Christianity has been a passionate argument, periodically escalating to bloody conflict, since its inception. There were disputes amongst the disciples even before Jesus died. Then came Paul, who directed his fury at his fellow Christians in Jerusalem. Several of the theologians who came next were first heralded as brilliant, only later to be declared heretics. All in all, the first five centuries, up to the Council of Chalcedon in 451, saw an extraordinary flourishing of theological imagination and religious antagonism. Christians were persecuting each other within two years of the emperor Constantine’s conversion, a fact that is doubly arresting since that was easily within living memory of the period during which Christians suffered their severest persecution under Diocletian.

Work through the centuries since, as Diarmaid MacCulloch does in his new book, A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, and it’s clear that few facets of human nature have been left unexplored in this struggle. Equally inventive are the authorities that have attempted to unify their bit of Christianity. That creativity continues to the present day too: the teaching authority, or magisterium, of the contemporary Roman Catholic church is an invention as recent as the 19th century.

Read it all.

The Episcopal Church has lost approximately a third of its members in 50 years. This should be a warning to other denominations. The gas that is choking The Episcopal Church is the same gas that is affecting all other church traditions, as well as the universities and other institutions of Western Civilization. The air we breathe does not contain the gas of coal mines, but our air does contain a mold or yeast.

Read it all.

Episcopalians from York, Carlisle and Gettysburg journeyed Sunday evening to the tiny borough of York Springs.

It was a homecoming of sorts.

They prayed and meditated on Scripture in a one-room brick chapel on Main Street — the parent church for Episcopalians west of the Susquehanna. A rotting sign out front reads: “Christ Church Episcopal, Colonial English Parish founded 1746.”

The historic chapel is open once a year for the pilgrims — about 25 of them Sunday. After the liturgy, the Rev. Canon David Lovelace of York explained the parish’s significance.

Read it all.

Yet there was a woman, also raised religious, who blazed the trail for Darwin””an often forgotten and dismissed fossil hunter who, too, was surely tortured by her own bizarre discoveries. Born in 1799, Mary Anning, the dirt-poor woman said to have inspired the tongue-twister “She Sells Sea Shells by the Seashore,” would spend her entire life uncovering and piecing together the fossils of one never-before-seen monsters””monsters that had been hidden away for nearly 200 million years in the cliffs up and down England’s southern coastline.

After her father died in 1810, a young Anning, in order to put food on her table, was forced to run the shore’s gantlet of high tides and landslides, dressed in tattered skirts, as she hunted for curiosities she could sell to seafaring tourists, mostly from London. By birthright, Anning never should have grown up to be an influential fossil hunter and geologist. She was marginalized not only by her family’s poverty but by her sex, her regional dialect and her nearly complete lack of schooling. But she enjoyed one natural advantage: the very good fortune of having been born in exactly the right place at the right time, alongside some of the most geologically unstable coastline in the world; it was””and still is””a place permeated with fossils.

Read it all.

From here:

The writer of a recent letter titled “Don’t break up Episcopal Church” stated, “The church that kept its Northern and Southern sections together during the Civil War. …”

I would like to refer her to the book “The Church in Confederate States” by Joseph Blount Cheshire, D.D.

“A Convention was held in Columbia, South Carolina, to organize the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Confederate States. A church constitution was drawn up and other matters settled. Within a few months, most of the Southern dioceses, including South Carolina, had ratified the constitution and had become part of the new church. The church’s only “General Council” was held in Augusta, Georgia, November 12-22, 1862.”

The Northern and Southern churches did reunite shortly after the end of the War Between the States.

Much of what became the Diocese of South Carolina started as the Church of England, and then freely joined the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States, then became the Protestant Church of the Confederate States and then back to Protestant Church in the United States, and that name has been recently changed to the Episcopal Church.

WILLIAM McINTOSH III

Co-archivist

St. Philip’s Church

The Israelites spent 40 years a building without a permanent home, the congregation of St John’s Chapel say it took them longer than that but they’re back where they belong Downtown.

The church on 18 Hanover Street was first consecrated in 1840 by Rt Bishop Christopher Gadsden but closed it’s doors in 1958.

The Lord bless them–read it all.

The problem with the Augustine approach is that we have been inconsistent in its use. It is unfair to be serious about the personal sins of gay and lesbian persons, and silent about the numerous personal sins of all others. We need to be more consistent in our use of language, and m ore consistent in our call to personal holiness.

Dated (from 2003) but helpful–read it all (hat tip: PW).

We know of the works of the Cappadocian Fathers as they developed a terminology in support of the Trinity and have been honoured for this in the Orthodox Christian tradition. However, there are other, now mostly forgotten, intellectuals who argued with as much intensity on the other side of the question. Eunomius, another Cappadocian, but of more humble background, made himself the target of the Fathers by the relentless way in which he used logic to clarify theological issues, arguing that it was the distinction between Father and Son that mattered, not the “one in substance” of the Trinitarians. He was taunted for having the philosopher Aristotle as his bishop and inspired a rush of responses “contra Eunomium” ”” against Eunomius.

