A defective working theology

In recent weeks I have been following the tragic events in Connecticut within the Episcopal Church, where the parish and pastor of a personal friend have been on the receiving end of what can only be described as episcopal tyranny. Philip Turner gives us some insight as to what is behind the disorder within the principal North American manifestation of Anglicanism in An Unworkable Theology. Despite formal adherence to orthodox creeds, liturgies, &c., the Episcopal Church's working theology amounts to a different gospel. This "unofficial doctrine of radical inclusion" demands only that the church welcome without qualification and certainly without demand for repentance and amendment of life. According to Turner:

In a theology dominated by radical inclusion, terms such as “faith,” “justification,” “repentance,” and “holiness of life” seem to belong to an antique vocabulary that must be outgrown or reinterpreted. So also does the notion that the Church is a community elected by God for the particular purpose of bearing witness to the saving event of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection.

It is this witness that defines the great tradition of the Church, but a theology of radical inclusion must trim such robust belief. To be true to itself it can find room for only one sort of witness: inclusion of the previously excluded. God has already included everybody, and now we ought to do the same. Salvation cannot be the issue. The theology of radical inclusion, as preached and practiced within the Episcopal Church, must define the central issue as moral rather than religious, since exclusion is in the end a moral issue even for God.

We must say this clearly: The Episcopal Church’s current working theology depends upon the obliteration of God’s difficult, redemptive love in the name of a new revelation.

Of course the irony of the situation in Connecticut is that those most vociferously preaching this new gospel of radical inclusion will not shrink at excluding those who do not, even to the extent of banning a recalcitrant priest and seizing a parish's property. This would appear to vindicate the truth of Neuhaus' Law, as articulated by Fr. Richard John Neuhaus: "Where orthodoxy is optional, orthodoxy will sooner or later be proscribed." It seems there are limits to indiscriminate niceness after all, and those believing the words of John 14:6 definitely place themselves outside of these.