Tentative grassroots suggestion for a new Commitment or Value: an equal honouring of marriage and celibacy
I was reflecting the other day about how in a grassroots organisation culture change can happen. I realised that creating momentum from the bottom up is quite hard. But I do believe that the voice of the Holy Spirit comes to us most accurately through corporate means...I realised that the internet portal of UE might be an interesting place to create this momentum...so I wanted to test out my theory by suggesting a new value/commitment for UE, and generating a discussion about it. Its a very topical issue, what with Lambeth coming up and all....
So my new Commitment/Value (im not too sure of the difference) reads like this:
"We honour marriage and celibacy as the two lifestyles which God has given through which we can experience intimacy and healing with him. We are committed to upholding these choices in humilty and graciousness, and will seek to actively encourage one another from all forms of relational brokenness into each fulness of life that celibacy and marriage offer."
Most months we have space in the liturgy for an extra value or two...how about this one? Obviously the phrasing has to be affirming and positive and not ungracious, so any insights as to how to do that better would be gratefully received.
P
Celibacy in community
Yeah, that'll be one of the tricky parts, i.e. whether or not gay marriage is included under that heading.
Putting that aside though, perhaps a more important issue is that of how to foster and support celibacy in Christian community - because celibacy is surely not a call to splendid isolation but rather to a different and perhaps more broad (and sometimes more intense) involvement in community, whether as part of a formal or informal "order", or making use of the freedom of celibacy to live under the same roof as e.g. AIDS patients in Africa. There's a huge gulf between denominations here, with the Catholics having huge experience and the protestants, in comparison, very little.
definitions
Perhaps it would push the debate on if you offered some definitions of "marriage" and "celibacy", as in this 21stC multi-cultural post-Christian world, those terms alone don't mean what they used to.
An alternative Evangelical view
http://www.acceptingevangelicals.org/
http://www.rainbowbaptists.org
http://www.ecwr.org/