Re: [HoB/D] TEC misses a gospel opportunity yet again.

[Louie Crew <lcrew@andromeda.rutgers.edu>]

>  I'd love to hear your thinking, Louie, if you have time to share.

I am confident that Bishop Wolf  acted within the letter of our polity.

I would prefer a Gamalielian response.   Wait and see.   Do not rush to
decide the case.

TEC had no need to rush.  Redding was not stalking TEC for a fight.   By her
account, she did not renounce her Episcopal orders because she still holds,
in her view, to the vows she has taken.

"How can she do that?! ," you and I might fairly ask, but why demand an
immediate answer?  Why not patiently wait to find out rather than presume to
judge and be shut of Ms. Redding?

I rejoice that Saul Tarsus waited two years after his conversion before he
talked about it to those whom he had previously persecuted.   He would not
have had a prayer of being taken seriously by Bishop of Rhode Island and
others who precipitously snatched off Redding's vestments.

Early Christians did not put on trial Christians who claimed still to
practice Judaism.  Indeed, almost all the first Christians were Jews, and
they did not think of Christianity as a new religion, but as consummately
Jewish.  (And it is!)

I treasure the high respect for ambivalence and ambiguity often practiced by
Episcopalians.   God needs some wiggle room when we try to pin Her down with
creeds and other formularies.  God is quite beyond the measure of our minds.
God is a spirit, and worship of God is not exclusively franchised by
Jerusalem, nor Samaria, nor by Mecca.

Bishop Wolfe struck a fierce blow at ambivalence and ambiguity in deposing
Ann Holmes Redding.   I am disappointed.

Defrocking the Rev. Ann Holmes Reading sends bad news to many who are
struggling to reconcile Islam and Christianity.  Even if Holmes' model had
not finally held--whether for her or for others--it seems to me she is
trying to bring peace as Yaweh and Allah bid us all to do.

"Be gone!   Get out of here!  You don't speak for us!"  does not demonstrate
TEC's usual expectation that we can trust people to think for themselves as
they work out their salvation with fear and diligence.

Louie, L1 Newark


Louie Crew, 377 S. Harrison St., 12D, East Orange, NJ 07018 973-395-1068
http://queereye4lectionary.blogspot.com/  Queer Eye for the Lectionary


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Louie Crew" <lcrew@andromeda.rutgers.edu>
To: <bishopsdeputies@hobd.org>
Sent: Thursday, April 02, 2009 4:06 PM
Subject: TEC misses a gospel opportunity yet again.


> http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/04/02/muslim.minister.defrocked/index.html
> 
> Louie, L1 Newark
> 
> Louie Crew, 377 S. Harrison St., 12D, E. Orange, NJ 07018 973-395-1068
> http://queereye4lectionary.blogspot.com/  Queer Eye for the Lectionary