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Primates Subgroup does have teeth

Amidst the hullabaloo about the supposed inadequacy of the subgroup report on the US Episcopal Church (TEC)'s response to the Windsor Report, it should be noted that the report has got far sharper teeth than many have assumed. In fact, in its discussion of blessings for same sex partnerships it takes very real cognisance of the failure of TEC to respond in this area at least and to the very real possibility of intransigent bishops not being a full part of the Anglican Communion:

It is therefore not at all clear whether, in fact, the Episcopal Church is living with the recommendations of the Windsor Report on this matter. ... We do not see how bishops who continue to act in a way which diverges from the common life of the Communion can be fully incorporated into its ongoing life.  This is therefore a question which needs to be addressed urgently by the House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church.

Further, the discussion of the "expression of regret" is hardly a ringing endorsement of TEC:

The group was unsure how these words should be understood.  On the one hand, there does not seem to be any admission of the fact that the action of consenting to the particular election at the centre of this dispute was in itself blameworthy. ... The Group feels that the reality of the change of direction that some see in the resolutions of the General Convention can only be tested however by the way in which the Episcopal Church lives out these resolutions.

In other words, "Don't try and pull a fast one: we are watching you."

Is the report adequate, fully accurate and encouraging? Overall - NO. But neither is it as unilateral as many comments have suggested.

Film and ethics nerdiness

Because of my double nerdiness of ethics and my enjoyment of movies I really liked this site.

There is a more professional and less fun-looking one here.

More Wimber

Posting the previous relating to John Wimber reminded me of my favourite Wimber story:

Shortly after John Wimber became a Christian, he became a voracious Bible reader. The Scriptures excited him. Finally, after weeks of reading about life-transforming miracles in the Bible and attending boring church services, John asked one of the lay leaders, "When do we get to do the stuff?"

"What stuff?" asked the leader.

"You know, the stuff here in the Bible," said John. "You know, like the stuff Jesus did—raising people from the dead, healing the blind and the paralyzed. You know, that stuff."

"Well, we don’t do that anymore," the man said.

"You don’t?"

"No."

"Well what do you do?" asked John.

"What we did this morning."

In frustration, John responded: "For that I gave up drugs?"

(From here.)

Reach out!

Custard asks:

I get the laying hands on people when praying for them. But what's with the vague stretching out of hands towards them? Are you expecting to be able to throw lightning bolts, as with the Emperor in Star Wars? Or is it a telekinesis thing? Or a telepneumatological thing? In which case why does it need the hand?

I am happy to provide the answer! It is actually rather funny.

Hand-extension, believe it or not, developed in the charismatic movement quite randomly (or, through the mysterious workings of God the Holy Spirit if you prefer). John Wimber recounts with some amusement the following in his autobiography. The original Vineyard church used to meet in a school hall in California. They would pray for the sick every Sunday at the end of their services, with the laying on of hands. And it was HOT. The person being prayed for would often become uncomfortable if several people laid their hands on them because it would make them feel hotter. So the practice gradually developed that people would stretch out their hands towards the person being prayed for, with perhaps just one person laying their hands on them. Then what happened was, John Wimber started travelling the world training other churches to pray for the sick, and taking teams with him from the Vineyard. They carried on praying for people in the way they were accustomed - that is, stretching out their hands towards them. In the event of someone falling over it also avoided the charge of them being pushed! And the people being trained, quite naturally, simply copied what they saw the Californians doing!!

Having explained that, it is worth pointing out that extending hands is nevertheless a perfectly useful thing to do in prayer since it helps one focus one's mind and heart in a particular way. One might say it is irrational if by irrational one means that it accomplishes nothing in the purely material realm i.e. it doesn't help one's prayers reach the intended recipient (!) any more than putting one's hands in the air in worship gets one nearer to God (although hand-raising is of course explicitly commanded in Scripture!). But it's not irrational in the sense that there is nothing irrational about one's posture assisting one's mind/heart/spirit/soul/insert appropriate anthropological component here. One might as well say that kneeling to pray was irrational. It's true but not informative. Yes it is a symbol - but symbols are important and helpful.

By contrast, the Bible is shockingly clear that the laying on of hands is not a symbol. It does not merely symbolise the impartation of the Holy Spirit - it actually confers the Spirit! (2 Timothy 1:6 and Acts 8:18). Scripture often challenges our ideas of what is rational and sensible!