This fertile tradition of debate was infused by the richness of pagan thought but not diminished by it. It faded at the end of the century, largely through the legislation of the emperor Theodosius I (379-95). The Eunomians and those who believed Jesus had seen himself as subordinate to the Father were declared heretical by law and pagans were silenced. A great deal was lost.

I am not a theologian but I do try to read some theology to understand the issues in contemporary debate. All too often I get stuck on sentences that mean nothing even on the third or fourth reading. As a historian I am often frustrated to be told that there is only one historical explanation for a supernatural event when the evidence is insufficient to support any at all. I have seen theologians taken to task for a wholly inappropriate use of logic. Very often theologians seem unaware of how weak their arguments are to anyone with a philosophical background. It is then that I think of the wisdom and confidence of Basil of Caesarea. His broad training in “profane” subjects served only to enrich his theology and strengthen his arguments and did nothing to diminish his Christian compassion.

Read it all.

It is happy for us, my Brethren that we have, in our Book of Common Prayer, a standard of faith and worship, conformable to scripture, and agreeable to the practice of the Church in the earliest and purest ages of Christianity. It will be the object of the present discourse to recommend to you a strict adherence to this standard; shunning, on the one hand, those corruptions and superstitions of the Church of Rome, which it was so carefully framed to avoid, and equally rejecting, on the other hand, the errors connected with ultra-Protestantism, and all the extravagances which have recently sprung from it.

The Holy Scriptures, as they were interpreted by the Church during the first two centuries after the ascension of the Saviour, not as they may chance to be interpreted by the wayward fancies of individuals, constitute the only sure basis for us to rest upon.

Guess the speaker and the date before you look (my emphasis).

The name of Cardinal Newman is often invoked in discussions of our current Anglican church struggles, and rightly so. Whether we agree with him or not, the Church of England has never had a more penetrating and profound critic, and his is a voice that must still be heard.

The Rev. Benjamin King, a young English priest and newly hired professor of church history at Sewanee, has in his first book listened to Newman’s voice with meticulous care, and so has given us crucial tools to hear the old cardinal with fresh ears. His book, Newman and the Alexandrian Fathers, is a carefully argued and closely researched examination of how Newman’s reading of patristic sources changed throughout his career, showing both how his reading of the fathers changed his life as well as how events in his life changed the way he read the fathers.

As King argues, Newman’s reading of the Church fathers has influenced our own readings in deep ways, and seeing how Newman’s judgments and interpretive paradigms remain with us is crucial for anyone seeking either to read the fathers for themselves or to understand the shape of patristic studies.

Although King’s book, as a strict work of history, does not venture very far into the waters of ecclesiastical controversy, its implications are clear enough. We today, much like Newman, are asking questions to do with whether and how doctrine develops, and where the authorities for such development might be found. Newman saw, as no one before him had, that such questions cannot be answered apart from a careful and theological study of the history of doctrine itself. King’s fine book has to do with the history of Newman’s quest for answers to these questions, and as such it is a superb guide to better understanding the questions that Newman still poses to us today.

Read it all.

We thank thee, heavenly Father, for the witness of thine apostle and evangelist Matthew to the Gospel of thy Son our Savior; and we pray that, after his example, we may with ready wills and hearts obey the calling of our Lord to follow him; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God,now and for ever.

Almighty God, who didst call thy servant Theodore of Tarsus from Rome to the see of Canterbury, and didst give him gifts of grace and wisdom to establish unity where there had been division, and order where there had been chaos: Create in thy Church, we pray, by the operation of the Holy Spirit, such godly union and concord that it may proclaim, both by word and example, the Gospel of the Prince of Peace; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

The principle in which the plan of our salvation had its origin in the counsel of God, was “mercy.”–Mercy, we may view as an extension of the sentiment of love. Divine love, strictly defined, may be regarded as goodness towards beings who are not unworthy, as the pure angels, and man in the state of innocence. Mercy, is goodness towards those who are unworthy, yet capable of being reclaimed, as men in their fallen condition. Mercy, therefore, is more than love; or rather, it is the highest act and exercise of love in its larger sense. It was love, that prompted the Deity to become a Creator, to form other beings than himself, that this benign sentiment might have an opportunity of acting, that there might be creatures for the divine love to embrace. It was “mercy,” that provided a rescue for the human family of these creatures when fallen; when, without this rescue through Christ crucified, they would have been without God, and without hope.

