Fr. Tony Clavier

EPIPHANY?

2009-01-06T11:41:00.000-06:00

Please go to: http://afmclavier.wordpress.com/2009/01/06/epiphany/

NEW BLOG

2008-12-07T07:10:00.000-06:00

Do see my latest blog at http://afmclavier.wordpress.com/

NEW BLOG

2008-11-19T09:44:00.000-06:00

I am now blogging at: http://afmclavier.wordpress.com/

STAY IN AND REVIVE

2008-11-10T16:10:00.003-06:00

(These are some comments I made about the Communion Partners Rectors' meeting held at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Houston last weekend.)

I was pleased with the tone and content of our meeting. As you now know I have been around the scene for some forty years and have witnessed successive waves of disaffection within TEC in their various manifestations and know most of the leading figures who have popped up during this time. I am not making any claims to special wisdom. While some say "older means wiser" others retort "there's no fool like an old fool."

I sounded the warning about the pitfalls of the past not out of pique, but with a concern that we do not repeat the mistakes of the past and that we understand that Anglican leaders abroad, even when sympathetic, do not always hear us without caution. I have said as much to almost every new manifestation of principled dissent which has arisen, usually without much effect!

My main observations concern what one might term the structural and political aspects of principled and loyal dissent. In the mid 70'ies when the first significant opposition to official TEC policies began to emerge, an organization was formed called "Evangelical and Catholic Mission": FiFNA is its present heir. It was an excellent title. Unfortunately those involved did not live up to the description provided. The emphasis which emerged was not on mission or formation, but all about structure, tactics and obstruction. Anger and resentment were encouraged and justified by the actions of those deemed the enemy. Granted those who held sway in TEC then - and now - replied in kind.

Principled dissent was not viewed as a vocation or a mission to revive and restore, but rather as a mechanism to use overseas Provinces and indeed archbishops of Canterbury as levers to exert pressure on General Convention and its leaders. The emphasis was on tactics and political means. The liberals in General Convention were much better at that game and won. I do not believe that Christ's truth is usually won in ecclesiastical legislative assemblies.

As membership in dissenting groups dwindled, and groups fragmented, that sort of leverage became less and less effective. By 2003 even granted a new wave of those dissenting from TEC policy, the ability of principled dissenters to influence General Convention or a majority of bishops had diminished significantly. To a majority of Episcopalians dissenters within TEC had all the appearance of grumpy, bigoted and negative old people. Perhaps we have seen a similar dynamic in the recent election?

It therefore became inevitable that the main engines of dissent would become schismatic. Gone was any evidence of the original claim to be an Evangelical and Catholic mission to the church and to the world. Instead the strategy became the creation of a defensive fortress, separated from TEC but acknowledged by overseas Provinces. In a word we exported our divisions to the rest of the Communion and Gafcon is the result.

I have great hope that we will return to the original vocation of principled dissent. I see our vocation, for that I believe it is, to be that of encouragement, a sort of Barnabas mission. We may encourage by fellowship here particularly those who are isolated and young potential leaders and Anglicans abroad, by clearly proclaiming Christ and Him Crucified in a winsome manner, by providing instruction and apologetics using the best and most modern tools at our disposal, and by winning over moderate opinion among bishops and other clergy in our church who have been frightened into reluctant alliance with the left because we have been deemed extreme and rather nasty. In short our mission is of the same order as that which inspired the earlier Evangelicals and Anglo-Catholics to win back the church for Christ while speaking in mission to the world: the ordinary mission of every Christian.

HISTORICAL OR PNEUMATIC?

2008-11-03T09:49:00.002-06:00

I'm writing this on All Souls' Day. Later at the Eucharist we'll remember the loved ones of our parish family, past priests who have served here and all the faithful departed. In a sense it is a time when we look back although that backward looking enables us to enjoy communion with those who now look forward to Jesus, the author and finisher of our Faith.

When we say that Christianity is an historic faith we don't mean it is what the late beloved +Michael Ramsey termed an archeological faith. The motto of the Christian is not "things aint what they used to be." Looking back to a golden age and seeking to replicate that age is a self-defeating practice. What results is make believe.

Christianity is an historical faith because it rests its faith in historical happenings. Most of such important events are recorded in the Bible. In addition to and following the biblical record we have centuries of "tradition". It's a pity that word now seems to mean old fashioned, out of date or irrelevant. Tradition means the memory of the church through the ages, recorded in buildings, documents, music, books, diaries, and in our own time even email! As we live into the story of our faith, into the real time happenings recorded in Scripture and in the Tradition, we add to the tradition one way or another.

There is positive tradition and negative tradition. Positive tradition is witnessed in the lives of those who have approached the recorded testimony of the Bible and the reflections of great women and men on the Bible with reverence and awe and who have sought faithfully to translate the faith once given into the language and culture of their contemporaries.

Negative tradition is instructive. It tells the tale of those who put their own thoughts, feelings and intellect first and claimed some personal or collective inspiration of the Spirit which in short declares that God's revelation in Jesus is not final, but changes as culture or mood or circumstance change. Believing that God has new things to tell us, rather than new applications of that which God has revealed, they enter into the excitement of "prophecy" as if "prophecy" is oracular.

Making the past an idol, refusing to speak to one's culture using that culture's ways as a vehicle for the timeless Gospel is a subtle form of idolatry. Imposing culture on the Gospel so that what has been given is overthrown in the name of modernity or progression is similarly a form of idolatry, the worship of trends and passions in a desire to be respectable or relevant.

At the Eucharist we proclaim that Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again. These are all historical facts, with at least as much evidence to support them as that which tells us William the Conqueror arrived on the English shore in 1066. In the Gospel records and the wide sweep of biblical evidence is contained all we, personally and collectively need to know for eternal salvation. That Gospel shifts in emphasis, although not in content, as it is applied in different places, using different languages and in different times. Yet always it is the same Christ with the same message and the same offer of forgiveness, restoration until Kingdom come.

GHOSTS

2008-10-23T12:04:00.002-05:00

GHOSTS

November begins with trick a treat, ghosties and ghoulies and things that go bump in the night, fearful horrors and a general election! The month begins as we remember the saints and pray for the souls of the departed. The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews reminds us that we are "encompassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses." Hebrews tells us that the great saints and heroes of the past are not just dead people we remember as examples, but living people who surround us on our journey of faith.

Of course our Lady and the saints are not substitutes for Jesus. Again Hebrews reminds us that the cloud of witnesses who surround us all the time are there for us as we "run the race" of faith, but that we are to "look towards Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith." In a real sense the saints are looking in the same direction as we are, but they see clearly while we see "puzzling reflections in a mirror."

It's always good to have clear sighted people around to help if we can't see very well or are blind. We stumble; they pick us up.

The saints who surround us, guide us and pick us up are not just those holy women and men we commemorate with special days. They are our loved ones who we can't see, but who have gone on before us. We say they are dead. That's a frightful insult. They are more alive than we are. Much more alive. They are now made perfect in Jesus because he died on the Cross and rose again, and conquered death for ever. Look at the cross or crucifix in your parish church. Marvel that Jesus died for you and that you are now a saint in waiting, adopted by God.

Why do we pray for the departed? Well we don't pray that they may be "saved". Jesus has done that. In a real sense it is better to say that we pray with them and that they pray with us. That is why we say at every Mass, "Therefore with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven..."

If your parish has an All Souls' Eucharist be there and say a special "hello" to those who you love but see no more. You will be telling them that you haven't forgotten them, that you think of them, give thanks for them and value their continued love and presence in your lives.

THE POOR ARE?

2008-10-17T16:04:00.002-05:00

I have no vote. Having said that I am not suggesting that I am neutral about who should be the next President. Never fear, I am not going to reveal my preference. Am I alone in noticing that the one constituency among the voting population which is not mentioned in the debates is the Poor?

Now it may well be that the poor have been given honorary membership in the "Middle Class" club. If the present financial crisis goes on for much longer, the distinction between poor and middle class may be moot. Perhaps politicians fear that poor people may be offended if they are identified? Perhaps they fear that middle class people won't vote for a leader who plans to spend tax money on those who have nothing? Whatever the motive, far from the poor being always with us, they seem to have become invisible.

Episcopalians are well versed in identifying the poor of whatever race as a group for whom soup kitchens are intended and pews are not. I am not sure whether this attitude portrays a subtle form of prejudice or a sincere conviction that poor people would feel uncomfortable in our worshiping midst.

The prejudice looks something like this: our form of worship requires intelligence to appreciate. The poor like rumperty tumperty songs, extempore prayer and fundamentalist preaching, and anyway they tend to be Republicans. The poor don't go to college, ergo they are dim witted. Episcopalians are intelligent and cultured. Anyway the poor wouldn't pay our parish bills.

Even if we don't harbor such obvious prejudice we may sincerely believe that the poor wouldn't want or like what we offer. We may explain Rome's greater success in pastoring all segments of a population, despite their liturgical tradition and ceremonialism, by suggesting that one doesn't have to think to be a Roman Catholic. Tell that to Chesterton or Tolkein.

One doesn't have to visit the Global South to encounter terrible poverty, sub standard education and appaling medical care. Visit any of our major cities. It may well be true that 11: AM on Sunday morning is the most segregated time in America. That segregation isn't merely between African-American and white churched Americans. There's as frightening a sgregation between our Episcopalian middle class worshipers and those who rent apartments in inner cities or live in trailer parks.

Anglicanism in America has become a denomination. If that is not indictment enough it has become a denomination of an elite. The humbug lies in our protestation of liberal and compassionate values. Are we going to vote for the middle class as we pray with the middle class next month? Ah! but there's always the soup kitchen and the thrift shop.

A RESPONSE

2008-10-08T09:38:00.002-05:00

The following is a joint letter from its twelve signers, all of whom are contributors to the Covenant-Communion web site. Others who wish to have their names appended to the list of signers may do so be posting a comment to that effect at: covenant.communion.org.

We write as an informal group of Episcopalians who share a desire to remain active and loyal members of the Episcopal Church. Most of us find ourselves profoundly at odds with several controversial decisions made by our leaders (General Convention, the Presiding Bishop and Church Center staff, Executive Council, among others) over the past several years. We are alarmed that they seem to represent a consistent trend away from theological, ethical, and pastoral norms that we understand as essential to Anglican faith and practice. Others among us are more open to the reconfiguration of some of these traditional boundaries, yet are concerned that the manner in which this process has been pursued has needlessly alienated many within our own church, raised substantive issues of mutual accountability between Anglican provinces, and increased the awkwardness in our relations with many ecumenical partners, both locally and globally.

We are deeply saddened by the steady stream of departures from the Episcopal Church that this ongoing crisis has provoked, especially as it has moved beyond individuals to include parochial and diocesan structures. We are not, as a matter of conscience, inclined to join them in their decision to leave. Moreover, we have varying degrees of disagreement with their perception of the necessity or advisability of doing so. Nonetheless, we are not without significant empathy for their position, and hold many of them as cherished friends and co-laborers in the work of the gospel. It is our desire to do whatever may be within our power to prevent the fences that have recently been erected between Anglicans (seen as protective fences by those who have erected them) from evolving into permanent walls, and, should it please God, to facilitate the conditions under which they might be removed.

At the same time, even amidst our deep uneasiness, we can confidently affirm that the Episcopal Church has not—in a formal and official and corporately univocal way—abandoned the inheritance of faith and practice that underlies Catholic and Anglican Christianity. We rejoice in the orthodoxy of our Book of Common Prayer (1979), in both its liturgical and catechetical texts, as well as the creedal documents that it includes. We recognize it as articulating the faith and teaching of the Episcopal Church, despite the statements and actions of some leaders that are reasonably construed as departing from it.

Moreover, we are cognizant of our obligation under the vows of our common baptism to assume the good faith and honorable intentions of fellow Episcopalians with whom we may have deep differences on contested questions. We find it important as a matter of principle to avoid demonizing or anathematizing those whom we disagree, even as we remain forthright in the articulation of our disagreement. We rejoice in any opportunity to make common cause with those whom we may perceive as adversaries (never enemies) in acts of gospel witness and service that transcend our differences.

In these days of great difficulty—indeed, crisis—within both the Episcopal Church and the entire Anglican Communion, we find it worth observing that many of those whose names appear below who would only recently have been considered “moderately conservative” in the Episcopal ecclesio-political spectrum now, as a result of rapidly shifting dynamics, occupy the veritable “right-wing fringe” of the Episcopal Church. A number of us feel mounting pressure to distance ourselves from the public image of the very church of which we are devoted members. This is not an indefinitely sustainable situation. It seems “meet and right,” on a number of levels, to seek some measure of structural relief as would decrease that pressure and allow us to live and move and have our being as Episcopalians. If the new “conservative fringe” is to remain securely connected to the institutional whole, some accommodation to their perceived need for insulation from many of the actions of that institutional whole, and the utterances of its leaders, would be immensely helpful.

We are therefore grateful to call attention to some recent “discussion points” (attached below as an Appendix) articulated by the Rev. Michael Russell, one whose own views are generally aligned with what might be called the “majority party” in the Episcopal Church, as a positive contribution to the process of seeking the sort of equilibrium that many of us on both sides of the divide desire. Among ourselves we have a variety of assessments of his specific proposals, and realize that, even if were able to speak with one voice on them, Father Russell does not speak for any authorized constituency, so his ideas only represent a starting point. Nonetheless, we appreciate the spirit in which they are offered, and find some of them both intriguing and worthy of further discussion.

It would be premature for us to put forward any concrete counter-proposals at this time, even if we were able to do so. In any case, we have no standing to do so. Our hope in making this public statement is to serve as a catalyst—one among many, perhaps—toward a fuller consideration of the challenge of creating and preserving a secure place within the structures of the Episcopal Church for those who hold traditional perspectives that do not reflect those currently held by the leadership, perhaps even including resolutions—legislative and otherwise—for consideration by the 76th General Convention next July.

Signed:

The Reverend Anthony F.M. Clavier
The Very Reverend Matthew Gunter
The Reverend Nathan Humphrey
The Reverend Dorsey McConnell
The Reverend Daniel H. Martins
The Very Reverend Dr. Jean McCurdy Meade
The Reverend Canon Neal Michell
The Reverend Matthew S.C. Olver
The Reverend Bruce Robison
Dale Rye, Esq.
Craig David Uffman, M.Div.
Christopher Wells

Appendix (per Mike Russell+)

1) DEPO for congregations as has been outlined and endorsed up and down the real and fictive Communion structures. This works for conservative parishes in liberal Diocese and liberal parishes in conservative Dioceses.
2) Canonical protection for cultural islands in our church, liberal or conservative. As long as there is DEPO as outlined there is not pressure to make culture islands like Ft. Worth itself to be forced to ordain women, for example, their parish could make it happen through DEPO, as well as women being placed.
3) Discussion of canonical changes that allow for some process to deal with concerns about uniformity and accountability towards respecting and affirming the creeds.
4) Modernize the curriculum of William White as a way of ensuring that all TEC clergy have command of some common body of writings. I think three years of seminary education is too little given the corpus of material to be mastered. But within that there should be some common library of reading that all must do so that we can respect the breadth of this Church.
5) Specific canonical sanction and review for testing the spiritual blessings of proposals that test the bonds of affection, with a review structure that takes into account the wider Communion.
6) Reciprocal Provincial participation in the Councils of the church. In essence this would have give some selection of foreign bishops (think of pulpit exchanges) voice and vote in every Province’s deliberative body. Sort of a perpetual mini-Lambeth. Every Bishop would participate over time in this process.
7) Discuss the creation of leases for disputed properties that allowed those who have left TEC to stay in them with three caveats:
a) If they congregation ever ceases to be in a Communion relationship with Canterbury/York they must surrender the property;
b) They must cease all verbal assault on TEC: and
c) They must send whatever the assessment would be to the local Diocese to the WWAC for use in world mission/relief efforts.

DEPOSITION

2008-09-28T17:59:00.001-05:00

I can't get my head around the strategy adopted by the PB and her advisers, now granted an imprimatur by about half of our diocesan bishops. As I mentioned before today, when I was bishing, the more TEC bishops sought to lambaste those who were on the edge of leaving, the more they left. One of the larger APA congregations is in Atlanta. It shares a block with an Episcopal church, merely because the congregation bought a former Presbyterian church building which adjoined St Patrick's.

Nothing did the tiny APA parish more good than when the then Bishop of Atlanta wrote an article denying the authenticity of our congregation on the grounds that it belonged to a group which could not be Anglican because it was not in communion with the See of Canterbury. Of course he was technically right. But he sounded as if he was saying that the members of the extra mural Anglican parish were frauds or fakes or con men. That article gained the new congregation some substantial members!

I have long written that the word "deposed" is an unfortunate and theologically erroneous term to describe the withdrawal of a license to practice within a specific jurisdiction. If a cleric is found guilty by due process of some frightful crime, then that cleric in most "catholic" bodies is "degraded" or "unfrocked" and prohibited from exercising whatever ministry was bestowed locally by a jurisdiction acting for the Holy Catholic Church. To employ a term to embrace everything from a frightful crime to merely deciding not to function as a cleric or to join some other church or denomination, let alone to transfer to another part of the same Communion, albeit under rather odd circumstances only leads people to assume that a deposition is draconian. Merely adding a clause assuring the world that "Mr. Duncan" hasn't run off with the organist of either sex, still may be parsed as his having done something which deprived him of ecclesiastical title and status.

Now if a jurisdiction claims that in baptism, the Eucharist, Ordination etc it merely acts for the Holy Catholic Church, and to removes from a deposed cleric who joins the Duck River Free Will Baptist Church his style and title, unless he (or she) abjures such status calls into question the intent and theology of such a jurisdiction. IF ordination is as indelible as baptism, one may no more deprive a cleric of ordination than one can baptism. It the crime is heinous perhaps such a person may be excommunicated, deprived of even the rights bestowed in baptism. But one does not suggest that if Fr Bloggs is odd enough to become Coptic Orthodox, he becomes Mr. Bloggs. One may not want others to follow his example, may even want to find ways to win him back and prevent an exodus, or thwack the offending cleric to discourage others following him, but one cannot in so doing deny that which one teaches about ordination.

Thus we not only have a canonical problem on our hands, we have a theological problem. If +Bob Duncan, exasperating as he may be, perhaps worthy of severe censure by his peers, is now "Mr. Duncan" then all the chatter about TEC having a "catholic" doctrine of Holy Orders is nonsense. Its leaders believe that just as a lawyer may be disbarred so a cleric may be de-sacramentalized. So why is it that if +Bob decides to repent and believe TEC to be right, he may be restored to his status through the mail?

BRITTANIA RULES THE WAVES

2008-09-26T14:11:00.002-05:00

Late Victorian days in Great Britain found her at her most jingoistic. The British Empire stretched across the world and although the United States and Germany were fast catching up in terms of wealth and prosperity, British power remained unchallenged.

The two political parties, Conservative and Liberal were largely led by people of the same class and with the same self-confidence in the particularism and self-confidence born of a passionate belief in the superiority of the British race and of its mission in and to the world. Where they differed, at least in part, was in their use of myth and their approach to wealth and its obligations. The Conservatives, led by an extraordinary man who had overcome the liability of race and social standing to rise to the highest elected office in the realm, believed largely in laissez faire capitalism, the reliability of a market economy and the extension of British power wherever its interests seemed to warrant imperial expansion. Disraeli came to realize however that Tories also needed to champion the common man, perhaps more by romanticizing village life and social order than by significantly bettering the life of a growing urban proletariat except by a judicious extension of the franchise.

The Liberals were divided between old-fashioned Whigs, less enamored with the pageantry of throne and Empire, but still invested in the reliability given to the state by people of wealth, breeding and culture, capitalists who believed in regulation, an extended franchise and the beginnings of social legislation to empower the working classes, and radical liberals who groped with non-Marxist socialism, the Nonconformist conscience and who distrusted Imperialism without wishing to dismantle what had been gained.

To the Tory led by that cynical convert to Anglicanism, Benjamin Disraeli, the inventor of the Indian Empire, who rescued the monarchy from probable oblivion. the Church was a formidable adjunct to the Establishment, a prop to the aristocratic ideal into which he had broken, and a symbol of social order. The Liberal Party, led by the tree-felling, prostitute-rescuing Anglo-Catholic, Gladstone, a man who disdained ennoblement and was capable of extraordinary righteous indignation, sought to disestablish the Church where possible and stress its "otherness", except in the matter of nominating progressive bishops, deans and other higher clergy.

I write this vignette of British history today because I feel there is much in our present predicament which mirrors these times. Almost all Americans of whatever persuasion, subscribe to some form of American particularism, that whether by Divine permission or native genetics, Americans are different, and have reached global ascendancy because this is America's destiny. Neither party dares to ignore or down play necessary patriotism or disavow America's destined leadership. Republicans, or most of them, believe in the majesty and omnipotence of the markets and expect little central government at home and much American government overseas. Republicans or most of them see conservative religion as an ordained adjunct to the State and read the Bible as a blueprint for conservativism. Jesus would have been a Republican if he had been fortunate enough to be an American and lacking that distinction He must be afforded honorary citizenship.

Liberals are champions of the common man, regret the folly of the common man's religion and political allegiance, at least of late, and believe that it is the intellectual class, rather than the wealthy, to whom should be given deference and who should govern the nation. In terms of religion, it matters little whether a person is religious or not, as long as he or she can manage to straddle a belief in egalitarianism allied to a trust in a right-thinking intelligentsia; an elite. Religion may be a useful personal pastime as long as its tenets do not contradict, at least in public, cherished liberal beliefs.

What unsettled the democratic game, in which British Tories and Liberals took their turn in bat while all was right with the world? Two movements shattered this world. The first was commercial and social. The United States, Germany and perhaps Japan began to rival the Empires's wealth and prosperity, while a wave of depressions encouraged the growth of socialism as ordinary people disdained paternalism, whether aristocratic or intellectual. The second came from the Imperial designs and ambitions of unscrupulous countries, and after the first War, the humiliated dreams of revenge fostered by Germany. Are we witnessing the birth pangs of a similar psychology in Russia?

What strikes me in this overview is the growing subservience or irrelevance of the Church, a Church either captured in Tory romanticism or neutered by liberal intellectualism. I fear that I see much similarity in our present moment. The late Victorian Church was unable to be the Church. It was either co opted to bolster Tory Imperial and Capitalist idealism or marginalized by a growing secularism in the old Liberal and new Labour Movements. The Church's leadership seemed unable to escape nationalism and the thralls of political dogma as it preached the Gospel.

To my mind nothing much has changed. Thus in our Episcopal Church the divisions are not Christian divisions but rather social and political divisions offered in some form of unholy baptism. No doubt there are people who like their politics encased in Gothic arches, but who speaks for and to the vast majority who have become as cynical about politics and political theory as they are about battling parsons? Our dwindling numbers speak more about the irrelevance of our message than about the effectiveness of the Faith.

GLOOMY THOUGHTS

2008-09-26T11:27:00.003-05:00

I spent over twenty-five years of my life in extra-mural Anglicanism in America. During that time I sought to influence the preservation of a positive, evangelical-catholic pastoral Anglicanism and to resist the anger and destructiveness of reactive religion. I failed rather spectacularly although my former jurisdiction at the moment despite defections is holding the line from throwing its lot into Common Cause and the Gafcon solution.

I came into TEC in 1999, and vowed to seek to be a faithful pastor and to do what I could to uphold communion evangelical-catholicism and to promote reconciliation. While I am now happily in a parish which wants to grow into a positive Anglicanism and in a diocese led by a holy and pastoral, orthodox bishop, I feel more and more on the larger scene that I have once again failed. That will teach me not to adopt highfalutin ambitions!

I watch with grief the nastiness which possesses the Episcopalian soul from left and right, the political expedience of the Establishment and the sheer bloody mindedness of the opposition and wonder “How may anyone be saved when the Son of Man comes?”

The leadership of TEC is narrow-minded and sectarian, safe in belief in its “particularism” and obsessed with sexualism. The opposition has been inoculated with the virus of intolerance and is equally sectarian in a world-wide ambition.

How may we remain faithful to the belief that the Church is visible, is One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic in such a context? How may one evangelize and propose the truth which is in Christ Jesus to a watching world which is not unaware of the brutality of our struggles?

Is Bishop Duncan a martyr? The Early Church taught that those who sought martyrdom were not martyrs. I believe that Bishop Duncan has deliberately sought martyrdom to prove his point. That he has indeed proved his point is neither here nor there. From the very beginnings of this conflict in the 60s the opposition has adopted political tactics, some of them as bad as those we witness in the present election, and has spectacularly failed. The Establishment has been much better at the game.

But who needs a church which merely replicates the strife, alarums and excursions of “Main Street” without providing the solutions offered by the Gospel? Who needs a schism which provides nothing but a fortress for like-minded politically conservative people who interpret the Gospel through the lens of right-wing Republicanism? Who needs a Christian Community which is so captured by cultural particularism and invests its hope in the myths of the American legend without subjecting that legend to the teachings of the Faith?

Damn it, I am more gloomy than George Bush.

THE BISHOPS MEET AGAIN

2008-09-17T14:42:00.002-05:00

Today our bishops assemble in Salt Lake City. As the modern Episcopal Church seems to believe that God has given it a new revelation, Utah seems an appropriate venue for the bishops to meet. The whole idea that God does add to the truths given in Christ Jesus, and that such additions are vouchsafed to local American assemblies of the faithful through parliamentary procedures might at least seem to have more in common with Mormonism than traditional Christianity. Granted those who believe themselves to be modern prophets of new truths prefer to anchor their vocation in John Henry Newman's theory of the Development of Doctrine, a theory which has been described as Newman's gift to his new Roman Catholic home. Of course Newman lived to rue his proposal when the Roman Catholic Church at the first Vatican Council decided that God had revealed that the Pope could be infallible. New revelations can be iffy things.

We had hoped that our bishops, home from the Lambeth Conference after hearing the Archbishop of Canterbury reflect on the office and vocation of a bishop, and listening to fellow bishops from across the world express their experiences and views on being an Anglican and being an Anglican bishop today, would arrive at this meeting of their House humbled and ready to respond positively to the mission of restoring the Anglican Communion to health, unity and concord. One prayed that exposure to the outside world would temper what seemed to be a determination to regard Episcopalianism as something plain different from Anglicanism, albeit ready to share in the councils of Anglicanism and to be genuinely altruistic in contributing money and talent to those parts of the Communion where MDGs are most desperately needed.

I believe in miracles but I doubted in my faithlessness that the bishops who have placed the theory of alternative lifestyles at the summit of their doctrinal top ten list would have been changed by the Lambeth experience. I hoped that those in the middle, who to this point have been mesmerized by fear of being regarded as bigots or allies of the extreme right would have gained confidence to demand that the church does its theology on the matter of sexuality before adopting regulations and policies which proclaim only one possible conclusion to the exercise of applying Scripture, the Tradition and Reason to the problem of human relationships.

Enter Pittsburgh. Like it or not, the Bishop of Pittsburgh represents to the liberal majority what the Bishop of New Hampshire does to the conservative minority. The poor bishop has been clothed with the mantle of intemperate disloyalty and archaic bigotry. He is the bogey man the left has used to scare the moderate and centrist constituency in TEC.

Now he is to be shot on his own quarter deck as an example to others. Once that has been done, a few more summary executions should pacify dissent and open the way for General Convention to institutionalize TEC's schism and its emergence as the herald of a brave new world.

As I was thinking about all this, while learning to walk again, and in the context of the elections, I mused about the ironies of all this. In the secular world liberals, whose share with our liberal bishops a belief in the essential goodness of human beings, want to regulate capitalism because they realize that greed and corruption are endemic. On the other hand conservatives who take a dim view of human beings unless they are rich and in business, and espouse Calvin's doctrine of total depravity, want to leave the market and its wealthy captains to their own devises. This odd dichotomy only succeeds in convincing me that neither side has its wits about it.

So it is in our church. The right wing believes in an ecclesiastical market economy in which clerical and lay entrepreneurs are free to do as they please, even if that includes schism and the creation of a multitude of rival entities which have unity only in their common loathing of TEC and their mistrust of any attempt by the Anglican Communion to regulate their activities.

On the other hand our ecclesiastical liberals devoutly believe in government intervention and the draconian application of Canon Law, inventively interpreted to tamp down anyone who departs from the party line, while espousing a theory of the glory of free will and equality which would make old Pelagius blush.

One doesn't have to be a prophet to suggest which side will win in Salt Lake City. The tragedy is that neither side resembles the great tradition of which our church is a churlish inheritor.

TAKE HEED

2008-09-06T11:34:00.002-05:00

Just as I was getting used to feeling well and enjoying the experience no end, I fell. I was trying to get through the back door to my office, my arms full of books, when the door jammed on a carpet. I shoved it with my left shoulder, the door swung open, and I fell in and broke my hip. Mercifully a parishioner who is a nurse was in the office. She called for an ambulance. Pat didn't have her cell phone with her, so it was later in the day, when she returned home, that she discovered I was at the Emergency Room in the La Porte Hospital.

What a splendid hospital it is. Nowadays one is used to being "processed" before being admitted. One must show ID and insurance cards before getting into a place where one can be evaluated. It was not at all like that. Through a fog of pain I kept suggesting that my insurance card was in my wallet, only to be told that someone would eventually get to such formalities but not to worry. The nurses were friendly and sympathetic and the doctor most apologetic that I must be X Rayed and that it would not be comfortable. An IV was inserted and an initial dose of pain killer provided and then I was wheeled swiftly to X Ray and gently moved onto the bench. A group of people expertly moved me from trolley to X Ray table and back again.

In no time at all, the hospital chaplain appeared and then my poor wife arrived, an Episcopal priest in tow. Yes, I had broken my hip, the doctor told me, but it wasn't a particularly complicated break. I was then taken to a room. La Porte hospital only has single rooms. Fears induced by a recent stay in another hospital immediately evaporated. A year or so in another hospital I was roomed with an alcoholic who tore out his chemo line and went whooping around the corridors chased by frantic nurses. There was to be no such excitement in La Porte.

Later that evening, August 20th., my splendid and cheerful surgeon Dr Magill inserted a rod and pins and patched me up. Then I was moved to a very large corner room, with nice views of La Porte and enough room to hold a vestry meeting if I felt that masochistic.

I can't speak too highly of the doctors, nurses and aides who cared for me on the 4th Floor and later on the Rehab floor. I would distribute medals to the occupational and physical therapy professionals who from the first day coaxed me out of bed and encouraged me to clamber up and down stairs with one hand on a rail and walker in the other, or made me walk and exercise and get myself mobile. I have always been against all forms of muscular Christianity, but despite the pain, I have to confess that I actually enjoyed working out.

I must also confess that the food was good. During my last stay in hospital in another state, I lost over twenty-five pounds. Not so at the La Porte Hospital. And if I wanted something other than that provided, it appeared in minutes, brought to me by a cheerful youth. If I rang for a nurse, someone came almost immediately.

Once in rehabilitation I took most of my meals with other patients. My first visit to the dining room was a bit difficult. The other patients sat around in lugubrious silence and my attempts to liven things up provoked the sort of response once encountered in English railway carriages, when the rule of silence was observed with all the discipline of a Trappist monastery.

Gradually I managed to produce some replies and even smiles. Two men had suffered strokes. One, a big, healthy looking man had just returned from a scout trip to the Blue Ridge Mountains, where he had canoed and hiked and had a wonderful time, only to be smitten while sitting at his computer. A lovely eighty-seven year old lady, who lives alone and loves to tend her flower garden, tripped and broke her shoulder badly. Another rather grand lady broke both hips while showing off her new clothes to family members. My simple fracture seemed slight in comparison to the damage these people experienced.

We got used to meeting each other in the therapy room. During rest breaks, one could watch another "inmate" being put through his or her paces by insistent but cheerful professionals.

The hospital staff seemed to have reached an extraordinary conclusion or two. The first was that if one allowed patients to sleep at night, instead of waking them up grumpily every hour or so, they were better able to function during the day. The second conclusion they must have reached at some stage perhaps years ago is that if the staff is cheerful, kind and interested in the patients, things run so much more smoothly.

So now I am home, staggering around on a walker and going in three times a week for therapy in a pool. I am armed with all sorts of gadgets to help me put on socks, pick up things I drop, and get my cup of tea from the kitchen to my chair. There has been a minimum of bureaucracy even with Workman's Comp. and the Insurance people.

Poor Pat. Last year she saw me through cancer and then pneumonia, a major move from West Virginia here, a flooded rectory and now this. She's had a very tough time. Despite all this stress and strain and having to deal with me, which is a story in itself, she has tackled this latest chapter in Clavier's decline and fall with courage and willingness. I thank God for her.

I managed to say Mass seated at my posh walker, and lead Bible Study last Thursday. I am taking this Sunday off, but hope to gradually slide back into harness over the next two weeks.

My older son Mark and his family are now safely at Durham University where he is reading for a Ph. D in Spirituality over the next three years. Diane has started a job there and Paul, clad in school uniform begins experiencing English primary education. Megan, who last year worked among refugee children on the Thai/Burma border leaves for Cambodia at the end of the month where she will teach villagers to use "wind-up" computers.

Never fear, I shall soon say something naughty about the House of Bishops, but I thought you would like to know why I have been silent for three weeks or so.

THE IMPORTANT THING IS..

2008-08-05T09:43:00.002-05:00

Each morning at Mattins I "cause the bell to be tolled" before the service and then say the Angelus at the Marian Shrine (tut tut) before I begin the Office. Yes, I am usually alone. But am I?

I say the Office for the parish, that is on behalf of the parish. But is there more? Surely the bell announces to the community that heaven and earth, the eternal, the global and the local are intersecting? The prayers of the Church with a capital C are just that. I am as much praying with the Church as I am praying for the Church.

One of the callings of a priest is to stand at that intersecting door between the eternal, the global and the "place". Our job is to keep that door open as it were.

Then the psalm this morning seemed appropriate. (78 1 - 39) "That which we have heard and known, and what our forefathers have told us, we will not hide from their children. We will recount to generations to come the praiseworthy deeds and the power of the Lord, and the wonderful works he has done....So that they might put their trust in God, and not forget the deeds of God, but keep his commandments; And not be like their forefathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation, a generation whose heart was not steadfast, and whose spirit was not faithful to God."

Even the lesson about Gideon this morning, militaristic as it is, tells of an obscure person from an obscure tribe, who is asked by God to reduce his armed strength to 300 men for the battle, gave some meaning to our weakness in the task we face as we seek to witness to Jesus, incarnate, crucified, risen and ascended in our Episcopal Church today.

If all the above is true of the Office, how much more so is it of the Eucharist, ideally celebrated by the bishop, surrounded by other clergy and laity, as the "ordinary" minister of the sacrament, but even so when we "extraordinary" ministers gather with the people of God.

In such a context the local becomes the microcosm of the eternal, global, regional and local. We priests are called to draw aside the veil and expose our little bit of ground to the Glory of God and to his saving grace.

Now our trouble, as I see it, is that we practice a sort of faithful agnosticism in all this. We would rather seek for other signs, synodical action, national strategies, world-wide solutions. Granted these things have their place. But unless, surely, we believe in our essential task and mission, the rest has little power. And when we put all our trust in structure and power, rather than in Word and Sacrament, we fall and deserve to fall.

I have a mind to believe that God probably used the time our bishops in Canterbury, prayed together, celebrated the Eucharist together, studied the Bible together and shared their hearts with each other, than in any other part of their agenda. Perhaps it would be better to say that in doing the real tasks of a Christian perhaps God was able to build the bishops up to tackle the hard, practical decisions and actions before them.

ON BEING THE CHURCH

2008-08-04T09:49:00.002-05:00

During the last press conference of the Lambeth meetings, Archbishop Williams was asked whether he viewed the Communion as a church or not. I think it fair to him to say that he hopes and prays that it will grow to be a church or perhaps realize its vocation as a world wide church.

Immediately alarm bells sound. The more "liberal" blogs have been warning that there is a plot to create an international super church out of what they claim to be a federation of autonomous churches. Immediately the vocation to become a church is painted in terms of "papalism", centralization, a process that strips the provinces and national churches of their autonomy.

