Category Archives: Anglican

Anglican Eyes looking in the wrong direction?

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There will be a lot of press in the coming days about the Primates Meeting in Dublin this week. Already there have been articles about which primates will attend and which won’t be there. Thinking Anglicans has the rundown. But perhaps this is better commentary: Google “bonobos” if you don’t get the reference.

Meanwhile work gets done even in Episcopal dioceses. A telling commentary from Julie Ingersoll on Religion Dispatches. Of course, there is pain. The article mentions those who went their separate way in the past decade. But the issue was never going to be resolve. There would always be contention, and in the midst of that contention, precious little good news gets proclaimed. We have gone our separate ways. Let’s get on with doing the Lord’s work in our own contexts and with our own perspectives. Perhaps the Primates are willing to do the same.

Open Communion again

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Or “Communion without Baptism.” A cogent three-part article by Derek Olsen that argues against the new custom on historical and theological grounds. I’ve talked about this before, but I agree with him that this practice constitutes so significant a change, that it needs careful and convincing theological formulation.

Part I

Part II

Part III

The comments are worth reading as well, because they offer insight into the depth of the disagreement and some of the strongest counter-arguments.

Karl Barth, December 10

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I was surprised by the appearance in Holy Women, Holy Men of a commemoration of Karl Barth. Not that he isn’t important, mind you. No, what took me aback was his presence in a volume produced by politically-correct Episcopalians in the twenty-first century. I would be curious to know about his presence in the syllabi of theology courses offered at Episcopal seminaries.

Barth was an important stage on my own theological journey. I read the Commentary on Romans as an undergraduate, then worked through the German original of the second edition. His insistence on the utter transcendence of God and the centrality of Christ were revelations to me and helped me move away from the theology of my upbringing. His resolute opposition to Hitler and his sharp criticism of his teachers and 19th century liberal theology were helpful as well.

Thinking about Barth today reminded me of how far I have come theologically in the last thirty years. I don’t know that I’ve read anything of his since the very early 80s. Certainly at Harvard in that era Barth was mostly a foil for critique, almost a straw man. We were certain we had moved beyond him.

The write-up on Barth for Holy Women, Holy Men provides a standard biography and some sense of Barth’s place in twentieth-century theology. It makes no mention of his impact on Anglican theology and I suspect for most Anglicans with advanced training, their indebtedness to Barth is relatively slight. He was a Calvinist after all, and although he had a deep Incarnational theology, he was also convinced that there was a chasm between God and God’s creation. This meant that he was suspicious of reason. To put it in more positive terms; for Barth, the Word of God was the only certain knowledge.

 

 

Friday in I Advent

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Since arriving at Grace last year, I’ve been intrigued by the possibilities and limitations presented by Grace’s location and physical space. The church itself is quite beautiful and its high-profile location are incredible pluses. But there are challenges as well–parking, for example, is one and the presence of the homeless shelter makes security an issue, too. Still, I have wanted to offer a robust schedule of weekday services, to reach out to our neighbors.

Several lay people have mentioned over the past few months that they would appreciate the opportunity to attend and to officiate at Evening Prayer, and after talking to a number of people, I thought it would be an interesting experiment to try it during Advent.

After one week, I can say that it has been an interesting experiment. The numbers have not been been overwhelming, but I’ve not had to say it alone. What has surprised me is the effect on me of saying Evening Prayer in a lighted church as evening darkens. The season of Advent is all about light shining in the darkness. Turning the lights on at Grace after 5:00pm, and lighting candles in the nave to prepare for the service, are reminders of the coming of the light of Christ into the darkness of the world.

But more than that, there’s something about saying the familiar words of evening prayer, as the evening darkens, as people make there way home after a workday, and while the men are lining up to enter the shelter on the other side of the courtyard.

Tonight we read Psalm 22–that powerful, gut-wrenching Psalm that Jesus quoted on the cross, and that we recite on Maundy Thursday during the stripping of the altar. To read that Psalm now, in the midst of our anticipation of the coming of Christ, is a jarring reminder of how this story ends. The hope and anticipation of Advent ends, it seems, in a body broken, shattered, dying on the cross.

