The Questioning Christian

A must-read debate about defining "the Church"

Dale Rye, a sometime commenter at TitusOneNine and elsewhere, has posted a thoughtful essay about recent moves by certain conservative dioceses and parishes to secede from the Episcopal Church — and, subtly, about TEC's own actions in recent years.

Church 'trademarks' have consequences

Rye argues that Christians cannot simply disregard the agreed rules of the branch of the church to which they belong. In terms that would sound quite familiar to a marketer concerned about dilution of a company's brand name, Rye says.

... We are not free to call ourselves Anglicans while behaving like Baptists or Unitarians. A church (while it is the Body of Christ, the People of God, the Communion of the Faithful, and so much more) is also an ordered human society governed by agreed rules of conduct. Those who would regard themselves as part of that society must obey the rules or face the consequences---which no longer feature burning at the stake, but do include possible expulsion from the society. [Emphasis added.]

Drawing on a remark by Ignatius Loyola, which he quoted in a similar on-line essay, Rye continues:

If we see black when our church tells us to see white, we (unlike Roman Catholics who believe they are in the One True Church) are free to go join a black-seeing church. We are not free to put a blindfold on our present church so it will see black when we want it to. We are not free as individuals (or groups smaller than the whole) to expel others from the group because their behavior does not comply with our private judgement of how they should behave.

Moreover, if we leave, we leave as individuals (no matter how many like-minded individuals leave with us). We are not free to subvert the rules of the group we are leaving in order to take its assets with us (if the rules allow us to do so, that is another thing entirely, of course). The organization has its own corporate identity distinct from the individual wills of its membership. We are not free to impose our private judgment on how the group ought to handle dissenters; that is for the group itself to decide, consistent with its distinctive way of being the Church.

Obviously, none of this makes any sense from the perspective of someone who is convinced that he belongs to the church that has sole possession of the truth. I am not such a person. I am an Anglican.

[Emphasis added.]

In a later comment, Rye distinguishes between "mere personal preference" and "an assessment [presumably an individual one] of how closely the church fits our understanding of what a church should be in order to comply with the truth of the Good News revealed in Christ Jesus… an objective standard, not a subjective one" (emphasis added).

But are churches not allowed to evolve?

The one part of Rye's essay that gave me trouble was his argument, in effect, that churches should be preserved in amber, never changing from what they originally were:

Having chosen Anglicanism because it has a particular way of being, a special God-given charism if you will, we are not free to remake it into something that it is not. If we want a church of the Assemblies of God or the Metropolitan Community Church or the Roman Rite, we can go join one; we should not be trying to change our local Anglican church into a mirror image of those quite different bodies. [Emphasis added.]

Ross TenEyck seems to have been likewise was likewise troubled; he challenges the bold-faced portion in Rye's second paragraph above, saying:

This would seem to imply that all churches must remain forever static and unchanging, since you deny the possibility—or at least the right—of ever changing the church into “something it is not.” Do you allow for the possibility of evolution of a church, and if so how would it happen?  What fraction of the church must agree to a change before it becomes allowable? [Emphasis added.]

* * *

The comments on Rye's remarks are worth reading as well: they illustrate some fundamental differences in the way people define "the Church."

Young Jews worship on their own terms - NY Times

WASHINGTON, Nov. 27 — There are no pews at Tikkun Leil Shabbat, no rabbis, no one with children or gray hair.

Instead, one rainy Friday night, the young worshipers sat in concentric circles in the basement of an office building, damp stragglers four deep against the walls. In the middle, Megan Brudney and Rob Levy played guitar, drums and sang, leading about 120 people through the full Shabbat liturgy in Hebrew.

Without a building and budget, Tikkun Leil Shabbat is one of the independent prayer groups, or minyanim, that Jews in their 20s and 30s have organized in the last five years in at least 27 cities around the country. They are challenging traditional Jewish notions of prayer, community and identity.

