Category Archives: Anglican

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.

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.

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.

“The Archbishop of Canterbury condemns Henry VIII to hell!”

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Well, not really. He preached a sermon at the Charterhouse, where in 1538, 14 Carthusian monks who refused to submit to Henry’s reforms, most importantly the Act of Supremacy and the dissolution of the monasteries. In 1611, the Charterhouse became the site of an Almshouse, which it remains. In recent years, there has been an annual commemoration of the martyrs’ and an effort to use the event as rapprochement between Catholics and Protestants. Williams’ sermon explores the connection between the suffering of Christ on the cross and the suffering of martyrs. He argues that as long as there is suffering in the world, Christ is in agony as well.

Williams points out that rulers more ruthless than Henry sought to destroy Christianity, but that they have been unsuccessful. The cross stands as a witness to the brutality of evil, but it also is a symbol of God’s ultimate triumph, the triumph of justice.

The money quote:

We treasure with perhaps a particular intensity the martyrdom of the contemplative, because the contemplative who knows how to enter into the silence and stillness of things is, above all, the one who knows how to resist to resist fashion and power, to stand in God while the world turns. In that discovery of stillness lies all our hope of reconciliation, the reconciliation of which John Houghton spoke in this place, this place where we are met to worship, before the community gave its answer to the King’s agents.  A reconciliation of which he spoke (as do so many martyrs) on the scaffold, a reconciliation which is not vanquished, defeated, or rendered meaningless by any level of suffering or death. If Henry VIII is saved (an open question perhaps) it will be at the prayers of John Houghton.  If any persecutor is saved it is at the prayers of their victim. If humanity is saved, it is by the grace of the cross of Jesus Christ and all those martyrs who have followed in his path.

It’s difficult to face the very human and fallible origins of Anglicanism, in the sixteenth century and in the seventeenth. But as hard as that is, we also need to face the same in our present church. The last two sentences of the quotation above remind us of our complicity in persecution, in every age.

The full sermon is here.

Mennonite in a long black robe (i.e. a cassock)

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I read Rhoda Janzen’s Mennonite in a Little Black Dress recently. It’s not exactly deep but it does have some amusing moments. Several clarifications are in order, however. First, she glosses over the significant distinctions among Mennonites. Her family is descended from Dutch and North German Mennonites who were invited into Russia in the eighteenth century and created thriving communities there that survived until Stalin. Many had already emigrated to North America in the late nineteenth century, especially to Kansas and the Prairie Provinces of Canada. But many more, including Janzen’s grandparents, fled in the 1920s or even later. Up until the late nineteenth century, they had considerable freedom to organize their lives and communities independent of Russian interference and they developed social, political, and economic institutions and become quite wealthy compared to their Russian neighbors.

Most of what she describes of her Mennonite upbringing and relatives relates to that history: the food (zwieback and borscht), the language (low German), and the cultural experience of living in Russia for over a century.

I grew up in a rather different Mennonite tradition–the Swiss and South German Mennonites who emigrated from those places (and in my case from Alsace as well) to the eastern US in the eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth century. My ancestors had very limited freedoms in Europe during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and had developed a strategy of separation and quietism. Most were farmers in Europe and remained farmers in North America.

Over the years, as I got to know Mennonites from the Russian tradition, I realized how very different our experiences and our cultures were, even though we shared so much. We looked at the world differently; they were much more open to intellectual and artistic pursuits, less suspicious of the wider culture. There was also a tendency to accept influence from the wider Christian tradition. The Mennonite Brethren, to which Janzen’s parents belonged have been strongly influenced by the North American Evangelical Protestant tradition. The other main branch, what once was called “General Conference” Mennonites and merged with the Mennonite Church in the 1990s, was more open to liberal Protestantism. I suspect that it is difficult now, in the twenty-first century, to detect such theological differences. From what little I know, most contemporary Mennonites look little different from most Evangelicals, but I’m willing to be convinced otherwise.

Perhaps what I liked least in Janzen’s book was the flip, post-modern, ironic tone of so much of the work. I finally extricated myself from the Mennonite Church in my early 30s, but it took great effort, considerable anguish, and some guilt. There are times still when I mourn what I was and could not continue to be; at the same time I have flourished in the years since as I never could have, and most importantly, I have experienced and continue to experience God’s grace and love in my life and in the Episcopal Church today in ways I never could as a Mennonite. And that’s what matters most.

What I really want to read is her memoir of teaching at Hope College, but I suppose that won’t come until she’s safely tenured.

