Comments

Fascinating. It was not Bishop Robinson that boycotted the conference, refused to share communion and fellowship, and threatened to leave the worldwide Communion but somehow he (and other gay and lesbian Anglicans) get stuck with the blame. It is obvious who is divisive here and it is not Bishop Robinson.

Tim seems to forget that the Episcopal church engendered by their bishops, are the ones that ordained a gay bishop, an action that flies in the face of the 1998 Lambeth declaration regarding homosexuality and the Holy Scriptures. Yes it is obvious who is divise here!

It is not fascinating that Gene Robinson, an open and acknowledged Homosexual who is flaunting his sin in the face of God and the Church. It is disgusting. If you choose to sin, disobey our Creator and His Holy Scripture, then don't call yourself a Christian, and don't try to rewrite the Words of God Himself. Go start the Homosexual Anglican Communion and quit this persistent effort to call those who actually believe the Word of God, Obey the Scripture and live our lives as Disciples of the Christ, racist, bigots or whatever the next word is in line.

Apostacy, Blasphemy, open rebellion to God's commandments, do they mean nothing to you? Annanias and Saphira dropped dead for keeping a portion of their offering. They lied and blasphemed the Holy Spirit, What on earth is in store for those that openly rebel against Yahweh and claim that it is correct, just and true?

You either know not what you do, or you know exactly what you do, and have no idea of the judgment which is to come or simply don't care. You are so caught up in selfish desires, again, why exactly are you Anglican?

Repent and sin no more. Those words are in the Bible, it is too bad you have little use for them.

We should share what we share - love in Christ Jesus, our bonds of affection and shared purpose in ministry, our relationship as an Anglican family.

We should live and let live about the things we cannot share: exlicitly uniform perspectives about every single aspect of our faith and experience of scripture. That's a traditional and cherished Anglican gift.

We have a pre-modern world, a modern world, and an emerging world, all gathered in this Communion. Accomodation and freedom of authentic expression of the movement of the Holy Spirit amongst us must be preserved as we all grow closer to one another and ever more intimately entwined in the real business of serving God's people in a suffering world.

Let Canada and TEC do what they will with their provinces and consciences. Let them make no demands of the pre-modern societies, in which polygamy and animism are still realities on the ground, that require that those provinces agree with the provinces of the modern and emerging worlds about matters of scripture and the movement of the Holy Spirit among them.

Let the African and other conservative members of the family tend to their own provinces and consciences. Let them make no demands of TEC and Canada that would require them to abandon their understanding of the Holy Spirit and Scripture.

Let's share what we share - delight in it, live it with thanks and gladness - and remain a family. And leave the rest to God.

As an Episcopalean, I applaud the Archbishop's reaffirmation of the 1998 Lambeth Conference's position on homosexuality. Agreeing with the revealed Word of God does not mean that we cannot or do not love those in the homosexual or lesbian lifestyles, just as we continue to love all men and women because none of us is without sin. Calling a sin what it is allows a person to seek repentence and healing from his or her Creator and Redeemer. Without repentence, there is no opportunity for healing. We can and do love the sinner and hate the sin; we must agree with God Who made us both male and female. Robinson broke holy covenant with his marriage before he chose homosexuality. He has done everything in order to justify his own actions without thought of the pain he has caused in the part of the Body of Christ called the Anglican Communion.

TEC gives the impression worldwide it is only about gays and lesbians. I am sure this is not true. One way towards building up confidence and bringing back many who are leaving the TEC would be for TEC to have a major drive towards teaching the apostolic faith and a major promotion of Christian marriage - one man and one wife living faithfully together. Lets hear Presiding Bishop Schori on such matters.

Bottom line is the rampant clericalisim in both the North American Communions and the African Provences have created a self-destructive arrogance that they are right and the rest of the communion does not understand the leading of the Holy Spirit. What ever happened to the richness of the Via Media and the true involvement of trained laity who were respected for their theological insights and unique gifts in the governance and councils of the church??

I don't think Tim has forgotten anything. He's the evenhanded reporter who submitted this report. But your comments are otherwise well taken. The incredible, shrinking ECUSA willfully violates the clear conscience of the Communion and then its well-monied anti-intellecual crowd attempts to pin the blame on the dispossessed third world bishops. You gotta give them points for their chuzpah.

Are any of you familiar with the AMIA (Anglican Mission in America) or the Gafcon conference held in Jerusalem this past June?

For what it's worth, I suspect it was to the posting of Cal Roberts that Steve was addressing his comments. Tim's name was above the comment, but it is the name below to whom comments belong.

Bishop Robinson is no more "flaunting his sin" by being Gay, than Black people were flaunting the alleged inherited sin of Ham by being of African descent, women flaunting the alleged inherited sin of Eve by being female, or of Jews for the alleged sin of being "Christ killers."

The Bishop is bravely trying to live a life of Christian integrity as best he can, in the face of rapidly changing times, evermore dysfunctional, frayed and timeworn understandings of sexuality and identity, massive ill will by the usual victims of APS, authoritarian personality syndrome (I'm making a sociological joke), greed and envy of his position and influence, pitiful ignorance and outright bigotry. I admire him a lot.

