Thus far, I think I can say that I have quick and frustrated (if not angry) reactions to hypocrisy and inconsistency, particularly toward those who claim the title “conservative” or “liberal” but who do not act according to the principles of those terms. For example, when conservatives promote policies that only increase the government’s intrusion into our personal lives. Another example: when liberals claim to want to be diverse and include all people in the conversation or at the table, but in fact will not consider including conservatives – only those who are willing to be as “open minded” and “accepting” as they obviously are.
For aspects of the Church, examples might include: when conservatives are more about imposing a specific theological bent or practice rather than being about passing down the traditions (practice and belief) to the next generation or when liberals rather than promoting space for honest questioning and inquiry are more intent on imposing positions of identity politics, political correctness, or skewed notions of diversity.
I probably do not perceive correctly my own failures in these areas, and that is why I need the fellowship of people from all different perspectives who will keep me honest!
Monthly Archives: June 2006
Knee-jerk reactions and Polarizations
With all the acrimony that runs through this Church these days, and considering the knee-jerk reactions from various sides coming out of the General Convention, we must begin to revive the traditional Anglican way of seeking a common or middle way that carries the Church though rough times and the strong pull of the polarizing extremes. Heck, we need a revival of Hooker’s ideals of what the Church of England and now Anglicanism can truly be. We could call ourselves “revivers†or “rekindlers†or “reawakeners†after the “conservative’s†term for themselves as “reasserters†or the “liberal’s†term for themselves as “reappraisers.â€
Now is the day to begin rebuilding Anglicanism in the United States.
The polarization resulting from the American Culture Wars (from both the conservative and liberals sides) has infiltrated The Episcopal Church. The two extremes in this Church have polarized the membership, perhaps intentionally, in order to achieve their goals that result in the imposition of particular perspectives and practices over and above the middle or opposite-extreme positions. There are good and faithful Episcopalians from all sides that do wish to remain together and to forge an honest way forward so that the balance and richness that results from different sides staying in conversation, debate, and inquiry can be maintained. The result is a solidly balanced way to understand our faith in the 21st century and God’s call to us to influence the world.
Dean Alan Jones from Grace Cathedral in San Francisco in his new book entitled, Common Prayer on Common Ground: A Vision of Anglican Orthodoxy, attempts to articulate an Anglicanism based squarely on Via Media – the middle way which encompasses the vast majority of the common folk in the Episcopal Church. He writes about the “Conservative and Liberal Perspectives” in one small section of the book. I want to quote from it because I think he does a similar thing that The Very Rev. George Back did with his essay written in 1991 detailing the positive aspects of conservatism and liberalism in the Church and our need for both. I read Back’s essay for the first time in The Anglican Digest July, 2003.
Jones writes:
“This highlights the weakness of liberalism. It is an effort – sometimes noble and heroic – to dispense with tradition and ancient ways of believing. [Houston] Smith writes, ‘Liberals are at their worst in not recognizing how much an absolute can contribute to life, and in assuming that absolutes can be held only dogmatically, which is not the case. Absolutism and dogmatism lie on different axes. The first relates to belief, whereas the second is a charter disorder. The opposite of absolutism is not open-mindedness but relativism, and the opposite of dogmatism is not relativism but open-mindedness. There can be, and are dogmatic relativists and open-minded absolutists.’
“But he goes on, ‘liberals [are] better than conservatives at recognizing the dangers of fanaticism and the virtues of tolerance, and conservatives [are] better as perceiving the dangers of nihilism and the virtues of a sense of certainty… Both the strengths and dangers of liberalism pertain to life’s horizontal dimension, which encompass[es] human relationships – whereas those of conservatives pertains to the vertical, asymmetrical God-person relationships.’ [Houston Smith, The Soul of Christianity, HarperSanFrancisco: 2005, p.211]
“Liberals need to learn that the vertical relation is more important. It seems to me that the conservative diagnosis is often right but its remedy (charging back into an idealized and imagined past) is both unworkable and disastrous. The liberal is often a poor diagnostician but, at least, has an inkling of freedom in God…
“…Of course, as an Anglican, I’d say that both statements are true! It’s a matter of emphasis. Polarization is a form of indulgence and is both unnecessary and harmful. The world is in both a state of sin and a state of grace. Human beings are both fallen and free.â€
Alan Jones, Common Prayer on Common Ground, Morehouse Publishing, 2006, pp31-32.
Reaccuring Themes
I’ve been journaling online for around six years now and before “blogging” came into vogue. Over that time, patterns and themes developed and it’s interesting to discover those things which continue to come up time and again. For third party readers, these themes may be obvious, but they are not so obvious to those who possess them – me in this case.
Anyway, I will continue to repeat myself as I continue to try to work through some of these thoughts of mine. I try to put into words the jumble of ideas and questions that race through my mind, never being really satisfied that I’ve hit on the right words or the phrase or the right thought progression; so, I try again and again. I know I’m not brilliant, I’m not an intellectual, and not very original, but still I’m hardly ever settled with what I’ve put down in words. I’m never satisfied.
