A Word from the Rector

Thoughts on Community #1

2011-11-30T06:15:00.000-05:00

November 28, 2011

So many things have had me thinking about community in recent weeks. Perhaps the way in for me has been a book called Disrupting Homelessness: Alternative Christian Approaches by Laura Stivers (Fortress, 2011). She uses the ethics of a liberationist called Traci West of Drew University to explore issues of homelessness. Along the way she articulates various attitudes that ‘society’ has taken to the homeless criticizing what she calls “assimilate or criminalize.” She looks at various models that have been widely used including the Rescue Mission Movement and Habitat for Humanity. She appears to have some admiration for the ‘Housing First’ Movement which seeks to put chronically homeless people into their own apartments rather than trhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifying to move them through a “continuum of care”, but which still seems to be about assimilating homeless people into societal norms. (It is my understanding that those prepared to provide and care for the men of the in the event that the Task Force for the Homeless wither step aside or are evicted are focused on the Housing First model.)

Set against this work is an idea that never quite gets articulated to my satisfaction but which appears to be that ‘the homeless’ are a constituency or community in themselves who need to be addressed as a collective and legitimate ‘other’. We read things like this: “Using prophetic-disruption methodology entails not simply deconstructing oppressive ideologies but also identifying and addressing power, privilege, and social domination.” (p.116) Or again: “So long as Habitat emphasizes changing the conscience of the rich, it will not adopt a structural critique.” (p.117) This ‘prophetic-disruption refers to “our Christina calling to confront, just as Jesus did, that which denies human well-being and community.” Stivers writes “For as long as humans have been around, domination and oppression have been used to gain power and privilege, and Scripture and theological rationales have been used to justify the status quo of inequality.” (p.7)

Stivers’ research and descriptions of the current reality of homelessness in America makes clear that there is a structural problem in that there is simply not enough low cost housing or adequate shelter and other services for those in need. We know this to be true anecdotally in Atlanta as Shirley Franklin’s first class efforts to engage the whole community in addressing the challenge of people living on the streets ended up being seriously underfunded after the recession of 2008.

The homeless people that we address at All Saints’ are not the majority, those who are invisible, the women and children, and so on. We address the ‘chronically homeless’ m any of whom refuse to live at the Peachtree Pine shelter which they describe as “being like a prison” and yet who resemble many of those who do choose to live there, some of whose lives have been transformed by some sense of kindness and community. They raise the question for me as to whether ‘the community’ is allowed to develop norms of behavior, violation of which puts someone outside of the community and therefore in need of ‘help’ in some way. The behavior of some disrupts the ‘wellbeing’ and ‘community’ of others. Is it criminalizing poverty to say that someone may not engage in drug use and prostitution on the All Saints’ campus and the ability of some of the homeless to regulate their own behavior has meant that we will no longer be a welcome place at night when we are closed? This is undoubtedly a decision of ‘power and privilege’ in one sense, but also a vision of community that is not governed by those who find inconvenient the norms which inevitably become rules when they are violated often enough.

Descriptions of the ‘Occupy Movement’ make clear that even in a ‘leaderless democracy’ the behavior of some is eventually curtailed or limited for the wellbeing of the many. I have more thinking to do about the ‘homeless advocates’ who seem to use the homeless to promote ‘disruption’ and be ‘prophetic’ without apparently wishing to challenge those they allegedly serve to abide by norms of the larger community. They become terrorists for a community that, however defined, finds it difficult to adjust to societal ‘norms’. Should assimilation not be the goal if community means that everyone thrives?

IALC

2011-11-17T11:06:00.000-05:00

November 16, 2011

There is really no reason that you would have heard of the IALC, otherwise known as the International Anglican Liturgical Consultation. Since the last General Convention the Episcopal Church’s Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music (SCLM) has been working on developing a rite or rites for the blessing of same-sex unions. At the annual Presbyters Conference of our diocese w were taken through the process of by which such a rite is being developed, including various theological principles underlying the potential and to-be-proposed rites without being allowed to look at the rites themselves. This all amounts to painstaking politics, apparently covering every base so that those who do not like and do not want to see such rites developed in the first place cannot engage the old game of attacking the process. I suppose it is necessary, but it is dull beyond words for those who have made peace with what is happening one way or another (some by leaving the Episcopal Church altogether) and have moved on.

The primary complaint that led to the development of the proposed Anglican Covenant was that The Episcopal Church did not ‘consult’ with official Anglican bodies of varying kinds at varying levels on the place of homosexual people within the church before proceeding to ordain and consecrate Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire. This complaint offered in spite of the wide and long standing conversation with Anglicans throughout the world who were willing to engage such a conversation.

So back to the IALC, a group made up of representatives of many, but not all Anglican provinces, with a predominant Western and professional academic representation. Our own Bishop is a part of that group and attended the most recent gathering of the Consultation in New Zealand last August. The main agenda was to be about marriage rites and particularly the thorny issue of whether or not we should be contracting a marriage as well as celebrating it. Bryan Spinks of Yale reports (in The Living Church, October 23, 2011 p.24-26) that our friend Mdimi Mhogolo of the Diocese of Central Tanganyika presented a paper lamenting the suppression of indigenous marriage customs through laws modeled on those of the United Kingdom. Into this mix those overseeing the agenda shoehorned a conversation about our proposed rite for the blessing of same sex unions and it is clear that from Dr. Spinks’ perspective this was unfortunate. Those who really don’t want any such rite and really don’t want to talk about it and certainly don’t want to imply any imprimatur from the IALC beg for a consultation (in the words of Dr. Spinks) in a “serious, charitable and fully informed manner across the communion”. This sounds good and would be if the communion wanted such a consultation. Dr. Spinks report suggests that this is precisely not the case and so perhaps a single morning of consultation within a consultation is the best we are going to do before the General Convention is asked to act next year.

Thoughts on tax policy and other matters

2011-11-16T14:09:00.001-05:00

November 15, 2011

I know that I am not a social conservative and in matters like abortion, sexuality and the like I tend to a libertarian position. Not so much with economic policy. It seems to me that we determine common goals in and through a democratic process and then argue about ‘fair share’ for meeting those goals. I think schools are important and that we should all participate in paying for them. I think that to do so through a sales tax is essentially regressive, meaning that it contributes to the mechanisms by which the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. In other words this is not the fairest way to fund schools that. My conservative friends tell me that public schools are mostly used by poorer people anyway and that the rich pay more sales tax because they spend more money, having more to spend. This seems to me an appropriate political argument, where making a case about any tax that government is “too big” is destructive of communal values that have been put in place and affirmed over time. The desirability or otherwise of government creating and maintaining a system to ensure that our citizens can retire with some measure of security and dignity is a reasonable conversation, as is whether the military budget needs to be large enough to fight two or more unpopular wars indefinitely. What does not seem reasonable is ‘line in the sand’, ‘my way or the high way’ type tactics we have seen from this congress. I’m also therefore among those who are glad that President Obama has avoided the temptation, urged upon him by many of his own party, to ‘creative a narrative’ that is the opposite and equal of his opponents. I prefer a more vigorous defense of what we should and do have in common, and why.

With that in mind I have a couple of modest proposals that overcome the ‘having it both ways’ problem that played a role in bringing down the banking system (selling bad paper and then making money again by betting that it will go wrong) and that plagues the political debate about matters of importance (government is too big for what you think is important but what I think is important is sacrosanct.)

1. Any time we go to war with the support of congress, we automatically institute a draft until that war is ended.
2. The top rate of tax for our alleged ‘job creators’ (individuals or businesses) is tied to the unemployment rates. Unemployment goes down, so does the top-tax rate.
3. Increases or cuts in taxes to pay for entitlement programs are, above some reasonable level, tied to similar increases or cuts in the military budgets.

These things should stay in place until the current climate changes and sanity is restored.

Into Difference

2011-11-16T14:07:00.002-05:00

November 12, 2011

One of the questions I have been asked with some regularity since returning from a visit to the Diocese of Western Tanganyika is why we are in this relationship in the first place. Are we helping the needy? Building an orphanage? Bringing some kind of expertise? The answer is ‘none of the above’. We are engaging in what Titus Presler calls “Reconciling Mission in a World of Difference.” That is the subtitle of his book Going Global with God (Morehouse, 2010). At All Saints’ we say that we are a community centered in worship and that we grow in faith as we engage God and our neighbor. It is that engagement of God and neighbor that is mission “into difference” with the reasonable and holy hope of “reconciliation” as a result of our opening ourselves to whatever it is that God has to teach us in the world of another.

Jennifer Vanderbes’ second novel is Strangers at the Feast (Scribner, 2010). At a recent gathering of our Novel Theology group we discussed the differing worlds of characters who appear to be in the same world as they are from the same family. Beyond that we saw what happened as they “engaged difference” with their eyes closed and how deathly violence was the result. As some of the members of the group shared about what was happening as they chose to live in ‘transitional neighborhoods’, we heard how difficult it can be to live in a world in which we displace each other for all kinds of ‘innocent’ reasons.

There is something about traveling across the world and wrestling with the suspicion that for our hosts, ‘unity in Christ’ and the ‘fellowship of the gospel’ are quite secondary to whatever monetary gifts we might release that opens our eyes to worlds of difference closer to home. We went with some clear instructions about how our gift was to be used and ended up coming to terms with the reality that partnership means that we must trust those with whom we are in relationship. Whatever financial gifts we can release to assist in the work of proclaiming the gospel in DWT will have to be used by those who live their in the way they think best even as they understand our particular interest in strong education in Africa as a primary means of their finding a sustainable future.

As we think about this ‘mission into difference’, we are already addressing what one reviewer declares missing from Dr. Presler’s helpful book. Ian Douglas, a former faculty colleague of Presler and now Bishop of Connecticut reviewed Going Global for The Anglican Theological Review (Fall 2011, Vol.93, #4 p.734-6) and says he “does not adequately offer a power analysis in his consideration of difference…how disproportionate power allows some to cross borders from positions of privilege while others experience that crossing as targets of oppression.” In DWT we are guests and we are dependent on our gracious hosts in so many ways, but we come from privilege and have to be careful about instincts we have to be ‘helpful’ without really and deeply understanding the world in which we are privileged to be visitors.

Mirrors

2011-10-26T16:35:00.002-04:00

October 26, 2011

A few years ago I was able to hear Hans Reinders, a Dutch theologian and ethicist, talk about a friend of his with profound mental disability. As I remember the lecture, his point was that his friend, who had to be dressed and taught anew each day to eat along with other basic functions, was made a person by the community around her. People would stop and comment on how nice she looked or how they had missed her if she was not sitting in the corridor of her nursing home or make a comment to her about the weather. I was struck by the idea that we are, in a sense, made human by community.

I found myself recalling this lecture during a recent ‘transformational journey’ to the Diocese of Western Tanganyika. I had not previously noticed that there are no mirrors to speak of in that part of Tanzania. What was an insignificant inconvenience while shaving in cold water from a bucket or brushing my few remaining hairs and hoping I looked OK, became quite significant as members of our team enjoyed taking pictures of people on digital cameras and then showing them to their subjects. I will not soon forget one elegant and older woman being shown what she looked like by Della Wells. It is likely from her reaction of what looked like a combination of awe and amazement, it seems likely that she was seeing what she looked like for the first time in her life.

What would it be like to grow up and live in a world without mirrors? I realize that people have long been able to see their own reflections, but it is my impression that in the Western part of Tanzania, that is a rare experience for most. How would it be if we were really dependent on each other in order to enjoy a sense of who we are? I know that I don’t think I sound to the world like I do when I hear myself on a recording. I wonder if I know what I look like to other people, what assumptions they make about me, how I act based on their responses and so on? In a way, it is already the case—mirrors or no mirrors—that we are creatures of our villages, our communities and our tribes.

Mirrors

2011-10-26T16:35:00.000-04:00

Anglican Imagination

2011-10-24T10:20:00.001-04:00

October 24, 2011

A recent book on John Betjeman by Kevin Gardner is called Betjeman and the Anglican Imagination (SPCK, 2010). It is less illuminating about Anglican imagination than it is about an imagination shaped by the Church of England in both rural and urban settings. Betjeman’s poetry (of which I am a fan) is riddled with ecclesiastic allusion, references to church architecture and to the sacramental life of the community. But it is very, very English.

I found myself thinking about my recent experience of Anglicanism in Tanzania and whether there really is such a thing as ‘the Anglican imagination’. I did not worship in Dar es Salaam on this trip, but know from the past that some of the worship in the Anglican cathedral could be mistaken for pre-Vatican II Rome. In the Western part of the country I have been treated to a North end celebration of the Eucharist with the presiding priest wearing cassock, surplice and tippet. Clearly the church reflects the predilections of the missionary societies that worked in different parts of the country.

If there is such a thing as Anglican imagination it must have something to do with imagining unity that transcends difference, without minimizing the importance of those cultural, historical and ecclesial differences. It is one thing to visit the Diocese of Western Tanganyika and affirm that in Christ there is neither slave nor Greek; that we are one in a communion of prayer and mutual concern; and at the same time face very different challenges and opportunities that can make each other’s lives more difficult. Our affirmation of gay and lesbian people is somewhere between astonishing and absurd for our friends in DWT. It also has the potential to leave them in a vulnerable position in respect to their rigidly moralistic and expansionistic Muslim neighbors. We have to listen to the Archbishop of Canterbury visiting Harare assuring people there that the Anglican Communion does not support homosexuality. (and if the Covenant process continues together support, one day he might be able to say that honestly having excommunicated those who make a lie out of such pronouncements today—namely the Episcopal Church and others.) At the same time we have to be gracious guests among Christians who have massive needs and yet who cannot seem to allow the development of real power for women. The Mother’s Union is impressive in DWT but seems to be a sleeping giant whose hands are somewhat tied by pretty rigid adherence to traditional gender roles. Bishop Makaya does a good job of reminding us that it is a sign of respect when a woman kneels to a visitor (or indeed just about any man) but it is profoundly uncomfortable to see that while being barraged with requests for money when one of the greatest resources for development is being restricted to traditional roles.

My ‘Anglican imagination’ suggests that maintaining a consistent and committed friendship across all of these differences will eventually lead us to a place in which difference matters only to the degree that the people in the next village use incense and we do not.

Remembering what is of Ultimate Worth

2011-10-19T06:00:00.001-04:00

October 19, 2011

At All Saints’ we talk about worship as ‘remembering and turning toward what is of Ultimate Worth, such that our lives are transformed in to the image of Christ as we live more freely, more graciously and more generously tan we did before. In a way, a pilgrimage or transformational journey can be a prolonged act of worship.

The morning of the recent departure of our small team to visit the Diocese of Western Tanganyika (DWT) I was discussing a slightly dated article by John Snow, formerly of the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Mass. I was with a class of students from the Candler School of Theology at Emory University who are engaging in and reflecting on their contextual education in congregations. The article is called “The Hedgehog and the Fox” and is from Snow’s book The Impossible Vocation (Cowley, 1988). Snow introduces the concepts from psychology of transference and counter-transference by looking at the kinds of encounter we have with people in need of financial assistance. His point is that in such interactions various aspects of our own personal histories are somehow ‘hooked’ or ’triggered’ and become part of the interaction. One student worked as a security guard for a church in his undergraduate years. He told us that the church had a clear policy about people who came begging for financial help but that every one of the six clergy with whom he worked treated the policy, and so the street people differently from each other. Even as our class conversation became slightly heated, it became explicitly clear that our personal histories were shaping our interactions.

So that night I began the two day journey to DWT. While there I’m not certain I had more than a handful of interactions that did not include either a covert or overt request for money or other expensive support. “Some of our clergy receive less than $20 per month and some months do not get paid at all.” “Please greet our visitors who have paid their own ways from America where they belong to one of the largest churches there.” “How can I get a scholarship for study in America?” “A senior priest will never really be able to function as he needs to until we can get him a diocesan vehicle that is suitable for our roads.” And so it was day after day during our visit. Intellectually I know that we were merely being introduced to the needs and challenges of proclaiming the gospel in a part of the world where 90% or more of the people exist by subsistence farming. The diocese borders Rwanda, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo in some places and is home to refuge camps from natives of all three. WE did not go into any of the camps on this trip but in the past I have been struck that life in the amps is not noticeable different from life outside.

I found myself getting quite angry and feeling as though I and we were looked at as human ATMs. I felt as though our hosts would rather we had stayed home and simply sent the money that we spent on our tickets. But one night, as I lay awake, it came to me that I was being silly. I had woken up from an anxiety dream about how tings were at home, about my personal finances, about my feelings about my friends in Tanzania and probably much else besides. But in the small hours of that night I remembered that we were there because we wanted to be in relationship with people who are the recipients of money we set aside for the Millennium Development Goals, that real gifts flow from relationship and that we were hoping to achieve a ‘memorandum of understanding’ that would guide our relationship with DWT going forward. I realized that I was getting ‘hooked’ by a functional (i.e. neither rational, nor intellectually chosen) theology that assumed it is my job to fix problems. How foolish is that? Of course that is not something I can do. There is no way that All Saints’ can begin to meet the needs of DWT. What we can to is learn to recognize, understand and appreciate differences between us of culture and theology. We can remember that we can love even in the most intractable of circumstance in Tanzania or Atlanta. We can remember that the job of ‘saviour’ has already been filled and get on with the work of furthering our relationship through honest conversation, even as we also remember that we are made one in Christ.

This remembering what really matters in life in the dark of the night, miles from home and from anything familiar, was a gift of divine origin, and one that is still with me today. The consequence of that renewed gift will still have to become clear because the ‘transformation’ that comes from a transformational journey is rarely fully apparent on the journey itself.

Resentment

2011-10-17T05:59:00.001-04:00

October 17, 2011

It has been said that Islamic fundamentalism was born of resentment in the Egyptian prisons of Nasser and Sadat. It was there that Sayyid Qutb began to believe that Muslims who thought they could lead a secular government were betraying Islam. This man’s writings against secularism and the west which he characterized as “the white man” became especially important after he refused to allow any change in his death sentence and became, in effect, a Muslim martyr over against any idea that Islam could exist in a secular state. This is all chronicled in the recently re-issued book by Lawrence Wright called The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11.
Resentment can be born of many experiences and in the case of Qutb they included time in various parts of America as well as the experience of colonial rule and its immediate aftermath. That kind of force is relatively easy to ignite among the poor and dispossessed, especially by the cynical rich who adopt ideology that sits them in their desire for power. That at least is one way of reading the actions of Osama bin Ladin. It is why watching Turkey as a kind of bellwether is so interesting at the moment. And it is why many Christians, including many Anglicans, are so frightened and defensive in Africa where, in spite of St. Augustine and others, Christianity is portrayed as a ‘western’ religion over against the ambitions of Empire among many conservative Muslims on that continent. Given the opportunity, I ask why we cannot be more confident in preaching grace instead of becoming more morally rigid and joining the outcry against America (in the form of the Episcopal Church in our case) in an attempt to hold our own against the aggressive expansion of Islam.

In the far west of Tanzania from where I have just returned after visiting our friends in the Diocese of Western Tanganyika, Christians and Muslims seem to get along pretty well in spite of the region’s history as a cradle of the slave trade. Christians express some concern and even resentment about Muslim reactions to any of their own who convert to Christianity, and the rumor that if a Christian man converts to Islam, he is forced to take more than one wife so that he cannot revert to his former ways. It is striking to me in a part of the world where 90% of the people exist by subsistence farming on land that shows all the signs of deforestation and other poor land management practices, that there is very little resentment being expressed at least to this foreign visitor. One person talked of being in a Western supermarket whole there was a drought and with it mass starvation at home and wondering why God distributed resources so unevenly. Everywhere our team went there were covert or overt requests for help, for more monetary support for projects and institutions in the Diocese and frequent requests for help getting to America for further education. Much less expensive advancement within Africa seemed received as decidedly ‘second best’. In other words, as I think about this one week visit (my third visit to the Diocese) rather than fueling resentment, poverty combined with our presence seemed to spark a kind of hope for something better.

Baptism and Covenant

2011-10-03T06:01:00.006-04:00

October 3, 2011

Two weeks ago I was in England for the annual meeting of the Compass Rose Society. There we had the opportunity to engage in the inevitable discussions of the proposed Anglican Covenant. Most observers to whom I spoke believe that the Church of England will adopt the Covenant “out of loyalty to Rowan”. There is some thought among some Episcopalians who dislike the proposed Covenant that we should adopt an imperfect thing in order to ’stay at the table’. After listening to the conversation, I still hold the view that the Anglican Communion does not need this innovation. I would also prefer that we stop the ‘bureaucratic creep’ that is going on with the development of an expensive ‘secretariat’ in the Anglican Communion Office, and return all those functions to Lambeth Palace, properly funding the Archbishop of Canterbury’s staff instead. It won’t happen as that train has already left the station. In the event that the Covenant is adopted by enough churches that there is a ‘table’ from which we are excluded, we could then decide to adopt it later as I understand what is going on.

I bring this up because I have been reminded of the importance of the baptismal covenant in the life of The Episcopal Church in two ways recently. At the Presbyters Conference of the Diocese of Atlanta we centered our conversation around the development of a proposed rite for the blessing of same gender unions. (We were not allowed to see the proposed rite itself which made the whole exercise a bit silly.) In the process of discussion however we had to articulate what we thought made liturgy ‘Anglican’. One of the distinctive features of the 1979 Book of Common Prayer is the centrality of baptism in all of our worship.

At our parish weekend at Kanuga, Bishop Peter Lee, formerly of Virginia and more recently of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco and General Theological Seminary in NYC (now preparing for another interim position at the American Cathedral in Paris, poor baby) centered his reflections on an enduring church in uncertain times on our baptismal rite and in particular, our Baptismal covenant.

In England, I was reminded once again how unusual this is among Anglican Churches. The way we include a brief moral catechesis or consequence following the Creed in the Covenant and make it central to our common life is quite alien to most other Anglicans. I cannot help but believe if they focused more clearly on baptism they would not be taken in by the proposed ‘Anglican Covenant’. Instead of embracing the centrality of baptism, what I heard and experienced was yet another snide dismissal of the baptismal covenant as “an American thing”, and therefore presumably something that does not have to be taken into account in Anglican conversation.

I’m leaving for the Diocese of Western Tanganyika this afternoon with a small team from All Saints’ for the purpose of furthering a relationship that has been strained to breaking point in recent years. I continue to believe it both important and valuable that international relationships among Christians be maintained across theological and cultural differences for the unity of the church. More than that I believe that it is in such relationships, founded in the promises of baptism, (more than will ever be nurtured by the proposed covenant,) that the reality of a relational catholic communion is found.

Justice has been done

2011-09-29T04:09:00.003-04:00

September 29, 2011

“Justice has been done” declared President Obama when he announced the successful raid in Pakistan which led to the killing of Osama bin Ladin. I began to understand my discomfort with the idea that this death was “just” as I read Michael J. Sandel’s Justice (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009). He outlines various philosophical traditions of justice, and while he does not name a specifically Christian ethical tradition, we fall clearly into that strain of ethics that considers justice as having to do with virtue or character. This coming Sunday (October 2nd) The New York Times will be publishing letters debating the question as to whether or not the killing of a prisoner can or should be considered ‘just’. There are those who consider justice to be about the welfare of the most people and others who think of it primarily in terms of freedom or liberty and who find that within a social contract the taking of a life for certain dreadful crimes is ‘just’ even while recognizing that uneven application with a majority of those receiving the death penalty are poor and black is unjust. It will be an interesting conversation.

I was accused recently of “using a couple of Bible verses to justify a political position” from the pulpit when I thought I had preached about the predominant biblical concept of ‘justice’ in distinction to other philosophical traditions. The trigger that caused my parishioner’s comment was that I talked explicitly about capital punishment at the end of a week in which there had been the publicly and internationally discussed execution of a man called Troy Davis about whose guilt there was significant public doubt. A number of our parishioners had participated in protests and vigils, asked for prayers to be said and were otherwise struggling with a profound sense that a wrong was being perpetrated by the state in our name. For some (probably many) this death seemed profoundly and absolutely wrong. For others (self included) it seemed as though every legal avenue for review of the original conviction had been used and the law followed in a state who have decided that certain crimes (in this case the killing of a police officer) deserve or merit death.

I oppose the death penalty on the basis that it is manifestly unjust in its application. Until now, I have allowed for the theoretical possibility that it could be the ultimate sanction and possibly a deterrent preventing some heinous crimes. I’ve changed my mind about that possibility, partly through understanding that the utilitarian deterrent argument is not supported by the facts and partly through revisiting the tradition of Christian ethics and its more recent expression in Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue (originally published in 1981).

2011-09-08T10:47:00.000-04:00

A LITANY FOR THE TENTH ANNIVERSARY OF 9/11/01

Intercessor: In peace, let us kneel and pray to the Lord.

Most gracious God, we lift before you the poor of the world, for whom your Son, Jesus, showed particular care and concern. Grant us grace that we be not indifferent neither to the poor in our midst, nor those who live in poverty far across the world. Grant us grace that we may also recognize and address places of impoverishment in our own lives, especially those that are hidden from us by our wealth.

Blessed are the poor in spirit,
People: For theirs is the kingdom of heaven

Intercessor: O God of mercy, surround all who mourn this day with the assurance of your love, most especially those for whom grief is awoken anew by the remembrance of those who lost their lives in New York, Washington D.C. and Pennsylvania ten years ago. Grant us all grace to find in grief the seeds not of burning rage, but of compassion from springs that overflow.

Blessed are those who mourn
People: For they shall be comforted

Intercessor: God of love, it is your love that makes it possible for us to be better than we are and calls us into meek and right relationship with you. Help us, and all whom you have made, to be faithful stewards of what you entrust to our care. Aid us in our care of your whole creation, and help us recognize righteousness in our midst as we discover anew that it is in giving that we receive, in service to others that we are freed and in dying we live.

Blessed are the meek
People: For they will inherit the earth

Intercessor: As we remember the wrongs in this world, we recognize our own sinfulness, holy God, and yearn for that day when justice and peace will be made manifest in your presence. Look with mercy on the hungry of this world, on those suffering from drought, on those oppressed by tyrants and on those oppressed by war. Grant them and us together what we need for life, creating in us generous hearts, and a passion for righteousness.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness
People: For they will be filled

Intercessor: Thank you, God, for all that sustains our lives and our common life. Thank you especially for your gift of forgiveness of our sins which we neither merit nor deserve. Help us find with in us the desire to forgive seventy times seven and beyond. Turn our hearts toward your love that we may more fully love others, forgiving as we have been forgiven. Spare us from hypocrisy, vainglory, revenge and greed, that we may be effective witnesses to your grace and love.

