Staying On

From The Anglican Planet:

Monday, September 28, 2009 at 06:19PM

By Philip Turner

When I was much younger, I lived in Africa; and I lived there at a time when the British Empire was folding up. I was surrounded by people who had spent their lives in the colonies. These people were faced with a terribly painful and frightening question. What were they to do next? Where were they to go? The government had changed. The rules had changed. The colonial period was over, and their mother land seemed a foreign land that promised only uncertainty.

“What then shall we do?” was the question of the hour; and the answers to that question were as varied as the people who asked it. Some simply migrated to another part of the shrinking empire. Others, in fact, went home. One answer, however, still intrigues me. Some said, “I’m staying on. The rules have changed, but I’m going to see this through to the end.”

Well, I’ve come to a similar conclusion in respect to the church into which I was born and in which I was formed as a Christian. The rules have changed. The leadership is hostile to the things I hold most dear. The present culture of The Episcopal Church is so unlike that of the church in which I was raised that I feel more like a visiting anthropologist than a native speaker. The gospel of radical inclusion espoused by our present leadership bears only marginal resemblance to the faith into which I was baptized.

What then shall I do is a question I have asked myself on any number of occasions. It is a question on the lips of a man who has become a stranger in his own house. The answer I have given is “I’m staying on!” At various times and in various places I have stated my reasons for this decision. Recently I received an email from a woman who asked me to gather these reasons in one place and send them to her. I confess I sat on her note for over two months without response--I suppose, in part, because I needed to gather my thoughts. In part, however, the reasons that have convinced me are ones that will hardly seem convincing to many others. I’m a person that takes great pride in being convincing. I’m averse to questions that pose a threat. They take me places I don’t want to go.

I know, however, that the question both demands and deserves an answer. Why stay on? To be honest (and at this juncture being dishonest would be both pointless and stupid), one reason may well be no reason at all for most people. I am now an old man of 74. Where would I go? I have worshipped daily according to the Book of Common Prayer since I was in the 8th grade. Its language and cadences are a part of the way I write and speak. It’s simply too late to make a change in the practices and forms that have shaped both my life in Christ and my sensibilities.

Some will no doubt say, well that’s no reason even for a man of your age to stay on. You could leave for an Anglican parish that has placed itself under another jurisdiction, or you could join an ACNA parish. True enough! I could do that, and indeed I understand why many have chosen to do so. But doing so would run against all the other reasons that have led me to “stay on.” More than my age has led me to the decision I have made.

My chief reasons are theological rather than personal; and the first is the course of Christ’s own life. The testaments, both old and new, make it clear that Israel’s saviour came to a disobedient people. They make it clear also that he exposed not only the depth of God’s mercy but also the depth of the people’s disobedience. The testaments, both old and new, make it clear that Christ’s way of restoring the people was to allow the powers of darkness to have their hour. They make it clear also that in taking this way Christ was obedient to his Father.

At the center of Christ’s life is fidelity in the face of disobedience; abiding with God’s people in lieu of going out from them into a more holy place. So far as I know, the Donatists were the first to take this latter step. They went out from the church catholic (with all its flaws) to a holier place. And it was just this action that so exercised St. Augustine. He had given up his early idea of the church as a spiritual elite. Like any other society, the church is always and everywhere tinged with sin in all its forms. In a similar manner, there is no Christian person who is not so tinged. And so, he contended against the Pelagians for the same reason he contended against the Donatists. Each group in their own way failed to grasp either the depth of the human problem or the primacy and depths of divine grace.

And so I have come to my second reason for staying on. Not only do I believe that the calling of Christians is to remain and contend with their erring brothers and sisters, I believe also that the dream of a purer place to be a Christian is just that–a dream. Nevertheless, that dream has proved a constant of Christian history. “They went out from us” has proved to be a whiplash that drives Christians on to ever new attempts to save by their own schemes and energies what God alone can save. Leaving also tends to create a habit of mind that makes us restless with those around us, even in the place to which we have fled for succor; and this flight may finally have to do with a certain restlessness within ourselves. One cannot flee this uneasy disquiet. One can only pray God to address it.

It is this observation that brings me to my third reason for remaining. If I were to leave I would in effect be placing myself outside the judgment God has rendered against my church (and no doubt others) for failing to keep the faith once delivered to the saints and failing to give an authentic witness through changed lives. I cannot possibly place myself outside this judgment because of the many ways in which I have, as an ordained person, been complicit in the massive defection of what we now call The Episcopal Church. The ways in which I have done this are numerous, and were I to list them I believe my readers would find their own reflection in the mirror held before them.

