{"id":550,"date":"2009-07-14T13:09:24","date_gmt":"2009-07-14T13:09:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/progressiverevival\/2009\/07\/gay-bishops-and-the-evolving-o.html"},"modified":"2009-07-14T13:09:24","modified_gmt":"2009-07-14T13:09:24","slug":"gay-bishops-and-the-evolving-o","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2009\/07\/gay-bishops-and-the-evolving-o.html","title":{"rendered":"Gay Bishops and the New Orthodoxy of the Episcopal Church"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It looks like the Episcopal Church is going to lift its <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/07\/15\/us\/15episcopal.html?_r=1&amp;hp\">ban on gay bishops.<\/a>This is great news for those of us who support equal rights of gays and lesbians to serve at the highest office in any political or religious sphere. \u00a0The only requirement should be that they demonstrate that God has given them that calling, that they are able to fulfill the duties the position entails, and that they are willing to make the sacrifice that such positions exact.\u00a0<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Yet already some, including Beliefnet&#8217;s own<a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/crunchycon\/2009\/07\/tec-close-to-okaying-gay-bisho.html\"> Crunchy Con<\/a> has decried the move saying:\u00a0<\/p>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><span class=\"Apple-style-span\">TEC (The Episcopal Church) is not a church that has any interest in adhering to Scripture or Christian tradition on sexual morality. And\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/crunchycon\/2007\/08\/neuhauss-law-in-action.html\">Neuhaus&#8217; Law<\/a>\u00a0(&#8220;Where orthodoxy is optional, it will sooner or later be proscribed.&#8221;) proceeds inexorably.\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n<div><span class=\"Apple-style-span\"><br \/><\/span><\/div>\n<div>The idea that the equal consideration of gay and lesbian people for religious office is a quesiton of orthodoxy is to demean the idea of orthodoxy. \u00a0Gays in the church is a social issue and, like other social issues, the Church can and has been wrong in the past. \u00a0And like Republican senators, the Church always repents of our theological sins with much hand wringing and apologies in the end.\u00a0<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Slavery was claimed to be &#8220;orthodoxy&#8221; for many bible believing Christians. \u00a0When the Baptist Convention decided to reverse that &#8220;orthodoxy&#8221; and take a stand against slavery, the southern baptist convention formed in 1845 to allow Christians the right to hold onto the &#8216;orthodoxy&#8217; of biblically sanctioned slavery. \u00a0Likewise we will see some leave the Episcopal Church to create the southern baptist\u00a0equivalent, this time vis a vis the gays. \u00a0 This doesn&#8217;t mean that they are orthodox, it means they are holding onto an &#8216;orthodoxy&#8217; that people are realizing is no longer valid and needs to be discarded. \u00a0 The new orthodoxy is love and acceptance of all of God&#8217;s children.\u00a0<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>We should be open to the truth that Jesus continues to lead us in efforts of love and redemption and thankful that he is at work in Anaheim.\u00a0<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It looks like the Episcopal Church is going to lift its ban on gay bishops.This is great news for those of us who support equal rights of gays and lesbians to serve at the highest office in any political or religious sphere. \u00a0The only requirement should be that they demonstrate that God has given them&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-homosexuality"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - 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Progressive Revival","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2009\/07\/gay-bishops-and-the-evolving-o.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Gay Bishops and the New Orthodoxy of the Episcopal Church - Progressive Revival","og_description":"It looks like the Episcopal Church is going to lift its ban on gay bishops.This is great news for those of us who support equal rights of gays and lesbians to serve at the highest office in any political or religious sphere. \u00a0The only requirement should be that they demonstrate that God has given them&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2009\/07\/gay-bishops-and-the-evolving-o.html","og_site_name":"Progressive Revival","article_published_time":"2009-07-14T13:09:24+00:00","author":"Paul Raushenbush","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2009\/07\/gay-bishops-and-the-evolving-o.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2009\/07\/gay-bishops-and-the-evolving-o.html","name":"Gay Bishops and the New Orthodoxy of the Episcopal Church - 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Paul B. Raushenbush is the moderator of the Progressive Revival blog and the Associate Dean of Religious Life at Princeton University. .An ordained American Baptist minister, Rev. Raushenbush speaks and preaches at colleges, churches and institutes around the country including the College of Preachers at the National Cathedral in Washington D.C., The Chautauqua Institute in upstate New York, and the New America Foundation. Rev. Raushenbush has served at Seattle First Baptist Church, the Presbyterian Chaplaincy at Columbia University and as College and Young Adult Minister at The Riverside Church in New York City. He has appeared on ABC World News Tonight and is a repeated guest on CNN. He has been quoted in The New York Times and The Washington Post and is a contributing editor for Beliefnet.com. His first book, Teen Spirit: One World, Many Faiths (HCI) was released in the Fall of 2004. He is the editor of the 100th Anniversary edition of Walter Rauschenbusch\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s book Christianity and the Social Crisis \u00e2\u20ac\u201c In the 21st Century (HarperOne). His work at Princeton includes strengthening the interfaith community on campus. He is the Co-Director of the Program on Religion, Diplomacy and International Relations at The Liechtenstein Institute on Self Determination at Princeton University. Rev. Raushenbush studied religion at Macalester College before attending Union Theological Seminary in New York City where he graduated with distinction.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/author\/praushenbush"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=550"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}