An Anglican priest recently affirmed that both believer’s baptism and infant baptism are acceptable, and that both going to a gay wedding and not going to it are acceptable. He compared the two issues, saying they “mapped perfectly onto each other” as examples of where it is appropriate to have ambiguity of position, to hold different approaches together. In either case, they affirm both options as within the pale of judicious Christian practice, and the choice between them as merely “a secondary issue.” Have your baby baptized or wait until they reach the “age of reason”—either way, they’ll get baptized eventually, and that’s all that matters, because, after all, God doesn’t really look on baptized children and unbaptized children any differently. Go to the wedding or don’t go—neither choice necessarily cooperates in the transgression of a line that God draws.
But in making these claims of tolerance, this Anglican position cannot but become intolerant of those who hold to either side exclusively. What these pastors reject as unacceptable is the assertion that either option is definitely wrong. Someone who claims “It is wrong to withhold baptism from one’s baby” or “It is wrong to attend a gay wedding” are only speaking their personal opinion, most likely out of an ill-advised spirit of contentiousness and a lack of Christlike sensitivity; the claims are not and cannot be objectively true.
But what if God does look on baptized children differently than unbaptized ones? What if baptism is not just a symbol, but a sacrament that makes a person, no matter their age, part of God’s family, part of his Body?
And what if going to a gay wedding does in fact transgress a line that God draws, because the act of attending a ceremony inherently endorses its validity, and God denies its validity?
The terrible thing is not just that these two things are true. It is that many Anglican clergy, by their academic rigor, their excellent knowledge of Scripture, their claim to conformity with the precedent and heritage of the historical Church, do very well know them to be true, and yet tolerate their contradictions, in the interest of civility and some sort of generous or mere orthodoxy that does not ruffle the feathers of the urban center.
It is not like Christ, who said “let the little children come unto me,” to withhold a blessing from a child. Nor is it like him to give a false and misleading blessing in the interest of love. It is no favor to anyone to pander to the spirit of the age, or to speak out of both sides of your mouth. “I would rather that you were hot or cold…”
Anglicanism has survived for hundreds of years by occupying a contradictory via media between mutually exclusive propositions, by adept use of the technique of not following things through to their logical ends. But as the world approaches the coming of the Lord, the bad will get worse, and the good will get better. The watersheds of ideology will be made plainer—Satan and his Minions against Christ and his Church Militant. Against all those who quibble in the middle, insisting upon lukewarmness, the nausea of the Spirit will grow and reach its inevitable consummation.
Ben Taylor 