qualify as something that the Queen should uphold or protect as head of the Church of England. Should parliament ever go down the disestablishment road then the Queen would be in a dodgy constitutional position as the establishment of church and state is something she is in charge of protecting. Typical CofE, more worried about political matters than doctrinal matters.
ReplyDeleteWhat a bizarre reaction. Brown's sermon did not deserve that much attention to begin with.
ReplyDeleteSCM
Well, Brown and Ali are of a certain type - the autocrat/priest. Moreover, for them, if the layman is meek, submissive, turning the other cheek, it makes it much, MUCH easier for the autocrat/priest to be a dictator. Dreadful people!
ReplyDelete