Cross-posted at Shreds and Patches

The predictable announcement that a majority of our Ordinaries consented to the election of a partnered lesbian as Suffragan Bishop of Los Angeles has been greeted by laments that His Grace of Canterbury has not galloped to the rescue of mere Anglicans in TEC. No amount of explanations about the restricted role of primacy satisfies blame-seekers. Even some who understand the structure of the communion mutter about +Rowan’s reluctance to play the politician and fire off sound bites to encourage the ranks.

The expectations one might have of a politician or perhaps a general are heaped upon the mitred head of +Rowan Williams. Now it may well be that when the Archbishop has finished consulting with the primates and others some form of discipline will be imposed on TEC. Such “sanctions,” the ecclesiastical version of those imposed on a rogue state, may well in effect place TEC in a special category. Yet nothing which may be done will “rescue” traditionalists in TEC. Unlike the Pope, the Archbishop can’t replace bishops, ban liturgical texts or sack the staff of seminaries.

Unless leaving for another ecclesial entity is viewed as a real option, mere Anglicans in TEC must make shift for themselves. No one is going to rescue us. No one can rescue us.

There are options we can consider to encourage fellowship and growth. The Communion Partner Bishops and those who signed the Anaheim Statement are in a position to give clear and courageous leadership. They must be brave enough to offer tangible assistance to those who live in heterodox dioceses. If they can’t cross borders, faithful clergy and laity can and should. The extraordinary resources of the computer age should be harnessed. Diocesan borders are not effective barriers to the internet or texting!

Our agenda should not be to hang on until we die off. If the present trends continue, TEC as an institution will soon be faced with structural collapse, as revenue and membership continue to decline. TEC has staked its future on being the church of and for the “progressive” and financially elite segment of American society. Yet that constituency is becoming more and more secularized and unchurched.

We have to demonstrate that we are as committed to social justice as any “progressive” Episcopalian. Our church has been distracted from its mission to the poor, to minorities and those who have no health care by its single-minded advocacy for one group.

We have to show that we welcome into our churches all who seek to meet Jesus. If contemporary society is fixated on labels, we must show that oneness in Christ afforded by baptism is the common identity of a Christian despite our sins and failings.

We have to summon up the courage to travel out from the safety of our church buildings and engage Americans where they gather. It is high time that we became evangelically driven rather than membership oriented. We can be utterly sure that the Trinity will inspire those of us who seem weak and marginalized in our church. +Rowan may not be able to rescue us, but God will. However, we must be prepared to accept God’s gifts as He gives them. They may not be the gifts we expect!
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Tony,

  It is incorrect to suggest that clergy can function in Dioceses not their own independent of permission from the local Diocesan. To do so will create more than tension between CP Bishops and their colleagues, including the filing of presentments against clergy and Bishops who do not discipline wandering clerics.

  Sadly the principal message of the CP Bishops will now be, “We’re not really TEC and we’re not really ACNA, but we are like ACNA because we segregate the glbt community from leadership”  Great message, I wonder how it will work.  Mask it in language of wanting to be in with the in crowd in the communion, or in terms that still look like the ACNA screeds on the Bible and Church tradition and the CP Bishops etc still do not have much appealing to work from.

  The ++ABC will have to gauge very carefully anything he does as he still does not know the full extent of support or opposition to the Covenant.  He doesn’t have any power to sanction TEC apart from not inviting us to tea parties.  Nor do the Primates.  So all he can do is make more of a mess than he has already created.

  TEC, however, emerges with at least two things going for it. First it will have pruned away the most toxic and bigoted people from its midst.  Despite wrapping themselves in their self righteous version of the Gospel we will simply be free of the constant drone of those who cannot make the case persuasively that their view of the world is correct.  There will indeed be some income adjustments, but pruning does that in the service of new, healthier growth.
 
  And that is the second advantage TEC emerges with. It’s commitment to inclusion and to celebrating the gifts as God distributes them and not as dead white males thought God should, positions us to speak an actual Gospel of Grace and Mercy over against the judgmental and mean spirited fundamentalist lookalikes formerly in our midst.  It may well take a decade to see the recovery, but it will come because Grace and Mercy always trump jugmental bigotry.

I didn’t suggest that they might exercise a sacramental ministry, although an occasional Sunday visit does not require the Ordinary’s consent. But Michael, I was under the impression that “pruning” or “weeding” were God’s task and not that of the “righteous.”  And if we are guilty of such activity by suggesting that persons who openly engage in sex outside marriage shouldn’t be elected bishops our scythe seems less formidable than yours in scope and target.  What a righteous and narrow community you propose.

Michael Russell - 19 March 2010 03:56 PM

TEC, however, emerges with at least two things going for it. First it will have pruned away the most toxic and bigoted people from its midst.  Despite wrapping themselves in their self righteous version of the Gospel we will simply be free of the constant drone of those who cannot make the case persuasively that their view of the world is correct.  There will indeed be some income adjustments, but pruning does that in the service of new, healthier growth.
 
