The General Synod of the Church of England has defeated a proposal for female bishops, and the bien pensants are furious. The outgoing Archbishop of Canterbury, whose performance in office merits the title Jimmy Carter of the Anglican Communion, delivered a typical denunciation:
We have, to put it bluntly, a lot of explaining to do.
Whatever the motivations for voting yesterday, whatever the theological principle on which people acted and spoke the fact remains that a great deal of his discussion is not intelligible to our wider society.
Worse than that it seems as if we are wilfully blind to some of the trends and priorities of wider society. So we have some explaining to do.
We have as a result of yesterday undoubtedly lost a measure of credibility in our society.
This “wider society” whose “trends and priorities” should, on Dr. Williams’ view, override mere “theological principle” knows little and cares less about Christianity. To it, discussion that takes Christian doctrine as its starting point is bound to be “unintelligible”. The learned Archbishop’s solution to this gulf between Faith and Fashion is to put Faith aside. A Christian of an earlier era, whom Dr. Williams would doubtless condemn for his wilful blindness to up-to-date trends, had a somewhat different opinion:
Do you see now how God has shown up the foolishness of human wisdom? If it was God’s wisdom that human wisdom should not know God, it was because God wanted to save those who have faith through the foolishness of the message that we preach. And so, while the Jews demand miracles and the Greeks look for wisdom, here are we preaching a crucified Christ; to the Jews an obstacle that they cannot get over, to the pagans madness, but to those who have been called, whether they are Jews or Greeks, a Christ who is the power and the wisdom of God. For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength. [I Cor. 1:20-25 (Jerusalem Bible)]
Christians had “a lot of explaining to do” in St. Paul’s day. Then and for twenty centuries afterward, being “wilfully blind to some of the trends and priorities of wider society” was recognized as a Christian’s duty.
At the present moment, no one with eyes to see or ears to hear can think that “wider society” is in good shape, or even able to perpetuate itself for much longer. The minority group in the next generation will be children born in wedlock and raised by two married parents. The minority within that minority will be kids who are not living like 20-something swingers by about age 14. How that will all work out will eventually become all too visible, though not, I hope, until after I’m safely in my grave.
Such is the “wider society” to whom the Archbishop of Canterbury does not wish to look foolish. At the risk of sounding curmudgeonly, I say, the more foolish, the better.
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