Abp. of Canterbury: Masculine God "Contributes to Domestic Abuse"
Think Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams is going to preserve "orthodoxy" in the Anglican communion? Here's the latest wake-up call:
Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams is backing a Church of England report that claims viewing God in masculine terms can validate "overbearing and ultimately violent patterns of behavior" in intimate relationships and "contributes to domestic abuse," the London Daily Mail reports.
The document, entitled "Responding to Domestic Abuse, Guidelines for Pastoral Responsibility," is a response to a motion passed by the church's General Synod in July 2004 for guidelines to assist dioceses in working with other agencies and "speak[ing] out against the evil of domestic violence"...
"[U]ncritical use of masculine imagery," the report says, can validate "overbearing and ultimately violent patterns of behavior" responsible for domestic abuse.
So, the Anglican communion decided to "speak out against the evil of domestic violence" by blaming it on traditional Christian theology, and the ABC signed off on it. You can read the whole story here.
posted by Ben Johnson at 7:20 PM
3 Comments:
For many still in the Anglican Communion, it's rather an "If Only Hitler Had Known" moment...Sadly, too many people have followed denial into oblivion.
God bless.
At first I was bit shocked when I first read about this. Seemed a bit strange to me as to WHY they would say something like this! I did a search on the web for the paper in question, and found the section about "Masculine God" stuff! LOL! It was taken a bit out of context!
There is a section in the paper that speaks about "bad theology" that abusers use. They were describing the mindset of the person as follows:
Domestic abuse is fundamentally an abuse of power, and many conceptions of God derived from the Bible and the Christian tradition have portrayed divine
power in unhealthy and potentially oppressive ways. There are particular problems in the attribution of violent actions and attitudes to God, chiefly but
not solely in the Old Testament, which require careful interpretation with
reference to the historical and theological context.
Even short of this, the divine–human relationship may be conceived in terms of
domination and submission at the expense of grace, mercy and patient love. When used as a model for human relationships, this emphasizes authority and obedience at the expense of mutuality. In combination with uncritical use of
masculine imagery to characterize God, it can validate overbearing and ultimately violent patterns of behaviour in intimate relationships. The ‘post-Christian’
feminist Mary Daly had a point – despite the crudity of its formulation – when she said in the 1970s, ‘If God is male, then the male is God.’
It was describing how an abuser's mindset of how he is next to GOD in value compared to everyone else is why I have the right to beat the heck out of you!
The paragraph does continue to explain the rest, but not the way the media is saying things!
http://www.cofe.anglican.org/info/papers/domesticabuse.pdf
See page 27 of the 64 page report. They wanted the awareness out there so when the family approaches them - they will know how to respond to the abuser's insane entitled mindset is all!
Hi "h,"
I do not intend to say everything the report says is wrong. Had the report simply said "God is not abusive," that would have been praiseworthy, if innocuous. However, the report states flatly that masculine imagery, when applied to God, must also be condemned as a contributing factor to abuse. Since most abusers don't honestly believe they are following divine mandates by beating their wives and children, the passage slipd in a subtle condemnation of the Divinity's masculine nature, thus associating traditional Christians with wife beaters. And ABC went along.
God bless,
Ben
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