Confessions of a Carioca

And the Beat Goes On

2009-12-06T22:06:00.006-05:00

The news is barely more than a day old and I already feel like I'm Johnny-come-lately by weighing in even now. I'm not sure I have anything original to say on the matter, but, if not, then it's still a chorus that needs to be joined.

The Diocese of Los Angeles elected a second Suffragan Bishop yesterday, the Reverend Canon Mary Glasspool of Maryland. It would be largely unremarkable but for the fact that she is an open and partnered lesbian, and so the event of her election is the next large domino to fall in a chain reaction that was set in motion nearly seven years ago with the election of Gene Robinson in New Hampshire.

I have to say at the outset that Mary Glasspool is a gracious and competent woman and I have no reason to doubt that she has substantial gifts for ministry. I got to know her just a bit at General Convention in 2006, when she served as a legislative aide to Special Committee 26 (Inter-Anglican Relations), and she and I shared a brief reminiscence of those heady days just this past July in Anaheim. So there truly is "nothing personal" in anything that follows.

A really telescoped selective history: In 2006, General Convention said, in effect, "Oops, we goofed. We made Gene Robinson a bishop without taking fully into account the effect our action would have on the rest of the Anglican Communion. Our bad. Sorry." (A160). We also said, in effect,"We're going to hold off on doing it again. For a while, at any rate." (B033) Then, in 2009, we said, "Hey, let's get real. We all know that God has called partnered LGBT people to the episcopate before, and will probably do it again. When that happens, we're going to be ready." (D025)

Now, before we formally debated D025, the Archbishop of Canterbury told the convention, in effect, "I really hope you don't do this. In fact, I'm asking nicely: Please don't do this." After we went and did it anyway, the Presiding Bishop and the President of the House of Deputies (aka the Co-Primates) fired a letter off to Dr Williams (who had since returned to Lambeth Palace) earnestly denying that D025 actually changed anything, that it was manifestly not an abrogation of B033. "The moratorium won't be lifted until we actually do something that lifts it," they said (once again, in effect).

Well, "something" has now been done. At least by the clergy and lay delegates of the Diocese of Los Angeles (the diocese in which, for the record, I was confirmed in 1975). Before the moratorium of B033 can be said to have been formally lifted, Canon Glasspool must actually be consecrated, and before that can happen, a majority of the Standing Committees and a majority of the bishops-with-jurisdiction must consent to the election.

It was with these contingencies in mind that Rowan Williams issued a statement only some eleven hours after the election. It is uncharacteristically brief and to the point:

The election of Mary Glasspool by the Diocese of Los Angeles as suffragan bishop elect raises very serious questions not just for the Episcopal Church and its place in the Anglican Communion, but for the Communion as a whole.

The process of selection however is only part complete. The election has to be confirmed, or could be rejected, by diocesan bishops and diocesan standing committees. That decision will have very important implications.

The bishops of the Communion have collectively acknowledged that a period of gracious restraint in respect of actions which are contrary to the mind of the Communion is necessary if our bonds of mutual affection are to hold.

The nub of the matter is this, I believe: The Archbishop is asking--one might even say "pleading with," given his proclivity for British diplomatic understatement--those bodies and individuals with a role in the consent process to withhold such consent, for the greater good of the unity and vitality of the rest of the Anglican Communion.

As one might imagine, Dr Williams has already been excoriated by both the left and the right. The left considers him a quisling, a moral coward, lacking the courage of his convictions, kowtowing to the forces of bigotry and fundamentalism of the worst sort. The right considers him a toothless dog who barks at all the right times (though someone timidly, so as to raise the suspicion that he's not really doing so with conviction), but is incapable of chomping down on an intruder's leg. Lots of talk, but no follow-through.

Sadly, this is a script--both Rowan's statement and the responses to it--that could have been written accurately before the events actually transpired. There is nothing here that is new or surprising. (Even the election itself was a virtual foregone conclusion; if not Mary Glasspool, it would have been somebody else later.) This is why it has all the qualities of few more frames in the slow-motion train wreck that is the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion. One may criticize the Archbishop's words and deeds--as indeed many are; Rowan is taking hits from both directions--but he certainly cannot be faulted for lack of consistency. The conservatives who complain, "Great bark, but we'd like to see some actual biting take place" are quite correct in not expecting their worthy opponents to be displaying Canterburian toothmarks any time soon. From Day One it has been Rowan's position that, if any "discipline" is going to take place, it will be exercised by the organic processes of the whole communion, and not by the office of the Archbishop of Canterbury. At present, those organic forces are following a trajectory that will lead to an Anglican Covenant. That is the mechanism by which TEC will suffer any consequences for her recalcitrant behavior. Some may argue that the Covenant will end up as toothless as the Archbishop, and they may well be correct. But for the time being, the Covenant is the next vessel with which the Episcopal Church is on a collision course. If the election of Mary Glasspool hastens that collision, perhaps it is an occasion for gratitude, even among those whose default inclination is to be dismayed by it. We can't start picking up the pieces until the debris stops flying.

A Question for Debate

2009-12-05T12:08:00.001-05:00

RESOLVED: "Anglicanism is the least religious religion."

From here.

Discuss amongst yourselves.

On the Importance of Small Stuff

2009-12-01T00:04:00.001-05:00

A sign in the sacristy of a church I once served in says, “Don’t sweat the small stuff. And it’s all small stuff.”

True enough, I think, when the nerves of a rookie acolyte or Eucharistic Minister (or priest, for that matter) are on edge. But a series of conversations, both on Facebook and in person, over the last several days has got me thinking that it’s perhaps not a maxim we would want to apply universally.

As is often the case, the impetus for deeper reflection came from a source that it in itself of less than eternal significance—namely, the appropriate observance of the season of Advent, extending even to the particularity of what color the candles in an Advent Wreath should be. Nothing over which the blood of martyrs should be shed.

Allow me to wax autobiographical for a bit: I grew up in American suburbia in the 1950s and ‘60s, and in the sub-culture of free-church evangelicalism. Christmas was a pretty big deal—culturally, and in my church, and in my family. Our minds began to turn Christmasward around the beginning of December. Most everybody put up their Christmas tree somewhere near the middle of the month, give or take a few days, and left them up until New Year’s Day or so. In school, we sang Christmas carols in music class, and had some sort of pageant or program, in the final days prior two a two-week recess. There was usually something similar at church, and it was “Christmas” in church on the Sunday before and the Sunday after the actual holiday. (One of my most unpleasant memories is having been made to play “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear” on the french horn at a Sunday evening service right before Christmas when I was in the eighth or ninth grade.)

In college, I discovered the great western liturgical tradition, via Anglicanism. In graduate school, I embraced that tradition. Part of that inheritance is the liturgical calendar, and the liturgical calendar begins, of course, with Advent. At first, I surmised that Advent must be a churchy way of saying “Christmastime,” and provided respectable cover for the familiar decorations, music, and festive social gatherings associated with the season. But we certainly weren’t singing carols in church, and it wasn’t all decked out in wreaths and garlands and bows. In fact, it looked rather more austere than usual. And when I snooped around the territory of Advent, I ran into the unsettling imagery of the Parousia (“deeply wailing, deeply wailing, shall the true Messiah see”) and the in-your-face polemic of John the Baptist. Only on the Sunday right before Christmas did we finally hear about an angel and a virgin, and usually sang “O come, O come, Emmanuel,” which, even though in the Advent section of the hymnal,”counts” as a Christmas song in the popular imagination.

In time, I fell in love with Advent. I fell in love with the “begin with the end in mind” first Sunday, and all of its apocalyptic overtones. I fell in love with Isaiah and John the Baptist. I fell in love with the Anglican warhorse hymns of the season: “Hark, a thrilling voice is sounding,” “On Jordan’s banks,” “Lo, he comes,” “Creator of the stars of night,” and more recently, “Savior of the nations, come” and “Prepare the way, O Zion.” Of course, “Veni Emmanuel” was already permanently ensconced in my soul, but discovering the Great O Antiphons on which it is based, and actually using them liturgically with the Magnificat at Evening Prayer the week before Christmas, has been an immeasurable boon to my spirituality.

Further investigation yielded the information that the “excruciatingly correct” way for an Episcopalian to keep Advent is to defer putting up any decorations until Christmas Eve day, if possible, and to eschew festive social gatherings to the extent possible without giving offense. Then, after the Mass of Christmas Eve, it’s not only permissible, but virtually required, to “let it all hang out” with festivity—liturgically, decoratively, and socially—for the twelve days that follow (i.e. the actual “twelve days of Christmas”), until Epiphany on January 6, at which time all greenery comes down and is brought to the churchyard, where there is a huge bonfire after the Mass (a sign of connection, no doubt, with the Druid strand in the DNA of Anglicanism!).

In our family, the family in which we raised our three children, we actually tried—and, for the most part, succeeded—to live that way. In so doing, we have never been under any illusion that we were not swimming decidedly upstream against the current of not only the secular culture, but the non-liturgical Christian culture as well. Over the last twenty years or so, for whatever combination of reasons (the retail industry being the prime suspect), what used to be known as “Christmastime” has morphed into “the holidays,” and its commencement has progressively invaded all of December, and has, only this year, it seems, broken the “Thanksgiving barrier.” What’s next? Hallowe’en? Labor Day?

Alas, the older I get, the more I discover that the classical tradition is not only ignored, but virtually unknown, even among Episcopalians, even among clergy! We have been assimilated into the Holidays Borg. Hence, my reputation for being the Advent Grinch, or the Advent Nazi.

Is it such a big deal? It is, after all, “small stuff,” when the grand sweep of the Paschal Mystery is considered. The answer is … No … and Yes.

Failure to keep an Excruciatingly Correct Advent will certainly not keep anyone out of the Kingdom of God. It won’t, in and of itself, subtract one gem from anybody’s heavenly crown. And I don’t think Jesus even gives it a second thought (though, I would like to think, party animal that he was while inhabiting this planet in human form, that he might not be above engaging in some playful repartee on the subject).

That said, we do well to remember the purpose of any feast day, fast day, or liturgical season—Advent, Christmas, or the Tenth Sunday after Pentecost—or, for that matter, any liturgical practice, discipline, gesture, or posture. They are all tools. They are all means to an end. They are, along with the sacraments, the scriptures, the prayers of the saints, and the communal life of the Church, means of grace that are intended to perfect our holiness, to make us more like Jesus, to fit us for life in the unfiltered presence of God, to enable us to look the Father in the eye and not be pulverized because when he sees us he sees his own Son, into whose image we have been perfectly configured.

As a pastor, it is my duty to keep all the tools sharp, oiled, and in good working order. Some of them are used everyday and are effective with a majority of the souls entrusted to my care. Others are used less frequently, and may work only with a limited number of people. As a pastor, it is my duty to encourage people to make connections between what they do in church and how they live in their homes and in the world, to see a coherence between liturgy and life. Holding up the formative value of keeping Advent and celebrating Christmas in the traditional manner is part of both those duties. Yeah, it’s small stuff. But sometimes small stuff is worth breaking a sweat over.

The Episcopal Church Welcomes You

2009-11-23T17:31:00.002-05:00

The shield is cockeyed, which is a relatively recent development, but otherwise it hasn’t changed in decades. I was familiar with it long before I ever imagined I would end up an Episcopalian. It can be found on street corners in thousands of communities across the country (and sometimes it is obvious that they have been left untended for a good many years!). It is probably one of the most consistent efforts at “branding” that could be found anywhere.

Last week an ad was run in USA Today (I apologize for egregiously using the passive voice, but I don’t know who actually ran it; given TEC’s budget woes, could it have been paid for by the national church?) that rang the chimes on the theme of “welcome,” trying to put some meat on the bones, as it were. It’s in the form of a series of “bullet points.” They’re all true. They’re also all an exercise in “spin.” I don’t fault them for that; it’s in the essential nature of advertizing. But it’s helpful to be aware, at least, of the “music behind the words.”

As Episcopalians, we are followers of Jesus Christ, our Lord, and believe in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

This appears to be directed toward recently-former Episcopalians, and those under their influence, who contend that the Episcopal Church has abandoned (formally, materially, or both) the core teachings of Christianity. In that, I agree with the ad; TEC, as a unitary organism, has done nothing of the sort.

The Episcopal Church has members in the United States, as well as in Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Haiti, Honduras, Micronesia, Puerto Rico, Taiwan, Venezuela, and the Virgin Islands.

And Fort Wayne, Indiana has an “international” airport … yeah … technically … in name, at least, though you can’t actually fly to another country directly from there. This is consistent with the message implied by the display of flags from the above-named countries behind the dais in the House of Deputies at the last two General Conventions, and the repeated admonition to banish the expression “the national church” from our vocabulary. It’s true that TEC has congregations in each of those places. But in many of them, you can count said congregations on the fingers of one hand, and have some left over. Plus, they’re small. (Haiti is the conspicuous exception; it is, by number of communicants, the largest diocese in “this church.”) So the import of this bullet point is more rhetorical than substantive. It is a shot across the bow of the Anglican Communion. It is, “We don’t need you to be international; we got your ‘international’ right here.”

We strive to love our neighbors as ourselves and respect the dignity of every person.

That is, unlike those nasty fundamentalist “Christians” you may have in mind, who are just a bunch of bigoted misogynistic homophobes who like NASCAR and watch FOX news. We’re better than them. We’re really nice … as long as you support your local Public Radio station. (Can I take my tongue out of my cheek yet?)

