How can I [understand] unless someone guides me? Reflections on the Lectionary for the Fifth Sunday of Easter

Posted on May 1, 2012 by djgrieser

This week’s readings are here.

The Acts reading (Acts 8:26-40), the story of Philip and the Ethiopian Eunuch, is one of the great stories in scripture. Philip is one of the men who was selected as a deacon to serve the hellenistic community (his name is of Greek origin). He had gone to Samaria, where his preaching met with great success (Acts 8: 4-8), but now an angel of the Lord takes him away into the wilderness. Here he comes upon an Ethiopian official who has been in Jerusalem to worship. As a Gentile, he was an outsider, but as a eunuch he could not participate in temple worship. He is reading from Isaiah, but can’t understand it. Philip helps him, and suddenly, miraculously, they come upon some water in the wilderness, and the eunuch asks, “What prevents me from being baptized?”

This is one of a series of conversion stories in Acts (Paul, Cornelius the centurion follow this one) in which the Holy Spirit works to transform individuals and also to transform the community of those who follow Jesus Christ. The group of disciples, Galileean followers of Jesus, is expanding to include members from other religious and ethnic groups and in so doing, the commandment to spread the gospel to all the nations is already being fulfilled.

But there’s more. What prevented the eunuch from being baptized? Well, all of the Jewish laws of purity did. As a eunuch, he was by definition outside the holy community; he could not approach the altar or even enter the temple (Deuteronomy 23:1). But nothing prevented him from being baptized, and so Philip did.

There are at least two important issues raised by this text. The first, of course, is that of inclusion. We see hear the expansion of the Gospel, and of the Christian community far beyond its original Jewish and Jerusalem setting. Philip, a Greek or at least Hellenist, preaches first in Samaria, then converts an Ethiopian eunuch–it’s difficult to imagine a figure more exotic, more other, more non-Jewish than that.

But there’s another theme that I find equally compelling. The eunuch is reading scripture and can make no sense of it. He needs help, and Philip provides or explains it to him. We often assume that the sense of scripture is clear, indisputable, and available to anyone who can read, or can hear it being read. But it’s not. Reading and interpreting scripture requires the help of others, of a tradition, of a community in which that scripture is a living organism, and in which the community wrestles with its meaning in a particular historical and cultural context. Philip helped the eunuch understand, and by understanding, the eunuch came to request baptism.

Bad Religion: Bad Theology (on Ross Douthat)

Posted on May 1, 2012 by djgrieser

Ross Douthat’s book Bad Religion has received considerable attention. Having read a number of reviews, I don’t think I’ll bother reading it. From all accounts, his historical retelling of American religious history is full of errors, and his understanding of “orthodox” Christianity is equally mistake-ridden. First, from the camp of his supporters:

Alan Jacobs writes here:

If you’re a Christian, it’s tempting to say (drawing on the Perfidious-Mainstream-Media account) that we were forced into these subaltern modes by the relentless hostility of the cultural elites. That’s a very comforting narrative: we get to cast ourselves as the persecuted minority, and who can resist that temptation? Ross is offering a less consoling explanation: that Christians lost their cultural influence in large part because they lost their connection to historic orthodoxy, preferring comfortably flaccid theologies — of the Right and the Left — that were pretty much indistinguishable from what most religiously indifferent Americans believed anyway.

So for those readers especially hostile to Ross’s account, I have a queston: Are you sure it’s not because he’s telling you something you don’t want to hear? — That if you have a marginal place in American culture, the situation may be largely your own fault?

Now from those who find his perspective inadequate. The Catholic author, Michael Sean Winters writes in the The New Republic. He begins:

ROSS DOUTHAT’S ANALYSIS of religion in America is more sophisticated than the analysis of, say, Rick Santorum—but not by much. There are many ways to be simplistic and coarse. In contending against what he sees as an America afflicted with too many heresies, Douthat’s book, like Santorum’s speeches, is riddled with mistakes of fact and interpretation that would make any learned person blush.

