Interpreting Scripture

For reasons that are not entirely clear to me, I remain a subscriber--and an occasional (formerly frequent) poster--to the House of Bishops/Deputies listserv. (Bishops and recent Deputies may participate; others may watch as "kibitzers.") Today one of the Deputies--someone whose positions could fairly be characterized as "liberal" on the divisive questions of the day--asked for help in understanding the "traditionalist" approach to the following question: "How do you decide which parts of scripture (Hebrew and Christian) to follow and which no longer need to be followed?"

So I took the bait. Originally I intended it to be a private response, but eventually thought my contribution worth sharing, so I posted it to HoB/D, and do so here as well. Subsequently, another member of the listserv told me my answer was "too academic to preach." Oh, well. I hadn't intended it to be a sermon. And it is a little academic, I suppose. But it's an important question, and worth struggling with.


You have posed a fair and legitimate question. However, as you might guess, I have trouble accepting its premise-i.e. that some parts of scripture "still" need to be followed and some parts "no longer" need to be followed, and the question is deciding which parts belong in which category.

The way I look at it is like this: There's a tension between reading scripture as "one book" and reading it as "many books." Since the advent of critical methodology, most in the historic mainstream denominations have emphasized the latter, and we have lots of fun picking things apart, ranging from the "four source" theory of the Pentateuch more than a century ago to the Jesus Seminar in our own time. I really haven't got a problem with this. I find that the insights of critical scholarship often inform my preaching in very positive ways.

Reading the Bible as "many books" leads to judgment questions such as you pose. But we need to maintain the tension. The Bible is also "one book." There is a meta-narrative that runs like a golden thread from Genesis to Revelation. Moreover, both the "Bible-as-one-book" and the unifying meta-narrative are the property of the Church, the community of disciples throughout space and time. The Church, in turn, is a community of mutual accountability. Yes, tradition is dynamic and variegated. But I would submit that there is a discernible core, a center of gravity, in which a consistent and fruitful hermeneutic can be grounded. Different chronological eras and different geographical areas and different sub-strata of piety and spirituality all act as an organic system of checks and balances through which, I would suggest, the Holy Spirit guides the Church into all truth, including the true interpretation of scripture.

Interpreting scripture, then, becomes a matter of "thinking with the Church."

The Mystery of Prayer

I just got an eMail from a friend two-thirds of the way across the country. My friend said, "I remembered you in prayer at Mass." He said it so matter-of-factly that one might be tempted to think he was speaking of something quite trivial, when he was actually telling me something of astonishing significance. He was accessing an untellably powerful mystery, and doing so, somehow, on my behalf.

Some years ago, on a visit to the parish church from which I was launched to seminary many years before that, one of the older saints of that community (every parish has them, I think--usually they're women) told me, almost as casually as my friend's eMail, "I pray for you every day." Every day! I was stunned. I still am, because I don't doubt that she's still doing it.

"Such knowledge is too wonderful for me." (Psalm 139:6) And it would be quite too much to bear, actually, except for the knowledge that it is so not "all about me," but, rather, all about web into which I have been knit (see the Prayer Book collect for All Saints) by the love and grace of God.

I don't pretend to be able to define--or even remotely comprehend--what any of this means. I'm a board member of a fledgling organization in my city that aims to galvanize resources to address some of the weak spots in the social fabric, and do so in the name of Jesus. My colleagues on the board, save one (who is my parishioner!), are all Evangelicals of one stripe or another. They believe in both the necessity and the power of prayer, and, probably not completely realizing what they're doing, they've put me in charge of the Prayer Committee. Now, these are good people, and I truly honor their faith and their dedication. But one of the things I've already begun to challenge them on is their limited notion of what prayer even is. In their universe, it could pretty much be defined as "verbalizing requests to God." Yesterday I suggested that just being together intentionally in God's presence, even if completely silent, with no words to articulate any requests, fully qualifies as prayer. Nobody said I was nuts (well, they were in my conference room, so at least they were polite!), and there were even some "Aha!" expressions.

I don't know whether my friend who prayed for me at Mass tonight asked for anything specific on my behalf. But it doesn't matter to me. What matters is that he prayed for me. And the fact that he did it in the context of corporate eucharistic worship gives it a whole added dimension. And I rather doubt (even hope) that the saintly woman from my home parish is keeping tabs on whether her particular requests on my behalf are being "answered" or not. It is sufficiently humbling, and life-giving, to know that she holds me in her heart when she comes intentionally into the presence of the Holy One, and that, in her doing so, we are both participating in the redemption of the universe.

Feeling Blue

After the momentous convention vote last Saturday, during a break, I was speaking with a lay delegate from another parish, someone who has served both the diocese and the Episcopal Church long and well. She asked, "How can something that's the right thing to do make me feel so bad?" I immediately identified with her sentiment. After the vote was taken, but before the results were announced, I used "personal privilege" to exhort the convention to refrain from any demonstrations when the tallies were made public. Contrary to the report of a popular conservative blogger, the convention indulged me on that one, and I was grateful.

On Monday, I was interviewed by a reporter free-lancing for the Church Times (London). After covering factual matters, he asked me the question that always makes me cringe when I hear a reporter put it to someone else, "How does all of this make you feel?" My immediate response was, "It makes me feel very sad." It still does. I am more acutely aware than ever that I have made myself complicit in something that could turn out to be a huge mistake.

I am also more acutely aware than ever of the pernicious influence in my diocese of what I call "digital thinking," whereby everything is framed into an either/or disjunction. I know this is the digital age, but when it comes to thought processes, the old analog model has a lot to commend it, I think. We are ill-served by rhetoric that casts every Episcopalian as either "Jesus-loving scripture-affirming orthodox" or a "scripture-distorting heresy-spewing apostate." There are countless degrees of gradation between those extremes. To presume to know where the definitive line should be drawn is...well...presumptuous.

(Of course, we are equally ill-served by rhetoric from the left that casts all Episcopalians as either "peace-loving justice-affirming followers of Matthew 25" or "misogynistic homophobic neo-Puritans.")

So I'm singing the blues today. I find it impossible to be a single-minded partisan on any corner of this conflict. There's a piece of me everywhere. I'm quite literally disintegrated.

The Convention

Well, we did it. Here's the language of the new Article II of our diocesan constitution if it passes next year on a second reading:

The Diocese of San Joaquin is constituted by the Faith, Order, and Practice of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church as received by the Anglican Communion. The Diocese shall be a constituent member of the Anglican Communion and in full communion with the See of Canterbury.

I proposed an amendment that would have added the following material after "The Diocese of San Joaquin": ", in organic continuity with the ecclesial life of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America,". My intent was to enable us to lay claim to our heritage as Episcopalians, to not surrender that identity to the Church-of-General-Convention. I did not make my case persuasively enough. It was perceived, I think, as an attempt to weaken the main motion, a back door into being under the thumb once again of "the national church." Such is the level of ire and disgust against the enormities of General Convention, Executive Council, and '815,' that even acknowledging where we've come from was a non-starter. To my disappointment, my amendment was roundly defeated.

When it came time to debate the main motion, here is what I said:

"Right Reverend sir, I rise to speak in support of the motion that is presently before the convention, but I do so reluctantly, and with a heavy heart. I believe we are doing the right thing at the wrong time. The Episcopal Church is a sinking ship. The senior officers have run it into an iceberg. They are in denial about the extent of the damage, but there are plenty of junior crew members who realize that she has taken on water to a point that most probably cannot be reversed. Yet, big ships sink slowly. The engines have quit, but the power is still on, and many of the passengers are dancing the night away in the ballroom, or are peacefully asleep in their cabins. If the crew members, who are awake and alert and know the danger, abandon ship now, what will become of those innocent passengers? They will perish. Now, we can blame the officers on the bridge, who elected not to sound an alarm. Or we could assess the situation with clear eyes and realize that we have some time before the fateful moment when the bow rises into the air and the entire hulk sinks into the depths. And we could use that time to allow the passengers to see what danger they’re in, despite what they hear from the bridge. These are the very passengers that I believe our Lord Jesus looks on with compassion, because he sees them as harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. It is this Christ-like vision that I wish we had been able to see our way to embracing.

Nonetheless, even though it’s the wrong time, it is the right thing. The ship is going to sink. Rescue operations do need to be underway. I am open to discovering that God is calling the Diocese of San Joaquin to be in the forefront of that rescue effort. There are some very concrete signs I will need to see before I would vote next year to pull the trigger on all this. No one should interpret support now as a guarantee of support later. But we’ll have plenty of time to talk about that in due course. Thank-you."

I was not surprised that the amendment passed, but I was surprised by the margin. It carried by well more than three-quarters in the clergy order, and by
88% among the laity.

Also...for what it's worth...I was elected to the Standing Committee.

