Musings of an Anglican/Episcopal Priest

Category: Uncategorized (Page 2 of 48)

Church shopping?

Church chestPastor Steven Furtick lets church shoppers have it:

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:

{read it all}

The Christian Vision Project: The False Gospel of Work

The following is an interesting essay from the Gene McCarraher from the Christian Vision Project linking what has been called “affluenza” and the disease of consumption to the continuation of the preaching of the “false gospel of work” in our society. Certainly I think he makes some good points, especially for people in our society who find themselves becoming work-a-holics and neglecting family and friends for the sake of material wealth they never have the time to enjoy, but I also know that there are people who simply don’t work, and would do well to have a work ethic inculcated in them. Here’s a bit of what McCarraher says, echoing Stanley Hauerwas’ criticism of President Bush’s bit of cultural enlightenment when, in response to 9/11 all he could tell people to do was “shop:”

Thus, as the contemplative mysticism of commodity culture, consumerism is also a form of imaginative labor that fuels the political economy of accumulation. Conservative moralists in particular don’t like to acknowledge that the accumulation of capital requires the proliferation of consumer desires. We must spend money, we must enjoy ourselves, lest the whole apparatus of production and employment totter and collapse through attrition. Ask President Bush, whose clarion call to a stalwart citizenry after September 11 was—shop, travel, treat yourselves. (Cincinattus, drop that plough and pick up your Visa card.) So why not refer to our “free market” system as a command economy of pleasure? The transformation of leisure into commodities mandates an enormous expenditure of energy in product investigation; in keeping abreast of changes in brands and technologies; in the ambulatory and cognitive labor of shopping.

{read it all}

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Spiritual Discipline

Discipline often seems like a negative word–in fact, we sometimes use it as a synonym for punishment. But this is not what it is really all about…it’s not a bad word

I’ve noticed something interesting over the past few years, and it’s a trend that others have noted as well–Lent is making inroads into many churches that have traditionally rejected its observance. No longer is it out of the ordinary to hear of Christians from Presbyterian, Methodist–even Baptist–backgrounds taking up various Lenten traditions and making them their own. Often, especially in the case of non-denominational or so-called “emerging” churches, this is done with a twist of some sort to make the observance of Lent fit more naturally into their context. Indeed, there are also movements afoot to change the way people from Churches like ours–which never stopped observing the Lenten season–reflect on its deeper meaning.

One such movement that has recently attracted some attention in the Tennessean and elsewhere is called Cool People Care. Dixon Kinser, the youth director at St. Bartholomew’s in Nashville has gathered folks from their parish and gotten involved in this movement. The idea of Cool People Care is to get people plugged into possible acts of charity or activism. Cool People Care is not strictly a Lenten thing–they plan for their work/ministry to be ongoing–but Dixon and others have decided to make these elements of community service part of their Lenten season. One of the motivations behind this is the simple fact that so many people have a concept of Lent that looks like a combination of diet and masochism. We make promises to give X up for Lent–and what we literally mean is that we’ll “sacrifice” our pleasure or desire for a set period, but then, come Easter, we’re right back where we started and we actually haven’t changed anything in our lives. As Dixon said in the Tennessean “I realized that I’ve made these Lenten pledges in the past to abstain from things I shouldn’t be doing anyway.”

What Dixon and the other people involved with Cool People Care have seen, is this: we need something more for our Lenten discipline than just giving up the second serving of ice-cream, our favorite candy (which we eat too much of anyway) or the three pack-a-day habit. These are things that we should pursue in moderation, if at all, at any time and not just in Lent.

