Canterbury

 

Today is the (lesser) feast of St Augustine of Canterbury. He was the Roman monk who was sent to England by Pope Gregory (“the Great”) in 597. He established a mission in the kingdom of Kent (the seat of which is now known as Canterbury), re-established contact with the indigenous Celtic church that had been living in isolation for 150 years or so, and became the first Archbishop of the new episcopal see of Canterbury. Rowan Williams, the present incumbent, is the 103rd in succession to Augustine. The chair pictured above sits near the east end of Canterbury cathedral and is known as “Augustine’s throne,” but, I’m told, actually dates only from the thirteenth century (Augustine died in 604, on May 26).

A thousand years (and more) after Augustine, as British imperialism led to colonialism, the church over which Augustine and his successors exercised pastoral oversight grew and evolved into an international family of churches that share the ecclesial ‘DNA’ known as Anglicanism. This family now exists in 39 autonomous provinces, numbering almost 80 million, and with a significant presence on every inhabited continent. It is the third largest Christian communion, behind Rome and Orthodoxy.

It is probably no secret to anyone reading this that the Anglican family is under an enormous amount of stress in recent years. There are powerful centripetal forces at work, and substantial fractures have appeared in the Anglican communion that are widening daily, in direct proportion to the recession of any plausible hope of their being healed. Canterbury itself, including the words and actions of Archbishop Williams, is at the epicenter of this conflict. Some have questioned—or even overtly rejected--the enduring value of Augustine's chair as a sign and focal point of Anglican unity.

I have generally been a supporter of Rowan Williams. He possesses a combination of frightening intelligence and manifest holiness that is the hallmark of not just a good pastor, but a great one. My admiration is not unqualified, and I am among those who are disappointed that he has not responded more quickly to articulate the “consequences” (his word) for the behavior of my own church (the Episcopal Church, of the “mostly USA” variety), which has intentionally veered away from the norms of our communion’s common life. Nonetheless, regardless of my personal opinion of the present occupant of the see, today’s commemoration reminds me of the vital importance of Canterbury as one of the “instruments of communion” for Anglican Christians.

In our creeds, we profess that the Church is “apostolic.” In our baptismal vows, we affirm fidelity to the “fellowship of the apostles.” Yes, without Canterbury, we would still have the historic episcopate (a chain of bishops-in-succession that can be transparently followed back to the original apostles) as a sign of our visible connection to the church that was “born” on the day of Pentecost. But it’s alarmingly easy to reach an abstract and mechanistic understanding of “apostolic succession” that leads to such anomalies as episcopi vagantes—in effect, bishops without churches. A healthy catholic ecclesiology certainly includes bishops in historic succession, but it also includes something more organic and more dispersed throughout the whole community of the faithful, a succession not simply of apostolic bishops, but of apostolic churches. The element of ecclesial security that a connection to Canterbury provides is simply this: the church of Canterbury is a church that is not just old, but was itself established by a church that was founded by not one, but two, apostles: Ss Peter and Paul. Canterbury is the token of the apostolicity of my particular church. Being tied to Canterbury is not magic. It guarantees nothing in and of itself. But, as part of a system of connections and reference points, it is invaluable, and ought not to be tossed aside, even for reasons that, in the thick of present but ultimately passing conflict, appear weighty.

Update on the Pax Nashotah

The sturm und drang of Anglicanism seems quiet of late, but it’s a deceptive calm. It’s not a good kind of calm. The disintegration quietly continues but the contending parties have long since pretty much quit talking to each other. They wonder what the point is. Meanwhile, average Sunday attendance in the Episcopal Church continues to skydive. The leadership of the Global South appears to be at odds within itself over whether it’s even a worthwhile aspiration to maintain the institutional and organic integrity of the worldwide (Canterbury-based) Anglican Communion. There’s a spat over the incumbency in an American seat on the Anglican Consultative Council. The Anglican Mission in America announced just days ago that it is stepping back from integration into the Anglican Church of North America, a major disappointment for many. And, of course, a week after a controversial episcopal consecration in Los Angeles, the deafening silence from Lambeth Palace drapes like a funeral pall over the hopes of those who long for a communion reconfigured and revived by a documented covenant.

This past week, I journeyed once again to Nashotah House, my seminary alma mater of 21 years, for Alumni Day and Commencement. I wrote about the same trip last year, and am pleased to report that I picked up the same vibe once again, possibly even amped up a tick or two. My enduring mental snapshot this time includes a thoroughly mainstream centrist TEC bishop walking in procession next to a former TEC bishop who is now, in the official eyes of TEC top leadership, deposed from the ordained ministry. Such details didn’t seem to matter. A Canadian bishop was awarded an honorary degree, the retired Bishop of Rochester (Church of England) preached the finest graduation homily I have ever heard, at Nashotah or elsewhere, a priest from Malawi received an advanced degree, students from the ACNA and the Reformed Episcopal Church got their MDivs alongside their TEC classmates, and alums who have left Anglicanism itself for Rome and Orthodoxy made their spiritual communion and participated with enthusiasm in every part of the liturgies save their denouement.

To paraphrase a question that should be familiar to my Baby-Boomer colleagues: What if they gave a schism and nobody came?

I am very grateful to God for Nashotah House. For a brief shining moment at this time each year, it is an eschatological sign of the answer to that question.

Getting Religion

Sadly, I am fluent in only one language, and will probably go to my grave in that lamentable state. I can carry on basic conversation (as long as everyone speaks slowly) in Spanish or Portuguese, and can credibly give you the gist of a newspaper article in either of those languages. I can read signs (for the most part) in French, and could probably do so in Italian, though I haven’t really tried. A basic knowledge I have of how German works, but scanty my vocabulary is. I’ve picked up a bit of Latin from studying music, and retain a smattering of Old Testament Hebrew and New Testament Greek from my seminary work.

So while I haven’t actually gone deep in any language other than English, my exposure is broad enough to enable me to draw some important generalizations. One of these is that different languages are not just different vocalizations for the objects and actions that are common to human experience. They are different ways of thinking, different ways of perceiving our common experience (which leads one to question how much of our experience is actually common). When Americans (for example) hear someone who is still learning English try to speak it, we find their mistakes amusing, and while we are perhaps likely to chuckle at their errors of word usage more than their errors of syntax and grammar, it is the syntactical and grammatical errors that tell us most clearly that we’re listening to someone for whom English is not a mother tongue, because syntax and grammar are the discernible signs of how the speakers of any given language perceive and process their sensory and interior experience.

So while one may study comparative languages quite fruitfully, doing so leads inexorably to the realization that one is actually studying comparative systems of thought, and eventually to the even deeper realization that one cannot fully comprehend any system of thought except from the inside, by taking the risk of “going native,” surrendering any pretense of objectivity.

But while I am an amateur philologist (in the strict etymological sense of both those words), I am not a linguist, and this post is not really about comparative languages. I’m setting up an analogy, which I wish now to apply to religion, and to “comparative religions.” Just as a linguist learns that one can take objective comparison only so far, and that comparative study is actually likely to yield deceptive results unless one subjectively enters another language and the system of thought that it represents—in other words, that there is no such thing as a genre we can call “language”, of which the various actual languages are mere speciations—so there is no such thing as a genre we can call “religion”, of which the various individual “religions” are mere speciations. Indeed, I think it is arguable that there is no such thing as “religion.” We can speak meaningfully of phenomena known as Christianity, or Islam, or Judaism, or Taoism, or Zoroastrianism, etc. etc., and comparative analysis of these phenomena may be fruitful to a point. But only to a point. Eventually, one hits a brick wall, and in order to fully comprehend Buddhism, one must subjectively embrace Buddhism, from the inside. A non-Buddhist may be able to make some true statements about Buddhism, but can neither fully understand Buddhism nor explain it.

Here’s a glaring example of what I’m talking about. In the late nineteenth century, historical and literary criticism, in tandem with ascendant empiricism, seemed to be setting explosive charges to the very foundations of Christianity. In America, a movement among some east coast Protestant scholars gained momentum in response to these developments. In time, they published a series of articles that affirmed what they called the “fundamentals” of the Christian faith (virgin birth, sacrificial death, bodily resurrection, to name the big ones). The movement they initiated began to be known as “fundamentalism.” It was not a populist movement in its origins; it was led by learned academics at mainstream institutions. What they professed varied in no substantive way from what anyone who says the Apostles’ or Nicene Creed with uncrossed fingers also professes.

