There is hope. Today there is a little hope. Not as much as we might have liked, but a little more than we might have expected. And that’s a better sign than it is a worse one. That’s an Up arrow, and not a Down.
On Friday the newly appointed Archbishop of Canterbury (who is to members of the Anglican Communion something of what the Pope is to Roman Catholics — although outside of England more in a titular sense ) promised to bring “a passion for reconciliation” to his new job.
The 105th spiritual leader of the 77-million member worldwide Anglican Church is having to deal with what all of today’s global leaders — spiritual leaders, political leaders, business leaders, environmental leaders, or educational leaders — are these days encountering: an open and widening schism between “conservatives” and “liberals” in each of their fields, across the planet.
The newest global spiritual leader, Rt. Rev. Bishop Justin Welby, hopes to resolve continuing discontent within his global congregation surrounding gay marriage and women bishops. Most conservatives within the Anglican church resoundingly oppose both. The Rev. Mr. Welby says he supports “the Church of England’s opposition to same-sex marriage,” although he has stated that he is “always averse to the language of exclusion, when what we are called to is to love in the same way as Jesus Christ loves us.” The new Archbishop of Canterbury does, on the other hand, support the consecration of female bishops. So he is halfway to where a spiritual leader offering a new direction for our world might wish to place himself.
What spiritual reason there could be to oppose the uniting of loving couples who wish to commit their lives to each other, or to oppose the elevation of female clergy to top level church leadership, in each case simply on the basis of the shape of their body parts, is incomprehensible. Yet there are billions of people across the earth who apparently believe that their views in opposition are God’s views. The new Archbishop of Canterbury can, if he now chooses to, show them that God holds no such views at all. But to do this, he will have to bridge an enormous gap.
The widening schism in the ideas people hold with regard to “what God wants” was predicted in the Conversations with God books, which said that as the world moved toward the embracing of A New Spirituality, the population of Earth would essentially divide itself into those who wish to cling to the ways of the past and those who wish to adopt the ways of the future (described as more progressive and far less dogmatic).
The next 30 years will see the final struggle of this dying culture to hold on to its fading ideas, CWG predicts, but will fail to do so — with wonderful results as an outcome in the social, political, spiritual, economical, educational, and environmental arenas. This transformation to a new breed of human will not be without rising and massive opposition, however, because new and untried ideas are almost always considered by humans to be less desirable than old ideas — even old ideas that clearly do not work. At least they are known, at least they are familiar, and so, at least they are comfortable.
And while Conversations with God observes that “life begins at the end of your Comfort Zone,” it says there will be many persons, glued to Old School thought, who remain stuck, refusing to be pried from what they view not as “ideas that no longer work,” but as their most sacred principles.
An erstwhile candidate for the U.S. Senate in the State of Indiana, Richard Mourdock, perhaps exemplified this personality type when he spoke to supporters following his loss in the recent American election. In his concession speech in a race that he was widely predicted just a week ago to easily win, Mourdock said, “As I will look back on this night over the weeks, the months, the years ahead…I will look back knowing that I was attacked for standing for my principles.”
And the “principle” on which he stood? The idea that a pregnancy which results from a rape is something “that God intended,” and for that reason abortion should be opposed and outlawed — even in cases of rape or incest.
The first half of his thought is actually so radical that it could easily have come from the messages of The New Spirituality. Conversations with God says that all outcomes in life are “what God intended,” or they could not have occurred. CWG does not envision a universe in which God is somehow out of control and relegated to standing by and watching things happen that God did not want to have happen.
On the contrary, CWG says, everything that occurs — everything — happens for a reason. Everything that occurs is collaboratively created by Life itself, and by all Souls, in order to produce a Contextual Field within which, on Earth, each Individuation of Divinity (that is, each human being) may announce and declare, create and express, become and experience the next grandest version of the greatest vision ever they held about Who They Are.
And so, Mr. Mourdock was accurate, according to The New Spirituality, in his remark. It was, according to these new spiritual messages, his conclusion that was off the mark. And it was this conclusion that pushed Indiana voters away from him in droves.
Mr. Mourdock’s conclusion was that because a pregnancy resulting from vicious and violent assault upon a woman was something God intended, the woman should not be allowed by law to have (and, in his view, should not even request or seek) an abortion. Or even the option to have an abortion.
Never mind if a woman’s idea of the next grandest version of the greatest vision ever she held about Who She Is, is a human being who would never choose to bring life into the world that was conceived against her will and in violence on her person. Never mind if a woman’s idea of the next grandest version of the greatest vision ever she held about Who She Is, is a human being who chooses not to endure and experience the unwanted outcome of an undeserved and brutal physical attack. Never mind if the woman wants to have the baby. She is supposed to have the baby because having the baby is what God wants, or she wouldn’t have become pregnant.
