From Anglicans United:
August 22, 2008
[Ed. Note: Fr. Jim Simons, whose article follows, bases his argument on the notion that TEC will be left apostate if all the Biblically orthodox abandon it. Can and will God renew that body on HIs own, according to His plan and time table? Yes, of course. So, what are the righteous to choose. That is the question that three dioceses and perhaps more - will deal with this fall. Cheryl M. Wetzel]
August 19, 2008
Deacon Tara Jernigan, deacon pastor of All Saints in Brighton Heights, responds to the Rev. Jim Simon’s “The Case for Staying in The Episcopal Church.”
I want to thank Fr. Jim Simons for his thoughtful comments on the situation in the Episcopal Church. On many things we agree, or as I have often said to others, we disagree on strategy, not theology. Jim Simons is my brother in Christ, and the current situation has no power to change that. In fact, I know all of “the twelve” who signed the
now infamous letter, the twelve conservative priests who publicly decline to realign. I respect each of them, some of them I count as close friends.
And yet, it remains that we do disagree on strategy. Fr. Simons mentioned that it is not the way of the Old Testament faith for the faithful to set themselves outside the body. He is correct. It was never appropriate, no matter how apostate Israel became, for the faithful to go off and found a new Israel. At one time, my own argument ended here, as do the arguments in Fr. Simons’ document. But there are two fallacies at play here. The
first is that the body of the faithful who are in favor of realigning are not going off and founding a new Christianity.
The Episcopal Church is not our Israel. We belong first and foremost to a body of believers, world wide and across the millennia, who profess Christ crucified and raised from the dead. The Episcopal Church is only a tiny faction
within that larger new Israel. Furthermore, we seek to found nothing new, as that would be an affront to the catholicity of our faith. We seek only to be under the authority of another, already existing, segment of that one, holy, catholic, and apostolic faith.
Many have accused us of seeking schism. This is not what we are doing. Schism seeks to separate from the body, realignment in fact seeks fuller membership in the larger body of confessing Christians. If the Episcopal Church were the fullness of the valid expression of the faith, of course this would be schism. Of course, this is not the case.
Centuries of schism in the church catholic and generations of decline in the Episcopal Church have left the Church fragmented and the Episcopal Church sliding further and further from the few boundaries of Christianity on which that torn and fragmented Church can manage to agree. Dr. Rod Whitacre once told a class that there is only one
kind of schism, schism from the Body of Christ. Regrettably, that schism has already taken place long ago in the Episcopal Church.
The second fallacy in the Old Testament Israel model is that this is not how the New Testament church has functioned. While the people of Israel were always defined by their ethnic heritage, no matter what faith they espoused, whether faithful or apostate, the church does not have the luxury of similar boundaries. The Church has always defined itself by the faith, not the ethnicity. The church has therefore had the obligation to consistently define what groups of people are and are not within the Body of Christ. This sacred discipline was no doubt any more comfortable on either side of the aisle during the eras of the Gnostics and Arians than it is today. It is, sadly necessary at times, for the Church to lay claim anew to her doctrines and draw lines beyond which we may not cross while claiming to be members of the body. We cannot happily sit by while the tithe dollars of faithful Christians go to support the creation of paganized liturgies, apostate theologies, and lawsuits against servant of Christ.
Personally, I find Fr. Simons’ arguments to be a bit naïve. His comments about women’s ordination being a difficult subject for the Southern Cone are indeed accurate. However it is very ungracious to assume that our brothers and sisters in the Southern Cone, having truly exceeded the call of duty in accepting our ordained women in the first place, would be anything less than charitable in their behavior towards us. Still more disturbing is Fr. Simons’ assumption that the women of the church might not be aware that our vocations are difficult for some to accept and that we would not be ready and willing to set aside our own personal positions and feelings for the cause of Christ. I, for one, would gladly set aside my ordination if the body of Christ required it. This is not because I have some distaste for my calling, rather it is because the nature of the ordained call is not about retaining one’s rights but emptying oneself of those rights for the sake of the Cross.
I further find Fr. Simons’ assumption that the Episcopal Church would treat Pittsburgh any more kindly than other dioceses and parishes have been treated and that the Episcopal Church would repent of their extra-canonical actions against the orthodox to date to be a little naïve. The whole idea that this abusive relationship will get any better if the one party would only return to the vulnerability and intimacy that was once shared is, unfortunately, neither a likely outcome nor a responsible risk. No doubt my cynicism is a symptom of my fallen human nature, and yet at the same time we must be as wise as serpents, not leading our people intentionally into danger.