I think that the focus of Cool People Care on community involvement and activism is admirable, however, one of the ways traditional (and appropriate) Lenten observances can contribute to this desire to live out the faith is through personal formation, which is something that comes through spiritual discipline. It might be helpful to reexamine the word “discipline”, since it often gets attached to these pledges we make during Lent. Lenten disciplines aren’t intended to be second chances at New Year’s resolutions. They’re meant to be the means of establishing habits of being, that is, they are a means to change old–often harmful but at least not helpful–behaviors and replace them with helpful and fruitful spiritual disciplines and habits. For instance, just as Dixon reminds us, we shouldn’t be using Lent as a time to temporarily fast from something that we shouldn’t be doing anyway–that just reinforces harmful behaviors of denial for a season only to have it capped off by bingeing. Instead, we should look at Lent as an opportunity to grow in our walk with our Lord Jesus. If there are things in our lives that have taken on the role of separating us from Jesus or our loved ones, Lent is a time to take advantage of the new life promised to us if we repent, by putting way these harmful habits and never picking them back up again.

Lent is also a time to begin helpful practices or habits that can bring us closer to Christ. For example, if some of us have never taken the time to engage in a schedule of daily prayer, Lent is a time to begin a good habit of praying at a particular time (or times) each day, one that will hopefully extend beyond the season.

Finally, during Lent, our spiritual discipline may be some sort of community activism, such as that supported by Cool People Care, and God willing such activism will not end with Lent, but would help us establish a pattern of involvement, and only be the beginning of the ways we find to be involved in Christ’s work in the world.

So does all this mean that we shouldn’t give up our favorite ice cream only during Lent? Not at all… it just means that, as I mentioned earlier, Lent is not about a second chance at a self-centered New Year’s resolution. Instead, the point of all the things Christians engage in or abstain from during Lent are meant to bring us closer to Jesus Christ. Whether that means coming closer to him in prayer by picking up a spiritual discipline of prayer, or a special act of self-denial so that we can better understand and reflect upon all that Christ gave up in order to offer us salvation, all these practices have the same point.

I think the collect that is said at the beginning of the Way of the Cross service is a fitting reminder of the point of Lent as a whole:
Assist us mercifully with your help, O Lord God of our salvation, that we may enter with joy upon the contemplation of those mighty acts, whereby you have given us life and immortality; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

A Statement of the Rt. Rev’d John Bauerschmidt, Bishop of Tennessee, concerning the Primates’ Communiqué of 19th February, 2007

[Note: You can download the PDF of this file here. Additionally Bishop Bauerschmidt has set up a web page where he is sharing sermons and other statements (this is a temporary page as upgrades to the diocesan web site continue.)]

I read with great interest this week the Communiqué from the Primates’ Meeting of February 19th, 2007, and their recommendations for a way forward for the Anglican Communion, of which the Episcopal Church is a part.

The Primates spent time in prayer, bible study, and reflection on the mission of the Church. They had an opportunity to celebrate the Eucharist in the cathedral in Zanzibar, a place of worship built on the former site of a slave market. They heard, among other reports, about the Millennium Development Goals and about a study of Theological Education in the Anglican Communion. They assented to the initiation of a Communion-wide study of the methods of Scriptural interpretation.

It was within the context of these things that the Primates engaged the issues arising from the Episcopal Church’s response to the Windsor Report of 2004. Related to these issues, the Primates heard a report concerning the process of listening to the experiences of homosexual persons that was initiated by the 1998 Lambeth Resolution 1.10, as well as a report on the work of the Panel of Reference established by the Primates in 2005 to monitor the adequacy of provisions made for groups in theological dispute with their own bishop. The Primates also heard a report from those charged with drafting an Anglican Covenant, the establishment of which they believe offers the possibility of more firmly anchoring the common life of the Communion.

A large part of this meeting was spent by the Primates in assessing the response of the 2006 General Convention to the requests made by the Windsor Report, as affirmed by the Primates in 2005. The Primates heard from the Communion Sub-Group of the Joint Standing Committee of the Primates’ meeting and the Anglican Consultative Council, as well as from three Bishops of our own Church with varying perspectives. The Primates also had the opportunity to meet with and hear from our own Presiding Bishop.