Blessed are the merciful
People: For they will receive mercy

Intercessor: O God of unutterable grace and goodness, make in us clean hearts and order our desires toward what makes us more the people you have created us to be. Let not our passion for all that is right and good and lovely and holy become the means of separating us one from another; and let such purity of heart as we may be granted be marked by a passion for justice for all your people.

Blessed are the pure in heart
People: For they will see God

Intercessor: O God in whose presence there is peace with justice for all; you know how the burdens of enmity, fear and war touch all of our lives. Look with mercy on those who fight far from home and all whose lives are touched by the immediacy and proximity of war. Spare them and us from being overtaken by rage and a thirst for bloody revenge. Help us, in our time, to accept the burdens of paying for the conflicts we engage that our children may know freedom from fear and freedom from the tyranny of indebtedness. Turn the hearts of those who plan and execute acts of terror that their and our swords may be turned into plowshares. Grant diligence and wisdom to those who seek to prevent such acts before they occur, an especially those for whom such work takes them into harm’s way. Make us all into instruments of your peace, sowing the seeds of love, pardon, union, faith, hope, light and joy.

Blessed are the peacemakers
People: For they will be called children of God

Intercessor: In all things turn our hearts toward what really matters in and for life. Keep us mindful, gracious God, of life and opens the possibility of our walking in that way. Help us remember that death is not the worst thing in life. Spare us from persecution for insisting that we strive for righteousness in all things, but grant us strength and courage to bear witness to your love should the threat of persecution ever loom. Look with favor especially upon those who are even today persecuted for their faith in you in Myanmar, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Sudan and everywhere where your love is considered subversive and your people share in Jesus’ sufferings day by day.

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake
People: For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Intercessor: O God, in response to the contemplation of terror, destruction and death born of hatred and a thirst for power, sometimes we have no words to express either the groaning and sorrow of our hearts or our reasonable and holy hope in your love, so now we come before your throne of grace in silence imploring that you grant us, those in any need or trouble and those we love whom we name before you silently in our hearts what we need for life with peace and justice for all.

Two minutes of profound silence follows

Intercessor: Lord, hear the heartfelt prayers of your people and what we ask faithfully grant that we may obtain effectively. Shine a light on the paths prepared for us to walk in and grant us grace and courage ever to walk those paths in the assurance of your love for us; in the name of Jesus Christ, we pray.

People: AMEN.

Religion. Politics. Morality.

2011-08-31T05:54:00.001-04:00

August 31, 2011

Bill Keller, the Executive Editor of The New York Times opined last Sunday that he would like to ask candidates for public office (and particularly the Presidency) tougher questions about their faith than have been asked in the past. He shows understanding of the complexity and interweaving of the evangelical right among Christians in this country while wanting to ask the same kind of questions that were asked of John Kennedy when he ran for public office as a Roman Catholic. Are you going to follow the Pope or the Constitution? Keller also wants to know whether or not a candidate will allow her or his religion to lead them to beliefs contrary to “serious science and verifiable history”, and whether or not she or he will serve as a “Trojan horse for a sect that believes it has divine instructions on how we should be governed.”

I wish him well in the task of sorting out the role of religious faith in the public square. Phrases and ideas that are common parlance among large swaths of conservative Christians can sound like fanaticism to those outside those circles without in fact revealing the speaker as a religious fanatic. In general I prefer leaders who have convictions about God that give rise to a degree of genuine humility. That is what I listen for, along with a genuine concern for the poor and downtrodden that includes at the moment and in particular the jobless and the uninsured. I think debates about the role of government and economic policy are useful, but not as a smokescreen for what appears to be fear-based and selfish greed. There is a joke that is told in the mountains that ‘an environmentalist is someone who has already built his mountain home.’ “I’ve got mine and I’m going to protect it from the likes of you (who might mean that I will pay higher taxes)” is ugly-think and not worthy of those who would be followers of Yahweh, Jesus or Allah.

In this regard we must note that tea party sweetheart and republican Presidential ‘hopeful’ Michele Bachman has referred explicitly to the recent earthquake and hurricane on the East Coast, saying “I don’t know how much God has to do to get the attention of the politicians.” She said that this was God’s way of underlining the “roaring of the American people”. She later said that she was speaking in a “humorous vein” about serious matters. The humor eludes me. The ‘roaring’ does not.

While I disagree profoundly with the solutions of the political right, I share the sense that much of the West has gone off the rails when we think that we can fight wars and leave our children to pay for them, when we spend and spend on ourselves and then justify doing nothing in the near term for the jobless in a recession which requires a measure of government spending calling it ‘austerity’ and so on. I share the sense that we have somehow lost our way and that it is a moral issue.

The chief rabbi of England (technically chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth) and a person whose thinking I have long respected is called Jonathan Sacks. He has argued persuasively in The Wall Street Journal that we have lost a sense of “self restraint and pursuit of the common good”. He believes that in much of Europe and even the United States, religion is a thing of the past and there is “no counter-voice to the culture of buy it, wear it, flaunt it, because you’re worth it.” I don’t agree with him in every detail (Niall Ferguson, now an historian at Harvard, far from being “one of our great British exports to America”, is someone I would be more likely to put in the embarrassment column based on some of his unfortunate articles in Newsweek,) but will be thinking about his argument and insight in particular as we prepare for the reflection that must come with the tenth anniversary of the attacks of 9/11/2001.

Hero

2011-08-30T13:30:00.002-04:00

August 30, 2011

A recent edition of The Economist (August 6-12, 2011) yearned for a British innovator to emerge (“Where’s Britain’s Bill Gates?” p.13) and be supported by a package of government policies. In another magazine a review article (which I cannot now find) talks about how innovators require a degree of genius and cannot be otherwise created.

The vote to take place at the United Nations session in September over whether or not to grant Palestinian statehood brings to mind a past British innovative genius. Michael Korda has written a readable biography of T. E. Lawrence called Hero: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia (Harper Collins, 2010). Korda assesses Lawrence’s work and significance including how his military strategy was the basis for the hugely successful Long Range Desert Group, praised by Field Marshall Rommel, no less. (p.686) He also bore some responsibility for his role in shaping today’s Middle East, even though the eventual outcome was for him a source of guilt and disappointment. In a map he prepared and proposed in 1918 he sought to divide the Ottoman Empire in a way that “sought to respect the geographical, tribal, religious, and racial realities of the Middle East…He tackled head-on some of the problems that are still plaguing the region, like the claims of the Kurds for an independent nation, and the need to find a place for the Armenians.” (p.532) “He tried to create states or indigenous areas based on the religion or the racial and cultural identity of the people living there, and so far as possible to take into account geographical features and water resources.” (p.533) He clearly supported what was to become the state of Israel but wanted much more for those who sought an ‘Arab Nation’ in the process.

The extraordinary circumstances that gave rise to the current shape and issues of that troubled region could have been quite different had Lawrence been granted more influence than he had among the swirling rivalries and colonial aspirations of the major powers of the day. What it seems he knew was that everybody had to ‘win’ in some way and they did not. So we are left with the UN voting on potential statehood for a people who deny the right of Israel to exist. Should there not be some kind of mutual and explicit recognition of the right of Israel to exist and the ability to defend itself. Such a requirement would by no means be a blank check for Israel, nor allowing the reality of the ways in which Palestinians have been victimized at the hands of Israel to afford them a kind of moral superiority. I realize all this is way above my pay grade (as they say) but I oppose statehood without something that serves as an explicit recognition of the rights of Israel.

Hero is a very good book.

History and Harlot’s Ghost

2011-08-29T06:04:00.002-04:00

August 29, 2011

In The Birth of the Modern: World Society 1815-1830 (Harper Collins, 1991) Paul Johnson tackles two theories at once. He wants to show (and largely succeeds) that what we know as the ’modern age’ was shaped over one fifteen year period in the 1800s. He also wants to deal with the whole world and employ “no one angle of vision” (p.xviii). He ranges over the whole world, not neglecting chronology, but not limiting himself to grand political movements, literary history or personal remembrances from peoples of the time. In a single section of the book he might deal with literary and musical genius, medical schools, body snatching and surgery, alcoholism, the weaknesses of Chinese government and ‘the invention of the Great Game’.

His book came to mind a lot for me this summer as I took on reading the monumental Harlot’s Ghost by Norman Mailer (Random House, 1991), a ’novel of the CIA’ which I had thought about trying but was spurred into action by a kind person delivering a copy to our parish summer book swap called ‘Trading Graces’. It is not a world history with no single perspective, but it had the same all-encompassing feel as Johnson’s history. It covers major events of the sixties (Castro, Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy assassinations and so on) from the perspective of a handful of memorably drawn characters, all of whom are patrician New Englanders and who work for the CIA. It is not a spy novel in any traditional sense, although the writing, color and atmosphere are recognizable from John Le Carre and Robert Littell. It is also, (surprisingly at nearly 1300 pages) not a novel in which I was able to ’lose myself’. It was less summer escapism and more being drawn into a world of characters with all of the complexity of real life in a time I remember from my own early years and a places I do not.

In a way this time was the beginning of so much that makes up for modern politics: the place of secrecy and the ubiquitous presence of ‘spin’ as those with power seek to control how a story is told. I remember seeing the original film about the Cuban missile crisis in a seminar reflecting on ’leadership in response to a crisis’ (The Missiles of October, 1974) and being aware how different (and how much more complicated) the whole crisis would have been with today’s political realities in play.

Mailer’s novel is beautifully crafted with real historical reality and extraordinary psychological depth. He neither avoids nor over simplifies the moral dilemmas of personal or international relations. His prose sometimes enters the realm of poetry. Overall I’m not sure I enjoyed the book, but I’m glad I read it, as we watched the old social compact of political life in this country be overturned by right wing politicians who declined to play by the old rules and made the debt ceiling debate into a manufactured crisis for everybody. I don’t think there is anything particularly marvelous or moral about having ‘an establishment’ run things, but I prefer it in many ways to the anarchic effects of the radical (and far from ‘conservative’) right.

Declining Sunday Attendance

2011-05-29T05:39:00.001-04:00

May 28, 2011

In October 2010, Lovett Weems published an article in The Christian Century under the heading “No Shows”. Dr. Weems charted declining attendance in mainline denominations and concluded that even churches such a ours with larger attendance have been showing declining numbers since a turning point of sorts in 2000. Smaller churches have shown a decline in attendance for rather longer. This has certainly been true at All Saints’, Atlanta where our average weekend attendance has declined by well over 100 people per week since 2000. This statistical shift is something we have in common with many other churches across denominations. A few years ago the great Willow Creek church in Barrington, Illinois, looked at their attendance figures and began closing for the summer months altogether, saving money in order to “reach more people for Christ during the school year”.

This trend appears to affect attendance, but not other indicators of church life such as membership or numbers of households making regular financial gifts. These statistics appear to be holding steady or are on the increase across the board. I have friends and colleagues who are trying to measure ‘average weekly contact’ or ‘average weekly touch’ as a new measure of church life and health.

Pundits and commentators point to increased wealth making for more opportunities than in the past. It seems to have become an expectation and norm that families will travel away for spring and fall breaks in the school schedule. For us that means about six Sundays in the spring on which we cannot expect to have children or youth choirs at full complement. The same is true for volunteer Sunday School teachers and the like. Children’s sports, school trips and a host of other things are being scheduled on Sundays. Attendance at worship is becoming, or has become, something we do when we don’t have anything better claiming our attention. There are still some families who make a clear commitment to weekly attendance and for them that might mean five out of eight weeks. For many people one Sunday in five or six might seem pretty good.

This seems to work OK for those families who have a weekly commitment that builds faith and community along the way: choir practices, small groups, bible studies and the like. Children who grow up in our choirs and their families have a significantly different experience overall from those who do not make that commitment. Some churches seem to accomplish this kind of investment in community through church sports leagues and other such things.

All well and good, but I continue to wonder about worship. It seems to me that worship is our ‘core activity’. It is what we do. If we did not worship, I do not think we could call ourselves a church. Worship is where we hear and enact the story that shapes out lives. It is in telling and in some sense enacting the story that we are ‘oriented or turned (metanoia) toward that which is of ultimate worth’ (my rather technical definition of worship that people at All Saints’ hear about from time to time.) If we are not in worship on a pretty regular basis, then how are we being formed as people of faith? Where are we learning to put our whole trust in God’s grace and love such that it makes a difference in the way we live?

Should we be looking at how to offer significant worship whenever we gather for any purpose, and how might we do that so that it is integral rather than ‘extra’ to whatever is going on?

The Middle East

2011-05-25T04:50:00.001-04:00

May 25, 2011

I confess to being far from expert on anything much to do with what is going on in the Middle East. The Arab Spring seems to me to have the potential to be a good thing for Arabs provided that self determination does not open the door to grater oppression than they knew before. “Nature abhors a vacuum” it is said, and weakened power or the absence of power without a recognized and accepted political system invites every malignant possibility to see and seize an opportunity. This is certainly something that many churches have experienced when they have had weak or absent leadership.

One thing is clear to me however and that is that somehow, for reasons I don’t really understand, real change and the possibility of real peace for the region must include some kind of resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian ‘question’. President Obama in his speech about the region in advance of Mr. Netanyahu’s (reportedly frustrating) visit to the U.S. made lots of interesting and positive points to this amateur onlooker including pursuing a two-state solution based on the boundaries of 1967. No one involved is going to love that proposal but it has some virtues nonetheless.

What I think is missing at this point is that we are talking about the creation of a new (Palestinian) state without first having or building in a process for the full recognition of Israel as a state with a right to exist. Israel, thank God, is blessed with strong and clear leadership, who seem to understand that you don’t negotiate with someone whose started aim is to destroy you and whose ‘negotiating posture’ is built in part around a ‘right of return’. The U.S. and anyone else can say that we will ‘guarantee the security of Israel’ until the cows come home, but if I was Israeli or I represented the Israeli government, there would be no real negotiation without powerful and ‘official’ voices in the Arab and Palestinian worlds renouncing without ambiguity their aim of destroying my country and supporting my right to exist.

I would do what Mr. Netanyahu and many of his predecessors appear to have been dong which is staying at the table in hopes of receiving such recognition without which any compromise on ‘borders’ and ‘defensibility’ would seem to be capitulation.

I do not underestimate the cost of leadership on this from the Arab and Palestinian point of view. I find it hard to imagine Palestinians acknowledging the right of Israel to exist without significant pressure from the Arab world as that will end the dream of the ‘right of return’. I remember sitting in my little room (on the Quad in those days) at Yale Divinity School in October 1981 trying to write a paper about something or other now forgotten, when I heard on the radio that Anwar Sadat had been assassinated. I remember my rage at the forces of evil that would do such a thing.

Can the Arab Spring allow for leaders of vision and courage to emerge? Can we forge and pursue a foreign policy that really encourages such a possibility while still resisting what we know to be opposed to any definition of freedom, (namely fundamentalism in any form)?

I would welcome any contribution here that could help me shape my understanding of all this that has within it the hope of positive change based in something other and additional to my trust in God’s love for the whole of creation and revealed desire that all humans be allowed to flourish.

The Working Man

2011-05-17T06:03:00.000-04:00

May 17, 2011

It is hard to know exactly where we are as a parish with regard to unemployment and underemployment. I still see a steady stream of parishioners for whom the wolf is knocking at the door and who need meaningful, or at least remunerative, work. We are blessed to be in a parish n which I have rarely had a request for an ‘informational interview’ or employment conversation turned down by a fellow traveler. My anecdotal impression is that in our community unemployment is returning to pre 2008 levels with the notable exception of the real estate and related sectors.

I am one of those people who must be annoying to the struggling print magazine industry in some ways. On the up side, I do like to read magazines and have not yet made a full transition to reading online. On the downside, the publishers generally want me to think I have ‘purchased a relationship’ and ‘become part of a readership community’ where I believe that I have bought six or twelve or twenty four issues with a subscription. If I don’t renew, it is because I want to read something else for a while. Those who ‘as a courtesy’ renew automatically without asking me don’t get any more money from me. This is all to say that I have returned to reading a magazine that I last enjoyed regularly in high school, namely The Economist. There was a fascinating article in the April 30-May 6, 2011 edition under the heading Decline of the Working Man. The article looks at the particular challenges of men without industry specific skills and a series of government policies designed to address them. It is pretty clear that we have not yet discovered either policy or stimulus that is going to change this reality.

I was surprised and pleased to learn that one innovative policy is at work here in Georgia in which unemployed people are allowed to work up to 24 hours a week for six weeks with a new employer, even as they continue to draw jobless benefits. The employer is able to take a look at a potential employee and the employee gets some work experience and on –the- job training even if that position does not become permanent.

The conclusion of the article does not offer a rosy outlook for unskilled men however. “Both Democrats and Republicans seem convinced that as the economy strengthens the labor market will heal itself. But although unemployment will continue to fall as the economy recovers, millions of American men will be left behind.”

We are gong to have to help these men learn skills, and preferably industry-specific, employer requested skills, if they are to survivie.

Getting Away

2011-05-10T05:51:00.003-04:00

May 10, 2011

It has long been observed that we can travel just about anywhere in America and imagine that we are anywhere else. I remember the first time I went to a meeting in Dallas near a large shopping center not far from the airport. I might well have stayed in Northern Virginia, which apart from Alexandria and parts of Arlington always seemed to me to be one big suburban sprawl. Not terrible. Just not terribly distinctive. Those who work to conserve, preserve and restore historic buildings have my vote as do those who, like the Midtown Alliance in Atlanta, seek to develop livable areas of genuine character.

I found myself thinking about distinctive places to live during a recent visit to New Mexico. I stayed just outside Santa Fe at a place that was slightly run down in some respects called Bishop’s Lodge. (See here for a photograph of the chapel.)The Roman Catholic diocese of new Mexico was established officially in 1853 with Jean Baptiste Lamy as its bishop. Later he bought a plot of land outside Santa Fe where he had began building St. Francis’ Cathedral and built a small retreat chapel and dwelling. Those are still there in the midst of the severe, almost desert-like and inhospitable landscape.

I was able to drive to Bandelier national Monument, a park around the ancient ruins of people who lived in small communities and hillside dwellings that included caves and were often three stories high. The ruins have been preserved there and in one or two cases, restored. Apparently when Francisco Vasques de Coronado led an expedition from Mexico, all he found were these fortified Indian villages which he called ‘pueblos’ or town. These towns then gave their name to the Pueblo people who still live in various pueblos in the area and who honor the spirits of their ancestors who dwell in Bandelier and elsewhere.

It was really good to be ‘away’, dislocated, (with poor cell phone reception from any carrier). There is something about being in a place that is clearly ‘different’ from whatever is our norm that helps allow new perspective. Such a move need not be geographic, although that helps me. It could just as easily be a genuine place of retreat as it must have been for Bishop Lamy, a place with different rhythms of life from whatever is our norm and so a place in which we can begin to see ourselves and our world in anew way, remembering what is of true and ultimate importance.

The Second Half of Life

2011-05-03T15:49:00.001-04:00

May 3, 2011

I have enjoyed the past two days in the company of colleagues from around the country in conversation with Richard Rohr, a Franciscan who founded the Center for Action and Contemplation over twenty five years ago. His most recent book is called Falling Upwards and he develops an image of what he calls the ‘second half of life’. The ‘first half’ is the work of ‘making the container’, --the structures and institutions that give shape to our lives. After a period of going through some stumbling blocks and beginning the work of ‘dying to self’, we begin the ‘second half of life’ as enjoying the ‘content’. This period is marked by an 0overcoming of either/or thinking in favor of a more mature understanding of the unity of all things, the cosmic Christ and other such notions.

Rohr is an appealing a engaging speaker who was able to use some images and language for familiar concepts that brought a new perspective. Among the more fruitful conversations for me were questions about what liturgy or common prayer looks like that really addresses the real issues and gifts of this second half, but it was not somewhere Fr. Rohr was really able to go. He was more of the ‘leaving church’ school rather than finding ways for church to do what he says is important and necessary, namely the whole of life. He has stimulated some interesting thinking and conversations for me.

“Justice has been done”

2011-05-03T09:54:00.002-04:00

May 3, 2011

So Osama bin Laden has been found, has predictably resisted arrest by US Navy Seals, been killed (in spite of possibly using his wife as a human shield), and been buried with a Muslim ceremony in the North Arabian Sea. As I watched the spontaneous rejoicing outside the White House and elsewhere, I was reminded of the service of thanksgiving that was held in London at the conclusion of the Falklands War in 1982. The then Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher expressed her displeasure when the Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Runcie, himself a decorated veteran of WWII, declined to sound a note of triumphalism, asking instead that the congregation pray for the dead and those mourning on both sides of the conflict. He questioned nationalism as being close to idolatry and said:

“Those who dare to interpret God’s will must never claim Him as an asset for one nation or group rather than another. War springs from the love and loyalty which should be offered to God being applied to some God substitute, one of the most dangerous being nationalism.”

I think there is much to celebrate in the death of Osama bin Laden. I am proud of the President, his advisors, the intelligence services and the Seals who carried out a dangerous operation. In distinction from some operations in the past, this one seemed to be careful and thorough and was given every possibility of success. Conspiracy theorists and general naysayers are questioning whether there really was a body in ways that cannot but have echoes of Holy Week this soon after the memorial of the death and resurrection of Jesus. A chapter has certainly been ended; there is much in American strength and perseverance to celebrate, and for those who believe in capital punishment, “Justice has been done”. A mass murderer’s life has come to an end and a message (which will serve to inflame the passions of our enemies) has been sent. Vigilance will need to be a watchword for some time to come.

I wonder if we need to keep on being an invading force in Afghanistan and Iraq at this point. One of the lessons of this series of events is that it has taken almost ten years to build the kind of human intelligence resources on the ground that have allowed us to move forward in spite of having a more-than-ambivalent ‘ally’. Why should we not withdraw our troops in the service of giving them some rest and rebuilding our economic base at home? At the same time we could prepare for such ‘targeted’ operations as we have seen in the Abbottabad compound when they are called for by events.

As for the call to pray for our enemies, we have been doing that all along at All Saints’, remembering all those affected by war and violence but singling out no one by name. Just so, we will not be singling out bin Laden and the others who died in the raid on his compound (Does anyone know their names?) in our parish prayers next Sunday. Instead we will give thanks that this particular chapter of our national life is over, give thanks for the safety of those who carried out this raid, and continue to pray for our enemies in the sure knowledge that warfare and violence, however necessary they may be in some circumstances, are never in accord with the intent and purposes of God for the flourishing of all life.

An interesting footnote: it was widely reported after the fact and after Thatcher had accused Runcie of being unpatriotic even as he stood by what he said in the sermon in 1982, that it had in fact been drafted, if not written, by Richard Chartres, the Bishop of London who so many in the world heard preach at the recent Royal Wedding. Patriotism need not be idolatrous. Triumphalism almost certainly is.

Catherine of Siena and the Royal Wedding

2011-05-02T13:20:00.001-04:00

April 29, 2011

I was delighted to hear the Bishop of London acknowledge the feast day of Catherine of Siena during his homily at the royal wedding today. She, like many mediaeval saints, was an odd bird, who began having visions at the age of six, did some writing about the ineffable love of God, saw herself as a bride of Christ and is honored, along with Francis of Assisi as a patron saint of Italy. Her shrunken head is preserved as a relic in a big Franciscan Church in Siena, not far from the shrine that is devoted to her.

The wedding of Prince William to Catherine Middleton, now Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge was a glorious occasion that defied cynicism. In the midst of all the pomp and pageantry was a couple saying that the commitment of self-giving love in marriage is, for them, the way of life. I was struck by a number of things in the ‘traditional’ service, --essentially a rite from 1928—including the use of ‘betwixt’ and the older version of the Lord’s Prayer: “Our Father, which art in heaven…” For me that tended to underscore the increasing irrelevance of a faith that is becoming reserved for special occasions and has little to do with the rest of life. Certainly a wedding or funeral without ritual is a flabby and flaccid thing, but there must be some places where the larger context connects with what is going on. I also wondered about the decision to include a Kyrie, triggering the saying of the Lord’s Prayer without doxology and wondering if that slightly confessional note was necessary for some reason.

On the other hand, I was also struck by the amount of times in vows and prayers that the honoring of each other in, by, through and with their bodies was mentioned and saw that as a strength of the liturgy from which we could learn. In days in which Christian sexual ethics are undergoing change, (although you wouldn’t know that from some blog commentary about the co-habitation of the couple prior to the wedding), the honoring of the whole person, made so explicit, seemed to me a good thing.

It was a great day to be British and to celebrate something of our national culture that other nations, notably including America, do more regularly and in a wide variety of ways. I sometimes get nervous when love of God and love of country get merged together as though they were the same thing and a flag becomes a quasi-religious object, but I still love William Blake’s poem Jerusalem and the wonderful Parry tune to which it is set. Not just a patriotic hymn or “alternative national anthem” but a prayer for justice and a call to work for same.

And did those feet in ancient time.
Walk upon England's mountains green:
And was the holy Lamb of God,
On England's pleasant pastures seen!

And did the Countenance Divine,
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here,
Among these dark Satanic Mills?

Bring me my Bow of burning gold;
Bring me my Arrows of desire:
Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!
Bring me my Chariot of fire!

I will not cease from Mental Fight,
Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand:
Till we have built Jerusalem,
In England's green & pleasant Land

Maundy Thursday and Charlie Sheen

2011-04-22T09:20:00.000-04:00

April 22, 2011

Last night I could not help but be struck by the irony that as we gathered to mark the Last Supper, the Institution of the Eucharist and to prepare the church for Good Friday by stripping the altar of the accouterments of worship, Charlie Sheen was less than one block away. A little way up the hill people were paying handsomely to listen to a man (who clearly suffers from some kind of mental illness, whatever its genesis) who talks about ‘tiger blood’ and who builds himself up by putting down those whom he despises.

Against all that ugliness, less than one block away, a couple of hundred people gathered fro a thing of great beauty to remember one who offered himself freely in an act for which no amount of money could compensate. We talked about the blood of life which raises up the lowly and the grace of God which allows all of humanity to flourish.

Hundreds of thousands of people have heard of Charlie Sheen but know neither the name nor the meaning of Maundy Thursday. We have work to do in sharing the Good News that we celebrate this weekend.

