General Theology
Rescue from the South
by Clay Staggs
I ran across two interesting comments on National Review’s blog, The Corner. Here’s the first, by Mark Krikorian:
The head of the Episcopal Church, Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, is complaining about Nigerian Anglican bishops coming to Virginia this weekend to formally install the head of the conservative breakaway denomination in this country. Here's what she said: "Such action would violate the ancient customs of the church."
I kid you not. The female head of a church with a practicing homosexual bishop planning to "marry" his lover, a church that could accept into seminary the adulterous homosexual governor of New Jersey, a church that embraces splitting open babies' skulls and vacuuming their brains out, is complaining about violating ancient customs? Wow.
Then the follow up from Mark Steyn, one of my favorite writers in the commentary business today:
Mark, what’s interesting about the Episcopal breakaway faction in the US is the indestructible assumption of the Presiding Bishop and her colleagues that they are the mainstream and the inevitable progressive future, and that the Nigerian bishops are the fringe and the doomed reactionary past. On any Sunday morning, there are more Anglicans in the pews in Nigeria than in the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada combined. So much for head office.
If the Anglican Communion has a future, it won’t be thanks to Bishop Katharine Jefforts Schori and the predictably reductive preoccupations of her ministry.
There’s been a good bit of discussion on this blog recently about the state of modern Christendom. One undeniable fact is that, geographically, the center of gravity in the Christian world is shifting south. Isn’t it interesting that the very folks who were colonized and converted, are the ones to whom it is falling to salvage the wreckage of modern Western Christianity?
Posted by Clay Staggs at May 3, 2007 02:48 PM
This fits on a nice angle with Tim’s blog about Addie’s baptism. Humility is a rare commodity in American/Western European life. Even in their downward spiral, European cultures seem more cynical than humble, generally.
It is interesting that the descendants of those upon whose backs the early US was largely built may indeed be one of the few, and perhaps the best, beacon of true Christian light in the world.
Christianity always ‘plays better’ to people in abject need. As Tim was saying recently, unless or until we realize our need for a Savior, all of this (religious exercise, moralism, piety, etc.) is hollow. Our current comfort level and obsession with self sufficiency obstructs that realization. I’m not saying sell everything & cloister yourself, just that as loud and repetitive as our material culture is- we are easily distracted by, as the Bible says, ‘other lovers’. Many of us have rejected the promise of hope for the mirage of autonomy.
On a related note, we must, as Christians, do what we can to help with the various crises on the African continent. I believe it also behooves us to implore those in power to do whatever we can nationally to help eradicate disease and poverty as well. Many of these are our our family in Christ and all deserve dignity.
It seems there is a deeper South than the Deep South. I was talking to Jimmy Hopper the other day about how 16 year-old teenagers have cars, cell phones, laptops, and all the external signs of luxury. He said something like: “It’s no wonder it’s hard to get them involved in the church— they already have heaven.” I thought it was a great line, and I also think that it can be extrapolated to America’s position within Christianity, globally. Why would we want to be orthodox?… we have everything already. I think it is no coincidence that the Church is strongest where it is poorest and persecuted. At that point, belief has no apparent external advantage.
When those quotes (that you cited) are juxtaposed, it would seem that any person with common sense would see the ridiculous contrasts. It would seem that way. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
Fresh from reading a commentary about Flannery O’Connor and why her writing is so troublesome to Christians, even Reformed ones, because of it’s “dark” nature….what stood out to me most was the writer’s (Douglas Jones) insistance on the fact that grace, at heart, is dark…and that O’Connor’s work is full of grace. He said we want to think of grace in a warm, fuzzy, soft sense…like a warm blanket wrapped around us, but that true grace is usually at the least, uncomfortable, and often exactly what we would consider evil….like the cross. Those thoughts came to mind reading this post…thinking of how evil slavery was…how many dark things went on in terms of our relationship to Africa and it’s people…then to see, and be humbled by the fact, that in the Anglican fellowship it is the Africans who are holding up the true faith, the true beliefs of the historical church. Also thinking that hunger and need are evils through which, apparently, God ministers grace. Need drives us to Christ…not power or a full table for dinnner each night…not smug intellectualism…only need. Hard to stay humbled when life is too good. Once again, only by grace. And by the way…for what it’s worth, Stonewall Jackson, one of my personal heros, was a man whose life was “darkened” by many evils, but he insisted on teaching a Sunday School class for black Americans, most of whom were slaves, in his Episcopal church when he was teaching at VMI before the war. Among other things, they learned the catechism…old, historical, orthodox Christianity.