And he concludes:

My problem with Douthat’s book is not that his opinions differ from my own. My problem is that he does not seem to have any idea what he is talking about. In the West, there has been no universally accepted authoritative voice on orthodoxy since the Reformation. “What am I to do when many persons allege different interpretations, each one of whom swears to have the Spirit?” asked Erasmus in 1524. But Douthat does not see the larger picture that he aims to explain, and his treatment of his subject is so pitifully mistaken in things large and small that what we are left with is a meandering, self-serving screed. The book has the same reliance on private judgment that anyone who was really concerned with heresy would recognize as part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Randall Balmer’s review is here. Ballmer is an Episcopal priest and a prominent scholar of American religious history. He points out weaknesses in Douthat’s argument, and the numerous factual errors (as well as several egregious errors of interpretation). Ballmer writes:

Although Douthat’s grasp of American religious history is sometimes tenuous — he misdates the Second Great Awakening, mistakes Puritans for Pilgrims and erroneously traces the disaffection of American Catholics to the Second Vatican Council rather than the papal encyclical “Humanae Vitae” — there is much to commend his argument. Yes, the indexes of religious adherence are down, and the quality of religious discourse in America has diminished since the 1950s, in part because of the preference for therapy over theology. Theological illiteracy is appalling; many theologians, like academics generally, prefer to speak to one another rather than engage the public.

But the glass-is-half-full approach, to borrow from the famous Peace Corps ad of this era, looks rather different. I’m not sure that the enervation of religion as institution since the 1950s is entirely a bad thing; institutions, in my experience, are remarkably poor vessels for piety. An alternative reading of the liberal “accommodationists” Douthat so reviles is that they have enough confidence in the relevance and integrity of the faith to confront, however imperfectly, such fraught issues as women’s ordination and homosexuality rather than allow them to fester as they have for centuries. I suspect, moreover, that Douthat has overestimated the influence of intellectual trends like the Jesus Seminar. The thinkers he quotes are important, but I would also recommend the lesser-known work of writers like Roger Olson, Jean Sulivan, Doug Frank, Miroslav Volf and David James Duncan as evidence of the vitality of Christian thinking; they may occasionally poke provocatively at the edges of orthodoxy, but most do so from well within its frame. Finally, the fact that we are having this conversation at all (much less in the pages of this newspaper) is testament to the enduring relevance of faith in what sociologists long ago predicted would be a secular society.

Like any good jeremiad, “Bad Religion” concludes with what evangelicals would recognize as an altar call. Douthat invites readers to entertain “the possibility that Christianity might be an inheritance rather than a burden,” and he elevates such eclectic phenomena as home schooling, third-world Christianity and the Latin Mass as sources for renewal.

Religion in the rearview mirror never looked better.

An hour-long video conversation between Douthat and Andrew Sullivan:

Restructuring the Church–the view from the United Methodists

Posted on April 30, 2012 by djgrieser

So they’re having the same debate The Episcopal Church is having.

A blog post from an observer outside the meeting provides insight into the similarities and differences between the two debates, and the two denominations.

We might learn from this effort, which apparently got voted down, on how to go about ours. Apparently the plan was devised by outside corporate (!) consultants, gathered steam from the bishops and was supported by some denominational megachurches. It’s largely an effort to streamline authority, which almost always means increased centralization.

The blogger links to the musings of another Methodist, on matters of restructuring and other things. Among the points made:

You might be surprised at how quickly a notion, fad or trend can take hold in certain quarters of this denomination. The desire to immediately act on what some perceive as a good idea, although it may in fact be a fad, is what is meant by the need for “nimbleness” in restructuring.
You can triple the size of the general-church structure or you can wipe it out entirely and it will make almost no difference in membership gain or loss.

Membership growth has more to do with welcoming congregations that offer compelling ministries and good worship. There’s not enough of that. If we’re going to do it, let’s do it right.

I hope people in The Episcopal Church are taking notes and learning from the Methodists here. It’s not the first time they’ve had something to teach us.

What, the Good Shepherd again? A Sermon for the Fourth Sunday of Easter, 2012

Posted on April 29, 2012 by djgrieser

April 29, 2012

I hate preaching on the Fourth Sunday of Easter, It’s Good Shepherd Sunday and each year we hear texts from John 10. Each year, we say or hear read, or sing, Psalm 23. I dislike the saccharine piety of the good shepherd; you know that painting your parents or grandparents had hanging in the living room, with a blond-haired, blue-eyed Jesus, in a long flowing robe, holding a cute little lamb in his arms. Or if not a painting on a living room wall, perhaps an image from Sunday School or a Bible story book. Then there are the hymns, and of course, Psalm 23. Continue reading →

Bishops behaving badly–not Episcopalian, Roman Catholic

Posted on April 28, 2012 by djgrieser

Bishop Morlino threatens interdict–yes, interdict–against dissident parishioners in Platteville, WI. Pope Innocent III would be proud.

