BISHOPS in the House of Lords are accused of turning their backs on theological arguments, and failing to give a moral lead
For those who don't see a copy of the CT each week, the basic arguments of the report seem to be that, looking at Bishops' speeches in the house of Lords, they refer very little to the Bible or theological principles. The conclusion, as reported, is that they are mainly arguing on secular grounds and not biblical or theological. This is not necessarily true and could even be mischievous. Now, I'm not saying that these bishops do or don't ground their arguments in theology or Bible, merely that the argument saying they don't is flawed as presented in the CT. The flaw is to assume that explicit mention of bible or theology equates to arguing theologically while not doing so does not. I take issue with this because I find that many of my political stances are informed by biblical and theological stances and principles. I don't always make them explicit because I tend to try to present them in terms others can relate to. So, I may talk about justice or peace, but behind my valuing them is a set of values which honour the God of justice and the prince of peace, my statements don't make that explicit because I take them for granted and I'm looking for common ground. If our bishops are doing similarly then I would not expect mere word counts or even a slightly more sophisticated count of explicit arguments to show up a great deal of theology. To get a truer picture one would have to interview the bishops about what they have said and ask them how what they say ties in with their faith.
Sheesh!
Church Times - Report finds bishops too political: Filed in: politics, religion, theology, Bible, Bishops, UK, England
3 comments:
A former colleague of mine in writing on public/political theology ("theology for the city" rather than "theology for the church") noted the challenge of pursuing theology that is publicly intelligible while still rooted in the Christian story. He argued that Christians must "be able to speak the language of political discourse, albeit with a foreign accent."
As you say, it's not how many proof-texts are dropped into the speech, but rather how their speech and actions align themselves with broader theological themes.
yeh, in fact I'd go further, spurred on by your comment: I think that I would go as far as to argue that provided they really were aligning themselves with broader theological themes, they would not be doing their job if they did proof text all the time. That would probably be counter productive and get their arguments 'not heard'.
I love the phrase "be able to speak the language of political discourse, albeit with a foreign accent."
Thanks.
Yes I am sure if they had been using too much biblicalese they would have been complaining in the other direction. Can't win with some people - they'll whine either way.
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