Don We Now Our Gay Apparel

Is the decline in Christianity among Anglican clergy moving pari passu with the decline in Western civilisation? Good question. Indubitably, is the answer.

Read an article in last Saturdays Weekend Australian by Jamie Walker about new Anglican Archbishop of Brisbane Jeremy Greaves. Among his libertine views on sexual matters, I was struck by his reported comment that he has never questioned the Resurrection. Why in the world would an Anglican priest ever need to provide such an assurance; I thought, quizzically. Reading on, I found that whatever his version of the Resurrection, to quote the article, “it is possibly not as described in the Gospels.”

I would say it wasn’t resuscitation – so if it’s not resuscitation, what is it?…It’s an event that is so far outside of human experience that for 2000 years people have struggled to put language around it. And so what you find in the creeds and many founding documents of the church is an attempt to give language to something that doesn’t have language.

Notice he says what it wasn’t; that is, resuscitation,  without saying what it was; namely, resurrection. He says it was an event that people have struggled to put language around it. Well, no, they haven’t. It is as plain as a pikestaff in the Gospels. No struggle required. It’s only a struggle if you find it hard to believe that our Lord Jesus Christ as the Son of God was able to rise bodily on the third day. Of course, that is a struggle to understand if you are not really a Christian. Thought I’d find out a little more about Rev. Greaves’ views.

Ten years ago, when rector of St Mark’s Anglican church in Buderim (Queensland), Greaves was reported in The Courier Mail as saying that “all the statistics show there is a growing acceptance amongst Christians across churches for same-sex marriage [and that] “it seems slightly odd we can bless pets, but can’t bless a relationship between two people who love each other.”

It’s a hard discipline, this Christianity. It has a one-to-one correspondence with the Bible. And nowhere in that book does it say  we should celebrate sin or bless those who are setting out to sin. And, for the avoidance of doubt, fornication — meaning having any sexual relations outside of marriage between a man and a woman – is a sin. There are so many attesting biblical passages that it makes your head spin.

Let me put it indelicately. Stop reading if you are easily offended. As one example of fornication: two men wishing to couple-up and engage in buggery are not entitled to have their relationship blessed by a Christian priest. And, there is no untoward discrimination going on here. The disentitlement applies equally to an adulterous heterosexual relationship. A blessing is just not doable. Of course, a Christian priest in name only might do it. But it’s a meaningless sham.

Back in 2010, as recounted by David Ould, the Rev. Greaves, then Anglican Dean of Darwin Cathedral, said in an ABC radio interview that he would be happy to abandon the Apostles’ Creed. Which particular part he believed to be redundant, I am not sure. The virgin birth perhaps? Jesus’ crucifixion, his bodily Resurrection, his return to judge the living and the dead? All of them are absolutely central to the Christian faith. None are dispensable. None can be nuanced or converted from a transcendental to a material realm. Of course, if you believe that nothing exists outside of what you can see and feel then atheism is for you. There is a third kind of person who manages to invent a category of spiritual life detached from scripture. They just make it up.

Among priests who occupy this category of the third kind — think, say, of the Archbishop of Canterbury — you will find such overflowing bonhomie that everyone knows they’re really good and generous people. Virtue positively pours from their pores. They are forever adjusting their theology to suit the times. Apropos the Archbishop of Brisbane – again in the Weekend Australian:

We have to find ways of engaging with a generation of young people for whom, largely, issues around sexuality are not issues – they have friends who are gay or trans, they have friends with two mums or two dads. It’s just part of the world they live in.

So instead of standing on the rock of the never-changing Bible (i.e., of God’s revealed truth) progressive priests like Greaves, are dedicated followers of fashion – à la The Kinks. Where that will lead who knows. They don’t know. Perhaps they gaze into a crystal ball to try to work out what young people will turn to next and therefore what they should believe next. And they actually think, delusionally, that pandering to fashion will attract people to Christian churches.

Meanwhile, Brother Muhammad of the religious opposition, at the Al Madina Dawah Centre in Bankstown in southwest Sydney, is reportedly calling for a Muslim army to defend Islam and fight against the West. (The Australian, December 18.) Let me guess, he doesn’t believe that the Koran is outdated. He doesn’t believe that his so-called Prophet of Allah should move with the times. Who’s going to win, do you think? Jeremy Greaves or Brother Muhammed?

Mosques are crowded, churches are emptying. To have any chance of turning the tide, Christianity needs biblically-based priests. Priests like Glenn Davies; Bishop of the breakaway Diocese of the Southern Cross and former Anglican Archbishop of Sydney. Woke Jeremys are not what is needed.

At this Christmastime, let’s remember that Christ came with a figurative sword (Matthew 10:34-36)  to separate wheat from chaff; good from evil; muscular churches from tepid churches. Of the latter: “I will spue thee out of my mouth.” (KJV, Revelation 3:15)