I am a seminary student, and quite curious as to where in the Bible it says that homosexual behavior is part of God's plan. Perhaps you can answer me that question? I will be eternally grateful.

As near as I can tell in the Bible, Ken, "God's plan" for humanity is for us to love God and do God's will, which as near as I can figure out, is to follow the Golden Rule as best one can. Sexual preference is irrelevant for that.

In any case, as humans do Identity, even ever shifting, multiple identities, we don't do homosexual behavior. We do as we do. Species that don't do identity do homosexual behavior. As a theory of human sexology, this quaint Victorianism is obsolete. Try to squeeze in some sociology classes if you can.

On multiple identities, don't think "Sybil," but the multiple identities in your own life, a member of your family and it's name, son, brother, uncle, student, boyfriend, husband, engaged, Christian, father, expectant father, your ethnicity, American, grandfather, human, Earthling, child of God...ever shifting, evolving, often seamlessly, multiple identities. Now, add straight, Gay, bisexual and/or MSM. (MSM, men who don't necessarily identify as Gay, but nevertheless have sex with men. Think Larry Craig.)

An animal is what it is, a lovely note that simply does what it does when the time mysteriously comes for it to do it...something that can't try, or at best, very dimly tries, to imagine what it is to be something that it's not, or imagine what it might like to be, could be, or just daydream about like Walter Mitty. You can see why something as simple as "homosexual behavior" just doesn't do it for us humans.

Sexual behavior is just one instrument, one line of notation, in the ever being written scores and variations for our personal orchestras of identity. Not only do we have our personal orchestras, but ours endlessly collaborates with everyone else's, even with those we've never met, never will meet, even on the opposite side of the world. Somehow, when they come up with a good phrase, it comes back to us and becomes ours.

Gregory Peterson: Your post displays the typical confusion of categories advocates of homosexual behavior have cleverly used for several decades. It reduces humanity to our sexual preferences -- far from the complete human being described in Scripture.

Homosexuality is not a 'state of being'. Rather, it is a chosen behavior. One's being is not 'gay'; rather one may be drawn to engage in homosexual actions. One either CHOOSES to engage in such behavior, or to not engage in it. Such behavior is prohibited to those who profess to be disciples of Christ. It's that simple and that difficult.

A great deal of human behavior can be said to be "chosen." I can choose not to eat that donut even though I'm hungry, choosing to eat something more wholesome on my lunch break in an hour. Or I can choose to eat the donut. An animal would have little choice. If it's hungry now, it will eat the donut now.

However, I will eat something sooner or later. Sooner or later, I'll have sex. I can chose a lot about who what when where and why...but nature gave me the powerful drive to have sex, like nature gave me a powerful drive get something to eat. But being human, I have a great deal of choice about a lot of things, but not eating, or not having sex, is something that nature really wants me not to never do.

However, being a social animal, maximizing offspring is also what nature does not want me to do, as that would upset the social order of things. Consequently, sex and food are charged with social significance.

A tiny bit of bread and a little sip of grape juice are hardly enough to live on, yet in a certain context, couldn't be more important to my identity, my sense of self.

To say that "homosexuality is chosen behavior" is being disingenuous, rather than stating a fact. There is little reason to think that Gay people choose their sexual preference, any more than heterosexual people choose their sexual preference. Being a social species, it doesn't matter if everyone is heterosexual, what matters is that we treat each other as we would treat ourselves, as best we can.

It's not I who is reducing humanity to our sexual preference. I don't know how you've come up with that. I though I made it clear that our sexuality is just one part of our existence, but an important part.

Gay is a personal identity, and a name of a worldwide community that exists, as with all communities, within and beside others. One is Gay if one says one is Gay. One can be Gay even if one isn't a MSM or WSW. I'm Norwegian-American because I say so, never mind that I don't speak Norwegian, have never been to Norway, am not Lutheran, or practice Norwegian traditions. Nevertheless, it's important to how I was raised, how I view the world and how I understand myself. I could choose to deny that, but why go to the bother? Being Norwegian American, and/or Gay, makes life a little more interesting.

To insist on labeling a person and a minority community with a generally obsolete word from Victorian science theory is rude and bigoted in the extreme. I may be Norwegian American, but I'm not Caucasian or Caucasoid, unless one is attempting to be pretentiously "scientific" using obsolete, Victorian theory, and very especially when attempting to take away my identity as Norwegian American. Neither am I "white," because I say so. My family and friends are not all "white," therefore I'm not either, even if all my ancestors came from Europe. I identify as me and mine.

I see nothing in the Bible that supports your last assertion. The beloved anti-"homosexual" clobber verses have contexts that are being savaged to bash gay people and the MSM/WSW, rather than being properly respected to learn something from them. And, the radical abolitionists showed that using clobber verses is simply immoral and why that is so, which is probably why clobber verses are so popular with some conservative Christians. Clobber verses are all about caste, claiming unearned entitlements and the exploitation of others.

The whited sepulcher that is the Episcopal Church is rotting from within, and the C of E has become a paper tiger. Having starved themselves of the nourishment of God's Word, and leaving their First Love, they have grown diseased and weak, and now are being devoured by the evil one.