And, do we not, in this view, perceive that the salvation devised for us by the Godhead, was wholly free? Yes, survey the matter in any light, and you will see that nothing in man could have contributed to the grant of saving “mercy” graciously provided for him. In the first place, salvation was devised for man before he existed, the Lamb was fore-ordained before the foundation of the world. And those who had not yet their being, could contribute as little to their own redemption, as to their own creation. In the next place, the very fact of our having fallen, precludes the possibility of any excellence foreseen in us, having had a share in procuring the scheme of grace. For, if men could, by anticipation on the part of God’s prescience, have offered a meritorious consideration towards the providing of mercy for them after sinning, they could have offered more to prevent their sinfulness, and secure themselves against the need of mercy. Man surely could contribute more, while yet innocent, to avert the approach of that tempter who brought sin into the world, than he could to move God to provide a pardon after sin had made him depraved. But we can claim no merit in either of these respects; we had not that in us, at first, which could have us spared the trial under which our nature fell; much less, when fallen, have we aught in us, which, being fore-known, could avail in bringing us restoration. In the last place, what could be thus foreseen in man, that would entitle him to the favour of God, or his forbearance? Perfect obedience is impossible, in our present state. Imperfect obedience, does not satisfy the law of God; much less can it buy off the just sentence of that law. It was imperfection, or failure in duty, that banished man from paradise; and surely, imperfection and failure, could contribute nothing towards procuring the salvation which brings him the higher privilege, of the paradise of God.

Is it not, then, infallibly true, that, in the counsel of the Godhead, which provided “mercy” for fallen man, no claim whatever, on the part of man, was anticipated? It was a counsel of mere, and pure love, and of higher love, than that which moved the Almighty to bring man into being.

Read it all.

OK, name the speaker, the date and take a stab at the context for good measure.

Read it all AFTER you guess.

The story of how the church (and by “the church” I mean the whole Christian church); how the churches do their work and carry out God’s plan throughout history is undoubtedly a mystery hidden within the mind of God.

But this much can be said, I think. God gives gifts not only to individuals, but also to institutions; institutional gifts; corporate charisms. So, the churches too have been given various gifts at various times “to prepare God’s people for works of service” and for the hastening of the Kingdom of God.

I believe that God has given our church–the Episcopal Church–a special gift, a special charism–the gift of leadership, the gift and the task of going first, the gift of being in the vanguard. Another way of saying that is that the Episcopal Church has been called to speak the Good News of God in Christ to an ever-changing world.

Read it all.

With permission–KSH.

I would like to begin with three preliminary observations.

Personhood

Firstly, there are three different understandings of personhood: Personhood as the problem; Personhood as an achievement; Personhood as a gift. For those keen to follow the ways of the East, being an individual, with hopes and fears, aspirations and anxieties, pleasures and pains””this is the root of the problem of the human condition. Get rid of individuality and one gets rid of the mixed bag of issues that comes with it. To see both pain and pleasure as impostors is to begin to escape from self’s hold on us. To seek union with all creation is at last to find freedom in becoming a water drop reunited with the ocean. Although the Episcopal Church has declined to consecrate a Buddhist-leaning bishop, its Presiding Bishop has publicly endorsed concern for the self as the key vice of our era.

Personhood as an achievement, however, takes the exact opposite approach. Individuality is not the root problem of human existence, but rather the source of its healing. Human beings have the opportunity to define themselves by what they choose to do and, in so doing, they can become “somebody”, i.e., somebody they would like to be, but do not feel they are now. Personhood as achievement can take many forms. We can follow the dictates of society and seek to define ourselves by becoming a success in the eyes of others. We can follow the dictates of our own inner drives and seek to define ourselves by our fierce commitment to honest self-expression, regardless of the social cost. We can even follow the dictates of a religion and seek to define ourselves by endeavouring to embody the values and commitments we think honour God and which he will honour in return.

Lastly, there is personhood as gift. This approach takes seriously the notion of divine vocation, that God himself has selected a specific mission for each person, complete with everything necessary to fulfil it, including the abilities, opportunities, successes and even failures that will enable us to learn, grow and eventually perform the good works he has set aside for each one of us before the foundation of the world. In other words, like the agent at the beginning of every Mission Impossible episode, we each receive an identity kit from God that enables us to fulfil his purpose of us. The task in life then is not to escape from this divinely established personhood, nor seek to determine and achieve of a personhood of our own choosing, but rather to receive from Him the understanding and power to live out the personhood which he has established for us.

The Nature of Saving Grace

My second observation concerns the current crucial need to distinguish between unconditional affirmation and unconditional love. Today, in both popular culture and within the church, unconditional love is often considered synonymous with unconditional affirmation. Yet unconditional affirmation is what an owner receives from a dog. The dog’s joy at being with his master never poses a challenge to the master’s being the centre of his own universe. That’s why it feels so good! No, unconditional affirmation never confronts human self-centredness. It simply affirms individuals as they are.
Of course, the hope of those churches which preach unconditional affirmation is that assurance of acceptance will release healing power into the lives of the wounded and broken. Yet, if the root of so many human problems are relational, and if the root of so many relational struggles is actually the bitter fruit of the seemingly intractable problem of human selfish self-centredness, how can unconditional affirmation be the answer? It can’t.