I think that is the M.O. of my thought life. I think I try and try to figure ways of understanding and reconciling various aspects of life, particularly concerning issues of our faith and social structures. I keep saying that the way and cause of Jesus is not conservative or liberal, but the way of Jesus is always a third way. So what the heck is this “third way?” Herein lays the quandary, the quest, the frustration, and the excitement.
More to come…
It’s over
Well, it is all over now. It is time to get back to the business of ministry and making Christ known.
I look forward to seeing how the new PB will pick up that office. I have heard from many that she really is the most qualified and competent, despite not being a long-time ordained person.
We wait and see what happens. I will continue to think through what I really do believe about our catholicity, about what we should and should not do with reference to others around the world who do not like what we’ve done.
Tomorrow, I get together with a our weekly clergy group in New York. We are going to discuss where we go from here. We’re not going to dwell so much about what has happened these past 10 days or so at Convention, but about moving forward with a vision for our ministries and our churches.
A different direction – an old path.
I just watched a video interview with Kendall Harmon after today’s proceedings. Here is the link if you wish to watch the whole thing.
I want to post a quote from the interview: “You can feel that people sense that where the church is heading is not where they want to go and not where they believe God is calling them to go. The hard part is how do you live in tension with that and what they need to not do is be driven by their emotions over the degree of the problem.”
You see, I can agree with Kendall that many people are feeling that this Church is going a wrong or skewed direction. Heck, I feel it. The problem, for me at least, is what direction am I to go? I won’t go back to the direction of the Akinola-ian conservatives. I can’t go in the direction of Spongian liberals.
I’ve written this before. Here is what I can say about the direction I can go – I believe that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. I believe Christ has died; Christ is risen; Christ will coming again. I believe our paramount calling and duty as those who follow Jesus is to love God with all our being and our neighbor as ourselves. I will be a Prayer Book Episcopal priest. I will with charity understand that people will differ with me on how to live out all this stuff in the real world, and that they could well be right.
I believe in the historic Anglican way of approaching our faith and Holy Scripture – not with the intent of upturning the oxcart, but with tradition and reason as guides – by allowing questions, even doubts, and investigating what might well be the Holy Spirit guiding us into more correct understandings of God and our lives here on earth. This is nothing new, nothing profound, but a way of going forward through the landmines of American ecclesial politics.
It is a middle way, an Anglican way, and a way that is not in the direction of a good portion of the American Anglican right or the American Anglican left.
I want to say that after my short conversation with Kendall at Convention, I hope that the conversation will continue. I believe we truly do have more in common, even concerning the underlying and very important foundational issues, then what we may differ over. That’s my opinion.
X-Men
I just saw the new X-Men movie. Why do comic book authors, screen play writers, and directors get it far better at times than we in the Church, particularly this Church? Xavier is the image of Christ. Listen to how he approaches issues, foes, and those under his charge.
If you did not see the final clip after all the credits rolled by, you missed a most significant ending.
Our country cries out for spiritual experience and connection with God. What do we give them? – so much watered-down faith, quasi-Christianity. American Evangelicalism is as much a failure than new-age liberal Christianity to the growing majority of unchurched people.
We must humble ourselves!
The 75th General Convention of The Episcopal Church in the United States comes to an end today, or at least is scheduled to end. Today we will see whether we can deal with the Windsor Report in ways very un-American – whether we can actually humble ourselves just a bit.
I have never used this phrase before because I do not engage in Identity Politics, but now I will for a reason: “As a gay man†all that happens at General Convention is not all about me or my “tribe.†My identity as a gay man is not paramount, but as a Christian (perhaps I should say “follower of Jesus†because self-identifying as a Christian is an identity in and of itself, I know). As a Christian my call is to a life of self-denial, to love others more than myself, to even love my enemy. To find life, I am to die to this life. If I honestly love my enemy, how can I do that which only causes them harm or hurt, regardless of whether they want to harm or hurt me? What is the example of Jesus on the cross, after all? This doesn’t mean I have to accept my opponents’ interpretation of Scripture, their form of piety, or what they want to accomplish. I can be a strong advocate of my position, but when I see my brother or sister hurt and distressed by my actions or words when they specifically ask me to slow down, wait a bit, or allow their voice to be heard, how as a follower of Jesus can I say, “NO?†It is only in our hyper-individualized, arrogant American way can we simply say to world Anglicanism – those who agree with me (us) and those who don’t – “screw you,†I’m or we’re going to do what we want regardless of how it effects you.
