Can eradicating poverty be a ‘distraction’ for Christian leaders?
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- July
- 28
Bishop Catherine Roskam has never tried to hide her belief that gays and lesbians should have full religious rights in the Episcopal Church (and society at large).
As I noted last week, the assistant bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of NY has been writing in her blog from the Lambeth Conference about her deep disappointment that Bishop V. Gene Robinson—the openly gay bishop from New Hampshire—has been excluded from the worldwide gathering of Anglican bishops.
But sexuality, she writes in her latest post from England, is not the be-all, end-all of Christian concerns.
Apparently, the bishops were taking part in an Indaba (a Zulu work for community discussion) session on the United Nation’s Millennium Development Goals for eradicating extreme poverty.
She writes:
While we are on the subject of a suffering world, I confess to you that I almost lost my temper in our Indaba session this morning when one bishop said he thought that our focus on the MDG’s was a distraction from the issue of human sexuality. I responded, trying to remain as civil as possible, that no matter what we might choose to discuss, the world’s suffering is not a distraction for a gathering of bishops from around a Communion riddled by poverty, violence and catastrophe.I have never heard a bishop from the developing world call the MDG’s a distraction. For those of us in the developed world, suffering seems to us an aberration from a life intended to be free of it. Hence, we often ask “Why me?” when we experience the inevitable sufferings attached to being human. We are reluctant to recognize that for the vast majority of human beings on this planet, suffering is a way of life. And for some, extreme suffering is a daily occurrence. (If you would like some figures on this, I encourage you to google theminiatureearth.org.)
It is as Gordon Brown said yesterday, people of faith can make a difference. The Anglican Communion does make a difference. Let us not spend time worrying about who is the wheat and who is the tare, but simply grow together in God’s garden, trusting in the abundance of God’s grace to get us through.
This entry was posted
on Monday, July 28th, 2008 at 9:33 am by Gary Stern.
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The world of religion, we don't have to tell you, is vast. The purpose of this blog is for Stern to note, flag and comment on some of the more interesting religious developments on the scene – weighty and quirky, somber and laughable, far away and just down the road. He won't interpret Scripture, take sides in conflicts or judge anyone. But he will take advantage of the journalist's license to observe.
