Issues to unite
Sir, The Anglican worldwide community has struggled for many years over the ordination of women and homosexual issues. Reading your newspaper over the last six months has shown me that these issues still dominate church thinking and cause disunity in the church. It is almost as if church history is repeating itself.
Right back at the start of the Christian church the apostle Paul had to negotiate between the circumcision group and the non-circumcision one. How were Gentiles to be accommodated into the church? Did they have to have the full identity of the Jewish Jesus followers? Christian women and homosexuals of today have much in common with the Gentiles.
The apostle Paul struggled with those with opposing viewpoints but found a uniting factor: ‘Remember the poor,’ (Gal 2:10). All Jesus followers were united in the fact that they cared for the poor. As the theologian Bruce Longenecker writes: “Care for the impoverished was integral to Paul’s gospel and standard practice in the Jesus groups that he founded.”
We are finding today that different church denominations and expressions are already in the process of uniting by working together in many food bank and soup kitchen ventures. The Anglican community is also uniting amongst itself in care for the poor but from my experience this only involves a small group within individual churches. If all Christians unite over the poor, women and homosexuals issues will eventually be addressed because marginalised people tend to be poor and also much more scripture supporting caring for the poor will be revealed satisfying traditionalists.
I recall that in the first few weeks of Pope Francis’ leadership he was bombarded with questions over his stance on homosexuality and women in the priesthood. His answers implied that the church needs to get on with the real mission of reaching out to the poor rather than being sidetracked and not being able to focus on Jesus’ Good News in reaching out to the poor.
Also it was a mistake in my letter to say women tend to be poor. What I meant to say is women are more likely to be poor because of social conditions.
Mandy Bisset,
Southport