Watching the Tiber go by

Check out this 7-part series by Will Duquette at The View from the Foothills. Here's an excerpt [boldface mine]:

In 1997 everything changed. Our first son was born that year, and though we continued faithfully attending St. Luke’s every Sunday our lives were (and are) consumed with parenthood. Coincidentally, it was also at about this time (December of 1996, actually) that I began posting book reviews on line–but I digress. And so we were more or less distracted until 2003, when Gene Robinson was elected and consecrated the Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire, an event that polarized–and well-nigh created–the Anglican Blogosphere. I don’t see any value in rehashing all of the details here; if you’ve not been following along, I’ll simply note that the events of 2003 revealed that the division in the Anglican Communion on matters of sexuality, biblical interpretation, and Christian orthodoxy was far deeper and wider than most of us had realized up until that time. Kendall Harmon, who blogs at Titus OneNine, dubbed the two camps the “reappraisers” (those who wish to interpret scripture in accord with modern needs) and the “reasserters” (those who wish to interpret scripture as the Church has always interpreted scripture).

Jane and I, along with most of the people at St. Luke’s, were and are firmly in the “reasserters” camp. The phrase our pastor used was “biblical orthodoxy”–at St. Luke’s, as at a handful of other parishes in our diocese, we would strive to be “biblically orthodox”. And that was well and good. “Biblically orthodox” described in a nutshell what we wanted to be, and what the reappraisers did not seem to care about.

Only, what did it mean? What did being “biblically orthodox” entail? Being true to the scriptures, obviously; but what were the specifics? The Nicene Creed was involved, and I knew something about that and what it meant and where it came from; but the “reappraisers” also recited the Nicene Creed. In the end, I decided that Kendall Harmon had it right: to be a “reasserter” was to interpret scripture as the Church has always interpreted scripture. So…how had the Church always interpreted scripture?

H/t to Aimee Milburn at Historical Christian.