Exclusion

My vicar, Tom, has written a good post at Thinking Anglicans about the decision by the primates of the Anglican Communion” to ask the Episcopal Church of the USA and the Canadian Anglican Church not to attend the Communion’s council meetings until the next Lambeth Conference in 2008. This is because of the disagreement from the conservative parts of the church (especially the African churches) with the decisions by these American churches to ordain an openly practising gay bishop, and to bless same-sex partnerships. (Father Jake has an interesting commentary on this decision.)

What is interesting in the comments on Tom’s article, ISTM, is what Tom and I were talking about this morning – that differences of doctrine are being confused with a supposed need to exclude the “unrighteous”. Jesus preached and practiced a radically inclusive ministry; have a quick look at the Gospels – Jesus got stuck right in with just about every excluded group of His culture: women, children, the disabled, lepers and even homosexuals (although that last isn’t ironclad, it is very likely that this is what was going on with the centurion and his “servant” ).

Not only did Jesus say that these people were loved by God, but He ate with them, touched them, laughed with them. He completely flouted the conventions of His time and the religious laws of His time, because He saw that these things were less important than the truth that God’s holiness was stronger than the sin of the world and that God’s love was stronger than the hatred of the world.

So, for us now, who profess to be followers of this Jesus, is it really right to exclude people from our churches because of their sexual orientation? Or is it right to exclude people from our churches for any cause? Would Jesus have done so? The only people Jesus condemned were the religious, the law-abiding and the hypocritical.

And is it right for us to say that, based on their kindness towards outcasts, another group of Christians are not worthy of our friendship and communion?

pax et bonum

Article posted at 10:01am on 25 February 2005
Category: Faith, Musing