Re-thinking heresy

To preface this post a bit - I'm currently taking a course in the Early Church. This blog is an excerpt from my journal, following some readings and a course discussion on Augustine's interactions with two major Christian communities of his day, with whom he disagreed:

I don’t think I had really appreciated until now how much the Donatists and the Pelagians are like Mennonites. But they are! Oh now, an inner voice inside me shudders; That’s it, I’ve really done it! I’ve joined the heretics. My Opa has warned me about those Mennonites since I started hanging around them in 1997. Maybe he’s right. Maybe I should turn myself in to the local authorities and make myself right with God again.

Seriously. I have always had a hearty fear of being labeled as a ‘heretic’ when I express views which diverge from the majority of the church. But I haven’t actually given much thought as to what exactly I fear. I sense that my fear is more about the label within the Christian community than about my status with God. And it’s not even a wide-reaching status these days; a heretic merely has to change churches and she’s found a new church home... Heresy is commonplace these days; in former times we killed or we died to prevent and protect it. (of course, heretics don’t label their own belief heresy!)

In class today, Alan’s [my prof] sadness over the suppression of these heresies by Augustine was evident. What if Augustine had held out in patience; what if he had followed through with processes of reconciliation. What if he had recognized that these persons were his brothers and sisters in Christ; and refused to get the state involved in the issue? The world would have looked different. What if we truly do have a chance in post-Christendom to take another stab at ecumenical diversity? What if?

But what about real heresy? Should we not get riled up when someone tries to preach that the gospel teaches us to torment gay people? Or that the Bible ‘clearly states’ what the Bible most clearly does not state (in my humble opinion) Or that the Arian race is superior to all? Or that the gospel permits racial/ethnic cleansing? Or that we should ignore the AIDS crisis because the disease is God’s punishment for sexual immorality? (I’m picking the big apples here)

I’m not a big fan of fundamentalism, or ‘orthodoxy’ in the sense of a stubborn clinging to old ways and old views of truth. But I do believe that some truths are worth clinging to, and that the gospel has a central core that is worth defending and promoting in our Christian communities.

If I deny the category of heresy, then do I deny orthodoxy as well? And if I deny orthodoxy, how can I preach with confidence?

They seem to be a co-related; you can’t have one without the other. Can you? How? The question is, I think, how to relate one to the other? How to discern, sift, process, nurture and defend? And how is power used in this process?