Thanks for this, Eugene. It was a helpful articulation of some of my own journey. It also captures and reframes the dissonance I felt when others described themselves as orthodox in comparison to me when we left the ACNA for TEC over several issues, including sexuality. Thanks for this!
This is wonderfully written. Thank you for your erudition and scholarship. I am grateful for your discussion of orthodox and conservative, not least because I first encountered the intermingling of these terms in the same context as you; viz., Tim Keller & Redeemer. Indeed, as an elder in the same presbytery at the time, I adopted the same language.
My faith journey is very similar: reared a white evangelical, I became a politically-conservative neo-Calvinist (and a real jerk--they go together); then a growing realization that I was weary of trotting out Timothy & Titus to argue, with ever-diminishing conviction, against the ordination of women; then a sudden dawning that, inasmuch as the gay men in the choir actually recited the Nicene Creed and knelt beside me at the communion rail, I had thought they were not 'really Christians' because...why, exactly? Oh, yeah: Arrogant homophobia.
Now I belong to a wonderful anglo-catholic parish (incense; 15th C. motets) who have had openly-gay clergy, who was one of the first parishes to have a woman priest, where one of the first authorized same-sex marriages in the diocese was conducted, and where we celebrate every opportunity we have to enjoy and administer both word and sacrament (in an orthodox manner).
Thanks so much for taking the time to read and engage. It's my hope that we can create more, visible spaces of an authentic orthodoxy while also affirming communities that have traditionally been sidelined within "orthodox circles."
I'm a queer Episcopalian (lifer, age 62), and I say the Nicene Creed every Sunday without apology...
...well, except for one: when it comes to the Holy Spirit, I find a way to say "Who/Whom". Spirit being "Ruah" (female) in Hebrew, and "Pneuma" (neuter) in Greek, I refuse to call the Holy Spirit "He"! 😏
I very much appreciate you taking the time, and I'm glad the piece resonated. I have great hope that the future will be bright for orthodox theology, but for that to happen, we'll, of course, have to disentangle it from all of these distracting, detracting accoutrements.
Well said!
Thanks for this, Eugene. It was a helpful articulation of some of my own journey. It also captures and reframes the dissonance I felt when others described themselves as orthodox in comparison to me when we left the ACNA for TEC over several issues, including sexuality. Thanks for this!
This is wonderfully written. Thank you for your erudition and scholarship. I am grateful for your discussion of orthodox and conservative, not least because I first encountered the intermingling of these terms in the same context as you; viz., Tim Keller & Redeemer. Indeed, as an elder in the same presbytery at the time, I adopted the same language.
My faith journey is very similar: reared a white evangelical, I became a politically-conservative neo-Calvinist (and a real jerk--they go together); then a growing realization that I was weary of trotting out Timothy & Titus to argue, with ever-diminishing conviction, against the ordination of women; then a sudden dawning that, inasmuch as the gay men in the choir actually recited the Nicene Creed and knelt beside me at the communion rail, I had thought they were not 'really Christians' because...why, exactly? Oh, yeah: Arrogant homophobia.
Now I belong to a wonderful anglo-catholic parish (incense; 15th C. motets) who have had openly-gay clergy, who was one of the first parishes to have a woman priest, where one of the first authorized same-sex marriages in the diocese was conducted, and where we celebrate every opportunity we have to enjoy and administer both word and sacrament (in an orthodox manner).
Thanks so much for taking the time to read and engage. It's my hope that we can create more, visible spaces of an authentic orthodoxy while also affirming communities that have traditionally been sidelined within "orthodox circles."
I'm a queer Episcopalian (lifer, age 62), and I say the Nicene Creed every Sunday without apology...
...well, except for one: when it comes to the Holy Spirit, I find a way to say "Who/Whom". Spirit being "Ruah" (female) in Hebrew, and "Pneuma" (neuter) in Greek, I refuse to call the Holy Spirit "He"! 😏
And, indeed, in the Greek and Latin, there are no personal pronouns used for the Holy Spirit, just a lot of relative pronouns “who/whom…”
I do this too.
I very much appreciate you taking the time, and I'm glad the piece resonated. I have great hope that the future will be bright for orthodox theology, but for that to happen, we'll, of course, have to disentangle it from all of these distracting, detracting accoutrements.