A generation later (mid-1920s), “fundamentalism” went lowbrow, and the movement became known for embracing not just the creedal verities, but a hyper-literal interpretation of the first chapters of Genesis, and a six 24-hour day Creation, thus acquiring a patina of intellectual obscurantism and a generally pugnacious spirit. Still, the appellation “fundamentalist” made sense only the the context of Christianity; it was not a phenomenon that anyone would have thought to correlate generically with “religion.”

Fast-forward now to the late twentieth century, and the rise of activist militant Islam. Academics of a “comparative religion” stripe, with the eager cooperation of thoroughly secularized journalists who were largely ignorant of the history of American Christianity, noticed within Islamist quarters the traits of intellectual obscurantism and general pugnacity that they associated with the Christian “fundamentalists” that they believed themselves familiar with, and wasted no time coining the phrase “Islamic fundamentalism.” That they would be so quick to do so, and that the public would consider it appropriate for them to do so, is a testimony not only to their historical ignorance and intellectual laziness, but is clearly incoherent to anyone who has ever made a serious effort to learn another language. There is Christianity and there is Islam, but Christianity and Islam are not only not the same thing, they are not the same sort of thing. Failure to recognize the inherent limits of a “comparative religion” approach leads invariably to a failure to understand either Christianity or Islam.

So, from the perspective of everything I have written thus far in this post, I’m entirely sympathetic with the spirit behind a Facebook group that one of my “friends” announced to the world today that he “likes”: Christianity … It’s not a religion. It’s a relationship. I have effectively disavowed any claim that Christianity is “a religion,” because I’m not sure there is such a thing as “a religion.” And I can certainly affirm wholeheartedly that Christianity is about relationship (not just “a” relationship, actually, but a network of relationships).

But now I’m going to flip, and turn my laser in the opposite direction.

I had a Facebook friend request today from somebody I don’t know. The request is in the holding tank while I discern what to do. We have one mutual friend, someone whom I revere highly, so there’s a good chance this person will get the green light. But when I looked at the profile, I saw under the category of Religion (yes, Facebook apparently thinks there is such a thing) that this person identifies as “spiritual.” He has plenty of company, apparently. “Spiritual but not religious”, some surveys indicate, is the fastest growing self-identifying category, especially among the Millennial Generation (late teens and twenties, at present). It’s cool to be spiritual—that indicates both personal depth and commendable open-mindedness—but suspect to be religious, which indicates narcissistic and closed-minded judgmentalism. (I’m going to leave aside for the time being the whole question of what “spiritual” can even coherently mean apart from the concrete practices that constitute Wicca or Candomble or Confucianism, but it’s a big question.)

Even among many professing Christians, there is an aversion to the term “religion”—hence, the Facebook group referenced above. With some, even “Christian” is eschewed; the new hip label is “Christ-follower.” There’s even a video that parodies the Mac-is-cool but PC-is-nerdy ads: “I’m a Christian … well, I’m a Christ-follower.” Christ-followers are, by implication, SO not religious.

If so, then they’re missing something quite valuable. Christianity may not be a species of the genus “religion,” but that is not to say that there are not dimensions of Christian faith and practice that are quite clearly religious. The Latin stem in the word “religion”—lig—denotes binding, tying together, unifying, making coherent (the same connotation as there is in “ligature”). There are things that Christians do that not only testify to their identity as Christians, but serve to form them more deeply as Christians. Habits of public worship, private prayer, devotional practices, evangelism, stewardship, study, fellowship with other Christians, and service (ministry)—these are all elements of religion. One can hardly conceive of what it would mean to be a Christian apart from these things. They are what bind us to Christ, to one another, and to our true selves. Religion is an eminently valuable and positive word that we (Christians) should not blithely surrender to the semantic refuse bin. Christianity may not be “a religion.” But to be a Christian is most assuredly to be “religious.”

Liturgy and Worship: A Distinction With a Difference

I have from time to time offered the opinion that when Episcopalians and other Anglicans—and Christians in general, for that matter—are finished wrangling over sex, we will resume fighting over the mode and manner of our public worship, a conflict in which, taking a historical view, we have considerably more experience. But there will be a new twist this time. Instead of the Brain-Dead Anglo-Catholics in one corner, and the Snake-Belly Low Evangelicals in the other, it will be organs, hymnals, and choir cottas in one transept glaring across the nave at guitars, microphones, and Power Point projectors in the other.

I’m not in any way suggesting that the sexuality war is over. Sadly, there’s a lot of unexploded ordnance remaining on both sides of the divide there. But we are, I’m sensing, in a bit of a lull—the eye of the storm, perhaps, but a lull nonetheless. There will no doubt be “developments” in the wake of next Saturday’s consecration in Los Angeles, and the operational tempo may pick up. But, for whatever it may be worth, I’ve noticed, over the last few weeks, some ardent conversations being had in Anglican cyberspace on the subject of public worship—from the language and texts we use to speak of God, to the songs we sing when we gather, to the physical mechanics by which we access those texts and those songs. The subject never lies very far beneath the surface.

I’ve got a whole bunch of ideas knocking around my head en route to becoming wise and insightful and erudite observations. But they’re mostly still gelling, not yet ready for prime time. So in this post I’m going to confine myself to a small bit of rhetorical prep work—you know, the tedious process of sanding and putting down masking tape before indulging in the rush that comes from cracking the seal on a can of paint.

The canons of the Episcopal Church state that it is the duty of every member of the church to participate, “unless for good cause prevented,” in public worship on the Lord’s Day. “Worship” is a broad category. It is a genre of human activity that is not even uniquely Christian; Jews and Muslims, at least, have a notion of God and a notion of worship that is sufficiently parallel to what Christians mean by “God” and “worship” that a disinterested observer could be forgiven for concluding that assemblies of Christians and assemblies of Jews and assemblies of Muslims are essentially doing the same thing, just in different ways. I have very little training in either anthropology or sociology, but I feel pretty safe in suggesting that human beings demonstrably have an innate urge to worship. Many have achieved great success in resisting this urge, but the urge is nonetheless there.

The rubrics of the Book of Common Prayer (1979), which carry the weight of canon law, go even a bit further than the canon cited above (“On the Due Observance of Sundays”). They specify that the Holy Eucharist in particular is “the principal act of Christian worship on the Lord’s Day.” Now, while it may be possible to speak of the Eucharist in abstract terms if our goal is to address the fine points of sacramental theology, sooner of later any consideration of the Eucharist must come to terms with the particular forms by which a particular community in a particular place actually accomplishes the act. In others words, we eventually have to talk about liturgy. There are myriad liturgical forms for the celebration of the Eucharist. Some are highly complex and some are disarmingly simple. Some are ancient and some are recent. Some prescribe every detail and some lay down only the broad strokes and allow a great deal of improvisation. Some are formal and some are casual. One may argue, as some have done eloquently and elegantly, that there is a basic inherent “shape” to the Eucharistic action, but even within the confines of such a shape, the possible variations are virtually endless.

In casual conversation, most Christians who have an interest in the subject will find themselves using “worship” and “liturgy” almost interchangeably. But a great many people are apt to do the same with alligators and crocodiles, toads and frogs, ostriches and emus, llamas and alpacas. At one level, such distinctions appear meaningless. If you’re a baby wildebeest hydrating on a riverbank, it doesn’t much matter what species of predatory reptile inhabit those waters; you’d just better be careful. But if you’re a sweater manufacturer shopping for yarn, you definitely want your merchandise to come from an alpaca and not a llama.

I would suggest that, before we can engage in any fruitful conversation on any aspect of either liturgy or worship, or both, we need to acknowledge the distinction between the two.

Worship, as I have posited, is an inherent—some might say necessary—human activity. It can be corporate and it can be private. Not all worship is liturgy. Worship can be very authentic and very powerful—and very emotional—without being liturgy. In the ‘90s I attended a couple of Promise Keepers events. On such occasions, it is the job of a team of musicians to lead a stadium full of men in worship through singing together. I remember being impressed with how masterfully they went about their task, using carefully chosen and carefully sequenced songs to raise the level of adrenalin (and, in that venue, probably testosterone as well!) and then orchestrate a soft landing of quiet reverence before the emcee introduced the next speaker. There was definitely Christian worship going on, facilitated by skilled leadership. But it was not liturgy. Not even in the same neighborhood.

Here’s another very well-done illustration of what I’m talking about:

Interestingly, this is a nineteenth century “standard” workhorse of a gospel song—one which was firmly embedded in the repertoire of my Baptist youth—with both the text and tune preserved intact while being recontextualized with the instrumentation and vocal style of a currently popular musical idiom and some fresh harmonies just discordant enough to be ethereal, used to great effect. This is, I would say, authentic Christian worship, and, again, nothing even close to Christian liturgy.

