Wednesday, 23 May 2018

April Fool


Bishop Michael Curry preached at the Royal wedding                     Source: Reuters/Christian Today


Presiding bishop Michael Curry thought his invitation to preach at the Royal wedding was an April Fool joke according to a report in Christian Today.

That is not surprising. Anglican leaders have barred the US Episcopal Church (TEC) from decision-making for allowing same-sex marriage.

No wonder Curry thought the invitation a joke. He was being offered a platform to preach his confused message of 'luuuuv' to hundreds of millions of people around the world.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, came up with the idea despite TEC having been sanctioned. "It was fantastic", he said, "This was raw God". Raw it might have been but it wasn't God. It was Michael Curry, liberal activist.

Welby claimed that people were caught up in it and excited by it. Those senior members of the Royal family he had spoken to were really excited by it and the people spoken to at the reception were gripped by it.

That is hardly surprising given the record of some of the senior members of the Royal family and many of the celebrities present. The Holy sacrament of marriage was combined with a message that legitimises just about anything in the name of love, interpreting selfish eros as selfless agape.

Wrapping all forms of love into one parcel is very convenient but it it is not biblical. So successful was Curry in getting across his liberal message that Labour peer Peter Mandelson said he was considering popping the question to his same-sex partner of 20 years. People across the UK will be 'inspired' by the moving display of love they witnessed between Prince Harry and his wife Meghan, he said.  

It wasn't April but there was a fool. Welby hammering yet another nail in the Anglican coffin.

5 comments:

  1. Anyone who knows this man's theology knows he thinks tries to justify anything by calling it love; that's why I just kept pressing 'skip' on my recorder when he came on; and boy did I have to press it many times.

    Best critique of it i've found is here;
    https://billmuehlenberg.com/2018/05/19/on-the-royal-wedding/

    https://billmuehlenberg.com/2018/05/20/on-michael-curry-and-the-power-of-love/

    https://billmuehlenberg.com/2018/05/20/on-weddings-theological-liberalism-and-discernment/

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  2. Yes, but why did he preach two sermons - one on "love" (mentioning the word no fewer than 71 times) and the second sermon on "fire"? It would have been good if he had actually named the couple getting married occasionally. However, 10 out of 10 for charismatic enthusiasm.

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  3. My thoughts of PB Michael Curry's sermon was that it was too long, the whole section on fire was superfluous to his point and was a bit of a dead spot in the sermon. Like Father David said, it was almost two sermons in one.

    I think Curry is such damaged goods in 'orthodox' (I mean real orthodox) Anglican circles that anything he said would've been rejected. We read between the lines as we know his heretical point of view on SSM etc. However, he made no reference to such things directly or tried to unpack the outworking of love in human relationships other than to present a utopian view of the world.

    The aim of the sermon was not an exact technical theological treatise on love in all its forms rather an appeal to recognise that love is the way (quoting 1 John 4) and as such love has the intrinsic power to be transformational. With regard to the main section of the sermon, I believe he really did make an impact.

    I think we need to be careful not to be so critical as to be defined by what we disagree with. Hyper criticism is not very edifying and makes one vulnerable to the charge of being vexatious in one's point of view.

    Chew the meat, spit out the bones.

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    Replies
    1. Egotistical,self indulgent buffoon? So often homiletic talk about love is drivel.
      Bob

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