If you’re just here for the book reviews and the cute kid stories,
feel free to skip this.

Some little while ago, the General Convention of the Episcopal Church met
and confirmed a gay man, Gene Robinson, as Bishop; the Convention also
determined that it should be up to individual bishops to allow or forbid
the blessing of same-sex unions within their dioceses. These decisions
were in all the newspapers, and have been widely commented on in the
blogosphere.

What’s largely been lost in most of the commentary I’ve read is how
deeply split the Episcopal Church is on this issue–and how little, at base,
the division has to do with sexual morality. Instead, it’s the result of
a disagreement about the basic meaning of the Christian faith. It is not
an exaggeration to say that for many years now the Episcopal Church has
in fact been two churches: one preaching the Gospel of Repentance, and
one preaching the Gospel of Inclusion.

Katherine Kersten, writing in the Wall Street
Journal, said this about General Convention:

Speakers who urged approval of homosexual unions did not use the
vocabulary or categories of thought of the Bible or the Book of Common
Prayer. Instead, they appeared to embrace a new gospel, heavily
influenced by America’s secular, therapeutic culture. This gospel has two
watchwords: inclusion and affirmation. Its message? Jesus came to make us
feel good about ourselves.

While I doubt the speakers in question would agree with quite that
formulation of their views, Kersten is more-or-less correct. She goes on,

Adherents of the gospel of inclusion offered arguments like
this: “The church should bless same-sex partnerships so everyone feels
included.” “People will want to join this church if they see others being
welcomed.” “God is love. He doesn’t care about the gender of the people
we love.”

This week’s events in Minneapolis suggest that, in 2003, the
three historic bulwarks of Episcopal Church doctrine–Scripture,
tradition and reason–are crumbling in the face of the gospel of
inclusion and affirmation.

To be sure, the new gospel’s disciples do not generally
jettison Scripture outright. Instead, they radically reinterpret it,
using techniques imported from America’s postmodern universities. Walter
Brueggemann, a theologian quoted in a pro-same-sex-union Episcopal
publication, put it like this: Scripture is “the chief authority when
imaginatively construed in a certain interpretive trajectory.” Approached
this way, inconvenient passages can be dismissed as inconsistent with
“Jesus’ self-giving love.”

Tradition fares no better at the hands of the gospel of
inclusion. The Episcopal Church has always regarded marriage as the
sacrament that sanctifies the “one flesh” union of man and woman. But the
new gospel expands the notion of sacrament to include anything that
“mediates” the grace or blessing of God and causes us to give thanks. As
a result, the Rev. Gene Robinson can describe his relationship with his
male partner as sacramental, because “in his unfailing and unquestioning
love of me, I experience just a little bit of the kind of never-ending,
never-failing love that God has for me.”

In short, the Gospel of Inclusion says that God accepts us where ever and
whoever we are, and loves us as we are, and that because he loves us we
are OK as we are. The Gospel of Inclusion thus has little use for
forgiveness of sins–achieving personal wholeness, instead, is the key. As
Kersten points out, though, this view requires
explaining away inconvenient Biblical passages. Now, the Good Lord knows
there are many inconvenient Biblical passages I’d just as soon
ignore–and that’s generally a danger signal that I’d better
pay close attention to them instead.

The Gospel of Repentance is the traditional view of Christianity. It
says that yes, indeed, God loves us where ever and whoever we are, and
that he calls each of us into a close relationship with Him. But He does
not call us to remain as we are–He calls us to repent of everything in
us that is incompatible with Heaven and to be transformed by His love.

The Gospel of Inclusion says that we are Holy because God loves us; the
Gospel of Repentance says that because God loves us, He will endeavour to
make us Holy. The central fact of Christianity, Christ’s crucifixion and
resurrection, is the prime act by which God so endeavours to make us
Holy; thanks to Christ’s sacrifice, we can be forgiven of our sins. But
the Gospel of Inclusion, which says that we are Holy as we are, has
little use for the crucifixion:

The gospel of inclusion has little place for repentance or
transformation. Thus, it has little place for the central feature of
Christianity: Christ’s Cross, which brings redemption through suffering.
This new gospel may be appealing, for it permits its adherents to
“divinize” their own, largely secular agenda. But in a Christian church,
it cannot easily coexist with the Gospel of Christ.

And, in fact, it does not. And this is why many conservative Episcopalians
are so distressed and dismayed by the General Convention’s recent
actions: they are yet another sign that the Gospel of Christ is being
jettisoned in favor of the Gospel of Inclusion. The Gospel that has the
power to transform is being abandoned in favor of the Gospel that says,
“There, there.” I believe that the followers of the Gospel of Inclusion
are genuinely motivated by a desire to share Christ’s love with all
people–but thanks to their theology, the people who come to the Episcopal
Church thanks to their inclusiveness are being sold a sham–a “faith” that
affirms them in their broken-ness and tells them that they are, thereby,
whole, rather than a faith that can bring them to true wholeness. In the
end, the inclusivists are short-changing the very people they hope to
help.

Please note: during this essay I’ve said nothing one way or the other
about homosexuality–following C.S. Lewis, I find it unwise to shoot my
mouth off over temptations to which I’m not personally subject. More to
the point, I’m not claiming that gays are any more broken than the
population as a whole, nor that homosexuality is the chief sign of
broken-ness in a gay person’s life. In my experience, there’s plenty of
sin to go around and although Lust gets all the press the other six
Deadly Sins–Pride, Envy, Sloth, and the rest–are generally more serious
problems for most people.

So it’s not the moral question that gets me riled; it’s the attempt to
make the teachings of Christianity conform to the spirit of the age, and
the consequent rejection of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross.

So why do I bring this up? As I say, many conservative Episcopalians are
distressed by these recent events, and are wondering what they should do.
Some have proclaimed that the Episcopal Church is dead. Many–whole
parishes, in some cases–are seriously planning to leave the Episcopal
Church altogether. I think there’s another way–but that’s another post.