Are we wrong?
A friend asked me an interesting question the other day. With revisionist Anglicanism ascendant in ECUSA, has it ever occurred to me that they may be right and we wrong? Certainly both honesty and humility requires that indeed we may be in error. Proper confidence (to employ Lesslie Newbigin’s term) resides only in God.
That being said, I have problems with my friend’s question. While I can imagine myself as wrong, I cannot imagine my revisionist Anglican friends are right. (Now bear with me here. I am not trying to be ungenerous or belittling.)
First, let us ask what it means to say that the revisionists might be right? It is not merely about sex. Windsor is correct to say that it is the presenting issue. In order to make the theological affirmations that our revisionist friends wish to make one has to engage in a hermeneutic and theological method that constitutes a dramatic shift in the Christian faith to the extent that while the outward form looks similar, the inner substance is radically different. In brief, what we find is that the primary locus of religious authority resides in experience that then finds its reflection in scripture and tradition. The Episcopal Church represents an aggregate of religious experiences joined by a common symbolic language and practice, which is adjudicated through procedural democratic structures. Furthermore, this symbolic and ritual language is not descriptive of an objective reality, viz. the being of God, but of our experience of the divine. Other symbolic languages and rituals, Christian and otherwise, are other ways of articulating the experience of the divine, which cannot be ruled out as authentic a priori. While many revisionists would claim that they are orthodox and creedal Christians (and indeed still are as individually they have not worked out the implications), I think the theological method required to make the affirmations about homosexuality will lead eventually to this conclusion.
If we are honest this does not constitute a mere variation on historic Christianity, but is actually a significantly divergent religious paradigm. Indeed, I believe that it has much in common with the various private cults that competed for adherents with the Roman Empire in the first few centuries after Christ. Liberal Christianity is sect among many other sects, never claiming for itself any exclusive revelation, but giving spiritual expression to the inchoate numinous experiences of its adherents within a common ritual framework. Other sects do this, with varying levels of spiritual authenticity, for their devotees. If I am right in claiming this, then our opponents should better be understood as Christopagans. This is to say that Liberal Christianity is a pagan sect of spiritual enlightenment with Jesus providing a symbolic narrative.
(Similarly, from this perspective all world religions would be simply other pagan sects. This, of course, leads to the question of who it is that arbitrates between sects when they are in conflict, and who judges what texts and rituals are spiritually authentic or not. In short, who plays Caesar? Interesting question for another post.)
To say “they” are right and “we” are wrong is not to say merely that we need to make adjustments to our theology, but that a thorough going shift in theology is required. We would have to cease being Christians as we have been. This is not the same as coming to believe, say, in the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary. Were I to make this shift I would have to wonder why I am still an Anglican, but the shift required would affect my pension more than my ability to recite the Creed. I would still be an adherent of historic Christianity.
So it seems the question is not between two variations of Christianity, but between historic Christianity and a Christianized neo-paganism. And if Christianity or paganism is the choice, then, frankly, I’m going to choose a more robust and sensuous form of paganism than the Christianized form.
That being said, I have problems with my friend’s question. While I can imagine myself as wrong, I cannot imagine my revisionist Anglican friends are right. (Now bear with me here. I am not trying to be ungenerous or belittling.)
First, let us ask what it means to say that the revisionists might be right? It is not merely about sex. Windsor is correct to say that it is the presenting issue. In order to make the theological affirmations that our revisionist friends wish to make one has to engage in a hermeneutic and theological method that constitutes a dramatic shift in the Christian faith to the extent that while the outward form looks similar, the inner substance is radically different. In brief, what we find is that the primary locus of religious authority resides in experience that then finds its reflection in scripture and tradition. The Episcopal Church represents an aggregate of religious experiences joined by a common symbolic language and practice, which is adjudicated through procedural democratic structures. Furthermore, this symbolic and ritual language is not descriptive of an objective reality, viz. the being of God, but of our experience of the divine. Other symbolic languages and rituals, Christian and otherwise, are other ways of articulating the experience of the divine, which cannot be ruled out as authentic a priori. While many revisionists would claim that they are orthodox and creedal Christians (and indeed still are as individually they have not worked out the implications), I think the theological method required to make the affirmations about homosexuality will lead eventually to this conclusion.
If we are honest this does not constitute a mere variation on historic Christianity, but is actually a significantly divergent religious paradigm. Indeed, I believe that it has much in common with the various private cults that competed for adherents with the Roman Empire in the first few centuries after Christ. Liberal Christianity is sect among many other sects, never claiming for itself any exclusive revelation, but giving spiritual expression to the inchoate numinous experiences of its adherents within a common ritual framework. Other sects do this, with varying levels of spiritual authenticity, for their devotees. If I am right in claiming this, then our opponents should better be understood as Christopagans. This is to say that Liberal Christianity is a pagan sect of spiritual enlightenment with Jesus providing a symbolic narrative.
(Similarly, from this perspective all world religions would be simply other pagan sects. This, of course, leads to the question of who it is that arbitrates between sects when they are in conflict, and who judges what texts and rituals are spiritually authentic or not. In short, who plays Caesar? Interesting question for another post.)
To say “they” are right and “we” are wrong is not to say merely that we need to make adjustments to our theology, but that a thorough going shift in theology is required. We would have to cease being Christians as we have been. This is not the same as coming to believe, say, in the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary. Were I to make this shift I would have to wonder why I am still an Anglican, but the shift required would affect my pension more than my ability to recite the Creed. I would still be an adherent of historic Christianity.
So it seems the question is not between two variations of Christianity, but between historic Christianity and a Christianized neo-paganism. And if Christianity or paganism is the choice, then, frankly, I’m going to choose a more robust and sensuous form of paganism than the Christianized form.
posted by peregrinator at 11:20 PM
1 Comments:
You're last is the point I've been increasingly convinced of. If the revisionists and universalists are correct, than why are we bothering to be a church at all. I've attended many a "progressive" church, and I always sit wondering the same thing. What the devil are we doing here? Why exist at all? If Christ is not the only way and all ways are equally valid, I'll go off and be the god of my own Mormon planet someday, thank you very much.
However the central question is a bit hard for me to deny, and it is one I wrestle with, knowing as I do a few faithful GLBT members of the church (well GL at least). Their position is hard to deny, and I do find myself wondering if I am wrong in denying it. And I often wonder, as a priest I know has said, if homosexuality is the wrong foxhole to die in, in the larger conflict with relativism/pluralism. But the ultimate conclusion of Robinson's arguments is precisely the one you have laid out, a neo-pagan church that has little reason to exist.
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