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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 1, 2023

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Commenting on the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Coronation Sermon

Nobody has made a post about the coronation yet. There weren't any major culture war incidents. It went off without a hitch in other words. I'm reaching to find something to talk about. Here is my reaction to the sermon given by the archbishop of Canterbury during the ceremony. The sermon states the ceremonial role of the British monarch in plain terms and tries its best to skirt around the fact that the king has no power. He likens Charles III to Jesus. Here is the full sermon:

https://www.episcopalnewsservice.org/2023/05/06/archbishop-of-canterburys-coronation-sermon/

We are here to crown a King, and we crown a King to serve.

What is given today is for the gain of all. For Jesus Christ announced a Kingdom in which the poor and oppressed are freed from chains of injustice. The blind see. The bruised and broken-hearted are healed.

That Kingdom sets the aims of all righteous government, all authority. And the Kingdom also sets the means of all government and authority. Jesus doesn’t grasp power or hold onto status.

The King of Kings, Jesus Christ, was anointed not to be served, but to serve. He creates the unchangeable law that with the privilege of power comes the duty to serve.

Service is love in action. We see active love in our care for the most vulnerable, the way we nurture and encourage the young, in the conservation of the natural world. We have seen those priorities in the life of duty lived by our King.

Today we have the honour of being in this Abbey with so many who show such love; you work with charities and organisations, you build community, you serve the nation in Armed Forces, in emergency services, and so many other ways. Next door are 400 extraordinary young people in St Margaret’s, whose lives speak of service. Around the world in the Realms and Commonwealth are so many more. You live your lives for the sake of others.

The unity you show, the example you give, is what binds us together and offers societies that are strong, joyful, happy and glorious. They bear heavy weights for us.

The weight of the task given you today, Your Majesties, is only bearable by the Spirit of God, who gives us the strength to give our lives to others. With the anointing of the Holy Spirit, the King is given freely what no ruler can ever attain through will, or politics, or war, or tyranny: the Holy Spirit draws us to love in action.

This is promised by Jesus who put aside all privilege, because, as the first reading tells us, God will give all things for our sake, even His life.

His throne was a Cross. His crown was made of thorns. His regalia were the wounds that pierced his body.

Each of us is called by God to serve. Whatever that looks like in our own lives, each of us can choose God’s way today.

We can say to the King of Kings, God Himself, as does the King here today, ‘give grace that in thy service I may find perfect freedom’.

In that prayer there is promise beyond measure, joy beyond dreams, hope that endures. By that prayer, for every King, every ruler, and, yes, for all of us, we are opened to the transforming love of God.

The archbishop likens Charles III to Jesus, not by elevating Charles to the level of a god, but by bringing down Jesus to the level of a man. Christians believe that Jesus was both a man and a God. The fact that he was and is an omnipotent deity is essential to Christian theology. But having the limitations of a man is what makes the telling of Jesus' life in the Gospels a compelling story. The archbishop's sermon depicts Jesus as a very talented preacher who relies on the power of persuasion to save souls. This aspect of the Gospel story most closely resembles Charles III's role as archon basileus of a parliamentary democracy. But unlike the British monarch, Jesus had real power to back up his preaching.

The sermon oversells what Charles III can accomplish with mere persuasion. It states with confidence that "showing unity" and "giving a good example" are sufficient to "bind us together", to "offer a society that is strong, joyful, etc." and to "bear heavy weights". By speaking of the ceremonial role of the British monarch as sufficient to accomplish the duties of kingship, the archbishop leaves no consideration for what happens if persuasion fails to produce the advertised results.

I was raised Christian but became an atheist a long time ago. When I think back on Christianity, there are certain concepts that that strike me as peculiar. One of these is the concept that a one's salvation may hinge on a chance encounter with another person whose intervention changes one's life for the better. It strikes me as chaotic, random and therefore unfair. My naïve understanding of Christianity when I was a Christian was influenced by growing up in an individualistic culture and a school system organized along individualistic lines. Every person was tested by God individually, I imagined. Sharing notes or copying answers from other test takers was not part of the test. I believed my choices in life would just determine whether or not my soul was saved. But the thought that my choices in life could be the determining factor in making somebody else a good person literally never occurred to me, and if it had, it would have greatly discomforted me. I would have perceived it as an added burden. Again, it would never have occurred to me that other people were sharing the burden of making me a good person. I would have perceived the sharing of responsibility only as an increased burden. I imagine that people raised in collectivist cultures perceive the sharing of burdens as generally resulting in a decreased burden. The concept of a mutually supporting community taking collective responsibility for the salvation of their souls is probably much closer to how people thought about Christianity in the past. It almost gives me warm fuzzy feelings, but I still find the chaotic, random nature of it discomforting.

Service and helping people is the unifying theme of the archbishop's sermon, but there is something lacking in his call to service. I like to help people. I like to be of service. I like giving people presents. I like teaching. I'm pretty good at it. But something I don't try to do is influence friends and family and coworkers to make them better people. I shrink from any situation where somebody is doing something immoral that I could intervene to correct. It's one thing teach somebody practical knowledge, and quite another to stage an intervention.