And that is the second advantage TEC emerges with. It’s commitment to inclusion and to celebrating the gifts as God distributes them and not as dead white males thought God should, positions us to speak an actual Gospel of Grace and Mercy over against the judgmental and mean spirited fundamentalist lookalikes formerly in our midst.  It may well take a decade to see the recovery, but it will come because Grace and Mercy always trump judgmental bigotry.

Michael, how in Hell is this not judgemental! How in Hell are the people in Terry Martin’s blog, the kind of people who will stick around, not judgemental! How in Hell can you say anything more self-righteous than this???

The irony of Michael’s position is that it bears an uncanny likeness to that which the Elizabethan sectaries proposed and Richard Hooker opposed. +Michael Ramsey once remarked that if all sinners were ejected from the church, the righteous would have to go for their deadly sin of pride.

We live in a Humpty Dumpty kind of world, and this thread illustrates it.

Tony graciously spells out the very real dilemma that faces many of us in light of the latest curve being thrown at worldwide Anglicanism by the Episcopal Church,setting the stage for what could be a very fruitful conversation. As I read Clavier’s latest comments to mind came John Wesley and George Whitefield, faithful priests of the church, excluded from the churches so preaching the message of salvation in the open air—and spawning a movement that has brought Christ to millions around the world. Powerlessness within the formal ecclesial structures does not spell the end of faithful and fruitful ministry—that, I think, is what I hear Tony saying.

However, Michael’s response, non-judgmentally, of course, is in effect saying what a blessing it is for the Episcopal Church to be rid of a great number of toxic and bigoted people who have not yet reached a requisite level of enlightenment, and reading between the lines there is the inference that if the rest of you would all decamp then we would have the ‘pure church’ for which he and others might long. Again, and of course without making any sweeping judgments gentle words are used like ‘mean-spirited,’ ‘fundamentalist,’ and the influence of ‘dead white males.’ That great trump-word ‘inclusion’ is used to back his assertions, claiming that it represents the grace and mercy of God.

I have come to the conclusion that there are few of us in this debate that has torn the church who can in any way make claims that we have or do represent the grace and mercy of God. The tenor of the conversation has been rancorous on all sides, and the manner in which we use language with (and at) one another utterly precludes the possibility of being able to reason together, or in most circumstances even to pray together.

We are hopelessly polarized, the Episcopal Church is leaking members like a sieve that has gone to sea, one side feels victimized, the other feels gleeful and keeps pressing home their advantage, the Anglican Communion struggles to be gracious, and the spiral continues downward.

Father Kew, I hereby nominate you to the “Jonathan Swift Society”!

Fr. Tony Clavier - 19 March 2010 03:29 PM

Cross-posted at Shreds and Patches

The predictable announcement that a majority of our Ordinaries consented to the election of a partnered lesbian as Suffragan Bishop of Los Angeles has been greeted by laments that His Grace of Canterbury has not galloped to the rescue of mere Anglicans in TEC. No amount of explanations about the restricted role of primacy satisfies blame-seekers. Even some who understand the structure of the communion mutter about +Rowan’s reluctance to play the politician and fire off sound bites to encourage the ranks.

The expectations one might have of a politician or perhaps a general are heaped upon the mitred head of +Rowan Williams. Now it may well be that when the Archbishop has finished consulting with the primates and others some form of discipline will be imposed on TEC. Such “sanctions,” the ecclesiastical version of those imposed on a rogue state, may well in effect place TEC in a special category. Yet nothing which may be done will “rescue” traditionalists in TEC. Unlike the Pope, the Archbishop can’t replace bishops, ban liturgical texts or sack the staff of seminaries.

Unless leaving for another ecclesial entity is viewed as a real option, mere Anglicans in TEC must make shift for themselves. No one is going to rescue us. No one can rescue us.

There are options we can consider to encourage fellowship and growth. The Communion Partner Bishops and those who signed the Anaheim Statement are in a position to give clear and courageous leadership. They must be brave enough to offer tangible assistance to those who live in heterodox dioceses. If they can’t cross borders, faithful clergy and laity can and should. The extraordinary resources of the computer age should be harnessed. Diocesan borders are not effective barriers to the internet or texting!

Our agenda should not be to hang on until we die off. If the present trends continue, TEC as an institution will soon be faced with structural collapse, as revenue and membership continue to decline. TEC has staked its future on being the church of and for the “progressive” and financially elite segment of American society. Yet that constituency is becoming more and more secularized and unchurched.

We have to demonstrate that we are as committed to social justice as any “progressive” Episcopalian. Our church has been distracted from its mission to the poor, to minorities and those who have no health care by its single-minded advocacy for one group.

We have to show that we welcome into our churches all who seek to meet Jesus. If contemporary society is fixated on labels, we must show that oneness in Christ afforded by baptism is the common identity of a Christian despite our sins and failings.