All this is passing strange coming as it does usually from those who applaud globalization and would love to strengthen the United Nations. On the other hand those calling for a more centralized Anglican body, with tools to discipline errant member churches tend to be those who are fearful of any measures which strengthen world government and who oppose, for instance, the International Court of Justice. It's a rum old world.

There was a time when Western Christians were split on the issue of congregational autonomy, with Congregationalists and Baptists affirming the autonomy of the local congregation and the rest for some form of wider church body, whether episcopal or Presbyterian in nature. Many in the Episcopal Church now seem to have settled for something in between the two. They don't like the idea of congregational or even diocesan autonomy. They do like the idea of "Provincial" autonomy, an autonomy enforced if needs be, by force of secular law and internal Canons.

It may well be that having decided that errant bishops, dioceses and parishes should be disciplined by ecclesiastical and if needs be secular law, the proponents of total Provincial autonomy can envision no wider structure than their own because they fear that a world-wide Communion would wish to use law to bring them to heel. In other words they are projecting their own sins onto a larger Communion.

No doubt if some of those who campaign for a Communion with teeth won the day, the fears of those who champion Provincial autonomy in all things would be correct. Yet, at least to this reader, the evidence is that the driving force behind the movement towards the Anglican Communion embracing the notion that it is indeed a church is biblical, theological and ecclesiological rather than merely practical or structural.

Orthodoxy recognizes itself as being a Church in pretty exclusive terms and yet it has as far from the Roman Catholic Church in the way it practices being the church as is possible to imagine. One might as well say that one doesn't want the Communion to look like TEC as to fear that it might look like the RCC. Indeed TEC is an international body and occasionally seems to be as much of a rival international body as GAFCON.

The Old Catholic Utrecht Union churches manage to be a global entity without being papal.

Unlike most other groupings within "Catholic" Christendom the Anglican Communion makes no claim to be the whole Church, but rather claims to be authentically "the Church" wherever its faithful gather around their bishop and other clergy in fellowship with other bishops and their flock. That is a good place to start.

The worst form of nationalism is that which breeds xenophobia and "nationalism". The 20th Century bore witness to that as millions died in its name. The worst form of provincial autonomy is that which exalts the local and even the peculiarity of its mission above all others. Such ecclesiastical nationalism may not actually kill people but it does have the power to divide, alienate and drive people, many of them caught in the middle, away from the church. Our Lord had some pretty harsh things to say about those who cause "little ones" to lose their faith.

I am no fan of bureaucracy, of endless commissions and committees and fully realize that majoritarianism can be as autocratic as dictatorship. The pattern of prayer, Bible Study and Indaba may point us towards an older pattern of church governance, one rooted in faithfulness and consensus, a rediscovery of what is meant by "It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us."

Of course this involves sacrifice, on all our parts. That sacrifice of "ourselves, our souls and bodies" must be freely given, or should I say ideally is freely given. But some find themselves sacrificed not by their own offering, but by that of others, by cruelty or expedience. Such sacrifice is by no means demeaned by its involuntary nature. We call such people martyrs, or witnesses. It is the vocation of us all.

THOUGHTS ON +ROWAN'S SECOND PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS

2008-07-31T12:03:00.002-05:00

I think that the dreadful thing about all this is that the point is obvious and fundamental. It is as if a veil has been drawn across our collective eyes. To follow Jesus is to walk to the Cross collectively and individually. We are to die. Death means the surrendering of everything.

We are to believe that such a surrender isn't a bargain in order to receive "eternal life". Death is just that. Death IS death. Death to all we are and have and think. I've long loved this little bit from Robert Llewelyn in his book "The Joy of the Saints":

"It is indeed the way to which Jesus points: 'He who loses his life for my sake shall find it.' I recall when I was first ordained being pulled up sharply when I misquoted this verse, saying that Jesus said that we must lose our lives in order to find them. In fact he said no such thing. We are not bidden to die in order that we might live -this is to be no nicely calculated venture embarked upon in order to bring in rich returns -but rather, in the Pauline phrase, it is a matter of 'dying and behold we live'. What is asked of us looks like loss, has every appearance of loss, and in the nakedness of faith the plunge is taken. Jesus did not die upon the cross in order that he might rise again. He died, was truly dead, and behold God raised him. With Saint Paul the saints die daily, and with every death there is a rising to a deeper and fuller measure of the resurrection life. So by many deaths are they prepared -as we shall be toofor the final plunge into the ocean of God's love."

We believe in that sure and certain hope that God will create us anew. Newness implies change. "We shall be changed." We have no right to ask God to reserve certain sections of our existence and keep them the way we like them. Daring to die is the greatest "risk" in living. Daring to die to our greatest and most informed beliefs and aspirations, not because they are necessarily wrong, but because they must be transformed by and in grace is that necessary action some have institutionalized into what is called "conversion." For us it means Baptism but a baptism done once but lived into daily.

+Rowan is asking our bishops on our behalf to risk such a death. Ironically it is the province which makes the most of Baptism which seems less able to penetrate the radical nature of the sacrament. The very systems we have adopted in the church by which to make decisions imply that some will win, will hold on to what they want, and others will lose and even lose the things they most cherish. +Rowan has challenged all sides in the present war to dare surrender at the Cross as the way to renewal and revival. Perhaps he could have said more. Perhaps he said enough!

LAMBETH THOUGHTS

2008-07-28T10:51:00.002-05:00

I have no more access to the events happening in Canterbury than anyone else. I rely on news reports, which are largely dramatic and those blogs available to us all. Thus the following is more of an impression than a statement of fact.

I am delighted that it was decided to forgo the legislative pattern of meeting. It is so easy for those who participate in such events to imagine themselves as members of parliament or of Congress. The format invites self-selection into groups and lobbies and to indulge in the intricacies of rules of order which typify the modern legislative process. At a time when the general public seems less than enamored with those who represent them in legislative bodies, it is perhaps salutary for the church to step away from such models.

I am sure that it is no easy thing for bishops to walk away from such a mode of doing business. Rather like the old Fuller Brush sales people, the American bishops arrived with position papers which attempted to control or inform the line they would take in their groups. Goodness knows which bright spark came up with that daft idea.

The whole purpose of the Indaba groups, at least as I see it, is to encourage bishops to listen to each other, in the context of the Bible Study engaged in each day, in the context of Eucharist and Daily Prayers and in such a process be willing to offer up their hopes and fears, their programs and local resolutions in the hope and prayer that God will speak to them as individuals and as a corporate body.

We've already heard grumbles and groans from those who have entrenched positions and are in a defensive mode. One only has to read the statements of a few, a very few of the traditionalist bishops who are at the Conference or of some of the liberal American bishops to hear just how difficult it is for those whose minds are made up to hear and evaluate what others are saying.

It seems obvious to me that our Communion needs to find ways to bring the bishops of the Communion together more often. Perhaps it would not be necessary for them all to attend every meeting. Yet if we are to live both into the global reality of the Communion and the cultural, theological, political and social contexts of Provinces, meeting once a decade doesn't hack it. Many bishops only attend one Lambeth Conference in their active episcopate. It is so easy for bishops to remain provincial and local in their thinking and experience.

As I write the Windsor Continuation Group is issuing its report. It calls for a pan-Anglican Pastoral Council the task of which would be to inject its influence and advice into those actions of Provinces which have caused or cause division and discord in the whole Communion. Obviously like all Instruments of Communion, such a council would not enjoy legal rights to interfere in autonomous Provinces. How it would then deal with those Provinces which continue to tolerate or endorse controversial rites and ceremonies or inject themselves in the territory of other Provinces remains to be seen. It would seem to be a step in the right direction. One awaits squeals of pain from American liberals and huffing and puffing from those Gafcon Provinces who have set up shop in the United States and Canada. But of course what is sauce for the goose...

It would take an extraordinary act of God to get those liberal and conservative Provinces, oddly alike in their pretensions if far apart in their theology to heed a call for moratoria and self-discipline. Yet surely we are called to expect God to act. If the retreat section of the Conference, the Bible Studies, corporate worship and interpersonal relationships established at the Lambeth Conference have not provided space and time for reflection, repentance and newness of life for all, one can scarcely imagine what other context could have such an effect.

To take all that one holds dear and nail it to the Cross and wait for God to redeem and renew and change is not easy for any of us at the best of times and even harder when things seem to be falling beyond our control. God works when we surrender and sacrifice. He may even work through a Lambeth Conference.

HOW DO WE KNOW?

2008-07-15T09:41:00.003-05:00

In a pre-Lambeth Conference letter the Canadian Primate made the following observation:

"Many say, as a group of Canadian Anglican theologians have said, "the interpretation of Scripture is a central and complex matter and that, at times in church history, 'faithful' readings have led to mutually contradictory understandings, requiring ongoing dialogue and prayer towards discernment of the one voice of the gospel".

Well yes. What is not noted here is how or by what method those involved in "ongoing dialogue and prayer" have usually gone about establishing which interpretation is that which has been received "everywhere, always and by all," as dear old Vincent of Lerins put it. We are in our present pickle not because we haven't insight into how the Church and even the churches hitherto have made up its/their mind, but because of two fairly recent developments. By recent I suppose I really mean widespread.

The first development is that the old sources we once used, which we believed to be reliable and "inspired" are now as much the source of differing interpretations as are biblical texts. Anglicans once looked to the undivided Church, its Creeds, Councils and "Fathers" to establish whether a belief was crucial or not, or even if not crucial of long standing and veneration. So that in applying Vincent's "canon" - how does one know how to establish a true reading of Scripture or a true interpretation of doctrine? - it was possible to deduce what was believed "everywhere, always and by all." Anglicans were carefull to draw a distinction between "matters essential" and "matters indifferent". In the first section, in what the late Archbishop McAdoo termed the "hapex" are those theological and christological dogmas upon which there has always been general agreement among what the Early Church described as "Catholics". (I am not talking about Roman Catholics, Anglo Catholics or Eastern Orthodoxy!!)

Nowadays there's a powerful academic school which tends to treat all pre-Conciliar evidence, whatever its source, whether what we once termed "Catholic" or "heretical" or "schismatic" as of equal value. Now one doesn't doubt that in schools of neutral academic research and scholarship, such a method is entirely appropriate, as long as it is as fair and objective as is possible for humans to achieve; in itself a tall order. In church-sponsored faculties and seminaries there ought to be a presumption that those who teach believe that which the Church has always taught. This does not mean that they should not research all scholarship or present fairly alternative views. But in the end, particularly in the training of clergy and active laity, the task is to promote genuine prayerful learning inspired by God through Scripture, the Tradition and sanctified reason.

The second development is the whole notion of "development" itself. One constantly hears that God is "saying a new thing." It is claimed that church Conventions are used by the Holy Spirit to say new things. Jesus' promise that the Spirit will lead the church into all truth is linked to a "progressive" concept of a constantly developing "truth" which God gives the church as humans progress and are able to absorb such truth. It's a Darwinian form of revelation.

What seems to matter is not what the Church has said, but whether the Church or even churches or bits of the Church has said anything lately. If it hasn't been voted on lately it isn't necessarily true.

Two problems, it seems to me, arise in such a time. The first is what is glibly described as "fundamentalism." Biblical texts are set forth in what is often described as a "plain and literal" sense, consciously or unconsciously hearkening back to church Reformers, usually of 16th Century vintage. We have seen this in the passion which has arisen from the recent writings of Bishop Tom Wright of Durham about Justification. The Bishop of Durham is biblically excommunicated by those who are utterly sure that the Protestant Reformers enjoyed a certain quasi-infallibility and that to question their views is to question essential the doctrine itself.

The second and one might say opposing problem is raised by those who are waiting eagerly for God to say something new, or who believe that God has said something new to them and assume the mantle of prophet as they announce such a new revelation to the Church and the world.

The United States seems to have this latter propensity in its DNA. Perhaps it is inevitable that those who incorporate in their state-myth ideas culled from the Old Testament story of a people being given a new land by their God, a place where freedom dwells, will be drawn to new revelations. Mormonism, and "Christian Scientism" are but two examples of this tendency.

Nor is such an encultured progression confined to living into the Exodus. Just as "fundamentalists" tend to live in "Geneva", so many "modernists" are comfortable in seeking to apply the latest evidence from psychological, sociological and medical research to their biblical and theological research, with perhaps more emphasis on the former than the latter.

Such a tendency easily leads to a form of Gnosticism. Christianity once believed that although the Faith offers more than enough opportunity for the pursuit of godly reason and intellect, its basic tenets were available to all and were for all. On the other hand there have always been those of a Gnostic turn who were either willing to claim special knowledge or to assign to special Teachers their consciences in meek obedience.

The question then of authority, of what the Church believes and how it receives belief is vital. If everything is up for grabs at a moment in history how does the Church and how do Christians discern the one voice of the Gospel? By what process may we evaluate how modern scholarship, often as transitory and conflicted as biblical interpretation, informs belief and practice. How may we know that "culture" rightly or wrongly informs belief and practice?

If our bishops at Lambeth concentrate on saying something clearly to the Communion about how the rest of us are supposed to hear and receive the Word of God Incarnate, the Word of God written, and the Word of God incorporate in the mystical body which is the Church, we might begin to get somewhere amidst our conflicts. A good beginning would be to approach humbly the way in which Anglicans once did their theology and spirituality, not as an exercise in archaeological religion but to discover again how God's unchanging Revelation in Christ lives anew in every generation.

anthony.clavier@gmail.com

PROPHETS AND PRIESTS

2008-07-14T10:18:00.002-05:00

Our bishops are coming together in Canterbury as I write. The ambiance of the modern university buildings may well bring back memories of student days. That isn't a bad thing. Granted students, and particularly seminarians are given to expressing opinions at will, often culled from the latest set books provided. Yet in a seminary setting, at least once upon a time, the daily round of prayer, Bible study, meditation and reflection and of being taught grounded and formed vocation for better or worse.

For a few short weeks most of the bishops of the Anglican Communion will be plunged into such a routine and in the physical context of a place of learning. Mercifully I believe, they will not be called on to legislate. More than a few times when attending General Conventions or Synods I've thought that the "ambiance" has prompted our leaders, clerical and lay -bishops ARE clergy - to imagine themselves as members of congress or parliamentarians rather than called-out members of the Body of Christ. I have a feeling that pretty shortly some or many of our bishops will go through a psychological deprivation as they are pine for lobbies, and rules of order and motions and votes. I do hope that the organizers fail to provide adequate internet access.

As usual in Anglicanism there will be three groups there. No longer are these to be defined as Catholic, Evangelical and Broad. Nowadays the fault lines run through separate and often extraordinarily similar attempts to define what God is saying to the Church and through the Church and how God says things to the Church and through the Church. Hence my title.

There will be bishops at Lambeth who believe passionately that God has called them to prophecy. That mantle has been taken on by "liberal" bishops, mostly from North America but not entirely, and by "conservatives" mostly from Africa and Australia, but not entirely. Of course these bishops are not autonomous. They are influenced by and speak for a wide constituency. In the middle, as usual are a great number of people who perhaps wish both sides would shut up, who worry that the Anglican Communion is being torn apart and put its unity and concord before prophecy. One must then speak a truism. All of these people are fallible human beings, as much swayed by ambition, pride, sloth or any other of the cardinal sins which typify a fallen race as the rest of us.

Not all the prophets on the one hand or the priests on the other in the Old Testament church were good guys. Indeed God has a way of using the bad guys to do his will. In the second lesson at Morning Prayer today St. Paul tells the Romans that only a remnant of Israel enables the world to see and accept the truth in Jesus, and yet God's will and purpose encompasses all.

So the prophets, at least those who are not staying away, will come to Lambeth eager to prophesy and both sets of prophets proclaim that there is something radically wrong with Anglicanism. Either Anglicanism has failed in its calling to embrace everyone whatever their mode of interpersonal relationship or Anglicanism has failed because it has permitted provinces to embrace, for instance, modes of inter-personal relationships which are prohibited in Scripture and Tradition. Prophets tend to be prickly types. They are not into compromise and they are not noted for liking their opponents. They are often more interested in the group than the individuals who comprise the group and unaware of the variety of human experience an artificial label may encompass.

Those who are more of a priestly bent object to "fanatics" spoiling the unbroken liturgical and pastoral life of parish, diocese, province, national church and the worldwide Communion. They wish such people would tone it down, have some regard for the feelings of others, comprehend what destruction they bring and remind the prophets what the watching world sees. "The trivial round, the common task, will furnish all we need to ask," perhaps is the motto of the priestly or the moderate. Such an attitude brings down the ire of the prophet. Such people, the prophet thinks, are tepid, unprincipled. given to compromise.

Prophets often point to the account of the first Church synod or Council related in Acts, by which the Gentiles were to be admitted to the Church through baptism just as the Jews. The decisions of that Council seem at first to be a triumph for the prophetic until one reads on to see that the rest of the decrees were rather conservative. No rare meat! No meat offered to idols. The Church compromised.

One can't really hope that our bishops will get to like each other at Lambeth. One can't even hope that they will learn to respect each other. Certainly the bishops at the Council of Nicaea achieved neither goal. But we can hope and pray that God will use each and every one of them and that these fallible human beings, from differing cultures and places will find a way forward so that this part of God's Church may find revival in the midst of the years.

GAFCON AND VOLUNTARY GROUPS

2008-06-30T10:15:00.003-05:00

At first glance the meeting of traditionalists in Jerusalem and its outcome seems revolutionary. In the United States, despite the origins of Anglicanism in this land, there has been a tendency to rely on official agencies of the church to get the job done. Granted there are many TEC organizations, privately run, which represent everything from Religious Orders to charitable trusts, One may find most of them listed in the Episcopal Annual. That being said, very early on, it was decided that domestic and foreign missions would be, at least in theory, the task of the entire church and not of "private" missionary societies.

Voluntary groups were a feature of the 18th Century Church. The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel was founded in 1701 by Thomas Bray and chartered to provide ministry to the colonies of the New World, the West Indies and later South and West Africa, India, Australia and the Far East. I possess a pre-World War 2 edition of Crockford, which lists parishes, for instance, in India and notes the missionary society involved. The SPG (now USPG) gradually assumed a High Church and then Anglo Catholic hue.

In 1799 the Church Missionary Society was founded by Evangelicals in England and soon had work in Africa and Asia.

These two societies and a few others not only provided missionaries, sponsored bishops, helped in the creation of dioceses but also assumed positions of power particularly in those days before indigenous Provinces emerged in Africa and Asia. What is now called the Intercontinental Church Society was yet another Evangelical group with chaplaincies in Europe and work in Canada and in other parts of the world.

These worldwide groups, with offices in England, formed their own networks of missions, missionaries and sometimes whole dioceses and their bishops. They funded missionary outreach and appointed their clerical and lay workers. Sometimes there was conflict between local bishops and these appointed missionaries and at best the authority of the local church was circumscribed by deference to the body which paid the bills.

In some ways the newly formed Gafcon body resembles much more this "colonial" strategy than perhaps its organizers contemplate. The banding together of like-minded Anglicans to give mutual support and to encourage evangelism and church growth, in bodies which remain within the traditional structure of the church, but in formal and ad hoc ways exercise their own control, has been a part of the Anglican story for centuries.

What is revolutionary and perhaps troubling is the intention of Gafcon to enter existing Provinces of the Communion without the authorization or consent of the canonical bodies involved. In this perhaps crucial aspect, Gafcon is proposing to act as a church rather than as a large "missionary society" or lobby or interest group.

That such a society exhibits impatience with existing church structures is nothing new. The argument which split the Evangelical Movement in the 18th Century was not simply about "Calvinism" versus "Arminianism", although neither title precisely fits the moment, but about whether the existing parochial structure of the church was to be respected and used, or whether to go outside that structure and create cells of converts linked in "connexion". Gradually the Wesleyans "invaded" the structure, placing evangelism above ecclesiology. Church evangelicals remained within the structure, "converting" parishes and accepting high office.

As far as North America and perhaps England is concerned, Gafcon seems to be following the path of the early Methodists in placing evangelical strategy and need over ecclesiology. Indeed the creation of episcopal posts in the USA, staffed by bishops who are not recognized by the See of Canterbury resembles at least on the surface the practical position of Asbury and the emerging Methodist leadership in America. Asbury and his followers believed the late Colonial and early Episcopal Church to be a dying and moribund "latitudinarian" body and thought nothing of setting up their chapels within the traditional boundaries of Anglican churches. They went where they pleased in Gospel zeal.

How the Gafcon "society" develops remains in the future. How the Lambeth Conference reacts, if it has the mechanism to react at all, also remains to be seen. At least at this point, and in the area of "mission strategy" the Gafcon communique in intention signals a profound departure from traditional Anglican practice. Only time will tell how these first intentions develop in practice.

MOVEMENTS and REACTIONS

2008-06-23T09:55:00.002-05:00

If I remember rightly one of Adrian Nichol's beefs in his book "The Panther and the Hind" is that Anglicanism has been largely controlled by ascendant parties and has not been able to create a cohesive 'magisterium' or collection of precisely defined beliefs.

I am not sure that any branch of the Christian Church may escape the accusation that it has been affected by prominent individuals, groups and movements. Twas ever thus. St Paul led a movement, built on St Peter's initial experience in reaching out to and including non-Jews. (That in this there is a similarity with present TEC policies ignores the rather basic fact that non-Jews were typified by their race, or perhaps lack of race (!) whereas today the focus is on groups identified by behavior. And of course behavior is not in itself a bar to incorporation. We baptize babies before behavior of any significant form develops. It is what we do about behavior, as best we can, in grace that matters. It is what we do not only as individuals but as corporate entities that matters. I have always thought that a besetting sin of Evangelicals is not their ability to diagnose sin but their real or apparent demonstration that they are above the sinner.)

That Anglicanism has been changed and challenged by persons and movements is a given. The second part of Nichol's indictment, that we have not been able to assemble a mutually acceptable core doctrinal position is more difficult to answer. But that is not my point this morning.

I seem to remember reading somewhere the startling thought that in the bust up between Arius and Athanasius, Arius was the conservative. I mulled that about a bit when I read it. It hit hard. I certainly believe that St Athanasius was right about the nature and Person of Christ. He was right to defend Nicaea. I can say the Creed attributed to him without crossing my fingers. So what did the comment about Arius being the more conservative of the two mean?

In the first lesson at Mattins this morning, Moses is confronting Dathan and company and as I read the passage from Numbers 16 the thought occurred to me that Dathan was pretty conservative. Wasn't it Moses (and his Ten Commandements) who was pretty out front there? The Jewish people had managed quite nicely without Commandments and a Tabernacle up until then. They had managed without a formal "Aaronic" priesthood.

Perhaps the pre-Nicaean Church, with its seemingly "broader" spectrum of beliefs about the Nature and Person of Christ had been less divided than that which was emerging in the Conciliar period? I certainly know Episcopalians who suggest that to be the case. I think they are wrong but they make a case. It is a very conservative case.

In the 1870s the Diocesan Council of the Diocese of Virginia issued a statement deploring "ritualism" and particularly the use of the Sacrament of Penance. For a few years before that the Evangelical Party had become more and more incensed (pardon the pun) about the Oxford Movement. Indeed the Evangelical party may have become the "Evangelical Reaction". There's something extraordinarily stimulating about the Evangelical Revival in Anglicanism in the 18th and early 19th Century on both sides of the Atlantic. I would say the same about the Oxford Movement and gladly claim them both as being part of my spiritual DNA. But when these parties took to confronting each other, and later not only confronting each other but battling the next ascendent party, the Liberals and later what I might call the "1960s Party" what emerges is not so stimulating and often self-destructive and destructive of the church and its unity.

As I write the Evangelical reaction to "Western 1960s religion" in Anglicanism is meeting in Jerusalem of all places, a city whose recent history is one of division and death, of implacable enemies, Jews and Palestinians in mortal combat over a few square miles of territory. The site is not propitious ground for people who talk of being a movement but not a schism. True there are a few rump Anglo-Catholics at the GAFCON meeting yet the manifesto produced as a theological and strategic manual for the GAFCON conference might have been written by 19th Century Virginian Evangelicals or even JC Ryle itself (except for the short passage on Anglo-Catholicism which would have enraged the old Bishop of Liverpool and undone his gaiters.)

Is GAFCON a movement or is it a reaction? Time will tell. However as I have remarked before its reliance on structure, inherited from organizations like the Network and perhaps "Common Cause" would suggest that rather than being a movement, as in going forward, it is a reaction or a retrenchment.

Certainly, at least in my opinion, orthodox Anglicans have monumental excuse to be reactive, to circle the waggons and defend themselves. Particularly in TEC the life of anyone or any institution claiming to live into the Gospel as the Anglican Tradition has received it has been fraught with peril. But have the losses we have sustained been largely the fault of "The 1960s Religious Establishment" or of our own lack of enthusiasm? The Evangelical and Oxford Movements were not activities of the official church or its structures and agencies. Men and women engaged themselves in study, prayer, evangelism and teaching, took incredible risks, bucked the Establishment and under God did marvels. Neither party proposed anything new. They revived things old, but did so in the power of the Trinity. Some people gave up and left Anglicanism but on the whole Evangelicals and Anglo-Catholics were passionate about the unity of the Church.

I would also add that as one reads the on-line blogs, the present Establishment in TEC is sounding just as reactive as the GAFCON grouping and some even contemplate a North American or Pan-American post-Anglican Communion, not yet as organized perhaps as GAFCON, but perhaps in the works. Others speak of the Episcopal Church (worldwide) as a communion within the Communion. In that claim there are echoes of GAFCON. What was a movement forty or so years ago is looking more and more like a reaction. The fire has gone out in its belly. So now they use what power they have, invoke the Canons and discipline to silence their critics.

Will the Lambeth bishops, meeting next month, do any better? Certainly a time of Bible Study, reflection, corporate prayer and discussion can do no harm to our bishops, if the demons of structure, process, system and organization, synonyms for placing form instead of content are resisted. Exorcising such demons will be no easy matter for a Communion which has more and more relied on committees and process as its essential Instruments of Unity. Yet I can think of few occasions in the history of the church in which bishops led the revival and restoration of the church.

But what of core doctrine? More later.

DAILY DAILY

2008-06-03T11:16:00.002-05:00

Very close to the church I served in Brighton, England was a department store named "Hanningtons". Next to its main door was a plaque in honor of a Hannington who met his death in 1885 in a part of Africa we now call Uganda. The Hanningtons were Nonconformists but James and his parents became Anglicans just before James went up to Oxford. James Hannington became a "Church Missionary Society" missionary in Africa and in 1884 was consecrated as "Bishop of Eastern Equatorial Africa" a see with somewhat imprecise borders and few if any parishioners. The CMS was a stoutly "evangelical" missionary society at odds with the Anglo-Catholics whose group was called "The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel." In typically Anglican fashion, those on the extreme edge of these theological and spiritual groupings within the Anglican comprehension formed even more precise organizations. The CMS spawned the "Bible Churchman's Missionary Society" while the SPG created "The Universities Mission to Central Africa." It is futile to begin to fathom contemporary African Anglicanism without remembering its roots. It's not a long history. Hannington was martyred during the lifetime of my grandparents.

Hannington's episcopate was short lived. He was captured by the tyrannical and perverted Kabaka of Buganda, Mutesa and with his companions were tortured and executed. The following year, on this date, 32 young men, who had spurned the king's sexual advances and clung to their CMS faith, were put to death cruelly. Some of these martyrs were Anglican and some Roman Catholic.

When the late pope, Paul VI canonized the RC Ugandan martyrs he made mention of their Anglican companions. His remarks signalled something of a breakthrough in Anglican/Roman Catholic relations.

I have no idea whether this is true or not but I was taught as a young boy that the Ugandan Anglican martyrs died singing one of Sabine Baring Gould's hymns -he wrote "Onward Christian Soldiers"- which begins with the words, "Daily, daily sing the praises/Of the City God hath made;/In the beauteous fields of Eden/Its foundation-stones are laid." Each verse finishes with the chorus "O, that I had wings of Angels/Here to spread and heavenward fly;/I would seek the gates of Sion,/Far beyond the starry sky."

Each time we sang that hymn, my imagination soared as I contemplated the brave Ugandans as they gave their life for Jesus. Whether they sang this hymn or not, it's a good story. I have a feeling that my own vocation in part was nurtured by the story.

The Ugandan church demonstrates the truth of the old saying "The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church." Only a few decades ago the Archbishop of Uganda, Janani Luwum was assassinated by Idi Amin a tyrant perhaps more bloody than Kabaka Mutesa.

The present leaders of the Ugandan Province of the Anglican Communion have decided that their church is longer in full communion with the Episcopal Church. (Whether a Province in the Communion is competent to take such an action is another matter; our communion as Anglicans is symbolized not by inter-provincial accords but by our common communion with the See of Canterbury.) One gathers that this does not mean that all Episcopalians are no longer in communion with Uganda. There's some complex ecclesiology here and one perhaps may say gently that ecclesiology has never been a strong point of evangelical theology just as evangelism sadly remains a weak part of our own collective psyche as Episcopalians.

The story of the Ugandan martyrs and of the very large Christian community which grew from the sacrifice of James Hannington and the young martyrs should not be obscured or forgotten in the miasma of contemporary controversy. British Christians have long forgotten their own martyrs who died at the hands of Anglo-Saxon and Viking raiders. While there are many saintly Americans in our Episcopal story, not one, to my memory, was martyred for the faith in Colonial or post revolutionary America. Perhaps it is because Anglicanism took root over here fairly easily that we have appropriated words like "suffering" and "sacrifice" and applied them to lesser painful states.

Perhaps we just don't "get" the history which precedes the positions Ugandan, Nigerian, Kenyan and other Anglicans take as they view our small Province and some of its actions because "our light afflictions" pale before the nobility of sacrifice demonstrated by indigenous African Christians and yes even now maligned figures like Bishops Hine and Frank Weston and many others, who travelled thousands of miles, lived lives of self-denial, and brought medicine, education and faith to converts and non-converts alike. Were they allied to colonialists and imperialists? Indeed they were. Should they have stayed at home and left Africa to the Africans. or Africans to the governmental colonists? That is one of the "ifs" of history about which enough time hasn't elapsed to perhaps make a balanced judgement. Yet James Hannington and his successors were followers of Jesus and were obedient to his instructions. They went and baptized. They went and preached. They broke bread and blessed wine "in remembrance" and they sought to extend God's love even in losing their own lives. In so doing they were faithful to our Lord's essential commandments.

We too are called to such an obedience. Faith is not extended by structural, political or legislative strategies but by lives committed to obedience.The next time I find myself grumbling about "persecution" I'll try to remember Hannington and the Ugandan martyrs and pray that my "light affliction, will win so great a prize."

ANOTHER DIOCESE SPEAKS

2008-05-28T10:15:00.002-05:00

Yesterday the Diocese of Northern Indiana's Standing Committee issued a statement about the recent actions of the Episcopal Church's House of Bishops in deposing two recalcitrant bishops. I commend this statement for its contents and tone and above all for its grounding in the faith of the church.

We live in a legalistic society and in a society which tolerates a high degree of freedom to indulge in character assassination. To politicians and media pundits the sort of nastiness abhorred by young people at school has become a way of life exalted in the name of free speech and constitutional rights. People may as easily be destroyed by oft-repeated slander and legal fees as easily as they may be by medical costs and lack of competent health-care attention. Sometimes one is as impotent in confronting slander as one is in getting adequate attention for cancer. We seem less and less able to address issues objectively and without personal affront. We seem more and more willing to circumvent due process if we convince ourselves that someone is guilty or even wrong-headed.

It was once said of us, "See how these Christians love one another." The history of ecclesiastical censure and the trials of bishops in our church has been rarely edifying. For instance it is said to this day that the trial and deposition of the Rt Rev. Benjamin T. Onderdonk, Bishop of New York, in the 19th. century was deeply flawed. "Whether the trial was an appropriate act to punish a Bishop for improper behavior or a conspiracy to silence a proponent of the Oxford Movement may be ultimately unknowable." Whatever the truth of the matter the struggle between Evangelicals and Anglo-Catholics in the mid Victorian period on both sides of the Atlantic and the clumsy and flawed legal and canonical attempts to settle the matter, far from protecting the church, produced defections to Rome, a schism which weakened and unbalanced the Episcopal Church for a century, or perhaps to this day and the unsavory drama of Christians in mortal combat. There were no winners.

One would think that such precedents would give pause for us to consider the grave dangers which attend our "unhappy divisions." Yet I suspect few have recently read the accounts of the bitter exchanges between "Catholic" and "Evangelical" bishops and other clergy, the story of the trials and imprisonment of clergy, fumbled attempts at "Ritualist" Canons, the repeated refusal of bishops and standing committees to consent to the consecration of James de Koven and the tragedy of the Reformed Episcopal schism. If history doesn't repeat itself it does a remarkable imitation.

It is in the context of this preface that I would commend to you all the Statement of Northern Indiana's Standing Committee one may access at http://www.ednin.org/ednin/. I would particularly commend to study, reflection and prayer the concluding paragraphs of the Statement:

We believe that when we let the same mind be in us that was in Jesus, other ways of responding to division come into view. Those Bishops (or other clergy) who, for sake of conscience, can no longer minister as part of The Episcopal Church can be transferred at their request, or permitted to renounce their vows and join with other Anglican Provinces without vindictiveness or punitive measures. Confrontation in the Church is an opportunity to show the world how Christians conduct themselves in the midst of serious disagreements. It is an opportunity to proclaim the Gospel. >

SERMON FOR TODAY

2008-05-25T16:32:00.000-05:00

May I point my readers to http://www.episcopalchurch.org/sermons_that_work_96800_ENG_HTM.htm for a transcript of my thoughts on today's Gospel?

DEMOCRACY

2008-05-22T11:50:00.002-05:00

At a recent press conference, discussing the format of the upcoming Lambeth Conference, our Presiding Bishop was quoted as saying:

“The parliamentary system as it is generally practiced in the West produces legislative winners and losers,” Bishop Jefferts Schori said. She added that she was hopeful for the conference because of its emphasis on a traditional understanding of conversation. “Conversation entered into deeply and fully leads to conversion and hope,” she noted.

As I read this my heart was "strangely warmed." I wanted to shout "yes, yes". And then I thought of next year and General Convention. Surely we have been saying loudly and sometimes rudely to the rest of the Anglican world that we are a democratic church in distinction to their polities. Some rather august officials have even suggested that when our laity and clergy -bishops are clergy - assemble the Holy Spirit tells the church what's new and exciting! Surely the Pope will be jealous. It is estimated that pope's have only spoken "infallibly" four times in history. Of course we don't believe in papal infallibility. Do we now believe in synodical infallibility?

Some may be thinking at this point that TEC has been democratic from its creation, has always decided things in a parliamentary manner, and indeed we tell the world that our bishops are better and our way of functioning more excellent because of our democratic structures and procedures. (Whether our bishops are more holy, more intelligent, better pastors, theologians and administrators than other Anglican bishops is another matter.) Yet in the past few decades surely the Presiding Bishop is right. We have produced "winners and losers" in our own church and now throw Canon Law at those losers who are fed up with always losing and seek other homes. We kill our wounded in the name of law and democracy and our more excellent way.

I rather think that the Presiding Bishop was thinking of the world-wide Communion rather than the Province she serves when she commended conversation over legislation as a model for the upcoming Lambeth Conference. Yet the TEC gander, at least to my way of thinking, desperately needs the goose's sauce. In a few months our House of Bishops, perhaps this time in due form, will be asked to legislate the equivalent of the death sentence for another bishop. Other democratic systems have long abandoned Impeachment trials and Courts of Attainder. Why? Because of the corruption of human beings who use such methods to settle scores or tidy up their own houses by excluding prickly people.

As we have no effective "Supreme Court" in TEC, majority votes win, whether justice and mercy are served or not. Next year General Convention meets again. Because we have trashed the old Anglican compact, a self-denying ordinance by which we eschewed legislating that which alienates the consciences of groups within our comprehensive church, we are in danger of creating more "losers" and dividing our dwindling church the more.