But to make things even more confusing, these same churches don’t say that they are preaching unconditional affirmation. They claim to be preaching unconditional love in the name of the Gospel of Grace. Should reformed Anglicans question their Gospel of easy acceptance, they in turn question how can good heirs to the Protestant Reformation can protest at the proclamation of the wonders of saving grace.

Yet, unconditional love is not the same as unconditional affirmation. Affirmation, well, it simply affirms. Love, however, creates a crisis. And the greater the love, the greater the crisis. For love reaches out for union. For implicit within the gift of love is a calling of the other into relationship. To accept the gift of love is admit into our heart a power from outside ourselves that tugs at our very self-centredness, seeking to draw us into relationship by stirring up in us a desire to love in return the one who gave us the gift of love. Yet, the price of this relationship is a dent in our self-sufficent autonomy, where our selfish ways thrive unquestioned. And the greater the love, the greater the loss of the right to live for oneself alone. And perfect, unconditional love seeks to stir up an equally unreserved giving of all of ourselves to the other. In short, true unconditional love does not simply affirm us in our self-satisfied self-centredness. True unconditional love provokes the ultimate crisis where we are called to die completely to our desire for autonomy and wholly give ourselves to the one who has already done the same for us. Groucho Marx famously said that he would not wish to belong to any club that would have him as a member. The true meaning of the Gospel of Grace is this: that God unconditionally calls us to join the fellowship of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, and his love is a work so to transform us that one day we will enjoy fellowship with God as much as God enjoys fellowship within Himself. Unlike Groucho and the clubs of Hollywood, we will feel comfortable in God’s company, because by its very nature, a relationship with God makes us more like Him.

Understandings of Repentance

My third and final preliminary observation is how the first two relate to repentance. How one understands personhood and love determines one’s understanding of repentance. Let’s consider the possible combinations.

By definition, personhood as the problem and grace as divine love cannot be combined, because in this belief-system there is no higher personal being with whom to have a relationship. Salvation is simply pursing inner numbness as the way to inner peace. Of course, this is simply another false association. There is a huge difference from feeling inner peace and considering not feeling to be peace! A church community which espouses such a view can only simply affirm the individual by mislabelling his retreat from life as repentance from self.

If we instead combine personhood as achievement with grace as affirmation, self-actualization becomes the way of salvation. We remain the centre of our own universe, but we have the opportunity and the responsibility to use our abilities and choices to shape it. Repentance then is simply saying no to all the things that hinder us from becoming all that we can be. Much of modern psychology is based on this premise.

If we combine personhood as achievement with grace as divine love, then we are challenged by God to give up our autonomy. How we then decide to respond determines who we will become. In this understanding, repentance is choosing to say no to self in order to become worthy of a relationship with God. Much of religion is based on this premise.

If we combine personhood as gift with grace as affirmation, we remain the centre of our universe, because that’s just the way God made us. As a result, self-fulfilment becomes the way to salvation. Hence, repentance is simply turning away from those societal pressures that will hinder our natural self-expression. The rest of modern psychology and, consequently, much of progressive Christian thought, is based on this premise.

Finally, if we combine personhood as gift with grace as divine love, we encounter a dilemma. God’s love challenges us to give up our autonomy, but since personhood is a gift, not an achievement, it is not in our power to do so. Divine love not only confronts us with the need to change, but also makes clear our utter inability to do so. Consequently, in this approach repentance is not a work we do to please God, but a divine gift which God is pleased to work in us. Repentance is turning to be turned and all because the power of God’s love is relentlessly drawing us to say no to self in order to enjoy a relationship with God.

In classical Anglicanism, personhood as the problem and grace as affirmation would have been considered decidedly unbiblical and, therefore, completely unchristian. The only two possible positions were either divine love combined with personhood as achievement or divine love combined with personhood as gift. In other words, in Classical Anglicanism, repentance was either a work or a gift, a decision or a dilemma.

–The Rev. Dr. Ashley Null is Canon Theologian of the Diocese of Western Kansas

He quotes from the Rt. Reverend Robert Smith, first bishop of South Carolina:

“We form schemes of happiness and deceive ourselves with a weak imagination of security, without ever taking God into the question; no wonder then if our hopes prove abortive, and the conceits of our vain minds end in disappointment and sorrow. For we are inclined to attribute our prosperity to the wisdom of our own councils, and the arm of our own flesh, we become forgetful of him from whom our strength and wisdom are derived; and are then betrayed into that fatal security, which ends in shame, in misery and ruin.”

In the year 1849 I was stationed at Baton Rouge, and married Miss Frank E. Stuart, whose honored sons and one living daughter now rise up and call her blessed.

