I Flunked the Thirty Nine Articles Test, You?

The recent GAFFcon Kings (no, no queens in that bunch) have developed a new set of rules to discern whether one is in or out of their brand spanking new Communion within the Anglican Communion now called the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (FOCA). Among the new rules are the retro-requirement to use the 1662 Book of Common Prayer (aka Prayer Book). Another is full acceptance of the Thirty Nine Articles of the Elizabethan era.

From the get-go, it is important to understand that the GAFFERS (now calling themselves FOCAs or would that be FOCAss in plural?) now consider themselves the de facto defenders of Orthodoxy within the church apparently desiring to "fix" in time who the Orthodox are and what the Orthodox belief in right down to the jot and tittle. And there will be no dissent. You are in or you are out.

In essence, it seems to me this is a message for the Holy Spirit to sit down and shut up because there will be no new revelation in the church. God is done talking and moving through the world and it will always be what it was several centuries ago as patently absurd as this concept is on its face. Back to the Future? No, Forward to the Past. I'm trying to figure out whose going to slam that stainless steel car into reverse.

So, as test one, I went back and revisited the Thirty Nine Articles (1562) to see if there was any any hope of me being in the club. I flunked miserably. No club for me.

I know I cannot possibly accept the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. Anyone that knows me knows I could NEVER say "I will" to these words:

Then shall the Priest say unto the Woman,
N. WILT thou have this man to thy wedded husband, to live together after God's ordinance in the holy estate of Matrimony? Wilt thou obey him, and serve him, love, honour, and keep him in sickness and in health; and, forsaking all other, keep thee only unto him, so long as ye both shall live?

Obey? Are you kidding? Obedience to another human being? And why doesn't he have to serve me, too? Not that I am ever planning on getting married. I have bought four wedding dresses in my life, and never wore one outside of the fitting room. I am a giant chicken with ice cold feet.

Of course, there would be no women clergy because we are too stupid and emotional and basically just too second-rung for that. We can cook the meals (nix on the apples though), clean and scrub the Sanctuary (and probably the grounds, too!), teach the kids and lead the choir. I might be wrong about the choir. We could iron the robes, though.

The FOCAss appear to dislike Westerners intensely. A bit odd given these Westerners write the speeches for the non-Western types, supply millions of dollars to those south of the equator so they can fly around the globe often for nefarious purposes, and fill in the silence when some of the other non-Western leaders appear stumped by incredibly complex questions from the press such as, "do you support jailing of gays in your country?"

It's just so hard to be in the spotlight. Makes some downright speechless.

So, I flunked the test big time. I believe I have been corrupted by science, and ruined by the philosophy that we should question authority. Either that or I was born a few hundred years too late.

ENOUGH! Shrill voices from the Anglican Communion ditch God and lead in hate

I am a Christian by baptism. The sign of the cross was oiled on my forehead as a wee baby sealing me to Christ at the font.

I am an Episcopalian, the U.S. church which is a part of the world-wide Anglican Communion. We're a diverse bunch.

Over almost four decades, God stuck with me through atheism and agnosticism. I was terrified of Christianity which appeared to me to beguile science, revel in hatred for those not "in step" with their thinking, blame horrible natural disasters and human-caused disasters on certain "segments" of the human population, relegate anyone and everyone to a supposed fiery hell for the slightest error, and, in general, seemed to hate God by eliminating those created by God they did not agree with. Some thinking. Some ego.

Why in the world would I want to be a Christian unless I was so self-loathing that I actually believed I deserved this kind of treatment under God? Talk about hell on earth!

And if God created junk--me--why would such a God be worthy of my praise?

This guilt thinking--the thinking of blame, the thinking of hate and non-redemption--and these kinds of words are more appropriate to politicians in an election year than the words of any kind of clergy that claims to understand God and the love of Christ.

I am an Episcopalian because this thinking, and these kinds of words are not representative of my belief or my church.

Make no mistake, these kinds of words are weapons. They kill the love of God in the heart of man, woman and child and drive them into the desert of no return, the guilt of clergy on their heads. They drive them away from mercy, deprive them of salvation, and hold them hostage in real and literal limbo.

