I don’t know how many of you have read Giles Fraser’s column in the Church Times this week, but I really urge you to do so if you haven’t yet (link to Church Times on right). He is writing about how the Bible should not be perceived as a “manual for moral uprightness” and explains that the Gospels did not use the Old Testament as such, but associated the old laws with religious leaders who wanted to judge and accuse. Later that day, or possibly the day after, I went to a service where we sang hymn 6 in our special ‘Lambeth Praise’ hymnbooks (of which I have two free copies. There are huge benefits to being a steward.), and it contained these lines:
“But we make his love too narrow
By false limits of our own;
And we magnify his strictness
With a zeal he will not own”
Now, that hymn was written by someone born in 1814, so the idea of the Church being too legalistic is not a new one, and I’m heartened to find that I’m not on my own in being unable to align my image of God as kind, loving, mercyful and completely forgiving with a God who would still expect us to stone to death an adulterer. I am not saying that reading the Bible literally is ‘wrong’ – we each should decide for ourselves ho we interpret and understand an ancient scripture in our modern culture – but I think that we need to realise that we all have our differences. I consider this to be part of the reason why we are not currently as united as we should be within the Anglican Communion. I feel that we have lost our way by being mired in the details of rules from a culture far removed from our own, and that we are not focussed enough on the vital messages of love given to us by Jesus. I hope I am not in a minority by judging the actions and attitudes and teachings of Jesus more relevant to me than the laws that went centuries before him that He fulfilled with His own word. As a Communion we need to keep the messages of Christ in our hearts and minds – He is our common theme, the fire burning at our core – and that each Church can make its own decisions about how it interprets scripture without being alienated or without alienating anyone else in turn. Like I said before, the stewards manage it, so why can’t our leaders?
I’m a little concerned with the line ‘we each should decide for ourselves how we interpret and understand an ancient scripture in our modern culture’. There needs to be a collective understanding of how we interpret our scriptures, otherwise we would descend into anarchy. Unfortunately the leaders of the Church are caught up in the polity of the church and everything that is said or considered is broadcast and it’s difficult to back down once a statement is in public. It might have worked better if the press had been locked out of Lambeth and there was more time set aside so that the ‘issues’ could be ‘thrashed out’ and a united front be put forward. Sometimes it’s not possible to hear the Holy Spirit talking when the telly is blaring out.
You have a valid point, but it’s not one I really agree with. I know I have a rather liberal view on Christian theology, but to my mind the story of Jesus and His sacrifice and the message of love for all that He proclaimed *is* the part we should understand as a collective. I think that the rest should speak to us as individuals – there is no one way of interpreting it, which is precisely why there is such a gaping divide between the liberal and fundamentalist sides of Christianity. Afterall, it is very difficult to have a collective reading of a text that isn’t one consistent genre and contains many contradictions. None of us can say with any authority which parts should therefore be held up as most important and which should be kept in the background. I think that this is a personal choice. Christianity is not about keeping to the small print.
As to the contention that more issues should have been “thrashed out” – the Conference is not a decision making body. It is a time for discussion, reflection and prayer. This is not where the future of the Anglican Communion get decided, but where people are given a chance to air their views on matters that affect them and their Church in faith. And there would have been even more trouble from the Press had we kept them out altogether. We are an open community.
But I do agree with “it’s not possible to hear the Holy Spirit talking when the telly is blaring out.” I’m not entirely sure how you meant this, but I take it that it was along the lines of how the Conference was portrayed in the media. All the stewards, and the ABC, were all-too-aware of how things had been reported, and I find it extremely sad that reporters’ annoyances at being kept out of private meetings were biasing their reportage of what was a very peaceful and worthwhile meeting of clerical minds.