Category Archives: Anglican

Civil Religion, Monarchy, Establishment, and the Church of England

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still reflecting on the royal wedding and what it says about the role of religion in the UK.

Jonathan Chaplin and Religion, Royalty, and the Media. He concludes with the following:

But it surely is primarily responsible for how far the liturgical offerings it seems so eager to supply to what is a largely inattentive and uncomprehending nation are actually consistent with its own theological integrity, even its self-respect.

For many defenders of establishment, the royal wedding will no doubt provide glorious confirmation of their claim that the church remains the spiritual hub of the nation, sending out signals of transcendence from the heart of a unifying national celebration. For many opponents, it will raise the question whether the meaning of even a robustly orthodox wedding liturgy – for such it certainly was, as Martin Bashir so tactlessly pointed out – is effectively neutered when placed in service of a survival strategy for a political institution with an uncertain future. They will interpret the day’s events as yet further evidence of church’s captivity to civil religion, and will ask whether on April 29th the church really “served” the nation or rather was “used” by it. Will the church dare to have a serious discussion about that question?

The situation is quite different in the US than in the UK because of establishment. Still, there is an American civil religion, and the Episcopal Church has very often provided the setting as well as the content for the exercise of it. Witness the prominence of the “National Cathedral.” Sometimes, civil religion is relatively innocuous, such as the requirement that presidents end their speeches with “God Bless America.” It easily shades into the dangerous, however, when civil religion and Christianity are equated, as they so often are, by politicians, people, and pseudo-historians like David Barton.

Still, I’m not sure the appropriate response for concerned theologians is to adopt a neo-Anabaptist position like Simon Barrow and Nick Knisely seem to advocate. Nick Kniseley asks “Co-opting the Church?”  In response to an essay by Simon Barrow. It’s not that I’m not sympathetic to their position; it was difficult to distinguish the worship of God from the worship of the royal family during the wedding, and the prominence of the nation-state in the form of dress uniforms was especially disconcerting. Still, the Anabaptist, and neo-Anabaptist response of withdrawing, figuratively or literally, from engagement with the spiritual concerns of the larger society is troubling to me. Our sacred spaces and rituals need to be available to those who turn to them for support and meaning at times of crisis or transition. The task is to use that tentative engagement as a step to deeper involvement, all the while recognizing that such deeper commitment might not be forthcoming.

And Frederick Schmidt  on the inadequacies of our traditional-language liturgy seems to have struck precisely the wrong note a few days before the use of traditional language in the royal wedding. One of the great powers of ritual is that it can invest with great power, language that seems meaningless or dead in other contexts.

This in the context on continuing doom and gloom concerning the future of Anglicanism in the UK.

Archbishop Barry Morgan of Wales chimes in: “the Church in Wales must adapt to cope with the decline in clergy, waning investments and falling congregations.”

I do think it is time for the Church of England to be disestablished; this would free it up to have precisely the sort of theological conversation that Jonathan Chaplin advocates.

Royal wedding, continued

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So I watched the service, straight up, with no commentary this evening. If you want to see it, it’s available .

I’m a liturgy geek, so it was all wonderful, from Cwm Rhondda to Jerusalem, and  a composition by John Rutter. I especially liked the Parry setting of John Milton. OK, so I want the Deaon of Westminster’s cope, too.

But there was also something quite powerful for me in seeing this ceremony, with the Dean of Westminster, the Bishop of London, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, after having celebrated at a wedding at Grace this afternoon. Both were lovely liturgies, with couples deeply in love and family and friends supportive. But each ceremony also pointed to something much greater than any of us, greater than the love any couple can share.

Some of the words I said were quite similar to words said by the Archbishop of Canterbury; I even read the Bishop of London’s sermon before completing my homily–and was astounded to discover that mine was 70 words longer than his. While watching tonight, I felt deeply connected, not only to the couple whose marriage I witnessed and blessed today, but to the larger communion of people who yearn for love and relationship, across the world.

Here’s the prayer, Prince William and Kate wrote:

God our Father, we thank
you for our families; for
the love that we share and
for the joy of our marriage.
In the busyness of each day keep our eyes fixed on
what is real and important
in life and help us to be generous with our time
and love and energy.
Strengthened by our union, help us to serve and comfort those who suffer. We ask this in the Spirit of Jesus Christ. Amen.

The Anglican Covenant Scorecard

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The Diocese of Michigan says no.

The Diocese of Kansas says no to Section 4.

The Diocese of Colorado says no.

