What these past few weeks have taught us about the Church in North America is interesting, if painful. First, our parishes are filled with friendly, welcoming, loving people””people who really mean well, and want to do the right thing, the loving thing, as they believe God would have them do. Second, we are essentially Congregationalists, and then perhaps “diocesanists”, and finally, maybe, members of our national church. There is no real sense of being one church with other Anglicans throughout the world, no sense that we are truly closer, more truly related, to an Anglican in Botswana or Beijing than to a Baptist down the street. Oh, we may have companion dioceses in Africa or South America, but we don’t really think of them as part of us, nor do we feel responsible to them. There’s no need to ask what they think about decisions we make as a church in the U.S., because it has nothing to do with them””sure, we send them some money every year, but that doesn’t make them “us”.
But they are us. If the Anglican Communion is truly to be a single Communion, then we must recognize that the national, man-made boundaries which separate us mean nothing, for we are truly a single Church, a single Communion, whether we’re in New York or Nairobi, Arlington or Addis Ababa. What we do in one part of the Communion directly effects every other part of the Communion, and we ignore that fact to the Church’s, and our own, peril.
Pray for the Church, that we may be One.
Read it all (scroll down to second item).
Kendall, I thought the more interesting part was the paragraph just before what you quoted, in which Fr. Francis describes getting stuck in a small town because of car trouble:
I have to wonder about people who get concerned about things like that. They claim to know with invincible certainty that, for example, “the Holy Spirit come[s] down upon the gifts, changing the bread and wine into Christ’s Body and Blood.” When pressed, however, they grudgingly acknowledge that such claims are unprovable and must be accepted “on faith.” What they’re really saying is that their claims amount to no more than wishful thinking, but that everyone should accept their claims anyway.
(That’s one of the principal bases of Sam Harris’s attacks on religion; he rightly points out the danger of belief without evidence.)
Too many people like Fr. Francis — and many theological liberals, too — insist that being part of “us” requires everyone to sign up for their particular brand of wishful thinking and to proclaim it as Truth. Uh, thanks, but no thanks.
Thanks for posting this KSH..
It is evident throughout the whole piece that the heart of Fr. Frances is breaking.
I understand he and his wife are on their way to Portugal, having been called to a parish there, and that he speaks Portugese? Hope that’s correct.
He will be missed here in Charleston.
Gloria
“If the Anglican Communion is truly to be a single Communion, then we must recognize that the national, man-made boundaries which separate us mean nothing, for we are truly a single Church, a single Communion, whether we’re in New York or Nairobi, Arlington or Addis Ababa. What we do in one part of the Communion directly effects every other part of the Communion, and we ignore that fact to the Church’s, and our own, peril.”
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Well stated.
When the revisionists started the most recent bout of trouble in ECUSA, I started identifying my religious faith as being Anglican, particularly if I am in a situation where there is even an iota of a chance of bringing the person to whom I am speaking to Christ.
Identifiying oneself as an Episcopalian has become a negative thing, a thing not conducive to evangelizing the unchurched or the unconverted.
The baptist “down the street” is our brother. So is the Anglican in Botswana. How is it that we are “more closely related” to the one than to the other?
I agree that congregations tend to think first of their own parish before moving beyond it. This fact demands that the rector do the work of explicitly connecting the parish to the diocese, the national church, and the AC, and if this isn not done the parish congregation remains focused inward. I think that a lot of the behavior of local congregations dissatisfied with recent decisions of General Conventioin is “congregationalist” in the sense that many parishes oir parts of parishes that have left have done so in large part because of the dynamic leadership of the rector who instead of helping people to stay in and become a loyal opposition made the decision to lead people away.
The congregationalist spirit is also evident in the thinking that “our church belongs to us; we’ve worked hard to get it to where it is today, so why shouldn’t it go with us?” It’s a bitter pill for many to swallow when they have to abandon the St. So-and-So that nourished them from their own baptism to their childrens’. It is one of the sad aspects of this own tragic affair.