Realpolitik

I love the lexical flexibility of the German language. Compound nouns can pop out of nowhere as the need arises. (My favorites are heilsgeschicte, weltanschaung and gesamtkunstwerk.) At this present moment in my life, however, realpolitik is the most relevant. For whatever reason, I associate this term with the foreign policy stance of the Nixon administration under the guidance of Henry Kissinger. It denotes a pragmatic approach to complex issues and relationships, driven by what can happen--what will work--more than by what should happen. It is non-ideological. Whoever said "politics is the art of the possible" was thinking along the same lines.

During the next couple of days, I'm going to be engaged in some heavy-duty church politics, as the Diocese of San Joaquin gathers for its 47th annual convention. (It's really the 95th, I should think, since San Joaquin was spun off from the Diocese of California in 1911, but it was a Missionary District until, if my math is correct, 1959. My own parish of St John's in Stockton, founded in 1850, ante-dates both the dioceses of San Joaquin and California.) I'm running for Standing Committee, and the budget is a highly contentious issue. But the elephant in the living room, of course, is the proposed amendment to our diocesan constitution that intentionally neglects to make any reference to our being a diocese in union with the General Convention of the Episcopal Church. That's why we're going to have our proverbial fifteen minutes of fame this Saturday as the eyes of the Anglican world will be focused on the humble Eden Hall of the humble Cathedral Church of St James in the very humble city of Fresno, California--about 125 miles down the often humble California Highway 99 from where I live in Stockton. (What's the largest city in the country that is not situated on an Interstate highway? Yup, that would be Fresno.)

Whatever happens in the big vote on Saturday morning, it will not be ideal. This is hard for me to accept, because I am by nature an idealist. (It comes with my INTJ wiring.) For every waking moment, my default mode is to be driven by ideology. But there is no ideal outcome to what's in front of us as a diocese. It's a matter of finding the least problematic solution. It's a matter of finding what will work--for us, for who we are, for this time and this place. Not what should work. Not what might work in some other diocese. Our task is to find a very pragmatic way through our particular circumstances. Our task--my task--is to practice realpolitik.

If I were to vote my ideals on Saturday, I would vote against the proposed constitutional amendment. This is the wrong time for us to be considering this question, and if given the chance, I will say as much on the convention floor. But I'm not in control of events, and the fact is, now is when the matter is before us. So...what to do?

The Episcopal Church, I am convinced, is a sinking ship. It has taken on more water than can plausibly be pumped out. It's a "sunk ship floating." My assessment, though, is that it's sinking at a rather leisurely pace, and that it's not an unsafe place to be for another three years or so, when the General Convention of 2009 fails to opt in to the Anglican Covenant. However, the prevailing consensus in the Diocese of San Joaquin seems to be that the bow is going to rise into the air and the entire hulk plunge to the bottom of the sea any time now, and we'd best be gettin' off while the gettin's good. I don't believe that to be the case, but this is not a hill I feel compelled to die on. We are going to do what we're going to do. And if this is what we're going to do, then I want us to do it well. And doing it well means putting up as united a front as we can, because we are going to have God-only-knows what hurled at us before we've even left the cathedral parking lot on Saturday afternoon.

Realpolitik dictates that I vote 'aye' on the motion to amend the constitution of the Diocese of San Joaquin.

Outloud Thoughts

I feel like a character in the novel Perelandra, the second in C.S. Lewis' Space Trilogy. On that fictional planet, there is no firm ground. It all consists of floating islands, constantly rising and falling, making it difficult for one to keep one's footing.

When I was ordained a priest nearly seventeen years ago, I promised to (among other things) "take [my] share in the councils of the church." I didn't give it an inordinate amount of thought at the time. Of course I would go to conventions and councils and meetings and the like. It comes with the territory.

In time, I have more and more learned experientially what I would have known then theoretically, that participating in the councils of the church is more easily said than done. The work I did last summer at General Convention, serving on a hot-button committee that was constantly in the spotlight, was one of the most demanding and exhausting labors to which I have ever given myself. I have still not completely "processed" what went on there, and the meaning of my own share in it.

This coming weekend, the diocese in which I serve as part of the "college of presbyters"--an ancient expression that is worth recovering, with its image of wise "elders" standing alongside the bishop and together leading the people of God in discerning God's vision for His church--as I said, the Diocese of San Joaquin will be convening and considering what is arguably the most important question in our 95 year history; to wit: whether to take a large step in the direction of dissolving our formal relationship with the General Convention of the Episcopal Church. Some would contend that we are considering doing something that is quite outside our competence. We'll find out, I guess. In any case, we're not pulling the trigger this time around. That opportunity will come at next year's convention, at the second reading of the constitutional change that I expect we will pass on Saturday. So, for now, we're just taking the safety off and cocking the gun.

I have very mixed feelings about this. At one level it's terrifying and sobering beyond words. If we do this, we will be entering uncharted territory, and it's impossible to predict what the consequences will be, especially the unintended consequences. We will also be taking very real leave of some very real people who, while they may have done foolish things that irritate and annoy us no end, are also our friends--people with whom we have worked and prayed and laughed for years and years. This is sad. Sadder still is the fact that we will also be taking our leave of people who have not particularly irritated or annoyed us, and who have not necessarily done foolish things, but who, for various reasons, are not going to accompany us as we step out into the abyss. Anyone who is not brought up short by this fact isn't really thinking.

At the same time, the prospect of breaking free of the madness that has slowly but inexorably tightened its grip on the Episcopal Church for the past 35 years or so is bracing and irresistably attractive. As I have previously written in upstream posts, I believe a realignment of Anglicanism is taking place that will produce structures of interdependence and accountability across provincial lines such as we have not seen before, and which the General Convention will most likely opt not to be part of. So, this weekend, we will hasten the inevitable.

I have also made it clear that I see no necessity of doing what we're about to do at this time. I would have preferred to wait, and let events take a more natural and organic course, and in the end produce pretty much the same result, only with wider buy-in. I can still serve in the Episcopal Church with a clear conscience. Moreover, I am mortified by some of the rhetoric that has been used by many of my colleagues as they have argued for haste in this matter. I fear that we are using an axe for a job that requires a scalpel, casting a wide net when a rod and reel are called for. But even though it's the wrong time, it is the right thing. Strategically, we've passed the point of no return. To back off now would send precisely the wrong message, both to our friends and to our adversaries. God help us, and God save us.

My Annual "Holidays" Rant

The whole "Christ and culture" question (kudos to H. Richard Niebuhr, whose 1951 book by that name still frames the discussion) is complex and, for me, infinitely fascinating. This is the time of year when I feel the tension between the "Christ of culture" and "Christ against culture" models most acutely. They grind like tectonic plates.

In days of yore (aka my childhood), "Christmastime" didn't even think about beginning until at least the day after Thanksgiving, and even then rather slowly and gradually, reaching and sustaining a peak in mid-December, and hanging on until the first work/school day of the New Year. As I recall, my family-of-origin put up our Christmas tree around the second or third week of the month, and left it up until New Year's Day, which was a convenient time for taking it down. And nobody seemed to mind the word "Christmas." The vanguard of the political correctness movement admonished us to add "and Happy Hunukkah" after "Merry Christmas" in any generalized public seasonal greetings, which is all well and good, but the fact is, growing up in what were then mid-to-outer ring western suburbs of Chicago, I didn't know more than a handful of Jews, and as I later learned, Hunnukkah is a second or third tier Jewish festival that doesn't carry anywhere near the weight for Jews as Christmas carries for Christians.

Of course, there was a good deal of grousing and complaining about the "commercialization" and "secularization" of Christmas (symbolized by a disdain for "Merry Xmas" signs--ignorant disdain, it turns out, as 'X' is the Greek letter "chi" which is the first letter of "Christ"and therefore an ancient and accepted abbreviation with no secularizing undertones). Santa Claus, despite the fact that his cult is derived from that of an actual Christian saint, was the hapless icon of this commercialization and secularization.

Fast forward to the new millenium, and what passed for commercialization and secularization in those days of yore now seems to be veritably the practice of Christian religion, and Santa Claus, precisely because of his association with Saint Nicholas, is an integral part of that "religious Christmas" we have lost to "holiday trees" and "holiday carols" and "holiday parties" and "holiday gifts." "Happy Holidays" used to mean "both Christmas and New Year's"--or so I understood it. Now it means...well, what does it mean, actually? It includes Hunnukkah, of course, and, apparently, Kwanzaa. What else? Festivus, perhaps?

Retailers know what they're celebrating, I'm quite sure, but I don't know that very many others do. Most, I think, are celebrating celebration. It's an excuse to party. That's OK. Just don't be wishing me "Happy Holidays." I may not take it well.

But wait...there's more.

