what we are witnessing now is not only the beginning of the end of the Anglican Communion but indeed the end of something even larger: the phenomenon of Christianity Lite itself.
By this I mean the multifaceted institutional experiment, beginning but not ending with the Anglican Communion, of attempting to preserve Christianity while simultaneously jettisoning certain of its traditional teachings—specifically, those regarding sexual morality. Surveying the record to date of what has happened to the churches dedicated to this long-running modern religious experiment, a large historical question now appears: whether the various exercises in this specific kind of dissent from traditional teaching turn out to contain the seeds of their own destruction. The evidence—preliminary but already abundant—suggests that the answer is yes.
...Some time after reading this article, I listened to a CA Live show entitled, "The Perils of Gay Parenting" (01/27/10). One of the knocks that progressives make on orthodox believers is that they aren't living in the real world; that they aren't in the trenches working with people who struggle with real issues like same-sex attraction. Listen to this clip and see if you find that claim to be valid or not.
How did sex, of all subjects, come to occupy such a prominent place in the division of Christendom? In a sense, the potential was always there. From the first believers on up, the stern stuff of the Christian moral code has been cause for commentary—to say nothing of complaint. “Not all men can receive this saying,” the disciples are told when Jesus puts divorce off limits. Observers throughout history, Christian or not, have agreed: that particular moral teaching and its corollaries are hard indeed. From pagan Rome two thousand years ago to secular Western Europe today, the Church’s rules about sex have amounted to saying no, no, and no to things about which non-Christians have gotten to say yes or why not.
Even so, there is no denying that the traditional rules do seem more problematic now than ever before. Widespread abortion, ubiquitous pornography, diminished social opprobrium, and above all easy and effective contraception: All have divided recreation from procreation as never before in history. They have also been the driving force behind the embrace of Christianity Lite itself. After all, many would say, hasn’t this explosion of sexual expression made what was once a difficult moral code practically an impossible one? Shouldn’t the proper Christian response be one of mercy, rather than censure—including a merciful rewriting of the moral rules in these particularly difficult times?
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