Try the Parish Directory Test
Read this bit from Catholic legal scholar Robert P. George as he is asked to consider how followers of Christ can be 'a counterculture for the common good?'
Now replace the Trenton phone book with an average parish directory and swap the Princeton faculty for the House of Deputies, and you have a great way to explain the disparity between the folks in the pews each Sunday and those making critical decisions for the Episcopal Church.
CT: "Before we can talk about becoming a counterculture, we have to understand the culture. What's your reading of our culture right now?
RG: "I've argued in my book The Clash of Orthodoxies that the contemporary moment is marked by profound cultural division. We have a clash of two worldviews. On the one side are those who maintain traditional Judeo-Christian principles, such as the principle of the sanctity of human life, the principle that marriage is the union of a man and a woman, the principle that sex is integral to marriage but that sex ought not to be engaged in outside of marriage, and so forth.
"On the other side of the cultural divide are people who have abandoned those principles in favor of some alternative ideology. Often it celebrates personal autonomy and freedom from traditional moral constraints, mixed with certain utilitarian elements. Sometimes it manifests itself in radical forms of feminism or quasi-pantheistic forms of environmentalism.
"This division runs between elite and popular opinion. If I may borrow a concept from William F. Buckley Jr., consider what the results would be if we were to ask 800 members of the Princeton faculty about their views on abortion or homosexuality or other issues of that sort, and then make the same inquiry of the first 800 people in the Trenton, New Jersey, phone book.
"Interestingly, the Princeton faculty and people of Trenton are probably going to vote largely alike—for Democratic candidates—albeit for different reasons. But when it comes to morally charged political issues, you're going to get answers from the 800 people consulted in the Trenton phone book that would be similar to those answers that would be given by 800 people from north-central West Virginia (where I grew up) or from Kansas or New Mexico. Their answers would be very different from those that would be given by the Princeton faculty or the editorial boards of The New York Times or The Washington Post.
"That's what I call a clash of orthodoxies.
CT: Why do you call it that?"
Read the rest in Christianity Today.
Now replace the Trenton phone book with an average parish directory and swap the Princeton faculty for the House of Deputies, and you have a great way to explain the disparity between the folks in the pews each Sunday and those making critical decisions for the Episcopal Church.
CT: "Before we can talk about becoming a counterculture, we have to understand the culture. What's your reading of our culture right now?
RG: "I've argued in my book The Clash of Orthodoxies that the contemporary moment is marked by profound cultural division. We have a clash of two worldviews. On the one side are those who maintain traditional Judeo-Christian principles, such as the principle of the sanctity of human life, the principle that marriage is the union of a man and a woman, the principle that sex is integral to marriage but that sex ought not to be engaged in outside of marriage, and so forth.
"On the other side of the cultural divide are people who have abandoned those principles in favor of some alternative ideology. Often it celebrates personal autonomy and freedom from traditional moral constraints, mixed with certain utilitarian elements. Sometimes it manifests itself in radical forms of feminism or quasi-pantheistic forms of environmentalism.
"This division runs between elite and popular opinion. If I may borrow a concept from William F. Buckley Jr., consider what the results would be if we were to ask 800 members of the Princeton faculty about their views on abortion or homosexuality or other issues of that sort, and then make the same inquiry of the first 800 people in the Trenton, New Jersey, phone book.
"Interestingly, the Princeton faculty and people of Trenton are probably going to vote largely alike—for Democratic candidates—albeit for different reasons. But when it comes to morally charged political issues, you're going to get answers from the 800 people consulted in the Trenton phone book that would be similar to those answers that would be given by 800 people from north-central West Virginia (where I grew up) or from Kansas or New Mexico. Their answers would be very different from those that would be given by the Princeton faculty or the editorial boards of The New York Times or The Washington Post.
"That's what I call a clash of orthodoxies.
CT: Why do you call it that?"
Read the rest in Christianity Today.
posted by Anglican Feedbag | 12:19 PM
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