An open letter to my vicar

Hi Rachel,

I hope that your retreat was a time of spiritual growth and insight. There's a lot of good that your pastoral oversight imparts, so I'm glad you're back.

At the same time, the recent report cataloguing the culture of connivance at Chichester exposes a terrible history of episcopal errors. In spite of the damning evidence, the Bishop of Lewes, Wallace Benn, remains in office until retirement later this year. He'll collect his pension with not so much as a censure on his record of public service. A skilled communicator, he even appeared as a bit of church PR on Top Gear some time ago.

The 'apology' extended to the child victims who are now adults (the perpetrator went after choirboys, once he was dismissed on similar grounds from the Scout movement) merely cites systemic failures that we should now presume to be fixed, rather than holding specific clergy to account for their lack of protective oversight: http://www.thinkinganglicans.org.uk/archives/005403.html#comments

Yet, we wonder why so many have abandoned the Anglican church. Even if you discount the comparative ignorance of the '60's, we are now in an era in which CRB checks are routinely mandated. Yet, the 'good' bishop was happy to endorse a 1999 Permission to Officiate for a previously convicted paedophile.

This case needed a clear and inspiring show of root-and-branch disciplinary rigour. Instead, victims got a set of ecclesiastical sound-bites aimed at avoiding organisational incrimination. Perhaps, we need a Christian equivalent of the Nazi-hunter to root out these convicted perverts before they occupy a role of trust. There must be a range of XXXL granite dog-collars on reserve for them in hell.

It's not the quality of theology, preaching and social initiatives that undermine the Anglican church, nor the rise of secularism. It is the reasonable public fear that at a certain level, we are a church run by those who can dismiss the damning evidence that would prevent interlopers ('wolves in sheep's clothing') from exploiting public trust with impunity.

There is an abiding recognition that many of our leaders are far too interested in publicised political debate, civic prominence and the advocacy of single-issue social causes to worry about a nurturing relationship with each individual parishioner, as a true shepherd would nurture sheep. Yet, the gospel not about driving through grand policies, but the transmission of divine grace through nurturing change, mentoring guidance and committed personal interaction. You can easily identify those who don't engage at those levels.

You can't overcome those obstacles from the pulpit alone. You can only establish important ideals. People will respond to someone who is alongside, rather than above them. That's why I'm signing up for the mentoring course that I mentioned last year. My extended two-cents worth here might just add up.

Regards,

Dave

The Genesis Prototype of Sexual Union

It all depends on whether you view the Genesis account of heterosexual differentiation and union as THE definitive prototype of marriage, or just the origin of its heterosexual variant. The event is presented in Genesis to explain why a man relinquishes his parental bonds to develop a new line of kinship. Christ’s application of this scripture makes clear that He accepted that Eve’s body was partially derived from Adam. The divinely induced sleep and mitosis began the furtherance of the human creation specifically for co-operation between companionable adult lives and for pro-creation.

As Christians, we must assume that, as with Adam, Eve was brought to life by the breath of God. As with references to Satan as the serpent, the specifics of her creation are cloaked in allegorical terms. Although the underlying moral truth remains, the text involves some language fashioned for the consumption of primitive minds. As Paul said : ‘When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.’ (1 Cor. 13:11)

Adam’s response on introduction to Eve implies that God had already revealed to him that she was derived from his own physical material. Out of that knowledge, he declares an immediate, instinctive kinship followed by naming his new partner in the great work of propagating mankind to become the dominant species on earth: “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman, for she was taken out of man’.

However, we know from the fact of gender that Eve’s creation involved sexual differentiation. It is the sexual differentiation within our species that facilitates sexual union. Sexual union arises from a created instinct to return to what was parted at the dawn of creation from Adam’s body. This natural desire to join sexually is not universal. However, in the case of marriage, it must take precedence over parental and filial demands. Marriage involves more than sex, it is a commitment to build affinity, a new line of kinship distinct from that brought about by procreation itself.

