Tag Archives: Anglicanism

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.

Sermon post-mortem

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I’m never quite sure whether I pull off what I’m working on. Yesterday, given the constraints of other commitments, I wasn’t happy with the final shape of the sermon. But some of what I was groping toward must have come through. A parishioner called me today and said lovely things about my sermon yesterday.

That’s not why I’m writing. Instead, I’m writing about two other things. First, a series of conversations at coffee hour about our decrepit dishwasher and how we should proceed. We can get it fixed. The problem is, it doesn’t do what we need it to do. It constrains our ministry because our kitchen is not adequate for the purposes to which we put it, or could put it, with the proper equipment. Our food pantry can’t re-package bulk food for example.

Then, I saw a post on the Episcopal Cafe that led me to this. There’s much here with which I disagree but it seems to me that the right questions are being asked. I especially like the parable of the life-saving station. I’d heard it before but it had slipped my mind. In some ways, it captures the history of Christianity in America. The full parable is here.

I was involved for a couple of years in a parish that was a fairly recent church plant. It was successful at the level of bringing people in, but I don’t think it was particularly at shaping and forming disciples.

I do think on one level that it is all about liturgy or worship. The old Anglican/Episcopal mantra was lex orandi, lex credendi, praying shapes believing. We have a gift to offer the larger church and the world–a gift of an experience of God rooted in beautiful music, beautiful language, and at Grace, a beautiful space. We need to find ways of sharing that.

Schism after all?

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GAFCON has spoken. Their concluding communique is available here. The Archbishop of Canterbury has responded. So, too has the Presiding Bishop. One should probably see this as another volley in a long-term struggle over Anglicanism. From the Archbishop of Canterbury’s statement, it is clear that he has grave theological and ecclesiological reservations about the communique and about the path the leaders of GAFCON are taking.

If you want to understand something of the theological background of the conflict, GAFCON appeals to the 39 Articles and to the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. The 39 Articles have been relegated to the “historical documents” section of our BCP. You should read them some time. The traditionalists bring together several streams of Anglicanism. One is Reformed, Calvinistic, which emphasizes human sinfulness. Another is Anglo-Catholicism, which draws on the rich theological, spiritual, and liturgical traditions of Catholicism. These two strands are mutually incompatible and are allied only because they have a common enemy–everyone else.

The 1662 prayer book has been mentioned before as one of the marks of Anglicanism. I’m not sure why contemporaries appeal to it. In fact, there is a strong tradition of alternatives to it, beginning with the Scottish Book of Common Prayer, with which the first American prayer book of 1789 was closely allied.

Most disturbing perhaps is the discussion by GAFCON of a “primates council” made up only of like-minded primates, self-selected. What this points to is an alarming trend, not just among conservatives, but throughout the Communion, of appealing to some central, hierarchical authority, independent of any lay involvement. The church, to thrive, needs to hear the voices of lay people at every level of government. It may be messy, but the alternative is authoritarianism.