In answer to Ken Snyder's very reasonable question: the answer is that the Bible very specifically condemns homosexual behaviour because this kind of behaviour is the very antithesis of the character and nature and purposes of God! We were made to be in God's image, holy, righteous, pure and the marriage bed undefiled! It will be the lot of those who choose to live the unnatural, ungodly homosexual life, and those who choose to promote it as being "normal", that God's wrath and judgement will descend upon them if they do not repent! The devil has wormed his way into the Anglican Church with just one purpose ... to destroy it, and as far as I can see he's well on his way!

Why is accepting homosexuality even an issue for debate. Scripture calls it a sin worthy of death. You either believe the Word of God or you don't. It's not open to opinions. God has already stated His position on the matter.

I am trying to help a gay man (dying with AIDS) who believes he can be a gay Christian. He can't accept the fact that God has established a standard of conduct. I explained that it's one thing to lapse back into sinfull ways, but to think those ways are acceptable before God is simply not the case.

The world wants us to accept everything... believing that there is no wrong, no sinfulness. They don't understand the concept of "love the sinner, but hate the sin."

God have mercy on us all. Were it not for His grace, I would be hellbound with the unbelievers.

Gay and Lesbian rights (Homosexual rights) are a human rights issue which is accommodated in the United Nations Charter, I suppose. In the past 30 years or so there have been powerful Femininist movements (for women's rights); and I guess their power has somehow diminished, I don't know for sure. But now to push homosexual rights into the church and make them hold there is something which I cannot understand. In the Bible homosexual behaviour has been forcefully condemned each time it was mentioned. Posted by William Dogani, August 11, 2008

The Bible does not condemn "homosexual behavior." It condemns some same-sex sexual activity, mostly because it was thought that the motivation was idolatry, like temple prostitution. This isn't even controversial in serious theological circles.

If the pagans did it, the ancient monotheistics went out of their way not to be confused as being pagan, and to establish their own distinct monotheistic identity and rituals. However, as everyone is human and we're all prisoners of our own ages, that was an impossible thing to do completely. A lot of things, like the temple ritual animal sacrifices, look extremely pagan like to me from my time and place. Of course, so does "intelligent design" with its roots in pagan Greece, health & wealth theology, the rather obvious Manichean dualism I sometimes see on Christian TV, and the modern Christian ritual of students encircling a flag pole and praying.

We don't know why there is MSM activity, not only in humans, but also in the same-sex sexual activity of many other species who don't do identity. We don't know why we often have such specific sexual attractions in general, but it's pretty clear that it's not caused by idolatry.

On the other hand, the style in which people are sociable and whom people think they can have sex with, certainly could be influenced by idolatry...as well as our institutions, ignorance and traditions.

When I was a kid, it was against the law for "interracial" straight couples to marry in a great many states. Now, no moral person cares about "miscegenation" at all, let alone considers it to be a sin, unnatural and against God's law.

My Bible is the same Bible as Jim Crow activists read, yet...my Bible doesn't say that at all. They said I couldn't be a Christian if I didn't believe that "race mixing" was a sin. I said they can Christians if they don't believe as I do, just that they could do much better at that Golden Rule thing.

We're a social species, and most everything we do is charged with being sociable, on top of the basic stuff every living thing must do if it is to continue living. MSM/WSW may reproduce genes less than other people, though not necessarily as many people are bisexual, but we all reproduce memes. We all need to work at being good ancestors as well as good neighbors, even if some of us don't actually have children at all. Our memes live on when we don't.

As I think Gandhi pointed out, in the long run, what we do as individuals is likely to be of little importance, but it's vitally important that we do it anyway, or there will be no long run.

The Bible also condemns some MSW activity, some for the same fear of appearing to be idolatrous reasons, ignorance of things like the mammalian egg, which wasn't discovered until the early 19th Century, as well as for now bizarre contamination fears, like touching menstruating woman.

For better or for worse, the issue of homosexuals in the church has already been decided, and not by us. Get thee to a local young adult hangout - a youth group, mall, theater, sports arena or Facebook (Heavens!). Ask them if they think much, if at all, about the issues of "gays in the church". To them, most of who have peers who are gay, it's simply a non-issue. It's about as big a problem as someone having glasses or tattoos. Seriously. This is the reality that will impact the church when your generation is buried / forgotten in nursing homes.

The most important truth to grasp onto is that God isn't surprised by any of this, nor does our foolishness mean his grace is less, for those that seek it.

Next up: Genetic engineering. Wheee! :D

Excellent observations Joe Chip. Thanks.

Of course, today's youth are a mere half century behind sociological research, and two centuries behind Quaker abolitionists, but they're finally getting the right lessons nevertheless. My work study students are all quite fine people, though maybe not eccentric enough to be really fun.

Genetic engineering...that will be fun. I have an inherited autoimmune disease, quite treatable, but always annoying and incurable. I can't wait. However, global warming might be a more pressing problem. I can live with my illness, but living in an overheated greenhouse with a lot of methane in the atmosphere isn't likely to be much fun.