Bishop Hathaway writes in response to a number of liberal organizations and persons who have been advocating that the Standing Committees of the Episcopal Church refuse to consent to the election of Fr. Mark Lawrence to become Bishop of the Diocese of South Carolina. ed.
by Alden Hathaway
Dear Members of the House of Deputies and House of Bishops,
Brothers and Sisters in Christ:
Dean George Werner, regarding consents to the consecration of Mark Lawrence, commented to this posting, "I worked with Mark for a number of years and also with his wonderful wife Allison. I thought from the first moment that he was the best chance for South Carolina".
Mark was my priest in Pittsburgh. George is right. Mark Lawrence is indeed the best chance for South Carolina.
South Carolina is a together diocese. It has been graciously and effectively led by its previous bishop. It represents the best of the evangelical and catholic traditions of American Anglicanism. It has sought to play a positive and effective role in the deliberations and decisions of the national church, striving for the comprehensive ecclesiastical balance that the three theological streams, (evangelical, catholic, liberal) must hold in creative tension if we are to be true to our heritage.
But along with other conservative voices in TEC, South Carolina has been deeply frustrated by the sense that the deck is stacked against them and their theological convictions disvalued.
In a truly liberal democratic society the political victors win the right to govern, but not the right of arbitrary rule. The rights of the minority must always be protected and their voices always heard in the halls of public debate. What has been lost for us as a national church is trust in the political process itself. What seems to be imposed is an ecclesiastical Taliban tolerating none but its own views enforced by a canonical fundamentalism.
Instead of asking who is loyal to the canons, it should rather be asked, "why do so many of our most committed laity, our best clergy, our strongest parishes feel they have no option but to leave TEC willing to buy, fight for or even walk away from the beautiful treasures, both real and spiritual, that is our church's incredible inheritance?".
To fail to understand this is to fail to understand the politics of a diocese such as South Carolina. Where no other options seem open, the only course remaining is to vote with the purse or the feet. No candidate in the South Carolina election could be seriously considered if they did not acknowledge this as a viable possibility. Of the three, Mark Lawrence did so, but in such a way as to turn the issue into support of more positive engagement with the national church and the hope of a truly gospel vision for the way ahead.
It was a transforming vision for the SC election. He won on the first ballot with just less than 75% of the clergy vote and over 75% of the laity. I am told that after his presence and address to the diocesan convention a few weeks ago, if election were held then, he would have won about 100%. It is a bit disingenuous to hold that there were fatal flaws in the nomination and election process. There seems to be, in the Diocese of South Carolina, zero dissatisfaction with the result.
What is so desperately needed in our Episcopal Church is a restoration of trust. Not this ham-fisted canonical leveraging, this attitude toward anyone who questions the government of the church or its public theological face "There's the door, What's your hurry. We'll keep your hat." What is needed is ecclesiastical 'statespersonship'. Leadership which is willing to go out of the way to mend the breach, at great sacrifice, leaving the ninety and nine to regain the lost. What it needs is the transforming hope of a truly gospel vision of the way ahead for us. What it needs is the likes of Mark Lawrence.
What I am saying is that Mark is not only the best chance for South Carolina, he is the best chance on behalf of the dioceses of Maine and Massachusetts, of California and San Diego. He is the best chance of a way ahead for the Episcopal Church. This bishop elect should be certified by every sitting bishop and every standing committee of this church.
George Werner and I were bonded in ecclesiastical marriage in Pittsburgh for sixteen years. It was not always a happy or peaceful union, he being who he is and I being who I am. But it was a marriage. For the good of the church and the integrity of our own ministries, we saw it through. And that was good, it was very good indeed. So take it from these two old farts, vote yes for Bishop Mark Lawrence and trust this old Episcopal Church of ours into the hands of God.
--The Rt. Rev. Alden Hathaway is the former Bishop of Pittsburgh
Thursday, November 30, 2006
Monday, November 27, 2006
Jordan Hylden at First Things on ECUSA Crisis
November 27, 2006
Jordan Hylden writes:
No one thought it possible, but there is a wave of nostalgia sweeping through the ranks of conservative Episcopalians for their old presiding bishop, Frank Griswold. Of course, he may well have been heretical, but no one could really tell for sure. His statements were a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside a bureaucracy, raising what commonly is known as “Episco-babble” to something of an art form. By and large, we conservatives could confidently ignore what he said, resting assured that no one understood him anyway.
But those days, alas, are now gone. Our new presiding bishop, Katherine Jefferts Schori, is by comparison a model of clarity, and within the span of a month has managed to offend a rather astonishing range of people, including Catholics, Mormons, individuals without a graduate degree, and mothers with children. Lord Carey, former archbishop of Canterbury, has said that conservatives ought to give her a chance, which is of course the charitable thing to do. But for those less inclined to charity, there is good reason to believe she intends nothing less than to run conservatives out of the church, finalize the split between the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion, and set up an international communion of liberal Anglicanism as a rival to Canterbury. In short, from her recent actions and public statements, it is reasonable to infer that her term is likely to tear the Episcopal Church in two—and, what’s more, that that is precisely what she intends.
To her credit, Bishop Schori has always been quite forthright about her intentions. Prior to her election as presiding bishop, she told a liberal Episcopalian magazine that:
As a church we have got to be better self-differentiated. We have to decide what it is we are going to stand for and be clear about it, and then say “these are the consequences.” Yes, Anglicans don’t much like to do that, but we do do it about some things. . . . I think we are getting there about the issues that are dividing us right now.
In the Anglican world, which tends to treat theological fuzziness as a virtue (we call it “comprehensiveness”), these are fighting words. With great frequency and clarity, she has committed herself to the full affirmation of homosexual practice, including ordination to the episcopate and same-sex marriage. This, she has stated, is the “reasonable conclusion and consensus” of the Episcopal Church, regardless of the contrary decisions of the Anglican Communion as a whole and the continued objection of a sizeable minority within ECUSA. In fact, she has said that their continued objection is “schismatic,” distracts from the real mission of the church (i.e., social justice), and will no longer be tolerated.
And, unlike her predecessor Frank Griswold, she has shown already that she is willing to put her money where her mouth is. A task force has been set up to deal with “property disputes,” and so far eight “problem dioceses” have been identified, which may or may not be met with legislation. Letters have been sent to the bishops of Fort Worth, Quincy, and San Joaquin, warning that nothing less than “unqualified accession” to the decisions of General Convention will be allowed. In short, Bishop Schori has in no uncertain terms laid out the agenda for her tenure of leadership—as she signaled before her election, she is making clear that the Episcopal Church has decided where it stands and that there will be “consequences” for those who disagree.
The problem is that she is on a direct collision course with the rest of the Anglican Communion. And, while she will not admit it in so many words, it has become increasingly clear that Bishop Schori and her supporters know perfectly well that their actions will end in a final break with Canterbury and the Global South. The church’s Executive Council has already proposed the formation of an “Anglican Convocation of the Americas,” comprising liberal churches such as ECUSA, Canada, and Brazil. Even the Episcopal Church’s name no longer officially includes reference to the United States, which Bishop Schori has stated reflects the “transnational” character (better put, “ambition”) of the church. Liberal voices from England and elsewhere have signaled their desire to join such a convocation, which almost certainly will set itself up as a “progressive” alternative to mainstream Anglicanism.
Quite obviously, this puts Episcopalians who wish to remain in full communion with Canterbury in a bind. This past September, nearly a quarter of diocesan bishops met at Camp Allen, Texas, and stated their firm desire to remain both Episcopalian and Anglican. The hope, which still is expressed by many, is that a compromise solution will be reached, allowing the Camp Allen bishops to provide a safe haven within the Episcopal Church for those who continue to profess Anglican orthodoxy.
That hope is not dead, but it is becoming more and more unlikely by the day. The actions of Bishop Schori have so far demonstrated that she does not intend to allow Episcopalians to do anything less than adhere fully to the decisions of General Convention, however they may conflict with the rest of the Communion. The Camp Allen bishops, if they are to have any chance at succeeding in their goal, must firmly and consistently articulate their opposition to what so clearly is happening to the Episcopal Church. If they do not do so, the rise of Bishop Schori will constitute the clearest example in years of the truth of Neuhaus’ Law: “Where orthodoxy is optional, it will sooner or later be proscribed.”
It is all very unfortunate, particularly since most Episcopalians sincerely hope that a compromise will be reached. It is a great pity that it almost certainly will not be, unless a significant number of bishops and laypeople refuse to follow the so-called “inclusionary” agenda of Bishop Schori. As it stands, it will not be long before she “includes” conservatives right out of the church.
Jordan Hylden is a junior fellow at First Things.
Jordan Hylden writes:
No one thought it possible, but there is a wave of nostalgia sweeping through the ranks of conservative Episcopalians for their old presiding bishop, Frank Griswold. Of course, he may well have been heretical, but no one could really tell for sure. His statements were a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside a bureaucracy, raising what commonly is known as “Episco-babble” to something of an art form. By and large, we conservatives could confidently ignore what he said, resting assured that no one understood him anyway.
But those days, alas, are now gone. Our new presiding bishop, Katherine Jefferts Schori, is by comparison a model of clarity, and within the span of a month has managed to offend a rather astonishing range of people, including Catholics, Mormons, individuals without a graduate degree, and mothers with children. Lord Carey, former archbishop of Canterbury, has said that conservatives ought to give her a chance, which is of course the charitable thing to do. But for those less inclined to charity, there is good reason to believe she intends nothing less than to run conservatives out of the church, finalize the split between the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion, and set up an international communion of liberal Anglicanism as a rival to Canterbury. In short, from her recent actions and public statements, it is reasonable to infer that her term is likely to tear the Episcopal Church in two—and, what’s more, that that is precisely what she intends.
To her credit, Bishop Schori has always been quite forthright about her intentions. Prior to her election as presiding bishop, she told a liberal Episcopalian magazine that:
As a church we have got to be better self-differentiated. We have to decide what it is we are going to stand for and be clear about it, and then say “these are the consequences.” Yes, Anglicans don’t much like to do that, but we do do it about some things. . . . I think we are getting there about the issues that are dividing us right now.
In the Anglican world, which tends to treat theological fuzziness as a virtue (we call it “comprehensiveness”), these are fighting words. With great frequency and clarity, she has committed herself to the full affirmation of homosexual practice, including ordination to the episcopate and same-sex marriage. This, she has stated, is the “reasonable conclusion and consensus” of the Episcopal Church, regardless of the contrary decisions of the Anglican Communion as a whole and the continued objection of a sizeable minority within ECUSA. In fact, she has said that their continued objection is “schismatic,” distracts from the real mission of the church (i.e., social justice), and will no longer be tolerated.
And, unlike her predecessor Frank Griswold, she has shown already that she is willing to put her money where her mouth is. A task force has been set up to deal with “property disputes,” and so far eight “problem dioceses” have been identified, which may or may not be met with legislation. Letters have been sent to the bishops of Fort Worth, Quincy, and San Joaquin, warning that nothing less than “unqualified accession” to the decisions of General Convention will be allowed. In short, Bishop Schori has in no uncertain terms laid out the agenda for her tenure of leadership—as she signaled before her election, she is making clear that the Episcopal Church has decided where it stands and that there will be “consequences” for those who disagree.
The problem is that she is on a direct collision course with the rest of the Anglican Communion. And, while she will not admit it in so many words, it has become increasingly clear that Bishop Schori and her supporters know perfectly well that their actions will end in a final break with Canterbury and the Global South. The church’s Executive Council has already proposed the formation of an “Anglican Convocation of the Americas,” comprising liberal churches such as ECUSA, Canada, and Brazil. Even the Episcopal Church’s name no longer officially includes reference to the United States, which Bishop Schori has stated reflects the “transnational” character (better put, “ambition”) of the church. Liberal voices from England and elsewhere have signaled their desire to join such a convocation, which almost certainly will set itself up as a “progressive” alternative to mainstream Anglicanism.
Quite obviously, this puts Episcopalians who wish to remain in full communion with Canterbury in a bind. This past September, nearly a quarter of diocesan bishops met at Camp Allen, Texas, and stated their firm desire to remain both Episcopalian and Anglican. The hope, which still is expressed by many, is that a compromise solution will be reached, allowing the Camp Allen bishops to provide a safe haven within the Episcopal Church for those who continue to profess Anglican orthodoxy.
That hope is not dead, but it is becoming more and more unlikely by the day. The actions of Bishop Schori have so far demonstrated that she does not intend to allow Episcopalians to do anything less than adhere fully to the decisions of General Convention, however they may conflict with the rest of the Communion. The Camp Allen bishops, if they are to have any chance at succeeding in their goal, must firmly and consistently articulate their opposition to what so clearly is happening to the Episcopal Church. If they do not do so, the rise of Bishop Schori will constitute the clearest example in years of the truth of Neuhaus’ Law: “Where orthodoxy is optional, it will sooner or later be proscribed.”
It is all very unfortunate, particularly since most Episcopalians sincerely hope that a compromise will be reached. It is a great pity that it almost certainly will not be, unless a significant number of bishops and laypeople refuse to follow the so-called “inclusionary” agenda of Bishop Schori. As it stands, it will not be long before she “includes” conservatives right out of the church.
Jordan Hylden is a junior fellow at First Things.
Saturday, November 25, 2006
Episcopal Bishop Subverts Judicial Ethics
Saturday, November 25, 2006
by Raymond Dague as posted to Transfigurations:
When the Executive Council of the Episcopal Church met in Chicago from November 15 to 18, Bishop Stacy Sauls of Lexington, Kentucky was there and presented the work of his “task force” on legal matters related to the widening split in the church.
According to an Episcopal News Service story and media accounts of the event, “Sauls says that lawyers, including several diocesan chancellors and a judge on the 11th U.S. District Court of Appeals, are helping the bishops prepare” for litigation.
This task force, according to the Associated Press story, has been working to “developed a ‘brief bank’ of court filings and legal research to help dioceses with litigation and has also identified potential expert witnesses” for the litigation. (Expert witnesses are used at a trial to convince the jury or judge that one side in the litigation should prevail.) The task force is also “working on a position paper ‘setting forth possible common grounds which could be sought so that the split in The Episcopal Church which is feared by the task force might be avoided.’”
There is nothing wrong with lawyers meeting to plan legal strategy. That is what lawyers do. As an attorney, I know how prudent it is to plan for litigation, both to avoid it, and if it cannot be avoided, to handle it well once the lawsuits start to fly. I do not begrudge any attorneys brainstorming with one another. Lawyers are advocates, and our roles of advocacy certainly involve advising clients and preparing for lawsuits.
It is distasteful (to say the least) to scheme to sue another diocese of the church. I cannot imagine participating in a “task force” to sue another diocese. I may disagree with the theology and practice of New Hampshire or Newark (and I vehemently disagree with them), but I am not part of any plan to sue them, nor will I be. If these dioceses choose to walk apart from the faith once delivered, that is their concern. They will have to answer to God, but they should not have to answer to the courts. Apparently several of my fellow chancellors have no such compunction, and are willing to be part of Stacy Sauls’ task force to sue.
What is a federal judge doing in all this? The press story ambiguously says that the judge in question is on the “11th U.S. District Court of Appeals.” This is a confusing reference, since there is in the federal system a “district court,” and a “circuit court of appeals,” but no “district court of appeals.” The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals is the federal appeals court below the U.S. Supreme Court which hears appeals from the nine district courts located in Alabama, Florida and Georgia. But whether this un-named federal judge is a circuit court or a district court judge is irrelevant. Why is a federal judge on a task force plotting legal strategy for anticipated litigation?
It is wrong for a federal judge to participate in a “task force” planning to sue parishes and dioceses in the Episcopal Church. Such conduct violates Canons 2(b) and 5(b)(1) of the Code of Conduct for United States Judges. If a judge wants to quit the bench and head back to the practice of law, he is free to advise clients and be a part of the task force Stacy Sauls has assembled. But while he remains on the bench, this sort of behavior violates judicial and legal ethics.
Lawyers as well as judges have an ethical duty to protect the impartiality and fairness of the legal profession. It is just as illegal for a lawyer to offer a bribe as it is for a judge to accept a bribe. Neither a lawyer nor a judge should be part of trying to recruit a judge to take sides in a legal battle. Stacy Sauls is a bishop of the Episcopal Church, but he is also a lawyer. Apparently he feels that his duties as a bishop do not bar him from subverting the judiciary into violating their ethical duties.
I am not a bishop, so I will not lecture Stacy Sauls about his ethics as a bishop. I’ll leave that to his fellow bishops. But as a lawyer, I can say that it sure looks like he is violating his oath as an attorney in doing this.
Christians are not supposed to sue one another in the courts, says 1 Corinthians 6:4-8. But apparently this bishop/lawyer takes as loose a view of the scriptures as he does of legal and judicial ethics. This is sordid behavior for one who once took an oath to uphold the rule of law. One wonders whether this bishop/lawyer will claim that the Holy Spirit somehow told him to "Go For It" as he ropes diocesan chancellors and a judge into his schemes to sue parishes and dioceses.
Raymond Dague is a New York attorney and an assistant chancellor of the Episcopal Diocese of Albany.
by Raymond Dague as posted to Transfigurations:
When the Executive Council of the Episcopal Church met in Chicago from November 15 to 18, Bishop Stacy Sauls of Lexington, Kentucky was there and presented the work of his “task force” on legal matters related to the widening split in the church.
According to an Episcopal News Service story and media accounts of the event, “Sauls says that lawyers, including several diocesan chancellors and a judge on the 11th U.S. District Court of Appeals, are helping the bishops prepare” for litigation.
This task force, according to the Associated Press story, has been working to “developed a ‘brief bank’ of court filings and legal research to help dioceses with litigation and has also identified potential expert witnesses” for the litigation. (Expert witnesses are used at a trial to convince the jury or judge that one side in the litigation should prevail.) The task force is also “working on a position paper ‘setting forth possible common grounds which could be sought so that the split in The Episcopal Church which is feared by the task force might be avoided.’”
There is nothing wrong with lawyers meeting to plan legal strategy. That is what lawyers do. As an attorney, I know how prudent it is to plan for litigation, both to avoid it, and if it cannot be avoided, to handle it well once the lawsuits start to fly. I do not begrudge any attorneys brainstorming with one another. Lawyers are advocates, and our roles of advocacy certainly involve advising clients and preparing for lawsuits.
It is distasteful (to say the least) to scheme to sue another diocese of the church. I cannot imagine participating in a “task force” to sue another diocese. I may disagree with the theology and practice of New Hampshire or Newark (and I vehemently disagree with them), but I am not part of any plan to sue them, nor will I be. If these dioceses choose to walk apart from the faith once delivered, that is their concern. They will have to answer to God, but they should not have to answer to the courts. Apparently several of my fellow chancellors have no such compunction, and are willing to be part of Stacy Sauls’ task force to sue.
What is a federal judge doing in all this? The press story ambiguously says that the judge in question is on the “11th U.S. District Court of Appeals.” This is a confusing reference, since there is in the federal system a “district court,” and a “circuit court of appeals,” but no “district court of appeals.” The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals is the federal appeals court below the U.S. Supreme Court which hears appeals from the nine district courts located in Alabama, Florida and Georgia. But whether this un-named federal judge is a circuit court or a district court judge is irrelevant. Why is a federal judge on a task force plotting legal strategy for anticipated litigation?
It is wrong for a federal judge to participate in a “task force” planning to sue parishes and dioceses in the Episcopal Church. Such conduct violates Canons 2(b) and 5(b)(1) of the Code of Conduct for United States Judges. If a judge wants to quit the bench and head back to the practice of law, he is free to advise clients and be a part of the task force Stacy Sauls has assembled. But while he remains on the bench, this sort of behavior violates judicial and legal ethics.
Lawyers as well as judges have an ethical duty to protect the impartiality and fairness of the legal profession. It is just as illegal for a lawyer to offer a bribe as it is for a judge to accept a bribe. Neither a lawyer nor a judge should be part of trying to recruit a judge to take sides in a legal battle. Stacy Sauls is a bishop of the Episcopal Church, but he is also a lawyer. Apparently he feels that his duties as a bishop do not bar him from subverting the judiciary into violating their ethical duties.
I am not a bishop, so I will not lecture Stacy Sauls about his ethics as a bishop. I’ll leave that to his fellow bishops. But as a lawyer, I can say that it sure looks like he is violating his oath as an attorney in doing this.
Christians are not supposed to sue one another in the courts, says 1 Corinthians 6:4-8. But apparently this bishop/lawyer takes as loose a view of the scriptures as he does of legal and judicial ethics. This is sordid behavior for one who once took an oath to uphold the rule of law. One wonders whether this bishop/lawyer will claim that the Holy Spirit somehow told him to "Go For It" as he ropes diocesan chancellors and a judge into his schemes to sue parishes and dioceses.
Raymond Dague is a New York attorney and an assistant chancellor of the Episcopal Diocese of Albany.
Letter to Presiding Bishop
Saint Cecilia, Virgin Martyr
November 22, 2006
[C.S. Lewis, 1963]
Madam Katherine Jefferts-Schori, Ph.D.
The Penthouse
815 Second Avenue
New York City
Madam Katherine,
Were the subject not so momentous, your presumption in addressing a man of
undoubted holiness, a true Man of God who walks in the gifts of the Holy
Spirit, Bishop John-David Schofield, in the terms you used, would be
uproariously funny. Is this ‘Theatre of the Absurd’?
You assert that he is on the verge of violating vows, thrice taken, as
deacon (June 23, 1963), priest (December 1963), and bishop (October 9,
1988), to uphold “the doctrine, discipline, and worship of Christ as this
Church has received them.” (italics mine)
The question then is, When did ‘this Church’ receive them? As continuity is
claimed with the Church of England, the obvious answer is April 29, 1607,
when the Jamestown colon-ists celebrated Holy Communion off Virginia Beach,
then planted the Cross on landing. This is the testimony of PECUSA’s oldest
documents and canons. ‘This Church’ did not receive its doctrine,
discipline, or worship from any recent General Convention! You misrepresent
and misinterpret your own vows, and therefore, YOU violate them.
Madam, the Virginia colonists would not recognize the distortion of
Christian Faith that YOU hold. You do not confess the Faith of the Apostles
in anything but hollow form, as your pathetic investiture ‘sermons’ of late
do sadly bear witness. You do not confess JESUS as LORD, but Mother. You
do not proclaim the Saving Blood of the LAMB, but the wings of a hen. You
do not proclaim Him GOD INCARNATE, ETERNAL KING, but treat Him as one whose
opinions were ‘limited to their time’ and may be replaced by ‘modern
knowledge’ ). Is this not a way of saying, ‘JESUS is accursed’? On the
score of Christian Doctrine,((((((( you fail. Yours is a Gnostic fraud.
The Apostles all witness against your apostasy. In all seriousness and
charity, I call upon you to repent.
Madam, the Virginia colonists may not have been perfect Christians, but they
knew and acknowledged the Morality expected of Christians, and confessed
when they were guilty of violating it. You, on the other hand, indulge and
coddle deviancy, leading to the dis-ease and death of many, both spiritually
and physically. On the score of Christian Moral-ity, the universal
discipline of Christian living, you fail. I call upon you to repent.
Madam, the Virginia colonists would not recognize as Anglican at all the
worship you now employ. (I doubt you ever use Rite I by preference.) The
iconoclastic, Gnostic feminism you speak from pulpits has no place within
the walls of any church. Madam, the Virginia colonists would be appalled to
see you play-acting the role of a priest or bishop. (They would, indeed, be
surprised to see you even as a deacon!) Such is not the Order established
by the first Apostles and Earliest Church, and delivered to England in
ancient time, as you are well aware. They followed faithfully the
‘blueprint’ of Holy Scripture. On this score, too, you fail. I call upon
you to repent.