The Diocese of California says “Not so fast:”

We also find great hope in the ongoing Indaba process, noting the Lambeth 2008 Conference set a way forward by departing from legislative process at the level of Communion and instead cultivating conversations that lead to mutual understanding and strengthen our bonds of affection. A wide majority of our members believe that these Communion processes and direct relationships are far more life-giving in the Gospel and Spirit-filled than pursuing the formal structures offered by the proposed Anglican Covenant.

The Diocese of LA votes no.

Maori Anglicans in New Zealand vote no.

Mark Harris’ prognostications for Mid-April are here.

The No Anglican Covenant blog keeps an up-to-date list of resources.

The Royal Wedding–Sorry, I couldn’t resist

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Commentary on the nuptials:

From Theo Hobson:

I am a rather keen Christian. The tradition of my upbringing is the Church of England, the established church. But it became clear to me about ten years ago, that this tradition contained the hugest structural error. It shouldn’t be established: Christianity and establishment are incompatible. The case for disestablishment is probably too obvious to restate, especially for American readers. The interesting question, though, is how Anglicanism manages to dismiss this case, how it justifies its refusal to reform.

He concludes with this:

I wish William and Kate all the best: they seem like the nicest sort of posh folk. But I also want to tell this young man that his future job is religiously problematic, that his funny family is unwittingly stifling the renewal of Christianity in my land.

And did you know that Ms. Middleton had to get confirmed quickly?

I cannot help feeling that if Kate Middleton had been serious about her Christian faith, she would have been confirmed in the Church of England at a somewhat younger age than 29. Having attended such expensive private boarding schools as Downe House and Marlborough College, she would have been offered the chance of confirmation while still in her teens. Prince William, for example, was 14 when he was confirmed. Of course, I know nothing of Kate’s views on religion, but neither she nor other members of her family appear until now to have been regular churchgoers. And while sources “close to Kate” are quoted in the Daily Mail as insisting that she went through the ceremony in St James’s Palace because of a “personal journey” of a religious nature and not in order to avoid the awkwardness of being denied Holy Communion when married to a future Defender of the Faith, it is hard to relinquish the suspicion that she did it more for convenience than from conviction.

Hauerwas on the church–local and universal

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Several weeks ago, I came across this essay by Stanley Hauerwas of Duke Divinity School: The place of the church: locality and catholicity – ABC Religion & Ethics – Opinion.

It begins with Constantinianism, post-Constantinianism and John Howard Yoder. Yoder argued that with the rise of Constantine, something important was lost in Christianity. It’s often assumed that Yoder viewed the church in the centuries after Constantine as completely fallen. That’s not the case. Hauerwas cites Yoder’s views concerning faithfulness in the Middle Ages, but he also thinks Yoder’s analysis went deeper than that:

For him the alternative to Constantinianism was not anti-Constantinianism, but locality and place. According to Yoder, locality and place are the forms of communal life necessary to express the particularity of Jesus through the visibility of the church. Only at the local level is the church able to engage in the discernment necessary to be prophetic.

Hauerwas’s essay is actually a review of Bruce Kaye’s Conflict and the Practice of Faith: The Anglican Experiment, in which Kaye uses the controversies in Anglicanism to explore the tension between locality and universality (catholicity) in the Christian faith.

Kaye is building on ideas of Rowan Williams. In defending the Church of England’s unique role in English society, Williams (according to Hauerwas) argues that:

the New Testament testifies to the creation of a pathway between earth and heaven that nothing can ever again close. A place has been cleared in which God and human reality can belong together without rivalry or fear.

For Williams, “the role of church is to take up space in the world, to inhabit a place, where Jesus’ priesthood can be exercised. Such a place unavoidably must be able to be located on a social map so that it does not have to be constantly reinvented.”

Hauerwas’ final sentences are provocative:

The culture that inhabits us – and by us I mean Christians – is a subtle and seductive one. It tempts us to believe we are free of place. It tempts us to believe that we do not have the time to do what needs to be done, so we must constantly hurry. These temptations are often assumed to be congruent with the gospel imperatives to have no permanent home.

But in the process we lose the visibility necessary to be witnesses to the One who made it possible to be Christians.

There’s something quite interesting here–and important for us to reflect on as we think about the role of the church in contemporary culture. But it’s more than that abstract question that I find interesting. It’s the concrete question: What is Grace Church’s role in our community?

We occupy a unique space that offers opportunities, challenges, and responsibilities. What does it mean to be church on Madison’s Capitol Square?

