BLOGGING-THOMAS

As usual, Jim Naughton, the Canon for Communications in the Diocese of Washington, scoops everyone on statements by his boss and our Bishop, John Chane.  The Lead, part of the superb diocesan blog, Episcopal Cafe, posted the following editorial by Bishop Chane from the UK newspaper, The Guardian.

The framing of mutual joy: Our church’s evolving attitude has led us to the point where we must consider gay marriage.

Archbishop Rowan Williams has tried to take the issue of gay marriage off the table at the Lambeth Conference, which begins in three weeks. But the celebration of a gay relationship at one of London’s oldest churches last month, and the well-publicised gathering of anti-gay Anglicans in Jerusalem this week, suggest the controversy must eventually be faced squarely.

Conservative Christians say opening marriage to gay couples would undermine an immutable institution founded on divine revelation. Archbishop Henry Orombi, the primate of the Church of Uganda, calls it blasphemy. But, theologically, support for same-sex marriage is not a dramatic break with tradition, but a recognition that the church’s understanding of marriage has changed dramatically over 2,000 years.

Christians have always argued about marriage. Jesus criticised the Mosaic law on divorce, saying “What God has joined together let no man separate”, but even that dictum appears in different versions in the Gospels, and was modified in the letters of Peter and Paul. Christians had to square the ecstatic sensuality of the Song of Songs with Paul’s teaching that marriage was a fallen estate, useful primarily in saving those who could not be celibate from fornication.

This tension is indicative of the church’s long struggle to reconcile the notion that sexuality is a gift from God with its deep suspicion of the pleasure of sex. As the historian Stephanie Coontz points out, the church did not bless marriages until the third century, or define marriage as a sacrament until 1215. The church embraced many of the assumptions of the patriarchal culture, in which women and marriageable children were assets to be controlled and exploited to the advantage of the man who headed their household.

The theology of marriage was heavily influenced by economic and legal considerations; it emphasised procreation, and spoke only secondarily of the “mutual consolation of the spouses”. In the 19th and 20th centuries, however, the relationship of the spouses assumed new importance, as the church came to understand that marriage was a profoundly spiritual relationship in which partners experienced, through mutual affection and self-sacrifice, the unconditional love of God.

The Episcopal Church’s 1979 Book of Common Prayer puts it this way: “We believe that the union of husband and wife, in heart, body and mind, is intended by God for their mutual joy; for the help and comfort given one another in prosperity and adversity; and, when it is God’s will, for the procreation of children and their nurture in the knowledge and love of the Lord.”

Our evolving understanding of what marriage is leads, of necessity, to a re-examination of who it is for. Most Christian denominations no longer teach that all sex acts must be open to the possibility of procreation (hence, contraception is permitted). Nor do they hold that infertility precludes marriage. The church has deepened its understanding of the way in which faithful couples experience and embody the love of the creator for creation. In so doing, it has put itself in a position to consider whether same-sex couples should be allowed to marry.

Opponents of gay marriage may raise other objections – that it is unsuitable, for instance, to raise children with two mothers or two fathers. I believe these arguments are easily refuted, but they are arguments about effective social policy, not sound theology. Christians who want to deny others the blessings they claim for themselves should not assume they speak for the Almighty.

John Bryson Chane is Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington DC, and a member of the Chicago Consultation, which works towards the full inclusion of gays and lesbians in the Anglican church.

An editorial worth reading on the Global Anglican meeting currently going on in Jerusalem appeared in the UK online paper, The Guardian, yesterday.

