Christ the (Only?) Way

The exclusivist claims of Christianity are a subject of ongoing debate both within the Church and outside it. When President Ford was buried from the National Cathedral a while back and the traditional funeral gospel reading from John 14 omitted the concluding phrase, "No one comes to the Father but by me," that omission did not go unnoticed either by those who were inclined to applaud it or by those who were scandalized by it. The recent deposition of an Episcopal priest who also professed Islam, and the bishop-elect who also walks the way of Zen Buddhism, have kept the issue on center stage.

With Good Shepherd Sunday coming up, I ran across this from the late Anglican New Testament scholar Reginald Fuller in his homiletical notes on John 10:11-18 for the Fourth Sunday of Easter (from Preaching the Lectionary, 1984). It speaks to the question cogently:

(Referring to Article XXVII of the Church of England, Of Obtaining Salvation Only by the Name of Christ) In modern words, this article condemns the view  that it is good to have a religion but it doesn't matter which one. The biblical exclusiveness that underlies the mission of the Church can be linked with ... the parable of the sheep and the shepherd: "I have other sheep that are not of this fold; I must bring them also, and they will heed my voice. So there shall be one flock, one shepherd." Perhaps, too, the "wolves" against which the good shepherd defends his flock are those broad-minded Christians today who hold that salvation is through any religion, not through Christ alone. This is exclusive claim is made because only Christ has been raised from the dead. Only he has passed through death to our final destiny, and therefore we can attain our final salvation only through him.

Hmmm

I didn't make this up. It's from here.

And there's no such word as "coronated." No wonder newspapers are losing circulation.

I know, but...

Results in the consent process for the election of Kevin Thew Forrester as Bishop of Northern Michigan are beginning appear at a stepped-up pace. This one raised my pulse and took my breath away. 

But the standing committee of the Diocese of San Joaquin has decided to approve the election of the Rev. Kevin G. Thew Forrester. Among those present for the April 18 vote, the vote was unanimous, according to the standing committee’s Cindy Smith.“We reviewed various articles and opinions by different people and we weighed those and we felt that we wanted to give our consent” after giving the issue “careful consideration,” Smith said.

Of course, I know it's the faux Diocese of San Joaquin that is making this announcement. I'm well aware of that cognitively. But at a visceral level, I can barely keep my composure while merely reading the words. Especially in the light of so many certifiably "progressive" bishops and Standing Committees already having registed in the Nay column, this is just further proof that the detritus left behind in the wake of the (lamentable) departure of the real diocese is not just a group of "mere" Episcopalians, but ... well, I probably shouldn't write what I'm thinking.

A Resolution on the Anglican Covenant

I am pleased to have been able to submit the following resolution to the General Convention office this afternoon. Co-sponsors are Dr Christopher Wells, also of Northern Indiana, and the Revd Bruce Robison of the Diocese of Pittsburgh.

TITLE: Provisional Acceptance of the Anglican Covenant

Resolved, the House of _____________ concurring, that this 76th General Convention of the Episcopal Church make a provisional commitment to abide by the terms of the Anglican Covenant proposed in the most recent text of the Covenant Design Group (the “Cambridge-Ridley” draft); and be it further

Resolved, that the text of the proposed covenant be commended to the various dioceses of this church for study and comment during the coming triennium; and be it further

Resolved, that the Presiding Bishop and the President of the House of Deputies appoint a Special Task Force to determine what constitutional and/or canonical measures may be necessary in order to make a permanent commitment to the Covenant; and be it further

Resolved, that this Special Task Force prepare a report to the 77th General Convention of the Episcopal Church that includes draft legislation that could be considered should the convention decide to make a permanent commitment to the Covenant.


EXPLANATION
The 75th General Convention passed resolution A166, which supports the participation of the Episcopal Church in the development of an Anglican Covenant. Since then, the Covenant Design Group has produced several drafts, culminating in what the members of the CDG believe is the final product of their work, the Cambridge-Ridley Draft.

The 75th General Convention also passed resolution A159, which affirms not only our commitment to interdependence in the Anglican Communion, but a desire to live in “the highest degree of communion possible.” The same convention also passed resolution A160, which offers an apology that “our failure to accord sufficient importance to the impact of our actions on our
church and other parts of the Communion” has “strained the bonds of affection” between the provinces of the Communion.

Since 2006, these strains have only grown more severe. Given our share in their creation, and in keeping with our long-held ecumenical position that for the greater good of the larger Church’s unity, “this Church is ready in the spirit of love and humility to forego all preferences of her own,” and as a sign of good faith toward our sisters and brothers across the Communion, it seems appropriate that we voluntarily and temporarily agree to order our life according to the terms of the Cambridge-Ridley Draft until such time as we can ascertain the level of its acceptance by other churches, and consider more fully the nature of our identity as a constituent member of the Anglican Communion of churches.

Calling All Software Engineers

This has been a more-significant-than-average day in the Anglican blogsphere. But the honest-to-God truth is that I haven't got anything to say about it that hasn't already been said, either by me or someone else. Go here for the details if you tend to hang out under a rock.

So, instead of engaging in redundant punditry, I'm going to indulge in a technology rant. 

Some background: Roughly fifteen years ago I graduated from pocket calendars and crude to-do lists scribbled on scratch paper to what was then called the Franklin Planner. My version was contained in a large seven-ring leather binder. It was quite handsome and I was very fond of it. There was a page for every day, with room for appointments, notes, and a task list that was governed by some fairly sophisticated principles for establishing priorities. My life was all but literally in that binder, and the loss of it would have constituted a major trauma.

In mid-2001, I acquired my first laptop computer and a PDA (yes, a Palm Pilot), and made the leap to paperless planning. By this time, Franklin had merged with Stephen Covey's operation (he of Seven Habits fame), and I purchased their software that more or less emulated the functionality of the leather binder that I then discarded. But my laptop came loaded with Microsoft Outlook, which I found very attractive, the only downside being that Outlook's task management tools are not amenable to the Franklin process to which I had become accustomed (addicted?). So I was shortly thereafter delighted to discover that Franklin Covey had developed add-on software that attaches itself to Outlook and delivers familiar Franklin Covey tooks in an Outlook environment. I was sold.

For the most part, this worked very well for me. The only glitch was that the marriage between the two was randomly unstable and they would stop talking to one another. This could always be fixed, but it involved a phone call to FC tech support and those experiences are never fun. 

Then, about a year and half ago, I moved to an office with a network governed by a Microsoft Exchange Server, and my life has never been the same. The pissing contests between Outlook and FC became more frequent and more difficult to solve. Every time there was a crash, I told myself that there must be a betteer way ... an Outlook-free way ... a Microsoft-free way. Once I downloaded a free trial of FC's stand alone planning software. The only thing I didn't like about it was the lack of an integrated email client (I was at that time not on friendly terms with Gmail's user interface), but I downloaded Thunderbird and loved it to death. But the big monkey wrench was that FC's software would not sync with the particular kind of Palm Treo (running Windows Mobile, ironically) smartphone that I have. Once again, reluctantly back to Outlook wit the FC add-on.

