The Revisionist Question

I would like to thank everyone who's shown such support over the past few days, and especially those who've shared their thoughts and feelings, posted comments, written their own articles, here, at the Inclusive Church forum, and in many other places where people are coming together.

I went to Calvary Episcopal Church yesterday morning, and was very grateful to be welcomed by a cheerful group of folk who are taking things in their stride with quiet courage and great good humour. Everybody was interested in finding out about my work, interests, reasons for moving to Pittsburgh (and of course, my accent!), and in describing the neighbourhoods where they work, what motivates them, and reasons why they like the community at Calvary.

Local terminology: the Episcopalians who think we should evolve with the rest of civilisation are referred to as "Revisionists". Like "Christian" and "Protestant", this originated as a term of abuse from other communities, and now arouses some mirth and popularity amonst those so named. Broadly speaking, "Revisionist" is something of a compliment to people who believe, for example, that whether or not you find evidence for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq should affect your a priori assumption of whether such weapons are there or not.

There is also a very good bookshop at Calvary - lots of works from the Church Fathers to the present day, much that goes before, and many broader topics covered. So all in all, I was lucky - I found a beacon of light when I badly needed one, went looking for companions and found some. Not all have fared so well over recent days - there are a few of us talking on a forum at the Inclusive Church network and many are feeling very much alone, on both sides of the geographical divide-and-conquer split that our Primates are trying to impose upon us. Please do pray for guidance for us, and please please please, if you're unhappy about the category in which you've beeen lumped then come out and say so. I don't know if there should be a more formal way of doing this, whether a petition or a day of prayer needs to be organized, but somehow we need to make the message ring loud and clear that we are still in communion with one another and we mean to remain so.

In terms of how we should make our voices heard - I do have one strong suggestion, that I raised in my posting the other day (The Anglican Schism), and though I was clearly ranting in anger on that day, there is some sense in the proposal which I will expand more clearly here.

One of the problems, as I see it, is that the cartoon conversation too often goes:
Conservative: Leviticus 18:22 says being gay is bad.
Liberal: Well, it's not necessarily that simple.
Conservative: Yes it is. I just believe the Bible and it's perfectly clear.
Liberal: Well, as I said it's really not that ... I mean, you should really consider ... oh dear oh dear, this is awful ...

I want to take this conversation one simple step further by asking what else should be considered in this debate.

The Revisionist Question

The Bible says that some things are bad. These include
1. Trimming your beard. (Lev. 19:27)
2. Two men sleeping together. (Lev. 18:22)
3. Failing to care for those in need. (Matt. 26:40)
4. Killing other people. (Ex. 20:13)

Most Christians agree that nobody should be thrown out of the church for trimming their beard. Most Christians also believe that it's vital to care for those in need. Yet both of these are commandments in scripture. On what basis are these commandments distinguished?

For a Revisionist, this is an easy question. They are distinguished by basic moral differences. You can draw inspiration for such moral distinctions from many philosopihical and religious works - many of which are really formalisations of experience and common sense. If you suddenly see one guy about to kill someone and another guy about to trim his beard, you don't need any books to tell you which one you should try to prevent.

If your only basis is scripture, then you deplore the idea of picking and choosing between parts of scripture, and you deplore the idea of anyone saying that some parts of scripture are more important than others. After all, such a person is just basing their judgement of importance upon intuition, reason, the morality of the times, and all of those human things that are fallible compared to the Word of God. So how do you proceed?

In practice, I know that many people who call themselves fundamentalists have no problem with beard-trimming. To find a regime that really claimed that beard-trimming is a crime because scripture says it's a crime, you have to look to someone like the Taleban. And I've met many good fundamentalists who are nothing like the Taleban. So what's the answer? If the only allowable input is from scripture, and you have to follow the whole of scripture, how do you tell the moral difference between killing someone and trimming your beard?