[Tom] Woodward has found constructive ways in his diocese to deal with conflicts, and will offer insight to members of the Wichita Falls congregations during the event, said Owanah Anderson. Anderson is part of the Remain Episcopal group and a longtime member of All Saints Episcopal Church.
“I’m a Remain Episcopalian,” said Anderson, who worked for the Episcopal Church’s national office in New York before coming back to Wichita Falls to retire. “I intend to remain an Episcopalian. I’m not going to transfer my allegiance to anything outside the Episcopal Church.”
The Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth, however, has moved ahead under the direction of Bishop Jack Iker with plans to end its associations with TEC in the United States and to align instead with a more conservative part of the Anglican Church in South America. The Province of the Southern Cone extended an invitation in 2007 to Episcopal churches until TEC changed direction or North America became home to a new structure of the Anglican Communion, the Fort Worth diocese’s Web site detailed.
Ms. Sherrod seems to have forgotten that TEc already rewrote the book they call the Book of Common Prayer. Also, I feel sorry for the gentleman who stastes he will never leave TEc. Isn’t he putting a little too much faith in a man made institution?
Tom Woodward has written a series in which he articulates the “constructive ways” he deals with conflict in the Episcopal Church. It begins [url=http://episcopalmajority.blogspot.com/2007/08/undermining-of-episcopal-church-part-i.html]here[/url].
The lady said,
“I intend to remain an Episcopalian. I’m not going to transfer my allegiance to anything outside the Episcopal Church.â€
Well, I inten d to remain Anglican and if necessary leave ECUSA behind in order to do so.
And by the way, as Christians, isn’t our spiritual allegiance owed to Jesus Christ our Savior and to God our Father?
When ECUSA makes it difficult, even impossible, for Christians to follow Jesus and His teachings and to obey God the Father, then The Episcopal Church has left the Anglican Communion of Faith.
#1, The 1979 BCP is a revision, just as the 1552 was a revision of the 1549, and the 1662 was a revision, and the 1928 was a revision. I recommend you spend some time with Marion Hatchett’s Commentary on the American Prayer Book. It has enlightened me on how deeply rooted the 1979 BCP is in traditioins of Christian worship going back to the fourth century.
Also, would you say that going to the Southern Cone is “putting too much faith in human institutions”?
All of us, every one, MUST read Woodward’s snarling hit piece on orthodox Christians linked for us by William Witt above. It is difficult to perservere on to the end of it, but to get the guage of what we are up against is more important than psychic comfort. Stick it out. Commend it to your friends. Send copies of it to the “moderates.” Make copies and put them in the Narthex. Be sure your Wobbly Windsor Bishop gets a copy. This bit of revisionist cant must have wide distribution among the faithfull. TW, the Seer of Santa Fe, has given us just what is needed to lay open to all the diseased core of the Episcopal Church now in thrall to Crew, Woodward, Bruno et al. Thanks Tom. We needed this.
Hmmm…this reminds me of a meeting we had in our parish back in October before Ft. Worth’s convention. The meeting was about a capital campaign for the parish, but some more outspoken members turned it into a discussion of the resolution that was (then to be) voted on at convention.
One woman asked very loudly “Well, if I’m not going to be an Episcopalian, what will I be?” She sounded VERY upset at the prospect. Before our rector could answer, I (being completely unable to keep my big mouth shut) said just as loudly “Christian”. Immediately after it came out of my mouth I could feel my face turning red. I am not normally the type of person to speak out in a group like that. Good news is I was saved from further embarrassment by our rector, who added “That’s exactly it. We’re Christians first.” (I’m paraphrasing what he said, but it was along those lines)
Some people at the meeting seemed shocked at what I said…then gradually I saw several nodding their heads.
BfB,
If you look at the ‘revisions’ of the Book of Common Prayer you listed, and leave out for the moment the current prayer book, you will see many similarites in the editions.
The current prayer book is not just a revision, but a re-writing, with some key theological points omitted or toned down or changed.
This is something I am learning as we go along, since I did not come into the Episcopal Church until 1986, long after the adoption of the current prayer book.