Catholicity and Autonomy

2011-04-14T06:32:00.001-04:00

April 14, 2011

The Rev’d Dr. Paul Avis is the general secretary of the Council for Christian Unity in and canon theologian of Exeter Cathedral in England. He has written several books on Anglicanism and Anglican identity that I have found helpful along the way. He has recently published an article in The Living Church (April 10, 2011, p.17) called Catholicity Outweighs Autonomy in which he argues that catholicity means ‘interdependence’ and that the proposed Anglican Covenant “seeks to flesh out in practical terms what interdependence might mean”. He concludes his appeal for Christians to “bear one another’s burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ” (Galatians 6:2) by saying “Any expression of communion is to be treated with great respect and care. It is an imperative of Christian love to seek communion with our fellow Christians. We are called to seek, maintain and extend communion. To do that we are inspired by the Holy Spirit…Ultimately, then, the future of the Anglican Communion is not a political matter, but a spiritual issue. I believe we should consider the covenant in that light.”

Well, so do I. And having considered it in that light, I reject it. The first three sections are inoffensive in themselves. They are theology crafted by a church committee and read as such. The fourth section which is what really “fleshes out in practical terms what interdependence might mean” is ultimately the control section and which undermines our attempt to be truly catholic in ways that put the relationships of the first three sections into practice in a way that is expressed and lived out differently than the power and control of hierarchy, --an option that is already available to us in the Roman communion.

The work of being in and staying in relationship across cultures, theological commitments, and huge financial difference is hard work. I hope to take a team to the Diocese of Western Tanganyika this autumn. All Saints’ has been in a relationship with that diocese, largely through the Bible College in Kasulu, since 2003 and we have made it thought serious official brokenness, changing personal relationships, Episcopal succession and other challenges. We do not try and change our brothers and sisters in, say the role of women in their church and society even though we believe they would be strengthened by educating and bringing women into leadership. We know that they would prefer that we not affirm gay and lesbian Christians as such but recognize that it is “not their issue”. The more troubling aspect of our relationship at the moment ahs to do with sorting out what is personal and whether there is any sense in which it could be said to be ‘institutional’. What I believe , for them, is a simple act of faith, namely asking for money, including asking for money for their own families, is for us a problem as we believe that gifts flow from relationship but that we are interested in strengthening and supporting the ministry of the church rather than the ministry of a particular priest or bishop. Rather than going on at this pint about other challenges such as that of developing a truly African theological tradition when everyone educated in the West tends to end up a bishop who does not have time for writing and teaching and the other things that might develop such a theological tradition, I’d like to return to the point of this piece and say that we are in relationship because we are Anglicans, because we grow through the challenge of recognizing, understanding and appreciating difference. The proposed covenant is not necessary to serve ‘catholicity’ or ‘interdependence’. It is, in effect, born of a desire to substitute rules for relationship and a means of control of some over others in spite of the (many protestations to the contrary. I’m agin it and hope that Dr. Avis might come to that conclusion as well.

Libya etc. and the US budget.

2011-04-13T06:56:00.001-04:00

April 13, 2011

I’m as confused about what is really going in the ‘African or Arab Spring’ as anyone. I understand that there are a lot of popular demonstrations and revolutions against long term, powerful dictators. I accept that it would be wrong to stand by while the crazy Colonel kills his own kith, kin and countrymen. I’m not certain why that compassion did not extend to the Ivory Coast where much the same thing seemed to be happening. I suspect the whole area of international diplomacy is going to be even more covered in contradiction and compromise going forward if the US is going to play any kind of role in the region at all. I support the President’s apparent insistence that action must be multilateral and coordinated. I’d be very much more impressed if some of the airplanes and other munitions that we had sold to , say, Saudi Arabia, were being put to use in support of those being threatened as they demand a measure of something like democratic freedom. Along with everyone else, I am nervous about religious extremists, often functioning as a kind of virulent tribalism, coming into any kind of allegedly democratic power.

David Fromkin’s A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East. (Holt, 1989) really helps make clear which of the countries that are in increasing turmoil are those with some kind of long tem ‘national identity’ and which are more like coalitions held together with force. Thomas L. Friedman, writing in the New York Times on March 30, 2011 outlined so many of the compromises we have made and will make as we find our way through this time of hope-filled change. We have to help in Libya…while we turn a blind eye to Bahrain among whose rebels are pro Iranian Shiite hardliners. Saudi Arabia criticizes us for supporting the ouster of Mubarak and we don’t want to antagonize the Saudis because “they have oil and money that we like”. We don’t like the leaders of Syria or Lebanon but we are unclear whether we like the opposition to them any better.

I join Friedman in being proud that our President is willing to weigh in, insisting on multi-nationalism in any response, declining to be ‘suaded by the cowboys of left or right demanding military intervention at all costs and declining to be cowed by the housekeepers in DC who want to cut the national debt but in a way that threatens unnecessary recession while there is a perfectly good bi-partisan blueprint on the table that neither part seems to think is politically attractive or viable, (possibly because it is not clear how to wring domestic political advantage out of such a scheme.) Friedman prays that Obama will get lucky in the middle of this mess. He hopes that “Qaddafi’s regime collapses like a sand castle, that the Libyan opposition turns out to be decent and united and that they require just a bare minimum of international help to get on their feet. Then US prestige will be enhanced and this humanitarian mission will have both saved lives and helped to lock another Arab state into the democratic camp. Dear Lord, please make President Obama lucky.”

The President has a style that welcomes conversation on issues of import and is no nearly as anxious as those in and using the media to stir up anxiety about ‘leadership’. He does not need to respond or react to everything in the political wind. Even so, I don’t’ understand why he is not vigorously and vociferously behind the bi Partisan budget proposals that he commissioned. Or proposing something he likes better. Representative Paul Ryan seems to be stepping into a vacuum and making proposals that seem to believe that growth will come if the rich get richer, but otherwise some credible ideas about Medicare. If that is really the best we can do (which it is not without some kind of go at social security and oour percentage of military spending) then let’s get behind him.

Unbroken

2011-04-12T05:30:00.001-04:00

April 12, 2011

I recently preached a sermon about suffering making use of the story of Louis Zamperini as told in the book Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand. (For a while you can access the sermon for the Third Sunday in Lent here). At one level the story is of a man who was abused and tortured in Japanese camps for prisoners of war during WWII, who then had the grace to forgive his tormenters. That same grace is what is required in the face of the devastation wrought by the earthquake in Northern Japan (also part of the sermon). The sermon was not primarily about Japan, but was deeply troubling to one parishioner who had spent the past two weeks trying to locate her friends and family and who found the combination of mention of past atrocities unhelpful in a time of great need. Apparently there had been some suggestion in parts of the blogosphere that the disaster which has afflicted Japan is somehow recompense for past sins. Apparently we have to say and keep saying that such a theology of disaster that is bound up with blaming the victims for whatever befalls them has no legitimate place among Christians.

Whenever we find ourselves in a time of trouble putting our energy into blaming someone else for our distress we have being given a clue that we are looking in the wrong place for a solution to our discomfort. In blaming others for their own distress, we appear to be attempting to justify ourselves for our own lack of compassion, response or understanding. To blame the Japanese for their suffering after an earthquake, to blame victims of HIV/AIDS for their illness or to blame the poor for their poverty are out of order for followers of Jesus.

Homecoming

2011-04-04T12:06:00.000-04:00

April 3, 2011

I had a conversation with a man the other day for whom church was, he felt, his ‘home’. He had grown up in various churches of various stripes, preached and taught in them and enjoyed a kind of love-hate relationship with communities that were so right for him but seemed to want him to deny a significant part of who he know himself to be because of his sexuality.

Another friend who is an expatriate living in America will sometimes say that he doesn’t know where he will be buried and really doesn’t have a preference. That will depend on the circumstances of his survivors at the time of his death. I find that I share some of that sense. Certainly, Christians believe that we are “in the world, not of it” or some such thing. Our true home, we say, is with God. The discovery of the Promised Land or Land of Promise was a part of Israel finding an identity, but the later experience of exile left a longing for some idea of ‘home’ that did not necessarily involve returning to Jerusalem for most of them. ‘Zion’ became an idea or aspiration such that John the Baptist echoed Isaiah and proclaimed a vision of mountains brought low and valleys raised up such that the people could make their way to their true home with dispatch and in safety.

I’m not entirely sure where I call ‘home’. I will sometimes refer to England as ‘home’ but when I am there I know I need to go home to Atlanta. “Home”, they say, “is where the heart is” and that seems to have quite a lot of truth to it. Even so there is something about the countryside of England that touches me in a way that the good earth and red clay of Georgia does not.

Bernhard Schlink, author of The Reader, has also written a novel called Homecoming. It is a fairly torturous plot with lots of twists and turns as a rather pathetic character tries to discover the truth about his father and so his origins. With much reference to The Odyssey our hero journeys in search of home, moving hither and yon in search of some elusive Zion. He ends by saying “I know it is not Johann Debauer or John de Baur I long for; it is the image I have made of my father and hung in my heart.”

In the end, my home is with the people I love and to whom I am committed, and while geography is important, there is no single piece of sod in which I must be buried.

Instructed Eucharist

2011-04-02T07:14:00.001-04:00

April 2, 2011

I have recently been introduced to the work of Alexander Schmemann (1921-1983) who was the sometime Dean and professor of Liturgical Theology at St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Seminary, and a mysteriously named ‘Protopresbyter’. His early work For the Life of the World (1963, 1973) and more recent The Eucharist (published posthumously in 1987) both have some of the flavor of an instructed Eucharist or series of theological mediations which might well have been offered in the contest of an Orthodox Liturgy.

I am leading our Adult Enquirers’ Class retreat this weekend that concludes with just such a service. I can go most of the way with Schmemann in his understanding of worship but find myself differing with him in some respects. He is inclined to say things like “Man is a worshiping being…for whom worship is the essential act which both ”posits” his humanity and fulfills it.” He wants to avoid reducing the Eucharist to some kind of cultic action separated from the ‘real’ or ‘outward’ work of either God or the Church. It is sacramental, a kind of sign that participates in bringing a certain godly reality into being. It is about man (sic) seeking transcendence. His views might be termed ‘high’, at least in relation to my own.

I think of worship less as the be all and end all of the world and resist claims that seem to me grandiose in their claims to worship as acts of ultimate significance; and more as ‘orienting (turning/metanoia) ourselves to that which is of ultimate worth’, and as something we do by both remembering and telling the story of faith, but also in some sense by enacting or participating in it. Articulating this enactment and participation is a real strength of Schmemann for me. He writes “The liturgy of the Eucharist is best understood as a journey or procession. It is the journey of the Church into the dimension of the Kingdom.” I would probably say something more along the lines of the Eucharist being, among other things, a means by which we mark our own journeys of faith toward what really matters, ultimate meaning, and the very life of God made manifest in the fullness of communion. If our worship is about the transformation of the world in any sense it is because it begins with our transformation into the people we were created to be.

I will be interested to see whether and to what degree Schmemann’s thinking colors the mediations I will offer on Sunday.

Ferraro

2011-03-31T06:00:00.001-04:00

March 31, 2011

I remember going to what was then the downtown Mall in Raleigh, North Carolina in 1984 to hear Geraldine Ferraro on the stump as a candidate for Vice President on the ticket of Walter Mondale. It was standard political stuff as I remember except for one thing and that was the candidate herself. She was the first Italian-American and the first woman to be a candidate for a major party in the U.S. It has not yet been thirty years since then, but a great deal has changed for women and many others in that time. On the political scene we have seen serious women candidates for high office and an African American in the White House. (I was pleased when President Obama did finally attend the Gridiron Dinner, he reportedly asked that ‘Hail to the Chief’ be replaced by Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Born in the USA’ as there cannot be too many reminders of that.)

But the changes are not only about women in high office. It seems to me that they are about a work far from finished but well underway of recognizing, understanding and appreciating difference in which people who do not look like, think like, or act like ‘us’ in some ways nonetheless have as much to offer the world as do ‘we’ and are not people to be feared as though ‘they’ somehow diminish our ‘power’. Such is part of the consequence of the Communion Table. It is neither obvious, nor easy.

From time to time I have heard it said that America should be thought of less as a ‘melting pot’ and more as a ‘salad bowl’ in which each ingredient keeps its own taste and texture but make a wonderful meal. Even recognizing the limitations of any analogy, I really do buy why the salad bowl is better. I still however want to know if the green pepper or the onion is in charge because either will dominate the lettuce. That is not necessarily a bad thing, but when others claim their power (in whatever way that happens) it reflects the Communion Table only when that power does not diminish mine. Diversity is a strength when we neither diminish the reality of difference nor the political significance of difference. Diversity is a strength when ‘I’ can celebrate ‘your’ strengths and vice versa. You can read more about these ideas in a paper by Valerie Batts available here.

Secrets

2011-03-20T06:30:00.001-04:00

March 20, 2011

The new production of Jane Eyre is beautifully done, with some fine acting and a significant absence of melodrama. The director, Cary Fukunaga, has captured a dark and terrifying world with almost Turner-esque attention to light. If the world needed another movie of this story, then this one is a worthy addition. The atmosphere of the whole film is conducive to secrets: first Rochester’s and then Jane’s own hiding of her true identity in the home of St. John Rivers. Secrets eat away at the hearts of all those involved and have an insidious and destructive power.

Tatiana de Rosnay who wrote Sarah’s Key has another novel called A Secret Kept (New York, 2009). It is the story of a brother and sister in their forties discovering a secret about their mother and her early death that changed everything in their family dynamics. This secret led to their relationships being significantly impaired, as secrets are wont to do.

Secrets are rarely, if ever, kept secret. In the old television comedies called Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister the character of a senior civil servant in England is called Sir Humphrey Appleby. He has many stock phrases and aphorisms. One of my favorites is: “He that hath a secret to keep, must generally keep it a secret that a secret he hath to keep.”

We keep secrets for any number of reasons including some perverse idea that secrets give us power (hence part of the appeal of modern Gnostic movements such as the Knights of Columbus or Freemasonry) or from some kind of shame and the fear of being discovered. Most of the time we find that secrets, in the light of day, lose their power and lose their appeal. Perhaps that is the real and life-changing power of twelve step groups and also the power of confession and absolution. A secret brought into the open loses its power. So it was, in the end, for Jane Eyre and Mr. Rochester. And so it was for the Rey family of A Secret Kept.

The Great Litany

2011-03-20T05:52:00.002-04:00

March 15, 2011

Most years it is our custom at All Saints’ to begin the First Sunday of Lent with The Great Litany chanted in procession. It is not my favorite liturgical moment of the year, but it is the only time that we pray the Litany as a rule. There have been, and will be, other times of course. I will never forget the power of that prayer in the days after 9/11 or the time we said it together in a special service of Prayer for Peace at the height of the second war in Iraq. Some of that flavor came through for me in our 8 a.m. service at which the prayer was said rather than sung and I thought about Japan, those whose lives were devastated by tsunami and fear of nuclear meltdown, the people in Libya being shot at by their own government, people in Bahrain being shot at by Saudi troops and on and on and on.

When I was first ordained it was still the practice in some parishes in which Morning Prayer was the principal Sunday service, to offer ‘The Great Litany and Sermon’ on the fifth Sunday of those months which had such. I confess that I don’t miss that practice.

Diarmaid MacCulloch in his magisterial biography of Thomas Cranmer (Yale, 1996) wrote about the Litany “The occasion may not strike modern worshippers as especially edifying: it was designed to encourage the people of England to maximize their effort of prayer for the threatening international situation, and by implication to enlist God’s aid for Henry’s massive summer relaunch of his war with France.” (p.328)

Approved for use in 1544, the Litany was a somewhat liberalizing and evangelical move away from triumphalist processional rites and a traditional association of such litanies with prayer for the saints. If sung, it was to be sung in plainsong and the 1549 Book of Common Prayer made abundantly clear that ‘Romish practices’ were off limits with such petitions as:

“From all sedicion and privye conspiracie, from the tyrannye of the bishop of Rome and all his detestable enormities, from al false doctrine and herisy, from hardnes of heart, and contempte of thy word and commaundemente:

Good lorde deliver us.”

This inflammatory petition was removed in the first Elizabethan Prayer Book of 1559, a gracious act of statesmanship on someone’s part.

The association of Litany with procession makes it more than a lengthy responsive prayer and turns it into something else. Any procession in worship can be the symbolic gathering of the people for Divine Service. It can also be a kind of enactment of pilgrimage, an icon of our procession through life, winding here and there, ever dependent on God for life. At its best, the prayer in this sung form becomes almost a mantra-like means to meditation for me almost irrespective of the words themselves. So I find the Litany to be most effective prayer in a threatening international situation when it is said, and most effective as a meditation on our dependence on divine grace throughout life when it is sung in procession.

The Muslim Hearings

2011-03-09T06:48:00.001-05:00

Ash Wednesday

Who does not remember the photographs of Christians surrounding Muslims with a protective human barricade as demonstrators prayed in Tahrir Square? How do we offer such a thing to our friends who are threatened by a New York congressman who has himself supported murderous terrorism in the past? Akbar Ahmed is a scholar at American University whom I have cited in the past. He has written an op-ed piece for the New York Times suggesting that the hearings should be seen as an opportunity to educate people about Islam and Muslims. Good for him, but I fear he putting lipstick on a pig, -- a pig apparently made up of members of congress with both parties planning to participate.

As we head into Lent, we have on our minds another set of ‘hearings’ that led to Jesus’ being put to death as the scapegoat for the anxieties of the righteous. In most accounts he declined to speak at his trials thus declining to bless them in any way.

Eboo Patel suggests that our view of Muslims would be akin to someone judging the citizenry of any of our cities by watching the first two minutes of our television news in just about any major market. It is, quite simply, distorted. A website called ‘Facts Not Fear’ is one example of the majority mobilizing to be heard in the face of fearful atrocity.

We can create the circle whereby we stand with and for those committed to peace as are we by prayer, but also by speaking up for fellow travelers at dinner parties, at church or wherever we gather and hear implicit fear in word or silence, the fear that allows the demonization of millions of people, the fear that sent Jesus to the cross.

Fourth and the Eucharist

2011-03-06T07:07:00.002-05:00

March 2, 2011

Last Sunday I was privileged to worship at the venerable Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago, where the pastor is John Buchanan, editor and publisher of The Christian Century. He was also the preacher on this occasion with a well woven, classically Presbyterian sermon—personal stories and intellectual content with some relation to Isaiah’s message to people in exile. The Church building is elegant. The bulletin was informative and the announcements gave a sense of the energy of the enterprise.

Our Cathedral of St. James is not far away and I have not worshipped there on a Sunday for some years, but Fourth has visibility and much that would appeal to many Episcopalians. If I lived in Chicago I might want to belong to Fourth but for the liturgy. Yes, it was beautifully done. And yes, it was well prepared. And Yes, the sermon bore some relation to the scripture and the hymn after the sermon, some relation to what had gone before. Those who lead worship there could and should be proud of what they do. That said, for me, it didn’t quite ‘work’. Certainly I was able to pray and sing, but somehow there was no obvious logic to the worship. I was not able to grasp the flow of the service.

We began with a beautiful Introit, --something like an entrance rite although one of the worship leaders was already seated in one of the thrones in the chancel (if that is what it is called). The procession of vested choir and robed clergy was led by someone carrying a supersized Bible. Fine so far. We were then welcomed and introduced to the ‘concerns of the church’ which essentially were the announcements and felt a bit like business rather than offering or worship. Either immediately before or after that was what was advertised as a ‘discipleship moment’. I gathered that this was a regular time for someone in the congregation to offer testimony. This is something that one of the presenters to the clergy meeting at the Consortium of Endowed Episcopal Parishes had urged us to consider finding a way to include in our liturgies. On this day a member of the fifth grade Sunday School class gave a polished account of a recent trip he had taken with his group. I know it meant a lot to his family and probably to the congregation, but it had no context for this visitor and so was tricky to appropriate or celebrate. I associate such a talk with the report of a pilgrimage or with Sunday School itself. I applaud the idea of our becoming proficient in talking about what God is doing in our lives, but on this occasion did not think the ‘moment’ was integrated in any way with the rest of the service.

We were on to the scriptures with Isaiah read by a Scot—sonorous, understandable, well done and enough to quicken the pulse of any good Presbyterian. The gospel was read from the pulpit by Dr. Buchanan as the lights dimmed before his sermon. From there to the prayers, led by the Scot in a way that was very inviting and actually served to encourage my own prayer. The concerns of the world as reflected in the newspapers were not forgotten and al bases appeared to be covered.

We drew to a close with what is basically the General Thanksgiving of our tradition of the Daily Office, introduced by something like the Sursum Corda; then a benediction r prayer of blessing before the procession out.

On the way out of church (as most of the congregation appeared to be heading the opposite direction presumably for coffee or Sunday School or to collect children who had been conspicuously absent) the minister who had introduced the service and welcomed us from the lectern (and who distracted me fairly often out of the corner of my eye by fiddling with her hair throughout the service—one of those things that does not matter in the great scheme of things and of which I suspect she is totally unaware) stood at the door making eye contact and smiling. I did not sense any expectation that conversation was ‘the norm’ at that point and so headed to the street and on to check out of the hotel.

I had certainly been able to enter into worship in some way. I expected a fairly passive experience from previous times with my Presbyterian sisters and brothers.I had forgotten how clergy centered the (non music) leadership tended to be, but appreciated the care and professionalism with which they led the service. What I really missed was the sense that we were not simply telling the old, old story and doing some intellectual (and possibly emotional) work in connecting that with our lives, but that we were also in some way, enacting the story. I don’t think that absolutely requires Holy Communion but it means some literal and metaphorical movement beyond the processions in and out. Maybe an altar call or an African style offering where we all go to the plates instead of them coming to us would suffice. But something.

Once again, even appreciating what I had been given to experience at Fourth, I find myself grateful for what we enjoy at All Saints’ and count myself privileged.

Eboo Patel

2011-02-28T09:23:00.003-05:00

February 27, 2011

I’ve heard Eboo Patel, founder of the Interfaith Youth Corps, speak in the past. This week I heard him at the Consortium of Endowed Episcopal Parishes (CEEP). I heard, as if for the first time, his point about ‘finding our own interfaith theology’. For him that means finding the stories in our own traditions that encourage us to stand with and for people of other and different faiths than our own as a matter of faith for us. In particular he opened the idea of Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan, told, of course, to a Jewish audience, as one that shows standing with and for a person of another faith.

In the same week I had picked up and read Sarah’s Key, a novel by Tatiana de Rosnay, the interweaving of the story Jewish girl rounded up in the infamous Vel’ d’Hiv round up of Jews by Vichy police in Paris in 1942, with that of a modern American journalist who had married a Frenchman and settled in Paris. The girl was saved and raised by an elderly French couple who wondered and worried about what was happening in and to their beloved country. Fictional though they are, they stand for the many ‘righteous gentiles’ who put their lives on the line for the Jews.

De Rosnay does an excellent job of capturing the need for willful ignorance among the French who were even tangentially involved in this atrocity and the havoc such willful ignorance with all its subsequent secrets wrought in the lives of so many people. I find myself wondering what compromises I make and where I ‘turn a blind eye’ to the injustices of today. Eboo Patel says he understands fear of Muslims when all we hear about Islam is the equivalent of the first two minutes of the local television news, and asks whether a religion more than 1400 years old can be “all bad”? I wonder where all the voices are that say loud and clear that “those people do not represent us” and realize how difficult that must be in a world where being different in a way perceived as negative only brings heartache and pain.

When Christians speak and act in ways that are vile, virulent and hateful how easy is it for us to get media attention for another point of view that says “those people do not represent our faith”? My experience is that news outlets, presumably seeking to be ‘objective’ would rather report on our internecine struggles and that standing against bigotry associated with any faith is much more difficult than it ought to be. I hope I can find ways to speak up about whatever it is that challenges us long before others have to die from my silence or my ‘blind eye’.

The Euro Zone and the Anglican Covenant

2011-02-22T06:34:00.001-05:00

February 22, 2011

If you have followed any of the politics of Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy attempting to establish a European Union within the European Union, you could be forgiven for thinking that they were taking their advice from the Archbishop of Canterbury. The political and economic process in Europe is as cumbersome as any federation of interrelated yet distinctive interests and agenda. Germany and France would like to find ways to ‘consult’ with those 17 countries of the Euro Zone, inviting the other 10 to sign up for a ‘competitiveness pact’ if they want to be part of the decision making conversations. We can be pretty certain that the euro-skeptic British will stay on the outside, preferring not to be governed by Germany and France together, who will be trying to force discipline on their economically less disciplined neighbors to the South as the price of a Euro ‘bailout’.

The sense that ‘we will never get anything done as long as we have to put up with this lot’ is understandable, but is a power play to form a ‘new center’, concentrating power in the historically challenged axis of Germany and France really a good thing for what I supported all those years ago when Edward Heath was touting the European Economic Community?

I can’t help but notice a parallel in Rowan Williams attempt to build a ‘center’ who can ‘govern’ the Anglican Communion as something other than a messy federation for ‘competitive’ reasons. Jim Naughton, a really fine Anglican Journalist and the mind behind the website Episcopal Café has suggested that we are heading toward a situation in which a number of churches sign on to the proposed Covenant, largely out of loyalty to the Archbishop, leaving some Africans and us out of the decision making and on the sidelines, doubtless a more comfortable ‘fellowship’ for those who see themselves as the center.

I think about the period when the reign of the judges gave way to monarchy, with n argument for strength in relation to neighbors (competitiveness or the possibility of ecumenical conversations with Orthodoxy and Rome) over against fidelity (working out difficult stuff in real community in which relationship is not substituted by ‘process’.) I find myself remembering the advice ‘be careful what you pray for’.

Egypt and the Church

2011-02-16T05:21:00.001-05:00

February 16, 2011

Last Sunday, Thomas Friedman, writing in the New York Times said that “the Obama team never found the voice to fully endorse the Tahrir Square revolution until it was over”. What I heard from the President was a consistent message that the people of Egypt should have the capacity for self-determination, and, implicitly, that American influence over events in Egypt was distinctly limited.

I have been impressed that violence has been kept to a minimum and that, thus far, the Egyptian military have acted with restraint.

