Inclusive secular clubs

Wish I'd said that!

[Reprinted from Issues & Views September 8, 2003]

As if the world required any further proof that today's churches are hardly more than secular clubs with faded doctrines, striving to keep up with the times, the Episcopal Church comes along and does an in-your-face, by appointing as Bishop an overt homosexual, who not only left his wife and children, in order to pursue his "gay" amours, but also promotes homosexuality among adolescents. In "Just Say 'No!" (Chronicles magazine,8/7/03),Thomas Fleming reflects:

Like every other weasel word, inclusive means something quite different from, often the opposite of, what it is meant to suggest. Every experiment in inclusion begins by excluding something that already exists, such as the word man from hymnals and liturgies. At the very least, what they mean is to substitute one word -- and one concept -- for another. Man is replaced by person and may soon be replaced by being or creature -- so as to be more inclusive toward our little animal friends. . . .
As used by liberal Christians, inclusive includes all those things that are excluded by Christian doctrine and tradition and excludes all those that are. The Christian view of sex roles, marriage, and morality was taught in the Scriptures from Genesis to Revelation, affirmed by councils and encyclicals, and endorsed (even strengthened) by Luther, Calvin, Cranmer, and the other leaders of the Reformation. But now, as one liberal sheep was heard to bleat at the [Episcopal church] convention, "God is working a change through us." Right. The "Great I Am," the Creator of all that is and can be, Who laid the foundation of the earth, to Whom Anglicans used to pray as "the author of peace and lover of concord, in knowledge of whom standeth our eternal life, whose service is perfect freedom," has waited until now to grow up and accept the profound wisdom of the Playboy Philosophy.