So, we wait two years until Lambeth. So we agree to withhold the election of another gay bishop, so we wait to conduct blessings of same-gender unions, so we express our profound regret that what we did has caused such division, harm, and dismay among the vast majority of Anglicans and Christians worldwide. We humble ourselves and say we may have been wrong in how we did it, and we could be wrong in what we actually did. I can advocate for my position, but my position is not what is most important – loving my brother and sister is regardless of how they respond to me. When concepts of justice conflict with concepts of acting in love towards others, we have a profound misunderstanding of both and I believe completely miss the Gospel imperative of love and justice and how they work hand-in-hand. “As a gay man,†I’ve always been vilified, never had the opportunity of blessing, so what is two years if in those two years many people around the world may understand me a little better, my perspective, or my interpretation of Scripture, and perhaps come to see things the way I do, or at least we can come to a compromise. For the sake of crucified Jesus, I’m willing to wait. If I simply want to force others to do want I want them to do, or the hell with them, then I am not acting as a Christian, but I am certainly engaging in Identity Politics. I am certainly enslaved to the “Tyranny of NOW.â€
We have been in a limited way discussed this issue for thirty years in this Church. The clergy have done a terrible job in bringing the discussion to most parishioners. What we did three years ago has forced the issue and forced the conversation called for by Lambeth Resolution 1.10.3, so let us continue in a way that will include as many people around the world as we can. I know what it is to be excluded, and I don’t want to do to others what I have experienced myself! Pass the Commissions recommendations for Windsor as a beginning point. If in three years our opponents do not accept the conversation or do not listen, then we have gone the extra mile and we continue on as we feel we should – but we tried, again.
Below I go into this whole issue of Identity Politics a little more deeply.
Identity Politics
I’ve been thinking about the whole issue of Identity Politics. It is well established within society in general, academia in particular, and has become apparent within our Church, too.
Tomorrow, I will post some thoughts on this issue. I have never bought into identity political theory, but I will write from my own experience and perspective. It is too late this night to think straight.
When will it end?
Resolution A161 failed in the House of Deputies. The motion to reconsider failed.
We have lost our ability to understand what it means to be catholic. In our arrogant and profoundly self-centered American way, we say to perhaps the majority of Christianity, and particularly world Anglicanism – screw you!
My hope and prayer is that something will come forward that will allow us to move forward as Christians, not as ideologues pushing our nice little agendas. But, we Americans have a very difficult time learning anything that is contrary to what we WANT to believe.
How do we understand the Gospel?
Much of what we see going on at General Convention and within our Church in general, is the clash of various “cultures” all claiming “The Gospel.”
What I see as a glory of Anglicanism is a recognition that various concepts of the Gospel come together to give us a more balanced and clearer view of its fullness. It is only when we lay claim to one form and become fundamentalist concerning our favorite “pet gospel†that irreconcilable differences and conflict have the day.
The Modernist inspired ideas of the “Social Gospel” taken up with full force by the mainline denominations during the 60’s and 70’s (and also reflected in the Liberation Theology initiated by South American Roman Catholics) still remains a powerful force in the Episcopal Church. While Modernism as a worldview/system has been waning for many years now, the primary undercurrent of general social understanding by those in power (the 60’s Baby-Boomer generation) within this Church and many of our national institutions remain. The gospel has a primary focus on social justice and righting the wrongs of past generations with relation to marginalized peoples.
There is a gospel that has arisen over the last twenty years or so that takes its cue from the “self-esteem” pedagogies of academic educational theory. It might be described as the “Gospel of Affirmation.” God is love, and all God wants to do is love us and enable us to love God’s self and one another. God affirms us in our personhood and completely accepts us for who, what, and where we are. God esteems us as individual beings, and because God is all love we are all brought into God’s loving embrace. This is probably a very inadequate description of this idea of the truths held within the Gospel as perceived by this group of people.
Then, there is what might be considered the long standing or traditional ideas of the Gospel of Christ, and at the moment no real term comes to mind to describe this perception of the Gospel. It might be termed the “Gospel of Transformation,” although that may be different from this form. Different variations of this exist within the Evangelical side of the Church up through the Anglo-Catholic side of Anglicanism. Within this gospel are the notions held within the Creeds fully accepted and believed. There is the assertion that God revealed Himself through the prophets, through Holy Scripture, and most poignantly through His incarnation in Jesus. It is in the life, death, and resurrection (actual, historical events) of Jesus that we find our fullness as human beings. We are transformed from who we were as blind, lost, and sinful humans and made new by the power of the Holy Spirit into the fullness of God through Jesus the Christ.
There is what I term the “Liberal Gospel,” although that is an absolutely inadequate term. It seems to me to be a rational extension of the Social Gospel. This form of the gospel might well be summed up in the teachings of Bishop Spong. Most of the gospel as seen is Scripture is metaphor and is absolutely anthropocentric. It deals with how we perceive and interact with the world around us and how we can move ever forward to achieving ideas of utopia.
Of course, various other “gospels” are out there, and I know what I have described above is quite inadequate. But, the reality is that we have competing ideas of what the “Gospel of Christ” really means as we live out our lives on this big, blue ball. As we align ourselves to one or another gospel, this determines where we place out emphasis in terms of legislation, piety, church policy, and the like.
My contention is that there are elements of truth in all the above. God does accept us where we are. God does not leave us where we are found, however, but transforms us as we yield our lives to His perfect will. In that transformation our objectives, our desires, and the focus of our lives are changed as we are enable to see the hurt and desperation of so many. As we are changed and renewed, we are enabled to love – God and one another – in new ways which compels us to fight for justice and the welfare of all people.
In my humble opinion, these gospels are not in competition. We force the competition because we are humans who know in part and see in part. My prayer is that as we seek God, we will be changed by God and made into new creations that are able to fulfill the two Great Comments of Jesus – Love God with our entire being and love our neighbor as ourselves.