Gays, Catholics and adoptions again

A number of people have expressed surprise at my disagreement with the Roman Catholic church for its stand against the Sexual Orientation Regs. Thinking Anglicans have today published an open letter from Savi Hensman, vice chair of the LGCM, to NT Wright which puts it well (text here):

Roman Catholic adoption agencies already consider as adoptive parents people whose views and lifestyles are not in accord with its teachings, and rightly so. If, for instance, an atheist is able and willing to offer a loving home which is likely to meet the often extensive needs of a particular child, her offer may be taken up without any change in fundamental Church doctrines.

The point is, the RC church already recognises the point that Roman Catholics do not have a monopoly on the ability to bring children up well - and therefore they are happy to place children with parents who they can be sure will bring them up well even though in an ideal world they would not place them with such parents. So for example they would presumably prefer to place all children with married Roman Catholic parents. But they recognise that since this is not possible, it's better to place them with stable, good non-married non-Catholic parents than for them not to be placed at all.

I see no reason why adoption by gay couples should be any different. I have no doubt that it would be better for all children to have one male and one female parent who are committed Christians, married to one another, and very good parents to boot. But we have established that this is not always possible. The question is, therefore, given that we have accepted the principle of realism (not to let the impossible best be the enemy of the relatively good) why should it be any different with respect to couples where both partners are of the opposite sex rather than where the partners are not married or not Christians?

When theology becomes biology

My friend the almost-Reverend David Cooke has posted this on his blog: when theology becomes biology. It's all about making sure that academic thinking about God does not replace experiencing him for yourself. Good stuff.

My favourite line:

A lecture this week told us about the animal husbandry of camels in the ancient near east and the importance of the distinction between a one humped and two humped camels. Apparently this fascinating information has some bearing on the dating of Genesis. Hasn't this slightly missed the point? This may well be true, but for me it is a long way from knowing the love, power and grace of God who has risen from the dead to redeem all mankind.

'Gay' Adoption and the Roman Catholic Church

I do not believe that the Roman Catholic Church (unfortunately supported last week in a small flurry of publicity by the Archbishops of the Church of England) are right to seek exemption for their adoption agencies from the so-called Sexual Orientation Regulations (see previous post for link to the text of the regulations).

The most important reason for this is as follows. The regulations are opposed to relative and not absolute discrimination. That is, they forbid only that one treat gay individuals and couples differently to the way one treat non-married straight individuals and couples. So, for example, a hotelier who wishes to prohibit gay couples from staying in her establishment is perfectly free to do so - if and only if she also turns away unmarried straight couples.

This makes excellent sense. It prevents the hypocrisy of claiming one is trying to uphold certain (purportedly Christian) standards whilst doing so selectively.

The reason that the Roman Catholic adoption agencies are caught in a bind is therefore very simple. They are willing to authorise in certain circumstances the adoption of children by unmarried straight couples - but not gay couples, even if they are in the commitment of a civil partnership. Thus they are guilty of discrimination according to the regulations which they would not be if they were genuinely upholding marriage as the only legitimate context for the raising of children. So in effect they are claiming that unmarried but straight relationships with absolutely no formal public lifelong commitment are better contexts for raising children than committed gay relationships. That is, any straight relationship is by definition better than any gay relationship as a context for raising children.

It is extremely difficult to see this as anything other than a selective and hypocritical position.

(Below the fold is a short comment on why I think that gay adoption as such is not necessarily wrong.)

IVF and the commercialisation and of children

Sorry not to update for a while. Two recent news items, although they did not directly pass comment on the issues they were reporting on, prompted me to reflect on the way we see children in our culture today and the worrying implications of this view.

The first report was on the undercover investigation by the BBC program Panorama into two London IVF clinics run by Dr Mohamed Taranissi (summary report here). Clearly there have been abuses in at least one of his clinics, although that does not in itself impugn IVF. Rather, what intrigued me about the report were the easy assumptions made about IVF and its purposes and most importantly the view of children and parenthood which lay behind it.