Liturgy, at its etymological heart, is a job, a task, a service. When the liturgy at hand is that of the Eucharist, it is the job of the gathered community to re-member itself, to put itself back together. And the “self” that it re-members simply by coming together is, of course, the Body of Christ. By proclaiming the Word of God, and by taking, blessing, breaking and giving “the gifts of God for the people of God,” the eucharistic community rediscovers afresh each time its identity as the Body of Christ. It participates—has koinonia, “holy communion”—in Christ.

In order to accomplish this work, the liturgy of the Eucharist bears a particular form and shape that has multitudinous expressions, but an essential character that has been passed on for two millennia. Those who are stewards of the Church’s liturgy (clergy and musicians, mostly) perform their work most faithfully when they allow the liturgy’s own inherent form and shape, its rhythm, pace and momentum, to take the lead in making decisions regarding choreography, use of space, posture, gesture, and, of course, music.

It is tempting, powerfully tempting, for these very stewards to view the form and shape of the liturgy as a sort of flatbed truck on which they can load the freight of various agendas. These agendas can be musical, or pastoral, or catechetical, or aesthetic, or political. They are almost invariably good and proper things, activities and ministries that the Church is rightfully engaged in. But at the moment they are allowed to trump the liturgy itself, to eclipse its proper character and shape, its momentum and flow, they become trespassers, interlopers, invaders.

At the risk of sounding blasphemous, I would contend that even worship itself can become one of these trespassing agendas. I realize that may seem ludicrous on its face, and I am not in any way suggesting that worship is unimportant, or even of secondary importance. But when the Church gathers on the Lord’s Day, its “work” is not merely to worship in some generic sense, it is to perform the liturgy of the Eucharist, and in so doing, to worship the triune God. Our particular task on Sundays is to offer a certain kind of worship, worship that is disciplined by the liturgy.

Any perceived conflict between worship and liturgy is, of course, an illusion. The liturgy is certainly a vehicle of worship, and a splendid one at that. But its purpose is not merely to serve as a means to the end of worship. It is itself a proper end (though ultimately, of course, a contingent one), compatible with the end of worship, but not identical with it. At some point I will speak again of pipe organs and plainchant and praise bands and Power Point. But in considering those things, it will be essential to recall that while liturgy and worship may be siblings, they are not identical twins.

Reflections on a Holy Spirit Hymn

From my parish newsletter.

Among the mysteries of our Christian faith, the Holy Spirit has certainly inspired a sizable amount of devotional poetry. This text, which occurs in the Hymnal 1982 at #516, is a translation of part of a poem written in Italian (Discendi, amor santo...) by Bianco da Siena, a Tuscan who died in Venice in 1434, and about whom virtually nothing is known, save for the legacy of these exquisite lines. The translator is R. F. Littledale, a 19th century Church of England priest and liturgical scholar.

Come down, O Love divine,

seek thou this soul of mine,

and visit it with thine own ardor glowing;

O Comforter, draw near,

within my heart appear,

and kindle it, thy holy flame bestowing.

This first stanza introduces an image that is found throughout the hymn: the Holy Spirit as fire. On the day of Pentecost, "tongues of fire" were seen above the heads of the apostles (this, by the way, is part of what lies behind the shape of the liturgical headgear worn by bishops--the miter--reinforcing the notion that bishops are "successors of the apostles"). Human experience of fire is ambivalent: It warms and cheers, and it also burns and consumes. In this verse, the poet (and by extension, those who sing the hymn) invites the "Comforter" (one of the biblical euphemisms for the Holy Spirit) to "draw near" and "kindle" our hearts with a "holy flame."

O let it freely burn,

till earthly passions turn

to dust and ashes in its heat consuming;

and let thy glorious light

shine ever on my sight,

and clothe me round, the while my path illuming.

Now the fire that has been kindled is invited to "freely burn," which is always a risky proposition. Burns cause pain. But what is it that we are asking be destroyed by the Spirit's "heat consuming"? "Earthly passions," sinful desires that, in the language of our baptismal liturgy, "draw us from the love of God." Then one of the benign properties of fire is invoked--that of providing light, light that is at the same time "glorious" and a practical source of illumination, providing light for the path on which we walk. Indeed, guidance is one of the ministries of the Holy Spirit.

And so the yearning strong,

with which the soul will long,

shall far outpass the power of human telling;

for none can guess its grace,

till Love create a place

wherein the Holy Spirit makes a dwelling.

All this fire and light is eventually bound to make some changes in the soul which has invited and welcomed it. The Spirit's ministry produces a "yearning strong" for more of the same, a yearning that cannot be adequately articulated in human language, and can be known only by others who have been possessed by the same yearning.

The tune is from the renowned English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1959), and is called Down Ampney after the village of his birth. The text and tune are pretty happily married to one another among English-speaking hymn singers, as there are no suggested alternates in either direction. We will sing this hymn at the 10:15 liturgy on the Day of Pentecost, May 23, as our post-communion devotion.

Quote of the Day

"God is whoever raised Jesus from the dead, having before raised Israel from Egypt."

--Robert Jenson, quoted by Stanley Hauerwas in the March 28 issue of The Living Church.

I find this a rather breathtaking statement in its combination of simplicity and profundity. How easy it is for Christians to forget that we worship a particular God, not a generic "god." If we indeed know God as a "first cause" or as a guarantor of hope for life in the dimension of Eternity--and I believe there is merit in both of those assertions--then it is only because we first know him as the one who raised Jesus from the dead. The resurrection is not some deduced or derived data point, having previously postulated a set of abstract propositions about God's nature (omnipotent, omniscient, etc. etc.). It is itself the starting point of theology, the original fact from which everything else is derived and on which everything else depends.

What We're Actually Doing When We Come to Church

I'm usually a few weeks behind in seriously reading through issues of The Living Church, an eminently worthy weekly publication that has been a channel for the "Catholic voice" in the Episcopal Church for over 130 years. So this morning I was working my way through the March 21 issue and came across this gem of a quote which I am excerpting from a gem of an article ("The Sacrament of Lent"). The author is Father Ralph McMichael, who happens to have been my professor of liturgics during my senior year in seminary (1988-89), though I'm fairly certain he would be reluctant to accept any blame for the way I turned out. This is definitely worth pondering:

Each action of the Eucharist is thus part of the economy of God’s offer of salvation, to share in Christ’s life of communion. Our gathering—leaving the homes we have chosen and arranged for ourselves—is the beginning of our offering to live in the place God has prepared for us to dwell. Listening to Scripture is the ascetic practice of laying aside our own opinions and viewpoints for the sake of the silence where only God’sWord is heard. We thus listen before we speak, and are acted upon before we act — formed and renewed by what we believe, rather than by what you or I might think at any given moment on an issue du jour.

Does it not seem like consumerism ("What's in it for me?") is ever more regnant in the attitude of American Christians toward their church relationships? Hyper-individualism will yet be our undoing as an effective witness in this culture. We need more strong antidotes like this article to help us see straight and remember who we are and what we're doing when we come (or don't come, as the case may be) to the Eucharist.

On Openness in the Process of Liturgical Change

I have just sent the following letter to the Revd Dr Ruth Meyers in her capacity as Chair of the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music for the Episcopal Church. For background on the issue, follow the link in the letter.

Dear Ruth,

I write to you in your capacity as Chair of the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music, and in partial fulfillment of the friendly promise I made to you when we chatted briefly at General Convention that I would be a thorn in the side of the SCLM during this triennium!

In the spirit of "fulfilling all righteousness" with respect to providing feedback on the trial use calendar commemorations in Holy Women, Holy Men, I want you to know that I have made a commitment to liturgically observing any of these proposed lesser feasts that happen to fall on a Wednesday, which is when my parish has a regular weekday celebration of the Eucharist. So far, we have commemorated the Dorchester Chaplains, Fanny Crosby, and Demby & Delany. Between now and the end of September, we will be observing five more of these occasions, and most likely more going forward, though I haven't yet done that much advance planning. At some point before the end of the calendar year, I will send you a synposis of our experience.

In the meantime, however, I would like to flag an underlying cognate concern that touches not only on HWHM, but on all the work that the commission pursues by way of drafting liturgical texts. When the draft of HWHM was made available in the Blue Book last spring, I observed publicly that the proposed collects aggressively continue a policy of systematically excluding the term "Lord" from new liturgical texts. I have not re-verified my count, so I may be off by a little bit, but at that time, out of 112 proposed new additions to the calendar, only three collects employed the traditional concluding phrase, "through Jesus Christ our Lord."

