The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams [Pictured], met with and shared Communion with some lesbian and gay clergy. In reaction to this meeting, the following was reported:
"In a joint statement Dr Richard Turnbull, chairman of the Church of England Evangelical Council, and Dr Philip Giddings, convener of the evangelical group Anglican Mainstream, said: 'Every occasion for listening pastorally to people is to be welcomed. However, the Holy Communion is a fundamental symbol of fellowship and an expression of our unity in Christ.' To offer this to those in gay relationships was contrary to biblical teaching and to the teaching by the bishops themselves in their document Issues in Human Sexuality, they said."
[For the full article, see here.]
Further evidence of the bankrupt nature of professing Christian homophobes, and their distortion of the Bible, can be seen when its reported that representatives of the Church of England Evangelical Council and an "evangelical" group called "Anglican Mainstream" state that, "...the Holy Communion is a fundamental symbol of fellowship and an expression of our unity in Christ. To offer this to those in gay relationships was contrary to biblical teaching...."
Nonsense! Show us even one passage in the Bible that prohibits the sharing of Comnmunion with any Christian! There isn't any such passage!
Jesus accepted and welcomed everybody, save the smug, self-satisfied, self-righteous self-proclaimed "evangelicals" who distort the things of God, and seek to place yokes of bondage on others. The Bible never condemns "gay relationships," and these two so-called "evangelical" groups had to reduce themselves to distorting the Bible in order to support their false gospel of exclusion.
Everyone should take serious note of this not insignificant issue. Every time you hear a clergyperson say that the Bible condemns same-sex love, he or she is lying to you, and such clergy, and their followers, are merely imposing their preconceived prejudices on the Bible in order to lend support to the insupportable, and seek to "justify" their own sinful exclusion of others!
Again, they are lying to you! There is absolutely nothing in the Bible that condemns same-sex love! And to indicate their level of desperation in "making their case," representatives of these two groups, and all other homophobic groups within the institutional Church, see fit to downright distort the Bible, falsely claiming that it supports their ungodly stance on same-sex love!
By their distortion of the Bible, the knot of their prejudices can be seen to be slowly but surely unravelling, just as is the Anglican Communion itself!
And what an ironic indictment of the bankrupt nature of the Anglican communion (and most of the institutional Church), if the issue of same-sex love is the cause for its splintering apart!
2 comments:
Yes, Jerry...yes, yes, yes! This is no small thing, and seems to me to be just another application of the unbiblical "love the sinner, hate the sin" teaching that is poisoning us all.
Yes, Ally, it is poison, but it's only poison if we take these people seriously, view them as Christians, and attend their "churches" or support them in any way, or give them any credibility whatsoever. As you know, the basis biblical teaching is to love others and not judge others, and these modern day Pharisees do just what Jesus condemned!
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