Kendall,
Sadly, this article is too full of hyperbole to be worthwhile. Canadian Cars rust out after 3 years because of road salt? Woodstock is smaller than Lake Woebegon? What a joke.
And his narrow view of what should (or shouldn’t) be in a epiclesis is very poor. While not explicit, the Holy Spirit is prayed to fill the offering of the church, and not solely the humans coming to the altar. In every consecration prayer too I might add. The Emphasis is different on each prayer, but it’s still evident in all.
Besides, to point out that the priest was (only) in an Alb and Stole is pretty petty comment as well.
D.C. makes a good point. The epliclesis is problematic for a lot of people including yours truly. Besides, Fr Francis is wrong about the contemporary English eucharistic prayers in the Book of Alternative Services. All six have some version of “Send your Holy Spirit upon us and upon these gifts.” It isn’t quite as explicitly expressed in the supplementary prayers for the BAS, however, and is not present in #3 which is my personal favourite. Knowing the priest at the church he probably attended, I wouldn’t be surprised if #3 is what was used there.
As for the segment about Anglicans essentially behaving as congregationalists it is quite easy to see why this would be the case in the present climate and also why it is a growing phenomenon. When you have dioceses and national churches moving away from the catholic faith, faithful local manifestations of the catholic church will quite naturally want to distance themselves in one way or another and form connections with other networks with which they have more in common.
[i]First, our parishes are filled with friendly, welcoming, loving people—people who really mean well, and want to do the right thing, the loving thing, as they believe God would have them do. Second, we are essentially Congregationalists, and then perhaps “diocesanistsâ€[/i]
This is a stunningly accurate description of the reality in most Episcopal parishes I’ve experienced. Especially true of the broad middle parishes, where relationships and getting along (a sense of clubbishness, almost) takes priority over any particular doctrine.
I think it is more than merely descriptive, however. I think this reality could also said to be CAUSATIVE in the current crisis. I.e., it is this reality which is helping shape the response to the current crisis on both the left and right (reappraiser / reasserter) wings of the church.
What I think has happened, at least on the “Fed-Con” wing of the reasserter side, is actually on one level the opposite of what Fr. Francis writes about when he says:
There is no real sense of being one church with other Anglicans throughout the world, no sense that we are truly closer, more truly related, to an Anglican in Botswana or Beijing than to a Baptist down the street.
For some of us in reasserter parishes like Truro, there’s actually a both/and going on here. 1) there has been to a real degree at Truro and throughout ECUSA a congregational mentality. 2) Through missions and outreach many of us Truroites and other reasserters have made the startling discovery that we actually DO have more in common theologically with Baptists down the street or other reasserting Anglicans in Botswana, or Nigeria, or Uganda… than we do with many in a neighboring ECUSA parish a few miles away.
What to do? The sense of actually being closer and having more in common with non-ECUSAns is driving the realignment on the evangelical side, and the congregationalist tendencies make it possible in terms of ecclesiological comfort levels (at least for Fed Cons). Ultimately it comes down to relationships and who you want to be in fellowship with. Relationship does influence ecclesiology.
In the “mushy middle” it will probably lead to a don’t rock the boat, accept any innovation if it means less conflict in our local parish. But on the further extremes of the theologicial spectrum — active reasserters (strong evangelicals) and active reappraisers (passion for social justice and inclusion),– the very strength of our ideological passions push us to make changes so as to strengthen relationships with those whom we’re like-minded.
Hope this makes some sense. I’m thinking aloud here. But I think that this is brilliant in terms of helping make sense of both those who are wanting to avoid conflict, and those who are eager for realignment or innovation.
Yesterday’s Gospel comes to mind. The problem with the “middle” is that they see church as the safe place for the 99 nice sheep, of which they are a part. They are not all that excited about seeking the lost sheep, although they wouldn’t mind if someone would find him/her to create a new pledging unit.
Reappraisers don’t believe that any sheep are lost. There are reasons to connect with others politically, but not to bring them into Christ’s flock.
