Financial Crisis

September 25, 2008

The Archbishop of Canterbury has been busy lately offering a cautious criticism of unregulated financial markets (http://www.spectator.co.uk/the-magazine/features/2172131/face-it-marx-was-partly-right-about-capitalism.thtml) Not so the Archbishop of York whose criticisms were not cautious in the least (http://www.archbishopofyork.org/1981) and asking for renewed commitment to the Millennium Development Goals and the eradication of poverty on the eve of the General Assembly of the United Nations. (http://www.anglicancommunion.org/acns/news.cfm/2008/9/24/ACNS4526) I am cheered by the attention being given to the current economic crisis and especially his renewed attention to the eradication of poverty where so many are busy appearing to either protect their riches on one hand or assign blame to the greedy on the other. I hope that the President and Congress take their time to structure any rescue package thoughtfully and carefully to make sure it achieves the desired goals and minimizes the unintended consequences. There is much that I have not yet grasped about the proposals floating around at this point but this I do ‘get’: the billions of dollars we are talking about eventually and somewhere become real money that buys bread and cheese and the like. It is the same real money that is going to pay for our war of aggression and in some way shape or form bear the reality of our various national deficits. We are right to be concerned about economic managers who think that all this money will appear by magic as a gift of that mythical (idolatrous?) god we call ‘the market’. In the end, one way or another, those billions result from our labor and the taxes we are able to pay, or some kind of profit from taking a stake in the financial services industry, a form of socialism that does not inspire me.

I’m looking forward to hearing our presidential candidates discuss these issues and think there is no time like the present. Maybe during the long scheduled and expensive-for-donors-who-make-gifts-to-fund the debate this Friday?

Rites for Same Gender Couples Continued

September 24, 2008

It is clear after only one day of preliminary conversation and response that naming such rites as ‘marriage’ is still immensely controversial (even when the resistance is more emotional and intuitive than rational) and so stands a good chance of getting in the way of our getting to the important issue of consideration of liturgical rites. I’ve therefore revised the proposal (with a little help from my friends)to show proper form and what I believe to be a required explanation, as follows:

Resolution to enable the development of liturgical rites for same gender unions

Resolved: This 102^nd Annual Council of the Diocese of Atlanta approves the following resolution to the 76^th General Convention of The Episcopal Church, meeting in Anaheim, California in 2009; and be it further

Resolved: This council directs the Secretary of Council to transmit the following resolution to the Secretary of the General Convention:

Resolved: The House of __________ concurring, the 76^th General Convention of The Episcopal Church authorizes the Standing Liturgical Commission to develop appropriate rites for the celebration and blessing of the sacred unions of gay and lesbian persons, taking into account the variety of civil arrangements for such unions available in the regions served by the church; and be it further

Resolved: that such rite or rites shall be presented at the 77^th General Convention of the Episcopal Church.

EXPLANATION:

In light of events following the Lambeth Conference of 2008, it is clear that our charitable restraint and response to the Windsor Report in the matter of our declining to develop a rite or rites to allow the celebration and blessing of sacred unions for people of the same gender has not had the effect of preserving unity and civility between those who believe such unions may be good and moral and those who cannot conceive as such a possibility being within the bounds of Christian faith and the Anglican Tradition. It is also clear that while a great many Episcopalians remain undecided about their own beliefs in these matters, they recognize both the desirability of allowing those who desire to make such commitments in the midst of their community of faith to do so; and that the reality that the cost of our charity has been at the expense of one clear minority within our church; and further that there is no compelling reason that these brothers and sisters should have to continue to bear the burden of that charity.

Further, the development of such a rite or rites by and for the whole church will allow a restoration of decency and order from diocese to diocese under the guidance of each bishop, the ensuring of theological integrity to such rites and the capacity of the church to ‘sanction’ and declare such committed relationships among people of the same gender to be both moral and fully within the bounds of our common life.

