Peter Boyer wrote another article (A CHURCH ASUNDER) in the New Yorker about another denomination. This time, it is the Episcopalians.
This is a case in the border paradigm where:
1. A clear-cut stratum that is cross state/sovereignty borders;
2. Liberal institution but strong illiberal centripetal force.
The tension is between Anglicanism’s liberalism tradition (lack of assertiveness on doctrines, allow greater individual freedom of Scripture interpretations, etc.) and its members longing for affirmation.
Key persons, events: Gene Robinson, Bob Duncan (Pitt), the African delegation/influence, Griswold.
The big-tent tradition of Anglicanism—what its churchmen call “comprehensiveness”—made the faith … [tolerates] theological innovations. … That an Episcopal university chaplain in the mid-nineteen-sixties would advise a conflicted student to disregard those parts of the liturgy that made him uncomfortable reflected not only the times but, in a way, the very nature of the Church.
After the influx of African converts, here is what their leader, Peter Akinola (AB of Nigeria), said, “What is written of God is for all time, for all people,” (universality–catholic–Catholicism. If one to read Anthony Marx’s Faith in Nation, recall what the Commons did to uphold Anglicanism against Catholic “restoration” …)
Boyer’s comment:
He is, of course, subject to the prejudices of his own culture, in which homosexuality is taboo.
There is also a practical aspect informing the views of churchmen like Orombi and Akinola, whose churches are in competition with Islam.
“Instead of putting your energy into the work of mission, you’re spending your time defending the indefensible. It makes things much more difficult.”
Here is the punch line:
Referring to the USAC’s decision on Gene Robinson, “If you want to be very blunt about it,” Orombi says, “it’s a form of neocolonialism.” (Throw that back to the post-colonialist liberals, how do they like it?)
Shelby Spong, of Newark, disparaged the Africans’ form of Christianity—“They’ve yet to face the intellectual revolution of Copernicus and Einstein that we’ve had to face in the developing world” (To be percise, what do Copernicus or Einstein have anything to do with Faith? To quote reason to uphold faith, particularly by a bishop, is rather ironic)
Further revealing conversation with head of USAC, Griswold (a NE blue blood).
Quoted Jesus in John: ‘I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. However, when the Spirit of truth comes, the Spirit will draw from what is mine, and reveal it to you.’
Went on to ask the question, “Why didn’t God simply plant the fullness of this knowledge in us at the beginning? … we’ve been structured in a universe in such a way that truth is progressive.” (The bishop is less teleological than many of the secular scholars!)
Boyer’s words:
the Hegelian dialectic shaped a new image of an immanent and impersonal God, an unknowable force whose will was worked through human progress. (Re-affirmed the philosophical trait of Western religious tradition, e.g. Plato)
Lineage of liberalism in the Church,
John A. T. Robinson, who inspired the “God Is Dead” vogue of the nineteen-sixties, … best-selling “Honest to God,” which posed the question: “… what does God’s existence mean?” His theological heir, Bishop Spong, of Newark, published a provocation that he called his “Twelve Theses”—pronounced miracles in the New Testaments, “a barbarian idea based on primitive concepts of God.”