Seriously, this language comes from the much-vaunted Baptismal Covenant, which has a quasi-cult following among those who try to purvey the impression that it is somehow unique among the baptismal liturgies of Christian churches. I have to ask, Is baptism, which is a universal rite of incorporation in the Church, not simply a church, really the place to sing “I gotta be me”? Not to worry though, the reality is that the Baptismal Covenant, when viewed in its entirety, is quite classically Christian, and not in any way uniquely Episcopalian. Shame on us if it were.

The Episcopal Church is part of the worldwide Anglican Communion, and traces its heritage to the beginnings of Christianity.

This is manifestly true. For now. But our status within the Communion is, to say the least, a little shaky. We were warned by the Archbishop of Canterbury when he came to Anaheim last July. We chose not to heed his warning. There will yet be consequences that may require someone to use the “strikethrough” formatting code on this bullet point. And given current trends, one could be forgiven for wondering whether the cord by which we “trace” our way to the “beginnings of Christianity” is a steel cable or an ultra-fine monofilament.

Our liturgy retains ancient structure and traditions, and is celebrated in many languages.

Yes, our liturgy retains ancient structure and traditions, and for that I am very grateful. That structure and those traditions feed my soul, and I know many thousands of Episcopalians are with me on this. But is it sufficient to merely “retain” these things, as if they were mere liturgical bric-a-brac that we may choose to “retain,” but can move around or fiddle with, or even melt down and recast, at will? I would sleep better if I were confident that my church was governed by and shaped by and accountable to these elements of our inheritance.

We welcome men and women, married or celibate, to be ordained as bishops, priests, and deacons.

This is another unfortunate attempt to define ourselves by what we’re not rather than by what we are—i.e. we’re not Roman Catholic, a church that does not ordain women or, with some exceptions, married men. Now, I’m on record as supportive of the notion that the Roman church would do well to look more closely at the benefits that a married priesthood would offer. That said, I’m not sure it’s accurate to say that we “welcome” into ordained ministry those who also have a vocation to celibacy. We permit them and tolerate them, to be sure, but there is generally a jaundiced skepticism toward celibacy as a possible charism that can greatly bless the Church. Both sides have something to learn, here, I think.

We believe in amendment of life, the forgiveness of sin, and life everlasting.

These are wholesome notions and true words. They are the truth. But they are not the whole truth, and in the absence of a context that includes a robust understanding of sin, grace, and redemption by means of the Paschal Mystery, are therefore capable of being sentimentalized and trivialized.

Lay people exercise a vital role in the governance and ministry of our Church.

This is a swipe not only that the Roman church but at other Anglican provinces whose structures of governance are not as directly democratic and egalitarian as ours. Now, I’m generally a fan of democratic processes in church affairs. I don’t know that I would want to trade our system for some other one. But I fear that we run the risk of idolizing it, of acting “just a little bit superior” toward churches that are in the habit of discerning the action of the Holy Spirit in ways other than concurrent majority votes in both houses of General Convention. The apostle Matthias, after all, was chosen in a game of chance! Moreover, I also suspect that we at the present moment suffering a crippling bout of episcophobia—the irrational fear of bishops! It is of the nature of the episcopal office to teach, govern, and lead. We ought not to hamstring bishops from exercising, individually and collectively, the ministry for which they were consecrated. And presbyters, after all, are elders. They are, for that reason, entitled to a presumption of knowing better. That may not always be true, and the consensus fidelium is always the final arbiter. But in the ordinary councils of the church, it is completely appropriate for bishops and presbyters to have disproportionate influence.

Holy Communion may be received by all baptized Christians, not only members of the Episcopal Church.

Another Romeward jab, since they welcome into full eucharistic fellowship only those whose bishop is a member of the college of bishops who are united in deferential communion with the See of Rome. I support TEC’s communion discipline, though, for pastoral reasons, I think the “all the baptized” invitation needs to be illuminated by the Cranmerian admonition about being in “love and charity” with one’s neighbor, and intending to lead “a new life, following the commandments of our Lord,” etc. Nonetheless, given the underlying ecclesiology of the Roman Catholic Church, their sacramental discipline is not at all incoherent, and I am a little embarrassed to have my church take this kind of a cheap shot in an ad.

We uphold the Bible and worship with the Book of Common Prayer.

Now we’re trying to shore up our street cred both with other Anglican provinces and with the broader world of evangelicalism. But the arrow falls short of the target, I’m afraid. “Uphold”? That can mean virtually anything, which is to say that it means virtually nothing. Something like “stand under the authority of” or “are formed by” may have gotten closer to the mark. As for “worship with the Book of Common Prayer,” that deserves a whole blog post of its own. Stay tuned.

We affirm that committed relationships are lifelong and monogamous.

If there has ever been a more inept attempt to thread a verbal needle, I haven’t seen it. What the author wants to say, of course, is that the Episcopal Church offers liturgical, spiritual, and emotional support for gay and lesbian couples who wish to live publicly in a marriage-like relationship. So why not just come out (I didn’t intend that pun, but it seems apposite) and say it? Well, because it might “scare the horses,” so to speak—i.e. anyone who was fished in by talk of “uphold[ing] the Bible.” Better to let those who know the code recognize what’s being said, and not spell it out for those who don’t. But only at the cost of laughable syntactic awkwardness.

Episcopalians also recognize that there is grace after divorce and do not deny the sacraments to those who have been divorced.

We can’t seem to lay off the Roman Catholics. Perhaps we should dust off that old petition that was once in the Great Litany—“From the Bishop of Rome and all his detestable enormities: Good Lord, deliver us.” OK, I agree that there is grace after divorce, and I agree that the Rome’s attempted response to the reality of divorce—i.e. Marriage Tribunals and Declarations of Nullity—is not, shall we say, their finest hour. But this is really a nose-thumbing reply to Anglicanorum Coetibus, saying, “Hey, Bennie, the door swings both ways, ya know.” It’s rather beneath the dignity of my church. And just for the record, Rome doesn’t deny the sacraments to divorced persons, only to those who divorce and then remarry. That may seem like a distinction without a difference, but it’s important to be accurate when you’re paying for ad space in USA Today.

We affirm that issues such as birth control are matters of personal informed conscience.

Ditto the above. But I have to wonder whether there is an even more deeply encrypted subtext here that is available only to those with “ears to hear”, a subtext that would substitute “abortion” or “reproductive choice” for “birth control.” I personally have high regard for the logic behind Humanae Vitae, but, let’s face it, birth control is widely practiced even among otherwise devout Catholics, and it’s certainly not a subject of any great conflict among Anglicans, even the most conservative. And TEC is, at least as far as Executive Council is concerned, a member of the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL). So … I’m just sayin’. But, again, there are those horses we don’t want to scare.

We celebrate our unity in Christ while honoring our differences, always putting the work of love before uniformity of opinion.

This is sad in at least two dimensions. First, it’s manifestly not true. In my 35 years in the Episcopal Church, I’ve seen precious little honoring of differences. Instead, we live by the saying, “to the victor go the spoils” (an earlier and more direct iteration of “elections have consequences”). There is rarely grace or magnanimity in victory, only more “attitude.” I have watched diversity dry up and wither in the Episcopal Church. We are becoming theologically monochrome at an exponential rate. Tolerance is in short supply. Some laud this as a sign of increased unity, and it indeed is. Unity inevitably results when dissidents are driven away. But it is unity purchased at the price of size and strength. Instead of being a spiritual department store (as is any church that lays claim to being catholic), TEC has become a specialty boutique on the way toward becoming a novelty kiosk in the back wing of the mall. So the best we can say about “honoring differences, always putting the work of love before uniformity of opinion” is that it’s an aspirational statement.

Alas, though, even the aspiration is paltry. Is “work of love” the most we can say about our mission, about our identity, about who we are an what we do? Hey, I’m all in favor of love. It’s hugely important, and needs to be included in anything we think or say about the Church’s mission. But to imply that what binds Christians together is the “work of love” is just … weak. Toothless. Uninspiring. If you substitute “service” for “love,” it’s not any different than what my Rotary club could say. Yawn.

All are welcome to find a spiritual home in the Episcopal Church.

I would hope so. I would think it has ever been so. I hope it will ever be so. What else is new? Is there any church anywhere that would not say the same thing about itself? The only way to make this final point interesting is to begin to take apart that little word—welcome.

Some years ago, my wife and I spent a weekend in Paris. After two fabulous dinners at restaurants that had been recommended to us by friends, we were on our own that last night, wandering around the area of the Bastille, with our very limited command of the French language. We inquired of one maitre’d, “Parlez vous Anglais?” He brusquely shook his head in the negative. So we moved on. He did not make us feel welcome, presumably because we were Americans, or he didn’t approve of the way we were dressed, or something; we’ll never know. By contrast, at our default dinner joint here in Warsaw, Indiana, if a staff member sees us coming, they open the door for us and greet us warmly. We never fail to feel welcome there. One of the servers, at least, has memorized our drink preferences. So the first dimension of welcome is, Will they let me in the door, and make me feel like they’re glad to see me? This sort of welcome is unconditional (or very nearly so). It demands nothing and presumes nothing. By this standard, I cannot imagine a congregation of the Episcopal Church that would not welcome anybody who is not in that moment literally on fire, or covered in excrement, or brandishing a weapon.

Soon after moving to Warsaw in 2007, I joined the local Rotary club. I was, in fact, recruited, wooed. And I was made to feel welcome. I was made to feel that the other club members were glad I was there. But then I got a phone call: “When can we schedule you to deliver Mobile Meals?” Then I got a bill for semi-annual dues. More recently, I saw in a club email that it was my responsibility to provide the speaker on a certain date. Rotary is a service club, so it stands to reason that I am expected to serve. I do not, because of that expectation, feel any less welcome, but I understand that if I were to persistently decline opportunities to serve (and especially if I persistently decline to pay dues!), my welcome would expire. So there is a second dimension of welcome, and this time there are conditions, expectations. The Church welcomes all, but lays certain expectations on her members. These expectations are spelled out in the liturgies of Baptism and Confirmation. Only for the most scandalous violations of these expectations would a person be formally “unwelcomed” by the Church. But short of that ultimate act of discipline, the ability to exercise leadership or influence is frequently conditioned upon consistent performance of those obligations required of those who would be “in good standing.” (In TEC canon law, this includes a standard of Sunday worship attendance [“unless for good cause prevented”] and working, praying and giving for the spread of the Kingdom of God.) Such expectations do not represent a lack of being welcoming. They are simply part of what it means to be a Christian.

So, when we say “The Episcopal Church welcomes you,” it seems reasonable that we mean “welcome” in both of its dimensions. At the door, we welcome anyone and everyone. At the table, we welcome those who have made a commitment to Jesus through the vows of the baptism. Into positions of leadership and authority we welcome those who demonstrate willingness and ability to submit with grace to the yoke of radical Christian discipleship. Everyone whom we welcome, in whatever dimension, is expected to change, to grow, to become more like Jesus in every way. Yes, his yoke is easy and his burden is light. But to follow him is to take up nothing less than one’s cross on a daily basis, with all the “cross” implies. If the demands of the cross feel uncomfortable, as they invariably will, it isn’t because the church is suddenly becoming unwelcoming.

In the ancient church, candidates for baptism received the sacrament wearing nothing but their birthday suits. It symbolized a radical putting-away of one’s past, and the embrace of a new (and very jealously exclusive) identity, an identity that trumps any other by which one may be tempted to define oneself. It is my hope that the welcome offered by the Episcopal Church is not about making anybody feel good, but about inviting them to a life-changing, identity-changing, pardigm-shifting, mind-blowing encounter with Jesus the Christ, King of kings, and Lord of lords. Anything less would be downright inhospitable.

Looking a Gift Horse in the Mouth

2009-11-11T00:24:00.003-05:00

For a number of reasons which I am not going to rehearse here (but which are, I hope, abundantly clear if you know me at all, or care to surf around upstream from this post), I am not a candidate for the provisions set forth in the new Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus. But I am certainly a sympathetic observer. So I first want to say some positive things about this overture from Rome, because it is itself, in my view, a positive thing. Then I want to offer some observations that will be more—what’s the word?—challenging, because, as good as it is, it could still be a whole lot better.

Why am I a “sympathetic observer”? First, because I have a lot of friends and colleagues for whom this is an option that they are looking at very, very seriously. Their decision will affect my relationship with them, so it will affect my life. Second, because I am committed with all my being to the visible unity of Christ’s Church, and I am persuaded that the See of Rome has been given a charism by the Holy Spirit to be the focal point and guardian of that unity. (I am not, obviously, persuaded that submission to Rome is essential, in an absolute sense, to ecclesial validity or even ecclesial fullness, or else I would have swum the Tiber long ago.) So any initiative that is configured toward manifesting a higher degree of visible unity is of interest to me. Third, there is a part of me that is envious of my friends for whom it is a live option. I share their joy (even as I will be grief-stricken when we can no longer share the Eucharist at the same altar). I want it to work for them.

In several respects, the details of the Constitution (and its supporting documents) exhibit a degree of pastoral sensitivity on the part of Pope Benedict that is almost breathtaking. While it is not surprising that there will be no allowance for married bishops, Ordinaries who are former Anglican bishops will be bishops in all but name. It appears that permission will be readily granted for them to wear the “insignia” of episcopal office, which presumably will include miters, rings, and pectoral crosses. The only part of their former job description they won’t be able to take with them is actually ordaining. It is also noteworthy that provision is made for items of governance that are more conciliar than is customary in mainstream Latin Rite dioceses, including what American Episcopalians would recognize as a sort of “Standing Committee,” a body of priests within an Ordinariate whose responsibility it is to act as a check on the Ordinary’s exercise of authority.

