Musings of an Anglican/Episcopal Priest

Category: hat tips

From “In Spirit and Truth:” Baptists on Baptism Baptist style.

I ran across a new blog recently entitled “In Spirit and Truth.”  The author has quite a few interesting posts up.  Here’s a selection from his discussion of a Baptist panel’s discussion of Baptism:

Finally, Thomas Nettles said “The Old Covenant was promising that the New Covenant would be a circumcision of the heart,” in an effort to emphasize his belief “that circumcision under the Old Covenant is fulfilled in the New Covenant not by baptism, but by regeneration.”

 

This is an interesting position, although I believe Holy Scripture soundly undermines such a view. The distinction between a circumcision of the “flesh” and a circumcision of the “heart” is not exclusively a new covenant emphasis — it is an old covenant one. The Old Covenant did not “promise” that, someday, the New Covenant would be a circumcision of the heart — it exhorted to Israel that it should be of the heart, right then and there. The sign should always correspond to the reality of what the Sacrament signifies about the person. This is why Moses says to a circumcised Israel in his second giving of the Law, “And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you, but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul (Deuteronomy 10:12),” emphasizing a holistic faith, along with “Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no longer stubborn (Deuteronomy 10:16).”  The promise of Abraham, fulfilled with the incarnation of Jesus Christ when the Word became flesh (John 1:14), was not annulled by the Old Covenant, as Paul teaches so plainly in his Epistle to the Galatians (Galatians 3:17-18). The Old Covenant very much emphasizes the everlasting covenant that God made with Israel (cf. Genesis 9:16; 17:7,13,19; 2 Samuel 23:5; 1 Chronicles 16:17; Psalm 105:10; Isaiah 24:5; 55:3; 61:8; Jeremiah 32:40; 50:5; Ezekiel 16:60; 37:26), so that Moses could say with full confidence to the people of Israel, “And the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, so that you will love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live (Deuteronomy 30:6).”

 

{Read it all}

Discipline and the Church

[Update: Bishop Howe of Central Florida has proposed a resolution that is similar to Ephraim Radner’s. The only problem is that reappraisers in the church are already poo pooing it because they think it forces the liberal Bishops to make an admission of some wrong-doing, or that it is simply unfair to ask them to absent themselves from the councils of the Communion without the reasserters doing the same.]

I have been following the developments at the House of Bishop’s meeting with some interest over the past several days, as have many within the Anglican/Episcopal fold. I have been encouraged to a small degree by a letter released by the “Windsor Bishops”that might serve as the basis for a resolution for our current conflicts. I say I’ve been encouraged only to a small degree because, while I appreciated the statement and seeing that both our current and retired Bishops of Tennessee had signed it, I haven’t seen anything to indicated that this proposal or anything substantive has really been taken up by the Bishops in their meeting. Every press conference I’ve seen has been discouraging–more ambiguity, more unease, more discouragement for people struggling to stay within the Episcopal Church as it currently exists.

That’s not to say that absolutely nothing is happening. There have been several proposals presented for possible ways forward. The most notable are those presented by the Rev. Dr. Kendall Harmon, Canon Theologian of the Diocese of South Carolina, and the Rev. Dr. Ephraim Radner, a member of the Anglican Communion Institute and a member of the Covenant Design group.

Both Harmon and Radner suggest that there may be a way forward for the Anglican Communion if Bishops of the Episcopal church voluntarily absent themselves from the deliberations of the communion. (you can see a note of comparison between the suggestions by Matt Kennedy on Stand Firm).

In Harmon’s scenario, the entire House of Bishops would voluntarily exclude themselves from the deliberations of the Anglican Communion, thereby representing our corporate responsibility for the current conflict and resulting loss of trust (this is not an us/them issue). This suggestion has much to commend it, and I think it bears a similar motivation to the reflection/thought experiment I wrote entitled “A Proposal for Repentance: what would it look like?” where I was, at least in part, inspired by Dr. Harmon’s statement at Plano, that we are all under judgment and in need of repentance. Here’s what “Bishop Theophilus Fictitious” suggested then (March of 2006), particularly relating to how repentance might be given liturgical and sacramental expression:

And so, friends, what is it that we must do. I have spoken of repentance, but what would it look like for us, for our church, to repent in these latter days where repentance has all but been forgotten, within the church as without?

I reiterate that this is a repentance of the whole church, not just of those who voted to approve the titular Bishop of New Hampshire. Nor is it only for those who have consented to or actively went forward with either same sex unions or the ordination of sexually active homosexuals. This is a time of repentance for us all, for our failures, for our neglect of Christ and his message, for our failure to serve Christ, to serve others, to set our face and stay the course.

As such, I want to suggest that, from a period determined (either Advent or Lent, depending on the time of year), we as the House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church USA, determine and state that we will hereby abstain from either partaking in or celebrating ALL sacraments, particularly the Eucharist, except in cases of extreme illness or imminent death.

