[Thomas] Cranmer as Archbishop of Canterbury spent the day in the same way as he had when he was a Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge-75% of it in study. And the fruits of that private, searching daily study were coming to maturity as Henry VIII died and his nine-year-old son Edward VI ascended the throne in 1547. The moment had come for deeper reform (emphasis mine).

—Caroline Stacey

In April, Benedict XVI will make his first visit to the USA as pope. When he does, some will complain about clean-up costs, traffic snarls, rescheduled television shows and other inconveniences. Others will express (and the media will obsess about) their various disagreements with the pope’s writings and church teaching. And many millions will be inspired, comforted and encouraged by his work, life and witness, and by the theme of his new encyclical letter, “Saved By Hope.”

Today, thanks in part to Pope John Paul II’s globetrotting, evangelical papacy, visits by popes to America are occasions for reflection, celebration and souvenir-selling. In our not-so-distant past, though, papal invasions loomed large in all kinds of nightmare scenarios.

It is easy to forget but, from the Puritans to the Framers and beyond, anti-“popery” was thick in the cultural air breathed by the early Americans. Our forebears were raised on hair-raising tales of Armadas and Inquisitions, Puritan heroism and Bloody Mary, Jesuit schemes and Gunpowder Plots, lecherous confessors and baby-killing nuns. As the great historian John Tracy Ellis once observed, a “universal anti-Catholic bias was brought to Jamestown in 1607 and vigilantly cultivated in all the thirteen colonies from Massachusetts to Georgia.”

In the 1830s, Samuel Morse (who invented the telegraph) wrote a popular book, Foreign Conspiracy Against the Liberties of the United States, warning that Irish immigration to American cities was part of a papal plan of conquest.

About the same time, Lyman Beecher ”” a Presbyterian minister and the father of Uncle Tom’s Cabin author Harriet Beecher Stowe ”” revealed, in his own A Plea for the West, that Catholic immigrants in the American West were laying the groundwork for the pope’s Mississippi Valley invasion. (Some tracts identified Cincinnati as the planned site for the new Vatican.)

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The enemies of our holy religion have frequently boasted, that the philosophy which is so highly celebrated in the present day is of a mild and liberal spirit, abhorring all manner of violence, using no weapons with which to propagate its peculiar notions, but those of candid discussion, and sober argument. Some shocking examples, which have recently occurred in one of the greatest nations of the European world, prove these assertions to be utterly false, and have showed to all mankind, that Infidel Philosophy, armed with power, is one of the most despotic and sanguinary of all tyrants. We have reason to bless God, that in this country the profession of Christianity does not expose us to such severe trials. We are not called upon “to resist unto blood, striving against sin.” Unbelievers are, nevertheless, numerous, subtil, [4/5] and malignant. The principles which they advocate, unless baffled by determined resistance, will be productive of the same effects here which they have produced in other parts of the world. With indefatigable perseverance, they are disseminated by methods almost infinitely diversified; by secret societies caballing in darkness, and by lectures delivered at noonday; by histories and travels, by novels and plays, by cheap pamphlets for the poor, and by newspapers circulating far and wide, among all classes of the community; and, when the original productions of our own country fail, the most impious publications of foreign nations are translated with mischievous industry. The word of divine inspiration has forewarned us, “that, in the last days, perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, boasters, proud, blasphemers, despisers of those that are good. Ye have need, therefore, to be exhorted to put on the whole armour of God, that ye may fight the good fight of faith, and having done all to stand.”

Be not misled by the bold pretensions of those proud boasters, who are ever declaiming upon the superior attainments of this enlightened age. It will be readily acknowledged, that, in the course of a few years past, improvements have been made in astronomy, geography, chymistry, and some other branches of natural philosophy, which depend upon experiments; but, in all these things, how is pure religion concerned? What have these to do [5/6] with that merciful scheme of salvation which has been revealed in the gospel of our Redeemer? Of this momentous subject we know no more than what God has been pleased to disclose to us. Christianity is now what it was from the beginning; and all the wisdom of this world can make no improvement upon the prescribed method of obtaining the remission of our sins, the sanctification of our corrupted nature, and the final salvation of our souls. It is written in the scriptures of everlasting truth, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nought the understanding of the prudent. Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this world? Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?” In things pertaining to godliness, let the word of God be your only guide. Attempt not to be wise above what is written. “Cast down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bring into captivity every thought, to the obedience of Christ.”