Of course, that’s not the end. Still, to celebrate Advent in the light, not only that shines in the darkness, but in the light of crucifixion and resurrection, challenges everything we understand about the season.

There’s also something about praying while the world walks by. Perhaps I’ll have more to say about that another time.

December 1: Nicholas Ferrar, Deacon, 1637

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Nicholas Ferrar is notable for his involvement in the foundation, with his mother and sister, of the religious community at Little Gidding. It seems that most of what is known about him is available here. From a wealthy family and ordained a deacon by William Laud, he and others devoted themselves to lives of prayer and service. George Herbert was associated with the community, and Herbert appointed Ferrar his literary executor. Ferrar died in 1637 and the community forced to disband, its buildings pillaged during the Civil War.

It may be that the presence of Ferrar in our calendar, and the prominence of Little Gidding in Anglican memory is due largely to T.S. Eliot, who titled one of the Four Quartets “Little Gidding.”

Here are some lines:

If you came this way,
Taking any route, starting from anywhere,
At any time or at any season,
It would always be the same: you would have to put off
Sense and notion. You are not here to verify,
Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity
Or carry report. You are here to kneel
Where prayer has been valid. And prayer is more
Than an order of words, the conscious occupation
Of the praying mind, or the sound of the voice praying.
And what the dead had no speech for, when living,
They can tell you, being dead: the communication
Of the dead is tongued with fire
beyond the language of the living.
Here, the intersection of the timeless moment
Is England and nowhere. Never and always.

Tactics and Strategy in the Anglican Wars

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It turns out that the so-called Oxford Statement was written over a month ago, but released on November 24. In it, a number of Primates declared their intentions not to attend the Primates’ Meeting in Dublin in January. The timing of the document’s publication is odd, however. It appeared on the day of the vote in General Synod to send the Anglican Covenant to the dioceses. According to Thinking Anglicans, it came out during the debate in General Synod, but too late to affect the voting.

One wonders whether GAFCON meant to upstage the Church of England’s meeting; whether they were asserting their independence, and the irrelevance to them of the Church of England’s position; whether they meant to release it earlier in order somehow to affect the voting (what we in the US call an “October surprise”).

Whatever the case, it seems to me that their actions have undermined all those, beginning with the Archbishop of Canterbury, who are trying to hold the Anglican Communion together; indeed all those who think the Anglican Communion is worth preserving, in whatever form.

Walking Apart: The End of the Anglican Communion

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So, it turns out it wasn’t the Episcopal Church or the Anglican Church of Canada forced out of the Anglican Communion by the Global South Primates, but rather the Global Primates who have walked away. And they chose to do it on the same day that the Church of England General Synod voted to send the Covenant to dioceses for discussion.

For all the criticism of the Archbishop of Canterbury, on this blog and elsewhere throughout the last weeks, criticism that continues even today, the effects of his statements and years of effort, however futile, seem to have preserved something of Anglicanism, in spite of it all. Oh, there are apparently those who are leaving, the GAFCON Primates who signed the statement yesterday that they will not attend the Primates Meeting in Ireland in January. But as others have observed, it’s never quite clear whether all the signatories of GAFCON statements have actually signed or even agree with the statement. They have also made clear that they are having nothing of the covenant. The full statement from that group is here.

Mark Harris’ comment on this development is spot on:

GAFCON is on its way to forming an alternate way to be Anglican in the world, one which the Covenant does not support and the existing unifying elements in the Anglican Communion are irrelevant.

His full commentary is here.

Here is what Tobias Haller has to say.

Oh, I have no doubt that this is not the end of efforts to keep things together. But the Covenant was the last best shot from Williams, et al, to hold things together, and with the GAFCON folks not playing along, I see no way forward. Unless something radical happens, the Primates Meeting will be a rump; the conservative Primates not attending, or forcing the ABC to disinvite our Presiding Bishop, which would also lead to others pulling out, I suspect.

Whatever they will say about the Archbishop of Canterbury down the line, they won’t be able to criticize him for not trying hard enough to keep the Anglican Communion together. In my view, the timing of the GAFCON statement was a direct attack on Rowan and on his vision for Anglicanism.

