From: LayLeader@GatewayUMC.org
Sent: Thursday, December 15, 2005 8:21 PM
To: ucmpage@ucmpage.org
Subject: Interesting quotes from Bishop Candler
From Bishop Warren A. Candler (Methodist Episcopal Church-South)
The Christ of the Creed: The Jarrell Lectures for 1927, Delivered
Before Emory University
Pentecostal Publishing Co., 1927 (a book I came across in the Univ. of Ga.
library)
"[The Church] cannot endure 'perverse disputings' with the 'household of
faith.' From [those] who, having obtained admittance into the sacred
company, disturb its tranquility and destroy its harmony..., she rightly
withdraws herself and justly excludes them from her fellowship. In so doing,
she commits no offense against freedom of thought or speech, nor does she
invade any person's rights. In such cases she does no more than that which
all secular bodies and organizations do with less reason and
justification...."
"The right of an individual to think what he will and speak as he pleases
cannot be allowed to overthrow the right of a number of people who hold the
same faith to combine to propagate the beliefs which they hold in common and
to achieve the practical ends to which their beliefs lead. If the liberty of
one man may overrun the liberty of many..., then freedom of thought and
speech for all... ceases to have any value whatsoever....
"If the
Church is compelled to admit to its fellowship [those] who reject its
beliefs, and to entrust its offices to [those] who reject its creed, its
existence as a household, or family, is at once at an end, and it passes
into an exhibition of ecclesiastical gladiators enacting a diverting
spectacle for the entertainment of a rabble of confused onlookers."
---
Grace and peace,
Joseph Slife
LayLeader@GatewayUMC.org
- Athens GA |