JESUS the LORD, GOD INCARNATE, KING ETERNAL, expected His Sheep to have
enough ‘sheepsense’ to flee from false shepherds (St John 10:5), how much
more, from presumptuous, false shepherdesses, promoted to fulfill some
fantasy of Political Correct-ness?
JOHN-DAVID IS OBEYING HIS VOWS, to guard and protect the Flock of Christ
from false doctrine and heresy. HE is the faithful shepherd, where you are
false. YOU, with temporal power and purse, leave the Faithful no
alternative but to depart your poisoned pastures.
My Great-grandfather founded the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Mission in San
Joaquin in June, 1879. He did not intend the people to be seduced by the
wicked spirits that have seduced you. The foundation he layed was intended
to further the unchanging Gospel of Christ, not the novel, occultic Jungian*
deception with which you now have dalliance.
Those who built churches and gave endowments and memorials to the Holy
Church of Christ, throughout PECUSA, gave them trusting that the Faith would
be truly kept, not warped, mis-presented, and jettisoned, as you and your
like-minded fellows are doing. YOU are the one(s) who should have departed,
when you adopted the deviations from the historic doctrine, discipline, and
worship of this Church; but instead, you force out the truly Faithful. Such
is the lot of the Righteous. This is how the LORD of History will raise up
a Remnant.
JESUS shed His Blood for you. Recognize your mistakes, and repent, and call
the entire hierarchy of PECUSA to repentance, and to renunciation of their
falsehoods, before you increase further the damage to souls, including your
own. As Nathan the Prophet might say to you, “Thou art the woman!”
I will pray for your conversion from the false idol you have put in place of
the True GOD. I will pray that your persecution of this righteous Bishop
will utterly fail, for your own good, and the salvation of souls.
Sincerely,
Christopher Pierce Kelley, S.S.C.
Ordained Priest by A. Michael Ramsey,
at Canterbury, June 30, 1974
*Jung declared he got his principal psychiatric theories in a three-day
séance in automatic writing. This includes ordination of homosexuals, and
virtually every error now embraced by PECUSA.
November 22, 2006
[C.S. Lewis, 1963]
Madam Katherine Jefferts-Schori, Ph.D.
The Penthouse
815 Second Avenue
New York City
Madam Katherine,
Were the subject not so momentous, your presumption in addressing a man of
undoubted holiness, a true Man of God who walks in the gifts of the Holy
Spirit, Bishop John-David Schofield, in the terms you used, would be
uproariously funny. Is this ‘Theatre of the Absurd’?
You assert that he is on the verge of violating vows, thrice taken, as
deacon (June 23, 1963), priest (December 1963), and bishop (October 9,
1988), to uphold “the doctrine, discipline, and worship of Christ as this
Church has received them.” (italics mine)
The question then is, When did ‘this Church’ receive them? As continuity is
claimed with the Church of England, the obvious answer is April 29, 1607,
when the Jamestown colon-ists celebrated Holy Communion off Virginia Beach,
then planted the Cross on landing. This is the testimony of PECUSA’s oldest
documents and canons. ‘This Church’ did not receive its doctrine,
discipline, or worship from any recent General Convention! You misrepresent
and misinterpret your own vows, and therefore, YOU violate them.
Madam, the Virginia colonists would not recognize the distortion of
Christian Faith that YOU hold. You do not confess the Faith of the Apostles
in anything but hollow form, as your pathetic investiture ‘sermons’ of late
do sadly bear witness. You do not confess JESUS as LORD, but Mother. You
do not proclaim the Saving Blood of the LAMB, but the wings of a hen. You
do not proclaim Him GOD INCARNATE, ETERNAL KING, but treat Him as one whose
opinions were ‘limited to their time’ and may be replaced by ‘modern
knowledge’ ). Is this not a way of saying, ‘JESUS is accursed’? On the
score of Christian Doctrine,((((((( you fail. Yours is a Gnostic fraud.
The Apostles all witness against your apostasy. In all seriousness and
charity, I call upon you to repent.
Madam, the Virginia colonists may not have been perfect Christians, but they
knew and acknowledged the Morality expected of Christians, and confessed
when they were guilty of violating it. You, on the other hand, indulge and
coddle deviancy, leading to the dis-ease and death of many, both spiritually
and physically. On the score of Christian Moral-ity, the universal
discipline of Christian living, you fail. I call upon you to repent.
Madam, the Virginia colonists would not recognize as Anglican at all the
worship you now employ. (I doubt you ever use Rite I by preference.) The
iconoclastic, Gnostic feminism you speak from pulpits has no place within
the walls of any church. Madam, the Virginia colonists would be appalled to
see you play-acting the role of a priest or bishop. (They would, indeed, be
surprised to see you even as a deacon!) Such is not the Order established
by the first Apostles and Earliest Church, and delivered to England in
ancient time, as you are well aware. They followed faithfully the
‘blueprint’ of Holy Scripture. On this score, too, you fail. I call upon
you to repent.
JESUS the LORD, GOD INCARNATE, KING ETERNAL, expected His Sheep to have
enough ‘sheepsense’ to flee from false shepherds (St John 10:5), how much
more, from presumptuous, false shepherdesses, promoted to fulfill some
fantasy of Political Correct-ness?
JOHN-DAVID IS OBEYING HIS VOWS, to guard and protect the Flock of Christ
from false doctrine and heresy. HE is the faithful shepherd, where you are
false. YOU, with temporal power and purse, leave the Faithful no
alternative but to depart your poisoned pastures.
My Great-grandfather founded the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Mission in San
Joaquin in June, 1879. He did not intend the people to be seduced by the
wicked spirits that have seduced you. The foundation he layed was intended
to further the unchanging Gospel of Christ, not the novel, occultic Jungian*
deception with which you now have dalliance.
Those who built churches and gave endowments and memorials to the Holy
Church of Christ, throughout PECUSA, gave them trusting that the Faith would
be truly kept, not warped, mis-presented, and jettisoned, as you and your
like-minded fellows are doing. YOU are the one(s) who should have departed,
when you adopted the deviations from the historic doctrine, discipline, and
worship of this Church; but instead, you force out the truly Faithful. Such
is the lot of the Righteous. This is how the LORD of History will raise up
a Remnant.
JESUS shed His Blood for you. Recognize your mistakes, and repent, and call
the entire hierarchy of PECUSA to repentance, and to renunciation of their
falsehoods, before you increase further the damage to souls, including your
own. As Nathan the Prophet might say to you, “Thou art the woman!”
I will pray for your conversion from the false idol you have put in place of
the True GOD. I will pray that your persecution of this righteous Bishop
will utterly fail, for your own good, and the salvation of souls.
Sincerely,
Christopher Pierce Kelley, S.S.C.
Ordained Priest by A. Michael Ramsey,
at Canterbury, June 30, 1974
*Jung declared he got his principal psychiatric theories in a three-day
séance in automatic writing. This includes ordination of homosexuals, and
virtually every error now embraced by PECUSA.
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
Bp. Iker to the Diocese of Fort Worth
From his convention address:
"There is no such thing as the faith of the Episcopal Church or the creeds of the Episcopal Church. The Holy Scriptures are not ours to alter as we wish by majority votes of national conventions. Nor do the threefold orders of ministry, of bishops, priests and deacons, belong to us, that we may alter them as we desire. Scripture, creeds, sacraments, and orders are all part of the Apostolic Tradition, the Apostolic Succession that we have received, and we must hand them on to others as we in faith have received them.
"The highest authority in this church is not the General Convention, my friends, but Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, the divinely inspired and revealed Word of God, containing all things necessary to salvation. Our highest loyalty is not to a denomination, but to the Lord Jesus Christ. However much we might love our church, we must not love it more than God. It becomes idolatry when we place anything else before Him.
"I say this because some would make an idol out of The Episcopal Church, it appears, and claim for it an infallibility that they deny the Holy Scriptures. If we deny biblical infallibility and papal infallibility, surely we must deny General Convention infallibility. Councils of the church can and have erred. It is troublesome to me when some talk more about why they are an Episcopalian than why they are a Christian.
"Evangelism is not bringing more people into the Episcopal Church, but bringing more people into a life-changing relationship with Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. We are first Christians, who follow the Anglican way of being evangelical catholics, and we must be careful that denominational loyalty does not lead us away from biblical truth and order. I love The Episcopal Church most when it talks least about itself and more about Jesus Christ. I love The Episcopal Church most when it is true to our heritage as a biblical church, standing under the authority of the Word of God, not as an American denomination, but as an integral part of the historic church of the ages that is one, holy, catholic and apostolic.
"As your bishop, it is my first duty to guard and defend the faith, unity and discipline of the historic church, as we have received it, and when the time comes, to hand it on intact to my worthy successor. But no bishop contends for the faith on his own, and I am deeply grateful for the support and faithfulness of the clergy of this diocese. I am also blessed and encouraged by you, the faithful lay leaders of our diocese, who stand with me in making our witness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. This Convention is an invitation for us a diocese to say once again that we will continue in the apostles' teaching and fellowship, that we will accept the challenges presented to us by difficult times, and that we commit ourselves once again to the Lordship of Jesus Christ in every aspect of our lives."
"There is no such thing as the faith of the Episcopal Church or the creeds of the Episcopal Church. The Holy Scriptures are not ours to alter as we wish by majority votes of national conventions. Nor do the threefold orders of ministry, of bishops, priests and deacons, belong to us, that we may alter them as we desire. Scripture, creeds, sacraments, and orders are all part of the Apostolic Tradition, the Apostolic Succession that we have received, and we must hand them on to others as we in faith have received them.
"The highest authority in this church is not the General Convention, my friends, but Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, the divinely inspired and revealed Word of God, containing all things necessary to salvation. Our highest loyalty is not to a denomination, but to the Lord Jesus Christ. However much we might love our church, we must not love it more than God. It becomes idolatry when we place anything else before Him.
"I say this because some would make an idol out of The Episcopal Church, it appears, and claim for it an infallibility that they deny the Holy Scriptures. If we deny biblical infallibility and papal infallibility, surely we must deny General Convention infallibility. Councils of the church can and have erred. It is troublesome to me when some talk more about why they are an Episcopalian than why they are a Christian.
"Evangelism is not bringing more people into the Episcopal Church, but bringing more people into a life-changing relationship with Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. We are first Christians, who follow the Anglican way of being evangelical catholics, and we must be careful that denominational loyalty does not lead us away from biblical truth and order. I love The Episcopal Church most when it talks least about itself and more about Jesus Christ. I love The Episcopal Church most when it is true to our heritage as a biblical church, standing under the authority of the Word of God, not as an American denomination, but as an integral part of the historic church of the ages that is one, holy, catholic and apostolic.
"As your bishop, it is my first duty to guard and defend the faith, unity and discipline of the historic church, as we have received it, and when the time comes, to hand it on intact to my worthy successor. But no bishop contends for the faith on his own, and I am deeply grateful for the support and faithfulness of the clergy of this diocese. I am also blessed and encouraged by you, the faithful lay leaders of our diocese, who stand with me in making our witness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. This Convention is an invitation for us a diocese to say once again that we will continue in the apostles' teaching and fellowship, that we will accept the challenges presented to us by difficult times, and that we commit ourselves once again to the Lordship of Jesus Christ in every aspect of our lives."
Among the Intellectualoids
From The American Spectator:
Not Much Thanksgiving for Episcopalians
By Mark Tooley
Published 11/22/2006 12:07:18 AM
Supposedly, it was Anglicans in Virginia who celebrated the First Thanksgiving rather than Puritan Congregationalists in Massachusetts.
Steadfast Virginians believe that the first celebratory autumn feast was held at Berkeley Plantation in 1619, where 38 men just arrived from England knelt on the banks of the James River. They declared: "Wee ordaine that the day of our ships arrivall at the place assigned for plantacon in the land of Virginia shall be yearly and perpetually keept holy as a day of Thanksgiving to Almighty God."
They probably did not eat as well as the Pilgrims at the Plymouth feast two years later. Instead of turkey, the new Virginians may have only had only bacon and peas, washed down by cinnamon water.
These English Anglicans had demographic goals somewhat similar to the Calvinist Pilgrims, though. They were going to settle and populate a whole continent, creating a nation and spreading the Christian faith.
In the mythology of the Religious Left, of course, these earliest of Americans were not only defrauders of the original tribes, they were also despoilers of the environment. Like good "fundamentalists," these hearty Protestants took the Bible too literally about being fruitful and multiplying. They also took too seriously the ostensible divine mandate placing the earth under man's dominion.
The spiritual descendants of those early English/Virginia Anglican pioneers are now correcting the divine record. New Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schori recently told the New York Times that her fellow Episcopalians are proudly not procreating so as to spare the environment.
The Presiding Bishop was asked how many Episcopalians there are in the U.S. "About 2.2 million," Schiori responded. "It used to be larger percentagewise, but Episcopalians tend to be better-educated and tend to reproduce at lower rates than some other denominations. Roman Catholics and Mormons both have theological reasons for producing lots of children."
"Aren't Episcopalians interested in replenishing their ranks by having children," the New York Times asked.
"No," Schori replied. "It's probably the opposite. We encourage people to pay attention to the stewardship of the earth and not use more than their portion."
True to Schori's boast, the Episcopalians have done magnificently in reducing their numbers and, purportedly, sparing the earth the ravages of an enlarged Episcopalian presence. Forty years ago, the Episcopal Church was over 50 percent larger than today, even while the U.S. population was 40 percent smaller.
Had the Episcopalians maintained the same ravenous membership pace of Roman Catholics, or Mormons, or Southern Baptists, over the last 40 years, there would now be somewhere between six and 8 million Episcopalians in the U.S., rather than the current 2 million.
Undoubtedly, the 2003 election of the Episcopal Church's first openly homosexual bishop has accelerated that denomination's decline, with increasing numbers of conservative church members giving up and walking out. Perhaps those Episcopalians who become Catholic or Baptist will soon thereafter become more procreative.
But the remnant Episcopalians under the pastorship of Presiding Bishop Schori no doubt will hold fast to their noble environmental stewardship and maintain a steady, and eco-friendly, downward membership spiral. A good model for the Episcopalians might be the Shakers, the early American sect that foreswore all procreation. Like Episcopalians, the Shakers lived in tasteful and tidy villages, ate plain food, wore all natural fibers, and had nice furniture. The Shakers also had a female leader, "Mother" Ann Lee. Like Bishop Schori, Mother Lee took a dim view of heterosexual couples marrying and having children.
Unlike the Episcopalians, the Shakers worshipped by shouting, dancing, and shaking in fits of ecstasy for hours. In stark contrast, Episcopalians sit quietly or sleep through 50-minute worship services occasionally interrupted by soft organ music. Also unlike the Episcopalians, the Shakers made converts to their faith and inducted orphans into their communities.
But eventually, the Shakers aversion to procreation caught up with them and they were dying out by the end of the 19th century. Today, most Shaker villages are museums or private homes, just as many venerable old Episcopal churches have become restaurants or condominiums for yuppies. A few eccentric Shakers still survive, making baskets and furniture, and keeping the old ways alive. Some day in future decades, if Bishop Schori is completely successful, the Episcopal Church similarly will have reduced to a dozen or so well-heeled adherents. They too will be objects of pleasant curiosity, attracting tourists to their tidy, ivy-covered tudor homes and well-stocked wine closets.
Like the Episcopalians, the Shakers were great conservationists. They depopulated and left behind only their tracks, along with quaint relics. Both Shakers and Episcopalians must find distasteful the more fecund religious movements around the world, whose members continue to marry, birth multiple children, and take up space.
There are now nearly 80 million Anglicans around the world, for example, and their numbers are increasing exponentially, especially in Africa. Forty years ago, for example, the number of Anglicans in Nigeria was somewhat smaller than the number of Episcopalians in the U.S. Today, there are 20 million Nigerian Anglicans, all of them no doubt polluting and contributing mightily to global warming. Bishop Schori must be aghast.
But the growing Anglican communion, like nearly all growing religious groups, view people as gifts from God, not as parasites on an exploited planet earth. And like the hearty Anglicans and Puritans who celebrated America's first Thanksgivings almost four centuries ago, they see the world as still an unexplored adventure, waiting to be unwrapped, enjoyed, and meriting thanks to a God in whose image all people were made.
Mark Tooley directs the United Methodist committee at the Institute on Religion and Democracy in Washington, D.C.
Not Much Thanksgiving for Episcopalians
By Mark Tooley
Published 11/22/2006 12:07:18 AM
Supposedly, it was Anglicans in Virginia who celebrated the First Thanksgiving rather than Puritan Congregationalists in Massachusetts.
Steadfast Virginians believe that the first celebratory autumn feast was held at Berkeley Plantation in 1619, where 38 men just arrived from England knelt on the banks of the James River. They declared: "Wee ordaine that the day of our ships arrivall at the place assigned for plantacon in the land of Virginia shall be yearly and perpetually keept holy as a day of Thanksgiving to Almighty God."
They probably did not eat as well as the Pilgrims at the Plymouth feast two years later. Instead of turkey, the new Virginians may have only had only bacon and peas, washed down by cinnamon water.
These English Anglicans had demographic goals somewhat similar to the Calvinist Pilgrims, though. They were going to settle and populate a whole continent, creating a nation and spreading the Christian faith.
In the mythology of the Religious Left, of course, these earliest of Americans were not only defrauders of the original tribes, they were also despoilers of the environment. Like good "fundamentalists," these hearty Protestants took the Bible too literally about being fruitful and multiplying. They also took too seriously the ostensible divine mandate placing the earth under man's dominion.
The spiritual descendants of those early English/Virginia Anglican pioneers are now correcting the divine record. New Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schori recently told the New York Times that her fellow Episcopalians are proudly not procreating so as to spare the environment.
The Presiding Bishop was asked how many Episcopalians there are in the U.S. "About 2.2 million," Schiori responded. "It used to be larger percentagewise, but Episcopalians tend to be better-educated and tend to reproduce at lower rates than some other denominations. Roman Catholics and Mormons both have theological reasons for producing lots of children."
"Aren't Episcopalians interested in replenishing their ranks by having children," the New York Times asked.
"No," Schori replied. "It's probably the opposite. We encourage people to pay attention to the stewardship of the earth and not use more than their portion."
True to Schori's boast, the Episcopalians have done magnificently in reducing their numbers and, purportedly, sparing the earth the ravages of an enlarged Episcopalian presence. Forty years ago, the Episcopal Church was over 50 percent larger than today, even while the U.S. population was 40 percent smaller.
Had the Episcopalians maintained the same ravenous membership pace of Roman Catholics, or Mormons, or Southern Baptists, over the last 40 years, there would now be somewhere between six and 8 million Episcopalians in the U.S., rather than the current 2 million.
Undoubtedly, the 2003 election of the Episcopal Church's first openly homosexual bishop has accelerated that denomination's decline, with increasing numbers of conservative church members giving up and walking out. Perhaps those Episcopalians who become Catholic or Baptist will soon thereafter become more procreative.
But the remnant Episcopalians under the pastorship of Presiding Bishop Schori no doubt will hold fast to their noble environmental stewardship and maintain a steady, and eco-friendly, downward membership spiral. A good model for the Episcopalians might be the Shakers, the early American sect that foreswore all procreation. Like Episcopalians, the Shakers lived in tasteful and tidy villages, ate plain food, wore all natural fibers, and had nice furniture. The Shakers also had a female leader, "Mother" Ann Lee. Like Bishop Schori, Mother Lee took a dim view of heterosexual couples marrying and having children.
Unlike the Episcopalians, the Shakers worshipped by shouting, dancing, and shaking in fits of ecstasy for hours. In stark contrast, Episcopalians sit quietly or sleep through 50-minute worship services occasionally interrupted by soft organ music. Also unlike the Episcopalians, the Shakers made converts to their faith and inducted orphans into their communities.
But eventually, the Shakers aversion to procreation caught up with them and they were dying out by the end of the 19th century. Today, most Shaker villages are museums or private homes, just as many venerable old Episcopal churches have become restaurants or condominiums for yuppies. A few eccentric Shakers still survive, making baskets and furniture, and keeping the old ways alive. Some day in future decades, if Bishop Schori is completely successful, the Episcopal Church similarly will have reduced to a dozen or so well-heeled adherents. They too will be objects of pleasant curiosity, attracting tourists to their tidy, ivy-covered tudor homes and well-stocked wine closets.
Like the Episcopalians, the Shakers were great conservationists. They depopulated and left behind only their tracks, along with quaint relics. Both Shakers and Episcopalians must find distasteful the more fecund religious movements around the world, whose members continue to marry, birth multiple children, and take up space.
There are now nearly 80 million Anglicans around the world, for example, and their numbers are increasing exponentially, especially in Africa. Forty years ago, for example, the number of Anglicans in Nigeria was somewhat smaller than the number of Episcopalians in the U.S. Today, there are 20 million Nigerian Anglicans, all of them no doubt polluting and contributing mightily to global warming. Bishop Schori must be aghast.
But the growing Anglican communion, like nearly all growing religious groups, view people as gifts from God, not as parasites on an exploited planet earth. And like the hearty Anglicans and Puritans who celebrated America's first Thanksgivings almost four centuries ago, they see the world as still an unexplored adventure, waiting to be unwrapped, enjoyed, and meriting thanks to a God in whose image all people were made.
Mark Tooley directs the United Methodist committee at the Institute on Religion and Democracy in Washington, D.C.
New Bishop shows bankrupcy of 'religious left'
By Michael Medved
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
The Democratic takeover on Capitol Hill provides new energy and aggressiveness for the nation’s Religious Left – that faction of clergy and activists who seek to associate organized faith with the liberal agenda in cultural, economic and foreign policy debates. While deriding Christian conservatives for their alleged “intolerance,” “ignorance” and “fanaticism,” the religious leftists manage to turn off most religious believers of even moderate outlook with their own displays of arrogance and radicalism, and their smug dismissal of traditional values.
The controversial new leader of the Episcopal Church in the United States provided a prime example of these alienating attitudes in a startling interview in the New York Times Magazine on November 19th with Deborah Solomon. When Solomon asked about the current numbers of Episcopalians, for instance, Bishop Jefferts Schori took it as a point of pride that her church experienced declining membership.
Q: How many members of the Episcopal Church are there in this country?
A: About 2.2 million. It used to be larger percentagewise, but Episcopalians tend to be better educated and tend to reproduce at lower rates than other denominations.
In other words, it’s just those uneducated, unsophisticated Evangelicals and Catholics and Mormons and Orthodox Jews who are bothering with the messy, dirty work of producing and raising kids. Naturally, the Presiding Bishop defends the low Episcopal birthrate as a sign of enlightenment:
Q: Episcopalians aren’t interested in replenishing their ranks by having children?
A: No. It’s probably the opposite. We encourage people to pay attention to the stewardship of the earth, and not use more than their portion.
In other responses, Bishop Jefferts Schori showed far more sympathy for Muslim extremists than she did for “fundamentalists” within the Christian tradition:
Q: As a scientist with a Ph.D., what do you make of the Christian fundamentalists who say the earth was created in six days and dismiss evolution as a lot of bunk?
A: I think it’s a horrendous misunderstanding of both science and active faith tradition…
Q: Pope Benedict…became embroiled in controversy this fall after suggesting that Muslims have a history of violence.
A: So do Christians! They have a terrible history… I think Muslims are poorly understood by the West, and it is easy to latch onto that which we do not understand and demonize it.
Note that when the good Bishop speaks of the shameful record of violence by Christians, she says “they have a terrible history” – not we. In other words, she instinctively excludes herself when she talks of Christian tradition.
At a time when Muslim fanatics seek to influence politics and mores around the world, conducting tireless conversionary efforts in the European and North American heartland of Christendom, it’s deeply disturbing that the leader of one of the most influential Christian denominations refuses to recognize what many thoughtful Muslims freely acknowledge—that Islamic culture, today and yesterday, has been marred by uniquely warlike and violent elements. The idea that Christians (or even Muslim reformers) who seek to identify and confront those ugly influences merely “latch onto that which we do not understand and demonize it” is to diminish the significance of the worldwide Islamic terror campaign that’s claimed literally tens of thousands of victims from Mumbai to Madrid, from Nairobi to New York.