Passing over several years in which I was engaged as the pioneer of temperance and prohibition work, I found myself the pastor at Macon, Miss[issippi], during the war, where a singular episode occurred.

The Mississippi Legislature, driven out of Jackson by the Federal army, took refuge at Macon. In the course of legislation, a bill putting all ministers in the State up to sixty years of age in the army, and favored by Governor Clarke, passed to its third reading, before the final vote was taken. Hon. Locke Houston, speaker of the House of Representatives, invited me to open the session with prayer.

In the course of the prayer I invoked the Divine Father: “Have compassion on the members of the Mississippi Legislature, who, without the fear of God before their eyes, have laid violent hands upon the ordained ministry of Thy church, placing carnal weapons in their hands, bidding them to go forth to war as instruments of wrath and blood, instead of messengers of love and peace.”

“O Lord, for this wicked act, which stands out in all its gloomy isolation without any parallel among the civilized nations of the earth, we invoke pardoning mercy.”

“O Lord, let not this vile act of legislation fall in dire disaster upon the lives of our people.”

Continuing in this strain of thought, and holding them up before the great Jehovah of all worlds, was somewhat startling in its nature.

Their indictment before the august Chancery Court of Heaven was something unexpected, and greatly surprised them; and when the final vote was taken they reversed their previous action and struck out of the bill all ministers engaged in their regular work.

This prayer, and its results, invoked the wrath of the governor, and much of the secular press.

–The Rev. John W. Harmon, Select Sermons (Paulding, Mississippi, 1894), pp.2-3. The author is my great great grandfather (!)–KSH.

Anaheim does not mean that the Episcopal Church is now a unified whole. There will be those who will want to boldly press forward and those who believe that now that things are settled it is time to rest for a bit. New fractures and caucuses will develop along a political continuum of those who remain. There will be fights over gender and power language in the development of new liturgies. Heated discussions will arise over the permanence and the number of partners to a marriage. (No, I’m not trying to say something flippant or sensational. It’s a discussion that’s already happening and, I think, a quite logical one if you accept some of the basic premises I’ve tried to sketch out above.) Contextual theologians and their more traditional counterparts will continue to wrestle over the boundaries of interfaith dialogue.

As the Episcopal Church lives more fully into its search for radical inclusion and deep engagement with the multiple cultures from which it draws its members it is highly unlikely that TEC will be a dull place. Those who previously thought of themselves as holding the middle ground will find themselves to be the new right of the church. Many who prided themselves on being progressive will suddenly find themselves to be the new voices of moderation.

I expect that for the next year or more the action will move to the international stage where the global Anglican Communion will wring its hands over what to do about the Episcopal Church. Don’t expect much of consequence. While the majority of the Anglican provinces in the developing world are opposed to TEC’s stands on a variety of issues, TEC has its supporters in Canada, South Africa, New Zeeland, Japan, Brazil, Scotland, Wales, and large sections of the churches in England and Australia. There may never again be a Lambeth Conference where everyone gathers together at one altar, but TEC will remain an important part of a truly global fellowship of one sort or another.

Read it all.

From here where it is trumpeted with the title “TEC: The Flagship of Anglicanism:”

The American Church jumped way out ahead of the Church of England and other sister churches in a number of respects. One was in giving voice to priests and deacons and to laity (as well as bishops and secular government officials) in the governance of the national church and of dioceses and of parishes. The early American Church revised the Prayer Book in a way that went far beyond revisions necessitated by the new independence of the states.

At its beginning the American Church legalized the use of hymnody along with metrical psalmody more than a generation before use of “hymns of human composure” became legal in the Church of England. At an early stage the American Church gave recognition to critical biblical scholarship.

The American Church eventually gave a place to women in various aspects of the life of the church including its ordained ministry. The American Church began to speak out against discrimination against those of same-sex orientation, and the American Church began to make moves in establishing full communion with other branches of Christendom.

Historically the American Church has been the flag-ship in the Anglican armada. It has been first among the provinces of the Anglican Communion to take forward steps on issue after issue, and on some of those issues other provinces of Anglicanism have eventually fallen in line behind the American Church. My prayer is that the American Church will be able to retain its self-esteem and to stand firm and resist some current movements which seem to me to be contrary to the principles of historic Anglicanism and to the teachings of the Holy Scriptures.

Ah, would this be the same American Episcopal Church which had the widely used 1786 Prayer Book that the English Church rejected, for, among many other things, its Unitarianism and anti-Trinitarianism? Hmmmm–KSH.

