Thursday, January 14, 2010

Newsweek's Lisa Miller: Unholy Alliances-The limits of Anglican soulmating.

Jan 14, 2010

In 2004 the members of St. James Church in tony Newport Beach, Calif., voted to secede from the Episcopal Church of the United States. Like dozens of other conservative Episcopal churches at the time, St. James found the theology of its denomination insufficiently orthodox (and the consecration of a gay Episcopal prelate unbiblical). So it, and others, sought—and found—protection among the conservative Anglican bishops of Africa. For administrative and theological purposes, St. James became an African church. It submitted to the authority of an African bishop and paid dues to an African diocese.

Church members were thrilled about their new connection. The church of the global South "is growing and exploding because we took the Bible to those countries, and they believed it," explained a St. James lay leader to a PBS news reporter in 2005. "They have seen the power of the Bible … and we wanted to be part of that..."

...American culture wars are kindergarten play compared with those in places like Uganda, where democracy is a sham and tolerance rare. And American conservatives who insist on romanticizing Africans for the purity of their Christian belief must guard against escalating those wars and endangering lives—intentionally or not—by giving support and money to Christian leaders with insufficient regard for human rights...

...But Otunnu and other human-rights activists believe the political war against homosexuals in Uganda is a direct result of the legions of evangelists who landed in his country during the Bush administration, determined to fight HIV/AIDS with Christian rhetoric about abstinence and marital fidelity... the rest

Albert Mohler on Miller's 2008 argument for gay marriage:
Turning the Bible on its Head — Newsweek Goes for Gay Marriage

Professor Bob Gagnon's Demolition of Newsweek's Lisa Miller

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