Author Archives: djgrieser

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About djgrieser

I have been Rector of Grace Episcopal Church in Madison, WI since 2009. I'm passionate about Jesus Christ and about connecting our faith and tradition with 21st century culture. I'm also very active in advocating for our homeless neighbors.

Perhaps it is all about Katharine Jefforts Schori

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There’s a report making the rounds that during her visit to England, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefforts Schori was asked by the ABC not to wear her mitre  while preaching and celebrating the Eucharist at Southwark Cathedral. Apparently there were hisses from the reactionaries while she preached. Apparently, too, she carried her mitre with her. The Bishop of Southwark, who extended the invitation comments here.

No doubt the ABC is concerned about what will transpire when the Church of England’s General Synod meets soon to discuss (again) the ordination of women to the Episcopate. It is a very sensitive issue with both Anglo-Catholics and Evangelicals resistant to change. But it seems quite an affront to our Presiding Bishop, and to the American Church, that our chief representative not be allowed to wear the symbols of her office.

And if he’s willing to do that, it’s likely he’s willing to sacrifice all of us to appease opponents of women’s ordination.

Women, the priesthood and the episcopate

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Thinking Anglicans links to a couple of posts about the ongoing debate over the consecration of women as bishops in the Church of England. Although ordination of women as priests has been possible since the early 90s, there are no women bishops in the Church of England, and in order to make that possible, legislation has to be passed by General Synod. There continues to be controversy as Anglicans from the Evangelical wing and from the Anglo-Catholic wing resist the move. Most commentators think the Pope’s overtures to Anglo-Catholics last fall had more to do with the debate over women bishops in the CoE than with the larger debate in Anglicanism over sexuality.

Thinking Anglicans also points to an essay decrying women’s ordination in the Church of Australia.

While all this is going on, the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, Katharine Jefforts Schori, has been visiting the United Kingdom, speaking to the gathering of the Scottish Episcopal Church, and preaching at Southwark Cathedral.

Mark Harris argues that the Archbishop of Canterbury’s sanctions of the Episcopal Church have more to do with the fact that we have a female Presiding Bishop than with our actions concerning sexuality. He also hints that the ABC began his current campaign by asking ++Katharine to step down from her position on the Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion.

All of this is especially interesting in light of today’s gospel reading in which Luke makes clear that there were women disciples, following Jesus, and ministering to him.

Forgiveness: A Sermon for Proper 6, Year C, June 13, 2010

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Our lessons today bring us up squarely against one of those ways in which the language and world of the Bible confronts our world most profoundly. The Biblical world uses the term “sin” to express the chasm that separates human beings from their creator, and in our texts today, we see “sin” in all of its complexity and all of the suffering it causes. From the Hebrew Bible, there’s the story of King Ahab coveting and seizing a commoner’s vineyard. From Paul’s letter to the Galatians, our reading begins with words that shock us: “we ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners.” And the gospel presents the story of a sinful woman who receives forgiveness from Jesus.

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More Anglican developments

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There continue to be interesting responses to the Archbishop of Canterbury’s letter and the disinvitation of Episcopal participants in ecumenical dialogues. Inclusive Church, a movement within the Church of England has spoken sharply against the ABC’s actions. They did it in an earlier letter, but now have responded forcefully to this week’s developments. Most criticism has focused on the unequal treatment of the different moratoria breakers–the Episcopal Church is sanctioned, but those who “crossed borders” have not been punished.

But there’s another important issue raised in the Inclusive Church letter and in the blogosphere as well. That is the matter of inculturation. In other words, in our contexts, it seems to many to be a gospel mandate to be inclusive, to open our churches fully to our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters.

There is also growing resentment of the Church of England’s hypocrisy, which I’ve mentioned before. With animosity growing toward British Petroleum in the States, there seems to be something of a snowball effect among progressives.