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The history of the Episcopal Church in the American West is tied intimately to the history of Asian Americans, particularly Chinese Americans. In the late 19th century, a Chinese Christian named Ah Foo began to preach the Gospel to railroad workers in the Diocese of Nevada. According to the Sheng Kung Post (the newsletter of the Episcopal Chinese Convocation), Ah Foo built a small chapel for 80 congregants in 1874 in Carson City.

In 1905, the first evangelical foundation for the Chinese in San Francisco was established. The True Sunshine Mission, which celebrated its centennial in Chinatown last year, ordained Father Daniel Wu, the first Chinese priest of the Episcopal Diocese of California.

The 1906 San Francisco earthquake forced Wu and the church to move to Oakland. After San Francisco’s reconstruction, half of True Sunshine’s congregation remained in Oakland to form the Church of Our Savior. The congregants who returned to San Francisco established the church under the official name of True Sunshine Church. Wu continued as the vicar of both churches.

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You probably didn’t notice it, but that old rogue Elmer Gantry turned 80 this year. A surprising thought, perhaps, given what a fixture Sinclair Lewis’s 1927 fictional portrait of a bogus and amoral itinerant Midwestern preacher has become in both our speech and our imaginations. Was there really a time when we didn’t have Elmer to kick around–or to kick others with? It is hard to imagine. No less than the camp meetings on the frontier or the Scopes Trial or the stadium revivals of Billy Graham, the character Elmer Gantry has shaped the world’s impressions of American religion.

A crude, profane, hard-drinking and oversexed football player from Paris, Kan., Gantry, using his histrionic gifts and his “arousing barytone,” latched onto the ministry because of the power it gave him over others. The book related Gantry’s picaresque wanderings from one ministry to another, always looking out for the main chance, always complicating his life with amorous dalliances, always ready to beat a hasty retreat, always emerging from his scrapes with ambitions undimmed.

His creator was a gloomy alcoholic Midwesterner with a personal life just as rootless and messy as Gantry’s. But Lewis (1885-1951) gave us a cultural icon whose name is invoked every time there is a scandal involving sex, money and a preacher.

Not many writers can claim similar success in adding to our storehouse of powerful archetypes–or our cupboard of easy clichés. But this is the chief consolation for a literary career that has otherwise faded into obscurity. Lewis’s reputation peaked in 1930, when he became the first American to win the Nobel Prize in literature. With this award and the invention of two cultural icons–Gantry and the crass businessman George F. Babbitt–Lewis has a secure place in the history books. But that does not mean that, except as cultural artifacts, his books are much worth reading today.

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On a Sunday evening in February 1905, the Rev. Algernon Crapsey stood at the pulpit of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Rochester to deliver the 12th and final lecture in a series that had proven very popular.

He chastised the illogical thinking of Protestants who criticized all the other alleged miracles of the world’s religions except their own. He further suggested that: “A belief in the inerrancy of the Bible is no longer possible to an educated man, or for anyone in fact, who reads his Bible with reasonable intelligence and attention.”

What he said next was, to the hierarchy of his church, utterly unthinkable.

He challenged the notion that the immaculate conception of Jesus Christ, the virgin birth and Christ’s resurrection from the dead were literal, actual occurrences.

“In the light of scientific research, the founder of Christianity no longer stands apart from the common destiny of man in life and death, but he is in all things physical like as we are, born as we are born, dying as we die, and both in life and death in the keeping of that same Divine Power, that Heavenly fatherhood, which delivers us from the womb and carries us down to the grave. When we come to know Jesus in his historical relations, we see that miracle is not a help, it is a hindrance, to an intelligent comprehension of his person, His character and his mission. We are not alarmed, we are relieved when scientific history proves to us that the fact of his miraculous birth was unknown to himself, unknown to his mother, and unknown to the whole Christian community of the first generation.”

Crapsey’s comments touched off a firestorm.

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Update: A brief obituary of Algernon Crapsey is here.

