Why the parody, Michael?
Michael Bird has the most baffling post up today. On the one hand, he starts it off with all the markers of a parody. On the other, as soon as he gets going, he seems to drop them all. So I want to know:
- does he really believe that in order to approve of same-sex relationships, the only view with any integrity is to adopt Marcionite views of the Old Testament, and despise the bigotry of St Paul and the ignorance of the fathers?
- and does he really believe that the Episcopal Church persecutes orthodox Christians?
- does he really believe that liberals simply ignore Jesus and promote the Millennium Development goals and the UN Charter on Human rights?
- does he think the Millennium Development goals and the UN Charter on Human Rights are patently evil things or just bad when taken as a substitute scripture?
Or, since he dresses the views expressed above up in the style of parody, does he believe the exact opposite of all of this? Are the views of Michael Vogel the same as those of Michael Bird? Or is he repudiating them?
The current Anglican shenanigans are quite bad enough without this kind of stirring of the pot. Much of the financial stirring of the pot has come from non-Anglicans on the religious right, like Howard Ahmanson, whose funds seem to find their way into a remarkable number of the soi-disant “orthodox” pressure groups. This dissing of the Millennium Development goals and the UN Charter on Human Rights plays right into the hands of typical right-wing rhetoric and the culture wars America seems happily to export to the rest of the globe. They may not be perfect, and they may not be scripture, but they’re addressing some real needs in some very poverty stricken places.
(I note that it takes less than 24 hours for an African archbishop to get comments out about gay clergy in America. It seems to be taking them considerably longer to get comments out about the threat of tribal civil war in post-”election” Kenya. Presumably the former is condemned in the Bible, and the latter merely disapproved of by the UN Charter.)
I am impatient with the demonising of the other that goes on in both sides of the sexuality argument. And I think Michael is buying into it quite unhelpfully. He is more than capable of mediating and gracious argument, and I’m sure could offer a more positive and constructive analysis. This is an area where we need patient reasoning, not confused parody. Ah, well. Perhaps its Bird flu.
January 3rd, 2008 at 3:59 pm
What do you see at the beginning that appeared to be pardoy? Maybe I missed it (or I don’t understand parody).
What do you think of the point of the article about how the Exodus story get misapplied today. Do you think many of the people and groups who appeal to it today in support of their views are being faithful to the story(ies) of the Exodus in the Bible?
I thought the following statement was interesting:
“Truth be told, I have alot more respect for that upfront repudiaton of the biblical teaching about sexuality than I do of some of the pseudo-exegesis that tries to convince the converted that homosexuality is now officially kosher.”
I also thought your 2nd to the last paragraph was right on and revealed the sad state of affairs and priorities in the church today.
Blessings,
Bryan L
January 3rd, 2008 at 4:03 pm
Doug,
Mate, I seem to have hit a nerve, I assure you no offence was meant in Vogel’s parody (Vogel is a pseudonym for my Anglophile tendencies). The problem is that I have too many Anglican friends in Australia, the UK, and the USA. I’ve even met a few AMiA chaps who have told me pained stories of their lives and ministries within the TEC.
To answer your questions:
1. No. Someone Williams has strived to be biblical in the best way he can, but I think he’s just fooling himself. Adams is persuasive rhetorically but not biblically. My point was that I think the Marcionite approach is a better way of overturning the biblical materials than with some creative albeit unconvincing exegesis.
2. Yes. Why else are their law suits against orthodox parishes and why are certain priests being deposed?
3. No. I never said liberals ignore Jesus, but by-gosh, Katherine Schori talks alot about UN Millennium goals.
4. I’m quite moderate theologically and left-wing politically. I’m not into the conspiracy theory that the “UN is trying to destroy America and take-over the world”. I think the UN Millennium goals are fine, but obviously not a substitute for the Sermon on the Mount.
Would you say I was “demonizing” some persons? I think I spoke of Adams fairly irenically, I do respect her scholarship. I wanted to make sure that I was not perceived as homophobic either.
I once met a guy who tried to enter ministry in the Anglican Church in Brisbane Australia and he was rejected on the grounds that, “We would rather die than have an Evangelical like you in our diocese”. The liberals who tout themselves as tolerant are often anything but!
My main objective was to draw attention to the plight of Dioceses such as San Joaquin, Fortworth, and Pittsburgh and their reasonable desire to realign with the Southern Cone.
Grace
Mike Bird
January 3rd, 2008 at 4:09 pm
Doug,
One final point. Do note my prayer for unity of the Anglican Church at the end of the post. And I recall Tom Wright saying how he respected someone for just saying the Bible is wrong about sexuality rather than opting for some creative exegesis. So hopefully I am not beyond the pale.