So ... when I fired up the present laptop (a seven month-old Dell Studio) on Easter Tuesday after being away from it for about 36 hours, Outlook would not launch. There was a corrupt file with the extension .ost--these have to do with the process of syncing with the MS Exchange Server so I can use Outlook when I'm not connected to the office network. I won't even go into the arcane turbidity of the Inbox Repair Tool and its minion of demons. It took two visits from our (Microsoft-certified) IT consultant (we pay a retainer for a certain number of hours, which we've almost used up for the year) to just locate the damn thing in Windows Explorer. Once found, it was easily expunged. Problem solved. Outlook is back up and, for the moment, on good terms with Franklin Covey.

But in the meantime I have spent an inordinate amount of time once again investigating alternatives. It rather amazes me that there doesn't seem to be one--nothing, at least, that replicates the range of functionality that my present arrangement provides ... when it's all working. So here's what I'd like to see. Somebody else will have to do the heavy lifting, because I don't know a line of code from a clothes line. But I'm willing to pay for a licensed copy of an application that will have the following features:

• A calendar with a "look and feel" that is comparable to Outlook's, with an ability to color-code events in several different ways. (I like to show Sundays and feast days in their proper liturgical colors, quickly see occasions that take me out of town, and appointments that are purely personal.)
• Task management tools that are more than just a re-arrangeable To-Do list. Like in Outlook, I need to be able to assign both start dates and due dates. I'm not married to Franklin Covey's precise prioritizing features, but there needs to be someting comparable that allows me to break big tasks down into smaller ones, rank them precisely by relative importance, and then move them around using "drag & drop" to various start dates on a calendar. And while I'm at it, the ability to link a task to a particular document file would be very cool.
• An integrated email client would be nice, but I have to say that gmail's interface is growing on me. I especially like the way it groups messages into "conversations," and I love its search abilities. So these features would need to be built in to any email client.
• The ability to import my Outlook database would be critically important. 
• I am not in principle opposed to a web-based application (Franklin Covey has one, but its interface is too drab and hard to read to excite me), but there would need to be some way to work offline in some limited way during those inevitable times when the internet connection fails or is too slow.
• I haven't yet thought through the handheld piece of this puzzle. I'm not currently paying for a data plan on my phone, so I rely on the ability to sync between laptop and PDA. But once I figure out which wireless company has a decent signal in my house (Verizon doesn't), I'll probably be ready to spring for a data plan.

So have at it, all you geeks. Let me know when yoo've got something to beta-test.

Notes Toward a Comprehensive Theory of Church Music

One of these days—not in my lifetime, perhaps, but eventually—sex and gender will cease to be the chief presenting issues in ecclesiastical wrangling. But there will always be music to argue about. Even today, a few fortunate congregations are untouched by the sexuality wars that rage above them. But virtually none can escape some degree of tension and ferment over what music should be used in the practice of corporate worship, who should perform it, and how it should be performed.

Music has been integrally associated with Christian worship from earliest times. And it has always generated tension. St Augustine experienced this tension within his own soul:

Thus I float between the peril of pleasure and an approved profitable custom: inclined to more (though herein I pronounce no irrevocable opinion) to allow of the old usage of singing in the Church; that so by the delight taken in at the ear, the weaker minds be roused up into some feeling of devotion. And yet again, so oft as it befalls me to be more moved with the voice than with the ditty, I confess myself to have grievously offended; at which time I wish rather not to have heard the music. (From Confessions)

One dimension of this tension concerns the delicate dance between liturgy qua liturgy, and music qua music. Liturgy is dependent on music (even though many western Christians regularly participate in “low Mass”—a celebration of the Eucharist sans music—this is a generic anomaly, and would wither without a connection to its normative template, the Sung Mass). But music is a veritable “force of nature,” and will always seek to take the lead position in the dance if it is allowed to.

Consequently, we see a cyclic pattern in history: Liturgical music, which begins as simple chant or song, very much “owned” by the assembly and its presider, grows little by little more complex, to the point where it becomes a high art form with a life of its own, reserved for skilled specialists, who perform while the main body of the assembly is mute. The music might also become so lengthy that it eclipses the texts and actions of the liturgy, and requires such logistical infrastructure (e.g. an orchestra) that it comes to dominate the liturgical space. 

When this happens, the liturgy eventually strikes back, and there is draconian reform. In the late 16^th century, Pope Marcellus floated the idea of banning polyphony (singing in harmony) in church, reverting to pure chant. The composer Giovanni Perluigi da Palestrina responded with his Missa Papae Marcelli (now considered a choral classic), intended to demonstrate that polyphony need not outshine the liturgical action. In that same era, at the back end of the Reformation, the emerging Protestant liturgical traditions all featured a musical idiom that was simpler and more participatory than anything in the Roman church. In England, we can see this in John Merbecke’s setting of the Prayer Book texts for Holy Communion (a setting still in widespread use), according to the principle of one syllable per note, and for every note a syllable. We can even see the tension expressed in the works of a single composer: William Byrd’s settings of Latin texts are fully contrapuntal (independent voice lines not always singing the same syllable at the same time) while his settings of the Prayer Book service are largely homophonic (hymn-like, a succession of chords in which all the voice parts sing the same words at the same time). Much later, in1903, Pope Pius X once again attempted to reform and simplify the music of the Latin Rite in his Motu Proprio on Sacred Music, this time in reaction to the mammoth choral and orchestral Masses and Requiems of composers like Verdi and Berlioz.

In the early 21^st century, this ongoing dynamic of gradually increasing musical complication leading to reactive simplifying reform still looms over our various liturgical landscapes. But we are usually too close to the ground to put our experience into this larger context. Rather, at the moment, we tend to draw battle lines in the “worship wars” pitting various classical traditions (represented by organs, hymnals, and SATB choirs singing from anthem folios) against the “contemporary” stream (represented by texts projected on screens and “Praise Bands” singing from lead sheets). It may be tempting, but is too facile, to equate the “classical” strain with the tendency toward complication and “professionalization” of church music, and the “contemporary” strain with the reformist impulse. Reality is not so simple. There are multiple examples of liturgical music in the classical tradition that is accessible, sturdy, and meant to be sung by a congregation without formal musical training. There are also plenty of instances of “praise and worship” music that is clearly more at home on the lips of the rehearsed “Praise Team” members than on those of the general congregation.

Actually, before we can begin to fruitfully sort out the issues relative to musical style, we need to tame the beast that is Music itself—i.e. the medium that will never stop trying to become the message. We need to face the dilemma articulated by Bishop Augustine so long ago. And in order to do so, we (meaning all who are entrusted with liturgical leadership) need to screw up our collective courage and embrace a sort of Prime Directive (in the Star Trek sense of that term), which might be something like: Let the Liturgy be the Liturgy.  This is to say, music (like tradition), is a wonderful servant but a horrible master.

The Eucharistic liturgy of the Church, both East and West, has a discernible shape, rhythm, and flow. Dom Gregory Dix may be in a sort of scholarly Purgatory at the moment, but we nonetheless all owe him a debt of gratitude for helping us see this shape, rhythm, and flow more clearly. This is the infrastructure through which the liturgy accomplishes its work—doxologically, catechetically, homiletically, sacramentally, and eschatologically. Anything we bring to the liturgy by way of adornment, enhancement, contextualization, vestments, ceremonial, music—whatever—anything we bring to the liturgy must serve the liturgy’s own ends and not introduce some other agenda. The duty of liturgical music, in particular, is to serve these ends by revealing, clarifying, and highlighting the liturgy’s inherent shape, rhythm, and flow.

