Michael Curry & the Royal Wedding. A star-turn offers the world ‘Christianity-lite’.
by Gavin Ashenden:
The world is rightly talking about Michael Curry’s wedding sermon. It was as tour de force. He is very good at preaching. But it also offers us all an insight into the dramatic difference between the two kind of Christianity that are at odds with each other in the Anglican Communion.
We will call them for the moment, ‘Christianity-max’, and ‘Christianity-lite’.
Credit where it is due. ‘Christianity-lite’ can be very appealing. It reaches out to where people are hurting and it encourages them. It reaches out to where they are longing for good change, and it promises them that change can come.
It speaks continuously of love and hope. Everyone likes to hear of love and hope.
But it has three serious flaws. It doesn’t define love, and it never delivers on the hope. It isn’t what Jesus preached.
It was of course wonderful to hear a celebration of love in the romantic and erotic context of a wedding (the women commentators kept on saying ‘look how hot Meghan looks in that dress. Showing that it is not only men how objectify and sexualise on sight.)
There is serious theological work to be done here. The two theolgians who have done it best, or perhaps done it at all, are Dante and the English poet, (and member of the Inklings) Charles Williams. They suggest that romantic love is a kind of theophany where for a moment, the lover sees the beloved through the eyes of God, and understands quite how loved they are by their Creator and Redeemer, and commits themselves as lovers to allow their romantic and erotic vision to be transformed beyond itself into agape; a love that overflows the boundaries of conditionality and mutuality.
But Michael Curry did not trouble his world-wide audience with the Christianisation of cupid and eros. He simply accepted cupid and eros, and celebrated how wonderful they were.
Read also: On Michael Curry and the Power of Love by Bill Muehlenberg, Culture Watch
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