https://www.reuters.com/.../anglican-head-williams-says...
“The worldwide Anglican Communion is near breaking point over homosexuality, with conservative clerics insisting the Bible forbids gay bishops or blessings for same-sex unions. Its U.S. branch, the Episcopal Church, named a gay bishop in 2003.” ….
“In the passage of Romans that Williams referred to in Monday’s speech, [Rowan Williams admitted that the apostle] Paul said people who forgot God’s words fell into [a homosexual lifestyle, a] sin. “Men committed indecent acts with other men and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion,” Paul wrote.
“Williams said these lines were “for the majority of modern readers the most important single text in Scripture on the subject of homosexuality.” But right after that passage, Paul warns readers not to condemn those who ignore God’s words.”
Well, Rowan Williams' quote of the apostle Paul in Paul's epistle to the Romans needs to be put into its real context. In this paragraph and in the next paragraph to follow this one, we will give the context. So, first of all, whom was Paul warning? He was warning Jewish religionists who were nationalistic; that warning also logically targeted Judaizers who were masquerading as Christians in order to subvert the faith of true Christians. The Judaizers’ argument was that all who wanted good relationship with God had to obey Moses as the chief spokesman for God’s will. These false Christians' (Judaizers') arguments actually amounted to a repudiation of the good news about the Christ, Jesus. Their argument amounted to no more than argument that Jesus’ primary mission served adjunctively God's purpose to have natural Israel as his special possession to rule over all other nations, and that Jesus' Law-abiding disciples would lead the way to an establishment of a globe-girdling Jewish nationalism through a legalistic and an all-too-convenient, attention-getting adherence to the Law, the Law of Moses. Those legalistically minded Jewish nationalists were not truly God-fearing; they were not of a repentant heart towards God. They made only a hypocritical pretense of loyalty to God’s eternal principles that were later incorporated into the Law of Moses, and which we Christians know were subsequently incorporated into the law of the Christ that replaced the old, Mosaic Law covenant.
Nationalistically minded Jews who preached and taught the Law of Moses were hypocrites, their hypocrisy being notably evident, as Paul handily exposed it in Romans chapters 1 and 2, in their own ungodly conduct that (1) amounted to idolatry, (2) involved theft, (3) caused Gentiles to blaspheme God, (4) included their acts of sexual immorality, and (5) was hateful to, and self-servingly judgmental of, uncircumcised Gentiles (those whom self-righteous Jews smugly declared to be a really “ungodly” people when compared to nationalistically minded devotees of Mosaic Law). Paul reminded all Christians in Rome that many uncircumcised Gentiles—they being the ones who were looked down on by Jews as ‘the ungodly Gentiles’—had learned that they were not bound to do work in accordance with the decrees of the Law of Moses. These had learned from Paul that every man—Jew and Gentile—should repentantly “put faith in the One who declares the ungodly one righteous” (Romans 4:5). (Note well this, too: Paul did not say that some actually ungodly ones (those practicing unrepentantly their ungodly conduct and who were without faith in God) nevertheless could, during all that time, still have God’s blessing, this as though God had supposedly already predestined certain individuals whom he would count/declare as righteous—such declaration supposedly occurring even while they were yet in the midst of their unrepented ungodliness because God, as goes this stripe of Calvinism, had begun to draw them ineluctably to himself. That is not the way that Jehovah dealt with the devout, God-fearing Cornelius when he helped that first Gentile convert to become a Christian, which also was when Peter learned that he must not smugly account all Gentiles to be unclean (defiled, ungodly) simply on the basis of his knowing that they were uncircumcised Gentiles. (See Acts 10:1, 2, 22, 28, 31, 34, 35.) So, keeping in mind that context, we return to quoting the Reuters journalist concerning that cleric, who was at the time the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams.
“Williams said reinterpreting Paul’s epistle as a warning against smug self-righteousness rather than homosexuality would favour neither side over the other in the bitter struggle that threatens to plunge the Anglican Communion into schism. It would not help pro-gay liberals, he said, because [the apostle] Paul and his readers [—Jewish Christian readers in Rome—] clearly agreed that homosexuality was “as obviously immoral as idol worship or disobedience to parents.”
"This reading would also upset anti-gay conservatives, who have been “up to this point happily identifying with Paul’s castigation of someone else,” and challenge them to ask whether they were right to judge others, he added.
….
….
“Williams warned of the danger of schism. “The [Anglican] Communion has to face the fact that there is a division in our Church and it’s getting deeper and more bitter,” he said. “If the Anglican Church divides, everyone will lose.” (This ends my quoting excerpts from the journalist's article concerning Rowan Williams' position as respects homosexuality.)
Ah! But the Anglican Church cannot lose communion with the God of the Bible because it cannot lose what it never had.
As Jehovah’s Witnesses, we know that Christendom, which includes the Anglican Church, has fulfilled Bible prophecy that marks it as pseudo-Christianity. Since the 20th century’s World War I, it has become ever more evident that all Christendom is a poisonous tree; its fruitage is harming all who keep “eating” it. For example, any who let themselves be mislead by a Church’s “pro-gay” stance into approving homosexuality as a morally acceptable life-style obviously do not have at that time God’s approval. Yet, on the other hand, all who smugly persecute homosexuals—rather than that they would try to make loving appeal to homosexuals on the basis that Jehovah forgives in a large way all who repentantly turn away from and desist ungodly conduct—do not have the mind of Jesus Christ, either. True Christians do not not involve themselves in political government; they can never participate in sitting in judgment against unbelievers who are outside the Christian faith (see 1 Corinthians 5:11-13), and accordingly we do not seek (agitate for) a man-coerced (politically sanctioned) correction of society’s evils, whatever they are or are imagined to be. We only want to be left to practice our faith in peace without disruptive intrusion by those who do not share our Christ-taught values; still, we want to adhere to Christ’s command that we advertise peacefully the merits of our brotherhood’s way of life as the best way of life. We earnestly desire to welcome whole-heartedly into our fellowship anyone who has learned from God’s holy word how to repent of, and turn away from, ungodly practices, and who will then dedicate himself to doing God’s holy will and symbolize it by Christian baptism.
As Jehovah’s Witnesses, we know that Christendom, which includes the Anglican Church, has fulfilled Bible prophecy that marks it as pseudo-Christianity. Since the 20th century’s World War I, it has become ever more evident that all Christendom is a poisonous tree; its fruitage is harming all who keep “eating” it. For example, any who let themselves be mislead by a Church’s “pro-gay” stance into approving homosexuality as a morally acceptable life-style obviously do not have at that time God’s approval. Yet, on the other hand, all who smugly persecute homosexuals—rather than that they would try to make loving appeal to homosexuals on the basis that Jehovah forgives in a large way all who repentantly turn away from and desist ungodly conduct—do not have the mind of Jesus Christ, either. True Christians do not not involve themselves in political government; they can never participate in sitting in judgment against unbelievers who are outside the Christian faith (see 1 Corinthians 5:11-13), and accordingly we do not seek (agitate for) a man-coerced (politically sanctioned) correction of society’s evils, whatever they are or are imagined to be. We only want to be left to practice our faith in peace without disruptive intrusion by those who do not share our Christ-taught values; still, we want to adhere to Christ’s command that we advertise peacefully the merits of our brotherhood’s way of life as the best way of life. We earnestly desire to welcome whole-heartedly into our fellowship anyone who has learned from God’s holy word how to repent of, and turn away from, ungodly practices, and who will then dedicate himself to doing God’s holy will and symbolize it by Christian baptism.