As a liturgical Christian, I'm swimming upstream in two channels at once. In my world, not only is it "Christmas" rather than "the holidays," it isn't even Christmas until...well...Christmas, or the eve thereof, at any rate. And then it continues--with trees still up and fully decorated--until January 6th, several days past the time when the "world" has settled into January humdrum. So while I'm dutifully frowning at retailers for their "holiday" muzak that begins around Hallowe'en, I'm also a sworn member (by virtue of ordination) of the Advent Police. (And, hey, Advent doesn't even begin for another week!) If the Advent Police were the sheriff's department in Mayberry, part of me would be Barney Fife wanting to ban red and green sweaters from church all during Advent, and decline all invitations to Christmas parties until after the 25th. But the other part of me would be Andy Taylor, who, as we know, never let his deputy carry a loaded weapon. So I'm pretty harmless. I control what I can--i.e. what happens inside St John's on Sunday mornings, and in my own home, to a limited extent--and roll with the rest. Some Valium would help, but I don't presently have a supply.

Happy C.S. Lewis Day

In the liturgical calendar of the Episcopal Church (of which--yes--I am still a member by virtue of being a presbyter of the Diocese of San Joaquin), today is the optional observance of the lesser feast of "Clive Staples Lewis, Apologist and Spiritual Writer (1963)." In Christian tradition, the obervance of a saint customarily takes place on the anniversary of that person's death, and this is the date in 1963 when Professor Lewis passed into the life to come at (what now seems to me) the tender age of 65. This photo is one I personally took of his gravestone (he and his brother are buried one on top of the other) in the churchyard at Holy Trinity, Headington Quarry Parish, Oxford.

Lewis is undoubtedly the Anglican who is best known in the non-Anglican world. (And possibly better respected by non-Anglicans than by his co-religionists.) Without a close second (though Martin Thornton is gaining ground), he is the single greatest human influence on my own theological and spiritual formation, and the energy behind the sort of pastoral care I so feebly attempt to deliver. So I'm exercising the "option" of keeping the feast today.

Blessed Clive, ora pro nobis.

Oh...yes...I'm still drowning.

I'm drowning...

...in command performances and diocesan drama--and command performances related to diocesan drama--at the moment, so I barely have time to wipe my nose, let along blog. Plus, most of what is consuming my attention I still don't want to air publicly. But, as our governator here in California says, "I'll be back!"

On Religious Epistemology

During my day off channel surfing, I ran across the film Happy Accidents (2000) on the Independent Film Channel. (Lest you think I just blew off two hours of my life with my posterior planted on a couch, think again: I did a full workout on my Bowflex Motivator, sorted mail, and prepared and ate my lunch while I took in the movie.) Yeah, it's a chick flick (can something billed as a "romantic comedy" be anything else?), but since it had a science fiction angle to it, and being amply secure in my sexual identity, I stayed with it.

The main characters are Sam (Vincent D'Onofrio, of whom I am a fan from his work on Law & Order: Criminal Intent) and Ruby (Marisa Tomei). They meet, there's an instant attraction, and things develop pretty much the way they always do in romantic comedies. Early on in the relationship, though, Sam announces to Ruby that he's actually a time traveller, visiting from the year 2470. Most of the plot development has to do with her vacillation in whether or not she should believe him. But since I am neither Siskel nor Ebert (a good thing, since one of them is dead, though I can ever remember which), I'm not going to go there. Given my larger interests, I want to take my cue from the incidental but significant role that religion plays in the script.

In one of her moments of exasperation with Sam, Ruby lifts her eyes in a direction that might be taken for "heavenward" and pleads sotto voce, "Help me! Help me!" But that can be accounted for as reflexive piety. The more interesting moment occurs when Ruby's therapist, trying to assist her in negotiating the relationship, casually inquires, "Is he at all religious?" The reply? "No, religion went out of fashion in 2033 when they discovered the gene that causes it." We'll see. There's a plausible chance I might still be alive in 2033. Fortunately, I'll be retired, so if religion goes out of favor, I won't suffer materially!

This may have been a throwaway line by the scriptwriter, but here's why I think it's telling: Ruby's not the only one wondering whether Sam is telling the truth about being a time traveller; the viewer shares that curiosity with her, but is probably a good bit less skeptical. This is the way it is with any science fiction story. It is much easier for us to suspend disbelief when we're watching events unfold in a world we don't actually live in. As viewers, we are conditioned to want what we "know" cannot be true to actually turn out to be true. We root for the weirdo as he does battle with the skeptics, even though we would be one of those skeptics if we encountered the same sort of weirdo. So, is Sam diagnosable? A charlatan? Or is he, in fact, a time traveller?

Now, speaking from within the universe of the story, if he's nuts, or an itentional liar, his comment about religion disappearing after 2033 is of no relevance. But if it turns out that Sam is telling the truth about time travel, then what he says about religion is automatically equally true. A "religion gene," huh? Maybe Richard Dawkins is on to something in his latest diatribe against belief in God. What if, in 2033, some research scientist indeed does isolate and identify a gene that predisposes one to believe in God? Would that drive a stake into the heart of the notion of revealed religion, and the whole concept of faith? (Actually, it sounds like a Calvinist dream-come-true, but that's a ball for somebody else to run with.)

This raises the theological/philosphical issue knowns as "the god of the gaps." A study of human history could easily lead one to theorize that we and our ancestors have employed God as a sort of algebraic 'x' factor. When there's a "gap" between what we observe (the volcano on our island erupts from time to time) and what we can explain (we have no idea why the volcano actually erupts), we plug a god or gods into that gap (time to sacrifice a virgin so the gods will make the volcano stop erupting). This technique worked splendidly as long as human experience was full of "gaps." But since the practical empiricism of Copernicus, Newton et al and the later philosophical empiricism of Locke, Hume et al, the number of "gaps" is shrinking, and such ones as remain are getting smaller by the day. I can remember being scandalized in the early 1970s when psychologist B.F. Skinner lectured on my college campus after having just published Beyond Freedom and Dignity, in which he contented that all human behavior can be accounted for as the effect of a huge sum of electro-chemical reactions in our brains and other tissues.

So, what if the last "gap" is finally closed...say, in 2033? Will the jig be up? Will all religion be exposed as an archaic hypothesis?

I have what I believe are plausible answers to these questions, but I'm in an interactive mood as I write. So I'm going to make that portion of the blogsphere that happens upon this corner of cyberspace weigh in first. I'll share my thoughts, but it will take a little prompting. Not much, but some. And I'm especially curious how others might respond to this problem.

On the Due Observance of Sunday

I need to remind myself more frequently what a privilege it is to celebrate Sunday--the Lord's Day--as a parish priest. It's exhausting, particularly when there are add-ons, like a deanery pre-convention meeting in the afternoon. I'm worn out at the end of the day; my introversion is taxed to the max. All I really want to do in the evening is veg out in front of the television. There is invariably someone who says something that causes me to doubt myself, or the effectiveness of my ministry. And at the principal Mass, where nearly half the congregation is, for whatever reason, accustomed to walking in at any point after the Entrance Hymn and before the end of the sermon, I'm always anxious and depressed as that gradual process of pew infill takes place. Nowadays, of course, there is the tension emanating from how the larger Episcopal and Anglican world impacts our life together at St John's. My diocese (San Joaquin) faces a monumental decision in three weeks time--arguably the most important decision in our 95-year history. And we're in the holy season of Stewardshiptide, so there's a certain amount of anxiety over how the Anglican angst might affect our finances locally.

But, my God (and I mean that literally in this case), what a joy it is! What an unspeakable privilege. From Evening Prayer on Saturday night through the last coffee hour on Sunday in the early afternoon, I can't imagine anything else I'd rather be doing. I feel connected with who I am and what I'm called to be like at no other time. How did I get to be so lucky? We have evolved a liturgical ethos at St John's that consistently speaks to my soul and makes my heart sing. I know it does the same for others as well. Do I wish more were sharing in the fun? Absolutely! But I can't remember the last time we had a "dud" Sunday. Every week, my heart is overflowing with gratitude at the conclusion of the final liturgy. I feel surrounded by the beauty of holiness.

And it isn't just the beautiful surroundings of St John's. It's the beauty of the people. Yeah, we come in all shapes, sizes, colors, and personalities. But when they're stretching out their hands at the communion rail (into the courts of Heaven, as I am wont to teach them), they're all beautiful to me. I am privileged to have been let into their lives in varying degrees, and as I press the Body of Christ into their hands, it is a precious moment of insight into the mystery of how the brokenness of our lives, when made available to God in Christ, can become the very tools by which God reweaves the fabric of His fallen creation. In giving out the Bread of Heaven, I am watching redemption happen before my eyes. Can it get any better than that?

I'm Feeling Special

Whatever.

Actually I'm feeling "different":

• Most of the candidates I voted for in this week's election lost. Most of the ballot measures I voted for lost, and most of the ones I voted against won. No news here, though; it almost always comes out that way.
  
