Monthly Archives: June 2012

More on the debate over communion without (before?) (instead of?) baptism

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A great deal was made several days ago over a post at the Cafe by Andee Zetterbaum:

The question we need to be asking isn’t what SHOULD the theology of baptism and communion be, it’s what is the PERCEIVED theology by the outsider who is present at our worship. And the people who need to be involved in that discussion are:

The 8-year-old who comes to church with her best friend after a sleepoverThe grandchildren who are only here twice a year when they are visiting their grandparents

The 11-year-old who often comes with his grandmother and has been leaving love notes to Jesus on the altar since he was first old enough to write, but whose parents won’t allow him to be baptized until he turns 18

The teen who is clearly uncomfortable being here, but wants to be with her boyfriend

The anti-church spouse

The Muslim grandmother from another country who is here for her grandson’s baptism

The Jewish son-in-law who comes with the family on Christmas

The ‘spiritual but not religious’ 20-something who has moved back in with his parents after college, and only comes to church on Easter to keep the family peace

The homeless person who wanders in off the street

Those who come to share with and honor their loved ones at weddings and funerals

What do our communion practices say to them about the nature of the God we worship? What does God say to them, through the way we share communion?

So I wasn’t going to say anything more on the topic. I’ve made my position clear, and I think at this point there is more heat than light in the conversation. There are those who think open table is crucial to our mission, our proclamation of Jesus Christ, and our self-understanding as inclusive and welcoming communities. There are others who see the practice as an affront to scripture, to two thousand years of Christian practice, and an offense to the sacraments.

Then I read this by Jesse Zink, who visited an “official” Protestant church in China last year:

One Sunday I visited one of the major, sanctioned Protestant churches in Beijing. The congregation stood while the pastor prayed over the communion elements. Then, just before the distribution, the pastor made an announcement. “If you are not baptized, please sit down.” About a third of the congregation did so. They watched while the rest of us received communion that was passed through the pews. None who sat down seemed offended. No one stormed out in a huff. This was how things were. They were not baptized yet but looked forward to the day when they were.

So what’s the difference between this church in Beijing and your average Episcopal congregation, where I can never imagine something like this happening?

One difference—and there are many—is that folks are beating down the door of this church in Beijing. I had to wait in line twenty minutes to get into that service. The sanctuary could probably hold 1000 people and it was standing room only that morning. In the Episcopal Church, perhaps, we’re so desperate for folks to come in, we don’t want to do anything that will turn people away.

I know it won’t change any minds, but still.

Is a representative democracy the best way to structure a denomination?

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Like Churchill said, it may be better than the alternatives. It’s certainly better than the authoritarian hierarchy we see elsewhere, but can we envision alternatives?

Jim Naughton takes to task those who see in the infinite vote-takings at General Convention a culture of “winners and losers.” He wonders whether we have become to fragile for democracy.

Mark Harris has asked the same thing.

Others disagree. Susan B. Snook advocates a deep period of prayer and discernment as we look toward restructuring, rather than the calling of a special convention.

Scott Gunn’s blogging blue has come to the resolutions on public policy that are before GC 2012. He is sharply critical of resolutions that ask governments to take action. In fact, this is one of my pet peeves. I’ve sat through enough diocesan conventions to dread the debate over this or that resolution that takes a stand on some issue facing the state or the nation. I doubt that whatever we say, as a diocese or as the Episcopal Church, has any impact on lawmakers or on public policy. The impact it does have is on making some of us feel good, when the resolution that is passed is in keeping with our political agenda. It also alienates those who may take a different perspective on the issue, and ultimately, it may alienate outsiders as well.

In the Episcopal Church, we have seen a hard-fought partisan battle over the full inclusion of LGBT persons. That battle is winding down with the approval of liturgies for blessings likely this summer. There were winners and losers and many of the losers left the church.