That said, I believe that the trajectory of where we are heading (maybe in a generation of two) is toward marriage. I am not among those who really mind what we name these unions, nor do I have a problem with naming them marriage. I rather suspect that the resistance to the idea is residual unwillingness to allow gay and lesbian relationship s to be somehow ‘equal’, preferring something that is, in effect, ‘separate but equal’. It is also possible that such unions might be something other than an emulation of a heterosexual institution. That remains to be seen even though I fear that we will have to go on talking about these matters until that question is resolved by a developing consensus one way or the other.

What I know now is that when I participate in celebrating a union (with all of the nuances of not pronouncing but rather invoking blessing and so on) people will come up afterwards and say things like ‘what a lovely wedding’ regardless of what the invitation named the ceremony. There is a certain level on which if it looks like a duck and walks like a duck and quacks like a duck then it is a duck.

Comments welcome and encouraged as ever.

Blessing Animals and Others

September 24, 2008

Along with many parishes we ask God’s blessings on animals around St. Francis’ day each year. (We are usually a little early in order to avoid conflict with our fall parish weekend at Kanuga.) We do this in the context of a 9 am celebration of the Eucharist and it is a moving and important event for many.

Part of the annual event which is not so fun is the conversation that arises each year in which someone will say something I first heard said in all seriousness at a clergy meeting in 1982: “We bless hunts. We bless ships. Why can’t we bless people who love each other?” The response should be obvious to anyone who gives such statements and question a moment’s thought. First, we don’t actually bless such things. We ask God’s blessing on something particular (‘the safety of all who sail in her”) just as we can ask God’s blessing on anything that is not immoral. What we don’t do is pronounce blessing as a sacramental act (akin to pronouncing absolution) in the life of the Church. I realize that this distinction makes little difference to most people but it is an important one. We pronounce blessing on all people, including those who identify themselves as LGBT or a host of other things at almost every Eucharist. We also pronounce God’s blessing on marriages, currently defined in our constitution as a union of man and woman. The church determined along time ago that there was no moral ambiguity in such a blessing.

At All Saints’ we will ask or invoke God’s blessing on the relationships of gay and lesbian people pending some level of consensus in the wider church about the (moral) status of such relationships. I’m looking forward to and working for that day but the cheap analogy between ‘blessing pets’ and blessing ‘people who love each other’ demeans the seriousness with which we take both possibilities.

Annual Council

September 24, 2008

The 102nd Annual Council of the Diocese of Atlanta will meet in Decatur on November 14-15, 2008 and among other things will consider resolutions. It is fairly common for dioceses of the church to ask the General Convention to act on certain matters on behalf of the whole church. In our Diocese it is most normal (and generally preferred) that any resolutions to come before the council be presented by convocations or geographical gatherings of parishes, but may be submitted by any clergy or lay delegate.

I plan to ‘shop’ the following resolutions for consideration by the mid-Atlanta convocation and also see whether there are other delegates who might be interested in sponsoring such resolutions with me. I’m sure that they will need editing and putting in the proper legislative form, but the substance of them is to move the church towards the end of doing what we need to do both to meet the pressing pastoral needs of our lesbian and gay members and to provide ecclesial recognition and ‘sanction’ for such life-long, committed relationships in the life of the church and removing any ambiguity about the morality of such relationships in principle.

I am among those who are wearied of and by our conversations about human sexuality over the past thirty years and believe that the only way to bring them to a close (at least in our official councils) is to address them with clarity and do what we need to do. Our parish has been blessed by relative calm since we decided ‘officially’ that we do not believe that gay and lesbian relationships are sinful by definition. If that position is correct, and we continue to see the fruits of the Holy Spirit in many gay and lesbian relationships suggesting that we are on the right path in our belief, then certain things follow. One of those is that such relationships should be affirmed and celebrated in the communities of faith of people who desire such celebrations.

We are currently living with a number of anomalies that would be clarified by making it possible for us to recognize marriage between people of the same gender, currently prohibited by our constitutional definition of marriage as being between a man and a woman. We have a situation in some states where clergy are permitted to bless gay and lesbian unions but not their marriages performed by their states. We also have a bishop who is in a relationship not yet officially sanctioned by the wider community of the church.