Mind you, our former "conversational" way of doing things, voting on budgets and funds for mission and practical things, turning a blind eye to new movements or the revival of old ideas as space, time and patience, and yes, God's Spirit working through what I term the common sense of the laity, required much civility and a good dose of toleration. Neither virtues are much prized today. Under the guise of "justice" often devoid of mercy, believing we have the truth, we would rather conquer and take no prisoners.

Anglicanism emerged in late Elizabethan days as a church willing to live in contradiction, tolerance, perhaps quarreling robustly, but determined to preserve the unity and mission of the church which existed for the world and not as a holy huddle of true believers. When we have forsaken our heritage, denied our DNA by insisting that the winners write the story, we have become something other than Anglican, however much we appeal to liberalism on the one hand or "classical Anglicanism" on the other.

I heartily endorse the PB's position and hope and pray it will manifest itself when we meet in conversation and Convention in 2009.

LAMBETH AND ORIGINS

2008-05-14T10:19:00.002-05:00

We've been asked to pray for the upcoming Lambeth Conference, which perhaps nowadays should be called the Canterbury Conference. It is many years since the bishops attending a decadal conference could fit into the library of Lambeth Palace, the home of the Archbishop of Canterbury.

With enormous irony those in our church most suspicious of the Conference, or at least those on the left wing of TEC, are also keen to assert that the emergence of the Episcopal Church as an organized "national" body at the end of the 18th Century signalled the creation of the Anglican Communion. This theory ignores the Scottish Episcopal Church which pre-existed TEC. Granted this "continuing Anglican" body was formally recognized by the Church of England at that time but at least a passing nod should be made to the church which provided America with its first official bishop. Yet even if our Scottish brethren are disqualified there remains the Church in Ireland, complete with its separate succession of bishops going back to St Patrick.

In a review in the "Church Times" of a recent book on Archbishop Ussher of Armagh, the wonderful post-reformation scholar and historian Dr Judith Maltby writes:

"We usually think of the origins of the Anglican Communion as lying in the emergence of the Atlantic colonies, but the roots are much closer to home. Archbishop Laud conducted a determined campaign to impose his brand of orthodoxy not only on the Church of England, but on the Scottish and Irish Churches as well. I most admire Ussher for his dogged persistence in maintaining that he was Laud’s peer and equal (he even suggested to the English Primate that they were not so much brother metropolitans, as brother patriarchs!) in the face of a determined, at times ruthless, campaign to subject the Irish Church to the English. As Ford puts Ussher’s vision, “the Church of England and the Church of Ireland were engaged, not in a parent-child, but in a more equal, sisterly relationship, which entitled them to defend their own rather different version of ecclesiastical orthodoxy.”

Ussher is perhaps notoriously remembered for his attempt to date Creation. Despite this now seemingly odd adventure, he is better remembered for his seminal rehabilitation of the works of Ignatius of Antioch against Puritan attempts to discredit the authenticity of that earliest Father of the Church, whose views on episcopacy and the sacraments did not commend themselves to radical evangelicals who sought to reform the Church of England "root and branch".

Dr Maltby also commends Ussher - the only bishop to attend the Westminster Assembly which produced the famous "Westminster Confession" - for his irenic attempts to forge a way between Laudianism and Puritanism. Ussher failed. Whether Ussher's example provides a goodly example for others to follow in seeking to comprehend the "prophetic" utterances of contemporary TEC establishmentarianism and classical Anglicanism perhaps is open to question. It might be noted that if "Laudianism" is viewed not so much as a High Church revival as an example of an intolerant ascendant "party" determined to enforce its agenda on the rest of the church, if necessary by the force of law, then perhaps in that limited sense the official TEC position is "Laudian".

Certainly pre-1662 the Irish Church represented a more unified example of Reformed Anglicanism than its troubled and divided sister church in England. "Laudian" bishops such as Bramhall and Jeremy Taylor, both Englishmen, would represent a change in all that after the Restoration but that was then the future.

The Church of Ireland does have a claim to be a part of the original "Anglican Communion" pre-dating TEC by centuries. Of course that doesn't really matter very much. That its "character" was comprehended by the Elizabethan and Jacobean Anglican family of churches, despite its differences, is also true.

I must also admit that although I appreciate the legacy of "Laudianism" and the heroic witness of those we later described as the Caroline Divines, I must also admit that I deplore the means used to force reforms on church people who were moderate Anglicans and not anti-church Puritans, forcing many of them to embrace schismatics rather than conform.

When Charles II returned from his journeys in 1660 it was hoped that the Laudians had learnt their lessons. They had contributed to the very destruction of the church they wished to reform because they were so sure of the virtue of their cause and brooked no opposition. Yet instead of learning from their mistakes, in a fit of revenge and righteous indignation, in 1662 and thereafter they used the force of law to eject from the church even moderate Puritans like the saintly Richard Baxter.

Nowadays the 1662 Prayer Book is viewed by many as a living memory of comprehensive classical Anglicanism. In 1662, to many, it was a symbol of resurrected oppression on the part of the High Church party bent on securing its place and accomplishing its agenda. Yet the victory of Laudianism in the Restoration Church came at a great price. Those ejected formed permanent Nonconformity, depriving the Church of England, at least in practical terms of its claim to be the comprehensive church of the English people. Was smaller better? Perhaps those in our church intent on establishing their agenda may wish to think about this lesson?

ISOLATIONISM

2008-05-05T09:50:00.003-05:00

One of the sure signs that a dominant group in the church is suffering from hardening of the arteries is when it gets defensive and perhaps isolationist. A movement which was full of vigor, freshness and hope, breaking out of the proverbial box, and stretching minds and hearts gradually becomes narrow, legalistic and defensive of its turf.

Such a development is as much a part of our Anglican history as the "golden ages" some love to re-visit for strength and solace. One of the tasks of a historian is to dig into golden ages to reveal, as best one may, that they were perhaps not as golden as they seemed, as well as to examine so called "dead" periods to see just how lifeless they really were. When I was much younger the popular historical view was that the 18th Century church was as dead as the proverbial Dodo until the Evangelicals came along and woke it up. Today a perhaps more measured description is available.

Yet one only has to see just how cross, defensive and miserable, for instance, many Evangelicals became as they faced a triumphant Anglo-Catholicism in the mid-19th Century or note just how "precious" the heirs of the Tractarians became in the mid 20th Century when faced by the earlier Liberals, that is until the Roman Catholic Church pulled the rug from under Anglican Catholics with the reforms of Vatican 2. It is daunting to spent decades introducing rites and ceremonies only to see them undermined by one's heroes. Take a look at some of the writings of the Evangelical Bishop Ryle and the Anglo-Catholic Vernon Staley to see just how defensive church people can get when threatened by other views.

The 1979 American Prayer Book is often derided by conservatives. Its irony remains that in a sense it was the last great triumph of American Anglo-Catholicism at a time when that party was being marginalized by converts to Liberalism in the 60's and 70s. Ascendant parties in Anglicanism often "win" too late!

One only has to read some of the blog sites and list-serves of contemporary establishment Liberalism in our church to see just how institutionalized and defensive its aging adherents have become. Where once they broke the rules in the name of justice they now cling to the Canons and church structure to preserve their achievements. Hope and confidence are now replaced by fear and retrenchment. Perhaps it is not too naughty to detect a similar dynamic at work in our House of Bishops.

Indeed many now espouse an isolationism as stark as its political equivalent in the 1920s. The Anglican Communion, which after World War 2, thanks to great bishops like Stephen Bayne (the first secretary-general of a growing Anglican Communion, whose nurse-maid was the autocrat and conservative Archbishop Fisher of Canterbury who fostered Provincial autonomy in the "colonies" before independence was granted by Great Britain) the American Church took to the ideal of a world Communion and became its largest financial contributor. Now, threatened by the very Provinces which copied American ideas of self-government and autonomy, some American establishmentarians dream of breaking away from pesky foreigners who have the audacity to question Yankee theology and practice. "Who needs a Communion?"

Few are more isolationist, particularly in an attitude to ecumenism, than vocal converts from Roman Catholicism or Fundamentalism who retain their fear of that which they rebelled against and interpret Anglicanism in the light of their personal reaction. Their interpretation of the tradition they have now espoused is often dreadfully flawed and destructive. They see our tradition in almost as lurid terms as late -Reformation Anglicans viewed Rome or Restoration Anglicans viewed Puritanism. Prejudice may often assume the mantle of righteousness and even "justice".

At home the structures of TEC creak and groan under the weight of modern life and opportunity. Tiny dioceses created in the missionary era of our church, strain to support a bishop, diocesan staff and the minimum of program and project necessary for viable diocesan life. The ancient theology which demanded that a diocese have not only a valid bishop in communion with others but also minimal viability is forgotten while a questionable European 16th Century doctrine of a territorial, unitary national church is espoused with great passion. Henry VIII call home! Such a love affair with structure is not the product of vigor and growth. Rather it is espoused because it works for those in power. It preserves our present governing oligarchy. It may not work at parish, diocesan or "provincial" level. It may not even work in the structure of our national church. The problem is that it is "broke" and it needs fixing for the life of the church.

I am not suggesting that the same sort of isolationism and protectionism "writ large" isn't manifest in the not-so loyal opposition to 60s Liberalism and establishmentarianism among us. In fact it is. The solution offered by those "traditionalists" marginalized by an ascendant party which cheerfully broke many essential doctrinal standards and disciplinary practices in the name of "progress" is to break all the rules by wandering off into a hinterland of rival groups which daily grow into themselves as they occupy "safe-ground". In reaction those in authority who speak of inclusion and freedom now cling to church law with fervor. Their job is to protect the church. One remembers a High Priest who said something on those lines.

Yet the real threat to TEC, whatever the causes of a dwindling "membership" is not Africa or the Southern Cone, and certainly not the tiny rump of "traditionalism" within the church, but rather internal collapse through the weight of obsolete institutions. It is certainly true that this is a problem we've faced before. The Baptists got to the frontier first. They walked and were self-creating. Episcopalians and some Presbyterians waited until they could replicate establishment structure, although, thank God, there were enough creative people, full of missionary zeal, to extend the church from the eastern seaboard across the mountains. My own parish here was one of four original parishes planted by Bishop Jackson Kemper. He covered an enormous territory on horseback. Of course he had to create borders, standing committees and vestries, but these were unaccompanied by the weight of regulation and structure which abounds as our parishes and dioceses dwindle. We've possibly created more ecclesiastical law and regulation in the past thirty years than TEC did in the entire 19th Century. Indeed where there seems to be revival it is often because of a core of "extroverted: Christians in place to build and expand despite the system rather than because of the system.

Despite the decline obvious to anyone with an eye to the facts and to anecdotal experience, voices still tell us that "smaller is better" particularly if what results is more homogeneous, more unified, and more on message. Some products can be successful sold to a discreet and upscale market. If we are to confine ourselves to those like ourselves we shall succumb ironically to the sin of many first Christians secure in their heritage, who didn't want or need those pesky Gentiles. Who needs the poor, or the "conservative" or those who lack good taste? Of course we do as a "cause". But how about as a constituency?

Local Choice

2008-04-18T11:12:00.000-05:00

An old friend wrote to me about how one decides on a local church community in which to share faith and practice in the light of ancient and present divisions in the church.

I suppose I've become something of a practical minimalist in my old age (68 tomorrow) in that while my ecclesiology remains firmly anchored in the concept of the bishop, surrounded by all Orders of the faithful, in communion with other bishops and faithful, in practical terms belonging to a local community of faithful people, where Word and Sacrament are "validly" observed in a sustainable community seems vital.

Orthodoxy isn't primarily private. "I" don't own it. It is one of the outward signs or symbols of the community of faith present visibly. Thus such a reality is marred where community exists but the minimal "signs" are not there or are formidably obscured, or where such a community lacks minimal viability in terms of stability and at least potential growth. I also have doubts about the problem surrounding the admittedly subjective area of whether a local community of faith (or collection of communities) exists to be in normal terms "the church" or on the other hand whether it exists to assert an almost exclusive emphasis on dissent or on a substantially unbalanced articulation of faith and practice.

The presence of an active and practiced "charity" would seem to me to be an essential demonstration of genuine piety. Charity includes the absence of judgmental attitudes although not of positive and evangelical criticism. Charity includes the practice of tactile love towards all whose lives are marred by poverty and disease as well as by sin and corporate and private failings.

This then boils down to a determination about whether there exists "close by" a place where the people of God assemble "viably" for common prayer and the sacraments and where the Word of God is heard. I would also stress here, as the later English Reformers stressed that we hear the Word primarily as the Scriptures are heard, read, marked, learned and inwardly digested and only secondarily in preaching. (One yearns for reliable preaching but that is not always the result of orthodox belief!!)

I would further argue that in communities claiming to be the church in which, in worship and community, the Triune God is liturgically offered those normal outward gifts which have "always" been transformed by the Spirit into means of grace, there exists potentially, using that word technically, all that a Christian needs personally and communally to practice the faith in daily life. I would therefore place much less stress on the personal ability or "reliability " of the priest who may preside in such a community for the time being, while stressing the usual "marks" of the church being present in Liturgy and Formularies.

In this present moment of division and dissent, making decisions about participating in local communal faith and practice isn't simple. Granted America has long been a place of religious pluralism, a marketplace of faith and thus those who are detached, one way or another from their original religious community have always been presented with choice. Nowadays that choice may also be between local communities attached to a single jurisdiction or "denomination". Anglicans may once have made such a choice based on what we used to term Churchmanship, although that choice always weakened the essentially parochial component of the Anglican tradition even in the United States. Today, as you know, other perhaps more formidable considerations exist. I have tried to point to two of these above in comments about the absence of "minimal" signs or their fundamental obscurity on the one hand or on the other an unbalanced dissent or articulation of faith and practice.In the latter matter I'd mention an articulation of the Gospel divorced from a "Gospel" ecclesiology or one that seems to magnify institutional division as a means of restoring orthodoxy.

I would perhaps cautiously reiterate that the lack of "institutional" self-sacrificing love and a spirit of reconciling forgiveness at least weakens formidably protestations of orthodox faith and practice.

POLITICS

2008-04-15T21:19:00.000-05:00

I always chuckle when I hear a politician denouncing others for "playing politics". It's almost as farcical as a multi-millionaire criticising a rival for not having the common touch. Before I get too high and mighty myself, I remind myself that to some extent we are all hypocrites and that is why we are able to make room for some more in church on Sunday.

In an election season one is obliged to watch media figures and those they "cover" parsing words selectively and often completely out of context in order to promote a story or create an artificial crisis. Obviously such otherwise frightful conduct draws an audience and pays for advertisements or they wouldn't do it. We get what we pay for. I am often reminded of the classroom sneak, who lurked around and then spread distorted stories or told the teacher in order to get someone in trouble. In totalitarian societies such people are dangerous, often mortally dangerous.

The church is a porous society. We take into it the habits we practice in what we term our secular lives. Very often we don't seem to notice the great gulf fixed between what we profess as Christians and how we behave. When confronted, our justifications are often plainly pagan. It's a bore to be told to turn the other cheek, walk the extra mile, forgive until seventy times seven, to forgive "because they know not what they do." All that sort of stuff is just fine for sermons but in the "real world" we have to be practical.

Today the Pope arrives in the United States. He is a brilliant person. Because the non-Roman Catholic Christian world, and even Eastern Orthodoxy, has become so divided on denominational, cultural, ethnic and over belief and practice, the papacy today occupies an extraordinarily powerful position in Christendom. Perhaps Benedict is less well-known and certainly less than an extrovert than his predecessor. Nevertheless he demonstrates that a Bishop of Rome may still speak for Christendom and draw the attention of even a Methodist, ex-Episcopalian President Bush.

Certainly there will be voices who raise what they call "justice" issues as an excuse to attack the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church and all and everyone who does not agree with their agenda. I could join them in lamenting aspects of Roman Catholic official teaching. Were that not true, I wouldn't be an Anglican I would convert. What I do lament is that there no longer seems to be much difference between the vocabulary of political discourse and the language of faith. All is fair, it would seem, in politics, love and war! Thus the lamentable conduct of some Roman Catholic priests -and they too are humans towards whom we have a duty of prayer and reconciliation - is jumbled up with a list of causes such as abortion and the ordination of women without any attempt to create a hierarchy of importance. The result may well be as blind a set of prejudices as once lurked in the drawing rooms of devout Anglicans as they placed in honor Foxe's Book of the Martyrs, together with the Book of Common Prayer and the Authorized Version of the Bible. (Foxe, you will remember wrote lurid biographies of those "Reformers" who were executed by "bloody" Mary 1.)

I am not for a moment suggesting that prejudice has been one-sided. My devout (sometimes) Roman Catholic aunt, whom I loved dearly, often chided me as an heretical and schismatic Anglican who was probably personally responsible for the deaths of the Elizabethan Roman Catholic martyrs. Yet we are not permitted surely to justify our own misdeeds on the grounds that those we oppose are just as bad!

My good friend Fr. Dan Martin, on his blog, has called for constructive empathy towards the liberal Establishment in the Episcopal Church and has been attacked for so doing. Yet it should be possible surely for Christians and even Episcopalians to entertain the thought that even those with whom we most disagree share with us elements of faith in very vital areas. We may wonder how they may recite the words of Creeds and Liturgy (what the language of those prayers actually say) and hold the beliefs they do, but while we have the positive duty to speak the truth in love as powerfully and winsomely as we may, we have no right to judge and condemn personally someone who has been baptized in the same water through which we have passed and shares in the same holy meal.

No doubt television reporters will slyly drop in controversial and negatively critical morsels as they "cover" the papal visit. Benedict XVI may get off a bit lighter than our own Archbishop Rowan does from the words of bloggers and pundits many of whom haven't and maybe can't read what he actually says. Our own Presiding Bishop, whose recent actions may hardly be viewed as non-controversial (her actions and those of our collective episcopate assembled in Texas may have done more actual harm in the Communion than controversies over same-sex blessings ) is daily insulted and attacked in a manner which goes far beyond the issues themselves.

As I write these words, after a bit of a silence as I get used to this new sphere of ministry, I reflect just how easy it is to tear down, to go for the jugular, to deride a person rather than a policy and then toddle off to eat lunch and have a nap. True the writers of scurrilous pamphlets, like the Elizabethan Marprelate tracts, have always been with us. Blogs just get the word out quicker, although I suspect mostly with far much less abiding affect.

I notice that the Church of England bishops are considering just how to protect parish priests from bullies. After forty-two years in the ordained ministry I still get a tummy ache when the righteous attack often under the guise of principle or virtue. Perhaps one should merely shrug ones shoulders and say "That's life." Yet surely there's a more excellent way?

PARISH THOUGHTS IN EASTER WEEK

2008-03-26T10:50:00.000-05:00

A priest, wise in the ways of reviving parishes recently wrote:

"The attitudes of the people, to God, to their priest, to each other and to the newcomer, are actually much more important than the style of the worship and the state of the finances."

1. Attitude to God:

One of the practical ways a parish or mission may take to help everyone with their prayers, is a printed weekly prayer cycle for parishioners. In it a group of parishioners are listed for each day, except Sunday. Nothing brings a parish to life more than the prayers of those who regularly "work, pray and give" to and for the Kingdom in a parish. Together in prayer they carry their community, city, and area and everyone and everything therein to God and become channels of God's grace.

Elderly Christians who may not have the physical strength or energy to do what seems to be “practical” work in a parish may become powerhouses of prayer –the most important form of energy – as they pray daily for the parish and its work and witness.

2. Attitude to our priest:

A priest is no stronger, no holier, and no more special than anyone else. His or her calling is special or set apart (the root of the word “holy”) in that a priest's life of prayer, study and care sums up and enables the worship, prayers, the study and the cares and caring of us all. Sir John Betjeman wrote:

"When things go wrong
It's rather tame,
To find you are yourself to blame.
It gets the trouble over quicker,
To go and blame things on the Vicar."

In a sense the way we treat our priest and family is an indication of the way we
care for our parish and each other. If our friends, neighbors, people at work or at "play" see just how we care for our priest and parish, pray regularly, are kind, generous and enthusiastic to and about our priest and parish, and support both, they will be intrigued, interested and drawn.

3. Our Attitude to each other:

Particularly after we receive holy communion each of us carries within us our Lord's true Presence. It is for this reason, among others, that we should respect each other, love each other, make allowances for each other and support each other. "They shall know we are Christians by our love." In short don't grumble about your parish and each other.

Constructive ideas are always welcome. Grumbles tear down and destroy, divide and weaken. There are people in your area who have left your church because they were grumbled about or grumbled about! They need to know that the past is forgotten and forgiven and that we all, in Jesus' name and grace, are "seeking to lead a new life, following the commandments of God and walking from henceforth in his holy ways." If you feel a bit responsible in all this, do call that person whom you may have offended "in thought, word or deed" and say sorry.

Do remember that what ever may be going on in the Anglican Communion, the National Church or the blogs may trumpet, because it is God who works in and through Baptism and the Eucharist, through the other sacramental rites and acts of worship, through hearing the Bible and of course reading and studying, through pastoral care and love, “the means of grace and the hope of glory” remain. Never mind what you may think others may or may not be doing. God has called you. Be faithful. Don’t confuse church politics with the work of God in Trinity in the Church, which continues through thick and thin until he comes again. The Church over the centuries has seen times of glory and times of shame, times when it has shown enormous vitality and times when it has seemed faithless and near death. Yet Jesus promised that “the gates of hell will not succeed.” Trust God.

4 Our Attitude to newcomers:

The first off-putting things for searchers or newcomers are dirty outside doors, ratty signs with pealing paint or rusting letters, or a complex way of getting into church or the parish hall for coffee hour. The more doors people must go through; the more daunting the experience.

Ushers should not only give out programs but show new people to a seat or pew and make sure the right books are there for them. Programs, bulletins or service sheets should be crisp and attractive and give notes about ceremonial, kneeling, standing and sitting. The vocabulary and jargon used in church should be defined clearly and simply and explained.

Make sure that the people chosen to greet new comers are friendly and kind. One can always find other jobs for those who find it difficult to show a happy face!

There are different ways of getting information about new comers. Nowadays an email address is probably as vital at first as a telephone number or a street address. Make sure information gets to the parish secretary/administrator promptly and to your outreach or evangelism team. While a note from your priest is good, one from an enthusiastic lay person is even more powerful in its impact.

Without smothering them or immediately unloading the jobs on them we don't want to do, we should be friendly, kind and encouraging to new people. At coffee hour the great temptation is to “love” each other and in the process, leave new people out because they don't know the script or what on earth we are talking about. New people don't even know our geography (where the restrooms or parish hall is) or even those strange things we do as we bow, kneel, stand or make the sign of the cross. Inform but don’t bore!

Don't be nosy about their homes, families or work. New people will share when they feel comfortable. Do make sure they meet your priest at coffee hour. Remember we don't own the church. It is God's house and a house of prayer for ALL people.

Because Anglicans believe in the parish we believe that the gathered people “in church” on Sunday are there for God and for the world outside, and not primarily for themselves and particularly not for themselves as individuals. If others hear us grumbling about the hymns, or the service, or the priest they get the idea that worship is a form of entertainment or group therapy for “me”.

Worship is the act by which we give God the glory and receive the grace to be agents of God’s Kingdom, and the power of the Resurrection in the world around us. It takes enormous communal courage to shout to the world “Jesus is Lord” and to challenge any power which claims that lordship or mistreats human beings or the physical world. Thus, “we do not presume to come to this thy Table, trusting in our own righteousness, but in thy manifold and great mercy.” In other words we come to admit our failure to live as if Jesus is Lord in our families, work, community life, trusting in the extraordinary mercy and grace of our Lord who has called us to “show forth his death and passion until he comes again, until “the kingdoms of this world become the Kingdom of our Lord Christ.”

Your parish is an outpost of God’s Kingdom. It is our duty to make sure that the world outside sees a community of faith and love, open and compassionate, and not a club for the self-righteous or a society for those interested in the traditions and ceremonial of something called “Episcopalianism.”! Our traditions and ceremonial are meant to be windows into God’s world, windows of the Church and not of a sect. Windows may be lovely, even ornate and treasures of architecture, but when all is said and done, their purpose is to see through and to let in light. Such is the purpose of your parish. Through the parish we see God. Through the parish the Light of Lights shines in our lives and into the surrounding world. Do keep the curtains drawn and the windows clean!

TO ENCOURAGE OTHERS

2008-03-15T16:53:00.000-05:00

There has been some controversy lately about the use of Canon Law, or its absence to manage the matter of the schism in the Diocese of San Joachim, the status of the members of its Standing Committee and the appointment of a temporary bishop for the rump TEC diocese. Certainly TEC has never encountered this sort of thing before. When congregations and groups left in the past, as in the Reformed Episcopal Church or the African Orthodox Church secessions, those leaving, aggrieved Evangelicals on the one hand and disenfranchised Black Episcopalians in the second case, departed without diocesan structure.

In perilous times many otherwise sane and liberally minded people are often seduced into surrendering their liberties in the name of corporate peril. Those charged with protecting the endangered body fudge the law, or break it, and get away with it all because the times dictate the measures. Situation ethics triumph.

My older son reminded me that there was a time, as in the English Civil War period when, to destroy an enemy, justice might be side-stepped by getting Parliament to adopt a Bill of Attainder. By so doing a trial was avoided and the wretched business of having to produce evidence or granting the accused their constitutional rights obviated. A majority might vote and then "off with his head".

May one ever assume that a body empowered to prosecute may be permitted to interpret the law by which an offender or a group of offenders are dealt with? Who interprets the law?

I return again to my theme. Who interprets our ecclesiastical law? It is extraordinary to be told that the Presiding Bishop's Chancellor assures us that the Canons were observed in the matter of the deposition of two bishops this week. In secular society the equivalent would be for the prosecution to assure the court that all was being done in accordance with the law. I leave aside the undoubtedly canonical business of getting, or not getting, the three longest serving bishops to approve of a bill of attainder or of a committee meeting in private signing off on the alleged guilt of the accused.

That there is an overwhelming desire on the part of our bishops to shoot as many admirals as possible on their quarterdecks "for the encouragement of others" is respectably British but questionably Christian. I am often told nowadays that our doctrine and much of our tradition is the fruit of victory. "Winners write history." Well it would seem obvious that we are in the hands of "winners" now and the history they are writing -may I become modern and wax anecdotal? - is that we make examples of at least one very old man whose wife is in the grips of a terminal disease, look as if we are after another elderly bishop, all in an attempt to "discipline" a bishop who has attempted to run off with the family silver, and perhaps warn two or more others not to do the same or else?

The "or else" is that without any form of trial or judicial hearing a group of persons will vote to declare that such persons have been deposed from the Sacred Ministry, our canonic version of a Bill of Attainder. The wretched bishops are obviously guilty and so "Off with their heads. " Ah! we say but that means "our" sacred ministry rather than that of the Church Catholic. Yet we are not prepared to say "from the ministry of
this jurisdiction". It's OK to imply it, or merely suggest that we don't mean that which the language states.

Now all this wouldn't matter a fig but for two points. The first is that we are doing this in the face of a world and in a nation which prizes due process and a system of justice tilted towards the accused. "But", I shall hear, "Bishop X did this or that ergo we are justified in doing this or that." Do two wrongs make a right?

Secondly we are part of a jurisdiction which makes much of justice. What sort of justice may one expect in a body whose laws are solely interpreted by those bringing charges and executing judgment and sentence? What sort of Christian justice may we expect of a jurisdiction for whom turning the other cheek, walking the extra mile,
"seventy times seven", not going before secular courts are quaint old-fashioned sayings to be ignored when examples must be made or property defended?

No one deplores schism more than I. "I've been there, done that" as
the saying goes. Nor do I suggest that there should not be serious consequences if someone, in what ever Order, willfully breaks our discipline. BUT I must say loudly that nothing has offended me more or sickened me -and that includes some actions of GC 2003- more than the activities of our leaders and their use of "law" during the
past few months. There seems to be a ruthlessness, a bloodlessness, and a determination to proceed whatever our Canons may suggest, whether authority is clearly given or not, all because of a present crisis. The nearest parallel I can see is to be found in the post 9/11 activities of the present administration. This will come back to bite us.

REFLECTIONS

2008-03-04T10:30:00.000-06:00

I am no longer a "West Virginian Parson". I suppose I shall have to change my blog address. Last Thursday I left Morgantown at 4:20 AM EST and arrived here in La Porte at 11:30 AM CST. It was a long drive.

On Sunday I was delighted that we had the largest congregation for a normal service in years. It was a wonderful beginning to a new ministry. I slipped back into Rite One, eastward position as if it were an old shoe. I am not at all convinced that old English is any more inaccessible than "modern" English to those who are not "churched." The concepts expressed are just as unfamiliar, whatever rite used, even odd to people who have not grown up in the Faith or come to know Jesus within the context of a liturgical church. People slip into the bizarre vocabularly of football or computers almost unconsciously. They equally slip into the church's vocabulary as long as liturgy lives and is done well.

Anglicans believe in a balance of Word and Sacraments and believe that in both and through both grace is received to built up the community, the Body of Christ, as it witnesses to the watching world. The Word is received first corporately (in church) as it is read and heard, and faithfully preached and taught. The priest as preacher has the extraordinary and frightening task of being faithful to the texts provided; interpreting them within the context of the Christian tradition (experience over the ages) and applying these words to the lives of those who hear and through the hearers to those outside. The words "In the Name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit" should convince the preacher that he or she is on holy ground and about a holy task.

In the sacraments and particularly Baptism and the Eucharist, He who is the Word made flesh draws the people of God into communion with the Trinity and with all the company of heaven. In these sacraments Christians are challenged in their vocation to be the people of God here and now, and members of the Kingdom which is now and which is to come. Every parish church in every community is a microcosm of that Kingdom and a witness to God's love and purposes. Through these sacraments we are, to use St. Paul's oft used expression "in Christ", we "dwell in him and he in us" as the Prayer Book puts it.

This is not primarily a personal experience, or a bargain forged between us and God to get us to Heaven. One day, please God, we will be in the new Heaven and the new earth, returned to Eden. Until then our vocation, until we fall asleep in Jesus, is to care for the world God made, and "Behold it was good", and to reach out in compassionate love to everyone, for the needy can be rich people and the blessed, poor people. We must help to feed, heal, house and enable those neglected by politicians and political parties and factions. Yet we must do more than that. For when Jesus healed, fed, raised from the dead, he also changed lives through the Good News. Bringing a person to Christ in the fellowship of the Church is the most vital political action any of us may attempt. If this happens, we don't do the real work. Christ does the real work in and through us.

None of this is possible if we are obsessed with the "politics" of the church and that part of the church in which we live. The Episcopal Church will not return to its first love through strategies, through schism, through process or through systems. It will return to its first love when its people, gorged on "fast food religion" despair, like an alcoholic who has reached the bottom. Then God will revive the church in the midst of the years through the faithful, positive, caring witness of those he has called to be his own.

I write all this to myself, as a reminder, as I begin this new phase of ministry with the people of God here in this parish. God help us and sustain us.

OF SYNODS AND THE CHURCH

2008-02-16T09:53:00.000-06:00

It is now nearly eight years ago since I wrote an essay entitled "The General Convention Church" which one may still read at "Anglicans Online." I was accused by one writer, whose response may be found at the same site, of disloyalty to a church of which I had only been a member for a year or so! I am not disloyal to the Episcopal Church and I haven't changed my mind about synods.

When I was serving as a bishop in what is now called the Anglican Province of America, our annual diocesan synod and less frequent General Synod meetings were times of refreshment, fellowship, faith and encouragement. Many people paid for travel and board who were not delegates, because these were family meetings. They went home renewed. I claim no responsibility for this and gather that the same holds true to this day.

Yet at no time did anyone claim that these meetings were the sites of special revelations from the Holy Spirit vouchsafed by majority votes! Indeed our first Anglican ancestors reminded us that synods may and do err. I remain convinced that the pretensions of those who claim that General Convention is the occasion and site of special visitations of the Holy Spirit to be erroneous and wrong-headed.

The claim is sometimes justified by reference to what is called the first Council of Jerusalem, recorded in the Acts of the Apostles. There decisions were made and St. Luke suggests that these decisions "seemed good" to the Holy Spirit and the Church. The decisions made were not only about the baptism of Gentiles, but that kosher laws about meat should obtain to all Christians who should also abstain from improper sexual activity. If we examine these decrees through the lens of St. Paul's writings, the nearest we have to preceding and eye-witness testimony, what was at stake was a recognition that God was calling the Gentiles into the kingdom and that in that kingdom, there were to be behavioral norms which set Christians apart from those who frequented pagan temples, purchased and ate meat "offered to idols" and perhaps gave in to the sort of sexual antics sometimes associated with pagan rites or the behavior of "pagans". That not all of these regulations survive is obvious as one notices when non-kosher meat is served at parish dinners.

Was this meeting a synod or a proto-synod, or do we now read backwards into another time and age the theories about representative and democratic institutions our church claims and boasts about to the rest of the Anglican Communion? Be assured the other Provinces all have synods and all are "democratically" elected. But are they oracles of God? Did the infant churches beyond Jerusalem elect deputies and expect a special work of God? Did God promise that synods would be special signs of his Presence? Now I would not argue that they cannot be places where the faithful are inspired and renewed, although I've been to American General Conventions since 1970 and "inspired and renewed" are not words which come easily to mind!

In his sermon at the memorial service for the Rev. Professor Charlie Moule recently, the Archbishop of Canterbury remarked that Moule challenged an ideal of the Spirit which made the Spirit autonomous of the works and presence of Christ. There's a splendid insight here. The Persons of the Trinity are "autonomous" and yet bound together without contradiction. The Holy Spirit "makes present" Jesus in whose "face" we see the Father. The Holy Spirit does not tell us new things but makes the eternal "nowness" of the Gospel, once delivered to the saints seem ever new in the church and through the church to us. Synods do not play the role of a Joseph Smith or a Mary Baker Eddy, nor in a different context are they collective forms of papal infallibility. They meet to do the business of the local church and to make sure that all things are done "decently and in order." God speaks to us collectively in the Church normally through Word and Sacrament and not through synods and votes. It is time we restored synods to their use and function without burdening them with pneumatic or oracular pretensions.

ON THE ROAD AGAIN

2008-02-15T18:19:00.000-06:00

In just two weeks I shall no longer be a "West Virginian Parson". I must remember to change my blogging name on a few sites.

Pat and I came to Morgantown, West Virginia two years and nine months ago from France. I came as an interim priest -later priest in charge -with no ability to be called as permanent rector at the parish church of St. Thomas a Becket. Although many would have loved us to stay here, and for medical reasons it would have been easier and perhaps safer, rules are rules even when not mentioned in the canons, at least in contemporary TEC. An interim priest has no input and seems seldom consulted. So this aging cleric picks up his bags and moves on. I do so with regret. Pat and I love the area and I have enjoyed serving the parishioners and others here. I think God has blessed us all and I pray and know that the work will go on from strength to strength.

Mercifully St. Paul's Episcopal Church, La Porte, in the Diocese of Northern Indiana, through its vestry, has unanimously elected me rector. I begin my new work there on March 2nd although I won't be formally Instituted and Inducted until May 16th. at 6:PM Y'all come, hear? I am delighted to move to a diocese which is Windsor compliant and served by a faithful, kind and open diocesan bishop, +Edward Little. I am also to serve him as dean of the Michigan City deanery. There's much to be done but the parish has a good team of faithful, hardworking, believing Christians.

As I write, Pat is downstairs boxing our worldly goods although the movers, due here next Monday are also to do that job. We will be moving into a large rectory next to the church. If we get bored with one bedroom we can move to another!

I hope you will all pray for me, for health and growing strength, for patience and good humor, and for God's grace to be in Christ a good priest and pastor in our new parish and the wider community. Please also pray for my wonderful wife Pat, that she may find friends and outlets for her extraordinary talents.

ANOTHER DRAFT COVENANT

2008-02-04T08:54:00.000-06:00

I wish I could recommend Ruth Gledhill's column in the London Times as a place to discover reliable conjecture. I grant you that journalists are almost bound to make inspired or even uninspired guesses to attract and keep a readership. Fair enough I suppose, except that there are those among us who place perhaps too much reliance on these excursions into prediction. Just because it is printed doesn't make it true! (Must remind myself of that as I write!)

