Back in Town

Welcome to An Exercise in the Fundamentals of Orthodoxy. If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to the RSS feed to keep up to date with what I'm writing. Alternatively, if you want to contact Peter in relation to issues of human sexuality, please use the contact form here. Thanks for visiting!

We were away for the past week so hence the lack of blogging (or replying to comments). Back now (via 4d baby scans, baby shows, brand new buggies and car seats etc), though still technically on holiday till next week. Loads to blog, but for the moment let me send you the way of this link for a wonderful parody of the current nightmare in sexual ethics that is liberal Anglicanism.

I have never been so excited to preside at such a blessing! I have to confess that I still felt a little bit naughty about the whole thing, but nonetheless the Spirit of anticipation and expectation was flowing like a river around us that night. What proceeded was in every way like a marriage liturgy despite leaving the usual introductory exhortations left unsaid. Even rings were blessed and exchanged. The world need never know that this was not just another married couple after that night. The congregation would never need to know what had transpired either. For all they would know, the couple might have just had a quickie marriage in Las Vegas. Neither the rings nor any of us would betray the truth. But we would know, and God would know, and that would be enough for all of us - at least for now. Someday, I’m convinced, the State and the Church will both come to realize what we have come to realize. At that time different couples, such as this couple, will not seem so unusual or strange anymore. Tolerance and inclusively will abound as the Lord himself restores all things!

In the meantime, we remain publicly silent about this secret. Even if others can’t yet acknowledge what we have experienced as true, we nonetheless have come to a fuller realization that where love is Christ is present also. We know that love is primary and what happens in the bedroom is secondary. We know that in time God will reveal to others what he has already revealed to us. God is doing a new thing. The Gospel is one of emancipation for all people.  We are in an age of liberation as our society slowly is allowing for new possibilities which were formerly impossible. Change, like a river, is coming. In the meantime we wait for that perfect moment, that fullness of time, when the Lord will set all the captives free. Free from intolerance and narrow minded bigotry. Free from false religion. Free to give and receive love as God has intended. This is the story. This is the temperate proposal.

Hear what the Spirit is saying to the Church!

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