In places like Atlanta; Brookline, Mass.; Chico, Calif.; and Manhattan the minyanim have shrugged off what many participants see as the passive, rabbi-led worship of their parents’ generation to join services led by their peers, with music sung by all, and where the full Hebrew liturgy and full inclusion of men and women, gay or straight, seem to be equal priorities.

-- From Neela Banerjee, Challenging Tradition, Young Jews Worship on Their Own Terms, NY Times, Nov. 28, 2007.

Muslim scholars reach out to Christians

I'm late to the party on this one, but if you haven't done so already, you need to read the exchange of letters between Muslim and Christian clergy and scholars:

• A Common Word Between Us and You, by the Muslim scholars, emphasized that the three Abrahamic faiths share a common ground in (what Christians call) the Great Commandment and Summary of the Law: Love God above all, and love your neighbor as yourself.

The Muslims take note of Jesus' remark that "he who is not against us is on our side" (Mark 9.40; Luke 9.50); they ask that Christians consider Muslims to be with them, not against them.

(With reference to Jesus' apparently-contrary saying in Matthew, the Muslims quote an 11th century Greek Orthodox scholar as arguing that in context, Jesus was referring to Beelzebub and other demons when he said that "He who is not [Greek: The one not being] with me is against me, and he who does not gather [Greek: the one not gathering] with me scatters abroad" (see Matt. 12.26-30).)

• Loving God and Neighbor Together: A Christian Response to 'A Common Word Between Us and You "receive[s] the open letter as a Muslim hand of conviviality and cooperation extended to Christians world-wide. In this response we extend our own Christian hand in return, so that together with all other human beings we may live in peace and justice as we seek to love God and our neighbors." 

The Episcopal Cafe has more about A Common Word, as well as about A Christian Response and about the positive responses by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the president of the Lutheran World Federation.

Revisiting "our great God and Savior Jesus Christ" in Titus 2.13

Last night I got a comment on a post that I did two years ago today, "Jesus is Lord" Didn't Mean "Jesus is God".  Commenter 'Norm' asked: "How do [you] explain Titus 2:13 where Jesus is explicitly referred to as the Great God (capital "G") and Savior?" 

I responded that you have to look at the whole sentence, which paints a completely different picture than what Norm suggests in his out-of-context snippet:

11 For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all, 12 training us to renounce impiety and worldly passions, and in the present age to live lives that are self-controlled, upright, and godly, 13 while we wait for / the blessed hope and the manifestation of the glory of our great God and Saviour, / Jesus Christ. 14 He it is who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify for himself a people of his own who are zealous for good deeds.

(Quoted from the New Revised Standard Version; emphasis and slash-mark delimiters added, footnotes omitted.)

To put the sentence in context, we need to recall that elsewhere in his letter to Titus, Paul uses the title "our savior" to refer to both God (1.3; 2.10; 3.4) and Jesus (1.4; 3.6), usually one at a time without mentioning the other.

I know very little of Greek, but the text in my Greek-English interlinear Bible seems to make more sense if we read it as "while we wait for the blessed hope and the appearing of him who is [i] the manifestation of God's glory and [ii] our Savior, Jesus Christ."

The sentence beginning at 2.11 clearly says that to Paul, Jesus the Anointed One (christos), whose return the church was eagerly awaiting, was metaphorically the hope and the manifestation of the glory of God. It'd be an enormous stretch to think that Paul's figures of speech meant he thought Jesus WAS God. (If he did think that, it's not at all clear why we should assume he was correct.) 

By analogy, suppose I were to write a letter to my widowed father-in-law, mentioning that my wife was the manifestation of all that was good about her late mother. It'd be a mistake for a future reader to conclude that I believed my wife was her mother. By the same token, it'd be a mistake to read Titus 2.13 and conclude that Paul believed Jesus to be God.

Science and religion are both founded on faith, says Paul Davies in the NY Times

in today's NY Times, British-born physicist Paul Davies writes of how both science and religion depend on faith. Excerpt:

A second reason that the laws of physics have now been brought within the scope of scientific inquiry is the realization that what we long regarded as absolute and universal laws might not be truly fundamental at all, but more like local bylaws. They could vary from place to place on a mega-cosmic scale. A God’s-eye view might reveal a vast patchwork quilt of universes, each with its own distinctive set of bylaws. In this “multiverse,” life will arise only in those patches with bio-friendly bylaws, so it is no surprise that we find ourselves in a Goldilocks universe — one that is just right for life. We have selected it by our very existence.

