Turning away from Jesus
2 June 2008 - 29 אייר 5768 by Huw
If you’ve missed the rumble in the blogoshere, go out and buy the current edition of Harper’s Magazine and read Turning away from Jesus: Gay rights and the war for the Episcopal Church by Garret Keizer. It’s not another left-good/right-bad piece. Nor is it another right-good/left-bad piece. It’s a Jesus-good/rest of us-messed up piece.
A church that was as “inclusive” as the progressives want it tome, and as “biblically based” as the self-appointed guardians of orthodoxy want it to be, would instantly rectify the situation described by Bishop Stacy Sauls of Lexington, Kentucky… “The problem is that the most isolated places need the priest with the greatest skills. But the system works so that the priest with the greatest skills go almost always to the places that are well-resourced [ie Wealthy - DHR] already… The deployment system is basically a free-market system.
I just finished reading it - and I’m on my way to work - but I’ll blog some quotes later. It’s a sound condemnation of how we’ve let a debate about sex derail the entire denomination: American, African, “Global South” - whatever.
I remain unconvinced that “a debate about sex has derailed the entire denomination.” That might be true enough if the denomination were not already off the rails before the debate about sex got underway. I would say, rather, that the debate about sex revealed just how deeply and irretrievably divided ECUSA already was, and had been for a long time.
It is telling, however, that the deep divide could be papered over until it was homosexuality that became the issue of the day. Everything else that the “progressives” did could be tolerated, but not that.
Chris - he also touches on that angle in the story (see the longest quote in the other post).