• A particular variety of nutrition bars I've gotten very attached to is no longer being stocked by the only store I know that carries the brand. "They weren't selling well enough," I was told. They're willing to special order them for me. But that's a pain.
• Every time I want to use CD-burning software for one of my apparently esoteric purposes, I wrestle with the assumption that whatever I'm working with must be a "song." I don't work with downloaded music to begin with, but even if I did, the sort of music that I listen to doesn't present itself as "songs."
  
• Along the same lines ... while the bazillion music channels I can get on my satellite TV dish are categorized into different sub-genres of Country, Rock, Hip-Hop, etc., my CD collection is broken down into Organ, Piano, Choral (the biggest section, with an entire sub-genre for Evensong), Concertos, other Orchestral, other Vocal (my scant collection of Opera is here), Christmas, and--the smallest category--Non-Classical (mostly Jazz).
• I'm left-handed.
• While my gastronomical repertoire has expanded considerably from what it was in my youth, I could probably still be considered a "picky eater." (No fruits, no cream sauces, no salads, very few vegetables.) When we accept a dinner invitation, my wife either has to have a discreet conversation with the host(ess) in advance, or worry that she hasn't.
• I'm foreign-born. Technically, I guess, that makes me an immigrant, even though I was born a U.S. citizen, since my mother is American.
• I'm a Cubs fan for life, though I haven't lived in the Chicago area since the early '70s. When I reveal this bit of personal information to my neighbors in the four other states I have lived in since then, I get lots of sympathetic smiles--verbal pats on the head--but very few know what it feels like. I fantasize about moving back to Chicago and just fitting in, wearing my Cubs hat without getting a second look.

I'm sure there's some profound point to be made here, but it hasn't been revealed to me yet! I've gotten used to being "different," and I don't need to tell myself I'm really "special" to help me deal with it. In truth, I suspect I'm probably not all that "special" anyway. I suspect that most every person around me has the same sense of being "different," of not quite fitting in. Just the details are different. This is a sign of the universal human experience of alienation. The older I get, the more aware I am of how so many of the ways people behave--ways that we would consider normal and healthy, and ways that we would consider pathological and dysfunctional--represent an attempt to transcend that experience, to connect in some way with something larger than oneself. Is this not the fundamental human angst?

peaceandjustice

For nearly the last five years, I have been a fairly frequent poster on the House of Bishops/Deputies listserv (HoBD--sometimes pronounced "hobdee"). I suspect that my involvement there is pretty much behind me now; times have changed. But I continue on my quest for what some have termed the "alpha issue"--that is, the single criterion that can reliably sort those who are (at least) generally happy about the direction the Episcopal Church has been moving ("liberals") from those who are (at least) generally unhappy about it ("conservatives"). For instance, a little over a year ago, there was a long thread about the various sorts of disabilities people can be born with or later acquire, and whether they should be considered tragic, or unfortunate, or in any way signs of the presence of evil in the world. To my fascination, that question, which would not seem to be tied in any way to the controversey over sexuality, was a dead-on accurate reflection of the liberal-conservative divide. Liberals saw disabilities, whether congenital or the result of illness or accident, as God-given, and therefore considered it poor form to assume that a blind person would rather be sighted or a deaf person would rather hear. On the other hand, conservatives saw disabilities as signs of the Fall, conditions that can be presumed to be within the heart of God to heal.

All the attention recently being paid to the investiture of the 26th Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, and the interviews she has given and the statements she has made, have reminded me of my quest for the alpha issue. I don't think I've found it yet, but I have another candidate, a clash of paradigms that enfleshes the chasm that first world Anglicans stare at each other across.

An autobiographical tidbit would be in order here. I am not a cradle Episcopalian. I was raised in an affirmatively Christian home, but it was of an evangelical Protestant variety. While I am hugely grateful for my early Christian formation, it did tend to inculcate a hyper-individualistic perception. We were concerned with how "I" get saved and you "you" can get saved, but there was very little "we" in the mix. Moreover, salvation had an exclusively other-wordly connotation. This present world was pretty much something to be endured on the way to Heaven. By the time I was in high school (mid-to-late 1960s), the evil of racism began to appear on our church radar screen, as did the moral imperative of benevolent engagement with the victims of urban poverty. For the most part, though, passion for social issues (whether liberal or conservative--remember, my evangelical days pre-date the "Christian right") is not in my genes. I have to work at it.

Consequently, my life as an Episcopalian--working on three-and-half decades--has alway been marked by constant chagrin over the public policy resolutions passed by General Convention. It's not only that I disagree with the vast majority of them on the basis of their actual content, which I do. It's that I am opposed to any public policy resolutions as a matter of principle.

There are two reasons they bother me. First, it seems to me that there are precious few concrete political issues about which Christians of good will and an informed conscience cannot legitimately disagree. For church conventions to pass resolutions about such issues creates winners and losers. It fosters resentment, embarrassment, and cynicism on the part of those whose consicentiously held and not inherently unchristian political views are officially trashed by the church they are attempting to joyfully serve.

Second, and more profoundly, such resolutions bespeak a fundamental attitude that I believe is flawed at the core, and this is where the new Presiding Bishop's public comments both make my blood run cold and clarify things for all of us. She speaks of trying to create "God's realm" and helping bring about "God's dream," and then proceeds to describe "God's realm" (formerly known as God's Kingdom) as a world where everybody has adequate food, clothing, education, and freedom from violence. One is tempted to add, "with liberty and justice for all." It's the old nineteenth century Social Gospel dusted off and propped up--you know, the gleaming vision that died a slow death in the trenches of World War I, the one where it's up to us to "usher in the kingdom," to "build Jerusalem" amid the "dark satanic mills" (per William Blake) of industrial and now post-industrial society.

This is, in my ever so humble opinion, a dangerous attitude, at least if one is purporting to speak for any branch or brand-name of Christianity. The scriptures make it clear that the vocation of the Church is to announce the kingdom ("Aslan is on the move") and to model the kingdom ("look at us for a sneak preview of coming attractions"), but that making the kingdom happen is God's work, subject to God's timing and God's methods. There are parables all over the gospels about how the kingdom of God is like something that just happens, with little or no human initiative or involvement.

In this dangerous way of thinking, there is little attention paid to the paschal mystery, the kerygma, because there's no need for it. This is why the classic notions of redemption and discipleship were so lacking from the Presiding Bishop's investiture sermon. The onus is on us, the Church, to "produce" the "realm of God," and to the extent that we fail to do so, our worship, teaching, evangelistic efforts, and the like, are of no avail. They are means to an end, and the end has not been produced.

Ultimately--and this may be my evangelical roots showing--the vision articulated by Bishop Katharine is not only misleading, but terminally boring. There is nothing in it that raises my pulse or makes me want to sing. A yawn is about all I can muster.

Primatial Inadequacy

Today Katharine Jefferts Schori begins her nine year term as Presiding Bishop and Primate of the Episcopal Church. In the corner of the church that I inhabit, this is not greeted as a happy event. The discontent transcends the current presenting problem of how the church should incorporate the faith and the gifts of gay and lesbian Christians into its life. It's bigger than that. Some among my acquaintance go so far as to assert that she ought not to even be considered a Christian.

In the days following her election in June, I defended Bishop Katharine (as I understand she enjoys being addressed) with respect to her use of "mother Jesus" language in her General Convention sermon. (She was drawing from a well that lies clearly within the tradition of Anglican spirituality, though it was a pastoral and strategic faux pas on her part to use it then.) So I've tried hard to believe the best about her, to give her the benefit of the doubt. Yeah, she's a liberal who's all about the agenda of (so-called) "full inclusion." But "not a Christian"? Surely my friends are being a little intemperate.

Well, my friends have also been a little worked up about some comments she made to Time magazine later in the summer, in which, responding to a question about the putative exclusivist claims of Christianity, she said something like, "For those who follow the Christian tradition, we know Jesus to be our vehicle to the divine." But, presumably, God makes other arrangements for those who do not follow the Christian tradition. Troubling. But maybe the interviewer and the interviewer's editor didn't give her ample opportunity to explain and elucidate.

So I was excited when, yesterday, on the eve of assuming office, the Presiding Bishop's interview with public radio journalist Robin Young was made public in both audio and transcript versions. I tuned in to the audio, and then read the transcript. Lucky for me, Ms Young honed right in on the same question that the Time reporter had posed: Is Jesus the only way to God?
Now, for myself, I think I have somewhat generous views on the subject. I do not agree with those Christians who insist that any human being anywhere who lives and dies without ever having said something like "the sinner's prayer," or been validly baptized (depending on what brand of fundamentalism one embraces), is condemned to eternal separation from God and all that it means to be human. Without compromising the truth that all salvation is through Christ, I don't think I'm straying too far off the reservation in thinking that God is capable of saving someone "through Christ" who may not be aware that he or she is being saved "through Christ." It's relatively easy for me to be a Christian. I had the good fortune to be born into a culture that, while no longer overtly Christian, is at least thoroughly marinated in Christianity. Why should that accident of birth give me an advantage over someone born in Mongolia or Uzbekistan or Borneo or the Amazon basin? Perhaps, I thought, Bishop Katharine's views are not all that different from my own. So I was all ears.