We do this recognizing that the Eucharist is not a gift of grace only, but a gift of judgment and discernment for the people of God. Just as the Lord warned the Israelites while in the wilderness to maintain the appropriate boundaries lest he “break out against them,” so too does the Eucharist have boundaries, established by our Lord, evidenced in the fate of Judas, explained by St. Paul, that those who eat and drink unworthily eat and drink judgment or damnation upon themselves. Not only will we as Bishops abstain from the sacraments, but we heartily encourage all our Priests to abstain as well (except in those cases where pastoral necessity may require. i.e. baptism, marriage, moments of death and funerals), and to explain such abstention, its reasons and symbolism to their parishioners. We will compel no one outside the house of Bishops to maintain this abstention, but we recommend that it be a sign of repentance for the whole Episcopal Church.

We will maintain this abstention from communion as a sign of our unworthiness and repentance and as a sign of the communion which has been shattered with our fellow Christians around the world. At the designated time (Appropriately Easter or The Nativity of our Lord), a select foreign Bishop appointed either by ballot at the Primates meeting or selected by the Archbishop of Canterbury, will admit one designated Bishop of the Episcopal Church back into the Communion through a Eucharistic service of repentance and reconciliation.

That Episcopal Bishop will then, the following Sunday or major feast, admit another ECUSA Bishop back into communion, the order (beyond the first who will be picked by the primates) having been designated by ballot in the House of Bishops. Each Sunday or major feast following, those Bishops who have been readmitted to communion will do the same for another ECUSA Bishop, the number growing exponentially.

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Kendall’s suggestion, which I think is a good one, is this:

“For myself, I will consider those in New Orleans serious when they consider offering the Anglican Communion something like this statement:

We realize we have caused huge damage to the whole Anglican Communion and therefore, we, as a body, voluntarily withdraw from coming to Lambeth 2008.

Now please note this means ALL the TEC Bishops. No exceptions. It would allow Dr. Williams to get nearly all (perhaps actually all?) the rest of the Communion to Lambeth, and it would show a sense of corporate responsibility for the wrong.

Yes, I know it is not perfect. I also know that it would only be PART of a solution and that there are many other questions which would have to be addressed. I also know it would only happen by divine intervention.

But only things LIKE THIS will really get us anywhere given the degree of damage, alienation, confusion and struggle.”

{HT Stand firm, T1:9}

In comparison, Dr, Radner suggests that only those Bishops who are unwilling or unready to accede to the requests of the Communion should voluntarily withdraw from the life of the communion, while those Bishop’s and Dioceses that are so commited would continue to participate:

My own hope, in light of this limited sense of the Archbishop’s desires, would be this: that the “Windsor Bishops” resolution be voted upon, and that, following that vote, there be an agreement worked out by which those who cannot, in good conscience (and here Abp. Anis’ plea provides a concrete possibility of direciton), abide by the acknowledged teaching and discipline of the Communion, by which they will temporarily withdraw from the Communion’s formal councils for an undetermined time (5 to 10 years was the suggestion of Prof. Grieb at the last House of Bishops’ meeting, a suggestion greeted with much appreciation); and during this time, those dioceses committed to the Communion’s teaching and discipline will move forward with the Communion’s life, and those congregations and clergy in dissenting TEC dioceses will be put under the oversight of Communion dioceses. When this is done, a formal request will be made to the Primates that those providing extra-geogrphaical oversight give up that role, and fold their congregations back into the Communion-linked dioceses and oversight of American bishops. TEC will not cease to exist (though, as with the Communion, not all will participate in its formal life); it will, rather, exist in a state of partition.

Like Matt Kennedy, I find much to commend in both of these ideas. I would be ecstatic to see either one put into place, though I think Radner’s may be less confusing to many orthodox who may not quite understand why their fellowship with the global communion should be so limited.

For myself, I would not only be encouraged to see such a step taken because I think it would provide the best way for the Anglican Communion to not only survive, but thrive, but I would also be encouraged because it would in effect, be a sort of self-imposed discipline that would allow time and space not only for the Communion to heal, but for TEC to re-learn what it means to be Church. What do I mean by that? Lately I’ve been thinking about discipline in the Church; the following is a summary of some of my thoughts. I hope they may be valuable as a starting point for discussion.

Where there is no discipline, there is no Church.

That may be a shocking statement to some, but it is a true one nonetheless. Consider first what discipline means. We think of discipline primarily in terms of punishment, and perhaps that betrays another example of the impoverishment of our language and thought. Consider: to be termed a “disciplinarian” is tantamount to being accused of being totalitarian or abusive. But discipline is not primarily about punishment, though punishment may be one of the acceptable tools to enforce discipline. “Discipline,” like the term “disciple” comes from the Latin word for “instruction,” and a person who lives a “disciplined” life is one who strives to set the bounds of their conduct by a particular teaching–their “discipline.” There is no getting away from discipline in the Church because there is no getting away from discipleship. Our Lord gave us the Great Commission saying, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit…”(Matt. 28:19). As Christians we can no more reject discipline and discipleship than we can reject baptism–they require each other, and we are bound to them both by the Word of God, incarnate and written.

