The Episcopal Church, like other mainline Protestant denominations, is not immune from the seismic political, sociological and economic shifts happening today. Most of us are experiencing “a time of no longer and a time of not yet”–an era of rapid, complex change; chronic anxiety; and heightened ambiguity. The comfort of the familiar is fading, and the movement toward an unknown future can feel terrifying.
In times like these, Christians expect religious leadership to help bridge the gap between the ideal and the real, and to equip followers to live out the Gospel in an environment of extreme polarities, i.e., poverty and wealth, insularity and inclusiveness, hostility and hospitality, homogeneity and diversity. The call “to love our neighbors as ourselves” is being drowned out by a barrage of shrill and hate-filled rhetoric. The distance between what Christians profess to believe and what they do seems wider than ever, creating a gap of dysfunction. There are few trusted religious leaders in the public square, whose rational voices, theological gravitas and moral authority can quell the incivility, incendiary rhetoric, and growing intolerance of differences. At a time when the leadership of the church is most needed, there is silence.
The mainline churches are finding themselves on the margins, declining in membership and donations. Some are in the grip of unresolved conflicts and divisions; others are locked in scandal. The main mission is hostage to a host of distracting issues. In short, the church is experiencing a crisis of leadership.
It really takes effort to manage that much banality in a few short paragraphs. Seriously, did she say anything at all?
I disagree with Hal. The article was not composed of a few short paragraphs. It is not only tedious, but entirely too long.
Oh, and…. under Mrs Schori’s top-down leadership, a new low in the authoritarian exercise of anti-canonical power has been plumbed. Frank Griswold, bless his heart, would have been FAR more reconciliatory.
Yes to all of the above. Plus the tiresome fallacy, so:
[blockquote]The top-down authoritarian model of trachurch is no longer effective in a world of new seekers, whose access to information is on par with the leader and where the experience of community is in cyberspace.[/blockquote]
At least two problems. First, cyberspace is not community. Just scan your Facebook page on any given day. Second, information is not wisdom. It isn’t even understanding of things in context and as part of a whole. Community, wisdom, and understanding all require presence (in person, in the body), time, and humility — all in short supply in “cyberspace”. Reconstituting those virtues is, ahem, a daunting task. Tripe like this doesn’t even acknowledge the difficulty.
Dull, uninteresting, banal and trite……..they all seem to fit the bill.
I don’t know, she does describe accurately some of our current experience–the alienation, the partisanship, the anti-authority mentality of nearly all.
Her prescription is less convincing. One suspects that amid the sensory overload and unintelligible chaos of our Babel, it will be the plausible image and convincing rhetoric of a genuine authoritarian that resolves corporate anxieties and personal fears at the cost of traditional liberties, breadth and comprehension. That result is hardly to be desired, but far more likely than anything she seems to posit. We have already seen glimmers in church and state, and we have little to suggest an alternative outcome. We call down judgment on ourselves, and it comes.
Wrong diagnosis, wrong prescription. Her superficial analysis fails to get to the real problems, which include the betrayal of the Gospel by well-meaning leaders who’ve mistaken an illusory Social Gospel for the real thing.
katherine Tyler Scott appears clueless about some of the deeper causes of the malaise and decline of TEC. One of which is that, like all the so-called “mainline” denominations, TEC is caught inexorably in the drift of a powerful cultural current that is now blatantly secular and relativistic, and even increasingly anti-Christian. And that current is dragging TEC over a waterfall.
The dilemma that all oldline, historic Protestant leaders face is that they must make a fateful choice between staying in the mainstream of the American culture or returning to the mainstream of classical Christianity. And for TEC, with its state church roots, becoming genuinely counter-cultural apparently seems to most of its leaders completely impossible, and probably undesirable in the first place.
TEC has lost its soul, and traded its doctrinal birthright, the biblical, Christian worldview, for a lousy bowl of cultural stew. No wonder it’s withering and dying. It fully deserves it.
But conversely, the future for orthodox Anglicanism in North America is as bright as the promises of God. I’m very hopeful for the ACNA. I have no hope whatsoever for TEC. Ichabod. The Glory has departed.
David Handy+