Here's what she said:

Christians understand that Jesus is the route to God. Umm– that is not to say that Muslims, or Sikhs, or Jains, come to God in a radically different way. They come to God through human experience.. through human experience of the divine. Christians talk about that in terms of Jesus.

Uh, what? Kind of opaque. Kind of evasive. Definitely not clear. Maybe she wasn't far enough into her cup of coffee. Appaently, Robin Young thought the same thing, because she just asked the question again:

RY: So you're saying there are other ways to God.

KJS: Uhh... human communities have always searched for relationship that which is beyond them.. with the ultimate.. with the divine. For Christians, we say that our route to God is through Jesus. Uhh.. uh..that doesn't mean that a Hindu.. uh.. doesn't experience God except through Jesus. It-it-it says that Hindus and people of other faith traditions approach God through their.. own cultural contexts; they relate to God, they experience God in human relationships, as well as ones that transcend human relationships; and Christians would say those are our experiences of Jesus; of God through the experience of Jesus.

RY: It sounds like you're saying it's a parallel reality, but in another culture and language.

KJS: I think that's accurate.. I think that's accurate.

Well, there we have it. Parallel reality. That goes way beyond the sort of speculative generosity that I indulge in. It goes against, among other things, the very liturgy of the church over which Bishop Katharine now presides. Look at the fourth of the five Solemn Collects in the Liturgy of Good Friday (BCP, p.279). Here are the opening biddings:

Let us pray for all who have not received the Gospel of Christ;
For those who have never heard the word of salvation
For those who have lost their faith
For those hardened by sin or indifference
For the contemptuous and the scornful
For those who are enemies of the cross of Christ and
persecutors of his disciples
For those who in the name of Christ have persecuted others
That God will open their hearts to the truth, and lead them to
faith and obedience.

Merciful God, creator of all the peoples of the earth and lover of souls: Have compassion on all who do not know you as you are revealed in your Son Jesus Christ; let your Gospel be preached with grace and power to those who have not heard it; turn the hearts of those who resist it; and bring home to your fold those who have gone astray; that there may be one flock under one shepherd, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

I can't imagine that there could be a more arresting contrast between the Presiding Bishop's response to Robin Young's softball questions and the clear teaching of the Episcopal Church as enshrined in the Book of Common Prayer. And I haven't even opened a Bible yet. Don't even need to. I am particularly troubled by the Bishop's assent to the interviewer's characterization of her position that other religions are "parallel" routes to God for those of "another culture and language." This is not only a theological train wreck (the Church being "catholic"--i.e. universal--and all), it's elitist and racist. What language or cultural vocabulary does one have to be fluent in in order to qualify to be a Christian?

I'm enough of a Catholic in my theology to affirm the baptismal identity of Katharine Jefferts Schori. So I don't go along with those who say she's not a Christian. But it's a distinction with nary a difference. She is manifestly not qualified to be a teacher of the Christian faith. She is not qualified to be the Primate of a Christian church. This is sad.

Happy All Hallows Even

The youth of my parish had a Hallowe'en party yesterday and one of them apparently saw fit to immortalize the visage of her rector in the medium of a sculpted pumpkin. Well, not "immortalize" exactly; the pumpkin will rot, as indeed will I, though, I hope, somewhat later.

I am barely even an amateur psychologist. I know enough to be dangerous. (I know what you're thinking: "Is he any better a psychologist than he is a statistician?") And while I don't uncritically accept everything Carl Jung ever wrote, he is something of a taproot for me. And in that vein, my concern-that-is-not-quite-anxiety over sharing a fate with the carved pumpkin that represents me gets to the spiritual heart of Hallowe'en. Tomorrow is All Saints' Day (All Hallows)--a luminous feast in which the Christian family celebrates its essential unity across not only space but also across time, and therefore also across the exquisitely thin membrane that separates this world from the world to come. I've long thought that Thornton Wilder's play Our Town offers a wonderful insight into the mystery of the creedal affirmation of "the communion of saints." (In the era of my own youth, at least, this was produced by virutally every high school drama department approximately every four years.) During the course of the action, characters die, and move to the village graveyard, which consists of a couple of rows of chairs on one end of the stage. There the deceased are not silent, however; they observe and comment on what's happening at the center of the stage. There's a divide, but it's a porous divide. Everybody is on the same stage, part of the same story.

All Hallows' Eve is the Jungian dark side of the light-filled feast of All Saints. Tonight we confront our uneasiness about the fact of our mortality, not yet with the triumphant assurance that we have been "knit together in one communion and fellowship" (Book of Common Prayer, Collect for All Saints), but by mocking, trivializing--in street vernacular, "disrespecting"--the powers by which we feel threatened. We thumb our noses at death and decay by dressing up in it and making it the subject of a burlesque. I would suspect that the genre of horror movies, which have been inescapble to channel surfers for about the last month, and which will mercifully go away after tonight (I don't like them), is an attempt to do the same thing.

Now, I realize that there are some Christians who in recent years have worked up a lather trying to trash Hallowe'en as nothing more than a pagan holiday. Well, yes, there was a northern European pre-Christian observance that had some of the themes we associate with Hallowe'en. But I would suggest that those who carry such concerns might consider doing three things: 1) learn about All Saints' day and the doctrine of the communion of saints, 2) read some Jung, and 3) stop celebrating Christmas, at least on December 25th, because it too is linked to a pagan celebration.

Anecdotal Taxonomy

What follows is not in any way scientific. I have no training in the science of statistics anyway. I’m not sure it can even be called an educated guess. But it’s more than just a shot in the dark. It’s an estimate based on a lot of anecdotal experience. I “get around” some in the Episcopal Church.

On the “far left”—there are certainly some Episcopalians who would have to cross their fingers in a big way to say the creed. They are not at all committed to traditional theological categories and language about such things as Incarnation, Atonement, Resurrection, or even the personal nature of God. They believe Jesus was the proverbial “great moral teacher” who “shows us how to live.” One honestly wonders (at least I honestly wonder) why such persons even call themselves Christians, let alone Episcopalians. The retired Bishop of Newark, John Shelby Spong, would be the poster boy for this category of Episcopalians. My guesstimate is that they represent 2%-4% of the clergy and maybe somewhere in excess of 5% of the laity, especially in the major urban dioceses.

Slightly to the right of this group is a class of Episcopalians who cross their fingers while saying the creed, but only loosely. They would affirm much of the language of traditional Christian theology, but substantially qualify their assent to the concepts themselves. They believe in some sort of personal God, and that Jesus is somehow an expression of that God, and that the world would be a better place if more people shared those beliefs. They are attached to the liturgical and sacramental ethos of traditional Christian practice, even while rejecting (or at least benignly neglecting) the underlying theology. Many of them are immensely faithful in worship and active in their parishes. Markus Borg and the Jesus Seminar would be the poster children for this group. My intuitive guess is that around 15%-20% of the clergy and a roughly equal percentage of laity fall into this category. However, they are collectively “louder” than many others, and, hence, it seems like there are more of them than there actually are.

Moving in the same direction, we next have a category of Episcopalians who can recite the creeds with a fair amount of integrity, and would certainly have a self-perception as “orthodox,” in that, by and large, they would wish to retain the language and categories that arose from the great Christological and Trinitarian debates of the third through fifth centuries. So they are not overly antagonistic to the Prayer Book—in fact, they have made something of a shibboleth of the “Baptismal Covenant”—and may profess genuine fondness for some very traditional elements of Christian spiritual practice (the Daily Office, spiritual direction, meditative prayer, for example), though most of them would want to delete, or at least significantly dilute—masculine pronouns about God, and other terms they consider loaded (Lord, Kingdom). They understand both theology and mission in largely social terms, as if everything the church does, in order to be authentic, must be ordered toward the unified objective of “peaceandjustice.” Ironically, while they observe institutional authority quite strictly much of the time, they have the capacity to sit very loosely to what might be called “meta-authority” in the church (like scripture and organic tradition). Both the Presiding Bishop and the Presiding Bishop-elect could stand as representative symbols of this group. I would suspect that something in the neighborhood of 50% of the clergy could be included in this category; it represents the paradigm that has been engendered in most of our seminaries for a number of decades now. However—and this might be the actual big story in my non-scientific analysis—I believe that only about half this percentage of laity fit such a description. There is a huge discrepancy here between the ordained leadership of the Episcopal Church and those entrusted to their pastoral care.

Sidebar: Without a doubt, virtually 100% of those in the above-defined groups would be at least conceptually supportive of the church providing blessing rites for same-sex relationships and removing any restriction on ordaining persons involved in such relationships, although some (less than a third, I would say) might be open to exercising restraint in those areas for the purposes of maintaining ecclesial communion.