It seems that we shall see a revised version of the proposed Anglican Covenant, a statement designed to give worldwide Anglicanism an agreed approach to doctrine, discipline and worship and to define the boundaries of inclusion and comprehension. It is also proposed that a way be suggested to deal with the sort of internecine controversy we've been used to since Bishop Colenso wrote his now rather tame and very dated musings on the authorship of the Pentateuch, which in part occasioned the summoning of the first "Lambeth" conference of bishops in 1868.

Since those days Anglicans have squabbled about birth control, polygamy, intercommunion with "Protestant non-episcopal" churches, the ordination of women, lay presidency at the Eucharist and human sexuality. Of late an older controversy has obliquely reared its head. It is the matter of just how "Reformed" Anglicanism was intended to be or should be. By "Reformed" I mean cleaving to the teachings of those who followed after and interpreted the theology and discipline proposed by John Calvin, although not necessarily what Calvin actually said and taught.

There was a time when it seemed Anglicans could and did settle controversy by informal discussion. After all, as I have pointed out, until just after World War 2 almost all our bishops, except in the United States, were British, educated at a few major Public Schools -that doesn't mean state schools but places like Eton and Harrow - and then at either Oxford or Cambridge or perhaps Durham! These bishops may have been higher than the Pope or lower than the Moderator of the Church of Scotland but they shared similar values, culture and devotion to the King-Emperor.

American bishops didn't always think themselves treated as equals or appreciated, particularly during the archiepiscopate of the patrician Cosmo Gordon Lang. By 1948 matters had improved. Archbishop Fisher struck up a friendship with the American Presiding Bishop Henry Knox Sherrill and then visited the United States. Fisher's chaplain wrote:

"..this lengthy tour really broke the ice with the Americans. They had always had a great love and affection for the Mother Church, but somehow or other, I don't think they thought they really belonged, that they were an integral part of it. From that moment onwards, (Fisher's speech on Anglican Tradition made in Philadelphia)however they knew they were..."

As the old boy's network within the Communion gave way to indigenous episcopates in newly emerging nation states in what we now seem to term the "Global South" the American Church played a greater and greater role in the Communion, providing both a pattern for self-governance and huge amounts of cash.

Perhaps the overwhelming vote by bishops at the 1998 Lambeth Conference for the now notorious or glorious statement about human sexuality so shocked the largely liberal American episcopate that the spell of concord was broken. Perhaps the reaction of traditionalists in the American Church, many of whom had personal or "missionary" ties with African Provinces, exacerbated disunity. No doubt the communications explosion of the last decade or so of the Twentieth Century played its part. The American PB Frank Griswold seemed genuinely shocked that his consecration of Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire caused such huge reaction across the world. What is clear is that doing deals and making decisions behind the scenes has become more and more difficult. As our conversation has become more public, so has "political" posturing. As what we say is public and for the public, changing minds and course also becomes more problematic.

There may be much good in all this. The views of clergy and laity, or those who blog or email, are much more evident and available than was true just a couple of decades ago. However much bishops lament what someone recently termed internet "addiction", it is here to stay. The Lambeth Conference is still only for bishops, but the bishops who will assemble in England in a few months will be better informed about the views of Anglicans worldwide than their predecessors. The exchange of opinions and views is something which may be done instantly and need not always be uninformed or an exercise in posturing.

On the other hand public exposure limits private conversation and negotiation, encourages intemperate language and expression and makes vain leaders less amenable to retraction or changing views or proposals. No doubt this factors in to the refusal of those who designed and put into place the idea of a Jerusalem conference of traditionalists before Lambeth, termed ironically GAFCON. As objections from the Primate of the Province in which Jerusalem lies, and its own local bishop, from the Archbishop of Canterbury, Evangelical bishops and many others, those responsible for this provocative and obviously "political" maneuver have become more defensive and more obvious in their schismatic and empire-building designs. It looks likely that we shall see an alternative Anglican Communion largely composed of those who adhere to a new form of evangelicalism largely based on the principles of those who left the Church of England in later Elizabethan and Stuart times. They propose an archaeological religious text set to rumperty tumperty music to an informal choreography. The basis of their biblical justification is readily demolished by the Bishop of Durham and other orthodox biblical commentators. That a few Anglo-Catholic bishops and their followers are tagging on to this eccentric vision of a totally reformed and pure Anglican Communion is surely the wonder of the moment.

Within this context it is to be hoped and prayed that the draft for an Anglican Covenant to be published later this week will be sufficient to be met by overwhelming approval by a consensus of authentic Anglicans and particularly those who have found in the Windsor Report a sensible and genuinely Anglican approach to our present unhappy divisions. The loss of two or three African Provinces with their huge "membership" and the Province of the Southern Cone -how Sydney will manage a re-alignment and remain within the Australian Church is a mystery - will be a tragedy, and unnecessary and provocative tragedy one prays may be reversed as leaders retire and it becomes obvious that the Anglican Communion has reached agreement on the basis of its faith and the limits of its comprehension.

That this development has made it the more difficult for the Communion and its Instruments to bring the Episcopal Church's independent policies to heel is obvious. It is to be hoped and prayed that wiser voices will be heard in TEC and that a younger generation of leadership will emerge reflecting not the 60s, but this century and its needs.

A TIME FOR HOPE: LENT

2008-02-01T13:52:00.000-06:00

A traditional or orthodox moderate Anglican in TEC of late hasn't had much hope upon which to hang a hat. The loudest voices have been those who urge us all to leave and join the array of alternative choice "life boats" bobbing about in an exilic ocean. That each life boat views itself as an alternative liner is another matter. Then again, one can amalgamate a score or more of lifeboats and still only have a very odd ship indeed.

I have commented before about the misuse of the term "prophet" in the contemporary church. Since Pentecost, the office of prophet has been exclusively that held by Jesus, as is true of the offices of priest and king. The Church is prophetic, as it is priestly, as it lives through baptism "in Christ." Those set aside and called to ministry, made "holy", which means separated, as a musician is separated from the tone deaf, or an athlete from the sedentary, by vocation and then practice, live into their roles by transforming grace as they exist through the Church in Christ and Christ in them. That there is ontological change in baptism does not exclude ontological change in ordination.

It seems obvious that Jesus didn't create a Qumran community. Rather he created a community in but not of the world. While it may well be the vocation of some Christians to live apart in prayer and service, most of us are called into close contact with people, yes, sinful, perhaps contagious people. Anyone who suggests that being in the Church is safe or divorced from the real world hasn't grasped the risky business of Christianity.(It is for this reason that a Confession and Absolution is or should be part of every Eucharist as Cranmer planned.)

An authentic prophetic ministry does that which Christ did on earth. It is here that it is not always easy to see the wood of the Cross for the proverbial trees. Yes, Jesus cared for the poor, the outcast, the diseased and the "marginalized". Yes, his care was practical and not just "spiritual." Jesus fed the hungry and healed the sick. Yet if he had done no more than healed, fed and preached -for after all we find figures in the Old Testament who did and said as much -he would merely be a great religious leader. Granted that is how many seem to view him in our church today!

Jesus died and rose to reconcile the world to God. Therein lies the scandalous, prophetic word of the Good News. Prophecy is all about reconciliation, restoration and making things new.

People who assume the mantle of a prophet and then shout aloud about news which diminishes Jesus or diminishes the Church by calling people into self-serving isolation may be all sorts of things, but they are not true Christian prophets. It is safe to be a church which regards itself as just one among many religions. It is safe to be a church made up of exiles in search of purity. It is safe but it is not authentic.

The true prophet calls us all into self-denying, cross-bearing, hurting, following of the Jesus whose fearing sweat in Gethsemane gave way to cruel death and passion and to death, but behold he lives! We cannot be trusted to stress the Incarnation or the Resurrection, or the Ascension until we dare live into the reality of Cross-bearing. We must be prepared to lose our life to save it; to lose the life of the Church to save it and that drama is played out in the world and not apart from it. Golgotha was firmly a physical, worldly place. Jesus died in the company of two sinners.

Lent is the yearly time for living into the stark reality of corporate discipleship. Perhaps much too much has been made of the personal disciplines of Lent. Perhaps it is the Church and our part of the Church we call the Episcopal Church which is called to "give up" its grasping for respectability, cultural acceptability, and upper middle class "virtue". (Should ashes be placed on our blood red doors?) Our personal Lenten disciplines are for such a purpose. Establishment religion and its opposite, the religion of retreat and abandonment cannot and do not present to the contemporary world the coming, living, dying, rising, ascending Christ who dwells in heaven and in his Body, the Church.Yet only in the fullness of the Gospel is life. Our "hope of glory" as the Church and through the Church as individuals stands on nothing less than Christ and Him crucified, and thus that Jesus is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

A SERMON

2008-01-28T10:54:00.000-06:00

The following is the text of a sermon preached by the Rt. Rev. Alden M. Hathaway at the consecration of Mark Lawrence to be Bishop of South Carolina on Saturday last.

Mark Lawrence Consecration Sermon January 26, 2008

St. Paul admonishes his young protégé Timothy:
Do not be ashamed then of testifying to our Lord – but share in suffering for the gospel in the power of God. II Timothy 1:8

It is the worst of times. It is the best of times.

To be consecrated a bishop of the one, holy catholic and apostolic church. Mark and Allison, here we are, finally and at last.

It has been a long way since that telephone call. The Lord had been speaking to you, as to Abraham, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you”. Go from the land of the High Sierra that you love. Go to the coastland of the Low Country. Go to where it is deep enough for the Ivorybill. And there I will bless you. And by this all the families of the Carolina shall bless themselves.

It has been a long and anguished journey. The tortured politics of the Episcopal Church. The whole thing has given you name recognition throughout the breadth of the Communion. Second only perhaps to the Bishop of New Hampshire.

It is a most auspicious thing we do here today, setting you over us as our bishop; and for the wider church, apostolic witness to the gospel of Christ.

Thank you Mark and Allison for your obedient patience, your steadfast willingness to lash your lives and your destiny to the foremast of the ship of Jesus Christ. You encourage us. You strengthen us. You give us hope for the perilous, the glorious voyage ahead.

“For God has not given us a spirit of timidity but a spirit of power and love and self-control”. That was St. Paul’s charge to Timothy - and His promise to us.

We know already Mark, that it is God’s Holy Spirit that so powerfully dwells within you and so singularly drives your ministry.

We rejoice this day and pledge ourselves to labor with you for the great cause of Christ that He lays before us - the years ahead.

* * *

For indeed - It is the worst of times.

It is pointed out that we, as Episcopal Church, are in the midst of a Class
5 Conflict. Nobody listening, all giving negative spin to everything said, demonizing each other and bending every effort to bar access to influence or credibility, property or power to anyone who professes or sympathizes with ‘The Other Side’.

The ordeal of your canonical confirmation, case in point.

The issues are purported to be about sexuality and doctrine and ideology.
But our problem is about trust. Big time. There is precious little of it. So we are locked in a pernicious process of ecclesial shunning and realignment.

The question at the heart of our issue is the Gospel itself. Do we really trust it? Are we ashamed of it? Does it not need something extra to make it credible? To make it effective?

Now I am using these terms advisedly and with tongue in cheek – But for a neopuritan, fundamentalist, reasserter like you Mark, in this neounitarian, pluralist, revisionist Episcopal Church of ours – it is the worst of times.

You will suffer for it. I speak as one who has the scars on my back from 27 years in the House of Bishops. Hey, we all bear the scars no matter what side we have been on, even when we would with all our hearts wish it other wise.

But it is also the Best of Times;

For as bad as things are in the Episcopal Church, to my view;
To my unashamed confidence in the Gospel point of view,
Things have never been better.

Look at it this way:

Sure, there has been a fifty-year movement pressing upon the church the teaching and practice of the popular progressive agenda. And thank God for the real and legitimate social gains it has championed.

We can even be grateful for the pop theologues who teach Jesus as
‘A Way’ rather than ‘The Way’ to the Father. They have quickened the debate and begged theological clarification regarding the fundamentals of the faith.

Along side of all of this, even perhaps because of it, there has been a great movement of spiritual renewal going on; a movement that has touched every aspect of our life as church.

At a time when the National Episcopal Church was looking to close and consolidate seminaries, this renewal movement produced a new seminary and revitalized an old one, now pumping out well-trained and prepared candidates for ordination. Trinity School for Ministry is after 30 years the second largest seminary in the church. Mark Lawrence, its first graduate to be made Bishop. There are many more coming forth to cast the future faithful witness of Anglicanism in America – and around the world.

At a time when the National Church was bringing missionaries home and teaching that foreign mission was cultural imperialism; The South American Missionary Society was started. It has spawned a plethora of other mission societies both domestic and foreign putting the Episcopal Church back in the missions business. Talk about ‘New Wine skins’.

And that has connected us with the our fellow Anglicans globally,
At the level of outreach and evangelism, Where we are partnered with them as they seek to build their churches and extend the reach of the gospel in engagement with the great spiritual challenges of the 21st Century.

As bad as some may conclude things are in the Episcopal Church, in reality they have never been better - for the witness of the Gospel.

Because finally – and here I am deadly serious – the greatest asset to the
Power of the gospel - is the strife itself;

All the opposition, the abuse, the shunning, the suffering, the ecclesiastical cleansing, the persecutions - if we can go so far to call it that.

For we follow the one who when He was reviled, reviled not in return,
But gave his back to the smiters. And who said, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross”.

It is by the witness of our suffering and our unwavering perseverance in suffering that we commend the integrity and the power of the Gospel we proclaim.

It is said that God first wounds those whom he will heal. It is true.
For in the wounding is the healing. It is the power of the Cross.

The many, the increasing stream, of people and clergy, congregations and even diocese departing the Episcopal Church – ‘To provide safe haven for the traditional, the orthodox Christian’, they contend. They have suffered much for their stand. I cannot gainsay their decision (they are as sincere of conscience as I). But indeed it breaks my heart.

We should rather be thankful that our Lord Jesus did not elect such recourse, or we would still be in our sins.

The gospel of the cross of Jesus Christ needs no protection, no safe haven. It needs rather to be proclaimed even in the face of both its determined detractors and its patronizing friends.

The power of the gospel, the power of the cross, is the joyful willingness to be abused for Christ, to suffer for Christ, yea to die for Christ.

That is the very power we are called to proclaim. We preach that. It is rare privilege that we have opportunity to live it. But when we do, Aye, there is the witness that does change the world.

I love the story John Stott used to tell about the preacher man who was going on an airline flight. He had his bible in one of those zip up leather covers. The security man challenged him, “What’s in that parcel sir?” To which the preacher man replied, “DYNAMITE”.

If you can find anywhere a better doctrine than this, a more comfortable refreshing teaching. If you have a more credible explanation of the way things are and the way they must need to be redeemed. Then go for it.

I have heard them all and so have you. For my money the old, old story of Jesus and his crucified love so far surpasses them, they are not even in the same league with the plain gospel of the cross of Christ. And it is the job of the church that professes to call itself Christian, to teach that gospel without apology. And not be distracted by lesser things.

As Yogi Berra reminds, “The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.

* * *

But - Now, it must be said: It is indeed an ill wind that blows no good.
I just wonder. How does all this confusion ecclesiastical look from God’s perspective?

This whole business about the uproar in the Episcopal Church.
There isn’t anyone in the whole of Anglicanism that has not heard about it, got an opinion about it, is incensed about it, wonders what it is all about, what is the problem, wish it would just go away so we can get on with the work of the Church.

God has got our attention.

We have until now, simply taken for granted this thing called the Anglican Communion, just a congenial gathering of national churches that have a common heritage with Canterbury and British Reformed Catholic Christianity.

Who all wait on the Whipples catalogue to see the latest in fashionable Anglican, clerical attire.

All of a sudden we are being forced to face what being Communion really means; ‘How we are accountable to one another, how we care for one another; How we shoulder one another’s burdens; How we are Church together’.

We have got a lot of work to do on this one. But the promise is of the utmost importance. What does it mean to be a truly global church?
There is the Roman – model All authority from top down
There is the Protestant model – Every one doping their own thing.

But Anglicanism works a different way, a councilor model. And so we have a grand opportunity to show what a worldwide fellowship of believers is meant to be, peoples so different yet equal members of the Body, Jesus Christ being the head. The truly global Church.

The other communions and denominations are watching us.
“Can the Anglicans pull it off? Oh, God, we hope they can.
For then there is a way for all of us to come together in the great missionary challenge of the 21st Century”.

* * *

The pieces are all in place for us. All that is needed is a positive, unifying, compelling vision. The only difference between a catastrophe and an opportunity is a matter of attitude.

The problem is that the conservative, orthodox, biblical, evangelical, gospel side of our Episcopal Church has had an attitude problem. A negativity, a pension for playing the game of ‘Aint it awful!’ God does not honor that. You cannot lead out of a negative agenda.

As Bishop Stanway was fond of saying, “If you aim at nothing, you are sure to hit it.”

How desperately our Episcopal Church needs a faithful, positive leadership.

Therefore it is indeed the best of times to be made a bishop.
To be made Bishop of the Diocese of South Carolina.
To make Mark Lawrence Bishop of South Carolina.

Not because South Carolina is a safe haven. Not because it has determined to be under alternative primatial oversight, whatever that means. Not because it is protected from the storm that is rocking the church.

But because it is a diocese that is together with itself. It is a diocese that is clear about what the gospel is. It is a diocese that is not ashamed of it.
And therefore confident and enthusiastic to make disciples of all people.

The faithful leadership of its past bishops, the dedication of its clergy, the amazing resources of its people – This diocese is locked and loaded, ready to sail into battle.

And to stand among the other dioceses, to stand in the House of Bishops and The General Convention and everywhere else we can engage this old Episcopal Church under the challenge of the prophet Isaiah: “Come let us reason together, though our sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow’’.

We have got a gospel to proclaim and a story to tell. Come and taste and see. It still has the stuff of truth in it and the power to sort out the souls of women and men.

Not those tired and tawdry old slogans that the pop culture wants to lay on us full of bluff and bluster, signifying nothing. The junk bond theology, sub prime spirituality, fast food morality

As church we have no time for that, there is a mission to be launched. There is work to be done. And Let us in South Carolina model the way.

And we have in Mark Lawrence, A man of God whom we trust, and by whose voice already we hear the voice of The Good Shepherd.
Him who goes before, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice.

* * *

What might that vision look like for us in this time of our witness?
I speak as a fool but let me presume to suggest. And here as I am coming better to know this diocese, perhaps I am ‘bringing coals to Newcastle’.

Let me tell you my parable of Fifth Ave. It is a paradigm of the Missionary Challenge before us.

In Pittsburgh, Fifth Ave. runs up from downtown through the University District. The University of Pittsburgh’s great tower of learning, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, row on row of hospitals clinics and research centers, Carnegie Mellon University, many small colleges and institutes that are committed to shaping the minds and inspiring the aspirations of the rising generation. All along Fifth Ave.

And right in the middle is St. Paul’s Roman Catholic Cathedral.
This great gothic pile. We consecrated Bob Duncan as my successor Bishop of Pittsburgh there 12 years ago.

We would gather for wonderful ecumenical events, the soaring arches and stained glass, singing the old hymns, praying the familiar prayers, church leaders in various costumes of traditional ecclesiastical attire – and at the conclusion we would all recess down the long aisle, out through the great west doors -

And there directly across the street, the foyer of the Carnegie Mellon University Institute of Software Technology. The young guys and gals from every corner of the globe dressed in their sweatshirts and blue jeans, sodas in their hands – and they are looking at us and we are looking at them. And the great question is:

How does the Gospel get across Fifth Ave?

Our mandate is to carry the cross of Christ to those bright young men and woman who are building this brave new technologically interconnected global world that increasingly is becoming ‘flat’, oh so flat.

Yes and also to those others, those voiceless millions, who are being quite by-passed by it all.

The gospel is transformation of the mind through hope in God, especially when the promises of the world are in free fall. It is the training of the soul to sacrifice and service, over and against the ideologies of terror and force.

Our primary mission is to sow the idea of the cross within the imaginations and intellects of our youth. “To Timothy, my beloved child”. That was St. Paul’s passion, to pass on the great gospel of hope down the generations. Let it be ours. Let us be strong to carry it across Fifth Ave. and to carry it up Mars Hill.

Our mission is to The College of Charleston and The Citadel
- And to Yamacraw Island, where the Water is Wide.

Mark, we recall your story about the man standing across from a church in a small English town. Watching a woman come out and put some things in the boot of her car. “Mam”, he says, “Can you tell me? Does this church work?”

In a time when so many things simply don’t work. Things we are supposed to believe in, depend upon, trust in, that simply don’t work.
“Does the church Work?”

Oh Mark, Yes it does! We have our Lord’s promise that it does.
“The gates of Hell shall not prevail against it”.

* * *

Let me conclude with a parable of the modern Church. I love this one.

The Church is like a bunch of good ole boys that had a fishin camp up on the lake. Where they went to fish a little and drink a lot and tell tall stories that were only a little bit true.

Now these good ole boys began to notice every afternoon an old fellow come into the landing, his beat up aluminum boat full of fish. They wondered how he was doin it, catching all those fish.

One of the good ole boys, who was also the game warden, said,
“I have my suspicion. Tomorrow morning I’ll be there when he goes out and I’ll see if he won’t take me fishin with him”.

The next morning the game warden, without his uniform and not identifying himself, greeted the old fellow, “Can I go fishin with you?” “Sure, get in the boat”.

Now the game warden was amazed to see that all the old man had for tackle was an old metal box and a net. They motored up to the end of the lake, pulled into a deep cove and let down the anchor. The old man opened the box. It was full of sticks of dynamite. He took a stick, lit the fuse, and threw it into the water. BOOM. He took the net and scooped up all the fish, stunned by the blast.

The game warden sat dumfounded. When he got his wits about him, he reached into his pocket, pulled out his badge and shoved it under the old man’s nose. The old man looked at the badge, looked at the dynamite, took a stick, lit the fuse, stuck it into the game wardens hand and said.
“Are you going to sit there – or are you going to fish?”

Mark, I’m told the fishin is pretty good down around this Low Country.
And there could not be a better time to go fishin.

This diocese is ready to go fishing with you Mark.
And I know that you are ready to lead us.

If I may paraphrase that great text from Hebrews chapter 11:
For we who are speaking thus make it clear that we are seeking a homeland. If we had been thinking of that land from which we have gone out, we have ample opportunity to return. But we desire a better country that is a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called our God, for he has prepared for us a city.

* * *

If there would be one word that I would leave with you Mark, it would be this. I believe it was Robert Murray McCheyne who first said it to a group of ministers: “Your Holiness is your people’s greatest need”.

Our greatest need of you as our bishop is your own relationship to God. Take care of your own soul. Take care of Allison and your family. Take the time to pray. Take your treks back into the marshes and streams where it is deep enough for an Ivorybill.

Listen to us Mark, and from what you discern by your prayers and by what you shall come to know of us by our life together: our selves, our souls, our needs and our dreams - pastor us.

Yet Abide in the Lord - and from what you hear from Him, And him alone lead us. As with St. Paul, “Decide to know nothing among us except Jesus Christ and him crucified”.

And it shall be well with us; all things shall be well. And it shall be well with the Church.

It is the Worst of times; and therefore it is the best of times:
To be made a bishop of the one, holy catholic and apostolic church.
To be made The Bishop of South Carolina.

Do not be ashamed then of testifying to our Lord – but share in suffering for the gospel in the power of God. II Timothy 1:8

God bless you Mark, God bless us all.

Amen

TWO CREATION NARRATIVES AND THE PB

2008-01-24T17:51:00.000-06:00

Father Jake, whose last name I don't know, writes a regular blog from a liberal point of view. He's a graduate of Nashotah House which makes his consistent attacks on orthodox Episcopalians the more odd.

Today he reports on a meeting between the clergy in Fr. Jake's diocese and our Presiding Bishop and Primate. Fr. Jake reports that +Katharine uses the two accounts of Creation in Genesis to differentiate between the God of love and acceptance of the first story and the God of sin and retribution in the second account. Some have written in saying they have heard this speech in their areas as the PB moves around. The first account is supposed to be embraced by liberals and the second by traditionalists.

Now I am quite prepared to hear that this account is a biased version of what the PB said. Fr. Jake suggests that those who oppose what +Katharine says do so because she is a woman or supports the Bishop of New Hampshire. The first is a political shot. Call a traditionalist a bigot and one doesn't have to hear what is said. As for the second shot, the PB has an obligation by her office to "support" all her comprovincial bishops whether they are left, right or center. I suppose Fr. Jake means those who do not accept the rightness of the Bishop of New Hampshire's consents and consecration are also bigots and so talk nonsense. Ah!

I wrote in comment:

"I'm not sure that one would have to object to +Katharine's being a woman or her support of Bishop Robinson (do you mean his election/consecration?) to disagree with her on some points. But perhaps that section was hyperbole?

Why give alternatives based on the Creation stories? Again one is offered supposedly conflicting possibilities which up until now the church seems to have harmonized. Why always the "either/or". I suspect it must have something to do with Republicans versus Democrats or football, making it impossible to contemplate symbiosis?

Does not God look at all God made and say, "It is good". Is it not true that our response, to want to be "as god(s)" rendered us, in the words of the Articles NOT totally depraved, but "very far gone from original righteousness"? Does not the Creed we profess speak of "baptism for the remission of sins" and of God's continued loving kindness in that God adopts us through Christ's death and passion and resurrection, and restores us to that gracious relationship which was "In the beginning"?

So one remembers, the Liturgy, which is our primary source of faith and doctrine, speaks Anglican orthodoxy. Why divide us up on something which should surely be the coin of the realm?"

One apologizes for using the word "God" so much in the above comment but if one uses "He" one is not pc despite the Lord's Prayer and I'll write their jargon to get over the church's teachings.

I hope I am not getting the PB right. It was the Gnostics who spoke of a good god who created everything and an evil lesser god who corrupted the earth and humans. But the Gnostics tended to be Puritans when it came to sexuality, perhaps wishing that God had devised a purer method of procreation, as do many schismatic sects and odd amalgams of religions which the Gnostics were as reflected in their "Gospels." It is passing strange that many find the Gnostics and their Gospels so affirming, but like Thomas Jefferson and his New Testament, they manage the manuscripts with a handy pair of scissors.

AFFIRMATIVE ACTION

2008-01-24T09:54:00.000-06:00

We are told by our church's leadership that there's ample room for traditionalists and "orthodox" moderates in the fold, that we should "stay in and fight", an unfortunate metaphor for Christians, and "take our place at the Table." We are even told that traditionalists are valued and appointed to commissions and committees of the National Church and of General Convention, although the evidence for such a deliberate policy is perhaps less than obvious.

I am associated with a very bright and positive group of clergy and laity at the "Covenant-Communion" web site. Some of them are engaged in post graduate studies at excellent seminaries. One wonders whether there will be a place for them on the faculties of our seminaries? I lament our loss of Dr. Ephraim Radner to the Canadian Church. Wycliffe Seminary was far-sighted enough to appoint him to their faculty along with the Reverend Dr. Christopher Seitz. Fr. Ephraim is a world class theologian, the author of some splendid books, recognized as such by the Archbishop of Canterbury and unsung in our own church. So much for inclusion.

What seems to be the case is that those of us who are firm in our Anglican ecclesiology (doctrine of the church) and believe that without its unity, as far as we may experience unity in the divided Christendom, justice, mercy, compassion and reconciliation are impossible, are invited to remain, grumble, grouse, and get nowhere!

This isn't entirely the fault of the Establishment -who still believe and yell that they are a minority - although I would suggest that most theological liberals, firm in their righteousness, find it utterly impossible to get into the minds and hearts of those who still believe with Bishop Lancelot Andrewes (1555-1626...yup an old guy!) in Anglican authority based on "One canon...two testaments, three creeds, four general councils, five centuries and the series of Fathers in that period...determine the boundary of our faith."

The major problem theological liberals have with the rest of us -maybe we are the silent majority but the silence is deafening - is that our religion seems archeological, the dead voice of tradition. Well they also oppose such a "belief system" because it offends their sentimentalism. Many seem to walk through this world blind to evil and the suffering and the destruction evil brings, confident that the eradication of poverty - a worthy and splendid cause -will usher in a brave new world. Not believing in "our father below" and all his works, dysfunction in families and societies and the world at large is attributed to social and psychological pathologies. They may well be right, but what lies behind such pathologies? To suggest that evil lies behind dysfunction is taken by many to suggest that dysfunctional people are necessarily evil. Some may be, but to the orthodox, so are we all prone to be evil without God's grace in Christ mediated in Word and Sacrament. The living tradition so teaches.

Notice this sudden obsession with the theory that a National Church creates dioceses which are part of that structure and whose property is held in trust for that structure? Now it may well be that our National Church by its missionary zeal did forensically create most of the dioceses in the USA. It is also true that the National Church was itself created by delegates from existing Anglican churches in the colonies, who organized themselves as dioceses and elected delegates to the first General Convention. But in Anglican ecclesiology the diocese and not the national church, the bishop surrounded by priests and deacons and laity at the altar table, constitutes the essential unit of a "Catholic" church. Why? Because that is how the early church began as episcopal-"men" like SS. Timothy and Titus were sent to establish the first Christian churches. From them, in various ways, with a very few exceptions developed the form of a bishop and his "parochia" or family of Christians. As these "parochias" grew they subdivided into "parishes", eventually pastored by episcopal delegates or priests and extended outward into "Provinces". The term "National" Church is anachronistic, expressing the emergence of the Nation State in the 16th. Century, a concept any true modern global liberal will want to alter if not abjure!

It's marvellous how an old-fashioned idea like the "National Church" can catch on again when property is in danger and dioceses split off. One cannot help a degree of cynicism.

Back to incomprehension! It is also true that theological conservatives often cannot get into the minds and hearts of theological liberals. They prefer to create safe bastions of faith, either in internal or external schism, into which may be attracted like-minded people. If the early Evangelicals and Tractarians had decided on such a policy -it is so like the Puritan paradigm of the church Anglicans firmly opposed in the 16th and 17th Century - their extraordinary transforming effect on the Church of England and the American Church would have been impossible. In this respect the Establishment challenge to traditionalists and "orthodox" moderates is cogent. "Make yourself heard". "Be fruitful and multiply." "Speak as true prophets to the church." A prophet says nothing new or novel, proclaim no developments as do many among us who claim the prophetic mantle. The task of prophets is to say "Thus says the Lord" and call the church back to repentance, conversion and new life. St. John the Baptist was a prophet, and he said "Behold the Lamb of God" and called the Church of Israel to repentence and newness of life.

Yet perhaps after the extraordinary battering traditionalists have experienced during the past forty years in TEC, the time has come to call for "affirmative action." Let us hear ourselves affirmed by the TEC leadership. Find places for us at the Table in churches, seminaries, Conventions and commissions. Listen to us. When that happens we will believe the burble about inclusiveness and comprehension, and not until!

AS IT WAS IN THE BEGINNING

2008-01-12T17:48:00.000-06:00

I have been reading a good deal about the Elizabethan, Jacobean and early Caroline church recently. The clergy by and large were not a very literate lot and thus were under constant attack by the Puritans who wished for a more reformed Church of England, more biblical preaching and less “ritualism.” Few of the bishops were much better with some notable and splendid exceptions. The Puritans dreamed of a pure church, a gathered church. "Anglicans" inherited the ideal of a "parish" church which embraced the whole community. This vision, of parson and parishioners ready to serve all who will accept their ministry in the community, rather than the paradigm of a "membership" church remains at the heart of Anglican self-understanding although TEC has fairly recently opted to stress a denominational model and ironically more and more embraces the Puritan model of church ministering to adherents of a brand of religious thought, left, middle or right.

It is now understood, for instance, that Lancelot Andrewes began his defense of the church as opposed to the idea of gathered communities of true believers before Hooker wrote his seminal “Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity.” Andrewes believed that what really mattered was not that sermons were orthodox -many were not through bad training and ignorance - but that the Liturgy was daily celebrated with its essential round of lessons, feasts and fasts in the context of the Christian Year. Naturally he and the leaders of the "Anglican" Church wished for a better trained clergy. It would take two hundred and fifty years before the first seminaries emerged, first in America. Whether that experiment in an elite priesthood has been entirely successful is an open question!

It was in such a context that the Word was to be heard, read, marked and inwardly digested, rather than in sermons which often were rants on the same old subjects of predestination and election. “Revivalism” and the notion of individual conversion had not yet taken off as it were. When people hark back to the Edwardian and early Elizabethan church as a pattern for Evangelicalism, they often pick up the baggage of Victorian revivalism and Georgian evangelicalism on the way. Of course, as a wonderful preacher Andrewes did not discount preaching anymore than did George Herbert. But the emphasis was not that of the Puritans and sectarians.

It is in this vein that I have hope that while the Liturgy is daily, or at least weekly celebrated (not just the Eucharist) within the same round of lessons, feasts, fasts in the context of the Christian Year, God will not entirely remove the candlestick from our midst

A COMMENT ON "NEW CREED"

2008-01-12T17:43:00.000-06:00

To my astonishment "Stand Firm" commented on my ditty entitled "New Creed." I replied to the comment and link in these words:

I think what I want to say is that my comments on my friend’s list of popular mantras -if only I could say who he is! - isn’t the sort of blither that I find when discussing the faith with the parsons I meet around TEC in everyday life. That, I believe, is the injustice of the whole thing. TEC isn’t what some of its leadership and most vocal “sound byte” parsons, purple or not, would have the world believe it to be. It isn’t even that which its House of Bishops sound as if it well could be. The tragedy is that so many have been cowed by the suggestion that to oppose those who advance an odd religion is to be a bigot or a moral coward. The peddlers of the new religion have not won their battles by using cogent argument and logical deduction let alone Holy Scripture, but by serving a diet of sentimental twaddle and moral blandishment.

Yet if surveys are to be believed 70% of our communicants have no part or parcel in this agenda. They love their parish church and the name “Episcopal”, distrust the diocese, largely because dioceses are often run by purveyors of packaged programs which seldom work and of regulation upon regulation which have no basis in Canon Law - ask a search committee - and disown many of the policies of HQ. The term “815” is not often looked upon with devotion.

The tragedy is, as I say, that the faith and devotion of our parishioners, the ones who keep the doors open and pay the bills is discounted and the sound and fury of a small elite is judged by Anglicans abroad to be that which ordinary Episcopalians believe. It ain’t so, except perhaps in hot house parishes to be found largely on the East and West coast of this country.

SERMON FOR THE FIRST SUNDAY IN EPIPHANY

2008-01-12T07:21:00.000-06:00

And now for something more serious. You may also read this sermon, as it was written for "Sermons that Work", a service of the Episcopal Church. http://www.episcopalchurch.org/sermons_that_work.htm

January 13, 2008 - First Sunday After the Epiphany/Baptism of Our Lord - Year A [RCL]

By the Very Rev. Anthony F.M. Clavier

Isaiah 42:1-9; Psalm 29; Acts 10:34-43; Matthew 3:13-17

"Covenant" is an interesting word. Mind you Episcopalians hear so much about the "Baptismal Covenant" nowadays that it is in danger of becoming one of those pious slogans often used and seldom contemplated.

When The Book of Common Prayer was revised in the 1970s, some of the leading thinkers in our church were developing a new emphasis on baptism and its place in our faith. A new emphasis doesn't mean something newly invented. In the sixteenth century some of our Anglican reformers who had spent time in exile in Switzerland eating chocolate and cheese and listening to a preacher called John Calvin came home and talked and preached a lot about Covenant. Anglicans were reminded that all are called into God's new world.

Even then there was nothing new about it all. The Old and New Testaments are full of language about God's agreement with human beings. Of course the word "testament" means "covenant" and the word "covenant" is something like our word "will." The only difference is that God isn't dead, and we still get to inherit. In a manner we can't fathom, a manner that makes us gasp with mental pain, we know that Jesus sealed this covenant when he died on the cross "for our sins and for the sins of the whole world."