But for Adam no suitable helper was found. So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and closed up the place with flesh. Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man. For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh. (Genesis 2:20 – 24)

1. This does not mean that the woman had did not have independence of life, choice, substance and an equal relationship with God. The breath of life from God would have animated her body to become a living soul. However, Adam’s ordained authority over creation was committed to him first. He was given the discretion to name all of God’s creation including Eve herself. His authority was neither to remain unshared with Eve, nor to be usurped by her.

2. Although pro-creation may be an outcome of sexual union, there is no reference to the propagation of the species in this particular passage. Sexual union occurs through an instinctive desire to re-join what was parted by design in creation. The wife’s body is joined to her husband’s in organic union. Sexual union makes their bodies and lives into extensions of each other. The intricately co-ordinated act of sexual union should inspire a commitment to grow, develop and harmonise effort towards their common purpose of family, emulating the satisfaction of that union in a shared life of mutual giving. This is why Paul expresses deep concern over fornication. Harmonising sexual behaviour with a person of promiscuous greed contradicts the re-born life of self-sacrifice to Christ:

‘But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God's holy people.’ (Eph. 5:3)

‘The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. By his power God raised the Lord from the dead, and he will raise us also. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ himself? Shall I then take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute? Never! Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said, “The two will become one flesh.” But he who unites himself with the Lord is one with him in spirit. (1 Cor. 6:13 – 17)

The difference between fornication and the sexual union described in the account of creation is that the latter involves intent to forge a new family unit by leaving the 'descent group', the man leaves his father and mother first. The same cannot be said of the promiscuous sexual union that Paul denounces here. Promiscuity thwarts the effort to secure a permanent offshoot of kinship (what the law calls affinity) that is the aim of marriage. However, Paul's central argument is that we are Christ's physical presence on earth, His body. The church (being the body of Christ) will be re-joined to her head, Christ, in the resurrection. Sexual immorality degrades Christ by joining His body to those who indulge in illicit sex, whether heterosexual or homosexual.

3. Christ’s own declaration is that joining to one’s wife is an act of permanent kinship arising from God’s unrevoked design intent for marriage at creation. Children are marriage’s blessing, but NOT its condition. Additionally, its dissolution was never instigated by God. Divorce was a provision requested by Moses to accommodate human intransigence. Christ has enunciated that sexual unfaithfulness (whether by a complete neglect of conjugal rights, or adultery) is the chief ground for ending attempts at marital reconciliation. Paul adds desertion by the unbelieving partner to this. Still, divorce is NOT a licence to re-marry. The Genesis prototype remains: ‘what God has joined together, let not man put asunder.’ We should not pretend that a conditional divine concession under Moses was unconditionally instigated and approved by God. Certainly no more than we consider how God accommodated Israel’s desire to replace the priest-prophet theocracy ordained through the Law of Moses with a monarchy in line with her Canaanite neighbours:

‘But when they said, “Give us a king to lead us,” this displeased Samuel; so he prayed to the Lord. And the Lord told him: “Listen to all that the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king. As they have done from the day I brought them up out of Egypt until this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are doing to you. Now listen to them; but warn them solemnly and let them know what the king who will reign over them will do.” (1 Sam. 8:6 – 9)

4. Adam declared what Eve meant to Him. Man is told the wider context of human sexuality as it relates to God’s plan:

‘So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground." (Gen. 1:27, 28)

Man and woman are both created in the image of God. However, under God, their respective roles in the shared task of establishing global beneficent order over the animal kingdom are not the same. God’s intent for humanity, as revealed here, would have been subverted, were humans to have largely turned to homosexuality after a few generations.

5. Although the Pharisees wanted to debate the acceptability of divorce, Christ harks back to the Genesis prototype as the perpetually authoritative prototype for marriage (Mark 10:7). Paul also refers to Genesis as the prototype for male disciplinary authority in Church, highlighting both the past consequences of subverting male authority and the pre-eminent role of women in nurturing the young:

‘A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. But women will be restored through childbearing—if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety.’ (1 Tim. 2:11 – 15)

The conclusion is that Genesis is the authoritative, universally applicable prototype for our sexual roles. Whether I am an overbearing, unloving, uncommitted heterosexual, divorced and contemplating re-marriage, or in a homosexual relationship, I am challenged by the prospect of divine judgement to re-apply these precepts of the Genesis account to my life and relationships.

