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Hallo again to all. This week we've been thinking about money. For ourselves and in general. Like many of you, we've been hit rather hard by the global economic downturn (oh, call it a recession). Like most of you, our families, parishes, towns, and charities are short of money.
Religious folk seem to spend much time and energy arguing about 'What would Jesus do?' or 'What would Jesus drive?'. We'll likely never know just what Jesus would have done or said about parliamentary government, socialised health care, fluoridated water, nickel-cadmium batteries, depletion of the ozone layer, sexual orientation, spam emails, airline food, or Microsoft. But we know exactly what He thought about money and God, because he said it, and his words were recorded by two of the four Evangelists: 'You cannot serve God and mammon.'
None of this would have prompted us to write about money while everyone else is talking about sex, had we not seen a news report that those opposed to homosexuality have threatened to withhold money from the Church of England if Dr Jeffrey John (a gay man) is made Bishop of Reading. We're not sure whether or not this threat is actually serving anything, but it is an interaction of God and mammon, with sex thrown in. It reminds us that, apart from homeless people and pillar saints, God and mammon are permanently intertwined in modern life, more so than we might wish. Money as a tool to argue about sex. How sad. The thought of years of people, parishes, or dioceses not paying assessments, years of threats to withhold pounds, dollars, and euros unless X happens—all this makes us cranky and short-tempered. It tempts us (wrongly) to say, 'Well, then, there we are.' If we really must have this schism, why don't we just stop talking about it and do it. But, wait: we'd then need to find something else to talk about. Can we? Stephen Bates argues (see our Worth Noting section) that obsession with sexuality is so much a part of the identity of the Anglican church that we can't stop talking about it. What a frightening thought. Ready to change the subject? See you next week.
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