We make a leap now of just a hundred years. From 1689 we pass to 1789, and find ourselves in the city of Philadelphia, at a convention assembled for the purpose of framing a constitution and setting forth a liturgy for a body of Christians destined to be known as the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America. During the interval between the issue of the Declaration of Independence and the Ratification of the Constitution of the United States, the people in this country who had been brought up in the communion of the Church of England found themselves ecclesiastically in a very delicate position indeed. As colonists they had been canonically under the spiritual jurisdiction of the Bishop of London, a somewhat remote diocesan. But with this Episcopal bond broken and no new one formed, they seemed to be in a peculiar sense adrift. It does not fall to me to narrate the steps that led to the final establishment of the episcopacy upon a sure foundation, nor yet to trace the process through which the Church’s legislative system came gradually to its completion. Our interest is a liturgical one, and our subject matter the evolution of the Prayer Book. I say nothing, therefore, of other matters that were debated in the Convention of 1789, but shall propose instead that we confine ourselves to what was said and done about the Prayer Book. In order, however, fully to appreciate the situation we must go back a little. In a half-formal and half­informal fashion there had come into existence, four years before this Convention of 1789 assembled, an American Liturgy now known by the name of The Proposed Book. It had been compiled on the basis of the English Prayer Book by a Committee of three eminent clergymen, Dr. White of Pennsylvania, Dr. William Smith of Maryland, and Dr. Wharton of Delaware. Precisely what measure of acceptance this book enjoyed, or to what extent it came actually into use, are difficult, perhaps hopeless questions.

–William Reed Huntington, A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer

In the creed commonly called the Apostles creed, one clause is omitted; as being of uncertain meaning and the articles of religion have been reduced in number; yet it is humbly conceived that the doctrines of the church of England are preserved entire, as being judged perfectly agreeable to the gospel.

It is far from the intention of this Church to depart from the Church of England, any further than local circumstances require, or to deviate in anything essential to the true meaning of the thirty-nine articles; although a number of them be abridged by some variations in the mode of expression and the omission of such articles as were more evidently adapted to the times when they were first framed, and to the political constitution of England.

And now, this important work being brought to a conclusion, it is hoped the whole will be received and examined by every true member of our church, and every sincere christian with a meek, candid and charitable frame of mind; without prejudice or pre-possessions; seriously considering what christianity is, and what the truths of the gospel are; and earnestly beseeching Almighty God to accompany with his blessing every endeavor for promulgating them to mankind in the clearest, plainest, most affecting and majestic manner, for the sake of Jesus Christ, our blessed Lord and Saviour.

–The preface of the Proposed 1786 Book of Common Prayer

Fr. [Mark] Harris with the rest of the communion opposes an international hierarchy with jurisdiction in the various local churches that make up the communion. He does, however, favor another form of hierarchy””one that finds no place in TEC’s constitution but nonetheless is now being argued in the courts of California, Pennsylvania, and Texas. For lack of a better term, I will call this the view of ecclesial hierarchy to be established in secular courts. The Office of the Presiding Bishop in the cases of the Dioceses of San Joaquin, Pittsburgh, and Forth Worth is arguing before a secular court that TEC is a hierarchical church with supreme authority located in the General Convention, the Executive Council, and the Office of the Presiding Bishop. In this scheme, the various dioceses are sub-units in a subordinate relation to these governing entities. The courts may be receptive to this argument because the law tends to operate with a very simple distinction between hierarchical and non-hierarchical churches. In this typology, TEC will appear at first glance as hierarchical in a way that say Pentecostal Churches do not.

It is a matter of general agreement that this position is being argued in order to prevent the three dioceses mentioned above, upon their departure from TEC, from taking the property of the diocese with them. To Fr. Harris’ credit, he has another, and to my mind nobler, reason for defending this position. He does not want the dioceses of TEC to be able to act independently of the General Convention, the Executive Council, and the Office of the Presiding Bishop. Thus, Fr [Mark] Harris has a position that is, as it were, a knife that cuts in two directions. Internationally, he seeks to establish the unfettered autonomy of the several provinces of the communion and so preclude any form of “global governance,” and domestically he wishes to establish a form of hierarchy, like that of the Methodists and Presbyterians, that locates final authority in a national form of governance that has supreme authority over its constituent units.

Fr. Harris’ position, like that of the Presiding Bishop and the majority of TEC’s present leadership, when all is said and done, serves to identify TEC as a denomination within the spectrum of American Protestant denominations. That is, Fr Harris wants TEC first of all to understand itself as an expression of Christianity defined by the borders of a nation state rather than as an expression of Catholic Christianity that happens to be located within the boundaries of a nation state.

The conversion of TEC, with little catholic remainder, into yet another American denomination is reason enough to be concerned about Fr. Harris’ views.

Read it all.

The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion of which it is a part (at least for now) bear all the marks of dictionary-defined tradition. The Church of England is the oldest Protestant denomination in the English-speaking world, ancestor and antagonist of Methodists, English Baptists, Congregationalists, Presbyterians, and Quakers. The Episcopal establishment in Virginia and surrounding colonies was every bit as old and firmly rooted as the Congregational establishment in New England. From stately signs out front to elegant windows behind the priest, countless Episcopal churches exude nobility, with the overtones of high ideals and high status intended. And yet the church is embroiled in an ugly, messy, knock-down drag-out fight. As MacIntyre would have it, this, too, is a hallmark of tradition.

