The Questioning Christian

Would God think less of orthodox Christians for praying with others who didn't share their beliefs?

I seem to be getting some post ideas from an ongoing discussion at TitusOneNine. Here's a thought experiment I posed there in response to a comment from one of that blog's more rigorously-orthodox participants.

THE SETTING: Imagine that:

• A group of Hindus, Jews, Muslims, and doctrinally-orthodox Christians, meet regularly for prayers.
• All are devout, all their beliefs and prayers are sincere.
• When a specifically-Christian prayer is said aloud, the non-Christians mentally ‘translate’ the prayer into their own respective religious idioms. The same is true when a specifically-Hindu prayer is said, etc.

QUESTION 1: In general, does God take a lesser view of, say, Hindus than he does of Christians? How about orthodox Christians versus heretical ones?

QUESTION 2: Does God take a lesser view of Christians when they pray in a theologically-heterogeneous congregation?

QUESTION 3: Do Christians' prayers lose some portion of their effectiveness if they're prayed in a congregation that happens to include non-Christians?

If your answer to any of these is “yes,” then please explain.

Redefining church

Here’s a proposition for debate, inspired by a discussion at TitusOneNine and a posting last week by Nick Knisely:

Resolved, that the members of ‘the church’ are those people — reasserter, reappraiser, Jew, Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, etc. — who are willing:

1) to pray ‘next to’ one another, even if the prayer of the person next to you is no more than a grudging acknowledgement that maybe a Creator of some sort might indeed exist;

2) to treat each other's prayers with equal dignity, even when there’s grave disagreement over underlying suppositions; and

3) to collaborate in seeking the best for others as for themselves, even if for no other reason than that this seems to give a species a survival advantage over the long term.

Under this definition of ‘church,’ a given individual’s theological beliefs would be of no particular relevance, except of course to the extent those beliefs influenced the individual’s actions.

I know some would object to such a definition of ‘church’; I’m curious how you’d articulate that objection.

"We pray together. And that's enough."

Bravo Nick Knisely!

Pittsburgh's separatists should be laughed out of court

HYPOTHETICAL: Suppose that: (1) The board of directors of General Motors approves the business plan of the Chevy division to experiment with other technologies such as the Volt hybrid. (2) Many of the workers of the Cadillac division get upset by this decision. They claim GM's board has abandoned The Automotive Faith Once Delivered that automobiles burn gasoline, damnit! (3) These dissidents proclaim that Cadillac is withdrawing from General Motors and temporarily joining the Indian car manufacturer Hindustan Motors [an actual company], under the auspices of the International Association of Automobile Manufacturers [there's no such thing, so far as I know], so that they can continue to build luxury cars the way they're meant to be built.

QUESTION: Who owns the Cadillac factory, the brand rights, the dealership contracts, the buildings and fixtures, the office supplies, etc. — is it the Cadillac dissidents, or General Motors? 

ANSWER: General Motors, of course.  The Cadillac dissidents would be horse-laughed out of court if they claimed Cadillac had ‘seceded’ from GM.  We can stipulate that the Cadillac factories, office buildings, etc. were built largely through the efforts of generations of Cadillac workers and execs. Even so, at best the dissidents would be treated as having constructively resigned en masse. And as with any other resignation, the courts wouldn't let them take so much as a desk stapler with them.

(What the courts would do, and what should happen, are not necessarily the same thing.  See my post from last year, Property ought to go where it can be best used.)

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I adapted the above from my comments in a discussion thread at TitusOneNine. Another commenter, 'Jeffersonian,' claimed that my hypothetical was inapt because, (supposedly) unlike Pittsburgh, ”GM created Cadillac, owns Cadillac and runs Cadillac.  At no time was there an organization called “Cadillac” that had to petition to join GM.  It never was, is not, and never will be an independent entity.”

Historically, it appears Jeffersonian is wrong: According to Wikipedia, Cadillac was originally founded as an independent company in 1902; it was acquired by General Motors in 1909. 

