food4thought

GAFCON is the Global Anglican Futures Conference. You can find more information on their website.

But just to give you a quick heads up, here are the headlines.

The essential intent behind GAFCON is to plan for the future. It therefore has these goals

1. to provide an opportunity for fellowship, to continue to experience and proclaim the transforming love of Christ

2. to develop a renewed understanding of our identity as Anglican Christians within our current context

3. to prepare for an Anglican future in which the gospel is uncompromised and Christ centred mission a top priority

I’d have expected the first and I would imagine there are a few people who could do with some genuine gospel fellowship. I’m intrigued by the second because presuambly there’ll be discussion about the need for realignment within a theologically compromised Anglican Communion. Some might answer that this has always been the case but Mark Thompson’s paper makes a persuasive case for having entered a new time for decisive action. Read comments on that here. And I’m especially excited by the third because Anglicanism remains a brilliant boat to fish from as we seek to reach the nations with the gospel of Christ.

The key movers and shakers are some of the key African Archbishops like Peter Akinola and Henry Orombi, Archbishop Greg Venables of the Southern Cone, Archbishop Peter Jensen from Sydney and some of the exiled Diocesan Bishops from America and Canada. From the UK Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali and Bishop Wallace Benn are both involved in the leadership team.

There will be about 1000 people in attendance in Jerusalem. All will be there by invitation only. Of the 1000 invitees, 250 will be Bishops and the others will be wives, theologians, church planters and some of the next generation of leaders. A quarter of the Anglican Communion Bishops will be there and they’ll represent about three quarters of Global Anglicans. Let’s pray and let’s see what transpires.

GAFCON is the Global Anglican Futures conference which will take place in Jerusalem prior to the Lambeth Conference chaired by the Archbishop of Canterbury. Not everyone is going, to either of them. You’d expect that of GAFCON since it’s essentially a gathering of Evangelical Anglicans by invitation only. But everyone is supposed to be at Lambeth.

A recent paper by Dr Mark Thompson from Moore Theological College, Sydney Australia provides an explanation of what’s happened in World Anglicanism to bring us to the point where Evangelical Anglican Archbishops are refusing to attend. The paper can be found here.

In summary he explains that five new elements have caused Evangelical Anglicans to decide that decisive action needs to be taken.

1. Now it’s the Bishops who are attacking the Bible

Anglicanism may have grown accustomed to the academy throwing bricks at orthodox Christian teaching but you could always rely on the Bishops to hold the line. Not any more. Their job is to protect biblical truth and morality and some of them did it quite well. Not any more. In ever increasing numbers the Bishops are lining up with the revisionists to undermine the teaching of scripture and the doctrine of the 39 Articles.

2. The Gospel has become ‘anything goes’ rather than ‘anything can be forgiven’

The gospel is being redefined. The gospel call is now inclusion rather than faith and repentance. No one is to excluded from Christian fellowship and to do so is discrimanatory and a denial of love. This new liberal gospel is making huge inroads and becoming the touchstone for a new Anglican orthodoxy. In so doing its adherents are effectively eliminating the gospel of grace from the midst of our denomination.

3. The institution is trying to call heresy orthodoxy

The institution is trying to catch up with the revisionists and officially endorse the new teaching. The presenting issue is that of homosexual practice. No longer is it simply a few ‘off the wall’ heretical Bishops banging their own drum. Now the establishments wants to get in on the act and call sin righteousness.

4. They’re riding roughshod over the concerns of the faithful

The redefinition of the gospel, the denial of historical anglican doctrine and the appointment of revisionist Bishops with their liberalising agenda has happened despite the objections from the vast majority of world wide anglicans. The Bishops of North America and Canada have treated the principles concerns of the biblically faithful with blatant contempt. They have gone ahead despite warnings that they’d be tearing the Anglican Communion apart.

5. We’re now in state of open persecution of dissenters

Those who disagree with the revisionist position are now being persecuted, mainly through legal action. Even Jim Packer’s being taken to court. You’d be hard pressed to think of a more loyal servant of Anglicanism that the author of Knowing God. And now he’s got a legal case against him for holdig to the truth. It’s blatant punishment of those who dissent from the new view.

Conclusion

Evangelical Anglicans have always had an uneasy relationship with the establishment. But this is far worse. We’re talking about deliberate unrepentant institutionalised apostasy. Read Mark Thompson’s paper and pray for the Archbishops and Bishops going to GAFCON. It’s only in the hands of these men that Global Anglicanism of the evangelical kind has any sort of future.

I didn’t see this one coming. The issue came straight out of left field. I hadn’t anticipated that by sending our kids off to the local primary school we’d have to deal with the issue of yoga.

I confess that my initial thoughts weren’t of a spiritual nature. They were physical. What are they thinking? What’s happening to our education system? We’re surprised that we’re producing obese computer game playing lard buckets and yet we’ve rejected physical activity in favour of relaxation techniques! It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work out the two might be linked in some way. Six year old boys don’t need to improve their posture; they need exercise. And lots of it. They need to let off steam not meditate in the lotus position. But apparently I’m at odds with the opinion of the educational establishment. This is not the first occurence!