If that is the case, if a living tradition not only must weather arguments but in fact is a sprawling argument, then who needs tradition? Haven’t Americans, with their penchant for leaving behind Old World identities, denominational ties, and boring hometowns chosen the wiser course? Not so fast. MacIntyre posits that traditions provide context and meaning for human practices while also identifying goals””goods””toward which to strive. These are things worth thinking about, and worth arguing about. People who shrink the circle of their connections until it is scarcely larger than themselves still have to find satisfying answers to these questions, but they have to do it alone.

I find it very useful to think of churches, institutions, and traditions of all sorts as historically extended, socially embodied arguments. I like any interpretive lens that incorporates history, of course, and I also like the way this formula embraces real people and their often angular opinions. I am not a theologian or a philosopher, and my brain doesn’t process abstractions well. But I certainly notice a brawl, on the evening news or in the archives of the periodicals I study, and I’m driven to figure out who is arguing what, and why, and what they believe is at stake. Conflict makes institutions flex muscles they would otherwise lose to atrophy, and it forces individuals to articulate beliefs that can turn to mush beneath presumed consensus. The saying goes, “It’s all over but the shouting,” but as I observe history unfolding, the shouting proves that “it,” the living tradition, has a ways to go.

Read it all.

Yesterday, 220 years after its constitutional documents were adopted, The Episcopal Church (TEC) at its triennial assembly (the General Convention) in Anaheim arguably brought to an end its ambiguous double-life as both Anglican and Episcopalian. To put it another way, it finally conceded the logic of American denominational identity, which most of its mainline Protestant neighbors have long accepted, that it is a national church, bound by historical bonds of affection to other churches in the Anglican tradition but in no way obligated to look beyond the concerns of its members in discerning the future direction of its mission and ministry.

Read it all.

The year was 1973, the place: Uganda:

Then [Idi] Amin ordered his soldiers to execute some of the people they had arrested. They were to take the prisoners to their home towns. The towns’ people would be ordered to watch the soldiers shoot the prisoners.

Three of the men were to be shot in the stadium in Kabale, the town where Festo [Kivengere] and [his wife] Mera lived.

“I should go to the president. I should talk to him about what is happening. Maybe he will listen to me,” Festo said to Mera. “He thinks we’re trying to overthrow his government. We need to convince him we’re not.”

Now, this was a very brave thing to do! To walk right into the palace and face the cruel president was risky, to say the least. After all, Amin was killing and torturing Christians and other leaders. He might kill Festo, too!

Festo went anyway. He drove to the president’s palace in Kampala, with Hark riding nervously in the backseat.
The president greeted Festo warmly. (Hark was surprised by this. And so was Festo!) Then Amin told lies.

“It is all right,” he said. “You are quite safe. Yes, some of the soldiers are doing bad things. But I am punishing them when they do. So don’t worry about it,” he said with a smile.

“Mr. President,” Festo said, “I hear you have told everyone in Kabale to come to the big stadium to watch three men be shot. Please let these men live. Forgive them for what they have done.”

Hark saw a big scowl on Amin’s face. Oh dear, Hark thought, now he’s mad.

Festo wasn’t allowed to stay any longer. Sadly, he (and Hark) left the palace and headed home.

“How terrible,” said Mera when she heard about it. “You mean thousands of people have to go to the stadium to watch the executions?”

“Amin thinks it will stop people from trying to overthrow him,” Festo replied. There was nothing for them to do but what the president demanded. When the day came, they went to the stadium.

Three thousand people were forced to attend the shooting. No one was speaking. Dark fear filled people’s hearts. Festo turned to two of his pastor friends.

“Let’s see if we can speak to the three men before they are shot,” he suggested.

“The soldiers will never let us,” replied his friend.

“Well, let’s ask anyway,” Festo said.

“Please, sir,” said Festo approaching the soldier in charge. “I am a minister. I’d like to speak some words of comfort to the three young men before they die.”

No one expected the soldier to agree. But to Festo’s surprise, he said gruffly, “All right. You can talk to them in the arena just before they are killed!”

Festo began to pray. Hark could hear the quiet prayers (angels can, you know). He wrote them down carefully.

“Please, Lord,” prayed Festo, “give me the right words to say to these men.”

A truck drove into the arena. The soldiers unloaded the three prisoners in the middle of the stadium. They were in handcuffs. Their feet were changed together. The firing squad stood at attention, their rifles ready.

In the stands, the silent people sat as still as statues. There was a horrible feeling in the air. Festo and his friends walked across the huge arena and came up behind the prisoners.

