Lovely oxymoron that !

This covenant is starting to sound like prayers to put the genie back in the bottle.

Bring back the "good old days" when men were really men, women were really women, and non-Christians were really little furry creatures not worthy of our Creation. Bring on globalisation, authority and democracy; as long as the wind is blowing in our (economic) direction. Sponsor dictatorships and death squads if the wind (power and/or money) are blowing someone else's way.

How many continents and nations should be hampered and destabilised simply so a few can plunder and swim as and where they will with no accountability to God, their human cousins or Gaia's inhabitants? How long with their puppetteer priests be allowed to act as the only scriptural authority?

You know the ones, all the everlasting covenants of the Jews are void with Jesus, but not one curse against women (especially Eve) were atoned for with Jesus' crucifixion.

Bring in a covenant to enshrine such hypocritical and blatently opportunistic power pandering? Sure, if you want to live in a world of posturing and bullying, deprivation and oppression.

If you want to live in a world where old curses are voided, decent everlasting covenants (including those to Jews and others) are respected and augmented, then this human covenant is not the way to go. This covenant comes from some men to enshrine and perpetuate their monument and power base. It is specifically dreamt of as a way of precluding any hope of reform of healing in the past, present or future. This covenant is aimed to ensure that the curse against Eve and all other females, and all other "unworthies" is enshrined in perpetuity with any attempt at reform being from the "evil one".

What is evil? To void all previous covenants but to enshrine in perpetuity all cruel curses? Or to void all previous curses and to enshrine in perpetuity nurturing covenants?

Biblical fundamentalism is the worst enemy not only of traditional Anglican sanity but of the power and authority of Scripture itself.

"Biblical texts must be handled “faithfully, respectfully, comprehensively, and coherently” with the aid of “our best scholarship”, but “primarily through the teaching and initiative of the bishops and synods”." Amen to that.

May I recommend the delightful interview of Bishop Richard Harries by Richard Dawkins which can be found on YouTube -- it is a model of sanity, dialogue, and serene understanding of the major perspectives opened by Scripture.

Harries-Dawkins conversation here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QS2TFVe9LDc

I see that the sentence on the use of Scripture that I said Amen to actually comes from the proposed new Covenant. It is a sentence that could be interpreted in a narrow way, where "comprehensiveness" and "fidelity" might mean yoking oneself to every archaic dictum of Scripture, rather than interpreting Scripture in light of its ultimate purpose and in dialogue with the signs of the times.

It seems to me that this is very dangerous, indeed wide open to abuse from whomever will define themselves as of "authority".

“faithfully, respectfully, comprehensively, and coherently” with the aid of “our best scholarship”, but “primarily through the teaching and initiative of the bishops and synods”."

Each of these is a lethal threat to scholarship, not least the "-fully"s.

"Biblical fundamentalism is the worst enemy not only of traditional Anglican sanity but of the power and authority of Scripture itself."

I'd go further. I'd say it's the worst enemy of the Kingdom of God.

It reads to me that we have hardly yet gotten our minds and hearts and communities around two sticking points. One is the subtle but telling difference between a familiar Anglican claim - scripture contains all things needed for salvation - and the newly invigorated realignment claims - that scripture must and can only be read one, strictly correct way. I used to think that all Anglicans more or less subscribed to the former, and that therefore the conservative views/hermeneutics were simply one point on the wider Anglican spectrums, and happily so. Now of course that is all called rubbish, and only the conservative Anglicans know anything useful.

The other sticking point is modernity.

Either the empirical and scholarly enterprise, as well as new paradigms like equality and democracy mean something valuable to us - or they are instances where we have fallen away from truth and godliness. So far, the best that realignment seems able to preach is: Democracy renders unto Caesar by having no Caesar; or: Who needs democracy? We have our Bibles.

Alas. Neither of these grand global shifts is going away any time soon, short of a new conservative Christian totalitarianism that leans fiercely into USA-type Christian Reconstructionism.

Alas. Our splitting is the occasion of our resurrection witness. God help us find the joy in that call.

drdanfee

I found this article posted on Ekklesia overnight heartening.

http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/5053

There is talk of the British government dropping the phrase "war on terror" as it connotes more alignment and credence to various groups than they would have otherwise. MP Hilary Benn is quoted as saying "The fight for the kind of world that most people want can, in the end, only be won in a different battle - a battle of values and ideas."

It hyperlinks back to a January article http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/news/world/070124tutu where Desmond Tutu comments that God is crying because Creation has been turned into a nightmare. Like Benn, Tutu comments that "The war against terror in the world will "never" be won by force and injustice, and will remain a problem "as long as there are conditions in the world that make people desperate," like dehumanizing poverty, disease and ignorance..."

I would go further. The bible says that the poor we will always have with us, so show compassion and give them the essentials of dignity. I would add, organised crime we will always have with us, it simply needs to be in proper proportion.

There is a story that after a major Japanese earthquake there were major issues in terms of getting food, water and essentials into a badly damaged city and the government authorities were doing a woefully inadequate job. At this time, the organised crime gang leaders realised that if they did not contribute to the rebuilding of their city, their own survival and livelihoods were also gone. They took on and successfully orchestrated helping the city out of that crisis.

In any normal societies, there are "no go" areas that you enter at your peril, and other areas that you do not enter after dark. But the majority of people can go about their business unmolested most of the time. Tyranny is when no areas are safe at any time. Societies are in collapse at that point, there are generational scarrings that need to be healed. You can not quarantine that trauma to one town, the escaping victims or their remote friends and relatives act out their post trauma stress in situ.

If you do not provide a minimum dignity to your enemies, it is no surprise if you are attacked by desperate or dysfunctional elements.