Breaking for tradition, denying reality

Rowan Williams, Arch Bishop of Canterbury, has announced his resignation from the leadership of the Anglican Church and is to be Master at Magdalene College in Cambridge. Since the announcement, he has received praise from many of those who approved of his administration and even many of those who disapproved.
Rowan worked feverishly during his tenure as head of the Church of England to keep the body together. But his high-mindedness obscured his theology. What did he stand for? Many who know him personally say he is a champion of homosexual inclusion in the hierarchy of the church. Yet he spoke publicly of working with both sides of the issue to reach an amicable solution. That's like saying you intend to cheer for both sides in a football match. Either you are secretly favoring one side or the other, or you really don't care who wins. And it really is a case of win or lose.
Centuries of church teaching supports the exclusion of anyone willfully disobedient to the will of God from holding office. In doing so, the church agrees with scripture. But wait, you say, scripture can be interpreted to deny teaching and authoritative positions to women as well yet the church has no problem with that.
And there's the crux.
Church teaching is tradition, and tradition is human and therefore mutable and malleable. It can change with the times. The Bible isn't rewritten. It is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. As long as you consider it to be the authoritative Word of God.
And there's the second crux.
Williams does not accept the authority of scripture. He is part of a brood of teachers and thinkers that began molding the teachings of the Church of England to conform to societal demands over the last few decades. As the church has become more and more secular, it has become more and more irrelevant. Trying to be inclusive, it has ignored the exclusivity of Christ's authority.
In seeking to make the teachings of Christ palatable to those whose lifestyle is in direct opposition to biblical precepts, the church has divorced itself from the deity of Christ.
Let me make this clear. Homosexuality is not the real issue here. Sin is sin regardless of the nature. Sexual immorality is not acceptable by biblical standards, be it between two of the same sex or of different sexes. While Christ emphatically stated His love of everyone, He never displayed love for their sin. The body of believers welcomes (or should) anyone with a desire to learn of God's redemptive plan. No one should be stopped at the door. But just as assuredly, there are biblical standards for leadership with the body.
Living in England in the late nineties, I saw first hand the destruction of biblical authority in the ranks of of the C of E. Visiting a small church in the village of Ripley, I listened to a Priest who calmly and warmly told his congregants that the miracles in the bible were simply teaching tools. "No one seriously believes the world was created in seven days, or that Noah built an ark, he told them, "no more than water was turned into wine, or that Lazarus was raised from the dead."
As for the growing schism that Williams worked so hard to prevent, the seeds of dissent were sprouting before the millennial celebrations had begun. Although the church had long ago removed the necessity of acknowledging biblical authority in its ordination vows, many priests were graduating from seminary and challenging the "orthodoxy" of the current establishment. The turn towards scripture was so pronounced that church leaders were writing articles about what could be done to stop it.
Schisms are not entirely bad. It means that not everyone has forgotten why they wanted the bible as the church's authority in the first place. It's why there are so many Protestant denominations. There always seems to be a remnant willing to stand and fight for the Gospel regardless of attendance numbers or popularity polls.

War in America

Are we in the midst of a Culture War? The battle for the hearts and minds of America's youth has grown steadily over the last 100 years, as leftist philosophies became entrenched first in the collegiate teaching ranks, then the centers of power in the nation's media.
Judge Robert Bork, in Slouching Towards Gomorrah, traces the development of modern liberalism and its impact on one generation after another.  Bork contends the Universities incubated the movement. I would add that liberal politicians enable it, and the press feeds it.
If you can define the terms of a conflict, you're much more likely to win the conflict. This is a lesson that the center and the right in America have been slow to understand and act upon. The most notable of these in our lifetime, it could be argued, involves abortion. Not the labels such as "Pro-Life" or "Anti-Abortion." I'm referring to the point of conflict. By setting the battle lines at a woman's right to control her own body, and not the taking of an innocent life, the left was able to claim the high moral ground. It has taken decades for society to even begin to recognize the reality of the argument.
Now we are at the precipice of conflict once again. This time the battle is over freedom of religion. The first amendment of the Constitution of the United States declares the right of citizens to this freedom and prohibits the government from the establishment of religion. But what has become lost in the public discourse is the next phrase, which guarantees us the right to freely exercise, or behave in accordance with, our religion.
If the government is allowed to force religious institutions of any kind to violate the precepts of the beliefs the institution is based on, that freedom is eroded away. This is where the battle must be enjoined, and where the terms of the conflict must be determined correctly. If liberal ideologists in the mainstream media, Hollywood, and on Capitol Hill, are allowed to couch the argument in favor of free contraceptives for insured employees in terms  that focus on denial of treatment, the battle field will be lost.
The argument must be, and rightly so, that Churches and their ancillary organizations have the constitutional right to freely exercise the religious beliefs they are founded upon.
Are we in the midst of a Culture War? Yes, but more to the point, we are seeing a War against Religion.
C-Cubed