But the real issue is not my one-eyed approach to sport which wins me few friends at the dinner parties of artistic friends. The real issue is whether spiritually it’s allowable or sensible to expose the kids to something that derives from Eastern mystical therapy. The local Baptist Minister has withdrawn his kids from the classes. We support them in that decision and we’ve wondered about doing the same thing. We haven’t and I guess these are the issues that we had to confront.

1. Our kids may be helped by yoga

I don’t understand how yoga works. I suspect medical science hasn’t got all the answers yet. But othopaedic specialists often recommend it because it helps with bad backs. The kids haven’t got those yet but if they continue to slouch like they do at the moment it’s surely a matter of time! If they grow up with a better understanding of how to sit, that’s great. If they grow up understanding that stress is bad for you and that relaxation can minimise it, that’s great. It’s better than growing up stressed with a bad back. At the level of physical health I have no objections. This is part of God’s wonderful generosity in giving us a physical world with so many useful things in it. God has been good to us in giving us techniques to stave off ill health.

2. Our kids won’t be defiled by yoga

There’s a temptation to think that their exposure to Eastern traditional techniques will make them unclean. But yoga isn’t demonic and the activity won’t make us spiritually unclean. That was the worry of the Corinthian Christians when they were concerned about whether or not to eat meat offered to idols. Paul’s advice was essentially ‘go for your life’ [1 Corinthians 10]. The only qualification he gave was that if our actions cause a weaker brother to stumble then for their sake we’re to restrict our freedom. That gave us serious cause for thought. We wondered whether our Christian friends might be led astray if we were to allow the kids to participate. They reassured us that they wouldn’t be. We also wondered whether we should withdraw the kids in an act of Christian solidarity. That was tempting but we didn’t think it was the hill to die on.

3. Our kids may be misled by yoga

If the yoga is accompanied by false teaching about God then there’s cause for alarm. I don’t want our kids exposed to the philosophical ideology of Eastern religions without being able to brief them first. But I’ve been reassured that the yoga at school is purely physical and not spiritual. That’s not denying that the beliefs behind these systems are idolatrous. They often are. The teacher may subscribe to some very dubious views about what’s actually going on in the activity. And so parents may decide to withhold their children from the class for that reason. But we might also need to withdraw them from the world if we applied that principle elsewhere. And it’s worth remembering that the same could be said for the gym. The gym instructor could help me with a weights circuit and the ideology that underpins his advice is pure hedonistic infatuation with attaining physical perfection. But I’ll still take his advice. I’ll even let the footy coach give Rufus advice about how to kick a ball even though the coach is driven by materialistic ambition for the wealth that footballing success promises. It seems to me that we need to equip them to identify and critique idolatry as they encounter it not completely isolate them from it.

We’re monitoring the situation. The school have no objections to us watching a class. We make subtle enquiries with the kids but it’s hard to decipher the monosyllabic grunts! And so, I continue to think that a school lesson is better spent chasing a pig’s bladder round the common but I’m on a minority on that one.

An article by Kirsten Birkett in the January 2003 edition of the Briefing entitled Can a Christian go to reiki? was most helpful in thinking this one through.

The BBC reports that a debate has been taking place at the annual conference of the National Union of Teachers concerning the place of religious education. You’ll find the report here. Essentially the NUT is proposing that religious leaders would be permitted into state schools to teach their faith to children from their religious group. So, instead of Tuesday lunchtime being Chess Club it might be Buddhist Society.   

I offer this initial response

1.  The NUT express an understandable concern about community cohesion and integration of ethnic groups into British society. Few people want their families to grow up in separate religious enclaves. Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali warned of the ‘no go’ areas in the Daily Telegraph. You can find his comments here. He was villified for his views by some portions of the liberal political elite. But he had a point. In defence of his view Ed Husain author of The Islamist and a former activist in the extremist Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir commented, ‘In the name of multiculturalism, we have created monocultural ghettoes’. And Trevor Phillips, Chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, said, ‘We all know that in virtually every big city there are places where different kinds of people feel uncomfortable. The Bishop of Rochester was right to raise this’. The NUT has to have a stab at this because they see where all this is going. They’re concerned about the popularity of state funded faith schools. They argue that this leads to a disintegrated society. They have a point. Their proposal to have different groups instructed in their religion is an attempt to stem the growth of faith schools. But I’m not persuaded their proposal will achieve what they wish for. The children of different faith groups might end up going to the same school but then they separate for faith education. I could be wrong but, to my mind, that would do little to unite divided communities.