1. The medicalisation of infertility. Infertility is characterised as an illness, to which IVF is the appropriate treatment. The terminology is so common that in one sense it will hardly give us pause. But is there more to it than that? The adoption of the illness-treatment model tends to obscure the fact that IVF is significantly different to, say, prescribing antibiotics to get rid of an infection. It's also different from, say, surgery to correct a damaged fallopian tube (which might have the same ultimate consequence). What is being treated is, as it were, the unmet desire for children. Furthermore, this language will tend to normalise and justify uncritically whatever methods are necessary to procure the desired result, since if it is seen as a treatment, then it is taken as read that it is necessary and right.
2. The functionalisation of children. It is relatively commonplace, but nonetheless valid for that, to point out that IVF here seems to make parenthood a quasi-right, and children as therefore created in order to satisfy their parents desires. Obviously, desire to have children is not wrong. But it is correct to raise the question of whether children should be specifically made in order to satisfy such desires. As Dr Taranissi puts it, he wants to "provide results for people".
3. The commercialisation of children. IVF is big business. Dr Taranissi has amassed a fortune of £38 million. Wow! People are prepared to pay a lot to get children! But one wonders whether this is a relationship that ought to be commercialised. There are a lot of things, as we say, that money can't buy. One can buy bread and apples and cars and shampoo. But we don't think we should bribe a judge in order to 'buy' justice, for example. We also agree that one shouldn't be allowed to buy people, because one should not be allowed to treat people as chattels. Some things we can buy and some things we can't. And it seems pretty clear that children fall more into the latter category than the former: they are more like justice and people than apples and shampoo - they are humans, not commodities.

The second report (much more briefly) was concerned with the potential implications of the new Sexual Orientation Regulations on Catholic adoption agencies. (See here for e.g.) What interested me about these is that the regulations prohibit discrimination against people on the basis of their sexual orientation for failing to provide "goods, facilities or services" (text here). Surely by any stretch of interpretation the adoption of a child cannot be considered a good, facility or service? Or has the commercialisation of children gone even further than we might have thought?

Whilst I'm on the subject, I might as well mention that I don't really see what all the church hoo-ha is about the SORs. It doesn't seem that they will affect most of the situations sometimes rather shrilly mentioned (see these parliamentary answers), and even if it does I wonder if it's much better to wait until we get sued rather than threatening to close down our charitable provisions such as adoption agencies. It looks like cheap emotional blackmail. The political posture of the church ought to be that of martyr, not blackmailer!

General course information

COURSE INFORMATION AND READING SUGGESTIONS

Course outline for the term's lectures.

The Theology Faculty reading list is extremely long. If you want to invest in any books, clearly the best option is On Moral Medicine edited by Lammers and Verhey. Gilbert Meilaender's Bioethics: a primer for Christians is very short and readable (it takes just a few hours to read) and is astonishingly comprehensive and illuminating for such a short book.

Other notable texts include Begotten or Made? by Oliver O'Donovan (ostensibly on artifical reproduction but with a wealth of wider insights) and Bonhoeffer's essay on "Natural Life" in his Ethics (which specifically handles abortion and 'self-murder' but again his theological conception and method is of particular interest as well as the particular conclusions he arrives at). It's probably pretty essential too to have read something by folk like Paul Ramsey and Stanley Hauerwas. It is also worth mentioning Matters of Life and Death by Professor John Wyatt, who writes as a neonatal paediatrician and Christian.

Andrew Goddard's website includes links to some of the texts on the reading list. Contemporary ones here and historical ones here.

You can get the text of papal encylicals online for free. The most relevant is Evangelium Vitae but it draws on concepts and principles outlined in Veritatis Splendor.

This is clearly not intended to be exhaustive as you will be picking up more in tutorials. We are happy to provide more suggestions but hope these pointers help in focussing your initial reading.

INTERESTING LINKS

NB obviously the quality and content of these sites varies hugely, but they should at least give you some general orientation. If you're going to spend time surfing the net it might as well be vaguely related to your degree.

The Centre for Bioethics and Public Policy (and it's Director, Nigel Cameron's blog)

The Nuffield Council on Bioethics has produced some major public policy reports.

The Christian Medical Fellowship has various free publications in its ethics section.

Care Not Killing is an alliance organisation bringing together various bodies who oppose legalisation of euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide including groups representing disabled people, the hospice movement, and different faith communities.

The Linacre Centre is a Roman Catholic medical ethics organisation with a wide range of online resources.

If anyone else comes across good sites either let me know or post them in the comments!

The death penalty (and Saddam Hussein)

To many it seems absurd that a Christian might believe in the death penalty: the gospel teaches us to forgive one another, that God's mercy can extend even to the most atrocious wrongdoer. It is especially de rigeur to point out the supposed contradiction between advocating the death penalty and at the same time working to bring down the abortion rate, and opposing euthanasia.

Perhaps surprisingly, however, it is not possible for Christian theology to advocate any absolute and total opposition to capital punishment as something that is inherently wrong.