Finally, Bishop Jefferts Schori casually dismisses the familial and marital norms that most believers embrace and defend as the very essence of Judeo-Christian faith. Instead of traditional pride in a husband and wife building a home together, making heroic efforts and even significant sacrifices to share a life, the Bishop happily announces that she and her spouse occupy opposite ends of the continent.
Q: You were previously bishop of Nevada, but your new position requires you to live in New York City. Do you and your husband like it here?
A: He is actually in Nevada. He is a retired mathematician. He will be here in New York when it makes sense.
In other words, it doesn’t “make sense” for a retired mathematician to be at his wife’s side when she takes on the leadership of one of the nation’s most significant Christian denominations? It doesn’t make sense for the first female Bishop to head this denomination to try to model marital togetherness?
The questions and answers with Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori eloquently (if inadvertently) demonstrate the bankruptcy of the Religious Left. If the movement’s attitudes toward marriage and child-bearing reflect the trendy ideas of secular environmentalists rather than timeless Biblical truth, then who needs religion? Most Americans understand that the purpose of organized faith is to bring unchanging values to bear in challenging and modifying the fads and temptations of the moment. Religion means nothing if we rather begin with fashionable contemporary ideas and use them to alter the fundamentals of faith. Moreover, what’s the point of maintaining any sort of organized Christianity if one of its most prominent leaders will instinctively condemn her own faith tradition while excusing or dismissing the violent excesses of the deadly Muslim enemies of the Christian world?
As with most leaders of the Christian Left, Bishop Jefferts Schori appears be very Left, but not very Christian. Her example shows the way that this new movement of religious liberals amounts to little more than a desperate effort to use the language of faith to repackage the tired ideas of secular, utopian leftism and moral relativism that have failed so spectacularly wherever they’ve been tried around the world.
Be the first to read Michael Medved's column. Sign up today and receive Townhall.com delivered each morning to your inbox. Sign up today.
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
The Democratic takeover on Capitol Hill provides new energy and aggressiveness for the nation’s Religious Left – that faction of clergy and activists who seek to associate organized faith with the liberal agenda in cultural, economic and foreign policy debates. While deriding Christian conservatives for their alleged “intolerance,” “ignorance” and “fanaticism,” the religious leftists manage to turn off most religious believers of even moderate outlook with their own displays of arrogance and radicalism, and their smug dismissal of traditional values.
The controversial new leader of the Episcopal Church in the United States provided a prime example of these alienating attitudes in a startling interview in the New York Times Magazine on November 19th with Deborah Solomon. When Solomon asked about the current numbers of Episcopalians, for instance, Bishop Jefferts Schori took it as a point of pride that her church experienced declining membership.
Q: How many members of the Episcopal Church are there in this country?
A: About 2.2 million. It used to be larger percentagewise, but Episcopalians tend to be better educated and tend to reproduce at lower rates than other denominations.
In other words, it’s just those uneducated, unsophisticated Evangelicals and Catholics and Mormons and Orthodox Jews who are bothering with the messy, dirty work of producing and raising kids. Naturally, the Presiding Bishop defends the low Episcopal birthrate as a sign of enlightenment:
Q: Episcopalians aren’t interested in replenishing their ranks by having children?
A: No. It’s probably the opposite. We encourage people to pay attention to the stewardship of the earth, and not use more than their portion.
In other responses, Bishop Jefferts Schori showed far more sympathy for Muslim extremists than she did for “fundamentalists” within the Christian tradition:
Q: As a scientist with a Ph.D., what do you make of the Christian fundamentalists who say the earth was created in six days and dismiss evolution as a lot of bunk?
A: I think it’s a horrendous misunderstanding of both science and active faith tradition…
Q: Pope Benedict…became embroiled in controversy this fall after suggesting that Muslims have a history of violence.
A: So do Christians! They have a terrible history… I think Muslims are poorly understood by the West, and it is easy to latch onto that which we do not understand and demonize it.
Note that when the good Bishop speaks of the shameful record of violence by Christians, she says “they have a terrible history” – not we. In other words, she instinctively excludes herself when she talks of Christian tradition.
At a time when Muslim fanatics seek to influence politics and mores around the world, conducting tireless conversionary efforts in the European and North American heartland of Christendom, it’s deeply disturbing that the leader of one of the most influential Christian denominations refuses to recognize what many thoughtful Muslims freely acknowledge—that Islamic culture, today and yesterday, has been marred by uniquely warlike and violent elements. The idea that Christians (or even Muslim reformers) who seek to identify and confront those ugly influences merely “latch onto that which we do not understand and demonize it” is to diminish the significance of the worldwide Islamic terror campaign that’s claimed literally tens of thousands of victims from Mumbai to Madrid, from Nairobi to New York.
Finally, Bishop Jefferts Schori casually dismisses the familial and marital norms that most believers embrace and defend as the very essence of Judeo-Christian faith. Instead of traditional pride in a husband and wife building a home together, making heroic efforts and even significant sacrifices to share a life, the Bishop happily announces that she and her spouse occupy opposite ends of the continent.
Q: You were previously bishop of Nevada, but your new position requires you to live in New York City. Do you and your husband like it here?
A: He is actually in Nevada. He is a retired mathematician. He will be here in New York when it makes sense.
In other words, it doesn’t “make sense” for a retired mathematician to be at his wife’s side when she takes on the leadership of one of the nation’s most significant Christian denominations? It doesn’t make sense for the first female Bishop to head this denomination to try to model marital togetherness?
The questions and answers with Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori eloquently (if inadvertently) demonstrate the bankruptcy of the Religious Left. If the movement’s attitudes toward marriage and child-bearing reflect the trendy ideas of secular environmentalists rather than timeless Biblical truth, then who needs religion? Most Americans understand that the purpose of organized faith is to bring unchanging values to bear in challenging and modifying the fads and temptations of the moment. Religion means nothing if we rather begin with fashionable contemporary ideas and use them to alter the fundamentals of faith. Moreover, what’s the point of maintaining any sort of organized Christianity if one of its most prominent leaders will instinctively condemn her own faith tradition while excusing or dismissing the violent excesses of the deadly Muslim enemies of the Christian world?
As with most leaders of the Christian Left, Bishop Jefferts Schori appears be very Left, but not very Christian. Her example shows the way that this new movement of religious liberals amounts to little more than a desperate effort to use the language of faith to repackage the tired ideas of secular, utopian leftism and moral relativism that have failed so spectacularly wherever they’ve been tried around the world.
Be the first to read Michael Medved's column. Sign up today and receive Townhall.com delivered each morning to your inbox. Sign up today.
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
US Episcopal Church Says More Interested in Decline than Growth
By Peter J. Smith
NEW YORK, November 21, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, the first woman to head the US Episcopal Church (ECUSA), has adopted a unique vision for the Episcopal church: a church not “interested in replenishing their ranks by having children.”
In an interview with New York Times Magazine, Bishop Jefferts Schori conjectured that the Episcopal Church’s now only 2.2 million faithful “used to be larger percentagewise”. However now, she says, “Episcopalians tend to be better-educated and tend to reproduce at lower rates than some other denominations. Roman Catholics and Mormons both have theological reasons for producing lots of children.”
The response provoked this query from NYT reporter Deborah Solomon: “Episcopalians aren’t interested in replenishing their ranks by having children?”
“No. It’s probably the opposite,” responded Jefferts Schori. “We encourage people to pay attention to the stewardship of the earth and not use more than their portion.”
However, Jefferts Schori’s assertion that Catholics, Mormons and those with large families have more children simply because they are not “better educated” has provoked criticism from Catholics, who point out that while the Bishop, a former oceanographer who has worked with “octopuses and squids”, advocates a diminishing population for her church, it would not be something she would view as healthy for marine populations of squids and octopi.
Domenico Bettinelli, jr, discovered that Jeffert Schori’s “better educated” remark may have actually been a “botched joke” much like Sen. John F. Kerry’s remarks that those who didn’t have college educations went into the military or got “stuck in Iraq.” Outraged troops in Iraq replied with a sign saying, “HALP US JON CARRY - WE R STUCK HEAR N IRAK.”
“Bishopess (sic) Katherine Jefferts Schori seems to suffer from the same foot-in-mouth problem as Sen. John Kerry, but if her self-satisfied moral and intellectual superiority gives her comfort as she contemplates the barrenness and decline of the Episcopal Church, she's welcome to it,” said Domenico Bettinelli, jr, former editor of Catholic World Report, who posted on his website an image of a large Catholic family at a wedding with the words “Halp us Bish-up Kate wee R Catlick”.
“As Catholics we're too busy having, raising, and especially loving our children to worry about such things, added Bettinelli. “And when my kids are paying for the good bishopess's Social Security in 30 years, I won't hold it against her.”
A huge rift looms over Jefferts Schori’s head, as her election has signaled to US conservative Episcopalians that the ECUSA will continue to push a pro-homosexual agenda. The Christian Post reports the Rt. Rev. John-David Schofield has urged his diocese to vote to split from ECUSA saying, "The Episcopal Church has become an apostate to the point of heresy.” Also, Bishop Iker of Fort Worth and six other American bishops have asked Rowan Williams, head of the Anglican Communion, to appoint a separate leader for their dioceses, instead of Jefferts Schori.
Whether or not Catholic or Mormon families “use more than their portion”, Jefferts Schori’s vision of a declining Episcopal population only means that there will be more to go around.
See the NYT interview with Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/19/magazine/19WWLN_Q4.html
See Domenico Bettinelli’s “Halp us Bish-up Kate wee R Catlick” at:
http://www.bettnet.com/blog/
NEW YORK, November 21, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, the first woman to head the US Episcopal Church (ECUSA), has adopted a unique vision for the Episcopal church: a church not “interested in replenishing their ranks by having children.”
In an interview with New York Times Magazine, Bishop Jefferts Schori conjectured that the Episcopal Church’s now only 2.2 million faithful “used to be larger percentagewise”. However now, she says, “Episcopalians tend to be better-educated and tend to reproduce at lower rates than some other denominations. Roman Catholics and Mormons both have theological reasons for producing lots of children.”
The response provoked this query from NYT reporter Deborah Solomon: “Episcopalians aren’t interested in replenishing their ranks by having children?”
“No. It’s probably the opposite,” responded Jefferts Schori. “We encourage people to pay attention to the stewardship of the earth and not use more than their portion.”
However, Jefferts Schori’s assertion that Catholics, Mormons and those with large families have more children simply because they are not “better educated” has provoked criticism from Catholics, who point out that while the Bishop, a former oceanographer who has worked with “octopuses and squids”, advocates a diminishing population for her church, it would not be something she would view as healthy for marine populations of squids and octopi.
Domenico Bettinelli, jr, discovered that Jeffert Schori’s “better educated” remark may have actually been a “botched joke” much like Sen. John F. Kerry’s remarks that those who didn’t have college educations went into the military or got “stuck in Iraq.” Outraged troops in Iraq replied with a sign saying, “HALP US JON CARRY - WE R STUCK HEAR N IRAK.”
“Bishopess (sic) Katherine Jefferts Schori seems to suffer from the same foot-in-mouth problem as Sen. John Kerry, but if her self-satisfied moral and intellectual superiority gives her comfort as she contemplates the barrenness and decline of the Episcopal Church, she's welcome to it,” said Domenico Bettinelli, jr, former editor of Catholic World Report, who posted on his website an image of a large Catholic family at a wedding with the words “Halp us Bish-up Kate wee R Catlick”.
“As Catholics we're too busy having, raising, and especially loving our children to worry about such things, added Bettinelli. “And when my kids are paying for the good bishopess's Social Security in 30 years, I won't hold it against her.”
A huge rift looms over Jefferts Schori’s head, as her election has signaled to US conservative Episcopalians that the ECUSA will continue to push a pro-homosexual agenda. The Christian Post reports the Rt. Rev. John-David Schofield has urged his diocese to vote to split from ECUSA saying, "The Episcopal Church has become an apostate to the point of heresy.” Also, Bishop Iker of Fort Worth and six other American bishops have asked Rowan Williams, head of the Anglican Communion, to appoint a separate leader for their dioceses, instead of Jefferts Schori.
Whether or not Catholic or Mormon families “use more than their portion”, Jefferts Schori’s vision of a declining Episcopal population only means that there will be more to go around.
See the NYT interview with Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/19/magazine/19WWLN_Q4.html
See Domenico Bettinelli’s “Halp us Bish-up Kate wee R Catlick” at:
http://www.bettnet.com/blog/
Rethinking the “Three-Legged Stool
This essay is written by a priest of the Diocese of Albany who has read Richard Hooker and understand's Hooker's teachings. Often in The Episcopal Church, priests use Hooker without either reading or understanding his teachings. ed.
by The Rev. Dr. Canon Christopher Brown
What makes Anglicanism unique? An earlier generation of Anglicans replied, “Nothing at all. We are a ‘bridge church’ with a vocation to draw all churches together. We hold nothing that is distinct and uniquely Anglican; our beliefs and practices are simply those that are common to the universal Church.”
Today, one is more likely to hear something like this: “Anglicans do not ascribe an absolute authority to Scripture. At the same time, Anglicanism rejects the absolute claims of an infallible papacy. Anglicanism is distinct in its reliance on the ‘Three-Legged Stool’ of Scripture, Reason, and Tradition.”
Attributed to the 16th century English writer, Richard Hooker, the “Three-Legged Stool” has become the essential feature of a distinct “Anglican Ethos.” Its popularity appears to lie in the manner in which it functions to exclude any form of religious “absolutism.” Neither the Bible, nor the authority or the Church, nor the reasoning intellect can claim the last word, but together they offer a balanced way to discern the will of God.
The “Three-Legged Stool” is so frequently invoked, and accorded such a central place in our Anglican self-presentation, that it seems un-Anglican to call it into question. Nevertheless, the time has come to retire the notion, especially as it is currently understood. Why? To put it bluntly, the “Three-Legged Stool” is part common sense, part theological slight of hand that distorts the historic “Anglican ethos.” It fails to say what needs to be said about who we are and what we have inherited as Anglican Christians.
Anglican Beginnings
In the 16th century, the Church of England went through a series of rapid and jarring changes: from Medieval Catholicism, to Henry VIII’s non-Papal, English Catholicism (Henry was never a Protestant), to a thoroughly reformed Protestantism under Edward VI, and then back to Roman Catholicism during the turbulent reign of Mary Tutor. When Elizabeth I ascended the throne in 1558, she inherited a nation that was bitterly divided in matters of religion.
As the daughter of Anne Boleyn (whose marriage to Henry prompted the break with Rome), Elizabeth was committed to the Reformation. Yet she also had an aversion to religious zealotry, and sought to establish a broad religious consensus that would include those committed to the new Reformed religion, as well as those nostalgic for the old Catholicism. The English people were allowed a wide breadth of doctrinal interpretation, so long as they conformed to the use of The Book of Common Prayer. It was a pragmatic solution; though admittedly theologically fuzzy, it had the virtue of keeping the focus on the essentials of the faith, “it kept the main thing, the main thing.”
Hooker in Context
The “Elizabethan Settlement” held the nation together, but it had many detractors both from the Catholic side, and from Puritans who believed that the English Reformation had not gone far enough. The most notable defender of the newly emergent English Church was a quiet, scholarly priest named Richard Hooker, whose book, The Laws of Ecclesiastical Piety,is the definitive exposition of classic Anglicanism, and is justly famous for its erudition, judicious balance, and its broad and gracious vision of the Church. Hooker balances a catholic understanding of the corporate dimension of the church and the efficacy of the sacraments, with a reformed theology of salvation, and the primacy of Scripture, and encloses it within a Christian humanism that places a high value on reason.
Richard Hooker does not use the term, “Three-Legged Stool.” He does write about Scripture, reason, and what we refer to as “tradition” (though for Hooker, the actual term “tradition” has negative connotations). This might appear to justify the claim that the “Three-Legged Stool” is a sort of “short hand” that distills Hooker’s approach into a simple formula. The problem is that this formula distorts Hooker’s understanding about how Scripture, reason, and tradition relate to each other.
Perhaps the closest Hooker gets to speaking of a “Three-Legged Stool,” and the relationship between Scripture, reason, and tradition, is the following passage:
Be it in matter of the one kind or of the other, what Scripture doth plainly deliver, to that the first place both of credit and obedience is due; the next whereunto is whatsoever any man can necessarily conclude by force of reason; after this the Church succeedeth that which the Church by her ecclesiastical authority shall probably think and define to be true or good, must in congruity of reason overrule all other inferior judgments whatsoever. (Book V, 8:2)
Hooker places three elements in a hierarchical ranking:
1. “What Scripture doth plainly deliver.”
2. That which may be concluded “by force of reason.”
3. That which “the church by her ecclesiastical authority” thinks and defines as true.
The Sufficiency of Scripture
The image of a stool suggests a balance of three equal components, but for Hooker these three do not have equal standing. To Scripture, “first place both of credit and obedience is due,” after which reason and ecclesiastical authority follow in an ordered sequence.
By contrast, the “Three-Legged Stool” limits the determinative role of Scripture. It offers a theological “second opinion” when a passage in Scripture becomes problematic, thereby setting Scripture, reason, and tradition over against each other. To place these on the same level is to abandon classic Anglicanism and contradict the foundational Anglican principle of the “Sufficiency of Scripture” from Article VI of the Articles of the Religion,
Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read
therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be
believed as an article of the Faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation.
There is a simple but profound issue here. We have a God who speaks, a God who provides access to Himself that otherwise lies beyond our reach. He reveals Himself in the Word made Flesh, the testimony to which is “spoken through the prophets”—and comes to us as the inspired Word of the Scriptures. The principal problem with the “Three-Legged Stool” is that it evades a crucial question: “Where do we hear the inspired Word of God? Is reason the Word of God? Is tradition the Word of God? Or is the Bible the Word of God in a manner that is unique and incomparable?” There may be some who say that God reveals Himself in reason and tradition no less significantly than in Scripture. But this is not what Hooker says; it is not what the Church has traditionally taught; and it contradicts what the Bible says about itself.
Though hardly unique to Anglicanism, there is a “common sense” relationship between Scripture, reason, and tradition that finds expression in the task of interpreting the Bible. To understand the Bible and appropriate its message requires all the resources that Christians can bring to bear. Reason is the God-given faculty by which we weigh the different elements involved in the interpretive task. And since we are not the first to strive to understand the Word of God, but stand within a theological tradition, we inevitably draw upon the reflections of those who have gone before us.
Hooker modeled this use of reason and tradition in the task of interpretation, and it enabled him to navigate between the theological extremes of his day. But for Hooker, Scripture remained supremely authoritative: there was no compromising the basic Anglican principle of the “Sufficiency of Scripture.”
"This we believe, this we hold, this the Prophets and Evangelists have declared, this the Apostles have delivered, this Martyrs have sealed with their blood, and confessed in the midst of torments, to this we cleave as to the anchor of our souls, against this though an Angel from heaven should preach unto us, we would not believe.” (Book V.8.2)
So let us retire the “Three-Legged Stool” to the closet. This is not to jettison reason or tradition, but only to accord them their proper place, and to give “first place both of credit and obedience” to the inspired Word of Scripture.
by The Rev. Dr. Canon Christopher Brown
What makes Anglicanism unique? An earlier generation of Anglicans replied, “Nothing at all. We are a ‘bridge church’ with a vocation to draw all churches together. We hold nothing that is distinct and uniquely Anglican; our beliefs and practices are simply those that are common to the universal Church.”
Today, one is more likely to hear something like this: “Anglicans do not ascribe an absolute authority to Scripture. At the same time, Anglicanism rejects the absolute claims of an infallible papacy. Anglicanism is distinct in its reliance on the ‘Three-Legged Stool’ of Scripture, Reason, and Tradition.”
Attributed to the 16th century English writer, Richard Hooker, the “Three-Legged Stool” has become the essential feature of a distinct “Anglican Ethos.” Its popularity appears to lie in the manner in which it functions to exclude any form of religious “absolutism.” Neither the Bible, nor the authority or the Church, nor the reasoning intellect can claim the last word, but together they offer a balanced way to discern the will of God.
The “Three-Legged Stool” is so frequently invoked, and accorded such a central place in our Anglican self-presentation, that it seems un-Anglican to call it into question. Nevertheless, the time has come to retire the notion, especially as it is currently understood. Why? To put it bluntly, the “Three-Legged Stool” is part common sense, part theological slight of hand that distorts the historic “Anglican ethos.” It fails to say what needs to be said about who we are and what we have inherited as Anglican Christians.
Anglican Beginnings
In the 16th century, the Church of England went through a series of rapid and jarring changes: from Medieval Catholicism, to Henry VIII’s non-Papal, English Catholicism (Henry was never a Protestant), to a thoroughly reformed Protestantism under Edward VI, and then back to Roman Catholicism during the turbulent reign of Mary Tutor. When Elizabeth I ascended the throne in 1558, she inherited a nation that was bitterly divided in matters of religion.
As the daughter of Anne Boleyn (whose marriage to Henry prompted the break with Rome), Elizabeth was committed to the Reformation. Yet she also had an aversion to religious zealotry, and sought to establish a broad religious consensus that would include those committed to the new Reformed religion, as well as those nostalgic for the old Catholicism. The English people were allowed a wide breadth of doctrinal interpretation, so long as they conformed to the use of The Book of Common Prayer. It was a pragmatic solution; though admittedly theologically fuzzy, it had the virtue of keeping the focus on the essentials of the faith, “it kept the main thing, the main thing.”
Hooker in Context
The “Elizabethan Settlement” held the nation together, but it had many detractors both from the Catholic side, and from Puritans who believed that the English Reformation had not gone far enough. The most notable defender of the newly emergent English Church was a quiet, scholarly priest named Richard Hooker, whose book, The Laws of Ecclesiastical Piety,is the definitive exposition of classic Anglicanism, and is justly famous for its erudition, judicious balance, and its broad and gracious vision of the Church. Hooker balances a catholic understanding of the corporate dimension of the church and the efficacy of the sacraments, with a reformed theology of salvation, and the primacy of Scripture, and encloses it within a Christian humanism that places a high value on reason.
Richard Hooker does not use the term, “Three-Legged Stool.” He does write about Scripture, reason, and what we refer to as “tradition” (though for Hooker, the actual term “tradition” has negative connotations). This might appear to justify the claim that the “Three-Legged Stool” is a sort of “short hand” that distills Hooker’s approach into a simple formula. The problem is that this formula distorts Hooker’s understanding about how Scripture, reason, and tradition relate to each other.
Perhaps the closest Hooker gets to speaking of a “Three-Legged Stool,” and the relationship between Scripture, reason, and tradition, is the following passage:
Be it in matter of the one kind or of the other, what Scripture doth plainly deliver, to that the first place both of credit and obedience is due; the next whereunto is whatsoever any man can necessarily conclude by force of reason; after this the Church succeedeth that which the Church by her ecclesiastical authority shall probably think and define to be true or good, must in congruity of reason overrule all other inferior judgments whatsoever. (Book V, 8:2)
Hooker places three elements in a hierarchical ranking:
1. “What Scripture doth plainly deliver.”
2. That which may be concluded “by force of reason.”
3. That which “the church by her ecclesiastical authority” thinks and defines as true.
The Sufficiency of Scripture
The image of a stool suggests a balance of three equal components, but for Hooker these three do not have equal standing. To Scripture, “first place both of credit and obedience is due,” after which reason and ecclesiastical authority follow in an ordered sequence.
By contrast, the “Three-Legged Stool” limits the determinative role of Scripture. It offers a theological “second opinion” when a passage in Scripture becomes problematic, thereby setting Scripture, reason, and tradition over against each other. To place these on the same level is to abandon classic Anglicanism and contradict the foundational Anglican principle of the “Sufficiency of Scripture” from Article VI of the Articles of the Religion,
Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read
therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be
believed as an article of the Faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation.