2. I think the Church of England spokesman is misleading the public. He said, ‘Faith schools are not about indoctrinating children in a particular faith’. If that’s the case then why have them! Someone needs to tell him the game is up on that one. The genie is out of the bottle. I think we’ve been rumbled! Christian faith schools indoctrinate children in the Christian faith. At least they should. And I’m OK with that. On the whole the parents who send their kids are OK with it as well. And those that aren’t are just grateful for the excellent education their kids receive from the quality Christian educators their kids get exposed to. I’m less enthusiastic about other faith schools but I don’t get to decide Government policy and it’d be hard to convince a non-Christian Government that we shouldn’t let the Muslims have their schools if we’re going to let us Christians have ours.

3. In principle I don’t have an issue with my kids being taught the content of other faiths in the school environment. I welcome an education system that exposes them to other ideological positions. I don’t want them to believe them. I’m not an idiot. That’s why I pray for them and why I educate them at home. But I’d like them to understand the culture into which God has placed them as missionaries. Of course it makes me nervous that they might believe the religious hype that they come across. But God can take care of that. And I’d like them to grow up knowing that I didn’t withhold anything from them. And so I’m comfortable with the fact that at school they’ll come across different religious and philosophical ways of looking at the world. At home I’m already teaching them that the Bible describes anything that is a substitute for God and His word is idolatry.

4. We need to get it into our heads that there’s no such thing as the non-faith school. Keith Porteus Wood, the Executive Director of the National Secular Society, said that ‘indoctrination has no place in schools’. Oh please. Not that old chestnut again. He can weigh in all he likes but he ought to demonstrate some integrity and realise that his secularism is a faith. If he wants to teach that faith it’s indoctrination. In fact, all education is indoctrination. What matters is not whether we indoctrinate or not but with what we indoctrinate. I have a strong preference for truth rather than falsehood. That’s why I’d like the Maths teacher to know that 9 times 9 is 81 and not 80. That’s why I’d like the religious education teacher to know that justification by faith is one of the key doctrines that distinguishes Reformed Theology from Catholic theology. But I also realise that for most Primary School teachers that’s a tough ask. And so why not let the local Imam go in and teach about the Five Pillars of Islam. As long as we let the Baptist Minister go in and talk about the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ I haven’t got a problem. Back home, where the real education ought to be going on Muslim parents will no doubt be teaching that The Imam spoke truth and the Baptist was lying. I use the language of confusion. I want our kids to know that Muslims, Hindus, Jews and Secularists are confused and that real education begins when we listen to the Lord.

No doubt other responses will come to mind but this is my first swing.  

Driving south out of London along the A23 you can’t miss the giant poster under the Norbury Railway Bridge. It looks like this. It’s one of 600 designed and paid for Stonewall.  It reads, ‘Some people are gay. Get over it!’ It’s effective and you’ve got to admire the momentum that it creates in favour of the ‘gay agenda’. For what it’s worth, their agenda in this instance is one that I support. The poster is part of a national campaign to reduce homophobic bullying in schools. So before we go any further, let’s be clear about this. I’m not in favour of bullying of any sort. I don’t know of any Christian worthy of the name who is. But nevertheless, I’ve got an issue with this billboard. I really don’t like it. It irritates me, because it’s wrong.

I accept the first premise ’some people are gay’ but I won’t accept the conclusion ‘get over it’. It tells me what to do but it doesn’t tell me why I need to do it. It manipulates me. And I hate being manipulated. If they want my support they need to persaude me. And to do that they’d have needed an argument that went like this.

Premise 1: some people are gay

Premise 2: it’s morally acceptable to be homosexually active

Conclusion: get over it!

If they’d said this I’d be right with them. But I’m not. Because of the second premise. It’s missing. And the reason it’s missing is that it’s not right. It’s not morally acceptable to be homosexually active. Homosexual activity is a distortion of God’s creation intent. I’ve written elsewhere on this. You might want to try here.

Almost inevitably the accusations of homophobia will come flying. But they just won’t stick. I’m not homophobic. It’s not homophobic to say that homosexual activity is wrong and dangerous. Homophobia is a fear of homosexual people. I’m not scared of gay people. I just don’t agree that a homosexual lifestyle is one to be encouraged. I’d want to argue that, in fact, I care for homosexual people so much so that I’m prepared to cop some flak for speaking out about the inherent dangers of homosexual activity. It won’t make me popular but it doesn’t necessarily make me wrong either.

Think about it. If I oppose drug taking I’m not anti drug takers. I’m anti drugs. Drugs are dangerous because they’re so damaging to our health. For that reason I’m opposed to drug pushers. If I oppose homosexual practice I’m not anti homosexual. I’m anti homosexual activity. Homosexual activity is dangerous because it’s damaging to our spiritual health. The Bible makes it clear that it’s one of those activities that we need to repent of if our profession to belong to Jesus Christ is to have any credibility.  If our claim to follow Jesus as Lord is to have any substance then he needs to be Lord of what we do with our bodies. If we won’t accept his lordship over our sex lives he’s not our Lord. That catastrophic. We can’t be saved apart from Christ. And so, it’s a salvation issue.

Some people are gay. I don’t dispute that. But I’m not going to get over it. And neither should you. Not if you care about homosexual people.