Musings of an Anglican/Episcopal Priest

Category: commentary

“Sorry about the torture; we thought you were one of the terrorists”

During the Clinton presidency I recall the cries and warnings of pseudo-conservatives, especially folks like Rush Limbaugh, that our freedoms were being taken away, big brother was coming to enforce libertine ethics on our families etc… Fast-forward to today, and many “conservatives” have prostituted themselves and any legitimacy they may once have had to defend policies and decisions that–if made by an administration they hadn’t staked their political futures on–they would have decried as leading to the end of the freedom and virtue this nation was founded upon.

Take the following examples. Ten years ago, how would people have responded to stories of our government kidnapping people–even criminals or terrorists? Have we become so set on safety and survival that we not only give up our own freedoms for it, but are willing to do things that are unquestionably evil (and I use that term deliberately), practice the vices of governments that for years we have chastised, abuse people in ways that the US was established to oppose? And yet still we sooth ourselves with the mantra that we’re a “good people” and a “great nation” and that “they hate us because of our freedom,” as “America’s Mayor” has trotted out for the press so often. If that’s true, then they won’t have reason to hate us much longer. It’s a brave new world, and the freedom we so often parade has shown itself to be it’s own means of societal control–a counterfeit liberty.

Take for example the response of the Republican candidates to questions about the use of torture in one of the debates earlier this year. Of the field, only one candidate stated definitively that he would not authorize the torture of prisoners to get information–John McCain. To be fair, I’ve since read that Ron Paul has also stated he would not use torture. The rest of the candidates said flat out that they would use torture or tried to play games with the question rephrasing it to sanitize it by using the term “enhanced interrogation techniques.”

John McCain was not just morally right when he said he wouldn’t resort to torture, he was also correct from a utilitarian perspective when he said that information extracted under torture is notoriously unreliable. He’s also correct when he says this: “It’s not about the terrorists, it’s about us. It’s about what kind of country we are.”

Or, to put it another way, in the reimagined sci fi series Battlestar Gallactica, Admiral Adama says that their fight with their Cylon enemies is not just about survival, but deserving to survive. Perhaps thats a question we need to ask ourselves as we defend our way of life: does what we’re doing make us more or less deserving of survival?

Consider that as you read this editorial, “Sorry about the torture; we thought you were one of the terrorists.”

Here’s the problem with Guantanamo Bay – and secret CIA prisons on foreign soil – in a nutshell: If the prisoners being held there are illegal enemy combatants, then most Americans believe they do not deserve all the procedural niceties afforded by the Constitution. But the only fair way to figure out if a prisoner qualifies as an illegal enemy combatant is to follow the procedural niceties guaranteed by the Constitution.

And the Bush administration hasn’t even come close.

Take Khaled el-Masri. He was kidnapped by American agents while he was vacationing in Macedonia in 2003. He was beaten, stripped, dressed in a diaper and sweatsuit, and then chained, spread-eagle, to the floor of an airplane. He was flown to Afghanistan – where he was held incommunicado and, he says, tortured in a secret prison for five months. By then, U.S. agents realized they had the wrong guy. Khaled el-Masri was not, in fact, Khalid al-Masri, the terrorist. Whoops, sorry about that! El-Masri was then dumped in Albania and left to find his way home.

ON TUESDAY, citing the state secrets doctrine, the Supreme Court said el-Masri could not bring a civil suit in U.S. court. Germany’s parliament continues to investigate the episode.

If el-Masri’s were an isolated case, that would be one thing. But it is not. Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen, was kidnapped by U.S. agents and spirited to Syria, where authorities tortured him for 10 months. A subsequent inquiry by Canadian authorities determined “categorically” that there was “no evidence to indicate that Arar has committed any offense.” El-Masri and Arar are not alone.

How do Americans know the prisoners held captive in Guantanamo are not also victims of the fog of war but are, as the Bush administration claims, the “worst of the worst”? We don’t.

Take Australian David Hicks, the first Guantanamo prisoner to be convicted under the 2006 Military Commissions Act. According to press reports, “The high school dropout, Muslim convert, and al-Qaida recruit fought for two hours alongside the Taliban before he sold his rifle for taxi fare and was captured trying to escape Afghanistan in December 2001.” He was held at Guantanamo for more than five years before pressure from the Australian government led to a plea agreement – in which Hicks was sentenced to all of nine months’ imprisonment, on condition that he stop alleging that he was physically abused.