There are, of course, some questions and some ironies. Precisely what liturgical materials will be authorized for use? In the Anglican Use, heretofore limited to America, there is a volume that is clearly modeled on the 1979 Book of Common Prayer. It even has forms in “Rite One” and “Rite Two” language. But even within the Catholic “wing” of Anglicanism, there is a dizzying degree of liturgical diversity. American Anglo-Catholics tilt in the direction (though not exclusively, by any means) of pre-Vatican II ceremonial (i.e. Tridentine), using Elizabethan-era language. Their British counterparts, on the other hand, tilt very strongly (but again, not exclusively) in the direction of essentially emulating contemporary Latin Rite ritual and ceremonial, to the point of using the Novus Ordo word for word rather than any officially authorized Anglican liturgy. (One might plausibly inquire, then, precisely what part of the “Anglican patrimony” they will be bringing with them across the river.) This is a much wider range of practice than is currently possible within the mainstream Latin Rite. I would have to assume that Vatican officials are aware of this, and it will be interesting to see how they ride herd on what can only be described as the “messiness” of Anglo-Catholic liturgical praxis.

As the news of the new Apostolic Constitution broke a couple of weeks ago, speculation was rife that it signified the victory of one section of the Vatican bureaucracy, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), headed by Cardinal William Levada, over another, the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, headed by Cardinal Walter Kasper, in an ongoing internal tug of war. The scuttlebutt was that Pope Benedict, whose previous job was Levada’s at CDF, reached a point where he no longer held out hope for achieving ecumenical rapprochement with Anglicans via the “front door” strategy of official bilateral and multilateral negotiations, concluding that “Anglicanism” is too amorphous to speak with a united voice, and is therefore not a viable ecumenical partner. At the same time, there are (ostensibly) whole communities of Anglicans ready to batter the gates of Rome for admission. Better to make a deal with them and achieve some tangible results than rely on painstaking negotiations with official Anglican bodies that have borne some significant fruit over the years, but which are constantly—and, it appears, hopelessly—undermined by the behavior of one Anglican province or another.

If there is any truth to this scenario, it is difficult to fault the Holy Father. He is passionate about visible unity and is eager for results. He is, after all, in the twilight of his life. But it is worth raising the question, and meaning not a micron of disrespect: Was even this bold stroke too timid? Is Rome perhaps even now squandering an opportunity for a truly game-changing move? One that would stretch, but not undermine, the disciplinary tradition of the Latin Rite?

What are the “liturgical, spiritual, and pastoral traditions of the Anglican Communion” that Anglicanorum Coetibus is intended to help preserve? Is it Cranmerian liturgical draftsmanship? Choral Evensong? Hymns with soaring treble descants? (Or, some have joked, hymns where all the verses actually get sung.) Sarum blue vestments for Advent? If we’re talking about these elements, or others like them, that’s something that I’m sure will be appreciated by those who opt in to the personal ordinariate scheme. But all that does is peel off a stratum of Anglicanism made up of people who are attached to such things and who also are already yearning to be in communion with Rome, to the point where they can no longer stand not to be.

But it’s a move that leaves a lot of unplayed cards on the table, because there are many more—many times more, actually—Anglicans who are very pre-disposed to fall in behind Benedict’s inspiring (and inspired) leadership in striking back at the forces of secularism. There are even some prominent Anglican evangelical voices in this particular chorus, which is really quite astonishing. Even though I write as an Anglo-Catholic, I realize that the “patrimony of Anglicanism” includes the evangelical stream, and I am loathe to make the move into the bosom of Rome without some, at least, of my evangelical brethren (realizing that the most resolute Protestants will likely never come along). Is comprehensiveness a necessary evil that worked for Elizabeth, but no longer serves us well? Perhaps. But it also may be a gem, something we as Anglicans can bring with us, if we are allowed to, as we hold ourselves to a higher degree of accountability to the wider Catholic Church in fellowship with the Bishop of Rome.

Another facet of that gem is a 450 year tradition of a married priesthood (and episcopate) that, on balance, has served us well, fostering a dynamic in the relationship between pastor and people that has a tendency to be health-giving. This does not denigrate the benefits that have derived from the charism of celibacy within the Latin Rite. It does suggest something different, something additional, an element of comprehensiveness. Yet another facet is a tradition of intellectual spaciousness that, to be sure, carries attendant risks, but which is demonstrably an effective force for the sanctification of the faithful by the renewal of their minds. It may not be consonant in every detail with the Catechism of the Catholic Church, but, in dialogue with (tethered to?) that valuable document, could represent a channel of divine grace. Another facet of the gem represents the “saints” peculiar to Anglicanism—Hooker, Donne, Herbert, Simeon, the Wesleys, Keble, Underhill, Eliot, Lewis, and others. There would be no need, I suspect, for any of them to be canonized in the technical sense. But for those spiritually formed in Anglicanism, there would need to be some provision for bringing these folks along posthumously. They have been used by God to shape us, and we cannot deny them.

What I, in my fantasies, would like to see—I may as well come out and say it—is a true Anglican Rite Church, alongside the Maronites, Melkites, Ukranians, etc., an Anglican Uniatism. In such a church, the gem that is the Anglican tradition could be allowed to shine in all its comprehensive glory, not just temporarily and partially, but indefinitely, until the Spirit works to bring all the strands of Christianity into fruitful unity. This would include permanent permission to retain a married priesthood. Yet, this church would be anchored firmly to deferential communion with the Roman Pontiff exercising his Petrine ministry of fostering unity among all the faithful in Christ, and thus be protected from evolving in ways that compromise the integrity of the faith. Now, I understand the technical reasoning behind the decision not to move in such a direction, that Anglicanism is a spinoff from the Latin Rite that needs to be reunited with its parent, and not, properly speaking, an ancient church with a patriarchate of its own. That is a completely coherent response. But it is also a failure of imagination, and possibly a deficit in the cardinal virtue of fortitude. The potential harvest of Christian unity is incredibly rich at this moment. But reaping that harvest demands not just a bold stroke like Anglicanorum Coetibus. It demands a leap of faith.

Your Holiness, carpe diem!

Adventures in Ecclesiology, Part III: The Visibility of the Church

2009-11-05T22:41:00.001-05:00

From time to time I run across a book, or a TV “infomercial, suggesting that the health of one particular organ or organ system within the human body is the key to overall physical health (nine times out of ten, it’s the colon). Patients present with a disparate range of symptoms, and providers attempt to diagnose and treat according the the symptoms, but, say these books and infomercials, they invariably get it wrong unless they first address the health of … the colon (or whatever).

If we were to apply this mental model to Christian theology, what would be the “colon”? It is at least quite arguable that this key place in the system would be held by ecclesiology. The “presenting problem” may be soteriology (how God saves us) or christology (the person and work of Christ) or pneumatology (the Holy Spirit) or some moral issue (can you think of any off-hand?!) or even hermeneutics (methodology of scriptural interpretation), but the underlying issue may actually be rooted in ecclesiology (theology of the Church). Divergent ecclesiological assumptions lead to divergent conclusions in those other areas, and no conflict in those areas can be effectively resolved without addressing the parties’ underlying ecclesiologies.

One case in point: Some years ago I served on the board of a (Christian) faith-based organization the mission of which was to channel the energy and resources of the Christian community toward attacking the root causes of the multitude of social ills that beset the city I lived in (the usual list: poverty, gangs, drugs, and violence, all feeding off one another). We discussed having a sort of “pastors’ summit” at a nearby facility in order to promote bonding and collegiality among the clergy leaders of the city. This board was dominated by free-church evangelicals—people with big hearts and a tremendous dedication to and love for Jesus, people whom I held in the highest esteem. One of them brought up the idea of having a “communion service” as a capstone to the retreat, an idea that got several immediate “Amens.” It fell to me to suggest that this wouldn’t necessarily be such a great idea. For me, and for others whom we were hoping to include in this event (namely, some of our Roman Catholic colleagues), what for some was a no-brainer was highly problematic. And although very concrete issues of eucharistic theology and liturgical form were at the front of the queue by way of explanation, the real issue was one of ecclesiology: What does the Eucharist and the way the Eucharist is celebrated “say” about the community that celebrates it—namely, the Church—and vice versa?

I am once again going to indulge in a sweeping generalization, cognizant more than ever of the attendant risk in doing so, but confident that the good to be attained thereby justifies the risk. So bear with me.

To some extent, it is possible to sort Christian communities along a continuum, with High Church/Catholic at one end and Low Church/Evangelical at the other. Apropos of the (crude) dichotomy I posited in Part II from last week, the Low Church position is one in which the individual Christian believer is (ontologically if not chronologically) “prior” to the Church. This view makes a sharp distinction between the Church per se and its institutional manifestation. The Church as such is an inherently “invisible” entity. It is comprised of all those who have made a conscious and voluntary faith commitment to Christ—“received Christ as their Savior,” as many might put it. The membership of the Church, then, is a number known only to God, for only God can accurately read the human heart. When individuals have made such a commitment, it is to be expected that they will seek out one another’s company for purposes of common worship, instruction, mutual encouragement, and shared mission. In doing so, they will create institutional structures, both tangible (buildings and bank accounts) and intangible (leadership positions, governing boards, etc.). The word “church” will often be associated with these structures in various ways. But that connection is only incidental. The Church (the invisible Body of Christ the membership of which is known only to God) should never be confused or identified with its institutional manifestation, which is temporal and passing. By this way of thinking, it is not only theoretically possible, but virtually mandatory to make a distinction between a believer’s relationship with Christ and his or her relationship with the Church.

By contrast, a High Church (Catholic) position holds that the Church is in every way (both chronologically and ontologically) “prior” to her individual members. She is an eminently “visible” entity, the “body of which Christ is the head and all baptized persons are members” (from the Catechism of the 1979 Book of Common Prayer), thus having an objective measure for discerning membership. If the number is known only to God, it’s not because only God can read the human heart, but because human engineers haven’t invented the right data storage and retrieval system yet! This is a thoroughly organic ecclesiology. The best analogue is not social--the voluntary association, or the corporation—but biological, i.e. the family, clan, tribe. In this framework, it is not so simple to divorce the Church qua institution from the Church qua “mystical Body of Christ.” They may not be precisely one and the same, but they are so interwoven and grown around each other that it is functionally impossible to pull them apart without doing damage.

Both ends of the ecclesiological spectrum, and all points in between, speak of the Church as the “body of Christ.” This is, after all, a pre-eminent New Testament (Pauline) metaphor. It cannot be casually overlooked. But I don’t think it’s misleading to say that an Evangelical will tend to use the expression more as an instructive figure of speech, whereas a Catholic will tend to embrace it as a dynamic reality. If Christ is the head and all baptized persons are members, then to make a sharp distinction between relationship to Christ and relationship to the Church is to risk decapitating the Church! There is no connection to the Head without a connection to the Body. How one behaves toward the Body is how one behaves toward the Head. Loyalty to Christ cannot be prior to loyalty to the Church; they are one and the same. Along similar lines, a dynamic understanding of how Christ is “embodied” in the Church precludes make too sharp a distinction between some abstract ideal of the Church and the Church’s actual (and quite messy and flawed) institutional infrastructure. It is precisely this infrastructure—with is canons and constitutions and covenants, to say nothing of bylaws and Letters of Agreement and everything else--that mediates (incarnates?) the presence of ministry of Christ in his corpus mysticum.

So the next time you’re observing or participating in debate, whether rancorous or civil, within the community of Christians, try digging a little deeper than whatever the presenting issue might be, and ask yourself, “What are the ecclesiological assumptions that each side is making? How do these assumptions, even if unspoken, actually drive the debate?”

Loving the Saints

2009-10-31T10:00:00.002-04:00

This essay was written for, and now appears in, the November 1 issue of The Living Church.

I don’t know precisely where “All Saints” ranks on the list of most-popular names for Episcopal churches, but I suspect it’s near the top. Anglicans tend to look on All Saints’ Day with a considerable degree of affection, and W.W. How’s text “For All the Saints” (set to Ralph Vaughan Williams’ tune Sine Nomine) is widely popular. Most congregations avail themselves of the rubrical permission to observe this principal feast on the Sunday following, so it is adorned with whatever embellishments local custom assigns to festival occasions.

Beyond that, however, I think it’s safe to say that the saints don’t have a particularly prominent place in popular piety among a great many Episcopalians and other Anglicans. This is no doubt partly attributable simply to indifference and lax catechesis, and partly to an innate reactivity —inbred among Christians influenced by the Reformation tradition—against what some perceive as excess devotion to the saints among our Roman Catholic cousins (“praying to” particular saints depending on the nature of the petition).

In any case, we are spiritually — and, I would dare say, theologically — impoverished as a result. This was brought home to me pointedly in a recent conversation I had with a longtime friend and former colleague, an Episcopal priest who has now become Eastern Orthodox. It was fallout from the recent unpleasantness within Anglicanism that set him on this path — I have never known anyone with as much of an “Anglican soul” as this man — but he has embraced the ethos of his new church family with discipline and enthusiasm. He worships in a parish under the patronage of St. Nicholas of Myra. He told me he has pondered the question of what he would miss most from his short time in Orthodoxy if for some reason he were to return to Anglicanism. (He doesn’t anticipate doing so; this is a spiritual exercise.)