I think I understand the motivation for this. I am not unfamiliar with the feminist critique of "Lord" as enabling the perpetuation of a patriarchal stereotypes, a "gateway" word, so to speak, that enables a whole array of images that serve to marginalize half the human race and obscure the radical universality of the gospel. While I believe it is possible to offer a cogent rebuttal to that critique, it is actually not my purpose to do so here. What I hope to argue for is, first, transparency and honesty in the process of drafting liturgical texts, and, secondly, as a result of such transparency and honesty, a practical measure of charity and inclusivity for all Episcopalians.

My point about transparency and honesty is that the "Lord" question is a serious theological issue. It deserves to be explored and debated on its own merits, freely and overtly, out in the open, for everyone to see. Instead, my perception of the standard procedure of the SCLM over the last 25 years (since the first revision of the Book of Occasional Services, at any rate) has been to virtually eliminate "Lord" from any new or revised texts, and do so quietly, without announcement or explanation. I can understand following this process in those portions of projects like Enriching Our Worship that have parallel texts in the Prayer Book or B.O.S., and are offered as optional alternatives to the standard rites. In such cases, the avoidance of avoidance of patriarchal or masculine language for God is understood as part of the underlying premise. But that same premise does not apply (or, at least, is not widely understood to apply) in the case of texts that do not have such parallels, and are intended, either in their present form or in a future form, to be the church's standard texts for the purposes to which they apply. HWHM would fit this category, as would efforts like Rachel's Tears, Hannah's Hopes. In these cases, I have trouble not naming the behavior of the Commission as (unintentionally, no doubt) deceptive, for, in effect, "sneaking" language driven by a particular ideology into liturgical texts intended for use by the whole church even though there has not been an open conversation, let alone an emerging consensus, throughout the church about the theological implications of such language.

At the very least, I would encourage the SCLM to be publicly explicit and clear about the policy of systematically excluding "Lord" from any new articulations of this church's worship. Make a case for it, and open the conversation. Beyond that minimal step, however, I would invite the commission to consider recasting the familiar two-track system of liturgical language. Since 1976, we have become accustomed to language that is either "traditional" or "contemporary." Given the blanket rubrical permission for local communities to render "Rite Two" texts into "Rite One" language (of which the Anglican Service Book is a published example), and given the evolution of the environment and parameters of liturgical change since the 1970s, it may now be more judicious to frame the distinction between "contemporary" and "traditional" in theological terms rather than linguistic terms. So, the "contemporary" form of a collect (or other element of a rite) could openly respond to the concerns of those who prefer an alternative to what they perceive as patriarchal or exclusive terms (inter alia, "Lord" and "Father"). The "traditional" form would robustly continue to use verbal forms that have been part of our liturgical inheritance. Such an approach would be both more honest and more charitable, I believe, than to continue what appears to be a practice of slipping in major theological change under the guise of responding to neglected pastoral needs, or adding prayers for new occasions, and the like.

As you might imagine, given the blogsphere's innate capacity for the dispersion and democratization of discourse, I intend to post this letter in cyberspace. I appreciate your attention to it, and sincerely hope you will share it with your colleagues on the SCLM. Know that I hold the commission's members in my prayers as you pursue your very important work for our church.

Faithfully in Christ,

Dan Martins+

What He Says

As the consecrations of the Bishops Suffragan of Los Angeles approach, the Anglican waters are once again stirring. I could not offer a more apposite assessment of this moment than that offered by my friend and colleague, Father Tony Clavier. Go here for the whole thing, but here are some pertinent snips:

The crucial matter is one of honesty and trust. Even after the votes taken at the last General Convention which seemed to reject a principled pause in these areas, the PB and the President of the House of Deputies wrote to the leaders of the Anglican Communion stating that TEC still honored its agreement to a moratorium on the ordination and consecration of persons in partnered same-sex relationships and to authorizing same-sex blessings.

The Archbishop of Canterbury has made his dismay quite clear. Mutual affection and submission, the type of any loving relationship, depends on trust. The issue presented to the Communion now is that it cannot trust TEC, for no single agency of TEC represents its voice, and thus one “voice” may say one thing and seem authoritative, only to be drowned out by another which seems authoritative.This confusion of tongues is lauded as TEC’s superior form of government!

And also (referring to criticism of Archbishop Williams on conservative blogs):

Having said all this, I return to another form of bad behavior and that is demonizing those one believes to be wrong, or inefficient.  Traditionalists in TEC: those who have left have no business grumping about TEC’s doings – so often sound like the “Tea Party at Prayer”. ...  Starting from the premise that the government is rotten, which may be true who ever is in power, such people invent stories intended to prove their point and these stories include personal invective against those assumed to be the Enemy.

I could draw instances of Liberals who demonize traditionalists, but my point this April morning is aimed at those in whose camp I uneasily dwell, whose world-view and consequent invective begins with the premise that the Archbishop and his Communion are rotten, and weave tales to prove the point, spiced with personal invective.

Well said, IMHO. I believe in vigorous debate. But I would rather think the best of someone's intentions, rather than automatically assume the worst.

Notes from Great Paschal Vespers

This will be succinct, as I'm writing from my iPhone while on a train.

Last night I attended Paschal Vespers at the Basilica of the Sacred Heart on the campus of the University of Notre Dame. It was an unexpectedly magnificent experience.

As a genre, this is the Roman Catholic equivalent of Choral Evensong (which, as a genre, I adore). But instead of receiving the inheritance through the line of Benedictine monasticism, the form used at ND drinks from the well of the ancient "cathedral vespers." This means that, without dumbing it down musically--a rehearsed choir plays a prominent role--it invites a great deal of congregational participation, mostly by way of antiphons, refrains, and imitative responses.

Here's what I loved the best:

The place was packed, mostly with students. What a joy to see young people serious about high-octane worship in the best Catholic tradition.

A fine organ played with great skill.

A metrical Magnificat set to the English hymn tune "Jerusalem."

A fine rendition by the choir of the (quintessentially Anglican anthem Hail, Gladdening Light by Charles Wood.

And most of all, I wasn't in charge. I wasn't responsible for midwifing the liturgical experience of others; I got to just be part of the worshiping crowd. People in my line of work need that from time to time. It was balm to my soul.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

In Praise of the Daily Office

Coming at the tradition of historic Christianity as I did (from free-church evangelicalism) and when I did (in my early twenties, nearly four decades ago), it is interesting (providential?) that the parish in which I first worshiped regularly as an Anglican was a “Morning Prayer” parish. That was already a dying breed in the Episcopal Church even then, and now it is virtually extinct. We seem to have thoroughly recovered and embraced the ancient norm that the Eucharist is the principal act of corporate worship on the Lord’s Day, and this is, in my view, an overwhelmingly positive development. Yet, on a number of levels, I am glad I had the experience of All Saints-by-the-Sea in Santa Barbara in the early 1970s. It is where I first heard “O Lord, open thou our lips.” It is where I encountered the canticles (I remember especially Benedictus es, Domine sung to Anglican Chant in a manner that has been aptly called “Anglican thump”). It is where I first encountered Cranmer’s majestic liturgical draftsmanship, drinking so deeply as it did of the Benedictine spirit that underlies the Anglican ethos.

In time (and elsewhere), I learned that the purpose of Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer is revealed most clearly when they form the foundation of a person’s (or, ideally, a community’s) daily prayer life. That foundation was eventually laid solidly in my own heart and mind and soul, and by the time I matriculated in a seminary that had monastic origins, it wasn’t that big a transition for me, just an intensification of something I was already accustomed to. More than 20 years after leaving Nashotah House, I still miss Michael the Bell calling the community to prayer.

I was blessed, upon graduation, to become a curate in a parish (St Luke’s, Baton Rouge) where Morning and Evening Prayer were read publicly, at stated times, seven days a week, thus extending the regimen to which I had grown accustomed in seminary. In the three congregations where I subsequently assumed the reins of pastoral care (in 1991, 1994, and 2007), I established this same practice. Much of the time I have been alone. Most of the time I have had one other person with me (usually another staff member, but still…), and occasionally a decent handful of co-worshipers. Unfortunately, my experience in this regard is quite atypical. Hardly any churches (of whatever stripe) recite the offices on a daily basis, a significant impoverishment to our common life, I would say.

As I mentioned upstream a few posts, I’m in the middle of reading a novel about a community of English Benedictine nuns that takes place around 1960. That narrative, to the extent that it wants to be authentic, cannot help but make frequent references to the daily liturgical life of the community, which spent several hours out of every 24 in the chapel, with some of them devoting even more hours to rehearsing for the chapel services. These comments, put by the author in the mouth of the novice mistress, particularly arrested my attention:

“This is our craft,” [Dame Agnes] said, using the word in its highest sense. “The craft of a contemplative religious, and as a good workman, an artist, loves his craft, we must delight in ours.”

