Catholic, Orthodox Bishops
It’s so encouraging isn’t it that these wonderfully orthodox bishops in TEC take huge amounts of effort to defend Christ’s glory.
INAUGURAL PRAYER: Bishop V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire is scheduled to deliver a prayer at a Jan. 18 inaugural event for President-elect Barack Obama. Bishop Robinson told the Associated Press "I will be careful not to be especially Christian in my prayer."
You couldn’t make it up could you?
Compare this to the (leaked) copy of the theological report to the English House of Bishops on the Uniqueness of Christ. A huge whopping back slap to Martin Davie who put it together. It’s absolutely phenomenal and sound as a pound to every jot and tittle.
In this report we have taken a long historical journey from the Old Testament to Common Worship. What we have seen in the course of this journey is as follows:
In the Old Testament The LORD, the God of Israel is the unique God. He alone creates, sustains and rules the world. From the time of Abraham onwards the LORD promises that he will bring blessing and renewal to a world marred by human rebellion against him.
In the New Testament Jesus is seen as unique because in him God has come to the world in person, taking human nature upon himself and dying on a cross in order to fulfil his promises and bring in his kingdom. Reflection upon the presence of the LORD in Jesus and on Jesus relation through the Spirit to the one he called Father led the New Testament writers to view the LORD not just as a simple monad, but as a unity consisting of the Father, the Son and the Spirit. .
In the Patristic period the New Testament account of the uniqueness of Jesus was challenged by theologies that denied either his true deity or his true humanity. The Fathers eventually rejected these theologies and expressed the core of the New Testament teaching about Jesus in the Nicene, Athanasian and Apostles Creeds and in the Chalcedonian Definition.
At the Reformation the New Testament and Patristic witness to the uniqueness of Jesus was challenged by English religious radicals who questioned both Jesus deity and his true humanity and also suggested that it was not necessary for those with opportunity to do so to have faith in Jesus in order to be saved. In its three historic Reformation formularies the Church of England rejected these challenges and upheld the teaching of the New Testament, the Creeds and the Chalcedonian Definition.
From the eighteenth century onwards the Church of England’s traditional view of the uniqueness of Jesus has been called into question by those who have asked whether the New Testament really teaches the equality and distinction of the persons of the Trinity whether it makes theological sense to continue to affirm the doctrine of the incarnation and whether we should continue to believe in Jesus’ virgin birth and bodily resurrection. In the face of this questioning the Church of England has continued to uphold its traditional teaching in all these areas.
The Church of England, and Anglicans more generally, have also taken the traditional doctrines of the Trinity and the incarnation as their basis for interfaith dialogue, holding that Jesus is the source of salvation for all people everywhere (whether they are yet aware of the fact or not), but also holding that Christians are called to be God’s instruments in bringing people to explicit faith in Christ and to membership of his Church.
Sounds fair enough to me. Why break the habit of a lifetime?
Interestingly I was *this* close to using the exact form of words of your second sentence.
 Very cheap and ugly point scoring, Peter. Explicitly Christian prayers have no place at a Presidential inauguration and it’s good that +Gene has the tact to acknowledge this (even as I’m sure Rick Warren will not). Unless you’re going to argue for America is  a Christian country Palin/Coulter etc nonsense.
Ryan, you are partly right. But the NYT also reports:
Bishop Robinson said he had been reading inaugural prayers through history and was “horrified†at how “specifically and aggressively Christian they were.â€
Those might be out-of-context quotes but you have wonder about a bishop who describes prayers as ‘aggressively Christian’.
Ryan,
Why do Christian prayers have no place at a Presidential inauguration? Where does that idea come from? There is a *massive* tradition of the inaugural prayer being explicitly Christian.
 Of course, but , like getting In God We Trust on the currency, that’s hardly a good thing.Â
Ryan,
Ignoring the nature of the upcoming event for the time being, tell me exactly who is a Christian bishop supposed to pray to?Â
This is seriously well deserved cheap point scoring. They really don’t come any cheaper than this.
Absolutely Ryan, because as Christians we don’t trust in God do we?
  We do, which is hardly the same thing as assuming everybody else does.  *Are* you denying that America was intended to be a secular republic?  The inauguration gig is an essentially non-Christian one. It’s a good thing that +Gene accepts the reality of this; surely it would be better for *his* cause if  he used the opportunity to show the world that the gay liberal believes in the uniqueness of Christ?Â
 And are you denying that prayer potentially *could* be aggresively christian? Aren’t there all sorts of formely accetable prayers (the ones relating to Jews and Muslims in the prayer book for example?) that we don’t say now?
