Thinking Anglicans

Leaven in the Lump of Lambeth

Updated Friday

The Reverend Professor Marilyn McCord Adams delivered a lecture with the above title last Saturday. Its subtitle was Spiritual Temptations and Ecclesial Opportunities.

The occasion of this was the LGCM Annual Conference in London.

You can read the text of this at Episcopal Café the new version of Daily Episcopalian.
It is here at Leaven in the lump.

You can also listen to it by downloading a podcast file that is 17 Mbytes (large, but then it took 42 minutes to deliver). That file is here.

Update
My report of the lecture is in Friday’s Church Times at Primates seen as dictatorial.

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Fr Joe O'Leary
16 years ago

Prof. Adams in full voice, with all the parrhesia of the Gospel as read in connection with the signs of the times. The Global South have nothing like this to show, shackled as they are by the attitudes she rightly names.

Hugh of Lincoln
Hugh of Lincoln
16 years ago

Brilliant!!

NP
NP
16 years ago

Brilliant – so clearly a different religion to the AC, such a different interpretation on the authority of the bible, a real contribution to the argument for split.

(Tutu comes second to St Paul for me!)

Ford Elms
Ford Elms
16 years ago

“a well-laid plan by conservatives to take over the North American churches.” Excellent! The above is something that needs to be noted. This is something widely believed in North America. There is ample evidence for it. Note that it does not say TEC, but “North American churches”. There is great suspicion of the right in this regard, and the general idea is that the right, in a more or less coordinated fashion, is attempting to tie the mainline churches up in interminable debates about sticking points like sexuality, thereby weakening their witness against the Republican policies of war and disenfranchisement… Read more »

John Henry
John Henry
16 years ago

Prof. McCord Adams’s lecture ought to be required reading for the ABC and the pompous Anglican primates before they further disgrace themselves, reducing their primatial gatherings to a “primatial circus”. Definitely, as a traditional Anglican, I have no use for a “primatial curia”, dominated by the Senior Cardinal of Abuja–his way of the highway!

Mynsterpreost (=David Rowett)
Mynsterpreost (=David Rowett)
16 years ago

Ford’s unease about chicanery in the US is reflected in an article in today’s Guardian by Naomi Wolf:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,2063979,00.html

Cheryl Clough
16 years ago

I loved this passage “…my point is not psychological but theological: homophobia and misogyny are contrary to the Gospel because they imprison everyone in lies about who we… It is not true that anyone has to appear smaller so that someone else can stand up to their full stature in Christ! It is not true that some have to stay in the closet so that others can be true to themselves. God Our Creator knew what God was doing. God calls us each to grow up into our full stature, and God has a way, God is determined to make… Read more »

Pluralist
16 years ago

Yes that passage was well worded, as highlighted by Cheryl Clough. Whilst the lecture is right that the international communion thrust was somewhat previous before the reality, it is coming off the rails now, and it is very doubtful that the Anglican Communion agenda will go forward. If Rowan Williams wants Lambeth 2008 to be prayer and Bible study as a way of discernment it won’t advance an international agenda as before. We may find that Nigerian bishops decide not to come as nothing will be finally decided there (unless they will try to make a communion agenda again) and… Read more »

Laurence Roberts
Laurence Roberts
16 years ago

Ford’s unease about chicanery in the US is reflected in an article in today’s Guardian by Naomi Wolf:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,2063979,00.html

Posted by: Mynsterpreost (=David Rowett) on Tuesday, 24 April 2007

My thanks for this. Very disturbing. We all need to read it, I think …..

NP
NP
16 years ago

Ford – maybe you are seeing a plan by a minority in TEC to stay in the AC – i.e. by not constantly breaking trust through innovations and then challenging the AC to face schism or accept the innovation.

Maybe some just plan to stay in the AC and be faithful members of it

Cheryl Clough
16 years ago

Laurence, David and all those who can look beyond complacency These are the big issues. Do we want to live in a world where there is no refuge from tyranny (we simply choose whether it is an Islamic/Christian or other tyrannical monster)? Or do we want tyranny to be isolated and seen as an unhealthy abherration of a society that has gone amock? The former means following the trends and allowing posturing males to escalate to ridiculous lengths to prove they can get others to do as much or worse than their competitors. The latter means recognising that competition for… Read more »

Ford Elms
Ford Elms
16 years ago

NP,
The right hasn’t broken trust? I say agreeing not to cross diocesan boundaries and then doing exactly that is breaking trust, so is putting together a plan to take over the Church because of a particular issue, while the process of sorting out that issue is still ongoing is also breaking trust. You need to realize that in TEC this issue is seen in the much wider context of government sponsored subversion of their democracy. Many of the supporters of your position are also inplicated in this wider movement, and are therefor very suspect.

JPM
JPM
16 years ago

>>>Many of the supporters of your position are also inplicated in this wider movement, and are therefor very suspect. BINGO! When the churches leading the secessionist movement count among their parishioners such luminaries as Alberto Gonzales and Karl Rove and draw their funding from the nation’s leading radical reactionary sugardaddies, like Richard Mellon Scaife, Howard Ahmanson, and the Coors family, then people have good reason to be suspicious. In the end, I don’t think any of this really has much at all to do with Gene Robinson and what he might be doing with his naughty parts. Sure, the dupes… Read more »

Cheryl Clough
16 years ago

Ford I empathise. What I am seeing is one group telling the “impure” and “unrepentant” that they have to be good submissive subjects whilst the power brokers set up their empire. We are to be tokens of no consequence, the same as the starving in Africa are of no consequence, or the victims of irradiated weapons in Iraq are of no consequence. Stupid souls playing power games to see who can get the most tokens or get them to do the most gross acts to prove their loyalty. It reminds me of other recreational competitions – Christmas street decorations, stereo… Read more »

Fr Joseph O'Leary
16 years ago

I have doubts about the headlong character of some of Prof. McCord Adams’ rhetoric, notably this: “Renouncing society’s right to say who we are and what we mean, frees us for full communion with Our Creator, with that gay men’s chorus, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.”

