I have never posted directly on the Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States (TEC). There are two main reasons for this. One is that while so many of my brothers and sisters in the new Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) were a part of TEC, I never was. The second reason is that the vision of the AMiA has been to reach the “unchurched” with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. That is what I have connected with so strongly in planting St. George’s Anglican Community. And that is where my heart remains, reaching the unchurched, not present/former members of TEC (of course they are welcome to come, they’re just not our focus).

The recent events in Ft. Worth, Texas with the forming of ACNA, and the TEC General Convention that has been going on in Anaheim have led me to make some comments. And in doing so, I’m going to rely heavily upon the recent comments of N.T. Wright, the influential Anglican Bishop of Durham, Engalnd. Wright is not only a bishop, but a prominent New Testament scholar. And while he is orthodox in his beliefs, he has not been a fan of ACNA. I say that, because up until the events of this week, he has been vocally opposed to what we’ve been doing. Now I don’t think he is jumping on board with us, but what he said is pretty significant.

He was responding to TEC’s move to go ahead and make all ordained offices open to practicing homosexuals. They did so even after the Archbishop of Canterbury, who has been on their side, pleaded with them not to do anything that would create further schism. Now while some of the leaders in TEC have been trying to spin their decision as no change, neither the Archbishop, nor N.T. Wright is buying it. He states:

‘In the slow-moving train crash of international Anglicanism, a decision taken in California has finally brought a large coach off the rails altogether…Both the bishops and deputies (lay and clergy) of TEC knew exactly what they were doing. They were telling the Archbishop of Canterbury and the other “instruments of communion” that they were ignoring their plea for a moratorium on consecrating practising homosexuals as bishops…They were formalising the schism they initiated six years ago when they consecrated as bishop a divorced man in an active same-sex relationship, against the Primates’ unanimous statement that this would “tear the fabric of the Communion at its deepest level”. In Windsor’s language, they have chosen to “walk apart”.

So while TEC protests the opposite, that we who have come under the Global South are the schismatics, Wright sees clearly and presents the facts of the matter. In addition to this, he makes some excellent comments regarding the issue of homosexuality. This is THE presenting issue that the media picks up on so much. The underlying issues are related to who is Jesus? and what is the bible? This next quote is lengthy, but important to think your way through.

Many in TEC have long embraced a theology in which chastity, as universally understood by the wider Christian tradition, has been optional.

‘That wider tradition always was counter-cultural as well as counter-intuitive. Our supposedly selfish genes crave a variety of sexual possibilities. But Jewish, Christian and Muslim teachers have always insisted that lifelong man-plus-woman marriage is the proper context for sexual intercourse. This is not (as is frequently suggested) an arbitrary rule, dualistic in overtone and killjoy in intention. It is a deep structural reflection of the belief in a creator God who has entered into covenant both with his creation and with his people (who carry forward his purposes for that creation).

‘Paganism ancient and modern has always found this ethic, and this belief, ridiculous and incredible. But the biblical witness is scarcely confined, as the shrill leader in yesterday’s Times suggests, to a few verses in St Paul. Jesus’s own stern denunciation of sexual immorality would certainly have carried, to his hearers, a clear implied rejection of all sexual behaviour outside heterosexual monogamy. This isn’t a matter of “private response to Scripture” but of the uniform teaching of the whole Bible, of Jesus himself, and of the entire Christian tradition.

Justice has never meant “the right to give active expression to any and every sexual desire”.

‘Such a novel usage would also raise the further question of identity. It is a very recent innovation to consider sexual preferences as a marker of “identity” parallel to, say, being male or female, English or African, rich or poor. Within the “gay community” much postmodern reflection has turned away from “identity” as a modernist fiction. We simply “construct” ourselves from day to day.

‘We must insist, too, on the distinction between inclination and desire on the one hand and activity on the other — a distinction regularly obscured by references to “homosexual clergy” and so on. We all have all kinds of deep-rooted inclinations and desires. The question is, what shall we do with them? One of the great Prayer Book collects asks God that we may “love the thing which thou commandest, and desire that which thou dost promise”. That is always tough, for all of us. Much easier to ask God to command what we already love, and promise what we already desire. But much less like the challenge of the Gospel.

This is a lot to chew on. Let me say this, the wider Christian tradition has always taught that sexuality is to be expressed between a man and woman in the bond of Holy Matrimony. That hasn’t changed, and is NOT going to change. Wright also says something that I not only agree, but have been arguing for a while myself. That this “tradition” was counter-cultural in the days of the early church. It took several centuries for the Church to so influence society that sex within marriage became the societal standard. Now that our society has rejected this, we find ourselves being counter-cultural again.

Lastly, he calls us to make the distinction between desire and behavior. We need to do this. We can get caught up in arguing about born/learned when it comes to homosexuality. But the truth of the matter is that many people have same-sex attraction, no matter where it came from. This does not make them any better or worse than anybody else. As Wright states at the end of the quote, all of us are called to the same life of following Jesus. And His call is clear:

24 Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 25 For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. 26 For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul? (Matthew 16:24-26 ESV).

Shane+