As soon as music calls attention to itself, to the extent that liturgical song—be it “folk art” or “refined art”—says, “Hey, look at me!” it immediately becomes an alien and an interloper. When that happens, the liturgy has been hijacked and turned into a flatbed truck. Back in the ‘60s and ‘70s of the last century, the Eucharist was often hijacked to carry the freight of social protest, with spontaneous Masses being celebrated in front of government buildings and defense plants.  But musicians of all stripes are probably the worst offenders here. I can recall a conversation with another church musician more than thirty years ago where we looked at the Christmas Eve Midnight Mass as little more than a vehicle on which we could load as many jewels of the Anglican choral tradition (which, just for the record, I believe is magnificent) as possible. More recently, I have had similar conversations with “contemporary” musicians who simply want to load different freight on the same truck. Both sorts of musician ask all kinds of important questions, like “What would most please the congregation (or celebrant, or bishop, or visiting dignitary)?”, “What will keep the choir/praise band happy?”, and “What can we do well with the resources at our disposal?” These are all good questions—even necessary. They’re just not the “one thing needful.” Unfortunately, the most important question in planning liturgical music is the one that too often never gets asked: “What music will best serve the needs of this particular celebration on this particular day with this particular congregation at this particular point in the service?” The question pastoral musicians (one bit of contemporary Roman Catholic parlance that I find quite helpful) need to be asking of the liturgy is not, “How can you help me accomplish my pastoral goals?” but “How can I best serve you today?”

But even after we’ve parked the flatbed truck for a long rest in the liturgical garage, there’s still another substantial issue to deal with before we can presume to calm the worship wars, and this is equally true for those on both sides of the battlefield. I’m talking about the fact that we invariably ask people to sing in church (except at those anomalous Low Masses), but church is increasingly the only place where that request is made. I think it is arguable that there is presently no vibrant (or even living) American folk music (in the sense of a genre and repertoire in which most people can readily participate) tradition. We are culturally bereft. Think about it: In movies from fifty and sixty years ago—I’m not talking about musicals, but straight dramas and comedies—it was not implausible for there to be a scene of spontaneous singing (often with someone playing the piano, also a dying skill). Aside from stylistic conventions, such a scene would be literally incredible in a film set in today’s culture.

It's not that music isn’t important to people—quite the contrary; witness the explosion of iPod sales in the last decade, and the growing dependence on having “my music” available 24/7. But “my music” is something I passively receive, and not something I’m likely to get together with friends and attempt to spontaneously replicate. And if I’m at all inclined to do so, it’s probably with the assistance of karaoke equipment. We may even be at the point where recorded music has become the norm and live performance the aberration—not only in bars but at weddings and funerals. (The culprits are probably legion; my candidate is the steady erosion of music education in the public schools.)

So, while in the relatively recent past, singing in church was a speciation of an activity in which people were likely to also participate in other contexts, it is now a thing-unto-itself, and an increasingly alien thing at that. This realization not only complicates the job of a pastoral musician; it is a potential game-changer in the worship wars because it suggests that both sides are fighting a losing battle. Those attached to the classical tradition (a company in which I can readily number myself) already know that. When I go to an orchestra concert, the proportion of gray heads to youth is about as alarming as it is in the typical Episcopal congregation on a Sunday morning. And when I bring up the rear of the procession into and out of a Sunday sung liturgy, the tendency to not even crack a hymnal—let along attempt to sing—is inversely proportional to advancement in years. But this doesn’t mean that those attached to the “contemporary” idiom (which my pastoral obligations have required me to make some peace with over the last twenty years) can claim victory. Just because someone won’t sing “Love divine, all loves excelling” doesn’t mean they’re going to respond full-throatedly to “Shout to the Lord.” In fact, my intuitive hunch is that singers are singers despite the genre (though most have their preferences one way or the other) and non-singers are non-singers despite the genre. And the problem is that the non-singers have overtaken the singers, in whatever style. So it seems to be in the best interests of the AGO and the AAM to declare a truce with CCLI and their guitar-toting devotees and work on getting people to sing…period. Then they can go back to fighting over what they sing.

Or maybe not. Here my thoughts are more tentative, more speculative. My suspicion is that there in fact needs to be another reform movement in liturgical music, a movement that is populist in that it effectively calls the plebs dei to “own” its participation in the liturgy—musically and in every other way. But it must not merely be a reform that panders to popular taste, because popular taste is presently wedded to passivity and artificiality, which is to say that it is poorly-equipped to generate music that serves the needs of the liturgy, that reveals its inherent shape, rhythm, and flow. Rather, the work before us is more fundamental, more seminal. With the exponentially-increasing de-christianization of western culture, perhaps the Church is called to cultivate (once again?) a musical idiom that is distinctly ecclesiastical (rather than an unreflective emulation of prevailing secular styles, whether “high art” classical or “folk art” popular), accessible (both technically and affectively) to those gathered for worship, and, most importantly, a style that takes a following role rather than a leading role in its dance with the liturgical action.

What will such music sound like? We can only imagine. Let the imagining begin.

The Post-Modern Creed

There needs to be more British humor in my life. Of course, the funniest things are usually the truest. This video absolutely nails my intuitive impression of our culture's ideological center of gravity with respect to Christianity.

GC Resolution Heads-Up

This is the season when we will be seeing more and more drafts of resolutions that will be presented to this summer's triennial General Convention of the Episcopal Church. The text that follows has been made available to me by a member of convention who wishes to remain anonymous at this time. 

The Episcopal Church and Single-Ply Compliance

Resolved, the House of _________ concurring, That this 76^th General Convention of The Episcopal Church urge every parish and Church institution to commit itself to the use of single-ply toilet paper in all restrooms and outhouses; and be it further

Resolved, That every diocese of this Church appoint a Toilet Paper Compliance Officer to monitor adherence to this single-ply policy throughout the diocese; and be it further

 

Resolved, That the Parochial Report submitted by every congregation of this Church include a check-box to indicate single-ply compliance; and be it further

Resolved, That training in Anti-Two-Ply be required of all persons in ordained and lay leadership in this Church; and be it further

Resolved, That the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music be directed to draft an Earth Day liturgy, to be submitted to the 77^th General Convention, which will include prayer for faithfulness to our commitment to single-ply compliance.

 

Explanation

The New York Times reported on February 26, 2009, that two-ply toilet paper is environmentally hazardous.  The Times states:

The national obsession with soft paper has driven the growth of brands like Cottonelle Ultra, Quilted United Northern Ultra and Charmin Ultra – which in 2008 alone increased its sales by 40 percent in some markets, according to Information Resources, Inc., a marketing research firm.  But fluffiness comes at a price:  millions of trees harvested in North America and in Latin American countries, including some percentage of trees from rare old-growth forests in Canada.  Although toilet tissue can be made at similar cost from recycled material, it is the fiber taken from standing trees that help give it that plush feel, and most large manufacturers rely on them.. . . . The country’s soft-tissue habit – call it the Charmin effect – has not escaped the notice of environmentalists, who are increasingly making toilet tissue manufacturers the targets of campaigns.  Greenpeace on Monday for the first time issued a national guide for American consumers that rates toilet tissue brands on their environmental soundness.

