Bounced by the Bishop

I've been bounced off Bishop Alan Wilson's blog.

Correction: no I haven't. A misunderstanding based on my hypersensitivity to the cryptic comments of bishops.

And he very kindly enquired and cleared up my misapprehension. For which I am grateful, and my apologies to Bishop Alan for ever suggesting such a thing.

The word from Clonmacnoise

The Archbishop of Armagh, the Most Reverend Alan Harper, preached at Clonmacnoise on the Feast Day of St Mary Magdalene 2007:

I have somewhat to say on the present madness of the Anglican Communion and the Christian quest to appropriate and to live the life of resurrection. All here.

He identified two 'boulders' to the resurrection life: bibliolatry and division and disunity in the Church.

While both are undoubtedly boulders the first is historically specific; the second is endemic.

He regards as simplistic the notion the thesis that unity may be sought at the cost of truth, arguing that no single group can hold all truth while division actively discourages us from seeing the mote in our own eye.

It is not then the case that unity is maintained at the expense of truth, but rather that disunity guarantees that access to a fuller knowledge of the truth is consciously inhibited.

I might want to ask he understands truth and our perception of it, and also how truth is apprehended if our disunity and division are not ephemeral to Christian faith but inherent and integral to it.

On his observation of the Covenant, however, I am with him all the way (emphasis added):

Archbishop Drexel Gomez, addressing the General Synod of the Church of England on the issue of an Anglican Covenant, [full speech here] said recently:

Anglican leaders are seriously wondering whether they can recognize in each other the faithfulness to Christ that is the cornerstone of our common life and cooperation. While some feel there will be inevitable separation, others are trying to deny that there is a crisis at all. That is hardly a meeting of minds. Unless we can make a fresh statement clearly and basically of what holds us together we are destined to grow apart.

I doubt if anyone believes that there is no crisis. Rather, in the context of Archbishop Drexel’s key test, that is, recognizing in each other the faithfulness to Christ that is the cornerstone of our common life and cooperation, a spirit of arrogance on both sides is causing people of genuine faith and undoubted love for the Lord Jesus to bypass the requirement for patience and for making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

I have yet to meet any “leader” who does not treat with the utmost respect and indeed reverence the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament. I have heard no one in this crisis deny the fundamental tenets of the faith as Anglicans have received them. Yet I have heard believing Christians attack other Christians for not believing precisely as they themselves believe. Equally, I have heard believing Christians attack other Christians for not attaching the weight they themselves attach to this biblical text compared with that.

This is not the way of Christ; it is the way of fallen humanity. It is a boulder of our own creation and I do not know who will help us to roll it away.

Some fear, and I am among them, that an Anglican Covenant, unless it is open and generous and broad, may simply become a further means of obstruction: a boulder, rather than a lever to remove what obscures and impedes our access to the truth that sets us free.

Weeping ash in a churchyard

Weeping ash in a churchyard

A century keeping vigil over

those who need no vigilance, concealing

the sweeping shadows, the day’s declension,

the tolling year’s irrecoverable

loss from Easter through a bitter Friday,

one leafless limb yearning sunwards with no

expectation, one arm consoling the stones –

their names uninscribed, loving memories

invalidated – slowly curling down

to the patient, all-embracing earth.

I slip in step with the dying and dead

in sad processions, like tides which reach no

further than the edge and turn away, and,

for the short, wordy, retrospective path,

my forehead smeared with penitential ash.

After a long gap:

The Draft Anglican Covenant is still wandering around the world. Critical comments (in some detail as well as summaries) are on the MCU site: http://www.modchurchunion.org/Covenant.htm. Progress in the General Synod can be followed through Thinking Anglicans.

There's also a paper on the way in which the Powers That Be are trying to bounce the decision through Communion by giving no-one a public voice on its contents (and therefore enabling a few people - whoever they are - to draft versions in private).

I believe this is wrong in principle and ineffective in practice. It will simply create a legal system which no-one cares for and, possibly, will ignore as soon as it makes a decision that is disliked.

David

When he was in his teens he lined up

his money in columns

and on his bedside table

to keep him warm at night.

At twenty he strode around

the globe keeping his feet

firmly on the ground and

his eyes fixed on the future.

And at thirty he turned to study

stately homes and old gravestones,

the archaeology 

of penury and wealth.

Forty felled him with passion:

he threw order out the window

drowned in bed and said

in that moment he was happy.

But fifty found him

meditating on the stream,

on the fluid transience

of loss and permanence.