His response? “I would miss Nicholas.”

My friend went on to tell me how the icon of a parish’s patron saint is always placed in the same prominent position in the ikonostasis, the row of icons that screens the altar area in an Orthodox church. From worshiping in that space, receiving Holy Communion week by week under the gaze, as it were, of St. Nicholas, he knows himself to have developed a relationship with the saint. Nicholas is more than just an interesting historical personage to him, more than a hero of the faith whose example is worthy of emulation. He is each of those things, of course, but he is also much more: Nicholas is a member of the family. My friend went on to say unashamedly, “I love Nicholas.”

I have had similar moments of spiritual insight. When I was a seminarian in the mid-to-late ’80s, I often practiced preaching in the graveyard. Though I never got a response from anyone in the “congregation,” I did over time feel like I “got to know” many of them, one of whom was Jackson Kemper, the great missionary bishop who is featured prominently elsewhere in this issue. For more than 30 years now, I have been privileged to worship in communities — as a lay person, a seminarian, and a priest — where the celebration of the Easter Vigil includes chanting the Litany of the Saints en route to the baptismal font. We are, after all, at that moment on the verge of making a new Christian, about as radically presumptuous an act as could be imagined. We need all the help we can get! So we invoke the prayers of the entire Christian family, not only across space, but across time as well. No matter how many breathing human beings are present in the room, I never fail to sense the additional palpable presence of many more than can be seen, joining their prayers with ours as we once again witness the miracle of new birth by water and the Holy Spirit.

What I feel on the way to the font, what I felt preaching in the graveyard at Nashotah House, what my Orthodox friend feels when he’s in the company of St Nicholas, is nothing other than the truth of what we all profess whenever we proclaim our faith in the words of the Nicene Creed. These are experiences of the communion (koinonia) of saints. Do we not sometimes gloss over this article of the creed? Yet, of all that we say at that point in the liturgy, these words may be the ones that have the most immediate practical impact on our lives. Both “communion” and “fellowship” can render the Greek word koinonia, but neither one is quite up to the task. Koinonia implies a relationship several degrees deeper and more intimate. It implies a relationship not just of admiration from a distance, but of love up close. How much richer and more satisfying our spiritual experience is when we broaden our horizon to experience the saints not only as heroes worthy of our study and imitation, but as family members whom we include in the circle of our love.

All holy men and women of God, pray for us.

On the "Patrimony" of Anglicanism

2009-10-29T15:30:00.005-04:00

Brother Stephen is a (Roman Catholic) Trappist monk who is a former Anglican (of the Anglo-Catholic stripe). I posted this link to my Facebook network, but it is, I believe worthy of wider circulation. He writes with what strikes me an uncanny perception of the ingredients than comprise the Anglican ethos ("patrimony," to use the jargon of last week announcement from Rome), and of the spiritual and mental moves that lie in front of Anglicans who may be tempted to respond affirmatively to the "personal ordinariate" schema. I am not myself so tempted, but I'm sympathetic, and I can understand its attractions to those who are.

In 2005, during my first and thus far only visit to England, I did attend Evensong at All Saints', Margaret Street, which made Brother Stephen's observations particularly poignant for me.

Adventures in Ecclesiology, Part II: The Priority of the Church

2009-10-26T18:36:00.001-04:00

Systematic Theology is the discipline of taking that which Christians believe and teach (or, in any case, that which any given systematic theologian thinks Christians should believe and teach) and organizing that material into a coherent whole, a “system.” Pick up most any Systematic Theology textbook, and the first chapter is likely to be about God, generically speaking, or, perhaps, about the basis for human knowledge of God—religious epistemology, revelation, or the like. From there, the “system” might proceed to the specifically Christian doctrine of the Trinity, and then, perhaps, to the person and work of Christ, or maybe to Christian anthropology—the nature of Man, the Fall, the character of sin, redemption, and grace. The concluding chapter is likely to be on eschatology—Last Things, how the story ends. Somewhere in the middle, and probably closer to the end than to the beginning, there will be a chapter on ecclesiology, the doctrine of the Church (and, depending on the theological perspective of the author, something on the sacraments).

It all seems reasonable enough. There are a great many puzzle pieces that need to be in place before one can make sense of the Church. This methodology has sometimes been styled “theology from above.” It is a deductive exercise, in that it starts with truths that are over-arching and all-encompassing—i.e. truths about God—and reasons downward to matters that are specific and localized, matters like the Church. But it seems worthwhile to pose the question, What if one were to attempt a systematic theology, as it were, “from below”? What if one were to do theology in a manner that philosophers might call “phenomenological,” beginning with the concrete and specific and reasoning from there to the general and all-encompassing? From such a perspective, Chapter I in a Systematic Theology textbook would probably concern itself with the Church.

If you are a Christian (a plausible presumption for the readership of this blog), how did you first hear about Jesus? Was it at your grandmother’s knee? From a Sunday School teacher? A pastor? A friend or neighbor? A radio or TV ministry? From picking up a Gideon bible in a hotel room? In any of these cases, it was some manifestation of the Church that introduced you to Christ. Unless the risen Jesus appeared to you personally as he did to Saul on the Damascus Road, you have the Church to thank for your Christian faith. So from the standpoint of the actual lives of actual Christians, the Church is not an afterthought, a derivation from some more foundational principles. It is our point of connection to the gospel, the indispensable medium in which and through which we have a relationship with Christ.

(I’m about to make some wide sweeping generalizations, which can cause trouble if they’re stretched beyond their usefulness in making a critical point. I’ll try to do my part in avoiding that trap; you’ll have to do yours as well.)

With apologies to chickens and eggs everywhere: Which came first, the Church or the Believer? I believe there is a correct theological answer to this question, and that such theological priority is rooted in and demonstrated by the phenomenological priority asserted above. It’s kind of hip these days among some believers to describe themselves as “Christ-followers” rather than “Christians.” This reflects a certain frustration with the institutional obtuseness of the Church, but in the end, it’s a bogus distinction, a red herring. Every “Christ-follower” first met Jesus through the ministry of the Church. Even Saul/Paul was commanded to seek out the Church in Damascus in order to be relieved of his blindness and be baptized. Even the apostles did not know Jesus apart from the community of their colleagues. There is no such thing as free-lance Christianity. By being connected to the Head, one is unavoidably connected to the Body. (More about that in subsequent posts in this series.)

What I am attempting to enunciate here is a Catholic ecclesiology, which consistently asserts that the Church is in every way (phenomenologically, theologically, and ontologically) prior to the Believer. This notion swims decidedly upstream against a powerful current of American individualism, with roots going back to colonial times, combined with post-modern intellectual relativism and libertinism—a stream that provides congenial lodging for an essentially Protestant ecclesiology. In Protestant ecclesiology, the Believer is prior to the Church. When an individual encounters Christ, that person immediately looks around for others who have had a similar encounter, and forms community with them for purposes of common worship, mutual support and encouragement, and united witness and mission. In this view, “church” is simply a collective noun for an aggregation of believers. The Believer is prior to the Church—theologically and ontologically, at any rate, if not phenomenologically.

In practice, this gets pretty mixed up. There are doubtless many thousands of Christians who are members of ecclesial bodies the ecclesiological moorings of which are solidly Catholic (Roman, Anglican, Orthodox) but whose personal mental model of the Church (even though they may not have the technical vocabulary to articulate it as such) is clearly Protestant (especially if they happen to be Americans). And there are doubtless many thousands of Christians who are members of ecclesial bodies the formal ecclesiology of which is squarely in the free-church congregationalist evangelical tradition, but who have intuitively constructed a personal mental model of the Church that is quite communitarian, in fact, quite Catholic.

This theological dissonance is, I suspect, largely subliminal. Most Christians who hold ecclesiological pre-suppositions that are at odds with the ‘DNA’ of their own church are not aware of the disconnect. Yet, if one were to take any given church conflict, and peel back all the underlying rhetoric and substantive argument, that very disconnect would in many cases lie at the bottom of the pile.

I suppose it goes without saying that I am an advocate of the Catholic position, as I have described it. It is not only undeniably true phenomenologically, but if we take seriously the Pauline “body” metaphor, it is manifestly true theologically (more on that to come). Of course, I hold in esteem my fellow-believers from ecclesial traditions that take the opposite point of view. What would perhaps be most helpful all around is if, in our discussions of other matters, we could be more consciously aware of our underlying ecclesiological assumptions. I suppose I would probably also find it helpful if people spoke and acted in ways that are coherent with the formal ecclesiology of the churches of which they are actually members.

Still to come: Part III: The Visibility of the Church, and Part IV: The Unity of the Church.

Check Out My Parish's Redesigned Website

2009-10-24T18:12:00.002-04:00

We've just gone live with St Anne's Website 3.0 (it now appears among my links on the sidebar). I can't take any credit for it; it's the work of my multi-talented Assistant, the Revd Craig Uffman, who has labored heroically. Do take a look. I think you will find that it is visually attractive, intuitively functional, and exceptionally well-loaded with content. I'm proud to have it as the showcase window for St Anne's.

A New Bridge Across the Tiber?

2009-10-20T23:07:00.003-04:00

I feel almost obligated to say something about a “breaking” Anglican story, if for no other reason than that it has shown up on the CNN crawler (and other secular media sources), necessitating a measure of spin control, since secular news outlets invariably get church-related stories really, really wrong, either in the headlines, or in the details, or both. (This, of course, leads me to wonder what else they get wrong in areas where I have no particular expertise or inside knowledge, but that’s another story.)

The Vatican has announced an arrangement by which Anglican Christians may enter into full communion with the Bishop of Rome (aka the Pope), and do so in groups that maintain their collective identity (like parishes and dioceses). They would then be allowed to continue liturgical and spiritual practices that are identifiably Anglican (such as using texts from the Prayer Book and music from familiar hymnals). Moreover, their clergy could become Roman Catholic priests, and, if married, remain so as they continue to pastor their congregations.

The technical name (and a hugely awkward one, I must say) for the new sort of jurisdiction is “personal ordinariate.” An “ordinary” is a cleric who has a sort of authority that is usually associated with the office of Diocesan Bishop, but may also be held by a Dean (of a seminary) or an Abbott (of a monastery). The personal ordinariates under this plan would be defined by and accountable to each (national, in most cases) Bishops’ Conference. The ordinaries themselves may, in fact, be bishops (though not former Anglicans, apparently) but will in most cases, at least in the near term, be priests (i.e. former Anglicans, probably married) who have the administrative authority and responsibility of a bishop without the sacramental peculiars—ironically, ordinaries who cannot ordain.

The media are treating this announcement as something new—indeed, something shockingly new. The truth is—it isn’t. From early in the papacy of John Paul II, there has been something called the Pastoral Provision in effect that allows married Anglican clergy, after undergoing mutual discernment and screening, to be ordained as Roman priests. There has also been something called the Anglican Use, which permits congregations of former Anglicans to remain stylistically Anglican while jurisdictionally Roman Catholic. There are a handful (well, maybe two hands-full) of Anglican Use parishes in the U.S., and have been for a number of years.

What is different about this new initiative? Two things, mainly: First, it applies worldwide, whereas the Pastoral Provision and Anglican Use were confined to the United States. So the most dramatic impact will no doubt be in England, where there are thousands of laity and hundreds of clergy who have been chomping at the bit for something like this. It comes at a particularly sensitive time politically, as the leadership of the Church of England has been trying to find a way to move forward with consecrating women bishops and still hang on to its Catholic wing, which is more numerous percentage-wise than it is in the Episcopal Church. Will the personal ordinariate arrangement siphon off Anglo-Catholics (who pretty much already worship according to the Roman Rite in toto), and not only make it politically easier to have women bishops but also radically shift the delicate balance-of-power in the church? Time will tell.

Second, the new arrangement takes something that has been tentative and somewhat fluid and gives it the character of something that is effectively permanent. It takes an anomaly and institutionalizes it. There is even talk of personal ordinariates (presumably, groups thereof) operating their own seminaries. One of the implications is that Anglicanesque (for lack of a better term) parishes would be in the local Latin Rite (i.e. mainstream Roman Catholic) dioceses in which they are geographically located, but only partially of them. The diocesan bishop’s authority will not extend to anything that pertains to the distinctively Anglican character of these congregations. Such matters would come under the purview of the “personal ordinary.”

There are, of course, some unanswered questions. So far, I’ve only seen second-hand reports and announcements, not any official documents that spell out the details, and we know who lives in the details. For instance, are married priests a one-generation “grandfathered-in” deal, or are we looking at an enduring element of an ecclesiastical sub-culture being created? Will the personal ordinaries be permitted to arrange the ordination of married men who have never been Anglican priests? If the answer to either of these questions is affirmative, then what we are witnessing is the de facto creation of an Anglican Rite within the Catholic Church (despite all Vatican protestations to the contrary) alongside the Melkite (Greek), Maronite (Lebanese) and other Uniate churches. And what effect is this all likely to have on the many, many Latin Rite priests who would dearly love to be married (or married laicized priests who would love to resume their ministry)?