We have to summon up the courage to travel out from the safety of our church buildings and engage Americans where they gather. It is high time that we became evangelically driven rather than membership oriented. We can be utterly sure that the Trinity will inspire those of us who seem weak and marginalized in our church. +Rowan may not be able to rescue us, but God will. However, we must be prepared to accept God’s gifts as He gives them. They may not be the gifts we expect!
View the original post

Fr Clavier,
Suppose the mere Anglicans still within TEC did become evangelistially driven. Once having made a disciple, how is it possible in TEC to “teach them to obey all things” with the progressives in control? Most of the bishops, most of the clergy, and many of the laity to whom a newcomer would be exposed in TEC are progressives, not mere Anglicans. ISTM TEC is a dangerous place for a new believer. How can they be kept safe from the false teaching everywhere—or is guarding them against those dangers God’s problem, not ours?

This is not the first time and probably won’t be the last when the few have found themselves surrounded by indifference and unbelief. We have not been called into a protective society or an ecclesiastical fortress but into danger. At some periods that danger has been physical, at others, moral. Being a Christian entails suffering, cross-bearing - as the Epistle for last Sunday reminded us vividly - and yet God is faithful and will always give us the means to endure.

Michael Russell - 19 March 2010 03:56 PM

Tony,

  It is incorrect to suggest that clergy can function in Dioceses not their own independent of permission from the local Diocesan. To do so will create more than tension between CP Bishops and their colleagues, including the filing of presentments against clergy and Bishops who do not discipline wandering clerics.

  Sadly the principal message of the CP Bishops will now be, “We’re not really TEC and we’re not really ACNA, but we are like ACNA because we segregate the glbt community from leadership”

That is certainly not my bishop (Ed Little)‘s message. We are indeed really TEC and intend to remain so unless and until we are forced to choose between TEC and the Anglican Communion. Just because you and your counterparts on the right are obsessed with the issue of homosexuality doesn’t mean that all of us are. Why would you expect that this would even come up in the course of evangelism unless someone specifically asked? 

Mask it in language of wanting to be in with the in crowd in the communion

The “in crowd” has nothing to do with it. Can’t you do better than construct straw men?

  TEC, however, emerges with at least two things going for it. First it will have pruned away the most toxic and bigoted people from its midst.  Despite wrapping themselves in their self righteous version of the Gospel we will simply be free of the constant drone of those who cannot make the case persuasively that their view of the world is correct.  There will indeed be some income adjustments, but pruning does that in the service of new, healthier growth.
 
  And that is the second advantage TEC emerges with. It’s commitment to inclusion and to celebrating the gifts as God distributes them and not as dead white males thought God should, positions us to speak an actual Gospel of Grace and Mercy over against the judgmental and mean spirited fundamentalist lookalikes formerly in our midst.  It may well take a decade to see the recovery, but it will come because Grace and Mercy always trump jugmental bigotry.

Do you have any sociological research that supports your expectation of growth? As far as I know, there are two schools of thought in the sociology of religion. One says that secularization is inevitable, and the other (which appears stronger to me, but that may be an illusion of perspective due to the fact that the folks I hang out with seem to trust this school more) says that churches generally grow when they maintain fairly “high tension” with their environment and make robust demands on would-be members. I think that Stark (the principal exponent of this school) falls prey to his own bias when he assumes that liberal churches couldn’t maintain a fruitful level of “tension.” (When I read Stark and Finke’s _Acts of Faith_ I remember thinking, “a liberal church in the South is in far more tension with its environment than, say, a conservative Southern Baptist church.”) But it seems to me that most liberals haven’t even begun to take on board the consequences of Stark and Finke’s theories, proceeding rather in the naive confidence that, as you put it, “grace and mercy always trump judgmental bigotry.” The belief of John Shelby Spong and many others that abandoning traditional Christian doctrinal claims will help the Church survive seems even more irrational to me.

There’s a Catch-22 here. Whatever we do simply in order to grow will probably not work, and will certainly contribute to our own damnation (interpret that literally or metaphorically as you prefer). So if we have strong convictions that don’t help us grow, we should act on them anyway and let the chips fall where they may. (And paradoxically, acting on our convictions is probably the thing that will make growth most likely.)

Theologically, I question what you mean by “grace and mercy.” Traditionally, this language has been applied to sinners. Yet you deny that homosexuality is sinful. So “grace and mercy” surely have nothing to do, in your view, with how the Church should treat homosexuals. Accepting active homosexuals into positions of leadership in the Church is surely, in your view, a matter of justice and not of grace or mercy. These considerations ought rather to apply to how you treat those “fundamentalist lookalikes” at whose departure you rejoice, since presumably you think that being a fundamentalist lookalike really is sinful.

Furthermore, in all but the most antinomian varieties of Protestant theology grace involves transformation. You are abusing the word when you use it to describe simply accepting homosexuals as they are. Either this is a mistaken tolerance that lacks the cleansing fire of true grace, or it is a simple act of justice toward people whose homosexuality does not in itself call for grace at all.

Edwin