Love Free or Die

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PBS aired the documentary on Bishop Gene Robinson this evening. Although there were moments of brilliance, humor, and power, I found it by and large unconvincing. I’m not sure why. Perhaps because by focusing on Bishop Robinson’s story, it failed to examine the larger issues at stake. The Archbishop of Canterbury was a caricature and the focus on the Lambeth Conference (a big chunk of the first half of the film) pitted the lone martyr and prophet (Robinson) against the institutional forces of the Church. There was very little attention to the real tension within the church and within individuals over Bishop Robinson’s election and the deep divisions it caused in the world-wide Anglican Communion. Apart from a couple of quotations from Robert Duncan and from some non-Episcopalian protestors at General Convention in Anaheim, or the protestor at Bishop Robinson’s sermon in England, there was no voice given either to the opposition or to the many people who have struggled with the implications of LGBT inclusion in the Episcopal Church.

I also found Robinson’s theological statements, sermons, et al, less than convincing. But he got in a good line on Jon Stewart’s Daily Show: “There was a queen on the board.”

I’ve never met Bishop Robinson. The documentary did a great job of showing his humanity and the toll the years of controversy took on him. But I doubt he was a single issue bishop, and I would have liked to see more of his ministry in the New Hampshire context. The vignettes from his parish visitations were priceless. Perhaps I would have found a straightforward biography more interesting than the LGBT rights focus of the film.

Do buildings matter, or don’t they?

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We have begun a master-planning process to envision how we might adapt our space to the possibilities of mission and ministry in the twenty-first century (I know, we’re already 12 years into the century, but still). Such an effort might seem silly, even foolhardy given the times, the economic realities, and the decline of mainline Christianity. And then there is the question whether we should put time, effort, and money into buildings at all. As one Episcopal site recently explained “Why our buildings don’t matter.”

But let’s face reality. At the end of the day our buildings just don’t matter. The people outside our beautiful buildings are what matters. Because let’s face it—it’s all about relationships, not real estate.

Now, I’ll be the first person to say that our buildings don’t matter–“Where two or three are gathered” and all that. On the other hand, I recently saw a documentary on the architect who was responsible for what became the model downtown hotel–the Hyatt in Atlanta, with a multifloor open atrium and glass elevators. He said something like, in our society, public space is created by private people and policed privately. He was thinking about hotels and malls, of course. But it’s true.

Human beings have sought to delineate space for special uses from the earliest times. The great scholar of religion Mircea Eliade pointed out in The Sacred and the Profane, that one of the key aspects of human religious experience is the demarcation of the sacred from the profane. In traditional societies, even in pre-modern societies, sacred space was set off from ordinary space. He also argued that in the modern world, we’ve lost that sense of distinction between the sacred and profane. Our cities are planned on the grid system with each plot or block of equal importance. Madison differs from that norm in some respects, but the recent conflict over the right to demonstrate in the State Capitol suggests an ongoing battle between the notion of private and public space, space for civic engagement.

One of the remarkable things about church buildings like Grace is the way in which they continue to convey and communicate a sense of the sacred to people who have no sense of the holy. I’ve blogged about it before, but just this week, I saw it happening in the visit of a high school class from Lodi, WI, and in a funeral that was attended by hundreds. When people enter Grace, they encounter the sacred. That doesn’t happen in malls or schools or even in many churches that have been designed to look like movie theaters.

The question for us is how we can adapt our space to enable such encounters with the sacred, and to develop ways of helping people to move beyond an encounter with the sacred to encounter and relationship with Jesus Christ.

I’ve been interested to read about a recent report about the significance of Anglican cathedrals in English life and culture. The full report is here. Media reports are here and here. Remarkably, eleven million residents of England visited the cathedrals during the period surveyed. The report details how cathedrals have become sacred space for the nation, even for non-religious or non-Christians.

This report should give us Episcopalians pause as we reflect on the future of Anglicanism in the US but I’ve not seen much engagement with it on this side of the pond. Kelvin Holdsworth, Provost of the Episcopal Cathedral of St. Mary’s in Glasgow, Scotland, ponders the role of cathedrals in the rather different context of Scotland.

Open Communion, Closed Communion–the debate rages

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There’s a lively debate among Episcopal clergy in the Madison area about the words we use in our service bulletins to invite people to communion. I won’t share the particulars of the debate nor why we are currently engaged in it. Here’s what we say at Grace:

We welcome all baptized Christians to take part in the Communion: coming forward to kneel or stand at the altar rail, receiving the bread in an open palm or guiding the chalice to receive the wine. If you would prefer not to receive, you may come forward to the altar rail, crossing your arms on your chest to indicate your desire for a blessing.

We’re not the only ones engaged in this debate. Today appeared two essays that address the issue. One is by Richard Beck, from the Churches of Christ tradition. Beck has written extensively about open communion:

Is communion dangerous?  Should people be warned about their participation?