We live in a political culture of hyper-partisanship and I think we need to ask ourselves whether the deep partisan divide that affects our political culture may also have infected our church. Are there other ways of decision-making that might avoid up or down votes on hundreds of resolutions? Are there other models for gathering the larger community together to discern God’s will? We have a legislative process in the Church and in the nation. The legislative process is broken in Washington; perhaps it’s broken in General Convention as well–or perhaps it diminishes us as individuals and as the body of Christ, instead of allowing us to flourish.

The analogy between bookstores and the church

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David Lose, whom I respect immensely, wrote recently on the parallel decline of bookstores and institutional Christianity:

This means things may – actually, strike that, things will  – look different. But it may also lead to a renewed sense of the nature and purpose of our congregations.  After all, there are a lot fewer book publishers and bookstores than there were a decade ago. At the same time, more people are reading – print books, ebooks, blogs, webzines, etc. – than ever before. The question isn’t whether people will keep reading, but who will help them do it.

The same is true, I think, of congregations. This present generation reports a greater interest in mystery, the divine, and spirituality than has any generation in a century. So the question isn’t whether people will seek God, but rather who will help them find God

Then I came across this. In 1931,

“In the entire country, there were only some four thousand places where a book could be purchased, and most of these were gift shops and stationary stores that carried only a few popular novels,” Davis writes. “In reality, there were but five hundred or so legitimate bookstores that warranted regular visits from publishers’ salesmen (and in 1931 they were all men). Of these five hundred, most were refined, old-fashioned ‘carriage trade’ stores catering to an elite clientele in the nation’s twelve largest cities.”

Read the whole article.

The rise of book publishing, “the paperback generation,” perfectly mirrors the growth in institutional Christianity in the twentieth century. The decline in “bricks and mortar” retailing, perfectly mirrors the decline in institutional Christianity.

What should we conclude? Lose is right: “The question isn’t whether people will seek God, but rather who will help them find God.”

This week in rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic

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i.e., talking about restructuring the Episcopal Church

Scott Gunn, in his blogging blue series, has this to say about a resolution to create a task force focused on restructuring:

when this task force is convened, we need to make sure it doesn’t have any of the usual suspects. The same people will bring us the same ideas. That’s not what we need. And if at any point you voted in favor of the disaster of a budget that came out of various committees and Executive Council, you especially should not be on this group. Not that anyone will pay attention to the ranting of a simple blogger.

A thoughtful post from Unapologetic Theology on gnats, camels and General Convention. He puts his finger on what I’ve been thinking, too:

Rather, I’ve come to believe in the concept of “parallel growth change.”

“Parallel growth” is a strategy apparently adopted by some major corporations that face issues similar to the Episcopal Church: outdated structures, bloated budgets, overly centralized and irrelevant systems.

The theory is this: Those interested in change should resist the temptation to battle the system or try to change the dominant, inherited culture – battles that only end up causing turf wars because people tend protect “the way things are.”

Rather, leaders who are in favor of change are encouraged to all but ignore “the system” and concentrate almost all their efforts on encouraging healthy franchises – those local retailers that are doing well in spite of “corporate” policy or procedures.

The analogy isn’t perfect – we’re not a corporation – but how that looks in the Episcopal Church is that people who are in favor of change should all but ignore “the system” and concentrate their efforts on encouraging healthy congregations – those congregations that are growing and mission-minded in spite of diocesan or “national” structures.

Susan Brown Snook is thinking along the same lines:

Let’s put everything on the table at this Convention – the budget, the structures of the church, the shape of Convention itself.  Let’s not spend our time wrangling over niceties in an endless series of resolutions that will make no difference to the church.  Instead, let’s have a conversation about where Jesus is leading us.  Let’s pray and read the Bible and discern where God is calling us to go.  Let’s network and share and listen for the voices of the ones who aren’t often heard – the younger, less experienced people who have a better understanding of the future that lies ahead.

He was ruddy, and had beautiful eyes, and was handsome–Lectionary Reflections on Proper 6, year B

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This week’s readings.

