As we all know, US presidential candidate John McCain last week announced his choice of vice-presidential running mate, and it is Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. One of the first things we learnt about her is that she is profoundly religious; and when that was unpacked a little more, it appeared to mean chiefly that she was anti-abortion and held a traditional moral outlook. In fact, at first I was unable to discover anything about her religion that was unrelated to sex, nor could I see anyone asking questions about her religiosity that might have involved, say, her views on poverty or world peace.
I am myself a member of the Anglican Church – the Church of Ireland in my case. And as many will know, the Anglican Communion worldwide has been tearing itself apart of late. The issue is not the meaning and significance of the sacraments, or the reform of the liturgy, or the question whether we are living up to the command by Jesus to feed the hungry, shelter the homeless and visit those in prison. The issue is homosexuality.
Church membership and participation has declined enormously in the developed world, and those outside the ecclesial structures must be wondering what on earth (because I don’t think it’s heaven) we are up to. We seem to be obsessed, not just with sex, but with the exact and proper amount of condemnation we want to direct at those whose sexual lifestyles we dislike. We trawl scripture with a tooth-comb to find obscure references to these pet hates so as to justify our obsessions, and ignore the spirit of the New Testament along the way.
I am exaggerating a little, of course. The spiritual lives of many churchgoers are very different from the above caricature, and the work of people such as Desmond Tutu has enriched the world. But we risk losing all of that if we appear to be single issue believers nursing our phobias, rather than the tolerant, charitable people I believe we are meant to be.
It’s time we re-arranged the agenda.
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