Marriage: the Gender Demarcation

A marriage is distinct from, but cannot exist without the parties to it. Pro-creation is not a condition of marriage.

A marriage is both a collective of substances and a state (in philosophical terms, an accident) with a specific dependence on both parties to it. It is distinct from the substance of the individuals so joined.

Nevertheless, marriage is not a relational accident. Relational accidents (e.g. a dance, a conversation, a kiss) can be described as existing in their own right, with qualities and changes being completely un-related to the properties of the individuals involved. The state of being a wife, husband, a brother or an uncle *cannot be so*. They are not gender-neutral terms. Such states are sometimes described as ‘Cambridge relations’ (Mulligan and Smith 1986).

Comparatives (e.g. ‘is longer than’, ‘is faster than’) share a common characteristic with these ‘Cambridge relations’. As Barry Smith says of both in ‘Objects and Their Environments: From Aristotle to Ecological Ontology’: ‘They exist not as something extra, but only in reflection of certain special sorts of demarcation which are imposed upon the underlying bearers or upon their non-relational accidents.’

We may then ask how the demarcations are set for such relations. Why can’t a mother-in-law be male? Why can’t a great-uncle be female?

If you do, also ask why the comparative ‘is longer than’ can only relate the length of two objects, and not the area. It is the property of ‘longer than’ that predicates and imposes the demarcation of length, rather than area, on the two substances under comparison. Few would challenge that.

Yet, it is the same with these ‘Cambridge relations’. The legal context of all of the affinities involved imposes demarcations on the underlying bearers or their non-relational accidents. In the case of marriage, this includes gender.

This demarcation is only contested by gay and bisexual pressure groups as it relates to sexual orientation. They challenge demarcations on no other basis. It is therefore an unjustified exemption to exclude a specific group from the existing gender demarcations imposed on the parties to a marriage.

While pro-creation is not a requirement of marriage, it should certainly not be a ground for divorce. If a woman falls pregnant unexpectedly by her husband, she has a right for this unplanned event not to be treated as a matrimonial cause for divorce.

Conversely, a married man has the right to expect that the children born of his wife (those to whom he extends nurture as a father) are actually his. If they are found to be otherwise, it is a ground for divorce. These issues arising from the interaction of two genders are part of the reality of marriage.

How do we continue to legally define adultery as a ground of divorce, but in a genderless way? Heterosexual sex triggers a whole range of potential legal consequences regarding consent, legitimacy of offspring and parental responsibility. These are issues that current marriage laws protect. The root-and-branch removal of gender as irrelevant and non-existent in marriage makes the above-mentioned outcomes meaningless to marriage.

This approach is already is being applied to UK birth certificates. They no longer reflect the male biological parentage of the child, but the partner of the biological mother at the time of birth. Hereditary causes of birth defects, family illnesses and death are no longer traceable by authorities in these cases.

The similar attempt to re-define marriage without regard to gender only serves the special interest of one group. Yet, it causes marriage to cease to correspond to and address the realities of marriage.

Some equivalences are valid. On the basis of the foregoing, gay marriage is not. We might as well change the laws of every sport imaginable to ensure they all field 11 players a side, thereby claiming that this would achieve perfect equality.

http://ontology.buffalo.edu/smith/articles/napflion.pdf

Render unto God, the things of God

You’re a first century inhabitant of Palestine. Jesus’s bold messages, interspersed with amazing miracles, are challenging everyone to forsake all for the unique opportunity of eternal reconciliation with God. He issues subtle and blatant warnings against the conceit of those who presume themselves to be the rightful custodians of Jewish moral life.

After his transfiguration before Peter, John and James on a mountain, Jesus descends to enter Jerusalem. His actions can hardly be construed as acceptance of mob adulation, but the crowds do proclaim Him as the rightful Messiah of the Jews. Yet, his entry on the ‘foal of an ass’ poses no military threat to imperial Rome. He prophetically cleanses the temple of the traders who, by imposing tariffs on converting foreign currency to legal tender for temple taxes, subvert its intended purpose as a ‘house of prayer’ for God-fearers of all nations.