{read it all}

Breaking America’s harmful addiction to oil…

I ran across a new blog for conservatives who are concerned about the environment and conservation. It’s called Terra Rossa, and they’ve posted this interesting video on their site. Our dependence upon oil has caused America untold grief (indeed, dependence upon other countries for energy has caused a number of conflicts–and, in addition to general imperialism–motivated Japan in many of its conquests prior to and during the second World War, given that Japan has such a dearth of natural resources). President Bush is the one who said that America is addicted to oil. Addicts do harmful and foolish things to themselves, their families and friends, as well as other innocents, in order to feed their addiction. If we can’t break our addiction, we will certainly wake up from our oil induced trance down the road and look at what we’ve done and be ashamed–with reason.

From the Guardian (Nigeria): A note from Archbishop Akinola

I have been somewhat critical of the stance of some in the global south that they will boycott Lambeth. In a way, it seems almost like snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. However, despite my criticisms, I think some very real spiritual concerns underly these statements. And I agree with them–we really need to deal with these issues before Lambeth, so that it can be a fruitful conference. How can we restore communion before hand? Obviously I think repentance is needed all around, but I think this is especially the case for those of us in the Episcopal Church. We acted arrogantly and self-righteously and the rest of these events have unfolded as a result of what we have done–and we can’t say we weren’t warned.

People forget that Akinola was one of the harshest critics of Archbishops Yong and Kolini when they formed the AMiA–the actions of the American Episcopal Church persuaded him that intervention was a justified option. Archbishop Akinola, so demonized in the west, has written a good summary of his thinking on the current issues in the Guardian.

Like a joke, they thought that as Africans, we don’t know what we are doing; particularly, the Americans and you know they always have their ways politically and economically. So, we have been dragging it since 1998 and Africans and some of our other colleagues in America, England and South Asian, we have maintained our stand that we will not continue with any of our church that ignore what the bible says. We have had several conferences and several meetings, attended several commissions to see how we could reconcile the western people with the so-called conservatives, all to no avail. In fact when America tried to ordain a practising homosexual as bishop, many conservatives broke communion with them. So today, we are in a state of a broken communion in the Anglican Church wordwide. This is critical and fundamental because when we say we are in a state of a broken communion, it means that the other group has been ex-communicated as it were or orstracised and you are not in fellowship with them anymore until that communion is restored.

As I said, we have made several efforts in Lambeth Palace, and other places, at reconciliation, but it hasn’t work so far and we in Africa are saying that until we resolve the issue and until we restore communion we can’t come together. What is the point of coming together? Let me give you a clear illustration of what I’m saying:

In Lambeth Palace, we met as Primates, we could not share in the Lord’s Supper. It is as that bad. As Primates and Archbishops, we could not share in the Lord’s Supper – the highest and most important service in our church. So, what is left of the church then? It happened in two other places like that again and again, because the faith once delivered to the saints has been abandoned as far as we are concerned. All we are saying is that, look you don’t have a monopoly of homosexuals in your community. They are in Africa, they are in Abuja here and everywhere, but we don’t celebrate it for God’s sake. Our duty is to counsel people that are involve in it. To pray with them guide and advise them until they will come back to their senses. Many who have this problem have been healed world over. It is an acquired syndrome. But they say no, it is not an acquired syndrome, it is the way they are made. But we say no to that. God did not make a mistake in creation. God did not make a mistake in creating a man and a woman and they cannot re-create what God has already created.

So, when our brother, Rowan Williams, a man I admire so much, a man I respect so much for his intellectual ability, spirituality – and he knows that I love and respect him a great deal- but when it comes to this, his position is baffling and we cannot sweep it under the carpet. Communion must be restored first. We cannot go to Lambeth Conference to go and restore communion. We must do this before we can meet at the Lord’s table.

{read it all}

Thoughts on Violence, Paternalism and Rambo

Last night Anna and I stayed up late watching TIVO’d episodes of Monk–the only way we can generally watch TV–and at the end of the many episodes the television automatically reverted to live TV.  It happened that Rambo: First Blood was on, and I watched for a few minutes, enjoying the nostalgia.  Because neither Anna or I could exactly remember what the plot of First Blood was, I looked it up online, only to discover as I surfed the net, that there is a sequel to the Rambo franchise in the works entitled “John Rambo.”  I watched the trailer (and the critics are right, if it makes it to the theaters with the level of realistic gore seen in the trailer, then it’s going to be one very violent film.  But that’s not what really interested me…instead, I was intrigued by the plot line. The trailer, which is three and a half minutes long, lays the story out pretty well: John Rambo has escaped the problem of reintegrating with society in the US by moving to Thailand and operating a boat on the Mekong river.  This part of the trailer is quiet, with Rambo leading a quiet life, fishing etc… Then some western aid workers come to him about hiring his boat to go up-river to Burma, to the ominous warning from Rambo that “Burma is a war zone.”  the western aid workers it turns out are Christian missionaries, and they end up being captured and tortured by the Burmese/Myanmar military.  Much violence and ethical questioning ensues.  The most interesting juxtaposition was the prayer of the missionary “Lord make me an instrument of your peace” voice-over right as Rambo decapitates one of the Burmese soldiers.  At one point Rambo highlights the contrast with these words: “When you’re pushed, killing is as easy as breathing…”