The Episcopal Church has made the Millennium Development Goals its first mission priority.  Among those Goals is an important focus on environmental sustainability.  It would be tragic if our Church, committed as we are to peace and justice, were to fail in the matter of toilet paper.  Our Baptismal Covenant implies a single-ply policy:  since we “respect the dignity of every human being,” we must protect the environment in which those human beings live – and must see to it that human beings, in dealing with their most basic needs, do so in an environmentally appropriate way.

Sacrum Triduum

In the spring of 1971, as a sophomore in college, I made my first visit to San Francisco. A friend of mine and I drove up from Santa Barbara on a Friday morning and crashed at some hippie pad (I'm not making this up!) somewhere near the line between Santa Clara and San Mateo counties on the peninsula. We made our way into the city the next day and somehow obtained access to the temporarily-vacated dorm room of another friend who was doing an "urban semester." As I woke up on Sunday morning, it eventually dawned on me: "Hey, it's Easter." But I didn't entertain the thought very long. I was in San Francisco, and there was stuff to do!

Only two years later, I was well into my discovery of liturgical time. I was spending Sunday mornings in a Lutheran congregation but sought out an Episcopal parish on Good Friday afternoon, where I encountered the then-ubiquitous Three Hours of meditations on the Seven Last Words of Christ, interspersed with readings, hymns and prayers.

It was not until 1979 that I tapped into the Mother Lode, however. By then I was living (with a wife, two kids, and a third on the way) in Salem, Oregon. The 1979 Book of Common Prayer was still only "proposed," awaiting its second reading in the General Convention to come that summer; it was still very much the "new" Prayer Book. And we had a new young priest who had learned his liturgy at General Seminary only recently and was keen to make it all happen in the first parish where he was "in charge."

I was blown away.

It was my first experience with Maundy Thursday foot-washing, stripping of the altar, procession to the Altar of Repose, and the all-night vigil there. (Beginning then, and for the next 15 years, I always signed up for the 3:30 to 4:30 AM slot.) The next day was my first experience of the Solemn Collects (with long enough silence after the biddings to actually get some praying done) and the Veneration of the Cross--I'm talking about every individual in the congregation coming up and spending quality time at the foot of a literal "old rugged cross" while we sang nearly every hymn in the "Passiontide" section of the Hymnal 1940. Then we had a real Easter Vigil, beginning at 10 PM, with the five Old Testament prophecies that are narrative in nature (Creation, Flood, Sacrifice, Exodus, Dry Bones), some baptisms, and all heaven breaking loose when the lights came on. I cried real tears during "Jesus Christ is Risen Today," and I am so not a crier. Then we had a party, with lots of food and drink and dancing, and it was dawn before the Parish Hall cleared out. (Being a musician, I had to be awake and attentive for the decidedly lower-key Easter morning liturgy, but I had enough adrenalin in me to get the job done.)

When I graduated from seminary in 1989 and went to my first parish as a curate, my kids--who were then 13, 10, and 9--were flabbergasted to find that some people actually go to church on Easter morning; they had never heard of such a thing!

So I guess this is my thirty-first Triduum, my twentieth as a priest. I would be lying if I said it's still as intense for me as it was those first few years. It's become--dare I say it?--kind of routine. Not boring, not by a long shot. But routine. I'm too old to get up in the middle of the night and drive down to the church to sit and pray and doze off for an hour. And it's certainly work, work that challenges my "see the forest, not the trees" natural wiring. At one level, I'm disappointed every year by the number of parishioners I don't see in church. It feels like a personal failure that I am unable to somehow "get through to them" how important this is, how vital this is, how everything we do as a church community drinks from this well, and how much they are depriving themselves of by not being there. From the occasional asking around among colleagues that I do, I know I'm not alone in this experience of pastoral frustration.

When noon on Easter Sunday rolls around, I will be barely alive. But it's always that "good kind of tired." You see, every year, I can think of at least one person for whom my efforts are "making it happen" the way that young (now not so young) new vicar did for me in 1979. And when I look at the Triduum through that set of eyes, the routine fades away and the work feels like play again.

Thank-you, Jesus.

Bishop Little re Northern Michigan

I believe this is worth sharing in its entirety, and I add my own 'Amen' to the Bishop's analysis.

Dear brothers and sisters,

Many of you have asked me about the election of the Rev. Kevin Thew Forrester as Bishop of Northern Michigan, and in particular about whether I gave consent for his consecration. I did not; nor did the Standing Committee, which had its own in-depth conversation on this important matter.

Several issues have been raised concerning Fr. Thew Forrester in the months since his election. First, he has undergone “lay ordination” in the Zen Buddhist tradition. Is this simply an acknowledgement that he engages in meditation practices with Buddhist roots? Or does it indicate a more dangerous mingling of Christian and Buddhist teaching, a hazardous syncretism? I do not have a clear answer to that question, though his articulation of the Christian faith seems to blend spiritual categories in a disquieting way. Second, the election process in the Diocese of Northern Michigan, while not uncanonical, gives the appearance of a closed system. The nominating committee presented only one candidate to the electing convention, and thus the election seems like the ratification of a decision already made. Third, the website of Fr. Thew Forrester’s parish – St. Paul’s, Marquette – indicates that he has written his own Eucharistic prayers and even made significant modifications to the baptismal liturgy. The Book of Common Prayer, on the other hand, is part of the constitution of the Church; its use is not optional, and clergy are not free to modify its texts. The Prayer Book is our doctrinal anchor, rooted in Scripture and summarizing the essential teachings of the Christian faith. Fourth, Fr. Thew Forrester’s sermons – also posted on the parish website – indicate a disturbing weakness in his understanding (and embrace) of basic Christian doctrines: the Trinity, the Incarnation, and the atoning work of Christ on the cross. As I’ve pondered Fr. Thew Forrester’s election, this is the most troubling dimension of all, and in the end it is what led me to withhold consent.

In the Christian Church, bishops are not “private citizens”. They are called “to be one with the apostles in proclaiming Christ’s resurrection and interpreting the Gospel, and to testify to Christ’s sovereignty as Lord of lords and King of kings . . . [and] to guard the faith, unity, and discipline of the Church” (BCP, p. 517). These are solemn obligations, and inherent to the ministry of bishop in the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church. St. Paul himself lays this charge upon his successor, Timothy: “Hold to the standard of sound teaching that you have heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. Guard the good treasure entrusted to you, with the help of the Holy Spirit living in us” (2 Timothy 1:13-14).

A bishop’s teaching ministry must never be idiosyncratic. We have no message other than the one that has been given to us. The task of bishops is to pass on that message as faithfully as we can; to proclaim Jesus Christ – crucified, risen, coming again; clearly and winsomely to present his person and his work; and to offer the world a Gospel that challenges, heals, and restores us to a relationship with the Father. With the information I have at hand, I am not convinced that Fr. Thew Forrester would be able to discharge this essential obligation of episcopal office.

I cast my No vote without joy; indeed, with sorrow in my heart. If the Church denies consent for Fr. Thew Forrester to be consecrated as Bishop of Northern Michigan, it will be a tragic development for the diocese, and for Fr. Thew Forrester himself. He is, from all reports, a beloved and respected priest, passionate about ministry and committed to his people. Please join me in praying for him, and for the diocese, that in the midst of a most difficult time Jesus will be experienced more and more deeply, and ultimately his kingdom extended and his people with encouraged. With all blessings I am

Yours in Christ,
+Ed

A Word to the 76th General Convention

My most recent posting (I know, not very recent!) intimated at the articulation of a General Convention agenda arising from a communion-oriented perspective (not in response to, but certainly in contrast to, the platform from The Consultation that I subjected to some analysis in that post.