Even so, Jeffersonian's response nicely supports my hypothetical:  It seems that at no time was there ever an organization called ‘the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh' until it was created by the General Convention of the Episcopal Church. According to the separatists' Web site, until 1865, western Pennsylvania was simply part of the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania: 

The first known Episcopal clergy resident in this western third of what was then Diocese of Pennsylvania included . . . . [¶¶] For a decade after 1810, Joseph Doddridge, pioneer missionary in our region, wrote letter after letter to the eastern bishops pleading with them to convince General Convention to establish a western diocese. But conservative forces continued to guard oversight of entire states.  The first division finally was set up in 1838 in western New York, but no further divisions took place until the western third of Pennsylvania with its 24 counties became the Diocese of Pittsburgh in 1865. [Bold-faced emphasis added.]

So, contrary to Jeffersonian's argument, the Diocese of Pittsburgh was not a standalone entity that elected to join the Episcopal Church. No, the diocese was a creature of the Episcopal Church from its very beginning.

(Related post:  It matters how an Episcopal diocese came into being.)

Over-exalting Scripture is a blasphemy against the Holy Spirit

Thoughtful Christians must reject teachings by some in the church that exalt Scripture to the point of making an idol of its various writings. That goes, for example, for the scriptural writings about sexuality, which are in the limelight again with the opening of the Lambeth Conference.

The various scriptural writings might indeed have been God-inspired.* They can indeed be useful for teaching, correction, etc. (see 1 Tim. 3.16).   And for the sake of argument, let's assume that those writings were a complete and totally-undistorted presentation of what God had to say to us at the time.

We can't rule out that God might have something different to say to us now, at a later stage in our development as a species. When my son was younger, he would sometimes ask if he could have a glass of wine with dinner. My response was no. Now that he’s an adult, when he's home from college I’m the one who offers him a glass. 

For all we know, God might well be doing something similar. Anyone who presumes to claim otherwise with (false) certainty would seem to be setting himself above God.

Time and change were created by God as much as anything else.  Given the dramatic changes of the past 2,000 years, it's certainly conceivable that God might have different instructions for us now than he did back then.

It's breathtaking that some traditionalists seem to think otherwise — that God had exactly one chance to say everything he was ever going to have to say to us, and therefore what he caused to be said in Scripture was “it,” once and for all. 

They blaspheme against the Holy Spirit who deny even the possibility that God might say something different to us now.  It might happen to be true that God would never change what he putatively said before. But categorically declaring that to be the case is way, WAY above our pay grade.

Paul had the right advice in 1 Thess. 5.20-21:  Don’t despise those who claim to be inspired by the Spirit — test everything, and keep that which proves to be good.

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* There's no reason reason to assume Scripture was any more God-inspired than, say, Newton’s Principia or Einstein’s special- and general-relativity papers. If anything, Newton's and Einstein's writings arguably had an additional divine credential: they weren't merely creatures of their authors' creativity, they were testable against the actual reality that God wrought (cf. Deut. 18.20-22).

The faith once delivered never actually existed

Go read "Rescuing the faith once delivered to all the saints," written by an unnamed friend of Katie Sherrod (a leader of the loyalist faction in the secessionist Diocese of Fort Worth) and posted on her blog. The piece marvelously demonstrates how, when traditionalists bemoan the abandonment of the faith "believed by all people in all places at all times," they're indulging in wishful thinking and even in willful self-delusion.

The piece sketches the main theological parties of the early church, whose various doctrines were often mutually exclusive:

• Primitive Jerusalem Christianity:  "... the final age has begun ... history will close upon [Jesus'] imminent return; ... Jesus seen more as messiah than divine being ...."

• Primitive gentile Christianity: "the concept of messiah means nothing; ... Jesus the son of God came to earth, died, was resurrected and restored, is now Lord and present to his worshippers ...."

• Pauline Christianity: "... life in Christ produces what the law cannot but with few hard and fast ethical rules; love, not law: little interest in Jesus’ life, emphasis on him as Second Adam ...."

• Johannine Christianity: "Jesus’ life [was] secondary to his relation to the Father and the divine nature of Christ ...."

• Jewish Christianity: "... a continuation of Judaism, Jesus is messiah in succession to the prophets, not divine, not virgin born, will be Messiah/Son of Man at return; ... an ethnic religion; they loathed Paul."

• Gnostic Christianity: "gnosticism antedates Christianity, has roots all over the place and a vast literature ...."