The question then, is whether the Anglican Communion in general and the Episcopal Church in particular can truly claim to be part of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church when we find it impossible to exercise even the most basic discipline in our common life, save that “discipline” which protects the letter of the law with not even a nod to its spirit. The truth, as hard as it is to stomach, is that if the Anglican Communion cannot find a way to discipline itself, if TEC continues on it’s way without any check, then the Anglican Communion will in effect, as a body, give up any claim to be a functional Church–instead, we will simply be playing dress up, and pretending–“having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power” (2 Tim. 3:5). In fact, I think it’s safe to say that TEC has already taken that step–we rejected any notion that we are fully or truly a part of the Church by affirming not just “local option” for the blessing of same-sex unions, but “local option” in the ordaining of non-celibate homosexuals to the priesthood. This point was made quite forcefully in another context, by theologians of the ELCA, our sister church, who stated in regard to their own denomination’s (since affirmed) drift toward local option:

By using the language of “this approach” (8) instead of “this change in policy” the Task Force advocates that the ELCA should “trust congregations, synods, candidacy committees, and bishops to discern the Holy Spirit’s gifts for ministry among the baptized and make judgments appropriate to each situation” (8). In the New Testament, however, the criterion for the discernment of the gifts of the Holy Spirit is a broadly based, ecclesial determination and not an individual, local preference. If the Report before us were to be implemented, the ELCA, as a national church body, would abdicate its theological and moral constitutional responsibility by relegating the decisions for which it alone is responsible to regional and local components. Far beyond transforming the polity of the ELCA into a congregational one, such an action would so fatally extend the boundaries of diversity in matters of doctrinal and ethical substance that this church would no longer be an effective collaborator either in the communio of the Lutheran World Federation or in the multiple dimensions of ecumenical dialogue. The proposed shift of matters of such enormous import from the national to the local levels will have two adverse consequences: 1. structural dissolution of the ELCA as it currently exists, and; 2. creation of intense division and disunity at the local level, thus effectively undermining “ways to live together faithfully in the midst of our disagreements” (5).

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In effect, the allowance of local option means that TEC (and now the ELCA) have ceased to be churches in the fullest sense of the word, and have in fact–though in most cases without understanding the ramifications–taken the first practical steps toward dissolution of their ecclesial bodies. Such “solutions” to the disagreements we are experiencing do nothing but provide for further alienation and mistrust and put into practical and theological form the ideological dissonance that has existed for sometime between the various factions within these institutions. The fragmentation that we have seen over the past several years in The Episcopal Church has brought home the reality of this theological bomb.

The ambiguity and anxiety that people feel within the Episcopal Church is the result of the fact that they are actually paying attention to what is going on. People feel a distinct lack of direction and leadership because the institution that our forbears created to further the cause of the Gospel within the bounds of the Anglican tradition is breaking down and nothing new has yet emerged to take it’s place.

Is this necessarily a bad thing?

While this transition is certainly painful and is causing more stress now than any ecclesial conflict in recent memory, I don’t believe that makes it a “bad” thing. In fact, I believe it is the nature of human institutions to pass away–they, like the individuals who organize and support them–are dust and ashes. As an Anglican, I do not believe the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church is co-terminus with any man made institution–institutions are created to further the cause of the Gospel–when they cease to do that in any meaningful way they need to be renewed or, when the spiritual gangrene is widespread, they simply need to die and be replaced.

Does this mean I am in favor of starting a new Church? Well–frankly, I don’t know that such is even a possible option. Either one is part of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church or one is not. I don’t agree with the logic that says “because you (or your congregation) exists within he Episcopal Church and the institution of which you are a part is dying, you must ‘come out’ in order to be part of the Church.” If faithful Christians are part of the Body of Christ, and it’s into the whole Church that we’re incorporated in baptism, then there’s no reason to say that because the brick and morter institution, the money-sharing once-was-missional-denomination is dying, that the gatherings of the faithful associated with it are also dying (though certainly many are). That is not to say that there aren’t practical reasons that congregations have encountered which have led them to exit the institutional structures of TEC in order to fulfill their ministries in as faithful a way as they can.

If not death, then what is the alternative for those gatherings of the faithful that find themselves in stagnant or dying denominations?

As I consider the landscape of our current conflicts I have to wonder how much of them are shaped by a form of “American exceptionalism.” Sectarianism is, along with various forms of gnosticism, a besetting heresy in American Christianity. How often have faithful Christians sought to create holy communities by coming out of sick denominations only to succumb to the same sickness themselves in a generation or two–if not less. Such a view of the struggles of Churches fails to consider the fact that there have been moments of spiritual renewal as well as malaise in many denominations.

