Monthly Archives: May 2012

General Convention Update–Blogging the Blue Book

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Not me, Scott Gunn. He’s writing a series of posts on the various reports and resolutions to be discussed at General Convention. They are all worth reading–thoughtful and challenging–and often addressing larger issues facing the church.

For example, he raises questions about the political resolutions proposed by various bodies here. Here’s the principle he proposes:

Let us tell the world what we are going to do about political problems, rather than telling the world what they should do about political problems.

So rather than tell corporations to mind the environment, let’s pledge to have environmentally sustainable congregations. Let’s stop killing so many trees (ahem, General Convention legislative binder. *cough*). Rather than tell President Obama to do this or that about various Middle Eastern crises, let’s divest or invest or travel or boycott or something. Let’s stop calling for an end to the boycott of Cuba and instead set up travel programs to take people there. You get the idea.

And, for the love of God, let’s stop telling other governments what to do. What possible business do we have telling the government of North Korea what to do? How are 800 deputies and 200 bishops going to monitor the use of drones in warfare? Why should we wade into the complexities of the US tax code (remember, we are an international church!)?

And remember, one of the few budget items to be increased for the the next triennium is the Governmental Affairs office, while other programs like formation were gutted.

Frederick Schmidt also ponders the relationship between the church and the political realm in “Winning the White House and losing our souls.” Some of what he says is quite pertinent to Scott’s analysis of the place of political resolutions at General Convention:

Three, political speech and theological speech are not one in the same. Yes, theology has collective and corporate implications and, therefore, political implications. But the church is called upon to think about those issues from a fundamentally different point of view. Methodists are fond of talking about the resources of Christian theology as lying in Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience. That list is inadvertently read as a list of two resources unique to the church (Scripture and tradition), alongside two resources shared in common with everyone else (what goes on inside our heads and what goes on in our lives). But when Christians talk about reason, we are talking about reasoning with the church, and when we talk about experience, we are talking about the experience of the church. When we use political language as if it were theological language, or when we use theology as if were a surrogate for politics, we fail to live and think as Christians were meant to live and think.

Conversations in the Church

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We have been engaged in a series of conversation among Madison Episcopalians. Organized around the big issues facing us as a church and focused on upcoming General Convention, we have gathered each Tuesday night in May to talk about matters like the Anglican Communion and Covenant, proposed liturgies for the blessings of same-gender unions, and questions around the structure, budget, and mission of the Episcopal Church.

Tonight we met again and were joined by Bishop Miller and members of our diocesan deputation to GC 2012. We talked about many things, but perhaps most importantly, we talked about conversation itself.

We live in a bitterly polarized society. Wisconsin may be ground zero for that polarization with the recall election for Governor Walker only two weeks away. Mention was made of Parker Palmer, his most recent book, and his efforts to foster conversation across the political divide.

Christianity is equally divided. There is the great divide over LGBT inclusion, which we are struggling over in the Episcopal Church as in other denominations. At the same time, in the larger culture, Christianity is fully identified with the forces of hate and intolerance, with video clips of Baptist pastors advocating that LGBT people be placed in concentration camps. Our internal struggles over full inclusion, and the nuances of our internal debates get drowned out.

We make halting steps toward having open conversations, toward allowing people the space, the freedom, to voice their opinions and their experience, without fear of retribution or punishment. Tonight we talked about our diocese’s history that made such open conversations difficult in past years, but might also mean that we are in a place now where we can speak freely, listen to another, and listen for the Holy Spirit’s leading.

Creating the space for such conversations requires a great deal of intentionality and groundwork. Often we don’t have any idea what they might look like, for our culture models only shouting and partisan soundbites. But such models do exist.

They exist even in the contested Anglican Communion. Recently, members of the Chicago Consultation, an organization dedicated to the full inclusion of LGBT persons in the life of the church, organized a consultation of some 25 African Anglicans with a dozen Episcopalians. A brief report on that meeting is here. Much more powerful is the brief video made of the meeting. It shows some of the conversation, the honesty and openness with which people participated. It also showed that relationships can be forged and nurtured through such conversations, even when disagreements are deep.

Here’s the video:

Communion without Baptism–more thoughts and additional links

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We’re gearing up for another big, emotional fight about “open communion” and like some other recent conflicts in the church, we haven’t dealt with the core theological issues in any detail. Proponents of the change shout “Inclusivity!” and appeal to Jesus’ table fellowship with tax collectors, prostitutes, and sinners. Opponents appeal to ancient Christian practice, beginning already in the New Testament, where it’s obvious the Eucharist was shared only by baptized members of the community (and even then, only those who were deemed “worthy”).