Speaking personally, does this get my attention? Yes, it does, in the same way that a man whose generally happy marriage is going through a rough patch might have his attention arrested by an attractive potential alternative. I believe the See of Rome to be God’s gift for the unity of Christ’s Church, and it would give me great joy to die at a ripe old age in full sacramental fellowship with the church founded by Peter and Paul. It is a prospect dear to my heart. From the day the Bishop of Los Angeles laid hands on me in Confirmation in 1975, I have considered myself, as an Anglican, fully a Catholic, no hyphens or qualifiers. Since the eve of St Thomas’ Day 1989 I have known myself to be a Catholic priest, a Catholic priest who has said Mass well over two thousand times, and has pronounced God’s absolution on dozens of penitent sinners. And it is precisely because I know these things about myself and my ministry that, with some measure of sadness, I do not foresee myself serving under a personal ordinary in an Anglicanesque parish. To do so would require me to say—not in so many words, perhaps, but with devastating clarity nonetheless—that I have never been a priest, that all the Eucharists over which I have presided have been make-believe, and that my absolutions have been mere aspirational hopes. I could never say those things and live with my conscience.

There will doubtless be much more to say on these matters as events unfold.

Adventures in Ecclesiology (Part I): Prospectus

2009-10-19T18:30:00.001-04:00

This is the first of what I anticipate will be a four-part series on how we think theologically about the Church. As all but the newest readers of the blog know, mine has been one of the voices in the chorus of conflict that Episcopalians and other Anglicans have been “singing” for several years. (I’m sure opinions vary on what “part” I sing!) The longer I participate in these discussions and debates, the more aware I am of how often we “talk past” one another because of unspoken assumptions about foundational categories and terms in Christian discourse. It is my further observation that a great many of these unspoken assumptions have to do with the Church. I don’t know whether it will help, but it surely can’t hurt to attempt to bring some of these assumptions into the light of day, to “speak” them, as it were, in the hope that we might thereby move the conversation about the actual presenting issues forward an inch or two.

I will make every effort to aim these remarks toward the hypothetical “seriously-engaged lay person”—i.e. someone who does not have a formal theological education but has more than an “Inquirers’ Class” level of biblical knowledge and spiritual formation, and is willing to do a little bit of intellectual heavy lifting. I am myself, at best, an “educated amateur” theologian (in the best sense of “amateur,” I hope), so I’m scarcely qualified to set my sights higher than that anyway. If you are a professional theologian and anything I say brings shame on the discipline, I beg your forgiveness in advance.

I write, of course, as an Episcopalian, and therefore as an Anglican, and therefore, as I understand the identity and character of Anglicanism, as a Catholic Christian. My ruminations on ecclesiology will be grounded in this identity; I make no pretension to comprehensiveness.

The Greek word ekklesia (hijacked into Latin as ecclesia), apart from its place in the Christian technical vocabulary, denotes those who have been “called out” from something (or some-things) into something else. It is, in this sense, related to our English work “eclectic,” which refers to a collection of items (or a style of collecting items) that would not ordinarily be placed together. What better description could there be of the assortment of people who show up for worship in many Christian congregations on a Sunday morning!

This is the word that, in English translations of the New Testament, is rendered “church.” The English word, interestingly, is also traceable (through several layers) to Greek, but not to ekklesia. Rather, it is apparently derived from kyrios—lord—hence, “of the Lord.”

In the New Testament, we find three discernible shades of meaning for ekklesia. It can refer to a gatheriing of Christians assempled for a specific purpose, such as we read about in I Corinthians 11:18-19

For, in the first place, when you assemble as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you; and I partly believe it, for there must be factions among you in order that those who are genuine among you may be recognized.

It can also refer more generally to specific congregation of Christians in a particular location (e.g. Corinth, Philippi, or the “seven churches” named in the first part of Revelation).

Finally, ekklesia can have a universal meaning, referring the totality of those who are united with Christ in the Paschal Mystery. This would seem to be what St Paul had in mind when he (or the pseudonymous author, if you prefer) wrote in Ephesians about marriage being a reflection of the relationship between Christ and “the Church,” or when Jesus in Matthew’s gospel instructs his disciples to “tell it to the Church” when they have a grievance against a fellow disciple that has not been amenable to resolution through more discreet means.

Of course, from these relatively simple New Testament origins, the layers of meaning attached to “church” have gotten deeper, richer, and more complex over the decades and centuries. Appropriately, then, “ecclesiology” is that branch of Christian theology that devotes itself to studying and articulating the mystery that is the one holy catholic and apostolic church of the Nicene Creed. It lies beneath many of our current conflicts. In the essays that follow, I hope to shed a little light on the subject. I hope to post them at roughly one week intervals, though “real life” may always trump that aspirational schedule.

Tentatively, Part II will focus on The Priority of the Church, Part III on the Visibility of the Church, and Part IV on the Unity of the Church. Stay tuned.

A Slight Momentary Affliction

2009-10-08T23:34:00.005-04:00

UPDATE: Thanks to an energetic friend, the link in my "links" sections now leads to a .pdf on GoogleDocs, rather than the blog, since there have been several requests for such. However, if you really like reading it on a computer screen, here's a link to the blog. Another energetic friend is in the process of finding several typos. These will be fixed in due course.

If you were following this blog about 15 months ago, you may recall my announcement that I had finished writing a novel, the working title of which is A Slight Momentary Affliction. Even when I started it, I knew the chances of it being published in the conventional manner were quite slim, and I reconciled myself to the probability that hard copy would gather dust in a closet somewhere, and my heirs would dispose of it upon my demise.

The advent of free hosted blog sites has provided a more attractive alternative. If you're interested, click on the link (eyes right, and a little down) called My Novel.

A Shamanic Moment

2009-10-14T22:59:00.002-04:00

One of the simultaneously bitterest and sweetest responsibilities of a priest is to bury the dead. I did that, once again, this morning, and, once again, I was amazed at how capable the Prayer Book liturgy is of "bearing the freight" of that sort of occasion. If allowed to do so, it simply does precisely what needs to be done, and I'm so glad I'm not in an ecclesial tradition where funerals have to be invented from scratch each time.

I was particularly struck this morning by something that has never occurred to me before. It has always been my practice to walk in front of the casket all the way out of the church, not stopping at the door and letting the pallbearers go it alone from there, but leading down to the sidewalk and standing by until the door is closed on the hearse. No one ever told me or taught me to do it. It just seems right intuitively.

This is one of those moments of priest-as-shaman. Please, I'm not trying to incite a cyber-riot by suggesting a parallel between pagan and Christian "priestcraft," but ... well ... there's a parallel between Christian priestcraft in this context and what we might call "generic" priestcraft. When I lead the casket all the way out to the hearse, I am exercising priesthood for the sake of the deceased. I am in that moment no longer a teacher, or an evangelist, or a community leader, or a care-giver, and not simply a presbyter in the technical Christian sense. I am a priest, conducting a soul out of this world and through the portal to what comes next. My responsibility during those few steps is not to the grieving family, or other parishioners and non-parishioners present, but to the deceased, represented by his body. When the door of the hearse shuts, then I stand relieved, and turn my pastoral attention once again to the living. The Communion of Saints waves hello to me. "See you again soon," they say, as indeed they will. And someday I'll be the one that another priest escorts to that point and then hands me off to them. So this is good practice.

De Trinitate

2009-10-07T21:33:00.003-04:00

Tonight's regular Wednesday Eucharist at St Anne's was a votive Mass "Of the Holy Trinity." I gave something resembling the following as an extempore homily. Like I said, something resembling...

I certainly can't exhaust the mystery of the Holy Trinity in a brief homily. Volumes have been written on the subject, and they only scratch the surface. The one insight that comes to me--I hope, in answer to my prayers--tonight is to hold up our trinitarian language about God--the language the Christian community uses to talk about God--as a sort of "canary in the coal mine." (This image, of course, comes from the old practice of coal miners, realizing that canaries are more sensitive to dangerous gases than humans, taking a canary down into the shaft with them to serve as an early warning system for potential hazards.)

Even though passages like tonight's gospel from Matthew 28 (the Great Commission) use language that seems compatible with full-blown trinitarian theology, it is a mistake to read that theology back into those passages. The fact is, it took the Church more than 400 years to sort out how we speak of God in trinitarian terms--or, more precisely, how we don't speak of God in trinitarian terms, because this is one area of theology that is done pretty much by elimination: We discerned/discovered ("were told," actually, by the Holy Spirit, but that's a faith statement) that "this" is not how we can speak about God, and "that" is not how we can speak about God, etc. etc. So, whatever is left after eliminating all the demonstrably false articulations of the mystery is what's available to us. That becomes the raw material for our theologizing. And what we are left with is "one God in three Persons": Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

One of the things our trinitarian language for God reminds us of is that the God we worship is not a concept, not an abstraction, not merely the idea of a Supreme Being. Rather, we worship a particular God. This is something our polytheistic forbears (even our polytheistic Hebrew forbears; Psalm 29 tonight mentions "gods") could see more easily than we can through our staunchly monotheistic lenses. In the Daily Office, we've been reading through II Kings. Recently, we read how, after the Assyrians deported the population of the Northern Kingdom, the settlers sent in to replace them were beset with plagues. The Assyrians just figured they didn't know how to properly worship the (particular) God of that land, so they sent back a priest from among the exiles to teach them how to do it! And when the LORD appears to Moses in the burning bush (tonight's reading from Exodus), he stresses the particularity of his identity: "I am the God of your fathers; the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." It wasn't just any God that Moses was dealing with, not simply a deity, or even The Deity. No, it was the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and, as St Paul would add, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. This is the God, and no other, whom Christians worship and serve.

So, the language of our trinitarian theology--the words we use to talk about God, and, by implication, the words we don't use to talk about God--serves as a boundary, a fence. It reminds us of the particularity of the God who is the object of Christian worship, because, left to our own devices, we will very quickly generalize our experience of God into vague abstractions. I know that, to many, trinitarian theology seems arcane and fussy, something professional theologians may get excited about, but which doesn't have any real impact on the real lives of ordinary Christians. Yet, this is precisely where it functions as the canary in the coal mine, because whenever we get the urge to jump the trinitarian fence, the canary keels over. Church history is full of examples of individuals and groups ignoring or contradicting orthodox trinitarian language. When that happens, nothing but turmoil and schism result. It never ends well.

Of course, ultimately the Trinity is not a doctrine that we must understand, but a God whom we must worship. So let us get on with that job, and worship the glorious and undivided Trinity.

More Dispatches from the Hymnal 1940

2009-10-02T14:14:00.002-04:00

Today, in my regularly-scheduled prayer time (yes, I know that sounds a little weird) at the console of the mighty Rodgers, I held a conversation with the Holy Spirit with Hymns 253 through 262 (fr0m the section "Missions") in front of us. It was a time of nostalgia for me. According to one of the characters in the AMC TV series Madmen, nostalgia is one of the most powerful emotions a person can experience. It signifies the vestigial presence of an old wound, a bittersweet feeling, the call of a place and time that one yearns to go back to, but can't.

Hymn 254 is "From Greenland's icy mountains...". The text is from the great missionary bishop Reginald Heber (part of whose legacy is that he has several namesakes who went on to distinguish themselves in Anglican ministry--more than any other single person I am aware of). He died at the age of 49 (by definition, prematurely, IMO) while Bishop of Calcutta.

I can remember attending a service in an Episcopal parish in the mid-1970s where this was used as the entrance hymn. It was not unfamiliar to me from my Baptist upbringing, so I did not think it strange. Yet, even then, among the avant garde of missiologists, it would have been considered anachronistic at best, and quite possibly racist. Despite being one of the most popular hymns of the nineteenth century, in both Britain and America, it was eliminated from the Hymnal 1982, and one can scarcely imagine a setting in which it would be used today.

From Greenland's icy mountains,
From India's coral strand,
Where Afric's sunny fountains
Roll down their golden sand.
From many an ancient river,
From many a palmy plain,
They call us to deliver
Their land from error's chain.

Can we, whose souls are lighted
With wisdom from on high,
Can we to men benighted
The lamp of life deny?
Salvation, O salvation!
The joyful sound proclaim,
Till each remotest nation
Has learnt Messiah's name.

Waft, waft, ye winds, his story,
And you, ye waters, roll,
Till, like a sea of glory,
It spreads from pole to pole;
Till o'er our ransomed nature
The Lamb for sinners slain,
Redeemer, King, Creator,
In bliss returns to reign.

Why? Because the paradigm that it assumes is now clearly a relic of the past. Both British and American society are rushing headlong into post-Christian secularism, while the gospel has taken hold and is flourishing by "Afric's sunny fountains," among other places. The image of souls in "heathen" lands "calling" missionaries (per the Madeconian who appeared to St Paul in a dream) from "Christian" countries is no longer even plausible, let alone compelling. There are other objections as well, but let's first look at another of the genre, "Remember all the people...":

Remember all the people
Who live in far off lands,
In strange and lonely cities,
Or roam the desert sands,
Or farm the mountain pastures,
Or till the endless plains
Where children wade through rice-fields
And watch the camel trains.

Some work in sultry forests
Where apes swing to and from,
Some fish in mighty rivers,
Some hunt across the snow.
Remember all God's children,
Who yet have never heard
The truth that comes from Jesus,
The glory of his word.

God bless the men and women
Who serve him oversea;
God raise up more to help them
To set the nations free,
Till all the distant people
In ev'ry foreign place
Shall understand his kingdom
And come into his grace.

These lines are from the pen of Percy Dearmer (1867-1936), a distinguished English priest, liturgist, and advocate for social reform. I don't remember this one from my growing-up years, and I can't say for certain that I have ever been present when it was used in an Episcopal service, though I definitely remember singing it (and chortling while doing so) in the Lutheran congregation in which I sojourned for a while en route to Anglicanism.