Indeed, there is something to be said for the faithfulness that stands and speaks truth to power rather than that which drives us to excise ourselves from the ailing institution in order to create one wherein “we” are the power. I have many friends who have left the Episcopal Church and either they or their congregations have sought some form of alternative Anglican oversight. I don’t begrudge them their decision in most cases. Indeed, there are many places in our nation where I would doubtless have been forced to make similar decisions. But that has not happened in the Diocese of Tennessee. What has happened is that those of us who feel strongly that we must maintain our communion at the international level, that we must be faithful to scripture and traditional Christian moral teaching–have become more and more irrelevant on the national scene. Thankfully, of course, it is not relevance we seek, but truth. And the truth is that discipline, if it is to mean anything must be imposed with some degree of broad agreement if not unanimity by the instruments that our Communion possesses, and others which it may form. If this does not or cannot happen, then fragmentation will occur as different bodies that can enforce discipline within themselves emerge, and the Anglican Communion will cease to exist in any meaningful way.

What this means is that calls for leaving the dead to bury their dead in the Episcopal Church are actually not serving the cause of discipline. They may be serving the cause of creating new ecclesiastical entities that can support discipline within themselves–but they are not actually calling anyone who declines to join them to repentance, nor do they seem to be serving the cause of discipline within the broader Anglican Communion. Indeed, the level of fracturing within the American Episcopal Church serves as a testimony not only to the fact that there are orthodox Christians who are seeking to remain faithful members of the Anglican Communion outside the bounds of The Episcopal Church, but also to the lack of ability the Anglican Communion has demonstrated to enact any sort of discipline. In an ironic twist, by departing the Episcopal Church for greener pastures in which they seek to remain part of the larger Communion, folks may simply be bearing witness to the fact that the Anglican Communion itself is unable to function fully as the Church.

The Discipline we can preserve

And yet, these questions of discipline do not make up the whole of the subject. To speak of calling to repentance and institutional correction is to talk about a limited form of discipline within the Church. There is another form of discipline that can be preserved even within an institution that has begun to cast off the designation of Church. This is the form of discipline represented by our worship, the sacraments and our practices of prayer.

Article XIX of the Articles of Religion states that “The visible Church of Christ is a congregation of faithful men, in which the pure Word of God is preached, and the Sacraments be duly ministered according to Christ’s ordinance, in all those things that of necessity are requisite to the same.

The visible Church of Christ is to be found then, in any congregation where the Word of God is preached and the sacraments are “duly ministered.” This says nothing of jurisdiction, affiliation or the like. And why should it? Anglicans have never claimed to be the entire church, alone. There has always been a recognition that the bounds of the Church and the bounds of the institution were not one and the same. This is something for us to be particularly thankful for, because, as Anglicanism has never claimed to be the entire Church, sufficient unto itself, it has also never claimed that the sacraments belong solely to her. Instead, the sacraments and sacramental acts are God’s gift to the world through the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church which Christ instituted, and which the Holy Spirit preserves and in which all faithful people and congregations may claim membership.

The first Bishop of North Carolina, John Stark Ravenscroft once preached a sermon on the subject of the Church in which he said:

We cannot help it, my brethren, if persons whose conduct is a scandal to all Christian profession, will call themselves Episcopalians: the discipline of the Church can be applied only to those who are known and received as communicants…The Works of the Rt. Rev. John Stark Ravenscroft: his sermons and controversial tracts, p 101

I would go further than the good Bishop and say that we cannot control the beliefs or conduct of anyone who calls themselves by the name of Christ–and yet, as Christians we bear the repercussions of it, regardless of denomination. At the same time, we also bear a responsibility, not only to give glory to Christ, but to offer support and correction to those who claim to be part of the body.

In order to do this, however, we must “continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers,” because this is the primary discipline of the Church, and it is only in this form of discipline that any other can find its grounding.

What say you?

Web roundup

Some interesting things I’ve been reading from around the web:

From Christianity Today, “Amish Grace and the Rest of Us”:

We often assume that humans have innate needs in the face of violence and injustice. For instance, some who said that the Amish forgave Charles Roberts “too quickly,” assumed that Amish people had denied a basic human need to get even. But perhaps our real human need is to find ways to move beyond tragedy with a sense of healing and hope. What we learn from the Amish, both at Nickel Mines and more generally, is that how we choose to move on from tragic injustice is culturally formed. For the Amish, who bring their own religious resources to bear on injustice, the preferred way to live on with meaning and hope is to offer forgiveness—and offer it quickly. That offer, including the willingness to forgo vengeance, does not undo the tragedy or pardon the wrong. It does, however, constitute a first step toward a future that is more hopeful, and potentially less violent, than it would otherwise be.

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From Covenant-Communion and Fr. Tony Clavier “A New Baptismal Theology?”

Most of the contents of the bishops’ findings should not take up our time. One is reminded of a Dan Brown novel in which a hidden document reveals that everyone has been wrong or ill-informed until now, or at least the Seventies when suddenly and in America new light bursts forth. Indeed there’s not much difference in method here than in that found in the justifications for any of the other “nativist” religious movements which emerged in America in the 19th Century. Golden tablets may seem rather more romantic than the findings of lawyer bishops, who note that entirely new interpretations of Scripture now suddenly burst forth and new concepts of just what a Christian is emerge from a re-appraisal of baptism.

