Williams, Heresy, and the Media

It seems that the Telegraph article on the Anglican Archbishop Rowan Williams is the to story on every blog I see.

Here is my take: I have read the article and the interview transcript and Archbishop Williams' comments were clearly taken out of context. I am not saying that he did not say things that are heinous and clearly against Christian belief. Strangely, enough the media is taking perfectly acceptable statements and making them outrageous and ignoring the outrageous statements.

Below I will analyze the article with the transcript.
Article - Italics
Transcript - Bold
My comments - Red

The Archbishop of Canterbury said yesterday that the Christmas story of the Three Wise Men was nothing but a 'legend'.

Dr Rowan Williams has claimed there was little evidence that the Magi even existed and there was certainly nothing to prove there were three of them or that they were kings

SM And the wise men with the gold, frankincense, and Myrrh - with one of the wise men normally being black and the other two being white, for some reason?

ABC Well Matthew's gospel doesn't tell us that there were three of them, doesn't tell us they were kings, doesn't tell us where they came from, it says they're astrologers, wise men, priests from somewhere outside the Roman Empire. That's all we're really told so, yes, 'the three kings with the one from Africa' - that's legend; it works quite well as legend.

SM But would they have been there?

ABC Not with the shepherds, they wouldn't. So if you've got shepherds on one side and three kings on the other, there's a bit of conflation going on.

As you can see he never said that the Magi didn't exist. He merely said that there is no proof that there were three or what race they were or where they were from. The fact is that the Scriptures only way they were from the east and that they brought gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Everything else is tradition and legend which may or may not be true.

As for the shepherds and the magi being there together, there is nothing the Scriptures to tell us that they were there together. In fact, there is much in the Scriptures which can lead us to believe that they magi came much later. In fact, there is no proof in the Scriptures that Jesus was even still in Bethlehem when the magi came. The Gospel of Matthew even says that they found Jesus and Mary in a house, not in a stable. The shepherds appear the the Gospel of Luke and do arrive at a stable.

Yes, it is possible that the events occured simultaneously, but on this count I have to agree with the Archbishop.

Also, here is the quote that was used in the article:

Dr Williams said: "Matthew's gospel says they are astrologers, wise men, priests from somewhere outside the Roman Empire, that's all we're really told. It works quite well as legend."

Again, taken out of context. He wasn't saying that the magi were legend, but that the way we imagine them is legend.

The Archbishop went on to dispel other details of the Christmas story, adding that there were probably no asses or oxen in the stable.

SM So we're panning out now'; shepherds? They're with their sheep and the oxes and asses?

ABC Pass on the oxes and asses; they don't figure very strongly in the gospels, so I can live without the ox and asses.

Well, oxen and donkeys aren't mentioned in the Scriptures. They entered the story because we assume the stable was being used to house animals. I doubt the shepherds brought them because we all know that shepherds keep sheep, not cattle.

He argued that Christmas cards which showed the Virgin Mary cradling the baby Jesus, flanked by shepherds and wise men, were misleading. As for the scenes that depicted snow falling in Bethlehem, the Archbishop said the chance of this was "very unlikely".

In a final blow to the traditional nativity story, Dr Williams concluded that Jesus was probably not born in December at all. He said: "Christmas was when it was because it fitted well with the winter festival."

SM And pulling back further - snow on the ground?

ABC Very unlikely I think; it can be pretty damn cold in Bethlehem at this time of the year, but we don't know that it was this time of year because again the Gospels don't tell us what time of year it was; Christmas is the time it is because it fitted very well with the winter festival.

Misleading or not it doesn't really make a difference. Bethlehem doesn't really get snow. No, there wouldn't have been snow on the ground. That is a European invention. As for when Jesus was actually born, we have no clue. The truth is that it doesn't really matter. If we are focused on celebrating his birth on the exact day, we are missing the point of the celebration.

Here is more of the transcripts that didn't make the article.

SM It comes round every year that we're not being Christian enough or people don't know where Bethlehem is, people have never heard of Mary and so on, so this is a sort of an almost a tradition of Christmas, isn't it really. But I wonder, if people have got a traditional religious Christmas card in front of them, I just want to go through it, Archbishop, to find out how much of it you think is true and crucial to the believing in Christmas. So start with … the baby Jesus in a manger; historically and factually true?

