On May 30th an Asheville Episcopalian parish excommunicated Lewis W. Green. The parish council also forbade him to set foot on church property. Should he disobey, he can be arrested for trespassing. Except for Mr Green, the entire human race is welcome at All Souls. That church's threat to turn over an alleged sinner to the secular arm converts an internal matter into a public issue. For why should taxpayers pay to prevent worshipers from attending  church?

Perhaps church leadership is afraid. Not of a messenger but of a message. That message is that the church should return to orthodox belief and practice. I recently asked Episcopal leaders if a local congregation might stray so far from the Gospel that someone had to jerk it up short and radically reform it. The answer was yes. I then asked what shape reform would take. The answer was prayerful consultation between clergy and congregation. For the Lord would then assure a holy outcome. But what if three parishes used this technique to solve the same problem and  reached three different solutions? Where then was the Lord?

Is there some one word which describes such a belief in how to reform? Passivism? Quietism? "Spectatorism?" Fatalism? Can a Christian of any denomination imagine Paul polling Corinthians or Thessalonians to determine the content--including the tough commands--of the Gospel? To that question one bishop smiled, "But we don't have Saint Paul today."

Some do not concede that a layman might have a God-given duty both to demand and actively to work for major reforms. No layman, they say, has a right forcefully  to complain when a pastor preaches personal beliefs contrary to the Gospel. For that would be intolerant, bigoted, "un-inclusive," sinful. After all, nothing much is at stake: only belief. And religious opinion, say some, is never settled truth.

But what if an irate reformer refuses to side with Pilate who shrugged and asked "What is truth?" What if, instead, a member of a church prefers the Master who asserted, "I am the way, the truth and the life?" In some congregations that simply will not do. There the commandments are only these:

remain unruffled,
never be provoked,
be polite,
stay tolerant,
offend no one for any reason.

How the sinning money changers in the Temple must have blustered against Jesus's impolite behavior once they had recovered from their lashing!  Why that weird young rabbi had dared to JUDGE them!

Some church leaders find it "regrettable" that Paul views homosexual
behavior (as distinct from homosexual temptation) to be objectively sinful. I recently met with one such bishop in Asheville to discuss the "excommunication" of my novelist friend, Lewis Green.

The bisop told me and editor Bill Fishburne that some scholars argue  that Paul  never dreamt that adult males might have non-ritual, consensual, caring sexual relations with other adult men. To Paul, they argue, homosexual practice denoted either coerced sex with boys or pagan ritual male prostitution.

Yet Scripture records Paul quoting obscure passages from two Greek pagan poets. Would such a learned man not also know Greek classics such as Plato's SYMPOSIUM, written 400 years earlier? In that dialog about love Socrates successfully resists determined homosexual wooing by Alcibiades. That dialog also propounds a mystical-ascetic theory that both heterosexual and homosexual activities are at best mere way-stations in a relentless human quest for that greatest Beauty which alone can satisfy every human mind and soul.

Christianity is a religion revealed by God. Its revelations do not destroy
but perfect a human nature created good but since fallen. Orthodox
Christianity also reverently and obediently presents supernatural, settled truths and insights. Those teachings include detailed, binding commands from God going far beyond anything which unaided human reason can discover. Granted that people are the first to judge their own consciences. In individual cases, teachings of a revealed religion may, therefore, ask more than a weak woman or man honestly seeking the full truth can bear at the time. Such persons might well turn toward simpler, easier, man-made religions. It is not, however, honest that they present themselves as teachers of orthodox Christian doctrine.

Which shall it be: Pilate's "What is truth?" or Jesus's "I am the way, the
truth and the life?"

-OOO-

for Asheville TRIBUNE

(revisited 09/03/2008)