From The Creedal Christian (blog) via TitusOneNine:
Friday, April 24, 2009
Even though only the General Convention of the Episcopal Church has the authority to revise the liturgies of The Book of Common Prayer, "Buddhist" bishop-elect of Northern Michigan Kevin Thew Forrester has taken it upon himself to revise the liturgy for Holy Baptism.
Here's an example from an Easter liturgy at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Marquette, MI in which Mr. Forrester has taken the liberty to rewrite the Presentation and Examination of the Candidates for Holy Baptism (I've added a couple of headers to provide points of reference for the discussion to follow):
Presider: The Candidate for Holy Baptism will now be presented.
Parents and Godparents: I present N. to receive the Sacrament of Baptism
Presider: Will you be responsible for seeing that N. is brought up in the Christian faith and life?
Parents and Godparents: I will, with God’s help.
Presider: Will you, by your prayers and witness, help N. to grow into the full stature of Christ?
Parents and Godparents: I will, with God’s help.
Presider: Do you seek to awaken to the eternal presence of God, who is your very heart and soul?
Parents and Godparents: I do.
The Renunciations
Presider: God forever invites you to let go of self deceit to dwell in the house of honesty, where eternal Hope reigns. Will you accept this invitation?
Parents and Godparents: I will, with God’s help.
Presider: God forever invites you to let go of all fear to dwell in the house of courage, where eternal Faith reigns. Will you accept this invitation?
Parents and Godparents: I will, with God’s help.
Presider: God forever invites you to let go of all anger to dwell in the house of serenity, where Love reigns. Will you accept this invitation?
Parents and Godparents: I will, with God’s help.
The Act of Adherence
Presider: Do you turn to Jesus Christ and accept him as the way of Life and Hope?
Parents and Godparents: I do.
Presider: Do you put your whole trust in Christ’s grace and love?
Parents and Godparents: I do.
Presider: Do you promise to follow Christ as the way of life?
Parents and Godparents: I do.
We stand as we are able.
Presider: Will you who witness these vows do all in your power to support N. in her life in Christ?
Assembly: We will.
There are some who charge that the baptism administered to this child is not valid, but from my perspective, the validity of the sacrament is not in question (in spite of the illegal liturgical revision, the sacrament was administered with water in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit).
My concerns center around the theological shift taking place with Forrester's revision. Comparing the revised Presentation and Examination of the Candidates to pages 301-303 in The Book of Common Prayer, the first thing that strikes me is the addition of this question to the two that precede the renunciations in the Prayer Book:
Do you seek to awaken to the eternal presence of God, who is your very heart and soul?
It's not entirely clear in this context what exactly the language of "awakening" refers to. But read in the larger context of Forrester's other writings, it carries gnostic or "new age" overtones that suggest a theological anthropology in which one's true self ("your very heart and soul") is identical with "the eternal presence of God." Our "salvation" lies in waking up to this "true self." Our problem is a lack of proper knowledge and insight about our divine nature, not anything as dire as the Christian conception of sin.
Perhaps this explains the absence of the renunciations, in which the baptismal candidate (or, in the case of infants, his/her parents and godparents) say "no" to three levels of evil:
1. Cosmic Evil - Nature and History Are Unmanageable
Question Do you renounce Satan and all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God?
Answer I renounce them.
2. Systemic Evil - Human Affairs and Social Systems Are Unmanageable
Question Do you renounce the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God?
Answer I renounce them.
3. Personal Evil - Our Lives Are Unmanageable
Question Do you renounce all sinful desires that draw you from the love of God?
Answer I renounce them.
The renunciations in the Prayer Book acknowledge the tragic reality that our world is messed up by sin and evil, and they affirm that a central vocation of the Christian way of life is to say "No!" to this sin and evil. By contrast, Forrester cuts out the renunciations, replacing them with"invitations" to let go of self deceit, fear and anger. Regardless of whether or not this sounds more Buddhist than Christian, this suggests that our lives and our world are manageable. We can simply choose to accept an invitation to live another way. We have the power to do this within ourselves. The consequence of this revision is an utter failure to take seriously the Christian claim that something is deeply awry with God’s good creation, that there is a desperate need for healing and redemption that requires divine intervention from a Savior, and that those who pledge their allegiance to this Savior commit themselves to ongoing resistance to the sin and evil that run amok in the world. Instead, Forrester's revised liturgy suggests (like his Trinity Sunday sermon) that there's no need for outside intervention and divine transformation. We don't need a Savior, we just need to accept the invitation to live our true selves.
Just as troubling is the way in which Forrester has revised the act of adherence. If the renunciations state the overwhelming magnitude and unmanageable character of the problem of sin and evil, the act of adherence acknowledges where we find the answer. Taken in conjunction with the renunciations, the language affirms the need for conversion. As Leonel Mitchell notes, the language of "turn to" in English "translates the Latin 'convertere,' from which we derive the word 'convert' [Praying Shapes Believing: A Theological Commentary on the Book of Common Prayer (Morehouse, 1985), p. 98] :
1. Conversion: We Affirm A Power Greater Than Ourselves That Can Save Us
Question Do you turn to Jesus Christ and accept him as your Savior?
Answer I do.
2. Conversion: We Affirm That We Can Trust The One Who Has This Power
Question Do you put your whole trust in his grace and love?
Answer I do.
3. Conversion: We Acknowledge Jesus Christ As The One Legitimate Power And Authority Over Our Lives
Question Do you promise to follow and obey him as your Lord?
Answer I do.
In contrast to the Prayer Book's language about accepting Jesus as Savior, Forrester's revised language is about accepting Jesus as "the way of Life and Hope." And in contrast to the Prayer Book's language about following and obeying Jesus as Lord, Forrester's revised language is about promising to follow Jesus as "the way of life." In short, Forrester's revision rejects Jesus as Lord and Savior, and thus the need for conversion as understood in a Christian sense.
This revision is consistent with Forrester's addition of the language about "awaken[ing] to the eternal presence of God" within one's self coupled with his jettisoning the renunciations. That language suggests that all of us are divine sons and daughters of God. There's nothing unique about Jesus in that respect. Instead of being our Lord and Savior, Jesus is more like a sage who shows us the path to enlightenment which leads us to recognizing our own divinity. We'd know this truth if we could only see it. So Forrester's revised liturgy affirms conversion (or "enlightenment") to the truth of our own divinity rather than renunciation of sin and evil and conversion to Jesus as Lord and Savior.
Forrester's writings and sermons are sufficiently distressing to call into question his fitness, not only to be a bishop, but to even be a priest. Add to that the fact that Forrester adds stuff to the liturgy like a reading from the Qur'an in place of the appointed lesson from the apostle Paul, while also taking away from the liturgy the renunciations, and also so thoroughly revising the theological grounding of the act of adherence that it bears little resemblance to anything specifically Christian.
Given what we know from his sermons and liturgical experimentation/revision, I think there is little basis for believing that Mr. Forrester, if consecrated as a bishop, will heed the call "to guard the faith, unity, and discipline of the Church" (The Book of Common Prayer, p. 517). It's much more reasonable to expect that he would continue doing what he's already been doing: departing from the core tenets of the Christian faith and revising the liturgical practices of the Episcopal Church accordingly.
My discussion of the renunciations and the act of adherence draws on John Westerhoff and Caroline Hughes' Living Into Our Baptism: A Guide to Ongoing Congregational and Personal Growth in Christian Faith and Life Revised Edition (Episcopal Diocese of Kansas, 1992), pp. 28-32.
Posted by Bryan Owen at 1:30 PM
No comments:
Post a Comment