ABC I should think so; the Gospel tells us he was born outside the main house, probably because it was overcrowded because it was pilgrimage time or census time; whatever; yes; he's born in poor circumstances, slightly out of the ordinary.

Well, he got that part right.

SM The Virgin Mary next door to him?

ABC We know his mother's name was Mary, that's one of the things all the gospels agree about, and the two gospels that tell the story have the story of the virgin birth and that's something I'm committed to as part of what I've inherited.

SM You were a prominent part of a Spectator survey in the current issue which headlined' Do you believe in the virgin birth?' there are some people in this survey who would say they were Christian who don't have a problem if you don't believe in the Virgin birth;' how important it is it to believe in that bit?

ABC I don't want to set it as a kind of hurdle that people have to get over before they, you know, be signed up;, but I think quite a few people that as time goes on, they get a sense, a deeper sense of what the virgin birth is about. I would say that of myself. About thirty years ago I might have said I wasn't too fussed about it - now I see it much more as dovetailing with the rest of what I believe about the story and yes.

Ok, he gets off track here. The Virgin birth is one of the few things about the birth of Christ that is confirmed by Scripture. It is important because it proves the parentage of Jesus. Jesus is the Son of God, not the son of Joseph or any other man. Belief in the Virgin Birth is essential.

SM Christopher Hitchens and many others make the point that isn't the translation for young woman rather than virgin? Does it have to be seen as virgin; might it be a mistranslation?

ABC It is… well, what's happening there one of the gospels quotes a prophecy that a virgin will conceive a child. Now the original Hebrew doesn't have the word virgin, it's just a young woman, but that's the prophecy that's quoted from the Old Testament in support of the story which is, in any case, about a birth without a human father, so it's not that it rests on mistranslation; St Matthew's gone to his Greek version of the bible and said "Oh, 'virgin'; sounds like the story I know," and put it in.

No, that is not what the Scriptures say. When the angel Gabriel visits Mary she clearly states that she is a virgin.

SM So you've got the Virgin Mary, Jesus: Joseph?

ABC Joseph, yes, again, the Gospels are pretty consistent that that's his father's name;

Ok, we are back on track again.

SM Just as a side issue on the kings and the wise bit; do you have a problem with astrologers being seen as wise men; there'd be many people in your church who would think, actually, astrology is bunk and should be exposed as bunk and the idea of saying that they are wise is somewhat farcical.?

ABC Well I 'm inclined to agree that astrology is bunk but you're dealing there with a world in which people watched the stars in order to get a sort of heads up on significant matters and astrologers were quite a growth industry; people who were respected and had a kind of professional technical skill and were respected as such., the thing here if course is what's the skill about? Well it's all bringing them to Jesus; it's not about fortune telling or telling the future, it's about a skill of watching the universe which leads them inexorably towards this event, so I don't think it's a justification of astrology.

Again, he does very well here. Although we do not believe in astrology and the Jewish people were not supposed to consult diviners, they often did so anyway. The Romans were heavily involved in astrology and divination. Yes, astrologers were considered wise men.

SM So if we're pulling back even further then, is there a star above the place where the child is?

ABC Don't know; I mean Matthew talks about the star rising, about the star standing still; we know stars don't behave quite like that, that the wise men should have seen something which triggered a recognition of something significant was going on; some constellation, there are various scientific theories about what it might have been at around that time and they followed that trek; that makes sense to me.

Maybe it was a star, maybe it was something else that looked like a star. Maybe it was a giant flying candle. Maybe it was an angel. Maybe it was something else. My question is: "so what?" There was something in the sky that lead the way. That alone makes it miraculous. As for stars not behaving that way, if the fact that stars don't behave that way causes us to not believe it was a star what will happen to our faith when we ponder the Virgin Birth, the miracles of Christ, not to mention the Ressurection, Ascension, and Pentecost. Let's look at all the things that don't work that way: babies are not concieved without intercourse, the sick are not instantly healed, dead people don't come spontaneously back to life, people don't float up to heaven, tongues of fire don't come into houses and rest upon people's heads. Seriously, if you can't believe that a star led the magi to Jesus, what can you believe.

I am so glad that archbishop scruffy isn't Catholic.

The Americanizing of Faith

The last time I posted from one of Fr. Stokes' articles he was bemoaning the decline of funeral homily. Now he is writing about the decline of the Episcopalian/Anglican Church.