In spite of their mortal enmity towards Him, the chief priests and teachers of the law are forced to work around His exceptional grass-roots popularity (‘the people hung on His words’), wary of offending the mob and inciting an open revolt by imprisoning Him. Yet, his verbal onslaught on them through the parallel stories and overt condemnation continues unabated.

It is within this context, that a cunning, disingenuous question is contrived to discredit Him. Those posing the question want to make a case against Him of open sedition against Rome. If Christ has undermined the system of currency conversion for temple tribute, how far will He go in establishing divine authority on earth, the kingdom of God? This is the added subtext of the question: ‘Is it lawful to give tribute to Caesar?’ We might well ask the same today of any institution in which the civil and religious duties are considered to overlap. For instance, is marriage a civil or divine institution? When does religion or secular authority have the greater claim on Christians?

Imagine presenting Christ with the same dilemma today, but in relation to marriage. If He says marriage should be a purely divine institution free from State impositions and requirements, he risks the accusation of undermining the legitimate protection afforded by State authority. If He says marriage is a secular institution, His own demand for submission to God is undermined by capitulating to State power. He cannot have it both ways. As He Himself said, ‘No man can serve two masters’.

There are two key aspects of His response to note:

1. Tough, impartial-sounding questions can often be posed by opponents with prejudices. Christ’s personal evidentiary demand and counter-question exposed human biases.

Christ’s demand exposed the prejudices of His interrogators by asking them to produce a Roman coin in the Temple Courts where He taught. Those sent to trip Him up had no problem producing coins inscribed with the blasphemous title and image of Caesar. Their ownership of a coin bearing the inscription: ‘Tiberias, son of the god, Augustus’ revealed their capitulation to imperial authority.

Of course, the mineral wealth of the world belongs to God. However, part of that wealth was converted into special denarius coinage, struck in Gaul and issued for very specific Roman transactions by order of the Emperor. These coins desecrated the sacred temple in flagrant contravention of the first commandment: ‘Thou shalt have no other gods before me’. Clearly, the opponents were completely in thrall to Rome. Ownership of such coinage proved that they were biased and insincere. It exposed the unworthy motives behind the question that they posed.

Today, Christ might have demanded that church leaders, contending over the right of the State or church to define marriage, show Him a marriage certificate. He might even challenge them to describe ‘the image and superscription’ that the document bears. As with the denarius, marriage certificates are issued by secular government. In England, they bear the stamp: General Register Office.

On that basis, the established church should accept that, while it has a significant voice in society and may, in its canons, define Holy Matrimony, the implied acceptance of the civil dictates of marriage registration involves an abandonment of the right to monopolise the definition of marriage. This is not stated to assert an Erastian insistence on submission to the State in all things. Yet, if the church claims that the true nature of marriage is grounded in scripture, the dual role of priests as licensed marriage registrars belies a compromise with the State.

2. When we are serious about our responsibility towards God, Christ’s demand sets the condition for discovering the divinely imposed extent of civic duty.

We must first surrender the denarius and its modern day equivalents to Caesar: Christians must abandon the instruments of worldly privilege and promotion accorded by the State: ‘Return to Caesar the things of Caesar’. This seditious secession might ultimately result in disestablishment. Nevertheless, once we have done this, we can lose our worldly bias. We can then rightly begin to ‘render to God, the things of God.’

I can let go now.

I discovered today that a former friend has found love and a great future. I am happy for her as I know this has been her dream.

I pray God’s blessing on her life and all her family. I pray his protection on her life ahead. I pray God’s guidance upon her fiancé to lead his new family in doing the right thing even when it’s tough.

I pray because powerless as I am and have been, God will do what I never could.

God is love.

'For wherein you judge another, you condemn yourself'

I write this with the hope of redemption for all.

I have decided to give up a deep-seated resentment over friendships and relations that offer so little genuine lasting affection, but rather provide hopeful protestations that easily give way to selfish mercenary tactics when I refuse the demand to sacrifice my own growth towards God for the unreliable posturing of 'fair weather' emotional warmth. My choice to 'say no' has incurred anger. Yet, I ultimately prefer peace at a respectful distance to lethal close-quarters hatred.