It  said in part:

The issue on which all of this currently hinges is the status of openly gay people. Over the past half century, civil society in many parts of the world, including ours, has broken free from the long tradition of hostility and discrimination against gay people – and both society and individual lives are immeasurably the better for it. Now, inevitably and rightly, the same process is taking place in the churches, with pressure for the election of openly gay clergy and bishops and the blessing of same-sex unions. In the past, the church has managed such issues by covering them up. But on this issue in these times, that is no longer possible.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, has battled to hold both his church and the wider communion together in the face of these pressures. That is one of his jobs – and it has not been a dishonourable effort. Yet it seems clear that it has only delayed an inevitable – and ultimately necessary – confrontation over this issue. Dr Williams has not, contrary to the views of Archishop Akinola, led the church into this. But, now that it is coming, he has a profound responsibility to lead the church out of it, happily and without fear. The question facing Anglicans – and facing other religious groups too – is whether theirs is a faith that is loving enough to treat gay people as equals. If the communion cannot hold together in the face of this question, then so be it. Unity matters as long as the cause is a good one. If the cause is not good, then maybe nor is the unity.

The whole thing can be found here.  Read the comments, which while disturbing are a keen reminder of how the non-church world is viewing Anglicanism right now – from continuing denunciations of homosexuality, to visions of a more just future, to calls for the Archbishop of Canterbury to resign, to my favorite: “Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock, ti”.

The genius of Anglicanism, as Episcopalians have understood it for at least the past 120 years is what I call “maximal minimalism” – that is to say, the maximal statement of faith can be best conveyed by the minimal number of core convictions.

The Lambeth Conference of 1888 stated it far better in Resolution 11 than any lengthier Anglican Covenant will ever do, when it said “That, in the opinion of this Conference, the following Articles supply a basis on which approach may be by God’s blessing made towards Home Reunion”:

(a) The Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, as “containing all things necessary to salvation,” and as being the rule and ultimate standard of faith.”

(b) The Apostles’ Creed, as the Baptismal Symbol; and the Nicene Creed, as the sufficient statement of the Christian faith.

(c) The two Sacraments ordained by Christ Himself–Baptism and the Supper of the Lord–ministered with unfailing use of Christ’s words of Institution, and of the elements ordained by Him.

(d) The Historic Episcopate, locally adapted in the methods of its administration to the varying needs of the nations and peoples called of God into the Unity of His Church.

• In its wisdom the church didn’t try to impose one reading of Scripture on everyone, or set up a tribunal for settling whose interpretation is correct;
• The church didn’t try to say what the creeds meant or exactly how one should understand them before becoming a Christian;
• The church affirmed baptism and holy communion as the central sacraments of the church, but didn’t try to set out who could and couldn’t be baptized or celebrate or receive holy communion; and
• The church left the central symbol of the Episcopal Church – the episcope, or bishop — to be “locally adapted in the methods of its administration to the varying needs of the nations and peoples called of God into the Unity of His Church.”

This “maximal minimalism” was not the result of believing too little. It was the result of believing too much to let any single interpretation, or understanding, or teaching, or doctrine, or church body or structure or person have sole authority over how God can and cannot be understood to be alive and at work among God’s people at any given time.

Sometimes less is more. Like now.

Dr. Wayne Whitson Floyd, a lay theologian, chairs
the Education and Formation Committee
at St. Thomas’ Parish, Dupont Circle, Washington, DC

One of the recommendations of the 2004 Windsor Report, written in response to reaction against the consecration of Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire, was that the Anglican Communion move towards the adoption of a so-called Anglican Covenant. Despite many gallant attempts to make Windsor into a statement of the beauty-of-unity that is the Anglican Communion, I remain unconvinced. As the old Southern saying goes: “You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig.” I say this because I am convinced that such a document — however nuanced its wording — would in effect state the means by which official condemnation of the Episcopal Church’s full inclusion of gay and lesbian Christians at all levels of church life could be justified. It also would define the Episcopal Church’s action in consecrating Bishop Robinson as having removed TEC from the fellowship of the Anglican Communion. Dress it up however you want, but IMHO it’s still a pig.

To its credit, the response of the Episcopal Church up to now has been far from enthusiastic about such a Covenant — “it would be a bad idea that I do not support” Washington’s Bishop John Chane was overheard to say recently. Our bishops and Executive Council and General Convention deputies have agreed, however, to study the idea and make recommendations about the Covenant (the official study guide can be found here), which is in its second draft (the full text can be found here).