Christianity used to take the collectivist approach to saving souls. It wasn't enough to lead the horse to water. Responsible people had to dunk the horse's head and make it drink. The king was often the one doing the dunking. Since the time of the Glorious Revolution, the power of the state has grown enormously. But liberal democracies impose artificial limits on how they use their enormous power. Faced with equine dehydration, or any other societal problem, the solution must be more education, free counseling and state-sponsored therapy. It's fitting that the land of the NHS should refer to kingship as a service. The solution is always a service. Yet there remain certain classes of societal problems that are best solved—or that can only be solved—by issuing a command.

When I think back on Christianity, there are certain concepts that that strike me as peculiar. One of these is the concept that a one's salvation may hinge on a chance encounter with another person whose intervention changes one's life for the better. It strikes me as chaotic, random and therefore unfair.

For what it's worth (not that I am trying to get you back in the fold or anything), that is not really true as far as I know. The way I was always taught is that God deals with people with their circumstances taken into account. So if you consciously reject Jesus, you will likely be judged unrighteous after death (though in the end only God knows, at best we can just speculate). But if you just wind up never having heard of him during your life, that isn't going to factor in. Instead you would be judged based on how much you tried to do right insofar as you were taught it, and what your conscience nudged you to do.

Obviously Christianity has many different schools of though, so there are probably Christians who really do believe that if someone in an isolated Amazon tribe dies without ever having heard of Jesus, they're going straight to hell. But it definitely isn't what I was taught, at least.

Actually, the belief that they're damned is a pretty normal belief, I'm pretty sure.

Among the Roman Catholics, there's the teaching of Extra eccleasiam nulla salus—outside the church there is no salvation, although I'm not sure what Vatican II did to things. The council of Florence has a statement saying that neither pagans nor Jews nor heretics nor schismatics will be saved. Eastern Orthodoxy I think has at times expressed similar thoughts, although I know that universalism is also kind of popular among them, at least in the present day.

Protestants are more varied, I think, but I think with the emphasis on sola fide, there should be the same belief.

Christianity really is an exclusive religion. As Christ says, "I am the way, the truth and the life, no one comes to the father, except through me." John 3:16 is perhaps the most famous verse in the bible: "For God loved the world thus: he gave his only begotten son, so that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life." Paul writes, "For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe."

If you're wondering, how is this just, well it's not as if Christians think they don't deserve hell. Their own salvation is an enormous gift, and it isn't as if it's owed to everyone else that they come to believe in Christ.

Edit: It looks like I understated the effect of Vatican II, Vatican II seems to have reinterpreted the things I was saying so as that they're probably not representative of current Catholic teaching.

I was taught in catechism class people who were not introduced to Christianity could still be saved if they lived righteous lives. So, unless the people writing the official catechism textbooks were heretics or it’s changed in the last 20 years that’s the official line from the church.

I imagine you're right. Aren't there teachings about the necessity of grace, though, given that the Pelagian controversy was a thing? And wouldn't pretty much everyone have committed a mortal sin at some point (and so they wouldn't be considered to have lived a righteous life, as you put it), as well as there being original sin?

Not disagreeing that is probably the official line, just unsure how some of that works.

The mechanism of theoretical salvation for the righteous non-Christian is still the grace obtained through the sacrifice of Christ, as it is for the innocent unborn, and for youths before their personal age of accountability.

They would have to be someone who, were they not ignorant of or memetically poisoned against the gospel, would repent of and turn from wickedness, and plead Christ’s blood before God’s throne.

So then why do Christians spread the gospel? First, because He told us to. Second, to assure salvation and hope to any who feel lost in this world’s turmoil.

That's a reasonable take, but I don't think it's quite the same as what @Hyperion was saying. You seem to be saying those who would have believed would be saved, while he was saying that those who did the best available to them would be saved, which are not the same.

(I'm not sure that the link you put is arguing what you are saying, since it seems to say that everyone still is guilty at the end—just saying there are differences of degree, if I'm reading it rightly.)

I disagree with both, though.

The scriptural evidence is somewhat interesting. The main thing that comes to mind is some imprecations of Jesus:

Matthew 11:21 “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. 22 But I tell you, it will be more bearable on the day of judgment for Tyre and Sidon than for you. 23 And you, Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? You will be brought down to Hades. For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. 24 But I tell you that it will be more tolerable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom than for you.”

It's definitely not saying here that Sodom and Tyre and Sidon will be in paradise. But it seems like they will have a less severe judgment.

I think one thing to be kept in mind is that our salvation is fundamentally not based upon our deservingness, but Christ's. It's not that people are good enough but just in the wrong situtation, never hearing the gospel, etc. No, rather, conversion is rather a work of God in those who are wicked and undeserving.

Yeah, I gave a hot take on the most permissible salvation scenario I can reasonably consider possible. It’s not likely to shake out that way.

It doesn’t really work, but people, and religions, contain multitudes. You see this in all religions where they compromise their previous beliefs for various reasons and that becomes the new orthodoxy only to then compromise them again during the next crisis.