It is clear that the road to a constitution and open, fair, elections will be tricky and whether that can be achieved in the military leadership’s ambitious timetable of six months remains to be seen. I wonder if that is enough time for a real opposition to emerge that can offer an alternative to the Muslim Brotherhood which seems to be the only organized group of any standing thus far. A friend and I were recalling Iran in 1979 before church on Sunday and doing so without irony.

Anglican leadership in these days has been more like Anglican followership as the Bishop of Egypt has called for calm and when Mubarak’s backers invaded the square and began to be violent, he decried the “wounds being inflicted on Egypt by her own children.” Where is the voice of the church that knows a liberating gospel? Where is a community of Christians in Egypt who aspire to shape the future? Where is there a church that has any relevance to those who led and participated n the protests? It does not appear to be among the Anglicans. The Roman Catholics and the Copts appear to have the same problem. We know what happened when religious authorities in Jesus’ day tried to ‘keep the lid on things’ so that the Romans did not get upset and become oppressive.

I pray that our brothers and sisters in Egypt will find their voice and share in the shaping of their future.

Meanwhile back with the Anglican Communion…

2011-02-07T06:05:00.000-05:00

February 7, 2011

Commentators are trying to get to grips with what, if anything, was the result of the recent meeting of Primates in Dublin. It seems that on one hand, the independence of the various provinces of the Communion was affirmed by the Primates, whole on the other, the governance of whatever constitutes ‘The Communion’ was centralized in and through Lambeth Palace and The Anglican Communion Office. You can read more about it at the Thinking Anglicans website.

To the degree that all this is somewhat incoherent seems to me to stem from a tension between those who share a vision for our working out what it means to be a Catholic Communion in which when push comes to shove, staying in some kind of relationship around the Lord’s Table and allowing that relationship to shape doctrine is more important than requiring assent to certain hierarchically ordained doctrines as the price of admission to the Table. I continue to think that those who want the latter have a perfectly good option with the Romans.

Multiculturalism

2011-02-07T05:56:00.000-05:00

February 7, 2011

David Cameron has suggested that multiculturalism and tolerance have caused many groups within British society to exist independently of each other “apart from the mainstream” and led many young Muslims to feel rootless”. He proposes instead “active muscular liberalism” which will be marked by “a sense of common identity centered on values of human rights, democracy, social integration and equality before the law.”

Reports from most news sources also refer to various responses to Cameron’s speech, particularly from various Muslim groups who wish to be seen as part of the solution rather than part of the problem.

He further suggested that there exists a double standard under which the propagation of radical views among nonwhite groups is tolerated when they would be suppressed if they involved radical groups among whites.
He has waded into troubled waters and has made one basic error: he has assumed that ‘racial views’ held by majority and minority groups are equivalent to each other where we know that the dynamics of interactions over time between majority groups and minority groups (whether racial or any other kind of group marked by ‘difference’) is much more complicated than that. At the same time he is correctly identifying a problem for any society that has marked separation or division in its midst where any group can live and act for the most part as though some others don’t really exist or have impact.
It is the separation that must be challenged and making accusations of ‘double standards’ is not a helpful way forward. The beginning of justice and common cause is finding ways into relationships in which we can begin to recognize, understand, and even appreciate, difference. That need not require giving up a ‘meta-narrative’ of the particular history and values of a country and culture which could indeed be named as “human rights, democracy, social integration and equality before the law”, but might also include a recognition that those very liberal values have been shaped by a fundamentally Christian world view, even if other faith traditions can lead to similar commitments.
I’m left with the sense that I sometimes have after reading a novel by Iris Murdoch in which she is trying to recast the idea of God as ‘The Good’ and wondering if there is any real basis for morality apart from some ’idea of God’ even if that is cast in terms of some kind of ‘humanism’.
Multiculturalism in Europe poses slightly different challenges and opportunities than it does in the United States because it takes slightly different forms. Cameron is right and doing a good thing when he engages the conversation in a public and international forum.

Revolution

2011-02-03T06:51:00.002-05:00

February 3, 2011

Two thirds of the Primates of the Anglican Communion met in Dublin last week from where they issued a number of statements at the end of their time discussing such things as ‘the scope of the primates meeting' and their self proclaimed ‘enhance role’ in ’guiding’ the Communion. Many of them made statements deploring the death of David Kato, the Ugandan gay rights activist, while aware that the Archbishop of Uganda, among others, declined to attend as long as the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church was going to be invited and present.

Meanwhile protesters were taking to the streets in Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, the Sudan and elsewhere apparently demanding an end to the rule of a number of long time autocratic leaders. They sent a letter of support to the President Bishop of Jerusalem and the Middle East who is also the bishop of Egypt, Mouneeer Anis. Bishop Anis, in similar terns to his Coptic counterpart has called for an end to the rioting in Egypt so that things can “get back to normal’ now that Hosni Mubarak has said that he would, in effect, step down in September.

While it is too soon to know exactly what all this rioting means and what will be its lasting impact, it is pretty clear that whatever else happens, it Is not likely to end in ‘getting back to normal’, at least in Egypt.

There is something quite surreal about all this to me. In one sense I’m glad the Primates did not rush to say something to a situation that is still unfolding but I’m left with a sense that we are ‘fiddling while Rome burns’.

We are told that one cleat place of long time contact between Egypt and the United States is through the two military establishments and can at least give thanks for the restraint, thus far, of the Egyptian military in a situation that looks ripe for the introduction of another military dictatorship. Maybe there is hope for some kind of more democratic system emerging in many of these troubled countries. In the mean time all I know to do is to watch andpray for a just peace to emerge from the turmoil.

Climate in Uganda

2011-01-28T09:28:00.001-05:00

January 28, 2011

It has been widely reported on Christian discussion sites and more recently in the newspapers that a Ugandan civil rights activist has been murdered in his home earlier this week. President Obama and the Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton have both issued statements condemning this murder and the climate of bigotry and violence that surrounds it. The Archbishop of Canterbury, meeting with Anglican Primates in Dublin has today, (belatedly in the view of many), issued his own statement even as protestors outside the meeting were begging him to do so. The Primate of Uganda, Luke Henry Orombi is not in attendance because he doesn’t want to be I the room with the presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church.

The slow and half-hearted condemnation of bigotry in the midst of a meeting marred by the absence of those in our church who foment such bigotry by their absence is both unfortunate and a disgrace.

That said, we must recognize that the Anglican Communion is only a ‘bit player’ in the Ugandan horror. If anything, Dr. Williams’ consistent efforts to keep Orombi In some kind of conversation had led to some statements, however muted, from some Ugandan bishops against a bill proposed in the Ugandan Parliament that would codify the outlawing of homosexuality and allow for the death penalty in some, (loosely defined) circumstances.

Inevitably, rather as we saw after the murder of Representative Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona, there is a lot of finger pointing going on. The beleaguered gay community is clear that this is a hate crime against an outspoken activist who had been singled out along with a few others by a small circulation virulent newspaper who perpetuates the myth that homosexuals raid schools and recruit children. (The paper subsequently lost a lawsuit on the issue.) The police want to portray the crime as nothing but another robbery–murder in a notoriously bad area.

The chairperson of one gay rights group in that country, a Ms. Val Kalende, has blamed American evangelicals who visited in 2009 led m by a man called Don Schmierer. He is accused of holding rallies and meeting with Ugandan officials of how gay men sodomize teenage boys and how the gay movement is an institution intended to defeat the marriage based society. Mr. Schmierer is ‘horrified’, feels like a victim of prejudice himself, says he offered parenting classes and “spoke to help people.”

Whatever influence Mr. Schmierer had in shaping the proposed Ugandan laws which are still under consideration but on hold thanks to threats in aid cuts from foreign nations, any responsibility he might bear is not a direct cause and effect kind of responsibility. Viruletn laws condemning homosexuality are to be found throughout the African Continent and especially in the East.

People of good will clearly have a role to play in protesting this insanity and making clear that prejudice in any form leads to violence in many forms. The hard work of creating a climate in which gun violence is abhorred and made difficult is part of that work in many places in this world. So is creating climates that do not solve disagreement with abuses of power. So are many other things. What we know beyond a shadow of a doubt is that those in power resist any notion of climate change. Those in power profit from the way things are. That is how we get our power.

In the church we are by no means immune to a dislike of change when it seems to affect our lives which are hard enough without someone monkeying with the balance of them. No0netheless, we also know what grace there can be for everybody when those who are currently held back, held down, threatened, persecuted and the like are set free and assisted in becoming full participants in the community which is more fully human itself because of their participation.

Government and Environment

2011-01-24T05:45:00.001-05:00

January 24, 2011

At a recent board meeting of the Berkeley Divinity School at Yale, there was much celebration of a marvelous capital gift to endow a faculty position at Yale called the H. Boone and Violet M. Porter Chair in Religion and Environmental Stewardship. During worship we heard a sermon from a student combining a Divinity degree with one in Forestry who made all kinds of points about culture change and population growth and how they would affect the children in the room when they are forty. He connected concern for the environment with prophetic concern for fighting racism, poverty and any number of other evils. He ended with a suggestion that students could work together on building community gardens and the like.

I found myself thinking, as I often do when confronted with the magnitude of the environmental crisis that seems to be coming our way, that any practices of environmental stewardship I might adopt on a personal level, while spiritually useful and a reminder of what is really important, don’t make a dent in what needs major governmental and regulatory attention. I value recycling and notice how much it has lessened the amount of trash we produce at home. I remember a sermon from Walter Smith some years ago in which he wondered how long it had been since some of us had felt earth rather than concreted under our bare feet, and I like to make a point of finding times to do just that as a personal way of staying literally and physically grounded. But when it comes to the kind of environmental shifts that our pointed towards in Jared Diamond’s Collapse and any number of sermons, I believe that addressing the complex network of issues that make for proper concern for the environment is a proper role for governments at the highest levels.

I worry that in the current debate about the role of government in this country, a mood that opposes regulation, especially when it interferes with what sounds like a belief in our God-given right to make profit at any expense, will mean that we will fail to do what we need to do today in order to provide for those who follow us tomorrow. While I know that there is a healthy debate about what effects there might be from climate change, I sense a kind of wishful thinking in some quarters that we really don’t need to worry about that now. It sounds like the idea that we can fight two long and breathtakingly expensive wars without having to pay for them.

Al this leads me to be doubly grateful for those who work on all of our behalf to understand the issues facing us and to lobby our government at every level to pay attention. I’m also grateful for our Earth Stewards at All Saints’ who organized an opportunity for responsible disposal and recycling of our no-longer-used electronics.

The Role of Government

2011-01-14T16:39:00.001-05:00

January 14, 2011

Paul Krugman had a column in today’s New York Times that helped me put a growing feeling into words. He pointed out that the conversation about the appropriate role of government has changed in recent years from one in which everyone basically assumed that government has some kind of role in being a mechanism for caring for the weakest in an affluent society, to one in which some people assume that government’s role should be severely limited and there is no ‘social program’ that can be considered legitimate.

I remember when Ronald Reagan started campaigning on the basis that ‘government is the problem’. He, as I remember it, wanted a limited role for government, but he also talked about the weakest in society. He was very taken (as was Margaret Thatcher) with the monetarist theories of Milton Friedman and he talked about how wealth would ‘trickle down’ to the neediest and everyone’s fortunes would be raised. It was pretty clear then and is even clearer now that monetarism is no more a magic theory than any version of the Keynesianism that it sought to replace. BUT, at least he seemed to believe that there is some necessity in a civilized society that the neediest have some kind of safety net.

What I hope to hear in our current debates is some concern for those who are weakest among us. It is conceivable to me that a Christian could see a very limited role for the federal government. What is not conceivable is that they would see no communal or regulatory role for caring for the weakest among us. I think about our traditions of stewardship, Israel’s gleaning laws allowing for the wayfarer and stranger to eat, prophetic concern for widows and orphans and on and on. It seems to me that we can have a legitimate debate about the appropriate level of ‘community’ at which such needs might be addressed (provided that the discussion also includes the appropriate level and source of resources). What I near now is a kind of implicit individualism that, whatever its intent, sounds angry and greedy and selfish to my ear. “Keep the government’s hand out of my pocket. My money is mine. Don’t regulate business. Leave everything up to individuals. If people choose to live on the streets, then that is their choice.”

Bipartisanship and civil discourse depend upon some common vision. Paul Krugman does not believe we have it. Is this not a place where conservative and progressive Christians could both find and model common ground?

Natural Disasters

2011-01-14T08:50:00.001-05:00

January 14, 2011

Our own Kevin York-Simmons recently presented a paper at the Annual Conference of the Society of Christian Ethics in New Orleans. Building on the work of Jon Sobrino he looks at the increasing incidence of moral analysis in the wake of natural disasters. At one level this looks like media looking to assign blame in the wake of such disasters. Why was the death and destruction caused by the Haitian earthquake so much more severe than the Chilean one a few months later, when that one was so much more powerful? Kevin looks at the moral, pastoral and theological consequences of Sobrino’s approach and the proper place of human agency in ’natural’ disasters.

I was remind of the work of Jared Diamond in his book Collapse (Viking, 2005) which looks at how societies choose to fail or succeed, including making choices that lead to ‘natural’ devastation.

Kevin does not shy away from addressing the complexities of poverty and race. Is there any way that decent building codes with relatively costly consequences could have been introduced or enforced in the midst of Haitian poverty? Those codes made the difference for Chile. Were the policy decisions that let the levees of New Orleans remain inadequate in spite of evidence of the same over a long period of time somehow a result of unconscious prejudice against the poor black people who would be most affected in the wake of Hurricane Katrina?

He also recognizes the real difficulties of a tendency to undertake analysis (and blaming) in ways that end up blaming the victim. I found myself thinking about the work of Valerie Batts on modern racism (and other ‘isms’) in which she identifies how the issues and challenges of the power group are mirrored within the non-power group and internalized in different ways. For example a liberal teacher might pass a student doing inadequate work in order to somehow try and mitigate the student’s disadvantages in life. That ‘dysfunctional helping’ can get internalized in the student over time as an attitude that believes it is not necessary to do the work because it is always possible to ‘beat the system’. In addition, the conversation takes place on multiple levels (personal, relational, institutional and cultural) with the frequent consequence that we ‘talk past each other’ in these important conversations. The work that different groups in society need to do in order to be prepared to mitigate the consequences of natural disaster differ according to one’s ‘place’ or ’position’ in the various power relationships involved.

On the theological front, Kevin recognizes that a moral analysis of natural disaster relieves us of the kind of theological conclusion that assumes that such disasters fall upon sinners who, by their actions, have in some way deserved the disaster. I’m not sure that much of the blame game goes far beyond this kind of analysis. Sobrino, apparently, turns to an idea of God suffering with those who suffer and leaves it at that while seeking to move the focus to human choice and human agency in the devastation wrought by these disasters. The question, of course, is whether or not our story of faith assumes that God can or should prevent such natural disasters as earthquake, flood and famine.

Taseer and Giffords

2011-01-11T16:49:00.001-05:00

January 11, 2011

By all accounts Salman Taseer was a well respected man in Pakistan. Until his assassination on January 4th he had been serving as governor of the populous Punjab region. He had taken up the cause of an illiterate woman who had been in an argument with neighbors over drinking water and in the process said something which led to her being accused of blasphemy. Asia Bibi is a Christian who was tried, convicted and given the mandatory sentence of death. Taseer had called publically for her to be pardoned. He had also campaigned to change the blasphemy laws. His murderer was one of his body guards and the others did little or nothing while he was murdered. Apparently the killer was able to make a statement to the media while being arrested. He acknowledged killing the governor because of his position.

Sectarian violence, mostly, though not exclusively, against Christians carried out by Muslims ahs been on the rise in Pakistan in recent months. Pakistan, while intended primarily as a Muslim state in distinction from India, was founded in 1947 with a clear commitment to religious tolerance. Most press commentary on this series of events paints a pretty gloomy picture for Pakistan going forward unless those who support tolerance begin to speak up, clearly risking life and limb as did Mr. Taseer.

I cannot help but think of this in light of the Arizona shootings including Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords who was, apparently the primary target of the shooter even though others died and she might well survive. It is not clear to me that the shooting was politically motivated although most commentary seems to make that assumption. I am pleased by the calls for reform in the gun laws (although am unaware of any calls for reform coming from anyone in Arizona who have passed laws last year making it legal for citizens to carry a concealed weapon.) I am not optimistic that our elected leaders will find the necessary backbone to take on the gun lobby based on their past performance. I wonder how many more of these kinds of shootings will need to happen before they do muster the will to act. Kudos to Representative King, (R) of New York for being willing to propose new gun laws.

I as also glad to see the expression of condolence from Sarah Palin because many have pointed out that the same site features a number of democrats that she does not like with gun sights placed over their districts. Whatever emerges about the motivations of the murderer in this particular shooting, there is no doubt that an atmosphere of intolerance has been growing, not only in Pakistan, but also in this country. The rhetoric of the tea party is only one piece of it. It is clear that such ‘clarity’ helps win elections, but I yearn to hear from politicians of any party a sense of the greater good, a concern for the weakest and neediest among us (without requiring a kind of sentimental, tearful lip service to concern for such people). Such an expression would give substance and context to our policy debates and could serve as an antidote to intolerance.

Class Action and Class

2011-01-10T09:40:00.002-05:00

January 10, 2011

Some time ago I read the story of Fen-Phen, the dangerous drug that was eventually banned but not before it had destroyed many lives. The story was told by Alicia Mundy in Dispensing with the Truth. It was the story of brave attorneys taking on a powerful industry and lobby on behalf of victims who did not know each other and who only knew that their lives would never be the same again. The ‘class action’ lawyers were, for the most part a ‘class act’.

So it was with some dismay that I read Curtis Wilkie’s The Fall of the House of Zeus: The Rise and Fall of America’s Most Powerful Trial Lawyer. It is the story of Dickie Scruggs, a man who made many fortunes taking on asbestos and big tobacco and the like. Wilkie does not come across as sanctimonious about his subject, a man who was eventually sent to prison for attempting to bribe a judge. I was clear that Scruggs made enemies early on in his astonishing career and was frequently in court defending himself against charges that he had promised money to associates and then not paid them. Once the money started rolling in they all wanted what they thought was their rightful share. At the same time he did things that rich people do: gave large gifts in his community, to his university and to political candidates.

What brought him down, in the end, was not some dire and dastardly premeditated deed, but more a pattern of expecting that he could make anything happen, that he was golden, almost a sense that he was born to succeed in what ever he did. The bribery, according to Wilkie, was not Scruggs’ idea, but something he eventually bought into while an associate was wearing a wire provided by some very excited federal agents who saw a chance to bring down a rich man. It is a sad story with a large cast and no one comes out looking particularly good.

The phrase ‘banality of evil’ comes to mind. There was no decision to commit an unthinkable crime. There was, rather, a pattern of action and belief that supported acts on the edge, created in Scruggs a sense of invulnerability and eventually led to the commission of a great crime almost without thought or realization as to what was happening.

It all goes back to the idea that it is the little decisions we make that shape the big ones: that little fudging of the truth on our tax returns or expenses, that extra desert or glass of wine, that box of pens from the office all lead to that sense that somehow we deserve what we have. It is the affliction of embezzlers and, apparently, some people who accumulate great wealth without cultivating a kind of self awareness or spirituality that keeps them on a good path.

The Feast of the Epiphany

2011-01-05T16:46:00.001-05:00

January 5, 2011

I hope everyone who reads this had a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Tonight being Twelfth Night, the Feast of the Epiphany is much on my mind. In my previous parish we had a lovely evening service to celebrate it. Alexander and Joanna were both baptized at that service. Here we have found little or no energy for coming downtown for evening celebrations such as Epiphany, Ascension, Annunciation and so on. So we tend to mark things on Wednesdays when many have gathered anyway for various activities and classes. This will be the second year we have tried a celebration which is mostly aimed at telling the story of the magi with dance and song for our children, but open to everyone. The service is followed by a festive Wednesday Night Supper.

One of my assumptions about the stories of Jesus’ birth is that in spite of God being made manifest to the poor, marginalized and outcast in the form of shepherds and to the wise, the powerful, the seekers after truth and the nations that this birth in a stable in Bethlehem did not seem like a momentous event of great significance to most people in the moment. That leads me to wonder where I am being granted grace to see God made manifest.

I think about the couple who are the only people caring for an elderly relative in her final months, while still juggling two careers. I think about the man who seemed to be homeless who left a dollar in our crèche for Jesus while the church was being decorated this Christmas past. I think about the unprompted and uncensored genuine response of a child to a scene of great beauty. What these all have in common is that God is made manifest in generosity, self disclosure and self-giving. The practice of generosity is not necessarily liberating in itself, but it can lay the foundation for those marvelous moments of grace in which we are freed to be generous and find ourselves part of the mystery of incarnation ad God is made manifest both to and through us.

Happy Epiphany to one and all.

Kohlberg and Christian Faith

2010-12-21T05:32:00.000-05:00

December 21, 2010

I mentioned Lawrence Kohlberg and his theory of moral development last Sunday as a way of awakening some recognition that we do, in fact, develop in some fairly predictable ways in many areas of our life. A friend said on the way out of church “I really didn’t expect to hear about post-conventional morality on a
Sunday morning.” I did not sense that she was distressed about this, --quite the reverse if anything. It seems to me that if Kohlberg’s theory has merit, and if it could be applied to Jesus in relation to the religious authorities of his day, he could be identified as someone who was by and large ‘post conventional’ over against a ‘law and order‘ orientation of many religious leaders of the day.

I realize that this is a pretty gross generalization on a number of fronts, but am struck by how often Christianity, the churches or Christian Faith are identified with a view that suggests that the will of God is somehow enshrined in a moral order supported by law. We have seen this recently in the move toward the ending of the policy of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ regarding gay and lesbian members of the armed services. We were told that military chaplains were opposed to any change in the policy on religious grounds. The New York Times carried a story on Saturday (December 17) about a debate at Belmont College in Nashville, TN as to whether it was going to remain true to its conservative Christian and Baptist roots or become more of a world class university with an “aggressively earned…reputation as a progressive, artsy place to study the music business.” The focus of the discussion was a lesbian soccer coach who was having a baby with her partner.

It seems that many people, including many Christians, assume that a large part of what Christianity is about is ‘helping us lead a better life’, ‘giving our children a moral upbringing’, ‘providing stability in society by teaching traditional morality’ and the like as though morality was somehow an enshrined set of rules and norms rather than a way of living that gets worked out in differing ways in differing situation as and contexts. I know this is an area of legitimate debate. What bothers me is how many people assume where Christians must stand in the debate. Surely Jesus did not “die to make us good” as I used to have to sing on Good Friday in Mrs. Alexander’s hymn of 1847, There is a green hill far away.

More Fair Game

2010-12-16T10:01:00.001-05:00

December 16, 2010

I suppose it was inevitable that the movie Fair Game would be controversial in some way. What I took to be a move primarily about the effects on Valerie Plame’s marriage and life of her being ‘outed’ as a covert CIA operative, is, according to the director, Doug Liman, is “about the President of the United States lying to the American people, and what happened to the people that challenged him”. This from an article at CJR.org in response to an editorial in the Wall Street Journal by Judith Miller (a journalist who was herself caught up in reporting the issues of the case at the time.) Both articles are worth reading for anyone interested in the history, but they are also examples of the polemic that is so divisive in the US at the moment where any deviance from a party line (on either end of the political spectrum) gets a vigorous party line response. I would not accuse President Bush of lying to the American people in the sense of some personal and morally culpable choice. At the same time, and however it came about, a lie was told which was a critical part of the argument that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and so part of the case for American engaging in a war of aggression, the costs of which we will be paying for generations to come. (Serious question: Is that, as I believe, an indisputable statement of fact? Or is that somehow a political statement, meaning someone would not like it said?)

Fast forward to the kind of rhetoric around President Obama’s ‘tax deal’. While I do not understand the logic of being both against the deficit, AND against any ending of temporary tax cuts for people earning over $250,000 per year AND supporting the costs of two wars, I do get that letting some temporary tax cuts go a little longer in exchange for the continuation of unemployment benefits is worth doing. There are too many people hurting right now to play games with their lives for a principle. I’m pro-pragmatism.

A Dean’s Diary

2010-12-09T07:40:00.001-05:00

December 9, 2010

I was a newly ordained deacon when I had the privilege of preaching at the wedding of a friend in St. Margaret’s Church, Westminster, which is the ‘parish church’ of Parliament. The Canon of Westminster who also served as Rector of the parish was a lovely man called Trevor Beeson. He could not have been more kind or hospitable to this strange phenomenon of a very young English deacon ordained in The Episcopal Church (then ECUSA). He went on to serve as Dean of Winchester Cathedral from 1987-1996, during which he kept a Diary (SCM, 1997). He also published a similar account of his time at Westminster and some wonderful portraits of some of the ‘characters’ that have served the Church of England as The Bishops, The Deans and so on. A few years ago he ‘came out’ as the author of most of the clerical obituaries in The Telegraph and published a collection of them. At one point in his Winchester Diary he recounts friends being offended on his behalf when and obituary of his immediate predecessor referred to him as “possibly the last of the gentleman Deans.” He could not tell them that he has actually written the thing.

His diary recounts the challenges of a Cathedral system that gives a Dean virtually no ability to manage, rein in, discipline or otherwise count the cathedral clergy as his staff. He recounts overcoming such difficulty to raise over 7 Million pounds in a recession, the encouragement of the arts, the challenge of his wife’s progressive decline from Alzheimer’s disease, his (good) relationship with his bishop and a host of other matters. He occasionally allows his wry humor free rein with lines such as “after a long rehearsal, so-and-so officially retired.”

A fair amount of time in these years was given over to issues around the ordination of women, which he supported, but his bishop and some other members of his Chapter, did not. He made extraordinary arrangements for the consciences of those with whom he had to work who saw the ordination of women as ‘contrary to the will of God’, but after the fist women were ordained in the Cathedral he remarks that in a few years “we will wonder what all the fuss was about.” He thought it sad that his bishop should have stayed at home and missed a marvelous and significant celebration while a Suffragan carried out the ordinations.

I think about our more recent journey with regard to gay and lesbian people and hope that one day the whole church will ‘wonder what all the fuss was about’ even as I recognize that we are not there yet. I was heartened by reports of a recent meeting of our wedding guild who, I’m told, are excited about the likelihood of further Celebrations of Commitment taking place in the church and looking forward to being able to serve all of our parishioners.

If you come across anything written by Trevor Beeson, even if you think you would not be interested, I promise you will enjoy what you read.