The piece also recaps how, around 300 years after Jesus' death, the Emperor Constantine knocked heads in the church leadership, provoking the production of the Nicene Creed as a brokered compromise:

[Constantine] gave the various church parties an ultimatum: clean up your act and give me a church that knows what it believes, an instrument of unity and centralization instead of the morass of claim and counter-claim and diversity and uncertainty I see now.

So the church did what it always does: it held conventions—or councils or synods as they called them—meetings where people met and argued and voted. [Extra paragraphing added.]

Read it all.

Pulling no punches about Mr. (ex-Bishop) Schofield

John-David Schofield, former bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin, was deposed from ordained ministry by the House of Bishops this week for (purportedly) taking his diocese out of the Episcopal Church and into the Province of the Southern Cone.  Mr. Schofield responded that he had already resigned from the House of Bishops and was now a member of the Southern Cone's corresponding body (you can't fire me, I already quit). Today, Father Jake reproduces an essay by Bryan Taylor-Ferguson, an Episcopalian from the Diocese of Fort Worth, in response to Mr. Schofield's statement. It pulls no punches; I see nothing in it to disagree with.  Here's an excerpt (italics in original, bold-faced emphasis and extra paragraphing added):

He wasn't deposed for abandoning the Faith. He was deposed for abandoning and otherwise violating the discipline of the Episcopal Church. ...

NEITHER the House of Bishops of TEC nor the House of Bishops of the Southern Cone "belong" to the Anglican Communion. Their churches do.

And yes, they ARE two churches, not one. The Anglican Communion is not a church (much less "The" Church). It is a federation of freely allied but independent and autonomous churches. That's still all it is, regardless of who says or thinks or wishes otherwise.

* * *

... it is precisely the same tolerance for diversity of belief that has allowed Schofield, Iker, and others to retain their status as bishops and allowed them wide latitude within their dioceses all these many years. ...

Schofield enjoyed exactly the same tolerance as Spong, and for exactly the same reason, until he crossed over from conspiracy to actual schism.

Definitely read it all.

The Episcopal Church's constitution and canons do not permit dioceses to secede or to 'realign' with other provinces

There’s no dispute that individuals can leave the Episcopal Church ("TEC"). The question is, when a group of individuals in a diocese does so — as happened earlier this month in the Diocese of San Joaquin — does the diocese itself (and its property) likewise leave TEC?

TEC’s constitution and canons indicate the answer is clearly "no." In a nutshell: 

The Episcopal Church's constitution and canons require that a diocese's religious ministry and real property must be under the control of clergy who have vowed to conform to the "discipline" of the Episcopal Church [which I'll refer to as "the discipline vow]. 

I could not find any provision for such individuals to renounce that vow while still retaining any authority in their dioceses or parishes. It logically follows that:

IF:

A) an Episcopal Church clergy member, who by definition has taken the discipline vow, acquires certain authority in a diocese;

B) under the Episcopal Church's constitution and canons, the authority in question is reserved for clergy members; and

C) the clergy member subsequently repudiates the Episcopal Church's discipline,

THEN:

D) the clergy member necessarily and automatically forfeits the right to exercise the authority in question, by virtue of his or her act of repudiation.

And given the sine-qua-non role of clergy members in any diocese of the Episcopal Church, it further follows that:

The Episcopal Church's constitution and canons implicitly prohibit a diocese per se from unilaterally 'leaving' the church, because the diocese's bishop and other clergy members are inherently incapable of taking or authorizing such action.

Putting it another way: It's no more possible for a diocese to leave the Episcopal Church than it is for the Chevrolet division of General Motors, or for GM's wholly-owned subsidiary OnStar, to decide that they're going to leave GM and be part of Ford or Chrysler instead.

The discipline vow

Here are some examples of the constitutional- and canonical provisions; I’m sure the national church's lawyers will do a much better job than this when the time comes:

• Const. art. VIII prohibits ordaining any priest or deacon unless the candidate takes the discipline vow. The Book of Common Prayer, whose use is constitutionally mandated for all dioceses (see below), likewise requires all bishops to take the discipline vow at ordination.

• Const. art. X requires all dioceses to use the Book of Common Prayer approved by General Convention; any special non-BCP services must have the approval of the bishop — who is required by the BCP itself to take the discipline vow.