The New Yorker on Rowan Williams

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There’s a major article in the current New Yorker on the Archbishop of Canterbury by Jane Kramer. It focuses on the struggles within the Church of England over the ordination of women. The Episcopal Church has ordained women to the priesthood since 1976, and the first woman ordained bishop was Barbara Harris, ordained to the episcopacy in the Diocese of Massachusetts in the late 1980s. The Church of England has been much slower. Ordination of women to the priesthood only became possible in 1994. The article focuses on the current struggle over ordination of woman as bishops. There have been ongoing attempts in the past few years to draft legislation that would make it possible for women bishops, all the while providing room for those who are opposed to it.

One of the reasons for the struggle is the very different religious landscape within the Church of England. Anglo-Catholic and Evangelical wings are strong and well-financed, and well-organized, and threaten withdrawal if they don’t get their way. In fact, many believe that the Pope’s overtures last year to welcome disaffected Anglicans was a thinly-veiled attempt to intervene in the CoE’s internal debates. Of course, things have changed dramatically since last fall, and for the time being reunion with Rome is probably less popular an option for Anglo-Catholics than ever.

It’s a somewhat sympathetic portrait of Williams, who is a theological giant and a deeply spiritual man, caught by the tides of history, both within his national church and in the Anglican Communion. Kramer quotes historians like Diarmaid MacCullogh to put his historical position in some context and the concluding paragraph sums it all up:

It may be that Williams’s ideas have changed, but in all likelihood it is simply that his job has changed. The women urging him on now are really trying to remind him that, however broad his concern and compassion necessarily are, he is also the Primate of a Western country where women priests—as well as a good number of openly gay priests—have played an impressive role in revitalizing Christian practice and, one would have to say, the Christian imagination. When he talks to them about restraint and patience—about the fullness of time and the “positive side to Anglican diffuseness and slowness of decision-making” and his own anguish “trying to counsel patience to people who are suffering more than you are”—they say, as many of them did to me: The fullness of time is fine, but it’s God’s time. We are living now.

Of course, the conflicts in Anglicanism over homosexuality also play a role in the conflict within the Church of England, although the contours of the battleground are somewhat different. And what happens in the Episcopal Church also looms large. It’s pretty clear one of Williams’ main goals, perhaps his highest priority, is to keep the conversation going, to prevent the final act of schism that would mean the formation of new denominations. Whether that’s possible isn’t at all clear.  One sign of the intractability of the positions is a quotation in the article from a leader of the Anglo-Catholic wing, who referred to our presiding bishop as a laywoman.

Kramer compares Williams to President Obama at one point, saying that both rely on reason to bring people together. The obvious inference is that Williams, like Obama, may have to give up finally on accommodating the various sides and push through the necessary changes. I don’t think that’s an apt analogy. I suspect the better clue to Williams’ self-understanding is the observation he makes about conflict within Christianity in the fourth century. Williams is a historian and can contextualize his current situation. But historians also can occasionally be burdened by the power of history and the weight of tradition.

Before becoming Archbishop of Canterbury, Williams explored disestablishment of the Church of England, which would have been a clean break with the past. It might be time to consider it again.

Good Friday, 2010

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I approach Good Friday with awe and fear. The liturgy of the day and the day itself are full of raw emotion and powerful imagery. Reading the Passion according to St. John with its virulent anti-Judaism is deeply problematic and offensive. Then the solemn collects and the veneration of the cross seem to draw us into the crucifixion, bringing all of our emotional turmoil to the surface.

When crafting the liturgy for the day, I always struggle with finding the right tone: allowing us to recognize our sinfulness but also inviting us to experience the love of Christ. I sometimes think that we overdo it. As a layperson, I often experienced the emotionalism and emphasis on Jesus’ suffering as off-putting. Perhaps the epitome of that was once at All Saints’ Chapel in Sewanee, after the Stations of the Cross that took us up University Avenue. Soloists sang the Tomas Luis de Victoria setting of the Solemn Reproaches. It was beautiful but bone-chilling. The anti-semitism of the text, coupled with the historical context of its composition (16th century Spain, during the Inquisition) almost turned my stomach.

Still, there are things that must be there for me on Good Friday. Bach, for example, specifically, “O Sacred Head, Sore Wounded.” The German text, with English translation, is available here. The origin of the text is quite interesting. Paul Gerhardt, a German Lutheran pastor in the seventeenth century, adapted a Latin hymn from the fourteenth century. In some respects it is full of Medieval sensibility. The original focuses on aspects of Christ’s suffering. Gerhardt refocuses the hymn on the individual, for example, in this stanza (Alexander translation):

What language shall I borrow to thank Thee, dearest friend,
For this Thy dying sorrow, Thy pity without end?
O make me Thine forever, and should I fainting be,
Lord, let me never, never outlive my love to Thee.