I would not suggest that the majority of Christians, who, unlike these cloistered nuns, are “in the world,” can hone the same craft to the same degree of subtle and sophisticated beauty. But I am too formed in the same craft, albeit at a more plebian level, to easily let go of the notion that it is something worth doing more and doing better. For nearly the last two years, I have had a sort of apprentice in practicing this craft. As you might imagine, I have over the years acquired some opinions about “best practices” in praying the Daily Office from the 1979 Book of Common Prayer, and it has been a challenging and rewarding exercise for me to regularly be made to articulate why these practices are indeed “best.” I may not be a “contemplative religious,” but the daily office is part of my craft too, and it’s a craft in which I continue to delight.

Frankly, I cannot imagine trying to be a priest without these daily spiritual anchors. The practice consumes several hours a week when you add it all up, which is time that one could argue could be spent more “usefully.” But not really. There is no value I could ever place on the grooves that have been worn in my soul by more than thirty years of praying all 150 Psalms, the canticles and collects, the Old Testament narratives and prophecies, the gospel pericopes, and the passages from the epistles, Acts, and Revelation. The Daily Office is certainly not in itself a sufficient rule of prayer. But it is, I am persuaded, for most Christians who hang their hats in liturgical churches, a necessary foundation.

Wiki Theology

The Los Angeles Times carried a story earlier this week about a conference recently sponsored and hosted by the Claremont School of Theology, the title of which was “Theology After Google.” Here’s the money quote:

Jon Irvine, a 30-year-old Web designer who works with the "emerging church" movement, said the church of the future will have to be less hierarchical and more freewheeling and ecumenical. Using the familiar formula for tracking software changes, he said: "Church 1.0 . . . was always about a big council of big brains getting together and telling you, 'Here, we've gone into a room and we've decreed that you need to believe.' Church 2.0 is more bottom-up. Every man is capable of learning and providing feedback. Church 1.0 is all about creeds and doctrines, whereas Church 2.0 is kind of like a wiki-theology."

Wiki, of course, is a dynamic concept that represents both the best and the worst of how the internet has revolutionized the exchange of information inside of 15 years. If you’re reading this blog, chances are you’re familiar with Wikipedia, an online reference that is constantly being edited and updated by anyone who believes they have the knowledge to improve any given entry. No permission is necessary and there is no formal oversight. Most of the time, this results in factual and reliable articles. Where the subject is one of current controversy, there is usually an editing tug-of-war. The idea is that, while this will lead to anomalies and imperfections, sometimes of a gross magnitude, over time the forces of the intellectual and academic marketplace will prevail, and the rough places will be made plain.

Mr Irvine’s contention is that, in the church-that-is-emerging, theology will be done in the same way. Rather than creeds or councils (or synods or conventions) or hierarchical authorities deciding the content of doctrine or teaching, theology will emerge from the ground up, fine-tuned by a rich dialectical process the authenticity of which is attested by the sheer number of participants. Without anything so formal as votes by orders (orders?) or concurrent resolutions, everybody will have a piece of the action—at any rate, those with a broadband internet connection.

I’m in a frame of mind where I’m still trying to discern the vector and speed of the puck, so this whole notion catches my attention. And, somewhat ironically, perhaps, wiki-theology seems strangely consonant with a very traditional and very Catholic concept—the consensus fidelium, the consensus of the faithful. Even in the most hierarchically ordered churches, the voice of the hierarchy is understood to be ultimately credible inasmuch as it is also the voice of the entire ecclesial community. A decree of the magisterium, or of an ecumenical council, is formally final, but effectively is concluded with an asterisk: It must still be “received” (a technical term in ecclesiology) by the “faithful” (another technical term pretty much synonymous with “baptized,” therefore denoting the whole body of the Church, not merely those whose piety is exemplary). Moreover, this process of reception is not only horizontal across space but vertical across time; it takes more than one generation to be deemed complete.

Will the latest technology for information sharing be a major factor in any process leading to an expression of the consensus fidelium? Of course it will. Philip Clayton, the principal presenter at the Claremont event, stressed how Gutenberg’s invention of moveable type made the Protestant Reformation not only possible, but, some might say, inevitable. He then suggests that the latest sea change in information sharing technology—i.e. the internet—is bound to have an impact just as cataclysmic. It will bring about “Church 2.0.” (I would say those who use that expression have missed a couple of product upgrades: I would place the release of Church 2.0 in wake of the Edict of Constantine in the early fourth century and Church 3.0 with Luther and his 95 Theses in 1517. [What about the Great Schism of 1054? 2.5, I would say.] So what we’re looking at now is probably something more like Church 4.0. But I quibble.)

But is a technologically more efficient process for achieving and articulating the consensus fidelium tantamount to wiki-theology? Does it obviate the need for (or at least the relevance of) creeds and councils? Does it make ordination obsolete, as one of the Claremont conference attendees suggested? ("’I think things like denomination and ordination are part of the old system of control and domination that has to go,’ [Doug] Pagitt, 42, said…”)

Arguably not, and here’s why: It’s nothing new. I’m not opposed to trend spotting. Remember, I aim to get ahead of the curve on that. But I wonder whether the ecclesial populism espoused by Mr Pagitt is really a sign of a technological tectonic shift as much as it is of the old-fashioned free church evangelicalism in whose water he swims, whether he knows it or not. If you’re already predisposed against hierarchical structures and church order, it’s pretty easy to think that your position is the wave of the future. Is wiki-theology substantively different than the every-man-his-own-pope paradigm in which I was formed as a youth, or does it merely accomplish the same ends more efficiently, and, presumably, with demonstrably more buy-in? I am inclined to think that it’s the latter.

In my musing of last week (linked above) about figurative hockey pucks, I noted the challenging work of discerning the difference between the genuine pearls of our tradition and time bound customs that need to be changed out before their freshness date expires. What is so precious that we must insist on establishing it among those who are joined to our fellowship, and what do we need to be careful not to force on others, even if we are ourselves quite attached to it? I’m a hymn geek, and there are a number of hymns that I find quite lovely, but which are clearly in the latter category. On this Mr Pagitt and I would probably agree. But he and I would part company as soon as we get beyond the first point of the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral. The creeds, the dominical sacraments, and the inheritance of apostolic ministry have already been vetted thoroughly and have settled positions in the consensus fidelium. They are no longer in a process of reception; they have been received. Editing is closed.

Just as Wikipedia can go bad at times, wiki-theology can also go bad. America (and any society where the secular politics are democratic) is a particularly risky environment for wiki-theology. It is distressingly easy for us to transfer our experience of and commitment to democracy in the secular arena to our life in the church, which is not inherently democratic even if some parts of it choose to employ democratic processes in discernment and decision making. It is easy to forget the given-ness of so much of our faith and practice, and entertain the illusion that we can make things up as we go along, decide doctrine by plebiscite, edit the creeds the same way we would edit a Wikipedia article.

If that’s where the puck is going, this isn’t hockey anymore.

Skating Toward Where the Puck is Going to Be

Last week my friend and fellow blogger Nick Knisely (Dean of Trinity Cathedral in Phoenix and short-list nominee for Bishop of Kentucky) posted an essay on the speed of technological change viz a vis mobile networking (using the incipient release of the iPad as the springboard for his reflections). He suggested that it would behoove churches (among other societal institutions) to try and get ahead of the change curve in the area of information technology, rather than always bringing up the rear. To illustrate his point, he alluded to legendary professional hockey player Wayne Gretzky’s response when asked to account for his astonishing performance in the NHL: “I don’t skate to where the puck is, I skate to where it’s going to be.”

That quote immediately arrested my attention, and I’ve been pondering it for several days. In fact, it’s almost hijacked my thought processes. I have a deep intuitive sense that there is a profound truth here that applies to a lot more than hockey in particular and sports in general. The ability to recognize changing circumstances, adapt to them quickly, and take it a step further by anticipating their implications is, I would suggest, the better part of what distinguishes good and great leaders from mediocre and incompetent leaders.

This is a subject of some importance to me because I am, among other things, a leader. I’m a parish pastor, and I have vestry members and parishioners who look to me for leadership. I’m among a group of leaders in my diocese, by virtue of serving on the Standing Committee, the Commission on Ministry, and the Examining Chaplains, to say nothing of a stint as General Convention Deputy. And simply on the basis of that last office, I guess you could say that I am—in a broad sense, at least—a leader in the Episcopal Church. Some might suggest that my presence in cyberspace over the last few years also qualifies me for the designation “leader.” While greatness as a leader is obviously beyond the range of my giftedness, I surely do aspire to be a good one, or at least to avoid being an incompetent one.

