Feudal Morality? Or Blind Perversity?

I wish that there was nothing more to say on this topic, and indeed, I had resolved to leave it alone for a while, but then there comes a piece which is so contrary to everything that I have held and written that I cannot refrain from making a response. From Episcopal Cafe's Jim Naughton comes this example of specious reasoning:

A touching, revealing moment at the press conference just now. The bishops have been talking for several days now about sacrifice. “What are you willing to sacrifice” to keep the communion together?” The clear implication is that Western churches must sacrifice their desire to include gay Christians more fully in the Church.

Katie Sherrod of the Lambeth Witness asked the question I wanted to ask. In sum: who exactly do the bishops think is authorize to negotiate on behalf of gay and lesbian Christians throughout the Communion? The primarily male, exclusively heterosexual delegations from the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada?

The people who are being asked to make a sacrifice are not represented at this conference.
Katherine Ragsdale, also from the Witness, put a finer point on it with her question. It is the essence of Christianity to sacrifice one’s self for others. It is in the inverse of Christianity to ask others to sacrifice themselves for you. The future of the Anglican Communion may rest on the willingness of gay and lesbian Christians to “sacrifice” for it.

And the Communion doesn’t have the good grace to ask them to make that sacrifice directly, preferring to pretend that the Western churches have the moral authority to act as their surrogates.

This is the feudal morality—lords making decisions for their vassals.

At least Bishop Charles Jenkins of Louisiana had the good grace to say that he recognized that gay people had been disenfranchised, and to say that this presented a moral dilemma for him.

All right---that was the piece in all its perquisquilian splendor. Now let's break it down:

A touching, revealing moment at the press conference just now.

Touching? revealing?---Yes, Mr. Naughton: that it was "touching" is more revealing than you could ever imagine.

The bishops have been talking for several days now about sacrifice.

Actually, Mr. Naughton, that statement represents a distortion of what the bishops have been talking about. Here is what the Archbishop of Canterbury actually asked the bishops to do in his second address to the Conference:

But whatever your views on this, at least ask the question : ‘Having heard the other person, the other group, as fully and fairly as I can, what generous initiative can I take to break through into a new and transformed relation of communion in Christ’

What has happened, Mr. Naughton, is that the Archbishop's expression "generous initiative" has been transformed, from something meaning "voluntarily begun" into something that must be "unwillingly surrendered". What he termed an"initiative" suddenly becomes, in the language of the those who have a different agenda, a "sacrifice". In fact, this process began at the very press conference which you are describing, Mr. Naughton. It was Archbishop Kwong who in the press conference unwittingly summarized the Archbishop's request as follows:

But all these people are saying, everyone is saying, that what they have done is correct in their context. Now we are asking all of these people to stop defending what they do or accusing others. Come instead together and say what sacrifice and concessions can you make for the sake of the integrity of the communion; for the sake of the integrity of the church. I was hoping this conference to ask us for a forward in that way.

I would like to see suggestions from this conference of where we can go from here to work out something tangible rather than just to talk about something that we have been talking about for years.

I value the listening and to have voices heard but instead of that we need some concrete action to be taken.

Needless to say, the language of "sacrifice" invokes a paradigm that is alien to the history of the Anglican Communion (unless you are intentionally referring to those famous precursors whose genuine sacrifices of their lives made it possible for those gathered today at Lambeth to call themselves "Anglican"). It is even more unfortunate that such language was seized upon, as Mr. Naughton's account reveals, by those in attendance at the press conference to twist its meaning to their own political ends:

Q: Sherrod: you (to ++Kwong) spoke about dealing with all parties concerned and you (to +Jenkins) spoke about not selling anyone out. How is this not selling out LGBT Anglicans? They are not in the room. It is one thing to sacrifice yourself. It is another to ask someone else to sacrifice for you.

++Kwong: that is why I said earlier that we need to find a person or a team to go around and talk face to face with all of these parties concerned and find a out to what extent they will sacrifice.

Mr. Naughton interprets this statement as follows:

“What are you willing to 'sacrifice' to keep the communion together?” The clear implication is that Western churches must sacrifice their desire to include gay Christians more fully in the Church.

That it is a "desire" that one sees as "needing to be sacrificed" speaks volumes---in fact, it shows precisely what is wrong with the entire LGBT agenda for The Episcopal Church: it is based on a desire for validation, and not on any aim to keep the church on a Bible-led path. In fact, the agenda demands that the church depart from the Bible, because the Bible stands in the way of LGBT validation.

(Let us be specific: every Episcopal parish understands that it is called on to welcome Christian LGBT persons into their congregations. What I am protesting here is the desire for more than that on the part of the LGBT agenda. It is not enough for them to be made welcome to worship with us; no, they must also be elected to positions of leadership in the Church, in direct contravention of the words of Scripture. It is simply not possible to accept their whole agenda and be faithful to the Word we are called upon to embody in our lives---I cannot do it, and I cannot ask any other Christian to do it.)