Blessings of Same Gender Unions–latest developments

Posted on April 28, 2012 by djgrieser

A bombshell (well, I think it is) from Bishop Andy Doyle of the Diocese of Texas. He has produced a lengthy document in which he charts a way forward for his diocese. With a foreword by former Secretary of State James Baker III, the paper does not attempt to change minds or force clergy and parishes into actions they don’t want to take.

Doyle begins with the premise that General Convention 2012 will approve Blessings of Same Gender Unions. Given that starting point, Doyle plans to permit one parish in Houston and one in Austin to offer same gender blessings, and also to permit clergy to offer them outside of parishes. Here’s the heart of his proposal:

1. Congregations may choose to take no action, one way or the other.
2. Traditional congregations/rectors may state that they will not conduct or participate in rites for blessing persons of the same gender, sponsor for ordination anyone or employ any clergy who are in a non-celibate relationship outside holy matrimony.
3. Following General Convention, one congregation in Houston and one congregation in Austin will be granted permission to bless same-gender covenants. Both the rector and the congregation must support such a liturgy and must complete the congregational education portion of the process. Additional congregations may request permission in the future. A provision for clergy who wish to do blessings of same-gender covenants outside the church is also included.Meanwhile, the government in the UK is proposing legalizing gay marriage. This has led to considerable debate in the Church of England. It’s worth eavesdropping from this side of the pond for several reasons. First, it’s inconceivable that a Republican administration would propose anything of the sort in the US in the foreseeable future.

The Rev. David Boyd, Rector of St. David’s Austin, has this to say.

This is significant news, a bombshell, even, because it may signal a tipping point. For a diocese the size of this one, and one not known for its leadership on progressive issues, to prepare for the blessing of same-gender unions suggests that Bishop Doyle, at least, expects that outcome from General Convention. Whether that result now becomes more inevitable remains to be seen.

It’s significant in another way, however. For bishops who have been reluctant to allow clergy and parishes to bless same gender unions, this action may offer them a way to approach their own situations. For those who have feared repercussions from conservative parishes and clergy, Doyle’s proposal may leave them with little wiggle room. It’s likely that progressive clergy and parishes will demand from their bishops the same sort of accommodation Doyle has offered his diocese. In other words, Bishop Doyle has roiled the waters.

Speaking of roiled waters, it’s not just the Episcopal Church that will be facing these issues at General Convention. The United Methodists are also on track for a lively debate.

There’s a comparable debate taking place in the United Kingdom as the ruling government proposes legislation for “civil marriages.” It has provoked an outcry from conservative Christians (including some Anglicans). But many in the Church of England welcome the development:

The Bishops of Norwich have weighed in on the debate. They challenge the UK government’s proposal to distinguish “civil” from “religious” marriage and conclude:

We are sympathetic to the full inclusion of gay people in our society and the provision of appropriate means to enable them to maintain stable and lasting relationships. We believe, however, that the redefinition of marriage itself in the law of the land raises other important issues about the nature of marriage itself. The way in which the Government is going about it appears to create a new and ill-defined phenomenon called religious marriage, a novelty liable to generate more problems than the present legislation will solve.

The Bishop of Salisbury has also weighed in:

So, increasingly, there is an evangelical imperative for the Church to recognise that covenantal same sex relationships can be Godly and good for individuals and society; that they are at least like marriage for heterosexuals, and this is a development that many Christians in good faith warmly welcome. For LGBT people it raises question about whether marriage is what they want, but for us as a Church there are things to affirm in this development. It is a disaster that we have allowed the Church to be seen as the opposition to equal civil marriage.

A group of Bishops wrote a letter to The Times(of London) in support of civil marriage:

It is our belief that the Church of England has nothing to fear from the introduction of civil marriage for same-sex couples. It will be for the churches to then decide how they should respond pastorally to such a change in the law.

Thinking can undermine religious faith

Posted on April 26, 2012 by djgrieser

That’s the headline in the LA Times.

No doubt the study is in some sense accurate. But it reminds me of when I used to ride the T in Boston on Sunday mornings to my field ed site in downtown Boston. At the MIT stop, the train would fill with students on their way to services at one or another Evangelical Church in the downtown. Human beings are quite capable of compartmentalizing.

Restructuring the Anglican Communion

Posted on April 25, 2012 by djgrieser

The folks from GAFCON (FCA, FoCA), or if you’re confused by the alphabet soup, the “real” Anglicans (Nigeria, Uganda, Bob Duncan and friends) are at it again. They met in London this week and offered their proposals for restructuring the Anglican Communion.