Yes and yes. But those answers, in light of what we’ve just discussed, do not mitigate against the practice of open communion. In fact, I’d argue that open communion is better positioned here relative to closed communion given the particular warnings we need. More, I’d argue that the fact that communion requires a warning presupposes its openness. Why warn if communion is closed and safe?

So, yes, open communion is dangerous. People do need to be warned, as Paul warned the Corinthians, that if you take this meal of inclusion while shaming, humiliating and excluding others then you’ve brought judgment upon yourself. You’re being a hypocrite as your ritual actions in the Supper are not being supported by your lifestyle. In taking the Lord’s Supper you are professing that you have “equal concern” for others, that you give “greater honor” to the least of these. Thus you bring judgment upon yourself when you shame and humiliate others, when you fail to discern and care for the many parts of body of Christ. Especially the most shameful parts.

The other is by a Lutheran, Russell Saltzman, who wonders why Lutherans can’t take Catholic communion and posits that the reason is women’s ordination.

The importance of worship–or Wendell Berry and the Anglican Marks of Mission

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The Rev. Bosco Peters from the Anglican Church of New Zealand, has begun a campaign to include worship as one of the “Anglican Marks of Mission.” Here’s his rationale:

I propose that worship, liturgy, is not a means to further the mission of the church. It is not a means to further any or all of the dimensions in the five-fold mission statement. Worship, in and of itself, is an essential dimension of our mission and should find its place in our accepted mission statement.

Worship, liturgy, especially the Eucharist, is understood, by the majority of Christians, to be “the source and summit of the Christian life” (Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, 11). St Ignatius Loyola understood “The human person is created to praise, reverence, and serve God” (The Principle and Foundation in his Spiritual Exercises).

Although worship is not a means, giving it centrality does lead to desirable effects. On the other hand, I would argue, the loss of the pivotal place of worship and liturgy leads to consequences, such as the loss of the unifying power of common prayer, of common worship.

I’ve been thinking a great deal about place, context for ministry. And if there’s any point at which my theological reflection on ministry is undergoing transformation, it is about the importance of understanding and responding to the particularity of local context.

There’s a great ongoing project This is our city that focuses on how evangelicals are reclaiming ministry in urban contexts. I’ve learned a great deal from it.

Today, I read this piece by Jake Meador on what Wendell Berry might have to say to urban evangelicals. Meador writes:

But in recent years, some Christian writers have warned that we shouldn’t mistake right thinking and right behavior for the holistic well being of a person, or a city, for that matter. James Davison Hunter and Andy Crouch (executive director of the City project) each made this point in To Change the World and Culture Making, respectively. Philosopher Jamie Smith devoted a whole book, Desiring the Kingdom, to this point, stressing that human beings are not chiefly thinkers or believers but worshipers. It’s here, I argue, that Berry’s vision of community life and creation is most vital for urban evangelicals. For all the things we do well, I’m not convinced that we know how to live as communities of worshipers day to day. Enter Port William.

What I see in Berry, and what I’ve been learning to live out, little by little, is the centrality of worship to personal and communal health. By that I mean something like one of Clyde Kilby’s resolutions for mental health: “At least once every day I shall look steadily up at the sky and remember that I, a consciousness with a conscience, am on a planet traveling in space with wonderfully mysterious things above and about me.”

Peters points out the importance of shared liturgy to the identity and unity of Anglicanism. Meador points in a different direction–to the fact that worship occurs in particular contexts and that it flows out of particular experiences.

Now I’m not much of a Calvinist, but I do think there is some truth in the Westminster Confession’s statement that our “chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.” Surely glorifying God includes worship.

What is the mayor thinking? A free ride out of town for the homeless

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Mayor Soglin has made the eye-popping suggestion to include $25,000 in the city budget to buy tickets to put homeless people on buses to their hometown. Former Mayor Dave Cieszlewicz calls him out on it here.

Soglin is convinced that Madison is a magnet for homeless people from across the country or at least across the state (or maybe Dane County).

Thinking dispassionately about the proposal and about what little Soglin has said about what he intends, raises at least several issues. First off, who would administer it and how? What would the administrative costs be? He proposes contacting relatives in the “hometown” before issuing tickets, and right there the complications would arise. There would have to be some sort of vetting process, some sort of communication between here and the proposed location, including social services, to make sure it was more than sending someone to the bus station in Chicago or Milwaukee.

If the mayor were serious about such a proposal, I would think it might require paying a professional social worker for at least a half-time job, given the numbers of homeless and the amount of necessary follow-up. And how much would a half-time salary cost? Way more than $25,000. Without that administrative structure, his program is nothing more than a free ride out of town.