Is there a way to avoid the train wreck? Probably not, but before we make such a radical innovation in our practice, a change that would have implications for our relationship in the Anglican Communion, and with our ecumenical partners, it’s important to get the theology right. Open Communion has profound implications for our eucharistic theology, our ecclesiology, and our theology of baptism, to name only three areas.

Perhaps it’s best to start with the latter, our theology of baptism. One of the great changes in the Episcopal Church over the last generation has been a recovery of a robust baptismal theology, and with it, a recovery of the notion that all baptized Christians share in the church’s ministry. There’s a sense in the 1979 BCP that the norm should be adult baptism, with those being baptized able to affirm for themselves their faith and their commitment to the baptismal vows. The 1979 rite seems to presuppose the sort of catechetical process that was practiced in the early church, with a lengthy period of education and preparation before receiving the sacrament. I wonder how typical this sort of program is in our church today.

Something the Presiding Bishop said that was reported by the Episcopal Cafe today has got me thinking.

“We baptize infants in the expectation that they will grow in community to be faithful members of the Body of Christ and we invite those babes in arms to receive communion… We haven’t everywhere discovered an attitude that can welcome older people in the same way. I would much rather see us have ‘on-call’ baptisms in the expectation that a person will be nurtured by the community in his or her faith…”

Now, I had never pondered whether the baptismal practice outlined in the 1979 BCP was appropriate, adequately inclusive, or reflected the life of the contemporary church. I accepted it as the norm, largely because I came from a background in the Anabaptist-Mennonite tradition that assumed adult baptism was the norm, that it was preceded by a period of intense formation, and that it meant participation in a separated community. While the latter is not explicitly referenced in the BCP, it seems to be the assumption of many Episcopal theologians and leaders.

There are alternatives to this baptismal practice and KJS alludes to one possibility, what she calls “on call” baptism. In fact, there is a fairly common model in other churches. Among Southern Baptists, for example, it’s often the case that baptism follows almost immediately upon one’s confession of faith.

But what would an Episcopal baptismal theology look like that invited people at the beginning of their exploration of faith to undergo the rite? What would it mean to have the baptismal font featured as a central element in our liturgical spaces. In some churches it is, but in many, its location at the entry of the nave is obscured by its small size and by the minimal amount of baptismal water that remains in the font week to week.

I’ve had as a theme this Easter season the Ethiopian eunuch’s question of Philip: “What is to prevent me from being baptized?” Philip’s answer should be ours–Nothing! And an immediate invitation to join us at the font. If we want to practice radical inclusion, that’s where we should begin. That’s where the early church began. Baptism is a beginning, not an end point, and a theology of baptism that embraces an infant as well as an infant in Christ is radically inclusive and affirms the spiritual journeys of those who find their way to our church.

More on this issue here and here.

Quitting Church, coming back, and staying

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Andrea Palpan Dilley on her journey away from and back to church. Her suggestions of 6 things to do to help young adults explore their faith and doubts

E.J. Dionne’s response to the Freedom from Religion ad.

My, my. Putting aside the group’s love for unnecessary quotation marks, it was shocking to learn that I’m an “enabler” doing “bad” to women’s rights. But Catholic liberals get used to these kinds of things. Secularists, who never liked Catholicism in the first place, want us to leave the church, but so do Catholic conservatives who want the church all to themselves.

I’m sorry to inform the FFRF that I am declining its invitation to quit. It may not see the Gospel as a liberating document, but I do, and I can’t ignore the good done in the name of Christ by the sisters, priests, brothers and lay people who have devoted their lives to the poor and the marginalized.

And his response to the comments his article generated.

James Martin, SJ on those who, like Dionne, stay in church:

The church is the place into which we were born and out of which we will leave this life. We are called through baptism into a distinctive place in the church. That means that we are called not only to enjoy its fruits, but to labor in its vineyards, even when that vineyard is filled with thorns, the day is late, we are exhausted, the fruit seems scarce, and the sun is beating down on us, seemingly without mercy. It is in our church that we will work out, difficult as it may be, impossible as it may seem at times, our salvation, alongside other sinners—sinners just like us.

“To whom shall we go?” said Peter. The church is not Jesus, but it is his visible body on the earth.  And, like his body after the Resurrection, it has wounds.  So you could also ask: “Where else shall we go?”

And remember that it’s your church, too. God called you into it, by name, on the day of your baptism.  Never forget that Jesus called each of the disciples for a particular reason.  They each had different gifts and talents, and were able to help build the Kingdom of God in different ways.  As Mother Teresa said, “You can do something I cannot do. I can do something you cannot do.  Together let us do something beautiful for God.”  Though the disciples often quarrelled with one another, Jesus wanted them all to be there.  When you’re tempted to leave, or when others say that they don’t want you around, remember who called you.