• Canon I.7.1(f) and (g) require annual financial audits of all dioceses, parishes, etc., with audit reports to be made to the bishop, i.e., to an individual who has taken the discipline vow.

• Canon I.7.3 prohibits transferring or mortgaging parish real estate without consent of the bishop, who has taken the discipline vow, except pursuant to regulations prescribed by diocesan canons.

• Let’s not forget the Dennis Canon (I.7.4):

All real and personal property held by or for the benefit of any Parish, Mission or Congregation is held in trust for this Church and the Diocese thereof in which such Parish, Mission or Congregation is located. The existence of this trust, however, shall in no way limit the power and authority of the Parish, Mission or Congregation otherwise existing over such property so long as the particular Parish, Mission or Congregation remains a part of, and subject to, this Church and its Constitution and Canons. [Emphasis added]

[Footnote: The people who claim that the Dennis Canon was never properly enacted may well be clutching at straws. That canon has been in the published canons for going on 30 years (and some 9 or 10 General Conventions). To my knowledge, no one has ever objected to the Dennis Canon’s inclusion in the church’s published canons, nor tried to get any General Convention to state that the canon is not effective. That being the case, I think a court would be extremely reluctant to rule that the Dennis Canon was not in effect. It’s been argued, e.g., in the California litigation, that denominations cannot unilaterally impose a trust on their congregations’ property without conforming to state trust law.  The U.S. Supreme Court, however, suggested in Jones v. Wolf that a denomination can do precisely that. The suggestion seems to have been a non-binding dictum, but I can envision the argument that the Free-Exercise and Establishment Clauses of the First Amendment override any contrary state law. We’ll have to see how future litigation plays out.]

• Canon I.14.3 requires that vestry meetings be presided over by the rector, who is required to take the discipline vow.

• Here’s a biggie: Canon IV requires that anyone holding virtually any significant religious lay ministry position — Pastoral Leader, Worship Leader, Preacher, Eucharistic Minister, Eucharistic Visitor, or Catechist — must be licensed by the Ecclesiastical Authority, which under Canon IV.15 means the bishop (who has taken the discipline vow) except during times of vacancy. Moreover, the lay minister must serve under the direction of a priest or deacon (who has taken the discipline vow). The lay minister’s license can be revoked essentially at will by the Ecclesiastical Authority.

Implications of the discipline vow

Anyone claiming that dioceses per se (as opposed to their congregants) can unilaterally remove themselves from the discipline of the Episcopal Church must find a way to reconcile that claim with the provisions summarized above. 

Such claimants should also keep in mind that when it comes to disputes over property, secular courts usually treat church constitutional- and canonical provisions as though they were contracts entered into by each person joining, or accepting a position in, the church. (For citations on that point, see the national church's recently-filed post-trial brief in the Virginia litigation.)

Recap of recent secession events

For those who don't follow the news about the secessionist movement in the Episcopal Church (TEC), here's a helpful recap of recent controversies by The Episcopal Majority.

The big news is that the arch-conservative former bishop of the Diocese of San Joaquin recently led a majority of his flock out of the Episcopal Church.  He has been changing the locks at loyalist mission parishes and purporting to fire loyalists priests who wouldn't go along with his usurpations.

Personally I wish the national church would ride into court in Fresno with lawyers blazing, seeking to evict the former bishop and his fellow squatters from church property and to reclaim rightful control of the diocese's assets. But litigation is a tricky thing, and so until events prove otherwise, I'm going to assume that the Presiding Bishop and her lawyers knows what they're doing and are waiting for the right moment to take action.

Bishop Stacy Sauls' essay on Anglican polity

Bishop Stacy Sauls, who is also a lawyer and a doctoral student in canon law, has written a lengthy essay on Anglican polity. You should read it if you're at all concerned about the demands by some scripturalists that the Episcopal Church submit to the will of conservative archbishops in other countries. Here are some excerpts (all bold-faced emphasis is mine, footnotes are omitted):

• On the role of canons and polity "I am pleased ... that this conference has elected to include a consideration of polity along with ... canon law. ... Both are important to our life together because the alternative to the rule of law on this side of the kingdom of heaven is not grace, but the rule of men (and I use the gender-exclusive term quite intentionally), men who equate their prejudices with God’s word, their ambitions with God’s will, and their agendas with the tradition of God’s Church. Polity and canon law are the security of God’s people against the wrongful exercise of power."