The anachronisms present in the Heber text are grossly magnified in this one. It bespeaks a world where it was still possible for something to be exotic, a possibility that information and communication technology has now pretty much done away with. It exemplifies a naive occi-centrism that is now not only very much out of fashion ideologically, but not not even plausible (the "apes swinging to and fro" line makes me laugh still).

So, from whence comes my nostalgia? First off, I enjoy the tunes (Missionary Chant and Far Off Lands, respectively). But I realize that my growing fondness for all-things-Victorian as I advance into my dotage is an anomaly, and not widely shared. Beyond that, however, I miss the unashamed passion for evangelism that is present in these hymns. Strip away all the intimations of cultural imperialism, and what shines through is an honest and fervent conviction of the universality of the gospel. The mysterium fidei is honest-to-God good news for all people in every place and in every time. There is no hint of forcing it on anyone; despite all the attempts at constructing a counter-narrative to the great era of European and American missionary endeavor, we're talking about genuine heroes here. (Reginald Heber lost his life to the exotic climate and micro-fauna of India more than to anything else.) They purveyed the gospel through acts of love and gentle persuasion. And there is certainly no hint of syncretism or universalism of a different sort--no "I'll take my road and you take your road and we'll meet at the peak." That era understood that to know Christ is to live in light and to not know Christ is to live in darkness, and they were passionate about bringing people to know Christ.

In fact, according to the Hymnal 1940, at least, mission is virtually synonymous with evangelism. It's a great thing to dig wells and build schools and make micro-loans to people in developing countries, but all that is an adjunct to mission, not mission itself. Mission is when you are in a position to say to someone, "May I tell you about Jesus?"

We need some new missionary hymns that don't make us laugh (though I think I won't like the tunes nearly so much as the old ones). But perhaps we need to first recover a passion for worldwide evangelism. A little resurrected Christian triumphalism wouldn't be such a bad thing now, would it?

An Annoyed Rant...

2009-10-01T14:41:00.004-04:00

...against the Revised Common Lectionary.

I'm trying to be a good sport about this. I really am. I was opposed to its adoption, single-handedly stalling it on the floor of the House of Deputies in 2003 and failing to do so when it was brought up again in 2006. (No always means 'No for now' while Yes means 'Yes forever'.) But there's no core theological or moral principle at stake here (not at long as we have the two track option for the first reading, at any rate), so, per my ordination vows, I use the ****** thing.

But as I begin to prepare my homily for All Saints Day (which actually falls on Sunday this year), I am reminded how, the more I use the RCL, the less I like it. Let me count the ways (the ones that affect me right now, anyway):

Gone is the familiar and beloved passage from Ecclesiasticus 44 ("Let us now praise famous men ...") that has been part of the Prayer Book liturgy for All Saints since 1549. Not just from this year of the cycle, but from all three. It's not there anymore. That disavowal of our tradition makes me sad and angry.
Instead, in this Year B, we have another familiar passage from the Apocrypha--Wisdom 3:1-9 ("The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God..."), often used at funerals and at a handful of lesser feasts and votive Masses. This is not an altogether implausible choice. However, in conjunction with the other readings, one can see it as part of a package that falls short of the mark of a robust theological illumination of the meaning of the feast.
The second reading is from Revelation 21 (New Jerusalem, God dwelling with humankind, no more tears). This is a passage of hope and comfort, but what does it say about the heroic hagioi ("holy ones") who have come through the Great Tribulation and whose robes have been washed in the blood of the Lamb and who cast their crowns before the One seated on the throne? In other words, how is it an All Saints' Day text?
The gospel is from John 11 (Jesus shows up to raise Lazarus, weeping in the process). Again, very comforting. But what does it have to do with the occasion?

I am left wondering whether the framers of the RCL even understand what All Saints' Day is, what its history is, and how it relates to the following day (All Faithful Departed in the BCP, known popularly as All Souls). Have they fallen into the trap of conflating the two (along the lines of the para-Christian Latino observance of El Dia de los Muertes)? Do these lections contribute to the blurring of the appropriate distinction between November 1, when we honor the heroic holiness of those from whom we are inclined to request prayers on our behalf, and November 2, when we remember more ordinary departed Christians for whom we are more inclined to offer prayers on their behalf? The readings from Wisdom 3 and Revelation 21 seem more fitting for the latter than for the former.

Anyway, back to sermon prep. I must play the hand I've been dealt. I will actually come up with a sermon based on these readings.

Somehow.

The Holy Spirit is always faithful in my homiletical ministry, I have found. But I'm not a happy preacher at the moment.

Keep Moving ... Nothing to See Here

2009-10-01T09:30:00.002-04:00

Anglican cyberspace is abuzz this morning with the release of a letter from the Archbishop of Canterbury to Central Florida Bishop John Howe, which is in response to a request from the leadership of that diocese for Dr Williams to more specifically outline a process by which dioceses may adopt the Anglican Covenant even if the provincial church of which they are a member fails to do so. The Archbishop commends Central Florida's endorsement of the three sections of the covenant document that are presently actionable, and then adds that, technically, only provincial churches of the Anglican Communion can adopt the covenant. The reason is that, at present, it is the Anglican Consultative Council that "owns" the covenant, and that body is constitutionally capable of dealing only with its own members, which are the 38 provinces of the communion.

This news is being spun--on both the hard left and the hard right--as a setback to the initiative of the Communion Partners and the signers of the Anaheim Statement. It is, in fact, nothing of the sort. It's not even news, since this is precisely what the Archbishop told the seven CP bishops who visited him a month ago. Dr Williams is just stating the facts, as dull as they may be.

He is also being utterly consistent with his previous words and actions. (Rowan is nothing if not consistent.) In order for the covenant process to have any integrity, the document must first be offered to the provincial churches. I believe a good case can be made that the Episcopal Church has already materially rejected the covenant in advance of its promulgation by General Convention's adoption of B025 and C056; I have made that case myself. But it has obviously not yet done so formally, and it is on formalities that we must stand in situations such as this.

By rejecting the covenant, as I believe will happen in 2012, TEC will, per the Archbishop's consistent schema, be relegating itself to the second Track/Tier of Anglicanism--that is, "associate" status. It is only when that happens that the actions of dioceses such as Central Florida (with others to follow, I have no doubt) enter the game. There will then be a solid basis on which Rowan and the other Instruments of Communion to recognize "endorsement" as de facto "adoption," and maintain the fullest sacramental communion with endorsing dioceses (and, one hopes, parishes that are under the non-geographical oversight of bishops from endorsing dioceses). The Archbishop's letter to Bishop Howe pretty well says as much. You don't even have to dig between the lines; just moving a few leaves and twigs will suffice.

This letter is not a "development," and is nothing for anyone to stress over.

A Hymn Geek's Version of Oldies

2009-09-28T21:19:00.004-04:00

The Hymnal 1940, which was in the pew racks of Episcopal churches and chapels and cathedrals from 1943 until 1985 (and in some places, long afterward), was instrumental in my transition into the Anglican way of Christian practice nearly four decades ago. I thought to myself then, "If there's a church that actually sings these hymns, I need to be in it." And so I am, even though I was to later learn that some of the hymns that so captivated me as a I played through them on a Westmont College practice room piano during spring break of 1971 didn't actually get sung very much. This particular collection is something of a classic, in my estimation. I don't advocate wholesale return to it, as we have moved on, appropriately, from too many aspects of its milieu. But setting aside the essential problem of anachronism, it's "better" than its successor (the Hymnal 1982), in the way the the venerable Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica is "better" than its successors, even though you wouldn't want it to be the only encyclopedia you have access to.

Many years ago I discovered that sitting down at a keyboard (organ or piano) and playing through hymns is not just recreational for me; it' s a form of prayer. So I have incorporated it into my regular prayer discipline. Recently, on one of these occasions, I was working my way through the sections devoted to Ordinations, Litanies, and the Departed, respecitvely.

In the first of those three, I was especially struck by #221, Ye Christian Heralds...

Ye Christian heralds, go proclaim
Salvation in Emmanuel's name;
To distant lands the tidings bear,
And plant the Rose of Sharon there.

God shield you with a wall of fire,
With holy zeal your hearts inspire,
Bid raging winds their fury cease,
And calm the savage breast to peace.

And when our labors all our o'er,
Then may we meet to part no more,
Meet, with the ransomed throng to fall,
And crown the Savior Lord of all.

Yes, it's over-the-top Victorian in its sensibilities, and many today would call it racist. I find the tune (Missionary Chant) quite stirring, but I'm a hymn geek, and most today would find it stodgy. I can't imagine a contemporary occasion in which it would be appropriate to be sung. And I grieve for that fact. Even though this text is in the Ordination section of the hymnal, it clearly bespeaks an occasion of apostolic commissioning that is at the same time more concrete and more generic than simply an ordination. Those being sent with this hymn are heroes--they are putting their lives in danger, indeed offering their lives to be spent, consumed, in their vocation. As was the case with Paul and the Ephesian elders when he took leave of them, it's with the understanding that this is a farewell, not just a goodbye. Only the third stanza, completely eschatological in tone, hints at any future reunion. I wince that what passes for "mission" in today's Church is so anemic, so easy, by comparison.

I also rediscovered, in the Departed section (i.e. funeral music), #224, a text by the inimitable John Ellerton (who is himself worthy of the doctoral dissertation I would write in the parallel universe where I would write a doctoral dissertation):

Now the laborer's task is o'er;
Now the battle dayis past;
Now upon the farther shore
Lands the voyager at last.
Father, in thy gracious keeping
Leave we now thy servant sleeping.

There the tears of earth are dried;
There its hidden days are clear;
There the work of live is tried
By a juster Judge than hear.
Father...

There the penitents, that turn
To the cross their dying eyes'
All the love of Jesus learn
At his feet in paradise.
Father...

There no more the powers of hell
Can prevail to mar their peace;
Christ the Lord shall guard them well,
He who died for their release.
Father...

"Earth to earth, and dust to dust,"
Calmly now the words we say,
Left behind, we wait in trust,
For the resurrection day.
Father...

The first tune given is Pax, and it is sublimely lovely, though more appropriate for a practiced choir than a funeral congregation. The text may fall short of the sense of paschal victory that has since been recovered in our funeral rites, but it is solidly realistic, and therefore comforting, in a very pastoral way.

Making Friends with the Imprecatory Psalms

2009-09-20T17:07:00.003-04:00

It is part of my Rule of Life to pray the Daily Office according to the form prescribed in the Book of Common Prayer (1979). Tuesday through Friday, and on Sunday morning, I do so publicly at stated times (though, to be sure, the universe of those who might join me on any given occasion is quite small). During Ordinary Time, the lectionary for the Daily Office takes one through all 150 Psalms every seven weeks. The option is provided for certain whole Psalms, and sections of others, to be omitted from this round. If you look at some of these texts, the reason for their permitted (suggested?) omission is intuitively obvious. Here are some verses from Psalms 59:

6 Awake, and punish all the ungodly; *

show no mercy to those who are faithless and evil.

7 They go to and fro in the evening; *

they snarl like dogs and run about the city.

8 Behold, they boast with their mouths,

and taunts are on their lips; *

“For who,” they say, “will hear us?”

12 Slay them, O God, lest my people forget; *

send them reeling by your might

and put them down, O Lord our shield.

13 For the sins of their mouths, for the words of their lips,

for the cursing and lies that they utter, *

let them be caught in their pride.

14 Make an end of them in your wrath; *

make an end of them, and they shall be no more.

Such sentiments certainly cause a Christian conscience a little uneasiness, at least, and probably evoke the "What would Jesus do?" question that was so in vogue a few years ago. Other examples of imprecatory Psalms and portions of Psalms are found at 7, 35, 54, 55, 58, 69, 79, 137, and 139. But the most hair-raising example of sustained petition for disaster to befall one's enemies has got to be 109, which calls down divine fury on even the innocent children of malefactors:

5 Set a wicked man against him, *

and let an accuser stand at his right hand.

6 When he is judged, let him be found guilty, *

and let his appeal be in vain.

7 Let his days be few, *

and let another take his office.

8 Let his children be fatherless, *

and his wife become a widow.

9 Let his children be waifs and beggars; *

let them be driven from the ruins of their homes.

10 Let the creditor seize everything he has; *

let strangers plunder his gains.

11 Let there be no one to show him kindness, *

and none to pity his fatherless children.

12 Let his descendants be destroyed, *

and his name be blotted out in the next generation.

13 Let the wickedness of his fathers be remembered before

the Lord, *

and his mother’s sin not be blotted out;

14 Let their sin be always before the Lord; *

but let him root out their names from the earth;

15 Because he did not remember to show mercy, *

but persecuted the poor and needy

and sought to kill the brokenhearted.

16 He loved cursing,

let it come upon him; *

he took no delight in blessing,

let it depart from him.

17 He put on cursing like a garment, *

let it soak into his body like water

and into his bones like oil;

18 Let it be to him like the cloak which he

wraps around himself, *

and like the belt that he wears continually.

19 Let this be the recompense from the Lord to my accusers, *

and to those who speak evil against me.

Psalm 109 pops up in the lectionary as regularly as all the rest--every seventh Wednesday morning, to be specific. Now, Wednesday happens to be the day when my whole parish staff attends Morning Prayer together, just prior to our weekly (or thereabouts) meeting.

Of course, I would be within my rights to exercise a certain pastoral discretion and omit verses 5 through 19, as they are enclosed in parentheses in the lectionary. But I choose not to avail myself of this option. Every seven weeks, these words of seething hatred cross the lips of five or six of the nicest people I know. We squirm--at least I squirm--but we say them.

