Anglican Mainstream

H.G. Wells could write about The War of the Worlds, in which Martians and earthlings battled for supremacy. But the real battles today really come down to a war of worldviews. Competing worldviews and ideologies are battling it out, and those which prevail will determine the course of history.

By Bruce Atkinson, Ph.D. 
Special to virtueonline

"Things are getting worse very quickly now. The list of what we are required to approve is growing ever longer. Consider just the domain of sexual practice. First we were to approve sex before marriage, then without marriage, now against marriage. First with one, then with a series, now with a crowd. First with the other sex, then with the same. First between adults, then between children, then between adults and children. The last item has not been added yet, but will be soon: you can tell from the change in language, just as you can tell the approach of winter from the change in the color of leaves.

As any sin passes through its stages from temptation, to toleration, to approval, its name is first euphemized, then avoided, then forgotten. A colleague tells me that some of his fellow legal scholars call child molestation "intergenerational intimacy": that's euphemism. A good-hearted editor tried to talk me out of using the term "sodomy": that's avoidance. My students don't know the word "fornication" at all: that's forgetfulness." — From J. Budziszewski, "The Revenge of Conscience," First Things, June/July, 1998

The above quote by Budziszewski focuses on moral regression in a culture, especially as we observe it in the media. In his letter to the Romans (1:18-2:16), the Apostle Paul deals with individual moral regression. As outlined here, the process of regression is pretty much the same in individuals and the culture, and as we all know, cultural moral regression requires the regression of individuals to make it happen.

Read the whole article

By Wesley J Smith, First Things

I believe that we are in the midst of an attempted coup de culture that seeks to supplant Judeo/Christian moral philosophy (equality of life ethic, human exceptionalism), that has long been the backbone of the West’s freedoms, with a society based on anti human exceptionalist utilitarianism (quality of life ethic), hedonism (indulge every impulse) and scientism/radical environmentalism (the new religion).  I generally focus on the first and third of these here at SHS, but The Age’s opinion page had an interesting piece that brought the dangers of unleashed hedonism to the fore on the sexual frontier.

Grindr (pronounced “grinder”) is a free downloadable iPhone app which, it promises, will help you “Find gay, bi, curious guys for free near you!” Grindr harnesses GPS, allowing you to establish who else in your direct vicinity is also using Grindr. It shows you — on a gridded display — who these men are and what they look like; it will tell you how far away from you they are standing; and it will allow you to “chat” them, if they take your fancy.

Issued by St Ebbe’s Church, Oxford and the Christian Legal Centre

Press Release  30 June 2010

AN OXFORD congregation has lost its appeal at Oxford Magistrates today to overturn the variation of a licence to run a lap dancing club just 50 yards from their church.  The Revd Vaughan Roberts, Rector of St Ebbe’s Church, lodged an appeal after Oxford Council’s Licensing Committee granted the variation on December 10, 2009, to Greene King to run Thirst Lodge in Pennyfarthing Place, off St Ebbe’s Street.
 
The Revd Vaughan Roberts, said: “We still feel that granting a variation of the licence to permit lap dancing at this sort of establishment was totally inappropriate because of its proximity to the church and because these types of clubs can make women feel vulnerable—there are hundreds of young female students who live nearby and women who park their cars in the nearby Westgate Car Park. We wouldn’t be keen to see such a club anywhere because lap-dancing degrades God’s gift of sex.”

Mr Roberts’s appeal included the fact that hundreds of children took part in activities at the church every week, and that the licensing authority would never have granted such a licence for a club to be opened next to a school, so why would it allow a club to be opened next to a church which has as many children and young people?

A petition signed by 800 people and several hundred letters were received by the Court prior to the hearing. Mr Roberts told the Court a further concern was the site of the club, which he described as “adjacent to one of the gateways into the university city.”