Whatever else Good Friday is about, the concluding prayer is a powerful message on this day:

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, we pray you to set your passion, cross, and death between your judgment and our souls, now and in the hour of our death. Give mercy and grace to the living; pardon and rest to the dead; to your holy Church peace and concord; and to us sinners everlasting life and glory; for with the Father and the Holy Spirit you live and reign, one God, now and for ever.

Amen.

“We haven’t done the work yet”

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It’s a lament we keep hearing from the Archbishop of Canterbury, from the Primates, from every group that pronounces. The Episcopal Church hasn’t made the theological case for same-sex marriages and for the ordination of gay and lesbian clergy. A recent example is from Pierre Whalon, Bishop of the Convocation of American Churches in Europe.

This complaint puzzles me to some degree. There have been any number of attempts, the Virginia Report in the 1990s, and more recently, “To Set Our Hope in Christ” which was presented at some gathering that I can’t recall any more.

So the House of Bishops gave its Theology Committee the task of writing on the topic. There was some controversy last year about who precisely were the theologians involved in the effort. Whatever. They presented their work to the House of Bishops meeting this week. It’s available here:

The disappointing thing is that the panel of theologians, four “traditional” and four “liberal,” quickly went their separate ways, apparently unable to agree on anything. Perhaps they couldn’t, still it would have been interesting to see if there was any point of consensus among them.

I’ve not read the work carefully, but in skimming through it several things stand out. First, the “traditionals” seem to discount the importance of “human flourishing” (an Aristoteelean phrase) as including our life on earth. They readily acknowledge that most gays and lesbians will never find fulfillment in celibacy or heterosexual marriage and offer them only the possibility of chastity, comparing their plight to the disabled, widows, or those who choose to defer marriage for a career, only to find it impossible later in life to find a soulmate.

On the other hand, the liberals seem to make several problematic moves in their argument. For me the most obvious is this one:

Thus, both same- and opposite-sex marriage may represent the marriage of Christ and the church, because Christ is the spouse of all believers. Men do not represent Christ by maleness alone, nor do women represent the church by femaleness alone. Same-sex marriage witnesses to the reality that a male Christ also saves men and a female church also saves women. p. 55

This seems to discount the important role bridal mysticism has played in Christian spirituality, for both men and women. Both men and women have written eloquently of themselves as the Bride of Christ, viewing themselves, and their souls, as Christ’s spouse. It’s not necessary to posit a sexual relationship to make sense of this imagery.

But this, too, seems insufficient:

What is a sexual orientation? It is an orientation of desire. Since Christ “satisfies the desire of every living thing” (Ps 145:16), a sexual orientation, theologically speaking, must be this: a more or less settled tendency by which Christ orients desire toward himself, through the desire for another human being.

This is a rather striking divergence from the traditional Christian understanding of desire, especially Augustine (who is quoted rather liberally throughout the document). To argue that Christ orients desire toward himself through anything, seems to border on idolatry.

But their closing pages did leave me with some things to ponder more deeply, above all this:

“Why did Jesus not climb down from the cross? – because he held himself accountable to put his body where his love was.” 65

To argue from the incarnation, to argue from the embodied nature of human existence, and the embodied-ness of salvation, seems to me the way to beginning putting sexuality and sexual relationships in the proper Christian perspective.

There is still work to be done and it needs to be done in conversation with one another, not by writing at one another.

“Unruly wills and affections”

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The Collect for the Fifth Sunday in Lent is one of my favorites, full of rich imagery and language.

Almighty God, you alone can bring into order the unruly wills and affections of sinners: Grant your people grace to love what you command and desire what you promise; that, among the swift and varied changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen

It has an interesting history. It derives from early sources (the Gelasian and Gregorian sacramentaries), where it was used in the Easter season. Cranmer’s appointed it for the Fourth Sunday after Easter. His translation was altered in 1662, introducing the phrase “bring into order the unruly wills and affections of sinners.” The 1979 Book of Common Prayer moved it to its current location.

I’m taken by the understanding of human nature expressed in the prayer: “our unruly wills and affections,” which certainly implies sin, but doesn’t dwell on human sinfulness. But there is also an appeal to God working in us to effect our salvation, the request to God to give God’s people grace “to love what you command and desire what you promise.”

It then moves out to put us in our context–amid the swift and varied changes of the world and expresses the hope that we might focus our attention not on the constantly changing scenery around us, but on our true hope.

I followed the last days of the debate over healthcare in the House fairly closely, and when I read this prayer, especially “the unruly wills and affections” I found it rather appropriate to what went on in Washington.