Peace
Jim E. <><
(A preamble: I do not agree with much of what is in the Woodward article linked above.) However, it is clearly not “a snarling hit piece” to point out that many of the attacks on the General Convention majority have completely missed their intended target by attacking positions that most of them clearly do not hold. It is not “snarling” to suggest to fellow-reappraisers that they should try to reframe the debate on their own terms instead of allowing their opponents to do so. Again, nobody on the reasserter side is going to be convinced by Woodward’s arguments, but they need to be answered on their merits, rather than by a blanket condemnation of a generic revisionism defined by its opponents rather than its alleged proponents. The reappraisers have been doing that for years, and it was wrong then; it is no less wrong when done in reverse.
I think those in the Diocese of Fort Worth who don’t want to follow Bishop Iker into the abyss or Southern Cone should have the ability to do so. If I were in Fort Worth, I would want that alternative.
Kendall, oTher than the usual hot button topics, what would you characterize as being different between the Reasserters and Reappraisers? What is it that the two sides believe differently? What is it about Jesus that they think is difference. I thought I knew, but I really dont’ think I do. What I do think that the differences are more political than anything else,and that the politics of the Episcopal Church have subsumed the energy and attention of far too many people.
Following Bishop Iker “into the abyss or the Southern Cone?” More likely into the Light.
thanks william witt for that link. what utter rubbish! dallasite in my view the differences between us come down to one line ‘whether we believe in the Bible as the written word of God or just use it as a reference tool’. it is NOT just political and goes to the heart of our faith. i found very little in common with the person who wrote the article at the above link.
It must be the duty of even retired officers to go down with the ship. So mote it be.
Dallasite — There is a continuum of belief about Jesus and quite a number of other things amongst the reasserters and the reappraisers. One could not take at random one person who would identify with one group and another who would identify with the other group and be guaranteed to find a bright line of distinction.
That being said, however, each group tends to cluster around two different poles of conviction.
Reasserters will say that the Bible has its source in the mind of God, and that the Holy Spirit did indeed inspire the writers, so that the Bible’s authority comes from God, and it is reliable because God brought it into being. Reaapraisers are more likely to say that the Bible came into being through human beings having spiritual experiences, reflecting on those experiences, and describing the kind of God they believed they had encountered. The authority of the Bible comes from its antiquity and its usefulness in helping to explain our lives and spiritual experiences.
Reasserters will say that Jesus is the second person of the Trinity, incarnate in human flesh, in full accord with the Chalcedonian formula. Reasserters would affirm the the three Creeds as being accurate descriptions of the biblical statements about God and as a description of divine reality as far as the human mind can manage to comprehend it. Reasserters would affirm that there is an atoning dimension to the cross and that Jesus died for our sins in order to redeem a humanity bound and broken by sin (and reasserters would describe sin as rebellion against God, a rebellion that is acted out in myriad ways). Reasserters would say that there is no salvation apart from Jesus Christ and his work on the cross.
Reappraisers tend to say that the Trinity is not so much a description of God’s inner life as a description of how human beings experience God. Reappraisers are very likely to describe Jesus as a man especially imbued with a sense of God presence and as a man with a deep relationship with God. Reappraisers are likely to say that humanity is not fallen, but is simply limited and fallible. I have not heard any reappraiser say this, but I think that they think this: humanity is the product of evolution, and our flaws are because we have not yet progressed to the point where we will be perfect and fulfilled; Jesus was a man who took a huge leap of progress in spiritual and psychological development and who showed us what we are to become. Reappraisers are likely to say that Jesus died because of our sins, not for our sins, and that the cross was a place of full participation in human suffering and of an example of selfless devotion to principle in the face of oppressive authority. Reappraisers would say that salvation can come apart from Christ, because what he taught is more important than what he did, and others have taught something close to what he has taught (besides which, God is just too nice to allow a few imperfections to keep people away from bliss — /sarcasm)
The difference between reasserters and reappraisers is largely a matter of differing foundational convictions. We can often use the same words — but mean something quite different by those words. And, as I said above, there is a continuum of convictions, and one might find a reappraiser and a reasserter who differ only on the question of sexuality — but there general differences are very deep and go to the heart of how we know who Jesus is, what was significant about what he did, and how that makes a difference to us.
