THE EDITOR, Sir:IT WAS my priviledge and delight to spend a few days recently with my wife back home. We stayed at the Pegasus and had a magnificent view of the Emancipation Park and its use.
It was so refreshing to see the ways in which the space was being used to create community at a time when the Jamaican community is under stress. I was particularly impressed by the numbers of families who were in evidence. In my book anything that strenghtens family ties especially that of the African family in the Diaspora is welcomed.
The effects of slavery can only be reversed by deliberate public policies of family support, creation and strengthening.
Still we must be wary that we do not interpret family to mean only the nuclear or extended family. These developed in response to survival and we should be open to some of the recent creations of family. This will increase as we become more exposed to the global market place of ideas, religions and social structures.
This brings me to the heated debate about the election of the celebrated Bishop Robinson of the American Episcopal Church.
I do not understand why so many persons would wish to shoot the bishop. There should be some empathy here.
There are two issues involved. There is the matter of Theology and Ethics on the one hand and on the other the question of Episcopal Authority. To be a Bishop means that there is a bestowed ecclesiatical authority to interpret the Scriptures, to guide the church in matters of faith and ethics and to do this within the prameters handed down to and by the church.
That is what the Apostolic Succession means which is symbolises by the "laying on of hands and anointing". The church is not the creator of doctrine it is a witness to the truth enshrined in the doctrine which simply put is that Jesus died; He rose from the dead on Easter Sunday morning and He shall return in glory or as we sing it in Sunday School," Jesus loves me this I know for the Bible tells me so."
In the meantime Christians receive the Holy Spirit in Baptism enabling them to live the fullness of life as forgiven sinners. Every Bishop then is a living witness by Word and Life to this.
A bishop is a public Christian as all Christians ought to be but the bishop is the leader.
Bishop Robinson's problem and those who follow him is that the public nature of the faith has been both forgotten and denied. Unfortunately, much of the recent expressions of American religion like every thing else in life has been individualised and privatised. Thus the importance of the wants of the moment have been heightened and so whims and fancies take the place of long term vision, principle and sacrifice. The now becomes the priority.
Yet, we do need to recognise that there are those among us who are homosexuals and by no fault of their own. They have been handed a difficult and strange genetic code. The Christian approach should therefore be not bigotry but instead compassion. There should also be the recognition that there can be a genuine relationship of love between persons of the same sex. Indeed it happens all the time and my feeling is that what most angry Christians are hung up on is the act of sexual intercourse which in some instances becomes a part of that relationship.
Those who utter such righteous anger against same sex intercourse are generally the same persons who have least to say about a prison system which locks up persons of the same sex together for years on end robbing them of that same female companionship which it so eloquently espouse.
We need to recognise that we are all sexual beings. The statue at the entrance to Emancipation Park which has lately been in the news is a worthy and beautiful reminder. Never forget that naked we came into this world and clothes are a human invention. Do not misunderstand me I do like a good suit. Still, a healthy pride in our bodies would go a long way in reducing many of the ills in our society.
While I do not really care what two men or two women do in the privacy of their bedrooms I do have a concern when that behaviour is given universal public legitimacy.
It seems to me that to do this flies in face of the natural order of the universe and as a religious person is an affront to the Created order.
Same sex unions while presumably pleasurable are in fact the beginnings of what Pope Paul calls," a culture of death" for there is no possibility of issue. Surely if this were universalised and all persons behaved like this in one generation our world would end.
If Bishop Robinson wishes to indulge himself as a private person, so be it. But if he so desires he should not have sought the bishopric nor should he have received the approbation of his peers for his private activities as if they were public. He should have known that to take the stand he did was to flout both the natural and the Created order and to do so was to commit an act of idolatry.
St. Paul at the very beginning of the Church, writing to the Roman Church at a time when prostitution and homosexual practices were rife described these activities are idolatrous and the church has followed that teaching and so do I.
I have every confidence that the Anglican Communion will do what is right according to the Scriptures and the teaching of the Church and that Bishop Robinson having enjoyed his brief but significant exposure in the Sun will disappear into the shadows. In the meantime let us pray for him and our brothers and sisters in the Anglican Communion because every Christian denomination, all religions viz, Islam, Hinduism etc. and their religious communities are wrestling with this issue anew today.
I am, etc.,
From: Horace O. Russell (Rev. Dr.)
horussell@aol.com
Saints Memorial Baptist Church
47 South Warner Avenue
Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania
USA