I have nothing against gay men’s choruses, but the metaphor and its tritheistic aspect are flippant.

Fr Joseph O'Leary
16 years ago

“In the end, I don’t think any of this really has much at all to do with Gene Robinson and what he might be doing with his naughty parts. Sure, the dupes in the pews care about such things, but the big boys know that the name of the game here is silencing the mainline churches so that the only religious voice in America will be that of the so-called “Christian Right.”” This reminds me of March 2003 when people darkly whispered that the Iraq War was not about WMDs or democracy but about oil and American hegemony. Conspiracy theorists?… Read more »

NP
NP
16 years ago

JPM says “the name of the game here is silencing the mainline churches so that the only religious voice in America will be that of the so-called “Christian Right.””

– you do know that TEC is hardly mainline???

(not to mention, its size)

Ford Elms
Ford Elms
16 years ago

“I have nothing against gay men’s choruses, but the metaphor and its tritheistic aspect are flippant.”

Amen! I hope little more than a piece of rhetoric meant for effect, else the idea that the Trinity HAS sexuality on any way we would experience it, much less that They “get it on”, (and I agree with your comment on tritheism too) makes me doubt her understanding of the basics of the faith. I think it was the former, though, but still a bit much.

Laurence Roberts
Laurence Roberts
16 years ago

I love the image of the gay mens chorus and the joyous Threesome.

Don’t be so tight assed you guys !

Ever read the Song of Solomon ?

Lighten up !

NP
NP
16 years ago

Ford – when I see the disgraceful if not blasphemous statements on this thread (from others, not you) , I am more convinced than ever that we must stick to the scriptures or people will continue to make God in their own image and lead others to destruction

Fr Joseph O'Leary
16 years ago

NP, I agree we must stick to the Scriptures in the sense of revering and obeying the Lord. But St Paul shows us that wresting with Scripture, in search of a larger fidelity, is an exciting and dynamic business. Paul was denounced as a heretic in his time, and those of us who seek a larger scriptural vision on sexuality, overcoming the limitations of ancient homophobic patriarchy, often find ourselves on paths that seem like those of Paul.

JPM
JPM
16 years ago

NP, in the American religious context, the word “mainline” hasn’t got a thing to do with attendance figures or fundamentalism.

And NP, I will agree to try not to make God in my own image if you will agree to stop trying to make him a Calvinist accountant. Deal?

Fr. Joseph, we have already seen that conspiracy: see http://edow.org/follow/index.html. While the NPs of the world obligingly froth at the mouth every time someone invokes the terrifying prospect of a homo getting within five miles of a church, the people with actual power have much bigger things on their minds.

Ford Elms
Ford Elms
16 years ago

“disgraceful if not blasphemous “ ? Which ones? “Don’t be so tight assed you guys” And, Laurence, not being tight assed, just taking exception to what seems to be too much emphasis on the Threeness of God, and the idea that sex is somehow part of the unity of the three hypostases. “And yet there are not three Gods, but one God.” I wasn’t offended by the sex reference, but it could reasonably be expected to offend some, and I wonder if perhaps that wasn’t the point. If so, I understand, appreciate, and have even used the rhetorical ploy, but… Read more »

NP
NP
16 years ago

Ford – exactly what you refer to as “unseemly” I think is disgraceful if not blasphemous.

Sad to see this kind of comment on the Trinity

Ford Elms
Ford Elms
16 years ago

Ah, but why, NP? I have all kinds of disagreement with the idea that sex is some sort of a “binder”, in some sense, of the hypostases of the Trinity, and with what I see as too much separation of the hypostases. I get the feeling your attitude is more on the lines of a school child taking offense because someone called him gay.

Laurence Roberts
Laurence Roberts
16 years ago

Ford I thinkI know a tight ass when I see one –the preacher made no reference to sex that I could see. But others seem to have rushed in and projected on to what she said ! Wonder why ?

But have NP and you read the Song of Songs much these days?

Do you reject the Christian and Jewish mystics’ imagery then ?

Isn’t God constantly ivolved in all that love making – everywhere ?

btw –remember to breathe from your diaphgm if not lower …. and smile (both spiriual practices of the bod )

NP
NP
16 years ago

Ford – please – Father and Son to be thought of like that? And the Spirit too? No – not right at all – even in human terms, I would not want to mention you and your father in that way.

FordElms
FordElms
16 years ago

Laurence and NP, Chill,brothers! Laurence,I have no problem with sex, really, I neither hide it away in the dark where we can do it only if we are suitably ashamed of ourselves for being such beasts, nor do I elevate it to some badge of freedom and enlightenment that all must validate or risk being fitted for jackboots and black shirts. What’s wrong with imaging the Trinity as three gay men? Lots. The Trinity is one and three, it puts too much stress on the threeness. To call the Trinity three “men” is to totally misunderstand. Only the Second Person… Read more »

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