Though I have been silent in this venue, I have been, along with many others, hard at work helping craft a "Word to the 76th General Convention" from Covenant, an emerging coalition of lay and clergy leaders in the Episcopal Church who are committed to a robust Anglican Communion, preferably with a renewed Episcopal Church as a vital constituent part thereof. 

I am very happy to share here the fruit of our labor, which is also available here.

Executive Summary:

• Evangelism is central to the life of the Church’s mission.
  
• Our Baptismal Covenant calls us to live lives leading to holiness, justice, and peace.
• The rite of Holy Baptism in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer contains no theology unique to the Episcopal Church.
•  Baptism before Communion is the best way to be faithful to our Baptismal Covenant as we engage in evangelism, and reflects an ecumenical consensus we cannot ignore.
• The Episcopal Church’s full communion with the See of Canterbury and its full and active participation in the other Instruments of Communion, as well as in the life of the whole Anglican Communion, are essential elements of our identity.
• The actions already taken by General Convention that demonstrate the Episcopal Church’s good faith intention to remain in full communion with the Anglican Communion are to be affirmed.
• Schism undermines the Gospel; what divides the Church is not of Christ.
• Unilateral actions undermine justice, even when such actions are intended to establish it.
• The Anglican Covenant is the only viable path at present for maintaining communion and should be adopted by the Episcopal Church.
• General Convention should not speak with one voice on public policy or other issues when that voice is merely that of the majority, and not reflective of genuine consensus.
• General Convention needs to keep in mind that schism among Anglicans damages the witness of all involved, and thus should focus on building mutual respect leading to reconciliation.
• Youth and young adults are necessary to the growth of the church and should be a top priority over the next Triennium.
• Bishops and other leaders need to pursue constructive and charitable relationships with those who are currently estranged from the Episcopal Church, particularly since we must be mindful of the legacy we will pass on to the next generation.
• Making a commitment to remaining lovingly engaged in worship and service with all members of this church, even amid our conflicts, is an essential feature of what it means to love each other as Christ loves us.

------------------------------------

Reconciliation in Communion:

A Word to the 76th General Convention 

of the Episcopal Church

An initiative of Covenant

http://www.covenant-communion.net

 

Holy Week 2009

 

We, the undersigned laity and clergy of the Episcopal Church, offer the following as a testament to our concern for the life and witness of our church and its membership in the Anglican Communion.  The God-given bonds of affection that unite us to one another are based in the prior unity of love that is God’s own Trinitarian life; for this reason, our corporate life should continually strive to be an icon of this same love.  At the present moment, we are particularly mindful that “God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself” (II Cor. 5:19), and that because of this we have been given a “ministry of reconciliation” (II Cor. 5:18). It is our prayer that the Holy Spirit will give the Episcopal Church a renewed awareness that at the heart of our common mission lies the ministry of reconciliation, which endeavors “to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ” (BCP Catechism, p. 855).

 

To that end, we

 

• Affirm that evangelism lies at the heart of the Church’s mission, understanding evangelism to subsist in the proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which calls all people to repent from sin, to be united in the Body of Christ through baptism, and to be continually discipled in the communion of the Church.
  
• Affirm that the vows and promises of Holy Baptism, articulated in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer, are a call for all Christians to live lives that lead to holiness, justice, and peace for all.
  
• Affirm that the rite of Holy Baptism in our Prayer Book stands in continuity with the received faith of the one holy catholic and apostolic Church of the creeds, and articulates no theology that is unique to the Episcopal Church, but only makes explicit that which is common to all Christians for whom the catholic and apostolic faith as expressed in the creeds is normative.
  
• Affirm that in continuity with our Baptismal Covenant, all who desire to participate in the Lord’s Supper are called first to Baptism, which is the sacrament of new birth through which all are welcomed into the full sacramental life of the Church. 

• Affirm that the self-understanding and mission of the Episcopal Church have become inextricably anchored to its relationship of full communion with the See of Canterbury, its active participation in the Instruments of Communion, and its formal and informal partnerships throughout the Anglican Communion.  This is reflected in our liturgical patterns, and the continued allocation of funds for the Anglican Communion. 
• Affirm those actions already taken by General Convention that demonstrate the Episcopal Church’s good faith intention to remain in full communion with all provinces of the Anglican Communion.

• Reject the way of schism as undermining the very Gospel it seeks to uphold.  That which divides the Church cannot be said to be of Christ.

• Reject the way of unilateralism and self-sufficiency as undermining the very justice it seeks to establish.
• Support the emerging Anglican Covenant because it is, at present, the only available concrete means of maintaining the unity and witness of the Anglican Communion.  We encourage its adoption by the Episcopal Church, and further encourage that this adoption be understood by all Anglicans to be an outward and visible sign of our commitment to maintain and deepen the bonds of affection that we already have with our fellow Anglicans.

• Encourage the Bishops and Deputies to engage in the work of reconciliation by not making pronouncements on public policy and other issues where there is no theological or moral consensus among Episcopalians, and to focus instead on those things that bring us together, rather than those that drive us apart.

• Remind the Bishops and Deputies that a growing number of Episcopalians now live in situations where schism among Anglicans has become an unavoidable daily reality that damages the witness of all involved.  This makes the imperative of mutual respect, which is necessary for reconciliation, all the more urgent.
• Encourage the Bishops and Deputies to take with the utmost seriousness the recently released report by the House of Deputies Committee on the State of the Church.  In particular, we request that “youth and young adults” be returned to our list of top priorities for the next Triennium.  We fear that a church that places little emphasis on the young is a church that risks placing little emphasis upon its own future.

• Encourage the leadership of the church, particularly the Bishops, to pursue constructive and charitable relationships with those that are currently estranged from the Episcopal Church, remembering that our quarrels and divisions will become burdens borne principally by future generations.
  
• Affirm our commitment to remaining lovingly engaged, in worship and service, with all members of this church, even amid our conflicts.

 

In closing, we humbly and earnestly ask those within and beyond the provincial borders of the Episcopal Church to seek the theological virtues of faith, hope and love, as we seek to embody the unity we have been given by virtue of our baptism into the Body of Christ.

Looking Hard at the Progressive Platform

The Consultation is a consortium of thirteen unofficial (that is, not created or funded by General Convention, Executive Council, or 815) advocacy groups within the Episcopal Church. They go into overdrive every three years as General Convention approaches, making common strategic cause for the advancement of positions widely known as “progressive.”

A few days ago, The Consultation released its platform for 2009. You can find the whole thing here. Some of those with whom I habitually consort cybernetically, folks who for the most part would not be identified by themselves or others as “progressives,” have been exchanging ideas about what our “platform” might be … if we indeed had a platform, to say nothing of a clear idea of how we understand “we.”

In due course—very shortly, I suspect—we may share some bullet points of our own. In the meantime, and by way of contextualizing what follows, some of The Consultation’s platform planks deserve to be—what’s the word for it these days?—fisked.

1. Continue the Reformation of the Church.
• Equip all the baptized for their ministry in the world and for their share in the governance and mission of the Church at every level of its life.
• Remove all canonical obstacles to exercising the full baptismal ministry in the whole life of the Church.