It's not often at all that any imprecatory Psalmody makes its way into the principal liturgical experience of most Christians who worship according to the Prayer Book, the Sunday Eucharist. Today (Year B: Proper 20) was a notable exception. In my parish, a singularly sweet-voiced soprano cantor chanted these lines from Psalm 54:

5 Render evil to those who spy on me; *

in your faithfulness, destroy them.

So, the obvious question is ... why? Why are texts that are so opposed to the spirit of "Love your enemies" and "Do good to those who persecute you" even granted admission into the canon of Christian liturgical texts? How is our corporate worship possibly enhanced by forcing ourselves to speak lines that we would never allow to be part of our public prayers?

There is no flip or glib or otherwise easy answer to this question. And therein lies the first clue, I think, to why Psalm 109 and its companions are still in the Prayer Book--precisely because it is hard to have them there, precisely because they are the proverbial skunk at the garden party. We wouldn't voluntarily pray such words . . . or would we? Many years ago I found myself, in the context of the Daily Office, praying one of these passages. As so often happens, my mind wandered as part of it remained dedicated to the text in front of me. Then, as now, I was more engaged than the average cleric, to say nothing of the average layperson, in the soap opera of conflict that has consumed the Anglican world of late. And then, in an embarrassingly lucid moment, I suddenly realized that as I was asking God to curse my enemies, the "enemies" I had in mind were not only fellow Christians, but members of my own church!

This experience yielded a hugely important spiritual insight: It showed me that I was subliminally demonizing my opponents in church conflict. I was thinking of them not as brothers and sisters with whom I had profound disagreements, but as enemies who needed to be vanquished, as minions of evil deserving of God's destructive wrath. I suppose it's possible that I might have come to this realization without the assistance of whatever imprecatory Psalm I was praying at the time. But the fact is, it was the Psalm that shined the light on an important step of spiritual growth I needed to take. The imprecatory Psalms force us to look unflinchingly at our "dark side" (Jungian shadow?), and be brutally honest about what we see. By being invited (or, in the case of my staff, forced!) to speak words that we would not otherwise choose to speak, we are provided with a "safe" release for some toxic stuff that will poison us from inside if we don't get it out.

Of course, making friends with the imprecatory Psalms also requires the cultivation of a certain amount of sanctified spiritual imagination. Such a process offers us an opportunity to redefine who the "enemy" is. Instead of directing the energy of our hatred--which is very much there, even if sublimated--toward people (individuals or groups), whom we are commanded to love, our hearts can be trained to direct that energy toward Evil in all its dimensions: Cosmic Evil ("spiritual forces of wickedness [stoichea tou kosmou if you're into New Testament Greek]) that rebel against God"), Social Evil ("evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God"), and Personal Evil ("sinful desires that draw [us] from the love of God"). After all, these are the three classic renunciations (aka "the world, the flesh, and the devil") that precede Christian baptism. Somewhat in the tradition of lectio divina, we can acquire the habit of "translating" verses of imprecation, redefining the intended target.

I don't know that I will ever absolutely love the imprecatory Psalms. I would probably be much more comfortable ignoring them. And that is exactly why I should not--and, with God's help, will not--do so.

An Emerging Secondary Infection

2009-09-10T22:27:00.008-04:00

I'm probably the exact opposite of a hypochondriac, but I pay enough attention to medicine as a "popular science" to know that the first bug to bite you sometimes makes it possible for a second bug to bite you, and that the effects of the resulting "secondary infection" are sometimes more damaging than those of the original. Secondary infections are often "opportunistic"; they have no organic connection to the primary infection, but merely use it as a vehicle.

Within the Anglican world of the last several years, the "primary infection" has certainly been conflict over sexuality and sexual behavior, and the consequences have been severe, it not devastating. There is honest question whether Anglicanism as a recognizable current within the Christian river can actually survive very much longer.

But within the segment of the Anglican world known as the Episcopal Church, there is a secondary infection that has emerged suddenly--only in the last several weeks--and is growing virulently. Even though the sexuality debate was the vehicle that delivered it to the scene, it has no organic connection to sexuality or the range of theological positions with respect to sexuality. It could easily have been another issue ("lay presidency" at the Eucharist, for example, or communion of the unbaptized), but just happened to be sex.

What I'm talking about is the tension--indeed, the dilemma--that some are experiencing between their identity as Anglicans and their identity as Episcopalians. Not too very long ago, this would have been an inconceivable dichotomy. It was axiomatic that if you are a member of the Episcopal Church (USA), you are also automatically an Anglican, and if you live in the U.S. and wish to practice Christian religion as an Anglican, the place to do so is in the Episcopal Church. Except perhaps in the first session or two of an Inquirers' Class, it all went without saying.

So what has changed? Two things, mainly: First, the various breakaway chunks (too large to be called "splinter groups")--AMiA, CANA, et al; now perhaps congealing as the ACNA--have quite understandably appropriated themselves the moniker "Anglican" while broadcasting their perception that the Episcopal Church has terminally squandered its Anglican inheritance. So we hear things like, "My parish is Anglican, not Episcopal." This can be said both truthfully and innocently, of course, like a resident of Philadelphia saying, "I live in the United States, not in New York." But it can also carry with it an implication of mutual exclusivity and put-down, like I've heard some say, "I'm a Christian, not a Catholic." So when lay Episcopalians who are not well-informed about their own ecclesial identity hear or read such a remark, they might plausibly infer, "If that non-Episcopalian says she's an Anglican, then I must not be an Anglican." This is nonsense, of course, but it is understandable nonsense.

Second, the rhetoric of the primary infection (sexuality conflict) abets the spread of the secondary infection. It has exposed where people's core sense of ecclesial identity lies. It has revealed that, among those who once casually accepted the premise that "to be an Episcopalian is to be an Anglican, and vice versa", some understood the primary category to be Episcopalian, with Anglican as a nice add-on, while others understood the primary category to be Anglican, with Episcopalian as the necessary add-on if one lives in the United States. Of course, most who hold what would be described as conservative views on sexuality are among those who are most concerned about the strained relations within the Communion, and those who hold liberal views tend to be less concerned. But it's not all that simple. There are some whose convictions on the sexuality debate are agnostic or even "progressive," but who feel their Anglican-ness so strongly that they are led to dissent from the decisions of General Convention. Similarly, there are those whose views on sexual morality lie decidedly on the traditional side of center, but who feel their Episcopalian-ness so strongly that they are not bothered by the potential for broken relations with the Anglican Communion. It doesn't necessarily break cleanly along predictable "party lines."

I know (all too well, as does anyone in parish ministry), the practical truth of the saying, "Perception is reality." But some perceptions are plain false, not rooted in fact, and while they need to be dealt with gently and compassionately, in the end they need to be challenged. The truth is, there is no dilemma. There is no "Episcopal or Anglican" disjunction. There is only the "Episcopal and Anglican" conjunction.

Let's look at the Preamble to the Constitution of the Episcopal Church. It speaks volumes:

The Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, otherwise known as The Episcopal Church (which name is hereby recognized as also designating the Church), is a constituent member of the Anglican Communion, a Fellowship within the One, Holy,Catholic, and Apostolic Church, of those duly constituted Dioceses, Provinces, and regional Churches in communion with the See of Canterbury, upholding and propagating the historic Faith and Order as set forth in the Book of Common Prayer. This Constitution, adopted in General Convention in Philadelphia in October, 1789, as amended in subsequent General Conventions, sets forth the basic Articles for the government of this Church, and of its overseas missionary jurisdictions.

A preamble, of course, is the governing rubric for the entire document; it is the interpretive key that unlocks the meaning of all the follows. So here we have it, plain as day: The core identity of the Episcopal Church is as a "constituent members of the Anglican Communion ... in communion with the See of Canterbury." Anglican identity is not (as they say in Louisiana) lagniappe, an optional extra. It's central, essential. And Anglican identity means being "in communion with the See of Canterbury." So those who assert the unbounded autonomy of the Episcopal Church are mistaken. According to our own constitution (I speak as an Episcopalian), the moment we cease to be in full communion with Canterbury, we have ceased to be who we are. We cannot cast off our Anglican identity without simultaneously casting off our Episcopal identity. In this light, then, the actions of recent General Conventions have put us on a collision course with ourselves. We are like a snake swallowing its own tail; it will lead only to our own demise. We are on the verge of violating our own constitution.

But wait ... there's more. The Preface to the Book of Common Prayer, which is our governing liturgical formulary, says this about our relationship to the Church of England:

It seems unnecessary to enumerate all the different alterations and amendments [between the English and American Prayer Books]. They will appear, and it is to be hoped, the reasons of them also, upon a comparison of this with the Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England. In which it will also appear that this Church is far from intending to depart from the Church of England in any essential point of doctrine, discipline, or worship; or further than local circumstances require. (emphasis added)

One of the repeated themes of the "Windsor Process" (which is now culminating in an Anglican Covenant) is that communion (koinonia) is the natural limit on provincial autonomy. Some have suggested that this is an unwarranted imposition on TEC from outside, not respecting our polity, not honoring our autonomy. Yet, a careful examination of our own foundational documents leads to the inescapable conclusion that the process is in fact calling us back to who we are, inviting us to remember our identity. The Episcopal Church is a body slipping rapidly into dementia, if not amnesia. It is a secondary infection, to be sure, but its effects have the potential to endure long after the sexuality mess is sorted out. The Anglican Communion is offering us an antidote. The new point of contention is between those who want to receive that antidote gratefully and those who want to persist in a perception that is not grounded in reality.

Report from the Lambeth Seven

2009-09-08T09:31:00.002-04:00

"This just in," as they say in the news trade. The originating source is Bishop McPherson, via email to another blogger. I offer it here without comment, but may have something to say in due course.

A Report of the meeting of the Bishops of Albany, Dallas, North Dakota, Northern Indiana, South Carolina, West Texas and Western Louisiana with the Archbishop of Canterbury on September 1, 2009.

As seven representatives of the Communion Partner Bishops, we are grateful to have met with the Archbishop of Canterbury to discuss our concern in light of the recent actions of the General Convention and the subsequent nomination of candidates "whose manner of life presents a challenge to the wider church and will lead to further strains on Communion" (General Convention 2006, B033).

At this meeting we expressed our appreciation for his post-convention reflections, "Communion, Covenant, and our Anglican Future," and were especially interested in his statement about whether "elements" in Provinces not favorably disposed to adopt the Anglican Covenant "will be free ... to adopt the Covenant as a sign of their wish to act in a certain level of mutuality with parts of the communion."

Given our commitment to remain constituent members of both the Anglican Communion and The Episcopal Church, we are encouraged by our meeting with the Archbishop. We agree with him that our present situation is "an opportunity for clarity, renewal and deeper relation with one another - and also Our Lord and his Father in the power of the Spirit." We, too, share a desire to "intensify existing relationships" by becoming part of a "Covenanted" global Anglican body in communion with the See of Canterbury. We also pray and hope that "in spite of the difficulties this may yet be the beginning of a new era of mission and spiritual growth for all who value the Anglican name and heritage."

We understand the divisions before us, not merely differences of opinion on human sexuality, but also about differing understandings of ecclesiology and questions regarding the independence or interdependence of a global communion of churches in discerning the mind of Christ together. However, we also shared our concern that the actions of General Convention have essentially rejected the teaching of 1998 Lambeth Resolution 1.10 as the mind of the Communion, and raise a serious question whether a Covenant will be adopted by both Houses at General Convention 2012.

At the same time we are mindful that General Convention Resolution D020 "commended the Anglican Covenant proposed in the most recent text of the Covenant Design Group (the "Ridley Cambridge Draft") and any successive draft to dioceses for study during the coming triennium" and invited dioceses and congregations to "consider the Anglican Covenant proposed draft as a document to inform their understanding of and commitment to our common life in the Anglican Communion."

Therefore, at this time we make the following requests of Communion minded members of the The Episcopal Church and the wider Anglican Communion:

1. We encourage dioceses, congregations and individuals of The Episcopal Church to pray and work for the adoption of an Anglican Communion Covenant.

2. We encourage dioceses and congregations to study and endorse the Anglican Communion Covenant when it is finally released and to urge its adoption by General Convention, or to endorse the first three sections of the Ridley Cambridge Draft and the Anaheim Statement, and to record such endorsements on the Communion Partners website (www.communionpartners.org).

3. We encourage bishops, priests, deacons and laypersons of The Episcopal Church who support the adoption of the Anglican Communion Covenant to record such endorsement on the Communion Partners website.

4. We encourage dioceses and congregations, in the spirit of GC2009 Resolution D030, to engage in "companion domestic mission relationships among dioceses and congregations within The Episcopal Church."

5. We encourage Bishops exercising jurisdiction in The Episcopal Church to call upon us for service in needed cases of Delegated Episcopal Pastoral Oversight.

6. We encourage relationships between Communion Partners and primates, bishops, provinces and dioceses in other parts of the Communion, in order the enhance the ministry we share in the life of the Communion.

7. We invite primates and bishops of the Communion to offer their public support to these efforts.

+Mark J. Lawrence, South Carolina
+Gary R. Lillibridge, West Texas
+Edward S. Little, II, Northern Indiana
+William H. Love, Albany
+D. Bruce MacPherson, Western Louisiana
+Michael G. Smith, North Dakota
+James M. Stanton, Dallas

Taking Counsel

2009-09-01T22:23:00.002-04:00

I have had this information for some time, and was never asked to embargo it. Nonetheless, it seemed best to wait until the event was actually in progress. It now is.