Today’s gospel is about Jesus' encounter with his cousin John the Baptist at the River Jordan. John would horrify our ushers if he turned up in church today. He wore a smelly old camel skin, didn't cut his hair, probably only washed when he waded in the Jordan -- more a stream than a river -- and ate an extraordinary diet.

Even worse, John the Baptist was blunt. Yes, we all say that we like blunt people. No we don't! We may know where we stand with them, but who wants to stand feeling guilty? John had been telling off every part of the community and urging them to "repent"; literally to turn around and walk in a new direction. He even told off the equivalent of bishops, priests, vestries and even General Convention. In the end, his bluntness cost him his head.

Jesus meets this wild-looking preacher at the river and asks to be baptized. John doesn't want to do it. He knows that his cousin needs no baptism, doesn't need to turn around. He knows that his cousin is "good." The word "good" and "God" in English are closely associated. The translation is telling.

As Jesus is baptized a voice is heard by some, and they believe that they are hearing God, and God is acknowledging that Jesus is in a unique manner God's son.

What has all this to do with a covenant? Probably all of you have been baptized. When water was poured on your heads, God adopted you. You are now children of God and heirs of God's world, God's kingdom.

On each of our foreheads there is an invisible sign, marked in holy oil, which signifies that we have been adopted by God and become members of Christ. In the Christian vocabulary, the word "member" doesn't mean someone who joins, but rather, as St Paul reminds us, it means someone who is joined to Someone. Like the limbs and organs of a human body, we are joined to Jesus and to each other.

Being joined to Jesus in a sense means that we share in who Jesus is. Jesus is described as being, among other things, prophet, priest, and king.

The Covenant means then that first, because we are joined to Jesus, through baptism, we are to be members of a "prophetic" community. That doesn't mean that we go around making up new things. A prophet is someone who says "This is what God says." We learn what God says in the scriptures, and above all, as we seek to live as Jesus lived. We belong to a forgiving, loving, caring Jesus-community. Our job is to tell the world that God is love and God is forgiveness. Telling also means living, and living means being practical and demonstrating where we are what a loving, forgiving, caring community looks like.

The Covenant means that because we are joined to Jesus through baptism we are members of a "priestly" community. Priests represent people to God and represent God to people, normally in Jewish and Christian tradition in rituals and meals. As priests, we say to the world, "Here is God loving you through Jesus." We say to God, "Here is the world yearning to be loved through Jesus." In the Eucharist we bid those whom God loves to eat and drink with God and to receive God's Son through the Spirit.

The Covenant means that because we are joined to Jesus through baptism, we are members of a "kingly" community. Kings, or at least good kings, rule the earth for God and for everyone. Jesus is the Good King. In Jesus we are to care for the earth, guard it from exploitation, and in Jesus we are to care for all beings, human and animal, and love and serve them sacrificially.

So that invisible mark on our forehead shows that we are Covenant people. Yet two other points must be remembered. Alone we cannot be or do any of these Covenant things. Alone we "err and stray." We are to act like God's people, and when we fail we are to repent and ask God to forgive us and renew us. Secondly, we need feeding if we are to grow in strength. If Baptism begins our Covenant life, in the Eucharist we receive Jesus into the very core and fiber of our beings as we dwell in Him and He dwells in us.

Inheritance is one thing, a very wonderful thing. God's Covenant tells us that we have inherited God's Word, God's sacraments, and God's world. Yet we must also listen to John the Baptist. Unlike Jesus, we have need to turn around and walk in God's ways all the days of our lives. Only then will we receive the Baptismal Covenant with thanksgiving. So be it.

NEW CREED

2008-01-12T05:34:00.000-06:00

A friend of mine, a priest who is also a blogger, by no means a traditionalist, made this comment to some of us yesterday after reviewing some of the blither posted to the Bishops/Deputies email list on the subject of the old adage, "Hate the sin and love the sinner", a catch phrase which is no longer PC because it suggests that some may sin..

"I agree -- the small number who hold influential
positions within the power-structure of TEC hierarchy have succeeded in
clouding the minds of many in the middle with the Kool-Aid of
pseudo-scholarly sentimentological nonsense that has constricted the
Episcopalian vocabulary to about six memes:

1. Inclusion
2. Celebrate
3. 'living into'
4. 'Baptismal Covenant'
5. prophetic
6. justice"

I must be honest and say that this is an expurgated version of the good priest's comment, but you get the point.

One might express the above in the form of a new Creed or perhaps a new Anglican Covenant.

We believe in Inclusion, the first and foremost virtue as long as we do not include those who believe that the calling to be a Christian involves embracing a chaste lifestyle or that when we fall, we are to confess our sins, and seek absolution; outmoded and stigmatizing habits not to be countenanced in our Brave New World. We believe in including all religions in equality and suspend judgment about any elements in other religions which may be perhaps unfortunate, poor dears!

We intend to celebrate every cause that comes along as long as we don't use the word "sin" or imply that anyone sins except for those who are branded by their refusal to accept our latitudinarian lifestyles. We intend to doubt every article of the Creeds and to accept every article of the belief-systems of other religious groups.

We proclaim that we are living into a new world in which the poor and the down trodden will become holy through the atoning offerings of MDGs and all jealousy, envy, hatred, malice and wickedness will no longer be recognized because none are PC.

We believe in the Baptismal Covenant that rite of the church which makes us all automatically good, moral, kind but please not holy. We believe that through this Covenant -see we do believe in Covenants - we are ushered into the tasteful upper middle class glory of Episcopalianism, a religion peculiar to the United States and not to be confused with Anglicanism or the Anglican Communion, a group of churches run by tyrannical and undemocratic prelates.

We believe in being prophetic by which we mean our right as ordained leaders to shout aloud or write books about anything which contradicts the experience, faith, doctrine, discipline and worship of Christians who came before, and particularly of the teachings contained in Holy Scripture.

We believe in justice the sum of all the law and the prophets which means we believe that every person is free to believe and do what their conscience tells them to do without interference from church or state. We do not believe in mercy unless we are the recipient.

NOSTALGIA: a brief excursion into autobiography

2007-12-28T16:16:00.000-06:00

I lived for most of the 1950s in the English county of Norfolk. Mother was the district nurse/midwife and so I saw the lot of very poor families, some abuse and cruelty although on the whole villagers were accepting of strangers and as there were few if any Black families those who arrived, largely professional people from the West Indies found ready acceptance. There were still characters abroad in those days including one old boy who begged for pints of bitter outside one of the village pubs. I remember he still wore the smock traditionally worn by farm laborers in earlier days. He was well in his nineties. I loved to chat with him about the village and his memories.

In 1953 my grandfather bought us a television so we could watch the Coronation. My grandson now has the Coronation Chair shaped money box we all received at school in commemoration of her Accession. I was bullied because I wasn't into sports and loved reading and poetry and as the only child of a divorced mother (a great scandal) was subject to some taunts. Yet I loved serving or singing in the choir in our ancient parish church, going to the Shrine of our Lady of Walsingham and even a Billy Graham rally all to the astonishment of my less than churched mother. The round of Prayer Book services, sung psalms, the calender of lessons for feasts and fasts, all in olde English was the stuff of my teen religion. I still remember the psalms in the Coverdale version with the appropriate tunes and lapse therein when not paying attention. When I was near death three month ago it was the old Prayer Book prayers which came to my aid. After eight years in TEC I still remember little of the Rite 2 prayers. They haven't yet sunk into my subconscious.

After the dreary post-war years of the Labour Government (not their fault) the return of Sir Winston Churchill to power and the subsequent availability of "candy" in any quantity seemed to usher in a stable world. We'd lost India, Pakistan and Burma, but the Empire in 1955 seemed to be something permanent. I did know something of the wicked side of colonialism as my father's family were from the West Indies and one of my history teachers was a left wing Cambridge graduate who shook us up with tales of misrule. I think I thought him a "spoil sport" then but later came to a more balanced view I hope.

I witnessed little class distinction or perhaps as the nurse's son who spoke "The Queen's English" I occupied one of those indeterminate places in English rural society of those days. The "squire" had sold the manor house which anyway wasn't much of a place, so there was no one around to whom one was obliged to tug one's forelock. I went to a minor boarding school as a weekly boarder (I came home each weekend) and rubbed shoulders with farmers' and bankers' sons few of whom were destined for an academic future. Mercifully for me there were two or three inspired teachers among a mediocre lot. There was some corporal punishment which would draw screams of horror today. The headmaster, always gowned, wearing a mortar board was known as "God" and one stood still and took of one's cap when he passed by his eyes riveted on the path in front of him. The corridor to his office was called "The Sacred Way". We mere mortals, if summoned to his presence to be caned, were obliged to walk around the outside of the building and enter through a dim door affectionately termed "Traitor's Gate." After college I returned to my old school briefly as a master and remember trembling as I walked down the "Sacred Way." The Head returned to me a pipe he had confiscated when I was caught smoking as a 6th former (12th grade).

I fell in love with classical music in my teens and even learned to play the organ, a skill now long gone. Listening to Vaughan Williams Pastoral Symphony while looking out on green fields and hay ricks seemed magical to this youngster. It also proved an escape from my well-meaning, unhappy and demanding mother who couldn't stand the sound of it.

We were not subject to the barrage of media information of all sorts our youngsters experience today. The countryside was lovely and the world seemed much less complicated. To me in many ways therefore they were the "good old days."

And I nearly forgot freedom. As a toddler of nearly five years I tottered down the lane to the ancient parish church of St. Peter ad Vincula in the small Devonshire village to which we had been evacuated. I would go to thee sea shore and gnarled fishermen would pick me up and drop me in their boats as they fished for crab and lobsters in waters sometimes inhabited by Nazi submarines. My worried mother -father had been captured at Tobruk and finally was placed in a German prisoner of war camp where he was part of many escape attempts -scolded me for being so adventurous but secretly loved my ability to strike up a conversation with anyone anywhere.

As a teen each Saturday, rain or shine, I would clamber on the ancient bicycle given me by a parishioner and ride for miles exploring ruined castles and houses and old parish churches, or stop to buy buns in the local bakery, the aroma from which filled village streets. At fourteen I was free to hop on a bus, and for a few pennies go the sixteen miles to Norwich. I would stand in the hauntingly lovely cathedral where I was confirmed, or wander through the stalls in the Medieval market, or imagine olden times as I sat in the graveyards of one of Norwich's many ancient churches.

I was free in a manner few youngsters experience today. Crime and fear dominate the programs provided for so many young people. Their parents fill their waking hours with activities to which they are ferried by weary mothers or fathers. This way of life is as responsible as anything for depriving young people of a vivid spiritual life. They have little time to be servers or acolytes, learn the faith in youth groups. Granted the Evangelicals still seem to attract many to their rather regimented boot camps. In later life it won't be learning the rules of soccer that saves a life, but a faith experienced in the beauty of holiness.

Tragically the sort of freedom of space and place I was lucky enough to experience isn't available to our young people. Granted I was brought up in a place where the past lived in its buildings, something only available to those living on our eastern seaboard. Yet I still think it is possible for parents to buck the trend and encourage in their children a sense of time and place and awe; their passport to the reality of that other world which so closely surrounds us in the Communion of saints.

GRUMPY THOUGHTS BEFORE THE NEW YEAR

2007-12-27T17:56:00.000-06:00

Of late I've blamed an upset stomach, worse in the morning, on one of the pills I take. I was wrong. The doctor tells me that the pain patch I've been wearing since my operation is responsible for my terrible digestion. This is the second problem I've had with prescribed pain killers. Earlier in the year I was given too strong a prescription and ended up babbling like a baby.

The dangers of a wrong diagnosis drives my mind to consider the state of our church as we enter a new secular year. Some believe that it is being forced back from its liberal path by the rest of the Anglican Communion. Others believe that TEC's liberalism has unchurched it and these people, not content with splitting this Church seem more intent on ripping apart the Anglican Communion. It seems that those who have appointed themselves guardians of the true Faith are planning a meeting for themselves in the Holy Land of all places just before the Lambeth Conference meets.

I only wish the problem with TEC was something to do with liberalism. I caught a bit of a radio talk by the Archbishop of York over Christmas. He said that if the Church of England closed inner city parishes, even if they are sparsely attended, it would cease to be the Church of England and become merely a church for the well-off in suburban areas.

He need only look at the Episcopal Church. More and more as we have retreated from the inner cities and the rural areas we have become a church for wealthy people; people with the money to attend meetings, espouse liberal causes, write checks and love at a distance. The poor, white, African American, Hispanic are served by a few parishes and fewer clergy. It is almost assumed that the poor will prefer fundamentalist churches (this isn't true of Roman Catholicism and it is a liturgical church) and will probably espouse illiberal views.

On the other hand where our church has grown in areas with substantial conservative populations, a form of Anglicanism has grown which looks very much like the political right at prayer. Its constituency is wealthy enough to support large parishes and now the latest Continuing Churches, allied to Provinces in the Third World whose theology seems akin to the leaders of these American groups.

I see no hope for genuine Anglicanism in either group. Indeed as they react against each other they are spreading schism and separation abroad. If Anglicanism, as many have said, is merely the religious department of this or that Establishment it has little Gospel to say to its own followers, for whom is provided an uncritical acceptance and has nothing but damnation to say to those who disagree.

If as I suspect, neither of these blocs represent authentic Anglicanism, where do we turn? I would like to see us start with the poor. I want to see our church financing starter parishes where poor people live, parishes devoted to the wholeness of those being served. I want to see us respond to those whose paychecks are devalued every time the cost of oil goes up; those who don't have adequate health care; those with no pensions; in other words those who are not normally found in our well heeled parishes.

I want us to stay in country villages and I want us to find creative ways to provide priests for parishes. There was a time when a country parish had a priest because he had a glebe to farm. He, it was "he" then, may have been better educated than most, but he shared the lives lived by those around him. One of the problems of the seminary experiment, largely avoided by Rome and some other denominations, was the creation of a clerical cult set apart from those to whom they minister.

If our church showed a determination to be the church for everyone I would begin to believe its liberal pretensions.

If the traditionalists in our church showed the sort of daring once demonstrated by Evangelicals and later Anglo-Catholics I'd begin to believe its orthodox pretensions.

These men and women of faith didn't despair because they were attacked by the Establishment, they carried on and they spread the Faith parish by parish. True some gave up and went to Rome, but few trod the path of schism. Revival always comes from the "edges."

These are thoughts born of a sour tummy on this feast of St. John the Evangelist. Oh dear, Bah Humbug!

A RECUMBENT BIKE

2007-12-25T12:30:00.000-06:00

Pat bought me a "recumbent" exercise bike for Christmas! As most of you know 2007 was the year when I confronted by own mortality, first with cancer and then with a frightful form of pneumonia which nearly sent me swiftly into the next world. In the process neuropathy attacked my toes and feet, I lost about twenty pounds and in consequence a good deal of what muscles I ever had.

So after years of avoiding all forms of exercise except for ritual genuflections, I must get strong and recover. The neck size of my clerical shirts, once a bullish eighteen and a half has shrunk over an inch. Mercifully my Parson son Mark has a smaller neck than I and was able to give me a couple of shirts but even in them I look like an aged clerical turtle.

In nine days time Pat and I fly out to be interviewed by a search committee of a parish near Chicago and I must give some impression that I have the stamina to take on a new parish. That exercise bike must swiftly toughen me up.

By its web site the parish looks lovely. Obviously there was some money about in that fairly small community once upon a time. The church building is gothic, built of stone. The stained glass windows are tasteful. The altar remains against the east wall, dominated by a huge crucifix. There's a tabernacle and one is told that all services are conducted according to Rite 1, the revised Cranmerian version not too unlike the 1549 BCP. (That was the first Prayer Book in English authorized for the Church of England.)

People say that with my accent even Rite 2 sounds like Rite 1. I can't help it. I know I've been in the USA for about forty years but when asked why I don't now have an American accent I reply that I've never found one I wanted to swap my own for. I was sent to one of those schools when I was a boy at which local dialects were suppressed. At any rate my Yorkshire coal-miner's daughter mother had taught herself to speak "The King's English" and was determined that I should not sound like a country bumpkin. Snobbery! As a result while I can imitate accents I can't adopt them.

I notice that after dabbling with new translations of the bidding prayer and of the Bible for the Lessons, Kings College Cambridge has returned to Eric Milner-White's text of the Nine Lessons and Carols Service. Even the Pope is now allowing the Latin Mass. Young people flock to candle light Compline services in olde English. What on earth is going on?

I've always said that there is no reason at all why there should not be a particular language for the liturgy. Indeed it is probably impossible not to have a special language for prayer. Corporate worship is all about learning the vocabulary of faith which can never be the language of the supermarket or the sports page -both of which have their own vocabulary. Talking about God, heaven, redemption, hell (although not in polite Episcopalian society) "the means of grace and the hope of glory" involves a language as precise as that used by computer geeks; a language to be learned and absorbed. A person who hasn't grown up using God-speak, once attracted to the Faith must learn that language and use the archaisms of liturgy whether in their Rite 1 or Rite 2 forms. God spare them from some of the humorless verbiage of some of the permitted newer rites our liturgical experts churn out.

A liturgy which is archaic for its own sake, accompanied by a ritual designed for those performing it, is no liturgy at all; it is self-indulgence. On the other hand a liturgy which uses beauty in language and form, in memorable texts and expressions may be a vehicle of enormous power.

And yet, in one of those unguarded moments during the Midnight Mass last night, as I read Eucharistic Prayer B in Rite 2 I thought that if I am called to a Rite 1 parish I shall miss that particularly splendid Eucharistic Prayer.

Well I better get Pat to put the bike together. If I attempt so to do it will collapse at first ride. If I am called to the parish in question (there are one or two others demonstrating some interest in this semi-geriatric priest) it will probably be my last as a full time priest. Yet I love being a priest now if anything more than I did, well I won't say how many years ago, when I was about my present weight and numbered among those "green things upon the earth" visited upon long-suffering parishes.

A Blessed Christmas to you all.

AND THE WORD WAS MADE FLESH

2007-12-22T13:16:00.000-06:00

Until the sweeping liturgical changes of Vatican 2 each Mass celebrated in a Roman Catholic Church ended not with a dismissal or blessing but with the Last Gospel. Many Anglo-Catholic parishes observed this custom. The first fourteen verses of St John's Gospel were often mumbled at break neck speed in Latin or English. At the words "And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us" the celebrant genuflected and that was that.

I mention this not in a fit of nostalgia, nor to suggest that this practice be revived but rather to press a point. Whatever one's theology of just how Jesus comes to us in the Sacrament, few would argue that there is not implied a very close and constant encounter between Christ and the Church, an encounter ensured and guaranteed "until he comes again in great glory." Much will have been made of the rather informal way in which we approach Christmas. No doubt enough has been said during this season about consumerism, the commercialization of a Holy Feast and perhaps of the fact that many of us spend quite too much money on people who need little and far too little on those who need much.

When Christmas Eve comes we will be there reaching out to clutch a crumb of bread and to sip a drop of wine, as we do Sunday by Sunday and sometimes more often. In this Mystery, +Rowan Williams reminds us Jesus is pledged:

" to the end of time, never defeated by Satan's forces, and that means that in this body Jesus works with all the limitations, the fragility, of the human beings he summons to be with him. He does not stop working in the church when we Christians are wicked and stupid and lazy. The church is not magic, much as we should love it to be -a realm where problems are solved instantly and special revelations answer all our questions and provide a short cut through all our conflicts. It is preeminently and crucially a community of persons...and so it is a place where holiness takes time and where the prose of daily faithfulness and, yes, sometimes daily boredom have to be faced and blessed, not shunned or concealed." "Rowan Williams, WHERE GOD HAPPENS, New Seeds, Boston, 2005, page 108.

The beginning of the Gospel of John, often the Gospel for Christmas Day gives us all the chance to contemplate just who we encounter at the altar and in the shape of the child of Bethlehem. The Person who was enfleshed in the womb of the Virgin Mary and who uses Bread and Wine to encounter the community and each of its members is him "by and through whom all things were made."

On Christmas Eve and each Sunday we walk down a corridor in company with all sorts and conditions of people to meet the Person who was here involved in creation before the Big Bang or however "all things were made", and who will come again to judge both the living and the dead. "The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us." The writer of the fourth Gospel proposes something perhaps far too extraordinary for us to grasp, for if we did we would be driven to our knees in terror. Or is that too much? Perhaps it is because it is too much that Jesus disguises himself in such easy dress. A baby isn't feared unless one is a Herod. Bread and Wine aren't feared unless one is a glutton.

The danger we face is not normally that we will be terrified, but that we shall be bored by the "same old, same old" of it all. How often have we heard the story? How often have we received Holy Communion perhaps celebrated the Eucharist? Our temptation is to doubt that anything much may happen in the midst of such a mundane habit.

There was a time when Anglicans received communion much less often and prepared for each reception with great thoroughness. One may still discover in used book shops little Victorian manuals of devotion designed to help the communicant deal with sin so that they would not "presume to come to this thy Table trusting in our own righteousness." Nowadays such preparation is often regarded as unhealthy, indicating a morbid preoccupation with sin.

Little wonder that we search beyond that which we have been given for answers to our problems and doubt whether there can be much practical to be found at the Table. Little wonder that the decisions of Synods excite us more than the Lord's Supper. We can get ourselves full of hope or expectation about the outcome of a meeting and expect nothing from the encounter frequently made between Jesus and the community of faith in the Sacrament.

If we really take to heart that which the Last Gospel, that extraordinary preface to St. John's Gospel has to say to us, we will be expectant, expectant in the face of what it meant for the Word to become flesh and dwell among us, expectant that in the boredom of the usual, even at Christmas when the usual is dressed up, God's purposes are being worked out through the community of the church, even a church which contains the wicked, the stupid and the lazy.

In a sense Jesus imprisons himself in the narrow confines of this sacramental act. This is not to say that he is limited by such a self-emptying, but that he chooses for our sake to limit himself in, through and during this sacramental encounter whether it occurs in Canterbury Cathedral or on a hastily erected table in a refugee camp. It is surely appropriate that as we consider who this child is in Bread and Wine at Christmas and every day, we will "bow the knee" in awe and gratitude and give ourselves again to serve Him, content to let him evaluate the effectiveness of such service and to trust in his redeeming love. Were we so to do who can tell what miracles in the ordinariness of life would happen this Christmas.

CHRISTMAS MEDITATION

2007-12-22T13:10:00.000-06:00

Do go to http://covenant-communion.com/?p=364#more-364 to read a mediation I've written on the "Last Gospel."

MIDNIGHT THOUGHTS

2007-12-20T09:50:00.000-06:00

I wrote the following last night for some friends. They urged me to post it to the COVENANT web site and for good measure I'm posting it on my own blog. I hope it helps those who feel that there must be an answer to our present woes out side the "structure" of the Anglican Communion and of our own branch of that part of the Church Catholic:

"I have just got up after trying to sleep. The wounds in my side where tubes were inserted to drain the area around my lung are nearly healed but more uncomfortable than usual, I had to go to the dentist today and a parishioner is grumbling that I haven't picked up on the signs of her stress: I have been in hospital or at home for the last 8 weeks! "Who needs this," I grumble, as I see my former jurisdiction, the Anglican Province of America flirting with Common Cause, those of us who are loyal to our church criticized for our lack of political strategy and I worry if I will be well enough when I am interviewed for a new parish on Jan 3rd.

So I am reading "Where God Happens" by +Rowan Williams and tonight he bursts into clarity. He's talking about the desert fathers and mothers and their temptation to wander even further into the desert in search of peace and being advised to press against the walls of their cells, literally press against the stone and make shift with what they have.

Some of you have heard of St. Anthony of Egypt. After Christianity became respectable some who yearned for the stricter discipline of the persecution years went out into the wilderness, the Egyptian desert. They lived largely solitary lives, coming together for prayer and Eucharist. They owned perhaps a plate and a cup, the food they grew or that was given to them and nothing else. They tended to be pretty hard on themselves but not so hard on others.

After quoting advice given to those who still were not satisfied, Archbishop Rowan remarks that our great danger is that we thirst for magic, for an existence now where it is all better. Perhaps this was the temptation given by the devil to Jesus. In reality all the devil could offer was illusion. Even though Jesus did miracles they reinforced the real. They didn't create something that isn't.

I was thinking that what the liberals offer and what Common Cause and the Global South offer us is magic, something unreal. If we are seduced by it it will not be "far away" enough and we will press for something more pure, more magical. We must find the solution to what ails the church by pressing harder against its walls, which means for us rediscovering its authenticity. The solution is in what the Anglican Communion is, in its odd ways of decision making, in its strange discipline and NOT in seeking the magic of another world, the pure world of Calvinism or some form of Roman Catholicism that even Pope Benedict wouldn't recognize. For us we must press against the cell wall of the mundane reality of what it means to be in Communion with Canterbury and with each other worked out for many of us in the parish, the regular round of prayer, the celebration of the Eucharist, in community, however exasperating parishioner may be, in deeper study of the Scriptures and in learning to speak the Gospel clearly and winsomely.

Our own church, and that means us, is guilty of looking for magic, something not real, where sin and poverty are abolished by program and legislation, a world all but the most romantic reject as phoney and so they stay away, and in reaction many of us have sought to create another kind of pure church, doctrinally pure, pure and tidy in discipline and again only attractive to the romantic and the virtuous but phoney to every one else. We may not like the "desert" of Communion Anglicanism but God has placed us in this "cell" and if we remember well, others have lived in it before us, others who we now celebrate and venerate for their holiness. So the cell must be all right, it must be a holy place. We've just been seduced by magic?

OF BISHOPS AND TERRITORY

2007-12-17T07:49:00.000-06:00

I've found it fascinating to read the varied responses to the Archbishop of Canterbury's Advent Letter to the Primates. Thus far I've only seen our own Presiding Bishop's measured comment, which I thought to be entirely appropriate. For the rest, I'm reminded of the old adage, "If the cap fits, wear it." Self-defense abounds. Few seek to step backwards, giving them self space to say something like, "Well I hadn't thought of it that way. Perhaps I should do my theology, say my prayers, and give myself time before responding."

One of my constant gripes since I wrote the essay entitled "The General Convention Church" for Anglicans Online, just over a year after I was received into TEC, has been about the politicizing of our church. If Dr. Williams is on to something when he wonders how the House of Bishops can say one thing now, but envision saying something else at a future meeting of the General Convention, is it sufficient to trumpet blither about his not understanding TEC polity? Certainly when American Anglicans organized themselves into an autonomous Province they sought to restore "primitive episcopacy". Indeed that term was one of the slogans of the day. What is not always noticed is that the concessions made to the New England followers of Bishop Seabury in the creation of a House of Bishops with veto power (yes the Deputies were given similar power in that compromise) were very High Church indeed for that pre-Tractarian period. These concessions were justified by reference to the Early Church, and particularly to the role of bishops as teachers and centers of unity.

It is therefore passing odd to find contemporary Episcopalians seeking to overthrow that compromise by reducing the collective bishops to a legislative role within a governing body to which all functions other than sacramental roles are ceded.

During the last part of Bishop Griswold's primacy there were those who seriously contemplated introducing amendments to the Constitution aimed at stripping the office of Presiding Bishop of its remaining primatial authority. These proposals were expedient. Those for whom the issue of human sexuality had become the unique raison de'etre for the church feared that Dr. Griswold would cave in to foreign primates rather than to the majority within General Convention. In the end he did both to the utter confusion of both.

Now many of this same constituency contemplates stripping the collective episcopate of its unique role within the baptismal community and for exactly the same reason. It is therefore not odd for the Archbishop of Canterbury to question whether those who advocate a merely political role for the collective episcopate -some of them like Archbishop Ussher making common cause with those who would abolish episcopacy as Anglicanism has known it -are not setting forth an ecclesiology which differs fundamentally from that espoused by most of the Anglican Communion.

In attempting to restore "primitive episcopacy" the organizers of autonomous American Anglicanism exported to the rest of the Communion a concept of episcopacy far removed from the Erastian model common in late 18th Century Anglicanism. A case may be made which suggests that the American Church in its concessions to Seabury High Churchism paved the way for the Tractarians from whose largely American and Canadian minds sprung the vision of an Anglican Communion.

The early history of the Episcopal Church was troubled by Methodism. American Methodism found the inherited diocesan and parochial structure of PECUSA impeded the spread of the Gospel. The Gospel was all important. What mattered was that people heard the good news and were saved. If ecclesiastical structure stood in the way of that gracious work, then it had to be either used or ignored.

It is passing strange to find a coalition of American Episcopalian Anglo-Catholic and Evangelical activists proposing the very same rationale for their program of disaffiliating parishes and dioceses from TEC and allying them to overseas Evangelical Anglican Provinces. Many of these overseas Provinces, particularly the African ones are heart-broken by what they perceive to be TEC's betrayal of them. After the Second World War the American Church, with its riches, seemed to step into the shoes of the English Church. TEC not only demonstrated enormous generosity in providing money and manpower but also a pattern of self-government attractive to those ready to assume responsibility for their own destiny.

Yet today this generous American Church seems to African Anglicans to espouse an approach to the Bible, to the essence of the Gospel and to Christian living dreadfully at odds with that which they inherited from the missionaries who brought them the faith. If American Anglicans were much good at self-evaluation and perhaps less sensitive to criticism, they might concede that the Africans have a case. One does not have to abandon one's views that God is saying something new about human sexuality to manage to understand the shock and bewilderment experienced by African and Asian Christians.

Some of those American Episcopalians who agree with these overseas Anglican Provinces, in pursuit of their own internal agenda -one that looks a lot like a necessary self-preservation - now say, "It is the Gospel that matters, and not the structural constraints of provinces, dioceses and parishes. TEC is rotten to the core. Come in and rescue us. Create with us a new missionary field." Asbury call home.

By "necessary self-preservation" I mean that for many Episcopalians, after decades of losing every battle for orthodoxy in a deeply politicized American Province, the only way forward seems to be to make shift for them self. If TEC won't give them space, they must make space for them self. If Canterbury won't recognize them they must persuade overseas Anglican Provinces to create an alternative Anglican Communion for them.

Why, it is asked, is everyone so hard on TEC? The Episcopal Church isn't much like the caricature of itself one reads about in the blogs or the Media. The extraordinary fact is that the radical causes espoused by successive General Conventions have had such little affect upon the Episcopal Church at parish level except in wealthy ghettos of liberalism in urban America. The reason is that the American Church has gone forward by itself without much self-conscious examination of consequences. It has exported its own internal problems in a manner the Church of England may no longer do, simply because TEC is the American Church and America is tops, its culture, politics and religion dominate all else. One may find the same radicalism in the Church of England true, but she is no longer the top church in a top nation.

Gentle Archbishop Rowan asks the "progressive" party in TEC what it now means by episcopacy and of what value the findings of its collective episcopate are at least as far as the Anglican Communion has come to understand episcopacy and that understanding was in great part pioneered by American Episcopalians.

Gentle Archbishop Rowan asks the orthodox" party what it now means by episcopacy in terms of the basic structure of the Church as Anglicanism has received the same. The American Church has been a leader in teaching how it is possible to be an "episcopal" church without being either Roman Catholic or Established. Now leading orthodox American Episcopalians seem to be saying that all that matters is the Gospel and that structure is adiaphora, to be undone if it seems to impede the preservation of the faith and the spread of the Gospel.

Gentle Archbishop Rowan not only asks these questions of Americans but of all the Primates. If bishops in their collective responsibility no longer have a unique teaching responsibility under the Scriptures, as demonstrated in the Tradition by sanctified Reason, and if the structure of the Church is no longer of the Gospel, what remains of Anglicanism and in what sense may we be a Communion? So he invites those bishops who believe they have a particular although not monopolistic responsibility for the unity of the church, for the faith and for the Gospel to join him next year at a Lambeth Conference. In so doing I believe he is true to his office and calling.

POWER

2007-12-10T22:07:00.000-06:00

Again and again I see people attracted to power, good power of course, but power; the ability to sort things out, to provide the right answer, for we believe that there must always be a solution if we work hard enough to find it. Jesus did promise to his Church "power" when the Holy Spirit came upon its first leaders. Yet that power is surely something quite unlike the ability to enforce a solution.

One of the aspects of Anglicanism which appeals to me is the absence of much power or authority to enforce things while affirming the power to teach, preach and proclaim, in life-giving and self-sacrifice that which is true and right. Even in this exhausting Advent waiting for +Rowan to tell us what the rest of the Communion wants done with us, I am attracted to the idea that he may not have the solution and that he has been unable to get +Barry Morgan and +Peter Akinola to be of one mind in one place and so must simply tell us to get on with that which God calls us to do in preaching the Word and administering the sacraments until day light returns..

As a boy I had on my bedroom wall a bad reproduction of that very Victorian Holman Hunt painting of Jesus, in alb and cope, wearing the crown of thorns, holding a lantern standing at a door. "Behold I stand at the door and knock." Jesus doesn't batter the door down. I wish our TEC leaders would realize that, rather than relying on Caesar to deal with schismatics. No stakes or racks or thumbscrews, but we still hand our malefactors over to the powers that be. Do we somehow believe that as the powers that be can no longer torture and kill it is now quite Christian to hand CANA or SJ to the judges of a secular and separated power?

+Rowan only has the power to knock at the door of a virtual place inhabited by Provincial leaders, many of whom would bring down the house rather than submit to each other in Godly love and self-oblation. Until the folly of our present actions (demanding our own way what ever that way is NOW) becomes obvious to us, perhaps all +Rowan can do, bearing a flash light and a brief case full of the advice written by this and that archbishop or presiding bishop, is knock and stand and wait.

To some this weakness signals impotency, the failure of Anglicanism. There are churches or even denominations which afford something more powerful. I can only remain where I am, believing that our willingness to lose, to die is that which enables us in faith to leave it to God to make all things new. We must not dream of winning as the world wins. We must not adopt the way of force to win. We dare not.

My wife discovered a poem by +Rowan which she put on her blog today. I haven't previously read it. (Extraordinary, we want a strong leader and God gives us a Celtic poet, a gentle man.)

He will come like last fall's leaf fall.
One night when the November wind
has flayed the trees to the bone, and earth
wakes choking on the mould,
the soft shroud's folding.

He will come like frost.
One morning when the shrinking earth
opens on mist, to find itself
arrested in the net
of alien, sword-set beauty.

He will come like dark.
One evening when the bursting red
December sun draws up the sheet
and penny-masks its eye to yield
the star-snowed fields of sky.

He will come, will come,
will come like crying in the night,
like blood, like breaking,
as the earth writhes to toss him free.
He will come like child.

And God's will for us today will come in like manner, or so I believe and hope.

AND SO IT BEGINS

2007-12-09T14:55:00.000-06:00

The Diocese of San Joaquin has voted to leave the Episcopal Church and ally itself to one of the most conservative Evangelical Provinces in the Anglican Communion. It will look rather like Martinique, whose geography places it in one part of the world and its polity in another. As this chapter further unfolds in Pittsburgh and Fort Worth the watching world will witness Christianity at its worst as it engages in internecine warfare.

The tragedy will be worst for those in the middle, faithful people seeking to worship God and to love their neighbor who are caught up in this struggle for victory. Those in the know may object that this is not a family squabble as TEC has left the family. As yet no word has emerged from the Instruments of Unity, our Anglican familiar symbols, affirming that TEC has left the family or even that the Southern Cone has left the family, and thus it remains forensically a family row. One wonders when in Advent the Archbishop of Canterbury will bring clarity to us or whether there remains any clarity at all for him to bring.

In worldly terms TEC may win, for it seems to have the money and the battalions. Yet such a victory, if it is a victory will drain further its resources, impede its attempts to grow -who in their right mind wants to join a squabbling group unless they are fanatics of one stripe or another - and probably seal its fate for the present as far as relationships with the rest of the Anglican world are concerned. It will emerge weakened and isolated.

Those who lose will find themselves fragmented and tugged between those who wish to remain loyal to the Anglican Communion and those who wish to replace it. They will be prey to ambitious people and unspoken agendas and to a dangerous romanticism which confuses fidelity to the faith once delivered with nostalgia for a mythical golden age when the Church was pure.

