Bigger brother than ever

It is, I think, inevitable:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The FBI is embarking on a $1 billion project to build the world's largest computer database of biometrics to give the government more ways to identify people at home and abroad, the Washington Post reported on Friday.

The FBI has already started compiling digital images of faces, fingerprints and palm patterns in its systems, the paper said.

In January, the agency -- which focuses on violations of federal law, espionage by foreigners and terrorist activities -- expects to award a 10-year contract to expand the amount and kinds of biometric information it receives, it said.

At an employer's request, the FBI will also retain the fingerprints of employees who have undergone criminal background checks, the paper said.

If successful, the system, called Next Generation Identification, will collect the biometric information in one place for identification and forensic purposes, the Post said.

Those who have the capability and the budget will be driven to compile ever increasing information about ever more people.  It gives a feeling of comfort to the powerful, a chimera of safety, the feeling that if enough is known about enough people then harmful actions can not only be punished but even prevented.  

A combination of ever-increasing processing power and the capacity to know biometric and also genetic information about people means that (other things being equal) the trend will be to recording every individual in an accessible form.  Who would ever have the power or, having the power, the will to stand up and say 'Stop now, we don't need to know.'?

It won't be enough to shout 'privacy' or 'liberty' as though these slogans will stop this trend, nor 'transparency' or 'safeguards' as though these will legitimate the amassing of data.   It will be important to know who has access to what information and how it may be used.  (In fact it may will be in the interests of the security services to let people know just how much they know, so long as they are vague about the limits, in order to deter malevolent action.  But it will be impossible to state the limits of how it will be used - once collected the data will be maipulable in ways currently unconsidered.)

We are, I believe, on the threashold of a vast change in social and political relationships embodied in the capacity to digitise people (in effect) of which Facebook is to future databases as an abacus to the computer.

How will we live with the assumption that everything is known and nothing forgotten?  Will we be ruled by shame - or will shame be a thing of the past as everyone is shown to do shameful things?  Will we find ways of public forgetting to enable us to grow - or will teenage excess, misjudgement, rebellion always be held against a person?  Will forgiveness become a new public virtue?  Or will the sophistication of data lead to crude divisions of people into, say, those who are a threat and those who are tolerable - white and black hats again?

It will not all be bad - the possibility of individualised medicine may well be one advance, the impossibility of racism another - and it may (despite the present structures creating these systems) tend towards egalitarianism.  But such extensive change is unlikely to happen without social turmoil and pain.

When

Balanced on sea-edge.

Between.

Land ground fine between

duration and oblivion;

unstable, edge-less.

Sea sand turning underneath;

an old new tide

erases my mark.

The religious roots of torture

William Schweiker has an article in Sightings (here) which, after expressing some bemusement that we should be debating torture in the twenty-first century, points to the religious roots of torture(see Martin Marty’s earlier article here).

Less often observed is that the practice of waterboarding has roots in the Spanish Inquisition and parallels the persecution of Anabaptists during the Protestant Reformation and the Roman Catholic Counter Reformation. Why did practices similar to waterboarding develop as a way to torture heretics—whether the heretics were Anabaptists or, in the Inquisition, Protestants of any stripe as well as Jews and witches and others?

Schweiker sees the use of water for torture by Christian persecutors as a kind of anti-baptism:

Torture has many forms, but torture by water as it arose in the Roman Catholic and Protestant reformations seemingly drew some of its power and inspiration from theological convictions about repentance and salvation. It was, we must now surely say, a horrific inversion of the best spirit of Christian faith and symbolism.

Christianity uses powerful symbols, its discourse addresses the great issues of life and death, morality and sin, and it also proclaims the possibility of transformatory redemption – that all things may be made new.

And beyond the symbols and discourse there is religious practice – the translation of such ideas into the reality of the way we treat one another. It is in this practice that we are judged. The question of torture should never be one of utility but one of fundamental respect for the human body: shaped by God, given for holy purposes.