Praying in Public

2010-12-08T05:18:00.000-05:00

December 8, 2010

Earlier this week I prayed for the work of the Atlanta City Council, something I have done once before. I have also prayed for the House of Representatives of North Carolina and the Senate of Virginia (who gave me a lovely small Jefferson cup to remind me of the occasion). There is something strange about offering prayer in such public legislative settings and I’m not sure what makes that so.

It could be strange because of the separation of Church and State business, but constitutional buffs tell me that a firewall between the two was never intended.

Or it could be the age old problem for Christians as to whether or not to pray through or in the name of Jesus. My standard with that question is that if I am allowed to be generous it is best to be so, and if there is some implied requirement that I be so, I prefer to pray with confidence in who I am as a Christian. (On this last occasion I asked that ‘whatever our tradition of faith we may carry out the work we are given to do in the assurance of your love for us, O God.)

It might be strange to pray in a legislature as a participant in some kind of meeting that needs a ritual but really doesn’t have a natural one. On this occasion the Invocation fell between the Call to Order and Roll Call of Council Members (a quorum for the 1 p.m. meeting was present by 1.15 p.m.) and the Pledge of Allegiance. This last is always tricky for a ‘resident alien’ who is unwilling to take the oath very reasonably required of U.S. Citizens. It currently reads as follows:

I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God.

In no way do I wish to express any disrespect to my hosts, so I usually turn toward the flag, and, if in very public view, place my hand over my heart, and then remain silent.

That done, I was then ushered out, while a group was being recognized for completing a massive and successful food drive. Our need for ritual is real. This is particularly so for otherwise non religious people seeking to get married or families trying to mark the death of someone they loved but who requested ‘no funeral’. I see it most clearly a t a Presidential Inauguration. (If only they would let the church take care of that. At least we can usually organize a procession.)

All this is by no means terrible, merely odd.

World War

2010-12-07T06:59:00.002-05:00

December 7, 2010

This fall, a friend gave me David Fromkin’s extraordinary book, A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East (Holt, 1989). It chronicles the chaos of the era in which the Allies of Europe led to the drawing of lines on a map creating the countries of Israel, Iraq, Jordan and elsewhere (1914-1922). He sees the formation of the Middle East as a consequence of ‘The Great Game’, the age in which Britain sought to protect the road to India from French, Russians and anyone else.

One of the things that becomes most clear in the book is that the European powers introduced an artificial system of ‘states and nations’ on the assumptions that they could change the fundamental life of Islamic Asia, that they should and that while this was about extending their own power it was dressed up as being good for the Arabs.

As with everything about the First World War it is a confusing story of bureaucratic infighting, terrible communications, unbridled arrogance, all underneath a heavy layer of myth. Most of the mythology was crated in the imagination of T. E. Lawrence, Lawrence of Arabia.

This is not a ‘happy read’, but is essential for having a clue about what is going on, (and what does not have a chance of going on) in the Middle East (including Afghanistan) today.

Ken Follett, tells a similar story in a wonderful and accessible novel of the First World War in the first volume of his Century Trilogy. It is called Fall of Giants (Dutton, 2010), and once again the arrogance of those with power in social respects and international respects, in class systems and gender inequality, in Europeans over Africans and Arabs, in Christians over Muslims and on and on. It is a sad story that caused untold suffering and slaughter and provided the seeds for societal change among those willing to be self critical. The consequence of that war was not only the Second World War. This idea is a main thrust of John Keegan’s magnificent history, The First World War (Knopf, 1999). It also fueled class struggle and bolshevism with its eventual strengthening of democratic institutions and countries, gave impetus to the case of equal rights for women in such democracies, began the rumblings that became civil rights movements and also moved the Democratic West further and further from the norms and assumptions of other peoples and systems.

I support fully the vigorous defense of our way of life and the freedoms that we enjoy within it. I remain hard pressed to understand how our aggressive wars contribute to that defense. I was never sold on the logic of invading Iraq. I thought going after Osama Bin Laden and his organization made sense. I can see some merit in trying to keep Pakistan honest and an ally. But I am unclear what virtue there is in continuing to pursue military action in Afghanistan that talks as thought the outcome will be the formation of a functioning ‘country’. Even if I thought that was a desirable goal, I can find no basis for having any hope that it is achievable through warfare.

Fair Game

2010-12-06T06:24:00.001-05:00

December 6, 2010

Fair Game is a film that I saw a couple of weeks ago and about which I keep thinking. It is the story of Valerie Plame, the covert CIA operative who was ‘outed’ in the press in concert with administration conversations about how to rein in her husband. Joe Wilson was a career member of the Foreign Service who had been an ambassador in the Clinton administration and who had written an op-ed piece for The New York Times. He believed that a statement made by President George W. Bush in a State of the Union address was wrong, and importantly so, as it was part of the justification for the invasion of Iraq and was made contrary to the report of an investigation he had carried out as a temporary consultant for the CIA.

The movie is really more about the effects on the lives of Plame and Wilson more than it is a political screed. Nonetheless, it brings me back to the question I have had since the beginning: Why did we invade Iraq? I once had the privilege of being in a small group in conversation with journalists Judy Woodruff and Ray Suarez, soon after the infamous “Mission Accomplished” declaration. Neither of them could really answer the question as to why we had troops fighting and dying in Iraq. The idea of there being WMDs that had been sold to us in a concerted campaign that included the President’s State of the Union Address and Colin Powell’s ‘Adlai moment’ at the UN had been discredited, as had the basis for that belief.

I think it came down to people in an administration who were ‘believers’. The believed that Saddam Hussein was an evil dictator and may well have been correct about that. They believed that Iraq and the world would be better off without him leading a strategically critical country. They also believed that Iraq, with its vast oil reserves and relatively ‘secular’ government was ripe for ‘nation building’ and the creation of a real ally in the Region. It is not clear that these last beliefs were based on much beyond a certainty that any right thinking person would want democracy as their form of government. That strikes me then and strikes me now as a flimsy basis for sending troops to fight and die.

We were the aggressors in that war. Traditional notions of ‘reparations’ don’t seem to apply. And it looks as though we will be paying for our choices for a long time to come. Our financial situation in general and our national debt in particular are not solely the problem of bankers and sub-prime mortgages. Surely trying to wage the most expensive war in history without asking for sacrifice from everybody to pay for it is bonkers. We really should require that engaging a war on this scale should require an automatic commitment to a draft. That would help clarify the decision making process and ensure that we are not dying for the opinions and beliefs of those who have only political ideas at stake.

English Church Buildings

2010-11-29T14:04:00.002-05:00

November 29, 2010

Our friend Giles Fraser has written an article for the Church Times making a utilitarian case fro the maintenance of Church buildings in England rather than their being ‘sold off’ as ‘too expensive. He writes “As the new National Churches Trust survey makes absolutely clear, the 47,000 places of worship in the UK provide the backbone of civil society.”

While this may or may not be a bit grandiose, he addresses neither the problem of who should pay for the upkeep and maintenance of these buildings, nor the opportunity cost in terms of mission for doing so.

My father is treasurer of a small church. A three minute walk across the fields brings you to either the church in Little Thurlow or the church in Great Thurlow depending on which way you walk. These two pretty village church buildings are part of an eight parish cure currently in need of a Rector. In spite of relatively successful “cure services” where everyone is expected to go to a single service once a month or so, the real desire of the villagers is to have ‘their’ church maintained and used. Last Sunday 15 people were reported present for a ‘Service of the Word’ led by a lay reader.

My middle brother is part of a different eight parish cure. His rector announced last Sunday that he was leaving for a single parish cure in another county. There were seven people present that day including the rector and his wife and retired priest.

I don’t know the ins and outs of financing the maintenance of these buildings. I do know that the Diocese continues to take and distribute the lion’s share of any money collected for all the good work that churches do together such as work in schools, prisons, hospitals and other institutions of society within the diocesan boundaries. I also know that the system is ‘top down’ and pretty dispiriting for those charged with raising the money and keeping the buildings open.

Both sets of villages are assured that it will be ‘a while’ before they can expect to have a rector. Not too many people are looking to do ‘rural ministry’, and when they are, they are more likely to be interested in those places where a single congregation can afford to sustain a rector by themselves.

So back to the buildings. There is no doubt that Canon Fraser is right and that these places of worship are integral to the life and history of the localities in which they are found. Many struggling parishes could manage a lot better fi they were able to ‘keep’ more of the money they raised and were granted more autonomy as to how to spend that money. Nonetheless it is really hard to see how a handful of parishioners can afford to maintain a medieval building, let alone support their clergy. In the age of fast cars it is worth noting that both my parents and my brothers can be at a Cathedral for worship within a 20 minute drive on a Sunday.

I’m glad this is not my problem to solve, but I would have to be thinking along the lines of helping congregations develop a plan to grow in their support of the work they carry out, including the maintenance of buildings. If in, say, five years they were not able to make it, then they would have a number of options for ‘Plan B’—mothballing, closing or selling some buildings. Part of the plan could include merging some of the institutional and diocesan responsibilities with parish expectations.

I’m perfectly certain there are hundreds of ‘reasons’ why such an approach is not acceptable to one party or another, but surely something has to give if the Church of England is to be a vital force that can really serve as “the backbone of civil society’.

The Proposed Anglican Covenant Limps Along

2010-11-28T03:51:00.002-05:00

November 28, 2010
The First Sunday in Advent

The First Sunday in Advent seemed a good time to return to occasional ‘blogging’ in and for our parish. The proposed Anglican Covenant is a necessary, albeit, unfortunate topic.

The Covenant was first proposed in “The Windsor Report” as a response to conflict among Anglicans following the Consecration of Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire in 2003. Some Anglicans refused to attend Holy Communion with others as a result.

What has emerged since those days are two key developments. One is that a number of Anglicans have decided to follow a path of ‘purity of doctrine’ which mostly seems to mean in practice a denial of the full humanity of women (at least as far as the Church is concerned) and the condemnation of homosexuality. A not insignificant number of Episcopalians have left The Episcopal Church and joined a new denomination of self-styled Anglicans. Some provinces, notably in Africa, have ‘recognized’ and declared themselves ‘in communion’ with this new effort.

The other key development is that the Archbishop of Canterbury has thrown his weight and authority behind the development of an Anglican Covenant that is now making its way through the provinces of the Communion for ‘response’. The ‘driver’ for this wordy effort is found in the commentary on the controversial section 4.2 which reads “From our recent history it is evident that some developments bring dispute, disruption and tension. The clear majority of responses demonstrated that a section of the Covenant which seeks to provide an ordered way for the Communion to approach disagreement remains a necessary feature of the Covenant.” The effort is to provide some means of resolving disputes without disrupting the Communion. The key principles are ‘inter-dependence and mutual accountability’.

The Archbishop told the General Synod of the Church of England that without the Covenant we could expect the dismantling of the Communion ‘piece by piece’. The commentary on section 4.2 of the document acknowledges, then dismisses, my position. “There remains in some quarters a lingering feeling that being in communion requires only positive affirmation and encouragement.” I would not characterize my position as “a lingering feeling”, nor as the belief that ‘being in communion requires only positive affirmation and encouragement”. I would characterize my position as the belief that “being in Communion requires being in communion or table fellowship irrespective of cultural differences.”

I see no good coming from continued efforts to keep this thing alive, especially in light of a statement made by leaders of the conservative movement known as GAFCON in the middle of the General Synod of the C of E saying that the Covenant is not satisfactory to them as it does not go far enough.

We have learned in this country that there really is no placating the group that wants a church founded on some notion of ‘purity of doctrine’ rather than the infinitely more messy search for ‘right relationship’, itself a gift of grace when made manifest, and in whose service doctrine is developed, put to use, and modified over time. The foundation for any scheme of union has been and should remain the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral.For these reasons I have signed on to a group led by an international group of respected ‘bloggers’ called “No Anglican Covenant”.
We may well wind up with a number of provinces ‘signing on’. They, presumably, would be the ones invited to the Archbishop of Canterbury’s every-ten-year-gathering. Those who do not sign on might be accorded some kind of observer status or could possibly free up a great deal of money for mission rather than meetings. I’m not knocking meetings and I’m not knocking costly investment in relationship. I’m pointing out that should Anglicanism be defined by our having some central ‘Standing Committee’ who can help us find our way through the ‘relational consequences of serious disputes’, that our not being invited to the party is not the end of the world.

Preparing for a Diverse World

2010-09-25T16:26:00.001-04:00

September 25, 2010

When I took Alexander to the University of Chicago we were struck by the wide variety of nationalities and interests that were manifest among freshman in his house. His roommate is of Indian descent from Los Angeles. I believe we heard as a first language Russian, Turkish, Korean, Mandarin, Japanese, and Arabic from among the sixty or so freshmen who were moving in. (I sometimes had to ask what language they were speaking.) The President of the University, Robert Zimmer made much of this reality in his remarks at the opening convocation. He was clear that diversity of opinion and perspective was not a substitute for rigorous academic enquiry but wad the context for really difficult work and the formation of appropriate judgments. Diversity of the kind he applauds does not mean ‘multiple truths’ or relativism, but what I would call hard spiritual work.

For all our socio-economic and other diversity at All Saints’, the world in which we and our children will be living is already much more international and complex than we sometimes experience in our comfort zones. This is why we have said that it is through engaging God and Neighbor that we grow in faith. Learning to recognize, understand and even appreciate difference are critical skills for people of faith. How can we build the development of those skills into our common life?

The work of our 2020 groups looking at various strategic issues such as this one hold promise with clear work in the area of diversity being included in leadership development, global missions, preparation for and reflection on transformational journeys of various kinds and so on. This will demand some of our time and attention and resources as we move forward. Anyone who wants a taste of hat this world is like could visit the student union building at Georgia Tech for a glimpse in to the future that is already present in many of the formative places for students in this country.

Saint Paul and the Redeemer

2010-09-24T17:00:00.001-04:00

September 20, 2010

Yesterday, before moving Alexander into his dormitory at the University of Chicago, I attended the 8 am Eucharist at the nearest parish to the campus. St Paul and the Redeemer seemed to be a vibrant place with all the signs of good leadership under a rector called Peter Lane, careful, thoughtful liturgy, an engaged multi racial group of about 15 or 20 for the early service, sounds of a choir practicing in the background, an attractive nave set up in the round with the altar in the center, good visitor information and on and on.

The new assistant Rector, Ray Massenberg preached an excellent homily in which he addressed the hard question of the parable of the unjust steward while introducing an expanded feeding ministry as a spiritual matter for all those engaged in it. I was particularly struck by his description of serving canned food to those in need from the church proper, how some community developed and the organist who was present played some impromptu hymns. We were treated to a careful, thoughtful sermon, inviting congregational response in a new initiative at the onset of the program year from a deacon who had been learning the needs of the surrounding area. This has all the signs of something that will become central to the identity of the congregation which describes itself as “an Episcopal Community.”

Mr. Massenberg referenced the recent report that one in seven Americans are now living below the federally determined poverty level. I picked up a book called Out of Reach (Yale, 2009) by a member of the U Chicago faculty called Scott Allard. He looks at the ways in which the American ‘safety net’ has changed over the years from cash assistance to programmatic and systemic assistance. He looks at the increased role of non profits and faith based organizations in the delivery of help and the question of ‘place’ or ‘geography’ including community y trust in the ability of the poor to access such services. He addresses the difficulty of service providers who are juggling uncertain funding among other challenges in looking at larger policy issues and the tendency of government agencies to become distant from the realties as they focus on ‘block funding’. I don’t know the field well but suspect that this is an important book that should be read by those who ought to be looking at how we respond to the reality of the poor.

Three Vignettes

2010-09-13T07:47:00.000-04:00

September 13, 2010

Newsweek (September 13, 2010 p.21f) tells the story of Hafiz Hanif, a young Al Qaida recruit. He goes back and forth to his home while training to make bomb vests for would be suicide bombers, use guns and explosives and the like. He remembers finding the head of one of the trainers after a US drone attack on his camp. He sometimes got sent on the food run to buy supplies for the entire camp. He reported never being short of cash for those kind of necessities. He wrote his last will and testament on his 16th birthday as all would be suicide bombers do, urging his male kinsmen to ”join the jihad, seek martyrdom and see him again in the company of the virgins.” The reporters, Sami Yousfzai and Ron Moreau convey a stunning sense that all this is quite normal in the eyes of their subject who is simply a boy growing up in unusual circumstances.

A friend who has spent a lot of time in Afghanistan in recent years reports the regular rape of recruits by more senior members of the Afghan military and Police. This, he says is all bound up with a perversion of the belief that there will be virgins in Paradise. Muslim women must be kept pure and protected (with the Burqa and other veils for example) meaning that male ‘needs’ must be met with boys or with young Christian women who have been kidnapped for the sex-slave trade. In some strange moral calculus this all seems to be OK.

The Week (#780, August 21, 2010) reprints much of an article from The Times Magazine/N.I. Syndication telling the story of a man in Pakistan who helps rescue young British girls from forced marriages, often contracted for purposes of acquiring visas for men to enter England with, or more often without their brides. Albert David is the rescuer who approves of arranged marriages as a cultural tradition and expression, but not these forced marriages that are akin to kidnapping and imprisonment. The article tells of Tania whose 16th Birthday present was a one way ticket to Pakistan and to a kind of perversion of marriage.

Where do we see the equivalent perversion of all that is good and holy and healthy in Christianity? When does our sense of ‘morality’ lead us off the rails with oppression, degradation and hatred dressed up as religion? We can certainly point to the laws that were proposed last year in Uganda that would criminalize all kinds of associations with homosexuality allowing the death penalty in some cases. We know that in some sense Christians support such moves because they are in competition with legalistic forms of Islam for ‘market share’ and seem to forget the fundamental Christian teaching about God’s grace. But what about closer to home? Are we, as President Obama said of Islam recently, a “religion of peace”?

The War in Iraq and Economy at Home

2010-09-02T10:25:00.001-04:00

September 2, 2010

I thought President Obama struck all the right notes in his address from the Oval Office on Tuesday, most especially in his oft repeated and heartfelt praise for those who have fought and those who have died in our wars. He backed it up with improved long term healthcare and a new GI bill. Good stuff. I do not understand to this day why we decided to invade Iraq and continue to hope that our intervention and all the lives that have been lost can yet be the seeds of something hopeful for the people of that region (explicitly including the Kurds in the North).

All of that said, I was also pleased to hear the reminder that we have a long way to go on the home front in a stagnant economy. I‘m among those who believe that rescuing the car companies and some banks (of which I did not approve) and providing stimulus money (of which I did approve) seem to have staved off the worst kind of recession. I see healthcare reform as a great victory even knowing that we have yet to see exactly how things will look in three or five years. The resistance to change was massive and predictable. But no one of good will and good sense can really suggest in good faith that some kind of change was not essential. In other words I’m not disheartened by how things are progressing and am among those who would give President Obama a high approval rating on everything except winning the PR battle.

As I think about what all this means for us and for our parish, I’m aware that we are facing significant capital needs in the not-too-distant-future. We are going to have to be very creative about how to move forward in meeting those needs in a climate that is not auspicious for a traditional capital campaign. Most of the pundits to who I listen are suggesting that ‘recovery’ in Atlanta will not be real and true until the commercial and residential real estate markets show signs of sustained positive movement. For many of us, ‘capital’ is in our homes and that is where we have been most visibly challenged. In one example of how this works, the wonderful ministry of Canterbury Court is facing no waiting list for admission for the first time in many years. This is less to do with the recent and beautiful expansion and more to do, I suspect, with the reality that most people need to sell their homes in order to move to Canterbury. In this climate, that movement is not happening. The ripple effect of the real estate market in our city will be a precondition for our being able to seek the kinds of resources we need in traditional ways. What will non-traditional and creative funding look like for us in the next five or ten or fifteen years? It will be exciting thinking through some answers.

The Mosque

2010-08-30T07:24:00.003-04:00

August 30, 2010

A number of you have asked whether I would comment on the proposed Islamic Center to replace an abandoned Burlington Coat Factory store in the vicinity of Ground Zero. The opposition to this work is profoundly un-American in that it is opposed to freedom of religion. This is, as they say, a ‘no-brainer’.

That said, the phenomenon of the opposition itself is interesting. Clearly there is a widely supported antipathy to Islam being expressed. We are also hearing something very like religious fervor about Ground Zero itself when it is described as ‘holy ground’ that is somehow being ‘desecrated’ if Muslims have a community and educational center with a prayer room in it somewhere within a few blocks of what used to be the twin towers of the World Trade Center.

I don’t really know what to make of the Ground Zero Religion except that it seems to be a kind of visceral and American response to disease about people for whom the separation of ‘church and state’ or ‘religion and politics’ is nonsense, people who are engaged actively throughout the world in trying to turn majority Muslim countries into effective theocracies. The religious impulse applied to Ground Zero converts the anti-Islamic sentiment into an issue of one religion’s freedom over against that of another and therefore somehow within the bounds of the common life of those who live in this country.

Akbar Ahmed of American University has offered a kind of ‘Muslim Typology’ in his Journey Into Islam in which he recognizes the mystical strain of Sufism. He bemoans the waning of modernist Islam of which he is a part, and which most Americans would recognize (rightly or wrongly) as inherently ‘moderate’. He sees the majority of Muslims as adhering to traditionalist and anti-modernist expressions of the faith that would include everyone from our friends of the Atlanta Masjid on 14th Street to members of Al-Quaida. If he is right then it is difficult for many Muslim leaders to really and truly distinguish themselves from the kind of Islam that suborns terrorism. It might not be just a prejudice of Western Media that makes the condemnations of murderous violence seem so ‘muted’. This is not a view that pleases me, nor is it one with which my friends who are more deeply involved in interfaith conversation than I am, agree.

The issues of immigration, American identity, the salad bowl full of distinctive identities over against the old melting pot in which everyone eventually assimilates in to something recognizably ‘American’, the relationship of religion to national life and so on are more than can or should be addressed in a short blog piece. The legalities of the proposed Islamic Center seem clear to this non-lawyer. The intricacies of the religious and nationalist impulses revealed in the political football aspects of this issue are complex and worthy of sustained attention and conversation.

Proposition 8 and Ugandan Anglicans

2010-08-10T05:28:00.000-04:00

August 10, 2010

I cannot help but contrast the elegant ruling in the case to overturn California’s Proposition 8 which outlawed gay marriage and the Anglican Church of Uganda’s continued support for criminalization of gay and lesbian people. The California ruling systematically examines the arguments presented at the original trial including the ideas that:
· Denial of marriage to same-sex couples preserves marriage.
· Denial of marriage to same-sex couples allows gays and lesbians to live privately without requiring others, including (perhaps especially) children, to recognize or acknowledge the existence of same sex couples.
· Denial of marriage to same-sex couples protects children.
· The ideal child-rearing environment requires one male parent and one female parent.
· Marriage is different in nature depending on the sex of the spouses, and an opposite-sex couple’s marriage is superior to a same-sex couple’s marriage.
· Same-sex couples’ marriages redefine opposite-sex couples’ marriages.

Episcopal Café reports that Jesse Masai has written in an article called “The Word from Kampala’s Anglicans” as follows:

“The church’s position on human sexuality is consistent with its basis of faith and doctrine and has been stated very clearly over the years as reflected in various documents,” she said. “From a careful and critical reading of Scripture, homosexual practice has no place in God’s design of creation, the continuation of the human race through procreation, or his plan of redemption.
“The Church of Uganda believes that homosexual practice is incompatible with Scripture. At the same time, we are committed at all levels to counseling, healing, and prayer for people with homosexual orientation. The church is a safe place for individuals who are confused about their sexuality or struggling with sexual brokenness, to seek help and healing.”
On the bill itself, she continued, the COU prefers that current law (Penal Code Cap. 120) be amended, clarifying gaps, protecting all parties from uneven enforcement and from the anti-homosexuality bill’s encroachment into family life and church counsel. Currently, the bill outlaws failure to inform authorities of homosexual activity, much as standard criminal law forbids failure to testify concerning wrongful acts observed. Ugandan law protects underage girls from sexual predators, Onapito explained, but not underage boys.
The COU wants the law to protect, not criminalize, confidential relationships of medical, pastoral, and counseling professionals and their clients, she said. An amended Penal Code must, in fairness and for the protection of youth, specify lesbianism, bestiality, and “other sexual perversions” as targeted behaviors. The free marketplace of ideas must have legal boundaries prohibiting material that “promotes homosexuality as normal or as [merely] an alternative lifestyle.”
Onapito added that while the church’s position may be contrary to Western notions of fair treatment for gays, it hardly poses the desperate risk to life and freedom that gay rights advocates fear. There should be no doubt, however, that the COU wants to ensure that “sexual orientation is excluded as a protected human right.”

Would that a reasonable judge would do the kind of rigorous research and work needed to examine statements such as “The church’s position on human sexuality is consistent with its basis of faith and doctrine and has been stated very clearly over the years as reflected in various documents.” Whether this prejudice is ‘consistent’ with ‘the Church’s basis of faith and doctrine’ is precisely what is in dispute and saying it is so –even while exhibiting the most passionate commitment to the idea-- does not necessarily make it so.

Why have many Ugandan Anglicans and their allies decided to make homosexuality their cause célèbre and align it with anti -Western sentiment? I don’t know the answer, but part of it must be demonstrating that Christians are just as legalistic and vicious as those of their Muslim neighbors who favor the imposition of Sharia. I continue to believe that rather than trying to out-moralize Muslim neighbors, Christians would do better to preach grace and to inspire others by their loving generosity. Those who live by the sword will die by the sword, will they not?

Ann Rice Gives up on Christian Community

2010-08-04T06:48:00.000-04:00

August 4, 2010

Ann Rice has recently declared in her blog (with thanks to Scott May and the Episcopal Café):

“For those who care, and I understand if you don't: Today I quit being a Christian. I'm out. I remain committed to Christ as always but not to being "Christian" or to being part of Christianity. It's simply impossible for me to "belong" to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. For ten years, I've tried. I've failed. I'm an outsider. My conscience will allow nothing else.”

And later:

“As I said below, I quit being a Christian. I'm out. In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life. In the name of Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen.”

There have been a flurry of responses including a group ‘welcoming her to the UCC’ and a copy cat effort to tell her that the Episcopal Church is where she needs to be. It does seem that most people think that what she is really leaving is the Roman Catholic Church.

