Statements in a radio interview given by Anglican bishop Martin Reynolds display the essentials of liberal antihomophobia: Anti-gay archbishop Jensen likened to Hitler. According to Reynolds, the claim that deviant sexual intercourse is bad, so homosexual couplings aren’t equivalent to marriages and those who affirm such things in their lives shouldn’t be pastors of souls, amounts to singling out “a single group … for … opprobrium and hatred” and is “nothing short of the evil that went on in the ’30s.”
Those are bizarre assertions. Reynolds provides the key to them, though, through an even more bizarre assertion: “This is really the last vestige of evil left in our society.” This final statement makes it clear that the bishop has an amazingly simple moral theory. It appears that his theory is identical to the moral theory of contemporary advanced liberalism. In that theory, there is no good other than the satisfaction of human desires, no material evil other than the thwarting of human desires, and no moral evil other than failure to support the equal furtherance of all desires. So to do away with moral evil altogether, and substantially achieve utopia, all you have to do is make tolerance, equality, and efficiency the sole acceptable principles of social order. This is what Anglicanism has become!
It seems that tolerance is
It seems that tolerance is not part of liberalism, which does not tolerate other points of view. Equality also seems lacking; liberalism says liberal allies must be treated unequally, that is, treated preferentially when they apply for jobs or for admission to schools. If tolerance and equality are ideals that liberals aspire to, then yes these ideals do seem to define liberalism.
The problem is that
The problem is that tolerance and equality are made into political principles; that is, _principles of authority_. Authority in its actual exercise, though, is always and everywhere intolerant and discriminating: that is the very nature of the assertion of authority. Thus liberalism’s internal incoherence manifests itself as rabidly intolerant tolerance and sharply discriminating antidiscrimination.
Thanks to Matt for that
Thanks to Matt for that important insight, which I am understanding more and more. I don’t think the insight can be repeated too many times.
Unfortunately, it’s what
Unfortunately, it’s what many western culture communities have become, although some few individual community congregations have circled their wagons in attempts to keep the love of immorality out. Morality is rationalized away by materialism. Cigarette smoking, for example, in the eyes of laymen, has become worse than adultery, and we’ve forsaken the Ten Commandments for ever more narrow and blind theology.