I must begin by telling you that I do not like to preach on Reformation Sunday. Actually I have to put it more strongly than that. I do not like Reformation Sunday, period. I do no understand why it is part of the church year. Reformation Sunday does not name a happy event for the Church Catholic; on the contrary, it names failure. Of course, the church rightly names failure, or at least horror, as part of our church year. We do, after all, go through crucifixion as part of Holy Week. Certainly if the Reformation is to be narrated rightly, it is to be narrated as part of those dark days.

Reformation names the disunity in which we currently stand. We who remain in the Protestant tradition want to say that Reformation was a success. But when we make Reformation a success, it only ends up killing us. After all, the very name ”˜Protestantism’ is meant to denote a reform movement of protest within the Church Catholic. When Protestantism becomes an end in itself, which it certainly has through the mainstream denominations in America, it becomes anathema. If we no longer have broken hearts at the church’s division, then we cannot help but unfaithfully celebrate Reformation Sunday.

For example, note what the Reformation has done for our reading texts like that which we hear from Luke this morning. We Protestants automatically assume that the Pharisees are the Catholics. They are the self-righteous people who have made Christianity a form of legalistic religion, thereby destroying the free grace of the Gospel. We Protestants are the tax collectors, knowing that we are sinners and that our lives depend upon God’s free grace. And therefore we are better than the Catholics because we know they are sinners. What an odd irony that the Reformation made such readings possible. As Protestants we now take pride in the acknowledgement of our sinfulness in order to distinguish ourselves from Catholics who allegedly believe in works-righteousness.

Unfortunately, the Catholics are right….

Read the whole piece.

The point is that one Church must not be suffered to become many churches, each teaching a variant Gospel. It is not that congregations do not deserve to be consulted about their particular needs, just that they cannot expect to be given the final decision.

This is such straight common sense that one wonders how anyone can have argued with it. It certainly seemed so to the Church for many centuries, as they fought off threatening heresies and divisions. The majority would accept it still; but of course no sound policy is proof against human fallibility, the abuse of power, or against political influences. Authority can become authoritarianism; a local church can be subject to intense pressure, as it was under Communism, when some of the wisest and best of people believed compromise to be a condition of survival. The shift of power from Rome to Constantinople, the nature and behaviour of medieval Popes and other Church leaders, the Crusades, Fascism, Communism, famine, war and even prosperity have all contributed to the pressure upon apostolic authority in which St Clement so firmly believed.

The endless trouble of the ages has often persuaded people at their wits’ end to look for a less vulnerable authority, an unalterable basis of faith which can solve all problems. Islam and biblical fundamentalism offer just such a basis. More subtle forms of this temptation offer themselves to apparently more enlightened congregations. Our bishops are there to guard us against falling for this. No comment.

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John Calvin’s theology arrests attention at the outset on two accounts: it has been extraordinarily influential, and it has been extraordinarily maligned.

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Last spring on a trip to Erfurt Germany, the medieval university town famous for the Augustinian cloister where Martin Luther was ordained to the priesthood, I learned that only twenty percent of the population professed adherence to Christianity. When the topic of religion came up in a conversation with a young woman in a hotel lounge I asked her whether she was a member of a church. Without hesitation she replied: Ich bin Heide. I am a heathen.

It is hardly news to discover pagans in the heart of western Europe where once Christianity flourished. The steep decline in the number of Christians has been underway for generations, even centuries. What surprised me was the complete absence of embarrassment in her use of the term “heathen”. She did not say she no longer went to Church, nor that she was not a believer. For her, Christianity, no doubt the religion of her grandparents if not her parents, was absent from her horizon. Two days earlier my train had stopped at Fulda where St. Boniface, the apostle to the Germans, was buried. Boniface had gone to Germany to convert the heathen, and in a spectacular and courageous gesture felled the sacred oak at Geismar. The astonished onlookers soon hearkened to Boniface’s preaching and received Baptism. It would seem that if Christianity is ever to flourish again in the land between the Rhine and the Elbe a new Boniface will have to appear to fell the sacred oaks of European secularism.

