What is marriage now?

From The Christian Century-

Amid endless debates concerning same-sex relationships and same-sex marriage, one biblical passage is often curiously absent. In 1 Corinthians 7, Paul reflects on the merits of married and single life. If unmarried persons struggle with sexual self-control, he says, they should marry, “for it is better to marry than to be aflame with passion.”

The King James Version translates Paul’s sentiment more bluntly: “It is better to marry than to burn.”

Wide embarrassment on all sides no doubt accounts for neglect of this passage—but also makes it an unexpected resource. If no side owns it, the passage may offer a rare place to meet for fresh discernment. If no one likes the passage, its very neglect might offer an unexpected way out of our impasse.

More here-

http://www.christiancentury.org/article/2014-10/what-marriage-now

An Act of Judgment?

From The Living Church-

The week before the raid that killed Osama bin Laden at Abbottabad in Pakistan, NATO air forces came close to hitting Colonel Gadaffi in a raid on Tripoli and may have killed one of his sons. The suggestion of an assassination attempt was met with a disapproving denial. The targeted building was positively identified as a command-and-control center, the British Prime Minister insisted; the rationale of NATO operations was military, and would not envisage assassination — though, of course, if the colonel had happened to be on-site commanding and controlling when the planes came over, that was his lookout. A compound may house families as well as facilities for military planning, but it does not follow that in targeting the military offices you are targeting families, too. All of which was in conformity with international law and traditional Just War doctrine, which prohibits assassinations but allows attacks on the enemy’s command facilities.

About a week after the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, a parallel account of that operation has begun to emerge. Material recovered from computers has shown that the compound was a center of planning operations. Bin Laden’s continuing role, which experts had for some time discounted, now appeared in a more significant light. And so in retrospect the military reasons for his death have come to seem clear: “an enemy commander in the field,” he was a legitimate target of hostilities. But this is all in retrospect. In the hours and days just after the raid the justifications, doubts and criticisms all bore a very different cast.

More here-

http://www.livingchurch.org/news/news-updates/2011/5/10/an-act-of-judgment

Living God's Ongoing Story

From Christianity Today-

Against the backdrop of the recent economic crisis, N.T. Wright, Anglican Bishop of Durham, opens with a persuasive call to recover character. Many Christians focus on "getting saved," but what about the rest of the Christian life? Often we get stuck between two extremes: an antinomian ("against law") spontaneity, and a rule-focused legalism. Instead, argues Wright in After You Believe: Why Christian Character Matters (HarperOne), we need to develop virtuous character.

At first, the author's prescription sounds like a popular version of Aristotle's ethics: Virtue is formed by self-consciously adopting new habits, countless daily decisions, with the goal of becoming a just person. Do the right thing (which feels odd at first, not spontaneous) long enough, and it becomes second nature. The main means of attaining this virtue is "following Jesus."

By the second chapter, however, Wright begins to show how the valid concerns of pagan wisdom are taken up by the New Testament writers (especially Paul) and, in the process, are transformed by the gospel. We do not live toward the human-centered goal of virtue formation for the sake of happiness or even "human flourishing," but ultimately as priests and rulers who anticipate the restoration of the whole cosmos. "[W]e urgently need to recapture the New Testament's vision of a genuinely 'good' human life as a life of character formed by God's promised future, as a life with that future-shaped character lived within the ongoing story of God's people, and, with that, a freshly worked notion of virtue." And "you don't get that character just by trying. You get it by following Jesus."

More here-

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2010/may/30.55.html

Complaints put brakes on ethics class trial

From Australia-

VERITY FIRTH is refusing to guarantee a 10-week trial for secular ethics classes will start next week in state primary schools as expected, after a flurry of complaints from religious leaders.

A spokeswoman for the NSW Minister for Education yesterday said getting the curriculum right was ''more important than the timing of the trial''.

She said the Board of Studies had yet to sign off on the final version of the curriculum before gaining ministerial approval.

