Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Anglican Bishop Calls for 'Gay Christianity'

The Anglican Church is the perfect vehicle for creating a new “gay” Christianity by virtue of the fact that it is the only church that accepts the logical contradiction of asserting both the sanctity of human life and the existence of a right to abortion.

Episcopal bishop Gene Robinson, whose ordination to the episcopate has precipitated the ongoing schism between traditionally Christian Anglicans and its ultra-liberal, secularized branches, is in London to talk about his vision for the homosexual future of the Anglican Church.

He was visiting and promoting his cause in preparation for the upcoming Lambeth Conference in July.

He told an admiring audience in Putney, in southwest London, that Anglicanism is uniquely suited to the establishment of the contradiction of homosexual Christianity.

“The Anglican tradition is uniquely capable of holding two seemingly contradictory ideas together. Its position on abortion, for example is that all human life is sacred. And, that no one has the right to tell a woman what to do with her body. Both are true,” he said.

The logical principle of non-contradiction, a basic philosophical concept identified by Aristotle, is defined as the idea that two opposed things cannot both be true. Aristotle put it that, “One cannot say of something that it is and that it is not in the same respect and at the same time.”

It is not possible, for example, for a person to both be in a room and not in a room at the same time. This principle is regarded by philosophers as one of the three first principles of rational thought, without which no assertion of any truth is possible.

Many Christian philosophers have noted that the moral chaos in western societies has stemmed from the 20th century’s abandonment of this principle as the guiding force of politics and religion.

Robinson is a long-time supporter of abortion. In 2005, he addressed Planned Parenthood's fifth annual prayer breakfast in Washington. He said then that the only way to defend the pro-abortion mindset is to reach out religiously, saying, “Our defense against religious people has to be a religious defense. ... We must use people of faith to counter the faith-based arguments against us.”
He told Planned Parenthood, “We have to take back those Scriptures.”

He spoke of “the need to teach people about nuance, about holding things in tension, that this can be true and that can be true, and somewhere between is the right answer. It's a very adult way of living, you know. What an unimaginative God it would be if God only put one meaning in any verse of Scripture."

In his talk in London and in a later interview with the Spectator’s Theo Hobson, Robinson laid out the precepts of gay Christianity in which homosexuals, as an oppressed minority, are more capable of Christian charity than heterosexuals.

To lend biblical credence to his assertions, Robinson cited a passage in John’s Gospel in which Jesus tells his disciples they were not ready for all of Christian teaching. Robinson asserts that the acceptance of homosexuality was part of the teaching that the Holy Spirit was to give the Church later.

He said that the growing acceptance of homosexuality in the churches “is all ultimately about is patriarchy — the beginning of the end of it. The strength of the resistance tells us we’re on to something.”

His book, "In the Eye of the Storm", reiterates the homosexual lobby movement’s doctrine that homosexuality is the equivalent of race or sex. He said it gives him a “little window into some of what it must be like to be a woman, or a person of colour, or a person in a wheelchair — and countless other categories the dominant culture has controlled, diminished and oppressed”. This naturally leads to a greater capacity for “Christian empathy”.

“Just as surely as Jesus called to his friend Lazarus to ‘Come out!’ of his tomb, Jesus called me to come out of my tomb of guilt and shame, to accept and love that part of me that he already accepted and loved.”

The Exodus story, he said, is “one of the greatest coming-out stories in the history of the world”.

He admitted that it is possible for heterosexuals to sympathize with the oppressed, saying, “It’s not impossible, but it’s harder.”
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