The various comment streams that I have seen on this suggest that there are many people who feel as she does about the Church but who do not seem to talk about worship or community. Being connected to a community that has deep disagreements in its midst about social and ethical issues also means recognizing that we are all creatures of God. Many commentators sympathize with Ms. Rice’s need to be clear about who she has been created to be without being told that she is wrong on every front by Christians who seem to ‘know better’ and who on every front appear to be ‘hypocritical’.

Even Ms. Rice and those who sympathize with her appear to be falling into the trap of those whom they are rejecting and that is assuming that ‘The Truth’ is both singular and obvious. We live in a series of interconnected and sometimes conflicting imaginative worlds shaped by philosophy, science, the arts and so on. ‘Humanity’ is not the same post Galileo or Descartes or Einstein as it was before them. But it takes a long time for the consequences of such insights to become normative in any sense and then, in time, be supplanted by new movements. All of them affect people of faith along with everyone else.

The consequence of this is that Christian Community becomes a very visible place in which those major shifts in perception are navigated thoughtfully and critically (and often with much weeping wailing and gnashing of teeth). It is not always fun and there are usually power games being played in the process as one group or another seeks to ‘hang on’ to their sense of security and place in the world, fearing that some shift will shake them up. This will be particularly true with any issue that is in any sense ‘ethical’ because in the end, ethics are deeply personal and none of us really like our worlds being shaken. ‘Don’t ask. Don’t tell’ is a compromise that we live with and prefer in many spheres because it means that we can hang on to whatever structures we live within (usually the ‘values’ we were taught in our formative years) without having to make difficult shifts.

In one example: a recent conversation in our staff about how to be more conscious of our using an expanded range of images and language for talking about God and humanity will mean that our children won’t have to do the difficult work of ‘undoing’ or ‘unlearning’ things we have taught them.

So while I wish Ms. Rice well, I choose to stay among people who are gathering around the Communion Table each week in the midst of hearing an enacting the story of what is of true and ultimate worth, together seeking and allowing our lives to be shaped by what really matters, even re cognizing that there are frequently deep disagreements among us about how we would like the world to be. In the end, our common humanity is more ‘real’ tan our differences, but our differences and how we deal with them can have a great deal to do with our (sometimes unwitting) inhumanity to each other.

Afghanistan

2010-07-31T15:35:00.000-04:00

July 31, 2010

Much has been published in recent weeks regarding what our strategy might be in the longest war of American History. Richard Haas, President of the Council on Foreign Relations and former official in the recent Bush administration has made more sense to me than anyone else thus far. Writing in Newsweek (July 26, 2010) he explores various options including ‘staying the course’, immediate withdrawal, ‘reconciliation’, ‘partition’ and ‘decentralization’. Haas sees many potential advantages of this last option which involves the US providing arms and training to local leaders who resist Al Qaida. It works with the Afghani tradition of a weak center and strong periphery and would allow the majority of US troops to return home. He describes this more as a ‘patchwork quilt’ than a partition’. He is not naïve about the challenges of any policy but believes that we are closer to achieving the goals of preventing Al Qaida from finding safe haven in Afghanistan and making sure that Afghanistan does not undermine the (relative) stability of Pakistan.

There is clearly a divide among people of both major parties in Washington about how best to proceed that ironically seems to achieve a certain number of potentially bi-partisan alliances.

In the background of all this, we must remember what we are doing to the young men and women who are fighting this war. Sebastian Junger (author of The Perfect Storm) has written War, a compilation of his thoughts and experiences during a sustained number of visits to Afghanistan war zones as an embedded reporter. He is particularly good in reminding us that we cannot view this war or our troops through the lens of Vietnam. In this war our troops are volunteers and, for the most part, proud to be serving their country. At the same time Junger addresses some of what makes war so intense: everything matters to everyone on the most mundane level. Smelly urine points to dehydration and that soldier is likely to fade out in a firefight. An unlaced shoe is a danger to everyone and so on. This kind of community and intensity are part of what makes return to life without war so very challenging. It sounded to me akin to why some practitioners of the twelve steps of AA and its offshoots find that community so much more helpful than church. In AA there is a certain level on which drinking or not is a matter of life or death. Salvation is literal and specific to the task of not drinking alcohol. A real sense of community can develop to the extent that people can look as if they are substituting a kind of ‘addiction’ to AA itself in some extreme cases.

Our solders are not inclined to philosophy or the life of the mind as Junger observes them on the front lines. Every instinct is being honed toward killing and not being killed to the extent that too long without a fight can lead to the creation of violence in the camp itself.

We know that our troops are being asked to serve longer and more frequent foreign tours than at any point in the past. We know that Afghanistan is a quagmire of corruption and we know that every nation and empire that has attempted to subdue it has failed. Mr. Haas gives me hope that there is a sensible way forward that takes seriously our security interests in the region, works with the tides of history in that part of the world rather than attempting to force a new direction and holds hope of bringing many of our young men and women home before we further damage them by making it ever more difficult to re-enter a society that is not living on the front lines of a war minute by minute.

Four Corners of the Sky

2010-07-27T07:36:00.002-04:00

July 27, 2010

Michael Malone is a talented man from North Carolina. In addition to being a successful script writer for soap operas, he has produced a number of literary detective novels. He has also written a great ‘Odyssey’ tale called Handling Sin which is one of the best works of fiction I have read in recent years and which sent me back to re-reading the original and watching O Brother with new appreciation. His most recent work is called The Four Corners of the Sky which is variously a mystery about a mostly charming and enigmatic con man and a story of a woman naval pilot trying to discover who she is through discovering more about the mysterious crook who is her father and anything about who her mother might be. For some, the strange characters and constant movement of the book will be a bit much but for me it kept me engaged the whole way through even if a little judicious editing was in order.

The business of who we are and who we ought to be has sent me back to one of the most substantial works of theology to come out in recent years: a work of Christian theological anthropology called Eccentric Existence by David H. Kelsey. He sees the questions of anthropology being essentially questions around ‘what are we?’, ‘who am I or who are we?’ and ‘How ought we to be?’

What makes anthropology specifically Christian are ‘non-negotiable’ bedrock beliefs we he articulates as being a) God actively relates to human beings to create them; b)to draw them to eschatological consummation; and c) to reconcile them when they are alienated from God.

This is a dense theoretical work of ‘secondary theology’ that I am hoping can shape some new self discovery for me in relation to God in coming months

Current goings-on in the C of E

2010-07-12T05:28:00.001-04:00

July 12, 2010

More leaked information from the Crown nominations Committee meant that the attempt to derail serious consideration of Jeffrey John as Bishop of Southwark was successful. Most of the press and blogosphere seems to blame Rowan Williams for another ‘betrayal’. I doubt that is fair as I cannot imagine him supporting John’s candidacy in the current circumstances anyway.

What has happened since then that has led to calls for his resignation is that the Synod of th Church of England meeting in York has defeated his proposal for some kind of compromise on the question of women bishops. In essence the proposal in which he was vociferously supported by the Archbishop of York (and made clear that he hoped that it wouldn’t be seen as a loyalty test) was that male bishops should be able to work alongside women to provide ‘care’ for parishes and people who decline to accept the ministry of women bishops. Given that he appears to have thrown his weight and authority behind getting the compromise passed it is not surprising that it has been seen as a loyalty test. They synod narrowly defeated the proposal.

Now the press is predicting a schism in the C of E as traditionalists who seem to believe in the depths of their being that it is wrong for women to be ordained at all, let alone as bishops, sort out whether to jump ship and take the well traveled road to Rome on the red carpet that Benedict has laid out to help with his bolstering the conservative flavor of his church while dealing with the clergy shortage at the same time.

I think that schism is more likely when institutional unity is made into a false God. This kind of unity appears to come at the expense of relationship-across-difference and is one in which my view of the world is ‘more important than yours even though the tides of opinion in the church are making me a minority’. I continue to hope that Anglicanism can serve as a catholic communion based on that kind of right relationship around the Lord’s Table rather than a purely hierarchical institution.

I am among those who have been disappointed that Archbishop Williams has chosen to try and hold things together by placating conservatives rather than using his full moral authority to teach what we thought he believed and urge all kinds of people with minority views (on an international basis that would include TEC) to stay at the table. Unfortunately what we now call ‘traditionalists’ (even though that is a name I would happily use to describe myself in some definition that was not part of the political spin) have a different vision of church. They appear to want to hold back the kinds of shifts in power that appear tome to be part and parcel of the consequence of gospel. And that drives them into the position of wanting to be part of some kind of purity sect.

I have, until quite recently, held all kinds of minority views within the church and can testify that it is not such a terrible place to be. I hope that Bishops will lead from conviction about something other than unity through placating those with whom they disagree and that traditionalists will set aside their desires to control the vision of world and church which is unfolding and find ways to stay in relationship with their brothers and sisters.

If that were possible then perhaps church gatherings could be about our response to the persecution of Christians around the world, the possibility of right relationship with Muslims and others, and even some kind of contribution to the work of peacemaking in those places where there is war.

2010-07-07T05:19:00.001-04:00

Rumors from Southwark

July 7, 2010

There have been a series of articles, blogs and the like, --all officially uncontested—that Dr. Jeffrey John, Dean of St. Albans in the C of E, is to be offered as a nominee to be Bishop of Southwark. Dr. John, you may recall, was forced to withdraw from nomination as (Suffragan) Bishop of Reading because he is partnered and gay while professing celibacy. Apparently the other name rumored to be in the mix is the Rector of St. Martin’s in the Fields in central London who carries his own baggage.

A blog entry by Colin Coward spells out the issues in terms of a debate between Giles Frazer and Chris Sugden, the Executive Director of Anglican Mainstream. You can read it here.

It will be interesting to see whether it actually happens and if so, how Rowan Williams will cope while he is up to his armpits in trying to have it both ways on the question of whether women can be bishops. It is certainly silly to say that Jeffrey John can be a dean but not a bishop, just as it is silly to say that a woman can be a priest but not a bishop. All the usual players are making the usual threats. “They will know we are Christians by our Love”.

The Sorry Saga of the Proposed Anglican Covenant Continues

2010-07-07T04:59:00.001-04:00

July 7, 2010

In recent weeks the Province of Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia have accepted the first three parts of the proposed Anglican Covenant and have rejected the fourth section. More recently, the Province of Mexico has approved the proposed Covenant in its entirety. This has won praise from Kenneth Kearon, the Secretary-General of the Communion. Paul Handley, writing for The Guardian has compared the process to “introducing the rules of football 100 years after the start of international tournaments.” The Archbishop of Canterbury has clearly placed his eggs in the Covenant basket opting for some kind of largely mythical ‘institutional unity’ at the expense of gay and lesbian people to such a degree that he found it hard to condemn Ugandan proposals for laws that would enact a death penalty for those found to be gay and punishment for those who concealed them which appeared to be supported by Anglican bishops there.

I’m tired of the whole thing. The Church of England is ‘a church’ governed by internally agreed up on rules and regulations in the form of constitution and canons. So is The Episcopal Church. So are each of the 39 interdependent provinces that make up the Anglican Communion (which itself is not ‘a church’). The Covenant is the beginning of producing something that could serve as a constitution for a kind of international ‘church’ with increasingly centralized power and control in the form of a ‘standing committee’ (which sometimes smells like the old soviet politburo to me). All this appears to me to make us susceptible to the old and ignorant taunt that we are ‘Roman Catholic Lite’. I continue to pray that we will continue to be a communion who model catholicity through staying in relationship through difficult (‘divisive’) controversies. There is no law that will set us free however good some rules may look to some.

I continue to believe it important that we find ways to be in relationship with Christians very different from us in Rio and Kasulu. I think it important that we continue to support such inter-Anglican efforts as providing for an Observer at the United Nations and the work of the Compass Rose Society in spite of the silly games by which Americans are being excluded from ecumenical conversations for proceeding with the consecration of a lesbian woman in Los Angeles, while others who have been deemed to have ‘ignored the moratoria’ are ‘being investigated’. At some point that work will become something less about relationship and more about giving material support to those who do not wish to be in relationship with us apart from whatever money we might provide. If and when such a time comes the current form of the Anglican project will be over. That would be a great loss in my view, but not the end of the world. The truth will still set us free.

Jane Shaw

2010-06-30T16:17:00.001-04:00

June 30, 2010

The Dean of New College, Oxford has been called to Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. She is as well known figure in the English church (and friend and classmate of our Kanuga speaker, Giles Fraser.) You may be aware that the C of E has been getting itself in a big twist over the inevitability of Women being appointed and consecrated as Bishops and how they will handle/care for those who believe this a theological impossibility. When I asked my mother if she know about the appointment she said she didn’t “but supposed that any talented woman get tired of waiting to be a bishop”.

This looks like a great call and you can read about Dean Shaw here

Galatians 5

2010-06-30T14:48:00.001-04:00

June 30, 2010

Last Sunday’s readings have set me on a path of thinking more about how Paul provides a basis for making ethical decisions on just about any controversial issue and at the same time how an ethical ‘rule of thumb’ (or indeed any rule or law) will never be able to save us from the real complexities of life which require our regular acknowledgment that we are not God and are in need of forgiveness. Here is how I get there:
• I assume Jesus’ bias toward the poor based on his concern and the prophetic concern of the tradition for the weak, the widow, the children, the sick, the stranger and the outcast.
• I think of 1 Thessalonians 5:21. “Test all things and hold fast to that which is good.”
• Paul outlines what is ‘good’ as the fruits of the Spirit in Galatians 5 (almost a summary of the whole epistle which deals with the relationship of Gentile Christians to the Mosaic Law.
• So in any given controversy I ask whether we can identify an increase in peace, joy, hope, kindness and the like (especially among those who identify as less powerful).
• The I listen to the claims of those (especially those who we identify as ‘more powerful’) that they are experiencing loss, factions, anger, dissention, envy and the rest as a result of whatever change is being brought about by emphasis on any particular ethical issue.
• Next, I ask whether the outcome of any debate in any way reduces the capacity of those who believe themselves to be ‘losing’ for peace, joy, kindness etc. This is not to say that there might be real loss: income, status, influence etc in any Magnifcat change, but that such loss is not the same as loss of capacity for the fruits of the Spirit which I do not see as dependent on such things.
• Finally, I recognize that even the best rule of thumb or process does not guarantee that there will be no moral ambiguity when we are addressing complex issues. I note, for example, that those who stress ‘individual responsibility’ are often directing such emphasis at the poor; and that those who abuse ‘community responsibility’ are frequently the poor themselves. There is no simple answer and in all our broken relationships lie opportunities for confession, forgiveness, grace and an increase in our enjoying the fruits of the Spirit.

Dueling Letters

2010-06-30T12:00:00.002-04:00

June 30, 2010

Early this month I reacted to a Pentecost Letter by the Archbishop of Canterbury. Subsequently we received a pastoral letter from our own Presiding Bishop that was a much more satisfying and hopeful vision of the church. It has been shared widely in our parish. Some have suggested that Bishop Jefferts Schori’s history is wrong, particularly regarding the Council of Trent. That has struck me as a way of attempting to undermine the main thrust of the ecclesiology of the letter which better expresses the nature of Anglicanism as I understand and seek to live it than the rather fussy and juridical letter of the ABC.

The threats articulated by the Archbishop of ‘discipline’ for provinces that have ignored the ‘moratoria’ suggested in the Windsor Report and elsewhere against the consecration of gay or lesbian bishops, moving toward the blessing or celebration of same sex unions, and ‘border crossing’ by bishops from one province interfering in the life and worship of another. Thus far the only province so disciplined is...wait for it…you guessed it…The Episcopal Church! Yes, our representatives to various ecumenical conversations have been told to withdraw or in one instance, asked to serve as a ‘consultant’. The logic for this is that TEC members cannot represent Anglicanism when it so clearly will not abide by Lambeth resolutions seen as expressing ‘the mind of the church’. Apparently the vibrant bilateral conversation sin which we are engaged are of little matter where we seem to be participating quite well and fruitfully. Our inconvenient beliefs and actions are thought to ‘confusing’ to our conversation partners. Rather than acknowledging challenging differences as being integral to our identity as a communion, the ABC and the Secretary General of the communion are trying to make them go away in favor of an organizational and hierarchical ecclesiology. If that is who we want to be, we really should reunite with Rome and submit ourselves to the Pope. I still believe in the possibility of an alternative and relational vision of catholicity that I thought was the hallmark of Anglicanism over against that (perfectly good alternative, but alternative nonetheless) of Rome.

Removing people from conversation might allay some anxiety in the short term but it won’t really solve the deeper problem.

I wish that the ABC would have used his office to teach and model theological reflection conversation about the substance of the issues that divide us rather than focusing on a controversial ecclesiological vision and using power mechanisms to enforce it without addressing the underlying issue of the proper place of gay and lesbian people in the life of the church, acknowledging that there is real and substantial debate about this, that there are clear cultural tensions and that there are divisions within provinces but that the positions of those who wish to move from tolerance to affirmation of gay and lesbian people are theologically considered, legitimate, and have long been discuss

Words in Summer

2010-06-30T11:23:00.001-04:00

June 30, 2010

I have sometimes thought that “A Word from the Rector” should be restyled “Far Too Many Words from the Rector” or perhaps simply “Verbosity”. I’ve enjoyed a break (including a break from blogging) but have been gratified by the fact that some of you have noticed and commented that you miss these ruminations.

A fair bit has been going on in the field of Anglicana, but none of it as interesting as the World Cup. My earliest national sporting memory is of watching the World Cup final in 1966 during which England beat West Germany 4-2 in London. I remember that there was a controversial goal in that match scored by Geoff Hurst of West Ham United. It seems that history has reversed itself with controversy in the recent match in which Germany saw England out of the cup.

In the 1070’s there was a Campaign for Real Ale in England known as CAMRA with the goal of reversing the post war trend toward fizzy keg beer, and urging a return to ‘pure’ local brews. I remember going to a finalist in the Pub of the Year competition in London as a guest of a CAMRA member. The place was crowded and smoky and we drank Flowers Beer from kegs mounted on the bar. We were served the dregs evidenced by the fact that the bung was removed from the barrel to get the last drops into our mugs. It was an indescribably filthy drink. My host declared that “one of the great things about real ale is that it is unpredictable”.

Now I’m a fan of limited production, well kept, local brews. (My favorite is Abbott Ale by Greene King, a brewery in Bury St. Edmunds in Suffolk). There is, however, something to be said for technological innovation that ensured a reliable product as well. The governing body of World Soccer (FIFA) has resisted the use of technology to confirm or alter the decisions of referees arguing that the absence of technology is one of the attractions of the sport. I’m not among those who are attracted when in game after game television shows game changing decisions to be in error time after time and from every conceivable angle. My guess is that some kind of official television review will be in place for the 2014 World Cup as has been allowed in other sports. It will not detract from our enjoyment one whit as best I can tell.

2010-05-31T07:33:00.001-04:00

The Pentecost Letter

May 31, 2010

The Archbishop of Canterbury has written a Pentecost Letter in which he proposes that representatives of various (unnamed) provinces who have not begun or continued to observe the ‘moratoria’ (against the consecration of (openly) gay or lesbian bishops, the blessing of same-sex unions or interference by one province in the governance of another) with draw from various councils. I fail to see how this ‘moves the ball forward’ and am glad I do not have his job.

Among the marks of Pentecost seems to be the breaking of the boundaries of race, language and religion through a radically new and Spirited sense of what it is to be human. The letter gives me the sense of a thoughtful Christian doing his best with a tricky situation more than giving me a powerful sense of the redemptive and freeing reality of Good News. I still wish that Archbishop Williams would lead from belief about the underlying issues rather than trying to manage disagreement through wordy ecclesiology. I’m not arguing for less intellectual rigor. I do wish it was being applied to our underlying differences.

Don’t Ask Don’t Tell

2010-05-31T07:17:00.003-04:00

Memorial Day
May 31, 2010

Early in the first Clinton Administration when senior military officers were resisting the expressed desires of their Commander-in-Chief (for reasons they considered entirely proper) regarding gays in the military I had an unusual experience. The policy known as ‘Don’t Ask Don’t Tell’ was on the table but not yet passed by congress and I was running my usual series of enquirers’ classes which culminated in a retreat. On the retreat I was able to introduce two people who had met previously but had no reason to know each others stories. One was a colonel in the air force who was to be responsible for overseeing the implementation of any policy that came out of the debate. He did not like anything much that made it possible for homosexual men and women to serve, but was more concerned about how he was going to be fair to all parties. He raised many of the same concerns that are being raised about implementation today: housing policy, bathrooms and the like. He was determined to do a good job in spite of his misgivings. The other was a Captain in naval Intelligence who had admitted during a routine review of her security clearance that she had entered into a relationship with another woman and had been discharged from the Navy within something like a week of her interview. All this was going on during the eight or nine weeks of those classes. The Colonel credits the former Captain with helping him come to terms with the work he had to do and which he began to conceive as ministry.

I recently received an email from a friend who was taking issue with a posting from March 6 in which I suggested that the published opinions of Retired U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff, Merrill A. McPeak qualified him as a ‘dinosaur’. He took issue with me on two points relevant to the current debate in congress. He read my comment in reference to McPeak about a “tired old unsubstantiated point about ‘unit cohesion’ on the battlefield” as belittling. My correspondent pointed out to me that I had not been in a battlefront unit and suggested that many in the military and in wider society are “naturally very uncomfortable in the intimate proximity of a military in the field with those that they fear and believe look at them with other than disinterest”. As a letter in the New York Times from yesterday points out, there has been little or no problem integrating open gay and lesbian service members in the forces of Israel, Great Britain or Australia. I have no doubt that the same services who have done such a fine job of integrating white and black members into cohesive units can do a similar job when they get their minds around the reality that the enemy here is prejudice not homosexuality.

My correspondent’s second point was my “apparent willingness, encouragement even, to place upon our soldiers, already under heavy stress (think PTSD) and daily risking their lives—to protect our freedoms, additional stress…” He says “perhaps you could find a more appropriate target to serve as an environment to attempt bringing about forced social change.” He is concerned about being forced into change by the government and ‘social engineering’ suggesting that if such change is good it will come about gradually in society. He recognizes that such a view poses a problem of an “imposition upon some service members who happen to be homosexual”.

I am unmoved by the ‘not during wartime’ argument (while I am concerned for the health and safety of our troops). I’m quite sure that clever Generals can come up with an implementation plan that does not put front line troops in danger from each other. I’m also aware from published reports that an unusual number of those who have been discharged under the current policy are Arabic translators and that their loss from service poses a wartime challenge of serious understaffing in a critical area. I do not think of this as ‘forced social change’ as much as I see it as addressing a fundamental weakness in our armed forces in today’s world. Prejudice, enshrined in law or policy, always weakens a country. Look at the governmental chaos in Nigeria, while an Anglican Primate urges that the country leave the UN because of its ‘support of homosexuality’. My correspondent’s arguments are fine if we are still unsure about whether or not gay and lesbian people should be objects of prejudice, and outdated and morally wrong if we believe that they should not be asked to bear an “imposition” for the sake of a capable and society shaping institution that would prefer not to have to juggle one more challenging task at the moment. I am glad that congress appears to recognize this tension while giving military leaders considerable respect and leeway in the implementation of a change in official policy.

On this day I join with all those who honor and pray for men and women who have given their lives in the service of the freedoms that we enjoy in this country and pray that those freedoms and their attendant privileges and responsibilities may be extended to all the people of this land as a beacon of hope for others.

2010-05-27T11:03:00.002-04:00

What follows is an 'open letter' to our friend The Rev'd. Emmanuel Bwatta MA, Principal of the Bible College of the Diocese of Western Tanganyika in Kusulu, Tanzania encouraging the development of an indigenous African theological tradition that is widely accessible through written transmission.

Dear Emmanuel,

I enjoyed reading your MA thesis on Prophets and the Social-Po0litical Welfare of Israel: Today’s Challenge to the Churches of Tanzania. You helped me understand some of what I have witnessed in my visits to you. I have noticed and commented on the reality that your Bishops live at a very different material level than the vast majority of their clergy. I had not seen this through the lens of ‘social class’ but am persuaded by your thesis that class is a useful lens for thinking about the challenges of your country.

We have talked frequently about the need to develop an indigenous theological tradition throughout Africa and the challenge that is posed to that project when so many of your people who are privileged to enjoy a Western Education end up becoming Bishops or otherwise enjoying the benefits of the class system that you have identified. It seems to me that an authentic tradition will do the kind of work that you have done in looking at the prophetic tradition, looking at your own country and looking at the insights of liberation theologies as they have developed elsewhere. This kind of work can become that ‘tradition’ that we long for if people like you will keep teaching, but also keep writing so that your work can be shared and disseminated more widely than strictly oral tradition allows.

I hope that we can continue our personal friendship and institutional partnership between this parish and The Bible College of which you are principal in ways that allow the flowering of this tradition for DWT, for Tanzania, for East Africa and for the Continent as a whole. Let’s keep talking about how we can help make that happen even as you return to your growing family and the day to day challenges of funding and managing your school.

In Christ,

Geoffrey

High School Graduation

2010-05-23T06:26:00.000-04:00

May 23, 2010

Attending graduation ceremonies from a large public high school has been an interesting experience for me as a parent. First and foremost I find myself filled with pride for my son, Alexander, who has done extremely well and will be heading to the University of Chicago. That said there were a number of things that were odd to my sensibilities.

First we had ‘pre-commencement exercises’. These took place in a Methodist Church on the campus of Emory University. It was referred to by the speaker as a ‘hall’, even as he acknowledged that many such observances would be called a Baccalaureate Service and would be an essentially religious observance with hymns and prayers. That speaker was the University President, James Wagner. His address was unusually substantial for such an occasion. He spoke of ‘the practices of community’ which included such things as honest conversation, being connected and giving for others. He resorted to the use of scripture only once, but for me this served to show how difficult it is to develop a genuine ethic without the idea of God or something that resembles or functions as God in the argument. Alexander is sure that God is unnecessary for such things as humanity or community or our responsibility to one another. I’m not sure whether he thinks such notions are somehow ‘innate’ to humans, but at any rate ethics in such a world seem limited primarily to utilitarianism. I remember reading The Mountain People by Colin M. Turnbull in an introductory course in philosophy as an undergraduate. While the book was somewhat controversial, Turnbull portrayed the breakdown of a people called the Ik from Northern Uganda when their way of life was essentially destroyed. He showed how many of the traits that we like to think of as ‘human’ go out of the window pretty quickly under really extreme and apparently permanent conditions. Certainly the breakdown of any kind of value to ‘community’ came fast and furious for these people.