 He added: “We are obviously disappointed about the decision because it doesn’t fit with the council’s intention to regenerate this area of the city and doesn’t take into account that women should be able to feel as safe as possible when they are out at night. It also doesn’t seem to fit with the views of many Oxford residents and visitors who were so keen to express their support for the appeal when they became aware that the club was opening.

Read the rest of this entry »

H/T:  Sarah @ StandFirm

By Stephen F. Noll

The texts below are the most important indicators of a consistent biblical teaching on marriage, divorce, and remarriage. The texts are first presented with exegetical comments and then some conclusions are drawn.

The foundation of marriage in creation

Genesis 2:24: Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh.

Comment: God ordains marriage as the union of man and woman in the flesh. The "one flesh" would refer both to sexual intercourse and indirectly to the procreation of children as offspring of that union and the resulting family unit. The "union of heart and mind" is more implicit, although Song of Songs may be seen as commentary on this verse. Marriage is neither an ideal nor a sacrament but is a covenant. While the institution of marriage cannot be broken, individual covenants can be (cf. vows). Monogamy is implicit in creation and is made explicit by Jesus when marriage is seen as a type of the covenant between Christ and the Church.  Read here

From David Ould at Stand Firm:  Breaking up is hard to do……

…It is commonly acknowledged amongst Christians that God's intention for male-female relationships, if  they occur (not when, as anyone who reads 1 Cor. 7 should plainly see), is monogamy. But what is not so clearly understood these days is the non-equivalence which God has designed in that relationship. By "non-equivalence" I mean that God has intended that men and women should relate differently to one another in marriage…

Genesis 2:24 That is why a man leaves his father and mother and unites with his wife, and they become a new family.

The Hebrew somewhat under-translated here as "unites" is actually better rendered by the old KJV (and other more modern translations such as the NASB) as "cleaves". That is to say, the sense of the original is not so much a bilateral joining together but a unilateral "clinging" on the part of the man. The Bible's view of marriage, God's view, is that a man leaves his parents and attaches himself  to a woman. One woman. Till death do they part.

There is no such call placed upon the woman. Now, of course, that is not to say that wives are not called to love and be faithful to their husbands, nor that this is not a marriage of equals. But the overwhelming emphasis in the Scriptures is on husbandly love and cleaving/attachment to that one woman. If you think this is not the case then consider for a moment the number of examples you can think of where the Scriptures call husbands to love their wives.  Read here

The consequences of sperm donation by Father John Flynn, LC   H/T:  Kendall Harmon

ROME, JUNE 13, 2010 (Zenit.org).- The constant increase in artificial insemination and the use of sperm donors means there is a growing number of children who are in the dark about the identity of their biological father. A recent report looked into the implications of this for the lives of those who have now reached adulthood.

The Commission on Parenthood's Future released the study. Titled "My Daddy's Name is Donor: A New Study of Young Adults Conceived Through Sperm Donation," it was co-authored by Elizabeth Marquardt, Norval D. Glenn and Karen Clark….

To study the situation of adults conceived through sperm donation the authors surveyed more than a million households and then assembled a representative sample of 485 adults between the ages of 18 and 45 who said their mother used a sperm donor. They were compared with a group of 562 adults who were adopted as infants, and 563 adults raised by their biological parents.

"We learned that, on average, young adults conceived through sperm donation are hurting more, are more confused and feel more isolated from their families," the report stated.

No less than 65% of donor-conceived adults in the survey agreed with the statement: "My sperm donor is half of who I am." Read here

…But he [Peter Singer] has also been known for his outrageous views on bestiality. I have already had many people express their shock at what Singer advocated last night, but I have had to tell them that he has been pushing this position for years. Indeed, he was happy to go public with this a decade ago. For example, he had an article in Nerve online magazine in 2001 entitled “Heavy Petting”.

In it he wondered why in the world we have taboos against bestiality. You can read this incredible article for yourself (see link below). In it he waxes eloquent about the virtues of bestiality, going into great details about the joys of sex with horses, dogs, orang-utans and donkeys.