In light of all this, the Primates’ Communiqué judges the response of the Episcopal Church in 2006 to lack clarity in regard to the authorization of rites of blessing for those in same-sex unions. The Communiqué acknowledges that some of the Primates also believe that the Episcopal Church has not yet given sufficient assurances concerning a requested moratorium on the election and consecration to the episcopate of candidates living in a same-sex union. The Primates recognize the seriousness with which our Church has addressed the requests of the Windsor Report, and the apology that the General Convention has made. Still, in order to clarify these two issues, the Primates have asked the House of Bishops to “make an unequivocal common covenant” that they will authorize no Rite of Blessing for same-sex unions, as well as confirm that the passage of Resolution B033 in 2006 means that a candidate for the episcopate living in a same-sex union will not receive the necessary consents to be consecrated. They have asked for these assurances to be given by the end of September, 2007.

The Primates also engaged the issue of the need for healing and reconciliation that now exists in the Episcopal Church. The Primates recognize that a number of bishops, clergy, and lay people have made explicit their commitment to the proposals of the Windsor Report, judged the response of the Episcopal Church to date to be inadequate, and wish to remain a part of the Anglican Communion

(the main points among the so-called “Camp Allen principles”). The Primates recognize, as well, that the interventions in the life of the Episcopal Church by some Primates and bishops from other Provinces, contrary to the Windsor Report, have exacerbated a situation of recrimination and hostility. They also recognize that some dioceses and bishops are unable for a variety of reasons to accept the primacy of the Presiding Bishop, and have requested provision for “alternative primatial ministry”. These considerations call the Primates to undertake some exceptional provisions for the Church in this interim time, before its clarification in the longer term by the adoption of an Anglican Covenant by the Churches of our Communion.

The details of this interim solution are detailed in a schedule attached to the Communiqué. The Primates will establish a Pastoral Council to act on their behalf, in consultation with the Episcopal Church. The Council will consist of members nominated by the Primates, the Presiding Bishop, and the Archbishop of Canterbury. The Council will be working on a number of issues around the need for healing and reconciliation. To this end, the Council will also put in place a Pastoral Scheme that will rely on bishops of the Episcopal Church who are overtly committed to the “Camp Allen principles”, in consultation with the Council and with the consent of the Presiding Bishop, to nominate a “Primatial Vicar” who shall be responsible to the Council. The Presiding Bishop in consultation with the Council will delegate powers and duties to the Primatial Vicar. When these provisions for pastoral care are in place, interventions by other Primates will end.

I appreciate the very gracious way in which the Presiding Bishop has worked with the Archbishop of Canterbury and with the Primates to shape these proposals for pastoral care. I believe the Primates have offered us a way forward in a period of great difficulty for the Church in its common life. I rejoice that the Primates of our Communion, in spite of real differences, were able to reach a common mind and to offer a common interim proposal to us.

The Diocese of Tennessee is on record, at its most recent Convention, in stating that “the findings and recommendations of the Windsor Report represent the best way forward for the Episcopal Church USA and the Anglican Communion”. In addition, the Diocese remains committed to being a “full and active part of the Anglican Communion, in unity with the See of Canterbury, and the Episcopal Church USA; forgoing our own local desires for the sake of the greater Anglican Communion; and a conciliar approach to decision-making in the life of the Church and the Anglican Communion by working with and heeding the collective wishes of the Communion before making unilateral decisions”. As Bishop, I am committed to the “Camp Allen principles” that the Primates have looked to in their Communiqué as providing a way to care for the Church during this interim period. I hope that we can provide the assurances that are now being asked of the House of Bishops. I recognize that these assurances will come at some cost for gay and lesbian members of the Church.
One of the very important statements made in the Primates’ Communiqué is this: “We believe that it would be a tragedy if the Episcopal Church were to fracture, and we are committed to doing what we can to preserve and uphold its life”. I heartily concur with the Primates. We need to pay attention to this in our common life in the Diocese of Tennessee. The Primates have given us a Pastoral Scheme that allows us to move ahead, holding up before us the possibility of continuing as the Communion of Churches that I am convinced we are called to be.

– +John Bauerschmidt

Rowan Williams++ on the likelyhood fo Anglican-Roman Catholic rapproachment.