There is a simple but profound issue here. We have a God who speaks, a God who provides access to Himself that otherwise lies beyond our reach. He reveals Himself in the Word made Flesh, the testimony to which is “spoken through the prophets”—and comes to us as the inspired Word of the Scriptures. The principal problem with the “Three-Legged Stool” is that it evades a crucial question: “Where do we hear the inspired Word of God? Is reason the Word of God? Is tradition the Word of God? Or is the Bible the Word of God in a manner that is unique and incomparable?” There may be some who say that God reveals Himself in reason and tradition no less significantly than in Scripture. But this is not what Hooker says; it is not what the Church has traditionally taught; and it contradicts what the Bible says about itself.
Though hardly unique to Anglicanism, there is a “common sense” relationship between Scripture, reason, and tradition that finds expression in the task of interpreting the Bible. To understand the Bible and appropriate its message requires all the resources that Christians can bring to bear. Reason is the God-given faculty by which we weigh the different elements involved in the interpretive task. And since we are not the first to strive to understand the Word of God, but stand within a theological tradition, we inevitably draw upon the reflections of those who have gone before us.
Hooker modeled this use of reason and tradition in the task of interpretation, and it enabled him to navigate between the theological extremes of his day. But for Hooker, Scripture remained supremely authoritative: there was no compromising the basic Anglican principle of the “Sufficiency of Scripture.”
"This we believe, this we hold, this the Prophets and Evangelists have declared, this the Apostles have delivered, this Martyrs have sealed with their blood, and confessed in the midst of torments, to this we cleave as to the anchor of our souls, against this though an Angel from heaven should preach unto us, we would not believe.” (Book V.8.2)
So let us retire the “Three-Legged Stool” to the closet. This is not to jettison reason or tradition, but only to accord them their proper place, and to give “first place both of credit and obedience” to the inspired Word of Scripture.
Irreconcilable Differences
From The Living Church:
11/26/2006
By Jack Estes
I have heard it said that the United States and England are two nations separated by a common language. For even though both share a common heritage from the past, today the words and the meanings are set in the context of different cultures, different histories, and a matrix of knowing and perceiving the world that is peculiar to each country. The language sounds the same, but much of what is said means something different.
The same holds true for liberal Episcopalians and conservative Anglicans. We are two churches separated by a common language. Although we share a common heritage, the priorities and practice of our faith are set in the context of different theologies, different views of the surrounding culture, and a matrix of knowing and perceiving God and the world that is peculiar to each.
Much of what is said in conversation with each other sounds the same, but the meanings are substantially different. Each community may be able to hear the words of the other, but in the end both walk away perplexed, not understanding what the other really meant. Perplexion turns to confusion, confusion to frustration, frustration to anger. We get angry because the others just don’t seem to get it. We seem to say the same thing, but then act in ways that are radically different.
The problem begins as soon as we try to name the difference. Most liberal Episcopalians consider themselves to be Anglicans. Many conservative Anglicans continue to assert that they are Episcopalians. We can’t even seem to make a distinction on what to call ourselves. For the sake of clarity, this essay shall refer to those who are committed to the progressive view held by a majority in The Episcopal Church (TEC) as liberal Episcopalians. Those who are committed to the traditional view, along with most of those in the Global South, shall be referred to as conservative Anglicans.
Naturally, the situation is not as simple as this. A whole spectrum exists in between the extreme left and the extreme right. Individuals, parishes, and dioceses consist of different mixes and opinions. This post-modern tendency to customize our own religious beliefs adds to the complexity and the confusion. Nevertheless, in the final analysis there remain two distinct theological systems, or religious expressions, which are distinct and irreconcilable.
At present they remain conjoined, two churches separated by a common language, the language of Anglican Christianity. Both uphold the Book of Common Prayer as the standard of worship. Both ascribe to tradition, reason, and scripture as the Anglican way. Both claim to be legitimate heirs of the Anglican tradition. Indeed, both may be justified in doing so, as the Anglican stream has provided a place of nurture for each.
Each theological expression asserts to uphold the truth of the gospel. Both affirm the authority of holy scripture. Both hold up Jesus Christ as Savior. Both even maintain that they are orthodox. Like the surface of a lake on a still afternoon, each reflects the surrounding landscape of Anglicanism in an illusion of unity. But beneath the surface there is a great divide.
In order to plunge into the depths and see clearly the division that resides there, one must ask questions that break through the surface mirage, questions that are penetrating. For example, we may ask, “Is Jesus Christ the Savior?” Most will answer “Yes.” But if we ask, “Who is Jesus?” “What do we mean by the Christ?” or, “What is the nature of sin and salvation?,” very different answers will begin to emerge. These answers form the theological presuppositions, which in turn order the faith and practice of each respective church community.
Who is Jesus? What is the gospel? How does holy scripture have authority? What is sin? Morality? Is God independent from the universe, or interdependent with it? These questions penetrate the idyllic surface of statements to which all claim to adhere. Beneath the surface we are faced with answers from two separate and distinct theological systems. These systems may be cohesive in and of themselves, but are radically different from one another.
Once the surface is broken, like a scuba diver we begin to see clearly what lies beneath. Two distinct visions of what it means to be an Anglican, perhaps even what it means to be a Christian, have emerged, and there is a great divide between them. This divide will not be breached by simply talking it over in the common language of the surface. Such conversation is merely representative. It does not convey the meanings that reside in the depth. The only way this division can be overcome would be if one or the other abandons their theological presuppositions.
Will this happen? Will liberal Episcopalians abandon their commitment to promoting gay-lesbian-bisexual-transgender inclusiveness, a peace and justice gospel, and the acceptance of all faiths as equivalent paths to God? Will conservative Anglicans abandon their commitment to morality based on an objective scriptural standard, Jesus as the exclusive means of salvation, and a gospel that proclaims the need to convert others to Christianity?
Simply answered, No!
Neither liberal Episcopalians nor conservative Anglicans will abandon the foundations of their faith as they see it. Whole lives and whole communities of faith are formed and committed to these two increasingly distinct and separate systems of belief. For either of them to cast aside these foundations would be to abandon their understanding of God, and, along with it, the community that is formed around that understanding.
And so we will remain divided, two churches — two theologies, separated by a common language. The division will only become greater as time goes on. Unless we honestly acknowledge the divide and embrace a realistic solution, lack of understanding, frustration, and anger will continue to escalate.
The only way to resolve the conflict is through reformation. In order to maintain integrity and fulfill their respective visions, liberals and conservatives must each reform into their own distinctive communities of faith. Attempting to force one side to capitulate to the other will only result in the shredding of all.
The great divide in the Anglican stream of Christianity is upon us. The division, which is already a reality beneath the surface, is becoming visible and tangible to all. Common language does not make the English into Americans nor Americans into English. Neither will it make liberal Episcopalians into conservative Anglicans, nor conservative Anglicans into liberal Episcopalians.
The time for denial is over. The day is at hand when all must choose to stand on one side of the divide or the other. Reformation is already underway. The only question remaining is how will it be accomplished? Will we reform with civility and respect for one another, or with bloody conflict and court battles?
The Rev. Jack Estes is the rector of St. Luke’s Church, Bakersfield, Calif.
This Reader’s Viewpoint article, which appears in the print edition, does not necessarily represent the editorial opinion of The Living Church or its board of directors.
To find more news, feature articles, and commentary about the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion not available online, we invite you to subscribe to The Living Church magazine.
11/26/2006
By Jack Estes
I have heard it said that the United States and England are two nations separated by a common language. For even though both share a common heritage from the past, today the words and the meanings are set in the context of different cultures, different histories, and a matrix of knowing and perceiving the world that is peculiar to each country. The language sounds the same, but much of what is said means something different.
The same holds true for liberal Episcopalians and conservative Anglicans. We are two churches separated by a common language. Although we share a common heritage, the priorities and practice of our faith are set in the context of different theologies, different views of the surrounding culture, and a matrix of knowing and perceiving God and the world that is peculiar to each.
Much of what is said in conversation with each other sounds the same, but the meanings are substantially different. Each community may be able to hear the words of the other, but in the end both walk away perplexed, not understanding what the other really meant. Perplexion turns to confusion, confusion to frustration, frustration to anger. We get angry because the others just don’t seem to get it. We seem to say the same thing, but then act in ways that are radically different.
The problem begins as soon as we try to name the difference. Most liberal Episcopalians consider themselves to be Anglicans. Many conservative Anglicans continue to assert that they are Episcopalians. We can’t even seem to make a distinction on what to call ourselves. For the sake of clarity, this essay shall refer to those who are committed to the progressive view held by a majority in The Episcopal Church (TEC) as liberal Episcopalians. Those who are committed to the traditional view, along with most of those in the Global South, shall be referred to as conservative Anglicans.
Naturally, the situation is not as simple as this. A whole spectrum exists in between the extreme left and the extreme right. Individuals, parishes, and dioceses consist of different mixes and opinions. This post-modern tendency to customize our own religious beliefs adds to the complexity and the confusion. Nevertheless, in the final analysis there remain two distinct theological systems, or religious expressions, which are distinct and irreconcilable.
At present they remain conjoined, two churches separated by a common language, the language of Anglican Christianity. Both uphold the Book of Common Prayer as the standard of worship. Both ascribe to tradition, reason, and scripture as the Anglican way. Both claim to be legitimate heirs of the Anglican tradition. Indeed, both may be justified in doing so, as the Anglican stream has provided a place of nurture for each.
Each theological expression asserts to uphold the truth of the gospel. Both affirm the authority of holy scripture. Both hold up Jesus Christ as Savior. Both even maintain that they are orthodox. Like the surface of a lake on a still afternoon, each reflects the surrounding landscape of Anglicanism in an illusion of unity. But beneath the surface there is a great divide.
In order to plunge into the depths and see clearly the division that resides there, one must ask questions that break through the surface mirage, questions that are penetrating. For example, we may ask, “Is Jesus Christ the Savior?” Most will answer “Yes.” But if we ask, “Who is Jesus?” “What do we mean by the Christ?” or, “What is the nature of sin and salvation?,” very different answers will begin to emerge. These answers form the theological presuppositions, which in turn order the faith and practice of each respective church community.
Who is Jesus? What is the gospel? How does holy scripture have authority? What is sin? Morality? Is God independent from the universe, or interdependent with it? These questions penetrate the idyllic surface of statements to which all claim to adhere. Beneath the surface we are faced with answers from two separate and distinct theological systems. These systems may be cohesive in and of themselves, but are radically different from one another.
Once the surface is broken, like a scuba diver we begin to see clearly what lies beneath. Two distinct visions of what it means to be an Anglican, perhaps even what it means to be a Christian, have emerged, and there is a great divide between them. This divide will not be breached by simply talking it over in the common language of the surface. Such conversation is merely representative. It does not convey the meanings that reside in the depth. The only way this division can be overcome would be if one or the other abandons their theological presuppositions.
Will this happen? Will liberal Episcopalians abandon their commitment to promoting gay-lesbian-bisexual-transgender inclusiveness, a peace and justice gospel, and the acceptance of all faiths as equivalent paths to God? Will conservative Anglicans abandon their commitment to morality based on an objective scriptural standard, Jesus as the exclusive means of salvation, and a gospel that proclaims the need to convert others to Christianity?
Simply answered, No!
Neither liberal Episcopalians nor conservative Anglicans will abandon the foundations of their faith as they see it. Whole lives and whole communities of faith are formed and committed to these two increasingly distinct and separate systems of belief. For either of them to cast aside these foundations would be to abandon their understanding of God, and, along with it, the community that is formed around that understanding.
And so we will remain divided, two churches — two theologies, separated by a common language. The division will only become greater as time goes on. Unless we honestly acknowledge the divide and embrace a realistic solution, lack of understanding, frustration, and anger will continue to escalate.
The only way to resolve the conflict is through reformation. In order to maintain integrity and fulfill their respective visions, liberals and conservatives must each reform into their own distinctive communities of faith. Attempting to force one side to capitulate to the other will only result in the shredding of all.
The great divide in the Anglican stream of Christianity is upon us. The division, which is already a reality beneath the surface, is becoming visible and tangible to all. Common language does not make the English into Americans nor Americans into English. Neither will it make liberal Episcopalians into conservative Anglicans, nor conservative Anglicans into liberal Episcopalians.
The time for denial is over. The day is at hand when all must choose to stand on one side of the divide or the other. Reformation is already underway. The only question remaining is how will it be accomplished? Will we reform with civility and respect for one another, or with bloody conflict and court battles?
The Rev. Jack Estes is the rector of St. Luke’s Church, Bakersfield, Calif.
This Reader’s Viewpoint article, which appears in the print edition, does not necessarily represent the editorial opinion of The Living Church or its board of directors.
To find more news, feature articles, and commentary about the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion not available online, we invite you to subscribe to The Living Church magazine.
Monday, November 20, 2006
PB to Bp. of San Joaquin
Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori — concerned by current affairs in the Fresno-based Diocese of San Joaquin, California — has written to its bishop, the Rt. Rev. John-David Schofield. The diocese, which is scheduled to meet in convention December 1-2, includes an estimated 10,000 Episcopalians in some 48 congregations. The text of Jefferts Schori’s November 20 letter follows.
November 20, 2006
The Rt. Rev. John-David Schofield
Diocese of San Joaquin
4159 E. Dakota Avenue
Fresno, California 93726
My dear brother:
I have seen reports of your letter to parishes in the Diocese of San Joaquin, which apparently urges delegates to your upcoming Diocesan Convention to take action to leave the Episcopal Church. I would ask you to confirm the accuracy of those reports. If true, you must be aware that such action would likely be seen as a violation of your ordination vows to “uphold the doctrine, discipline, and worship of Christ as this Church has received them.” I must strongly urge you to consider the consequences of such action, not only for yourself but especially for all of the Episcopalians under your pastoral charge and care.
I certainly understand that you personally disagree with decisions by General Conventions over the past 30 and more years. You have, however, taken vows three times over that period to uphold the “doctrine, discipline, and worship of the Episcopal Church.” If you now feel that you can no longer do so, the more honorable course would be to renounce your orders in this Church and seek a home elsewhere. Your public assertion that your duty is to violate those vows puts many, many people at hazard of profound spiritual violence. I urge you, as a pastor, to consider that hazard with the utmost gravity.
As you contemplate this action I would also remind you of the trust which you and I both hold for those who have come before and those who will come after us. None of us has received the property held by the Church today to use as we will. We have received it as stewards, for those who enjoy it today and those who will be blessed by the ministry its use will permit in the future. Our forebears did not build churches or give memorials with the intent that they be removed from the Episcopal Church. Nor did our forebears give liberally to fund endowments with the intent that they be consumed by litigation.
The Church will endure whatever decision you make in San Joaquin. The people who are its members, however, will suffer in the midst of this conflict, and probably suffer unnecessarily. Jesus calls us to take up our crosses daily, but not in the service of division and antagonism. He calls us to take up our crosses in his service of reconciling the world to God. Would that you might lead the people of San Joaquin toward decisions that build up the Body, that bring abundant life to those within and beyond our Church, that restore us to oneness.
I stand ready for conversation and reconciliation. May God bless your deliberation.
I remain
Your servant in Christ,
+Katharine
The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori
Presiding Bishop and Primate
From the comments at TitusOneNine:
"That letter is horrible. I wonder how long it’ll be until her main flying monkey, Beers, is sent in to “enforce” her idea of “reconciliation”?"
ed. note: David Booth Beers is the Chancellor (lawyer) to the Presiding Bishop.
November 20, 2006
The Rt. Rev. John-David Schofield
Diocese of San Joaquin
4159 E. Dakota Avenue
Fresno, California 93726
My dear brother:
I have seen reports of your letter to parishes in the Diocese of San Joaquin, which apparently urges delegates to your upcoming Diocesan Convention to take action to leave the Episcopal Church. I would ask you to confirm the accuracy of those reports. If true, you must be aware that such action would likely be seen as a violation of your ordination vows to “uphold the doctrine, discipline, and worship of Christ as this Church has received them.” I must strongly urge you to consider the consequences of such action, not only for yourself but especially for all of the Episcopalians under your pastoral charge and care.
I certainly understand that you personally disagree with decisions by General Conventions over the past 30 and more years. You have, however, taken vows three times over that period to uphold the “doctrine, discipline, and worship of the Episcopal Church.” If you now feel that you can no longer do so, the more honorable course would be to renounce your orders in this Church and seek a home elsewhere. Your public assertion that your duty is to violate those vows puts many, many people at hazard of profound spiritual violence. I urge you, as a pastor, to consider that hazard with the utmost gravity.
As you contemplate this action I would also remind you of the trust which you and I both hold for those who have come before and those who will come after us. None of us has received the property held by the Church today to use as we will. We have received it as stewards, for those who enjoy it today and those who will be blessed by the ministry its use will permit in the future. Our forebears did not build churches or give memorials with the intent that they be removed from the Episcopal Church. Nor did our forebears give liberally to fund endowments with the intent that they be consumed by litigation.
The Church will endure whatever decision you make in San Joaquin. The people who are its members, however, will suffer in the midst of this conflict, and probably suffer unnecessarily. Jesus calls us to take up our crosses daily, but not in the service of division and antagonism. He calls us to take up our crosses in his service of reconciling the world to God. Would that you might lead the people of San Joaquin toward decisions that build up the Body, that bring abundant life to those within and beyond our Church, that restore us to oneness.
I stand ready for conversation and reconciliation. May God bless your deliberation.
I remain
Your servant in Christ,
+Katharine
The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori
Presiding Bishop and Primate
From the comments at TitusOneNine:
"That letter is horrible. I wonder how long it’ll be until her main flying monkey, Beers, is sent in to “enforce” her idea of “reconciliation”?"
ed. note: David Booth Beers is the Chancellor (lawyer) to the Presiding Bishop.
An Insightful Essay from First Things
October 25, 2006
Jordan Hylden writes:
Seeing as how I am a new Episcopalian and still learning about my church, I attended a public address given a couple weeks back by Bishop Gene Robinson at General Theological Seminary, in the Chelsea district of Manhattan. There was a pleasant reception before his remarks, supplied nicely with wine and hors d’oeuvres platters and attended by a quietly chattering crowd of 60-year-olds outfitted by L.L. Bean. Sad to say, I did not know a soul there, and mostly stood off to one side, listening to people talk about things like the new art galleries over in Williamsburg. One gentleman politely asked me if I was there because of my “orientation,” to which I responded that I was in fact simply there out of curiosity. Later on I reflected that my response could have been taken several ways, but, as it happened, there was not much time for reflection, and I along with the L.L. Bean folks soon went inside the chapel for the evening’s talk.
The chapel of course is a beautiful structure, built one hundred and twenty years ago in the English Gothic Revival mode with donations from the Morgans, Pierponts, and Vanderbilts, and featuring a magnificent reredos behind the altar that tastefully reflects the gender equality that subsists among the saints in glory. It did not take long for the nave to fill up, although, unfortunately, it took longer for the event to get started, which gave me ample time to flip through the pewbooks. (The African-American hymnal looked to be quite good; the feminist hymnal, however, seemed filled with titles like “In Praise of Hildegard We Sing.”) I had nearly gotten to the point of thumbing through the BCP church calendar when the Very Rev. Ward B. Ewing, dean of the seminary, rose to give the welcome, which of course was quite warm. Following him was Christine Quinn, the first openly gay speaker of New York’s city council, who reminded us all that “If you believe in yourself, if you define yourself, if you love yourself, you can overcome any odds that anybody puts in front of you.” This met with loud applause, after which we all sat quietly in our seats to consider how the glorious company of the saints had believed in themselves.
The bishop himself was next. He began by thanking Ms. Quinn for her wise words and reminded us that most places in America—like Iowa, Georgia, or New Mexico—were not like the Chelsea district of Manhattan. Indeed, I thought. But that should not deter us, he said, from going out into the rest of the country to take back religion. For years, he said, the Church had been the world’s greatest oppressor, until finally, in the 1960s, people began to wake up and set things straight. People started to realize that what the Church had taught all along about lots of things just wasn’t true, and so they started acting prophetically as a voice for change. That, he said, is the true mission of today’s Church: To find out where God is already at work outside the Church and to join God there. Because I did not grow up in the Chelsea district of Manhattan, this required a bit of sorting out in my mind, but eventually it all seemed to fit. “The Church is the world’s greatest oppressor,” I reasoned, “but God is at work outside the Church, so our mission as Christians is to work to change the Church until it becomes like, you know, those places outside the Church.” It still seemed like I was missing something, but I figured I could think about it later.
Bishop Robinson’s talk was, on its surface, all about LGBT inclusion, but he said it actually was about much more than that. At its most basic level, it was about the end of patriarchy, which to him explained why he met with such opposition. The audience nodded approvingly—civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights, and the sexual revolution were all part of a single struggle for liberation, from the Man, or something like that. Freedom, justice, and sex were all the same thing! I liked this idea. Being an Episcopalian, I thought, was going to be fun.
But if that was the good news, then what came next was the bad news. Many people, he warned, will be hurt and confused by our prophetic struggle against patriarchy. Some of them will probably even leave the Church. And, what’s more, we won’t even have the same relationship to something called the “Anglican Communion” anymore. This all sounded worrying. But, the bishop said, that was just the price we would have to pay for doing the right thing. If people were hurt and confused, or if they left the Church, then we would just have to deal with it later. He reminded us that Jesus was the ultimate example of someone who did the right thing and paid a price for it. He told us how, when he was made bishop, he had to wear a bulletproof vest and have an armed guard standing by, and how they had made special plans if he had been shot to take him into another room and make him a bishop before he died. He was being modest, of course, but we all thought he had been very brave. And although I had been worried at first, I started to feel sort of tough and rebellious. Maybe, I thought, I could be as brave as Gene Robinson some day. I stopped thinking about those people who would be hurt or confused. They would just have to get with the program.
Next, it was time for the question-and-answer session, and I was lucky enough to ask the bishop about something that had been bothering me. “Do you think,” I asked, “that conservatives from places like South Carolina and progressives from places like New Hampshire should stay together in the same church?” Bishop Robinson gave a surprising answer—yes, he said, they should stay together, because part of the genius of Anglicanism is keeping everybody together no matter what. The audience members puzzled over this. On the one hand, being tolerant and inclusive people, we didn’t want to tell people what to do or push anybody away. But on the other hand, wasn’t taking back religion from the conservatives the whole point of all this? Aren’t the conservatives in the Church the world’s greatest oppressors—just the people we’re fighting against? This seemed strange to me, but I supposed that maybe it would be all right so long as the conservatives stayed in far-off places like South Carolina, where they belonged. Although, I didn’t think that everyone in the audience liked the bishop’s answer, and I wasn’t sure that I did, either.
Finally, it was time for one last question. A gentleman in the back stood up and asked, “What do you think we need to do to save General Theological Seminary?” This came as quite a surprise to me—how could such a nice seminary need to be saved? But apparently it was true. Bishop Robinson, who was on the board of the seminary, said that the building plans would have to go forward if the seminary were to be saved. I wasn’t quite sure what that all meant, but later on I found out that the seminary was almost bankrupt and wanted to knock down its library and put an apartment building there instead. It seemed to make sense, although it was very sad—it explained why there was so much old scaffolding on the buildings (sort of like the Cathedral of St. John the Divine up on Morningside Heights), and why there were plastic sheets on the library books to keep them from getting wet when the roof leaked. But that wasn’t even the saddest part. It turned out that the seminary’s neighbors in Chelsea weren’t letting them put up the apartment building. They thought it would be too noisy and ugly, and they wanted things to stay just the way they were. The neighbors, it turned out, didn’t much like the seminary at all. They had even organized petition drives and protests to tell the seminary so.