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Discussion of the Federal Vision and New Perspective on Paul controversey in the PCA and OPC by a Lutheran…some good insights:

Now, imagine you are a TULIP Presbyterianism, and you want baptism to actually do something to the baptized baby. You want baptism to really be a “washing of regeneration” as Paul writes to Titus. And you want the visible communion of Holy Communion today to be in some integral sense part of the future communion of the wedding supper of the Lamb. Now you want these things because the Bible obviously says them. They are expressed in both major themes and concrete proof-texts. Peter Leithart mentions for example 1 Cor. 6:11, Gal. 3:28-29.
Unlike an Augsburg Evangelical or Roman Catholic, however, you don’t have the category of genuine apostasy. (More on this here.) You can’t say: this baptism was indeed a true baptism of the Holy Spirit, but unfortunately as an adult she rejected God’s grace and became an atheist. Or that when he was with us he was truly enjoying today communion with Christ in Holy Communion, but then he began living in adultery and his conscience was seared. As a Reformed, you can only say, they seemed to be Christians but really weren’t.

[Note: I think I would add Armenian/Anglican/Wesleyan to his list of Augsburg Evangelical and RC.]

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From Reformed Catholicism, “You have to believe *something* and take a stand…”:

Something happened after the Reformers were gone, something really tragically bad. We all split apart into a thousand perpetually warring sects, each one of us forgetting our common roots as we increasingly narrowed our respective visions of “Truth” so that the word became a simple synonym for “Whatever we think.” Nowadays we can’t even respectfully argue about what the Fathers meant because we’ve all inherited these vast polemical traditions that are purely self-justifying: Augustine is our guy, not yours, you filthy heretics. Nor can we even respectfully argue about what the Reformers meant: If Calvin was here today, he would certainly be a member of the PCA, you Institutes-twisting scum. Lift high the banner of Flacius, and let the very memory of Spener perish from the earth! Away with all cursed heretics!

Contrast this with theological discourse in the catholic Church before the Reformation. In order to become a master of theology you had to write a commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, a work chock full of an astonishingly diverse array of patristic citations–not, I note, citations of post-patristic people whose undies were all in a twist about Some Big Burning Issue that supposedly only they and whatever meager band of followers they had correctly understood. A bit earlier than Lombard, even, Peter Abelard had compiled a book of patristic sentences (Sic et Non) in which he stated that because of the tremendous diversity of the Fathers

All writings belonging to this class are to be read with full freedom to criticize, and with no obligation to accept unquestioningly; otherwise the way would be blocked to all discussion, and posterity be deprived of the excellent intellectual exercise of debating difficult questions of language and presentation.

Now if “this class” contains Augustine, it surely must contain Luther and Calvin!

[Note: a very good post with good insights put humerously.]

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I’m off to write a bit about discipline in the Church. Enjoy.

New link in the sidebar: Covenant

compass rose 3I want to direct your attention to a new link in the sidebar under Canterbury. There has been a need for a site in the blogosphere for a while that presents the perspectives of “Communion Conservatives” in the current Anglican Communion conflicts–Covenant may be that voice. It’s a group blog and includes Fr. Will Brown of Whitehall, Fr. Tony Clavier of WVParson Craig Uffman and a slew of others. Keep your eye on this new endeavor.

A short note on politics today

I just had an interesting conversation with one of my friends from college. We always talk politics when we chat, and one of the things we talked about was the upcoming presidential election and the state of the political parties. Both of us in different ways count ourselves conservatives and inheritors of the traditionalism eximplified by Russell Kirk among others. But my friend said something in regards to US party politics: “unfortunately, Kirk is dead. Around in a few educated, semi-libertarian circles–but on the national level: dead.” This made me think a bit of Rod Dreher’s book “Crunchy Cons” because he deals with what one could call either a reemergence of (neo)traditionalism or a diaspora of neotraditionalists out of party politics. And if the realignment that seems to be taking place in the Republican party comes to pass, it won’t be long until the denizens of the Christian Right find themselves out here in the wilderness with us.

in regard to the million-dollar industry of “conservative” talk, Dreher wants to edge out the predominance of “market-mad consumers who vote Republican . . . whose commitment to conservative ideals ends the moment it costs us something.” He proposes a sacramental vision, something akin to Vaclav Havel’s antipolitical politics, whereby individual ethical choices, discerned and hashed out within communities (families, neighborhoods and churches), might somehow serve to transform the collective.

The revolution might be nothing more than a determined witness in which people choose lifestyles of mindfulness and communal consideration, an art of being in the world. Dreher notes that joining the volunteer fire department or a local farmers’ food co-op might be more authentically conservative than joining the Republican Party.