He said there, as he did again last night, that as long as the animal is not hurt or exploited, what is wrong with it? Is that it?  As long as the animal is happy, let’s go for it? And this guy is a world-renowned ethicist and philosopher. As a strident vegetarian, all that he is really doing here is telling us that it is OK to have sex with animals, as long as we don’t eat them afterwards.

So what he shared last night was nothing new. The amazing thing was that he was not booed off the show. This is incredible. A reputable prime-time debate program which allows some “intellectual” to tell us there is nothing wrong with bestiality. And most of the other panellists did not seem concerned at all.  Read Bill Muehlenberg here

Cohabitation: A Sensible Step Or a Destructive One? by Mike McManus  VirtueOnline
June 7, 2010
 

…Myths About Cohabitation

There are three widely prevalent myths about cohabitation that are unwisely causing couples to live together while unmarried.

Myth 1: Living together is a step towards marriage.

Actually, cohabitation is a step away from marriage. Evidence?

The number of couples cohabiting soared 13-fold from 523,000 in 1970 to 6.8 million in 2008. Yet the number of never-married adults tripled in those years from 21 million in 1970 to 63 million in 2008. No wonder the marriage rate plunged in half. Cohabitation has diverted tens of millions away from marriage. It seduced them with the notion that they could test the possibility of marriage without making a full commitment. But you can't practice permanence.   Read here
 

Gay marriage impacts marriage for all of us because it alters what has been the historic definition of marriage and family.  This redefinition is then enshrined in the social and political institutions which govern the lives of us all.  Unless one is a hermit living on an island, there is no getting away from its coercive influence. 

Gays have blazed the trail for others to follow. The latest sexual minority and 'orientation' to come out with a splash is polyamory. Polyamory simply means 'plural loves', and mostly involves those of non-binary bisexuality, but also those of heterosexual,  lesbian and gay 'orientations'. This is not polygamy, though gay marriage arguments were deployed by infamous North American polygamists, Winston Blackmore and Tom Green, in court.    

Gene Robinson recently drew attention to the 'other letters in the alphabet',  'so many other sexualities to be explored'. Perhaps more will realise that the LGBT needs to include a P now, and that is just the start. The logic is impeccable.   

For LGBT campaigners it is a tricky call.  If the full programme of this sexual revolution were known, it would put people right off.  The public has been sold this 'social justice' agenda on the basis that it was about the private goings-on of two consenting adults and that it would not impact them or their worlds; that it was really minimal tweaking of the system and that life would then return to normal. However, if people began to realise what was actually involved, they might get alarmed.  They  might discover that gay marriage came with some hidden and unexpected 'extras'.  

The more confused and disordered the sexual landscape becomes, and the more this confusion and disorder becomes enshrined in law and cultural mores, the more difficult it becomes for individuals, families and communities to achieve the kind of wholesome family life and community functioning which provides for all the needs of children.     

A right to live with the people we love": Polyfamilies file statements in Canada court case  9 June 2010

 The Canadian Polyamory Advocacy Association (CPAA) took a big step forward on Tuesday when five of its members, representing five polyfamilies living in what they consider to be "conjugal unions," filed affidavits with the court in British Columbia that will test the legality of Canada's 19th-century anti-polygamy law. Read the rest of this entry »

Charles M. Blow, "Gay? Whatever, Dude"   H/T:  Kevin Offner

Last week, while many of us were distracted by the oil belching forth from the gulf floor and the president’s ham-handed attempts to demonstrate that he was sufficiently engaged and enraged, Gallup released a stunning, and little noticed, report on Americans’ evolving views of homosexuality. Allow me to enlighten:

By Mary Kenny, Spectator

The first time I interviewed Mary Whitehouse was for the Evening Standard in 1965. She seemed to me a narrow-minded schoolmarm, and after our encounter I wrote a teenagerish attack on her. I was thrilled by the satire boom that had been launched by That Was The Week That Was, and I loved other shows that she opposed, such as Till Death Us Do Part.

