Commentary
By Canon Gary L'Hommedieu
www.virtueonline.org
9/17/08
There's a lot of pressure on Episcopal middle-of-the-roaders these days.
With traditionalist dioceses lining up like planes on the tarmac waiting for takeoff, the pressure is on the Left Behinds to define their own Episcopal identity. Because doctrine is off limits, the only thing left to rally around is the church as institution. Not an institution with a purpose or even a variety of purposes, but simply as an institution pursuing its own survival.
A faithful Episcopalian is no longer one who faithfully stands by the creeds, the Prayer Book and (heaven forbid!) the scriptures. A faithful Episcopalian is now one who stands behind the Presiding Bishop and the General Convention. To paraphrase the jingoist sentiment of another era, "My church, right or wrong!"
It is troubling to note the shift of TEC from an institution centered around a long religious tradition to one centered around rules, regulations, and real estate. Even more troubling is watching the leadership of the Episcopal Church act more and more like this is the way it ought to be--the way it has always been--and to watch them feign indignation at those who cling to an historic faith as the proper object of Christian loyalty. There is no one "faith", they retort. And even if there is, to make demands about it is to be divisive and exclusive. Today's loyalists have no stomach for standing on principle.
It is sobering to watch the bishops and clergy of TEC pretend a new history into existence and then equate conformity to this fabrication with faithfulness to the gospel.
The program of pretense has engulfed the laity as well. In the Ft. Worth area alone we hear of Via Media, Steadfast Episcopalians, North Texas Episcopalians, North Texas Remain Episcopal and Mid Cities Episcopalians, all lining up to oppose the traditionalist bishop, his clergy and the lay majority. Similar organizations, or branches of the same, pop up throughout the remaining enclaves of Episcopal conservatism in Albany, South Carolina, Central Florida, Pittsburgh and elsewhere.
Not since the Viet Nam era have we witnessed such a dramatic display of wrapping oneself in the institutional flag. "Hell no, we won't go!" comes readily to the lips of the graying clergy, only now with a biting irony. The American Counter Culture, firmly embedded in the mainline denominations, must now call itself the Establishment. Worse, it must wax indignant at the protestations of a new minority.
The new majority came to power championing the cause of every minority it could add to its letterhead. Like the generation that surprised itself by coming of age, they were not prepared to be a majority--to become the Establishment. They were certainly never prepared to see themselves as driven by Establishment concerns--power and property. But what else is there?
The causes espoused by the new majority are calculated to grant legitimacy to the new Establishment. The Millennium Development Goals project (to cite the most recent example) is an obvious fit precisely because MDG's are unassailable by popular criticism. They are politically correct and thus culturally orthodox. Their popular enthusiasm certainly has no relation to the UN's track record in practical solutions to global problems particularly on such a grand scale.
Take the rest of the "causes" championed by the mainline churches--female clergy, environmentalism, gay liberation, opposition to war, just to name a few--which of these was not pre-certified to mediate approval by the secular establishment? Who risks anything to back the "prophetic" program of today's Episcopal Church?
The new church has become the old Establishment, and it's embarrassing.
Still, that is not what puts pressure on Episcopalians today as the steady trickle of defections threatens to hemorrhage. The real pressure is on for TEC to pretend that it stands in historic continuity with the Christian church across the ages--the church of the Bible and the creeds. What is the only possible evidence TEC has to make such a claim? Well, we hold deed on the old properties, and we have attached our name to some worthy projects. So we must be the church of the prophets, apostles, and martyrs.
The new Episcopal loyalists have redefined loyalty based on the only thing left--the institution. Doctrine is divisive. Morality falls under the general category of public relations. The political shell of the American Church is now a social advocacy group in vestments. Its adherence to its own creed is dismissed as superfluous.
One can argue the merit of subscribing to the Christian faith in our time. One can argue that Christians are "the most to be pitied" after all (or just plain stupid) based upon what we know today about history or biology or physics. One cannot argue that the institution that goes by the name "The Episcopal Church" is the same historic movement that formerly called itself by that name. Such a statement is historically indefensible. It is a fiction.
As the House of Bishops prepares to expel Bishop Bob Duncan for "abandonment of communion", they must put forward the absurdity that leaving the communion of the Episcopal Church and aligning with a church with which the Episcopal Church is presently in communion is abandoning communion.
Here it is hard to fathom what "communion" is purported to mean. Whatever it means, it does not mean standing in continuity with those churches who received the same faith that the Episcopal Church received when it separated from the Church of England. It refers to the Episcopal Church as a national, legal entity, which traces only its development as an institution to the Church of England.
Institutional succession is not the same as communion. Here the Lutherans have an important corrective to our doctrine of succession. "Apostolic succession" must refer primarily to the succession of the faith of the apostles, with the succession of hands being secondary. In our tradition we assume the succession of faith but only insist on the succession of hands. And increasingly we wink at the reference to faith and acknowledge only the power of the apostolic office. The succession of hands is good theater in support of an important principle--the need to pass on the faith from generation to generation. Take faith out of the equation and all you have is theater. It's all for show.
Notice the word "communion" hasn't yet entered into the equation. The apostolic communion would be the church's claim that, by standing in communion with the apostles through sharing the faith they received from the Risen Lord, one is standing in communion with the Lord himself. Abandonment of communion is a serious matter because it implies the abandonment of the apostolic faith and, by extension, the Lord of the Church. In the case of Bishop Duncan abandonment of communion means--you guessed it--abandonment of the institution.
Episcopal Church leaders are becoming hardened in their pretense that the Ordinal is really a "living document"--that reference to "the doctrine, discipline, and worship of Christ as this Church has received them" are traditional words that borrow divergent meanings from novel "contexts". I hear more and more clergy defending this position with feigned outrage at those who rebel at the church's abandonment of historic doctrine. I know how the clergy are drilled in the critical analysis of texts. They know the historical background of the Prayer Books. They know that "received" does not refer to the legislative fiat of the most recent General Convention. If they have grown dull, it is because they have chosen to do so.
The Episcopal Church has become a legal shell with timid survivors who cannot make anything but institutional statements in support of institutional ends. Doctrine has been bargained away. All that remains are familiar phrases, emptied of meaning, retained for occasional use in public relations. Even these have largely fallen out of use, replaced by secular hot button phrases like "justice" and "inclusiveness"--words which never mean anything in particular but always adapt themselves to institutional ends.
Today's Episcopalians are under pressure to pretend that nothing of substance has changed over the centuries. For the most part they are not wearing it well.
---The Rev. Canon J. Gary L'Hommedieu is Canon for Pastoral Care at the Cathedral Church of St. Luke, Orlando, Florida, and a regular columnist for VirtueOnline
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