The Diocese of Washington’s Episcopal Cafe recently commissioned a series of articles on the Covenant, which give you an idea of how it is being approached officially by the Episcopal Church. And the General Theological Seminary’s Desmond Tutu Center, following its April 2008 conference on the proposed Covenant, has posted on its website more html, mp3, and pdf resources and responses to this than most Episcopalians will ever have the patience to absorb.

I realize I betray my own heterodox Episcopalianism — and poor Southern manners — by having lost already most of my patience to participate in what already is a several years long extended series of debates among our bishops, Executive Council members, General Convention deputies, seminary faculty and all manner of cogs in the complex machinery that is the Episcopal Church. This will continue past this summer’s Lambeth Conference, into the 2009 General Convention, and certainly beyond.

From the outset, I must say that I simply think the whole endeavor is a bad idea, but a bad idea whose time appears to have come.

It’s a bad idea for some fairly simple reasons: Read more

“We have heard the reports of the recent service in St. Bartholomew the Great with very great concern. We cannot comment on the specific circumstances because they are the subject of an investigation launched by the Bishop of London.”On the general issue, however, the various reference points for the Church of England’s approach to human sexuality (1987 Synod motion, 1991 Bishops’ Statement — Issues in Human Sexuality, Lambeth motion 1:10, House of Bishops’ 2005 statement on civil partnerships) are well known and remain current.”Those clergy who disagree with the Church’s teaching are at liberty to seek to persuade others within the Church of the reasons why they believe, in the light of Scripture, tradition and reason that it should be changed. But they are not at liberty simply to disregard it.”

The statement by the archbishops of Canterbury and York was in response to the civil blessing of the partnership of two gay priests in London.

[Episcopal News Service] Two gay clergymen who had their partnership blessed in a London church and the priest who led the ceremony have received both criticism and praise for the move which conservatives say is at odds with the Church of England’s policies and more progressive Anglicans believe is long overdue.

According to reports, the Rev. Peter Cowell and the Rev. Dr. David Lord “exchanged vows and rings in front of hundreds of guests” on May 31 at St. Bartholomew the Great Church in the City of London.

The Rev. Martin Dudley, who led the service, said he didn’t have any regrets and he did not seek permission from London Bishop Richard Chartres.

Dudley said that the ceremony didn’t resemble a marriage and was “quite simply the blessing of a civil partnership.” He said the church’s guidelines don’t prohibit such blessings, “but ask me to respond pastorally and responsibly to what I’m being asked to do.”

Meanwhile, Chartres has ordered an investigation to take place, saying that services of public blessings for civil partnerships are not authorized in the Church of England or the Diocese of London. Civil partnerships have been legal in England since December 2005.

Read more

[Episcopal News Service] Conservative Anglicans and former Episcopalians started to arrive in Jerusalem June 19 in anticipation of the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON), a controversial summit regarded by some critics as a rival to the 2008 Lambeth Conference.The GAFCON event, set for June 22-29, is expected to draw 1,000 participants, including former Episcopal priests, some of whom are currently engaged in litigation concerning Episcopal Church property.

A closed-door pre-conference consultation in Amman, Jordan, was promptly wrapped up June 18 after key participants, including Archbishop Peter Akinola of Nigeria, were denied entry for lacking the necessary diplomatic paperwork, according to news reports.

GAFCON has come under fire from local Church leaders, including Anglican Bishop in Jerusalem Suheil Dawani, who expressed his concern that the conference would “import inter-Anglican conflict” into his diocese. Dawani previously called on organizers to move the conference, but his requests have not been honored.

The Most Rev. Mouneer Hanna Anis, primate of the Province of Jerusalem and the Middle East, also has raised concerns about the event and acknowledged that his advice to the organizers — that this was neither the right time nor place for such a meeting — had been ignored.

Anis has declined an invitation to attend the conference.

Bishop Robert O’Neill of the Diocese of Colorado has traveled to Jerusalem at Dawani’s invitation.