In the event, Charles Wintour, then the Standard’s editor, spiked my article. ‘You haven’t understood the point about Mrs Whitehouse,’ he said. ‘She’s challenged the system. She has annoyed the hell out of the Director-General of the BBC, [Hugh Carleton Greene]. But she’s got a constituency behind her and she’s making an impact.’

Charles Wintour was a Roy Jenkins liberal who supported the social changes that so dismayed Mrs Whitehouse during the 1960s – the abolition of theatre censorship, the Abortion Act of 1967, the Sexual Offences Act of 1967 (decriminalising homosexuality), and the Divorce Act of 1969. Wintour in fact adored everything that the 1960s presaged. He sent me off to do to the first interview with Richard Neville, editor of the magazine Oz, who boasted that ‘the weapons of revolution are obscenity, blasphemy and drugs’. He was also excited by Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange (1962), which he serialised in the Evening Standard (Mary Whitehouse excoriated the novel –and the movie – for its gratuitous violence.)    Read here

Letter to The Telegraph from Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali

SIR – I was astonished to read (Comment, June 2) that Joan Bakewell is to present a programme on Mary Whitehouse today. It seems highly unfair that one of Mrs Whitehouse’s principal adversaries should be writing her epitaph.

Dame Joan writes disparagingly of Mrs Whitehouse’s Midlands provincialism but does not give any good reasons why her own metropolitan elitism should be preferred. In fact, a good case can be made for holding that it is the libertarianism of the chattering classes which has led to the broken Britain we see all around us.

Sex is, of course, a beautiful gift but there is no evidence at all that the “liberation” of sexual expression, to which Joan Bakewell refers, has had a beneficial effect. It has led to broken families, children without a parent (usually the father), hurt individuals and abandoned spouses, and high rates of teenage pregnancy. What we need is not more sex education but proper education about the value of stable relationships and, especially, about marriage and family.

Dame Joan allows that Mrs Whitehouse was right at least about the commercialisation of sex, but fails to see that this has been made possible by the kind of “liberation” of which she has been an important agent.

She says she does not share Mary Whitehouse’s answers. I don’t share hers and neither should the nation.

Rt Rev Michael Nazir-Ali
Chatham, Kent

By David Phillis, Church Society

We were saddened, but hardly surprised to hear Tom Butler, the former Bishop of Southwark, speaking this morning on Thought for the Day about how he and others have changed their minds on a variety of moral issues. It ought to be obvious to everyone that at the same time as so many in the churches have ‘changed their minds’ the Church of England, the US Episcopal Church to which Mr Butler alluded, and many other western churches have also declined numerically, spiritually and in their wider influence for good. It appears that despite the rhetoric many others have “changed their minds” and no longer see these Churches as offering anything to a broken world.

Many churches in the west have lost their way precisely because they and their leaders have changed their mind on important matters of morality and truth. Rather than accepting and living by the will of God revealed in the Bible they have preferred instead to be shaped by the whims of the culture around us. The consequences of this for the church, and for society, is dire. The collapse of the family with its particular impact on the lives of children, and the social and financial cost of sexual immorality are just two of the ways in which we are now reaping what we sow.  Read here

…Other data released last month showed the percentage of unwed mothers differs from race to race. While 28 percent of white women gave birth out of wedlock in 2007, nearly 72 percent of black women and more than 51 percent of Latinas did [emphasis added] …

While she and many other single mothers by choice can afford this option [IVF], David Popenoe worries about the example they're setting in a society where children still benefit most from married parents, he said.