Next we have a category that is diverse within itself—comprehending elements from both the Catholic and Evangelical (including the Charismatic) strains of Anglicanism—but is united in a transparent affirmation of both the language of the creeds and their underlying theology. The classical categories touching on human sin, the person and work of Christ, discipleship and growth in holiness make sense to them and energize their faith and practice. They are not “fundamentalist” in the popularly-accepted sense, in that they have a capacity for major-league scholarship and intellectual sophistication, and much of their theological expression can be quite irenic. While cautiously suspicious of modern biblical criticism, they do not dismiss its insights out of hand. They see themselves without affectation as the mainstream heirs of the Anglican tradition. Instead of a representative individual, I would suggest the periodical The Living Church as an appropriate emblem of this category. My intuitive guess is that nearly 30% of Episcopal clergy could be numbered here, but probably two-thirds of the lay membership, mirroring the discrepancy noted above. (Full disclosure note: I number myself in this category.)

Note: The great majority of Episcopalians in this last group would be opposed to the sort of blessings and ordinations that are favored by the other categories, though a relatively small number might believe that the subject is worthy of further exploration and discernment.

Finally, there is a small percentage of Episcopalians who might legitimately be labeled as fundamentalists. They would adopt an inerrantist view of scripture, believe in a literal six-day creation, and be adamantly hostile to the insights of modern biblical criticism. My sense is that this category might include 1% of the clergy and maybe 2% of the laity.

My point? We all need to be wary of using too wide a brush with which to paint our picture of the Episcopal Church. Simple (simplistic?) “two religions under one roof” analyses offer a certain appeal, but leave an awful lot un-accounted for.

Keeping First Things First

Somehow it seems like cheating for a blogger who's also a preacher to post a sermon. But I'm feeling a little naughty tonight--just a little, that is, so I'm only going to post the last four paragraphs. (Should you be so masochistic as to want to see the entire text, go to my parish website and follow the yellow brick road.)

But a setup is necessary: The gospel yesterday was from Mark 10, with the Zebedee boys asking Jesus if they can be his special go-to guys after the inauguration, the other ten pitching a fit, and Jesus setting them all down to say, "Whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all." And now we join my sermon in progress, as I come in for a landing:

In the economy of the Kingdom of God, time is too short and the mission of the Church is too important to give much slack at all to anyone’s ego, whether that ego is individual or collective. A stagnant church is full of egos that want stroking. A dying church is full of egos that get stroking. But a healthy church, a faithful church, is by necessity and definition also a servant church.

Thinking locally, as St John’s continues to live into the vocation that was embraced by our founders 156 years ago, we will know ourselves more and more to be a servant church. We will develop a collective heart for our neighbors—our weekday neighbors downtown, our 24/7 neighbors all over central Stockton, and our regional neighbors throughout San Joaquin
County. We will be so consumed by serving our neighbors that we will have little time for anxiety about mere institutional survival. The primary sign of our servant ministry today is that we are on the brink of closing the Budget Shop. Our reasons for doing so are sound, but the way we do it, and how we use the resource of that property, will speak volumes about our commitment to servanthood.

Thinking at a diocesan level, we will know ourselves to be a servant church, not by bathing indefinitely in the refined waters of our theological and moral orthodoxy, but by how we use the gifts that have been entrusted to us—including the gift of orthodoxy—for the furtherance of the larger Church’s mission. The decisions we make in this diocese, including and especially some decisions we will make in convention on the first weekend of December, will have a tangible impact not only on ourselves, but on other Episcopalians throughout the country and other Anglicans throughout the world. When the clergy and lay delegates assemble in Fresno six weeks from now, we will make faithful decisions only to the extent that we know ourselves to be a servant church.

Finally, thinking at the level of the worldwide Anglican Communion, to the extent that we pat ourselves on the back for our open-mindedness, good taste, and beautiful worship, and then retire to the wine and cheese reception, we will have betrayed our inheritance. Anglicanism, quite frankly, was conceived in sin and midwifed by political expediency. We have no abiding reason to remain permanently separate from either the mainstream of western Catholicism from which we diverged four and a half centuries ago, or from the evangelical movements, symbolized by Methodism, that diverged from us two and a half centuries ago. We have prided ourselves on being a “bridge” church. Right now, we have some gaps in our own living room that need to be bridged. Either we will claim the grace to bridge those gaps, or, I suspect, God will just bench us and send in replacement players. We will learn how to be a servant church or we will no longer be a church. My prayer is for the former, of course—that Anglicans will persist in our willingness to forego all preferences of our own, and grow a heart for the unity of the whole church, that we may serve God’s kingdom not by our pride, but by our willingness to become extinct for the greater glory of God and for the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church of Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory for ages of ages. Amen.

A Must Read for Anglicans

When I started blogging, I determined not to become too cannibalistic, and just pass on links to other blogs. To date, I have successfully resisted this temptation. So, forgive me, but, if you're an Episcopalian or any other sort of Anglican who is concerned about the ills that beset us, you will not want to miss this address by Bishop Jeffrey Steenson of the Diocese of the Rio Grande. It is the finest, most penetrating, and thoroughly Christian assessment of our situation I have yet read. If I could do cartwheels to get everyone to read it, I would.

The Manager is Fired, Long Live the Manager

The Chicago Cubs have introduced Lou Piniella as the latest designated Messiah. Indulging the fantasy that my opinion matters to anyone, I add my voice of welcome and best wishes as he acclimates himself to the friendly confines of beautiful Wrigley Field. I welcome him as one would welcome a sailor to the Bermuda Triangle. I welcome him as Saul welcomed David to do battle with Goliath. And if he brings a World Series title (what the heck...even a World Series appearance) to the north side of Chicago, I will invite him into my heart to stay. But I'm not getting my hopes up. I had hope for Leo Durocher. How long ago was it when he announced, "This is not a ninth place ballclub"? He was right. They finished tenth his first year.

Live-Blogging "Six Feet Under"

I tend to bring up the rear of the popular entertainment parade, one indication of which is that I don't have HBO. But Six Feet Under has now finished its premium cable life and is now available to the rest of us who have something more than basic cable. So I'm catching up...at this very moment...as I write.

I've already slipped into the "Hollywood doesn't understand religion" niche with respect to Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. I hadn't planned on diversifying, necessarily, but here it is, right in front of me. My interest was piqued anyway because, way back in a previous lifetime (aka the mid seventies, when I was a graduate student in music history), I worked part-time in a mortuary. And as a priest, of course, I have had a couple of hundred opportunities to interact professionally with the funeral industry. In a way, morticians are para-colleagues of mine.

Now, I don't go looking for reasons to play the curmudgeon. They just find me. In the episode before the one currently showing, David, one of the members of the mortuary-owning Fisher family, anounces that he is being considered as a "deacon" in his church. (We discover this when he explains to his gay lover why they won't be available to get together on Sunday.) Well, that's fine. I grew up Baptist, and deacons were the elected lay leaders of the congregation, the governing board. Very shortly thereafter, however, I'm hearing language that is familiar to my ears: "For David, chosen deacon in your church, let us pray to the Lord," to which a congregation responds, "Lord, hear our prayer." Then follow the next several petitions from the Litany for Ordinations, right out of the Book of Common Prayer. There's a clergyman, vested in alb and purple stole, presiding over a congregation gathered in a large gothic structure. (Later we learn that it's called St Bartholomew's.) And there's David. Is he kneeling, wearing an alb, with a bishop somewhere in the picture? No, he's wearing a business suit, standing next to the clergyman, looking quite beatific.

Obviously, the script writers have chosen to combine the ecclesial and liturgical trappings of the diaconate as it is understood by churches in the Catholic tradition with the function of the diaconate as it is understood by churches of the left-wing Reformation tradition. That's their prerogative, I guess. It's their show. I'm not the dispenser of artistic license, and if I were, I don't think I would be particularly stingy. But it bothers me. It's like when the secular news media mess up on their coverage of religion (which, as far as I can tell, is most of the time). It makes me distrust them when they talk about things of which I am truly ignorant. If the writers and producers of Six Feet Under can't find a way to just pick a church for the Fishers--any church, it doesn't matter--and represent that church accurately and without affectation, what makes me think they can represent, say, the funeral industry, or teenage girls, or middle-aged widows, or not-quite-completely-out gay men, or single straight men who have just moved from Seattle to Los Angeles?

Oh wow...a chance for a live update. Now watching the beginning of the episode I came in during the middle of. David meets the clergyman on the steps of St Bartholomew's and addresses him as "Father." Then Fr Jack, right there on the church steps after a Sunday service, casually mentions that he would be happy to recommend David (who just told him, apparently falsely, that he's been attending another church--St Stephen's in the west valley--for the last several weeks) to the Bishop for consideration as a deacon, since, after all, his late father was one. Makes sense to me. Later, Fr Jack takes David to meet a purple-shirted bishop in an Anglican "dog collar." The bishop promises to let David know of his decision in a week. (I know several aspirants to the diaconate who would like that bishop's address and phone number.) Do you see my point? Most of the outward signs suggest that Fr Jack and the Fishers are Episcopalian. But it's a kind of Episcopalian bad dream.