I didn’t understand any of this. Before I had felt all tough and cool, fired up and ready to take religion back from the conservatives, but now it seemed like even our friends in the Chelsea district of Manhattan didn’t want us anymore. “How could they do this?” I thought. Many of them were gay, and we were sticking up for them! We were doing the right thing! Acting prophetically, no matter what! It was all very sad, and I started to wonder if anyone cared about the Episcopal Church anymore. People had started to file out of the chapel by this point, and I started to follow them. As I did, I overheard a young man about my age say to his friend, “You know, I agree with his politics and everything, but I’m not religious, so this wasn’t all that interesting to me. I bet my dad would have liked it, though.”
I was pretty depressed, and I started walking glumly back to my apartment. On my way home, I passed by an old Episcopal church that seemed sort of different from normal churches—it didn’t say anything about services, but there was a back door open, with loud music playing inside and a bunch of kids standing out front. I looked closer, and realized what had happened. Why, it had been turned into a nightclub! Loud and exciting music thrummed from inside the sanctuary, where young people like me were dancing and drinking and having a good time. I thought back to what I had learned earlier that night, about how freedom and justice and sex were all the same thing, and how being the Church meant joining the world in the struggle against patriarchy. Finally, I started to feel good again. It was going to be a tough fight, but there would be lots of fun along the way. I smiled, looking up at the nightclub-church, and thought that maybe we were starting to get it right after all.
Jordan Hylden is a junior fellow at First Things.
Jordan Hylden writes:
Seeing as how I am a new Episcopalian and still learning about my church, I attended a public address given a couple weeks back by Bishop Gene Robinson at General Theological Seminary, in the Chelsea district of Manhattan. There was a pleasant reception before his remarks, supplied nicely with wine and hors d’oeuvres platters and attended by a quietly chattering crowd of 60-year-olds outfitted by L.L. Bean. Sad to say, I did not know a soul there, and mostly stood off to one side, listening to people talk about things like the new art galleries over in Williamsburg. One gentleman politely asked me if I was there because of my “orientation,” to which I responded that I was in fact simply there out of curiosity. Later on I reflected that my response could have been taken several ways, but, as it happened, there was not much time for reflection, and I along with the L.L. Bean folks soon went inside the chapel for the evening’s talk.
The chapel of course is a beautiful structure, built one hundred and twenty years ago in the English Gothic Revival mode with donations from the Morgans, Pierponts, and Vanderbilts, and featuring a magnificent reredos behind the altar that tastefully reflects the gender equality that subsists among the saints in glory. It did not take long for the nave to fill up, although, unfortunately, it took longer for the event to get started, which gave me ample time to flip through the pewbooks. (The African-American hymnal looked to be quite good; the feminist hymnal, however, seemed filled with titles like “In Praise of Hildegard We Sing.”) I had nearly gotten to the point of thumbing through the BCP church calendar when the Very Rev. Ward B. Ewing, dean of the seminary, rose to give the welcome, which of course was quite warm. Following him was Christine Quinn, the first openly gay speaker of New York’s city council, who reminded us all that “If you believe in yourself, if you define yourself, if you love yourself, you can overcome any odds that anybody puts in front of you.” This met with loud applause, after which we all sat quietly in our seats to consider how the glorious company of the saints had believed in themselves.
The bishop himself was next. He began by thanking Ms. Quinn for her wise words and reminded us that most places in America—like Iowa, Georgia, or New Mexico—were not like the Chelsea district of Manhattan. Indeed, I thought. But that should not deter us, he said, from going out into the rest of the country to take back religion. For years, he said, the Church had been the world’s greatest oppressor, until finally, in the 1960s, people began to wake up and set things straight. People started to realize that what the Church had taught all along about lots of things just wasn’t true, and so they started acting prophetically as a voice for change. That, he said, is the true mission of today’s Church: To find out where God is already at work outside the Church and to join God there. Because I did not grow up in the Chelsea district of Manhattan, this required a bit of sorting out in my mind, but eventually it all seemed to fit. “The Church is the world’s greatest oppressor,” I reasoned, “but God is at work outside the Church, so our mission as Christians is to work to change the Church until it becomes like, you know, those places outside the Church.” It still seemed like I was missing something, but I figured I could think about it later.
Bishop Robinson’s talk was, on its surface, all about LGBT inclusion, but he said it actually was about much more than that. At its most basic level, it was about the end of patriarchy, which to him explained why he met with such opposition. The audience nodded approvingly—civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights, and the sexual revolution were all part of a single struggle for liberation, from the Man, or something like that. Freedom, justice, and sex were all the same thing! I liked this idea. Being an Episcopalian, I thought, was going to be fun.
But if that was the good news, then what came next was the bad news. Many people, he warned, will be hurt and confused by our prophetic struggle against patriarchy. Some of them will probably even leave the Church. And, what’s more, we won’t even have the same relationship to something called the “Anglican Communion” anymore. This all sounded worrying. But, the bishop said, that was just the price we would have to pay for doing the right thing. If people were hurt and confused, or if they left the Church, then we would just have to deal with it later. He reminded us that Jesus was the ultimate example of someone who did the right thing and paid a price for it. He told us how, when he was made bishop, he had to wear a bulletproof vest and have an armed guard standing by, and how they had made special plans if he had been shot to take him into another room and make him a bishop before he died. He was being modest, of course, but we all thought he had been very brave. And although I had been worried at first, I started to feel sort of tough and rebellious. Maybe, I thought, I could be as brave as Gene Robinson some day. I stopped thinking about those people who would be hurt or confused. They would just have to get with the program.
Next, it was time for the question-and-answer session, and I was lucky enough to ask the bishop about something that had been bothering me. “Do you think,” I asked, “that conservatives from places like South Carolina and progressives from places like New Hampshire should stay together in the same church?” Bishop Robinson gave a surprising answer—yes, he said, they should stay together, because part of the genius of Anglicanism is keeping everybody together no matter what. The audience members puzzled over this. On the one hand, being tolerant and inclusive people, we didn’t want to tell people what to do or push anybody away. But on the other hand, wasn’t taking back religion from the conservatives the whole point of all this? Aren’t the conservatives in the Church the world’s greatest oppressors—just the people we’re fighting against? This seemed strange to me, but I supposed that maybe it would be all right so long as the conservatives stayed in far-off places like South Carolina, where they belonged. Although, I didn’t think that everyone in the audience liked the bishop’s answer, and I wasn’t sure that I did, either.
Finally, it was time for one last question. A gentleman in the back stood up and asked, “What do you think we need to do to save General Theological Seminary?” This came as quite a surprise to me—how could such a nice seminary need to be saved? But apparently it was true. Bishop Robinson, who was on the board of the seminary, said that the building plans would have to go forward if the seminary were to be saved. I wasn’t quite sure what that all meant, but later on I found out that the seminary was almost bankrupt and wanted to knock down its library and put an apartment building there instead. It seemed to make sense, although it was very sad—it explained why there was so much old scaffolding on the buildings (sort of like the Cathedral of St. John the Divine up on Morningside Heights), and why there were plastic sheets on the library books to keep them from getting wet when the roof leaked. But that wasn’t even the saddest part. It turned out that the seminary’s neighbors in Chelsea weren’t letting them put up the apartment building. They thought it would be too noisy and ugly, and they wanted things to stay just the way they were. The neighbors, it turned out, didn’t much like the seminary at all. They had even organized petition drives and protests to tell the seminary so.
I didn’t understand any of this. Before I had felt all tough and cool, fired up and ready to take religion back from the conservatives, but now it seemed like even our friends in the Chelsea district of Manhattan didn’t want us anymore. “How could they do this?” I thought. Many of them were gay, and we were sticking up for them! We were doing the right thing! Acting prophetically, no matter what! It was all very sad, and I started to wonder if anyone cared about the Episcopal Church anymore. People had started to file out of the chapel by this point, and I started to follow them. As I did, I overheard a young man about my age say to his friend, “You know, I agree with his politics and everything, but I’m not religious, so this wasn’t all that interesting to me. I bet my dad would have liked it, though.”
I was pretty depressed, and I started walking glumly back to my apartment. On my way home, I passed by an old Episcopal church that seemed sort of different from normal churches—it didn’t say anything about services, but there was a back door open, with loud music playing inside and a bunch of kids standing out front. I looked closer, and realized what had happened. Why, it had been turned into a nightclub! Loud and exciting music thrummed from inside the sanctuary, where young people like me were dancing and drinking and having a good time. I thought back to what I had learned earlier that night, about how freedom and justice and sex were all the same thing, and how being the Church meant joining the world in the struggle against patriarchy. Finally, I started to feel good again. It was going to be a tough fight, but there would be lots of fun along the way. I smiled, looking up at the nightclub-church, and thought that maybe we were starting to get it right after all.
Jordan Hylden is a junior fellow at First Things.
Saturday, November 18, 2006
Liberals do talking, conservatives do giving
This is certainly true to my experience in The Episcopal Church. Many liberal churches in ecusa have terrible financial stewardship patterns and are largely living off of their endowments. ed.
By FRANK BRIEADDY
Published on: 11/17/06
Syracuse University professor Arthur C. Brooks is about to become the darling of the religious right wing in America — and it's making him nervous.
The child of academics, raised in a liberal household and educated in the liberal arts, Brooks has written a book that concludes religious conservatives donate far more money than secular liberals to all sorts of charitable activities, irrespective of income.
In the book, to be released this month, he cites extensive data analysis to demonstrate that values advocated by conservatives — from church attendance and two-parent families to the Protestant work ethic and a distaste for government-funded social services — make conservatives more generous than liberals.
The book, titled "Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism" (Basic Books, $26), is due for release Nov. 24.
When it comes to helping the needy, Brooks writes: "For too long, liberals have been claiming they are the most virtuous members of American society. Although they usually give less to charity, they have nevertheless lambasted conservatives for their callousness in the face of social injustice."
For the record, Brooks, 42, has been registered in the past as a Democrat, then a Republican, but now lists himself as independent, explaining, "I have no comfortable political home."
Since 2003 he has been director of nonprofit studies for Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. He has lectured in Spain and Russia and makes about 50 appearances a year at professional conferences around the world.
Brooks is a behavioral economist by training who researches the relationship between what people do — aside from their paid work — why they do it, and its economic impact.
He's a number cruncher who relied primarily on 10 databases assembled over the past decade, mostly from scientific surveys. The data are adjusted for variables such as age, gender, race and income to draw fine-point conclusions.
His book, he says, is carefully documented to withstand the scrutiny of other academics, which he said he encourages.
The book's basic findings are that conservatives who practice religion, live in traditional nuclear families and reject the notion that the government should engage in income redistribution are the most generous Americans, by any measure.
Conversely, secular liberals who believe fervently in government entitlement programs give far less to charity. They want everyone's tax dollars to support charitable causes and are reluctant to write checks to those causes, even when governments don't provide them with enough money.
Such an attitude, he writes, not only shortchanges the nonprofits but also diminishes the positive fallout of giving, including personal health, wealth and happiness for the donor and overall economic growth. All of this, he said, he backs up with statistical analysis.
"These are not the sort of conclusions I ever thought I would reach when I started looking at charitable giving in graduate school, 10 years ago," he writes in the introduction. "I have to admit I probably would have hated what I have to say in this book."
Still, he says it forcefully, pointing out that liberals give less than conservatives in every way imaginable, including volunteer hours and donated blood.
In an interview, Brooks says he recognizes the need for government entitlement programs, such as welfare. But in the book he finds fault with all sorts of government social spending, including entitlements.
Repeatedly he cites and disputes a line from a Ralph Nader speech to the NAACP in 2000: "A society that has more justice is a society that needs less charity."
Harvey Mansfield, professor of government at Harvard University and 2004 recipient of the National Humanities Medal, does not know Brooks personally but has read the book.
"His main finding is quite startling, that the people who talk the most about caring actually fork over the least," he said. "But beyond this finding I thought his analysis was extremely good, especially for an economist." Brooks says he started the book as an academic treatise, then tightened the documentation and punched up the prose when his colleagues and editor convinced him it would sell better and generate more discussion if he did.
To make his point forcefully, Brooks admits he cut out a lot of qualifying information.
"I know I'm going to get yelled at a lot with this book," he said. "But when you say something big and new, you're going to get yelled at."
• Frank Brieaddy is a staff writer for The Post-Standard of Syracuse, N.Y.
By FRANK BRIEADDY
Published on: 11/17/06
Syracuse University professor Arthur C. Brooks is about to become the darling of the religious right wing in America — and it's making him nervous.
The child of academics, raised in a liberal household and educated in the liberal arts, Brooks has written a book that concludes religious conservatives donate far more money than secular liberals to all sorts of charitable activities, irrespective of income.
In the book, to be released this month, he cites extensive data analysis to demonstrate that values advocated by conservatives — from church attendance and two-parent families to the Protestant work ethic and a distaste for government-funded social services — make conservatives more generous than liberals.
The book, titled "Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism" (Basic Books, $26), is due for release Nov. 24.
When it comes to helping the needy, Brooks writes: "For too long, liberals have been claiming they are the most virtuous members of American society. Although they usually give less to charity, they have nevertheless lambasted conservatives for their callousness in the face of social injustice."
For the record, Brooks, 42, has been registered in the past as a Democrat, then a Republican, but now lists himself as independent, explaining, "I have no comfortable political home."
Since 2003 he has been director of nonprofit studies for Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. He has lectured in Spain and Russia and makes about 50 appearances a year at professional conferences around the world.
Brooks is a behavioral economist by training who researches the relationship between what people do — aside from their paid work — why they do it, and its economic impact.
He's a number cruncher who relied primarily on 10 databases assembled over the past decade, mostly from scientific surveys. The data are adjusted for variables such as age, gender, race and income to draw fine-point conclusions.
His book, he says, is carefully documented to withstand the scrutiny of other academics, which he said he encourages.
The book's basic findings are that conservatives who practice religion, live in traditional nuclear families and reject the notion that the government should engage in income redistribution are the most generous Americans, by any measure.
Conversely, secular liberals who believe fervently in government entitlement programs give far less to charity. They want everyone's tax dollars to support charitable causes and are reluctant to write checks to those causes, even when governments don't provide them with enough money.
Such an attitude, he writes, not only shortchanges the nonprofits but also diminishes the positive fallout of giving, including personal health, wealth and happiness for the donor and overall economic growth. All of this, he said, he backs up with statistical analysis.
"These are not the sort of conclusions I ever thought I would reach when I started looking at charitable giving in graduate school, 10 years ago," he writes in the introduction. "I have to admit I probably would have hated what I have to say in this book."
Still, he says it forcefully, pointing out that liberals give less than conservatives in every way imaginable, including volunteer hours and donated blood.
In an interview, Brooks says he recognizes the need for government entitlement programs, such as welfare. But in the book he finds fault with all sorts of government social spending, including entitlements.
Repeatedly he cites and disputes a line from a Ralph Nader speech to the NAACP in 2000: "A society that has more justice is a society that needs less charity."
Harvey Mansfield, professor of government at Harvard University and 2004 recipient of the National Humanities Medal, does not know Brooks personally but has read the book.
"His main finding is quite startling, that the people who talk the most about caring actually fork over the least," he said. "But beyond this finding I thought his analysis was extremely good, especially for an economist." Brooks says he started the book as an academic treatise, then tightened the documentation and punched up the prose when his colleagues and editor convinced him it would sell better and generate more discussion if he did.
To make his point forcefully, Brooks admits he cut out a lot of qualifying information.
"I know I'm going to get yelled at a lot with this book," he said. "But when you say something big and new, you're going to get yelled at."
• Frank Brieaddy is a staff writer for The Post-Standard of Syracuse, N.Y.
Monday, November 13, 2006
The Dawkins Delusion
Review by Prof Alister E. McGrath
Richard Dawkins’ latest book The God Delusion fires off a series of salvoes against religion. It is perhaps his weakest book to date, marred by its excessive reliance on bold assertion and rhetorical flourish, where the issues so clearly demand careful reflection and painstaking analysis, based on the best evidence available. Attractive precisely because it is simplistic, Dawkins demands the eradication of religion. Only when it is eliminated can the human race rest secure! Get rid of religion, and the world will be a better place. It is a familiar theme, if stated with greater fervour than before.
But is it right? What happens if a society rejects the idea of God? The evidence suggests that it transcendentalizes alternatives – such as the ideals of liberty or equality. These now become quasi-divine authorities, which none are permitted to challenge. Perhaps the most familiar example of this dates from the French Revolution, at a time when traditional notions of God were discarded as obsolete, and replaced by transcendentalized human values. Madame Rolande was brought to the guillotine to face execution on trumped-up charges in 1792. As she prepared to die, she bowed mockingly towards the statue of liberty in the Place de la Révolution, and uttered the words for which she is remembered: “liberty, what crimes are committed in your name.” All ideals – divine, transcendent, human, or invented – are capable of being abused. That’s just the way human nature is. And knowing this, we need to work out what to do about it, rather than lashing out uncritically at religion.
Suppose Dawkins were to have his way, and that religion were to be eradicated. Would that end the divisions within humanity? Certainly not. Such divisions are ultimately social constructs, which reflect the fundamental sociological need for communities to self-define, and identify those who are “in” and those who are “out”; those who are “friends”, and those who are “foes”. The importance of “binary opposition” in shaping perceptions of identity has been highlighted in recent years, not least on account of the major debate between different schools of critical thought over whether such “oppositions” determine and shape human thought, or are the outcome of human thought. A series of significant “binary oppositions” are held to have shaped western thought – such as “male-female” and “white-black”. This binary opposition leads to the construction of the category of “the other” – the devalued half of a binary opposition, when applied to groups of people. Group identity is often fostered by defining “the other” – as, for example, in Nazi Germany, with its opposition “Aryan-Jew”. At times, this binary opposition is defined in religious terms – as in “Catholic-Protestant”, or “believer-infidel”.
Let’s look at one of these, which I experienced at first hand when growing up in during the 1960s. Primarily for sociological reasons, the binary opposition “Catholic-Protestant” came to be perceived as normative. Each side saw its opponent as “the other”, a perception that was relentlessly reinforced by novelists and other shapers of public opinion. Media reporting of the social unrest in from 1970 to about 1995 reinforced the plausibility of this judgement. Yet this is a historically conditioned oppositionalism, shaped and determined by complex social forces. It is not a specifically religious phenomenon. Religion was merely the social demarcator that dominated in this situation. In others, the demarcators would have to do with ethnic or cultural origins, language, gender, age, social class, sexual orientation, wealth, tribal allegiance, ethical values, or political views.
Dawkins’ simplistic assertion that the elimination of religion would lead to the ending of violence, social tension, or discrimination is thus sociologically naïve. It fails to take account of the way in which human beings create values and norms, and make sense of their identity and their surroundings. If religion were to cease to exist, other social demarcators would emerge as decisive, becoming transcendentalized as necessary in response to the situation. Dawkins has no interest in sociology, as might be expected. Yet the study of how individuals and societies function casts serious doubt on one of the most fundamental assertions of Dawkins’ analysis.
The question of the future role of religion in is far too important to leave to the fanatics, or to atheist fundamentalists. There is a real need to deal with the ultimate causes of social division and exclusion. Religion’s in there, along with a myriad of other factors. Yet, it can cause problems. But it also has the capacity to transform, creating a deep sense of personal identity and value, and bringing social cohesion. Let’s skip the rhetoric, and cut to the reality. It’s much less simple – but it might actually help us address the real social issue that we face in modern Britian.
Alister E. McGrath is Professor of Historical Theology at Oxford University. A former atheist himself, he has written extensively on atheism, particularly the ideas of Richard Dawkins, and their foundations in modern science. His book "The Dawkins Delusion" will be published by SPCK in February 2007.
Richard Dawkins’ latest book The God Delusion fires off a series of salvoes against religion. It is perhaps his weakest book to date, marred by its excessive reliance on bold assertion and rhetorical flourish, where the issues so clearly demand careful reflection and painstaking analysis, based on the best evidence available. Attractive precisely because it is simplistic, Dawkins demands the eradication of religion. Only when it is eliminated can the human race rest secure! Get rid of religion, and the world will be a better place. It is a familiar theme, if stated with greater fervour than before.
But is it right? What happens if a society rejects the idea of God? The evidence suggests that it transcendentalizes alternatives – such as the ideals of liberty or equality. These now become quasi-divine authorities, which none are permitted to challenge. Perhaps the most familiar example of this dates from the French Revolution, at a time when traditional notions of God were discarded as obsolete, and replaced by transcendentalized human values. Madame Rolande was brought to the guillotine to face execution on trumped-up charges in 1792. As she prepared to die, she bowed mockingly towards the statue of liberty in the Place de la Révolution, and uttered the words for which she is remembered: “liberty, what crimes are committed in your name.” All ideals – divine, transcendent, human, or invented – are capable of being abused. That’s just the way human nature is. And knowing this, we need to work out what to do about it, rather than lashing out uncritically at religion.
Suppose Dawkins were to have his way, and that religion were to be eradicated. Would that end the divisions within humanity? Certainly not. Such divisions are ultimately social constructs, which reflect the fundamental sociological need for communities to self-define, and identify those who are “in” and those who are “out”; those who are “friends”, and those who are “foes”. The importance of “binary opposition” in shaping perceptions of identity has been highlighted in recent years, not least on account of the major debate between different schools of critical thought over whether such “oppositions” determine and shape human thought, or are the outcome of human thought. A series of significant “binary oppositions” are held to have shaped western thought – such as “male-female” and “white-black”. This binary opposition leads to the construction of the category of “the other” – the devalued half of a binary opposition, when applied to groups of people. Group identity is often fostered by defining “the other” – as, for example, in Nazi Germany, with its opposition “Aryan-Jew”. At times, this binary opposition is defined in religious terms – as in “Catholic-Protestant”, or “believer-infidel”.
Let’s look at one of these, which I experienced at first hand when growing up in during the 1960s. Primarily for sociological reasons, the binary opposition “Catholic-Protestant” came to be perceived as normative. Each side saw its opponent as “the other”, a perception that was relentlessly reinforced by novelists and other shapers of public opinion. Media reporting of the social unrest in from 1970 to about 1995 reinforced the plausibility of this judgement. Yet this is a historically conditioned oppositionalism, shaped and determined by complex social forces. It is not a specifically religious phenomenon. Religion was merely the social demarcator that dominated in this situation. In others, the demarcators would have to do with ethnic or cultural origins, language, gender, age, social class, sexual orientation, wealth, tribal allegiance, ethical values, or political views.
Dawkins’ simplistic assertion that the elimination of religion would lead to the ending of violence, social tension, or discrimination is thus sociologically naïve. It fails to take account of the way in which human beings create values and norms, and make sense of their identity and their surroundings. If religion were to cease to exist, other social demarcators would emerge as decisive, becoming transcendentalized as necessary in response to the situation. Dawkins has no interest in sociology, as might be expected. Yet the study of how individuals and societies function casts serious doubt on one of the most fundamental assertions of Dawkins’ analysis.
The question of the future role of religion in is far too important to leave to the fanatics, or to atheist fundamentalists. There is a real need to deal with the ultimate causes of social division and exclusion. Religion’s in there, along with a myriad of other factors. Yet, it can cause problems. But it also has the capacity to transform, creating a deep sense of personal identity and value, and bringing social cohesion. Let’s skip the rhetoric, and cut to the reality. It’s much less simple – but it might actually help us address the real social issue that we face in modern Britian.
Alister E. McGrath is Professor of Historical Theology at Oxford University. A former atheist himself, he has written extensively on atheism, particularly the ideas of Richard Dawkins, and their foundations in modern science. His book "The Dawkins Delusion" will be published by SPCK in February 2007.
Saturday, November 11, 2006
Jesus Christ is "Our Vehicle to the Divine?"
