Jul 01
Before opening mouth, put brain in gear
What I’m going to say is risky, because it’s based on a press report, which may or may not be fully reliable. But according to the Daily Telegraph, (Hat tip to Libby Purves) the Bishop of Carlisle thinks God has sent floods on Britain in retaliation for the Blair government introducing Civil Partnerships in the UK.
“The sexual orientation regulations [which give greater rights to gays] are part of a general scene of permissiveness. We are in a situation where we are liable for God’s judgment, which is intended to call us to repentance.”
He expressed his sympathy for those who have been hit by the weather, but said that the problem with “environmental judgment is that it is indiscriminate”.
Let’s see, Parliament passes Civil Partnerships, and they run comfortably for a year during which further rights are introduced. Then God wakes up and says to himself, “O ho! Do you know, I hadn’t spotted that bit of legislation, and all those gays and lesbians have been getting hitched for the last year. I think I’d better send some storms along. What’s that you say, London, Manchester and Brighton have seen most of the civil partnerships. Oh dear, I left them alone and flooded nearly everywhere else. Never mind. Better aim next time!”
Well, thank God the Bishop of Carlisle is there to explain the connection, because not many people would have spotted that. “The Lord,” said the bishop, “is so upset by it all that his hand is shaking with rage, and so his aim is a bit off.” (No, sorry, I made that last bit up – but I have to say so, because I’m not sure you could tell the difference.)
July 1st, 2007 at 9:24 pm
So now you have your own crazy Pat Robertson lunatic eh. Welcome to the insanity that is fundamentalism.
July 11th, 2007 at 4:27 pm
(finally got my thoughts in order on this one. i’m trainable. a good comment is a planned comment):
there are three things about bishop dow that make me nervous.
1) anglican tradition: i grew up in the northeastern us, in a high anglo-catholic parish, rich with tradition. and literalist evangelicals weren’t major players. not even on the radar screen, in fact. a british anglican theologian, urban holmes, says in his book “what is anglicanism?” that, ‘when anglicanism is at its best, its liturgy, its poetry, its music and its life can create a world of wonder in which it is very easy to fall in love with god.’ this is the anglican experience and tradition i remember, and i remember feeling great contentment when i read this validation from holmes a few years ago.
but the bishop of carlisle would not agree with urban holmes, i suspect. i can’t imagine falling in love with dow’s god. this week has burst a bubble for me about the anglican church in britain; i have always looked to the church of england as the example of holme’s experience, while we in america fiddle with biblical literalists. how wrong i was. guess i’ll have to grow up.
2) prophet-ability: i think the bishop of carlisle fancies himself a prophet, and if a significant number of others think so too, this makes me nervous. walter brueggemann, in his book ‘the prophetic imagination,’ says three things are an important part of the prophetic tradition: criticizing, energizing, and holding a vision of a consciousness different than the one we know (a vision of transformation from a configuration we know, to a ‘better’ one we can only imagine).
bishop dow seems quite good at critiscism, but i don’t get a feel from the press coverage that he is energizing toward a transformative vision. ‘correcting,’ in his view the immorality of homosexuality, is not, in my view, a prophetic vision of transformation. if he is going to be a prophet, i expect him to paint energizing pictures that, coupled with his criticism, move us to a ‘better’ configuration. unless there’s a draft of such a transfoming vision on his desk somewhere that he doesn’t share with the public? (we went through something similar in the states after sept 11, 2001, when jerry falwell put on his prophet clothes and went public.)
3) parousia: there is an expectation among christian denominations that jesus will return to earth and a variety of interesting things will happen. some denominations feel that it will happen any minute and is extremely important, while other denominations give it less weight.
there are several passages in the christian scriptures which allude to this second coming being like a cataclysm sweeping everyone away, because they were eating and drinking and such instead of watching diligently for jesus’ return (matthew 24:37-44, which is the gospel reading in the anglican lectionary for advent one year a, coming this december to a parish near you). is dow the kind of evangelist who thinks jesus’ return is immanent? is he using these floods to deliberately scare believers into ‘repentance?’
July 11th, 2007 at 10:07 pm
Scott, there is probably a wider diversity in C of E Anglicanism than in any other province, except possibly Australia. The tradition you love is alive and well, and so are many others.