Monday, June 15, 2009

Proclamation not Protection:


"If we keep up this legalistic, doctrinal attitude, nothing will be possible in TEC -and we will head toward something much worse than financial bankruptcy - spiritual bankruptcy .

If we keep arguing about what is right in these terms we only delay our demise.

People who think they are protecting the faith are only delaying the death of the body they think they are protecting....

....We need proclamations folks - not protection.

We need adventurous souls not absolutely (there are none anyway) correct ones.

To look carefully means we have to exercise judgment - not keep citing Bible or creed as a way of avoiding judgments ourselves.

Knowledge about history, theology, and geography is only the beginning of wisdom.

It is the wisdom of the holy community we seek and that means we have to have people thinking about the future as well as trying to protect what they presume to be the correctness of the past.

Because we are all human we are going to be in a mess if we believe there is an absolute correctness. There ain't no such thing. It only is approximate at best!"

Walter Cameron Righter
June 15, 2009
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3 comments:

  1. Kay & SarahMon Jun 15, 08:01:00 PM

    I am in TOTAL agreement!

    ReplyDelete
  2. HiramMon Jun 15, 10:39:00 PM

    I've had an idea for a while that many in the Episcopal Church have had the operating assumption that because we do not (and admittedly cannot) understand everything, we then free to posit almost anything as being true. Because of this assumption, we have candidates for bishop who would not have even been admitted to the catechumenate in the first centuries of the Church.

    Oddly enough, however, while it is open season on historic Christology and soteriology, there are some things that are beyond doubt, such as the propriety of ordaining women and the goodness of same-sex sexual relationships. Since we cannot know things for sure, I do not know where this certitude came from, but it is certainly there.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Muthah+Tue Jun 16, 01:55:00 PM

    +Walter is one of those good ole sage old time liberals whose timelessness makes for something new. If only our Church had the temerity to listen to the sage voices of some of the guys who have seen the church's pendelum swing and still love the Church enough to speak the truth.

    ReplyDelete

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