Bishop Griswold Tries to Focus on Life and Death Issues Not Homosexuality - Christian Today

God willing, as my Muslim friends always say.

He informed that he wants to spend his time working on life and death issues, not on the stir over the homosexual issue, which was the main topic of a majority of discussions over the past year for the Episcopal Church.

Griswold said that the "developing world - Africa in particular - is far more in need of the Church's attention and resources to combat poverty and disease, including the AIDS epidemic that has killed millions."

And yet we throw our energies into the debate over the acceptance of homosexuals into the Episcopal Church USA, and not into finding solutions to the problems of the developing world.

"There are entities within my own country, this country, who are determined to make a domestic question an international question," he said. "Certain right-wing forces within this country and the Episcopal Church are driving a lot of the active displeasure among primates in other parts of the world, saying such things as 'If you really are orthodox, then you will sign on to the condemnation of this church in the United States.'"

There are diverse views on how the scripture should be read: Doctrinal absolutists point out that the Bible evidently rejects "disordered sexuality." on the other hand, Griswold belonging to the liberal wing thinks that "In the end, it's about context."

"For instance, in the portion of Romans that talks about homosexuality, clearly the Biblical writers assume that everyone was naturally heterosexual, and therefore any kind of homosexual behaviour was unnatural. Well, I think there's a big question mark there," he said.

The question mark Griswold is referring to is, I suppose, whether all of us are born heterosexual and whether that was known at the time Romans was written. Another question mark is: did God in effect write the Bible? If we are certain she did, then I think we can be certain that the first question mark can be removed. I'm not prepared to take it as given that the hand of man intervened between the word of God and the words on the page.

Christian Today, the source for the quotes above uses these words at the top of its pages:

..Simply let your 'Yes' be 'Yes', and your 'No', 'No'. (Mt 5:37)

I wonder what CT's intent is.