We have held off making such moves out of consideration for the wider Anglican Communion and for the comfort of the more instinctively and intuitively conservative members of The Episcopal Church and have done so at the expense of moving toward the affirmation and full inclusion of gay and lesbian people. Anyone who has been in relationship with our more conservative brethren and sistren over the years know that there is no placating them in this area and that anything other than condemnation is considered ‘unscriptural’. We also know that while their beliefs about the evils of homosexuality are most certainly well within the bounds of traditional Anglican faith and practice, their claims to be the only upholders of biblical ethics over against ‘liberals’ or ‘revisionists’ are spurious, exclusive and (intellectually) dishonest. They are choosing the route of ‘reform’ or ‘schism’, depending on your point of view, but in any event are bringing about a division of some sort in the Anglican Communion made manifest in an ugly attempt to size power in the face of what appears to be a leadership vacuum.

Those conservatives (including many friends and some in my own parish) who have stayed away from this ugliness have found that while they are in varying degrees and fro varying reasons less than thrilled about the affirmation of GLBT people, that such affirmations really don’t negatively affect their lives in any way except that they see their friends fighting with each other over something that is not worth splitting the church. My hope is that enough such people would recognize that there are no ‘half measures’ that will end this conflict that so many on both sides believe to be so fundamental to the fidelity of the church.

So here are my proposals that I would prefer to submit unadorned by ‘whereas’ clauses and ‘background information’. Your thoughts are welcome.

Resolution to enable the recognition and blessing of marriage between persons of the same gender in The Episcopal Church

Resolved: That the Diocese of Atlanta request that the General Convention begin the process changing our constitution to allow a definition of marriage that includes marriage between people of the same gender; and further

Resolved: That the Diocese of Atlanta request that the General Convention authorize the Standing Liturgical Commission to develop a marriage rite appropriate to and for gay and lesbian persons for use in those states where such marriage is permitted.

Resolution to enable the celebration of same-sex unions in The Episcopal Church

Resolved: That the Diocese of Atlanta request that the General Convention authorize the Standing Liturgical Commission to develop a rite or rites appropriate to the Celebration of same-sex unions.

Guns and Public Safety

September 23, 2008

A hearing is to be held today on House bill 89, an extraordinary piece of proposed legislation that will have the effect of allowing the carrying of concealed weapons in many public places, the more worrying of which include bars, houses of worship and college campuses, athletic events and areas of courthouses not directly involved with court hearings or a jail. It also removes any prohibition against or sanction for consuming alcoholic beverages while carrying a loaded and concealed firearm.

The leaders of our public policy network and I attended a meeting of concerned clergy about this issue and both would be wiling to answer any questions or concerns you may have. Jan Woolford can be reached at jbwoolforduk@aol.com and Margaret Daniel at mpdaniel@mindspring.com and I am grateful to them for staying on and with this issue.

I can only assume that there is some philosophical agenda behind this proposed madness. I observe but do not understand at a visceral level the attachment so many have to guns at a level that seems to me to reach that of idolatry. This proposed change in state law seems to me to be more about some odd version of ‘rights’ over reason and presume that serious concern about this will transcend party lines.

I grew up in a house that had guns for sporting purposes and I remember the village policeman coming by from time to time to ensure that the guns and ammunition were kept safely and under lock and key. This procedure allowed my father to keep his license to own the things. I enjoyed shooting at targets with a rifle on a shooting range and found (after the fact) that Joanna enjoyed it too this summer at the Athens Y Camp for girls. In my former parish I knew of a t least one member of the vestry who was a serious collector of guns. That became apparent as we discussed joining a coalition of Northern Virginia Episcopal Churches who were attempting to address some really flabby laws in Virginia that allowed significant trafficking of guns through the state to murder and crime capitals in the Northeast. I don’t consider myself a fundamentalist on some questions about owning or using guns but the emotional heat that gets generated around constitutional questions gives me the willies. Lots of worked up people frothing at the mouth are usually being manipulated by some very calm back room operators with an agenda. (We see it in the church all the time, --more so in the blogosphere).