Blessings for the New Year
Mike Bird
January 3rd, 2008 at 7:26 pm
I have certainly had a very bitter experience myself in this regard. The clergy of the congregation that I was a member of was, in my view, mistreated by the hierarchy for taking a stand against same sex blessings. I supported them vocally in their stand against the hierarchy. However, this congregation has recently joined the dissenting group and it now has become clear that the dissenting group is for the most part against ordaining women and no fault divorce. In fact, the clergy of my former congregation had always been against the ordination of women in spite of the fact that women had been ordained in Canada since 1976. Given the fact that women had always preached in British Columbia since single women were a significant missionary force here, this group is actually setting the clock back over 100 years and denying the historic contribution of women.
In fact, some in this group are promoting the full platform of the Council of Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, which, believe it or not, promotes men watching sports on television on Christmas Day. I feel as if we have been catapulted back in time to an era which predates the dinosaurs.
So really what choice is there? Join the troops who promote the TV sports Christianity, and believe me this creeps into the sermons, or join those who provide inclusion for homosexuals. Hmm, let me see - the NBA or gay clergy. What a choice!
Don’t think I am spoofing here. Grudem did say that he wants Christianity to appeal to boys who aspire to be in the NBA and these congregations are with Grudem all the way. I would not have thought that any Anglican congregation could aim this low, but it appears that they have.
January 3rd, 2008 at 7:33 pm
A few answers. To Michael first of all: I am disturbed by the many different individual stories that suggest “they” are always persecuting “us”. The identity of “us” and “them” always depends on who’s telling the story. Where I have had first-hand knowledge of particular cases, I must say my judgement is that it feels a bit like those early Christians who actively sought martyrdom in a kind of suicide mission. The stories seem to get distorted very readily, so I now treat all of them with a hermeneutic of suspicion.
I do know of at least one evangelical (I would have said impeccably evangelical) bishop in the UK who does refuse to have evangelicals who were trained at a particular college under his authority because he believes (and feels experience has taught him this) that they see them selves on a mission to split the church and have a fundamentally Donatist theology and attitude to discipline. Not all stories are what they appear to be on the surface.
I am aware you are moderate theologically in all sorts of ways. I think this was why your post surprised me, and the parody elements of your alias left me very confused how to take this posting. I may have over-reacted. If so, I’m sorry, and peace also be with you. I would love to see you engage with the biblical interpretation questions with the eirenic rigour you mediated, say, the justification debate, and offer a careful critique of someone like Dale Martin or Bill Countryman. I’m afraid I think Adams is an easy target.
To Bryan, the parody elements I saw were the false name, the joke parish identity (Watership of Down) and the non-esistent first Sunday after Advent. I suspect that the exodus model is always open to misapplication, not least if people accept Freire’s dictum that only the oppressed can define their oppression. It is also true that the comfortable don’t like being told they’re being oppressors, and equally readily mis-reject the Exodus model.
January 3rd, 2008 at 8:22 pm
Thanks. I didn’t realize those were false names. Shows how much I know about the Anglican/Episcopal church. : )
Blessings,
Bryan L
January 3rd, 2008 at 8:49 pm
PS What’s up with the Regreek daily quote these days? Looks like a list of lexical entries.
January 3rd, 2008 at 8:51 pm
One of the things that surprises me constantly about the homosexuality debate is how firm lay-people I talk to seem to be in their views one way or another. Yet the level of surety most people have that their own view is correct does not often seem to be backed by the exegetical and philosophical skills needed to tackle this topic. On this topic, far more than any other, uniformed people seem so sure they’re right… why is that?
The other thing that surprises me is when some scholars who are informed like Michael Bird or NT Wright, actually come to an anti-homosexual viewpoint. (But, I suppose, since much of the rest of their theology and exegesis is wrong :p, it’s not too surprising that they should get this issue wrong as well.) Wright in particular, seems atrocious at philosophy (if his ridiculous epistemological theory in JVG is anything to go by) so it doesn’t surprise me much that he’s no better at moral philosophy.
January 3rd, 2008 at 9:45 pm
Care to elaborate on Wright’s “ridiculous epistemological theory in JVG” Andrew?
Thanks,
Bryan L
January 4th, 2008 at 12:23 am
I have a case of Episcopalian oppression of big-O Orthodox for you. When Katherine Jefferts-Schori’s mother died, her mother, an Eastern Orthodox convert, specifically requested an Orthodox funeral. Ms Jefferts-Schori ignored her own mother’s request, and instead officiated at the funeral, at which her mother’s Orthodox priest could only stand by. Ms J-S also referred to the ancient Orthodox funeral service as “weird.”
January 4th, 2008 at 12:39 am
Kevin, I don’t think this is quite comparable. We all know families are strange things, and people do strange things in times of grief. On the bare facts of the matter, I don’t think she was right to do this, but who knows what the family dynamics were, and how many other members of the family were involved in the decision? It is hardly an abuse of her episcopal position, though it might be of her familial one.
January 4th, 2008 at 5:36 am
I’ve made an argument in support of same sex marriage here. Certainly I didn’t repudiate the Hebrew scriptures (like Marcion); nor did I ignore Jesus. Rather the reverse: my argument is explicitly grounded in both Testaments.