Compared to the conditioned reflexes of today’s politics (our values versus their values, or our Swift Boat Veterans against their Swift Boat Veterans), there’s something noteworthy and redemptive in the character type that Dreher sketches. It reminds me of many Protestants my age (I’m 36) whose dabblings in Dostoevsky and other Russian writers eventually took them toward Eastern Orthodoxy and homeschooling or whose discovery of Flannery O’Connor or Walker Percy as they emerged from Baptist youth groups took them all the way to G. K. Chesterton and Roman Catholic catechism.

As I read the book, I kept a list of potential honorary members of the Crunchy Cons. It was headed by Dorothy Day, followed by Daniel Berrigan, William Stringfellow, Martin Luther King Jr. and Will Campbell (with folks like Cornel West, Bill McKibben and Brian McLaren as more contemporary candidates). And I kept wondering what Dreher would say about such people. With my more obviously Crunchy Con peers, names like these sometimes lead to a strain in the conversation, a parting of the ways.

Like Dreher, these figures conspire toward or hope for a socialization of conscience even when they’re skeptical as to how much their moral vision will be popularly realized. They are also remarkably vigilant against the Manichean impasse whereby we assume that our kind of people with our values (homeschoolers, soup kitchen workers, draft-file burners) are the only ones who are really trying to do something to change the world. They don’t bother much with liberal or conservative labels.

“We don’t want our kids to be in a school where they’ll pay a price for being a nonconformist. We want them to learn in an atmosphere informed by our religious, moral, and philosophical values,” writes Dreher. While I’m very sympathetic to Dreher’s hope (I teach at a school that advertises itself as Christian), I see something problematic in a kind of greenhouse theory of conservative education in which students are reared and taught within an engineered, not-in-the-world atmosphere. This isn’t to say that any old public school will do. But there is tension between the biblical imperative of receptivity toward the ostensible outsider and the ethic of the enclave—between love and safety. I don’t pretend to have resolved this tension.

Dreher reports the following conversation:

“What will happen to the public schools if good people give up on them?” a liberal friend asked me one night. She was near to tears trying to convince me of the moral offensiveness of choosing to homeschool. She said it was un-Christian, and implied that there was something racist about our decision. All I could say was that our first responsibility as parents was to our children’s welfare, and we would not put them at risk for the sake of living up to a political or social ideal that we believed, rightly or wrongly, conflicts with what’s best for our kids.

I’m not sure where I’d land as a partaker in this particular conversation or what label might be added unto me at its conclusion, but I’d want to throw in, as an attempted testimony, that the coming kingdom of God is an appropriate hope within which to place our hope for our children’s welfare. What it will mean to try to bear witness to it in various contexts (to homeschool or not to homeschool?) will always be the work of communal discernment.

More than any explicit reference to the kingdom come, Dreher refers throughout the book to Russell Kirk’s “permanent things”—”those eternal moral norms necessary to civilized life and which are taught by all the world’s great wisdom traditions.” I can imagine a great deal of common ground in conversations relating Jesus’ gospel to the “eternal moral norms” of Dreher’s Crunchy Cons, but I sense some tensions too. Are the norms whatever should be obvious to all sensible people of good will? Might the gospel occasionally be foolishness to the Greeks and the world’s great wisdom traditions? Might Day and the Berrigans and Will Campbell prove scandalous in their attempted multipartisan, enemy-loving witness? Aren’t we all only now (and still and later) coming to the faith?

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The Anglican Communion Institute, Inc. – Why Theology Should Precede Change

The following is a very interesting article by Dr. Jacqueline Jenkins Keenan about the trajectory the study of human sexuality in the Episcopal Church has taken. Many of her observations align with my own. I went to a liberal arts university with a pretty active GLBT presence, both among students and faculty and can attest to the fact that the “queer studies” (their term, I’m not bashing) folks in the academy talk about homosexuality and gender identification much differently than people in the Church. Honestly I was shocked at the arguments being advanced in the Episcopal Church in favor of blessing same-sex relationships etc… because it was largely based on a genetic determinism I had seen debunked and attacked by liberal, sometimes homosexual professors. I recall making the point that it didn’t seem like the Episcopal Church was really up to date on the current thinking about gender and sexuality in a discussion forum in Seminary–at which point I was berated by a past-middle-aged female seminarian who assured me that after her evidently deep and profound experience of the dialogue in the Episcopal Church, that was simply not the case…in addition to the fact that she was very condescending, she displayed a total ignorance of any thinking about human sexuality except that which has for so long been presented in the press– something I like to call genetic/biological predestination.

Ahh well… so it goes. Enjoy the essay

In the ongoing debate about sexuality The Episcopal Church (TEC) has consistently looked to the medical and scientific community in order to understand human sexuality. This tradition was continued when TEC presented a theological statement in 2005 to the worldwide Anglican Communion in order to explain its consecration of a homosexual bishop in 2003. This theological document, To Set Our Hope on Christ, stated that “Altogether, contemporary studies indicate that same-sex affection has a genetic- biological basis which is shaped in interaction with psycho-social and cultural-historical factors. Sexual orientation remains relatively fixed and generally not subject to change. Continuing studies have confirmed the 1973 decision of the American Psychiatric Association to remove homosexuality from their diagnostic manual of mental illness.”

