Sunday, June 25, 2006

What does cultural captivity look like?

Geoffrey Rowell Bishop of Gibraltar in Europe writes in The Times yesterday (see link from title above) "...the stances adopted this week by the General Convention of the Episcopal Church reveal more about cultural captivity than faithful Christian witness". The idea seems to be that if a church decides something you don't like its conforming to culture; but if it does something you do like it's bringing in the kingdom of God. Apparently conforming to culture is wrong by the way. But what if the culture has got it right? And what if the culture has absorbed the Christian gospel more fully and far-reachingly than the institutional church has? It might be expected that after 2000 years of Christian preaching Western culture has been maybe a bit influenced by the gospel? And why is the Enlightenment so often condemned by bishops of the Anglo-Catholic tradition as Rowell does in this article?

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