What do you want the Episcopal Church to look like in 2019?
An eight-question survey posted online June 24 asks Episcopalians””lay and ordained””to envision the church in 10 years’ time and to prioritize the strategies toward that vision.
Do you favor a multicultural church? Is evangelism “less important,” “important,” or “very important” to you? Should advocacy and social justice define the church? Or should the church be a combination of mission and worship?
“We are looking at where we are as a church today and addressing hopes and desires,” said the Rev. Christopher Johnson, a member of the Strategic Planning Committee formed by Executive Council at its January 2009 meeting in Stockton, California.
Apparently there is no vision or sense of mission. Therefore there is no leadership. Are we going to define the mission of the church by a majority vote? Why don’t they look at growing churches to find out what to do?
My diocesan office sent all clergy a link to this survey a few days ago. I thought some of the questions were very interestingly (and vaguely) worded.
And looking at it again from the link posted here on T19, I believe it has been altered slightly since I took it a few days ago. Maybe my memory is playing tricks on me, but I distinctly remember there being more that one question that invoked the term “social justice” directly.
I remember that because I distinctly remember cringing, because I hate that term as it is usually a code word in TEC parlance for a very particular political ideology/agenda. I always have to debate with myself how I answer questions like this because on the one hand, I believe in social justice for sure, but not necessarily “The Episcopal Church Center” definition of it.
I know it was the same survey because I also remember the way “Episcopal Church Center” is referred to as this bizarre 3rd person abstraction.
One only need look at what the solons of TEC have done with parts of the Baptismal Covenant to have metaphysical certainty of what they would pour into the empty vessel of “social justice.”
TEC is desperate need of major repairs before they can think of reshaping themselves.
The programs are not the message. They come out of a response of folks whose live have been changed a a decision to follow Jesus. It is just that simple. Many churches have already figured this out.
#5, that’s more or less what I wrote on my response, though I also did try to highlight some important issues (evangelism, leadership development). There is an old saying, that when the only tool in your toolbox is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. This is a survey created by people who live and die by the development and administration of programs, and thus they assume that programs are the solution to what ails this church of ours. It’s a dog chasing his own tail, I’m afraid . . . .
Bruce Robison
Also worth remembering that most of the early American Social Gospelers had been raised as Evangelicals, and initially saw the “social” aspect as a necessary corrective not a replacement. It’s only later that one sees the shift towards the program being an end in itself (and not everyone was affected the same way).
[url=http://catholicandreformed.blogspot.com]Catholic and Reformed[/url]
I was intrigued that it didn’t stop me — with a NZ IP address – from filling in the form and submitting it. On that basis it probably wouldn’t stop you doing it repeated times either – if you could face the inane questions more than once.
Talk about a poorly designed survey!!!!
# 6. I recall all too well Terry Fulham telling us years ago, PECUSA/TEC “has tried this programme and has tried that programme – tried just about all programmes imaginable – and still …. nothing. Oh; when shall we see folk just try the Gospel!†[Roars of applause …]
And then he sang in that inimitable voice, teaching us the song: “I hear a sound …†It was quite something to hear 5-6,000 people’s voices swelling …!
7. Jeremy Bonner wrote:
[blockquote]Also worth remembering that most of the early American Social Gospelers had been raised as Evangelicals, and initially saw the “social†aspect as a necessary corrective not a replacement.[/blockquote]
That may be true in the U.S., but certainly it was the case that the social gospel was part of the Oxford/Ritualist movement in England in the latter part of the 19th century, because many of its clergy were shunted into poor, working class parishes.
And then there is what the early Church Fathers had to say on the subject….
Absolutely correct, #10. Charles Lowder and Alexander Mackonochie both being great exemplars.
In the US – perhaps because the Anglo Catholics were the “victorious” party and not merely one co-equal branch – there seem to have been fewer Anglo Catholics of this type (though I’m sure this thread will be alerted to the exceptions).
My point was not that the American Social Gospel was propagated solely by former Evangelicals, but that most of those who were began their careers with a very developed sense of saving not just the body but the soul. One “troubler of Israel” whom I studied spent several years as the rector of Trinity, Newark, at the turn of the century. His fulminations against the selfishness the well-to-do of his parish and his support for trade union activism were de rigeur, his harangues against the overly revealing displays of female underwear in downtown department stores were not. Interestingly, he also took it amiss that his senior warden – with whom he was frequently in conflict – was baptized but unconfirmed and, consequently, did not partake of the Eucharist. I was surprised to discover that such a practice persisted into the 20th Century.
11. Jeremy Bonner wrote:
[blockquote]In the US – perhaps because the Anglo Catholics were the “victorious†party and not merely one co-equal branch…[/blockquote]
I would take issue with the notion that Anglo Catholics were the victorious party, whether we speak of England or the U.S. It is pretty clear to me that the Broad Church party has dominated the Church of England throughout much of its history and TEC for most of the past century. Therein lies the plight of both the CoE and TEC today.
I think there are several ironies involved. It was, after all the Low Churchmen and High Churchmen who saved the PECUSA from extinction after the American Revolution, while the Broad Churchmen sat on their posteriors. And yet, it has been the Broad Church (and hazy) that came to control the General Convention in the 20th century and the national administration of something that was once, quite literally, the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society — mostly, I think, through the poison injected into seminarians by their faculites. (50 years ago I was being directed by the faculty to read continental history, theology and biblical scholars, while the venerable Anglican divines and scholars were simply ignored. I remember nearly being choked by dust when I pulled some of those works off the library shelves.)
The other irony is the sleeping giant of Africa. Because the Broad Church establishments in both England and the U.S. were quite literally lazy as well as hazy, the evangelicals (the doggeral is mistaken–they weren’t lazy) and catholics were busy evangelizing in the mid-west, in Asia [b]and[/b] in Africa. And essentially what has happened in the Communion is that the seeds planted in the 19th century by the evangelical and catholic Anglicans has borne fruit many times over.
Ken,
As to the last point, fair enough.
I’m not sure that the “Broad Church” was the same entity in Britain and in the United States (certainly not before the 1930s), nor that we can compare the Broad Church of the 19th Century (which is what I was mostly talking about) with that of the 20th Century. Assuming you think the post-Revolutionary Church was worth preserving, you do little justice to the archetypal Broad Churchman William White. If it had been down just to Samuel Seabury and the Virginians, TEC would never have existed.
Robert Prichard has made the point that there have been two major shifts in the American Church over the past 100 years. The first, the “Mere Christianity” consensus negotiated in the 1920s, was an orthodox compromise that saved TEC from having to deal head on with the fundamentalist crisis but stripped away much of the historic Anglican framework. This in turn paved the way for the second shift – which you yourself apparently experienced – which occurred in the 1940s and 1950s with the embrace first of neo-orthodox and then of even more exotic forms of continental Protestant theology.
Interesting fact also recounted by Prichard, many of the ordained faculty appointed by Episcopal seminaries during the early 1950s had received their academic training not in an Anglican milieu but at New York’s Union Theological Seminary. Make of that what you will.
[blockquote]Interesting fact also recounted by Prichard, many of the ordained faculty appointed by Episcopal seminaries during the early 1950s had received their academic training not in an Anglican milieu but at New York’s Union Theological Seminary. Make of that what you will.[/blockquote]
Odd. I wasn’t trained at UTS. Maybe some of the faculty were. But my theology prof was trained at the University of Basel. One guess by whom.