So what does it look like for a responsible leader to skate to where the puck is going? This is neither a whimsical nor an abstract question. The institutional contexts in which I exercise leadership are in distress. The level of conflict in my parish is not crippling (or even close), but it’s certainly sharper than the kind of background noise an experienced cleric learns to accept as a baseline norm. We halted a precipitous numerical decline that began in the middle of the last decade and continued until my arrival in mid-2007. But in the wake of last summer’s General Convention, there is once again evidence of erosion. My diocese is a demographic microcosm of much of the Episcopal Church—slowly but steadily declining Sunday attendance, slowly but steadily rising median age, fewer and fewer full-time clergy positions, only about a third of our congregations able to afford a full-time priest, and some of them only marginally so. And the Episcopal Church itself, of course, is in numerical and financial free-fall, on a glide path toward institutional meltdown.

None of this is particularly news, or course. As a pastoral leader, the sort of of response I have advocated and tried to implement has included several components:

• A robust liturgical life that embodies the breadth and depth of our Anglican tradition, leading to the sanctification of matter, time, space, gesture, and action; rich symbolism and vibrant sensory experience. This includes music of a variety of styles, but always done with an unfailing standard of excellence.
• Engaging preaching that opens up the scriptures, sets forth good news with consistently compelling clarity, and calls people to ever-deepening discipleship and stewardship.
• Leadership that persistently casts a vision of communal dedication to mission—both spiritual and material.
• Strong and challenging programs of Bible study and Christian formation, for both adults and young people.
• Pastoral care that makes no pretense of being a therapeutic milieu, but winsomely leads people, in their hour of need, to a connection with Jesus, their suffering and crucified and risen Lord, the true “Shepherd and Bishop of their souls.”

This is how I attempt to ply my trade, to exercise my craft as a priest. I’ve done it this way for twenty years. It’s all I know how to do with any confidence. At some level, these things define my very sense of self, they are central to my vocational identity. And I’ve been modestly successful with them, relatively speaking. Treading statistical water certainly conveys no bragging rights, but in a larger context of accelerating decline, it is, so to speak, nothing to sneeze at.

What’s been bothering me the last few days, though, is the growing sense that operating in this area of my competence and comfort, even if I do it well, even if I were to do it better than most of my colleagues and peers (a big “if”), is still just skating to where the puck is, rather than to where the puck is going to be. And I have a suspicion that there are plenty more where I come from, that there are a great many Christian pastors and lay leaders who can readily find themselves in the bullet points listed above. If so, we’re all skating toward the edge of a precipice, and Wayne Gretzky has a word for us.

As pastoral leaders, we need to lay hold of a fresh vision for our mandate. This is, of course, where the lights start to get dim, but those of us who are members of a “developed world” western culture can start by really acknowledging that the era of Christendom is over. We’ve been talking about this for decades now, and while we’ve been talking the death spiral of Christendom has accelerated exponentially. Even while acknowledging this reality, we’ve been engaging in largely rear-guard action, trying to cope with and manage the situation, hoping, perhaps, to slow down the process a bit. If we’re going to skate to where the puck is going to be, however, would it not make more sense not to merely accept it, but to embrace it? Rather than trying to hang on to vestiges of cultural Christianity as long as we can, would we not do better to proactively cast them aside? The culture we want to engage is one that only recently was the stuff of jokes: People who really don’t know the difference between Easter and Groundhog Day, art students who would really ask professors why the Louvre holds so many paintings of a mother and child, store clerks who would really tell a shopper, “Yes, we have several crosses to choose from; some are plain and some have a little man on them.” These are not aberrations to joke about; this is our world.

There’s no shortage of ideas about what Christianity 4.0 will or should look like. Brian Mclaren’s A New Kind of Christianity takes on the subject, and is all the rage at the moment. (I haven’t read it yet, only about it.) Walter Russell Mead offers a biting analysis of the mainline church scene in this op/ed piece, which I have read, and partly agree with and partly take issue with. Thinking strategically about how to do church in a post-Christian culture is, as they say, above my pay grade. If I were to forget myself for a moment and transgress the boundaries of my station in life, I might venture the suspicion that it would not require us to jettison the beliefs and practices enshrined in that benchmark Anglican document, the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral.

But, alas, I’m a mere line officer, and must ultimately confine myself to tactics. Mead, in the essay referenced above, posits that all churches will of necessity emulate a model that is drastically less dependent on “professional” leadership than most churches are today, with much more informal and decentralized structures of governance. By analogy, he offers that Americans (and all denizens of western liberal democracies in general) now consult the internet where they once would have phoned or made an appointment with a professional. We take responsibility for gathering our own information and making our own decisions. Cyberspace enables the democratization of information, including theological and spiritual information. We have Wikipedia, so who needs a priest?

Ah, my sarcasm betrays my bias. Mead’s prescription may work for those Christians who are inclined to embrace only the first two of the Chicago-Lambeth 4. But Catholic Christianity (by which I mean, at the very least, those communities that order their life, wittingly or not, according to all four, though I would probably want to put an even sharper point on it than that) is an inherently communitarian enterprise. It is its own culture. It takes seriously St Peter’s declaration that we are a chosen race, a holy priesthood, God’s own people (I Peter 2:9). It has ways of doing things that are not immediately or intuitively clear to the uninitiated. It has a technical vocabulary. It should strive very hard to meet people where they are (and has largely failed to do so, which explains a big part of the mess we’re in), and then it should strive even harder to bring them to a very different place. It’s called evangelization, formation, and catechesis, and if it was once as simple as teaching a child to memorize the Apostles’ Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Ten Commandments (though it never was actually that simple; we just acted like it was), then it is infinitely more complex in the post-Christian world, where art students no longer have a context for understanding the tradition of which they are an extension, and people see the cross as nothing more than an item of jewelry, and they do so not out of rebellion or even intellectual laziness, but out of invincible ignorance.

So a proactive tactical response to the demise of Christendom, by which I mean one that aims at where the puck is going to be rather than where it is, invites us into a delicate dance of discernment: Among those things that we are in the habit of doing and saying (and singing), which are part of our Christian (counter-)culture—the lore and technical vocabulary of our community into which we must form and initiate people—and which ones represent truly excess baggage (what Mead in his essay calls “crap”)? This is difficult, because it’s important that we not err too far in one direction or the other. I was recently in a Facebook exchange extolling the merits of some liturgical music that is much beloved among many American and Canadian Anglicans (Healy Willan’s Missa Sancta Maria Magdalena). We were having a fine time until another commenter chimed in with “This is 2010! Get over it! Time to move to something more contemporary!” (or words to that effect). I happen to love this music, and have eventually taught it to every congregation I have served. But is it part of that sacred deposit of Catholic Christian culture into which we need to form the catechumens from our post-Christian world? Probably not, I’m sorry to say.

The discernment dance involves thousands of little steps just like that one. Some items are essential. They will seem quite foreign to “seekers” and not make any sense to them. (“The hell you say? No sex outside of marriage?!”) But discipleship is neither seeker-driven nor particularly seeker-friendly, so this is when we trust the Holy Spirit to work on a person’s heart and mind. Other items may be cherished treasures, but will need to be laid aside lovingly (and perhaps indulged in from time to time by those who are inclined to do so—“Choral Evensong with Howells Collegium Regale? Sign me up!”) for the sake of the essential mission of the church.

Perhaps the biggest horse pill we need to swallow is letting go of the notion that Sunday morning worship is our show window to the world, the place where we meet those whom God is preparing to respond to the gospel in our midst. This is such a “Christendom” assumption, and one we need to let go of. Before Christendom (that is, before Emperor Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire in the second decade of the fourth century), the Sunday Eucharist was the last place Christians expected to meet a “seeker.” Might we need to re-engineer the social architecture of our church communities such that potential new members find us and are integrated into various aspects of our common life even before they have ever darkened the door of the nave on a Sunday morning? A great deal of thinking-outside-the-box is called for here.

Honestly, I don’t much like where the puck is going to be. I don’t even like where it is. I much prefer it where it used to be! But I’m wearing these skates and I have this stick in my hand, and it’s my job to get in the game.

Jesu, mercy.

Mary, pray.

Come Fly With Me …

… to the Holy Land, about 50 weeks from now.

