Disestablishment?

[tinyjo]

I wonder what will happen to the Church of England after this debate over gay bishops. The future doesn't look rosy what ever way the debate comes out, really. It was nice to hear an actual bishop endorsing my view of the bible, saying that it consists of people describing their experiences of God and what they believed about it. It's a valuable document, particularly for learning about Jesus but it does need to be read in the context of it's time and shouldn't be taken literally.

Comments

Re: disest't etc

[snowking.livejournal.com]

First, there is an argument that people who are in some deep, fundamental way simply disinterested in half the world's population (the other sex, whichever it may be) might not make good bishops. It's a point of view.

That's a very insulting argument. To everyone.

Re: disest't etc

[(Anonymous)]

Well, it is an existing point of view, held by people who believe it applicable to a large swathe of people - I didn't say it was right. But to deal with any issue involving people and their beliefs about others, we have to acknowledge the range of opinions about where we actually are. Some lesbian women think or feel quite honestly that gay men are as much "the enemy" as straight men, because "the community" is at least in part a fiction and that when push comes to shove, in economics or the workplace or wherever, that men will advance other men, no matter what their sexual orientation might be.

There's a fine line in every community - Christian, gay, whatever - between trying to act in accordance with the highest, most loving theoretical posits the community adopts, and merely swallowing wholesale a mythos of perfection and ignoring some of the ugly truths which live side-by-side with the Best. There are some gay people who really don't actually like or care much about members of the opposite sex. If those individuals in some way work the system to be considered for a diocese, it is to be hoped that they would be weeded out - NOT because they're gay but because they don't care. There are plenty of heterosexual but still misogynist men who manage to be priests, but so far relatively few of them have actually become bishops, primarily because their lack of care has been noticed, commented on, reviewed, and they have been contained. The C of E does try hard to eliminate misogynists from their groups of candidates, from the get-go; and certainly the 'harvests' of priests I have encountered in the last 15 years have generally left me feeling hopeful about the long-term future of the church. They ain't perfect, but they *tend* to be open, balanced, positive people with a real sense of the breadth of human behaviours and attitudes.