The Episcopal Church is in Big Trouble
by The Rev. Dr. Albert Mohler
Posted: Friday, November 10, 2006 at 2:41 am ET
Dr. Katherine Jefferts Schori has now assumed office as the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church USA. A former oceanographer, Bishop Schori is the first women to serve as Presiding Bishop. Her election is one of the most divisive developments within the world-wide Anglican Communion -- and just wait until the global communion gets wind of her theological statements.
In an interview with CNN's Kyra Phillips, Bishop Schori was asked, "So what happens after I die?" Her answer:
What happens after you die? I would ask you that question. But what's important about your life, what is it that has made you a unique individual? What is the passion that has kept you getting up every morning and engaging the world? There are hints within that about what it is that continues after you die.
There is nothing even remotely Christian about that response. This woman is now the leader of the Episcopal Church in America, and she can do no better than this?
It gets worse.
Here is her answer when TIME magazine asked, "Is belief in Jesus the only way to get to heaven?":
We who practice the Christian tradition understand him as our vehicle to the divine. But for us to assume that God could not act in other ways is, I think, to put God in an awfully small box.
Jesus Christ is now only "our vehicle to the divine?" Her astounding answer to that question led an interviewer with National Public Radio to ask, "What are you: a Unitarian?" Here is the exchange:
Robin Young [NPR]: TIME asked you an interesting question, we thought, "Is belief in Jesus the only way to get to heaven?" And your answer, equally interesting, you said "We who practice the Christian tradition understand him as our vehicle to the divine. But for us to assume that God could not act in other ways is, I think, to put God in an awfully small box." And I read that and I said "What are you: a Unitarian?!?" [laughs]
What are you– that is another concern for people, because, they say Scripture says that Jesus says he was The Light and The Way and the only way to God the Father.
Bishop Schori: Christians understand that Jesus is the route to God. Umm– that is not to say that Muslims, or Sikhs, or Jains, come to God in a radically different way. They come to God through… human experience.. through human experience of the divine. Christians talk about that in terms of Jesus.
Robin Young: So you're saying there are other ways to God.
Bishop Schori: Uhh… human communities have always searched for relationship that which is beyond them.. with the ultimate.. with the divine. For Christians, we say that our route to God is through Jesus. Uhh.. uh.. that doesn't mean that a Hindu.. uh.. doesn't experience God except through Jesus. It-it-it says that Hindus and people of other faith traditions approach God through their.. own cultural contexts; they relate to God, they experience God in human relationships, as well as ones that transcend human relationships; and Christians would say those are our experiences of Jesus; of God through the experience of Jesus.
Robin Young: It sounds like you're saying it's a parallel reality, but in another culture and language.
Bishop Schori: I think that's accurate.. I think that's accurate.
A "parallel reality" to the Gospel of Christ? This is a direct refutation of the Gospel. Consider the fact that the Articles of Religion (often popularly known as the "Thirty-Nine Articles") of her own church obligates her to believe that there is salvation only in the name of Jesus Christ. Here is Article XVIII:
They also are to be had accursed that presume to say, That every man shall be saved by the Law or Sect which he professeth, so that he be diligent to frame his life according to that Law, and the light of Nature. For Holy Scripture doth set out unto us only the Name of Jesus Christ, whereby men must be saved.
No lack of clarity there.
As Bishop of Nevada, Bishop Schori supported the election of Gene Robinson as the openly-homosexual Bishop of New Hampshire and she also supported homosexual unions. Here is her response to the issue in the NPR interview:
Well, as a scientist and as a person of faith, I– I understand that sexual orientation is a given, for almost all people; it's not a matter of choice, and in that case, if this is how people are created, then our job as a community of faith is to assist people in finding holy ways of living in relationship, and, uh, that's what we're about.
She does not even attempt to reconcile her position with Scripture, the Christian tradition, or the creed and teaching of her church -- and she is the presiding bishop!
Many Episcopalians and Anglicans around the world will recognize that the logic of subverting Scripture in order to ordain women to the preaching ministry opens the door to all these aberrations. This is a church in deep trouble.
We discussed this issue on Thursday's edition of The Albert Mohler Program [listen here]. My guest was Dr. Kendall Harmon, Canon Theologian of the Diocese of South Carolina.
by The Rev. Dr. Albert Mohler
Posted: Friday, November 10, 2006 at 2:41 am ET
Dr. Katherine Jefferts Schori has now assumed office as the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church USA. A former oceanographer, Bishop Schori is the first women to serve as Presiding Bishop. Her election is one of the most divisive developments within the world-wide Anglican Communion -- and just wait until the global communion gets wind of her theological statements.
In an interview with CNN's Kyra Phillips, Bishop Schori was asked, "So what happens after I die?" Her answer:
What happens after you die? I would ask you that question. But what's important about your life, what is it that has made you a unique individual? What is the passion that has kept you getting up every morning and engaging the world? There are hints within that about what it is that continues after you die.
There is nothing even remotely Christian about that response. This woman is now the leader of the Episcopal Church in America, and she can do no better than this?
It gets worse.
Here is her answer when TIME magazine asked, "Is belief in Jesus the only way to get to heaven?":
We who practice the Christian tradition understand him as our vehicle to the divine. But for us to assume that God could not act in other ways is, I think, to put God in an awfully small box.
Jesus Christ is now only "our vehicle to the divine?" Her astounding answer to that question led an interviewer with National Public Radio to ask, "What are you: a Unitarian?" Here is the exchange:
Robin Young [NPR]: TIME asked you an interesting question, we thought, "Is belief in Jesus the only way to get to heaven?" And your answer, equally interesting, you said "We who practice the Christian tradition understand him as our vehicle to the divine. But for us to assume that God could not act in other ways is, I think, to put God in an awfully small box." And I read that and I said "What are you: a Unitarian?!?" [laughs]
What are you– that is another concern for people, because, they say Scripture says that Jesus says he was The Light and The Way and the only way to God the Father.
Bishop Schori: Christians understand that Jesus is the route to God. Umm– that is not to say that Muslims, or Sikhs, or Jains, come to God in a radically different way. They come to God through… human experience.. through human experience of the divine. Christians talk about that in terms of Jesus.
Robin Young: So you're saying there are other ways to God.
Bishop Schori: Uhh… human communities have always searched for relationship that which is beyond them.. with the ultimate.. with the divine. For Christians, we say that our route to God is through Jesus. Uhh.. uh.. that doesn't mean that a Hindu.. uh.. doesn't experience God except through Jesus. It-it-it says that Hindus and people of other faith traditions approach God through their.. own cultural contexts; they relate to God, they experience God in human relationships, as well as ones that transcend human relationships; and Christians would say those are our experiences of Jesus; of God through the experience of Jesus.
Robin Young: It sounds like you're saying it's a parallel reality, but in another culture and language.
Bishop Schori: I think that's accurate.. I think that's accurate.
A "parallel reality" to the Gospel of Christ? This is a direct refutation of the Gospel. Consider the fact that the Articles of Religion (often popularly known as the "Thirty-Nine Articles") of her own church obligates her to believe that there is salvation only in the name of Jesus Christ. Here is Article XVIII:
They also are to be had accursed that presume to say, That every man shall be saved by the Law or Sect which he professeth, so that he be diligent to frame his life according to that Law, and the light of Nature. For Holy Scripture doth set out unto us only the Name of Jesus Christ, whereby men must be saved.
No lack of clarity there.
As Bishop of Nevada, Bishop Schori supported the election of Gene Robinson as the openly-homosexual Bishop of New Hampshire and she also supported homosexual unions. Here is her response to the issue in the NPR interview:
Well, as a scientist and as a person of faith, I– I understand that sexual orientation is a given, for almost all people; it's not a matter of choice, and in that case, if this is how people are created, then our job as a community of faith is to assist people in finding holy ways of living in relationship, and, uh, that's what we're about.
She does not even attempt to reconcile her position with Scripture, the Christian tradition, or the creed and teaching of her church -- and she is the presiding bishop!
Many Episcopalians and Anglicans around the world will recognize that the logic of subverting Scripture in order to ordain women to the preaching ministry opens the door to all these aberrations. This is a church in deep trouble.
We discussed this issue on Thursday's edition of The Albert Mohler Program [listen here]. My guest was Dr. Kendall Harmon, Canon Theologian of the Diocese of South Carolina.
Thursday, November 02, 2006
Installing the Lady Primate
Reflections upon the Liturgy as printed in the service booklet
By Peter Toon
November 1, 2006
God-willing, on Saturday November 4, 2006 The Episcopal Church will have a new Presiding Bishop and Primate, a married woman called Katherine Jefferts Schori.
She will become the first ever female Presiding Bishop and Primate in the Anglican global family of churches. For The Episcopal Church she will be its twenty-sixth Presiding Bishop. I attended the installation of her predecessor, Frank Griswold, and in my report of the Service at the National Cathedral in Washington I noted amongst other novelties the use of "The Baptismal Covenant" as the focal point of the first half of the service (the second half being Eucharistic) together with the emphatic claim by Bp Frank that he was entering into a new phase of his baptismal ministry.
Thus I was most interested to note that Bp. Katherine is taking the same position as did Frank. That is, she is claiming that she is entering into a new phase, howbeit a continuing phase, of her baptismal ministry which began the moment she was baptized, fifty or so years ago. In the service there is (a) the giving to her of water as "the symbol of Baptism and of the ministry of evangelism shared by all the baptized"; (b) the public use of "The Baptismal Covenant" from the 1979 Prayer Book and involving everyone; and (c) the use of bishops and deacons in "Baptismal Sprinkling" of water over the whole cathedral congregation.
I raise two topics for my readers to ponder, who may download the booklet at http://www.episcopalchurch.org/3577_77550_ENG_HTM.htm First, what kind of connection is there between "the baptismal covenant" and the office of Presiding Bishop ? Obviously the office and ministry of the PB is of the same basic nature as that of diocesan and suffragan bishops except that the PB has a larger pastoral care -- of all the Bishops and the whole Church with all its dioceses. Further, as this office is only open to a Bishop, then what would have been more appropriate-if renewing "covenants" is the right way to go-would have been for her, alone, publicly to renew the commitments she made when consecrated a bishop and indicate that they were now extended in various ways.
After all, it is her installation not the re-dedication of everybody who got a ticket for the service or sees it on a web-cast. However, so central has "The Baptismal Covenant" become in Episcopal Church practical theology and ethics that it is brought in nearly everywhere and connected with virtually everything.
The general idea of it appears to be that everyone baptized enters into a covenant with God which requires various duties by him/her, and that, in turn, requires God to make promises to the baptized and place him/her in "the risen life of Christ" to achieve them. What God gives in Baptism, it is held, includes the seed or the embryo of all possible forms of ministry, lay and ordained, that exist within the Church.
So as the baptized person grows, he/she and the church discern which ministries are for him/her at succeeding stages of his/her pilgrimage. So whether one serves as a lay vestry member or as a priest then that ministry is the working out of one's baptismal ministry, even also it is if one moves on to be a lay member of the General Convention or a bishop of the Church.
This notion that all possible ministries are given in seed or embryo at baptism is really a modern novelty. Baptism has a sufficient rich supply of meaning in terms of (a) relation to the Father through the Son and by the Holy Spirit, (b) membership of the Body of Christ and (c) the commitment to fight in Christ's army against all forms of evil and sin, without adding to it this dimension of including all ministries.
The general tradition of the Church has been that to be called to ordained Ministry is a special call into a special Order and that this call is only specifically related to one's baptism in that God only calls baptized believers into this Ministry and Order.
The calling is NOT present as a seed from baptism; rather it is the action of the exalted Lord Christ as Head of the Church. Of course, one reason why Bp Frank and Bp Katherine hold this novel doctrine so firmly is that it requires the church to admit into all forms of ministry, lay and ordained, those who in the classic tradition were not admitted into certain ministries through history-e.g., women and homosexually active persons into ordained priesthood.
But, by normal standards, to claim that the office and work of the Presiding Bishop is a baptismal ministry is to confuse the priesthood of all the baptized with the Ministerial Priesthood of those called from above by the Lord of the Church.
The second topic is the claim made several times in this Service and assumed generally in The Episcopal Church that "baptism is into the risen life of Christ." And this "life" is usually explained in terms of "a life of an inclusive love" where Jesus receives people, especially those on the fringes of respectable society and its outcasts-"just as they are." What he did and does we are to do likewise.
What strikes me as I read the presentation of St Paul in Romans 6 about the symbolism of Baptism is this. He is absolutely clear that we have been baptized into the death of Christ and have been buried with him. But the way he talks about our relation with the Risen Christ has a slightly different emphasis to it. He does not claim that "we have been already raised with him" for that is not true yet; for it will only be true at the resurrection of the dead at the end of the age.
The truth is that the life of the age to come, the life of heaven and of Christ, is present in the Church-it is already here and we receive it in the Spirit-but it is not yet here in fullness, for this glorious state will only be present after the full redemption of our bodies.
So while we are wholly identified with Christ in his death to sin and are to put away sin absolutely, we cannot yet be fully within the risen life of Christ, for that is only possible when we are given a glorious resurrection body like unto his.
Thus what I find missing in the great attachment to the theme of Baptism in the practical theology of The Episcopal Church and of this Service is (a) the baptismal emphasis in Scripture on dying to sin, or sin being as it were buried with Christ in the grave-that is the forsaking of and mortifying of sin in our souls and bodies; and (b) that the partaking in "the risen life" is real but partial and that its primary aspect is communion with God and seeking to be holy as he is holy. The avoidance of the "sin" part of the meaning of baptism and the emphasis on the "new life" part allows celebration of life as it is, that is life as it is without the full sanctification of it by the Holy Spirit. Zeitgeist is the Spirit here so often.
In conclusion, I have to say that in comparison with what is often encountered as "Eucharist" in the progressive liberal Episcopal Church, the Eucharistic second half of the service is (for this Church) "traditional."
One real problem with it, however, is that for the majority of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church it will not be a valid Eucharist since the "Presider," whatever titles she holds by courtesy of The Episcopal Church, is not really and truly in the Ministerial Priesthood of the Catholic Church (since only men called by Christ can be so!).
---The Revd Dr. Peter Toon M.A., D.Phil (Oxford) is President of the Prayer Book Society of the U.S.A. www.episcopalian.org/pbs1928 www.anglicanmarketplace.com www.anglicansatprayer.org drpetertoon@yahoo.com
------------------------------
By Peter Toon
November 1, 2006
God-willing, on Saturday November 4, 2006 The Episcopal Church will have a new Presiding Bishop and Primate, a married woman called Katherine Jefferts Schori.
She will become the first ever female Presiding Bishop and Primate in the Anglican global family of churches. For The Episcopal Church she will be its twenty-sixth Presiding Bishop. I attended the installation of her predecessor, Frank Griswold, and in my report of the Service at the National Cathedral in Washington I noted amongst other novelties the use of "The Baptismal Covenant" as the focal point of the first half of the service (the second half being Eucharistic) together with the emphatic claim by Bp Frank that he was entering into a new phase of his baptismal ministry.
Thus I was most interested to note that Bp. Katherine is taking the same position as did Frank. That is, she is claiming that she is entering into a new phase, howbeit a continuing phase, of her baptismal ministry which began the moment she was baptized, fifty or so years ago. In the service there is (a) the giving to her of water as "the symbol of Baptism and of the ministry of evangelism shared by all the baptized"; (b) the public use of "The Baptismal Covenant" from the 1979 Prayer Book and involving everyone; and (c) the use of bishops and deacons in "Baptismal Sprinkling" of water over the whole cathedral congregation.
I raise two topics for my readers to ponder, who may download the booklet at http://www.episcopalchurch.org/3577_77550_ENG_HTM.htm First, what kind of connection is there between "the baptismal covenant" and the office of Presiding Bishop ? Obviously the office and ministry of the PB is of the same basic nature as that of diocesan and suffragan bishops except that the PB has a larger pastoral care -- of all the Bishops and the whole Church with all its dioceses. Further, as this office is only open to a Bishop, then what would have been more appropriate-if renewing "covenants" is the right way to go-would have been for her, alone, publicly to renew the commitments she made when consecrated a bishop and indicate that they were now extended in various ways.
After all, it is her installation not the re-dedication of everybody who got a ticket for the service or sees it on a web-cast. However, so central has "The Baptismal Covenant" become in Episcopal Church practical theology and ethics that it is brought in nearly everywhere and connected with virtually everything.
The general idea of it appears to be that everyone baptized enters into a covenant with God which requires various duties by him/her, and that, in turn, requires God to make promises to the baptized and place him/her in "the risen life of Christ" to achieve them. What God gives in Baptism, it is held, includes the seed or the embryo of all possible forms of ministry, lay and ordained, that exist within the Church.
So as the baptized person grows, he/she and the church discern which ministries are for him/her at succeeding stages of his/her pilgrimage. So whether one serves as a lay vestry member or as a priest then that ministry is the working out of one's baptismal ministry, even also it is if one moves on to be a lay member of the General Convention or a bishop of the Church.
This notion that all possible ministries are given in seed or embryo at baptism is really a modern novelty. Baptism has a sufficient rich supply of meaning in terms of (a) relation to the Father through the Son and by the Holy Spirit, (b) membership of the Body of Christ and (c) the commitment to fight in Christ's army against all forms of evil and sin, without adding to it this dimension of including all ministries.
The general tradition of the Church has been that to be called to ordained Ministry is a special call into a special Order and that this call is only specifically related to one's baptism in that God only calls baptized believers into this Ministry and Order.
The calling is NOT present as a seed from baptism; rather it is the action of the exalted Lord Christ as Head of the Church. Of course, one reason why Bp Frank and Bp Katherine hold this novel doctrine so firmly is that it requires the church to admit into all forms of ministry, lay and ordained, those who in the classic tradition were not admitted into certain ministries through history-e.g., women and homosexually active persons into ordained priesthood.
But, by normal standards, to claim that the office and work of the Presiding Bishop is a baptismal ministry is to confuse the priesthood of all the baptized with the Ministerial Priesthood of those called from above by the Lord of the Church.
The second topic is the claim made several times in this Service and assumed generally in The Episcopal Church that "baptism is into the risen life of Christ." And this "life" is usually explained in terms of "a life of an inclusive love" where Jesus receives people, especially those on the fringes of respectable society and its outcasts-"just as they are." What he did and does we are to do likewise.
What strikes me as I read the presentation of St Paul in Romans 6 about the symbolism of Baptism is this. He is absolutely clear that we have been baptized into the death of Christ and have been buried with him. But the way he talks about our relation with the Risen Christ has a slightly different emphasis to it. He does not claim that "we have been already raised with him" for that is not true yet; for it will only be true at the resurrection of the dead at the end of the age.
The truth is that the life of the age to come, the life of heaven and of Christ, is present in the Church-it is already here and we receive it in the Spirit-but it is not yet here in fullness, for this glorious state will only be present after the full redemption of our bodies.
So while we are wholly identified with Christ in his death to sin and are to put away sin absolutely, we cannot yet be fully within the risen life of Christ, for that is only possible when we are given a glorious resurrection body like unto his.
Thus what I find missing in the great attachment to the theme of Baptism in the practical theology of The Episcopal Church and of this Service is (a) the baptismal emphasis in Scripture on dying to sin, or sin being as it were buried with Christ in the grave-that is the forsaking of and mortifying of sin in our souls and bodies; and (b) that the partaking in "the risen life" is real but partial and that its primary aspect is communion with God and seeking to be holy as he is holy. The avoidance of the "sin" part of the meaning of baptism and the emphasis on the "new life" part allows celebration of life as it is, that is life as it is without the full sanctification of it by the Holy Spirit. Zeitgeist is the Spirit here so often.
In conclusion, I have to say that in comparison with what is often encountered as "Eucharist" in the progressive liberal Episcopal Church, the Eucharistic second half of the service is (for this Church) "traditional."
One real problem with it, however, is that for the majority of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church it will not be a valid Eucharist since the "Presider," whatever titles she holds by courtesy of The Episcopal Church, is not really and truly in the Ministerial Priesthood of the Catholic Church (since only men called by Christ can be so!).
---The Revd Dr. Peter Toon M.A., D.Phil (Oxford) is President of the Prayer Book Society of the U.S.A. www.episcopalian.org/pbs1928 www.anglicanmarketplace.com www.anglicansatprayer.org drpetertoon@yahoo.com
------------------------------
THE FUTURE OF ANGLICANISM
An Address for Convocation Nashotah House
by Robert Duncan
25th October, A.D. 2006
The Rt. Revd. Robert William Duncan, D.D.
Bishop of Pittsburgh
Moderator of the Anglican Communion Network
O God of unchangeable power and eternal light: Look favorably upon thine whole Church, that wonderful and sacred mystery; by the effectual working of thy providence, carry out in tranquility the plan of thy salvation; let the whole world see and know that things that were cast down are being raised up, and that things that had grown old are being made new, and that all things are being brought to their perfection by Him through whom all things were made, even Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord; who liveth and reigneth with Thee, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.
I have been asked to speak about the future of Anglicanism. I gladly do so on this happy occasion and in this historic Chapel, a Chapel that has become very dear to me, and to countless others, whose spiritual lives have been profoundly shaped by its devotions and whose missionary and pastoral commitments have been fed by the heroes and heroines whose ministries founded and sustained this House and rightly earned it its simple nickname: "The Mission."
As I begin let me say how deeply honored I am by the Board's action in granting me the Doctor of Divinity degree (honoris causa), and how greatly honored I am by this company's presence here today. To become a "Son of the House" - to join so many other sons and daughters whose friendships have come to mean so much to me - is gift and encouragement of the first order. For the parish church that formed me, and especially the Anglo-Catholic priests who did their best to teach me through all those early years, this is their honor too. For Nara, whom I met in that parish church and who has stood by me all the years since we were teenagers - especially through these last supremely challenging years - this honor is also profoundly her honor. For the great Diocese of Pittsburgh that it has been our privilege to serve as Bishop and Lady through this last decade, and for the extraordinary comrades with which I have been surrounded in the emergence of the Anglican Communion Network, fo!
r the clergy and people and staff that have supported me and freed me to be at the center of the work of Reformation in our day, this honor also belongs to them.
The Three Choices on which All Else Hangs
Just a year ago, some three thousand Anglicans gathered at Pittsburgh for the Hope and A Future Conference. Many who are here today were there in those days. They were thrilling days in which we modeled what we wanted to become. They were days of worship, days of teaching, days of challenge, days of fellowship, days of reconciliation and days of hope. They were exhausting days.
As the Hope and a Future Conference began, I spoke about three encouragements, three warnings and three choices. In beginning this address about the future of Anglicanism I want to say again what I said at that time concerning the three choices that are before us, choices that are profoundly personal and profoundly corporate and on which do hang the future of Anglicanism. Everything else I shall have to say depends on the bedrock - or the quicksand - of the "day in and day out" of these choices individually and institutionally made, choices which together will "add up" to Anglicanism sustained or Anglicanism failed.
I said these words to the multitude assembled for Hope and A Future:
"The first choice is for Truth over accommodation. For everyone in this hall we are continuing to deal with choosing Jesus first: Jesus above culture, Jesus above comfort, Jesus above property, Jesus above family and friends, Jesus above any other security, Jesus above a wayward North American Church. We are here to confirm our choice for Truth above accommodation. This is the evangelical choice."
"The second choice is for Accountability over autonomy. There are lots of fragments in this hall: fragments of congregations, fragments of dioceses, fragments of denomination. Freedom, like Truth, is a passion that all of us share. But the vast danger here is that we will get stuck in our freedom Forty years of Anglican splits and splinters tells the story only too well. Autonomy is every bit as much a danger as accommodation. We are here to make a choice for Accountability over autonomy. This is the catholic choice."
"The third choice is for the Mission over sullen inaction. Is your congregation a church-planting congregation? Is your congregation partnered with a Global South diocese? Is your congregation functioning in local needs-based evangelism? Are you personally engaged in a Matthew 25 ministry? Have you personally led anyone else to saving faith in Jesus Christ? Have you challenged those around you to "Choose This Day?" Are you trapped in "ain't it awful?" or "what can we possibly do?" or the escape of self-absorption? We are Holy Spirit people: people who have been gifted, "charismed." We are here to elect Mission over sullen inaction. This is the charismatic choice."