Mr. Naughton continues in the same vein, and praises Dr. Sherrod for her question:

Katie Sherrod of the Lambeth Witness asked the question I wanted to ask. In sum: who exactly do the bishops think is authorize[d] to negotiate on behalf of gay and lesbian Christians throughout the Communion? The primarily male, exclusively heterosexual delegations from the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada?

What, pray tell, is there to negotiate? Do Katie Sherrod (who recently was made an honorary Doctor of Divinity, by the way) and Jim Naughton (who wishes he had asked the question that she asked) think that ordination to the priesthood is a matter for negotiation with God? ("Listen, God, we demand our rights! We demand that You negotiate with us right now!) If so, let me refer them to a book they might want to read: God Owes Us Nothing, by Leszek Kolakowski. Or, if the book is just too long for them to trouble with, then let them please read this outstanding post, by my colleague at Anglican Musings.

The self-deception of victimhood continues as Mr. Naughton writes:

The people who are being asked to make a sacrifice are not represented at this conference.

Katherine Ragsdale, also from the Witness, put a finer point on it with her question. It is the essence of Christianity to sacrifice one’s self for others. It is in the inverse of Christianity to ask others to sacrifice themselves for you. The future of the Anglican Communion may rest on the willingness of gay and lesbian Christians to “sacrifice” for it.

But you cannot make a sacrifice if you have nothing to give up. Gays and lesbians have no rights to be ordained that they can be asked to "sacrifice." Nobody has a "right" to be ordained. If the "future of the Anglican Communion" depends on the sacrifice of a non-existent right, then it is doomed for certain.

Now comes Mr. Naughton's peroration:

And the Communion doesn’t have the good grace to ask them to make that sacrifice directly, preferring to pretend that the Western churches have the moral authority to act as their surrogates.

This is the feudal morality—lords making decisions for their vassals.

No, Mr. Naughton, it is nothing of the kind. But your seeing it as such is what is causing a good deal of the problem. There are no "decisions" that are or can be made by churches on behalf of LGBT individuals; they have to make those themselves. And there is nothing which the Communion can ask them as a group to "sacrifice", because they have no more of a call on the Communion than does any other Christian. If they would stop acting as though they were entitled per se to holy orders, just by virtue of who they are, because of their orientation alone---now, then, maybe we might talk about a "sacrifice". But is it really such a sacrifice to give up a line of thinking that leads one so badly astray?

Mr. Naughton concludes with this little consolation to his cause:

At least Bishop Charles Jenkins of Louisiana had the good grace to say that he recognized that gay people had been disenfranchised, and to say that this presented a moral dilemma for him.

Translation: "Bishop Charles Jenkins bowed to the pressure of his politically correct interrogators [oh, now I see why they call it a press conference---it's because reporters press people into saying things!] and allowed as how he bought into the vapid idea that gays and lesbians, of all people, have franchise rights in God's church."

Franchise rights, indeed.

[Curmudgeonly harrumph.]

[Update 08/06/2008: the utter blindness to the lack of Scriptural authority for their position continues unabated. At The Lead, Ann Fontaine cites a logophobe (hey, if they can gratuitously call us "homophobes", I can easily return the compliment) named ("I am not making this up," to quote Dave Barry) Will Self, who asks rhetorically: "Why does Rowan Williams bow down before those belligerent African Anglican bishops and their conservative supporters who view homosexuality as 'unnatural' and a 'sin'?" In the first place, Will, the sin is not "homosexuality" as you are using that term, but homosexual practice or behavior; and in the second place, so to read the Bible is not "the same Old Testament fundamentalism that leads to denying the discoveries of Galileo or Darwin," as you claim, but a plain and straightforward reading of what the New Testament says, let alone the Old Testament. But Mr. Self reaches the epitome of blindness to his own foolishness with this remark:

But, most worryingly, the Archbishop's position gives ammunition to those regimes where institutionalised homophobia and misogyny have truly tragic consequences. Two of the bishops who've been vocal in their lambasting of the liberals hail from Uganda and Nigeria, states where punitive laws against homosexuals are still on the statute book: a man was sentenced to death for being gay by sharia courts in northern Nigeria only last month.

Excuse me, Mr. Self, but what kind of court was that you say issued such a sentence? Was it one occupied by your typical "Old Testament fundamentalists"? Oh, I see---it was a sharia court, operating in a predominantly Muslim and tribal country, carrying out a decree found in the Quran. No doubt the judges and the legislators in Nigeria would be happy to have Dr. Williams give them a learned lecture on what the Christian religion says they should have done instead.]

OK, I promise---no matter what the provocation, I shall remain silent on this topic for at least another ten posts or so. If anyone sees another subterfuge deployed by the LGBT camp, just adapt to the purpose this sentiment by that model of a curmudgeon, the inestimable Nathaniel Ward---it will have to suffice. Speaking of women's desire to stay current with the latest court fashion, he wrote:

Whatever Christianity or civility will allow, I can afford ... but when I hear a nugiperous Gentledame inquire what dress the Queen is in this week ... I look at her as the very gizzard of a trifle, the product of a quarter of a cipher, the epitome of Nothing, fitter to be kickt, if she were of a kickable substance, than either honour'd or humour'd.”