And if the leaders of our religions can agree on nothing else, can they not agree that torture is reprehensible? And then that religious practice should always and actively set its face against torture – in symbol, in discourse, and in political influence?

There is no

                             there is no
symmetry in cloud, treason
lies in Heraklitus’ stream,
needles are lost in a forest,
words hobbled lame

                            can these words live?
spewed as unmetered seconds,
as gamblers’ coin, not seeds
but stones kicked onto gravel.

                           Once they spoke

of their own volition conjured
jinni castles feasts juggled
puns joked with children till
like gods they fell tangled
in nets of their own cunning
crushed thin as ice in the crude
jaws of calculated time.

                             I write my story
on water, stutter in smoke,
break it between leaves, lose
nouns and tempo, yet would still
rhyme it in hope, in love.

                            Speak to me!
can these words live?

Don't take holiday snaps

The geographer Ghazi Falah was caught between Israel and the Arab world, John Gravios writes in the American Chronicle of Higher Education.

Falah, with dual Israeli and Canadian citizenship, was held by the Shin Bet allegedly for spying until released after 23 days following a campaign by fellow geographers and other academics.

He felt he was being questioned more about his academic career - and that it was held as an accusation against him - than about any putative spying.

Most of all, the article concludes, Mr. Falah is haunted by the sense that his imprisonment was meant to send a message.

"I feel it was like a punishment," he says, meant to scare him and other Palestinian scholars into self-censorship.

And that's the way of police states, the purpose of interrogation and torture: not solely the punishment of the individual but the breaking of civil society and the crushing of any independence of thought and autonomy of action.  If the Palestinians are to be cowed then any who attain prominence of any sort - within or outside the Palestinian territories - become legitimate targets. 

And across the world the police seem to go to the same school.  Keep interrogation and torture hidden and secret so that no-one can see what is happening, but make sure it's an open secret so that it can terrify the rest of the society.  There is nothing so powerfully destructive as a dirty secret that everyone knows.

In the end the use of force is unsustainable - but in the mean time too many are broken and suffer from it.

Violence in decline

A fascinating talk by Steven Pinker at The Edge on the long-term decline in violence - video and article.

He addresses some of the reasons why violence has declined, and the equally puzzling question of why, given this fact, it doesn't feel like it.

Where do terrorists come from?

There is an interesting article at The American called What Makes a Terrorist ,by Alan Krueger.

First- not poverty or lack of education, though these have been fastened on as explanations.

On the contrary, higher education is correlated with greater support for terrorism in research in certain Islamic countries.  The indications are that actual terrorists are likely to be less poor and more educated than the average in their countries of origin.

Krueger is an economist and sees things in terms of supply and demand, including terrorism.  As people choose to be suicide bombers for a a range of reasons, he says, reducing the supply is difficult.  More sensible is to reduce demand by the dual programme of aggressively reducing the capacity (technical, financial) of terror groups to act while, simultaneously, enabling political engagement and non-violent protest.

Thus the absence of civil rights and sufficient GDP may be expressed in a greater number of potential and actual terrorists.  These were people taking reasoned decisions to try to impose an extreme solution on a political problem by the use of violence.

Thus (in my opinion) terrorists and terrorist groups should be treated as rational, as open to reason and engagement.  The necessary 'war' on terror should be targetted as precisely as possible (I accept Krueger's suggested targets). 

And it should be accompanied by, and perhaps be secondary to, political programmes which enable populations to have the capacity of political engagement, to be able to make a difference.

Countries which use harsh repressive measures and torture will breed violence much of which will rebound against them.  (It has to be acknowledged that many such countries do not engender international terrorism and that a strong universalist ideological programme may also be a necessary condition for the supply side of terrorism.)  But at the very least this provides a strong self-interest argument (where moral arguments seem insufficient) for western countries to stop supporting repressive regimes.