I don’t think anyone would argue that the Church isn’t perpetually in need of reformation, and it seems plausible enough that every baptized Christian ought to be exercising the gifts for ministry that are conferred in the paschal sacraments. But the devil, as they say, is in the details. What do they mean by “share in the governance” and “every level of its life” and “full baptismal ministry”? Should the nine-year olds whose birthdays I blessed a couple of Sundays ago be allowed seat and voice on the vestry? Should a dyslexic be elected clerk? Obviously not. Discernment is called for in determining which of “the baptized” are appropriately invited to serve in which ministries. Of course, one person’s “discernment” is another person’s “discrimination,” and therein lies the bone of contention buried in The Consultation’s platform.

Conform the canons to the baptismal theology of the Book of Common Prayer.

The organizations represented in The Consultation apparently see something implicit in the 1979 Prayer Book rite of baptism that they understand as validating and energizing their commitment to “progressive” causes, something that is both intrinsically good and uniquely distinctive; it’s something we have in TEC that other Anglican provinces and other non-Anglican churches lack. Moreover, they discern an incongruity between this ostensible “baptismal theology” and the present canons of TEC. Completely apart from the merits of these claims, one might plausibly ask, When it comes to the foundational sign of Christian identity, is uniqueness necessarily such a good thing? Is this not the one area in which we should most proactively eschew distinctiveness and embrace commonality with other churches? We are, after all, talking about the sacrament by which one becomes a Christian, not merely an Episcopalian. To claim uniqueness for our “baptismal theology” turns us into a cult, not a church. Beyond that, it smacks of the worst sort of triumphalism. Perhaps, in our “non-progressive” bullet points, we should affirm that the baptismal theology of the 1979 Book of Common Prayer is neither more nor less than that of the one holy catholic and apostolic Church of the creeds, and not in any particular conflict with canon law.

2. Maintain the historic principle of the autonomy of Provinces in the Anglican Communion.

• Reaffirm that our covenant is given by God in baptism.
• Celebrate the unique character of the polity of the Episcopal Church.
• Express our solidarity with the Anglican Church of Canada in their rejection of any Anglican Covenant.

Well, there you have it: An overt swipe at the developing Anglican Covenant, which General Convention will almost certainly have the opportunity to act on, though there is considerable doubt that it will do so. Again, no one I know argues for the abrogation of provincial autonomy. But the events of the last five years in Anglicanland have raised legitimate and pressing questions as to its nature. We can pretty much blame this on the internet, I think. The world is exponentially smaller than it was twenty years ago, and the shrinkage continues apace. What Anglican leaders do and say in Harare and Perth has an immediate impact on the lives of Anglicans in Vancouver and Brasilia. And vice versa. So where are the appropriate limits on autonomy? It has been suggested—helpfully so, in my opinion—that communion is the fundamental limit on autonomy. The Consultation apparently doesn’t see it that way.

As for the “unique character and polity of the Episcopal Church,” this is admittedly much less problematic than having a unique baptismal theology. But the subtext here is directed toward other Anglican provinces in general—and, it must be said, the Archbishop of Canterbury in particular—who, The Consultation perceives, chronically don’t “get” they way things are done in the Episcopal Church; specifically, the democratic synodal processes that involve laity on an equal footing with priests and bishops. In reality, the rest of the Communion “gets” TEC just fine; they just think we’ve royally fouled our own next … upwind of theirs. And can we get beyond our smugness about being democratic? I’ve got no particular quarrel with democracy, but in church governance, throwing dice is proven to work just as well as taking votes. And the Holy Spirit probably thinks it's a little less stressful that way.

3. Invest in economic justice and eliminate poverty.

I’ll spare you the bullet points on this one. In brief, they advocate U.S. government participation in the MDGs to the tune of 0.7% of the federal budget (somebody want to do the math on that?), fully socialized healthcare, and an end to immigration enforcement raids. So…the Episcopal Church doing all this is going to eliminate poverty? How nice. Who knew the answer was so simple?

4. Repent and make reparation for slavery.

The Episcopal Church does indeed have some dirty laundry in this area. Many church buildings still in use were built by slave labor, and some of the endowment funds of dioceses and parishes in older sections of the country can be traced to wealth originally accumulated by means of “involuntary servitude.” Some form of accounting for this history is probably not out of order. But the principal energy behind calls for reparations rests on the premise that there are identifiable people in this country today—more than 150 years after slavery was abolished—who have been demonstrably and measurably harmed by the practice. This is by no means a self-evident starting point. There are those who want to make such a case, but it is extremely tenuous, particularly when balanced against the human and material resources that would be diverted away from other mission priorities in order to make this possible.

5. Dismantle racism and oppression.

Again, I don’t know anyone who’s going to argue in favor of racism, so this one appears to be a slam dunk. But it’s not. The bullet points call for mandatory “anti-racism training” at the seminary and diocesan levels. The notion that one can be “trained” to oppose racism is inherently preposterous. It smacks of Soviet-era “re-education camps.” Moreover, the working definition of racism in such settings defies common sense. Rather than willful (or even negligent) discrimination on the basis of race, rather than active (or even passive) discrimination on the basis of race—i.e. the sorts of practices that the civil rights movement in the ‘60s struggled against—anti-racism “trainers” now define racism as “the exercise of unearned white privilege.” That’s simply a recipe for the perpetuation of identity politics and a culture of victimization. The second bullet point calls for “inclusive representation at all levels of Church leadership”? So what are we talking about? Quotas? Reserved spots on General Convention committees for designated minorities? The mind boggles at trying to reconcile this with the vision of Christian identity articulated in Ephesians 4, among other places. St Paul (or the pseudo-Pauline author) would weep over this platform plank.

6. End the culture of violence.

This one is a very broad brush. Let’s see, who are the officially sanctioned victim groups here? We’ve got women, children, “sexual and gender minorities,” victims of human trafficking, and the “Palestinian people.” Conspicuous by their absence? Israelis, targets of suicide bombers, and (last, and in this case very much least) children in utero, the single most-vulnerable class of human beings in the world.

7. Build a culture of peace.

Who can argue with that? I certainly would not. But what about this bullet point: “Add peace, justice, and nonviolence studies to the curricula of all Episcopal schools, colleges, and seminaries.” Presumably, this would include the parochial school in Louisiana where I used to teach, the diocesan-owned high school my children attended there, undergrads at the University of the South (those same children’s alma mater), and all the seminaries. The seminaries, I can assure you, are already stretched to the max trying to satisfy all their various constituencies during the three years they have a student. This is where the good truly become the enemy of the necessary. Such a mandate would send seminary deans speeding toward the medicine cabinet by way of the liquor cabinet.

8. Embrace the full inclusion of all the baptized in all the sacraments.

• Affirm that all orders of ministry are open to all the Baptized who are otherwise qualified.
• Urge clergy to refuse to function as civil magistrates in marriage and to re-affirm their authority to bless all faithful relationships.

I actually haven’t got a problem with the first bullet point, interpreted literally just as it stands. I bet my friends at The Consultation, however, would have a different spin on “otherwise qualified” than I would! And I actually haven’t got a problem in principle with the first part of the second bullet point. As long ago as 1980, I supported a resolution in the convention of the Diocese of Oregon that called for clergy to disengage from being agents of the state. (It was successfully tabled by the local “Marryin’ Sam” rector.) Of course, what’s at stake here for The Consultation is permission to bless same-sex unions (or “marriages”, as the case may be), which, ipso facto, betrays a callous disregard for the rest of the Anglican Communion. In fact, any resolution to this effect would be in violation of TEC’s own constitution, the preamble of which makes Anglican identity the governing rubric for everything that follows.