Yet what made an even deeper impression on me in Europe was the debate over the preface to the new constitution of the European Union. I was living in Italy at the time and had been following the discussion in the Italian press. All the nations of the European union are historically Christian, and the very idea of Europe””which is not the doings of nature””was the work of Christian civilization. The Carolingians, Christians kings, first brought together the peoples west and the east of the Rhine to form a political alliance with the blessing of the bishop of Rome. The story of Europe is a spiritual drama fueled by religious convictions, not geography, economics or technology. Yet the framers of the EU constitution refuse even to invoke the name of Christianity in its preface. While readily acknowledging the inheritance of Greece and Rome, and even the Enlightenment, in a wilful act of amnesia, they excise any mention of Christianity from Europe’s history. Not only is Christianity excluded from a role in Europe’s future, it has been banished from Europe’s past. One wonders whether the new Europe, uprooted from its Christian soil, will continue to promote the spiritual values that have made western civilization so unique.

Talking to the young woman in Erfurt and listening in on the debate about the EU constitution I found myself musing on the future of Christian culture. In my lifetime and in the lifetime of others in this room we have seen the collapse of Christian civilization. At first the process of disintegration was slow, a gradual and persistent attrition, but today it has moved into overdrive, and more troubling, it has become deliberate and intentional, promoted not only by the cultured despisers of Christianity, but often aided and abetted by Christians themselves.

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Fifty years ago, the phrase “In God We Trust” first appeared on our nation’s one-dollar bill. But long before the motto was signed into law by President Eisenhower, it was considered for U.S. coins during the divisive years of the Civil War.

On Nov. 13, 1861, in the first months of the war, Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase received the following letter from a Rev. M.R. Watkinson: “Dear Sir, One fact touching our currency has hitherto been seriously overlooked. I mean the recognition of the Almighty God in some form on our coins. You are probably a Christian. What if our Republic were now shattered beyond reconstruction? Would not the antiquaries of succeeding centuries rightly reason from our past that we were a heathen nation?”

The clergyman surmised correctly. Chase was indeed a Christian.

As a young man at Dartmouth College, Chase had described himself as skeptical of the Christian faith. He had written to a friend, Tom Sparhawk, in 1826: “A [religious] revival has commenced here [at Dartmouth]. I was not taught to believe much in the efficacy of such things but I do not know enough concerning their effects to oppose them.” Not only did Chase tolerate Dartmouth’s revival of 1826, but he emerged as one of 12 new followers of Christ. As Chase wrote to another acquaintance in April of that year, “It has pleased God in his infinite mercy to bring me . . . to the foot of the cross and to find acceptance through the blood of His dear Son.”

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William Gladstone was a very peculiar man indeed, and not just for meeting prostitutes to “rescue” in the streets near his house.

His astonishing energy – 63 years in parliament, 11 budgets, four times prime minister – was directed chiefly towards realising God’s purposes, as he saw them. Or, as Henry Labouchere, put it: “I don’t object to Gladstone always having the ace of trumps up his sleeve, but merely to his belief that the Almighty put it there.”

Much of what we think we know of WE Gladstone (1809-98) derives from the first, three-volume biography of him by John Morley. But Morley was an odd choice for biographer, since he was a “freethinking” atheist, and he agreed to the Gladstone family’s stipulation that he should refrain from treating Gladstone’s religion in any depth. It was like leaving Nazism out of a life of Hitler.

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The largest property dispute in the history of the Episcopal Church, brought on by divisions over a homosexual bishop, is likely to turn on a Civil War-era Virginia law passed to govern churches splitting during disputes over slavery and secession.

Circuit Judge Randy Bellows will preside starting tomorrow at the Fairfax County Courthouse over a case brought by the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia and the national Episcopal Church against 11 churches seeking to leave the denomination along with millions of dollars of property.

The 11 churches voted in December and January to leave the denomination and join the Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA) under the Anglican Church of Nigeria, citing disputes over biblical authority and the 2003 election of the openly homosexual New Hampshire Bishop V. Gene Robinson.

The case is informally referred to as “57-9” in many documents because the coming hearing is based on Virginia Code Section 57-9. This says when a diocese or a denomination experiences a “division,” members of a congregation may determine by majority vote which side of the division to join, along with their property.