The multiverse theory is increasingly popular, but it doesn’t so much explain the laws of physics as dodge the whole issue. There has to be a physical mechanism to make all those universes and bestow bylaws on them. This process will require its own laws, or meta-laws. Where do they come from? The problem has simply been shifted up a level from the laws of the universe to the meta-laws of the multiverse.

Clearly, then, both religion and science are founded on faith — namely, on belief in the existence of something outside the universe, like an unexplained God or an unexplained set of physical laws, maybe even a huge ensemble of unseen universes, too. For that reason, both monotheistic religion and orthodox science fail to provide a complete account of physical existence.

(Emphasis added.)

My new favorite participatory prayer: The Great Thanksgiving from the Book of Common Prayer

At the Thanksgiving Day service at church yesterday, I was surprised that the Prayers of the People took the form of the Great Thanksgiving litany (BCP page 836). I confess I don't remember ever having noticed it before.

Later on, I suggested to my wife that we use the same litany for Thanksgiving dinner. As usual, we were hosting extended family and friends, ranging in age from 16 to 91. All but one or two of us were Episcopalians, so a Prayer Book piece shouldn't be too unfamiliar. My wife smiled tolerantly and wondered out loud whether "the college crowd," viz., the teenagers and young adults, would think it was too long.  

(I was curious myself whether some the college crowd would even participate, given that their present beliefs are a bit of a mystery, at least to me.)

I copied the litany from the Anglicans Online Web site and printed it out.  It occurred to me that people might find it more satisfying to take turns reading the invocations, instead of me doing them all and everyone else merely saying "We thank you, Lord." Names popped into my head: This one is perfect for So-and-So, that one fits with Whosis's personality, etc. So I annotated the printout by hand with a name for each invocation, then made photocopies (our all-in-one multifunction printer is great for that).

When it came time to sit down for dinner, I handed out the copies. Each reader read his or her part seriously and respectfully, including the teenagers. People seemed to appreciate that they were being asked to participate in a structured prayer from the Prayer Book, as opposed to being subjected to an endless extemporaneous prayer, or worse yet a home-brew sermon. I think everyone also enjoyed having succinct statements reminding us of what we ought to be grateful for.

After we said "Amen," several people made favorable comments, and a couple of them folded up their copies to take with them. My sister laughed and said (tongue in cheek), "that's really cool — the Prayer Book actually has prayers!"

---

Here's the text (copied from Father Jake's blog, where it was featured yesterday also):

A Litany of Thanksgiving

Let us give thanks to God our Father for all his gifts so freely bestowed upon us.

For the beauty and wonder of your creation, in earth and sky and sea.
We thank you, Lord.

For all that is gracious in the lives of men and women, revealing the image of Christ,
We thank you, Lord.

For our daily food and drink, our homes and families, and our friends,
We thank you, Lord.

For minds to think, and hearts to love, and hands to serve,
We thank you, Lord.

For health and strength to work, and leisure to rest and play,
We thank you, Lord.

For the brave and courageous, who are patient in suffering and faithful in adversity,
We thank you, Lord.

For all valiant seekers after truth, liberty, and justice,
We thank you, Lord.

For the communion of saints, in all times and places,
We thank you, Lord.

Above all, we give you thanks for the great mercies and promises given to us in Christ Jesus our Lord;
To him be praise and glory, with you, O Father, and the Holy Spirit, now and for ever. Amen.