On June 19, GAFCON’s organizers released a document, “The Way, The Truth and the Life,” which, according to a news release on the conference website, “sets out to define authentic Anglicanism, discuss what is at stake in the conflict, and what the future holds for orthodox Anglicans.”

In the document, which is critical of recent developments in the Episcopal Church, Akinola writes: “We have made enormous efforts since 1997 in seeking to avoid this crisis, but without success. Now we confront a moment of decision.”

“There is no longer any hope, therefore, for a unified Communion,” he adds.

GAFCON is being held one month prior to the Lambeth Conference when more than 700 of the Anglican Communion’s bishops are expected to gather at the University of Kent in Canterbury, England, for more than two weeks of study, prayer, learning, sharing and discerning.

Read more

Main Entry:

tra·di·tion

Pronunciation:

\trə-ˈdi-shən\

Function: noun

Etymology:

Middle English tradicioun, from Middle French & Latin; Middle French tradicion, from Latin tradition-, traditio action of handing over

Date:

14th century

When I still had a brain, I was for an embarrassing number of years a graduate student in philosophy and theology, and I read tons (quite literally) of books from the past. I was sifting and sorting – a crucial part of education, I later discovered – to find the significance of at least a piece of the past for my own life in the present.

One of my intellectual guides was a theologian and social critic named Johann Baptist Metz. He kept me reading on many a long night because he was convinced that one of the main reasons we should read history is to rediscover the “dangerous memories,” the gifts buried in the past and forgotten.

• They are dangerous because some forgotten things can harm us, like an injury we suffer and forget because it is too painful to remember, and yet our life is changed forever by what had happened. Such things need to be remembered so that we can be whole again, so that we can regain health that we once had, but lost.

• Other memories are dangerous because they make demands on us; they need to be remembered because in them the Tradition had a potential that was never realized, and even the people who knew them are dead and buried. Children killed in China or Myanmar will always have “a meaning which is as yet unrealized,” in Metz’s phrase, until and unless we or someone else remembers them and gives them some of the life they never had themselves.

In either case, memory has a very powerful role in who we become as we grow up into adulthood.

For Episcopalians, the power of memory is what is meant by the only-apparently stodgier word, tradition. This is the word we use to speak of turning back to hear the voices of those who have fallen behind us in death, but who still live on through the stories they told, the things they wrote.

These formational narratives from the beginnings of a society or relgion give shape to the world of meaning as we know it. We are who we are because of the stories that we are capable of telling.

For Christians the Biblical stories have a voice in our identity, as does the voice of Reason. And these stories from out of the past, passed along to us in the present, are the Tradition that is the third and equal point of authority for catholic Christians.

One of my heroes, Dorothy Day, in her autobiography, The Long Loneliness, wrote: “Tradition! We scarcely know the word any more. We are afraid to be either proud of our ancestors or ashamed of them. We scorn nobility in name and in fact. We cling to a bourgeois mediocrity which would make it appear we are all Americans, … all of a pattern, all prospering if we are good, and going down in the world if we are bad.

“‘Tradition,’ G.K. Chesterton says, “is democracy extended through time. Tradition means giving the vote to that most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. Tradition is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who are walking about.”

Honoring Tradition means admitting that it’s actually never been “all about me.” Others don’t go away just because I’m oblivious.

Tradition is dangerous, though, because to learn about the Tradition may mean we have to rethink everything else we have ever thought, like African slaves in America had to rethink slavery, which they had been told was their God-given lot in life, once they learned again the stories of their ancestors, kings and queens of their native lands, and of the freedom that they once had practiced with abandon, though in servitude they had virtually none at all.

Tradition means giving voice to the dangerous memories of forgotten gifts; it means letting dead insights and the persons who had them come back for another round of life. Jesus remembered his friend Lazarus, and the memory alone was enough to raise him from the dead.

Tradition is not dusty, musty, old, and boring – at least not always. To rediscover it can be like finding forgotten gifts that had been yours all along, although you had forgotten that you had ever had them. But beware of the danger – when you explore the past, you may be changed by what you find.