The Anglican Crisis Over Homosexuality
For the past year, or so, I have been following the developments of the potential split within the Anglican Church (AKA, Episcopal Church, here in the U.S.).
Last night, I read an article, "Saving Grace," in TIME magazine. It was written by David Van Biema and Catherine Mayer, and it is perhaps the best article that I have read on the debate surrounding homosexuality, within the "Anglican Communion."
It's a "must read" because it covers so many issues--the struggle (and wavering) of Dr. Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury; the fierce bigotry-disguised-as-Christlike-ideals of Nigerian Archbishop, Peter Akinola; the fading line of separation of church and state in Nigeria, and the very notion of people actually thinking and deciding for themselves what is "Christlike" or "morally right," rather than accepting authoritative doctrine, without question:
Unlike Roman Catholicism, the Communion lacks definitive doctrine to aid decisive solutions. Nor does it have a universal leader such as the Pope — the Archbishop makes no claims to infallibility and cannot dictate to his flock...
...But Anglicans have foregone Catholicism's useful authoritarianism, staking their unity on a seemingly more attractive continual conversation, based on mutual respect. The sharp debate over homosexuality threatens that unity, and crystallizes a challenge facing everyone in an uneasy, newly wired world: can the North — rich and imbued with an ethos of individual rights — and the poorer South find a constructive interdependence?
...It seems there are people who do not really believe in "freedom." They would rather be told what to do, than to face their ignorance and fear.
2 comments:
I have probably said all there is to say elsewhere about religion. People will fundamentally believe what they WANT to believe…and if someone in perceived divine authority vindicates them then all the better. The church will fracture accordingly.
If only the faithful flock would open their minds, I quote (sic)
Every fact of science was once Damned. Every invention was considered impossible. Every discovery was a nervous shock to some orthodoxy. Every artistic innovation was denounced as fraud and folly. The entire web of culture and "progress," everything on earth that is man-made and not given to us by nature, is the concrete manifestation of some man's refusal to bow to Authority. We would own no more, know no more, and be no more than the first apelike hominids if it were not for the rebellious, the recalcitrant, and the intransigent. As Oscar Wilde truly said, "Disobedience was man's Original Virtue."
God Bless Oscar Wilde!
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