Gratitude as a learned practice can improve your life

Appropriately for Thanksgiving, a cardiologist friend has sent (via my sister) a link to an article about the benefits of learned gratitude, written by two friends from the parish, Drs. Blair and Rita Justice.  Excerpt:

In one of his first studies on gratitude, conducted with colleague Mike McCullough at the University of Miami, Emmons randomly assigned participants one of three tasks. Some were encouraged to feel gratitude indirectly [by writing down five things each week for which they were grateful],   others to be indirectly negative and complaining, and a third group to be neutral. * * *

• Participants in the gratitude group felt better about their lives as a whole and were more optimistic about the future than participants in either of the other control conditions -- a full 25 percent happier.
• They reported fewer health complaints and even spent more time exercising than control participants.
• They had fewer symptoms of physical illness than the other two groups.
• The gratitude group exercised 1.5 hours more than the hassled group.

... There was evidence that the daily [gratitude note-taking] led to greater increases in gratitude than did the weekly practice in the first study. * * *

The participants weren’t the only ones believing life was better. According to the researchers, “Spouses of the participants in the gratitude condition reported that the participants appeared to have higher subjective well-being than did the spouses of the participants in the control condition.”  * * *

Gratitude, with practice, can become not only a habit, but a way of viewing the world. “Ain’t it Awful” is as much learned as “Ain’t it Grand,” and not nearly so much fun. No doctor’s appointment needs to be scheduled to practice gratitude, no deductible on your insurance, no personal trainer required. This amazing health remedy is yours for the taking, right now. So, say, “Thank you!”

Read the rest.

Bishop Iker denies that there's such a thing as an Episcopal Church

[UPDATED]  Judging by his diocesan convention address, Bishop Jack Leo Iker of Fort Worth has an interesting perspective on his station in life: He seems to believe that, as bishop of the Diocese of Fort Worth, he is the head of an independent denomination that can do as it pleases. (Recall that he still refuses to ordain women as priests and places severe restrictions on their serving in 'his' diocese.)

The good bishop concedes that yes, Episcopal dioceses do periodically meet in something called General Convention. But he must think General Convention is strictly a voluntary, social-type gathering that has an advisory role only, because he seems to reject the idea that GC has any real authority over what dioceses do:

... I must object to the claim that the Presiding Bishop has any canonical authority in this Diocese or any legitimate power over the leadership of this Diocese.  She has no authority to bring Fort Worth into line with the mandates of a so-called “national Church.” There is no such thing as “the national Church.” We are a confederation of Dioceses, related to each other by our participation in General Convention.

From the earliest days of the beginnings of the Episcopal Church in this country, including the formation of dioceses and eventually the creation of the General Convention itself, there has been a strong mistrust of centralized authority that is deeply rooted in our history as Episcopalians. We do not have an Archbishop in this Church, who has authority over other Bishops and their Dioceses. Instead, we have a Presiding Bishop, with very limited canonical responsibilities, mainly administrative in nature.

We must object to the tendency in recent years in this Church to create some sort of central bureaucracy at the top that holds power and authority over the various Dioceses of this Church.  We do not have a Curia that dictates policy and dogma in this Church.  We do not have a Presiding Bishop with papal authority over us, nor do we believe in the infallibility of any Bishop or any council or, indeed, of any General Convention.

If I may be so bold to speak on your behalf, dear friends: the leadership of this Diocese does not need to be brought into line with the mandates of some mythical “national Church.”

(Emphasis and extra paragraphing added; hat tip: TitusOneNine.)

[UPDATE] So there's never been a "national" Episcopal Church after all, huh? Then we've been going to a lot of time and expense for no reason. For example:

• Fort Worth didn't need to go to the trouble of seeking consent of General Convention to become a diocese in the first place. And it needn't have included a provision in its constitution, unqualifiedly acceding to TEC's constitution and canons.

• Fort Worth shouldn't have bothered seeking anyone else's consent to ordain Mr. Iker as bishop; election by their diocesan convention was all they needed to do. And the diocese's various bishops and standing committees needn't have bothered consenting to other dioceses' election of their own bishops over the past 25 years.

• Fort Worth's clergy — including +Iker — should have refused to profess those portions of their ordination vows that refer to the doctrine, discipline, and worship of the non-existent Episcopal Church. [It just occurred to me that secessionist Fort Worth clergy should, in conscience, first resign their orders in the Episcopal Church, because secession indisputably violates those "discipline" portions of their ordination vows.]