“This case is literally historic, because it’s based on a statute enacted by the Virginia legislature during the Civil War,” said Mary McReynolds, one of 24 lawyers involved on CANA’s side of the dispute. “The Virginia division statute is unusual, and my understanding is there are not many situations in the country that allow this.”

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Take a look.

In his final years, the Rev. Paul Hoornstra faced heart disease, cancer, blindness, Parkinson’s disease and diabetes.

Through it all, he never questioned his belief in God.

“He only questioned which path to follow,” said his former Tuesday lunch buddy, Bryan Springthorpe.

Springthorpe’s biography, “Crossing the Bridge: The Life and Works of the Reverend Paul Hoornstra,” appears in bookstores and churches this month. The 361-page biography captures the events and struggles of the late Episcopalian priest known locally for launching two local churches and restoring a congregation on Tybee Island.

Springthorpe began work on the book shortly after Hoornstra’s death in 2003 at age 83.

“He was a fascinating guy and a great inspiration to me,” Springthorpe said.

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There is a strong argument for reforming the Church from within rather than through schism and we have a practicable model for pastoral care and social action. In closing, permit me to highlight three areas of Simeon’s ministry which have greatly challenged me in my reflections and which, if we were to follow them, would have the potential to rejuvenate our ministry.

1 Giving priority to an effective devotional lifestyle, with a commitment to spending ”˜quality’ time in Bible study and prayer.

2 A commitment to living a holy life, recognizing the need of the renewing and cleansing power of the Holy Spirit in our daily lives.

3 That, along with Simeon, our understanding of the purpose of our preaching would be: ”˜Sir, we would see Jesus’ (John 12:21).

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The first parishioners of Christ Episcopal Church were forced to worship underground in people’s Stratford homes 300 years ago to avoid harassment by the dominant Congregationalists.
It was a religious turnabout since the Congregationalists had fled to the New World to escape persecution by the Church of England, with which the Episcopal, or Anglican, faith is affiliated.

Today, the 223 families who comprise the Episcopal parish at 2000 Main St. are proudly ”” and publicly ”” celebrating the third century of their church, the first Episcopal church established in the Connecticut colony.

The birth of the Anglican Church in the United States mirrored the birth of the nation, according to the Rev. Robert Stuhlmann, the 30th pastor of Christ Episcopal Church.

Most of the 12 brave men who established the local parish in 1707 ended up in jail for their defiance of the General Court of Connecticut, which said there could be only one church ”” and it was Congregational.

That was not unlike the fate of the daring men who attached their signature to the Declaration of Independence. Many of them faced death threats, jail and loss of property. Eighty years after the formation of the Anglican Church in Stratford, another group of brave men signed the U.S. Constitution, and Stratford’s church had a direct role in that historic document.

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In a remarkable article in the London-based Church Times (13th April), Canon Gregory Cameron, the Deputy Secretary-General of the Anglican Communion, publicly distanced Anglicanism from Protestantism. Canon Cameron spoke of an Anglican “dialogue with the Protestant traditions,” making it clear that he regarded Anglicanism as lying beyond the pale of Protestantism. Many in Ireland will regard his views with puzzlement, and perhaps not a little concern. So will many historians.

We need to appreciate that the sixteenth-century Reformation was a complex phenomenon. There was no single Protestant ”˜template’. Rather, a variety of reforming movements emerged during the sixteenth century, whose specific forms were shaped by local politics and personalities, as much as by the broader commitment to a recognizably Protestant agenda. The forms of Protestantism which emerged in the great imperial cities (such as Strasbourg), territories (such as Saxony) and nations (such as England or Sweden) had their own distinct characteristics. Some, for example, retained the episcopacy and a fixed liturgy; others discarded one or both. Yet each represented a local implementation of the Protestant agenda.

Historians generally consider that one of the most remarkable and influential forms of Protestantism emerged in England, and has come to be known as ”˜Anglicanism’. Reformers in the reign of Henry VIII did not refer to themselves as ”˜Protestants’, partly because this was seen to have foreign associations at the time. (Henry VIII, it will be recalled, disliked foreigners having influence over English affairs.) Yet from the reign of Edward VI onwards, English Church leaders began to use this term to refer to themselves, and see themselves as being connected with the great reforming movements and individuals on the continent of Europe.

