Is the decline in Christianity among Anglican clergy moving pari passu with the decline in Western civilisation? Good question. Indubitably, is the answer.
Read an article in last Saturdays Weekend Australian by Jamie Walker about new Anglican Archbishop of Brisbane Jeremy Greaves. Among his libertine views on sexual matters, I was struck by his reported comment that he has never questioned the Resurrection. Why in the world would an Anglican priest ever need to provide such an assurance; I thought, quizzically. Reading on, I found that whatever his version of the Resurrection, to quote the article, “it is possibly not as described in the Gospels.”
I would say it wasn’t resuscitation – so if it’s not resuscitation, what is it?…It’s an event that is so far outside of human experience that for 2000 years people have struggled to put language around it. And so what you find in the creeds and many founding documents of the church is an attempt to give language to something that doesn’t have language.
Notice he says what it wasn’t; that is, resuscitation, without saying what it was; namely, resurrection. He says it was an event that people have struggled to put language around it. Well, no, they haven’t. It is as plain as a pikestaff in the Gospels. No struggle required. It’s only a struggle if you find it hard to believe that our Lord Jesus Christ as the Son of God was able to rise bodily on the third day. Of course, that is a struggle to understand if you are not really a Christian. Thought I’d find out a little more about Rev. Greaves’ views.
Ten years ago, when rector of St Mark’s Anglican church in Buderim (Queensland), Greaves was reported in The Courier Mail as saying that “all the statistics show there is a growing acceptance amongst Christians across churches for same-sex marriage [and that] “it seems slightly odd we can bless pets, but can’t bless a relationship between two people who love each other.”
It’s a hard discipline, this Christianity. It has a one-to-one correspondence with the Bible. And nowhere in that book does it say we should celebrate sin or bless those who are setting out to sin. And, for the avoidance of doubt, fornication — meaning having any sexual relations outside of marriage between a man and a woman – is a sin. There are so many attesting biblical passages that it makes your head spin.
Let me put it indelicately. Stop reading if you are easily offended. As one example of fornication: two men wishing to couple-up and engage in buggery are not entitled to have their relationship blessed by a Christian priest. And, there is no untoward discrimination going on here. The disentitlement applies equally to an adulterous heterosexual relationship. A blessing is just not doable. Of course, a Christian priest in name only might do it. But it’s a meaningless sham.
Back in 2010, as recounted by David Ould … Read it all in Quadrant
