[Apologetics] Rowan Williams says anti-gays misread Bible

[Art Kelly]

I think Rowan Williams is out of his mind! 

Here's what St. Paul's 1st Epistle to the Corinthians,
Chapter 6, verses 9 and 10, says:

"Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit
the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither the
immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor sexual
perverts, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards,
nor revilers, nor robbers will inherit the kingdom of
God."

Furthermore, Leviticus 18:22 says, "You shall not lie
with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination."

Art 

Rowan Williams says anti-gays misread Bible

Wed Apr 18, 2007 5:58AM BST
By Tom Heneghan, Religion Editor

PARIS (Reuters) - The spiritual leader of the world's
77 million Anglicans has said conservative Christians
who cite the Bible to condemn homosexuality are
misreading a key passage written by Saint Paul almost
2,000 years ago.

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, addressing
theology students in Toronto, said an oft-quoted
passage in Paul's Epistle to the Romans meant to warn
Christians not to be self-righteous when they see
others fall into sin.

His comments were an unusually open rebuff to
conservative bishops, many of them from Africa, who
have been citing the Bible to demand that pro-gay
Anglican majorities in the United States and Canada be
reined in or forced out of the Communion.

"Many current ways of reading miss the actual
direction of the passage," Williams said on Monday,
according to a text of his speech posted on the
Anglican Church of Canada's Web site.

"Paul is making a primary point not about
homosexuality but about the delusions of the
supposedly law-abiding."

The worldwide Anglican Communion is near breaking
point over homosexuality, with conservative clerics
insisting the Bible forbids gay bishops or blessings
for same-sex unions. Its U.S. branch, the Episcopal
Church, named a gay bishop in 2003.

In fact, Williams also revealed on Tuesday that he had
considered cancelling the Anglicans' once-a-decade
2008 Lambeth Conference, which has the potential to
become a flashpoint over homosexuality.

"Yes, we've already been considering that and the
answer is no," he told the Anglican Church of Canada's
Anglican Journal.

"We've been looking at whether the timing is right,
but if we wait for the ideal time, we will wait more
than just 18 months."

In the passage of Romans that Williams referred to in
Monday's speech, Paul said people who forgot God's
words fell into sin. "Men committed indecent acts with
other men and received in themselves the due penalty
for their perversion," Paul wrote.

Williams said these lines were "for the majority of
modern readers the most important single text in
Scripture on the subject of homosexuality." But right
after that passage, Paul warns readers not to condemn
those who ignore God's word.

"At whatever point you judge the other, you are
condemning yourself," wrote Paul, the first-century
apostle whose epistles, or letters, to early Christian
communities elaborated many Church teachings.

NEITHER SIDE WINS

Williams said reinterpreting Paul's epistle as a
warning against smug self-righteousness rather than
homosexuality would favour neither side over the other
in the bitter struggle that threatens to plunge the
Anglican Communion into schism.

It would not help pro-gay liberals, he said, because
Paul and his readers clearly agreed that homosexuality
was "as obviously immoral as idol worship or
disobedience to parents."

This reading would also upset anti-gay conservatives,
who have been "up to this point happily identifying
with Paul's castigation of someone else," and
challenge them to ask whether they were right to judge
others, he added.

"This does nothing to settle the exegetical questions
fiercely debated at the moment," Williams said.

But he said a "strictly theological reading of
Scripture" would not allow a Christian to denounce
others and not ask whether he or she were also somehow
at fault.

Williams warned of the danger of schism.

"The Communion has to face the fact that there is a
division in our Church and it's getting deeper and
more bitter," he said. "If the Anglican Church
divides, everyone will lose."

(Additional reporting by Randall Palmer in Ottawa)



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