That was one year ago. Nothing has altered the centrality of these choices. How our choices add up - our choices for or against Truth, Accountability, and Mission - will ultimately determine the future of Anglicanism. What I shall go on to say in this address concerns matters of lesser importance, matters concerning which it is good for us to think, propose and build, yet matters that can never rise above the level of the penultimate. I raise these lesser considerations about the future of Anglicanism with the understanding that it is the "three great choices" that are ultimately the significant ones. And if I speak somewhat more provocatively today than is normally my custom, my hearers will also understand that this is, after all, an academic convocation.
Can Anglicanism Survive At All?
Reflecting thirty years ago, in the Epilogue to the fourth edition of Anglicanism, Bishop Stephen Neill, then nearly eighty years old, wrote these words:
"The Anglican Communion, being a living entity and not an ossified institution, never abides in one stay, and is in a condition of perpetual change. This means that any description of its situation at a given moment will be out of date before it appears in print; the most that can be hoped for is an analysis of trends and an indication of the direction in which developments seem to be moving."
Bishop Neill continued:
"The first and burning question is, naturally, whether the Anglican Communion in anything like its present form can survive at all."(1)
For Stephen Neill, the question of the future of Anglicanism had been raised by a range of developments that surely meant that deep change was ahead: the appearance of the United Churches of first South (1947) and then North (1970) India, the diminution of the metro-political role of the Archbishop of Canterbury in the emergence of separate national Provinces, the independence those Provinces sometimes exercised, the creation of the Anglican Consultative Council, the blossoming of the charismatic movement, the abandonment of Communion-wide formularies (especially Prayer Book and Articles) and the extraordinary strains introduced by fundamental theological questioning and the ordination of women.
In 1976, Bishop Neill did not go on to answer the question he had raised. Thirty years on, what I am prepared to say at this moment in time is that the Anglican Communion cannot survive, let alone flourish, in its present form. It is in need of, and in the midst of, profound reformation. It is not alone in this - for the whole Church in the West is in need of this reformation - but our subject, for today, is Anglicanism, and it is to some of the aspects of this reformation that I now turn.
A Mediated Settlement in the United States
There are two churches claiming to be the Episcopal Church. In the words of Bp. Ed Salmon, Chairman of the Board of this House, there is a "chasm fixed between them." Eight dioceses(2) have gone so far as to appeal to the Communion for Alternative Primatial Oversight (APO), whereby a bishop or archbishop external to the States would exercise all the functions of Presiding Bishop within the States. Three dioceses have withdrawn their consent for inclusion in their domestic provinces and one has proposed complete re-alignment with an overseas jurisdiction.(3) The Archbishop of Canterbury has intervened by asking the Secretary General of the Anglican Communion, Can. Kenneth Kearon, to seek an "American solution" to the conflict represented by the APO requests. Significantly, the four principals identified by the Archbishop of Canterbury for the Kearon initiative, were the Presiding Bishop, the Presiding Bishop-elect, the Bishop of Pittsburgh and the Bishop of Fort Worth, all se!
ated as equals, naming equal teams. Unable to achieve any resolution on the Alternative Primatial Oversight issue at a September meeting in New York, and aware that the issue is actually the "chasm" between us rather than APO, significantly many of the participants present at New York believe that the Kearon initiative has no future, thus insuring that in fact it has none.
Speaking together from Kigali, just one week after the New York meeting, twenty Primates of the Global South (or their representatives) communicated their intention to provide Alternative Primatial Oversight, in consultation with the Archbishop of Canterbury, to the appealing U.S. dioceses.(4) Representatives of the Global South Committee will be meeting with representatives of the eight APO dioceses within a very few days.
Also in September, twenty-one diocesans (ten of whom are Network diocesans) met at the invitation of the senior diocesan of the Episcopal Church, Bp. Don Wimberly, the Bishop of Texas, to declare that the response of the General Convention to the Windsor Report was substantially inadequate, that the Windsor Report was the only hope of a way forward for the Anglican Communion, and that they (we) were committed to going forward together on that basis.
But the situation is very much more than Network or Windsor dioceses. Progressive and moderate dioceses are at different stages of disintegration. Diocesan budgets are in shambles in many places, and membership and average Sunday attendance continue to decline, as congregations split or the faithful choose non-ECUSA Anglicanism or Rome, Orthodoxy, Pentecostalism or Evangelicalism. In some parts of the country, orthodox congregations are in "mutual defense pacts," or are quietly negotiating "ways out" where there is a liberal openness to such conversations. Where generally conservative dioceses suffer, it is because the bishop is perceived to be compromising or unable to stand clearly enough for his clearest clergy and lay leaders. Conservative church-plants are emerging everywhere. Often they are on no one's radar for months. Eventually they identify themselves to the Network's church-plant trainer, or to the Network's international "transfers desk." Not atypical is this sit!
uation, reported to me just last week: In addition to the nine congregations under Ugandan or Bolivian oversight in Southern California, there are now eight new Anglican congregations forming there who are, as yet, related to no one. Additionally, the Canterbury Trail has not cooled at all on evangelical campuses across the nation - indeed the trail grows more like a highway - despite (or might it be because of?) the troubles. That both Gordon-Conwell and Fuller Seminaries, each located in strongholds of the other Episcopal Church, have established "Anglican tracks" in the last year are significant signs of the times.
We have reached the moment where a mediation to achieve disengagement is the only way forward. I believe that the other Episcopal Church - the one not represented in this convocation - has finally also come to that conclusion, as well. I believe that a mediated settlement will be in place by this time next year, or that the principals will be well on their way to such a settlement. How can we set one another free to proclaim the gospel (the Truth) as we, so differently, understand it? How can we bless one another as cousins, rather than oppress one another as brothers? The day for a serious and wide-ranging mediation has arrived. This will have an immense impact on the present and the future of Anglicanism, and it cannot come too soon.
An End to Western Hegemony
In his landmark book, The Next Christendom(5), Penn State Professor Philip Jenkins described the decline of European and North American Christianity and the emergence of a dynamic and rapidly-expanding Christianity in the Global South. Anglicanism in Africa, Asia and South America, along with Pentecostalism and Roman Catholicism, is at the center of this "next Christendom." Nigeria alone, with double the number of Anglicans of just fifteen years ago, and one-quarter of all the world's Anglicans today, will consecrate another eighteen missionary bishops this January.
But the Anglican tune, and the call for the dance, have long come from London or New York. The systems that govern the Anglican Communion are Western. The Anglican Communion Office is chiefly funded by American money. The Anglican Consultative Council has been dominated by British and American interests, and operates on the First World's paradigm of parliamentary rules and procedures. Or compare the anachronism of a "first among equals" chosen only from among British citizens and named by a secular Head of State. How peacefully, how cooperatively these systems change will determine much about the future of Anglicanism: Will the old systems be metamorphosed for a new day, or will the old systems be supplanted by new ones that emerge from the events of these days?
For a conciliar tradition, which is what Anglicanism most nearly is at its provincial level, what, we must ask, is the Council at the international level that will come to guide it? The once-in-a-decade Lambeth Conferences may have functioned in that way in a more settled age, but are inadequate for 21st century Anglicanism. Can the Primates Meeting, or some smaller Council drawn from that membership, serve this purpose? And what of the radical imbalances between Provinces when comparing the Primates of Scotland, Ireland, Wales or even the United States with Provinces like Nigeria, Uganda or Kenya?
The future of Anglicanism depends on the shift of its systems and institutions from North to South, and from Anglo- to Afro-, Sino- and Latino-. In some measure an early sign of the shift in leadership may have been signaled from Kigali in September. Alternative Primatial Oversight may not be something that Western leaders see any way to provide, but Southern leaders believe they can. Just as old paradigm responses to the present Anglican crisis - responses like the Panel of Reference - pale in comparison to the vigorous and more immediate interventions in our domestic life of Provinces like Central Africa, Kenya, Southern Cone, Uganda, and, in the first wave, Rwanda and Southeast Asia. What will the Instruments of Unity of this shift look like? We cannot yet say, but shifting they are, and shift they must. Stephen Neill was able to pose the central question. My hunch is that he would have been astounded at the depth of the changes that the maturing and renewal of Anglicanis!
m, if it be God's will, now requires.
One last consideration as we look at the necessary end to the Western hegemony in Anglicanism: Covenant is an idea with a very old and non-Western pedigree. How an Anglican Covenant emerges will be fascinating to observe. Already the West - not least in Archbishop Rowan Williams' "The Challenge and Hope of Being an Anglican" - has proposed degrees of Covenant commitment. Whether the Windsor Report-proposed or Global South-introduced notion of an Anglican Covenant will be meaningful or meaningless will depend on whether Global South clarity or Western post-modernism define what is and what is not Anglicanism. The future of Anglicanism as a coherent Christian enterprise or remnant of a syncretistic Enlightment development will hang in the balance. What must also be observed, in any case, is that the emergence of two Anglicanisms - like the two Episcopal Churches of the present moment - one a declining and ultimately heterodox expression and one a chiefly Southern Hemisphere of!
fspring with totally new Instruments of Unity still to emerge is, sadly, far from a remote possibility.
Recovery of an Anglican Magisterium
Whether Global Anglicanism can survive the entropic forces at play within our life together is a question of monumental historical and ecumenical significance. For all of us in this Chapel, the question is also one of great personal significance.
An Anglicanism without Scripture as its fundamental authority cannot survive. Richard Hooker rightly saw Scripture's primacy. Reason guides the application of Scripture's message for any age. Tradition elucidates Scripture's meaning as previous generations have applied it. But Scripture is the ultimate authority in its plain meaning.
In his bleak assessment of the survivability of Anglicanism, the English Dominican Aidan Nichols, quoting Eric Maschall, speaks of the "fundamental incoherence" of the three historic streams of Anglicanism: Evangelical, Catholic and Liberal.(6) Summarizing the arguments Nichols brings to bear in this analysis, Graham Leonard, former Bishop of London and former Anglican, cites four factors that have substantially (terminally?) diminished Anglicanism's ability to hold these parties and the whole tradition in creative tension: 1) an undermining of the ultimate authority of Scripture (as symbolized by the loss of place of the Articles of Religion, 2) the loss of the Book of Common Prayer, 3) the innovation of the ordination of women, and 4) the substitution of the authority of national synods for the authority previously accorded Scripture.(7)
To points 1) and 4) the experience of the American Church reveals all too starkly the pattern in contemporary Anglicanism that cannot be a part of our future, if there is to be a future. In 1973, the General Convention of the Episcopal Church, allowing pastoral concern to trump Scriptural teaching, replaced its annulment canon with a canon allowing remarriage after divorce, not limiting such remarriage to those cases that might be argued from Scripture. By comparison to effects visited on the whole Church in the undermining of Scriptural authority in life after life and household after household, the confirmation of a bishop in a same-sex relationship in 2003 is but reasonable follow-on. Part of Anglicanism's magisterium was its fundamental submission to the theological and moral teachings of Scripture, especially when that teaching was personally costly,(8) all the while offering the grace that forever met sinners where they were. To each one in this room I ask, are we prep!
ared together to recover this submission, or no? In Scripture's plain words, are we prepared to remain faithful to the wife of our youth, or no?(9) The future of Anglicanism is fundamentally dependent on submission of this sort, on submissions that break our own desires against Scripture's narrow way. And not just in theory, but in my life and in yours.
To point 3) - the ordination of women - I do not wish to speak, which you will regard as this address's one avoidance. My own support for women in holy orders is well known. Global Anglicanism has said that there are, in fact "two integrities" here, both arguable from Holy Scripture, and - to employ Hooker's method - less so from Tradition. I am convinced that an honest century of reception will sort this one out. I am also persuaded that our God has challenged us to deal with this issue, either because He does intend to bless this new understanding or because He has it in mind that we Anglicans will best find ourselves again in the institutional and relational charity it will require of us as a dynamic and faithful Anglicanism re-emerges.
To point 2) - the loss of the Book of Common Prayer - I want to be so bold as to suggest the following: that Anglicanism's practical magisterium - its reliable teaching authority - has been its Book of Common Prayer, and that without a restored Book of Common Prayer, reasserting the theological propositions of medieval Catholicism as reshaped by the English Reformation, best represented in the prayer book of 1662, Anglicanism will continue its theological disintegration apace. For that Western Church whose popular and practical believing was more nearly lex orandi, lex credendi than any other tradition - for that Western Church whose practical magisterium was its prayerbook - a fixed prayer book is essential. For a tradition that has a separate magisterium, Vatican II-style liturgy is a possibility. For us as Anglicans, it is, quite demonstrably, not. Forty years of alternative texts and expansive language have produced an undiscipled people and a theological wasteland. We h!
ave become a Church that actually does believe, in the words of one eucharistic canon, that we are "worthy to stand before ."(10) How staggeringly un-Scriptural and un-Anglican!
What I would also add to this is that the need for an "Authorized Version" of the Bible, at least parish by parish, or diocese by diocese, re-emerges alongside the need for a Book of Common Prayer. How shall we ever learn Scripture again except that we always hear it in the same way? The matter of formation needs to dominate our liturgical and ascetical thinking, rather than our desires for education, variety, correctness or newness. And since I have already given quite enough offense, I shall leave off here without arguing for hymnody that is static enough to produce texts that are known by heart...
A Church without a magisterium is soon no Church at all. It is not too late to begin the reform, but the time is short. The reform will also not come from the top - as much as we might yearn for such a solution (for Reformations do not come from the top or begin at the center) - but from a thousand altars, like the one at the heart of this House, and from leaders brave enough to embrace unpopular and counter-cultural truths. The future of Anglicanism is most assuredly tied up in this.
The Choice for Comprehensiveness over Balkanization
Diocesan boundaries are lost forever, at least in the United States. Resistance by American progressives to early suggestions of ways to accommodate conservatives in progressive dioceses (as well as progressives in conservative dioceses)(11) have led to situations in which multiple Anglican jurisdictions now operate in the same territory. Prior to the Singapore consecrations of January 2000, there were, of course, multiple Continuing Church and Reformed Episcopal Church jurisdictions operating within what were Episcopal Church dioceses. But between 2001 and 2006, multiple Anglican Communion jurisdictions have come to operate in the same domestic spheres. Rwanda, Uganda, Central Africa, Kenya, Southern Cone and Nigeria all have significant congregations within U.S. dioceses, and more join them daily. Other presences from the Diocese of London to the Province of Korea are less well documented. The embrace of affinity relationships, rather than geographical location, as the org!
anizing principle of the Anglican Mission in America, has also offered an intentional alternative to classic assumptions about diocesan structure. Things will never return to the simplicity of one Anglican bishop having authority over one Anglican territory. What was lost by the whole of Western Christendom at the Reformation of the 16th Century has now been lost by Anglicanism in the Reformation of the 21st Century.
The danger in what is taking place is immense. The competitive denominationalism that characterized the Christian Church for most of the last five centuries could as easily come to characterize intra-Anglican relationships, particularly in North America. But North American rivalries and conflicts are soon enough transported to the rest of the Anglican world. The Anglican Communion Network has striven to avoid this outcome, but whether its labors will finally succeed is still to be played out.
Can we limit our love affair with freedom? Can we choose - both clergy and congregations - the common good over more self-interested opportunity? The sorrows of having a bishop five thousand miles away (limiting episcopal ministry) may be found to be outweighed by the joys of having a bishop five thousand miles away (limiting episcopal accountability.) The independence of being the only one of our kind anywhere nearby may prove seductive when compared to the hassle of regional expectations for joint mission when there are several connected congregations. The temptations of American "assessments" flowing into the treasuries of economically-challenged Global South dioceses or provinces is also a factor militating against a quick end to Anglicanism's increasing Balkanization. The late Paul Moore of New York used to be fond of describing the Episcopal Church as "a catholic church in love with freedom." The longer we embrace our freedoms, the less catholic we shall prove to be. W!
hether we shall permanently live in Anglican silos labeled AMiA or Kenya or Anglican Province in America or Windsor or fill-in-the-blank remains to be seen. Will we choose the common good when push comes to shove? The future of Anglicanism will depend on our answer, both individually and corporately. Forty years of domestic Balkanization among conservative Anglicans point to the tremendous change of heart that must overtake us.
Holiness and Sacrificial Leadership
Among the clergy of the Diocese of Pittsburgh are a great many of my personal heroes and heroines. They work for less than they could earn in another diocese. They work among the poor and socially battered locally, or cross-culturally around the world. Many work at less than clergy minimums and have under-funded pensions. Some have gathered extended communities, with students and those willing to risk downward social mobility drawn into their vision of the gospel enfleshed. Among our rectors are also those who stay the years it takes to become the rector, loving the people in such a way that they endure for the long-haul, still creative, still leading, always aware that they turned down "greener fields" in sacrifice to the people God continued to call them to serve. We have young clergy and older clergy and their families willing to take on very difficult assignments, risking (and sometimes achieving) failure because the Lord, the people and the Bishop have asked it. We have!
the faculty of Trinity School who serve untenured and most under-compensated of all the Episcopal seminaries, in a noble experiment in a decayed industrial town.
Contrast this sacrificial leadership with the vision of secular professionalism that drove clergy values during the last half of the twentieth century. That vision did many things, but rarely did it increase holiness or make of the parish priest an icon through which the people glimpsed God's kingdom breaking in.
The theme of this past summer's Network Council, "A Reformation of Behavior," speaks of the repentance and re-direction required for the counter-cultural movement that a renewed Anglicanism must become. Harkening back to the definition of evangelism offered by Archbishop William Temple so long ago, our people and our congregations must so present Jesus Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit, that people are drawn to accept Him as their Savior and to submit to Him as their Lord.(12)
Jesus honors those who take up their cross and follow him. For American Anglicans in this day, that means being willing to bear considerable personal suffering and uncertainty. It means shepherding sheep in the midst of a church war whose outcome is not known, in the midst of an Anglicanism that may have run its historic course. It means forgiving church leaders, especially bishops, who have utterly failed us and who continue to fail us. But Jesus has put into our charge what he has put into our charge, and the issue is whether we will lay down our lives for those sheep. For priesthood that looks like Jesus' priesthood, someone else's failure in his or her stewardship does not give us license to abandon our own, no matter how painful, no matter how lonely. Jesus' stewardship on the cross, is the stewardship God is asking of us in this Reformation time, this hinge of history. More than any other thing, the future of Anglicanism, like the future of the whole Christian Church, !
depends on Jesus' cross and on ours. (And if this does not sound very "modern" or very "Rite-II," it is not supposed to.) Are we not with Shakespeare's Henry V at our own Agincourt? Yet the stakes are even greater, the battle fiercer, the casualties no less painful, and the outcome surely to be spoken of for ages, however we shall elect to play our individual and our corporate part.
God's Sovereignty and the Future of Anglicanism
In human terms, I have attempted to describe what I believe are among the key elements that will determine Anglicanism's future. Prof. Lamen Sanneh of Yale University, Islamic-born West African who converted to Anglican Christianity in his youth, assesses Anglicanism as that Christian tradition best-positioned and best-suited to global evangelization in the 21st century, and especially so in the ever-deepening confrontation with Islam. Lamen Sanneh also recognizes the extreme vulnerability of Anglicanism to the destructive forces threatening to undo that Anglicanism.(13)
Whether our God shall choose to use Anglicanism as a key to the Reformation He is bringing to His One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, or a sign of the judgment that comes upon a branch of that Church that has lost, through its sin and infidelity and arrogance, His favor, we cannot yet say.
I am prepared to hope for the former and sacrifice for the former, with hands and head and heart joined with thousands of Anglican leaders across this land and around this globe, knowing that I have not been released from God's call to me to guard the sheep entrusted to my care. I am prepared to believe Paul's words at the end of his First Letter to the Corinthians, and to take at face value God's promise in God's Word offered there:
Be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain. (I Cor. 15:58)
This is what Anglicans do. It is why I believe there is a future beyond this excruciatingly difficult present. Moreover, I have come to trust a God who creates out of nothing, raises the dead, and loves the likes of us. That He could do something with Anglicanism, if we will entrust ourselves to Him, is not really that hard to believe. And whatever He does, we may rest in the security of knowing that in Him our labor will not have been in vain.
Footnotes: 1 Neill, Stephen, Anglicanism, Fourth Edition, Oxford University Press, New York, 1977, p.388. 2 Central Florida, Dallas, Fort Worth, Pittsburgh, Quincy, San Joaquin, South Carolina, and Springfield have appealed for Alternative Primatial Oversight or Relationship. The Bishop of Dallas has withdrawn from the request, but the Bishops of Albany are considering joining the request. 3 Fort Worth, Pittsburgh and Springfield. Under Article VII of the Constitution of the Episcopal Church. San Joaquin is considering complete Provincial re-alignment.
4 Communique, Global South Primates, Kigali, 22 September 2006. 5 Jenkins, Philip, The Next Christendom, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002. 6 Nichols, Aidan, The Panther and the Hind, T&T Clark, Edinburgh, 1993, p.176. 7 Ibid., pp.xi-xii. 8 Here we might reference countless martyrs from the Oxford Martyrs to the Martyrs of Uganda. 9 Malachi 2:13–16. 10 Book of Common Prayer, 1979, p. 368. 11 The most notable of these proposals was the "Jubilee Initiative" proposed by American Anglican Council Bishops in January, 2000. 12 "To evangelize is so to present Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit, that men shall come to put their trust in God through Him, to accept Him as their Savior, and to serve Him as their King in the fellowship of His Church." 13 Private conversations hosted at St. Vincent Archabbey, Latrobe, Pennsylvania, 2005.
END
The Anglican Communion Network is a biblical, missionary and uniting movement of North American Anglicans in fellowship with the worldwide Anglican Communion. The Anglican Communion Network is comprised of over 900 parishes and over 2200 clergy. The Anglican Communion Network operates under the legal name of the Network of Anglican Communion Dioceses and Parishes as a tax exempt organization under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Service code.
by Robert Duncan
25th October, A.D. 2006
The Rt. Revd. Robert William Duncan, D.D.
Bishop of Pittsburgh
Moderator of the Anglican Communion Network
O God of unchangeable power and eternal light: Look favorably upon thine whole Church, that wonderful and sacred mystery; by the effectual working of thy providence, carry out in tranquility the plan of thy salvation; let the whole world see and know that things that were cast down are being raised up, and that things that had grown old are being made new, and that all things are being brought to their perfection by Him through whom all things were made, even Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord; who liveth and reigneth with Thee, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.
I have been asked to speak about the future of Anglicanism. I gladly do so on this happy occasion and in this historic Chapel, a Chapel that has become very dear to me, and to countless others, whose spiritual lives have been profoundly shaped by its devotions and whose missionary and pastoral commitments have been fed by the heroes and heroines whose ministries founded and sustained this House and rightly earned it its simple nickname: "The Mission."
As I begin let me say how deeply honored I am by the Board's action in granting me the Doctor of Divinity degree (honoris causa), and how greatly honored I am by this company's presence here today. To become a "Son of the House" - to join so many other sons and daughters whose friendships have come to mean so much to me - is gift and encouragement of the first order. For the parish church that formed me, and especially the Anglo-Catholic priests who did their best to teach me through all those early years, this is their honor too. For Nara, whom I met in that parish church and who has stood by me all the years since we were teenagers - especially through these last supremely challenging years - this honor is also profoundly her honor. For the great Diocese of Pittsburgh that it has been our privilege to serve as Bishop and Lady through this last decade, and for the extraordinary comrades with which I have been surrounded in the emergence of the Anglican Communion Network, fo!
r the clergy and people and staff that have supported me and freed me to be at the center of the work of Reformation in our day, this honor also belongs to them.