The Archbishop of Canterbury’s address at General Synod

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The ABC’s address to General Synod today is available.

He talks about the Anglican Covenant and decision facing Synod concerning the ordination of women bishops. Here is the heart of his defense of it:

The Covenant offers the possibility of a voluntary promise to consult. And it also recognises that even after consultation there may still be disagreement, that such disagreement may result in rupture of some aspects of communion, and that this needs to be managed in a careful and orderly way. Now the risk and reality of such rupture is already there, make no mistake. The question is whether we are able to make an intelligent decision about how we deal with it. To say yes to the Covenant is not to tie our hands. But it is to recognise that we have the option of tying our hands if we judge, after consultation, that the divisive effects of some step are too costly. The question is how far we feel able to go in making our decisions in such a way as to keep the trust of our fellow-Anglicans in other contexts. If we decide that this is not the kind of relationship we want with other Anglicans, well and good. But it has consequences. Whatever happens, with or without the Covenant, the Communion will not simply stay the same. Historic allegiances cannot be taken for granted. They will survive and develop only if we can build up durable and adult bonds of fellowship. And in this respect, the Church of England is bound to engage in this process as one member of the Communion among others. The fact is that the mutual loyalty of the Communion needs work, and the Covenant proposals are the only sign at the moment of the kind of work that has to be done.

The ABC is rarely clear in his writing but the key sentences seems to be these: “The question is how far we feel able to go in making our decisions in such a way as to keep the trust of our fellow-Anglicans in other contexts. If we decide that this is not the kind of relationship we want with other Anglicans, well and good. But it has consequences.” One might turn the question back on him, because clearly the decision to ordain women bishops has led to the breaking of trust with some groups within the Church of England. He would undoubtedly say that he wants to keep the trust of those fellow-Anglicans, but they had no desire to do the same. So then what?

More interesting still is his decision to build his essay around John Wesley. A good Anglican, certainly, but when it became necessary, he took actions that led to the creation of the Methodist Church in the USA. That wasn’t an action taken lightly, but it certainly broke the trust with the Church of England and with Episcopalians in the US. And those actions had enormous consequences for both denominations, impoverishing each in some ways, but at the same time creating structures that would contribute to the enormous growth of Methodism in the US.

One might conclude that Rowan wants us to follow Wesley’s lead and go our separate way.

 

More developments in Anglicanism

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Some interesting developments. An excellent essay by Jim Naughton on Episcopal Cafe; one of the more important observations:

One doesn’t have to be a lawyer to notice that the covenant contains no standards of evidence, and provides for nothing resembling due process, The Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion can investigate complaints in whatever manner it sees fit. Perhaps this is unsurprising. If the only fact at issue is whether a party has given offense, the only evidence necessary is the offended party’s assertion that they are, indeed offended.

A news release from No Anglican Covenant.

 

Keeping track of all the words written in the last few weeks would be a full-time job. The Church of England General Synod will be debating the covenant tomorrow. It promises to be interesting.

 

The Leavers: Young Doubters Exit the Church | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction

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I linked a couple of days ago to an article highlighting a study about the importance of spirituality to college students. Now comes an article from the venerable Christianity Today that examines the growing exodus of young adults from Christianity. The author, Drew Dyck, cites from a number of studies that young people are leaving church 5-6 times faster today than in previous generations; that up to 3/4 of those who grow up in church leave. It’s a dire prognosis, and Dyck places much of the blame on the response doubters get when they raise questions about their faith. He also suggests “moral compromise” contributes to the problem.

If you read my blog, you know by now that I’m not terribly concerned about such statistics; in fact, I think they offer the Episcopal Church an opportunity. Anglicanism used to be a tradition that encouraged intellectual reflection and fostered serious questions about the faith. We are also openly and publicly struggling with issues with which people struggle everyday.

The full article is here: The Leavers: Young Doubters Exit the Church | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction.

But there’s an irony here. How is it that a study can find college students engaging spiritual questions more deeply, while at the same time they are leaving institutional churches? Perhaps because those churches are not safe places for engaging spiritual questions. I hope Grace Church and the Episcopal Church are safe and welcoming environments for such spiritual questions.