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Why assume the USA was meant to be secular? It’s constitution doesn’t say so and that First Amendment separates state from church, not state from religion.
Quizzically yours,
JF
Is this along similar lines to the observation my six year old daughter made during a YouTube viewing of the Queen’s Christmas Day message and Rowan Williams’ New Year message: “The Queen said more about Jesus than the Archbishop” !!
 IIRC HM pointedly referred to Jesus “of Nazareth” rather than Jesus Christ.  No doubt if +Gene did something similar it would lead evangelicals to further attack his faith.
Sad thing is, it seems to be increasingly fashionable to make as little reference to Jesus as possible. We’re “faith communities” or we’re “religious believers”, even from the mouths of those who should be giving the clearest possible definition of our identity.
My measure on these things is always “the average man in the street” which roughly equals, the people I work with/meet in the pub/plays sports with/etc. Asking round the office here what identity a bishop is expected to communicate in public, the rather cynical “a religious politician” was popular once coined and others could only get as far as “they represent the Church”. The substance and foundations of “church” and “Christians” are increasingly unknown.
I’d suggest that the rumbling throughout this post and comments is a correct one – we need to be putting out a clear message that as Christians (whether bishops or not) we’re about Jesus and knowing Him. If somewhere I’ve misunderstood and that’s not what we’re about and the Jesus bit is made up, I’m quitting!!
Nicodemus, who had gone to Jesus earlier and who was one of their own number, asked, “Does our law condemn anyone without first hearing him to find out what he is doing?”
…so how about waiting til Jan 18th to find out what Gene R actually prays?
Blair
If every inauguration has had explicitly Christian prayers, then how can we say that “explicitly Christian prayers have no place at a Presidential inauguration”?
 Doesn’t make it right.  It’s surely a good thing that +Gene is recognising the secular nature of the inauguration instead of taking a chidlish “everybody else did explicitly Christian prayers, so I’ll do them do them too” attitude. Â
Well, it’s had to recognize a “secular nature” if there has never been one and there has always been “explicitly Christian prayers.” I’ll leave it to others to decide which is more childish: doing something as it has always been done, or doing something different for the sake of being different.
  Why is +Gene necessarily doing something for the *sake* of being different if it’s self-evidently true that the presidential inaugaration *is* a secular event even if me, you, or millions of Americans *want* it to be Christian? Â
Oh I get it. Robinson’s problem is that he thinks that events can be secular.
Kuyperianly yours,
John Foxe
 IIRC didn’t Peter and others here pointedly refer to +Gene as Mr Robinson ( a step up from VGR of course) suggesting that you don’t regard him as a real bishop? If +Gene did make specific references to Christ at Obama’s inauguration then wouldn’t the conservative blogosphere be full of people bemoaning the alleged hypocricy of someone you don’t regard as a creedal, orthodox Christian making references to Our Lord? Wouldn’t you be angry that the general public would regard +Gene as a Christian Leader in the same way as Rick Warren if he invoked Christ? If the President-Elect of your country asks you to do something then it’s only polite to accept; despite this, there is nothing +Gene could do at the inaugaration that would prevent him from receiving criticism. Obama presumably regards +Gene as a legitimate Christian leader. Given that he ran *against* the mislabled relgious right of Palin’s Republican Party then why would he capitulate to their ideology?Â
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Ryan,
No, I don’t regard him as a proper Bishop, but then I’d join a huge number of people in doing that. I personally have moved to *not* calling him “Mr Robinson” because I think that’s a bit insulting – my practice now is to call him “Robinson” or “Gene”.
Peter, I am not absolutely sure that, personally speaking, I regard you as a Priest. But I know that the church does, and that I need to take articles 26 and 36 seriously, and so I am equally clear that the choice to regard you as a priest or not isn’t mine. For the time being it is the Church’s and there is no question that the church took the decision lawfully and after serious thought. But ultimately it is God’s, and I don’t presume to put myself in the place of God. Â
You’re saying that I’m evil?
 Peter,is it just +Gene’s being in a same-sex relationship that precludes you from regarding him as a proper bishop, or more generally what you regard as his unorthodox beliefs? Do you go along with the idea (often expressed by evangelicals in the Scottish Episcopal Church) that the problem in the current debate is that there are essentially two different religions at work and that one or the other must be true making a 3rd way impossible?Â
Yes, Yes.