I hope you will join me in keeping an eye on today’s version of gun insanity and doing what you can to prevent it.

Robert Duncan

September 19, 2008

So our House of Bishops has voted to depose the Bishop of Pittsburgh for ‘abandoning the communion of this church’ by a vote of 88 to 35 with 4 abstentions. He was received immediately as a ‘bishop at large’ by the province of the Southern Cone. A quick search of the web will lead you to many statements including a number that call the deposition illegal or unethical without suggesting any grounds for such claims. Bishop Duncan who I remember as a superb chaplain at the University of North Carolina has apparently made a number of statements and taken a number of actions by which he has placed himself beyond the bounds of the Episcopal Church and declined an opportunity to refute or deny those statements in the House of Bishops of which he was a member until yesterday.

The confusion will continue as the Diocese of Pittsburgh moves towards a vote to ‘realign’ with the Southern Cone (apparently the Diocese of Fort Worth is also quite a way down that path). The standing committee of the diocese (with one dissenting member) supports that path and we will have a situation similar to that of San Joachin pretty soon with two entities claiming to be the church in the area and doubtless legal wrangling over property. Those who wish to leave the Episcopal Church also wish to take over the ‘brand name’ of Anglicanism and do not want to forgo what they see as ‘their’ property when they leave. There are many in the wider Anglican world (and within the Episcopal Church) who support them and abhor our affirmation of gay and lesbian Christians. That continues to be the issue underlying this turmoil, complicated by large amounts of money supporting a conservative cause and course of action.

I find the whole business very sad and think it would make sense to recognize that we are looking at a world-wide division with progressive Christians in the Anglican minority. If leaders in England, Canada, Australia etc. and were to stop hoping that they could ‘dodge the bullet’ we could probably get on with an equitable (and non litigious) separation.

A Crystal Ball on the Church

September 11, 2008

At a recent rector’s forum I was asked for my ‘crystal ball’ prediction as to what was going to happen with the Anglican Communion. I said I did not know but that I thought the current confusion would continue for some time as those who see themselves as reformers continue their apparent desire to establish a new church (which of course they see as ‘reformed’) with something other than Canterbury as its ‘center’ and with a doctrine that whatever else it contains is fundamentally about opposing any affirmation of gay people and will be rid of the contaminating influence of the Episcopal Church.

I don’t really know more than that now except that I think we are going to end up with two Anglican Communions who (mostly) neither talk to each other nor like each other much. Certainly in this country we are going to see an increasingly formal ‘split’ as places like the Diocese of Pittsburgh move forward with their ‘realignment plans’, and we will continue to have the doublespeak about nomenclature.

A recent issue of The Living Church (September 14, 2008) contains an article by a priest called David Handy that makes this clear. (I knew him slightly at Yale and we crossed briefly in the Diocese of Virginia. I remember him as extremely bright and as a former Wycliffe Bible Translator www.wycliffe.org who came into the Episcopal Church through the influence of a professor at Wheaton College.) He calls his ‘reader’s viewpoint’ article (p.40-41) A New Reformation is Coming and looks for a “whole new kind of Anglicanism”. He writes “Freed at last from the shackles of our Constantian past, this post-colonial, post-Western, post-Christendom Anglicanism will be much more uncompromisingly biblical, much more theologically coherent, and much more ethically rigorous than the old Erastian kind ever was.” He begins his article by looking to a bright future and talking of the God of love, peace and hope. There is much that is attractive to me in his vision but he goes off the rails and reveals his true bottom line with the statement: “The deep tear in the fabric of the Communion has continued to widen, primarily because of the intransigence of the heretical advocates of the unbiblical ‘gay is OK’ delusion.” And there you have it: blaming, drama, inflated rhetoric, exclusive claims to correct biblical interpretation and quite possibly, hate dressed up as love. With that at its core the ‘New Anglicanism’ fails to attract me. I will continue to seek ways to proclaim good news in a post-colonial, post-Western, post-Christendom and probably post-modern world apart from what I hear as hateful.