Even more troubling, of course, is the fact that none of the members of the church-going Fisher family seem to integrate their religious practice--let alone actual faith--into their lives away from church. In this they are certainly not unique, even in the real world (quoth the jaded pastor). But between the four of them, only David's brother Nate confesses any actual faith in God, and then only in a vague "force," something quite a few degrees removed from the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Lord, have mercy.

It's All About Ecclesiology, Stupid

I’m not actually trying to insult anyone with that title. Just trying to get some mileage from the mantra that some say got Bill Clinton elected president in 1992.

(Note to non-Anglicans: There’s going to be some inside jargon in this post. My apologies. Please deal with it as best you can. If you’re insanely curious, contact me privately and I’ll ‘splain things to you. Or you can just take a pass until I next step into my media critic persona.)

Some of my best friends are Evangelicals. (I use the upper-case ‘E’ to denote both the amorphous genre of what might also be called “orthodox Protestants” and also the more definable “party” within the Anglican stream, and to distinguish both from “evangelicals” in the pure semantic sense—i.e. anyone who proclaims good news.) I was raised in that subculture (just a few miles from Wheaton, Illinois, which used to be the center of the Evangelical universe before it moved to Colorado Springs some years ago). Purebred Anglican Evangelicals have been a bit of a rare species in United States for about the last 150 years, but I do know a few, including one presbyteral colleague here in my diocese (San Joaquin) who hails from New Zealand, and with whom—amid our good-natured sparring over theological and liturgical minutia—I have a relationship of great affection and esteem. We’re together on the core issues of Christian faith and discipleship.

It’s no secret that if Evangelicalism—either the generic variety or the Anglican party—has a theological Achilles heel, it’s in the area of ecclesiology. It’s not so much that Evangelicals have no theology of the Church as that they have a underdeveloped theology of the Church, one lacking in the sophistication and nuance that characterizes, say, their soteriology (how does Jesus save us?).

Consequently, Evangelical theology turns out to be somewhat of a blunt instrument when dealing with the questions that are on the Anglican table at present—questions that focus on the visible superstructure and institutional infrastructure of the Body of Christ, and how relationships within those structures ought to be carried on. So when we find that there are church members and church leaders who are, for whatever reason, unable or reluctant to use certain language to talk about, say, the uniqueness of Christ as the bearer and agent of human salvation, or who studiously avoid the classical Trinitarian language of “Father” and “Son,” a crisis ensues, not merely a dispute, but a crisis of communion, of ability to co-exist in the same community of faith.

This is not difficult to understand if one sees the Church as a voluntary society of like-minded believers who come together for common worship and mutual support rooted in a shared experience of faith or perception of certain cardinal realities. If it turns out that there is, in fact, no shared experience or perception, no like-mindedness, there is no energy to hold such a society together. Maybe there once was an authentic commonality, which creates a certain degree of inertial momentum that can sustain institutional unity for a time. But, eventually, that momentum spends itself, and there is an inevitable atomization, and possibly a reconfiguration of the constituent parts.

In short, from an Evangelical perspective, there is no reason to keep company with unbelievers as though they were believers. It is dishonest to all concerned, and dishonors that very gospel that it is the vocation of Christians to proclaim. Hence, we hear clarion calls from Evangelical Anglicans to “come out from among them” and “be not unequally yoked,” etc. etc. There are “two religions” within the one institution of the Episcopal Church, and what should one, after all, have to do with the other? Would it not be better to make a clean, honest break, and have everyone get on happily with their lives?

Like I said, some of my best friends are Evangelicals. But I’m a Catholic. We may have our weak points, us Catholics, but ecclesiology isn’t one of them. Ecclesiology is our thing. The Catholic vision of the Church is richer, more refined, more resilient, and more versatile than that of “some of my best friends.” For a Catholic, the Church is less of a voluntary society of the like-minded and more of an organic family of the like-born—or reborn, to be precise. The Prayer Book states that “the bond that God establishes in baptism is indissoluble”—admittedly, a very Catholic notion. In the organic family of the Catholic Church, we don’t get to choose our relatives. When some of them misbehave and embarrass us to tears, we can avoid them and hang out with those we get along with, but we cannot, in the end, deny them. No one will be fooled; the family resemblance is too striking. When they say foolish things at family gatherings, we can get angry, but they’re still family. When they act in ways that are contrary to the traditions of the family, we can roll our eyes, but they’re still family. Even when they betray the vital interests of the family, we can see that they are subject to discipline, but they’re still family.

In short, from a Catholic perspective, schism and excommunication are, like divorce, always signs of failure, never of success. Is it not striking that, among those sectors of Christianity that have an organic ecclesiology, there is a high degree of sacramental fellowship and institutional unity, even in the midst of wildly diverse spirituality and culture, while among those sectors that have a voluntary association ecclesiology, there is atomization to an exponential degree? Theological integrity, yes. But an astonishing amount of division.

It was an e-mail from an old friend, a priest in another (very mainstream) diocese, that got me thinking along these lines. So I will conclude by quoting from his very insightful reflections:

The longer I serve as a priest, the deeper (I think) I am understanding the meaning of obedience. Over the years, I've read a fair amount regarding Benedictine matters, and find that this practice challenges my selfish and anxiety-borne tendency to panic or seek quick, satisfying solutions to challenges in discipleship. … [A]n authentic witness in our setting requires us to embrace obedience to our vows much in the same way as Christ embraced the Cross in obedience to His work of reconciliation, rather than pushing the schism button before the Mind of Christ is laid out by the Instruments in a clearer, more truly Catholic sense.

Amen!

Harriet Hayes Update

Last week I wrote about the "openly Christian" character in the new NBC series Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, one Harriet Hayes. (No, I'm not going to give you a link; just look upstream a couple of posts.) I opined that she is a symbol of irony, because one of the axes she grinds is that Hollywood doesn't get Christianity, but the very ways the script writers have her make that point only serve to demonstrate that they, in fact, do not get Christianity.

Anyway...I told you so. In last night's episode, while trying to achieve that elusive quality of clarity in her relationship with ex-boyfriend and current boss Matt, Harriet says something along the lines of, "Of course it would have never worked out between us. You're an east coast Jewish atheist and I'm a Southern Baptist who believes you're going to burn in hell." (I assume she meant Southern Baptist and not southern Baptist--there is a significant difference, but would Aaron Sorkin actually know that?) OK, even allowing for a certain element of hyperbole, that is more than a little over the top. Now, I will grant you, there are Christians who are inordinately fascinated by questions of who gets to burn in hell. I even know a couple. But I don't think there are nearly as many such Christians as there are non-Christians who are incensed that such Christians exist in any quantity whatsoever and who salve their indignation by projecting the offending attitude onto the entire class of Christians. Poor fictional Harriet Hayes is only the most recent victim of such religious profiling.

I'm tempted to conclude by saying something like, "If you don't agree with me you can just go burn in hell." But then someone might not get that I'm trying to be wry and ironic, and that would not be good.

Stretching the Comfort Zone

I don't dislike animals. Often I even enjoy them. I've toyed with the idea of getting a talking bird, and teaching it liturgical responses. (OK, I'm a liturgy geek. There are worse things.) But I'm realistic enough to realize that I would not be happy as a pet owner. It's a big responsibility, and there are too many other worthwhile things going on in my life that I want to pay attention to.

That said, the same concerns, alas, are not shared by those who have shared and continue to share my domestic life. At present, my living space is invaded by a five-year old Border Collie named Lucy (aka Lucifer) who belongs to my wife Brenda and a six-year old psychotic male orange tabby who is a vestige of my younger daughter's need to decompress when she lived at home for a few months following her college graduation. Brenda also feeds an eleven-year old long-haired female tabby who abandonded us some years ago for the front porch of some neighbors two houses up the street.

Given my general temperament, then, I have never, in seventeen years of ordained ministry, succumbed to the increasingly popular practice of liturgically blessing animals on or around the feast day of St Francis of Assisi. Until now. Maybe I've had a pastoral epiphany. Maybe I'm getting all emotionally squishy in my old age. Maybe my Jungian uncounscious really adores animals. Or maybe I'm shamelessly pandering to popular demand. But with comparatively little publicity, 31 humans, an uncounted number of dogs, one (very brave) cat and one (rather oblivious) fish turned up in the Hoffman Memorial Garden at St John's this afternoon for the Blessing of Animals. There were only a couple of minor canine scuffles. Beyond that, everything went smoothly and expeditiously, and everyone (the humans, at any rate) seemed pleased.