At the graduation itself I was struck by how well Ms. Donovan, who had been Alexander’s advisor, read the names of more than three hundred students with care and aplomb. I don’t know how many ethnic origins were represented, but it was a truly international group and many of the names were quite challenging for an Anglo. I was quite moved by that reality. I was also struck by the fact that Alexander was wearing a tassel on his shoulders that proclaimed ‘work readinesses. While I don’t’ know what was required to achieve this recognition, I was encouraged anyway. Could a summer job be a possibility? Less encouraging was my unscientific observation that only about a third of the class was sporting a sign of such accomplishment. Third, while I realize that not everyone who begins Druid Hills High School graduates, and while I know that for some this will be the major academic accomplishment of their lives I was strangely revolted and appalled at the whooping and shouting and carrying on of some of the students and their supporters in the Civic Center. This seemed to transcend race and national origin to some extent, but it didn’t seem in keeping with the occasion. Last, I have a friend who believes that there is really only one ‘
Alma Mater’, that it is used everywhere and is universally dreadful. Certainly there was no one on the stage last Friday who seemed remotely enthusiastic about singing it including leading faculty, administrators and students. Thank God (or whomever) for the talents of the Kennesaw Brass Quintet who carried the thing.

The student speeches were, for the most part a highlight. I particularly liked the one by the two salutatorians who with real wit and substance urged us not to be quick to judge others as we might miss some important gifts. It was a good message for the crowd and the occasion. They didn’t put it this way but they came close to saying that prejudice is when we judge a person and discernment is when we judge behavior. Good thoughts for life.

The Bible tells me so

2010-05-21T06:55:00.001-04:00

May 21, 2010

Martin Doblmeier is president and founder of Journey Films based in Alexandria, Virginia who in 2006 produced a documentary for PBS on Bonhoeffer. Along the way he interviewed Inge Karding, a former student of Bonheoffer in Berlin. She remembers Bonhoeffer saying that “when you read the Bible, you must think that here and now God is speaking with me…he taught us that we had to read the Bible as it was directed at us, as the word of God directly to us. Not something general, not something generally applicable, but rather a personal relationship to us.” (Metaxas, Bonhoeffer p.128f.) In 1936, in a letter to his brother-in-law Bonhoeffer wrote “I believe that the Bible alone is the answer to all our questions, and that we need only to ask repeatedly and a little humbly, in order to receive the answer…in the Bible, God speaks to us…” (p.136)

Bonhoeffer’s Barthian interest in the Bible was an interest in the Word revealed in and through the Bible. I agree with him about the Bible but would modify the emphasis slightly to make sure that we remember that the point is the revealed Word or what Bonhoeffer elsewhere makes clear is relationship with God in Christ. In his thesis of 1929, Act and Being Bonhoeffer named something that was to be one thematic strand of his theology: “God is free not from human beings but for them. Christ is the word of God’s freedom.” While the story of faith contained in the Bible is the preeminent revelation of God’s love, the Word is also present in the sacraments, in creation, made incarnate not only in Jesus but in our own discovery of grace as we move towards right relationship.

It is not so much that “Jesus loves me this I know for the Bible tells me so” but more “I know that Jesus loves me as I meet the living Word in the whole story of canonical scripture.” Those who would use the Bible as a talisman or attempt to stem the tide of cultural shifts with all of their scientific, philosophical and artistic manifestations by insisting on some manifestations of culture in the stories of scripture are simply wrong. Bonhoeffer and Barth before him would be appalled at such distortions of the Word.

Bonhoeffer in America

2010-05-20T05:56:00.001-04:00

May 20, 2010

Eric Metaxas has written the first major biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer since that of Bonhoeffer’s friend, Eberhard Bethge, more than forty years ago. It is called Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy. (Thomas Nelson, 2010) I wrote my undergraduate thesis on this man and both his life and theology have intrigued me ever since. I keep returning to the story of someone who saw and felt what was happening in Germany in general and in the German Church in particular such that he compared himself to the prophet Jeremiah and suffered imprisonment and death for his fidelity. I keep returning to the story of someone for whom God was real, but who rejected fundamentalism along with the particularly American forms of liberalism that he encountered while yearning for what he called a kind of “religionless Christianity”.

He came to Union Seminary near Columbia University in New York City in 1930 at the height of American liberalism and was appalled. John Rockefeller had just built Riverside Church as a pulpit for Harry Emerson Fosdick who also taught preaching at Union. Fosdick’s curriculum placed topics like ‘the forgiveness of sins’ and ‘the cross’ in the general, and by implication not terribly important, category of “traditional themes” (p.106). Bonhoeffer learned much about community while at Union and much about both music and holding the faith apart from the mainstream through what he called ‘negro religion’ traveling through the South in search of greater understanding of this particularly affective and hopeful expression of the faith. Both were to play an important role in the way his life was to unfold. But he was appalled by the theology, or rather lack of theology that he encountered. Metaxas cites a letter to Max Diestel in which Bonhoeffer writes

“There is no theology here…They talk a blue streak without the slightest substantive foundation and with no evidence of any criteria. The students…are completely clueless with respect to what dogmatics is really about…They become intoxicated with liberal and humanistic phrases, laugh at the fundamentalists, and yet basically are not even up to their level” (p.101).

Elsewhere in a reflection on The Enlightened American he remarked that the sermon has been reduced to “parenthetical church remarks about newspaper events.” He admired the social conscience that was part of genuine community, but feared for Christianity that did not preach a vigorous gospel of sin, repentance, salvation and the cross.

I doubt that Bonhoeffer would have the same experience of Union Seminary today. We will have a glimpse of today’s theology when Serene Jones, the President of union and a wonderful speaker offers our Woodall Lecture this autumn. She has spent much of her career holding together the insights of Calvinism and the insights of feminism which even in the early 1980s were considered strange bedfellows. Her recent work considers theological resources for those who have suffered trauma. I wonder what he would say about the content of preaching at All Saints’ and believe that he would hear the gospel proclaimed with vigor from a clear consistent theological (what he calls ‘dogmatic’) foundation. But he would hear it in the midst of a people who, while shaped by and towards a desire for righteousness (diakosoune), and with an appreciation for the continuing revelation of divine will in and through community, might not always articulate the Christian gospel of forgiveness and grace through the cross and resurrection with great confidence. Does that sound right? And is it a problem?

Thoughts on attending a Seminary Graduation

2010-05-15T15:44:00.000-04:00

May 15, 2010

Yesterday I attended the graduation and commencement ceremonies of St. Luke’s Seminary at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee. We had a small representation form All Saints’ in support of Emmanuel Bwatta, our friend who is the principal of the Bible College of the Diocese of Western Tanganyika in Kusulu. He received a Master of Arts degree and was awarded the prize for excellence in the study of Hebrew. I’m looking forward to reading his thesis on “Prophets and the Social-Political Welfare of Israel: Today’s Challenge to the Churches of Tanzania.”

Fourteen people received the Master of Divinity Degree, thirteen of whom are Episcopalians and (presumably) headed toward ordination in the eleven dioceses represented. The preacher was Barbara Crafton (who has led our women’s and all parish retreats in recent years, and who herself received an honorary doctorate). She mentioned the phenomenon of ‘disappearing curacies’ and I wondered how many of these graduates were going to have positions and places in which to serve in the coming months.

I wonder what the future holds for the provision of ministry as clergy in particular and church staffs in general become ever more expensive. The General Convention does a good thing requiring some level of health and pension benefits for all staff and sets the bar at people who work twenty hours per week. That will increase our costs in a year or two by an amount that is roughly the cost of the position we are giving up by not hiring a person dedicated to Christian Social Ministries in the near term. Even as we lose positions in this climate, so those positions become ever more expensive to fill. Something has to change and I’m not sure what that will be. What I know is this: the ministry of the gospel is not dependent on handsomely paid positions in the institutions of the church. I also know that those positions will be much easer to fund if the people who are graduating from seminary have fire in the belly and a passion for proclaiming good news rather than solely having really well thought out opinions on the use of incense in worship. I am not intending to take a swipe at theological education which I value, but am suggesting that the education needs to be focused more on the gospel and less on the institutional forms that it takes. Could it be that this is why denominational seminaries of every stripe are struggling?

As to the ceremony itself, it was a joy to see people happy and celebrating surrounded by friends and family who have supported the journey. It was fun to connect with old friends from various parts of the church. One of my pet peeves is any attempt to use the ‘large occasion’ to introduce new music or liturgical innovation to a congregation who are not there for that. We had a couple of spectacularly unfortunate examples. Shouldn’t our worship on such an occasion be as inclusive and celebratory as possible? Also, while I was proud of our bishop who is serving as Chancellor of the University and who clearly knew what he was doing, if we are going to use schools Latin in the awarding of degrees after the custom of the ancient Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, then some of the other speakers could use some guidance in pronouncing the Latin. It really shouldn’t sound like we imagine a modern Italian might do it! The school did a good job of providing translations, but I wonder if it had much to do with the mountains of Tennessee in the first place.

The Omega Point

2010-05-15T15:21:00.001-04:00

May 15, 2010

Don DeLillo’s recent novel called Point Omega (Scribner, 2010) has sent me back to the work of Teilhard de Chardin, a French Jesuit and biologist who died in New York City in the 1950s. I was introduced to his work when I was a teenager by an Anglican priest who taught biology along with theology. De Chardin developed a theory of the evolution of people, consciousness and matter which he saw as moving towards a kind of perfect relation that he called the ‘omega point’. It is over simplifying things to say that he thought of the omega point as God but he used language like ‘supreme consciousness’ as the goal and direction of the evolution of all life.

DeLillo’s short novel takes hold of the omega point idea almost making it a place within the universe (implied by the name ‘Point Omega’). The question that I was left with early on and again after reading the novel is whether there is really any place for ethics in a universe that is moving inexorably toward its end or purpose. Should we care that a character goes missing in the desert or is that just part and parcel of life working itself out. The novel almost suggests that the process is a kind of Hegelian movement of thesis-antithesis –synthesis. A man involved in the architecture of the first gulf war escapes (in a sense) to a desert which itself becomes a place of violence (perhaps) as he more or less wastes away. It is not even clear that love is a real part of ultimate consciousness in DeLillo’s vision of ultimate consciousness.

This kind of phenomenology seems to have more in common with certain kinds of Buddhist teaching than with the story of Jesus. I enjoyed the book in many ways but am still wondering what to make of it. Has anyone else read it and could you comment?

Participatory Exegesis

2010-05-09T06:50:00.001-04:00

May 9, 2010

I met with my interdenominational colleague group this week. We gather once or twice a year to discuss theology, usually having read a biblical text, something ancient and something contemporary. This time it was the Psalms, The Letter to Marcellinus by Athanasius, and Participatory Biblical Exegesis: A Theology of Biblical Interpretation by Daniel Levering. I went with little clue about what issue Levering was addressing and wondering whether that emperor had any clothes. I found myself thinking that in the end he was arguing for inductive bible study for Roman Catholics. He clearly wanted bible study to be more than reading solely through the lens of the historical critical methods that most of us were taught but that none of us were limited by or to.

Our conversation however did lead us to the question of how our ‘world view’ affects biblical exegesis. Or put another way, we wondered about our fundamental assumptions about theology and history and how they affected our reading of scripture. If we say ‘Jesus is Lord’, do we mean something for all people and all of history? Or is the notion that God has established a single claim for all people for all time a reflection of the limited world view of the Roman Empire (as I suspect)? Is it the greater hubris to claim that Christianity is the ultimate way and that those of other faiths will need to get with the program, perhaps after they die; or is the hubris greater to say that a god who would condemn large swaths of the planet with different religious and cultural assumptions than our own is a god not worthy of worship? Is there a way to develop some kind of theological theory of relativity without resorting to relativism (‘my truth’ and ‘your truth’)?

We didn’t solve these mysteries, but once again ran up against the kinds of fault lines that are divisive for Christians. We see the conflict being played out in many ways in most mainline or old line denominations and between the more ‘liberal views’ and the more ‘conservative views’. Perhaps we are not so much an interdenominational colleague group as an interfaith one.

Angry Men

2010-05-03T17:57:00.001-04:00

May 3, 2010

I read an article somewhere suggesting that part of the problem with much of the negativity in Washington (currently represented by the tea party movement and Mitch McConnell’s inability to find anything he likes in any proposal from Democrats, but from which no party is immune) is that it is un-American. The article suggested that in a democracy, some respect must be given to majority desires in the assurance that there will be another election in due course where the polis may express their preferences. The author pointed out that President Obama ran for office in part on a platform of healthcare reform, was elected by a large majority at the head of a party with majorities in both houses of congress. He then set about doing what he said he would do with endless and public conversation, televised debate, open process and on and on. At what point do those who resist move on? The refusal to accept democracy at work is what is being suggested is un-American.

Related to that, a friend sent me an article from the San Francisco Sentinel by Tim Wise (25 April 2010) called Imagine if the Tea Party was Black.

Here are just a few quotes from the article:

“Imagine that hundreds of black protestors were to descend on Washington DC and Northern Virginia…armed with AK-47s, assorted handguns and ammunition …Would these black protestors with guns be seen as brave defenders of the Second Amendment, or would they be viewed by most whites as a danger to the republic?”

“Imagine that white members of congress, while walking to work, were surrounded by thousands of angry black people, one of whom proceeded to spit on one of the congressmen for not voting the way the black protestors desired?...that is what white Tea Party protestors did recently in Washington.”

“Imagine that a rap artist were to say in reference to a white president: ‘He’s a piece of shit and I told him to suck on my machine gun.”…that’s what rocker Ted Nugent said recently about President Obama.”

Is this really legitimate protest when engaged in by people who have generally seen themselves as ‘those in power’ when ‘outsiders’ would be viewed as threatening and probably criminal? And does any of this suggest that all is well with the State of the Union?

The sea change that has been going on for years and has made possible (at least for now) a black President is being predictably resisted by those who feel some sense of loss, often without really knowing what that is. We have seen the same behavior in the church over the ordination of women and, more recently, the reaching of a tipping point in support of gay and lesbians in the church. The noise and bad behavior of those who feel themselves displaced is just plain ugly. I am not convinced that any of these changes are secure as yet but I am convinced that they are gospel, consistent with the good news of Christ and consistent with Peter’s vision at Joppa of nothing and no one God has made being declared profane. With any such change sabotage and resistance is inevitable. This is the time to stay the course.

A Canterbury Tale

2010-04-25T16:45:00.002-04:00

April 25, 2010

It is not fun to come from a Sunday Morning celebration of our children’s and youth choirs, wonderful preaching by high school seniors, high energy and many visitors effusive in their praise for a vibrant, young, downtown parish only to read A Canterbury Tale by Jane Kramer in The New Yorker of April 26, 2010. it is a careful and thorough examination of the Church of England in relation to the ministry of women in the clergy in general and the debates about women in the episcopate in particular. I find my self wearied by the whole discussion that seems like ancient history for us even as I recognize all the same old arguments that have been around for so long. The Archbishop of Canterbury comes off as a nice and thoughtful man who really dislikes the divisions that seem to be exacerbated by debates of the kind going on in the C of E.

I also received an email today from a parishioner telling me that he is now ‘Anglican’ (as though The Episcopal Church isn’t) and begging me to follow the Bible. He has nothing against ‘those people having civil unions or whatever’ but sees no need for the Church to ignore the Bible. He asked that he and his wife be ‘removed from the rolls’.

Another visitor told me how much he enjoyed the liturgy and how religion is complicated for him as he also loves parts of his own evangelical heritage , especially the belief that we should ‘take the Bible as it comes’ and his concern that the Episcopal Church does not do that.

When will religious leaders stop making the false claims that they are following the Bible and that those who think differently (on what is culturally conditioned and necessary to change as a direct consequence of reading the Bible) are not being Biblical? They are as disingenuous as those who claim that ‘The Episcopal Church has left them’ as the basis for their ignoring their ordination vows or seeking to retain property. They are as disingenuous as those who say that the Church is following a path that ‘no Christina can take’ as though they and their doctrines are the ultimate arbiters of who is Christian. How long must we keep on making our case against those who should know better? How long must we debate those who repeat slogans without using the God given gift of reason?

I thank God that in the midst of this I am able to gather with all manner of hypocrites and sinners around the table of the Lord knowing that we are all striving to accept and honor the invitation to be transformed into the people we were created to be in and through the Love of God.

Going to Court

2010-04-21T10:46:00.000-04:00

April 21, 2010

A recent post inspired an interesting response from someone who did not sign their name. The writer wanted to suggest that ‘squabbling over property’ was in some respects a consequence of The Episcopal Church being unwilling to embrace a clear biblical faith. I’ve not seen the article but would always argue that we present a clear biblical faith. What we argue about is what aspects of the various times and cultures reflected in scripture are essential and what are things that ought to change in the name of being faithful.

One of the most helpful things I have read on this recently is in David Kelsey’s Eccentric Existence in which he uses Wisdom Literature as a lens for addressing ‘what is’ without needing to embrace the elements of the social order underlying the approach.

While there is a legitimate debate to be had over biblical interpretation (i.e. is there something essential about male/female complementarity and difference or is the essential matter the negotiation of complementarity and difference between any human beings?) Current complaints about whether the Church is ‘biblical’ amounts to little more than sloganeering without acknowledging the conversation.

Going to court is what Christians or anyone else does when someone else is behaving badly and not responding to reason. What TEC is experiencing is the classic reality that when we point out someone else’s bad behavior, those who do not appreciate it will try and make us the issue. The property issue is not ‘biblical’. It is about fiduciary trust, canons and the like in the Episcopal Church. Most courts seem to understand that so far.

Virginia is a little different for a number of reasons. Under state law, individual congregations have trustees of the property. When I was serving in the Diocese of Virginia it was made clear to me and I taught that the property was held in trust for the Episcopal Church. Accounts of recent arguments before the Virginia Supreme Court seem to suggest that perhaps the Diocese needed to take some legal action to make that explicit. Who knows how that will play out? In any event, those congregations who are seeking to depart with property invariably have a) persuaded themselves that they are justified in doing so on some basis like “The Episcopal Church is not Biblical”, and b) have clergy who are being clever but choosing to ignore what they have been taught in polity classes in ay and every Episcopal Seminary since the early 1980s at least. Without in any way minimizing the real sense of loss felt by those whose conscience will not let them stay in a church in which norms are shifting, and without suggesting that there are no other ways to negotiate this problem through negotiation, sale of property and the like in some situations, going to court is an appropriate response to the belief that departing congregations are engaged in theft. The courts will have to sort out whether that belief is justified or not under the law.

Nuclear Summit

2010-04-14T16:39:00.001-04:00

April 14, 2010

It has been interesting being in Washington DC for a colleague group meeting at the same time as a huge meeting, including many heads of state, who are discussing the security of nuclear materials. This is clearly part of a series of events focusing on security issues. At the beginning of April we saw Russia and the US sign a pact which limits their respective stockpiles of nuclear weapons. It seems a long time since President Reagan and Michael Gorbachev came so close to agreeing to get rid of the things altogether at their summit in Reykjavik in 1986. Last week we saw the release of the latest ‘Nuclear Posture Review’ in which President Obama has limited ay possibility of the US striking first. Finally, we are looking towards a new multinational non proliferation treaty early in May. This has to be a huge accomplishment by any measure and especially important in an environment where rogue states and terrorist organizations are determined to get their hands on nuclear materials, and in which our troops appear to have been fighting with less equi98pment than they need due to budget constraints.

The conversations facilitator for our meeting of Episcopal Clergy was James Carroll, author of Practicing Catholic and Constantine’s Sword among other works. He led us in thinking about a deep stream of apocalyptic, messianic idealism in American history that he sees as serving to undergird the idea that we can resist violence or end violence only through more violence. He argued persuasively that what really motivated people on both sides in the civil war was less the cause of slavery or Union and more a kind of religious ‘manifest destiny’. I’m looking forward to his next book.

2010-04-14T16:00:00.000-04:00

James Baker in News from the Hill

April 14, 2010

The spring issue of News from the Hill, an occasional publication of the Virginia Theological Seminary includes an article by the former Secretary of State, James A. Baker III. He makes it clear that he claims no expertise in the polity of the Episcopal Church of which he is a member. He sees the sexuality debate in our church as one in which there is not likely to be any resolution in the near term and that an outcome where one side is seen to ‘win’ and another to ‘lose’ as unnecessarily costly. He wants us to do what I thought we were doing which is to express respect for the good faith of the point of view of those with whom we disagree and not ‘squabble over assets’. He suggests that each parish be allowed to vote on what position it wishes to take on the position it would take on” issues of sexuality”. He then proposes what sort of mechanisms would be needed for parishes to change their minds, how often votes could come up and so on. All parishes would be deemed to be in good standing in the Episcopal Church.

He does not address exactly how those who disagree with their bishop’s decision on the matter would act but I presume they would accept the ‘good faith’ of their bishop as well. He does want no more consecrations of lesbian or gay people as bishops until the necessary canonical changes are in place.

If I understand him correctly he is proposing some kind of ‘local option’ (a term he uses) based on the votes of individual parishioners in individual parishes.

I am not entirely clear what it is that would be accomplished by this plan that is not in place already. It seems to me that it is very clear that no one is being required to support the blessing of same sex unions and certainly no clergy are being required to officiate at them. The most common arrangements seem to involve some kind of ’customary’ approved by the bishop and/or a requirement that clergy have vestry support prior to proceeding. Certainly those kinds of arrangements could be strengthened if that would achieve the desired goal.

What else would be the desired outcome of such a plan? It might be that congregants want to be able to tie the hands of their clergy. That is tricky to achieve in our polity although agreements forged at the time of hire can have a similar effect. It could be that a desire is for bishops to respect parishes who disagree with her or his position on theses matters and vice versa. Is that not happening already on the part of bishops? Clearly there are clergy and congregations who want their bishops to be pure and in line with their own thinking. Will those people be satisfied by such a plan or should we assume that they have already departed this branch of Christ’s Church?

Mr. Baker’s plan would be a concrete, outward and visible expression of the idea that the Episcopal Church is broad enough to “include within it people who hold divergent views on a variety of issues including the ordination of openly gay clergy and the blessing of same sex unions”. I believe that is already the case and has been the case for some time. I don’t have any problem with clear statements to that effect. What has changed is that the majority opinion of the Church leadership expressed in various conciliar forms has shifted. I wonder if the proposal is an attempt to suggest that the leadership are ‘out of touch’ with people in the pews. If that is the desire then the proposal has the effect of pursuing a more explicit congregational polity in order to ‘rein in’ the leadership rather than expecting the leadership to preach and teach in a persuasive way such that those charged with leading the church at various levels (vestries, councils conventions and the like) can make informed decisions.

I find myself wondering what the proposal that we all ‘agree to differ’ would achieve and why that is not where we are and have been for a long time. What it won’t do is help people who do not like the current direction of the Episcopal Church either o come to terms with it or change it as best I can see. Or am I missing something?

Happy Easter and Apologies

2010-04-14T15:59:00.000-04:00

April 14, 2010

Contrary to the suspicions of some, I have neither dropped off the face of the earth nor have I given up this blog. The happy combination of preparing presentations for our GIFT (Growing In Faith Together) program, Holy Week and Easter in combination with not much going on that merits comment in the wider Anglican scene have all conspired to keep me away from writing. A few new entries follow.

Maundy Thursday Meditation

2010-04-01T10:11:00.000-04:00

Thursday, April 1, 2010

I grew up imagining that Maundy Thursday was something to do with mourning and was not that excited by it. I preferred Good Friday where we were given 'hot cross buns' and sang a ditty from the 1700s. As I grew, I sang in the choir of our parish church. We tended to what I now know to be a fairly 'high' liturgical style, and Maundy Thursday was a pretty solemn and beautiful observance with not many of our fellow parishioners present. (Not unlike today at All Saints' now I come to think of it.) I remember learning that the name of the day comes from the Latin Mandatum Novum, or 'New Commandment'. "Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another" said Jesus even as he had just made this love manifest by washing his disciples' filthy feet. Today is the day in which we remember, above all, the gifts of love made manifest, first in the Eucharist and then in the consequence of that meal in our service to one another in the world.

It is around the Table that we are formed for life by telling the story of what really matters in life, the story of Love made Manifest. In telling and hearing this story while in table fellowship and conversation with one another, we turn our attention to that which is of ultimate worth and find our lives and values, our choices and hopes all being shaped toward what really matters. This is worship, or Ultimate Worth-ship, and is a particular gift that we celebrate in this memorial of the Last Supper.

About once a year I have the privilege of meeting with some high school students who have been selected to take a class on 'Philanthropy.' We talk about the origins of the parish as a particular geographical region and the way that understanding has developed in the Anglican Tradition. I enjoy pointing out that our parish 'philanthropy' is not so much something we do out of noblesse oblige or left over from our abundance, but is something that is rooted in the ancient law of Israel. The Torah understood community as meaning that the most vulnerable in life (the weak, the widows, the orphans and the wayfarers) were especially protected as a matter of common humanity or community. In a parish understood not as a congregation of like-minded believers, but as a geographical region, the church provides care for everyone in that area as a matter of being the church and recognizing how essential is the new commandment to our identity as human beings and children of God. Caring for one another in effective, often difficult, service is something that really and truly matters to us. It is not an 'optional extra' in life. It is at the heart and meaning of life. In the Episcopal Church the pastoral responsibility for a civic geographical region like a city or county is shared among the Episcopal Churches in that locale. We offer care to everyone because that is the generosity that is extended to us by God and the kind of love that makes us more fully who we are.

What made this commandment of the Last Supper a new commandment, was Jesus saying 'as I have loved you'. We are commanded to love, remembering that the worst thing in life is not death. The fate-worse-than-death is breaking faith with the Love that made us for Love.

Disappointments in Nation Building

2010-03-26T17:46:00.001-04:00

March 26, 2010

While playing in a charity golf tournament today (and playing spectacularly badly) I had to dodge conversation with a caddy who was eager to instruct an Englishman in the dreadful state America is in thanks to ‘government taking over healthcare’. I pretended with dispatch that I was hard of hearing.

On returning home I came across a disappointing article in Newsweek (March 29, 2010) under the banner “Scandal in Afghanistan: The Exclusive Story of how we’ve wasted $6 billion on a Corrupt and Abusive Police Force that may Cost Us the War”. The article describes the levels of illiteracy, the corruption which gets police weaponry, funded by us, into the hands of the Taliban and the drug addiction. The only thing missing from the descriptions of one of our parishioners who is a contractor in that country is the sexual abuse by older men of younger recruits.