Raven

The Anglican Covenant - a view from NZ

Bishop Brian Carrell of Nelson, New Zealand, has posted a talk giving a considered overview of history and prospects for the dissolution of the Anglican Communion. (Here.)

I share his list of centrifugal factors with which the Anglican Communion must cope, though these pull in different directions.

For example, the need to address diversity in a post-modern world suggest the possibility of a range of differing answers - a loosening of the bonds of Anglicanism without finally untying them. Conversely the resurgence of conservative Christianity across all parts of the Church which tends to look toward answers in the narrowing the bonds of unity and greater degrees of centralisation and control. I share his statements that the authority and understanding of the Bible is a core issue, whilst sexuality has been the occasion (rather than the cause) our our present disputes; and also that the centre of gravity in Anglicanism has moved from London and Washington to Africa which would require an organizational response whatever the occasion of our differences.

But his discussion of the Anglican Instruments of Unity is a little sparse. To quote Michael Nazir-Ali as asserting that "Lambeth has a moral authority which is different to legal authority but not less; it’s the authority of the common mind of Christ manifested in his Church." does not make it so. Previous Lambeth Conferences have explicitly eschewed such a level of authority and it's hard to see what this statement means in constitutional terms. If Provinces are autonomous (i.e. self-governing) then they are not subordinate to the Lambeth Conference however carefully they may listen to its pronouncements.

Michael Nazir-Ali's statement also equates the mind of the church with the resolutions of its bishops. But perhaps the ACC (with its formal constitution and lay participation), has a better claim to express the mind of the church. Whoever has the better claim, however, the idea of 'the mind of the church' entails a deliberate choice not to hear minority voices from any quarter, and to not take seriously the evident diversity of the church. Why should disputes have only one outcome?

Bishop Carrell rightly points to the antecedents of the Primates' assumption of greater power. However he misses the Primates' decision that we already have a fifth Instrument of Unity - Canon Law, as agreed in Canterbury, 2002. But - although a network of legal advisers was agreed - this has largely sunk without trace as an element of restructuring the Communion, overtaken by subsequent events. It would be no more than a footnote in any talk on this issue except for one thing: the fact that the proposal could rise and fall so quickly shows the flexibility inherent in decision making: just because a meeting comes to a decision it doesn't make it so. There also has to be a process of reception.

Lambeth 1998 certainly expressed its mind in Resolution I:10 on human sexuality. The Bishop doesn't explain that this involved the rejection of the results of the international study group which had been preparing a paper for the conference - and this may very largely explain the surprise (in NZ as elsewhere) at the eventual outcome.

Bishop Gene Robinson's election and consecration as Bishop of New Hampshire certainly brought the pot to the boil. However, first, enough people were looking for a fight - if Gene Robinson hadn't been the cause célèbre someone else would have been. Second, to say

Gene Robinson had been a married man, but before his election had parted from his wife to form a public partnership with another man in a same-sex union.

is to telescope events of his personal history in a way which at best is seriously misleading.

The Windsor Report was clearly a significant pivot in the progress of the dispute (and I note the Bishop does not also cite the Windsor Report's opposition to the intrusion of one bishop into the jurisdiction of another) but it was not a statement of the mind of the church. Again, its recommendations did not make it so - notwithstanding the semi-juridical and now ecclesiological weight the Report has subsequently been accorded.

And so to the Covenant. (This talk was evidently given before the Episcopal Church made their response public - my summary.) The Covenant was part of the Windsor Report. But the suggested draft with the Report, once again, has sunk without trace. Again, in a talk, this would be no more than a footnote. Except that what it shows is that the issue is not 'Covenant or no Communion' but: 'what are the terms of our association with one another which are to be expressed in this document?' Writing a Covenant will not create harmony - and the Covenant as drafted was evidently designed to give power to the Primates to exclude The Episcopal Church - but if there is sufficient agreement between the parties of a voluntary communion then these can be written down for all to follow.