That is such convoluted thinking that it defies description. It is equaled in its astonishing lack of intelligence only by the remark by another losing Republican U.S. Senate candidate, Mr. Todd Akin of Missouri, who said during his campaign that a woman’s biology automatically prevents her from conceiving an unwanted child in cases of “legitimate rape.” A female’s physiology “shuts that down,” he said — but, presumably, not in the case of illegitimate rape.
Mr. Akin’s comment is equaled in its conservative, hang-onto-the-dogma-of-the-past-no-matter-what attitude only by the remark offered by incumbent (also losing) Republican Congressional Candidate Joe Walsh in his own 2012 campaign, who said that abortion should not be allowed even to save the life of the mother because “with modern technology and science, you can’t find one instance” in which an abortion would be needed to save the life of a mother.
Faced with an avalanche of protest — not just from “liberals” but from the usually very conservative medical community — Mr. Walsh amended his foolish remark later by saying that “in rare instances” such a procedure might possibly be needed, but it was too late. His soon-to-be-former constituents could, apparently, only in rare instance embrace this level of mentality. He did not receive enough votes to remain in the U.S. Congress.
The list of far right wing conservatives who have made statements bordering on the absurd goes on, and typifies the pronouncements of those who insist on clinging to Old School dogma even in the face of clear and obvious evidence that their views are not simply outdated, but flatly and factually inaccurate.
But inaccuracy is not the greatest offense against the future committed by the “I’m-stuck-and-glued-to-this-place” conservatives around the world. Obstructionism is.
The Minority Leader in the U.S. Senate, Republican Mitch McConnell, famously and loudly declared just weeks after the first election of Barack Obama in 2008 that the sole and only agenda of Republicans in the U.S. Congress over the ensuing four years would be to stop Mr. Obama from winning a second term.
From that day on he preached nothing to his GOP colleagues in Washington but obstruct, obstruct, obstruct — even (and especially) it the President’s idea happened to be a good one. The idea was to deny Mr. Obama credit for anything, so that the country would have to eject him from the White House.
Mr. Mourdock likewise sent a message to his constituents in a television interview months ago, just hours after he won his party’s nomination to run for the U.S. Senate in Indiana. “Bipartisanship ought to consist of Democrats coming to the Republican point of view,” he said. “The highlight of politics,” he said, “is to inflict my opinion on someone else.” He later claimed that his remarks were either meant as a joke or where taken out of context.
It didn’t matter. The voters in Indiana found them not at all funny, rejecting Mr. Mourdock in a shocking defeat for the Republicans, who had previously called his election a sure bet.
Senator McConnell seems equally determined to completely ignore the fact that his tactics over the preceding 48 months had produced utter failure (Mr. Obama was victorious in eight of nine so-called “swing states” and won the popular vote by a margin of more than two million). Within days of Mr. Obama having been re-elected, Mr. McConnell was at it again, issuing what news reports on Politico.com called “a stark warning to Senate Democrats and President Barack Obama who see their election victories as a clear mandate to raise taxes on the rich: He won’t let it happen.”
And so, America seems to be in for another four years of Republican obstructionism, in which the value of anyone’s ideas is deemed less important than the source of them. If they come from Democrats, they must be labeled bad, and they must be defeated, no matter what. No matter who suffers. Even if it is your own country.
But what we are seeing is not just about a particular political party. It is about “conservatism” versus “liberalism” all over the world. It is about, in some very large ways, “yesterday” versus “tomorrow.”
In spirituality it is about Yesterday’s God vis-à-vis Tomorrow’s God. In economics it is about Yesterday’s Commerce vis-à-vis Tomorrow’s Commerce. In the environment it is about Yesterday’s Ecology vis-à-vis Tomorrow’s God Ecology. In politics it is about Yesterday’s Solutions vis-à-vis Tomorrow’s Solutions. In the culture and society it is about Yesterday’s Cultural Mores vis-à-vis Tomorrow’s Cultural Mores.
(For instance, several states in the U.S. voted to legalize same sex marriage last week; as well, some states voted to legalize recreational use of marijuana. Both stances were considered impossible to consider just one or two elections ago.)
Soon, these issues — just as the issue of whether the government should have any say, much less be able to intervene, in a woman’s decision on abortion — will be considered Resolved Questions. The American electorate will be ready to move on. On to other cultural/social issues, such as Gun Control, and the Death Penalty.
Soon, the obvious and painfully hypocritical position of conservatives that an unborn fetus may not be aborted in the name of “life” — not even in the name of saving the life of the mother — but a fully grown adult may be killed in the name of “justice,” will be called out for what it is: another astonishingly unintelligent idea to be thrown on the trash heap of yesterday.
It is as a reader on this website commented just recently, regarding the American election:
Comment by Pat on November 9, 2012 at 3:43 pm
Small steps. We’re still divided, but we did send a message. Some think the message was intended for our leaders and representatives. I think the message is one we sent to ourselves. Some of us realize now that we are not alone – that there are other people who share our desire to get away from the current religious and cultural foundation that is based on ‘hostility to the other.’ The tide is changing, and as always the old and broken will be swept away in due course…