Orthodox Fundamentalism
Ruth Gledhill draws attention to the bizarre letter sent out to SPCK bookshops this week, explaining why staff would have to work on a Sunday.
The theological justification is, apparently, to be found in Canon 29 of the Canons of the Council of Laodicea which says:
Christians must not judaize by resting on the Sabbath, but must work on that day, rather honouring the Lord’s Day; and, if they can, resting then as Christians. But if any shall be found to be judaizers, let them be anathema from Christ.
Far from justifying the position taken by the owners (Saint Stephen the Great Charitable Trust) this actually encourages Christians to try to rest on a Sunday (the Lord’s day). The letter also tries to big up the Synod of Laodicea by claiming that it decreed the books of the Bible. Unfortunately, not only is this (Canon 60) seriously disputed, but it’s First Testament canon list is the Protestant OT + Baruch and the Epistle of Jeremiah, which is of course no-one’s canon today.
What’s in view seems to be the kind of practices so roundly denounced by John Chrysostom - a fourth century Asian resurgence of Christian interest in the synagogue. The canon is part of that matrix of what later became foundational to Christian anti-Semitism, and it’s astonishing to see it being employed, entirely contrary to its intention, and without any awareness of the disastrous history associated with the views expressed in it.
This kind of sloppy a-historicism, and naive non-interpretative quotation, is exactly a hallmark of fundamentalism, it’s just that in this case it’s a kind of conciliar fundamentalism. But then again what can you expect form a group who claim on their website: “Until the Norman Conquest in 1066 A.D., England was Orthodox.”
November 2nd, 2007 at 4:46 pm
[...] business ethics and personnel management. They claim to be promoting Orthodoxy, but as their bizarre argument for Sunday trading based on the Canons of Laodicea shows, they seem to have a remarkably tenuous grasp of Orthodox [...]
July 24th, 2008 at 8:15 am
I’m profoundly shocked and appalled by such a display of glibness, ignorance, and hubris. What kind of nonsense is this? And who are these people, anyway? Do they not have confessors, or bishops?
July 24th, 2008 at 8:35 am
I haven’t quite sussed their “orthodoxy”: but they seem to have used a bishop from one jurisdiction (or whatever the technical term is) while claiming to be in another, and doing whatever they want.