Sex, Moral Teaching, and the Unity of the Church. Timothy F. Sedgwick

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      Other churches, including Oriental and Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and some Protestant, Anabaptist, Evangelical, and Pentecostal churches, as well as some other churches in the Anglican Communion, have taught matters of morals in ways that differ from the Episcopal Church. This has included differences in who teaches and what is taught, and thus how differences in understanding and action are addressed. However teaching is done, this has led to divisions within churches and between churches. As one person whom I worked with said over a matter of institutional differences and conflict, “The question is, ‘Who decides?’ ” In the same sense, teaching and the ordering of moral authority are tied together and determine where conflict rests and divisions rise.

      Different ways of moral teaching and the ordering of episcopé carry with them strengths and weaknesses. As matters of deepening Christian faith, they all seek to inform conscience in truth and so to deepen life in Christ as koinonia, as participating and sharing together in that life as given in Scripture, celebrated in worship, and lived in love of neighbor, friend, and stranger. Some or many may wish and propose for the Episcopal Church a different way of teaching and exercising authority over teaching in order to have right teaching. But in itself, this only leads to division and the breaking of the unity to which Christians are called. First, as a matter of charity and faithfulness to the gospel call that we should be one that all might believe, the need is to understand the ways churches teach and why. Then it is possible to see more clearly what stands at the heart of teaching as a matter of deepening new life in Christ, and whether differences may be honored, and even embraced, and when they may be cause for division.

       NOTES

      The problem of “will our children have faith” is posed as the problem of secularization, given that church affiliation is a matter of choice. As the liturgical movement saw in the twentieth century, this is a challenge and opportunity for the church to be clear about the nature of Christian faith as given in and through the church. In the Anglican tradition, see the first work introducing liturgical renewal as celebrating and effecting a way of life: A. G. Hebert, SSM, Liturgy and Society (London: Faber and Faber, 1935), e.g., 132, 191–95. Hebert’s understanding of liturgy and society is grounded theologically in F. D. Maurice. See The Kingdom of Christ, 2 vols., ed. Alec R. Vidler (London: SCM Press, 1958, based on the second edition of 1842), 1:227–57, on the nature of spiritual constitution and 1:258–88 on baptism. For my own account of this for ethics, see Sacramental Ethics: Paschal Identity and the Christian Life (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986, republished 2008). On the history of the liturgical renewal movement, see Keith F. Pecklers and Bryan D. Spinks, The New Westminster Dictionary of Liturgy and Worship, ed. Paul Bradshaw (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002), 283–89.

      John Westerhoff brought the questions of formation in faith in a secular age to a focus with his question, “Will our children have faith?” See John H. Westerhoff, Will Our Children Have Faith?, 3rd ed. (Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse Publishing, 2012), first published in 1976. For a recent discussion of these matters, see Ruth Meyers and Paul Gibson, eds., Worship-Shaped Life: Liturgical Formation and the People of God (New York: Morehouse, 2010).

      Forming and passing on Christian faith from one generation to the next is a matter of the nature of tradition. The nature of tradition is a central question in classical sociology but has received scant attention beyond studies within particular fields of study. However, see Karl Man nheim, Essays on the Sociology of Knowledge, trans. Paul Kecskemeti (London: Routledge and Paul, 1952); Edward Shils, Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981); and Mary Douglas, How Institutions Think (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1986).

      On the history of the ecumenical movement, see Lorelei F. Fuchs, SA, “A Brief History of Faith and Order: Times, Places, People, and Issues behind an Ecumenical Theological Movement,” in The National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA Faith and Order Commission Handbook, comp. Lorelei F. Fuchs, SA; ed. Ann K. Riggs and R. Keelan Downton (New York: Graymoor Ecumenical and Interreligious Institute, NCC Faith and Order Office, 2005), 3–11. For a broader account, see Ruth Rouse and Stephen C. Neill, eds., A History of the Ecumenical Movement, 1517–1948, vol. 1 (Geneva: WCC, 1993). The classic history of the WCC was written by its first secretary general, W. A. Visser ’t Hooft, who served from 1948 to 1966. See The Genesis and Formation of the World Council of Churches (Geneva: WCC, 1982). For a history and anthology of major texts, especially focused on the World Council of Churches, see Michael Kinnamon and Brian E. Cope, eds., The Ecumenical Movement (Geneva: WCC, 1997).

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