Coincidentally, both the Anglican Church of Canada and the Scottish Episcopal Church were meeting this week. Presiding Bishop Jefforts Schori attended and spoke at both, and ironically, Kenneth Kearon, General Secretary of the Anglican Communion spoke to the Canadian Church on the very day that his letter was made public.

The Canadian church debated the Anglican Covenant as well as issues of sexuality. The primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church offered a thoughtful discussion of the covenant.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court of the State of Virginia decided in favor of the Diocese in a long-running property case with dissident parishes.

It’s early in the game yet (strange to say, since we’ve been arguing over this stuff for over a decade), but I think we are beginning to see real fracture in the communion. My sense is the Episcopal Church is beginning to make its peace with the future, and seek alliances with like-minded folk across the communion, whatever the ABC may say.

The ABC lowers the boom

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In his Pentecost letter, the Archbishop of Canterbury asked that the Episcopal Church’s representatives to interfaith and ecumenical conversations be lowered to “consultant” status. This week, the Secretary General of the Anglican Communion, Kenneth Kearon, did his master’s bidding, effectively disinviting Episcopal involvement in dialogues with the Orthodox, Lutherans, and Methodists.

The internet is abuzz with stories concerning the “sanctions” imposed on the Episcopal Church. There’s a wonderful irony here, because the Lutherans and the Methodists have each seen controversy in the US over sexuality, although apparently the Lutherans’ decision last year to permit the ordination of gays and lesbians went relatively smoothly.  Even more amusing is the fact that last year there was great concern when the Church of Sweden voted to allow gay marriages. Not only that, the Bishop of Stockholm, Eva Brunne, is a lesbian in a registered partnership, with a three-year old son. Because of the Porvoo Agreement, the Church of England is in full communion with the Church of Sweden. As a punishment, it seems rather silly to prevent Episcopal representatives from meeting with Lutherans whose policies on sexuality are more clear and more open than ours.

Of course there are other matters at stake. One of the key issues in the reception of the Anglican Covenant is section four which deals with disciplinary action. There has been some resistance from various sectors of the Anglican Communion to these proposals for a more tightly-run ship. I suspect the ABC would have liked to do something a little more ruthless to the American Church but lacked the nerve. Where’s Ratzinger when you need him?

There’s a local connection to this controversy. Tom Ferguson, who is Chaplain at St. Francis House and who also works for the national church on ecumenical matters, is one of those who has been disinvited. He was a participant in the Anglican-Orthodox dialogue.

The Presiding Bishop has also commented on recent developments.

As always, you can follow developments at Thinking Anglicans and The Episcopal Café.

St. Columba, June 9

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Columba’s Affirmation

Alone with none but Thee, my God,
I journey on my way;
What need I fear, when Thou art near,
O king of night and day?
More safe I am within Thy hand,
than if a host did round me stand.

My destined time is fixed by Thee,
and death doth know his hour.
Did warriors strong around me throng,
they could not stay his power;
no walls of stone can man defend
when Thou Thy messenger dost send

My life I yield to Thy decree,
and bow to Thy control
in peaceful calm, for from Thine arm
no power can wrest my soul.
Could earthly omens e’er appal
A man that heeds the heavenly call!

The child of God can fear no ill,
His chosen dread no foe;
we leave our fate with Thee and wait
Thy bidding when we go.
Tis not from chance our comfort springs,
Thou art our trust, O king of kings.

St Columba (trans. unknown)

(From Brendan O’Malley, A Celtic Primer)

The Templeton Foundation

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In The Nation, there’s a lengthy profile of the Templeton Foundation, its founder, financier John Templeton, and son Jack who is now running it. After making his billions, John Templeton established a foundation to explore the relationships of religion and science. Back in the 90s, when the Foundation was actively recruiting grant proposals from theologians and scholars of religion, its mantra was something like: “There have been so many advances in science and technology, why has there been no progress in spirituality?”