I just can’t bring myself to say, “I have sinned, but I am going off with a crowd that’s decided it can place itself outside the consequences of that sin.” This statement leads me to my fourth reason for staying. I believe that the way to confront error is to speak the truth in love and live in a different manner. When all is said and done, witness of this sort is the only solution. Political strategy, not even political victory, can right the ship that is the church and carry it to harbour in the midst of a storm. Truthful witness and willingness to bear the consequences of that witness are the means by which God changes not only the world, but also his church. One must be willing to say with Christ, “But this is your hour, and the power of darkness” (Luke 22:53) and then leave the rest to God.

Having said this, I must rush to my fifth reason for staying. The vast majority of the people with whom I have been contending are in fact Christians. There may be a few among them, but they are not mostly “apostates” as is often claimed. They are Christians, most of whom live exemplary lives. They are, however, Christians who have fallen into serious error. The errors often have to do with sexual ethics. More frequently and more seriously they reflect an inadequate understanding of the rule of faith.

As I understand it, my role as a Presbyter is to protect the church from strange doctrine rather than go to another place whenever error rears its ugly head. When I was ordained, by solemn vow I said yes to the following question:

“Will you be ready, with all faithful diligence to banish and drive away from the Church all erroneous and strange doctrines contrary to God Word; and to use both public and private monitions and exhortations as well to the sick as to the whole, within your Cures, as need shall require, and occasion shall be given?”

My cure has been the seminaries of our church. I have tried from this place to do just as this question asks. As it turns out, the tide of our times runs against what I have sought to teach and defend, but the tide of our times does not so far as I can see release me from the vow I took some 59 years ago.

Am I tired of this struggle? Yes I am! Am I discouraged? I am far less so now than I was a couple of months ago. The recent actions of our General Convention have made it clear to the Anglican Communion that The Episcopal Church has gone off course and is unlikely by its own choosing to right itself. It is likely that those dioceses and parishes that refuse to take the direction set by the General Convention will receive support from the Anglican Communion not given to those who do follow that direction. I believe in fact that “the worm has turned.” I believe that those who throw their lot with the Anglican Covenant will increase and that those who do not will decrease.

I have reason to hope, but I am not staying because things look a little brighter now than they did a short time ago. I am staying on because I believe it is the calling of a Christian to contend for the fidelity of the church and to do so from within the messy confines of its interior life. We are a mixed body and it will ever be thus!

And indeed, though things look brighter for those within TEC who support the covenant, there are even greater struggles on the horizon–-struggles of far greater significance than the current battle over sexual ethics. I speak of a concerted effort to diminish or be rid of the revealed form of Trinitarian language that gives basic shape to our liturgies, and the increasingly popular practice of offering the elements to people who have not been baptized. The first move replaces the form of Christian prayer and belief with a simulacrum and the second misrepresents both the person and work of Christ.

The waters we are entering are far choppier than the ones in which we now sail. Of that we can be sure. But does the degree of difficulty nullify the task presented by the calling given me? I do not believe so. I in fact said yes to two vows at my ordination. One was to give my faithful diligence always to minister the Doctrine and Sacraments, and Discipline of Christ and the other was with faithful diligence to banish and drive away from the church all erroneous and strange doctrines. I cannot see that the present defection of The Episcopal Church in the matter of sexual ethics breaks the bonds of those vows. I cannot see that the severity of future struggles does either. These eventualities only make their fulfillment more difficult and more costly.

Mention of the difficulties that lie ahead brings me to my sixth and final reason for staying on. Until our Lord comes again, the church will never exist in circumstances where it is not threatened by enemies from within and without. It certainly will never exist in a time and space where it is no longer necessary to banish and drive away erroneous and strange doctrines. It certainly will not exist in a time and place where its members do not manifest in their behavior all the signs of a “former manner of life.” It will certainly not exist in a time and place where the massive difficulty of contending against these false notions and ways does not seem overwhelming. It will certainly, therefore, never dwell in a time and place where it may not seem right to go out from one’s brothers and sisters and find or establish a more faithful community.

How does this fact impinge upon my reasons for staying? It impinges because past divisions leave all sorts of opportunities to find a church that is more to my liking–one that seems a little more faithful. On a relative scale of things there are no doubt a number of more faithful options. But to my mind, to avail myself of one or another of them is simply to repeat what I believe to have been an inadequate grasp of the way in which God has confronted the defection of the world. No matter how noble my intentions and no matter how understandable my reasons, I, nonetheless, repeat in my own life the divisions of the past. In so doing, I avoid once again, as did my forebears in the faith, the way my Lord took. He stayed on.