I have a number of qualms about the validity of Ould’s reading of the Councils’ “principle of diocesan integrity.” First of all, his reading would have required Christians under the authority of Arian or Donatist leaders to remain under that authority ”” that is, under the authority of the very people whose vies the Councils were summoned in order to denounce. It is not likely that Augustine or Jerome would have endorsed the principle that Ould articulates here.
But let me address this issue more directly. I left the Episcopal Church and joined a new Anglican church largely because I did not want to have my son instructed in beliefs I do not share. Consider this: the man who is now the rector at the parish I left ”” a wonderfully kind and generous man, by the way ”” preached, on Easter Sunday no less, that it does not matter whether Jesus was or was not raised physically from the dead. Now, I happen to think that it matters very much whether Jesus was or was not raised from the dead, and unless I am tragically mistaken, St. Paul did too (see 1 Corinthians 15). I am glad that my son, instead of hearing this sermon, heard a sermon from Father Martin Johnson that joyfully and boldly proclaimed the fact of the Resurrection.
What does Peter Ould have to say to me? He does not believe that All Souls’ Church should exist, at least in its current form, so what options does he think were legitimate and appropriate ones for us? Is it his view that we we obliged to remain at our former church and allow our son to receive false teaching ”” and not just from the pulpit ”” which we could then, presumably, correct once we got home? Or would we be allowed to form a new church as long as it had no bishop other than TEC’s ”” an independent church, say? How about becoming Baptists or Presbyterians or Methodists? If Ould’s concern is the maintaining of catholicity, and catholicity requires bishops whose territories are geographically distinct, then attending any of those non-Anglican churches would violate catholicity just as much as attending a church affiliated with the Southern Cone would.
As far as I can tell, then, Ould is saying that the only way for my wife and me to avoid sin in this matter is to allow ourselves and our son to be instructed in heresy.
Peter actually made a very good and important point in his post which Kendall rightly called our attention to, and I wrote my own post that acknowledged that point but then went on to engage in extended self-defense. I am sorry about that. What I wrote here doesn’t help the conversation, and I wish I had kept my mouth shut.
Alan,I’m glad you spoke. While we’re listening, this is something else we need to hear. And I think you speak for a lot of us. How can we stay faithful in a church that no longer seems to be so? Sermons like your former rector preached trouble me deeply. This is at the heart of my trouble with TEC.
Alan, I have gained much from your writing and your appearances on Mars Hill Audio. Your forthrightness here is commendable. We live and worship in tough times now and many of us share your concerns about nurture. I hope your example of patience will be widely emulated.
We can have honest disagreement over these issues. Can’t we? Ptere’s good points does not amke all his points correct, nor does it mean that they needn’t be balanced with other good points.
Ould espouses historical revisionism, plain and simple. The historical record of the mid fourth century shows that orthodox bishops saw it as their duty to serve the faithful in Arian dioceses. I wrote a paper about this in seminary, but I remember one bishop who was hit in the head with a brick by an Arian barmaid on his way into her town.
The discussion threads at Peter’s and T19 got off topic and stayed there. Thank you, Alan, for stating what should be obvious – stopping interventions means allowing our children to be told that the resurrection “doesn’t really matter.” If Peter and Gayle were trapped in a revisionist diocese here in the states and little Reuben was growing up on this nonsense, I wonder if Peter would be be calling to give up interventions. I doubt it.
As I said on Peter’s blog, I object that Rowan has weaseled the equivalency of interventions with homosexual ecclesiastical blessings in direct contradiction to the DeS unanimous decree that they are not equivalent.
Rowan:
[blockquote] It’s worth adding, too, that the call for a moratorium on interventions across provinces belongs in the same theological framework.[/blockquote]
To which Newbie Anglican [url=http://wannabeanglican.blogspot.com/2008/08/lambeth-rowan-williams-on-proposed.html ]replies[/url]:
[blockquote]It does NOT belong “in the same theological framework†of same-sex innovations at all. Even church fathers, such as St. Athanasius, engaged in interventions, but they sure as heck did not engage in same-sex blessings. And, while there are a number of passages addressing same-sex conduct, scripture does not say much about the holiness of diocesan boundaries. Moreover, the Primates Meeting clearly said that interventions to relieve distressed orthodox are NOT equivalent to the enormities of North American provinces. [b]Yet ++Rowan ignores and undermines the Primates . . . once again.[/b][/blockquote]
Re: #4,
“I wrote a paper about this in seminary, but I remember one bishop who was hit in the head with a brick by an Arian barmaid on his way into her town.”
