Bishops criticize Anglican focus on sex as 'obsession'

[dArKeR]

The Church of England has an "unhealthy obsession" with sexual sin, a panel of bishops suggested on Tuesday in a document exploring cross-dressing, bisexuality, gay marriage and homosexual clergy.

Launching the long-anticipated guide, the clerics -- led by the Right Reverend Richard Harries, the Bishop of Oxford -- betrayed their frustration at the way in which the Anglican communion was being torn apart by what some consider to be a peripheral, theological debate.

The guide, Some Issues in Human Sexuality, was published in the wake of the consecration in the US of Gene Robinson, the first openly gay bishop. Within hours of that ceremony on Sunday in New Hampshire, leaders of the Anglican church in Africa condemned his elevation and threatened to cut ties with the Anglican community in the US.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2003/11/06/2003074799

[xchrom]

1. and the african anglicans can do

with out american money.
coddling superstition regarding gay clergy and women clergy won't ''win'' anything.
it's time for at least some portion of the christian faith to grow up, and deal with sex the way it really exists in peoples every day lives.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

2. Back in the 1930s, mystery writer and religious essayist

Dorothy Sayers wrote an essay asking why we conflated sex and sin, when there were many varieties of sins. When a person was referred to as a "sinner," it was immediately assumed that the person had violated some sexual rules rather than being violent or greedy.

Sayers was undoubtedly speaking from personal experience, since she had a child out of wedlock.

Those African bishops really need to read her essay.

[xchrom]

4. agreed -- but it's not just

the african church -- though right now they have the head-lines -- look at the distorted view that christianity has presented it's followers with through history. with this pope, jerry and pat being some of the more glaring recent examples of adolecent, backward thinking among prominent christians.

[BiggJawn]

3. It ain't just the Anglicans....

Our "Culture" on the whole has an obsession with Sex.
Wheteher it's the "act we love to hate/hate to love", a power tool, or a way to get lonely people to loosen their wallets (while they think they're loosening something else) it's just obsessive.

[grilled onions]

5. Deja Vu

To any person in the U.S. who had to suffer thru the "Penis Years" when a certain portion of our political population became obsessed with BJ's while the country itself was put on hold, this should come as no surprise.

[ninkasi]

6. I've never understood it.

I'll admit that I've never understood anyone's obsession with sex, as long as the sexual acts are between consenting adults, and the partners are honest about any dangers their health might represent to others.

I'm concerned about MY sex, I don't want or need other people telling me how, with whom, how frequently, or anything else. I'm far more concerned with the pornography of violence, the viciousness prevalent in society today.

There is something really, really wrong with people who spend so much of their time with this unhealthy obsession with other people's sex lives. Really.

[dArKeR]

7. Fear of Nudity is so stupid too! What a bunch of Christian *holes!

Travel around the world and you see people living without such fear. In remove areas, villages, towns, beaches. People felt NO DISGRACE about nudity until the Christian Missionaries showed and taught the nice people about the evilness of nudity. What a bunch of Pathetic Christian Sex Psychos!

[Liberator_Rev]

8. "Faith of our Genitals" is essence of Conservative Christianity.

Here's the latest improvement we've made to one of the principal pages of our web site:
"If you have a world view (or "religion" if you like) in which what "little people" do with their sexual organs is terribly important, but what people of great wealth and power in this world do with such power and wealth is not very important to you, then you are a Conservative, like Paul of Tarsus.
If, on the other hand, your religion or world view causes you to think that what the average person does with his or her sexual organs is not terribly important, but what people of great wealth and power in this world do with that power and wealth is very important, then you are are a Liberal like Jesus of Nazareth.

"Christian Conservatives" claim to speak for Christ on the basis of what they imagine Jesus would say and do about our world today. They treat Jesus like an inanimate object, a puppet in effect who can't speak for himself and therefore needs people like themselves to serve as his ventriloquists and speak for him. And so they have been needed over the years to speak for Jesus and condemn organs and pianos (because everybody knew they were created by the devil for use only in brothels) and
condemn ice cream Sundaes (because they were made with sinful seltzer water and they had to be renamed, so as not to share the name of the holy sabbath day on which they were mainly sold originally.) and
condemn playing cards, drinking any and all alcoholic beverages, dancing, wearing bathing suits, viewing motion pictures, reading most books, and
condemn masturbation,
condemn family planning or birth-control, and
condemn homosexuality (using very debatable scripture), and
condemn abortion, (as though Jesus knew nothing about abortion).
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"Liberals Like Christ" claim to know what Jesus would say and do about the world today because of what Jesus said and did about his world, which in many respects has changed very little. To really conserve the teaching of Jesus, you must know precisely what that teaching was, and not allow anyone who came after Jesus tell you otherwise.
Here is the way Jesus defined himself :
{Luke 4:18}
"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me;
he has appointed me to preach Good News to the poor;
he has sent me to heal the brokenhearted
and to announce that the blind shall see,
that captives shall be released
and the downtrodden shall be freed
(i.e. liberated) from their oppressors."

Ever since the "conversion" of the pagan Emperor Constantine, in 325 A.D., Christianity has been embraced by the rich and the powerful. But as part of the bargain, Christ's "Good News to the poor" has been twisted to mean that the brokenhearted, the captives and, the downtrodden would all have to wait for "the next life" for relief. And anyone who suggested otherwise was a troublemaker, a "rabble-rouser", a "heretic" or, more recently, a "Communist".

http://www.LiberalsLikeChrist.Org/Christlike