For those unfamiliar with Fr. David L. Stokes, he is a former Episcopalian priest, who converted to Catholicism and was ordained to the Catholic priesthood. He teaches theology at Providence College and writes an occasional column for the Providence Journal. As I learned on my first day as his student, Fr. Stokes pulls no punches. He tells it like it is, and if you don't like it, tough luck!

This particular article is from October 29th. I had wanted to post it weeks, ago but you know what happens when something is put on the back burner.

In this article, Fr. Stokes argues that the Episcopal Church has much deeper problems than same-sex marriage and gay bishops. The emphases are mine.

...But Robinson’s election, important as it is in this drama, is really only secondary to the woes besetting the Episcopal Church — and, indeed, Anglicanism world-wide. To couch it in theological language, we may call Robinson the efficient cause of Anglicanism’s fracturing. But he is not the formal cause. Strange as it sounds, the formal cause is nothing less than the demise of the British Empire and with it the ineluctable evaporation of a definite British ethos.

In 1559, Queen Elizabeth I, much more a practitioner of real-politic than her father Henry VIII, dealt with feuding Christian factions by encompassing them within the same state church. Puritans and Catholics, “high” churchman and “low,” woke up one morning to find themselves beneath the same tent. That didn’t mean disputes ceased. The English Civil War (1642-1651) attests to how bloody theological contentions could turn. Still, by the late 17th Century, with a common prayer book and the King James Bible, the lineaments of Anglicanism had emerged — much more a cultural ethos than a confessional church such as existed amongst the Lutherans and Calvinists on the continent.

Elizabeth’s actions had another result. In suspending theological squabbles, she inadvertently suspended corporate theological reflection. For over 400 years the Anglican ethos remained pretty much a late medieval view of God and the human person, suspended in linguistic amber of dazzling beauty. Thus “protestant” and “catholic,” Platonist and even the odd agnostic all found themselves harmonizing after a fashion in the same choir.

What kept this ethos from evaporating like mist? Not the Archbishop of Canterbury. (He has never held authority analogous to the pope.) Nor the creedal statements of Anglicanism. (Like a wax nose these have always been shaped pretty much by whoever was doing the interpreting.)

What grounded this Anglican ethos was the very English culture from which it arose. For example, two Anglicans may, and did, vehemently disagree on a biblical text’s meaning, but they both shared a common culture that took the Bible as normative. Their differences became blended into the soil they share. With the significant exception of nonconformists, to be an Englishman was to be an Anglican, to be an Anglican was to be English. Cultural stability ensured theological consensus.

[...]

For anyone brought up in the mid-20th Century, the Episcopal Church still radiated certain Englishness. We resonated to the rhythm of the old prayer book, the sonorities of T. S. Eliot and the urbanity of W. H. Auden. Ours was the church of C.S.Lewis, Dorothy Sayers, and Vaughn Williams. Those mid-century decades possessed a spirituality of informed and stylish moderation.

Even then, though, had we been more attentive, we would have heard a distinctly nostalgic, even elegiac, tone in all this. But few of us are ever explicitly aware of the under-currents of real change in our lives. It’s not that the Episcopal Church scrapped the old prayer book, nor was it somehow infiltrated by dastardly liberals. Simply, it underwent what happened to most Protestant traditions imported to these shores: As the English ethos slowly dissipated, the Episcopal Church was finally being transformed into an American denomination.

What does this mean? To use the most glaring example: Where once heterosexual marriage was integral to the social and civic ecology of America, it is no longer. And the spiritual ecology of American denominations cannot but adapt accordingly, if they are to be credible. American culture determines the agenda for American denominationalism.

[...]

...I am certainly not ringing the death knell of the Episcopal Church. Indeed, when these disputes are finally settled, I suspect the Episcopal Church may prove an attractive option to many Americans nostalgic for some sort of a spirituality.

[...]

American history’s answer has always been power-plays, cloaked in theological rhetoric — followed by yet another, new denomination. Let’s wait and see.

Read the complete article here.

