This is a good way to start the day.
Instead of always being one of the chief bastions of thePosted by tripp at September 20, 2007 05:28 AM
social status quo, the Church is to develop a Christian
counter-culture with its own distinctive goals, values,
standards, and lifestyle--a realistic alternative to the
contemporary technocracy which is marked by bondage,
materialism, self-centeredness, and greed. Christ's call to
obedience is a call to be different, not conformist. Such a
Church--joyful, obedient, loving, and free--will do more than
please God: it will attract the world. It is when the Church
evidently is the Church, and is living a supernatural life of
love by the power of the Holy Spirit, that the world will
believe.
... John R. W. Stott (b.1921), "Obeying Christ in a
Changing World"
The gospel in and out of season... the church can go along with the dominant culture, if that culture agrees with the gospel, or not. It isn't 'reactionary' as in oppositional, or always counter-cultural on principle... like getting a Mohican and dyeing it blue to spite one's parents used to be.
He's right of course that ALWAYS being a bastion of the status quo is just as wrong!
(Which is why the Anglo-Catholic Movement attracted lots of rebels... and included reactionary religion fuelling radical politics.)
Stott is interesting, sort of a pope of English Evangelical Anglicanism (a type unknown really in America), the sometime vicar of All Souls', Langham Place (when in London I used to walk by it but never went in - not my brand of religion).
Digression: Just learnt of this. IIRC in the 1990s he also came up with the idea of 'limited women's ordination' some Evos believe in (like the Revd Anne Kennedy in the US - she's from a free-church background and I think English which may explain her hyper-Calvinism). I think it's meant as a compromise between the Catholic positions (yes, plural - impossibilist like the Pope and improbabilist like my 'the larger church trumps everything else') and accepting it outright. (But Evo arguments against it are about male headship not Catholic sacramental arguments.) It says you can do it as long as the minister is under male headship - a male bishop or vicar - and never becomes a vicar herself. A compromise which I dare say would offend more modern people than the Catholic positions! (Which though unpopular right now are consistent.)
Posted by: The young fogey at September 20, 2007 09:52 AMYup. Living in agreement with Christian principles IS conformism -- to Christian principles.
Posted by: Megan at September 20, 2007 02:17 PM