Ministering among those “crushed” by the Church

Today in Marilynne Robinson links

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Did you know she was a “narrative Calvinist“?

An interview with her from The Atlantic. It’s all worth reading, but perhaps given other recent blog entries, this exchange is especially interesting:

How has it been for you being a profoundly religious person who’s spent much of your life in the mostly secular university setting?

I’m a great admirer of secularism. At its best, I think it’s one of the best things that we have. I don’t believe in insinuating religion into conversation. I don’t believe in excluding it from conversation. I enjoy the fact that people’s innermost thoughts are their own. I think actually that writers tend unusually to have a religious aspect to their thinking, whether or not they’re formally religious in any way. I never feel isolated in this.

At the same time, it’s an inappropriate use of a classroom to exclude the possibility of religious thought, or to insinuate it. But any human situation is imperfect. People are on one side or the other. I think people who choose a religiously oriented education can get an excellent education of that kind. I like being in a larger environment. I’m already interested in what interests me almost to the point of obsession, and I don’t feel the need to be in a setting that reinforces it.

The idea that there are huge spaces in which everyone feels equally at home, and that everyone can choose within the vast ways of responding to religion or anything else, is excellent. It’s much too precious, should never be ridiculed or minimized.

A review, also from The Atlantic, of her oeuvre.

An audio interview with her, from The Guardian. Gilead is the featured book in The Guardian Book Club. Here’s her writing about it for that audience.

And finally, Andrew Delbanco’s review of When I was a child I read books, from last month’s New York Times.

Think we’ve (Episcopalians) got it bad? Check out the Methodists

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Tony Jones blogs a reflection on the United Methodist General Conference that took place a couple of weeks ago.

The eye-popping numbers: It cost $1500/minute!!! (I hope someone does the numbers for our own General Convention).

Will Willimon comments. Willimon’s warning applies to us as well:

My organizational guru Ron Heifetz speaks of the “myth of the broken system.”  Heifetz argues that all systems are “healthy” in that systems produce what those who profit from thesystemdesire.  Though the CGC can’t produce a complicated, large scale, two week convention, the CGC produces a General Conference that protects those in positions of power in our church.

Jones concludes:

All bureaucracies are good at one thing: self-perpetuation. They may be good at other things, too, but the propagation of the gospel is not one of those. Bureaucracy is good at distributing drivers licenses. But bureaucracies are bad for the gospel.

Hitchcock: A Blogathon

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The Blog of the Society for United States Intellectual History is featuring daily essays on Alfred Hitchcock. The best so far is the introduction, a lengthy comparison of Hitchcock and his English contemporary Michael Powell (Red Shoes) by Ben Alpers, which places Hitchcock in the context of post-war Hollywood.

Also lovely is Raymond J. Haberski’s meditation on Notorious and on Hitchcock’s role in making Cary Grant the iconic figure he became in the 1960s, a point made by Pauline Kael.

On The Birds (including a link to a clip of Zizek interpreting, I didn’t dare to click on it).

The Rear Window as a reflection of Cold War angst.

I really didn’t begin to get Hitchcock’s genius until the theatrical re-release of North by Northwest, Vertigo, Rear Window, and Rope in the 1980s. Then I was hooked and I still am.

Culture Wars in Universities

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Colleges and universities are in the news (It’s commencement time, I suppose). And some of the news is about commencement. A furor over Georgetown’s invitation to Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sibelius to speak. More here.

St. Francis University of Steubenville has announced it will no longer offer health insurance to its students, ostensibly because of the contraception provision in the ACA. But it turns out that the decision is largely financial, and they will continue to offer insurance to their employees.

At Shorter University in Georgia, a furor over the requirement of staff and faculty to sign a statement of moral behavior–. Inside Higher Ed’s coverage of the story; a story from Huffington Post on a librarian who has refused to sign, and the website that is spearheading opposition. Shorter is one of many institutions caught in the middle of the fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention in the 1980s and 1990s.

And, on a very different note–at another Christian college, the Biola Queer Underground.

And finally, my friend and mentor John O’Malley asks whether medieval universities were Catholic:

Were medieval universities Catholic universities? It is a question easier to ask than to answer. One thing, however, is certain: the contemporary grid for an “authentically Catholic” university does not neatly fit the medieval reality. There are even grounds for asserting that in their core values medieval universities more closely resemble the contemporary secular university than they do today’s Catholic model. If we are looking for historical precedents for that model, we do not find it clearly in the Middle Ages.

I still remember him saying in class some 25 years ago that the university was the one institution in the West that had never been reformed; it still functions in many ways today as it did in the Middle Ages. Shorter and St. Francis are both evidence that some modern universities are more benighted than medieval ones.