Back in the 1980s, Richard John Neuhaus wrote a book entitled The Naked Public Square. I don’t recall the gist of his argument (it’s been over 25 years!) but the image of a public arena in which religion had no role is a powerful one. We don’t live in a completely secular world, and religious voices continue to clamor for attention and influence policy. But at the same time, the church as an institution plays a much smaller role in our society than it did even a half-century ago.

But there’s something to be said for the reality of place. For what it’s worth, Grace Church still occupies a corner of Capitol Square. Whatever mission and ministry we do at Grace, part of what we do has to involve nurturing that space where heaven and earth meet, as Williams put it, “to inhabit a place where Jesus’ priesthood can be exercised.”

The Anglican Covenant, back in the news

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The House of Bishops is meeting this week. Among the topics of conversation is the proposed Anglican Covenant. Bishop Kirk Smith live-tweeted the first set of conversations: Bishop Smith’s tweets. There’s also a brief and not very informative report from ENS.

But there have been other developments in recent months. The Church of Ireland held a colloquium recently with papers for and against, as well as proposals for that Church’s response. The papers are well-worth reading. The full report is here.

For background, Kate Turner’s essay is helpful. Jonathan Chatworthy argues against the covenant with several salient points. Among them, he argues that the definition of the church put forward in the document is “far too steeped in Reformation Protestantism,” and that the description of Anglicanism put forward in Sections 1-3 would become foundational for Anglicanism. He also argues convincingly that it would lead to centralization of power, limit provincial autonomy, and have dire implications for local initiative, theological development, and ecumenical efforts.

Chatworthy sees the covenant as introducing something quite new to Anglicanism–revolutionary, in fact. He describes the approach of classical Anglicanism in the following terms:

Classic Anglicans, on the other hand, expect the insights of modern research to shed light on current church debates. The way to resolve disagreements is to allow the different points of view to be publicly expressed, defended and criticised. Debate should continue until consensus is reached. Any attempt by church authorities to curtail debate and impose their own view would be to abuse power and suppress the search for truth.

For Classic Anglicans, therefore, the Covenant is equally unsatisfactory but for the opposite reason: not because it does not draw a clear enough line between two kinds of Anglican, but because it proposes to draw any line at all. The Covenant is at fault for seeking to pre-empt theological agreement by ecclesiastical decree.

His description of the way power is deployed in the covenant is illuminating:

Critics point out that it is like a school playground. You are free to do whatever you like, but if you don’t do what we tell you we’ll all walk away and we’ll have nothing more to do with you. At the very least it’s a power game.

If that’s not enough for you, the Church Times has produced a handy guide to the covenant: Anglican Covenant_18 March. Church of England dioceses are beginning to weigh in as well. The Diocese of Litchfield approved it; the Diocese of Wakefield rejected it.

Another view against it from Nathaniel Rugh: rugh_case.

Consultation on Same-Sex Blessings

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On Friday and Saturday, there was a gathering of lay and clergy deputies to General Convention to discuss the development of liturgies for same-sex blessings. The consultation is in response to the General Convention’s mandate in 2009 to the Standing Committee on Liturgy and Mission “to collect and develop theological resources and liturgies for blessing same-gender relationships.”

Reports are beginning to trickle in. Here’s the article from Episcopal News Service. One attendee’s reflections are here.

To be honest, I’m not sure where I am on this. That same-sex blessings are taking place in the Episcopal Church is obvious; that such blessings are probably quite diverse theologically and liturgically also probably goes without saying. My guess is that we are at the very initial steps of a process that will take some time to come to fruition. I doubt very much whether General Convention will be prepared in 2012 to publish such liturgies.I think moving slowly on a denominational level is wise. I wasn’t around when the Book of Common Prayer was under revision but I should think such a process, even for a single rite like same-sex blessings, should include a great deal of feedback, including after using such rites.

What I do like about this process is the openness with which it is occurring. To have a conversation that includes not just liturgical or theological experts lets a wide range of voices and interests to be heard. On the other hand, I’ve never been a fan of editing by committee…

It is worth noting that recent polls suggest a majority of Americans now support gay marriage.

 

 

The nature of religious authority

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There has been considerable discussion about the nature of authority in the Anglican Communion, precipitated by the recent Primates’ Meeting. These discussions often focus on the locus of authority (is it the bishop, the national church, the local congregation); less often do they focus on the origin of that authority. The lack of conversation about the source of authority is largely due to the notion of apostolic succession, although the challenge to that idea comes from those who view scripture or adherence to some doctrinal formulation to be more important than a genealogy that can trace authority to the apostles.

