As always, when Rowan speaks there is something worthwhile!
It's sad that we have been given the ability to communicate in all languages and yet so many do not know and have not heard! The Gospel, which Rowan rightly says "Is not the property of any one group, any one culture or history," is denied so much in who we are and the choices (and attitudes) we make our own.
As it is, and ever has been, the Church has division and conflict as part of it. Living outside of that which God desires for us and seeking to support our actions by corruption of the word is, and always has been with us. Division continues, and even grows, and those who have been asked to show restraint have merely shown contempt and continued in their own ways. To make one's own choices is to live with the results of this. TEC, in consecrating Mary Glasspool, have made their choices.Not only that but they have taken brothers to court and time continually being the Church's good name into disrepute and ridicule. And whilst this conflict continues, across the world many fail to hear the Gospel or regard the Church as irrelevant and in disarray and ignore its call.
"The sobering truth is that often our attempts to share the Gospel effectively in our own setting can create problems for those in other settings."
I see no trust, only suspicion and vitriol, without our communion. I think it would be unfair to label sexual issues as the primary cause but the effect generated has destabilised and effectively broken our church and damaged the Church (universal), perhaps irreparably (for people are flawed and incalcitrant beings). There is no unity and we don't even share a common Bible any more. We have effectively split into tow different voices of Christian thinking and theology and they are as oil and water! Perhaps this should be recognised and the separation made such that where we might fellowship we do and where we differ we merely live separately. Anglican and Episcopalian. Orthodox and Revisionist church. In this way there may be a way forward and some semblance of God honouring unity.
I am sympathetic to Rowan's predicament, for appearances of unity when none exists is flawed and weakens the Church and it's message to the wider world (and thus places at risk those Christian in minority settings). It is obvious that we need to have the ability to 'rescue' those in the US from the excesses of revisionism and permit them to continue in their 'orthodoxy'. Tine to change the primary church group from TEC to others then it seems. Rowan is right when he says that decisions should not be made in haste, for as the old adage says, repentance comes afterwards.
Yet we have surely reached that time and place where some decisions have to be made and the results of actions and attitudes which make one member of the family stand out as being at variance with the rest of the family need to be addressed and order within that family restored. I guess this is the time to use the words, "You've made your bed and now must lie in it!'
And Rowan appears to be at that place, for those who have failed to show restraint are to see the effect of their actions in no longer have a voice within the running of the whole and in dialogue with others as part of that whole.
I am sure that some will scream at this apparent victory of hatred over love just as I am sure that some will claim that it doesn't go far enough (quickly enough). But the steps taken must be well thought through and steady and I thank Rowan for his measured approach (just wish it had come a lot sooner). The reality is that we do need some public marks of distance and these are the first steps to achieving that in a way that will hopefully restore unity and redeem our denomination.
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