Christianity Today has this hillarious response of Archbishop Williams to reports that there is a plan for Anglican-Roman Catholic union.

there’s also some other stuff to read about Episcopal Bishops who have said they will choose to continue blessing same sex unions etc… rather than remain part of the Anglican Communion.

“What’s this we hear about the end of the world?”
—Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, in an uncharacteristically sarcastic response when asked, “What’s this we hear about you guys joining up with the Roman Catholic Church?” Williams went on to dismiss the widely circulated report of Catholic-Anglican union as overblown and garbled.

Rowan Williams, , , ,

What is Spirituality?

The following is a reflection I wrote for my first year “Spirituality for Ministry” class in Seminary. My professor didn’t like my understanding of the over-use of the word spirituality, but I stand by the gist of it. 😉

What is Spirituality
9/5/03

The term spirituality is amorphous and defies definition, especially as concerns the individual experience of the divine. Despite this we are called as a community to define what spirituality means in our tradition. While we may not be able to specifically define what spirituality means for every individual, we must come to a consensus as to the meaning of spirituality in general and Christian Spirituality in particular. I want to suggest that spirituality refers to the way and manner that people seek, respond to and understand the experience of the divine in their lives and that this process in its fullness is best described as a lived or living spirituality.

An Invitation To The Christian Spiritual LifeThough there is an understandable reluctance to define spirituality there is a danger inherent in using spirituality in an undefined way. As illustrated by Marjorie J. Thompson in her book Soul Feast as she discusses the terms “piety” and “devotion.” Thompson argues that piety “now suggests to many a saccharin sentimentality or the delicate, easily shocked conscience of moral rigidity”Marjorie J. Thompson, Soul Feast. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1995), 6 and that “devotion has suffered a similar though less damaging fate.”ibid. Thompson wrote Soul Feast in 1995 and it is to be expected that terms have altered in their popular usage since then. Because of this it is hardly surprising that spirituality, once turned to as “the contemporary word of choice for expressing how we live with God in this world”ibid. has begun to suffer a similar fate as the terms piety and devotion in the popular mind, especially among growing numbers of young people. Words like piety and devotion are rarely used at all in popular discussion of religious or spiritual issues but in an ironic twist, spirituality–because of overuse and abuse–has reclaimed much of the baggage that it carried during the seventeenth century when it was “used in a negative fashion to describe elite forms of subjective religious practice.”Lawrence S. Cunningham and Keith J. Egan, Christian Spirituality: Themes from the Tradition. (New York: Paulist Press, 1996), 5 A growing number of people view the sloppy use of the term spirituality—when its use is detached from any particular tradition—as a warning sign that a heavy dose of pop-psychology, “feel goodism” and “self-helpism” is on the way. In short they look for the Amway card. For many people who are either still in or just out of college much of popular spirituality is viewed as another form of mid-life crises as experienced by the 60’s generation and, to use a good post-modern word, is viewed as inauthentic.

In defining spirituality the authentic or lived spirituality must be separated from the inauthentic and the sleekly packaged which can be termed dead spirituality. Dead spirituality can best be seen as referring to the grab-bag that exists, along with other more materialistic options, as a way of constructing a false identity while a lived or living spirituality is an outgrowth of an already stable and healthy identity. Because of its attachment to identity, a lived spirituality cannot be experienced apart from tradition and the faith community. Just as the basic “definition of spirituality is generic, but there are no generic spiritualities,” so people do not experience spirituality in a generic way, but instead rely upon some socially constructed lens through which the experience is filtered.ibid., 6

Themes from the TraditionChristians are blessed to have such a rich spiritual tradition with a multiplicity of ways in which to better their spiritual lives and interpret their experiences of the divine. As Thompson says, these traditions are a “feast for hungry hearts.”Thompson, 13 In seeking to better our spiritual lives we must not loose sight of what is important. “God’s spirit is continually challenging, changing and maturing us,”ibid., 7 we must not begin to focus on actions or spiritual disciplines for their own sake or we risk failing to follow where the spirit leads. “Spiritual disciplines are those practices that help us consciously to develop the spiritual dimension of our lives,”ibid., 9 and they are very much a part of a living spirituality. There is also a danger that people may become attached to the discipline or activity and loose sight of its purpose.