Eusebius of Samosata, one of the most active (alongside Athanasius himself and the mercurial Lucifer of Cagliari) “boundary-crossers” of the day.
We have moved a lot, and have left Episcopal parishes for the same reasons. Our daughters were watching and listening. It used to be I would check into the Episcopal parishes first in a new location. Never again; Anglican only.
The border crossing issue is really not difficult to deal with. TEC wishes to keep its enemies from escaping its grasp. If the accusation were not border crossing, it would have been something else. In fact, you all know that it is that simple. All the academic elaboration of this subject is of academic interest and I read it as such. For an untutored soul like myself, it is fascinating. But none of this is necessary to deal with the issue. The question is: Can a member of a congregation, and entire congregation, a parish, a diocese change its affiliations if it chooses? The answer is, “Of course.” Who has the power to stop such a change for whatever reason? No one. Once one abandons one’s original church, its canons are utterly irrelevant.
A priest vows to obey a church’s canons. He leaves the church. The vows are no longer germane. Why has such a to do been made over so straightforward a solution? Larry
All this is well and good – both Ould’s desire to safeguard what is left of the ancient ecclesial structures (in the UK at least), and Jacobs’ desire to safeguard his son from being inducted into Valentinianism. Both as a father and as an intermittent resident of Ould’s much-buffeted post-Christian country, I have deep sympathy for both positions. My residual reservations about Ould are well expressed by commenters above, whereas my reservations about Jacobs are that the principle he brings to bear is a deeply and incorrigibly Protestant one: the man in the pew must sit in judgment over his priest’s or bishop’s orthodoxy, and if he has qualms he must take his religious business elsewhere. These things are not easy and I don’t have answers – yet the question of congregational and denominational church polity seems to me necessarily a “tribal” and collective one, which should be individualized only in rare and extreme circumstances of sufferance (and not simply because my priest preached a bad Easter sermon, a genre to which I too have been exposed far too often, and not just in liberal churches). That’s my worry here. At the same time, I confess always to scratching my head about TEC’s strange claims of territoriality, when it is itself a church superimposed in many or most cases on an existing diocesan network of the church catholic in French and Spanish North America. Somehow I’m not sure one can with historic integrity be Protestant Episcopal on the one hand and prissy about territoriality on the other. GAFCON supporters, especially in North America, need urgently to reassure themselves and the church worldwise, not just in words but in deeds, that the move they have embarked upon is both doctrinally and structurally a catholic one and will not lead to the predictable Protestant outcome of wees, wee frees, and solitarians.
Oh, and one more point. Commenters on this and other conservative blogs are always totally sure that unauthorized boundary crossing and the abandonment of the traditional teaching of the church are not matters to be discussed together. In principle I am sure that concern has considerable merit. In practice, however, it’s also worth looking back at church history to note the long history of supposedly chaste or even celibate prelates including bishops in multiply compromised sexual liaisons. Reformers (and not just “the Reformers”) always rightly railed against this both for it hypocrisy and for its holding the gospel in contempt. But it was not perhaps always regarded as fundamentally more threatening to the unity of the church than episcopal interference across historic boundaries.
We are of course in uncharted waters. History’s attestation of concerns to rescue the church catholic where it has fallen under the control of Valentinians or Arians (or for that matter Puritans) shows that we’ve been down this road before – though perhaps only in periods of the greatest threat to the Christian faith’s integrity and survival.
Fatherlee, post 4,
For the sake of those of us who are easily confused, please use first names as well as last names.
It took me a while to realize that this thread refers to the writings of Peter Ould, not those of David Ould.