When I was first ordained, the rector whom I served as curate told me he had abandoned the practice because some child's pet rodent had keeled over and died immediately upon receiving a blessing. Such events raise rather tricky issues of pastoral theology that a prudent cleric would want to avoid if at all possible. By God's mercy, I was spared such a fate today, for which I am immensely grateful. So I suppose I'll do it again next year.

I do apologize to St Francis, though. He has, I fear, been kidnapped by the cult of cute. Were he alive today and doing what he did, there are several diagnosis codes in DSM IV that would apply to him, and he would probably be institutionalized, or at least under a conservatorship. He was crazy for the sake of the gospel, and I'm not sure that blessing pets does justice to the virility of his witness.

Media Watch

I can't remember ever not being cynical about the way movies and television (not to mention the literature of the last century or so) generally portray religion and people who seriously practice religion. One favorite archetype is the Elmer Gantry figure--a venal hypocrite whose inevitable downfall casts not-so-subtle aspersions on the whole faith that he purported to espouse. Another is Father Mulcahey from Mash--likable and well-intentioned enough, but definitely running on a low dose of testosterone--in short, a wimp. The Camden family from Seventh Heaven is at least allowed to be somewhat real, but in a very syrupy way; I mean, who can really take that much sweetness? Plus, the nitty gritty of their religious practice is never exposed; everything is kept rather superficial. Eric Camden is some sort of (mainline?) Protestant minister, but that denotes a wide universe, and to keep it that general also keeps it proportionately unrealistic. Then there was the short-lived Book of Daniel, which was overtly Episcopalian, and I actually kind of enjoyed. But it was also bizarrely Episcopalian, an exaggerated caricature of every weird thing the Episcopal Church is currently into, which is no mean feat, since the Episcopal Church is currently into some very bizarre and weird things.

This Fall's primetime network fare features two new programs--both on NBC--that attempt once again to integrate "people of faith" (I really do hate that expression, but...whatever) into the cast and plotlines. One is Friday Night Lights, based on the movie of the same name, and therefore focusing on small-town Texas' obsession with high school football. My brother Steve (yeah, literally my brother) has some pertinent comments about this program on his own blog. I haven't seen it myself, but from two eyewitness accounts I have read, it is a dead-on accurate and unaffected representation of the dominant Christian piety of west Texas.

The other entry is Studio 60 On Sunset Strip (Monday, 10 Eastern & Pacific). This show marks the return of the writing and producing team of Aaron Sorkin and Thomas Schlamme, who distinguished themselves in the first four seasons of The West Wing. I am openly a West Wing junkie, still in serious grief over its demise, so I've watched the first three episodes of Studio 60 in seach of a fix. It's cruel. Sorkin and Schlamme have an unmistakable literary style in the dialogue they write, and a trademark technical and narrative style as well. Plus, one of the lead roles is played by Bradley Whitford, whose Josh Lyman was a mainstay of the Bartlett administration. The other leading character is played by Matthew Perry, who had a several-episode gig on "the wing" as deputy White House counsel. So there is the patina of the experience of watching The West Wing (did I mention that the music is done by the same person as well?), but, alas, it's not.

Enough of my whining. One of the characters in Studio 60 is Harriet Hayes (Sarah Paulson), who is--Is there a better way to say this?--"openly Christian." She (the character, that is) is a comedic actor who is a member of the cast of the show for which Whitford and Perry's characters are the writers (it's clearly a stand-in for Saturday Night Live). In every episode so far, she has been in a position to make a point about how Hollywood just doesn't "get" Christians or Christianity. She appropriately rolls her eyes and grimaces and throws out "Aren't you clueless?" one-liners. Now, this has to be one of the biggest ironies of the decade, because the character of Harriet Hayes is a neon illustration of how Hollywood--are we ready for this?--just doesn't "get" Christians or Christianity. In contrast to the honest if unsophisticated piety of Friday Night Lights, Harriet's Christianity tries to be uber-chic and sardonic. Tries, but fails. In an effort to be cool and avoid the sticky sweetness of a Seventh Heaven, as well as the hypocrisy and primness of the classic archetypes, Sorkin and Schlamme have turned Harriet into...well, I don't know what, exactly. Just not a believably authentic Christian of any stripe (the implication is that she is an evangelical). I could illustrate with prayers for falling objects on ex-boyfriends and malicious riffs on the theme of "accepting Jesus Christ as your personal savior," but the hour is late.

In order to write convincingly, you have to write from the inside. (That's why I never believed that, had The West Wing been allowed to continue, Arnold Vinck [Alan Alda] would have been allowed to win the presidency. I don't know that Hollywood can do Republicans any better than they can do Christians!) You can't just learn some of the vocabulary and some of the symbols and throw them into a script. Practice makes perfect, though. Maybe someday they'll get it right.

On Intercessory Prayer

A long time friend of mine recently eMailed me about her concern for a friend of hers who has just been diagnosed with serious illness, asking for prayers, of course, but also reflecting on the experience of intercession and petition. I thought our exchange worth sharing:

[It's been said that ]one prayer is enough; that the instructions in the Bible about prayer are aimed at keeping us in communion and communication with God. After
all, God doesn't keep a balance so when x number of people have prayed for something or someone the answer changes from no to yes. I once read that prayer is laying hold of God's highest willingness. Whether all of this makes sense or not, I'm sure it's so: one prayer is enough. Amazing grace! Your thoughts?

Intercessory prayer is certainly a mystery. Yes, once is enough. At the same time, Jesus seems to encourage us to "pester" God. So while the former seems more natural to me, I make myself do the latter as a matter of obedience and discipline. Lately, I like to think of intercession and petition, particularly when suffering is the subject, as a way of making ourselves--i.e. our sufferings--"available" to God for him to use in his redemptive re-weaving of the fabric of creation. Rather than passively or grudgingly tolerating suffering, it makes more sense to me to actively embrace it, intentionally identifying it with the sufferings of Christ and, hopefully (in the words of the Book of Common Prayer) "find [the way of the cross] none other than the way of life and peace." Of course, I also find that I'm never too keen on embracing my actual sufferings. It works better in the abstract! But, however imperfectly, I try.

San Joaquin's Constitution

Word is now out in cyberspace that the Episcopal diocese in which I serve, San Joaquin, will be considering a proposal at its next convention (first weekend in December) that, if passed in two successive regular annual conventions (the second time by a concurrent two-thirds vote among both the clergy and the lay delegates), would amend our constitution in such a way as would effectively remove us from the Episcopal Church. This is a pretty big story, and I expect that it might dominate Anglican discourse in this country for the next couple of months.

I have a lot to say about this. For the time being, however, I'm not going to be saying it in venues that extend beyond the Diocese of San Joaquin. Like this blog. By means of our diocesan intranet, I have invited my brothers and sisters here to similarly restrict their public comments. This is something we need to debate in good faith locally, and it will not be helpful if we are trading broadsides in the blogsphere and on message boards. My own commitment, of course, is contingent on buy-in from others. If members of the diocese choose to carry on the debate in front of the whole world, I reserve the right to do the same. But I hope this doesn't happen.

MLB 2006, R.I.P.

What?! you say. This is just the end of the regular season. There's nearly a month of exciting playoff action yet. (Isn't there something sick and twisted about playing baseball practically until Hallowe'en?)

Well, I'm cursed with being a Cubs fan, so--yes--the season is over. I was ten years old when I first started following them in 1962. (I can still give you the starting lineup from that year, plus most of the pitching staff. Anybody interested?) When I left for college in California at the beginning of September 1969, the Cubs had an eight game lead in the N.L East. But I'm not ready to talk about that yet. The pain is still too fresh. I have not lived in the Chicago area since Richard Nixon lived in the White House. Yet, despite the advice of several friends-cum-therapists, the Cubs are still in my system. The year after next, after all, is the centennial of their last World Series title. Maybe there will be poetic justice.

Dusty Baker will get fired tomorrow. That will be sad for me. I have an autographed picture of him wearing a Cubs uniform, hanging on the wall of my study. (A parishioner of mine is an off-season fishing buddy of his.) It says, "To Father Dan Martins: Keep praying for us. We'll get there." I believe it, Dusty. Just not during your tenure and probably not in my lifetime!

Can anybody tell me why Greg Maddux was traded? Sure, it wasn't a Brock-for-Broglio boondoggle, but still. He was at least a person one could root for even if the team was tanking.

There is an arcane theological concept called Eschatological Dualism. It's an attempt to name the paradox that, while the Kingdom of God is upon us--the power of sin and death is defeated, and Jesus reigns--there is still considerable residue of the old order for us to still deal with. There is a tension between the "now" and the "not yet." Cubs fans intuitively understand Eschatological Dualism. We're well accustomed to the tension between "maybe this year" and "wait til next year." Cubs fans live in a never-ending sense of waiting, hope, and expection--always Advent and never Christmas. That Christ will come again I am well assured. Whether the Cubs will win a World Series before that happens I can't say. Maybe the latter will happen right before the former. How cool would that be?