Seven diocesan bishops of the Episcopal Church are presently at Lambeth Palace for a brief--but, I'm sure, intense--consultation with the Archbishop of Canterbury. All seven are members of the Communion Partners, and all seven are signatories to the Anaheim Statement.

I have no inside knowledge of the subjects under discussion, but it doesn't require any eavesdropping equipment to figure out that they're talking about how Dr Williams' "two tier/two track" plan might actually get implemented. More specifically, it is a safe bet that each of the seven is interested in what steps a diocese might have to take to remain on Tier/Track One even as TEC per se is assigned (consigned?) to Tier/Track Two.

The Archbishop's schema is going to happen; of that I am more certain than ever. It will happen too quickly and too decisively to suit the ruling party in the Episcopal Church. It is long since past happening too slowly and too subtly to suit those in what had been TEC's conservative wing, and who are now part of the GAFCON-ACNA axis. But the Archbishop has behaved with utter consistency and coherence since the advent of this crisis in 2003, and there is no reason to think he will deviate from that path now. He will never send the Presiding Bishop an email saying, "The tracks have been assigned. You're in #2." He will say something like, "Here's the Anglican Covenant. Churches that adopt it as their own will remain in full communion with the See of Canterbury."

The General Convention, of course, will never do so. In time, the consequences of that decision will be seen in the form of invitations to Primates Meetings that never reach 815, and registration materials for the Anglican Consultative Council that never make it to TEC's chosen delegates. It will not come with a bang. It won't even be a whimper. It will simply be the sound of silence.

The wild card in the mix, of course, is the ACNA. Despite the word "Anglican" in their title (and on the signs in front of their churches), it could be plausibly argued that the ACNA, technically, is not Anglican. Not yet, at any rate. But they are aligned with GAFCON, which represents the overwhelming majority of the world's actual Anglicans. So they are part of a matrix that is capable of putting immense political pressure on Lambeth Palace. I suspect the seven bishops and Dr Williams are discussing this fact as well.

So I pray ... and wait ... and pray. Like my bishop (one of the seven, of course), I have neither an intent nor a desire to separate from the Episcopal Church. I also have neither an intent nor a desire to be in anything less than full unhindered communion with the See of Canterbury (read: Track One). There is, admittedly, some tension between these twin commitments. I am looking for a way to honor both of them, and have hope that the next step in such a way is having a light shined on it by what's happening in London right now.

Love in a Time of Impasse

2009-08-24T09:49:00.002-04:00

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is the latest to make news in the sexuality wars, and I am quite happy to let them have the limelight for a while. It was a little eerie to follow the story, as they were meeting at the Minneapolis Convention Center, where General Convention pulled the switch on Anglicanland's ongoing roller-coaster ride in 2003. I was there then, so I could picture the environment in my mind's eye. It is also eerie to read first reports of how the ELCA's decision is playing among those Lutherans who dissent from the majority position of their Churchwide Assembly. The refrains are all too familiar.

We are at an impasse. At certain levels, of course, the majority has spoken clearly and, as they say, "elections have consequences." But if we either zoom in or zoom out from either the Churhwide Assembly or the General Convention, the picture is murkier. One of the "consequences" of General Convention's "election" looks increasingly likely to be some degree of marginalization for the Episcopal Church in the councils of Anglicanism--the Archbishop's two-tier/two-track scenario--and an attendant effort by the minority within TEC to remain in Tier/Track One even while the church as a whole is consigned to Tier/Track Two. These consquences may strike many as abstract, far-removed and slow-moving. But they are quite real, and their effects at the level of "here and now" are already being felt. Communities of Christians--Episcopalians--who have an investment in one another--a history together, networks of deep friendships, shared joys and sorrows, godparents to one another's children--find themselves riven, on opposite sides of the Great Divide. They don't have the luxury, in any sense--nor, frankly, the desire, the stomach for it--of going separate ways. Yet, convictions are held very deeply, and whatever capacity there may once have been for pretending that the differences don't exist is evaporating very quickly.

To complicate matters even further, there is another dimension of disagreement that cuts obliquely and jaggedly across the scene. Is the Issue at Hand--i.e. the place of same-sex relationships in the discipline and sacramental life of the Church--an appropriate "ditch" in which to "die"? This is not a liberal-conservative split, but a question that divides liberals from liberals and conservatives from conservatives. We have seen this so far most clearly and painfully among conservatives ("reasserters," to use Kendall Harmon's helpful taxonomy). The Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) is filled with reasserters who answer the "ditch" question in the affirmative; anyone who advocates for anything other than heterosexual marriage as an acceptable ethical context for sexual activity has stepped out of bounds, and there is no imperative to remain in communion with such people. The Communion Partners (bishops and rectors) represent those reasserters who do not believe it is necessarily a church-dividng issue, and who thus seek to stay in relationship (albeit a differentiated one) with the Episcopal Church, fully within the structure of its constitution and canons.

But the self-styled "progressives" ("reappraisers" in Harmon's parlance), are not immune from this dimension of the conflict. There are those within dioceses and/or parishes that tilt in a reasserter direction who are immensely troubled, and who wonder whether they are providing "aid and comfort to the enemy"--cooperating with the purveyors of injustice and bigotry--by their mere continued presence and participation in ministry and mission. Some have withdrawn altogether; others have pulled back from positions of leadership. Still other reppraisers who are at odds with their parochial and diocesan contexts have found themselves able to "suck it up and soldier on," believing that there is still more that unites us than there is that divides us.

Of course, both reasserters who remain in TEC and reappraisers who remain in cooperative relationships with reasserting leaders do so at the cost of some credibility among those with whom they are in fundamental agreement on The Issue.

So we are at an impasse. How then shall we live?

I suppose I have to acknowledge at the outset that any answers I might propose to this question are addressed only to those on either side of the Great Divide who have decided that it is neither necessary nor desirable to unchurch (or unchurch themselves from) those with whom they disagree. I'm not going to argue that prior question here. I'm speaking to that set of Episcopalians who want to keep the bridges in good repair even in the midst of our profound disagreements over issues that skirt perilously close to the boundary between adiaphora ("matter indifferent") and core doctrine.

No one likes to be at an impasse. But the first step in the direction of getting us out of this undesirable place is counterintuitive, and that is to accept it; indeed, to make friends with it, to learn to see this time of tension as a channel of grace. This means, of course, laying aside any expectation of persuading "them" to accept "our" correct point of view. Reappraisers tend to assume that time and momentum are on their side, and that if they're just patient, reasserters will quit reasserting what is demonstrably false and "come around" in due course. This attitude is, as a British diplomat might say, "unhelpful." But so any corresponding expectation among reasserters that any honest and thorough appraisal of scriptural and theological evidence can only lead to a conclusion that affirms the traditional understanding of sexual morality, and that we should therefore drop the question entirely. So I'm not suggesting that we should stop the converssation about sexuality; quite the opposite, we should keep talking. But "progress in negotiations" should not be an implicit condition for continued sacramental and ecclesial communion.

Thinking at the same time more tactically and more spiritually (ascetically?), I’m increasingly aware of our need to cultivate the habit of mutual generosity. This means, among other things, bending over backwards to give one another the benefit of the doubt as to motives and intentions, to resolve to jump to the best possible conclusion about another’s words and actions, rather than the worst. It means forgiving our brother or sister, not seven times, but, per Jesus, seventy times seven. It means learning to ask ourselves what in our “opponent’s” position we can learn from? How are they are gift to the whole? How are we all richer and more blessed because they and their views are among us? How are we challenged and called to stretch?

The key to this attitude of generosity is that it is indeed mutual—reciprocal, working both ways. It can’t just be something that we expect “them” to do. Times of conflict can turn into great opportunities for growth—indeed, times of blessing—if we can abandon a Win-Lose mentality. For what it’s worth, I am persuaded that, generations from now, neither “side” in the present conflict over sexuality will be proven “right.” Rather, I suspect that both sides will have been shown to be wrong. What our descendants will recognize as “right” will probably be something we are not now imagining. If we are who we say we are as the Church of Jesus Christ, and if the Gospel is what we believe it to be, we will persevere in humble generosity in anticipation of that day.

If I Were a Software Engineer

2009-08-11T21:37:00.003-04:00

Twenty years ago I was still getting settled into my new digs as curate and school chaplain at St Luke's, Baton Rouge. I had a computer at home, the one that had gotten me through seminary. (It was an original IMB PC, with dual 5.25" floppy drives. WordPerfect was the only software I ever ran.) If I needed to use a computer while on church premises, I had to make nice with the office staff and use one of theirs when they were away for something. My personal organizational tools consisted of a Rolodex, a pocket liturgical calendar, a small desk calendar (I "synced" the two manually), and a pad of sheets labeled "Dumb things I gotta do," or some such. The internet was still at least five years away from being on the common persons's horizon.

Some four years later, by then in my second cure, a small parish across town from St Luke's, I stepped up to the Franklin Planner, a marvelously integrated personal management system contained in one very solemn-looking ("Monarch" size) black leather seven-ring binder. Carrying that thing around (and feeling like I would need to open a vein should I ever lose it), I impressed even myself.

That held me for about the next eight years, but I eventually went paperless, all of a sudden, in 2001, with the purchase of my first laptop, which, when asked nicely, talked to my Palm Pilot PDA. And I have never looked back. As much as I loved my Franklin Planner, moving beyond it was a good decision for me.

So that's how I became addicted to Microsoft Outlook. It came automatically loaded on my Dell Inspiron laptop (running Windows 2000). For a while I used Franklin's (by that time Franklin Covey) proprietary software, but soon acquired F-C's Plan Plus for Outlook, an add-on that brings a more robust functionality to the process of task planning. (It does other things as well, but that's pretty much what I wanted it for.) This arrangement served me quite well for a number of years, and despite occasional techno-glitches with a succession of devices that succeeded the Palm Pilot, I was relatively techno-happy.

Then, two years ago, I moved to my present venue, where they had (and indeed still have) a fancy arrangement known as a Microsoft Exchange Server. Danger, Will Robinson: Unless you're part of a large organization that has an in-house IT staff, don't ever get a Microsoft Exchange Server. It's like the Borg: It will assimilate you. Resistance is futile. Outlook suddenly stopped playing nice with PlanPlus, even though I purchased and installed a series of upgrades, thinking, "Maybe they've finally worked out the bugs." Data would evaporate from my hard drive, only to turn up later somewhere on the server--or not, sometimes. Syncing became a nightmare of caprice, never working the same way twice. I almost bought a Mac--that's how bad it got!

Now, I am pleased to say, I am a recovering Outlook addict, with nearly two months of Outlook sobriety behind me. It's getting easier every day. Naturally, you are intensely curious as to how I actually have a life without Microsoft Outlook (and, for that matter, Microsoft Exchange). Well, here's how:

I've gone to Google Calendar for my calendar needs. In fact, the whole office has. Nobody uses Outlook. It's easy, it's free, and it does the job. Plus, I can access it on any computer in the world with an internet connection.

I made friends with Gmail's user interface. I've had a Gmail account for quite some time, but always found their interface a little off-putting, preferring to download my messages into client software ... like Outlook. (I had a brief flirtation with Thunderbird, but the Borg sucked me back in.) But a little tenacity has paid off, and Gmail's highly functional (and always improving) interface has won me over. I now prefer it to any client software that I've seen.

I exported my Outlook contacts into Gmail's contacts. Very easily done, and all my contact information is a click away from my inbox.

For task management, I signed up for a Nozbe account. It costs me $14/month, but I could chop that by 75% with a two-year commitment, and I expect I will do so very soon. Nozbe is based on the Getting Things Done method of task management. I should probably actually read the book, but a series of very helpful training videos takes the pressure off needing to do so. Nozbe has an iGoogle version that I have conveniently embedded on my iGoogle home page (which I use on the desktop computer at home).

I signed up for an account (free) with Evernote, and downloaded their desktop software. Evernote replaces the Notes function in Outlook, but is a great deal more robust in its features. I have only yet begun to explore its capabilities, and expect to be using it much more than I even am at present.

I bought an iPhone. Best technological decision I have ever made. It has been a quantum leap in the experience of personal management. I used to dread the thought of receiving email on my phone, since I have a difficult time managing one inbox, let alone two. But the syncing is seamless and in real time. When I "manage" my inbox in one place, it's taken care of in the other. The same goes, of course, for contacts and calendar. Nozbe and Evernote both have iPhone apps, so I'm able to capture ideas and tasks right when they come to me, literally anyplace except the shower (which is still a problem, since a lot of ideas come to me in the shower!).

So what do I miss about Outlook? Three things, really:

1) Outlook is pretty. The Office 2007 version, running on Vista, is really quite visually attractive. Google, for all its imaginative functionality, still hasn't come up with anything quite so aestheticallyt appealing.

2) Outlook's calendar features are almost infinitely flexible and adaptable. I miss being able to schedule a repeating task or event in virtually any way I can imagine, and being able to color-code different categories of events. I hope both Google and Nozbe begin to catch up in these areas.

3) Outlook is integrated. I admit, that appeals to me perhaps more in concept than in actual execution, but it's something I miss.

So ... if I were a software engineer, I would be going after the Holy Grail of personal management: An integrated one-stop application that is stunningly beautiful, feature-rich and customizable, with seamless syncing between its resident app, its web-based mirror, and its iPhone app--the best of all possible worlds. OK, all you wonks, get to work!