The reading from I Samuel jumps us ahead in the story from Saul’s selection as king of Israel to the anointing of David as his successor. Our reading includes Yahweh telling Samuel that God had rejected Saul as king. Two explanations are given in earlier chapters. In each, Saul disobeyed God. The first time was when he offered sacrifices and went into battle without waiting for Samuel to arrive. The second was when he disobeyed God and did not “utterly destroy” the Amalekites after defeating them, instead he spared their king and the livestock.

On one level, both reasons for the rejection of Saul seem arbitrary. Samuel had promised Saul he would come to the military camp in seven days, and Saul was worried that the troops he had mustered would leave if they didn’t act quickly. In the second, sparing the livestock seems a logical act of war booty. Nonetheless, Saul was rejected, and David was anointed in his place.

David’s qualifications for the job? “Now he was ruddy, and had beautiful eyes, and was handsome.” If that seems arbitrary, too, Saul’s own qualifications seem equally sketchy: “There was not a man among the people of Israel more handsome than he; he stood head and shoulders above everyone else” (I Sam. 9:2).

Last week, we saw the Israelites rejecting God’s direct rule of them. This week we see God, somewhat arbitrarily, rejecting Saul as king and choosing David instead. And given their histories, God’s rejection of Saul for disobeying commands seems lame in comparison to some of the things David did–killing the husband of Bathsheba comes to mind.

On one level, these stories are told in this way to provide legitimacy for the Davidic monarchy (which had its origins in a revolt led by David against Saul). Nations tell such stories about themselves, so do dynasties.

Are there lessons for us here? I’m not sure. Perhaps cautionary tales. We might want to consider the stories we tell ourselves about our nation’s past and present.  We might also want to consider in this lengthy election season why we choose the leaders we have. Is our electoral process any more sane and rational than choosing a king on the basis of his height or good looks (Oh, sorry, I forgot).

The Myth of America’s Christian Heritage

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David Barton is at it again. He has a new book, The Jefferson Lies: Exposing the Myths You’ve Always Believed About Thomas Jefferson. Here’s a review from The Wall Street Journal:

Jefferson’s religious beliefs are central to Mr. Barton’s thesis, in the service of which straw men are consumed in bonfires. No Jefferson scholar to my knowledge has ever concluded that Jefferson was an “atheist,” as Mr. Barton suggests. That Jefferson might have been what we would think of as a deist or even a Unitarian, as many historians believe, Mr. Barton also disputes. Jefferson was “pro-Christian and pro-Jesus,” he says, although he concedes that the president did have a few qualms about “specific Christian doctrines.” The doctrines Jefferson rejected—the divinity of Christ, the Resurrection, the Trinity—are what place him in the camp of the deists and Unitarians in the first place.

Paul Harvey, in Religious Dispatches, argues that challenging Barton’s version of American history is futile:

It’s a case study, in some ways, of recent depictions of the neuroscience of political differences, and in particular the way “righteous minds” conceive of the world. And it’s a perfect example of the thesis that Randall Stephens and Karl Giberson have outlined in The Anointed—the ways in which evangelical experts have created alternate intellectual universes that provide large audiences with a complete explanation of the world. In this case, Barton is the go-to historian with an explanation of America’s founding as a Christian nation and its providentialist mission in the world. There’s a pseudo-historian like that in every generation, from Parson Weems to David Barton.

Contra Paul Harvey, Kerry Walters debunks the myth again.

What never occurs to the Christian Right is that if the founders in fact had beenChristians intending to create a commonwealth faithful to Jesus’s teachings, the United States today would be a nation quite different from what evangelicals think it should be. There would be no standing army, no divide between rich and poor, no ethnic hatred or closed borders, no persecution of religious dissent, no national chauvinism, a lot less holier-than-thou finger-pointing, and a lot more forgiveness and compassion.

Now, that would be a shining city built on a hill.

Andrew Sullivan asks: “Did Jesus foresee the US Constitution?” He’s writing about the Mormon understanding of US History, not Barton’s.

