The family have been sequentially laid low this week – #1 at the weekend; #2 from Monday night; beloved followed, and now I am suffering. We have been ministered to by various angels from the congregation – the Spirit has been especially busy – but today I’m spending most of my time on my computer (when not sat somewhere less congenial) – but I’m finding my stomach even more churned up by the Dar es Salaam stuff, which I’m sure I’ve read more about today than is good for any sane person. So this is a bonus rant, to follow the earlier post of today.

First, one of my favourite quotations from Wittgenstein: “A theology which insists on the use of certain particular words and phrases, and outlaws others, does not make anything clearer. (Karl Barth) It gesticulates with words, as one might say, because it wants to say something and does not know how to express it. Practice gives the words their sense.”

In other words, it is what we do with the words that matters, that give to words their meanings. Words in and of themselves are inert, mere flotsam and jetsam above the sea of human nature.

So when there is an agreement in a communion that certain words should be followed, and other words should be denied, we should attend to what is going on through the use of those words as much as (if not more than) the use of those words themselves.

Take this form of words: the Lambeth 1998 declaration “calls on all our people to minister pastorally and sensitively to all irrespective of sexual orientation and to condemn irrational fear of homosexuals”. In one primates case, this involves supporting a law criminalising precisely such ministry – how this can be reconciled with the words of Lambeth escapes me.

This is hypocrisy; more, it is hypocrisy in the service of power and prestige. It is fitting for a gay man to die for the sake of the people, and so on.

“This people honours me with their lips but their hearts are far from me.”

Seems to me that throughout Scripture there is this constant tension between the life – the actual living out of divine abundance – that God is calling his people to, and the way in which the religious authorities short-change that vocation in order to preserve a comfortable status quo. They want the proceeds of the vineyard for themselves.

With YOU is my contention O priest!

Here we have a mentality that uses all the right words and phrases but whose heart is so far from God’s commands that the discrepancy is shocking. This evil of fundamentalism, get the passwords right and you gain access past the pearly gates. No sense of Revelation: “I saw the dead, the great and the lowly, standing before the throne, and scrolls were opened. Then another scroll was opened, the book of life. The dead were judged according to their deeds, by what was written in the scrolls. The sea gave up its dead; then Death and Hades gave up their dead. All the dead were judged according to their deeds.”

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier provisions of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness; but these are the things you should have done without neglecting the others.”

And what does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, to love kindness and to walk humbly before your God?

Because you have rejected knowledge, I also will reject you from being my priest. Since you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children.

This awful, awful spiritual sickness. Time for it to die; then perhaps there is a chance for resurrection.

Pondering the shenanigans at/after Dar es Salaam. (If you don’t know what I’m referring to, give thanks, and move along swiftly). These are more interim thoughts. (Click Full Post to read).

1. What I have written before (here) still represents my understanding of the underlying issues at stake. However, I’m now not so sure about item 6, that the CofE will remain in communion with TEC. My impression of the conclusion to Dar es Salaam is that a plank has been placed on the edge of the ship, and TEC has been invited to step onto it.
2. On the fundamental issue, my perspective has been steadily solidifying in favour of authorising same-sex blessings. (NB I have a pretty strong view on the importance of ordination vows, one of which involves not using unauthorised services, so I don’t expect to be carrying any out any time soon). I’m not persuaded that there is no merit in the traditional teachings prohibiting rectal intercourse, nor that this is simply a matter of personal preference, but I am more and more convinced that this is a) none of my business, and b) something which can be established from within the gay Christian context, and does not need to be imposed from outside. (I take for granted that a gay man can be as immersed in Scripture as a straight man). It also, of course, completely ignores female homosexuality, where I suspect the traditional prohibitions have no purchase.
3. Whilst TEC might, therefore, have underlying justice on their side, I think they have repeatedly undermined their own position through a reckless disregard for the ‘bonds of affection’, most especially with regard to +Robinson. More than that, I find much of the theological perspective articulated within TEC to be bafflingly bad, and barely Christian. It seems to me now that there is a very strong case for TEC to make a prophetic witness – but that witness will be compromised through dilution with extremely bad theology. There is also the distinct smack of self-indulgence in some quarters.
4. Having said that, nothing from TEC seems as monstrous as that emanating from Nigeria. With TEC I have arguments; with +Akinola there seems a heart of darkness, which is quite clearly not Anglican in any sense that I have understood it. Thank God for the South Africans, and the other sane African voices, otherwise my PC conscience would be descrying my own racism – which would play in precisely to +Akinola’s own satanic manipulations. (I’m using satanic there in a Girardian sense.)
5. I had hoped that the half-dozen Akinola devotees would have walked out, leaving the remainder to continue a recognisably Anglican communion. That had always been my perspective on Rowan’s strategy. However what now seems to be opening up is a great abyss of schism – not the departure of TEC from the Anglican Communion, for however messy that might be, it would still be a substantially whole church separating itself off. No, what has now opened up in a way that I had really not been expecting, is the sense that the CofE itself will split apart. Establishment will soften things, and slow things down, but I know that there are people within the CofE making contingency plans on this question. Which is really very depressing. It will make the arguments about women priests look easy. Several more substantial lacerations on the road to the death by a thousand cuts.

I hold on to Keble’s idea: even if the Church of England were to fail, it would still be found in my parish.