A Church Evolving

I am an Episcopalian. It is an American off shoot of a worldwide Anglican Communion. Catholics would like to say it is “Catholic Lite”. However I believe it is more of a progressive form of Catholicism with its grand Liturgy that also accommodates marriage of priests, divorce, birth control and women at all positions of worship such as deacons priests and bishops. The Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church now is a woman and is of great accomplishments that includes being an oceanographer.

Currently there is a great storm raging across the Episcopal Church for consecrating a gay person who was selected by a Diocese to be its Bishop. It is threatening to cleave the whole world wide Anglican Communion in two parts, one believing that Bible does not permit homosexuality and the other believing that the ultimate message of Bible is love. When the Biblical literalists challenge me I answer like this:

“Bible is an inspired book. Biblical inspiration is like a musical note. Even though you play the same note in different instruments such as piano, flute or violin, they all sound different because of the overtones. People are the media that the Holy Spirit uses to convey God’s message. The basic message is amazingly clear and unified throughout the Bible that God loves you and expects you to love others to show your love for the God. Of course this message comes through people who add their overtones such as the culture, understanding and the historical time frame. A mind tuned to the Holy Spirit allows you to extract the underlying message of love and discard the overtones.”

Some agree, others don’t. To me it is as silly as discriminating left handers vs. right handers. Episcopal Church slowly came around on the slavery issue even though Bible explicitly permits it. It will finally come around on this too.