I attended at least one of their information sessions at a national conference. It seemed to me that the organizers (marketers?) lacked any theological sophistication or understanding of the academic study of religion. On the other hand, I suspected that many of the religion scholars in attendance were looking for any way to get grant funding.

I do find some of the Foundation’s efforts worthwhile. To ask the big questions and to put money behind that is a noble thing. Nathan Schneider writes:

Templeton money supports other causes, like promoting virtue, encouraging gifted youth and fostering free enterprise, but its core concerns are more cosmic: “Does the universe have a purpose?” “Does science make belief in God obsolete?” “Does evolution explain human nature?” As the advance of knowledge becomes ever more specialized and remote, these questions seem as refreshing as they are intractable; the foundation wants them to be our culture’s uniting, overriding focus.

Of course, anything this big (they funded a $9.8 million dollar grant to Duke University’s Center for Spirituality, Theology, and Health) is bound to come under criticism. And of course, the usual suspects rose up in unrighteous indignation:

The zoologist and author Richard Dawkins quipped in his 2006 book The God Delusion that the Templeton Prize goes “usually to a scientist who is prepared to say something nice about religion.”

And:

Now Dawkins and Kroto, with eight other advisory board members of Project Reason, founded by New Atheist author Sam Harris in 2007 to promote secularism, are at work on another offensive. Project Reason hired British science journalist Sunny Bains to investigate Templeton and build a case against it. Her unpublished findings include evidence of pervasive cronyism: more than half of the past dozen Templeton Prize winners were connected to the foundation before their win, and board members do well obtaining grant money and speaking gigs. Bains also argues that the true atheistic tendencies of leading scientists were misrepresented in the foundation’s Big Questions advertisements. Templeton’s mission, Bains concludes, is to promote religion, and its overtures to science are an insidious trick with the purpose of sneaking in God.

Schneider tries to uncover evidence of the Templeton Foundation’s nefarious involvement with a vast right-wing conspiracy and does provide  number of clues, but at the same time, it’s clear that the Foundation doesn’t silence research that downplays the importance of the spiritual (as in the findings concerning the value of intercessory prayer).

The relationship between Science and Religion was hardly at the center of my intellectual interests although I am fascinated by the relationship between the brain and religious experience.

Grace in Ordinary Time: A Sermon for Proper 5, 2010

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Finally, things are beginning to settle down. We have entered that period of the church year known as Ordinary Time, the weeks after the Feast of Pentecost. We will be in Ordinary Time all the way through November, right up to the beginning of the next church year, which begins on the First Sunday of Advent. Since last December, we have been following, more or less, the life of Jesus from his birth, through his baptism, on to his death and resurrection. With our celebration of his Ascension and Pentecost, when we remember the coming of the Holy Spirit, we turn our attention away from Jesus’ nature, his life and death, and turn toward his teachings and his ministry among the people of the Roman territory of Palestine in the first century.

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More turmoil in Anglican-land

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The Archbishop of Canterbury wrote a Pentecost Letter to the Anglican Communion in which he responded to the consecration in May of Bishop Glasspool in the Diocese of Los Angeles. In the course of that letter he wrote:

I am therefore proposing that, while these tensions remain unresolved, members of such provinces – provinces that have formally, through their Synod or House of Bishops, adopted policies that breach any of the moratoria requested by the Instruments of Communion and recently reaffirmed by the Standing Committee and the Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Unity, Faith and Order (IASCUFO) – should not be participants in the ecumenical dialogues in which the Communion is formally engaged.

This seems to imply that the Episcopal Church (and the Anglican Church of Canada) should absent themselves from inter-Anglican activities. One might debate whether the Episcopal Church has “formally” breached any of the moratoria (on blessings of same-sex relationships, ordinations of gay and lesbian clergy, and border-crossing).