• The three key aspects of Anglicanism polity: "The constitutional identity of Anglicanism is not in the violent course of the English Reformation itself but in the Elizabethan Settlement that brought that violence to an end by charting a middle way. That Settlement has three key aspects: (1) the principle of autonomy, (2) the principle of toleration, and (3) the principle of lay participation in the governance of the Church.

• On local autonomy: "... the supremacy has found expression in Anglican canon law, not so much vesting authority in a hereditary monarch, even a constitutional one, as vesting authority for the government of national churches in national communities. It is a principle we have come to recognize as local autonomy, and it has been considered fundamental to the identity of Anglicanism."

• On the importance of the laity in Anglican polity: "The laity thus assumed a very powerful role in the life and governance of the Church of England from the beginning. The role of the laity remains a fundamental characteristic of Anglicanism."

•On agreeing to disagree in matters of theology: "The first Prayer Book in 1549 expressed its catholic theology of the presence of Christ in the consecrated elements of bread and wine ('The body of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was given for thee' and 'The blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was shed for thee'). The second Prayer Book in 1552 expressed a quite different Zwinglian theology of the Eucharist ('Take and eat this in remembrance that Christ died for thee' and 'Drink this in remembrance that Christ’s blood was shed for thee'). The Elizabethan Prayer Book in 1559 combined the two, doctrinal inconsistency notwithstanding. The standardization of worship with a toleration of theological diversity has been constitutionally characteristic of Anglicanism ever since.

• On the less-exalted role of bishops in TEC: "... to my knowledge, TEC is the only Church in the Anglican Communion that took shape in its formation entirely without the involvement of bishops. ... in TEC’s origin, securing the historic [episcopal apostolic] succession in the former colonies was secondary in importance to uniting the isolated and scattered congregations formerly a part of the Church of England."

• On the supremacy of General Convention in TEC: "... the exercise of episcopacy was one area in which [TEC's] central authority initially delegated power to the states. Each state was to choose its own bishop according to its own rules. Some dioceses even limited their bishops to a seat in their state conventions without the right to preside, and some allowed a bishop to be tried for offenses without the presence of another bishop. The General Convention has reclaimed a great deal of this authority over the years, as is its right."

• On the non-unitary nature of the Anglican Communion: "Last year the present Archbishop of Canterbury expressed his concern that the Anglican Communion might, in its current tensions, degenerate into no more than a federation. I was immediately alarmed, as a federation is already a great deal more than I think we are now."

• On the draft Anglican Covenant: "The draft Anglican Covenant ... abrogates the constitutional principles that make us Anglicans. It abrogates the principle of lay participation in the governance of the Church by placing disproportionate emphasis on the views of the highest ranking bishops. It abrogates the principle of toleration by imposing a standard, and more frighteningly a mechanism, for judging orthodoxy other than the idea of common worship. Most dangerously of all, it appears merely to compromise the principle of autonomy when, if fact, it virtually destroys it by vesting the right to determine what is a matter of common concern, what the common mind of the Communion is, and what punishment is appropriate for violations of the common mind in the Primates Meeting. It is as if the English Reformation, to say nothing either of the Elizabethan Settlement or the constitutional development over time of independent churches voluntarily cooperating on the basis of a shared heritage, never happened."

• On property litigation: "There are many pleas coming from secessionist congregations and dioceses to end the recourse to secular law, a plea that has been adopted recently by the Joint Standing Committee. Since the secessionist case is so weak in secular as well as canon law, the plea, while understandable, is also hollow. The most appropriate, and absolutely effective, way to end all property litigation immediately is for the secessionists and uninvited bishops to stop trying to steal the property."

• On same-sex blessings: "... I believe General Convention, as the legitimate voice of the whole Church, should begin a process to move toward authorizing such liturgies sooner rather than later. In the meantime, though, I think it is incumbent upon the rest of us, particularly bishops—individually and collectively, as something less than the General Convention, to wait on General Convention to act because it is crucial to maintaining our polity that we do."