Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Shaking the Foundations

Daily Episcopalian has just posted the text from Marilyn McCord Adams' wonderful Chicago Consultation presentation, "Shaking the Foundations." It seemed PARTICULARLY appropriate to post and share now with "Stir It Up" Sunday coming up!

So here you have it: "Shaking the Foundations: LGBT Bishops and Blessings in the Fullness of Time," a paper delivered by the Rev. Canon Marilyn McCord Adams at the Chicago Consultation, Seabury-Western Seminary, December 5, 2007.

The Church is a school for Kingdom-heralds. The Church is charged with responsibility for Christian education that grows us up in the knowledge and love of God and sends us out for word-and-deed proclamation of God’s love for a broken and divided world.

The Church is human as well as Divine. At the deepest level, God organizes church and cosmos into Christ’s organic body-politic, whose members are interdependent and united under the direction of Christ their head. The real unity and eventual functional harmony of the Church are not in jeopardy, because they are guaranteed by God. By contrast, visible church institutions--the ways we organize ourselves--are human constructions that have no intrinsic authority. They gain credibility and earn our allegiance only insofar as they prove to be skillful means to Kingdom-ends.

Read the rest here ... and give thanks for the witness of Marilyn McCord Adams!

1 comment:

Unknown said...

WOW!