Just as Sufis do not dance simply for the sake of dance, Christians must realize that we do not walk the labyrinth for its own sake but because we have lost Jerusalem; we cannot become so attached to a mode of doing” spirituality that we forget that the purpose is to come closer to God.Another good example of how attachment can change meanings is found in Cunningham & Egan, page 18: “To follow St. Francis of Assisi, for instance, does not mean that one must acquire sandals, a brown religious habit, and a rope for the waist. Such garb [. . .] might symbolize religion and not poverty. As a person who is deeply concerned by materialism, false identity and detachment from tradition it is easy for me to fall into the other extreme of tradition for traditions sake. Just as it is important for spirituality to be authentic, it is important that it truly be spiritual. Currently I think there are many people who lack respect for and understanding of the many spiritual traditions within Christianity; likewise there are those—myself included—who are uncomfortable with individualistic spirituality. We need to recognize the need for both or our spiritual lives will suffer.

First Things: Jordan Hylden on what happened at Tanzania

I’m still taking my time and formulating my response to the Tanzania communique, but I can say that I was very encouraged by its final form, and I pray that its stipulations can be implemented and provide a way forward for the orthodox in the American Church. In the mean time, I thought I would direct everyone’s attention to the excellent analysis of Jordan Hyldan from First Things:

This new council could act as a significant check on the Episcopal Church’s internal authority, and it has been given great leeway to negotiate its own terms. In an especially telling line, it is given authorization under paragraph 157 of the Windsor Report to consider whether the Episcopal Church’s future actions merit further steps toward the withdrawal of the Episcopal Church from membership in the Anglican Communion. In essence, the new church-within-a-church stands ready to become a new American Anglican province in its own right if the Episcopal Church should decide finally to revoke its own current status in the communion.

In addition, the primates have encouraged but not required those who have already left the Episcopal Church to return under the new pastoral scheme, and they have left the door open for their inclusion in more-or-less their present form. The primates have also requested that all legal action currently pending against breakaway parishes come to an end, a significant repudiation of the Episcopal Church’s well-publicized strategy of filing as many lawsuits as possible. It remains to be seen whether the national church office will comply, but one certainly hopes that it will.

{read it all}

Timothy George: The Evangelical Mary

MaryTimothy George offers the following reflections on why Evangelicals ought to pay more attention to Mary. It’s a wonderful article; I especially like his ending–but I won’t post it here, you’ll have to go and read it for yourselves.

Timothy George is an ordained minister in the Southern Baptist Convention and dean of Beeson Divinity School of Samford University in Birmingham Alabama.

Evangelical retrieval of a proper biblical theology of Mary will give attention to five explicit aspects of her calling and ministry: Mary as the daughter of Israel, as the virgin mother of Jesus, as Theotokos, as the ?handmaiden of the Word, and as the mother of the Church. Consider Mary’s first title, Daughter of Israel. Mary stands, along with John the Baptist, at a unique point of intersection in the biblical narrative between the Old and the New Covenants. When Mary cradles the baby Jesus in the Temple in the presence of Anna and Simeon, we see brought together the advent of the Lord’s messiah, and the long-promised and long-prepared-for “consolation of Israel.” The holy family is portrayed as part of a wider community, namely “all those who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem” (Luke 2:38).

Mary appears in the infancy narratives as the culmination of a prophetic lineage of pious mothers: Sarah, Rachel, and Hannah-together with Tamar, Rahab, and Ruth, who appear in the Matthean genealogy. There is a sense in which any of them could have been the mother of the messiah. According to one interpretation of Genesis 4:1, when Eve exclaims at the birth of Cain, “I have gotten a man from the Lord,” she supposes that her first-born son was already the fulfillment of the prophecy of Genesis 3:15, the seed of the woman who would bruise the head of the serpent.

