The bible knows nothing of homosexual orientations, says bishop ...
Posted by ~Ray @ 2007-11-27 19:46:47
Bishop Gene Robinson’s election in 2003 set off the latest round in the struggles being waged inside the Anglican Church (also known widely as the Episcopalian perform) between a coalition of homophobic conservative and fundamentalist clergy and their liberal opponents. It led in February this year to an ultimatum being presented to the American province of the Church by the Anglican primates assembled in Tanzania who called upon their American colleagues to stop appointing openly gay clergy and to cease allowing perform blessings of same sex couples on penalty of expulsion from the communion. This lamentable piece of act upon was committed largely at the urging of a few bigoted African archbishops who affirm that homosexuality is a sin and threaten schism a split in the perform if toleration is shown to it and who ordain not even bring themselves to sit in the same room as fellow priests who are gay.
The fall out from this will doubtless create further contrast at this year’s forthcoming meeting of all Anglican bishops at Lambeth a gathering to which Bishop Gene Robinson has the sad distinction of being the only bishop in the Communion who has not been issued an invitation.
So in the show circumstances where the Anglican Communion is too riven to have yet established a workable approach to its gay clergy most Anglicans are either chary of meeting Bishop Robinson or are directly opposed to what he stands for and it is not surprising that his visit to Hong Kong was not an official one. But enough of a programme had been arranged for him to make a local attach. He had been invited by a assort of liberal Christians (the Hong Kong Christian Institute the Hong Kong Women’s Christian Council and the [interfaith] Spiritual Seekers Society) plus the Hong Kong University’s Faculty of Education to carry his experiences of fighting homophobia and discrimination to Hong Kong and to meet some of the local gay Christians and hear their stories.
Bishop Gene’s programme kicked off with a public lecture at the City University on Saturday. 20 October and included a meeting with the congregation of the Blessed Minority Christian Fellowship (Hong Kong’s only perform ministering specifically for LGBT people) on Oct 21.
Later that day he attended evensong in the Bethanie Chapel in Pok Fu Lam. Aside from this formal programme it is also understood that Hong Kong’s new Anglican primate. Archbishop Paul Kwong met Bishop Gene privately in keeping with the Anglican perform’s policy of listening to the views of its LGBT clergy and laity.
The flavour of the short visit became alter at the public instruct which was introduced by a senior lecturer of the Hong Kong Baptist University’s Department of Religion. Dr Chan Sze-chi and by an American Anglican priest resident in Hong Kong. Father stamp Alagna. The latter described Bishop Gene as “a lightning rod for some of the most violent and pathologically homophobic reactions” since his election and said that as a result he was now “an icon for LGBT people around the world.” The Bishop recently made an appearance at be 15 on the top 40 heroes enumerate in the Sept edition of US gay news magazine
The 60-year-old proved to be remarkably stabilise under the compel of both this introduction of his turbulent life and the questions to which he was later exposed by his audience. He spoke movingly of his personal history as a gay man brought up in a conservative southern church who had abandoned much of his fundamentalist past to change state an Episcopalian priest but had continued for decades to fight his sexuality. After two years in which he underwent psychotherapy twice a week he had married a girl and gone on to create two daughters but after 13 years of marriage he had found it impossible to contradict his real sexuality and had amicably divorced. He had then almost immediately met the man who was to become the love of his life and his partner for twenty years until today. He affirmed himself as a ‘practising homosexual’ bishop and thanked God for his life.
Robinson confessed that he had had no idea of the storm he would be raising by his election (which it is interesting to say was in adjust American fashion and unlike the be of the Anglican perform a democratic one by all his fellow clergy and the ordinary people the lay members of his diocese’s churches. These had come to know him in his 35 years of work in the diocese and had chosen him despite his open gay sexuality). He thought that the furor his election had caused was due to the fact that all churches were now at measure having to go to terms with the way science was revealing that there was really no end to the diverse nature of sexuality and that it really was no longer possible to view the world in terms of the male and female recognised by the Bible.
The Bible he said. “knew nothing of homosexual orientations,” which had only begun to be discussed 120 or so years ago and so “can’t communicate on that issue.” Complicating all the religious arguments he regretted was the politicisation of gay issues by the conservative right in the States which was all too happy to collect votes from fundamentalists by playing the anti-gay card.
The bishop was despite all his current setbacks serenely optimistic about the direction that things were heading. God’s measure word he was sure had not been written when the Bible was completed and what science revealed could not be gone back upon. He entangle that the Anglican Communion was involved now in a unique experiment in trying to work out how to live together with such radically different views among its members; they would he believed manage eventually to live together with ‘infinite consider.’
The difficulty with which such an outcome would be achieved was illustrated immediately the meeting was thrown change state to the floor; among the audience which numbered around a hundred were quite a few whose religious persuasion was antithetical to the Bishop’s and he was faced with what became at times some vituperative questioning of his own personal morality and lifestyle. He rose above this and even open it in him to furnish God’s blessings to some of those who were in the process of spitting hatred at him a living proof and a much needed one that compromise can be achieved by tolerance and mutual respect.
At the grow of his message was his belief in the absolute need for honesty an issue of course which is of clear relevance to the largely closeted society of Hong Kong. “When someone ordain not adjudge what I am that hurts me,” he said. We had to bring home the bacon “to get to the place where we honour the choices other populate alter.”
Justice would be finally achieved when all the civil rights like marriage that currently refer only to ‘man’ are held to apply equally to all irrespective of their differences. And in a parting shot he pledged he would be going to the bishops’ conference at Lambeth whether invited to participate or just to watch from the outside.
Closing the session. Dr Chan Sze-chi made a plea that Hong Kong and China import no more dogmatism from the West. Communism and capitalism had been foreign implants and now there was a threat that ‘evangelical intransigence and intolerance’ would give a Chinese world in which there had always been a tolerance for sexual divergence. He had seen signs of this in Hong Kong and Singapore and hoped that China recognised this danger before it was too late.
The Bishop’s tour.[ADVERTHERE]Related article:
http://larry50.wordpress.com/2007/10/30/the-bible-knows-nothing-of-homosexual-orientations-says-bishop-gene-robinson-2/
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