This is what is happening, and has been happening, in the Anglican Communion, specifically through a few individuals that, for one reason or another, believe that the winnowing 'down' of Christ's love, and God's forgiveness, is balanced on their individual understanding of God and that this understanding is true and final. As a Communion, and most certainly as Episcopalians, we are not called nor are we required to understand God as they do. That is not what I, as an Episcopalian, or perhaps an Anglican does nor does it allege to Anglicanism at all.

I cannot and will not dance on the head of that pin.

I was created by God, I live in God, I am sustained by God. My very existence and continuum defies their position.

My love of God demands that I speak against this thinking, but pray for them.

To those of you who step aside from Lambeth, stand before the world press in condemnation of the church and your sisters and brothers in Christ unable or unwilling to defend the least in your own nations, in fact supporting laws which are internationally categorized as human rights violations, I say ENOUGH.

You are setting God and God's creations aside for personal vanity. You have supported the jailing of human beings rather than protecting and shielding them from harm because you disagree with who those children of God "are". You pretend not to know, but you do know. In the face of physical conflict, you walk away from peace and consultation and threaten more violence in the way of the shadow. While alleging to save millions of people, you outright condemn millions more to hell.

ENOUGH!

If you cannot walk the path of Christ's love, then perhaps it is not Christ's path you walk at all.

It is one thing to disagree. It is wholly another to take the Anglican Christian message into the territory of hate.

With God on Our Side

A recent comment on a blog site made me think about both the concept of God being on "our" side, and the theological repercussions and political repercussions of this notion. It also made me think of the Bob Dylan song by the same title:


With God on Our Side

Oh my name it is nothin'
My age it means less
The country I come from
Is called the Midwest
I's taught and brought up there
The laws to abide
And that land that I live in
Has God on its side.

Oh the history books tell it
They tell it so well
The cavalries charged
The Indians fell
The cavalries charged
The Indians died
Oh the country was young
With God on its side.

Oh the Spanish-American
War had its day
And the Civil War too
Was soon laid away
And the names of the heroes
I's made to memorize
With guns in their hands
And God on their side.

Oh the First World War, boys
It closed out its fate
The reason for fighting
I never got straight
But I learned to accept it
Accept it with pride
For you don't count the dead
When God's on your side.

When the Second World War
Came to an end
We forgave the Germans
And we were friends
Though they murdered six million
In the ovens they fried
The Germans now too
Have God on their side.

I've learned to hate Russians
All through my whole life
If another war starts
It's them we must fight
To hate them and fear them
To run and to hide
And accept it all bravely
With God on my side.

But now we got weapons
Of the chemical dust
If fire them we're forced to
Then fire them we must
One push of the button
And a shot the world wide
And you never ask questions
When God's on your side.

In a many dark hour
I've been thinkin' about this
That Jesus Christ
Was betrayed by a kiss
But I can't think for you
You'll have to decide
Whether Judas Iscariot
Had God on his side.

So now as I'm leavin'
I'm weary as Hell
The confusion I'm feelin'
Ain't no tongue can tell
The words fill my head
And fall to the floor
If God's on our side
He'll stop the next war.
------------------------

Well, if the last two lines are true, God isn't on "our" side as much as this might perturb and dismay the likes of Dick Cheney and others who somehow have the audacity to commit an entire nation to their religious vision.

Don't get me wrong, Cheney has the perfect right to believe in ANY version of God he choses. He does not have the right, however, to impose that religious interdiction upon a nation.

I am a devout Episcopalian. I am liberal in the sense that I don't expect you to agree with my view of God, the Trinity, the Bible or the implications of Christian history.

My liberalism is freeing... after all, it is your soul, not mine, at stake. I think no less of you for what you believe knowing that your beliefs today, if you are truly praying and in search of truth, will change daily. And if they don't, then you just aren't listening?

I don't like all Christian theology, nor do I like all Episcopalian or Anglican theology. I am not required to LIKE it. I am, I believe, required to tolerate it and hold those that are vehemently different than me in prayer. Why? Because that is what we Episcopalians/Anglicans do. We debate, yell, pray, stomp off, pray some more and kneel beside those different from us at the alter to accept God into ourselves. Accepting God means accepting all.

And I do.

Mostly, I have to pray for myself... for forgiveness in being judgmental (simple human!) and for peace among all people.

So, do I have God on my side? Yep. Absolutely.

Do you? Yep, absolutely.

Are we at peace, no, absolutely. But we are absolutely called to work on it.