Presiding Bishop Katherine Jefforts Schori responded powerfully this week to Williams’ letter. She argued that Williams was seeking to centralize authority in Anglicanism in ways that had been resisted throughout its history. She also pointed out that whatever “formal” decisions had been made by particular provinces, there were many places, the Church of England chief among them, where both ordinations and same-sex blessings occurred regularly and that any move in the Episcopal Church was nothing more than recognizing the reality on the ground.

This exchange has received considerable exposure both in the press and on the internet. Diana Butler Bass, an Episcopalian herself and one of the leading commentators on religion in contemporary America commented that the conflict between Jefforts Schori and Williams is not a clash between liberal and conservative. Both are theologically liberal. Rather, it is a clash between competing visions of Anglicanism—one hierarchical and centralized, the other more democratic.

Jefforts Schori (and Bass) point out the origins of the Episcopal Church in the US in the American Revolution and in the desire to develop independently of the Church of England. Jefforts Schori cites as well the origins of the Church of England in the desire to be independent of the papacy. She goes too far when she tries to connect that with Celtic Christianity and the conflict in the early Middle Ages between Celtic Christianity and the missionaries sent from Rome.

The rise of individualism and of democracy are two long-term trends that have changed all institutions and the ways in which individuals come together to form institutions and relate to institutions. Once centralization and authoritarianism give way to localization and autonomy, it is impossible to recapture them. The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion are becoming new things because of those developments. The internet has changed how we communicate and how we connect. It has helped us create like-minded communities that span the globe, but it cannot create closer ties or strengthen central authority.

What Jefforts Schori is saying in her response is that the sort of Anglican Communion Williams is imagining is not something the Episcopal Church wants to be a part of. Rather, we want to work together with those who are willing to work with us, whatever our theological views. We will also build networks with people and churches across the world who share our views. Yes, this may mean loss, but it has been happening de facto for over a decade. In fact, this was begun not by the Episcopal Church but by those disaffected with the Episcopal Church who made alliances with (and were consecrated Bishop by) conservative African and Asian archbishops.

As I reflect on recent events and on the controversy that has been going since 2003 (well, in fact, much longer than that), it seems to me that the dust has largely settled. Those who were going to leave the Episcopal Church have left. New structures have been created but how they will develop remains to be seen. I’m sure there are places and people where the controversy rages, but my sense is that in those places and people, controversy will always rage. I will never forget what David Anderson said in response to a question about why he didn’t just leave the Episcopal Church. “I love a good fight,” he said.

I don’t. I love God, Jesus Christ, and the body of Christ in the world. I want to be about the ministry and mission of Jesus Christ in this world. Frankly, I don’t care any more what the Archbishop of Canterbury has to say about the Anglican Communion and about the Episcopal Church’s place in it. Frankly, I don’t care about the Anglican Communion. I care about the Church of Jesus Christ, but of course, the Church of Jesus Christ will take care of itself. It has for two thousand years. It has survived, in spite of the members, laity and clergy, who have done whatever was in their power to destroy it.

A sermon on Proper 5 I preached in 2007

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I reread this sermon as I began work this week and thought it deserved posting, largely because in it I share some of my earlier experiences of ministry with the homeless, from the vantage point of a suburban parish.

Proper 5_YrC

St. James

June 10, 2007

When I was growing up, our rural Mennonite Church had as one of its outreach projects, providing a monthly service at the Cherry Street Mission in downtown Toledo, Ohio. I don’t remember now how many times our family went, but to the best of my recollections it must have been several times a year when I was a preteen. It was an old style mission, where those who wanted something to eat and a bed for the night, first had to sit through whatever kind of worship service we put on. It was of course a cultural conflict of enormous proportions. We were well-off, white, Mennonite, small town and rural folk; the people at the mission were urban, overwhelmingly African-American, predominantly alcoholic and homeless. We didn’t provide the meal, we didn’t help out with the soup kitchen; we simply gave our hour-long worship service, and got back in our cars and drove the forty-five miles home.

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