January 4th, 2008 at 11:31 pm
Bryan,
I meant New Testament and the People of God rather than Jesus and the Victory of God, my mistake. Around page 30 and onwards of that book, Wright attempts to grapple with the question of how we can do historical analysis by going back to the root question of how we can know anything at all. He proposes an epistemological theory to attempt to explain human knowledge. Since no other historians feel the need to give philosophical theories of epistemology to justify their historical research, it’s a bit bizarre that Wright should do this, but he seems convinced (wrongly, I think) that some of his opponent’s views flow from their (in his view) mistaken epistemological theories worked out in historical research and that therefore he needs to combat the real problem at its root. I am interested in epistemological theories and so was intrigued, but Wright’s offering struck me as simply laughable and is packed full of serious errors. To write a refutation of it would be to take it more seriously than it deserves I think. If you want further reading there is an argument here on the topic.
January 5th, 2008 at 6:42 am
Doug, don’t make excuses for her. It was all an excercise in the daughter getting what she wanted. The mother explicitly told her daughter she wanted an Orthodox funeral, and explicitly told her daughter she did not want her doing an Episcopalian funeral for her. What more is there to say? There was no other family involved in the matter. Final requests should be respected, particularly in the religious sphere. Such a daughter!
Also, I don’t think you can quite grasp the world of difference between someone who is Orthodox expecting a proper Orthodox funeral and having some high priestess of a Protestant sect doing some entirely unacceptable ritual instead. That’s just horrible.
January 5th, 2008 at 11:32 am
Kevin, I hope you have first hand knowledge of that, since you assert it so savagely. Comments such as “high priestess of a Protestant sect” are out of order – but very revealing of the arrogance of the Orthodox, and the zeal of a convert.
January 5th, 2008 at 2:05 pm
Andrew said
ahhhh the famous ‘I’m too far above something to actually take it serious’ comment. Far be it for you to actually truly engage a scholar as lowly as N.T. Wright. We all know in the blog world that he’s not really much of a scholar anyway.
I could just as easily say ‘I found that post you linked to to be ridiculous, but I don’t want to waste my time writing a refutation of it because that would be taking it more seriously than it deserves… I think.’ But what’s the point?
Instead why don’t you blog on it and show us why Wright’s epistemological theory is “simply laughable and is packed full of serious errors”? It should be easy and not take much time for someone like you since it’s so obvious how bad it is. And think of all the good you will do in exposing how ridiculous Wright’s epistemology is so that we can dismiss his whole Christian Origins project?
Either way thanks for the link. The discussion was interesting.
January 7th, 2008 at 12:27 am
Pushed a button, did we?
People of the mother’s parish have told many others about it. The woman didn’t want an Episcopalian funeral, as she wasn’t Episcopalian. The arrogance lay in a daughter forcing her will on others, including her dead mother.
This isn’t Orthodox “arrogance,” but rooted in ecclesiology, which knows, among other things, one Church only, and no female ordination to the priesthood and episcopacy, just as it has always been. This is not just a thing rooted in the “zeal of a convert.”
The personal slurs are revealing. Enjoy your Protestant sect.
January 7th, 2008 at 12:51 am
Well, Kevin, that seems a fairly clear confession that you don’t know this first hand. You’re repeating a story, which may or may not be true in all the details you repeat. Then again, I guess as an orthodox person, you won’t be held back from repeating your tradition by any concern for investigating the root facts.
January 7th, 2008 at 3:04 am
I can’t see how anyone could describe such a post as ‘moderate’ in any way.
This is the problem with Christians. They simply fail to recognise their own prejudices.
My own feeling is that a conservative approach to Christianity and affording the Bible any more authority that a book, an inspired read, must lead one to a conclusion that the moral stances of the first century are those we should live by.
I came to the conclusion that it wasn’t really worth defending so don’t regard myself as Christian any longer.
January 12th, 2008 at 1:57 am
So, Doug, everything we know must be experienced firsthand in order to be related? That’s ridiculous. Someone in that parish described the situation in great detail, to me and others, and many accounts have been passed around online, but more often offline. That’s about as firsthand as you’re going to get with such a story that the news media are not about to touch.
It doesn’t matter whether you accept it, or believe it, or not. It happened, and is an incident that sheds light on the character of Katherine Jefferts-Schori.
January 12th, 2008 at 10:09 am
No, Kevin, but certain types of story — those which carry great emotional freight, and which can also carry the weight of theological divisions and strongly held opinions about individuals and churches — need more investigation than you seem content with here. I am not defending Jefferts-Schori on this: it seems bizarre and wrong on the face of it. I am questioning whether the story is more complex, and there is unknown material. You will excuse me for saying this, but I automatically question whether someone who refers to Jefferts-Schori as “a high priestess of a Protestant sect” is a disinterested witness. The story serves your purposes so well, that I naturally resort to a hermeneutic of suspicion.
March 14th, 2008 at 8:07 pm
It is Bishop Tom Wright’s policy eventually to have no partnered gay clergy in his Diocese. If gay priests want to move parish, they are not allowed to move within his diocese, but have to look elsewhere