9. Save the earth from environmental catastrophe.

Here we have mandatory energy audits and conservation measures in “all Episcopal Church facilities and programs.” It isn’t clear whether this means only those facilities and programs under the direct control of General Convention, or extends to every last diocesan summer camp chapel and latrine. They also want us to only buy electric power from renewable sources. Nice idea. I’ve tried to do the same. There isn’t always a choice, however. Then there’s more stuff about the EPA Superfund and the Kyoto Accords, as if the secular world gives a gnat’s posterior what the Episcopal Church thinks about such things. (We are the quintessential roaring mouse.)

10. Urge renewed attention to domestic HIV/AIDS.

This is pretty much a no-brainer. I’m tired, so I’ll only deal with their last bullet point on this one: “Support bills requiring states to provide Medicaid coverage to all persons who are HIV-positive.” Do they really mean “all”? What about those who are already adequately insured? If there are indeed states that discriminate against indigent patients because they have HIV, paying at a different level than they would for one who has, say, diabetes, then I could support this call. But if they’re simply trying to use HIV/AIDS as a wedge on behalf of their earlier-stated goal of single-payer healthcare, then this is a Trojan (I’m sorry, the pun is not intended) horse.

Stay tuned for some “non-progressive” platform planks.

Internet as Borg: Threat & Promise

In two iterations of the Star Trek franchise, a collective entity known as the Borg figures prominently in several plot lines. The Borg is seen as a threat to individual freedom because it endeavors relentlessly to assimilate individual organisms into its complex network, thus subjecting them to a hive mentality. Among the Star Trek cognoscenti, the Borg has become a metaphor for any impetus toward coercive collectivization.

I reflect on this metaphor often, and, I must confess, ambivalently.

I have been an internet denizen since early 1996, when I bought a new Macintosh that came loaded with Apple’s (now defunct) eWorld browser and e-mail software. (My college daughter had been using a rudimentary form of e-mail called Broadcast, limited to college campuses, but in which the internet culture of anonymity via screen names had already taken root, for a year or two before that.) That was, of course, on a dial-up connection with a by-the-minute pricing structure. Logging on to “check e-mail” was something of an event. Nonetheless, I got my first taste of the potential for forming community that is completely internet-based, participating actively in messages boards that got ever more sophisticated in the way topic threads could be organized and accessed.

Three years later my parish had its own website, ultra-primitive by today’s standards but reasonably handsome at the time. A couple of years after that, I made the move, both at home and in the office, to always-on DSL. In 2005, or thereabouts, it was on to a wireless router, first at home and then at church, now using a laptop in both places. We updated our parish website about the same time. A parishioner told me about Google, and my life has never been the same since. I have long since reached the point where I will sooner “google” a piece of information (even looking up a Bible verse!) than walk across a room to pull a book of the shelf. And I remarked to a parishioner just yesterday that I no longer check my e-mail; my e-mail checks me!

It was largely because of my internet presence via a listserv that I got appointed to a high-profile committee at the 2006 General Convention, which was also my introduction to blogging, as I made a nightly post on my deputation’s blog. And I quickly learned thereby how what you post in cyberspace can come back to bite you quickly and mercilessly, as a witness at a committee hearing quoted my words (out of context, of course) in front of a gallery of about 1,000 persons.

In September of that year I began my own blog, and continued to make comments on others. It occurred to me this morning, as I was drying off from my shower, that I have in all likelihood reached the point that the list of people who are familiar with my name and my general views is longer than the list of those with whose names and views I am familiar. That’s a convoluted way of saying that I am a net exporter of information and influence. The surplus balance may not be all that large, but it is, I’m sure, a surplus. And it would never have been possible without the internet.

Some seven months ago, I joined Facebook. I resisted for a long time, and was skeptical at first. It took me a while to grasp—shall we say—the “Zen” of the medium. It has given a whole new meaning to the word “friend” (to say nothing of turning “friend” and “favorite” into verbs, a development against which my inner linguistic purist still rebels). I have come to value it as an easy way to maintain relationships with people in different overlapping universes—extended family that I actually see on relatively rare occasions, people from my past who are no longer physically proximate but whom I don’t want to totally lose contact with, people who do live close by and whom I do see regularly but may not have the chance to just chit-chat with, and people whom I have never actually met except in cyberspace, but with whom I share something in common. It is, as they say, a “social network,” and now I get it.

Over the last several months, the parish office has become much more web-dependent. Our calendars, internal e-mail, and membership database software are all now web-based. (Consequently, when the DSL goes down, productivity grinds to a halt.) Organizing, promoting, and keeping track of our growing small-group ministry is facilitated by a web-based application. The April edition of our newsletter will be delivered to the majority of our households via the internet, with a few hard copies going out to households that are not online.

I pay my bills online and file taxes online. I make travel arrangements online and do a substantial amount of internet purchasing online. My personal organization software still lives on my hard drive (Outlook with a Franklin-Covey add-on), but I have little doubt that five years from now I will be using a web-based application for that as well.

And I am not alone in any of this. To many of those who are reading this post, I am probably something of the technological Neanderthal.

But in our growing dependence on the internet, are we slowly being assimilated into the Borg? (Remember, “Resistance is futile.”) And, if so, is this a bad thing? This morning, courtesy of a Facebook friend who I have never met in person, I ran across an incredibly provocative video. I encourage you to watch it.

I’m sure there are important elements of what this man is saying that I’m not grasping owing to my poor math education in high school, and all the ensuing implications of that tragedy. But at a mostly intuitive level, it rocks my world. He’s talking about applying cyber-linking protocols not only to formatted, interpreted information, which is what web pages are, but to actual raw data—uncooked, unprocessed, unfiltered. This would, of course, require a massive amount of cooperation from millions of individuals, institutions, and (most importantly) governments.

There will be great resistance to this, and we will find out, I suppose, whether resistance is indeed futile. Many will be wary that he’s talking about their own medical chart and bank statements being suddenly accessible to strangers on the internet. I don’t think that’s what he’s talking about, but let’s just play with that idea for a moment. The main reason I don’t want the general public to be able to see my personal medical and financial information is the high probability that somebody will be inclined to abuse that information by causing me harm in some way. It could be a crook out to con me, or an insurance company selecting me out of its risk pool, or a government agency pressuring me to behave or not behave in a certain way.

Yet, that threat only works if there’s an imbalance of information, if they know something about me and I don’t know the corresponding or equivalent information about them. But in a (still quite hypothetical) world where all data are linked and universally accessible, such informational disparities would be more difficult to arrange. I don’t want the occasional nightmare where I am naked in public to ever come true. I might not like it any better if everybody suddenly turned up naked one day, but it would be an entirely different—and less threatening—scenario than if I’m the only one. It would have issues of its own, but informational disparity would not be one of them!

This vision of linked and universally accessible data is nothing but the fruition of the democratization of information that the linking of documents has already accomplished. And this is, on the whole, a good thing. Political spin, on any level, is a whole lot more difficult now than it was a decade ago. Why? Because there’s an army of bloggers out there who are not on anybody’s payroll that will waste no time pointing out when the Emperor is naked. Wholesale fraud can still be perpetrated, but not easily. There are too many sentinels who have the information to recognize phony credentials when they see them and cry, “Halt! Who goes there?” In my own micro-universe of Anglicanism, this has already been proven time and time again, much to the chagrin of both 815 and the Anglican Communion office.