Reasserters believe that lost sheep exist and that the Good Shepherd wants them found. Reasserters are best disposed to fulfill the Gospel of lost sheep/lost coin, and to share in the cosmos-shaking celebration “every time one sinner repents.”
I don’t know Fr. Francis. But as I read through the full story on the parish website I recognized immediately a quintessential Anglo-Catholic pastoral-gifted parish priest, a Christian in love with Jesus as manifested in the Mass, also known as the Divine Liturgy, the Lord’s Supper, the Holy Communion. This is going to color everything. He will tell you, probably with color, why he does not consider the Mass from Lutheran, Zwinglian, Calvinistic, Knoxian, or perhaps even Roman pre-Vatican One terms. He will not describe the Mass or all of its parts and ceremony and costume, separately and individualistically, but only as parts of the whole. Any part that is less than what it should be will be understood as making the whole “underdressed.” All of this is to make the congregation who gathers, including the Celebrant, of course, visibly presentable, worthy before the Lord of Love, that the outward and visible becomes a sign of the inward and invisible grace afforded to us by God. He is not a sacramental isolationist, demanding overbearingly that all who attend must submit to his personal demands to make the sacrament “just right” for him. I can see, to the contrary, that it is in his nature to “incorporate”, showing that the Mass invites us into each other’s lives, and that we should endeavor to do the same even outside the moment of the Mass. Therefore any epiclesis that does not first include the essential focus of the Mass – Jesus in His Body and Blood – causes the whole to be “unfinished”, or “underdressed”, as I suggested this priest to see it. And for that matter, and in that light, any priest that is not fully vested (as the Anglo-Catholic considers vesting) causes the whole to be diminished, underdressed, even.
Further, his understanding of the Mass is extended to the bonds of the whole Church, and in our widest parochial sense, the Anglican Communion. So that not celebrating the Mass with some semblance of ancient order and meaning (and Fr. Francis does show himself to be flexible with local customary), nor maintaining the primary foundation of biblical and traditional theology (as he describes in former parishes), causes serious questions about whether the offering presented to the Lord is “worthy.” In fact, the whole presents itself as underdressed, incomplete, unfinished, without integrity. And he is confronted tangibly with the fact that he is personally incapable of incorporating the whole to be a presentable offering before the Lord of the Mass.
The stark realization that we are functionally not in communion with each other as we come to Communion is obviously a spiritual challenge. Fr. Francis will probably quickly reflect after his “great adventure” that – although it is his job as a parish priest and called by God to do exactly this – he cannot possibly within his own human strength gather all, incorporate all into the Mass as a perfect offering, perfectly prepared to receive Jesus’ manifest Love. I am sure he knows that without accepting and incorporating into his own life God’s Grace that brought him there and keeps him there, his righteous anguish will eat him alive.
This is a lovely vignette of a Christian man who has fully integrated his love of Jesus, and the theology in which he expressed that faith and love, into his life and vocation.
BTW, although I have some experience and heritage in Anglo-Catholocism, that is not my own primary theological expression. But I do pay attention to my fellow Christian pilgrims on the way so we can spend our time relating about Jesus and what He understands as acceptable worship, offering, discipleship.
RGEaton
The Protestant instrumentalist view of the Church is one of the reasons for congregationalism in ECUSA.
This is a lovely vignette of a Christian man who has fully integrated his love of Jesus, and the theology in which he expressed that faith and love, into his life and vocation.
Thank you for writing this, Rob Eaton+, and your effort to understand with a warm heart rather than condemn.
There is no real sense of being one church with other Anglicans throughout the world, no sense that we are truly closer, more truly related, to an Anglican in Botswana or Beijing than to a Baptist down the street.
When I joined the Episcopal Church, one of the things that attracted me so strongly, beyond the liturgy and worship, was this sense that Anglicans were truly part of a larger church, with meaningful ties and sympathies with our counterparts around the world, linked in our faith. It’s a sense I haven’t had in years.