If agreement with women bishops becomes de rigueur in the national church, what will the ecclesiastical establishment do about the English Bible? There are passages in it that are frankly embarrassing for a church that defines itself by feminist criteria.
One possibility is that the established church would produce its own version of the Bible for public use in churches that would bracket the offending passages in the manner of the Alternative Service Book. Or it would authorise a version that simply excised the offensive passages about male headship such as 1 Corinthians 11v2-16; Ephesians 5v22-33; Colossians 3v18-25; and 1 Timothy 2.
This would not be the first time in English history that the Bible has flown in the face of church dogma. In the 1520s the ecclesiastical establishment was desperate to ensure that an English Bible did not get into the hands of the laity. They knew from bitter experience that once people started to read the Holy Scriptures for themselves in their own tongue they would able to perceive that church dogma on the worships of saints, purgatory, and the cult of the papacy had no biblical basis and was indeed contradicted by the Word of God.
Clearly, ‘homophobia’ would also be a cardinal sin in the new established church so the passages relating specifically to homosexual immorality in both the Old and New Testaments would have to go. It is likely that Jesus’ insistence that ‘in the beginning God created them male and female’ (Matthew 19v4; Mark 10v6) would also prove to be problematic.
Moreover, the balance of probabilities is that the national church would get significant financial assistance from the government for its politically-correct version of the Scriptures for public use. Government ministers whether they be Conservative, Labour or Liberal-Democrat would also surely not be adverse to a request from bishops that unexcised versions of the Bible were not sold freely in retail outlets. A nod to the EU could facilitate a helpful directive to that effect on equality and diversity grounds.
When the church starts dancing to the tune of the world, God’s Word is the party pooper. So the natural human recourse is to call for the nearest bouncer.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Dear Julian
ReplyDeleteThankfully the great joy of Christianity is that nobody apart from the Spirit gets a monopoly on anything.
People have tried similar stunts in the past and their Bibles have died a death. If the Non-sexist, Non-homophobic, Non-violent Bible was ever produced, it would have to go alongside Today's Nearly Inspired Version and all the rest in the religious marketplace.
The "national" church can't prescribe what version we read now - I don't suppose it will get any better, or any more inclined to do so, in the future.
Julian, you conveniently forget to mention that it takes a fair amount of exegetical gymnastics to transform the passages you quoted into a prohibition on women bishops. And it is possible to expound those passages in ways that are totally compatible with women in church leadership.
ReplyDeleteLet me change the subject a bit. Where in the Bible is there a ban on the lay celebration of communion? Nowhere as far as I know. So why, as a man who is committed to Biblical authority, are you part of a denomination that goes against the Bible in this area?
Sorry to make such a crude point, but the truth is that a selective approach to the Bible has been part of virtually every branch of christianity since the beginning. And I write as an evangelical, by the way.
Hi Julian
ReplyDeleteIt is difficult to understand your concern re editing the Bible when reading it from the context of an Anglican church in New Zealand which has lived happily for many decades now with women priests, and slightly less decades with women bishops, and has not felt compelled to excise or parenthesize or downsize-font-size any passage in the Bible!
A grand idea, Your Grace.
ReplyDeleteA "BCoE" Study Bible, the "Bracketed Church of England" Study Bible. Let Cam Un. or Oxford Un. Presses carry it with appropriate study notes throughout for corrections.
And, of course, with one of your successors, Archbishop R. Williams, could write a commendatory preface with other episcopal signatories.
A toast to a great idea.
Cheers.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteNo need to call me Your Grace - I'm only a curate.
ReplyDeleteI very much doubt the current generation of liberal bishops would go along with a censored Bible. It is more something for the more 'illiberal' liberals increasingly gaining the ascendancy in the Church of England - ie the ones who are determined to steamroller through the women bishops legislation without legal safeguards for opponents.
Dear Sir:
ReplyDeleteThank you for the clarification.
"Illiberal" liberal Bishops = steam rollers = repressors = dogmaticians.
We have the Oxford Memorial at Oxford Un. as our continuing reminder.
Thank you for the clarification.
D. Philip Veitch