In Star Trek, the Borg is indeed a menacing entity. It robs people of free will. It de-humanizes them (or whatever the equivalent is for non-human species.) As a steward of the Christian faith, I cannot fail to resist any “evil powers … which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God.” To the extent that the internet, and the very real worldwide web that connects people cybernetically, even people who don’t own or use a personal computer, dehumanizes people or somehow robs them of their dignity, the Christian community must cry “Foul!” But to the extent that it enables us to build and maintain connections between human beings that mediate life and love and truth, to say nothing of transparency and accountability; to the extent that it is a counter-force to the atomization to which we are so prone, a force that builds community and fosters mutual responsibility and interdependence, we cannot receive it as anything but a gift from the hand of a good and gracious God.

On the Demise of Evangelicalism

“The Coming Evangelical Collapse”—such is the provocative title of an op-ed that appeared in Tuesday’s edition of the Christian Science Monitor. The author is Michael Spencer, a Southern Baptist pastor in Kentucky, who blogs here.

Here’s a teaser:

We are on the verge – within 10 years – of a major collapse of evangelical Christianity. This breakdown will follow the deterioration of the mainline Protestant world and it will fundamentally alter the religious and cultural environment in the West.

Within two generations, evangelicalism will be a house deserted of half its occupants. (Between 25 and 35 percent of Americans today are Evangelicals.) In the "Protestant" 20th century, Evangelicals flourished. But they will soon be living in a very secular and religiously antagonistic 21st century.

This collapse will herald the arrival of an anti-Christian chapter of the post-Christian West. Intolerance of Christianity will rise to levels many of us have not believed possible in our lifetimes, and public policy will become hostile toward evangelical Christianity, seeing it as the opponent of the common good.

Millions of Evangelicals will quit. Thousands of ministries will end. Christian media will be reduced, if not eliminated. Many Christian schools will go into rapid decline.

For Spencer’s assessment to be totally coherent, one should probably insert “American” before “Evangelical,” and understand “Evangelical” in a refined sense as referring to a post-WWII religious-cultural-intellectual movement that was a sort of “cleaned up” Fundamentalism. This is to distinguish it from both Evangelicalism broadly-conceived, which can properly refer to any ecclesial entity or tradition with roots in the Reformation, and also—for purposes of this blog, at any rate—from the Evangelical stream of Anglicanism, though there are overlaps all around. Billy Graham, Fuller Seminary, and Christianity Today were some of its early signature institutions. (Full disclosure: This is the milieu in which I was formed before my early twenties.)

In the ‘70s and ‘80s (i.e. when I began thinking of Evangelicals as “them” rather than “us”), leaders like Jerry Falwell and James Dobson led what we might call “second generation neo-evangelicalism” into the arena of secular politics, overlaying an identifier that the media took to calling the “Religious Right.” More recently, a third generation of leaders typified by Rick Warren have made tentative moves toward de-linking American Evangelicalism from automatic association with conservative politics, not abandoning the “culture wars,” but opening up to a bit more political diversity within the Evangelical fold.

From where I sit . . . well, where is it, exactly, that I sit? That’s a bit of a complex question that deserves more than a casual answer.

First, I sit in a place where I think I “get” Evangelicals, even though I don’t identify myself as one. I was raised in that culture, and even though the culture has changed—quite a lot in some ways (particularly musical!)—I know its vocabulary and its intellectual architecture. And I can affirm many points of commonality between my own Anglo-Catholicism and Evangelicalism, not the least of which is a devotion to Jesus Christ as the divine Son of God whose death and resurrection provides the basis for our reconciliation with God. So while I may be a critic at times, I’m a sympathetic critic.

Second, I occupy a seat in a denomination that is dying. The Episcopal Church is dying. It will be pulled down in the same vortex that swallows Evangelicalism. But the eventual autopsies will reveal, I believe, rather different causes of death. Different, but strangely similar as well. Both will die because they implicated themselves too closely with the political Zeitgeist—the Episcopal Church with the Left, Evangelicalism with the Right. Though diametrically opposed on some concrete issues, they drink the same Kool-Aid, which causes them to sacrifice the Best on the altar of the merely Good. So I read Spencer’s prognostications with an awareness that, while I may not be on the same roller coaster, I’m on one very much like it, and the ride is going to be just as rough.

Third, I sit in the Catholic section of the Christian tent. You can argue with me if you want to about whether the Episcopal Church retains a meaningful fragment of whatever substantive Catholic identity inheres in Anglicanism generically; I’m aware of all the arguments. But from an operational standpoint, as far as my day-to-day religious practice is concerned, personally and pastorally, I’m a Catholic. My week is anchored in the Eucharist on Sundays and Holy Days. My days are rooted in the Daily Office. I venerate icons, statues, and relics. I invoke the saints and pray for the dead. I pray the Angelus and the Rosary regularly. I make my confessions regularly and encourage others to do the same. I love Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament. My years—the last 35 or so, at any rate—revolve around the incarnational, paschal, and ferial cycles.

So, from where I sit … from all three of those places … here’s what most got my attention in Spencer’s article:

Two of the beneficiaries will be the Roman Catholic and Orthodox communions. Evangelicals have been entering these churches in recent decades and that trend will continue, with more efforts aimed at the "conversion" of Evangelicals to the Catholic and Orthodox traditions.

You see, I am always, in the “background” (as we would speak of a computer), trying to craft an ecclesial survival strategy for the post-nuclear (I speak metaphorically) era. And so I see in this prediction by Spencer a potential life raft—or the mirage of a life raft, at least. As a Catholic with an Anglican brand name (aka “denomination”), I’m already used to confecting gourmet fare from the crumbs I’m able to catch from the table of Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. That’s a skill I’ve already honed. Could it be that I will be able to employ that skill even after the Episcopal Church effectively (if not quite formally) collapses? Can I and others keep the ember glowing by being “Catholic enough,” and profiting from the Evangelical-to-Catholic migration that Spencer predicts? Or will it be impossible to remain immune to the “toxic assets” that are weighing TEC down?

Only time will tell.

I am neither alarmed nor discouraged by Spencer’s apocalyptic vision. Come what may, the gates of Hell will not prevail against Christ’s Church. The gospel will remain good news. Between the fourth and seventh centuries, Christianity’s center of gravity moved from the eastern Mediterranean to western Europe. The rise of militant Islam sealed the deal, completely eliminating Christianity from places that had been Christian bastions for centuries. There’s no reason the same can’t happen to Europe and North America; indeed, it’s difficult to deny that the process is more than half complete. Some might call it Divine Judgment. I won’t take that notion on here, but it’s worth pondering. In any case, though, the Spirit will blow in other places. I hear it’s windy in Africa.

Come Up Higher

Sometimes a blog comment deserves a post of its own. This one on the post just upstream from Allison Elaine:

Sanction: to ratify, approve
Sanction: to reprimand, penalize

Some Anglican churches have asked the Archbishop of Canterbury to sanction their own actions and to sanction the actions of other Anglican churches. It is unclear if he will do so.

There! All recent Anglican history in one swell foop!

Brilliant (in the American sense, not the British one). Utterly brilliant.