“Oh, dear Lord Jesus! What shall I say? What shall I say?” Festo said out loud. The three prisoners heard him and turned around to face the church leaders.

“Oh!” gasped Festo when he saw their faces. They seemed so peaceful!

Festo didn’t have to say anything. As he approached the prisoners, one of them suddenly thanked Festo for coming! The man told Festo he knew Jesus had forgiven his sins. Then he asked Festo to tell his wife and children he would be waiting for them in heaven. He hoped they would accept Jesus, too, so he could be with them there.

The second man said the same thing. He raised his hands in joy and smiled bravely at Festo. Then the third man said, “I am at peace!”

Festo looked at the wonderful smiles on the men’s faces. “Why,” he said to his friends, “we need to talk to the soldiers in the firing squad, not to these men!”

Festo explained the prisoners’ words to the soldiers. When they heard what Festo said, they were shocked. For a moment, they didn’t seem to know what to do!

The three prisoners stood tall, smiling at the huge crowd of people. Then they raised their handcuffed arms and waved. Everyone waved back! People who were near had heard the brave words the prisoners had spoken. They saw the peace of God on the men’s faces.

Then the shots rang out, and the three men fell.

Now they’re safe in heaven with Jesus, thought Hark, standing beside Festo.

Then everyone went home.

–Jill Briscoe, The Man Who Would Not Hate:Festo Kivengere (W Pub Group, 1991), which was read by yours truly in this morning’s sermon

But what does it mean to argue that the polity of TEC is unique? If the emphasis is on significant discontinuity with the character of that polity otherwise seen to be representative of Anglicanism, is the danger not in cutting TEC off from the Communion at large? Surely the continuity of the Anglican Communion””whatever the special features of this or that polity””is to be grasped in the Episcopal Office. No specialness can alter that feature without at the same time creating a truly national denomination. If this is what the President of the House of Deputies is calling for, let her indicate that she realizes that and wishes it to be so and means to make it so.

At the founding of the Episcopal Church in this country efforts were made to create a polity that constrained the office of Bishop, and held it accountable to a second House. Does the President of the House of Deputies mean that uniqueness lies in this sort of understanding? If so, it bears recalling that at precisely this point the new church had to defer to the spirit of recommendations of the Church of England, and the pleadings of Seabury, if she was to remain a branch of the catholic expression of Anglicanism. So the General Convention that then emerged did not in the least preempt or constrain the special responsibility of Bishops, and it is exactly that reality that serves to give proportion to any idea of special features.

It is important as well to keep comments like this in perspective given other recent trends. In the legal submissions made by the national church, we have seen a different argument for the ”˜special polity’ of this church. The fact that there are similarities but also differences suggests that these arguments serve the purpose chiefly of aiding in a cause, and less in the accuracy of their historical claims, or the consistency of their logic and presentation.

Read it all.

In this context, what are we to make of the controversial comments by Archbishop Williams regarding the local bishop and diocese? Insofar as he has defined bishop and diocese as “primary” with respect to ecclesial “identity” and insofar as he has identified them as the “organ of unity” as opposed to the “abstract structures” of the province, he is presenting a vision of the Church that at least fits within the general notion of pastoral synodality I have outlined above. But might he also be setting his vision in tension with actual Anglican practice? I would argue that he is in fact expressing a tension that Anglicanism itself is working to overcome precisely by moving in the direction of the fundamental reality of pastoral synodality.

There is no question but that Anglican churches have by and large functioned according to a post-Nicene set of structural assumptions. But that functioning has always been under question, and it is the rise of the Communion itself that has had the greatest role in setting up dynamics that have moved us towards a re-appropration of the ante-Nicene understanding, not because it marks some Golden Age to be repristinated, but because it is in fact more properly expressive of the kind of missionary context in which Anglicanism herself has come to flourish. Once Anglican churches grew up within contexts in which they necessarily existed alongside other Christian churches, the Nicene model by definition was deprived of any even tenuous or imaginary theological rationale. The idea that geographical episcopal boundaries demand strict imposition when in fact multiple and often mutually non-communicating Christian churches exist within the same local area simply cannot be sustained with integrity. And even within the single tradition of Anglicanism, unless one views the world’s political nations as the primary ordering of human life ”“ a deeply problematic notion from a Christian perspective to say the least ”“ the division of Anglican churches into national, regionally political, or ethnic groups whose boundaries prove more powerful and imposing than Christian communion itself can only end up by subordinating ecclesial reality to human political and cultural limitations. And it is these that the episcopal press for synodality properly ends by overcoming.

The first Lambeth Conference of 1867 was obviously aware of this tension already inherent in the expanding Anglican churches around the world.

Read it all.

The first scientific tests on what are believed to be the remains of the Apostle Paul, the Roman Catholic saint, “seem to conclude” that they belong to him, Pope Benedict XVI said Sunday.

Read it all.