And then there’s this from Barton.

Some links on Spirituality: Silence, Mysticism, and “Spiritual but not Religious”

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An email exchange with four Trappist monks. One of them writes:

After communion, we sit there a few minutes and the quiet is intense. Coughing stops, nose-blowing stops, throat clearing—it all stops. The silence is palpable and is, I believe a real communion. A recent retreat master told us it seemed that we were out of time and in the eternity of the sacrament we had just received. The same thing happens when we have Eucharistic Adoration on Sunday afternoons. No group of human beings can agree when it comes to ideas or words; we may arrive at consensus on isolated issues through a lot of work and compromise. But in the silence of adoration, we can arrive at a deep communion when we share the same faith. Sometimes I think silence is one way of not letting our differences define who we are for one another.

And later:

This says on one level that silence is in our lives to create an ambience of recollection so I’ll remember and honor God’s presence. On another level, silence reminds me that the misuse of words, the abuse of language can also be the sinful abuse of people; silence for us means not talking, more than not making noise… On yet another level, silence means listening. We follow the Rule of St. Benedict and the first word of that Rule is “Listen.” That’s the great ethical element of silence: to check my words and listen to another point of view. I’ll never have any real peace should my sense of well-being depend on soundless peace. When I can learn the patience of receiving, in an unthreatened way, what I’d rather not hear, then I can have a real measure of peace in any situation.

Another writes this:

I would say the cultivation of silence is indispensable to being human. People sometimes talk as if they were “looking for silence,” as if silence had gone away or they had misplaced it somewhere. But it is hardly something they could have misplaced. Silence is the infinite horizon against which is set every word they have ever spoken, and they can’t find it? Not to worry—it will find them.

Why Mysticism matters:

The path of the mystic is one of transcendence, of going beyond: beyond the mind, beyond time, beyond the whole world. When the mind is transcended, awareness of the passing of time fades away. And when time disappears, awareness of the world also disappears. All the greatest mystics from the world’s religious traditions have made the same unexpected and liberating discovery: when awareness of the world and everything in it, including ones own bodily shape and form, disappears, the most intimately felt sense of “I” still remains. Except now, “I” is all there is—beginningless, endless. When the historical Buddha awakened to this depth dimension, he called it “the Unborn,” “the Deathless,” or “the Uncreated.”

An Interview with David Webster, author of Dispirited: How Contemporary Spirituality Makes Us Stupid, Selfish, and Unhappy:

Finally, I argue that the dissembling regarding death in most contemporary spirituality—the refusal to face it as the total absolute annihilation of the person and all about them—leaves it ill-equipped to help us truly engage with the existential reality of our own mortality and finitude. In much contemporary spirituality there is an insistence of survival (and a matching vagueness about its form) whenever death is discussed. I argue that any denial of death (and I look at the longevity movements briefly too) is an obstacle to a full, rich life, with emotional integrity. Death is the thing to be faced if we are to really live. Spirituality seems to me to be a consolation that refuses this challenge, rather seeking to hide in the only-half-believed reassurances of ‘spirit’, ‘energy’, previous lives, and ‘soul’.

Reflecting on the Recall from a quiet Capitol Square

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Well, the Solidarity Sing-a-long is back and as boisterous as ever but other than that…

I retired as a political pundit after confidently predicting in my high school newspaper in January 1976 that Jimmy Carter would received the Democratic nomination for president that year, so I have nothing to say about the recall. You’ll have to go elsewhere for commentary about winners and losers and all of that.

But as an eyewitness to the events over the last sixteenth months, I am struck by several things. First of all, a parishioner was in my office talking about the recall and other things. She had been very engaged in the process, regularly participated in the Solidarity Sing-a-long on the Capitol Steps, and earlier this week spoke to me of her deep anxiety about what might happen on Tuesday.