In all this the prayers, hopes and voices of sensible people will be needed if not always heeded. Of all God's gifts that of common sense will be the most desired and the most difficult to acquire. Yet as I write this I wonder whether even sanctified common sense may help. This present tragedy has been long a coming, and could have been averted years ago if leaders, appointed and self appointed had been graced enough to listen to each other and to prize Anglican comprehension, civility and gracefulness. The frightful modern obsession to win and take no prisoners, which has ruined sports and bedeviled politics has donned an alb and strides around our altars.

There has been a brutality about in those who have pressed a wide agenda of "reforms" and those who have used fear as a weapon to oppose the agenda of our ascendant progressives. Certainly that perfect love which casts out fear has been absent. One wonders whether we are not witnessing the truth of the ancient adage, "Those whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad."

Those of us who embrace Anglicanism and seek to live into its best nature, into a spirit of mutual tolerance and purposeful comprehension have a difficult road to follow, made the more difficult because that which we feared but thought impossible has now happened.

For myself I love and honor my friends who are sure they cannot stayin TEC knowing full well that some of them will take it ill that I remain where I am or where I may be. The personal irony will be that if TEC is expelled from the Communion (or perhaps TEC and the Southern Cone) I will have come full circle and will abide once again in a body which calls itself Anglican but which is not in full communion wth the See of Canterbury.

AT DEATH'S DOOR

2007-11-30T13:07:00.000-06:00

I dimly remember my Yorkshire relatives discussing deaths and saying, "EE, yon lass were at death's door for months before she went in." Well, it seems I was at death's door for a few days early this month. I don't remember what it looked like and I didn't knock. My wife, children, in-laws and the bishop were with me as I struggled in a haze of pain and pain killers. Then came the operation to clean out the pleural cavity between that balloon-like sack around the left lung and the lung itself. The balloon had become like a tire and had to be scraped. Oh yes, and I developed two formidable bed sores. That's why I am sitting on this bloody special cushion as I type.

Twice in a year our Lord had delivered me from death's door. My cancer is in full remission and, despite pleural pneumonia my lung is without permanent damage. I haven't been this light weight since I was a teenager, and the face that looks back at me is gaunt, haggard and old. But exercise, Pat's love and good food, rest and prayer will restore me over the next weeks. I hope to be able to celebrate on December 16th, and of course do the Christmas services. People from a couple of parishes are coming to look at me after Christmas. I can stay here at St. Thomas a Becket until the end of 2008 but if I need to carry on, at my age, the sooner I am called to a new parish the better. I can't retire. I have not been in the pension fund long enough to receive a living wage.

I am struck once again by the knowledge that even at my most insensible moments the words of our liturgy, snatches of prayers and psalms were there to lift me up and those who brought me the Sacrament brought me Jesus and life and hope. I am so thankful to be an Anglican and to live in the company of its saints and sinners whose words and offerings, yes and I do believe presence in the Communion of Saints surrounded and defended me and brought me through. And what was my smelling my granddad's pipe all about? It wasn't my imagination. For two days, on and off, I smelt his pipe. Perhaps it was a dream but it was a wide awake dream.

I am humbled by the extraordinary phenomenon of hundreds of people all over the world, even those who have not always been kind to me, even those who have attacked me, who prayed for me and with me during the past month. Were they to be in one room we would have a riot on our hands. Yet they all claim the name Anglican even if they dispute with each other about status and reliability.

I can't say enough about my wife's self-sacrificing love and care for me or of our children's calls and thoughts and my English cousins keeping in touch.

For how ever long I have to live and with all the strength I can employ I will magnify the Lord and make known His saving, forgiving, gentle love. A bishop friend told me that I had to live to remind everyone who will listen of the goodly heritage we enjoy as Anglican Christians. It's a deal.

URGENT NEWS ABOUT FR. TONY

2007-11-06T18:13:00.000-06:00

GULP.... Dr. Graber (Thoracic Surgeon) visited just a bit ago. After spending much time reviewing the many tests, labs, scans and such, from the past week.... he's decided Tony must have surgery to clean up the mess infection has left in the lung.

Over the coming few days he and his team will be working with Dr. Craig, the pulmonary department, etc to make sure each and every duck is in a row..... in preparation for the surgery. He anticipates it will be a surgery that would last 4-5 hours, and will probably occur early next week.

EVERYONE... continue to hold our Tony up in your prayers.... that God see fit to put all involved (doctors, nurses, assistants, anesthesiologists, surgeons, etc) in His hands... as we venture into the next stage of this challenge. We have complete confidence in Dr. Graber and our Dr. Craig doing all that's possible to make this go as smoothly, painlessly and risk free as possible.

If you're sitting at your computer scratching your head... wondering what in the world is going on.... visit our family blog at http://clavierfamily.blogspot.com.

Losing my Religion in Search

2007-10-25T07:19:00.000-05:00

I’m in search. It’s not easy to be taken seriously when one is sixty-seven years old and after a serious illness. Retirement isn’t in question because I entered TEC so late that if I threw in my Canterbury Cap now I’d receive just over $600.00 a month from the pension fund. At any rate I don’t want to retire. I’m a priest, not a business executive. Orders are indelible and so I am vocationally committed to ministry of some sort or another until they shoot me. I feel better than I have in years and retain the energy, enthusiasm and commitment to carry on. If people can be senators and representatives or even cabinet ministers and presidents in their seventies why is our church still practicing ageism?

Pat and I have loved it here. Of course we always knew that the time would come when the “interim” job was done and the parish would go into search. I get much too attached to be a good interim and anyway don’t have the financial resources to sustain an itinerant ministry.

What threatens to make me lose my religion or at least my cool is the search process. It is an enigma wrapped in very bad manners. I cannot for the life of me understand why regulations are not mutually adopted which institute basic efficiencies and require normal civilities. In an age of email it seems that parishes in search are still in the quill pen age but without the good manners which then accompanied conversation.

My name is now before a number of places. In only one of those has my application been received by a prompt email reply and acknowledgment and a promise to keep me informed about the process. For the rest, “I shot an arrow in the air. It came to ground I know not where.”

We are told there is a clergy shortage, but one wouldn’t believe it. One is sometimes required to respond with CDO forms which deployment officers may easily access and supply to search committees. One always must send a resume which replicates the information on a CDO profile which is up to date. Sometimes one is asked to answer generic questions, often of the most banal quality and for which there seem to be no right answers or even a suitable prize. No wonder some vestries still wnt to treat their priest as the hired help.

All the above may be taken in one’s stride if search committees acknowledged the receipt of applications, outlined their process and gave a time line. This almost never happens. One is left wondering and can’t even inform anxious spouses or children of progress or even, sometimes, whether one is being considered at all.

A Christian organization is surely committed to Christian behavior? Perhaps deployment officers need to be trained in compassionate civility and then offer a similar training to search committees. Modern methods of communication make it possible for a search process to be one of mutual discernment rather than that of priestly passive supplication and leisurely paced evaluation.

As in other areas of church life, national and diocesan regulations and programs have overcome basic canonical rules -the vestry elects, period - and created often dysfunctional systems which like the laws of the Medes and Persians will not perish whether they work or not or portray compassionate openness and care. It is time for reform.

Growing Together in Unity and Mission

2007-10-14T08:32:00.000-05:00

From the Agreed Statement of the Anglican/Roman Catholic Commission for Unity and Mission, 2007. The Episcopal Church is a partner in this consultation.

58. The priesthood of the ordained ministry cannot be derived from the congregation. It is a distinct vocation, and not an enhancement of the common priesthood. But the common priesthood and the ministerial priesthood are nevertheless interrelated. The minister, though not the delegate of the congregation, does act in its name and focuses thereby its offering of worship. Only bishops and episcopally ordained and authorised priests preside at the Eucharist.

EX OPERE OPERATO

2007-10-13T11:24:00.000-05:00

Religious controversies have their times and cycles. There was a time when the above Latin tag, thrown into a discussion, excited extraordinary vehemence. Roughly stated, "Catholics" believed that when sacraments were celebrated their force and virtue became really present because a qualified person, using the right words, the right ceremony performed that which the Church intends to do. "Evangelicals", concerned about the moral suitability of the persons to which the sacramental rite was the subject (and the verb), and the reality of the faith of such a person or persons denied that the sacraments had force or virtue of themselves. They became real and forceful or virtuous if the recipient was faithful and "moral." Catholics believed that the sacraments "worked" ex opere operato. Evangelicals were "receptionists." As in all convenient tags, those so tagged were not all of one mind or in one place. Yet perhaps they exhibited sufficient degrees of commonality to be placed in convenient categories.

Today such controversies may seem hardly worthy of contemplation. Just to think that Episcopalians left their church because they denied that in baptism children became regenerate merely because they were baptized. The language of the Prayer Book rite in use then made that claim. Evangelical parsons tended to leave that bit out, or coughed loudly when reaching those words. The same people denied that the Holy Table was an altar, that ministers were "priests" other than being, if saved, members of the "priesthood of all believers", or that Jesus was truly present in Bread and Wine, although Bread and Wine might act as effective signs and symbols inspiring the faithful recipient to encounter Jesus by faith. Ironically there are many non-evangelical Episcopalians today whose views differ only marginally from their Protestant ancestors some of whom left to found the Reformed Episcopal Church in 1873.

Certainly our Evangelical ancestors would approve of the Almy-inspired reformation of ecclesiastical furniture. The altar is now a Table. The theory of mutual ministry suggests that in baptism all enter the priesthood of all believers and that "ordained" ministry is merely functional, and that "priests" are not set aside to an ontological ministry, but merely recognized to have the charisms and talents to exercise that which all have by virtue of baptism. No one says much about bishops in all this! That in many places the consecrated elements, or those remaining, are placed on the ground outside for the birds and plants indicates either a Lutheran idea that the presence only remains effective when "in use" -but what about the reserved sacrament? - or that the real presence is only "real" to those who by faith receive Bread and Wine.

There remains one area in which the Catholic view of the sacraments or at least baptism prevails and that in perhaps a starker form than the classical Catholic doctrine allows. It is suggested that all the baptized by virtue of baptism are to be included and have the varied gifts of ministry simply by virtue of their baptism. Here one sees a triumph for ex opere operato. Indeed there are those who in championing communicating the unbaptized, suggest that human beings by virtue of their being created by God have all the privileges of Christian and ecclesial inclusion, subject perhaps to those infuriating church regulations to be used or ignored at will. There are those who proclaim such a view with enormous relish. Such primitive issues about whether a person is faithful, in a state of grace, believes the faith once delivered to the saints are to be disregarded except by commissions on ministry and perhaps diocesan bishops and even then with an eye to the law of inclusion. To such people the new doctrine of the Baptismal Covenant includes all. Such a view I gather is expressed in a statement to be found on the website of the Episcopal Diocese of Northern Michigan. As In many areas I think the problem with such a view is that it doesn't go far enough. The radical notion that God in Christ has purposed to redeem us through the Cross, and the Resurrection and has called us to new life in a new society which always stands in counter-culture to the world, demonstrates the poverty and inadequacy of natural inclusivity. As with most heresies, the problem is not radicalism but essential timidity. And our response surely is not to propose a pure church and to burn the heretic, but rather to propose the hard work of orthodoxy as we tackle the timid sentimentality of error For we are to love those whom Jesus seeks and would save.

IF ONLY I'D BEEN BORN

2007-10-10T09:36:00.000-05:00

Address by Fr. Tony Clavier to the Clergy Association of Pittsburgh,
Oct. 11, 2007

I sometimes wish I had been born in the late 18th Century! It would have
been lovely to be an English or perhaps Virginian country parson in
those days. The church's legislative bodies hadn't met in decades, the
Evangelical Movement was ossifying into a party, the Anglo-Catholics
were yet to arrive on the scene and most Anglican clergy on both sides of the ditch might well fit John Betjeman's description:

"Broad of Church and broad of mind;
Broad in front and broad behind."

Dean Church would later describe such a clergyman as being "not fully
alive to the greatness of his calling"!

But that wasn't to be, and as I am recovering from cancer perhaps that
is just as well. Medicine was then even a bit cruder than chemotherapy. I happen to live in an age of turmoil, of confusion, of division and mutual recrimination. As I am not a particularly confrontational type, this doesn't suit at all. My temptation is to wander into my study, close the door and immerse myself in things past. Many Anglican clergy have been called to such a life. There was a time when sound Divinity and scholarship was more the product of the rectory study than of the university or seminary. Anglican clergy were described as "stupor mundi", the wonder of the world. Both the Evangelical and Catholic revivals in Anglicanism were born not in Conventions or Synods but in the homes of devoted clergy and laity.

We have all experienced that almost visceral frisson of horror when a
vestry member –why is it normally the treasurer? – starts to blither
about our need to be practical, citing the way things are done by boards of
directors, or in politics or the Rotary Club. The real meaning is that
while religion may be fine, in church we need to be practical. There's always a slight whiff of sulfur in the air on such occasions!

I realize that I run the risk today of being so heavenly minded I am
no earthly use. I will take that risk because at this moment of division and
discord I want to remind us of our goodly heritage, of the elements in
our ethos which have made us distinct. The problem is that many of
the elements I shall mention do not seem particularly practical, even weak and other-worldly in a moment of time when we believe we need practical,
instant and effective solutions. If we feel this to be so, perhaps we think the following “marks” of Anglicanism are at best discarded or at least ignored.

Yet as I shall go on to suggest, there is a possibility that in the
midst of our search for instant solutions we are stumbling into enemy
territory, into picking up the enemy's weapons. We do so with the best
of intentions, but we all know what road is paved with good
intentions.

As I write these words I do so using the word processing program on my
computer. It is so convenient. When I have finished, I can attach this
to an email and have it to Bruce Robison in the twinkling of an eye.
To print this off, put it in an envelope with an attached letter, take
it to the post office on Monday and mail it not only takes time, but I
risk it not getting from Morgantown, West Virginia, to Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania in time for this meeting. I can drive the distance in a bit over an hour!

Our thirst for the instant not only affects the way we do things, I am
beginning to think it affects the way we view God. He becomes for us the
God of the instant response. Just as we tend to think that all
problems must have a solution now and that all problems are ultimate
and must be solved now or all will be lost, so we begin to think that
God either wants to fix things now or worse still, has entrusted us
with the task of fixing things now. After all, if left, they will only
get worse.

I've lived in the United States for most of my adult life, so perhaps I can
risk saying to you that Americans not only want a quick fix, they want
a structure in which to make that quick fix. Even in the midst of
trying to be spiritual we envision political/structural solutions.
Just as political discourse is often about persons and not principles,
seeks to argue back, catch someone out, force someone to say or act in
a specific manner, so our religious discourse all too often follows
this pattern. If we are not name-calling we are proposing structural solutions often of some novelty, in which we may contain our new alignments. No group in the contemporary Episcopal Church is immune to this temptation just as all of us, as much as we flinch from the thought are still very much formed by the Enlightenment and by political structures which emerged in the Age of Reason.

In a recent book on Anglican history –I can't quote him because I lent
the book to my priest son – Archbishop Rowan points to the Anglican
virtue of patience. Unlike some of you, I don't have a mathematical
frame of mind and so I can't remember texts by chapter and verse
easily, and thus I must look in my ancient, battered, small print
Cruden's Concordance given me by an evangelical Methodist shoe
repairer when I was a boy.

As I am in a proof texting mood, here are some references:

Luke 21. 19: "In your patience possess your souls." –“by your endurance you will save your lives.” REV.
Romans 5: 3: ".. knowing that tribulation worketh patience and
patience, experience and experience hope." ( RSV “endurance”)
Romans 15. 4: "that we through patience “steadfastness” and comfort might have hope."
Romans 15. 5: "the God of patience (steadfastness) grant you to be like minded.."
2 Thess, I. 4: "so that we glory in you for your patience.(steadfastness)"
I Tim. 6. 11: "and follow after love, patience, (steadfastness) meekness…"

The modern translators have us understand the old English word “patience” in terms of “stick ability” endurance, steadfastness, or perhaps staying put in the midst of everything. One doesn’t endure by removing oneself from the scene to a safe place.

There's a lot, lot more. I would commend to you all a study
of these and other texts. Of course it is much more fun to smite down
the Amalekites hip and thigh or to pick through St. Paul to discover
juicy passages about discipline, some of which may apply, but all of
which are to be viewed through the patient compassion of Jesus our
Savior and Lord.

If I am to list a group of what might be termed Anglican virtues, I
would begin with patience. It is or used to be in our DNA. May I
suggest that it was thrust upon us in one particular context?

As some of you know, particularly if you attended or are associated
with a seminary just down the road from here, our first Reformers,
over time, embraced the Evangelical tradition of Martin Bucer, Peter Martyr
and Heinrich Bullinger in its immediately pre-Calvin context. Ironically it was Calvin who encouraged Cranmer to continue the Episcopal system of
government. However the preservation of the diocesan and parochial
system imposed upon Evangelicals a distinct form of pastoral patience.
One may believe that the church is Invisible and Visible, that men and
women are destined either to salvation or damnation, but in practice
every single baptized person in the village was a parishioner and
under the care of the parish priest. One may think that parishioners
were hell bent but unless they were notorious or frightened the
horses, one was obliged to care for them, probably have them
confirmed, married, visit them in sickness and in health and bury them
in the churchyard.

16th Century Anglicanism may have been Protestant
but it was "haunted by its Catholic past" as Diarmaid MacCullogh puts
it. Dr Jean Maltby demonstrates in her study of the Elizabethan and
early Caroline Church that some Puritans just couldn't handle dining with
publicans and sinners. Many were hauled before the ecclesiastical
courts because they refused to celebrate the Eucharist for sinners or
catechize their children. Puritans like Richard Hooker's nemesis,
Walter Travers wanted a pure church made up of the elect. These people just
didn't have the patience necessary to be Anglicans.

A study of 18th Century Evangelical pastoral practice in the Church of
England demonstrates a similar pastoral patience. Tempted though he
was to emulate the Methodists and create churches for believers,
William Grimshaw at Howarth, later the Bronte parish, cared for his
erring flock, although often his patience was sorely taxed. Charles
Simeon of Holy Trinity, Cambridge, brought back Confirmation into
good repute and instituted early Communion services. He remains the very
model of a patient parish priest. One could easily cite similar patience among High Church and later Anglo-Catholic pastors from the pages of our history. I am not suggesting that pastoral patience is the unique virtue of Anglican clergy, but it has been one of our notable traits. These traditions lived in our own branch of the Communion and may be encountered in the staunchly pastoral “church” traditions espoused by Philander Chase, Charles Pettit McIlvaine, John Henry Hobart, Kemper and Hopkins, Polk, Hare and Tuttle, Muhlenberg and William Reed Huntingdon. That we are perhaps unfamiliar with these people and their writings and deeds demonstrates just how deep our amnesia has become.

Patience reminds us that we may not know God's plan in detail and what
seems to be a dreadful situation a collective dark night of the soul,
may well be, as in the past, a preparation for revival. We may at this
moment espouse different practical solutions but we must have patience
with each other and give space to each other, even if we disagree
passionately about tactics. God may prove us all wrong: Liberal and
Conservative, “progressive” and "orthodox."

Another Anglican virtue is comprehension. Here again we tend to
underestimate the passions of the past to magnify the problems of the
moment. Read the admittedly skewed evidences of Puritans and Church
folk in the 1640s on both sides of the Atlantic and you will read
stories of clerical, even Episcopal immorality, doctrinal innovation
or ignorance, worldliness of clergy and laity, heresy and schism.
Think of the 18th. Century Church, of naughty prelates like Bishop Hervey of Derry of whom it was said –“his ambition and his lust alone can get the better of his avarice” – or heretics like Bishop Hoadly who was not alone in his Deism.

We sometimes forget today the great gulf fixed between an Anglo
Catholic who believed in Eucharistic Sacrifice, auricular confession,
mass, Mary and confession and a staunch Evangelical who denied
baptismal regeneration, the Real Presence, the priestly nature of
ordination and regarded as immoral manuals of devotions published to
help penitents confess their sins to a priest. Read the history of the
creation of the Reformed Episcopal Church and note that after schism,
those who believed they were reforming Episcopalianism were swiftly
elbowed aside by dispensationalists on the one hand and biblical
liberals on the other. Within thirty years of its foundation many had returned to the Episcopal Church or drifted away into individual obscurity. It took that church over one hundred years to re-discover its Anglican roots.

We have, as Anglicans, experienced the gravest reasons to divide
before and we have divided before. We forget that the founders of
Congregational and Baptist Churches were members of the Church of
England and that both denominations created Unitarianism before being
rescued by the Evangelical Revival. Methodism is Anglicanism's
offspring. I have mentioned the Reformed Episcopal Church and I was a
"continuing Episcopalian" for a quarter of a century. If you are quite
sure that separation is the only way. I urge you to discover ways to
preserve your ties not only with the Anglican Communion, but fellowship
with Episcopalians, lest you wander off into novelty and forget your
comprehensive tradition. The blog world is much too intent on dividing
us, dividing even those whose principles are similar. Tribalism is the
very opposite of catholicity and liberality, two Anglican traditional
virtues. The Holy Spirit is the author of unity, not of recrimination,
hostility and division. We may feel justified in occupying our
fortified camps. The watching world is alienated. "See how these
Christians love one another."

Nor should one suppose that the dangers inherent in schism are not the
temptations of those who stay. Establishments may become equally
intolerant, insular and self-serving. Provinces with small memberships
and monochrome theology easily become the mirror image of separated
ecclesial bodies.

Finally Anglicanism is virtuous in its love of beauty. By beauty I do
not necessarily mean pomp and ceremony, ritual and ceremonial although
that too can have its rightful place as long as it does not become an
end in itself, what +Michael Ramsey, in his splendid book “God, Christ and the World” described as “fetishism”. I think of the irony of those verbal, rational Reformed Episcopalians, the foes of sacerdotalism and ritualism who swiftly built gothic revival buildings, the very symbols of the Medievalism they abhorred.

We are the church of John Donne, Lancelot Andrewes, George Herbert,
and Thomas Traherne whose beautiful words, poems and prayers still
inspire. Think of our evangelical tradition of hymnody typified by
Watts and the Wesleys. Read Herrick, Cowper or the diaries of Parson Woodforde or Francis Kilvert, the wonderful prose of William Tyndale and the translators of the Authorized Version of the Bible, the devotional language of Cranmer which survives in Rite 1. In architecture and place we have always shown forth the Incarnation. Beauty is a means of grace. It is often the casualty of war. If you are straying into contempt or suspicion for beauty read the first part of the first chapter of St. John’s Gospel: There one finds truth expressed in beauty.

When I served in "continuing church" –the Anglican Province of America- parishes the people swiftly sought to get out of the hired hall and build the best church building they could afford. They mourned the loss of the place where often their grandparents worshipped or they were baptized and married. The loss of beauty and place can foster resentment and anger, the seeds of war, division and the antithesis of the Gospel of hope. Anglicanism is perhaps hopelessly wed to outward and visible signs.

Beauty is part of "liberality" an Anglican virtue I have not the time to do more than mention in passing this morning. It is not to be confused with the word "liberal" at least in its modern meaning. The two contending sides in our church at the moment –you may belong to one or the other –are not noted for that patience of expression, beauty of life, and practice of comprehension which have been marks of Anglicanism because they are surely marks of Christian living. And lest you think I have left out the Cross or neglected Jesus, His death and resurrection run throughout this Anglican story in the lives of men and women, known and forgotten, whose faith was in the Word made Flesh and who died to rise again in His love and care.

Perhaps these memories and reminders are not answers to our immediate questions. Yet I offer them to you this morning in the hope that these last minutes may have been to you a soothing balm in Gilead, a reminder of the company we keep, those who have gone before us whose presence lives in the words we use and the surroundings we preserve or reproduce, and whose communion we invoke whenever we mention that odd word “Anglican”.

Is it folly on my part to remind us all of our tradition, of our way, in the midst of strife and division, when opinions harden, plans sharpen, and battle cries sound? I trust not. May the God of peace keep you in all in peace in believing. Amen

THOUGHTS FOR THE DAY

2007-10-10T09:03:00.000-05:00

Two thoughts for the day. We've been meeting Josiah in the readings for the Daily Office this week. Cranmer compared the young Edward VI to Josiah and the Edwardian reforms as the equivalent of the discovery of the Book Of the Law by the Josiah's High Priest. We know in retrospect that poor King Edward's wicked uncles used the Reformation cause as a means to empower and enrich themselves. Things are never as simple as they seem.

Which brings me to a nice quote from Stanley Hauerwas in his preface to "Heresies and How to Avoid Them", Quash/Ward et al, SPCK Hendrickson, 2007.

"Orthodoxy can tempt us to self-righteousness and a protectiveness that betrays the joy and confidence that should be the heart of the gospel. When orthodoxy becomes defensive rather than a form of love and proclamation it denies its own reality."

OOPS AGAIN

2007-10-04T16:43:00.001-05:00

For contraint read restraint. I have amended the text.

IN A WORD

2007-10-04T14:46:00.000-05:00

It was George Bernard Shaw who said that the British and Americans are divided by a common language. As my friend Bishop Whalon points out "scheme" means something quite different to an American than to a Briton. One might say that we are all divided by our pre-conceived notions concerning what lies behind the use of words placed together to convey or perhaps obfuscate meaning.

These considerations are very much to the fore as we seek to evaluate the answers our bishops recently provided to the primates particularly on the subject of who may or who may not be elected and consecrated a bishop and whether priests may bless same-sex couples. In a real sense these are "new" concerns about ideas our parents or grandparents never considered. They never considered such issues because few people if any thought about either subject. It is not that they perhaps held strong religious convictions on these subjects. Asking my grandfather whether two people of the same gender might be married would have been on the order of asking him whether he was in favor of the internet or blogs! Knowing my grandfathers, or at least one of them, asking whether a person who habitually had sex with someone to whom he was not married might be appointed a bishop would have elicited rude remarks about his doubts about the sexual nature of clergy. He probably subscribed to the three sex theory: there are three sexes, men, women and clergy.

Now mere novelty is no ground for rejection, although given the conservative nature of a goodly proportion of human beings, it is a natural reaction in those who are born "a little conservatIVE," rather than "a little liberal," as W.S. Gilbert reminded us: yes the chap with Sullivan. Novelty can also mean some idea which is recent and has yet to be tested fully. A blog run by people who do not head my fan club recently posted a poll asking whether they would change their minds on the above subjects if the Anglican Communion came out in favor of both, or if, in twenty years the three major branches of Christendom so did. Might even a doubter say yes? Similar questions were posed to those opposed to the ordination of women when the matter came to the vote in TEC thirty years ago. Many hedged their bets by suggesting that if a General Council of the whole Chuch approved the ordination of women they would obey. The likelihood of such a Council is so remote that the question is safe. Not in my lifetime but perhaps in God's lifetime; or not?

In such contexts Anglicanism in pursuit of its destiny to comprehend often seeks ways to remain old-fashioned while giving a glimmer of hope to those who style themselves "progressive." Framing such a policy often demands a good deal of verbal dexterity of the sort which produces a frisson of horror among the precise, who hate compromise as the policy of the devil in hell, and who are certain they are on the Lord's side. Anglicanism has never been a comfortable place fo the rigorists unless they were able to huddle in a party ghetto and forget that the rest of the church existed.

Even so I find myself uneasy with two linguistic devices used by the bishops in seeking to frame a response to the Primates which would be satisfactory and yet preserve the hope of progressives, those who believe that not only doctrine develops but so do our bedroom habits.

On the matter of the ordination and consecration of bishops the text, following the earlier reply from GC 2006 urges bishops to "exercise restraint" in not giving consent to the election of persons whose lifestyles are controversial, and in a commentary, those who are gay and lesbian living in non celibate unions are specifically mentioned. Now what does "exercise renstraint" mean? Does it mean, as the Joint Standing Committee of the Primates judges, that the bishops will restrain themselves by not giving consent or does it mean that the bishops will restrain themselves by not giving consent to perhaps most elections of this sort? Why were the words "exercise restraint" used? Is it a pat on the back saying, look how disciplined we are going to be?, or is it a loophole? Or does it merely act as a code to say to gay and lesbian people, look we still love you?

Again, what does it mean when the bishops say that they will not authorize "public" liturgies and blessings for same-sex unions? Does it mean that they will not authorize same sex-blessings of an ad hoc nature at which extempore prayer is used, or will not authorize same sex blessings at which are used authorized liturgical texts (but there are no such texts so they can't mean that) or that they will permit "private" rites using a liturgical text approved by the Ordinary but not by the church, but are any religious rites "private"? Are the bishops saying that they will not permit clergy in their dioceses to perform same sex blessings, period? Is the language merely clumsy, awkward, intended to disallow while giving hope and comfort to gay and lesbian parishioners or does it merely mean what it says, whatever it says?

One realizes that facilty in language isn't a modern virtue. We may indeed live in an age which does not value precision, except in science and medicine, and which seeks to avoid absolutes. Perhaps the American language as it is evolving or developing encourages obfuscation. Perhaps it was designed by politicians? One has enormous sympathy for the plight of those Anglicans who seek to perpetuate comprehension and to make space for all who wish to avail themselves of our altars. Yet hitherto this was done not by obfuscation of language but by tolerance of diversity in the context of doctrinal clarity in matters essential and those other matters which stem from core doctrine. When our bishops issue statements they do so both to the city, that is their own constituency, and to the world. They owe both winsomeness in expression and clarity in words. By clarity I do not mean the sort of bullying "orthodoxy" espoused by those whose confidence in their virtue enables them to sniff out and expose heretics of every sort. After all we are all invited to eat with publicans and sinners. To be clear does not mean to be "in your face", rude or arrogant. Our Lord is the example of humble clarity, always pointing to that which is good. He reserved his judgment for religious bigots and religious humbugs, the sure and the evasive while warning that compromise may be deadly. Indeed it was perhaps his association with sinners and certainly the clarity of his claims which unleashed the frightening power of religious and political establishmentarianism. Judging by the text of the New Orleans statement, our bishops are in no danger from either front.

OOPS

2007-10-03T20:25:00.001-05:00

I forgot the courtesy link to Sermons that Work which is:

http://www.dfms.org/sermons_that_work_90371_ENG_HTM.htm

A SERMON FOR NEXT SUNDAY

2007-10-03T20:12:00.000-05:00

( I wrote this for the Episcopal Church's "Sermons that Work" and it may also be found on their web site.)

Do you sometimes get turned off by “religion talk”? Or do you think that the vocabulary and jargon used by many Christians somehow makes an ordinary idea so religious that it doesn’t apply in day-to-day living?

Such a word is “grace.” It sounds so pious and out of reach. So when a prayer, one of those lovely compact “collect” prayers, talks of God’s grace going in front of us and behind us, we sort of shrug, say “fine” but really don’t think it means very much at all.

The prayer – collect – today is a reminder of the story about God’s glory in visible form, as a great light, which went in front of and behind the children of Israel as they escaped Egypt and went in search of the Promised Land. Yet escaping from Egypt and looking for a Promised Land seem so very far from our experiences at work, or at home, even in church. Surely, sometimes we would love to run away. Maybe we pray that one day we will go to heaven. After all, why else would we be in church today, singing these hymns and saying these prayers? God seems to like that sort of thing for some unknown reason, so we do them. Perhaps we get some comfort and some hope. But as to the practicality of all this, perhaps some of us or most of us reserve judgment.

The readings today try to give practical examples of what “grace” means. Inevitably they are stories about, or reflections on “grace” set in a very different world than ours. No cars, no supermarkets, no global warming, no politicians – it all sounds wonderful! But what have two stories about lepers and one bit of advice to young Bishop Timothy have to do with high blood pressure, a fight with the teens or our parents, and mortgage payments, or even job insecurity?

Leprosy was once the scourge of all illnesses. It was incurable. Those with it were shunned and shunted off into separate places, ostracized and feared. Some people with AIDS feel that way. Even the word “cancer” or admitting one has that disease instills an irrational fear in some people. So the condition then may well be translated into our feeling alone, misunderstood, helpless, and perhaps actively shunned. Feelings of being alone and helpless surely attack most of us at one time or another. Feeling misunderstood often happens in the classroom or the office – and frequently at a vestry meeting! While the scene recounted in the Bible stories today may be unfamiliar, there are plenty of modern equivalents and experiences.

General Naaman’s problem was that he thought his condition and status required a dramatic response, a unique form of treatment, not merely a dip in a foreign river on the orders of a prophet who hasn’t even the courtesy to come out to meet this important dignitary. The lepers whom Jesus heals have a different problem. They take a miracle for granted, and all but one shrugs and gets on with life. Only one is thankful.

In both cases, we see that what gets in the way of grace, of receiving a gift, is pride in one form or another, that deadly sin. We think we are the only person with our problem. No one has had this problem before. To suggest that God has a universal answer, something as simple as merely doing as one is told and accepting a simple gift in a simple manner is just too much of a stretch – or should one say a stoop? Merely accepting, as Timothy is told to do, that Jesus is sufficient, that:

“If we have died with him, we will also live with him;
if we endure, we will also reign with him;
if we deny him, he will also deny us;
if we are faithless, he remains faithful--
for he cannot deny himself.”
Merely accepting is the clue to wholeness and a life lived within God’s gifts.

In a few minutes perhaps you will leave your seat and go to God’s table to receive promised gifts, the grace that goes before us and behind us, guiding and keeping us in the midst of everything. How on earth can a crumb of bread and a sip of wine address my extraordinary needs and problems? Or perhaps I will reach, take, and get on with life without a thought of “thanksgiving,” the word from which “Eucharist” derives.

Almost all healing is not the result of being “zapped” by God, but the result of being given an opportunity to anchor oneself in that which has been given, and an opportunity to live life with a new and different perspective. I accept the bread crumb and the sip of wine as a promise that I died with Jesus in baptism and rose to life, eternal life – something that starts at the font and not at the death bed.

So, as St. Paul reminds us, we are given the extraordinary gift to endure, to get on with life, a life made new and special because we are able to be thankful. Endurance doesn’t sound like much fun, but Christianity isn’t about fun, it is about cross-bearing, self-sacrifice, self-examination, admitting one’s faults and sins which get in the way of our vision of God. Yes, endurance made splendid, because we are given the gift of thanksgiving, of gratitude that we have been placed in the company of those who have gone before us in patient endurance; in the company of those who walk with us in joy. And we are given the gift of gratitude to be in the company of those who will come after us and who will endure as witnesses of the Christ who came, died, rose again and ascended into heaven and who restores everything and makes all things new.

Accepting simple gifts as the answer to what seem to be complicated needs takes humility. Accepting simple gifts when they work with thanksgiving takes a good deal of humility. Humility and being thankful are two sides of the same coin – a coin if you will, given to us by Jesus, who is equal with God but who empties himself to us and for us

GOLDEN AGE?

2007-10-01T14:22:00.000-05:00

I was a "continuing" church bishop when the last threat of a significant schism disturbed the Episcopal Church. In 1977 perhaps a thousand clergy and laity met in St. Louis. At that meeting a church was born and a statement of faith, "The Affirmation of St. Louis" adopted. The then TEC Presiding Bishop, John Allin, a gracious and gentle man was refused communion when he presented himself as the Congress Eucharist. Bishops from Fond du Lac, Eau Claire, Northern Indiana, saints like Stanley Atkins and William Sheridan stayed away althugh they shared many of the misgivings owned by these proto-unilateralists.

The new church was titled "The Anglican Church of North America". Before its birth cries were heard some opted to disassociate themselves, creating a small body intent on reunion with the Roman Catholic Church. Then there were squabbles about whether there should be a few or even one non-geographical dioceses and disagreements about Canon Law, High Church, Low Church matters and much more.

One of the priests, later a bishop in Canada, described many of these efforts as an attempt to create a Brigadoon Church. The temptation, almost impossible to resist was the creation of an ideal church. The problem was that many had different visions of what such a church would look like. Would it look like PECUSA in the fifties? Would it look like the Church of England in the latter part of the reign of Henry VIII? Very nasty things were written about the Elizabethan Settlement and its comprehension. It was generally judged that Anglicanism had failed because it allegedly hadn't established a firm body of doctrine, canon law and discipline. What many wanted wasn't really an Anglican church at all, but a National Catholic Church with an Anglican Missal rite, rather like the Polish National Catholic Church shorn of its ethnic component.