I know that if those seduced by their desperate emotional co-dependency hate me for my relative independence, they first hated Christ's own call for them to be independent from worldly greed. It is because of this that I bear the tacit pronouncement of after-life retribution to those I have known, who blatantly or subtly reject God. How can they bear His presence, or His testimony of blame through me against them?

God promises to repay those who have troubled me. In spite of this, as in the vineyard parable, I ask Him to give everyone another year and another season of His exceptional forbearance and providence. A season in which, perhaps, they may recognise the wisdom of sharing a few words of reconciliation before life expires. Where would any of us be without the benefit of that chance to give up hatred before we die?

I can't change my past, I can only commit to now follow an uncompromising line of integrity (that may ultimately expose the deceits of my detractors). Renewed insight and integrity shows up desperate greed, uncovers indifference to the harm of others and condemns continuation in that life of conscienceless double-dealing that I have long since left behind.

Whatever I was before, I am no longer. I will find a way to bury the loss of lip-service alliances by relieving and undoing the pain and the misfortunes of others. The assured alleviation of that suffering will be a balm to my wounded soul.

I pray that one day, God will grant me the respite that He gave Joseph in finding, at least, a distant truce with those at odds with me; those whom I did eventually learn to hold close as family; those whom I must now hold aloof as hostile. One thing I will never learn is to endure their gloating contempt for my year of deep repentance, the hollow ring to their self-congratulation and their resort to emotional double-dealing at my expense.

Nevertheless, may they either finally discover that their self-exonerating scape-goating was a gratuitous lie or know that they will face the relentless sentence of God for never relinquishing their own condemnations. They could have done better than heap ignominy on someone like me who, for all his mistakes and sins, eventually learnt to abandon them.

Uniformity or Unity of the Spirit

I have witnessed the legacy of uniformity in the pre-eminence of Anglican religious influence on the political establishment, not only in the UK, but also several territories in the West Indies, where I and my forbears previously lived. Typically, you could not even hope for a job without a character reference from the Anglican priest. In spite of this requirement, the lives of many of the established clergy (who carefully restricted references to Anglicans in good standing) were far from exemplary.

Beyond this anecdotal evidence, many studies of other parts of the former British Empire attest to the sway held by Anglicanism over the colonies. Perhaps, the post-colonial experience in the USA differs from the West Indies. Factually, we do know that it was the political influence of key members of the Church of England that established several colonial authorities, such as Virginia and Georgia (e.g. cf. Virginians Reborn: Anglican Monopoly, Evangelical Dissent, and the Rise of the Baptists in the Late Eighteenth Century). These colonies were committed to the predominance of Anglican influence through a provincial cultural hegemony: a mix of compulsory catechism, conspicuous churchmanship and insistence on externalised form and ritual. It is the insidious legacy of this kind of provincial uniformity that I consider to be malign and ripe for dismantling. Human beings may be won to a cause by the tyranny of the majority. They will desert it with contempt, once the old regime of coercive tactics is exposed. Persuasion of the truth is a far better way for Church of England to secure a lasting posterity.

We may note the greater popularity of other denominations in the US, such as the Baptist movement. However, their later ascendancy was largely a result to the American Revolution that created a new environment in which evangelical Protestants of other denominations could flourish.

While, in each case cited, the legal framework of uniformity (upon which the moral case for colonialism was built) was repealed, the history of how provincial uniformity was imposed continues to influence how Western ideals are established in the world and elsewhere maintains the perception of Western liberal thought as another form of neo-colonialism.

The reaction of conservatives is ironic, given that the Covenant reduces their own autonomy, rather than maintaining the relative freedom of the status quo.

While provinciality may indeed be a worthy ideal for internal self-government, the historic role and influence of the Anglican church is far from ideal. Especially in former colonies, it is tarnished with the brute force of colonial rule and, rightly or wrongly, viewed with suspicion of surreptitiously imposing its values on the wider society.

If there is a demonstrable commitment to undo the entire legacy of uniformity, it may engender enough trust between provinces for us to settle or accept differences without recourse to a written covenant.