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In the end, repentance, not love, has come to symbolise Cranmer himself, his life’s work being interpreted by his last days. In the eyes of his critics, Cranmer’s recantations prove that at best he was weak and vacillating. In the hearts of his admirers, however, Cranmer’s last-minute renunciation of his recantations proved his true commitment to the Protestant faith. But what of Cranmer himself, how did he interpret his last days and the meaning they gave to his life? According to a contemporary account, having previously been distraught, Cranmer came to the stake with a cheerful countenance and willing mind.

Fire being now put to him, he stretched out his right Hand, and thrust it into the Flame, and held it there a good space, before the Fire came to any other Part of his Body; where his Hand was seen of every Man sensibly burning, crying with a loud Voice, This Hand hath offended. As soon as the Fire got up, he was very soon Dead, never stirring or crying all the while.

His Catholic executioners surely thought Cranmer was making satisfaction to his Protestant God. Yet his doctrine of repentance would have taught him otherwise, for the God he served saved the unworthy.

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“Let none eat or drink of your Eucharist except those who have been baptised in the Lord’s Name. For concerning this also did the Lord say, ‘Give not that which is holy to the dogs.'”

–Didache ix.5, trans. Kirsopp Lake.

“This food we call Eucharist, of which no one is allowed to partake, except one who believes that the things we teach are true, and has received the washing for forgiveness of sins and for rebirth, and who lives as Christ handed down to us. For we do not receive these things as common bread or common drink; but as Jesus Christ our Saviour being incarnate by God’s word took flesh and blood for our salvation, so also we have been taught that the food consecrated by the word of prayer which comes from him, from which our flesh and blood are nourished by transformation, is the flesh and blood of that incarnate Jesus. For the apostles in the memoirs composed by them, which are called Gospels, thus handed down what was commanded them: that Jesus, taking bread and having given thanks, said, ‘Do this for my memorial, this is my body’; and likewise taking the cup and giving thanks he said, ‘This is my blood’; and gave it to them alone.'”

–Justin Martyr, First apology 66, trans. Edward Rochie Hardy.

The recent turmoil in the loosely affiliated churches that are described as “The Anglican Communion”, has produced or thrown into prominence several new committees and quasi executive bodies. Among them is a group that is called, somewhat quaintly, “The Primates’ Meeting”. These meetings began after the Lambeth Conference of 1978, but only recently have they seemed to mimic some of the organs of the much more tightly hierarchical Roman Catholic Church. Thus, at a fairly recent meeting in Tanzania, they requested (though, directed would seem more accurate) the Bishops of ECUSA, to “make an unequivocal common covenant that the bishops will not authorize any Rite of Blessing for same-sex (they mean, I assume, same-gender) unions in their diocese or through General Convention”. The Primates go on to insist that anyone living in a same-sex (sic) union should not be approved for Episcopal orders. I am not clear whether this means that such a life-style is permissible for deaconal or presbyteral orders.

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Religion in American History–check it out.

Driven to the Internet, I see Richard Hooker described as the “closest counterpart in the Anglican-Episcopal denomination to Luther for Lutherans or Calvin for Presbyterians or Wesley for Methodists.” His books on the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity explain every aspect of Anglican doctrine, and I’m sure the vicar of my little church in Roxboro, North Carolina, has read them all.

Hooker defined the essential character of our early church as broad, tolerant and inclusive at a time when it was threatened by Roman Catholicism on one side and Protestant extremism on the other. He’s credited with defending the Anglican cause against the Puritans who wanted to get rid of bishops and turn us into Presbyterians. When Hooker died in 1600, the pope said that his ideas would remain until the end of the world.

Even though I just met Richard Hooker and hardly know him, I’m struck by the way he acknowledged the diversity of ideas within the church as a strength, saying, “Carry peaceable minds, and you may have comfort by this variety.” I can’t help but think of Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, who was recently quoted in TIME as saying that God intends that our church members “have something to learn even from the people we most dislike or instinctively mistrust.” The reporter said it’s a nice thought, but will it be enough to stop a split?