Now, I don’t know that I’ll watch “John Rambo”–the graphic nature of the violence in the trailer was greater than I usually watch, and I find myself less and less interested in violent movies–but I was interested in what seem to be indications of a sort of paternalism toward the Christian missionaries who, bless their hearts, thought they could do some good in such a cruel world without being more stone cold.  I hear subdued versions of this in many popular justifications of war and violence and the attendant negative comments about pacifism.  Most people don’t seem particularly hostile to pacifists, they just treat them with a sort of paternalistic condescension… they might as well be patting them on the head saying “Ok, you be peaceful if you want… believe that you can be in this world, but we’ll be here to protect you from the bad guys–and yourselves.”  The worst–and most ironic–part of this attitude however, is that it completely disregards the fact that most of the peace churches, Mennonites and Amish for example, know exactly what they are doing when they declare their pacifism–and they live by it, just think about the Amish school shooting and its aftermath.  They are certainly familiar with the ways of this world, their response is simply not to take part in it.

This is not to say that there is not also a legitimate Just War position within Christianity–certainly there is, and it is often forgotten as many mainline churches embrace a “functional pacifism” that lacks the integrity of the stance of the peace churches, it being more evidence of political leanings than anything else.  But I do think that those of us who lean toward being “just warriors” need to give more credit to our brothers and sisters who take the stance of Christian non-violence out of true theological integrity.  We also need to take to account the popular paradigms that would make Christians–whether just warriors or those practicing non-violence–seem naive about the realties of the world, for certainly we are not, especially our brothers and sisters in other parts of the world who lay their lives down every day for our Lord.

One thing that the tradition of Christian non-violence challenges us to do, is to look at our governments and ask the question: if I do or support this, am I supporting God or Caesar.  If I am supporting Caesar, am I doing so in a way that is consistent with scriptural admonitions to obey laws etc… or am doing the modern equivalent of sacrificing to the emperor’s genius.  Too often the answer as been the latter in the Church as we have found ourselves becoming not only the foot soldiers but the apologists for evils perpetrated in the name of the state.  One has only to look at the weakness of the Anglican Church in Zimbabwe and it’s support for Robert Mugabe to see how easily this can happen.  So we need the two stances of the Church to stand with integrity together, calling one another to account.  For the traditions of Christians of non-violence which have tended to be sectarian, we can call them to continued or greater social engagement.  For the just warriors, our brothers and sisters can call us to greater obedience to creed over country, and a recognition that the most important thing is serving Christ.

Perhaps no film portrays the difficulty inherent in questions of defense and violence so well as The Mission, and of course, the thing there is that it doesn’t matter which side is chosen, they all have to trust in God’s mercy.  Better God than Rambo.

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Touchstone– “Filthy Rich: The Unnoticed Gift of Trickle-Down Decadence”

I was catching up on my periodical reading recently, when I came across this little gem from Anthony Esolen in the editorial section of Touchstone: a Journal of Mere Christianity. The basic thrust of Esolen’s editorial–more observation than argumentative essay–is that societies, whatever their time or location, structure themselves so that the filth that the upper-classes wade through (nearly) unscathed, or that they produce, is foisted upon the lower classes and results in their struggle and demise. The first, highly illustrative example he gives is of the ancient Roman sewer system which emptied at the Esquiline gate. “I’m not sure” he says “whether the Roman’s arranged it so that the end of the sewer wold be located in the poor quarter. More likely, it became the poor quarter because people don’t wan’t to live near a sewer, and will spend money to avoid it.” Later, he mentions that “…in Dickens we have the miserable corpse-robbing thieves at Old Joe’s pawn-shop, and they are but Scrooge himself, and his money-hungry class, shorn of top hat and watch fob and man-of-business etiquette.”

This little editorial struck me not only because of its truth–the poor do often suffer more for the sins they learn from the wealthy–but because of the situations I have seen that bear this out. When a woman comes into my office in need of help with groceries for the final few days before her disability or welfare check comes because she or her husband drink alcohol or smoke, it becomes clear that the simple vices the more well-heeled among us take for granted have become more immediately deadly. On the other side, in attending Sewanee, I often described the University itself as in large part a padded play-pen for wealthy southern elite. While parts of this identity may be fading (the Southern part is enduring a campaign of whitewashing and title changing) it is still amazing to see the lengths to which the institution goes to create a safe environment for wealthy adolescents to engage in behavior that would leave their less well-off contemporaries injured, sick, in jail or worse.