“dreaming a new church into being” –and the Diocese of South Carolina

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The official word is that the Title IV Disciplinary Board has certified that Bishop Mark Lawrence of the Diocese of South Carolina has “abandoned” the Episcopal Church. The news article is here. Crusty Old Dean provides background on the notion of abandonment. He also points out that we’ve all seen it coming but no one seemed able to prevent it.

And now the war of words escalates.  Mark Harris asks Bishop Lawrence to admit he lied during the process that led to his consecration as bishop. The Episcopal Lead assembles the evidence pro and contra. The Diocese of South Carolina cries foul and criticizes the “assault” on their bishop.

I find it interesting that these events are taking place this week against a backdrop of the first meeting of TEC’s Executive Council after General Convention 2012. There were also stories about the work that took place this week: conversations about budget, mission, and restructuring. All of that talk about “putting everything on the table,” the end of Christendom, imagining a new way way of being church for the twenty-first century.

Ah, that word–restructuring. It seems to me that here is a prime opportunity to think creatively about structure, the way we do business, and imagining what a twenty-first century Episcopal Church might look like.

Here’s my question. Why not let the Diocese of South Carolina go? It’s been clear for at least a decade that they don’t want to be part of the Episcopal Church. Their recent actions suggest the plan is to incorporate as a separate denomination (The Protestant Episcopal Church of the Diocese of South Carolina).

What’s coming next is years of litigation, increased acrimony, conflict played out in the press. The lawyers will make money; bloggers will get lots of website hits; there will be anger, pain, and bad publicity all around.

So why not stop it all now? Why not imagine what a church would be like that could allow those who want out to go, leaving behind all of those who want to remain in the Episcopal Church? Let them have their property and go their separate way. And after they go, let’s imagine what an Episcopal mission might look like in the low country of South Carolina–an Episcopal mission freed from the oppressive traditions of slavery, racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia.

Why not put our limited resources toward that vision of a future church rather than paying lawyers and fighting to hold on to a vision of an eighteenth or nineteenth century Church?

South Carolina secedes!

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Curious that the only story about this comes from the Diocese of South Carolina’s website:

On Monday, October 15, 2012, Bishop Mark J. Lawrence, the 14th Bishop of the Diocese of South Carolina was notified by the Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church, Katharine Jefferts Schori, that on September 18, 2012 the Disciplinary Board for Bishops  had certified his abandonment of The Episcopal Church. This action by The Episcopal Church triggered two pre-existing corporate resolutions of the Diocese, which simultaneously disaffiliated the Diocese from The Episcopal Church and called a Special Convention. That Convention will be held at St. Philip’s Church, Charleston, on Saturday, November 17, 2012.

I wonder when the story will hit the Episcowebs.

More about the “Nones.” Who are they, anyway?

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You remember, last week’s Pew survey stirred up a frenzy of speculation (and angst) about what it might mean that the number of religiously unaffiliated in the US has grown by 5% (and yes, I contributed in my own small way, to that frenzy).

There’s been a lot of commentary about the “nones”–who they are, why they have rejected institutional religion. Much of it is like a recent piece by Brian McLaren which focuses on college students who have been turned off by conservative Christianity.

Elizabeth Drescher offers a more nuanced approach, pointing out that the Pew Survey focuses on belief, rather than on practice:

My hunch is that questions about “belonging to a community of people who share your beliefs and values” confuses the idea of community as a gathered social-spiritual network (a tribe) with the fraught subject of doctrinal religious belief and, further, the problematic language of religious values. We know, of course, that attendance at religious services of all sorts is down (except, perhaps, among religious groups in which doctrinal pluralism is something of a core value), but that does not allow us to conclude that religious or spiritual community is not important in the United States among those who identify or formally affiliate with institutional religions as well as those who do not.

Still, it’s clear that McLaren, Drescher, and most Episcopalian commentators on the survey imagine the “nones” to be well-educated, middle-class or upper-middle class, and probably white.

The reality, revealed by the Pew survey itself, is rather different. Jeff Sharlet points out the connection between disaffiliation and economics:

so the Pew study of the Nones has distracted many from what I think are the most interesting numbers: the largest percentage, 38%, is in the under $30,000 income bracket. Another 34% are below $74,999. Which means 72% are poor, working class, or, for a family of four, lower middle class. Those identifying as “atheist/agnostic,” a much smaller group than the “Nothing in particulars,” skew 62% under $75,000. Look at the education demographics and you’ll find more evidence for the hypothesis that what these numbers show is economic absence as much as religious absence. 45% of those identifying as Nothing in Particulars (NiPs) have no college, roughly the same as many religious affiliations.

He also points out the historical connection between disconnectedness from religion and economic downturns. The Great Depression was the last historical period that saw such numbers of the “unchurched.”

If he’s right, that might require rethinking how one does outreach to the religiously unaffiliated (the “unchurched”).