Well, I don’t know. What I do know is that I’ve been finding myself less and less willing to talk about controversial topics, including this one. Most people tend to rant these days, and I just don’t want to listen. I’m getting to be a lot like Dogbert who says in the Dilbert cartoon, “There’s really no point in listening to other people. They’re either going to be agreeing with you or saying stupid stuff.”

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Check out the documents at Surrounded here and there.

ROADS were packed, tents were pitched, and crowds wearing their Sunday best were out in droves, as thousands of people gathered in Jamaica to hear the Archbishop of York, John Sentamu, speak to mark the 200th anniversary of the Abolition of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.

One of Britain’s most influential church leaders, Dr Sentamu was the preacher at Jamaica’s bicentenary celebration of the abolition of slavery.

Dr Sentamu spoke to the crowds in Jamaica’s National Arena against the evils of the transatlantic slave trade and sent out a message to work with humility and for the grassroots.

“God rejoices in the fact that he created each one of you. That is the greatest message of the sermon this morning, be yourself and don’t try and be somebody else,” he said.

Quoting a sermon from the Archbishop of Zanzibar, he asked the people to reach out and work at the grassroots: “Go out to the highways and byways look for the people who have lost hope and those who are struggling to make good.

“Have Jesus on your lips and the world in your heart, you have been called to freedom to work with justice and to embrace responsibility.”

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Clearly, the debated vision of “communion” present in our Anglican turmoil is tied to this, not only historically, but conceptually and theologically. We are in the midst of a grand movement towards and through democratization: its gifts are potentially and really (in many cases) great, especially in terms of the kinds of democratic charisms that we rightly cherish here and wish to support elsewhere: individual freedoms, protection of rights, the coherent rule of law and appeal, and accountability. The Church’s place in this movement is not peripheral, however, since – at least as we believe, and indeed even as students of democratization recognize with or without a religious lens – the persuasive moral frameworks by which the violence of autonomy is checked and transformed are not only the special charism of the Church, but is also a divine imperative for human history’s ordering.

The current Covenant process can be seen in terms of those elements bound to the choices we earlier claimed face all democratizing movements: we can choose to move towards a retrenchment of confrontative blame, whereby the boundaries of a pure confessionalism deny the possibility of open discussion and engagement across local units; we can choose a path that leads to the dissolution of accountability altogether, through a kind of the federalist model of autonomous units that merely talk to one another across local divides, but that cannot hold each other accountable to some broader formative molding of the self and its assertions; or we can choose some kind of structure that can uphold dispersed accountability, where truth is bound to a way of life and to the persuasive moral framework of accountable actions. I would obviously argue for the last option as our calling as well. One can see that the Covenant proposal that was presented to the Primates in Dar es Salaam, and through them to the Communion at large, takes this last road. (And the Primates’ Communiqué from Dar falls squarely within this perspective.) One need only look at the current debate over human rights in Nigeria, and the Church’s proper duties within this debate, to realize that unless Christian Communion is able to bring its formative weight to bear upon these matters, the process of democratization will indeed become a weapon in the hand of forces whose destiny will simply be the re-expression of Cain and Abel’s long-standing conflict, where power means simply giving each brother a chance to have his say and do his thing, with whatever results.

In sum, I invite us to see the relationship of Communion to democratization in a special way: as the embodied work of transfiguring the violence inherent in the dispersal of power. We are aware of what this means Scripturally, if nothing else: it is, in the terms of Ephesians 2, the breaking down of a “wall” of separation, and of making what were once “two” hostile and estranged bodies, “one” body in the “one new man” who is Christ. But this reality, as Paul emphasized, is achieved through the Cross and the shedding of blood, Jesus’ own. Not surprisingly, Paul is here speaking of an act by which violence itself is exposed before the world to be seen for what it is, and then comprehended within the being and heart of God. If power is dispersed in this context, it is also given over to God, who bears its chaotic assertion. Only here is the seeming contradiction of Galatians 6, where each is accountable only for his or her own actions yet is also called to bear the burdens of others, resolved. If we are to think of Communion, it is from this base, and in the context of those seeking to see such a foundation exposed before the world. The buzz-words of “mutual accountability” and “interdependence”, so important to the Windsor Report, yet based on a long tradition of discussion dating to the 1960’s at least, are not mere jargon in this light. They go to the center of the Gospel’s particular summons to this age. And so I have no hesitation in commending this vision of Anglicanism. There are few gifts more filled with promise that God has given his people in this regard for the service of the nations, at this point in history most especially.