It’s interesting occasionally to compare the sources and loci of authority in one’s own religious tradition to those in others. There is currently something of a debate taking place within American Zen Buddhism that can shed light on our controversies. The source of the current conflict is described here. Here’s a call from one Zen practitioner for a “Protestant Reformation.” But the problem in Zen predates the current controversy. There’s a fascinating book that describes similar developments in the San Francisco Zen Center, entitled Shoes outside the Door.

Given the apparent centralizing and bureaucratizing tendencies in the Anglican Communion, it’s important for us as Episcopalians and Anglicans to do all that we can to resist such efforts. An interview with Bishop Mark Sisk of New York details some of the issues, and the cultural/political differences between the American church and other branches of the Anglican Communion.

The dust settles on the Primates Meeting

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It didn’t take long, for there wasn’t much dust. It seems little happened, or in ABC-speak, “conversations took place, relationships were deepened, yada yada yada.” George Conger, Paul Bagshaw, and the Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church comment.

There seem to have been some important developments, not least the recognition (finally, what took so long) that the role of the primates differs widely from local church to local church, that their power and office are often structured quite differently, all of which make unified action impossible.

Bagshaw makes two comments which seem on target, and which reflect on ongoing development in the Anglican Communion. One is that “it is an ever more clerical communion.” It’s not clear to me why, and given the enormous cultural shifts throughout the world, a narrowing of the power and role of the laity seems both wrongheaded and against the tide of history. The second comment is that, given the changes in roles for the Lambeth Conference, the Primates Meeting, and the sidelining of the Anglican Consultative Council (all of which I think are taking place and have been taking place for the last decade), power is centralizing in the Archbishop of Canterbury and in the Anglican Communion Office–as Bagshaw terms it, an international bureaucracy. This, too, seems odd to me, and somehow roughly parallel to developments in the European Union, where power has centralized in the bureaucracy, not in any deliberative bodies.

But more important than any of this may be the absence of a significant number of Primates, for whatever reason. For many of them, what the Archbishop of Canterbury does, the meetings he calls, are meaningless. Conger and Bagshaw agree that “the Anglican Communion as we knew it no longer exists,” what isn’t clear is what precisely is coming into existence. And so long as there is no lay voice at the highest levels of international meetings, I don’t think the Episcopal Church should spend time, energy, or money, trying to remain a part of it.

The Anglican Communion’s “consistent condemnation” of anti-gay violence

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David Kato, a prominent Ugandan Gay Rights activist, was brutally murdered this week. While police officials chalked the motive up to robbery, most observers suspect his death was the result of the ratcheting up of anti-gay rhetoric and violence in Uganda in the last few years, much of it spurred on by American evangelicals.

Kato’s death came as the Primates of the Anglican Communion are meeting. The meeting is smaller than usual with a number of national church leaders staying away, some because of the Episcopal Church’s openness to gay and lesbians. In the course of the meeting, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefforts Schori released this statement:

At this morning’s Eucharist at the Primates Meeting, I offered prayers for the repose of the soul of David Kato. His murder deprives his people of a significant and effective voice, and we pray that the world may learn from his gentle and quiet witness, and begin to receive a heart of flesh in place of a heart of stone. May he rest in peace, and may his work continue to bring justice and dignity for all God’s children.

The Archbishop of Canterbury released a statement of his own this morning, two days after Kato’s death. It reads:

“The brutal murder of David Kato Kisule, a gay human rights activist, is profoundly shocking. Our prayers and deep sympathy go out for his family and friends – and for all who live in fear for their lives. Whatever the precise circumstances of his death, which have yet to be determined, we know that David Kato Kisule lived under the threat of violence and death. No one should have to live in such fear because of the bigotry of others. Such violence has been consistently condemned by the Anglican Communion worldwide. This event also makes it all the more urgent for the British Government to secure the safety of LGBT asylum seekers in the UK. This is a moment to take very serious stock and to address those attitudes of mind which endanger the lives of men and women belonging to sexual minorities.”

The ABC says violence against gays “has been consistently condemned by the Anglican Communion worldwide.”

Later today, we learned that violence broke out at Kato’s funeral. The BBC reports that the priest presiding said from the pulpit:

“You must repent. Even the animals know the difference between a male and a female,” he said, before warning that they would face the fate of residents in Sodom and Gomorrah, the biblical cities destroyed by God.

Gay rights activists then stormed the pulpit and prevented the priest from continuing.

An excommunicated priest who has in the past called for people to respect the rights of homosexuals then presided over the rest of the service.

Apparently, some Anglicans worldwide haven’t received the message sent “consistently by the Anglican Communion.”