It is clear that we can have short lived alliances and some victories here and there as a result, but the long term occupation of Afghanistan is not a viable option for a government determined to reverse the deficit spending that goes with waging war. I await the tea bag protest about our continuing our efforts there.

The Elegance of the Hedgehog

2010-03-23T09:06:00.002-04:00

March 23, 2010

There are many pearls in this stunning novel by Muriel Barbery but none more so that the reflection of Mme Michel on reading a Master’s Thesis on William of Ockham: “Given that primates are primarily interested in sex, territory and hierarchy there seems little point in spending time on the prayer life of St. Augustine.” Has she been following Anglican blogs?

Health Reform

2010-03-22T05:34:00.001-04:00

March 22, 2010

This morning I am grateful that sooner or later, in one way or another, the vast majority of people in this country will be able to receive healthcare through a proper insurance program. I have never imagined that such a change would not cost me something and confess that I am not really excited about paying for it. Nonetheless, removing some of the absurdities of our current system such as sick people not being able to get insurance and emergency rooms in public hospitals serving as primary care for the uninsured clearly needs to happen. I’ve heard two speakers at our ‘eggonomics’ breakfasts on this subject and have been given reason to suppose that some, if not all, of the provisions of this bill will end up in various courts as one interest or another resists change. It is also clear that we are going to need a lot more doctors than we currently enjoy and that there is some danger of standards being ‘relaxed’ in order to get them. These kinds of things, together with the fact that some of the provisions of the bill are not intended to take affect for some years from now mean that we will not really know what reform will look like for some time.

President Obama made the case early on in his tenure that the economic meltdown was of such significance that we would not be ‘getting back to normal’ and that many of the stressors had to be addressed along with regulatory reform. Our extraordinary healthcare system was chief among them. At a parish forum yesterday leaders of our vestry shared that we do not yet really know what ‘the new normal’ looks like even if the contours are beginning to emerge. We know that for us it will not be ‘just like it used to be but with less resources’. Part of what we mean when we talk of ourselves being ‘a worshipping community, growing in Christian faith, through engaging God and neighbor’ is that we will work to help one another grow in our capacity to face or roll with or respond to the challenges that life presents us. I have no doubt that reforming our healthcare system will touch everyone of us sooner or later and that adjusting to whatever the change means will be challenging. I’m also clear that whether we were for or against the expansion of our system to include tens of millions more Americans in it, we are no less beloved of God this morning than we were yesterday and that we will continue to support one another in times of joy and sorrow in the community of faith.

A Lenten Mediation on the Prodigal and a basis for Unity

2010-03-20T09:15:00.001-04:00

March 16, 2010

Eating and drinking with sinners? Horrors. What was Jesus thinking? Could it be that he was not terribly interested in purity of the kind that sets up boundaries and barriers and separates one person from another? I've been wondering if the basis for unity among Christians is not agreement or 'like-mindedness' but is more our ability to look one another in the eye and hear one another's stories around the Lord's Table. The basis for unity is our transcending not our differences from one another, but the negative consequences of those differences. The basis for unity is not overcoming difference in favor of similarity, but appreciating difference as part of our unity in the magnificent and endless possibilities inherent in creation. What we discover around the Table is that we are eating and drinking with sinners and they discover our sinful or distorted being at the same time. Like the prodigal, we discover the prodigious love of God for all of creation in our difference around that Table. It is as we learn to recognize, understand and even appreciate difference that we become more fully ourselves, more clear about who we have been created to be and more compassionate toward others.

It is as we allow our attention to be turned toward what really matters and toward that which is of ultimate worth that we are participating truly in worship. We properly look for the effects of worship in our lives and not in the worship itself. Frequently we will not be aware of those effects of worship in our lives. At other times we will notice that we are living with a little more compassion for the follies and foibles of others than was the case in the past. Or we will discover that we enjoy being a little more generous and a little less anxious than our internalizing of all the world's messages of scarcity had previously allowed us. Once in a blue moon we might enjoy some experience of the presence of God in our being convicted of sin or called to repentance; in our being aware of forgiveness and granted a powerful sense of common cause with those about us; with our knowing the might and majesty and glory of God in a theophany during some magnificent anthem; or simply being touched at the moment of communion when just for a second or two we know ourselves one with our creator and unaware of time. All such gifts during the worship itself are exactly that—gifts of grace—and not something we can conjure, manipulate, coerce or guarantee.

So we find ourselves being welcomed as sinners and eating with others like us in the company of our gracious host—the one who runs to meet us as we lay bare our hearts before the throne of grace.

Bishops, Ecumenism and Interfaith Conversation

2010-03-20T09:09:00.000-04:00

March 14, 2010

Christ and Culture is the name of a new book (Canterbury, 2010) edited by Martyn Percy and Mark Chapman from England and Ian Markham and Barney Hawkins, both of the Virginia Seminary and representing this side of the Atlantic. It is far from having the kind of weight of its famous Niebuhrian predecessor and is essentially a series of papers by Bishops reflecting on aspects of their role and work. There is a fair amount of referencing and exegeting official reports and documents of one sort or another.

Where the effort had some ‘bite’ for me was in consideration of ecumenical and interfaith concerns. Most of the contributions dealing with ecumenism pointed toward doctrinal conversations with various official bodies and bemoaned the difficulty of having a particular group who could ‘speak with authority’ for Anglicans without the fear or likelihood of being contradicted by the actions of any province acting somewhat independently. (Guess who they mean.) I have some sympathy for the problem and think that conversations with the Inter-Anglican Doctrine Commission are a decent place to start. What no one seems interested in acknowledging in this book is that ‘gracious restraint’ and the like in regard to actions consequent to belief about the proper place and status of gay and lesbian Christians is not simply an intellectual exercise that can be put on hold, but one that has real effects in the lives of real people.

A similarly conservative tenor is found in the essays on interfaith conversation in which it is argued in one way or another that diversity of belief and practice amounts to ‘disunity’ and is a scandal or stumbling-block in presenting the faith to representatives of other faiths. I would rather that a compelling case be made for a communion of churches who live by grace before law. I would also like some acknowledgement that faiths other than Christianity also display a remarkable diversity of expression. Neither ecumenical nor interfaith conversation can be effective if they are really about control, however frustrated our representatives to such conversations become.

Liberal Democracy

2010-03-20T09:08:00.000-04:00

March 13, 2010

Lurking in the murky politics of healthcare reform is the question of abortion, and the determination of those for whom this is a critical moral issue to ensure that no federal funds support abortions in any way.

I have a friend who believes that all embryonic human life has the status of ‘human being’ and that therefore any abortion is murder by definition. He is a single issue voter by his own admission and talks of how what he identifies as ‘the genocide of abortion’ grieves his heart. He is utterly sincere and if I believed his premise I would have to agree with him. I am more inclined to go with what is and accord the moral status of human being only to those who have been born. That does not mean that I think abortion is ever within the intent and purpose of God for humanity, nor that a zygote or fetus had no moral standing at all, nor even that ‘viability’ is a distinction without merit. I do believe that sometimes abortion is the best choice a woman can make for her life without therefore proclaiming it ‘good’.

Michael J. Perry of the Emory Law School has written on The Political Morality of Liberal Democracy (Cambridge, 2010). He says that a liberal democracy is committed first to the proposition “that each and every human being has inherent dignity and is inviolable” and second is committed to “certain human rights against government…such as the right to freedom of religion.” (p.10) He examines in some detail a religious basis for morality and also (though with less success) asks whether there is or can be a secular basis for the morality of human rights. He looks at ideas of religious and moral freedom before moving on to the question as to whether religion can ever serve as a basis for lawmaking. His answer is that it may not when some kind of religious commitment is the only rationale for a particular course of action. Such a law, in effect, is discriminatory or coercive of those who do not share the religious point of view and is therefore not consistent with the axiomatic interest of liberal democracy. There may, however, be laws that have a clear additional or alternative rationale for government having a compelling and obvious interest apart from a religious premise.

And so he looks at two moral issues: same sex unions and abortion. With regard to same sex unions he asks what kind of interest a State might have in not extending certain civil rights to same sex couples. After looking at and dismissing some claims to State interest in banning such behavior, he looks at State interest in declining to encourage what religious belief might see as immoral behavior. He writes “State refusals to extend the benefit of law to same sex unions obviously succeed in serving the interest in not supporting or incentivizing same sex sexual conduct understood as immoral conduct. However, under the right to moral freedom, that interest is not a legitimate (or, much less, a weighty) governmental interest.” (p. 149)

With regard to abortion he reaches a different conclusion. He does not make a case for or against a particular view of when a life should be granted the moral status of a human being (with inherent dignity and inviolable). He does argue that a view that affords such status to unborn life is plausible and that liberal democracy can therefore make a legitimate decision to grant protection to unborn life on something other than a religious basis. He does not shirk attending to the great costs a ban on abortion can have on the lives of many women, but writes “However that the costs (of a ban on abortion) are undeniably great does not entail that one cannot plausibly conclude that unborn human life has the requisite moral status and that therefore the public benefit achieved is sufficiently great to warrant the costs.” (p.136)

In other words he thinks a case can be made for legislation which bans abortion, but not a case for withholding certain civil rights to same sex couples. I am not persuaded that the decision to accord the moral status of human being to the unborn is anything other than a religious belief and therefore should be ruled out on the same basis as his case against legislation which opposes same sex unions.

Still an Anglican?

2010-03-20T09:05:00.000-04:00

March 13, 2010

A recent meeting of the Advisory Council for the Anglican Observer to the United Nations was held in London. I was struck once again by Archbishop Williams’ grasp of international issues, especially our foci which include addressing sex-trafficking and the education and empowerment of women. I was also struck by a sense that by being in England, both at Lambeth Palace, the Archbishop’s London residence and office, and at St. Andrew’s House in Notting Hill, the ‘headquarters’ of the Anglican Communion Office (ACO), many of those attending appeared to assume that we were at or near the heart of the Anglican World. I have no evidence for this opinion but have a strong sense that we, as Episcopalians, should count ourselves lucky to be associated with such magnificence. And in a sense, I do count myself as fortunate to be Anglican.

While I was in London I picked up a book published before the last Lambeth Conference and edited by Caroline Chartres called Why I am Still an Anglican (Continuum, 2006). In it various ‘notables’ like P. D. James and Fay Weldon along with clergy of various stripes, the requisite Member of Parliament and so on reflect on their Anglicanism. In spite of one ‘Nigerian perspective’ from someone who serves in various roles in that country and in the British Commonwealth, who is also a Trustee of the British Museum (Emeka Anyaoku); and a journalist writing from Europe (Edward Lucas), the only version of Anglicanism that is really considered as such is the Church of England. Many of the contributors wax eloquent about the glories of Choral Evensong or their memories of school chapels. There is a certain amount of English hand wringing about ‘troubles’ in the Communion. One novelist married to a C of E clergyman (Ann Atkins), wrote about her view of scripture including her ‘huge admiration’ for the Roman Catholic Church. She says “One of the great strengths of Anglicanism is that it is local. Of course it is important that we are also a part of a great big global family. But there is always a tendency to heresy in the heart of man, and what makes Anglicanism strong is that it is rooted in the parish, rooted in the place, so if a province like ECUSA errs and strays…well it’s a shame, but it doesn’t bring down the rest of us.” (p.37)

Even those with some grasp of the international realities of our Communion (Archbishop Williams excepted) show a tendency to English-centrism if they are English and it is, quite simply, a skewed perspective and one that does not serve the Communion well.

I don’t know if the Anglican Observer at the UN is viable as long as Lambeth and the ACO feel unable to pay for the person and her office. It is certainly not something that ought to have a special fundraising body to support it. But those pesky Americans are welcome to raise it if they can. The belief of some seems to be that there is no way that any of the money can be raised in England. It is strange to have the sense that my own countrymen are determined to ‘get it wrong’.

Conversions to Rome

2010-03-07T06:34:00.002-05:00

March 7, 2010

You may have read about Anglican parishes converting to Rome. There was an article last week in the Telegraph under the headline “100 US Anglican parishes convert to Roman Catholic Church.” You have to read quite a way into the article before discovering that this group is part of something called ‘The Traditional Anglican Communion’ whose members, many of whom are in Australia, separated from other Anglicans in 1991. The American branch (called the Anglican Church in America or ACA) has joined their Australian branch in accepting the Pope’s invitation to traditional Anglicans to come to Rome en masse. This group, who mostly follow traditional Anglo-Catholic liturgical practice and interpretation of the Thirty Nine Articles, separated themselves for the most part over liturgical innovation and the ordination of women. The American branch which claims 100 congregations was itself an attempt to unite ‘continuing Anglican churches’ in the US, but as is often the case, people who agree about not liking something (in this case TEC) have a hard time agreeing about what they do like. The only parish in Georgia appears to be in Columbus.

There area host of these breakaway groups which you can try and sort out by looking here. There are also conservative ‘fellowships’, some of whom continue within Anglican churches in communion with Canterbury such as ‘Forward in Faith’. In England, this group is also exploring conversion to Rome.

From everything I can tell, this move makes complete sense for the ACA and has integrity with respect to their own belief, practice and history. It appears that the Roman Catholic ‘invitation’ grew out of negotiations with this group in particular.

Dinosaurs

2010-03-06T18:11:00.001-05:00

March 6, 2010

I was in England earlier in the week where people were still talking about a Tory Member of Parliament called Sir Nicholas Winterton. In the wake of the MP expense scandals this man said he was “infuriated” by the suggestion that MPs should not be able to claim for first class travel. He did not want to travel with people from “a different walk of life” and might have to stand “when there are no seats”. This is not good stuff for a conservative party on the eve of an election that most pundits say is “theirs to lose”. He manages to show an extraordinary disregard for his party’s efforts to show that they are not the party of the privileged. He wins my first ‘dinosaur’ award for the week.

The second goes to the Retired U. S. Air Force Chief of Staff (1990-94), Merrill A. McPeak who penned a column of the New York Times last Friday. He argued in favor of the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy for the military (which he helped craft). His main point was the tired old unsubstantiated point about ‘unit cohesion’ in teams on the battle front. He believes that the presence of open and honest homosexual soldiers would be a problem for others. The military in this country have been at the forefront of introducing cultural change and reducing, if not eliminating, prejudice in matters of race. That expertise could easily be put to good use in helping build ‘cohesion’ among military personnel who may still be prejudiced about gay and lesbian people as is Merrill McPeak.

Educating for Christian Leadership

2010-02-26T11:02:00.001-05:00

February 26, 2010

In a contextual education class, and after listening to an Associate Pastor talk about his ministry including his ministry to newcomers, I was asked why we had to keep on talking about theology when welcoming a newcomer was a relatively simple matter of learning someone’s name, writing a note, being gracious and following up. I agreed that, as with any program in the church, common and humane sense will go a long way and that the opportunity to learn the latest technique is always available. What we are about however is theology in context (‘orthopraxis’ for those who remember the 80s theological buzzword) and knowing why we are doing whatever we do, learning to test our instincts and intuitions against both what we believe to be right and proper and against the realities of our context as it presents itself. (David Kelsey’s reflections on Wisdom Literature in Part 1 of his Eccentric Existence are particularly helpful here.)

In the same time frame I was asked to reflect on what I consider most important for a seminary in the next five years. My answer was something along the line of wanting a seminary to prepare students for a wide variety of congregational forms of life and settings, with the ability to function effectively as members of staffs or head of staff in any of them.

And so along comes another special edition of the Anglican Theological Review (Winter 2010, Vol. 92, No 1—available in our parish library) on ‘leadership. It contains a mixture of personal stories of leadership in particular situations, literature review and articles of theological reflection—a mixed bag some of which I will write about later. It serves to highlight the problem that we all want to educate for ‘leadership’ but do not really know how to do that. In a essay called Theological Education in the Twenty-First Century Ian Markham, Dean of the Virginia Theological Seminary proposes that “successful leadership should be judged by the impact made on the wider denomination.” I could probably see that as one measure and one that provides some correction to ‘do your own thing’ leadership provided that it is not another way of hemming in creativity under the guise of ‘community’. Joseph Britton, Dean of the Berkeley Divinity School at Yale has developed a ‘rule of life' for the seminary community that gets a little closer to what preparing church leaders might entail in practice. He sometimes uses the metaphor of ‘language’, describing Anglicanism as a ‘first language’ for BDS/Y students with ‘ecumenism’ as a ‘second language’. I wonder if music might not provide another metaphor for what we are after. Church leaders need to know their scales and maybe an instrument or two, perhaps some idea of what goes into composition, all in the service of their being able to improvise in a variety of contexts. This would mean that the content of seminary education must offer basic disciplines (Bible, Theology etc.) but always in conversation with what these things mean for the life of the church in a variety of concrete, specific, ecclesial situations.

Out and About and Christian Unity

2010-02-23T06:10:00.003-05:00

February 23, 2010

I have enjoyed the chance to visit a number of Episcopal parishes and congregations of other Christian traditions in recent months. Recently I led a workshop for two parishes in Eastern North Carolina. St. Andrew's, Morehead City and St. Paul's, Beaufort both appeared to be healthy and growing in the faith at least to this outsider. Fifty people came together on a Friday night to consider Christian Community after some of them had taken on some fairly serious reading (Raymond Brown’s Community of the Beloved Disciple and Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Life Together). A snow storm Saturday Morning caused our sessions to be rescheduled for Saturday afternoon and about forty people were able to change their [pans and get through the snow to St. Paul’s to continue our work together. I tried to imagine being able to reschedule something at All Saints’ at such short notice and wondered whether we would be able to identify everyone who attended on an Friday and find their contact information and have that many of them willing and able to change their plans at such short notice. We may be spoiled with the opportunities we enjoy here, but in Beaufort they were hungry enough and enough of a community to make the change happen. They appeared to love and appreciate their clergy and one another and it was good for me to be reminded of the fidelity of the church in a rather different set of circumstances than mid-town Atlanta.

On another front I have been teaching a section of contextual education for students at the Candler School of Theology, most of whom are preparing for or exploring congregational ministry. I have been to a number of communities including Baptist, AME, United Methodist, and the Church of Christ. These congregations have been all over the metro area. Some are large and thriving, while others appear to be in a season of decline. Only one is in deep conflict with the presenting issue being the style of music and the deeper issues being wider societal change with some embracing change and others resisting it. I have a general impression that the further out from the city center we get, the more churches seem to be thriving with fairly traditional models of ministry of the kind implied in our course curriculum that looks at preaching, worship, service, education, pastoral care and the like, almost as separate disciplines from each other. One notable exception is the North Atlanta Church of Christ, a ‘progressive’ example in an American separatist, ‘Christ against Culture’ type of denomination. They have made some serious and intentional decisions to become racially diverse under the leadership of their current preaching minister and they seem to be growing in that direction as a result. This is in stark contrast to one congregation who are dealing with the aftermath of what could be described politely as a ministry of ‘dysfunctional helping’.

I am increasingly sure that the way toward some kind of Christian Unity today must be through addressing the reality of ‘difference’ and moving toward embracing such differences around the Lord’s Table rather than seeing to make that table a place of agreement or unanimity. On one hand this could be a recipe for cheap grace and chaos. It is also possible however that it could be a way of beginning to grasp the much greater unity of all creation in the ‘mind and heart’ of the Creator. It certainly means being intentional and conscious about what is going on when we ‘engage God and neighbor’ as our strategic thinking group has put it. I will be working with our newly appointed All Saints’ 2020 steering committee to think about ways in which we can become conscious of how to recognize, understand and even appreciate difference as spiritual work that serves to deepen both our faith and our common cause with all of creation.

Interdependence

2010-02-09T05:40:00.002-05:00

February 9, 2010

I am using a weekend off to lead something styled “A Workshop in Christian Community” for members of three parishes in Eastern North Carolina. I will offer three presentations along with exercises and Q and A on Friday and Saturday and will preach in one of those churches (yet to be revealed, but probably a parish in Morehead NC) on Sunday before coming home for a ‘Valentine’s Day Dinner’. How this came about is a long story, but with all such stories has to do with personal relationships and old friends. A group of people there has been reading Raymond Brown’s The Beloved Community about the Christian Community of John’s Gospel and its relationships with others around them. They have also read Dietrich Bonheoffer’s Life Together, theological reflections on the practices of Christian Community.

I have fairly free rein given that and intend to follow a trajectory looking at some of the bases for (or assumptions I make) about our communal nature as people made in the image of God revealed as Triune. This will be a kind of anthropological effort that is intended to get us thinking about who we are, what makes us a ‘self’ in relation to others and so on. We will look at how we like to be treated by others in light of how God treats us and in light of the reality of differences in power in many of our important relationships. The second section will focus more on the practices of community especially what is going on when we gather around the Lord’s Table (with Bonheoffer as the subtext or context for a discussion of worship.) Last we will look at the community’s relation to other Christian communities, other communities of faith and people who claim no faith (with Raymond Brown as subtext or context) and the assumption that God’s hope or end is that we find ourselves in common humanity beyond, but with full appreciation for our particularities. I have some ideas for a sermon coming out of this with texts for the Last Sunday after the Epiphany in which we hear the story of Transfiguration, but am going to let the conversations we have shape the final form of the sermon for Sunday.

I’m looking forward to seeing what unfolds and the preparation has been fun. Where I am stuck however is in thinking about the other subtext that will shape our conversation even if we never make it explicit and that is the reality of tensions within the Anglican Communion. I’m not planning to take this head on in any presentations but will probably address the issues in terms of Christian Practice in community. We sometimes hear that the proposed Anglican Covenant is about strengthening ‘interdependence’ over ‘provincial autonomy’. A newish English Suffragan Bishop called Graham Kings is also leader of the group called Fulcrum. Has recently suggested that this is his view of things going so far as to say that if TEC moves forward with confirming the election of Mary Glasspool as Suffragan Bishop of Los Angeles, and if our Presiding Bishop participates in the consecration, she will have made it impossible for herself to serve on this new animal called the ‘Anglican Standing Committee’ with any integrity as a result of her actions. You can read his comments here.

Regular readers of my opinions on this will not be surprised that I disagree with Bishop King’s (and the proposed Covenant’s—much of which is simply a well thought out expression of Anglican Ecclesiology and no problem--) assumption that interdependence means ‘gracious restraint’ in the living out of principles of the gospel which have become clear to this province but are matters of debate in others and simply ‘beyond the pale’ and not even worthy of discussion in yet others. Restraint sounds very reasonable when discussed as a theory and simply wrong when thought about in terms of sisters and brothers in the pew who have by presence and conversation over a long period of time have helped the Church gathered around the Table and under the Holy Spirit to come to a new assessment of what it means to be human. (Obviously this sentence can be debated and in itself does not constitute an argument). Why can ‘interdependence’ not mean recognizing, understanding and even appreciating difference? And why can Episcopal leadership, especially in those parts of the Church who grant bishops ‘high’ and even ‘autonomous’ privilege, not mean insisting that such decisions as that made by TEC with regard to the full humanity as such of lesbian and gay people be ‘respected’ or ‘given room to develop’ or ‘be one more manifestation of cultural difference’ rather as we live with differences over the status of women in the Communion? Instead we have brothers and sisters (and a pride of male bishops—lions of the Church?) who see interdependence as essentially expressed in ‘majority rule’. Is that really the proper consequence of the ecclesiology of the ofrst three sections of the proposed Covenant?

The C of E and ACNA

2010-02-05T06:55:00.002-05:00

February 5, 2010

Those interested in understanding what has been going on in the Episcopal Church regarding the status of clergy and property will find a splendid summary written by Simon Samiento, an Englishman, for the education of their General Synod. You can read it here. This is in response to a briefing paper offered by the sponsor of a private member’s motion that the Church of England express desire to be in communion with the Anglican Communion in North America (ACNA) which contains a number of inaccuracies of fact. You can read that one here There is a parallel paper submitted from the Anglican Church of Canada which you can read about here I am encouraged that our friends are stepping up. I hope that we too desire to be in communion with ACNA, some of whose are former colleagues of mine, but they have chosen (for whatever reason) to leave The Episcopal Church and start their own community of faith in the Anglican tradition in many ways, muddled about the validity and desirability of women in Holy Orders and clear that whatever one’s opinion of the idea of ‘sexual orientation’, any ‘same sex activity’ is sinful.

Politics

2010-02-03T18:04:00.000-05:00

February 3, 2010

With all of the talk of the dreadful lack of results from Obama’s first year as President, I was both heartened and disheartened by recent news reports.

I was disheartened by a piece in the New York Times by Charles Blow naming the widespread and pretty basic political illiteracy in this country. Less than a third of us know that no republican senators voted in favor of the health bill that eventually came to the floor of the senate. Blow says that people don’t care about the process as much as the results. It is certainly hard for me to understand how the democrats, with a supermajority in the senate were unable to sort through the admittedly complex interests that have to be balance in any reform of any system while at the same time taking on the fog created by republican opposition to any reform.

I was heartened by Obama sharing the lowest approval rating of any President since records were kept in the Eisenhower days. He enjoys approval rtes lower than Nixon and Carter after one year. He shares this low number with the Gipper who also inherited a mess and could not get things turned around in a year. According to a recent Newsweek they both come in with about 57% approval at the end of their first year.

There is certainly a lot of handwringing and punditry going on. Timid democrats and obstructionist republicans need to hear that their stance is not working for the country and won’t work for them either. Leaders in congress need to get serious about helping move forward the agenda for which the President was elected. He might have to stop being so reasonable and incorporating republican ideas. He doesn’t get credit when he does. He gets slammed by his friends for being ‘ineffective’. The spin game is keeping us from moving forward even as the economy is showing the faintest signs of survival. I know we need healthcare reform and that paying for insuring more people is a burden that must be shared fairly. (Isn’t it great that corporations are people too?). I don’t’ know about regulating banks, but I do know that de regulation was the change that made the current mess possible (while making some people extremely rich). I am glad that we are getting out of Iraq and have every expectation that we will fail to make real and permanent friends in Afghanistan while we continue to hammer at Al Qaida and the rest. I generally approve of drones in that fight and soldiers living with the people they are serving and protecting. I’m simply not a person of faith when it comes to military action in that part of the world. I can be persuaded that it is the lesser of two evils but I cannot get excited about war as a good thing.

Up to now I have not really come across populist rage in person. Now I seem to be experiencing it in my own person.