''When the minister announced the trial she said it would be reviewed by the Board of Studies,'' the spokeswoman said.

''While it's a trial, it's a significant change to a long-standing arrangement in our schools and subject to considerable public debate.'' The trial, overseen by the St James Ethics Centre, was expected to start next week at Darlinghurst, Bungendore, Rozelle, Hurstville, Haberfield, Ferncourt, Baulkham Hills North, Leichhardt, Randwick and Crown Street public schools.

The first lesson for students in years five and six, covering issues such as truth and fairness, was scheduled at Haberfield Public on Tuesday at 9am.

The pilot ethics program was fully funded and was endorsed unanimously by the Federation of Parents and Citizens' Associations of NSW in July.

More here-

http://www.smh.com.au/national/education/complaints-put-brakes-on-ethics-class-trial-20100416-skfy.html

Bishop enters battle against secular ethics classes

From Australia-

THE Bishop of North Sydney has urged Anglican priests to collect information from principals of public schools to stop the spread of the secular ethics classes the Sydney Anglicans believe may threaten religious education.

In an email seen by the Herald, Bishop Glenn Davies urged ministers to contact the principals of public schools in their parishes to ascertain the exact numbers of children enrolled in religious education. This was even though most schools were not involved in the trial, which is being piloted at just 10 schools under the guidance of the St James Ethics Centre.

''The St James Ethics Centre claims that there are large numbers of students not enrolled in SRE [special religious education],'' the email from Bishop Davies read. ''We need to gather some accurate information to challenge this claim.''

Bishop Davies added that ''there is an urgency to this request'' and asked for results by the following week.

The Herald has learnt that even rectors whose local schools are not involved in the trial have turned up at P&C meetings to protest about the secular ethics classes.

Groups of religious education teachers including Anglicans have also lobbied the principals of schools where the trial will occur, to make sure the trial did not affect their class numbers.

The NSW Federation of Parents and Citizens' Associations and the St James Ethics Centre yesterday renewed their invitation to the Anglican Archbishop of Sydney, Peter Jensen, to meet to discuss the trial.

''There is absolutely no desire or intention to weaken religion or eliminate scripture from schools and to suggest otherwise is misleading,'' the centre's head, Simon Longstaff, said. ''The reality is that, prior to this trial being mounted, in some schools, 50 to 80 per cent of students were electing not to go to scripture.''

More here-

http://www.smh.com.au/national/education/bishop-enters-battle-against-secular-ethics-classes-20100413-s7pp.html

Anglican Head: An Ethical Economy is Built on Ethical People

From Christian Post-

If the world wants an ethical economy, it must build ethical people.

That was the message from the head of the worldwide Anglican Communion at the end of a three-day conference at Trinity Church on Wall Street this past week.

Dr. Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, asserted that the question of how to build an ethical economy could not be separated from the question of what kind of people we want to be.

“Moving through the question of how we define ‘economy’ and ‘ethical,’ we find that we are actually discussing what we mean by building persons at the end of the day – which implies that a critique of economics is always also a cultural critique,” the Church of England cleric said.

“What sort of persons are needed to make economies work well and constructively is a question that leads to what sort of persons we think ourselves to be and want to be. And that’s an important warning against simply offloading blame onto the places where it seems to sit most easily," he added.

Addressing the function of schools in building humanity, the archbishop recommended further reflection on the kind of "humanist" education that could produce in children "that blend of financial and cultural and moral literacy that we’d all like to see".

More important than education in the formation of people, he contended, was defining the self, which according to the Christian tradition is “always and invariably invested in the good of the neighbor”.

“Faith carries with it the vision of the social self, and the sense also of humanity overall as a community of communities. The language of Christian theology says that we are created in the image of a God who is eternal, relational, good. Christian theology speaks of the optimal form of global society as organic and mutual," Williams said.

More here-

http://www.christianpost.com/article/20100131/archbishop-an-ethical-economy-is-built-on-ethical-people/