SACK-CLOTH & ASHES for November 2nd, 2003

www.american-anglican.fsnet.co.uk

Although November 2nd is the Lord's Day and thus not a day for fasting, it will be most appropriate in the afternoon of that day - 2.p.m. Eastern Seaboard Time, USA - for Evangelicals & Charsimatics (& others) to cover their heads in ashes and their bodies with sack-cloth.

The penance and mourning before God, the Lord, will be in part because at this time Gene Robinson, the "gay" activist, will be "set apart" and "consecrated" as bishop of the ECUSA diocese of New Hampshire.

The greater part of the penance should be by Evangelicals etc. because they have provided world-wide publicity for the "gay" cause within the liberal denominations and in western society. They fell for the LesBiGay way of describing the controversy in New Hampshire and in the General Convention of the ECUSA and, thereby, they aided and abetted in a massive way the publicity of this group. Further, they united the election of Robinson with the "gay" blessings in Vancouver Canada and again served the LesbiGay cause by this bringing together of different issues!

Consider this. Had the opposition to the election and the confirmation of Robinson been on the basis that he was disqualified by being a divorced man and that this disqualification is compounded by his not living a chaste life now, then the whole controversy and debate would have been different. It would have been on the biblical validity of the ancient canons concerning candidates for the Ministry that divorce is a barrier; on whether or not a divorced man can be a right icon for the Church wherein Jesus is described as the Bridegroom and the Church as his Bride; on whether a divorced man is the right person to give pastoral advice on Christian marriage within a dominant divorce culture..and so on. Thus it could have been a serious debate on whether or not the ECUSA had made a massive mistake by inviting so fully into its midst the divorce culture of the post 1960s and what can be done to recover the doctrine of Christian Marriage.

Yet the Evangelicals, the AAC, the FinF NA and so on chose to adopt the agenda favored by the LesBiGay movement and to make it all a debate as to whether a "gay" man in a "faithful" partnership is an appropriate person to be a bishop. And they got the Primates (who come from a different culture and hardly appreciate how deeply the divorce culture is accepted in the Churches of the West and how it is utilized by American and British Evangelicals etc.) also worked up about it. The Primates should have been rightly concerned about the "gay" issue in New Westminster, Canada and elsewhere - e.g. in many ECUSA dioceses -- but they should have seen this Robinson issue for what it really basically is, at least in terms of historic Christian moral theology and canon law. A divorced man ought not to be a bishop & a divorced man who is not chaste certainly ought not to be a bishop. But the modern evangelical doctrine seems to be that a divorced man can be a bishop if he is not "gay". Evangelicals could have said: we discuss only his being divorced for this is an insuperable barrier to his being a bishop if we are to keep to historic Christian standards within the Anglican Way.

Therefore the Evangelicals & Charismatics have yet to face the basic questions about Christian Sexuality and what is pleasing to the Lord Jesus for members of his Church. They all agree that "gay" stuff is sinful, but do they all agree that marriage discipline is virtually absent from the ECUSA and from their own ranks, and that until they face up to this there can be no genuine reform and renewal of the Anglican Household in the USA?

WITHOUT PAIN THERE WILL BE NO GAIN.

The Rev'd Dr. Peter Toon M.A., D.Phil. (Oxon.)