All this is to say that we need to take more notice of the “trickle-down effect” of decadence, and the impact it has on those without the means to mitigate the effects of the vice they mimic from their “betters.” As Esolen says:

The rich can afford their vices, for a time anyway; the poor have no such margin for comfort. They are, in fact, endangered by the vices of the rich.

A Bishop in Tennessee

I have intentionally refrained from commenting on the recent election of the Rev. John C. Bauerschmidt as the twelfth bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Diocese of Tennessee (now comprising the central part of the state, the west and east of the state each being their own dioceses now) until I’d had time to reflect on it more.I want to say to begin with that I don’t envy Fr. Bauerschmidt his job. To be a Bishop at this point in the life of the Episcopal Church is a difficult task with a great deal of uncertainty. I am pleased and hopeful that Fr. Bauerschmidt was elected and I look forward to working with and supporting him as I can. I was impressed with his responses to the questions submitted by the search committee and liked him when I met him in person. In speaking with him he seemed to be a person who “gets it,” and understands the current situation in the Anglican Communion and indeed in global Christianity, i.e. that what goes on in the US–while spiritually important–isn’t as practically important as many American Episcopalians in our self-important bubbles, believe it to be (I include myself at least partially in that indictment). In short I think that our bishop-elect understands the importance of communion, the importance of maintaining our relationships with other Christians, especially those in our own communion around the world as well as the fact that the average Christian (to say nothing of the average Anglican in particular) is non-white, poor and female.

All-in-all I’m looking forward to interacting more with Fr. Bauerschmidt, and I believe the Diocese of Tennessee will be in good hands when he takes office. I pray that we will be able to build on the wonderful work for the Kingdom that has taken place during Bishop Herlong’s episcopate, particularly his church planting initiative which has meant so much to the numerical and spiritual growth and health of the diocese.

Looking back: A Proposal for the Formation of a New Province of the Anglican Communion in the United States

Before this summer’s upcoming General Convention, I thought it might be worthwhile to take a look at this early proposal by the Rev. Dr. Guy F. Lytle III, my friend and mentor.

Guy Lytle:

A Proposal for the Formation of a New Province of the Anglican Communion in the United States

What do we do now? That is the question many are asking since the 2003 General Convention. The constant rhetorical drumbeat of “Unity, unity, unity,” sounded from ‘815’ and other pulpits across the land, is sincerely meant, and should be sincerely pursued, by all those who take our Lord’s commandments to heart. But ‘unity,’ in its true and classical sense, can never mean ‘unity at all costs.’ When Truth is forfeited to unity, then unity has become an idol. Our own Reformation principles bear this out: if certain well-placed men and women hadn’t believed Truth was more important than unity in 16th century Europe, would there even be an Anglican Communion today?

Whatever the Post-modernist mindset says, Truth cannot be forfeited to unity. We must be prepared, in the service of God, to take bold steps for the sake of the Gospel. Some will find the proposal I am about to make dangerous. Some will say we are bigoted fundamentalists for even considering it. Certainly it will call down the wrath of the institution; they will probably threaten our churches, buildings, endowments, and lands. But I do believe it is the right thing to do, for Truth’s sake. It is a positive approach to the current crisis, not the mean-spirited “pick up my marbles and go home”-response some will paint it to be.

Most importantly, I believe it is the only way there will be a true Anglican Christian presence in the U.S. To lose that voice would be an evangelical tragedy.

What do we do now? Taking into account all the various meetings, special conventions, parish forums, and internet news items for the past two months, I believe the gathering in Dallas should ask the Anglican Primates, meeting in London in October, to order the American bishops to:

affirm their commitment to biblical orthodoxy; request that V. Gene Robinson voluntarily abandon his scheduled ordination to the episcopate; withdraw consent to the election of V. Gene Robinson as the next Bishop of New Hampshire, should he refuse to withdraw voluntarily; and revoke their tacit allowance of the blessings of same-sex unions.

Taking these four steps would allow the American bishops to preserve the unity of the Church, show the respect due fellow Christians (as mandated by our common baptismal vows), and repent of ‘Western arrogance,’ racism, and cultural hegemony.

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I thought Chad was dead

[Listening to: Psalm 69: ‘ Let God Arise,’ Anglican Chant, Setting By C. Hylton Stewart – George Guest, John Scott & St. John’s College Choir, Cambridge – The World of Psalms (8:37)]

Just when we thought Chad was hanging limp and dead, his first cousin shows up and swipes the ballots in Broward County. Or maybe this is the result of one of those pregnant Chads we heard about? Its pawned more crazyness. . .

The same day postal officials publicly denied responsibility for 58,000 missing absentee ballots, an internal e-mail sent by the South Florida District Manager to his employees expressed concern that his staff was not handling ballots within the region properly.

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