The Archbishop and his controversial opinions

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams- the leader of the Anglican church worldwide- has personally adopted views regarding a moral grounding for gay marriage. The issue of gay marriage can be debated from the theological to the political. Yet, this article (linked above) took an interesting spin. Note the quotes below:

The article notes, "He drew a distinction between his own beliefs as a theologian and his position as a church leader, for which he had to take account of the traditionalist view."

Williams himself states, “When I teach as a bishop I teach what the Church teaches. In controverted areas it is my responsibility to teach what the Church has said and why.”

The article doesn't note how these letters became public. I don't suppose it matters if Williams is willingly quoted in the article. Williams displays at least some theological responsbility in teaching the doctrines of the church, but the fact that this knowledge is now public makes any theological comment that Williams makes on behalf of the church seem disingenuous. I respect Williams for making the distinctions listed above; there's a certain amount of theological humility he holds to teach as he does. In the end, though, one has to wonder if this is a slippery slope towards an Anglican split. If Williams holds these beliefs, it might be more likely that his successor will as well.

I won't deal with the claims Williams makes about homosexuality and the Bible. But for a good theological treatment on the subject, see Slaves, Women, and Homosexuals by William Webb.

Elections + Religion = Muddy Waters

Barack Obama's Muslim-Outreach Advisor resigns.

The above article seems to insinuate a couple of interesting facts.

1) American Muslims may be exclusively Arab. This is not true of course. Nor is it true that all Arabs are Muslims.

2) The article referred to this specific demographic as Muslim-Americans. I generally don't consider myself a Christian-American or an Evangelical-American, merely because the terminology seems bogus. Why should I, or anybody else, be labeled by our citizenship and our religious allegiances? The term "African-American" carries more weight, as it signifies an ethnicity within a national identity. "Muslim-American" is not as precise. But, as racial distinctions may be a human fabrication, cultural or ethnic distinction are not. That begs the question, then, whether "Muslim-Americans" view their status both in a cultural and a religious sense.

3) I understand that it is politically savvy to have a political consultant on many issues, religious or otherwise. Generally, though, this assumes that all "Muslim-Americans" think alike and share the same views. Furthermore, the article cited above fails to ellucidate any "Muslim-American" issues. Politically, what do "Muslim-Americans" care about? Would the answer be different for a secular Muslim, a moderate Muslim, and a fundamentalist Muslim? I don't speak as an expert on Islam, but I generally don't think like many Roman Catholics, Orthodox, or Liberal Christians about many issues within our own faith.

Thus this article really made me question how fruitful a campaign advisor on these issues are. However, people spend a lot more time trying to court the Evangelical vote than any other religious bloc. While many young evangelicals try to shun the hyper-politicization of the Christian right, it is still significant that politicians have to spend time articulating their view of issues that are important to Evangelicals.

An Exercise in Protest

It took me about 10 seconds to find this image on Google from the Tiananmen Square democratic protest back in 1989 in Beijing, China. But the image won't be accessible at all to media in China for the Olympic games, which is now a broken promise by Chinese officials to the International Olympic Committee.

So this is my exercise in protest. The Chinese government devalues free speech in the name of central power, authority, and order, but the opportunity to express one's opinions is the essence of human thought, the exchange of knowledge and ideas, and the entire point of reading people's blogs. In your own subtle or overt way, how can you best promote truth for the upcoming Olympic games?

Persecution in Conversion

Check out this article on religious persecution.

While the article acknowledges this, it looks exclusively at religion from a sociological perspective. It promotes that people always do various things for various sociological reasons. It ignores the simple power of ideas. People do extraordinary things based upon what they fundamentally believe about the world. Ideas are powerful, and so looking at people as solely responders to stimuli is overly simplistic. I am in control of my ideas, are you?

The relevance and pertinence of Christianity

Wellspring Anglican Church in Englewood, CO has produced a weekly summer lecture series with fantastic Christian scholarship.

You can listen to the audio files here (mixed with Sunday sermon audio files as well).

The subjects range from contemporary topics such as the Middle East and U.S. Immigration to current Christian historical and philosophical issues such as the resurrection of Jesus and current Christian apologetics. The primary site for the lecture series is found here.

The final lecture is this upcoming Friday.