The Three Choices on which All Else Hangs
Just a year ago, some three thousand Anglicans gathered at Pittsburgh for the Hope and A Future Conference. Many who are here today were there in those days. They were thrilling days in which we modeled what we wanted to become. They were days of worship, days of teaching, days of challenge, days of fellowship, days of reconciliation and days of hope. They were exhausting days.
As the Hope and a Future Conference began, I spoke about three encouragements, three warnings and three choices. In beginning this address about the future of Anglicanism I want to say again what I said at that time concerning the three choices that are before us, choices that are profoundly personal and profoundly corporate and on which do hang the future of Anglicanism. Everything else I shall have to say depends on the bedrock - or the quicksand - of the "day in and day out" of these choices individually and institutionally made, choices which together will "add up" to Anglicanism sustained or Anglicanism failed.
I said these words to the multitude assembled for Hope and A Future:
"The first choice is for Truth over accommodation. For everyone in this hall we are continuing to deal with choosing Jesus first: Jesus above culture, Jesus above comfort, Jesus above property, Jesus above family and friends, Jesus above any other security, Jesus above a wayward North American Church. We are here to confirm our choice for Truth above accommodation. This is the evangelical choice."
"The second choice is for Accountability over autonomy. There are lots of fragments in this hall: fragments of congregations, fragments of dioceses, fragments of denomination. Freedom, like Truth, is a passion that all of us share. But the vast danger here is that we will get stuck in our freedom Forty years of Anglican splits and splinters tells the story only too well. Autonomy is every bit as much a danger as accommodation. We are here to make a choice for Accountability over autonomy. This is the catholic choice."
"The third choice is for the Mission over sullen inaction. Is your congregation a church-planting congregation? Is your congregation partnered with a Global South diocese? Is your congregation functioning in local needs-based evangelism? Are you personally engaged in a Matthew 25 ministry? Have you personally led anyone else to saving faith in Jesus Christ? Have you challenged those around you to "Choose This Day?" Are you trapped in "ain't it awful?" or "what can we possibly do?" or the escape of self-absorption? We are Holy Spirit people: people who have been gifted, "charismed." We are here to elect Mission over sullen inaction. This is the charismatic choice."
That was one year ago. Nothing has altered the centrality of these choices. How our choices add up - our choices for or against Truth, Accountability, and Mission - will ultimately determine the future of Anglicanism. What I shall go on to say in this address concerns matters of lesser importance, matters concerning which it is good for us to think, propose and build, yet matters that can never rise above the level of the penultimate. I raise these lesser considerations about the future of Anglicanism with the understanding that it is the "three great choices" that are ultimately the significant ones. And if I speak somewhat more provocatively today than is normally my custom, my hearers will also understand that this is, after all, an academic convocation.
Can Anglicanism Survive At All?
Reflecting thirty years ago, in the Epilogue to the fourth edition of Anglicanism, Bishop Stephen Neill, then nearly eighty years old, wrote these words:
"The Anglican Communion, being a living entity and not an ossified institution, never abides in one stay, and is in a condition of perpetual change. This means that any description of its situation at a given moment will be out of date before it appears in print; the most that can be hoped for is an analysis of trends and an indication of the direction in which developments seem to be moving."
Bishop Neill continued:
"The first and burning question is, naturally, whether the Anglican Communion in anything like its present form can survive at all."(1)
For Stephen Neill, the question of the future of Anglicanism had been raised by a range of developments that surely meant that deep change was ahead: the appearance of the United Churches of first South (1947) and then North (1970) India, the diminution of the metro-political role of the Archbishop of Canterbury in the emergence of separate national Provinces, the independence those Provinces sometimes exercised, the creation of the Anglican Consultative Council, the blossoming of the charismatic movement, the abandonment of Communion-wide formularies (especially Prayer Book and Articles) and the extraordinary strains introduced by fundamental theological questioning and the ordination of women.
In 1976, Bishop Neill did not go on to answer the question he had raised. Thirty years on, what I am prepared to say at this moment in time is that the Anglican Communion cannot survive, let alone flourish, in its present form. It is in need of, and in the midst of, profound reformation. It is not alone in this - for the whole Church in the West is in need of this reformation - but our subject, for today, is Anglicanism, and it is to some of the aspects of this reformation that I now turn.
A Mediated Settlement in the United States
There are two churches claiming to be the Episcopal Church. In the words of Bp. Ed Salmon, Chairman of the Board of this House, there is a "chasm fixed between them." Eight dioceses(2) have gone so far as to appeal to the Communion for Alternative Primatial Oversight (APO), whereby a bishop or archbishop external to the States would exercise all the functions of Presiding Bishop within the States. Three dioceses have withdrawn their consent for inclusion in their domestic provinces and one has proposed complete re-alignment with an overseas jurisdiction.(3) The Archbishop of Canterbury has intervened by asking the Secretary General of the Anglican Communion, Can. Kenneth Kearon, to seek an "American solution" to the conflict represented by the APO requests. Significantly, the four principals identified by the Archbishop of Canterbury for the Kearon initiative, were the Presiding Bishop, the Presiding Bishop-elect, the Bishop of Pittsburgh and the Bishop of Fort Worth, all se!
ated as equals, naming equal teams. Unable to achieve any resolution on the Alternative Primatial Oversight issue at a September meeting in New York, and aware that the issue is actually the "chasm" between us rather than APO, significantly many of the participants present at New York believe that the Kearon initiative has no future, thus insuring that in fact it has none.
Speaking together from Kigali, just one week after the New York meeting, twenty Primates of the Global South (or their representatives) communicated their intention to provide Alternative Primatial Oversight, in consultation with the Archbishop of Canterbury, to the appealing U.S. dioceses.(4) Representatives of the Global South Committee will be meeting with representatives of the eight APO dioceses within a very few days.
Also in September, twenty-one diocesans (ten of whom are Network diocesans) met at the invitation of the senior diocesan of the Episcopal Church, Bp. Don Wimberly, the Bishop of Texas, to declare that the response of the General Convention to the Windsor Report was substantially inadequate, that the Windsor Report was the only hope of a way forward for the Anglican Communion, and that they (we) were committed to going forward together on that basis.
But the situation is very much more than Network or Windsor dioceses. Progressive and moderate dioceses are at different stages of disintegration. Diocesan budgets are in shambles in many places, and membership and average Sunday attendance continue to decline, as congregations split or the faithful choose non-ECUSA Anglicanism or Rome, Orthodoxy, Pentecostalism or Evangelicalism. In some parts of the country, orthodox congregations are in "mutual defense pacts," or are quietly negotiating "ways out" where there is a liberal openness to such conversations. Where generally conservative dioceses suffer, it is because the bishop is perceived to be compromising or unable to stand clearly enough for his clearest clergy and lay leaders. Conservative church-plants are emerging everywhere. Often they are on no one's radar for months. Eventually they identify themselves to the Network's church-plant trainer, or to the Network's international "transfers desk." Not atypical is this sit!
uation, reported to me just last week: In addition to the nine congregations under Ugandan or Bolivian oversight in Southern California, there are now eight new Anglican congregations forming there who are, as yet, related to no one. Additionally, the Canterbury Trail has not cooled at all on evangelical campuses across the nation - indeed the trail grows more like a highway - despite (or might it be because of?) the troubles. That both Gordon-Conwell and Fuller Seminaries, each located in strongholds of the other Episcopal Church, have established "Anglican tracks" in the last year are significant signs of the times.
We have reached the moment where a mediation to achieve disengagement is the only way forward. I believe that the other Episcopal Church - the one not represented in this convocation - has finally also come to that conclusion, as well. I believe that a mediated settlement will be in place by this time next year, or that the principals will be well on their way to such a settlement. How can we set one another free to proclaim the gospel (the Truth) as we, so differently, understand it? How can we bless one another as cousins, rather than oppress one another as brothers? The day for a serious and wide-ranging mediation has arrived. This will have an immense impact on the present and the future of Anglicanism, and it cannot come too soon.
An End to Western Hegemony
In his landmark book, The Next Christendom(5), Penn State Professor Philip Jenkins described the decline of European and North American Christianity and the emergence of a dynamic and rapidly-expanding Christianity in the Global South. Anglicanism in Africa, Asia and South America, along with Pentecostalism and Roman Catholicism, is at the center of this "next Christendom." Nigeria alone, with double the number of Anglicans of just fifteen years ago, and one-quarter of all the world's Anglicans today, will consecrate another eighteen missionary bishops this January.
But the Anglican tune, and the call for the dance, have long come from London or New York. The systems that govern the Anglican Communion are Western. The Anglican Communion Office is chiefly funded by American money. The Anglican Consultative Council has been dominated by British and American interests, and operates on the First World's paradigm of parliamentary rules and procedures. Or compare the anachronism of a "first among equals" chosen only from among British citizens and named by a secular Head of State. How peacefully, how cooperatively these systems change will determine much about the future of Anglicanism: Will the old systems be metamorphosed for a new day, or will the old systems be supplanted by new ones that emerge from the events of these days?
For a conciliar tradition, which is what Anglicanism most nearly is at its provincial level, what, we must ask, is the Council at the international level that will come to guide it? The once-in-a-decade Lambeth Conferences may have functioned in that way in a more settled age, but are inadequate for 21st century Anglicanism. Can the Primates Meeting, or some smaller Council drawn from that membership, serve this purpose? And what of the radical imbalances between Provinces when comparing the Primates of Scotland, Ireland, Wales or even the United States with Provinces like Nigeria, Uganda or Kenya?
The future of Anglicanism depends on the shift of its systems and institutions from North to South, and from Anglo- to Afro-, Sino- and Latino-. In some measure an early sign of the shift in leadership may have been signaled from Kigali in September. Alternative Primatial Oversight may not be something that Western leaders see any way to provide, but Southern leaders believe they can. Just as old paradigm responses to the present Anglican crisis - responses like the Panel of Reference - pale in comparison to the vigorous and more immediate interventions in our domestic life of Provinces like Central Africa, Kenya, Southern Cone, Uganda, and, in the first wave, Rwanda and Southeast Asia. What will the Instruments of Unity of this shift look like? We cannot yet say, but shifting they are, and shift they must. Stephen Neill was able to pose the central question. My hunch is that he would have been astounded at the depth of the changes that the maturing and renewal of Anglicanis!
m, if it be God's will, now requires.
One last consideration as we look at the necessary end to the Western hegemony in Anglicanism: Covenant is an idea with a very old and non-Western pedigree. How an Anglican Covenant emerges will be fascinating to observe. Already the West - not least in Archbishop Rowan Williams' "The Challenge and Hope of Being an Anglican" - has proposed degrees of Covenant commitment. Whether the Windsor Report-proposed or Global South-introduced notion of an Anglican Covenant will be meaningful or meaningless will depend on whether Global South clarity or Western post-modernism define what is and what is not Anglicanism. The future of Anglicanism as a coherent Christian enterprise or remnant of a syncretistic Enlightment development will hang in the balance. What must also be observed, in any case, is that the emergence of two Anglicanisms - like the two Episcopal Churches of the present moment - one a declining and ultimately heterodox expression and one a chiefly Southern Hemisphere of!
fspring with totally new Instruments of Unity still to emerge is, sadly, far from a remote possibility.
Recovery of an Anglican Magisterium
Whether Global Anglicanism can survive the entropic forces at play within our life together is a question of monumental historical and ecumenical significance. For all of us in this Chapel, the question is also one of great personal significance.
An Anglicanism without Scripture as its fundamental authority cannot survive. Richard Hooker rightly saw Scripture's primacy. Reason guides the application of Scripture's message for any age. Tradition elucidates Scripture's meaning as previous generations have applied it. But Scripture is the ultimate authority in its plain meaning.
In his bleak assessment of the survivability of Anglicanism, the English Dominican Aidan Nichols, quoting Eric Maschall, speaks of the "fundamental incoherence" of the three historic streams of Anglicanism: Evangelical, Catholic and Liberal.(6) Summarizing the arguments Nichols brings to bear in this analysis, Graham Leonard, former Bishop of London and former Anglican, cites four factors that have substantially (terminally?) diminished Anglicanism's ability to hold these parties and the whole tradition in creative tension: 1) an undermining of the ultimate authority of Scripture (as symbolized by the loss of place of the Articles of Religion, 2) the loss of the Book of Common Prayer, 3) the innovation of the ordination of women, and 4) the substitution of the authority of national synods for the authority previously accorded Scripture.(7)
To points 1) and 4) the experience of the American Church reveals all too starkly the pattern in contemporary Anglicanism that cannot be a part of our future, if there is to be a future. In 1973, the General Convention of the Episcopal Church, allowing pastoral concern to trump Scriptural teaching, replaced its annulment canon with a canon allowing remarriage after divorce, not limiting such remarriage to those cases that might be argued from Scripture. By comparison to effects visited on the whole Church in the undermining of Scriptural authority in life after life and household after household, the confirmation of a bishop in a same-sex relationship in 2003 is but reasonable follow-on. Part of Anglicanism's magisterium was its fundamental submission to the theological and moral teachings of Scripture, especially when that teaching was personally costly,(8) all the while offering the grace that forever met sinners where they were. To each one in this room I ask, are we prep!
ared together to recover this submission, or no? In Scripture's plain words, are we prepared to remain faithful to the wife of our youth, or no?(9) The future of Anglicanism is fundamentally dependent on submission of this sort, on submissions that break our own desires against Scripture's narrow way. And not just in theory, but in my life and in yours.
To point 3) - the ordination of women - I do not wish to speak, which you will regard as this address's one avoidance. My own support for women in holy orders is well known. Global Anglicanism has said that there are, in fact "two integrities" here, both arguable from Holy Scripture, and - to employ Hooker's method - less so from Tradition. I am convinced that an honest century of reception will sort this one out. I am also persuaded that our God has challenged us to deal with this issue, either because He does intend to bless this new understanding or because He has it in mind that we Anglicans will best find ourselves again in the institutional and relational charity it will require of us as a dynamic and faithful Anglicanism re-emerges.
To point 2) - the loss of the Book of Common Prayer - I want to be so bold as to suggest the following: that Anglicanism's practical magisterium - its reliable teaching authority - has been its Book of Common Prayer, and that without a restored Book of Common Prayer, reasserting the theological propositions of medieval Catholicism as reshaped by the English Reformation, best represented in the prayer book of 1662, Anglicanism will continue its theological disintegration apace. For that Western Church whose popular and practical believing was more nearly lex orandi, lex credendi than any other tradition - for that Western Church whose practical magisterium was its prayerbook - a fixed prayer book is essential. For a tradition that has a separate magisterium, Vatican II-style liturgy is a possibility. For us as Anglicans, it is, quite demonstrably, not. Forty years of alternative texts and expansive language have produced an undiscipled people and a theological wasteland. We h!
ave become a Church that actually does believe, in the words of one eucharistic canon, that we are "worthy to stand before ."(10) How staggeringly un-Scriptural and un-Anglican!
What I would also add to this is that the need for an "Authorized Version" of the Bible, at least parish by parish, or diocese by diocese, re-emerges alongside the need for a Book of Common Prayer. How shall we ever learn Scripture again except that we always hear it in the same way? The matter of formation needs to dominate our liturgical and ascetical thinking, rather than our desires for education, variety, correctness or newness. And since I have already given quite enough offense, I shall leave off here without arguing for hymnody that is static enough to produce texts that are known by heart...
A Church without a magisterium is soon no Church at all. It is not too late to begin the reform, but the time is short. The reform will also not come from the top - as much as we might yearn for such a solution (for Reformations do not come from the top or begin at the center) - but from a thousand altars, like the one at the heart of this House, and from leaders brave enough to embrace unpopular and counter-cultural truths. The future of Anglicanism is most assuredly tied up in this.
The Choice for Comprehensiveness over Balkanization
Diocesan boundaries are lost forever, at least in the United States. Resistance by American progressives to early suggestions of ways to accommodate conservatives in progressive dioceses (as well as progressives in conservative dioceses)(11) have led to situations in which multiple Anglican jurisdictions now operate in the same territory. Prior to the Singapore consecrations of January 2000, there were, of course, multiple Continuing Church and Reformed Episcopal Church jurisdictions operating within what were Episcopal Church dioceses. But between 2001 and 2006, multiple Anglican Communion jurisdictions have come to operate in the same domestic spheres. Rwanda, Uganda, Central Africa, Kenya, Southern Cone and Nigeria all have significant congregations within U.S. dioceses, and more join them daily. Other presences from the Diocese of London to the Province of Korea are less well documented. The embrace of affinity relationships, rather than geographical location, as the org!
anizing principle of the Anglican Mission in America, has also offered an intentional alternative to classic assumptions about diocesan structure. Things will never return to the simplicity of one Anglican bishop having authority over one Anglican territory. What was lost by the whole of Western Christendom at the Reformation of the 16th Century has now been lost by Anglicanism in the Reformation of the 21st Century.
The danger in what is taking place is immense. The competitive denominationalism that characterized the Christian Church for most of the last five centuries could as easily come to characterize intra-Anglican relationships, particularly in North America. But North American rivalries and conflicts are soon enough transported to the rest of the Anglican world. The Anglican Communion Network has striven to avoid this outcome, but whether its labors will finally succeed is still to be played out.
Can we limit our love affair with freedom? Can we choose - both clergy and congregations - the common good over more self-interested opportunity? The sorrows of having a bishop five thousand miles away (limiting episcopal ministry) may be found to be outweighed by the joys of having a bishop five thousand miles away (limiting episcopal accountability.) The independence of being the only one of our kind anywhere nearby may prove seductive when compared to the hassle of regional expectations for joint mission when there are several connected congregations. The temptations of American "assessments" flowing into the treasuries of economically-challenged Global South dioceses or provinces is also a factor militating against a quick end to Anglicanism's increasing Balkanization. The late Paul Moore of New York used to be fond of describing the Episcopal Church as "a catholic church in love with freedom." The longer we embrace our freedoms, the less catholic we shall prove to be. W!
hether we shall permanently live in Anglican silos labeled AMiA or Kenya or Anglican Province in America or Windsor or fill-in-the-blank remains to be seen. Will we choose the common good when push comes to shove? The future of Anglicanism will depend on our answer, both individually and corporately. Forty years of domestic Balkanization among conservative Anglicans point to the tremendous change of heart that must overtake us.
Holiness and Sacrificial Leadership
Among the clergy of the Diocese of Pittsburgh are a great many of my personal heroes and heroines. They work for less than they could earn in another diocese. They work among the poor and socially battered locally, or cross-culturally around the world. Many work at less than clergy minimums and have under-funded pensions. Some have gathered extended communities, with students and those willing to risk downward social mobility drawn into their vision of the gospel enfleshed. Among our rectors are also those who stay the years it takes to become the rector, loving the people in such a way that they endure for the long-haul, still creative, still leading, always aware that they turned down "greener fields" in sacrifice to the people God continued to call them to serve. We have young clergy and older clergy and their families willing to take on very difficult assignments, risking (and sometimes achieving) failure because the Lord, the people and the Bishop have asked it. We have!
the faculty of Trinity School who serve untenured and most under-compensated of all the Episcopal seminaries, in a noble experiment in a decayed industrial town.
Contrast this sacrificial leadership with the vision of secular professionalism that drove clergy values during the last half of the twentieth century. That vision did many things, but rarely did it increase holiness or make of the parish priest an icon through which the people glimpsed God's kingdom breaking in.
The theme of this past summer's Network Council, "A Reformation of Behavior," speaks of the repentance and re-direction required for the counter-cultural movement that a renewed Anglicanism must become. Harkening back to the definition of evangelism offered by Archbishop William Temple so long ago, our people and our congregations must so present Jesus Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit, that people are drawn to accept Him as their Savior and to submit to Him as their Lord.(12)
Jesus honors those who take up their cross and follow him. For American Anglicans in this day, that means being willing to bear considerable personal suffering and uncertainty. It means shepherding sheep in the midst of a church war whose outcome is not known, in the midst of an Anglicanism that may have run its historic course. It means forgiving church leaders, especially bishops, who have utterly failed us and who continue to fail us. But Jesus has put into our charge what he has put into our charge, and the issue is whether we will lay down our lives for those sheep. For priesthood that looks like Jesus' priesthood, someone else's failure in his or her stewardship does not give us license to abandon our own, no matter how painful, no matter how lonely. Jesus' stewardship on the cross, is the stewardship God is asking of us in this Reformation time, this hinge of history. More than any other thing, the future of Anglicanism, like the future of the whole Christian Church, !
depends on Jesus' cross and on ours. (And if this does not sound very "modern" or very "Rite-II," it is not supposed to.) Are we not with Shakespeare's Henry V at our own Agincourt? Yet the stakes are even greater, the battle fiercer, the casualties no less painful, and the outcome surely to be spoken of for ages, however we shall elect to play our individual and our corporate part.
God's Sovereignty and the Future of Anglicanism
In human terms, I have attempted to describe what I believe are among the key elements that will determine Anglicanism's future. Prof. Lamen Sanneh of Yale University, Islamic-born West African who converted to Anglican Christianity in his youth, assesses Anglicanism as that Christian tradition best-positioned and best-suited to global evangelization in the 21st century, and especially so in the ever-deepening confrontation with Islam. Lamen Sanneh also recognizes the extreme vulnerability of Anglicanism to the destructive forces threatening to undo that Anglicanism.(13)
Whether our God shall choose to use Anglicanism as a key to the Reformation He is bringing to His One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, or a sign of the judgment that comes upon a branch of that Church that has lost, through its sin and infidelity and arrogance, His favor, we cannot yet say.
I am prepared to hope for the former and sacrifice for the former, with hands and head and heart joined with thousands of Anglican leaders across this land and around this globe, knowing that I have not been released from God's call to me to guard the sheep entrusted to my care. I am prepared to believe Paul's words at the end of his First Letter to the Corinthians, and to take at face value God's promise in God's Word offered there:
Be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain. (I Cor. 15:58)
This is what Anglicans do. It is why I believe there is a future beyond this excruciatingly difficult present. Moreover, I have come to trust a God who creates out of nothing, raises the dead, and loves the likes of us. That He could do something with Anglicanism, if we will entrust ourselves to Him, is not really that hard to believe. And whatever He does, we may rest in the security of knowing that in Him our labor will not have been in vain.
Footnotes: 1 Neill, Stephen, Anglicanism, Fourth Edition, Oxford University Press, New York, 1977, p.388. 2 Central Florida, Dallas, Fort Worth, Pittsburgh, Quincy, San Joaquin, South Carolina, and Springfield have appealed for Alternative Primatial Oversight or Relationship. The Bishop of Dallas has withdrawn from the request, but the Bishops of Albany are considering joining the request. 3 Fort Worth, Pittsburgh and Springfield. Under Article VII of the Constitution of the Episcopal Church. San Joaquin is considering complete Provincial re-alignment.
4 Communique, Global South Primates, Kigali, 22 September 2006. 5 Jenkins, Philip, The Next Christendom, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002. 6 Nichols, Aidan, The Panther and the Hind, T&T Clark, Edinburgh, 1993, p.176. 7 Ibid., pp.xi-xii. 8 Here we might reference countless martyrs from the Oxford Martyrs to the Martyrs of Uganda. 9 Malachi 2:13–16. 10 Book of Common Prayer, 1979, p. 368. 11 The most notable of these proposals was the "Jubilee Initiative" proposed by American Anglican Council Bishops in January, 2000. 12 "To evangelize is so to present Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit, that men shall come to put their trust in God through Him, to accept Him as their Savior, and to serve Him as their King in the fellowship of His Church." 13 Private conversations hosted at St. Vincent Archabbey, Latrobe, Pennsylvania, 2005.
END
The Anglican Communion Network is a biblical, missionary and uniting movement of North American Anglicans in fellowship with the worldwide Anglican Communion. The Anglican Communion Network is comprised of over 900 parishes and over 2200 clergy. The Anglican Communion Network operates under the legal name of the Network of Anglican Communion Dioceses and Parishes as a tax exempt organization under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Service code.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)