Unfortunately, the bibliography that was cited in this document consisted of scientific articles that were written between 1970 and 1995. In fact none of the TEC documents on homosexuality include any studies after 1995. But research on homosexuality has continued, and later studies have produced new data in the areas of genetics, prevalence rates, and mutability of homosexual attraction. These studies also show that data regarding homosexuality in men does not apply to women.

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New spam blocker tool

I’ve added a new tool to the site that will replace the “math question” plugin. It’s called “reCaptcha” and is administered by Carnegie Mellon University. Normally I wouldn’t devote a whole blog post to a spam fighter, but this one is interesting. You see, every time you post a comment on a site that uses this, and type out one of the word images, you’re helping to digitize a book for the Open Library. Ain’t that cool?

You can learn more about reCaptcha here.

Or you can take a look at the Open Library project .

Internet Monk: Mainline moment….

Internetmonk,

Whose blog I just visited for the first time (ht: Kyle Potter) has a great post about the fact that the mainline is having a moment–an opportunity. And we are squandering it. Especially you fellow Episcopalians/Anglicans.

This post really resonated with me, coming from a Southern Baptist Background, I know about the opportunity he’s talking about. I also know, first hand, how the Episcopal Church just isn’t equipped to deal with evangelistic opportunity. I went to a University at the heart of our Diocese. No Episcopal campus ministry. None. They said there was one, but it was never visible, never did anything, never reached out, and I, a churchgoing Episcopalian at the time, never saw or heard one peep from it. The only thing that our Diocese did, was to a) rent the campus for a leadership conference and b)co-sponsor a lecture by John Spong. Ouch. Talk about missing the boat.

I’m in a Diocese now that I feel is much more concerned about mission and evangelism, yet we too still have the institutional inertia that afflicts the Episcopal Church elsewhere, underneath all the public conflict. At any rate, enjoy the post, and think about ways that we might reach out to the people he’s talking about.

Yes, my mainline friends, we’re having a moment here. You can see it all around the edges of evangelicalism. It’s there and it’s real. It isn’t easy or automatic, but it’s there. And it is sad to realize that at the very time so many are looking for what you have, you’re mostly squandering the moment entirely.

Your churches could be taking in thousands of evangelicals. That’s right. Those recognizably “churchy” churches of yours, with the Christian year, the Biblically rich liturgy, the choir robes, the still-occasionally used hymnals and the multi-generational, slightly blended worship services, could be taking in thousands of evangelicals.

Of course, you’d have to want them. You’d have to, in many ways, meet them halfway or more. You’d need to talk to them as younger evangelicals, not dangerous fundamentalists. You’d have to reconsider how important it is to you to keep homosexual grievances constantly on the front burner. You’d have to start acting like Biblical morality meant something. You’d have to stop acting as if being mainline is a game where you wait to see how fast the membership dies off.

It’s a moment when you need to speak the language of people who want to hear the Bible; a moment when preachers need to preach mature, Biblical evangelical messages.

Those younger evangelicals are ready for your appreciation of tradition, your more balanced theological method, your commitment to multi-generational churches and your more substantial appreciation of justice issues.

But they aren’t ready for the things that have emptied so many of your churches. They will never come if things remain the same. Much needs to change and should change.

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Giving people the right foot of fellowship…

lost1I came across a post tonight on the web site “Church Marketing Sucks,” which has as its raison d’etre the task of helping churches communicate effectively in our technological age. As I was reading their site, I came across a post entitled Grow your church by asking people to leave. This title sounded more than a little disconcerting to me, so I read on to see if I could find something useful behind it. What I read raised some of the issues I’ve discussed before about the way we Christians evangelize and (in)form our faith.

Here’s a selection of the post in question (and I encourage folks to read it in its entirety as well as the comments):

Craig gives an example where he preached on the church’s vision trying to get everybody on board. If people weren’t on board with the vision, he asked them to find another church. He even offered brochures from 10 other churches he knew and recommended. It was a serious challenge and 500 people ended up leaving. Most people would freak out at that thought. Not Craig:

The next week, we had about 500 new seats for people who could get excited about the vision. Within a short period of time, God filled those seats with passionate people. Many of those who left our church found great, biblical churches where they could worship and use their gifts.

Everybody won!

That’s why I sometimes say, “You can grow your church by asking people to leave.”

Craig focuses on making leaving a church a graceful option and a positive thing and not the bitter experience it often is.

While I applaud the fact that Livechurch.tv doesn’t seem beset by that paralyzer of ministry, the fear of “sheep stealing” and is in fact a church that is willing to recognize the movement of the spirit in other congregations, as well as the fact that some places of worship will better equip some people than theirs will–while I think that part of the attitude is great–I can’t get beyond the notion of asking people to leave based upon whether or not they are “on board” with the “vision” of the church. I understand that some people may think I’m standing on thin ice as the Episcopal Priest in charge of a small church plant–where do I get off criticizing anything a large and successful ministry like Lifechurch.tv, with its multiple campuses fast becoming a mini-denomination within a denomination (Lifechurch is part of the Evangelical Covenant Church), is doing? Well, first and foremost I’m a fellow Christian who sees some things within this philosophy of ministry that could be harmful.