I think that as American Catholics, we need to take Fr. Stokes words to heart and see that something quite similar is happening in the Catholic Church. Have we moved from the Roman Catholic Church to the American Catholic Church? When we desire to assimilate into American culture, that is exactly what we are doing. I am a member of the Roman Catholic Church. There was a time where Catholics wouldn't dare to eat meat on Fridays, now Catholics don't give it a second thought to eat meat on any Friday, even during Lent. I hear Catholics say that they don't want to stand out or do anything which will reveal their faith. We are to be signs of contradiction, not signs of assimilation. So what if someone looks at us funny when we don't go along with the rest of society. Notice how well Christ blended in?

Robinson Risks Tax Status?

Remember when Bishop Tobin from Providence spoke out against Rudy Guiliani? Well, Bishop Gene Robinson, yes, the famous gay Episcopalian bishop, is endorsing Barack Obama.

From WMUR:

Bishop Gene Robinson, the first openly gay Episcopal bishop, announced Thursday that he is endorsing Barack Obama for president.

Robinson said that he chose Obama because of his faith and background in civil rights.

"Barack Obama sees beyond the partisanship and hopelessness that have dominated in recent years, and the movement he's building is bringing vital new energy and optimism into our democratic process," Robinson said.

We all know about the separation of Church and State outrage over Bishop Tobin's comments. What will happen now? Will the tax exempt status of his diocese be challenged? I doubt it. Hmmm...double standard anyone?

What Is She Thinking?

Or more accurately...is she thinking?
My professor mentioned this article in class this morning. The good father is in disbelief that anyone could use this sort of thought process. My thoughts are in red. My professor equated this with hinotheism, but I don't think that defines it well enough.

From the Seattle Times:

Shortly after noon on Fridays, the Rev. Ann Holmes Redding ties on a black headscarf, preparing to pray with her Muslim group on First Hill.

On Sunday mornings, Redding puts on the white collar of an Episcopal priest.
She does both, she says, because she's Christian and Muslim. Sure she is. I hate to break it to her, but she is neither Christian nor Muslim.

Redding, who until recently was director of faith formation at St. Mark's Episcopal Cathedral, has been a priest for more than 20 years. Now she's ready to tell people that, for the last 15 months, she's also been a Muslim — drawn to the faith after an introduction to Islamic prayers left her profoundly moved.

Her announcement has provoked surprise and bewilderment in many, raising an obvious question: How can someone be both a Christian and a Muslim?

[...]

"There are tenets of the faiths that are very, very different," said Kurt Fredrickson, director of the doctor of ministry program at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif. "The most basic would be: What do you do with Jesus?" Right on!

Christianity has historically regarded Jesus as the son of God and God incarnate, both fully human and fully divine. Muslims, though they regard Jesus as a great prophet, do not see him as divine and do not consider him the son of God.

"I don't think it's possible" to be both, Fredrickson said, just like "you can't be a Republican and a Democrat."

Redding, who will begin teaching the New Testament as a visiting assistant professor at Seattle University this fall, has a different analogy: "I am both Muslim and Christian, just like I'm both an American of African descent and a woman. I'm 100 percent both." You can keep telling yourself that, but it doesn't make it true. The difference is it that your race and your gender do not contradict one another.

[...]

"It wasn't about intellect," she said. "All I know is the calling of my heart to Islam was very much something about my identity and who I am supposed to be.
"I could not not be a Muslim." And you are still not Muslim. You aren't Christian either.

[...]

As much as she loves her church, she has always challenged it. She calls Christianity the "world religion of privilege." She has never believed in original sin. And for years she struggled with the nature of Jesus' divinity. So you have always been a heretic. Maybe you are more Muslim than Christian, because you definately aren't Christian if you don't believe in the divinity of Jesus.

[...]

Ironically, it was at St. Mark's that she first became drawn to Islam.
In fall 2005, a local Muslim leader gave a talk at the cathedral, then prayed before those attending. Redding was moved. As he dropped to his knees and stretched forward against the floor, it seemed to her that his whole body was involved in surrendering to God.

Then in the spring, at a St. Mark's interfaith class, another Muslim leader taught a chanted prayer and led a meditation on opening one's heart. The chanting appealed to the singer in Redding; the meditation spoke to her heart. She began saying the prayer daily. One more reason why churches shouldn't introduce practices of other faiths...like yoga and reiki.

[...]

She believes the Trinity is an idea about God and cannot be taken literally.
She does not believe Jesus and God are the same, but rather that God is more than Jesus. HERESY!