I would add to Hakkatan’s theological framework a further source of difference, which derives from his summary.
Many, though by no means all, reappraisers appear to retain an attachment to the institutional church as it was in its early 20th century heyday (when explicitly Episcopal schools and hospitals were a reality, instead of being nonprofits with an Episcopal heritage). During the 1950s, when the move away from the institutional church gathered pace, many dioceses had to make a choice about whether to continue in the same vein, but on a smaller scale, or to strike out in a different direction.
In the case of Pittsburgh – the only one I know intimately – that produced the Anglican Fellowship of Prayer and the Pittsburgh Experiment, to name but two. The parachurch framework was laid long before Trinity School for Ministry was established or Alden Hathaway elected Bishop.
The choice, then, was either to move in a parachurch direction or not to do so, the maintenance or mission paradigm that was so popular during the 1980s and 1990s.
It doesn’t follow that a general mission/anti-institutional approach will always be 100 percent successful or that every institutionally minded person is fixated with scale or power. It does mean, however, that reasserters tend towards a form of subsidiarity in ministry for precisely the reasons that Lord Acton warned against the exercise of power. You don’t have to make a God of the Free Market, for example, to believe that microcredit programs better serve communities in nations without a tradition of the rule of law.
In a sense, you could argue that some reappraisers still embody the heady confidence of the national church idea at its zenith. They no longer talk in terms of being the basis of organic unity for American Protestantism, but they still have that sense of denominational destiny that leads to the assertion of national denominational autonomy. Probably for many it isn’t even about the presenting issue but about identity defined in American terms. In those terms, local authority structures matter.
Conversely, reasserters have been steadily shedding their American identity since the 1970s. Initially, this was expressed mainly in terms of solidarity with non-Anglican American evangelicals. Since Lambeth 1998 – and arguably before that – a global identity has taken its place. We can argue about how “Anglican” that identity still is at this point, but it puts its trust either in ad-hoc affiliations based around trusted leaders (Federal Conservativel) or in the authority vested in the Instruments of Unity (Communion Conservative). Since the ties that bind are much more intimate (parish-to-parish; missionary ties; long-distance primatial oversight), it’s no wonder that the historic institutional church model has little place in reasserter thinking. Globalization has had some unexpected consequences.
Well, I’m a reasserter who “retains an attachment to the institutional church as it was in its institutional heyday.” Nothing wrong with that. That is NOT an exclusively reappraiser position.
Evan,
I didn’t claim that it was. On most issues there is a spectrum of opinion.
I would maintain, however, that this is a typology that is becoming increasingly evident in separating the two parties to the current debate. Most reasserters are going to believe in some sort of structure, the question is which structures and what function(s) they are called upon to perform.
I happen to believe that there is a great deal to be said for parachurch ministries, but they perform a very different function from the dominant institutional ministries at the beginning of the 20th century (and operate within an entirely different ecclesial context).
The Progressive Era institutional churches explicitly mirrored the agencies of the emerging secular reform movement. I don’t get the sense that many of today’s reasserters believe that to be a desirable course. For my part, with some reluctance, I’m inclined to believe they’re right.
No. 16 – It seems that you have an instrumental view of the Church – and that it is something that can be remade according to the times, and that it is not ontologically continuous with the Church throughout the ages, and that it is not indefectible.
Rob,
My comments were made as a historian rather than a theologian and should be read in that context. It seems to me that if we are to understand where we are and where we’re going, we need to be aware of where we’ve been. I have read enough observations from thr reasserting side of the spectrum (with which, in large measure, I agree) not to recognize that they’re sometimes informed by assumptions that are as localized in time and culture as those of their opponents. And we know from the American expereince, if from no other, that the VISIBLE structures are often far from indefectible. That doesn’t mean that the “Church” as she was intended to be is so or that there is no ontological continuity.
JB – In Catholic terms, the church would not be indefectible without its Catholic structure, which is so easily dismissed by many of the reasserters and reappraisers, as they grind their axes. I trust you realize that I mean “indefectible” in the traditional way – the Church CAN fall into error, but will in time be purged of it, as long as it remains Catholic. Thx.