Certainly one of the roles–even primary roles–of a Pastor or Priest as a Shepherd is to protect the flock, even when such threats come from within. There may be times when individuals and groups with a congregation are creating a situation of such dissention and division that the only healthy thing to do is to help them see, in a loving way, that their spiritual health as well as that of the congregation would be best served if they found another church home. But something tells me that I would disagree with Pastor Groeschel about when exactly that needs to be done. I certainly can think of very few cases–none of them involving anything short of public and unrepentant actions that cause distress to the community–where I would feel compelled to address the issue from the pulpit rather than in a one on one conversation.

The first thing that bothers me about Pastor Groechel’s statement is that the “vision” of a given congregation is not the Gospel itself, and that if anything is going to drive people away it is the clear presentation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ–and that Gospel is also the only message that will be life-giving to those who stay, regardless of what supplemental direction the congregation wants to go. The primary task of the Church is to evangelize and make disciples… one of the problems I have with the contemporary church in America–across the board, and not just with either the “contemporary” free church traditions or with the old-line traditional bodies–is that we do a horrible job in actually making people disciples. On the one hand many seeker-sensitive churches seem to have forgotten that Sunday worship is primarily for the believer and is not meant as the primary means of outreach.

I know, I know, this goes against many church growth schemes. But that doesn’t make it less true. While it is true that the most likely a time a newcomer is to visit your congregation is Sunday morning, it is also true that most seekers expect to hear what we as Christians believe–not some watered down, candy coated version blasted through a $100,000 sound system. On the other hand, many historical traditions seem to have forgotten what outreach is in addition to fumbling around big-time with how to actually inculcate the faith.

I’m also concerned–perhaps as a residual effect of Donald Miller’s lecture Free market Jesus, as well as my reading of Dr. Michael Budde’s Christianity Incorporated: How Big Business is buying the Church.–that the influence of a corporate mentality has begun to overshadow the Gospel–when we start talking about telling people that they need to get out of our churches because they aren’t 100% on board with our extra-biblical mission strategy, then we have lost something very important and have begun to treat the Body of Christ like a corporation where members can be hired and fired at will for disagreeing with the direction the leadership wants to take–can you say recipe for egotistical pastors? The only reasons any Church would have for asking anyone to leave would have to be based on scripture, not adherence to a marketing plan–that sounds suspiciously like adding to the Gospel.

It definitely inspires the sort of market-centered mentality among other Christians that another mega Church pastor, Steven Furtick was complaining about recently. I mean, isn’t Groeschel just expressing the ecclesial version of this attitude:

The other day, a lady said something to my wife that made me sick to my stomach upon hearing about it. Literally.

She was talking about how she visited Elevation with her family over the summer.
So far, so good…

In fact, she continued, they have visited “just about every church in Charlotte, looking for the church that’s perfect for us.”

Uh oh…
My wife doesn’t have much tolerance for church hopping Southerners.
Neither do I.

Then the woman made one of the most absurd comments I’ve ever heard from a churchgoer, even here in the Bible belt. That’s saying a lot.

“I wanted to let you know that there’s one praise song, I can’t remember the name of it, that ya’ll do better than all of the dozens of churches we’ve been to in our church shopping quest.”

Ma’am, if you’re reading:

Doesn’t what Groeschel seems to advocate–and I freely admit that this is from a shred of a quote taken from a site that’s not affiliated with his ministries, so it could be completely misconstrued–seem a whole lot like Churches going people shopping?

The final thing that bothers me–and the most important–is that 500 people left his church. 500. Did they find other churches where they “fit in” better? Possibly, but what a condemnation of a congregation that it had no welcome for them. And how many never found another congregation to welcome them, another place to praise the name of Jesus. For how many, possibly wounded by less than Christ-like Christians in the past, was this the last straw, the last brick in the wall separating them from a loving community of Christ-followers?

Makes me think of something our Lord said:

“Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea” (Matt. 18:5-6).

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Ecumenical Insanity has some interesting news

Ecumenical Insanity has some interesting news regarding the ECUpagan debacle:

The Episcopagan story is about to get bigger. Word in the blogosphere is that the Washington Times is going to be running a story in the next day or two about it. And from there it’s only a matter of time before other media outlets jump into the fray.

Hatchetman in the “grove” of the Lord

Chris Johnson has dug up this tidbit on Our Man Melnyk from the Druidry.org site, where his posts are now apparently stored under the name of “Thrum,” though he’s signing them “Bran.” (Those posts haven’t been deleted, just altered.) This one gives us an idea of how he and his wife view their ministry:

Very interesting reading–very interesting indeed.

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