Today, she spoke about the justice of God, and Christ’s triumph over the powers of evil. We talked about the difference between the justice called for by God, the reign of God proclaimed by Jesus Christ, and the realities of the political systems in which we live. We can never succumb to the temptation to believe the political causes in which believe are somehow ushering in God’s reign. To do so, whether on the left or right, is to turn our faith into political ideology. We have seen that too often on the right, and those on the left should learn a lesson from that.

There is something deeper here, a deeper longing, a greater value that somehow got subsumed in the political process, subsumed to recall elections. And many of those most invested in the protests allowed their voice and concerns to be channeled into more narrow efforts at political gain and interest group politics.

Reasonable men and women can disagree about the power of unions (just as they can disagree about the power of corporate money in politics). What was lost over the last year and a half was the deeper sense that what was at stake was a vision of the common good, a sense that in order for difficult problems to be solved, people had to come together to talk about them. Sure, we’ve lost that on the national level; if I fault Gov. Walker for anything, it is for the tactics he and the Republicans used to divide us as a community.

We live in an era of “winner-take-all” and demonization. That is as true on the left as on the right; it is more and more true in the church as well.

The problems haven’t gone away. They’re still there, and in some respects, the problems (unemployment, for example) are deeper and more intractable than ever. But what I sense today is that there are some efforts being made to move beyond the deep divisions and the pain that has existed over the last year and a half here in Wisconsin; an attempt to reach out to rebuild community and a sense of the common good.

There is also some soul-searching going on in the progressive community, questioning whether the recall movement was the best way to focus energy and efforts. From my perspective, the recalls fed the fires of partisanship and division, and prevented Walker’s opponents from offering a compelling vision of an alternative to the vision articulated by Walker and others. There was a great deal about the importance of unions from the protesters, but I didn’t hear a word of debate or discussion about whether it was appropriate for the Teamsters and the IBEW to have their huge trucks parked on Capitol Square throughout the protests. To put it bluntly the election was fought over partisan politics and the power of unions, and not over issues of the common good.

If there is a role for communities of faith in our political discourse, it ought to be, as I’ve said repeatedly, that we provide a model where people with differing views can come together to discuss, debate, and disagree. We don’t do that particularly well, but if we can learn how to be community across the divisions that separate us, we can help to shape a vision for our larger society that allows us to come together to work for the common good, across our political, economic, and ethnic divide.

St. Paul wrote in Galatians, “in Christ there is no Jew or Greek, slave or free, male and female. That vision of the body of Christ may not have been fully realized, even by Paul, but it should stand before us as a model for our religious communities, and for our civil society as well (where ethnicity, socio-economic division, religious difference need not prevent us for working toward a common good).

 

 

 

Witness to history: the Wisconsin Recall

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I’m feeling rather Calvinist this evening, knowing the results are out of our hands and in the hands of God’s providence.

A couple of impressions from today. First, Grace was open and a few people came in to look around and to pray. One woman who spoke with me was here from Minnesota to be with family who were deeply involved in the recall. She stopped in to pray and then we talked. She shared with me some of her story, her hopes and fears for today and for the future.

I walked around the square, as I try to do on a regular basis. There weren’t a lot of people around, but there was a nervous energy. And the network news trucks were there. CNN and Fox News were both parked a block and a half a way from Grace.

Back at Grace, I sat down with the parishioner who was volunteering at the reception desk this afternoon. He’s retired from the newspaper business, a former reporter on the Wisconsin political beat. He shared with me some of the wisdom he had gained about Wisconsin over his fifty years following politics. He also told me that as a cub reporter, he had been assigned to Joe McCarthy. Without making any explicit connection between the two politicians, he pointed out that a Walker victory tonight would vault him onto the national stage, just as McCarthy had gained national attention 60 years ago.

He also mentioned to me that nearly thirty years ago, a former rector of Grace had had a regular prayer service for people who worked in the Capitol. We both wondered whether something similar might be meaningful in the context of our divided polity.

Whatever happens tonight, Grace’s doors will be open tomorrow morning, offering a place for prayer in the midst of a tumultuous world.