She believes Jesus is the son of God insofar as all humans are the children of God, and that Jesus is divine, just as all humans are divine — because God dwells in all humans. More Heresy! And you calls yourself Christian!

What makes Jesus unique, she believes, is that out of all humans, he most embodied being filled with God and identifying completely with God's will.

She does believe that Jesus died on the cross and was resurrected, and acknowledges those beliefs conflict with the teachings of the Quran. "That's something I'll find a challenge the rest of my life," she said. Not only do Christians consider her a heretic, but Muslims do too! Let me guess, she is going to start her own religion. She can call it Muslims for Jesus.

She considers Jesus her savior. But the redeemer must have equity with God. If Jesus isn't God he can't be the Savior. At times of despair, because she knows Jesus suffered and overcame suffering, "he has connected me with God," she said.
That's not to say she couldn't develop as deep a relationship with Mohammed. "I'm still getting to know him," she said.

[...]

Redding knows there are many Christians and Muslims who will not accept her as both. No kidding!

"I don't care," she says. "They can't take away my baptism." And as she understands it, once she's made her profession of faith to become a Muslim, no one can say she isn't that, either. Nope, no one can take away her baptism, but she has already rejected it. She was baptized in the name of the Trinity...something she doesn't believe in.

While she doesn't rule out that one day she may choose one or the other, it's more likely "that I'm going to be 100 percent Christian and 100 percent Muslim when I die." That is a stretch because right now she is 0 percent of both.

[...]

"For me, that symbolizes who I am," Redding said. "I look through Jesus and I see Allah." Oh my! No comment.

Read the complete article here.

Bishop Wolf To Marry

Thankfully, SHE isn't Catholic. Unfortunately, in the article she is quoted as saying on this occasion "being a bride is more important than being a bishop".

From the Providence Journal:

The Right Rev. Geralyn Wolf, who next month marks her 11th anniversary as Rhode Island’s Episcopal bishop, is getting married.

The bishop says that until she met her husband-to-be, Thomas Charles Bair Jr., at a visit last summer to St. John’s Parish, in Newport, she assumed she would always remain single.

But that changed when Bair, who runs his own financial-services company in New Paltz, N.Y., and who had come to help the Newport parish with its stewardship campaign, saw her there and invited her out for lunch.

Bishop Wolf, who is 59, says that toward the end of August, “I began to feel I had met a very special man, and he felt he met a special woman.”

It wasn’t until the end of October that the two became increasingly certain that they wanted to marry, and they kept the news from close friends and family members until recently. A letter to diocesan clergy was mailed Friday.

“My family is rejoicing and shocked at the same time,” the bishop said Thursday.
Although it is not common for a sitting Episcopal bishop to get married while heading a diocese, it is not unprecedented. Bishop Wolf noted that Bishop Carolyn Irish, the Episcopal bishop of Utah, married an old friend a few years ago. Bishop Wolf and her fiancé are planning to be wed at the Cathedral of St. John, Providence, on April 21, with the U.S. Episcopal Church’s former presiding bishop, Frank Griswold, officiating.
To reserve the cathedral for that day without tipping their hand, Bair requested use of the cathedral for that date for the purpose of holding a retreat. Staff members in on the secret developed the practice of referring to Bair not as the bishop’s fiancé, but as the “retreat director.”

Bishop Wolf acknowledged that even she was surprised by how it all developed.
“I’ve never had any suitors. When I went out with him, I told him it was my first date in 11 or 12 years. Nothing before was serious. I had always assumed I would remain single.”

(...)

Bair is a member of his parish vestry in New Paltz.
The marriage will be the second for Bair, who divorced 10 years ago and has two sons, ages 15 and 19. Bishop Wolf said that because of the divorce, they will need to get permission to marry from the Episcopal bishop of New York. They have already spoken at length about their plans with Bishop Griswold, who now lives in Philadelphia, and with the U.S. Episcopal Church’s new presiding bishop, Katherine Jefferts-Schori.

Bishop Wolf said that by the time of the wedding, she and Bair will have received all the premarital counseling required by the church and “some more.”

Bishop Wolf said she hasn’t picked out a wedding dress as yet but plans on wearing a white A-line gown rather than her usual Episcopal garb.
“I think that on this one day, being a bride is more important than being a bishop,” she said. (...)

Read the complete article here.