I agree with Fr. Simons on much, including that this will be a painful process. However, the faithful have counted the cost and it is a pain we are willing to bear. It is my sincere hope and prayer that the relationships we have built here in Pittsburgh can stand as a testimony to the Episcopal Church and to the world that no matter what side of the
strategic debate we stand on, Christians honor one another and strive to love one another as Christ loved us. I have been honored these four years to serve among the finest clergy and most inspiring Christian men and women I have ever met. I pray those relationships are not ended over issues of strategy.
In Christ,
Tara Jernigan
Deacon Pastor, All Saints Brighton Heights
Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers. And grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption. Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice: And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you. Ephesians 4:29-32 KJV
8 comments:
This is all very fine, but I would remind you that women of great courage and faith made it possible for you to respond to the fullness of God's call to you in the first place.
Look, I'm going to say something now that I would just ask you to ponder in the deep recesses of your own soul. I will not judge the situation. I simply ask the question in some strange casting of the thread to catch and hold.
If I were to ask you to search yourself for what might be called "internalized misogeny" (which is a very painful thing, btw), would you search? Please?
If you really believe that the sacrifice is for something better, so be it. But for integrity's sake, I must tell you that to abandon ministry seems to me to be stiff-arming God in a most unhelpful way.
It's just my two cents worth, so please don't give it any more value that it's worth.
Blessings and prayers...
Scott, I would think that Tara realizes that women of great courage paved the way for her. Rather than looking at her proposal as "internalized misogeny," might it be more appropriate to look at it as submitting to the authority of the church? I know this is radical (as in getting to the roots)in a pecusa state of mind given that pecusa is hellbent of pressing autonomy and unilateralism.
While I am supportive of women's ordination, I do recognize that the vast majority of churches (those being the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and a number of Anglican provinces) believe that women's ordination to the priesthood and episcopate are not God's will.
Should I, Tara, and you be so arrogant to insist that we have it right and the vast majority in the church have it wrong? Of course, pecusa is perfectly willing to do so on human sexuality and doesn't care one twit that it has severely torn the fabric of the Anglican Communion in doing so. I would hope that some in pecusa might speak up and say no to unilateralism and arrogant autonomy.
tony,
I do hear your point of view. But I have to ask if anything at all would have changed since the 1st century CE if christians had held to that point of view. Would the Constantinian solution ever have occured, for instance? I don't think it's arrogance to hold firmly to perceived movements of the Holy Spirit. How that holding turns out is, of course, not up to us - or you.
Scott, things have changed since the first century AD (I prefer the reference to the Lord of the Universe in this dating), tradition is not static. However, the tradition has changed by a consensus of the faithful. pecusa, on the other hand, has changed by irregular ordinations (women's in 2004) and acting against the expressed will of the Anglican Communion (expressed through the Instruments of Unity). This unilateralism is arrogant. As Rowan Williams eloquently said at Lambeth, movements of the Spirit are not the exclusive property of one province over against the perceptions of the rest of the Communion.
This is from the ABC's pastoral letter that is posted above:
"on the controversial issue of the day regarding human sexuality, there was a very widely-held conviction that premature or unilateral local change was risky and divisive"
tony,
so when wasn't the movement of the Spirit ever not controversial, risky, divisive, premature and unilateral?
besides, it has occured to me over the last hours that we really should just step back and let Tara speak for herself?
:-)
Scott, if Tara wants to come here and comment she is surely welcome. As I noted, I picked this up from Anglicans United.
As to your point about the Spirit, in catholic (that is, pertaining to the universal church) theology, the Spirit speaks to the Church, as I said above, through a consensus of the faithful. No such consensus exists on VGR & SSBs. Again, pecusa was told by the four instruments of unity not to proceed with the VGR consecration. When any part of the church acts unilaterally it damages the rest of the church, as we are seeing.
Women's ordination is another issue that has been divisive, yet the Communion did not at any point develop a consensus that spoke with one voice saying "pecusa don't do this." There's a huge difference between women's ordination and the ordination of sexually active homosexuals.
Deacon "Pastor?????" Pastors = presbyters.
Seven MEN were chosen to be deacons.
There were wonderful "servant" women in the Church in the NT and throughout church history. I am aware of the brief period when there were "deaconesses" who oversaw the preparation of women for baptism.
Our sisters, such as Dr. Jernigan, should not be ordained to the office to which seven men were appointed by our Savior's Church. Such women should serve one of the many non-ordained capacities of service in which women have served over the past two millennia.
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