Yup, you guessed it–more power to the primates, and none whatsoever to the laity. They propose reducing the role of the Archbishop of Canterbury, who serves as chair of the Primates Council, to simply one of membership, with the chair elected from that body. Such moves would lead inevitably to increased centralization, with the primates becoming the functional equivalent of a curia determining doctrine, membership and everything else for the new Anglican Communion. But where would the curia build its palaces?

This is the latest development in a lengthy process that included many bishops boycotting the 2010 Lambeth Conference and attending an alternative meeting in Jerusalem. The end goal seems to be the creation of an alternative Anglican Communion. They have already begun alternative structures in England, similar to what has become the Anglican Church in North America on this side of the pond.

One possible complication ahead–the next Archbishop of Canterbury. Rumor has it that Archbishop Sentamu of York has thrown his miter into the ring. Originally from Uganda, conservative theologically, tending toward evangelicalism, he would be a logical ally in the effort to reshape Anglicanism after Williams and the failed Anglican Covenant. It would be interesting to see how he would respond to this attempted power grab.

Who would want to get ordained in times like these?

Posted on April 23, 2012 by djgrieser

I haven’t been to many ordination services–a handful, I suppose, including my own. I’ve never been to an ordination service in quite the context we find ourselves in the church today–with all the talk of mainline decline, and the battles in the Episcopal Church over budget, restructuring, and the future.

As I sat in the service and over the last two days, as I reflected also on the celebration yesterday, when one of those two new deacons preached and served at Grace, I wondered about the church that these two young ordinands will serve in twenty or thirty years. What will it look like? In what sorts of programs, ministries, and people will the grace and love of Jesus Christ be expressed and made incarnate?

For a moment or two, I felt I had become like a priest I knew a decade or more ago, when I was first beginning the ordination process. He was close to retirement, near burn-out, and pessimistic about the future. I imagined myself saying to these two new deacons exactly the sort of thing he said to me ten years ago.

The other clergy in attendance seemed much more engaged, sharing in the excitement of the event and of the ministries of these two young men. I wondered whether the reason clergy like ordinations is that by participating in the discernment and ordination of new candidates, our own decisions to have gone this way is somehow confirmed. “Look,” we say to ourselves; “people still want to become priests. That’s proof that our call is valid and our ministry meaningful.”

I thought back as well to my own theological education, and the year I spent teaching at an Episcopal seminary. Of the latter, I remembered most the sense that all was right with the world–that the institutional church was safe, built to last, and that ordination promised a long career in ministry immune from the vagaries of corporate buyouts, mergers, and downsizing. Well, the church is downsizing now, and I wonder if the conversation we are having about the restructuring and the future of the church is also taking place in our seminaries. How are they preparing students for the uncertainties they will face when they graduate?

In other words, why would anyone jump to serve on what may be a sinking ship? Why would anyone seek ordination?

But then came yesterday–a lovely pair of services, one of them largely bilingual, the ministry of a gifted deacon who will serve the church effectively, and conversations with people that reminded of our hope in Jesus Christ.

We can’t control the future. We can do very little about the budget debates and structures of the Episcopal Church. We need to remember, though, that we are not called to create structures or programs, or even denominations. We are called to serve God in his church. What that might look like in five or ten years is hard to imagine; for some clergy and laity, what that ministry might look like today or tomorrow might inconceivable. Nonetheless, we are called to serve God in his church. We are called–lay people and clergy–to serve God.

At Grace, we are beginning a conversation that in some sense parallels TEC’s conversations about restructuring. We’re talking about restructuring, too, but we mean it quite literally. How might we adapt our building for ministry and mission in the twenty-first century? It’s a hard question to answer, because we know what the building was designed for and what sorts of programs have used its space over the decades. But what might a Grace Church adapted for the religious and cultural contexts of the next decades look like? Can we think outside the box, when the box consists of stones and mortar and plaster?

In that sense, in the sense that both locally and across the church, we need to engage in creative thinking, experimentation, that to use the language of Bishop Sauls from last week, “everything is on the table,” who could imagine a more exciting time to be in the church, a time when all of our creativity, intelligence, and sense of adventure is needed. What better time than now to be ordained a transitional deacon in one’s mid-twenties? Think of the infinite possibilities that lie ahead, the uncharted territory, the future into which God is calling all of us!

So, I suppose I’m just a little bit envious of those two new deacons, envious of the futures that lie ahead of them, of how they will shape their ministries in a context where “everything’s on the table,” envious of all the new ways and new places in which they will encounter God and help others encounter God. And yes, I’ll be praying for them. I hope you will too.

Communion on Chemo < Killing the Buddha