• The drafters of Article VII of TEC's constitution, which allows General Convention to group dioceses into provinces, needn't have bothered including a carve-out that "no Diocese shall be included in a Province without its own consent," because obviously that goes without saying.

I'm sure others will come up with additional examples.

They went to all that trouble for nothing, it seems.

Someone needs to explain to +Iker & Co. the doctrine of estoppel. I'm sure TEC's lawyers will do so. And maybe in due course a Texas judge will do so as well.

Incidentally, check out +Iker's all-purple regalia, including a zuchetto, no less — a yarmulke-like skull cap  — of the kind Roman Catholic bishops wear. (Cardinals wear scarlet zuchettos, and the pope, a white one.) I can't remember ever seeing an Episcopal bishop wear a zuchetto, of any color.

I feel sorry for progressive and moderate Episcopalians in Fort Worth, who deserve better. If the non-existent national church would get off its duff and depose Bishop Iker, maybe they'd have a shot at getting someone better.

Church is mostly about rituals and belonging, not propositional beliefs - Andrew Brown

In The Guardian, Andrew Brown has this to say:

... Most churches, most of the time, don't give a damn for theology. That's one of the things that atheists get wrong about religion. They think it is about propositional beliefs, rather than rituals and belonging. And so they assume that the dispute in the Anglican Communion is really about gays. But if it were, it would be possible to reach a compromise, as has been done about women, where people at least pretend to accept each others' viewpoint.

(Hat tip: TitusOneNine.)

Here's how a seceding diocese MUST proceed under the Episcopal Church's constitution

It surprised me to learn that the Episcopal Church's constitution contains a complicated mechanism that a diocese such as Fort Worth could use to secede, after a fashion. But it would not be able to do so so unilaterally; it would first have to obtain approval of its proposed action by super-majority votes of both houses in General Convention and of its TEC-loyal parishes. Given that each diocese's own constitution contains an unqualified accession to TEC's own constitution, it follows that a diocese's extra-constitutional attempts to secede would necessarily be ultra vires, and thus null and void.

Here's how a constitutional secession of sorts would work. Under Article VI, section 2 of TEC's constitution: 

• Bishop Iker and the Fort Worth standing committee must propose to cede jurisdiction of a part of Fort Worth's territory to TEC, where it would have the status of unorganized mission territory.
• The ceded territory would not be the parishes that wanted to stay in TEC, but the ones that wanted to leave; this is counterintuitive but will make sense momentarily. 
• General Convention must then approve the proposed cession of territory by: 
  • a 2/3 vote of the House of Bishops; 
  • a 2/3 vote of the dioceses in the House of Delegates, voting by orders; 
  • a 3/4 vote of the parishes in the ceded territory, i.e., of the secessionist parishes; and 
  • a 3/4 vote of the remaining parishes.
• If GC approved, the Diocese of Fort Worth would still exist, but it would shrink down to encompass just the TEC-loyal parishes that did not want to secede; the remaining parishes would be in unorganized mission territory.
  
• Bishop Iker and his standing committee would then leave TEC and be received in the Southern Cone or other province. In the newly-designated TEC mission territory, they could organize on behalf of their new church, in competition with their former church, as they and their ecclesial authorities saw fit.
  

This would undoubtedly be a funky and cumbersome process, in which a successful secession would be by no means assured (the votes probably just aren't there). The new church would be in violation of the ancient canons prescribing geographic dioceses (but those should be revisited in any case). And property ownership issues would still have to be fought out (but that would be true in any case).

But here's my point: TEC's constitution sets forth a constitutional way for a diocese to 'secede.'  The secessionist dioceses unqualifiedly acceded to TEC's constitution. So, if those dioceses wish to leave TEC, that's how they must attempt to do it; they can't just go off and do what seems good in their own eyes. As a result, the recent extra-constitutional attempts to secede, on the part of Fort Worth, San Joaquin, and Pittsburgh, are no more than so much noise (and are grounds for presentment of their bishops).