Within three years the Anglican Church in North America split into four parts and further splits later occurred. Much of the strength and energy of the Movement was channeled into bitter internal feuds and personal attacks. The problem of discipline was compounded rather than solved, as clergy and parishes hopped from jurisdiction to jurisdiction seeking to avoid punishment or to discover greener pastures. Meetings to settle differences, discourage internal schism, parish hopping and priestly ambition produced agreements often breached before the ink was dry. Wrangles about whose bishops were more or less valid than others exercised the minds of many.

The miracle is that even in the midst of such confusion some strong and viable parishes emerged and a few, but not many jurisdictions grew and became stable. One of these jurisdictions is now a partner in the Common Cause movement. Those of its leaders, clerical and lay, who remember the past must surely enter this federation with some misgivings and fears.

It seems that the new Golden Age to be reproduced to create a viable Anglican alternative is based on the model of the Church of England between 1547 and 1552. The leaders of the CofE then were pre-Calvin Evangelicals, followers of Peter Martyr, Martin Bucer, Henry Bullinger and perhaps John a Lasko. The fruits of their labor are to be found in the short-lived Prayer Book of 1552 and the earlier draft Articles of Religion. Such a church died with the accession of Mary Tudor and the burning of the bishops including Cranmer, Ridley and Latimer.

True this blueprint for Anglicanism is "liberalized" to give space to charismatic worship, the ordination of women, although their ministries will not be generaly recognized, with a nod to a few Anglo-Catholics. Victorian Evangelicalism and its missionary outreach has some influence. It seems to be generally agreed that Comprehension is a bad thing, and those who remain in TEC are judged to be collaborators, hell-bent, to be shunned and exposed by self appointed inquisitors. Such a temperament will surely come back to bite any future ecclesial entity.

I welcome an attempt to bring together some of the sounder "Continuing Churches" and the Reformed Episcopal Church, whose own history is an object lesson is idealism, reaction and now a wider and salutary comprehenson. I hope the crafters of the new Anglican alternative will listen closely to those in the Continuum who have "been there, done that." I hope such leaders will be brave enough and strong enough to offer sound advice and warnings and will not be drawn down paths leading to artifical golden age religion. The Agreed Statement between the Anglican Province of Amrica and the Reformed Episcopal Church, to be found on their web sites would seem to offer a non-romantic blueprint of classical Anglicanism.

The tragedy remains in fragmentation, dreams of alternative Anglican Communions -nor for the first time in vision or creation - and an alternative TEC. The tragedy is compounded by recrimination and judgmentalism, the real loss of common cause and common witness to the best Anglicanism can be, is and will be. In such a climate it woud be easy for those of us under attack to become reactive and self-conscious or even to despair. Yet, as I have written before, any present persecution is that "light affliction" which may "gain so great a prize".

WOE IS ME

2007-09-26T17:43:00.000-05:00

"Those of us who deplore the methodology of General Convention infallibility still cannot give up the essential catholicity and liberality of Anglicanism merely because we managed to be born at a time in which the Province in which we serve seems good at erring and straying. Nothing is for ever except God and His purpose.

I am convinced that one of the great errors of this generation is that we all believe that we are stuck in a moment of time, believe that what now is is crucial and that we must fix it now or God will lose and the church fail. This is a lie from our father below.

Now if TEC abolishes its formularies, creates a liturgy incapable of grace-bearing, and annuls ministry, then that’s quite another matter. For now patient faithfulness is the calling of some of us, as best we can, under the mercy. I think I am more convinced of this now than I was a few days ago."

I wrote the above to the Covenant web site in response to some lugubrious commentary by traditionalist writers. I don't want to be unfair, but whatever "persecution" we may experience in TEC is very comfortable in comparison with that encountered by Christians in other parts of the world today and that which our spiritual ancestors suffered. We are not a very tough or brave lot today. I wonder whether there may be depression in the DNA of American traditionalists! We moan and groan, seek escape routes, use the web to attack and defame while sipping good scotch and enjoying brie and crackers. This sort of attitude seems general and not the exclusive preserve of those of us who claim the title orthodox. Cross-bearing is distinctly uncomfortable. Not getting our own way instantly or even generationally is good for us. Sef-sacrifice, suffering is the Christian menu.

It would be lovely to have lived in a golden age when all was peaceful. When, pray tell, was that? That state is not behind us, but before us, in the new Jerusalem, and God is good to give us a foretaste of that which shall be at each Eucharist, when we pray and read the Scriptures, when we do good and when we suffer bravely and cheerfully. "See how these Christians love one another. That was said of dying Christians in the arena as the crowds enjoyed cruel martyrdom. Where are our good Bishop Polycarps today?

A MINOR MIRACLE

2007-09-26T07:31:00.000-05:00

In a world of pride and hubris, the Archbishop of Canterbury would seem to stand little chance. Yet twice in the last few months, first in Canada and now in the United States his presence has contributed significantly to calm the most ardent prophets and reformers, whose addiction to Cause threatens to destroy the very vehicle they occupy.

While the answer the Episcopal Church has offered the Primates is bound not to satisfy everyone on the “right”, and it will embarrass some, it gives the necessary space for the Anglican Communion to go forward with a Lambeth Conference, the proper forum for the world episcopate to address the vexing human sexuality and authority issues as a gathered body, rather than separate groups lobbing answers at each other from afar.

The bishops go to Lambeth first of all as individuals, individually invited, and only secondly as provincial affiliates. This is a fact both they and the rest of us should stress and take in deadly earnest. They are given the opportunity to seek to shed for a space of time, jurisdictional and ethnic pride and to live into the baptismal promise the American Church constantly trumpets. Each bishop will go to Kent primarily as a baptized Christian, called to exercise episcopacy in a context. That context is both universal and local. As the late Eric Mascall suggested, they are Apostolically incorporated into the College of the Apostles, a rather more important concept than mere “succession.” They are locally appointed to an area in which they serve as proclaimers of the faith and unity of the church.

Historically provinces were a later development. In that sense they are of less importance than the international and local aspects of episcopacy. Perhaps that is an emphasis to be recovered at a moment when national locality grabs the attention and affords opportunity for sin.

The Episcopal Church’s response to the Primates embarrasses those who were banking on an excuse for schism both here in the United States and on a larger stage. The outposts of Uganda, Nigeria, Kenya and elsewhere shakily established in the United States now look unfortunate at worst and provisional and tentative at best.

As their representatives and those from the “Continuing Churches” meet now in “Common Cause” in Pittsburgh, they have been given space to get their own house in order, to take time to evaluate cooly and under the Gospel, their divisions and ambitions. What do they contribute in a positive and Gospel fashion to the peace and unity of the Church of God? The answer may not be entirely a negative one. It is a fact that thousands of Episcopalians have given up and gone into a wilderness. The wilderness is a place to find and hear God.

It would be foolishly romantic to suggest that the Episcopal Church has reformed herself or her manners. She remains very far gone from original righteousness, an unlikely home for all but the most entrenched and stubborn orthodox believer. She has hedged her bets by appealing to future consensus or not so future meetings of the oracular General Convention as times and places to resume her restless quest for special revelations from God. This being the case, it is doubtful whether she is a likely destination for those already in exile. The Episcopal Church will still be eyed with suspicion by many Global South primates, induced by American allies into premature impatience and acts violating jurisdictional integrity. They too now have a chance to pause, to step back from their own hubris and to seek to contribute positively to a solution rather than compounding the problem.

And is it too much to ask the leaders of domestic dioceses planning to leave TEC to wait and see and at least examine what the Presiding Bishop may now suggest as a pastoral solution? How the South Carolina and Chicago elections work out may determine the immediate future of these people.

Enormous gratitude is due to the Archbishop of Canterbury for his quiet, steady, patient faith and witness. No doubt the stern words of the Australian Archbishop Aspinall played a significant role in making the American bishops blink. Nor should the contribution and skills of the Presiding Bishop go unnoticed and un-praised. God has purpose in all this and that purpose has created space and time. God help us all take full advantage of such an unexpected gift.

ODD PRAYERS

2007-09-22T17:20:00.000-05:00

As I finish the Office I usually say something like this..." May St. Mary, St Thomas of Canterbury, X and all the saints pray with us, may the angels of God guard and protect us and may the souls of the faithful rest in peace." I know it all sounds frightfully High Church, but there it is.

Sometimes including today I get a wry smile as I recite these words. I remember St. Mary because she is blessed among all women and men. I remember Thomas a Becket, that very human saint, because he is the patron of my parish and I then remember whoever is commemorated in the Calendar. Today we remember that doughty bishop and Evangelical Philander Chase, Bishop of Ohio and then Illinois, founder of Kenyon College, a missionary bishop who himself and his proteges established TEC in places as far apart as Arkansas, Louisiana, Illinois and elsewhere. Chase didn't even obey the rules. He got himself elected bishop of Illinois before the diocese was received into union with TEC, without consents from the PB, the bishops and the standing committees, forcing General Convention to play catch up. Bishop John Wordsworth, son of the poet, wrote a book defending this action on grounds of "necessity and charity." That's a concept to be evaluated anew today.

My wry smile is occasioned by two factors. Chase was an Evangelical, a real Evangelical at a time when that party was great and powerful in our church. The way some people talk, Evangelicals are a new and unwelcome addition to our ranks. True they almost died out after the schism of 1873 -we've had schisms before- but they just hung on. Nothing new there. From 1662 until the early days of the next century Evangelicals were a very rare breed indeed on both sides of the Atlantic. They burst forth to new life in the 18th Century. In Anglicanism one thing is sure, nothing is for keeps. Our "progressive" friends should remember that.

I smile because Chase would be horrified that I pray "to" the saints and for the departed and that he is named with the Blessed Virgin Mary and St. Thomas of Canterbury. Chase would be equally horrified to leaf through our Prayer Book. I am pretty sure he would find it deficient in acknowledging sin, dreadful in mentioning saints and the departed, and very weak in its lop-sided doctrine of the baptismal covenant. It's not lop-sided if the credal words "for the remission of sin" are recited and remembered and believed. The Catechism can't annul the Creeds.

Nevertheless I am delighted to remember Bishop Philander Chase today and delighted to name him with the saints. He reminds us that even the most lifeless churches can be revived, that where Word and Sacrament are liturgicaly enabled, even in the context of powerless preaching and teaching, God may and does use the potential to perform the actual.

At the press conference in New Orleans someone asked the Archbishop of Canterbury what people should do in "liberal" dioceses. I can't quote his exact words but he asked, I think, whether sacramental grace remained there. That is a very Angican approach. After all, thank God, the unworthiness of the minister doesn't annul the sacrament, nor does an attenuated Gospel. I would suggest that the "unworthiness"of a diocese or a province doesn't hinder the sacrament. God is not dependent on our orthodoxy as long as the biblical channels of blessing remain intact.

Chase was the heir to the Virginia revival, in which an almost dead church was brought to life by Evangelical zeal. This was enabled because the church survived both Revolution and deadly boring Latitudinarianism, a Gospel of good works and good manners. Note that neither good works nor good manners are wrong or undesireable. Caring for marginalized people, MDGs and the like are not wrong or undesireable. But if good intentions and organized altruism were possible without "conversion" in its widest definition, the world would be a good place now. Nothing our "progressives" propose hasn't been proposed before. Unfortunately each time such a benevolent description of humanity takes hold, a frightful war intrudes to warn us that humanity, unredeemed can be devilish. Progressivism isn't possible in the Congo, Northern Uganda or Dafur. It is possible here, as long as we don't watch too much TV.

For this and many reasons I am sure that all is not lost in TEC whatever our bishops decide on Tuesday. I know with certainty that one day, beginning in the most unlikely place, God will burst onto the scene through prayerful people. I also know, as sure as eggs are eggs, that one day new Evangelicals will sink into judgementalism and "moralism" and usher in a new day of progressivism, or maybe a High Church revival. I may not believe that history repeats itself, but it does a pretty good immitation.

A WEEK OF HOPE?

2007-09-17T09:13:00.000-05:00

At the end of the Protectorate of Cromwell, father and son, those years of utter religious confusion and near anarchy in the English church, someone wrote: the "differences of honest Protestants" were confidently judged "but small compared to the bonds of union, in which they do agree as to doctrinals, morals and essentials." (John Gauden) There remained great hope that when King Charles II came home from his journeys the English Church might be reunited in the shape in which it found itself before the Laudian reforms destroyed its compact. Archbishop Laud and his friends, with the help of Charles I attempted to introduce certain practices, largely to do with furniture and millinery which caused great offense and charges of popery. For their innovations both men were judicially shortened.

It is perhaps odd to think of the High Church martyr archbishop as an innovator, so used we are to elaborate choreography and drapery in contemporary worship, and yet the Laudian reforms, as innocuous as enforcing the use of the surplice, copes in cathedrals, Godes Board placed altar-wise against the "east" wall and fenced to prevent dogs "pissing" thereon,as cause for offense and yet these liturgical innovations acted as potent symbols of something worse. Laud and his friends, it was alleged, were undermining the Reformation, and the godly settlement of religion undertaken in the reigns of Elizabeth of blessed memory and even, in the safety of hindsight, of "good" King James I.

I was thinking of this as I watched the ordination and consecration of my friend Greg Rickel as Bishop of Olympia, a romantic title if ever there was one. Greg and I served together in the Diocese of Arkansas and I came to understand him to be a person with whom there is no guile.

Some elements of the rite would have thrown most Episcopalians into a fit of the vapors forty years ago, whether they were the standard run of the mill Low Church people or one of those exotic birds who frequented the regions of the biretta belt. Here were variously clad bishops sploshing people with holy water using some kind of plant as an aspergilium. Loaves of bread and glasses of wine were consecrated and who knows who consumed the elements afterwards all to a rite not contained in the Book of Common Prayer but rather culled from various permitted and innovative manuals of devotion.

There again, the use of a Table drawn close to the people would have gladdened the more Puritan Anglican of the early 17th Century. What links Greg's consecration with the fears of the anti-Laudian party is the suspicion that beneath all these innovations in rites and ceremonies, millinery and furniture lies a radical revision of religion. No one can accuse the innovators of papism, as they did the Laudian party, but those who are disturbed by the trends in official religion, for Laud was an official as is our present Presiding Bishop, also look back in sorrow as do many in our church today to the days when Johnson or Nixon were kings and the church looked different and sounded different.

After the upheaval of the Cromwellian years, as the king prepared to return the English Church was given an extraordinary chance to reconcile factions and reunite. Surely moderate puritans like Richard Baxter, offered a bishopric by the king at least at first, might be found a place in a restored church?

Sadly between 1660 and 1662 optimism about reconciliation was submerged by a victorious and vengeful Cavalier party intent on instituting the Laudian innovations and punishing those who had supported the Commonwealth. So came the Act of Uniformity, the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, the great ejection of over four hundred clergy from their parishes and punitive acts against those who stubbornly stayed outside the Established Church. The price of such conformity was the loss of any real claim of the Church to be the Church of All England. Gradually denominationalism, such as we see in America overtook the vision of one church in one nation. The Established Church, established to this day, never really recovered numerically from the losses during and after the Civil War.

Our bishops inherited a comprehensive church, granted less comprehensive liturgically than it once was, yet still a church of diverse custom, and opinion. Some Provinces in the communion enjoy this heritage, while others, where missionaries of one party or another were ascendant, have a more monochrome aspect. It was once thought that diversity was one of Anglicanism's gifts to ecumenism. It was possible for people with seemingly mutually exclusive beliefs to dwell in one house together, not always without discord and rows, but nevertheless as one family. What united us was the diocesan and parochial system and Prayer Book worship. What preserved this often fragile unity was an unwillingness to promulgate and enforce doctrines, or practices which would violate the conscience of a significant constituency or "party".

Such a compact did not mean in practice that doctrines were not taught and practices not indulged which were controversial or even taxed the patience and consciences of those opposed to them. What it did mean was that such doctrines and practices received no official sanction. In this seemingly anarchical playground, space and room was given to allow new and old ideas to be presented, tried, amended and often discarded without their becoming the subject of formal legislative debate, at least until a Gamaliel judgement was given time to do its work. That is what reception used to mean to an Anglican.

If our bishops, meeting in New Orleans wish to follow the bad example of the Cavaliers in 1662, our church will become narrower, less diverse and less tolerant. On the other hand if our bishops take extraordinary steps in extraordinary times to preserve our comprehensive heritage, who knows what God will do in our midst?

A NEW BAPTISMAL THEOLOGY

2007-09-15T10:37:00.000-05:00

This article has been written for the Covenant web site by me and I reproduce it here. Please become a subscriber to: http://covenant-communion.com/

In the past day a group of lawyer bishops have produced a report which attacks the idea of an Anglican Covenant out of hand and which proposes that the baptismal rite in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer and the teachings stemming therefrom in the Catechism are a radical reformation of our theology from which now originate changes in our concept of discipleship. The authors note that other ecumenical documents from about that time period (the Seventies) undergird such a claim, but that many Provinces of the Anglican Communion have yet to adapt to this new theological method in their rites and teachings. This, in part, it is suggested, explains the differences of approach between the North American provinces of the Communion and all others. There seems to be no awareness of or consideration of any further study on baptism since that time.

Most of the contents of the bishops’ findings should not take up our time. One is reminded of a Dan Brown novel in which a hidden document reveals that everyone has been wrong or ill-informed until now, or at least the Seventies when suddenly and in America new light bursts forth. Indeed there’s not much difference in method here than in that found in the justifications for any of the other “nativist” religious movements which emerged in America in the 19th Century. Golden tablets may seem rather more romantic than the findings of lawyer bishops, who note that entirely new interpretations of Scripture now suddenly burst forth and new concepts of just what a Christian is emerge from a re-appraisal of baptism.

One of the arguments between Catholics and Protestants at the Reformation and until now centers on just how grace “works” in the sacraments. Is sacramental grace “invincible” in that it is offered in the sacrament whether the recipient seeks the grace or is prepared to receive the grace or not, or does the receptive state of the recipient determine whether grace abounds or not? Nothing is as simple as it sounds, and the Catholic would assert that the recipient of a sacrament should be in a “state of grace” to receive the gift, or there are consequences. Nor am I absolutely sure that a “receptionist” would want to make Jesus and His Presence entirely a matter of the receptive nature of the receiver: too much like works righteousness.

I raise this question because our lawyer-bishops seem to propose that the theology of a baptismal “covenant” -but they say they are against covenants - is now divorced from any scriptural or credal teachings, among them that baptism is “for or by the remission of sins.” While “mutual ministry” doctrine is not clearly articulated in this paper, what is assumed is that all Christian ministries have their origin in baptism and that ergo all the baptized are to be included in all ministries to which the church discerns they have a calling. Certainly the unbroken teaching of the Church has been that in baptism all our incorporated into Christ and therefore into His ministry as prophet, priest and king. The source of the charisms of ministry is in the water of baptism rightly administered with the Trinitarian formula. That last caveat should be noted and remains the clear teaching of the Prayer Book and the Catechism.

An Evangelical and I would suggest an earlier Tractarian would object to bishops’ thesis in two particulars. The first is that it lacks a “moral” component. The second is that the bishops say too little rather than too much about their “discovery.”
My use of the word “moral” takes us into dangerous grounds, for to most of us the word “moral” immediately suggests sex. That is a commentary on our times rather than theology. For “moral” I might propose the word suitable or apt, not perfect synonyms, but good enough for my purpose. While all the baptized may forensically be suitable or apt candidates for any form of ministry lay or ordained, it is surely obvious, even to the most sentimentally obtuse that all are not really suitable or apt candidates. I do not discount the power of grace to make up for deficiencies in talent or ability, but there would be no point in our present elaborate methods of discernment if all shall win and all take the prize.

A discernment committee is quite right to suggest that Susy’s chronic bad temper makes her a less than suitable candidate to serve as a deacon. A moral judgement is here made. But why should chronically choleric people be excluded? The fact that Frank has dreadful problems with comprehension would perhaps rule out a seminary education, although one remembers the Cure de Ars and wonders. To say to the world that persons living together in a sexual relationship outside the bounds of matrimony is a given based on their baptism asks us to suspend all moral or “suitability” judgments. It would be one thing if our part of the church had concluded that such relationships are valid and that, all things being equal, their intimate lives were not to be considered in any suitability investigation. I am not suggesting that our “church” is competent to make such a decision, I am merely stating a fact. The Episcopal Church doesn’t permit its clergy or ordinands to have sexual relationships outside matrimony. That’s the truth. To suggest that it does, and it does because all the baptized, whatever their talents or suitability are apt candidates for all ministries is sheer nonsense.There are all sorts of lifestyle matters rightly to be considered in discerning vocation.

Some suggest that what the church seeks from same-sex partners is a real attempt to live in chastity as is asked of married couples. That may be true. But from whence does one deduce such a standard, such a moral principle? I am not even suggesting that the Church and the churches may not find a way to incorporate “blessed” same-sex couples living chastely into its moral economy. I am saying that at the moment this has not happened. Yet our lawyer-bishops insist that the Communion should allow us to break our own Canons. Strange talk for lawyers.

That takes me on to a wider consideration of baptism. It seems to be suggested by some that baptism is the lowest common denominator in Christian math. I would suggest the contrary. If my baptism initiates me into the Kingdom along with my Roman Catholic relatives, my Baptist acquaintances and my Methodist friends, surely this interconnectiveness extends to my Anglican sisters and brothers in a more immediate sense.

I cannot at the moment express my oneness with the fellow-baptized in other jurisdictions and denominations in any satisfactory manner. I regret this and want to work to find ways in which we can do more and more together. I can do something about my relationships with fellow Anglicans. I can because the structure is in place. And if the structure in place at the moment impedes a fullest possible relationships, surely I must work to clarify those structures?

Our lawyer-bishops fear a Covenant. They even suggest that the present draft proposal for a Covenant is the final word and that therefore, on that basis, any covenant violates a newly discovered unwritten constitution which governs inter-Anglican relationships. Both are straw men. We shall not see what a proposed Covenant looks like until the newest proposals, whatever they may be, are debated by the bishops at Lambeth and then in the legislative bodies of each constituent Province. As to there being an unwritten constitution for the Communion, if such a constitution vouchsafes itself in precedent, precedents such as the development of the Instruments of Unity, moments when the Archbishop of Canterbury, with consent, has entered into the internal affairs of Provinces, such as Rwanda and the Sudan, all point towards a more robust understanding of Communion rather than a “federal” model. If baptism means anything it means living into the fullest possible relationships for “we are no longer Jew or Greek”, TECITES or Nigerians, “it is not possible for us to be male or female, bond or free, we are all one in Christ.” St. Paul isn’t suggesting the equivalent of the local ministerial alliance as a pattern for the Church or the churches.
I shall spare no space in commenting on our lawyer-bishops’ interpretation of the works of Richard Hooker, or of their reliance on some recent opinions on the Constitution of the Anglican Consultative Council, a narrow document for a narrow purpose which has little to do with anything beyond the mechanism of the ACC. I can only lament that their glorious baptismal vision bogs down in moralism and in the most attenuated vision of our Ecumenical vocation for the Communion and beyond. They seem to say, despite the nods to African culture that we are not our brothers’ keeper. TEC is all in all, has been given a new revelation and should be left alone to pursue its dreams. I hope their wishes are not fulfilled for the sake of the Communion and for the sake of the whole Church here on earth.

VICHY

2007-09-10T17:50:00.000-05:00

The writer of a well known blog, commenting on another blog, in considering the new web site "Covenant "and its authors, blurted out the word "Vichy." When I lived in France the train from Paris to Clermont-Ferrand often stopped at Vichy. I wanted to get out and explore, to see whether the ghosts of Lavel and Petain wander the streets. I never did, not even to taste the waters.

My father won the Military Cross fighting the Axis and spend years in Italian and German prisoner of war camps. I am looking at his photograph now, in his officer's uniform (Royal Tank Corp). He sports a formidable mustache and looks very handsome. His family left Nantes in the 17th Century for Martinique and then St. Lucia. My great-great grandfather married the daughter of the first banker in St Lucia. Visiting the island some years ago I found the old family house and sat on a bench in the park in Castries dedicated to Alexandre Clavier.

Matt says that my friends and I, including my gentle son, are collaborators. Our alleged sin is to suggest that the Anglican Communion has mechanisms to deal with offending member churches, and these "mechanisms" must be permitted to do their job and given that respect due to them. The old Catechism says a great deal about respecting those in authority and there's no small print about our having the right to rebel if we don't approve of the way they act. Surely the old Catechism has as much authority as the Articles?

"To submit myself to all my governors, teachers, spiritual pastors and masters: To order myself lowly and reverently to all my betters: To be true and just in all my dealings: To bear no malice nor hatred in my heart."

No this isn't the Catechism of a monarchy. It was TEC's catechism until supplemented in 1928. Times have changed. Certainly the Archbishop of Canterbury is my spiritual pastor. If we are going to be traditionalists lets live into our tradition!

Well, Matt's judgement isn't very Christian. I don't think he knows one of us, has chatted with us over a pint, doesn't know my Airedale's name, and yet he feels free to be gratuitously insulting. I don't agree with him but I certainly wouldn't write rude and insulting labels to stick over the cross on his forehead. OK Luther was rude to Erasmus, but I would say that in being rude, he sinned. It's like the suggestion that as there have been schisms in the past, schism today is acceptable. We are talking about the Church and not the Confederacy.

We used to burn bishops at the stake or disembowel Jesuits in public executions. Mercifully we don't anymore. It may sound snobbish but Anglicanism is also about the "village" and about civility and liberality as well as about sound doctrine and right worship. These are not menu items. They are the meal.

IMPUDENCE?

2007-09-08T16:47:00.000-05:00

I write this with some trepidation, although my thoughts in this area have been with me since I first went to college over forty-seven years ago. I had been taught in my ignorance that "private judgement" as related to Scripture and doctrine and indeed discipline, was a theory which came to life in late 18th Century Evangelicalism, largely because those wonderful people mistook the theory of perspecuity (the Bible is open to believers) with the disciplinary practice of the major churches affected by or founded at the Reformation. For instance, our own Reformers gave to the collective "institutional church" the right to determine the outcome of controversies in doctrine, although not of doctrine itself. The right was not given to parish priests, literate laity, theologians or even bishops per se. The authority was given to the "national church." Do note that our Reformers said very little about a level above the local church, not because they believed that the national church was "it", but because in a divided Christendom the only way to hear the voice of the larger church was to go back to the Undivided Church and particularly the Councils. This they did. Jewel did, Hooker did, Andrewes did, evangelical, broad and catholic.

Because of this realism, Anglicans were often accused of archeological religon and it was this barb, framed by Dr Wiseman, which probably finally pushed Newman to Rome. Some Anglo-Catholics seek to find some essential authoritative commonality within contemporary "Catholic Christendom" but that requires a reductionism and an over-simplification of some proportion.

For a few decades now using private judgement, even in the context of some consensus, we have been told to believe that we cannot return to Fathers and Councils, because their conclusions were those of "winners" and therefore suspect at least. (Winners nowadays are good and uninfluenced by contemporary political and social theory!) For instance our theology of Orders must now bow to the sort of theory first proposed by 16th Century Anabaptists and those who later would become Congregationalists and Baptists. Well not quite so. The modern theory that all "ordination" happens at baptism and all ministries are merely recognition by the church of talents or charisms given in baptism, would not have set well with those who saw conversion as the real thing and baptism as a mere symbol. But of course if the Eucharist is to be opened to the non-baptised, we shall all soon be Brownites, except Mr. Brown would not have permitted the non-baptized to participate in the Lord's Supper. Now we have radical Anabaptism on our hands. (Notice that few dare reduce episcopacy to mere function.)

I've often said that Rome once seemed to teach that the only priests who were priests were priests, while extreme Protestants taught that the only people who were not priests were "priests". Few now notice that the doctrine of the Priesthood of All Believers is primarily about Jesus and only by extension about us. All ministry belongs to Jesus, and as PT Forsyth put it, "we are his curates."

So we are asked to believe that early Christians were egalitarian Democrats (maybe Republicans too) until the Order of Priesthood devolved from the episcopate, and then by dreadful papish plot, deacons were flung from the nest. We are asked to believe that all those delicious gnostic texts -never mind that Gnostics tended to be as puritan as our right-wing moralists - were condemned by power play of "orthodox" males who with the help of Constantine ( George Bush of his day) - we forget what happened after he died - made the church boring and Roman Catholic and masculine.

As long as the authors of texts supplying this Dan Brown version of Church History inhabit Chairs, or thrones our seminarians bow the knee to authority and our church undergirds policy by recourse to what in reality has no authority other than private judgement. Now Global South bishops join in the method and perhaps the madness.

Before some of you jump and clap, let me say that one of the glories of Anglicanism is the freedom given to its scholars and laity to read, to explore, to propose, "to criticize" anything and everything without being hauled before an inquisitional tribunal. (Bishops, I believe are not as free by virtue of their job description and oaths. I would extend this to parish priests in public exposition, and preaching. This in no way prevents responsible enquiry or a refusal to discuss alternative ideas and theories, hope and doubts.) The fault lies not there, but in the fact that we have all forgotten where authority lies. Anglicans were once thought to be grown up enough to respect authority without being burnt thereto The fault is in our willingness to confuse the faith of the Church as expressed, however archeologically until unity returns, in Church Formularies, with private speculation, and to confuse ecclesial authority with private speculation, however popular. It is one thing, for instance, to speculate about the origins and development of ministries and quite another to set up a mandatory system based on that speculation. It may also be one thing to explore ways to minister honestly to same-sex couples and quite another to set up an authorized "system" permitting that which the Church does not sanction. And no amount of votes in synods makes one into another.

THE CROSS

2007-09-07T17:45:00.000-05:00

Mark 15:22-32 (NRSV)

Mark's stark version of the crucifixion is the lesson at Evensong today. There's a lot of controversy about what Atonement means -nothing at all new there - but if it means nothing much than an ethical program, we don't seem to offer much in Christ to the proposing young terrorist, to whom life-giving in the context of killing others, is the gateway to heaven and the services of heavenly prostitutes.

If we, in a fit of enormous charity, suggest that in all important matters, all religions say the same thing, are we selling short our own Gospel and its power to transform whole individuals? If we merely suggest an ethical program of self-denial, and suggest parallels in other Sacred Writings, are we not merely tarted up Pelagians? Mind you Pelagius was a severe old Brit, so perhaps we aren't even Pelagians.

Does not the Gospel propose to those whose behaviors threaten themselves and worst still others "the power of God unto salvation," a restorative and forgiving process achieved by a daily application of infused love by the merits and death of Jesus? Jesus really said nothing new. What he did was new and because it was to most people obscene, a scandal, it remains an enormous and staggering proposal. It is obscene to willingly die for others when one has the power to save oneself, even to propose another less painful and ethical way pehaps to save others. After all what of Jesus' responsibility to his mother, brethren and friends? What of leaving a new Movement in the hands of incompetants -thus apostolic succession! Yet he surrenders to corrupt clergy and politicians and dies, wherefore He is now highly exalted, to whom every knee shall bow.

Moral and ethical proposals are vital, but to offer them as a substitute for wrong-headed self-sacrifice seems daft. The terrorist has a supporting community and believes he or she has God's blessing and so sets a bomb off in a market. Because Jesus died and rose again, we have a supporting community, living and dead, the Church and are assured of daily Grace and Forgiveness because Jesus allowed himself to be killed on a hill far away. That's the Gospel. To give one's life to such a saviour is perhaps still an extraordinary proposal particularly if by so doing we may also "save" others in the market place.

COVENANT

2007-09-07T10:16:00.000-05:00

Brothers and Sisters:

I want to commend to you all a new, well, I suppose it is a blog site,
but I hope and pray rather more than the term implies:
http://covenant-communion.com/.

It is a site born in hope and faith, and even some charity, for those who do not
want to see our church and the Communion torn apart, particularly but
not solely because of our mutual responsibility to our journeyers in
Baptism in other jurisdictions, churches and denominations for whom
Anglican anarchy cannot be anything but a dreadful blow to all
Christians have worked for for a century.

While I suspect that many of us endorse the idea of an Anglican Covenant, the title of this new forum is not connected to that concept. We will also welcome writers and readers from all parts of the Anglican spectrum who believe in the Anglican Communion and who find the Windsor Report, with all its imperfections, the best available road map for the immediate future. However the WR is not an Anglican formulary and it is good in a post-modern area not to use documents or even blog sites as a means to find comfort among those we think are like us in some way or another. From the outset Anglicanism, as a separate "face" in Christendom, has been a communion of the unlike bound together by liturgy and a common structure and sense of "place" rather than by confessional accord.

Covenant is also a small act of confidence in the God whose will is to
be done on earth as it is in Heaven.

You will recognize the names of some of the
contributors who threaten to write in the future and who endorse the
birth of "Covenant" at this particular moment. And if in your
conservatism, liberal or traditionalist, you do not wish to be
disturbed, do at least look at the site for its artistic and
structural qualities.

Please pray for those of us to whom this has become a faith-project of
significance. I pray that Covenant will become part of your experience
in the future.

INCOMPETENCE

2007-09-06T09:32:00.000-05:00

Until perhaps thirty-five years ago the standard text for part of the Doctrine component of a seminary education was Bicknell on the Thirty-Nine Articles. Back then the Articles were described by our Constitution as being "in use" in all dioceses and missionary dioceses and commentaries on Canon Law suggested that the oaths clergy then took included the Articles in their orbit. Bicknell was first published in 1919. My copy is the one revised by Harry Carpenter, Bishop of Oxford in the 1950s. Of course Evangelicals in those days preferred a commentary by Griffith Thomas. I have no idea what is used today. I have Alister McGrath's "Christian Theology" - he doesn't mention Hooker even as a foot note! - which one supposes is in succession to those useful manuals once authored by people such as CB Moss and Francis Hall. I'm also fond of Geoffrey Wainwright's "Doxology" and to return to the Articles proudly possess a copy of Bishop Forbes' "An Explanation of the Thirty_Nine Articles: which he dedicated to Dr. Pusey. I digress, but only to make the astounding suggestion that a study of the Articles once gave us some inkling as to the levels of competence and incompetence enjoyed by the various levels of the Church.

I have no idea what texts were in the hands of our bishops when they attended seminary, or whether any sustained, systematic study of "Dogmatics" was presented to them. I have a lurking suspicion that for the past number of decades, any attempt to provide theological students with a curriculum based thoroughly on Anglican texts and of course fleshed out with other bodies of divinity has been absent. Anecdotally I am struck by the number of bright theologs I know who have stumbled upon classical Anglican authors by accident rather than intent.

In my day the onslaught on the authority of Scripture was in full swing, but study of Patristics, Church History and Anglican Doctrine Discipline and Worship hadn't yet reached the point where any "traditional" approach to anything was deemed suspicious, and that which emerged from the Conciliar period "dissed" as the triumph of the "winners". Mind you the present "winners" and their version, it is assumed, is pristine in its conclusions and not at all influenced by contemporary power blocks or socio-political considerations!

I bore you with all this because I am amazed how easily we all seem to speak from a level of incompetence. By "incompetence" I do not mean ignorance, but rather our asserting an authority we do not possess. Clergy and vestries make decisions to permit rites which are not permitted, or to "leave the church" as if they had the moral and spiritual competence to make such a collective decision. Bishops and diocesan officials plan to secede, nominating committees include candidates for election to the episcopate unqualified by Canon, General Conventions assume that they may do as they please, given the requisite majority vote, protesting a level of particular competence of astounding audacity. Groups of Primates presume to speak for the Communion, trotting out pious statements about fidelity to the Gospel, as if, when one feels sufficiently provoked, one may take a scalpel to separate the Gospel from the Church in order to create an ecclesial association of the like-minded.

Even Colenso, or the Kenyan Bishops in the Kikuyu Controversy, the Bishop of Hong Kong and astoundingly, the Canadian and American Churches over the ordination of women, were unable to provoke their opponents to the measure of incompetency we now encounter almost every day. One can only conclude that as no one much is intentionally formed in the basics of what Evangelicals and Catholics alike once called Churchmanship, now all may win and all may take the prize, all are competent to take what action may be deemed expedient as long as God, or the Bible or some other standard are invoked. Our new Anglican mission statement is surely the last verse of the Book of Judges!