Bishop Ed Little is leading a pilgrimage to Israel next year, departing February 21 and returning March 2. I am privileged to be among those assisting him in this effort, and would love to have you join me. Most of the pilgrims will be from the Diocese of Northern Indiana, but the trip is open to anyone.

We will see Nazareth, where Jesus was raised, other towns in Galilee, where he ministered, and take a boat ride on the Sea of Galilee, which figured so prominently in his life and teaching. We will visit the Jordan River, the Dead Sea, and, of course, Jerusalem, the holy city where Jesus suffered and died and rose from the dead. And there’s some great stuff I’m not even mentioning here.

And it’s a bargain—estimated price (pending locking in airfare) is $2,899 per person, including all travel (from Chicago), lodging, and meals. Only taxes and tips will be extra.

I made an exploratory trip a year ago. See here (and then go to the posts that follow) for my reflections at the time. It was a life-changing experience that I am still unpacking in my mind and heart.

If you’re interested, and would like more information, please shoot me an email or give me a call (564.699.3266).

Something Old, Something New

Today is the lesser feast of John & Charles Wesley, Priests. They are claimed by Methodism as founders, though they both died as presbyters in good standing of the Church of England. As a musician, I must confess myself more drawn to Charles. Though he may be the "lesser light" in terms of leadership genius, he is certainly the "greater light" as a poet. So many of his hymn text have wormed their way into my heart, but none perhaps moreso than Love divine, all loves excelling... . There are a number of very fine tunes to which this hymn has been sung. The two best ones happen to be Welsh (serendipitously so, since St David's day was only two days ago): Hyfyrdol and Blaenwen (the latter much more well-known in Britain than here). But I recently ran across this more contemporary setting, which I find really quite moving (and not only because I'm a soft touch for young people's faces while they're singing). The opening conversation with the composer leads to a performance by the National Youth Choir of Scotland. Enjoy.

A Lenten Thought

In my cycle of reading, it's time for some fiction. So I picked up a volume that's been sitting on my shelves for a number of years (well ... decades), and been moved from house to house several time, but which I have never read. It's nothing famous, and I don't remember where I got it, except that I didn't buy it new. It's called In This House of Brede, the work of Rumer Godden, published in 1969. The action takes place in an English Roman Catholic Benedictine convent in the late 1950s.

I'm not far enough into this book to know whether it's much good, but the opening lines of the Prologue show some promise:

The motto was 'Pax,' but the word was set in a circle of thorns. Pax: peace, but what a strange peace, made of unremitting toil and effort, seldom with a seen result; subject to constant interruptions, unexpected demands, short sleep at nights, little comfort, sometimes scant food; beset with disappointments and usually misunderstood; yet peace all the same, undeviating, filled with joy and gratitude and love. "It is My own peace I give unto you." Not, notice, the world's peace.

Learning to identify the "world's peace," and then repeatedly renounce it, is, I would say, always on the task list of a Christian disciple.

Making Friends with the Mother of God

(Now appearing on my parish website, and soon to be in the March newsletter.)

In the stream of Christianity where I first learned to “swim” spiritually, Mary the mother of Jesus showed up for Christmas pageants—the “yon virgin” of “mother and child” fame—but otherwise kept a low profile. We were a little skittish about her, not on her own account, actually, but out of a desire to distance ourselves from Catholics, who appeared (literally) to idolize her.

After I embraced the Anglican stream of Christianity in early adulthood, Mary began to appear more prominently on my spiritual “desktop.“ Several times a week, at Evening Prayer, I said or sang the canticle Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55), in which she gives voice to her conviction that “all generations will call me blessed.“ If you repeat something enough, it eventually sinks in! I listened to sermons and read articles about how Mary is an example for us all in her unreserved “Yes” to God (“let it be to me according to your word”).

In time, I learned to pray the Rosary, which, while focused ultimately on Christ, approaches him, as it were, through his mother. During my seminary formation years (1986-1989), we paused three times a day to pray the Angelus, a devotion that is rooted in the appearance of the angel Gabriel to inform Mary of God’s plan for her life (and for the life of the world).

Somewhere along this path, what began as mental attention to Mary evolved into heartfelt love for Mary. I can’t say exactly when this took place, but I can recall when I became intently aware of it. In Mel Gibson’s compelling and controversial 2004 film The Passion of the Christ, our Lord’s mother is shown watching him cautiously from the shadows as he is whipped almost to death, and then prominently, in full view, as he hangs on the cross. In what is apparently an effort not to scream in anguish as she watches her son’s suffering, she squeezes pebbles in her hands, and it seems as if the sheer energy of her pathos will surely turn them to a fine powder.

It is certainly possible for devotion to Mary to be carried too far. There’s a joke that has Jesus walking into a church and trying to get the attention of the proverbial “little old lady” praying in the front pew. She gives him an annoyed look and says, “Don’t interrupt me! Can’t you see I’m talking to your mother?“ Yet, I would say that Episcopalians are, by and large, a pretty safe distance from letting devotion to Mary eclipse devotion to Jesus. Our problem is quite the opposite. Our spiritual lives, individually and corporately, are more likely to be impoverished because we have not made room in them for the Mother of God.

Mother of God? Is that expression not a little over-the-top? It can certainly be confusing, at least. It can sound as if we’re saying that God the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth, was brought into being through birth to a human woman, which is, of course, a ludicrous notion. But the expression “mother of God” is not an attempt to say something about God the Father, and still less about Mary. It’s an attempt to say something very important about Jesus. The Greek word that lies behind it is theotokos—literally, God-bearer. It came into use during the early theological debates in Christianity (we’re talking second, third, and fourth centuries here) over the affirmation that Jesus is both fully divine and fully human. To say that Mary is the God-bearer is to say that the one whom she bore is indeed God. That may not be controversial among Christians today, but it was in the early years, and they felt that the expression was an important element in orthodox christology. Theotokos got rendered into Latin as mater dei—hence, “mother of God” in English.

Do we pray to Mary? Certainly not in the same sense in which we pray to God. Yet, we are within the Christian mainstream when we invite Mary (or any of the saints, for that matter, both those who are presently 98.6 and those who have moved into eternity) to offer her intercessions on our behalf. This expresses our belief, which we affirm every time we say the creeds, in “the communion of saints.“ Surely the prayers of the God-bearer are heard favorably by the one who is himself God!

In our Prayer Book calendar, there are three major holy days that are focused on Our Lady. On March 25 we celebrate the feast of the Annunciation, commemorating the angelic announcement of her impending pregnancy. On May 31, we keep the feast of the Visitation—Marys’s visit to her relative Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist. On August 15, there is a generalized feast of St Mary the Virgin. This is the dedicatory feast of our lovely chapel here at St Anne’s. This year, however, it falls on a Sunday, and in keeping with Prayer Book rubrics (rules, stage directions), we will break with our usual summer Sunday routine and observe it in grand style. Though not officially a part of our Episcopal Church calendar, many Anglicans also observe the feast of the Immaculate Conception on December 8, which honors the pious customary notion that Mary was “pre-sanctified,“ made sinlessly holy by the grace of her Son, retrospectively applied, in order to make her an appropriate vehicle through which the Incarnate God to arrive in this world.

Hail, Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you. Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.

For Local Consumption

My blogging is, among other things, a calling. It is part of the larger package that goes with a vocation to the priesthood. According to the liturgical formularies of the church in which I was (an am) ordained, one of the expectations the church has of me as a presbyter is that I will “take [my] share in the councils of the church.” One of the ways in which I am gifted to “take my share” is through writing, and in 2010, the “wild, wild west” of cyberspace is where the sort of writing that seems to be my niche mostly happens.

My blog posts cover a variety of topics, but the vast majority concern the macro-issues that confront Anglican Christianity during a time which is characterized by what is arguably an unusually high degree of stress and conflict. These issues are not rocket science, but they are complex and full of details and arcane vocabulary and a fairly long list of dramatis personae. So, for the most part, I write with the assumption that those whose lives are so vacuous that they have nothing better to do than read my blog are up to speed on all these things. From time to time, I may offer a bit of a refresher mini-course (“previously on Confessions of a Carioca”), but this is not a frequent or regular occurrence.

But as I have repeatedly made clear, blogging is a secondary (or even tertiary) element of my vocation. My “day job” is as a parish priest, and in that role my daily fare is rather more mundane (and I mean that in a good way) than what I usually write about in this space. It concerns real people with real lives who are trying with varying degrees of intensity and varying degrees of commitment, and at various levels of formation, to be disciples of Jesus in a world that makes that task pretty challenging. My job is to lead them in that effort and guide them on that road.

