It is the Most Rev. Frank Tracy Griswold III\u2019s custom to begin his day at 5 a.m. with prayer and yoga, a heels-over-head ritual that symbolizes what some call his Zen-Benedictine approach to faith.<\/p>\n\n
The graceful, bookish cleric didn\u2019t stand on his head in the National Cathedral during the festive rites in which he was installed as the Episcopal Church\u2019s leader. But the new presiding bishop did challenge his church to wholeheartedly embrace the ambiguity of modern life.<\/p>\n\n
Each person must discover \u201cthe truth which is embodied in each of us, in what might be called the scripture of our own lives,\u201d he said, in his sermon on Jan. 10. With their legacy of \u201cgraced pragmatism,\u201d Episcopalians are uniquely gifted at blending the \u201cdiverse and the disparate,\u201d the \u201ccontradictory and the paradoxical,\u201d the \u201cmix and the muddle,\u201d he said. In a flock committed to finding the \u201cvia media,\u201d or middle way, \u201cdifferent dimensions of truth, different experiences of grace, can meet together, embrace one another, and share the Bread of Life.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
Here is a postmodern credo for the next millennium: The truths are out there.<\/p>\n\n
The problem is that there are so many people with so many truths and so many of them clash. Thus, Griswold faces a challenge: promoting unity in a deeply-divided church in which, if he has his way, the only Gospel truth will be that truth is essentially personal and experiential and discovered in compromise. Thus, the only heretics will be traditionalists who insist that scripture and church tradition contain transcendent, eternal truths that must be defended.<\/p>\n\n
But some issues defy compromise. Consider this biblical commandment: \u201cI am the Lord thy God. \u2026 Thou shalt have no other gods before me.\u201d On the other side are those who teach that the God of Christianity is merely one image of an older god or gods and who, on occasion, use rites blending Christianity with other religions. The \u201cvia media\u201d? Thou shalt only occasionally have other gods before me? Or there is the issue that haunts Episcopalians and other old-line Protestants \u2014 sex. On one side is the biblical teaching that sex outside of marriage is sin. On the other side are those who insist this teaching must change. The \u201cvia media\u201d?<\/p>\n\n
Griswold has sought compromise on this and other related issues. But the former bishop of Chicago has made his own stance clear. He has ordained priests who are sexually active outside of marriage and was one of more than 100 bishops to sign a 1994 statement saying sexual orientation is \u201cmorally neutral\u201d and that the church must recognize \u201cfaithful, monogamous, committed\u201d same- sex relationships. He is active in efforts to modernize church liturgies.<\/p>\n\n
The new presiding bishop has said that his love of ambiguity is rooted in his education, which took him from New Hampshire\u2019s high-brow St. Paul\u2019s Episcopal prep school to Harvard University and then on to Oxford. His critics note that these settings have consistently served as Anglicanism\u2019s laboratories for theological innovation.<\/p>\n\n
Griswold says his goal is to find middle ground between different truths. Others are more blunt. In a new book called \u201cStealing Jesus: How Fundamentalism Betrays Christianity,\u201d gay Episcopalian Bruce Bawer describes a titanic struggle between \u201clegalists\u201d who preach a faith based on law and compassionate Christians who base their faith on love.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cLegalists,\u201d argues Bawer, view \u201c\u2018truth\u2019 as something established in the Bible and known for sure by true Christians.\u201d Others see \u201ctruth as something known wholly only by God toward which the belief statements of religions can only attempt to point the way.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
Griswold states this another way. Those who are committed to compassion, conversation and true communion accept the reality that \u201cabsolute truth is beyond our accessibility,\u201d he told the Philadelphia Inquirer.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cBroadly speaking, the Episcopal Church is in conflict with scripture,\u201d he said. \u201cThe only way to justify it is to say, well, Jesus talks about the Spirit guiding the church and guiding believers and bringing to their awareness things they cannot deal with yet. So one would have to say that the mind of Christ operative in the church over time \u2026 has led the church to in effect contradict the words of the Gospel.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It is the Most Rev. Frank Tracy Griswold III\u2019s custom to begin his day at 5 a.m. with prayer and yoga, a heels-over-head ritual that symbolizes what some call his Zen-Benedictine approach to faith. The graceful, bookish cleric didn\u2019t stand on his head in the National Cathedral during the festive rites in which he was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":610,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n