BLIMEY

2007-09-04T08:33:00.000-05:00

"Blimey" is a Cockney expression indicating surprise. My last blog provoked some incendiary responses on a blog site frequented by many who have left TEC or contemplate so doing as soon as possible. Now I do realize that Christian character is something we all have to work on. Even those who believe in instant conversion, and surely there are those who are blessed in this way, expect that the road to sanctification is long and often uneven. Yet I remain astounded at the lack of self control or self-evaluation on the part of those who are so ready to condemn sexual failures and yet who indulge in anger, gossip-mongering and a love of exposing what they believe to be the sins of others with little or no readiness to confront their own demons.

The watching world, no stranger to the sort of hypocrisy that delights in the misdeed of politicians and pop stars, while indulging readily in the freedom modern American society provides, remains rightly offended by the sight of Christians going after each other with abandon. Non Christians have little equipment or inclination to decide which of us is the more orthodox or progressive. They do detect humbug and nastiness and we are the ones who provide them with adequate reasons not to contemplate the richness of the Gospel.

Perhaps "witness" is something we have largely forgotten in the midst of the fight. We may have success in "converting" people who are by temperament not adverse to the judging business, or who share our social or political views. But what of those who fit into neither category -how we love categories - who yearn for a greater meaning in life than that which they have, but see our Church as an unsafe place for anyone who is not a crusader for this, that or the other? And what of those who have left our parishes, not to start a new fellowship, but to escape the sort of fanatical hatred they have witnessed as parishioners take up arms against each other, and shower the emails and the tract rack with polemics.

Our Anglican/Episcopal tradition at its best has been a gentle, worldly-wise, patiently pastoral faith, developed by the realization that the principles of the few are rarely embraced by the many, to whom their parish church has been a place in which the important events of their lives have been celebrated and where, in the liturgy and the Christian Year they have found comfort and solace. True such a religion is small beer to the enthusiast and not the stuff which changes the world, or does it? Yet our tradition has produced a legion of unsung saints, nurtured by Prayer Book Christianity, parochial life, and the rhythm of "Catholic" devotion. Perhaps that which is taking away from the Episcopal Church its authenticity, is not the causes and the trumpeting of agenda, but the eradication of that quiet space in which women and men and young people may find the Lord of the Church in unspectacular devotion and service.

OF BISHOPS AND HASTE

2007-09-01T16:47:00.000-05:00

Gracious me, being an "ex-bishop" is fast losing its cache. While there are three of us in TEC at the moment, consecrations like grace abound. Anglicans in America managed well for two hundred years without bishops, and then, those seeking ordination risked long and dangerous voyages to England and back in sailing ships, often disease-containers, scurvey ridden and in danger of shipwreck or piracy. Now one may wing to Africa is hours in almost complete security. So why on earth does the USA need eleven bishops to care for perhaps 120 new congregations? Why are these congregations allied to different Provinces of the Communion? Did someone come up with the idea that if a number of Provinces violate historic Western polity it would be impossible for the Archbishop of Canterbury or the Primates to discipline them? There seems to be a "political" ingredient in all this that could only have been dreamed up in America!

None of these men have been elected by their followers. I was four times and each time by large syodical majorities. The four elections, or at least three of them, were the result of mergers. These new bishops have been appointed by African Provinces. I suppose that is the right of such churches. That they have been apointed to serve in the United States is extraordinary. True bishops of the Philippine Independent National Catholic Church, which is in communion with TEC, have appointed bishops to serve Filipinos in America. That is slightly different as the PINCC is a different "rite" than an Anglican Church. The Mar Thoma Church of South India may also have a bishop here, I'm not sure. But in each case agreements have been forged between TEC and the jurisdiction at hand. I believe the Church of South India at least used to have congregations in the US.

Orthodoxy has overlapping jurisdictions outside its own historical territory, but that is justified on rather dubious ethic grounds as is the presence of Uniate jurisdictions in the US within the Roman Catholic Church

What makes this hard to take is that Global South jurisdictions, in response to TEC's unilateralism and utter failure to enforce its own doctrine, discipline and worship, now adopts unilateralism itself. Two wrongs do not make a right, except in politics and one fears that this is all politics. Cries of Scriptural, traditional, canonical orthodoxy are drowned out by activities which find no support in scripture, tradition, ecclesiology or the doctrine, discipline and worship shared by Anglicans.

All this "in your face" politics is surely copied from American secular politics. It certainly has no Christian foundation. Rather than turning the other cheek, forgiving until seventy times seven, refusing to judge, we now seek ways to respond in kind, to force our opponent onto the ropes, and to deliver the knock out punch. So much mirror imaging may be found if one compares a good deal to be found on the Stand Firm and Fr. Jake blog sites. It's fascinating. The same excuse is trotted out. The church has to be defended, Those who subvert the church must be exposed. A pure church must emerge. "Those who take the sword shall perish by the sword."

It would take the wisdom of a Solomon to sort out this dreadful mess. One can only hope that the Archbishop of Canterbury will be given special grace and patience. He seems to have two choices. The first would be to send TEC and the Global South people into exile for a time certain, to lament their sins. The second would be to invite almost everyone to Lambeth and let them sort it out among themselves. Those who refuse to attend should be formally censured for committing an Anglican deadly sin. Bad Manners.

POLITICS AS USUAL

2007-08-24T09:52:00.000-05:00

Those of you who know me, one way or another, realize that I love words and hate to surrender them when they are misused. Of course its a dangerous vocation because there's always someone around who wants to catch one out. It is in this vein that I write about politics. It's amusing, all right, annoying when a politician accuses a foe of "playing politics." Politics is (are) necessary and unavoidable. What is avoidable, one hopes for Christians, is the use of political methods and habits which are not "holy". "All's fair in love and war" and religion it would seem.

I was thinking of this when I read about the Bishop of New Hampshire's plans, and date for entering into a "civil partnership". when I read the Minns/Akinola missive and mulled over the agenda adopted by the ACN Oh yes and the coy letter from the Sydney bishops to the Archbishop of Canterbury. The problem is that when one suggests that political methods are inappropriate as tools in the Christian arsenal, one is accused of being a pacifist. I should think that any Christian worth her or his salt has gone back to the issue of pacifism over and over again and felt uneasy. But I don't think I am a pacifist in a precise sense. On the other hand I do take our Lord's words about cheek turning, "until seventy times seven", walking the extra mile, disposing of clothing and cross-bearing as an important area in which I should be earnest if seldom successful.

I don't blame the Archbishop of Canterbury's taking a sabbatical at this time. Perhaps he is reminding us all that a season of prayer and study, even in, or perhaps more vitally in times of crisis is splendidly Christian and a true mark of leadership. I do hope that the Archbishop hasn't read the threats, promises and insults aimed at him by liberals and conservatives alike. In the world of politics, character assassination is fair game, particularly in America. So are brinkmanship, seeking to force someone's hand, threatening a withdrawal of funds or help, law suits, and the whole arsenal of "in your face tactics" about which there emanates the smell of sulphur. Certainly it is more difficult for the Archbishop of Canterbury, the other Instruments of Unity in the Communion, even our own bishops to address calmly and dispassionately the extraordinary problems they face when all and sundry do their best to beat the drums of war.

I would not blame the archbishop at all if he flew to New Orleans, met the bishops and then said to us all, "Cool it" or however that is expressed in academic English. I would not blame him if he urged the primates to invite all to Lambeth and then locked them all in the University of Kent on a diet of shepherds' pie and Bishop's Finger ale, provided only with the 1549 BCP in its original English, and perhaps the Britches Bible until they emerge saying, "It seems good the Holy Spirit and to us."

Why was +Rowan Williams appointed Archbishop of Canterbury? That we can't know for sure. If one compares him with the long line of archbishops who have occupied the throne of St. Augustine he stands out and is numbered in a very small and select company of them for his holiness, scholarship, humility and brilliance. I wouldn't say that he is a brilliant strategist or politician or even an ordinary one. There are plenty around on all sides who one might fit into such a category. Indeed his reputation suffers in the media and among his peers because he is extraordinary and people, yes even bishops, don't really like extraordinary people. They tend to make one feel inadequate, not a sensation beloved among purple personages liberal or conservative.

I believe that +Rowan's gifts are for such a time as this. The answer to our present dilemma is not to be found in politics, the triumphalism (or defeatism) of the Cause-champions, in strategies, calculations, threats and counter-threats, but in patience, long-suffering, humility, love, empathy, in loving even those who despitefully use us, in speaking the truth in self-sacrificing love. In such a context all "sides", "parties", factions, theological positions and most of all the practice of true religon among us come under judgement and no one may cast the first stone.

There can be no solution to the things that so grievously beset us until we abandon politics as usual and return to a humble waiting on God. We all need to repent, we all need to seek reconciliation, we all need to cool it.

WINDSOR BISHOPS' STATEMENT

2007-08-16T08:50:00.000-05:00

I hesitate to write this column because it is really inviting disaster! So far there has been no official or unofficial statement from the "Windsor Bishops" who met at Camp Allen in Texas a few days ago. In case, dear reader, you do not know what a "Windsor" bishop is, I must explain that they are bishops of the Episcopal Church who publicly endorse the thrust of the "Windsor Report" in which our church has been asked by the rest of the Anglican Communion to cease and desist from what has become a habit. The habit is to take actions on issues which determine a course of action, a doctrine or a practice about which the Communion has no common mind, the result of which may well be division and disunity. In short Americans and Canadians are being reminded that actions have consequences and that we are our brothers and sisters keepers.

Windsor bishops are not to be confused with bishops who for one reason or another keep their heads down and hope things will go away or with Network bishops although some Network bishops are also Windsor bishops. Confused? If there's one thing to learn about the "conservative" scene in America, in church as well as state, it is that there will be divisions within, factions and an alphabet soup of organizations, each with leadership and turf and a good deal of mutual animosity.

Network bishops and their supporters, at a recent meeting, also in Texas, demonstrated a lack of trust in, and patience for, the process outlined by Windsor and subsequent meetings of the Anglican primates. (When Network people speak of primates, they tend to forget that all Anglican primates are not members of the Global South group, all are not "conservative" or "traditionalist" although it is fairly safe to say that all are exasperated that we have arrived at this moment of division largely because we have neither the skills nor the patience to "discern" in organized conversation for any length of time at all.) If there's one thing in common between Episcopalian liberals and conservatives, and there are many, it is that everything must be done immediately, now and in the form of legislation or political strategy. Control is definitely the "in" thing. Such habits are not obtained through prayer and fasting but rather by a studied observation of the manner in which political parties, lobbies and candidates do business in the modern state.

I digress. The Network bishops, having lost patience, want to create an alternative Episcopal Church in the United States now. Windsor bishops want to wait to see how the Episcopal Church responds to the Primates at the end of September, after the House of Bishops meets with the Archbishop of Canterbury. Windsor bishops want to allow the primates to respond and want the response of the various Instruments of Unity, the catch phrase for the major elements created to give coherence and unity to the Anglican Communion. They are, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Anglican Consultative Council (made up of bishops, other clergy and laity from the constituent provinces), the Primates' Committee -all the "first among equal" chief bishops of the Communion provinces, and the Lambeth Conference, a meeting of those bishops invited by the Archbishop of Canterbury to meet to discuss, pray and speak to and for the whole Communion. The Lambeth Conference is scheduled to meet next year. Preliminary invitations have been sent to most diocesan bishops.

I am delighted that the "Windsor Bishops" haven't issued a statement. I hope they won't. I hope they possess their souls in patience until they have met in the House of Bishops, listened to the Archbishop of Canterbury and taken a full part in framing the response of the House of Bishops to the Communique issued by the Primates at the end of their meeting in Tanzania. There has been entirely too much talk, too much posturing, too many position statements.

Now if our bishops fail to give an adequate response to the Primates, then will be the time for the Windsor bishops to speak to the church and speak clearly for the church. What would failure to give an adequate response look like? It is being argued that the bishops cannot, according to our polity, speak for the church. I believe that opinion to be wrong headed. Certainly the House of Bishops, on its own, cannot legislate for the church. There's a good deal of difference between speaking for the church and legislating for the church. The bishops, together, preferably by consensus, after prayer and fasting, may speak on those matters which pertain to the spiritual and practical functions of bishops. They may make decisions about worship, as long as they do not prohibit liturgical texts and practices authorized or authorize liturgies which conflict with the formularies now in place in our church. In short they may not approve of rites and ceremonies which take us further than current provisions authorize.

Bishops also have the final say in the matter of who is or is not ordained and collectively a collective "say" with the standing committees on the matter of who is or is not ordained or consecrated to the episcopate. For bishops to determine that they will not authorize that which has not been authorized is, one presumes, well within their scope of collective authority! For bishops to authorize that which is not authorized, even by committing themselves to turn a blind eye would be a "legislative" action and beyond the competence of the House of Bishops unless performed during General Convention and with the consent of the House of Deputies. One hopes that the Windsor bishops will counsel their sisters and brothers to act strictly within their powers. If they so do, and all of the bishops concur, or most of them, the primates should be satisfied.

The Communion could then go ahead on the matter of a Covenant or some other instrument or "process" to ensure that Provinces live into interdependence as autonomous units within the wholeness of Communion. The Lambeth Conference might then be able to devote time and space to a healthy discussion of the subjects which seem to divide us, the issue of authority, of biblical authority, of scripture, tradition and reason, of the nature of communion and autonomy, all subjects which are involved in describing and limiting a fellowship or society in which prayerful, theological and pastoral discussion about human nature and the human condition may be contemplated and the will of God discerned. Without a mutual understanding about who we are and how we function, it is impossible to debate or consider much at all. Structure isn't an optional extra. The Gospel and the Catholic Church are not two subjects, but a single principle. Scripture, tradition and reason are not three subjects, from among which we may pick our favorite. They constitute a wholeness, a unity which points to the unity-in-community which is God in Trinity.

If the view triumphs that constituent Provinces are totally and completely free to do as they please, if that is what autonomy means -then I doubt there's much Christian to salvage. Who among us is so autonomous that she or he may do exactly as one pleases? Even God doesn't claim such an autonomy! If the view triumphs that individual provinces or groups of them are free to determine the ecclesial status of another Province without some mutual agreement that in a specific area they are free to determine the limits of communion, then what we mean by Communion is rendered nonsense. If provinces are free to set up shop in another jurisdiction unless mutual consent or at least an authoritative consent by the instruments of unity has been forthcoming, then what we mean by Communion is merely anarchy.

I have said elsewhere they I don't approve of deadlines. Well we have one coming up. I hope our bishops won't take umbrage about the deadline imposed by the primates, won't let pride assert itself, resist a "Bushish" response, don't wrap themselves in a Cause which assumes the mantle of total Gospel at the expense of that which is affirmed in our baptisms. I hope they will be humble in asserting that which they believe they are called to say and that say that clearly and will be equally clear in striving to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. Jesus prayed that "They may be one." Please Lord, make that our prayer. It would be tragically odd if Twenty-first Century bishops by action or inaction embrace Sixteenth Century means and methods and rend the church for the sake of whatever. Do I believe that schism, who ever is responsible or who ever walks apart is worse than heresy? I think I now believe that schism is heresy and heresy is schism for both tear apart that very fabric designed to enable us to learn from God and from one another in God.

REMNANT

2007-08-14T08:37:00.000-05:00

I realize that the concept of "the remnant" is biblical, but it still reminds me of a bit of cast off cloth, a "second" one may find in outdoor markets. Thus when I read of traditionalists as being a faithful remnant, I understand the OT allusion, but I am left feeling rather rejected. I wonder whether it is even an appropriate metaphor for those of us who can recite the Creeds without crossing our fingers, who believe in miracles and are not quite sure about "progressive revelation."

Being not quite sure about doctrinal development doesn't at all mean a belief that God has spoken once, long ago, and now has retreated to watch what happens. That's the god of the Deist. It doesn't mean that one denies that the revelation which is in Christ Jesus doesn't speak to us in what seem to be new ways, or in new contexts, although we should be reminded that the "newness" isn't novelty and probably isn't new at all. It's a modern conceit to think that we invent new religious concepts just because we come up with new ways to get from A to B. In vital matters it is probably true that there's nothing new under the sun. What is "new" is the translation and perhaps the context in which we "hear" the Word of God, often through the Word of God written. Jesus is the final Revelation. Jesus lives and his Gospel lives in the power of the Trinity. Now that is living!

Back to the remnant. It seems to me that there are two assurances given to Christians and those two assurances were lived into by the first Christians. The first assurance seems masochistical. Being a Christian will get you hurt! The hurt may be from an external source, it may be the result of our seeking to live as Christians, and it may be the result of our not succeeding in living as Christians. Cross-bearing hurts. That's a difficult concept to embrace in a culture in which "hurt" and "pain" are railed against and resented. The blogs of liberals and conservatives are full of stuff about people being hurt, being given pain, by this or that action, or declaration. I do not deny that people are hurt, do get pained, by words and actions, some just and some manifestly unjust. Yet our American pains and hurt, for the most part are nothing like those experienced across the globe in other places by millions who starve, suffer and die, in war, famine, flood, as the result of disease, economic injustice, cruelty and human malice. In our affluent Episcopalianism, most of our hurt and pain is experienced in comfort and we can take pills and even pray because we can afford so to do.

Law suits and discrimination hurt, but they are not excuses for us to behave as pagans!

Now I am not here addressing the real torments of psychological or physical pain, although here too, at least the medically insured experience their torments in the context of available help and nurture. True in this manifestly unjust society of ours, many fall through the cracks and we cannot rest, as Christians until this great wrong is made right.

The Christian journey does hurt. Jesus told us that if we want to follow him we must embrace the cross, give up much which cushions life from reality and walk hand in hand with him through the valley of the shadow. Certainly the first Christians heard the story of Jesus and the comments of the Epistle-writers in the context of persecution, fear and peril. Yet this growing "remnant" had another assurance we often forget. The victory has been won for us. On the Cross Jesus won the ultimate victory. Our task as Christians is not to fight a war to win, but announce the victory and its fruits. Perhaps "Onward Christian Soldiers" should read, "Onward Christian witnesses, marching on to speak."

Whenever Christians are driven to believe that their task is to fight to preserve and protect something or other, however right, holy or splendid that "something" is, a psychological change occurs. We come to believe that our job is to win the battle against the enemy instead of risking carrying the news of victory into enemy territory. It is true that being the messenger of victory is a dangerous business, can get us into all sorts of trouble, even unto death, but it is a very different calling than that of fighting a war to protect the faith. Fighting to protect includes the concept of losing. Telling the story of Calvary involves no possibility of losing, other than losing the argument temporarily, losing acceptance,losing respectibility or still in some places losing one's life. Yet Calvary and the Empty Tomb cannot be "lost". They constitute the greatest victory ever won, no less than the liberation and restoration of all things in heaven and on earth; the promise of newness in both. Talk about a new revelation.

Again the problem with fighting to protect something or other is that it is possible that the glory of what we seek to protect dims into banal color and the protecting thing becomes an idol or a fetish. There's enormous depth in our Lord's comment that if we seek to save our lives we will lose them.

In this light I remain unhappy to be described as a remnant. I prefer to think of mere Christians as the leaven, the yeast, the ingredient injected into church and society which transforms and creates. Yes, there's newness in the process, but it is a very old newness. It's difficult to accept this truth when we have wrapped our cause or campaign, our "progressiveness" or "orthodoxy" in a blanket and are rushing away to where?, so that we can continue to defend and protect our possession . Don't unwrap the blanket. You may not like what is now there.

ARCHBISHOP MORGAN ON THE ANGLICAN COMMUNION

2007-08-13T09:24:00.000-05:00

An extract from a comment by the Archbishop of Wales which, although dated, speaks to our present crisis:

September 17th, 2004

"But you might ask, why does the Anglican Communion matter? It matters
because Communion is God’s gift to us, and what God has given we should not, dare
not spurn. God has given us in this Communion people who are very different
from ourselves. They are however His gift to us, as we, hopefully, may be his
gift to them. Gifts are means of grace and as such are to be cherished and
nourished, not rejected and cast aside. The Communion consists of nearly 100
million Anglicans across the various countries of our world. They are people
like us who believe in the authority of scripture, the creeds, the sacraments
and the historic episcopate but who in other ways are culturally very different
from us. As one report puts it “the Communion describes a theologically
identifiable group of particular, regional churches which embody reformed,
catholic faith and trace their original existence and inspiration to the mission or
ministry of the Church of England or churches closely associated with it”.
The Communion matters because in our world it is often non-governmental
organisations rather than governments which express the aspirations of
populations. The Anglican Communion is one of the largest non-governmental
organisations in the world and so has a major contribution to make as a trans-national
civic society in bringing hope, reconciliation and transformation to the
communities of our world. We have seen how that has happened already in countries
such as Kenya and South Africa. The Communion matters therefore for the
witness to truth and justice that it makes to our world as well as the vitally
important expression of what it means to be a member of the Christian family.
This Communion also has companionship links across the world, partnership and
mission links, inter-Anglican networks and religious orders helping to bind it
together. Do we want to throw all that away?

For it is a Communion not a Federation as is the case with the Lutheran
Church. Thus there are no formalised overlapping jurisdictions except in Europe
and as Anglicanism was exported, the model was not a hierarchally centrally run
church with unity maintained by magisterial rulings or uniformity but a
familial one held together by bonds of affections. Lutheranism consists of a
number of pre existing groups coming together by agreement. The familial model
however evokes from provinces the building up of ways of articulating the bonds
they have in common as they develop. The familial model is different from
the federal model since the latter consists of churches coming together and
surrendering certain rights and privileges in order to gain others. The familial
model recognises the history and tradition we have in common needing some
kind of institutional support. The difference between the federal and the
familial model is the difference between a group of friends renting a house
together and to a family living together under one roof.

Professor Daniel Hardy writes that “In Anglicanism, unity is found in
movement towards others, not in moving apart, no matter how well rationalised”.
Why, because it is a response to God’s movement towards his world and so as
Ephesians 4:2-3 puts it, “We must bear with one another in love, making every
effort to maintain the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace”. The crucial
question then is how do we do that? Let me just outline three ways in which
that can be made possible:

Firstly, by listening to one another. This can best be summed up by a
passage I came across the other day, having nothing to do with the Anglican
Communion as such but we could certainly benefit from the advice:
“Can you just listen? When I ask you to listen to me and you start giving me
advice, you have not done what I asked. When I ask you to listen to me and
you begin to tell me why I shouldn’t feel that way, you are trampling on my
feelings. When I ask you to listen to me and you feel you have to do something
to solve my problem, you have failed me, strange as that may seem. Listen.
All I asked was that you listen, not talk or do, just hear me”.

Secondly, we need to remember our Anglican tradition and our particular way
of doing theology. It was Isaac Williams, the Vice Principal of this College
and a Welsh Tractarian to boot, who wrote on “Reserve in Communicating
Religious Knowledge”. “We need” he says “an abstention from over-hasty doctrinal
definition and a commitment to the mystery of God’s presence with us”. In
other words, Anglicanism has been about definitive questions not definitive
answers. Richard Hooker, that sixteenth century divine in his Law of
Ecclesiastical Polity had this to say “Although to know God be life, and joy to make
mention of his name: yet our soundest knowledge is to know that we know him not
as indeed he is, neither can know him: and our safest eloquence concerning
him is our silence, when we confess without confession that his glory is
inexplicable, his greatness above our capacity and reach. He is above, and we upon
earth; therefore it behoveth our words to be wary and few”. “Surely” says
the psalmist “ you are a God who hides yourself”. A bit of reticence therefore
about how exactly God reveals himself would not go amiss.

Thirdly, we need to remember that the witness of the Gospel and of Jesus is
to an inclusive community, not to an exclusive community. This means
associating with and striving to understand and value, as well as accepting as
brothers and sisters not just people who are most like us or who are related to us
or those with whom we feel at ease, but those who are least like us and who do
things differently and whom we might find it difficult to get on with.
Richard Hooker again, “Pray God that none may be offended if I seek to make the
Christian religion an inn where all may be received joyously rather than a
cottage where some few friends or family might be entertained”.
One of the key passages of the famous 1998 Lambeth Resolution 1.10 on human
sexuality was, and I quote, that “the Anglican Communion commits itself to
listen to the experience of homosexual persons and wishes to assure them that
they are loved by God and that all baptised believing faithful persons,
regardless of sexual orientation, are full members of the body of Christ”. It is a
section that tends to be ignored. It is a fact, that in many countries of our world, people are being persecuted
simply because of their sexual orientation. In fact there are 80 countries in
the world, which persecute gay and lesbian people through their penal codes
with punishments ranging from death to mutilation and imprisonment. We do not,
as a church, want to do anything that adds to the suffering and
marginalisation of such people."

There's much food for thought in this address as we approach the deadline set forth by the Primates when they last met in Tanzania, amid calls from the left and the right to walk away from or be pushed from the Anglican Communion. I regard our unity as a family as something we cannot destroy in an act of rage or impatience. Any cause we maintain, whether it be biblical authority, gay rights, or ecclesial integrity or provincial autonomy means little or nothing if used as a justification for schism, the violent act of breaking baptismal relationships. TC

THE LANGUAGE OF DISSENT

2007-08-06T07:47:00.000-05:00

I'm in North Carolina, staying with my son. Last Friday my car was hit by a deer, the windshield destroyed plus some minor body work damage and I was left shaken and bemused. The windshield will not be replaced until tomorrow, so I am grounded.

I am trying to keep up with the emerging story of traditionalist struggle within and without TEC. This is not made easy by the continuing development of new vocabulary to describe emerging or declining groups and factions. Acronyms are bad enough -althought I admit to using some of them-but odd conglomerations of partial words seem to be coming into favor, a habit once the preserve of military establishments. Perhaps this connection has something to do with the admittedly understandable, although I think unfortunate comparison between the struggles and feuds of Christians and warfare. Neither are pretty activities and few if any are "just".

I have to say that I enjoyed the cut and thrust of the Archbishop of York's assistant, in defending his boss against unkind accusations from Common Cause's Canon David Anderson. http://www.dioceseofyork.org.uk/cgi/news/news.cgi?t=template&a=1138. No doubt it had to be said. Amid all the evocations of Middle Earth and Mordur in traditionalist blogging there's the hint that our modern Hobbits don't fight fair and fail to have that sense of humor and proportion enjoyed by Bilbo's descendant and friends.

It seems that those who wish to see the Anglican Communion charging to the rescue of orthodox Episcopalians are to be called Comcons, while those abandoning ship and joining one or perhaps more of the cafeteria array of post modern traditionalist groups are to be termed Fedcoms. Apart from a common love of something termed "Anglicanism", although the term stretches from screens, ping pong balls and rumperty tumperty songs, interspersed by snatches of vaguely liturgical texts and quotes from the NIV Bible to Mass, Mary and Confession according to the Anglican Missal, no slavish conformity here, it is suggested that all these people are quite sure that unless God decides to do a miracle, and strangely for believers in miracles -I do too - one isn't expected or perhaps even wanted, the Episcopal Church is going or has gone to hell in a proverbial hand basket.

While staying with Mark I've borrowed Dr. Judith Maltby's "Prayer Book and People in Elizabethan and Early Stuart England." It seems Dr. Maltby's research was no easy thing. Much is said to disparage users of the Prayer Book in those days by Puritans who had decided that those who used the Book were "papists and atheists," while Roman Catholic recusants worried that "Church Catholics" would opt for the Established Church rather than risking fortune and maybe life by clinging to the "old religion." The point is that those who used the Prayer Book and attended their parish church said little for themselves. If one judged them on the basis of the writings and pleas of their detractors, they would seem a rather sorry lot. Perhaps they were not noted for their adherence to this or that popular theology peddled by those whose counter-claims to orthodoxy vexed the souls of many.

Perhaps in their illiteracy, although those who couldn't sign their name seemed to know what they wanted in terms of liturgy and worship, these people couldn't make a great show at providing anything more than a simple, and perhaps a bit superstitious faith. Yet their memory is sullied if one is to believe all that puritan and papist said of them. They wanted their children baptized, their sons and daughters married, their dead ones decently buried, chance to receive the sacrament of the altar now and again, perhaps a decent sermon or homily and Matins and Evensong on Sundays and Feast Days, Wednesdays and Fridays. These simple expectations were not always easy to come by amidst the turmoils of our extended Reformation. Yet the persistence of these devout and unsung saints lasted even through the Puritan Interregnum.

That I was reading this while traditionalists were assailing the predominant faith and practice of American Episcopalians -and the beliefs of the Archbishops of Canterbury and York for good measure-seemed no accident. Granted I am constantly amazed at the confidence with which some prominent people, some bishops, some seminary professors, some "cardinal rectors" promote novel and often daft substitutes for mere Christianity, or put all their trust in projects which while not antithetical to the Gospel necessarily, are not Gospel, or in a feverish wish not to seem intolerant, limit the power of Jesus to the narrow confines of ecclesiastical groupings, in attempt to regard all religions as salvic, yet having admitted all this, I have to return to my essential experiential belief about the Episcopal Churchs religion, at least at parish level. Despite all this, and I do remember the "God is Dead" lot of a few decades ago, I am not prepared yet to say that the Episcopal Church is totally depraved. Sometimes when I read the burbling of far left and far right I wonder if she is not "very far gone from original righteousness", but that's another matter.

Of course I hope and pray that after the Archbishop of Canterbury has attempted to inculcate some sound theology into our bishops, they will forsake their lately espoused super patriotism and damp their injured pride in being called out for naughtiness and agree to work as bishops of an autonomous province in an Anglican COMMUNION and not federation. It would be ironic if they joined hands with the ACN Fedcoms and became Fedlibs! Stranger things have happened..."those whom the gods would destroy..."

As for deadlines, I regard them as being utterly political and totally unhelpful, a stumbling block for the prideful and an affront to the pious.

I also hope and pray that the next Lambeth Conference will be a place where Christian bishops listen to each other, learn from each other, forgive each other and emerge committed to the Gospel as the Anglican Church has received the same. To do that the temptation to posture, to judge, to invoke sectarian, party or ethnic struggles, even to assume the mantle of "prophet" will have to be abandoned. What the church needs today are bishops who are sound in learning, loving pastors, and active evangelists. God give us such bishops!

HOW DO WE FIND THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH?

2007-07-30T17:49:00.000-05:00

When I lived in France I was constantly assured that while the French didn't care much for President Bush (English understatement) they liked Americans. This piece of information was of greater comfort to my American wife than to me. However simplistic in practice, the sentiment was appreciated and contained some grain of truth. Setting aside that President Bush had been elected by a majority of Americans for a second term -whether he was elected the first time is another matter-one cannot judge a nation merely by recourse to the policies of its government. Immediately one brings to mind the fact that Hitler assumed power as a result of a democratic election process, but perhaps in that case the exception proves the rule. (I've never really understood that aphorism.)

If you read my burbles often you will know that I lament the politicization of the Episcopal Church. I am therefore uncomfortable with the notion that the policies adopted by those who govern us adequately describe who we are as Episcopalians. I believe the way most of us worship, in Word and Sacrament -not sermons and teaching classes -more accurately defines us and always has done. I'm even more distressed when I read the words of champions of Episcopalian orthodoxy when they seem to agree with the idea that present policies define who we are as Episcopalians.

In his presidential address to "The Anglican Communon Network" at its annual meeting in Texas today the Bishop of Pittsburg said:

"Yes, we are all at different places on the Calvary journey as concerns our ministries in the Episcopal Church. But I suspect I can speak for all when I say that where we are is not where we had hoped to be. God, in His wisdom, has not used us to reform the Episcopal Church, to bring it back to its historic role and identity as a reliable and mainstream way to be a Christian. Instead the Episcopal Church has embraced de-formation – stunning innovation in Faith and Order – rather than reformation."

Now for the inevitable bit of history. Although the level of "deadness" the church on both sides of the Atlantic experienced in Latitudinarian times is now disputed, it is certainly true that Anglicanism's hierarchy at the beginning of the 18th. Century had nearly reduced the faith to Aristotle and the rules of cricket, if the sermons of Tillotson and Tenison are any guide. Stillingfleet's proposed revision of the Prayer Book, designed to make it possible for nonconformists to conform, later taken up with enthusiasm by revolutionary Americans and then ironically by the Reformed Episcopalian evangelicals, was intended to enable gentlemanly Deism. The Enlightenment at prayer.

The Wesleys were born into such a world, although their improvident father and pious mother were nearer to the Non-Jurors who in isolation carried the torch for Tory , High Churchism, a movement which would flower in the Northern Colonies much more than in its home turf of England. Evangelicals and High Church people saved the infant PECUSA from sudden death.

(If I've lost you in this history lesson, for goodness sake learn your heritage. It is because we forget who we are that we repeat the follies of the past. "There's nothing new under the sun.")

What I am suggesting is that the semi-Deist Anglicanism of the 18th. Century wasn't transformed in a decade or even in a couple of decades. Yes, the followers of Wesley gave up on the Church and went wandering off into splintered sects which only came back together, or mostly together in the 20th Century. Yet those who didn't give up on the church took most of a century to revive it and when they thought they had won, and that Anglicanism would be Evangelical, sober and moral -the Anglicanism of missionaries who went to parts of Africa -a newly technicolor version burst forth, a return to the form of Anglicanism experienced in the latter part of the reign of Henry VIII. Who would have thought it? Mass, Mary and Confession has returned as something new!

But to return to my original thought. Has the real church ever been the church of the headlines? Perhaps there have been times when to has seemed to be so. Yet all along, the very heart of what Anglicanism is has been doing its work and raising up new generations, new thoughts -well they are all really old thoughts -which demonstrate the dynamic reality which bursts forth as the Scriptures are read in public and private and the Sacraments celebrated. No headlines and no ascendent party is able to control the dynamic work of the Trinity when that name is invoked, even by those whose theology is wonky and public policies plain wrong. Aslan is not a tame lion.

I in many ways honor the Bishop of Pittsburgh. I am very fond of the Bishop of Quincy. I understand what they go through. But I am afraid that they, and the primates and I hope not the Archbishop of Canterbury believe the headlines. Certainly there are leaders in the church who sound a great deal like Tenison and Tillitson, or even William White our first PB although their sermons aren't nearly as long -OK I malign those two long deceased archbishops of Canterbury and one PB,; they weren't all bad! -and there are obsessed fanatics among us who rant and rave, some liberal and not a few conservative, but on the whole our parishes are not much different than those found anywhere else in the Communion. It's really a secret, but there are Episcopalians who are Republicans! ( my wife is a Democrat and I'm just an old fashioned constitutional monarchist!) and the majority of parishioners, by far, are moderate people who hate the headlines and worship faithfully in their parish churches, don't much bother about the diocese, don't read Borg or Wright and distrust the National Church on principle, whether that principle is informed or not.

Because the policies of our present Establishment are regarded, quite wrongly, by primates and others as being who and what our church is, some encourage the impatient among us - "God in his wisdom has not used us to reform the Episcopal Church", hang on a moment, why should He and if He hasn't does that mean that He doesn't have other ideas; does God have to do as we tell Him? Sorry +Bob but really!- to leave and create a new church, and others conclude that TEC is what General Convention votes on and thereby demonstrate that they have surrendered to a political and secular definition of "the Church" in exactly the same manner as those who have attempted to turn us into a "General Convention Church."

September 30th is the deadline. By that time our present bishops must decide for our past bishops and future bishops whether TEC is a really Angican Church or not. If a similar deadline had been given to Anglicanism in 1730 shall we say, we might not have an Anglican Communon today. Please someone give me a theological, biblical, traditional definition of a deadline. Please +Rowan whom I admire, tell us. Or have our leaders worldwide and at home taken upon them the mantle of secular politicians? It all sounds like the Bush Adminisration and Iran. It doesn't sound at all like New Testament faith to me. I believe that God will revive us, change us, use us, but what shape and form that will take I haven't the ability to know. God hasn't asked my advice. I dare not give God a deadline.