Ironically, when I blog, I usually don’t have my own parishioners foremost in my mind. Why? I suppose it’s because I presume that they are pre-occupied with questions that are more immediate and concrete than the ongoing Anglican travail. In my pastoral work, I almost never talk or write about that kinds of issues that concern me in my blogging. I want people to see and know Jesus, and not get distracted by the vexing complexities and inconsistencies of life in Anglicanland. Of course, it’s because of my sense that those very issues ultimately impact people’s ability to see and know Jesus that I get involved in them, but the impact is several links down the chain removed  from what is on the hearts and minds of most “people in the pews.” It’s complicated.

But I’m fooling myself, of course, if I don’t remember that some of those with whom I have an actual face to face relationship, people with whom I exchange the Sign of Peace and into whose hands I regularly place the Body and Blood of Christ, also know me when I’m wearing my blogging hat. Lately, there have been some developments that cause me to want to share a word with just these people. For a change, then, they’re going to be the ones I have primarily in mind, and everyone else is invited to eavesdrop if they’d like, or go watch the Olympics.

A couple of weeks ago, I attended an event in Texas. It was sponsored by the Episcopal Diocese of Dallas and the Anglican Communion Institute, which might be described as a sort of “think tank” devoted to reflection and discourse on the polity and relationship dynamics within and between the various entities that make up the Anglican family. At this conference, various Episcopal scholars and leaders, along with ecumenical guests from the Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Methodist, and Presbyterian traditions, presented talks and papers, and participated in panel discussions on the general subject of “hierarchy” in the Episcopal Church. This is a timely subject because of recent divisions among Anglicans in North America. Many have left the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada and formed alternative church structures through which they have expressed a desire to retain an Anglican identity. These developments present fresh challenges to Episcopalians, especially as we try to remain true to our own founding documents and pastoral practices and traditional polity. You can see the text of one of the papers here, and another one here, and yet another one here.

Most of the expenses of my trip were paid for from the Continuing Education line item in our parish budget ($500) that is part of my compensation package. There are no specific agreed-upon guidelines about what constitutes an appropriate use for these funds, but an academically-oriented conference, with presentations by two revered seminary professors, a retired seminary dean, an attorney who specializes in canon law, the pastor of a leading Presbyterian congregation in Dallas, and two learned lay women representing the Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox jurisdictions in that area, in my judgment, arguably falls under that umbrella.

I do not contend that the ACI is a neutral observer. It has staked out a position of advocacy in favor of a covenant that clarifies the relationship between the constituent member churches of the Anglican Communion (of which the Episcopal Church is one), and it has questioned the rapidly-evolving understanding of authority that has been purveyed by the current elected executive leaders of the Episcopal Church. The ACI is one voice of “loyal opposition.” It is a voice that I am personally in broad agreement with.

The conference formally concluded at noon on Saturday, February 6th. After lunch, there was a two-hour presentation by another organization called Communion Partners. This was an optional extra, and was attended by only about half the number who were at the ACI conference. The aims of Communion Partners are generally congruent with those of the ACI, but it is a more “on the ground” and practically-oriented group. It was originally a fellowship of bishops within the Episcopal Church who found themselves marginalized by some of the decisions of recent General Conventions that they fear place our standing within the Anglican Communion in some jeopardy. In time, membership in CP was made available to rectors, and, more recently, to all clergy and lay persons. Their goal is to maintain a viable and vibrant witness within the Episcopal Church, and work cooperatively with Episcopal church leaders and leaders of other Anglican provinces to ensure a continuing relationship of full communion for all Episcopalians for whom that is a concern even in the event that the Episcopal Church as a whole finds itself in some state of formally impaired communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury.

I am in agreement with these objectives, and am a member of Communion Partners. But, while I was present for most of this two-hour session (I had to leave before it concluded in order to catch my plane home), this was not a “Communion Partners meeting.” There wasn’t even any discussion, let alone plotting and planning. It was purely informational. I should also point out that Communion Partners is not some veiled attempt to facilitate yet another round of departures from the Episcopal Church. The Episcopal Church has plenty of exit doors, and there’s no need for another one. Quite the opposite is, in fact, the case. Most of us in Communion Partners have friends who have left TEC, and, in many cases, continue to bear their scorn for having discerned that we are not called to accompany or follow them. In any case, had the whole three days been devoted to a “Communion Partners meeting,” it would not have been appropriate for me to use continuing education funds to cover my expenses, and I would not have done so.

I hope this clears some things up. As always, I will bend over backwards to accommodate anyone’s desire to discuss these issues with me. Just let me know where and when.

Now back to regularly-scheduled blogging.

Ashes to Go?

 

The photo above is of the Rev. Lane Hensely, rector of the Church of the Transfiguration in Palos Park, Illinois (a southwest suburb of Chicago), imposing ashes on the forehead of a commuter at the platform of the local METRA rail station. Yesterday’s Chicago Tribune carried a story about Father Henley’s presence at that location on Ash Wednesday, offering ashes, presumably along with the customary reminder of one’s mortality: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” The Episcopal Cafe blog reports that similar efforts took place in several other locations.

At one level, this is admirable, appealing, and winsome. It is a proactive missionary tactic. Any time anyone in the church gets the fact that the “if you build it they will come” era is over, that’s a good thing for the cause of the gospel. It reminds me of the matching T-shifts I once saw on a church youth group at an airport as they were getting ready to embark on a mission trip: “What part of ‘Go’ do you not understand?”

At another level—a much deeper one, I would say—this is profoundly troubling. The imposition of ashes on Ash Wednesday is a potent symbolic ritual act. It is accessible on a very intuitive and visceral level, not requiring a lot of rational explanation. For that precise reason, those who are its stewards bear a responsibility for seeing that the power of the act is not abused. The tool by which this stewardship is exercised is the community of the church and the “work” of that community, the liturgy. Both normatively and normally, the imposition of ashes takes place in the context of a celebration of the Eucharist, after the Word of God has been read and proclaimed homiletically, and right before Psalm 51 is prayed, and a corporate confession of sin voiced. It isn’t even the central act of the gathering, and is, in fact, optional.

The imposition of ashes can be said to be, in a broadly generic sense, “sacramental.” But it is not a sacrament, and it is not an entitlement, an inherent privilege of all the baptized. Its significance is revealed only in its native liturgical context. Removed from that context, it quickly becomes incoherent. Apart from the communal character of public corporate (and eucharistic) worship, it easily becomes trivialized, sentimentalized, privatized. It becomes “all about me,” just like most everything else in our hyper-individualized culture. It becomes a very attractive tail with no dog to wag it.

Do Christian communities need to be imaginative about how we display the message of good news that has been entrusted to us? Yes. Absolutely. But we need to do so coherently and thoughtfully, not just looking for a feel-good freebie.

Some Pertinent Historical Analysis

I am pleased to see that the Anglican Communion Institute has published what I found to be one of the more insightful papers that were presented the week before last at the conference they sponsored in Dallas, and which I attended. It is by the Revd Dr Robert Prichard, esteemed professor of Episcopal Church History at the Virginia Theological Seminary.

I find particularly interesting the light Dr Prichard's work sheds on the evolution of the office of Presiding Bishop, and, more recently, the office of President of the House of Deputies--indeed, of the House of Deputies itself as an entity that more and more has a "life" outside the two weeks out of every 156 when it is actually assembled in General Convention. All this, in turn, has a rather direct bearing on the revelations made last week (see the post before last) with respect to 815's legal strategy in the Diocese of South Carolina.

It is tempting to say that the Episcopal Church is in the midst of a constitutional crisis, but that would be to say, simultaneously, both too little and too much--too little, because there's a lot more going on than differences over polity (like cultural and demographic forces that are a lot larger than any of our current fights over "hot issues"), and too much, because our polity is not based on any outside point of reference (in secular parlance, the "rule of law"), but is intrinsically and thoroughly political, which is to say that those who have (or arrogate to themselves) responsibility for implementing and enforcing the constitution and canons have as much leeway in the interpretation of those documents as their political base (ostensibly and formally General Convention, but it's more complex than that) is willing to afford them, and at the present time that political base seems to have written a blank check to the Presiding Bishop. No amount of legal analysis proving she is wrong in her reading of the canons will be of any avail as long as the ecclesiastical equivalent of her "job approval rating" remains high. There are no "civil" procedures by which to challenge her in church courts, because the only courts we have are ad hoc and are convened only in response to "criminal" allegations ... and her political base is so strong that those who are in a position to formally accuse her of of misconduct are strongly disincentivized from doing so; the personal risk is great and the hope of success slim.