Other women might look at these single mothers by choice and say, "'So many people are doing it, why shouldn't I just go ahead?'" said Popenoe, founder and co-director of the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University in New Jersey. "It's part of a slippery slope."  Read here

CEN  20 May   HUMAN RIGHTS campaigner Peter Tatchell has defended the decision by Greenbelt to ask him to speak at the festival, following criticism by Anglican Mainstream that this could be dangerous for vulnerable children. Mr Tatchell said: “The suggestion that my guest lecture at this year’s Greenbelt festival will leave children vulnerable to sexual abuse is an outrageous slur, wholly unbecoming a Christian.”   [Image:  Greenbelt 08, Stephen Sizer]

Dr Lisa Nolland, a consultant at Anglican Mainstream who made the recent criticism, claimed the Greenbelt organisers were irresponsible not to provide another speaker who could balance the impact of Mr Tatchell. She said: “Mr Tatchell articulates and advances an increasingly popular sexual smorgasbord ethic which includes a strong sexual liberation component.  Cohabitation, ‘open relationships’, promiscuity, the legal right to cruise (have sex in public places), and lowering the age of consent to 14 all appear to be legitimate and acceptable sexual options and views.” Read the rest of this entry »

By Rusty Wright, Assist News Service

Some university students are giving up casual sexual activity because they feel it’s not fulfilling.

Take, for instance, Vanderbilt University student Frannie Boyle. She told CNN that, in the past, she sometimes drank to excess before parties and hooked up with a stranger or acquaintance before the night was over.

"I saw it [hooking up] as a way to be recognized and get satisfaction," Boyle admits. But satisfaction eluded her. "I felt so empty then," she laments.

So she decided to kiss casual physical involvement goodbye.

(Intergenerational translator: “Hooking up,” an ambiguous term, refers to no-commitment sexual activity ranging from making out to intercourse.)

Kissing Casual Sex Goodbye

Criticism came. Some male friends shunned Boyle. "They probably weren't my friends anyway," she observes.

"I'm respecting myself," she affirms. "And I won't waste my time with some guy who doesn't care about me."

Boyle is in the minority, but she’s not alone. Of course, many students abstain from non-marital sex because of spiritual convictions. But nowadays, even nonreligious campus groups are promoting sexual self control and commitment. Read here

From The Christian Institute

By Wesley J Smith, First Things

Flemish doctors not only admit to killing patients who have not requested to be euthanized, but the levels of such terminations without request or consent are barely under the rate of legal voluntary euthanasia.  From the study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal (may have to manually download):

We found that, five years after the euthanasia law was enacted in Belgium, euthanasia and assisted suicide occurred in 2.0% of all deaths in Flanders during the study period period. They predominantly involved patients less than 80 years old, patients with cancer and patients dying at home…The use of life-ending drugs without an explicit request from the patient occurred in 1.8% of the deaths in Flanders during the study period. Most of these cases involved patients 80 years or older and occurred in hospital. In the majority of cases, the patient was not involved in the decision, primarily because of coma or dementia; however, relatives and other caregivers were often consulted. Considerations involving the relatives and needless prolongation of life were reasons indicated by physicians for reaching the decision.

By Albert Mohler

The ordination of Mary Glasspool as a bishop of the Episcopal Church on Sunday drives yet another wedge into the already fracturing Anglican Communion — and raises some of the most fundamental questions about the Church and sexual morality.

Bishop Glasspool, ordained as an auxiliary bishop of the Diocese of Los Angeles along with another woman, becomes the second openly-homosexual priest to be elected as an Episcopal bishop, and the first lesbian. As the Associated Press reported, "Seven years after the Episcopal Church caused an uproar by consecrating its first openly gay bishop, it has done the same thing again — only this time with a woman."

In 2003, the Episcopal Church set off an explosion in the Anglican Communion by consecrating V. Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire. Robinson became the first openly-homosexual bishop serving anywhere in the Anglican Communion, the world-wide fellowship of churches related to the Church of England. In response, the Anglican Communion sternly asked the American church to refrain from any further ordinations of homosexual bishops and from offering official blessing same-sex unions. This past summer, the Episcopal Church announced its decision to defy that request. Bishop Glasspool's ordination is the concrete demonstration of that defiance.

Read here