A short meditation
Since the 1970s I have been watching the development of the divorce culture of the West and in the USA particularly. In the latter especially because there it has been absorbed by many of those [who constitute millions] who call themselves biblical and orthodox and evangelical and charismatic – as well, of course, as those who are liberals.
A long time ago I organized seminars and conferences in Oxford University for the study of revival and church growth and not a few of the big names in these areas came from America and several of them stayed with me. In two of them (very well known persons) I noticed a major change in their approach to the nature of marriage and morality from one year to another and then I realized that in both cases their children had been divorced and remarried and they were having to accommodate to this fact and it was painful and embarrassing. One immediate sign was that they talked of the ideal of one man and one woman in a one flesh union for life and avoided their previous [strong] talk of the commandment of God for such! (Another friend of mine who became a distinguished professor at Fuller Seminary has recently written in favour of blessing faithful homosexual partnerships based on the rights given to divorced people to remarry.)
Then when I lived in the USA from 1990 I noticed that the experience of divorce and remarriage caused many of those directly and indirectly involved to feel obliged to begin to approve various expressions of a lowered standard of morality, doctrine and forms of expression in other areas of life . Why? I guess not to be accused by themselves or by others of being judgmental. In other words, what they knew in their minds objectively to be that which is good and right and true, they were not able always fully to support because they felt that they had themselves failed and been given a new start and so did not want to be judgmental. So they gave support to a less-than-excellent standard. And of course different personalities expressed this in different ways, with varying levels of emotion.
I also noticed that the fact of a 40 percent divorce and remarriage rate in the churches and amongst clergy was rarely spoken about openly. Not a taboo but generally there was a general consent not to mention it except when really necessary. So it was taken off the table and discussions of doctrine and morality proceeded as if this powerful culture did not exist and was not affecting many of those who sat at table. Further, it was seen not as a doctrinal but as a psychotherapy problem and so entered quietly the massive field on non-judgmental counselling. At the same time serious attention was given to the care of children affected by the family upheavals; yet, sadly, this did not always work out into good mental health.
Yet, even though it is rarely mentioned, the discussion at the table is deeply affected by it because those who are obliged to support the divorce culture due to their personal participation in it (or via family) are influenced by this reality and instinctively feel a need to justify it or themselves or both. I do not say that they engage in justification in obvious ways; but rather, in supporting other things that dumb down standards they therefore in a general way give a kind of blanket approval to lowered standards that undergird the divorce culture. In particular they tend to support experiental religion in “community” where there is much emphasis either by ceremonial or by music or both on the feelings and coming to feel good about oneself, God, relationships, one’s partner and friends.
One exception to the rule of dumbing down seems to be – in evangelical circles - that there is little toleration for homosexual activity. This is strange because one of the reasons why the homosexual lobby has advanced in society & the churches is that it has appealed much to the divorce culture and said, “If you can exchange partners to achieve happiness and self-esteem why can’t we do our own thing?”
I think that one reason for the special attention being given by the conservative end of the divorce culture to opposition of the claimed rights of homosexual persons is that these supposed rights come too close to the claimed (and generally approved) rights of divorced and remarried persons [e.g., the right to personal happiness and personal fulfilment and the right to a second and third chance if the first fails etc.] and so they have to be silenced. Thus the arguments used against homosexuality are primarily at the level of biology, that it is the male and female bodies are made to fit together in sexual union (with scriptural verses added). And the case is made (as it has been recently over New Westminster) that homosexual acts are somehow more sinful than illicit heterosexual ones because only the latter are truly natural.
If those who are against the homosexual acts were to argue for chastity and that there is no automatic right given unto any of us for personal happiness, personal, realization and the like, then this would also be an argument against much of the foundation of the divorce culture. So it is rarely used.
In short, I think that when churches are so deeply involved in the divorce culture and are using primarily psycotherapeutical means to deal with it, then their whole ability to worship God aright, to create and understand doctrine, and to exercise discipline is deeply affected in negative ways (even if not perceived as such). They are in serious danger of engaging in much self-deception and of thinking that their experientialism is experience of the living God and that their search for self-esteem and self-fulfilment is sanctification.
I submit that the Episcopal Church could never have gone so quickly (1965 onwards) towards the denial of historic doctrine and morality had it not been a church which had by the 1960s absorbed the divorce culture and maintained this union through the decades. Thousands have entered the ECUSA in the last two decades from R Catholicism because there is a welcome for divorced and remarried persons in ECUSA and ready admittance to the “Eucharist”. There is little or no marital discipline in the ECUSA these days and this is celebrated as human freedom.
And this general spiritual disease affects all of us, however far we distance ourselves from the main-line/old line churches, and whether we participate in the divorce culture directly or not. Dumbing down because of it is the way things seem to be and look like being for a long time yet for all of us.
Regrettably the Church of England seems all geared up to follow after the ECUSA!
Thanks be to GOD that He is merciful and compassionate and in his justice remembers mercy!
The Rev'd Dr. Peter Toon
Minister of Christ Church, Biddulph Moor,
England & Vice-President and Emissary-at-Large
of The Prayer Book Society of America
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