I would have the same dilemma as Hoskyns except for one thing. I believe he unintentionally mis-characterizes one side of the situation that leads to the dilemma: “whereas my reservations about Jacobs are that the principle he brings to bear is a deeply and incorrigibly Protestant one: the man in the pew must sit in judgment over his priest’s or bishop’s orthodoxy, and if he has qualms he must take his religious business elsewhere.” — Jacobs’ position is decidedly not a Protestant one. [i] He [/i] is not standing in judgment. He is relying upon the judgment of the higher councils within Anglicanism (Windsor Report, Dar es Salam, etc.) and of the early church Fathers who gave us the Creeds. Jacobs is simply relying upon the judgments given him and rightly so. That is what makes this emergence of faithful Anglicanism not a protestant sinful reaction, but a purposeful and sacrificial movement of faithfulness. We who have left are not standing in judgment over the bishops and clergy above us, we are listening to the primates who are calling them to correction.
Peter Ould has written and reply [url=http://www.peter-ould.net/2008/08/05/clarifying-the-nicene-point/#comment-33394 ]here[/url]. In particular, he now states that there should be a 6 mos moratorium on boundary crossing. My question is why 6 mos? Why not till GC08? Or Lambeth 18? As the Anglican Curmudgeon points out in his discussion of the lawsuits, the revisionists will never admit to the problem being on their heads ([url=http://accurmudgeon.blogspot.com/2008/08/trigger-happy-church.html ]here[/url] or [url=http://new.kendallharmon.net/wp-content/uploads/index.php/t19/article/15227/ ]here[/url]).
The reality is that +Duncan will be deposed in September. Pittsburgh will be heading out in October (with several other dioceses).
[blockquote] While I think it is perfectly acceptable for conservative laity to leave revisionist clergy, what we need to stop doing for the moratorium is attempting to transfer churches into other jurisdictions. I know that that is a painful decision, but we are asking the LGBT lobby to also make painful (for them) decisions in abandoning their justice agenda. We can’t turn back time and put churches that have left back into the TEC structures, but we can stop making the situation worse. I realise that for some this will mean being in limbo, but we have to genuinely ask ourselves what the real sacrifices to currently by made are.[/blockquote]
OK, so what about the planting of a brand new Anglican Church in a revisionist diocese and coming under a foreign biship?
Those interested in a longer read about Athanasius, Eusebius of Samosata and Lucifer of Cagliari, the most active boundary-crossers of their day (the 4th century), are referred to Dr Tighe’s essay, originally published in Touchstone magazine, a longer version of which was published online here:
http://reader.classicalanglican.net/?p=133
People are leaving not just because they fear TEC will get worse but that they believe it is already far too heretical. Moratoriia on gay additional ordinations and SSBs isn’t going to change that. Therefore, the border crossings must continue to deal with those who have been driven out by TEC’s current apostacy.
My response to Peter is here – [url=http://new.kendallharmon.net/wp-content/uploads/index.php/t19/article/15208/#263733]link[/url]
I agree that when the children are at stake – you need to follow the ecological principle “Adapt, Move, or Die” – Adapting is Apostasy, so you have either of the other choices – and I think most of us would choose the second… as the third is a long term solution, but not a real healthy one.
The TEC is far from the only apostolic church. A large number of Eastern Orthodox churches and Roman Catholic are present in many cities as are several Anglican churches protected by various Global South primates. Never look back, you might turn into a pillar of salt, that was over this same problem and those cities are gone forever.
Before unwise concessions are made to the GLBT lobby that might hinder the development of spirtitual and physical health in Christian children, I think we should consider what Jesus said:
Mark 10:14 (New International Version)
14 When Jesus saw this, he was indignant. He said to them, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.
#14, that is essentially what happened with a couple of the former “CT6” parishes. In Watertown, we had repeated votes authorizing the vestry to take the parish out of TEC and seek alternate oversight. However, we did not act on that, but eventually came to the decision that the rector and vestry would resign and leave the parish to the Bishop to deal with. Meanwhile, a few members went out and incorporated a new Anglican church (New Hope), hired the former TEC rector, received oversight from Bp Murdoch (Kenya), and secured an alternate location for worship.
My understanding is that the old TEC parish now has a priest-in-charge leading worship for a few of the elderly that weren’t up to starting over, and they are quietly feeling out the market for the property.
It was a costly move for us, financially and emotionally.