As a gift to the American church in particular, it poses an enormous challenge. We are loath to admit that pure autonomy embodies the violence of death. And few of us, in any context, are ready to admit that the death of self leads to the resurrection of the self’s life as a common life. Yet in such an admission lies the promise of God’s peace.

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ABOUT 30 YEARS AGO, after he was appointed director of the V&A, Sir Roy Strong put on an exhibition, The Destruction of the English Country House 1875-1975, that was a turning point in saving these buildings.

Now in his 70s, Sir Roy Strong has turned his attention to saving the English parish church, which he believes is facing crisis. But preserving the buildings in a heritage aspic ”“ like that around so many of his beloved country houses today ”“ is not his answer. Preservation is admirable, he writes in his new book, but the word has begun to take on negative connotations. A replacement is needed that shows a desire to move on. To save the parish church, he says, “perhaps we need bodies whose names feature the word ”˜adaptation’ rather than ”˜conservation’ or ”˜preservation’ ”.

Sir Roy is infused with the love he feels for the Church, its inhabitants and its Creator. What he suggests must be taken seriously if the Church, as well as the parish church, is to survive.

The writing is concise, uncluttered, clear. Even when you know the history, you still turn the pages, wanting to find out what small but telling detail he has uncovered next.

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Jeremiah C. Lamphier, a layman, started the revolution because he was helping his declining church near Wall Street in New York City. Posting flyers announcing a noon prayer meeting, he prayed alone in an empty room for the first half hour.

Finally someone joined him. Before the hour was over, six had attended. It was an ordinary prayer meeting, fervent but unspectacular. Meeting the next week, 20 attended. When 40 appeared the following week, they decided to go daily.

On Oct. 14, 1857, Wall Street experienced the Panic of 1857, one of the worst financial crises in American history. By the month’s end, another 100 people were participating in the daily prayer meeting.

Newspaper accounts of a November spiritual revival in Ontario, Canada, spurred prayer meetings throughout America. In New York City, the prayer movement spread so that by March 1858, newspapers reported that 10,000 businessmen were meeting regularly to pray. Every available room in churches was packed at noon for prayer and at evening for services. The happening gained front-page headlines in New York newspapers.

The fervency for prayer swept into Philadelphia and up into Boston and the Northeast. Like a wave, the movement splashed into Chicago and the Midwest. Though it started in the North, the spirit of prayer rippled into the South. Thousands came to Christ. Churches gained attendance.

Amazingly, it began by a layperson leading a small, obscure prayer group. It swelled into a tidal wave of prayer washing the nation, changing lives and reviving declining churches. It sounds like a plot in some cheesy Christian film, but it really happened!

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Like many children of the ’60s, Arne and Marie Bergstrom rebelled against the expectations of their middle-class families. In 1970, halfway through their undergraduate studies at the evangelical Bethel College in St. Paul, Minn., they dropped out, got married, sold all their possessions and went to do God’s work. Their journey took them to Papua New Guinea, Sudan and the Philippines (where they adopted two girls; they had two sons as well). When they settled back in the U.S., Arne’s beat was disaster relief: He went to Rwanda, Kosovo and Turkey (after a massive earthquake), to refugee camps at the Iran-Afghanistan border. Marie became an award-winning fifth-grade teacher.

A couple of months ago, our church in Wheaton, Ill., had to bid the Bergstroms goodbye. They were moving again, close to Seattle, where Arne took a position at World Vision, the Christian relief and development agency. If you had seen them standing in front of the congregation, you could hardly have failed to recognize them as aging hippies–Marie’s long straight hair, Arne’s grizzled beard–and they are both runners, thin as rails.

The Bergstroms’ story is an inspiring tale of faith in action, but it is also a goad to rethink what we mean when we talk about “the ’60s” (which, of course, can’t really be contained within a 10-year span). Canonical accounts, from both the left and the right, have systematically ignored, played down and distorted the religious dimensions of that tumultuous time.

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