So sixty saw him in the garden

cultivating roses and

reflecting on the delicacy of life,

its beauty and its thorns.

Seventy was sweet: the body

stumbled a little but beer

was good and the food

they cooked tasted of love.

Eighty was a slow decade

spent contemplating death

and curating peace

in the storehouse of his soul.

At ninety he recalled

he had once been a child

so invited himself to parties

and was rowdy.

Anglican Divorce

An excellent and brief summary of TEC's divisions from the New York Times:

LAURIE GOODSTEIN

A Divide, and Maybe a Divorce

[Extract]

In many American churches, the divide on homosexuality is neither generational nor geographic, unlike the North/South split over slavery. Homosexuality is not the cause of the divide, just “the last straw,” said John L. Kater, a lecturer in Anglican Studies, at the Church

Divinity School of the Pacific, in Berkeley, Calif., a liberal-leaning seminary. The underlying differences are over the basic understanding of tradition and Scripture. The conservatives say they are something sacred and fixed, while the liberals say they can be open to interpretation and responsive to new information.

That approach has shaped their responses. The liberals insist that what defines Anglicanism is theological diversity, and the conservatives claim Anglicanism requires a commitment to doctrine. The liberals are saying, “Can’t we all just get along,” while the conservatives are saying, “Can’t we all just get in line?”

Hardly a Christian spectacle, the rivalry has been more like a log-rolling contest where the conservatives and the liberals are battling to push each other off a spinning log, while trying to make it look as if their adversaries voluntarily jumped. Now, with the ultimatum, the liberals may need a lot of deft footwork to stay on the log.

The branches break

We have come, I think, to the parting of Anglican ways.

The House of Bishops of The Episcopal Church (TEC) have declared: enough is enough. They refuse to allow unaccountable Primates to dictate terms; they refuse to countenance any longer the intrusion of other Bishops into their jurisdictions; they refuse the deal offered (or demanded) at Dar es Salaam; and they refuse to embed in TEC structures discrimination against people on the grounds of sexuality. [Thinking Anglicans, amongst others, has followed the story in detail.] It has to be said that the Bishop's statement still needs ratification in the American synodical process but it seems unlikely that this will not happen.

The first reaction is, I think, to give thanks to God. Conservatives and liberals are generally welcoming the end of prevarication, if for different reasons. LGCM has issued an exultant press release (can't see it on their site yet).

But it will take a while to see how things pan out in the global game of poker that our Primates are playing - using as chips the members of the Anglican Communion. (You can see this in the way the numbers of adherents are attributed to each Primate or group of Primates as though they all agree with their leader and the group with the biggest pile of members at the end of the game is the winner.)

It may be that TEC's stand - especially if supported vocally by other Provinces and Dioceses - will force the conservatives to retreat. Can the Anglican Communion claim unity if TEC is asked to leave? Can the international 'Instruments of Unity' survive without TEC's money? Will Canada, Scotland, Wales and others join them in saying 'if TEC is pushed out we go too'? If so, it is unlikely that the rest of the players will want to force everyone to show their hands.

Or, perhaps, it will work the other way. Perhaps the conservatives now scent victory. After all, TEC was given an ultimatum and they blinked first. From the conservative point of view TEC has now made explicit that it stands on the side of 'culture' and against biblical truth. They have revealed their hand and they held no high cards. Will the conservatives therefore force their exclusion from effective participation in the Anglican Communion? Will the conservatives in the US formalise their division from TEC, pending only law suits and financial settlements?

Either way the statement of the House of Bishops is likely to shift the politics significantly and, in my judgement, the chances of a formal split are now higher than before. For this I do not thank God: divisions in church structures and conflicts between Christians (and history is full of them) are inherently derogations from the unity that God seeks for us all.

I guess the CofE will try to stay friends with everyone - and may not be able to. Perhaps it will be time to choose which team it belongs to. On the other hand, knowing the CofE's infinite capacity for playing cards all through the night on the grounds that tomorrow is another day and you never know what that might bring, I think I'd be surprised.

TEC's stand may result in new options within the CofE. There is a growing prospect that conservative congregations might seek pastoral oversight from conservative bishops outside the CofE (as even the most reactionary flying bishop may be seen as tainted by association with the House of Bishops' stance on Civil Partnerships) . Perhaps TEC will offer a parallel possibility for liberal congregations. But I think this is improbable short of complete melt-down: congregations will find it hard to let go of parish churches and clergy will not relish eviction from their vicarages.

Nonetheless the ecclesiastical landscape has changed unexpectedly and the future is even less predictable than it was.