[…]

The second common title of Mary is Virgin Mother. The doctrine of the virgin birth emerged in America as one of the badges of evangelical orthodoxy during the Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy. J. Gresham Machen, professor at Princeton and later founding president of Westminster Theological Seminary, published in 1930 a major treatise on the virgin birth of Christ. Machen was concerned to support the ancient Christian conception against the anti-supernaturalistic views set forth at a popular level by Harry Emerson Fosdick and supported in academic circles by scholars at the University of Chicago and elsewhere.

Though he was a straitlaced Presbyterian and could never be accused of “cozying up to Rome,” Machen rightly recognized that evangelicals had much more in common with Catholicism on this than they did with what he disdainfully called that “totally foreign religion-liberalism.” “Let it never be forgotten,” he wrote, “that the virgin birth is an integral part of the New Testament witness about Christ, and that that witness is strongest when it is taken as it stands. . . . The blessed story of the miracle in the virgin’s womb is intrinsic to the good news of the Gospel. Only one Jesus is presented in the Word of God; and that Jesus did not come into the world by ordinary generation, but was conceived in the womb of the virgin by the Holy Ghost.” Machen did not go so far as some in claiming that no one could be a Christian without believing in the virgin birth. He recognized that the biblical accounts may not have been known in some circles of earliest Christianity. But while one might conceivably be a Christian without affirming the virgin birth, there could be no true Christianity among those who denied it.

The virgin birth continued to be a celebrated point of difference between mainline Protestants and their more conservative counterparts during the neo-evangelical renaissance after World War II. In 1958, Christian Century published an editorial denying the historicity of the virgin birth: The virgin birth, the editorial said, presents Jesus as some kind of tertium quid, half God and half man. In reply, the Lutheran theologian Arthur Carl Piepkorn snapped: “To account so materially, so biologically, so cellularly for the uniqueness of Jesus is to land dead center on what is precisely not the point.” Such disdain for Jesus’ “miracle of entrance,” as Karl Barth called it, obviously belonged to the trajectory of theological liberalism, from Schleiermacher through D.F. Strauss to Paul Tillich, who wrote in the first volume of his Systematic Theology: “Apollo has no revelatory significance for Christians; the virgin mother Mary reveals nothing to Protestantism.”

For all their fervent advocacy of this doctrine, evangelicals may have missed two important aspects of this teaching. Modern evangelical preoccupation with the virgin birth arose in the context of post-Enlightenment skepticism and reductionism: Evangelicals were concerned to defend the miraculous character of the virgin birth because they saw it undergirding the deity of Jesus Christ. The prominence of the virgin birth teaching among the Apostolic Fathers, however, arose from a different Christological concern: as an affirmation of the true humanity and genuine historicity of the Son of God. “Away with that lowly manger, those dirty swaddling clothes,” Marcion had cried. Against all docetism and anti-materialism, Ignatius of Antioch declared in one of the early creedal expressions of the Christian faith that Jesus was “truly born, truly lived, truly died.” The adverb resounds like a gong through the writings of the second century.

{Read it all}

Bishop J.C. Ryle on Sanctification

JC RyleIt is a subject of the utmost importance to our souls. If the Bible be true, it is certain that unless we are “sanctified,” we shall not be saved. There are three things which, according to the Bible, are absolutely necessary to the salvation of every man and woman in Christendom. These are justification, regeneration, and sanctification. All three meet in every child of God: he is both born again, and justified, and sanctified. He that lacks any one of these three things is not a true Christian in the sight of God, and, dying in that condition, will not be found in heaven and glorified in the last day.

HolinessIt is a subject which is peculiarly seasonable in the present day. Strange doctrines have risen up of late upon the whole subject of sanctification. Some appear to confound it with justification. Others fritter it away to nothing, under the pretense of zeal for free grace, and practically neglect it altogether. Others are so much afraid of “works” being made a part of justification that they can hardly find any place at all for “works” in their religion. Others set up a wrong standard of sanctification before their eyes, and, failing to attain it, waste their lives in repeated secessions from church to church, chapel to chapel, and sect to sect, in the vain hope that they will find what they want.

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