David L Greentree, August 2008

I had some first hand experience of the pain of conservatives when we visited relatives in Canada in June.

They have attended the Metchosin Anglican church for over 20 years. Recently their minister along with theologian James Packer and others were stripped of their licences by the bishop. While we were there the said bishop won a court ruling to lock the entire congregation of over 100 out of their church!

They were feeling very betrayed by the Canadian Church. Talking to them the way they saw the conflict was between faithful Anglican believers and a ruthless heretical bishop. But on the radio news they were called "a rebel Anglican group who are opposed to gays ..." portraying the congregation as a handful of bigots and the bishop the reasonable man!

Later in our trip I was walking beside the beautiful river in Banff pondering this when a thought occurred to me. It struck me that the people there had been ambushed - I am not imputing blame to their human opponents or implying that they planned it that way – just that "ambush" was the analogous situation When I got home I wrote the article "Hey GAFCON" as a warning for Australian conservatives not to follow their American comrades into the ambush. In military situations the last thing you would do is follow your comrades into an ambush – they are already dead or hiding. The only winning move is to outflank the ambushers, then rescue any of your survivors.

Talking this over with my son David Jnr. we made a startling discovery. Maybe both sides had been ambushed!

From talking to my relatives in Canada, and watching with them the video footage by some Episcopal Church bishops, we could readily see that to conservatives the ultra-permissives  looked to be 5 star baddies. But how did the conservatives appear to the liberals? Yes, when we tried to see it through their eyes, to the liberals the conservatives looked like nasty people who had to be weeded out of the church at all costs.  So, is each side stacking “the enemy” or have both sides been set up into a friendly fire tragedy?

Read David Jnr’s article "Reformation or Revolution" or the "Louise's Page" articles dealing with problems in Sydneyto see that Australian ultra conservatives are not the lead we should be following.

Look at David Jnr’s  article "The Four Pillars" to see that ultra liberalism has grave dangers.

So... anyone for the traditional Anglican casserole of moderate  “conservatives & liberals” and “Anglo Catholics & Evangelicals & Charismatics”  all spiced with faith hope and charity

We love you people
We want to see you succeed under God
So it hurts us to see you being ambushed!

Read on for our analysis of the position!

David L. Greentree - June 2008

1. You've been ambushed! There is a battle in the Anglican church between bible proponents and bible deniers. If the deniers succeed it will rob people of much of the benefit God intends they should gain from the scriptures. So as bible proponents that makes you the good guys. However the deniers are also ultra permissive. By accident or design bible proponents have been lured into fighting them on the subject of homosexuality. Now for many decades our society has come to accept gay rights as fundamental - so on this battle field the bible deniers have a huge advantage: they are widely seen as the good guys and can treat bible proponents unjustly - even kick them out of their parishes (as is happening in Canada) and society & even church moderates will say they were justified. Basic rule of warfare is not to engage on ground that gives the enemy an overwhelming advantage!
2. Jesus commanded us to pull the plank out of our own eye before tackling the speck in another's. True, perhaps someone still contenting to be in homosexual relationships is not sufficiently advanced in their Christian pilgrimage to be a godly bishop. But neither is someone who is a liar, a gossip, a slanderer, greedy, a drunkard, a violent person, or heterosexually immoral. We all know that historically there have been and currently there are many bishops whose lives are dominated by one or other of these sins. So it is hypocritical to single out homosexuality.
   I know: you were ambushed; but you did walk into it! I believe you failed by treating scripture the same way the liberals do. Liberals start by saying the practices of their culture or group are right and then either accept, bend or discard scripture as required to make those practices look biblically right. Generally conservatives are culturally at least a weeny bit homophobic. Adopting the liberal's methods: i.e. accept the scriptures that say homosexual acts are a sin, bend the bits about not judging our fellows, and discard the scriptures which condemn the prevalent sins of our own culture or group; is not the way to defeat liberal theology!
3. Homosexuals are not special: they are just people like us. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. We are all sinners, sought out by God's grace, forgiven by the sacrifice of his Son, adopted as his sons and daughters, sealed with his spirit and made his heirs. But in this world we are all "sinners in recovery" just as AA or NA members are addicts in recovery. We all have what the past evangelicals called prevailing sins - sins which by nature or nurture we are particularly susceptible to. Whatever our "sin of choice" the stark fact that makes us all the same is that we are all fellow sin addicts! Let's drop the one-up-manship and help each other on the road to recovery.
4. You are tilting at windmills anyway. The teaching of Romans 1 on homosexuality is that its rise in society is the direct result of society's rejection of God. In other words it is a social indicator. Now if you use a Ph indicator - like litmus paper - it just tells you whether the sample is acid or alkaline. If you don't like the result it is no good colouring over the litmus paper - it is just an indicator. You need to add acid or alkali to the sample! If there is a high incidence of homosexuality in society or in the church it is merely an indicator of our rejection of God. No point telling people they shouldn't be gay! No point being homophobic - they are just people like us, in fact some of them are rather nicer people than some of us! Work instead on changing our national and church rejection of God - starting with ourselves!

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