Commentary
By Canon Gary L'Hommedieu
www.virtueonline.org
10/01/08
There's blood in the water, and the barracudas can no longer restrain themselves.
The contract on Robert Duncan has been executed. There is the matter of property still to be managed, but Duncan himself is no longer a target. He must be replaced.
The House of Bishops has shown such disdain for order that it is almost certain they will act swiftly, with even less pretense at due process, to make this most recent episode appear orderly by comparison.
Orthodox journalists and bloggers are predicting a full scale mop-up operation. Bishop Iker has declared that the succession of an orthodox episcopate is no longer possible in the Episcopal Church. There is no longer any way an orthodox candidate for bishop can be approved by the majority of Standing Committees in TEC dioceses.
Call it sacramental genocide.
Mark Lawrence was lately admitted as a face saving measure on the part of the TEC leadership, after the Presiding Bishop fumbled around with due process in squashing his election the first time. She no longer fumbles with due process. She simply ignores it.
Her bishops no longer see deposition as having primarily to do with specific charges brought against a specific individual. They admitted that the case against Duncan had nothing to do with Duncan the man, but with the need for TEC to position itself for the next legal battle, or perhaps the one after that. In other words, the deposition was not pastoral and disciplinary but strategic. Robert Duncan, the renegade bishop, had become incidental by the time he was taken out by the HOB.
Speaking of Mark Lawrence, the well spoken but cautious Bishop of South Carolina foresees trouble for his own conservative diocese. It is no revelation to him that conservatives are not welcome in TEC. More likely he senses that the Presiding Bishop and her panzer divisions are searching the conservative lines for weaknesses. After Duncan who is the most vulnerable?
The likely targets are the usual suspects: Ft. Worth, Quincy, Albany, Central Florida, maybe a few more. That TEC's imperial episcopate will strike is not in question. Everyone senses the inevitability of the upcoming mop-up of Episcopal conservatism. What has not been sufficiently understood is the inner necessity of it.
The radical social gospel is predicated on protesting against and eradicating evil. Not all evil, of course. None of the radicals are waging a campaign against the Muslim slave trade. None dares mention protecting the most vulnerable, the unborn. The liberation gospel that has gripped the mainline denominations is fixated upon symbolic liberations. These are less risky, and the payoffs are more immediate.
The radical church vents its outrage across the aisle. It feeds on itself, certifying issues for confrontation, then dividing into those who support and those who oppose the issues. There must be two sides, or else there can be no victory for justice.
Since the issues are pre-chosen based upon the success of similar movements outside the church, the radicals have a political advantage even before they become a majority. If they choose their causes carefully, they can enter the struggle with a moral advantage. The "correct" position on the issues has already been canonized by the wider culture. Their Christian brethren to the right cannot oppose them without appearing Neanderthal and reactionary.
Take the issues in order: women's ordination, gay ordination, same sex unions. Of course, these are not the only causes named in resolutions at General Convention. There are plenty of other "peace and justice" issues, but these are only important as a backdrop for the real struggle.
The "real" issues are the ones that will divide the church, thus making possible the necessary components of winners and losers, justice advocates and reactionaries. Confrontation means there needs to be an enemy to be defeated, even if defeat is mostly symbolic. At first the battle was waged as part of a political debate, where winning was measured in terms of resolutions and votes. Then it turned to sacraments, where the definition of Holy Order was changed. Now the focus has shifted to matrimony, where the created order is undergoing revision.
The warfare has recently shifted from the arena of policy to that of property. Legislative measures presented to the General Convention are now strategically chosen in anticipation of legal confrontations to follow. Casualties are no longer merely symbolic. Now they are counted in terms of ruined careers and congregations removed from their properties.
Thirty-plus years of adversarial politics have brought us to the present moment. It has been adversarial and confrontational from the beginning, and, for the sake of the new TEC majority, it must be so in the future. The faith of the new Episcopal Church is measured in terms of being "right" on issues of social importance. In order for one to be right, someone else has to be wrong. For the sake of convenience adversaries are sought in the church.
After the last conservative goes away, having fled TEC or else having been deposed, who will the radicals turn their symbolic guns on? Does anyone imagine that they long for the tranquility of a new status quo? What is peace and justice without war and injustice? How will TEC conjure up tokens of their righteousness? Does anyone believe the Episcopal Church as it presently exists can simply return to passing resolutions and mouthing slogans?
The adversarial gospel cannot cease to be adversarial. Confrontation is not only the familiar method of political action. It is also the church's only sacrament. The faith itself has been reconstituted as an allegory of the contemporary peace and justice movement among those who have the luxury of pondering it. These are disquieted souls, very self-conscious about being materially privileged in the face of global wretchedness. They would like to think they are championing the cause of the masses when what they are mostly doing is making statements to impress their peers. They occasionally ruin a few careers of those who disagree with them, just to show they mean business.
They are confident that the poor will be with them always to provide fodder for their disputations.
The revisionist church cannot survive its own maturing as a majority. Like every successful revolution, it must have a counter-revolution to sustain its spirit. TEC will gradually turn to cannibalizing itself, upping the ante on social righteousness and hunting down new heretics. Christian revisionism, after all, began by revising Christianity. It has been and remains inwardly focused. There is no reason to expect it will shift to a missionary posture. Proselytizing, you recall, is anathema in this church.
While TEC has no compunctions against devouring its own, it cannot in conscience reproduce itself. It has revised itself without a future.
---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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