The response of TEC's House of Bishops to the Primates' Communiqué from Tanzania, and its broad welcome by the Joint Standing Committee of the Primates' meeting, provoked considerable disappointment from more conservative bishops. But they don't constitute "the rest of the Communion", they are pursuing their partisan commitment like the rest of us. (And the Global South isn't a monochrome entity with a single voice - there are as many differences in Africa and Asia as anywhere else on the globe.)

And, after all this, my major criticism of Bishop Carrell's account is its one sidedness. He hears the voice of the conservatives much louder than he hears the voice of others. But their answers are not the only ones, nor do they have a monopoly on faith or wisdom.

The causes of disintegration are also the sources of reconstruction, and multiple answers are possible. My sympathies are unashamedly with TEC - but I don't suppose that whatever happens will simply echo what I (or any other individual) would ideally like to see. The church is formed by the actions and decisions of all its members.

The mind of the church can only be determined by historians, if there could ever be such a thing in the singular. In the meantime all is politics: while we continue to struggle together we stay together - it is when we walk away and stop talking that division ensues (and, as Bishop Carrell notes, in the US at least the only thing holding the dissentients together is their dislike of the Episcopal Church - they walk away in different directions).

And of course the next Lambeth Conference will go ahead. Who would want to miss the opportunity of a truly global shebang in the midst of such uncertainty? To miss this party is to have no say in the shape of the church to come.

Pheonix church

Grandmère Mimi said,

But the church, as we know it, is moribund. A new thing will arise from the ashes of the old, but it will not look much like what we have now.

Perhaps it's moribund. Though it's not dead yet. In fact it seems to have enough energy to squabble and fight in a very lively way.

And the church 'as we know it' has surely always been passing away, it's just that each successive generation knew it as something slightly different and laments the loss of what was good and forgets the bad - a kind of rolling golden age.

But I'm not accusing Grandmère Mimi of nostalgia. I think she means something much bigger - that whatever happens at Lambeth or with covenants or by any official attempts to decide anything, TEC has been torn up and scattered to the winds. The legacy of anger, bitterness, sorrow will poison its soil for a generation. TEC's hurt will wound other parts of Anglicanism, leaving scarring, and possibly a broken body. Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. I recognise the hurt in Linda McMillan's comment and the expectation on her blog of something new (and not just great looking tomatoes).

I guess that only when historians have had the time and distance to turn around and make measured assessments of this period (and their problem will be the excessive number of words poured into the conflicts) will there be a way to assess what has died and what still lives.

So what is important, I think, is to do what we can for the present, not for tomorrow. I add my little voice to the chorus of those who want no greater concentration of power with the Primates (or bishops, for that matter), no top-down power to determine narrow bounds of acceptable doctrine, no command morality. I do this for now, not for the future church.

But I think we do need rules. (I'm thinking I'll post something about why I think rules are important, and the necessity and difficulties of having them in a church, but it may not be straight away.) The rules I want to see would place the people who sit in the pews and chairs on a Sunday, who pray together in small groups, who follow the call of God whever the dance leads them, right as the centre of the church. Rules which require all the paid people, especially the clergy, bishops, bureaucrats, globe-trotting Primates, to be accountable to their congregations. Let there be a hierarchy, by all means, so long as it's upside down.

It seems to me, looking from a distance, that TEC is much further along this line than the CofE is (and possibly will ever be). It clearly isn't a recipe for happiness. And, in a voluntary body which should inherently reject policing and enforcement, rules will only work with those willing to making them work.

This is the life I want to work for, not out of the ashes but mired in the mud.

The shrivelling of synod

I think our Deanery Synod is dying on its feet. I know local synods depend very much on local leadership but I wonder whether this is a symptom of a wider tendency.

All the important decisions are taken in the Deanery Standing Committee which scarcely reports to the Deanery Synod and is scarcely questioned. In fact in the past three Deanery Synods only one of them has conducted any deanery business at all.

Parish ministry is being reduced while money is sidelined into 'fresh expressions'. But what that means is anybody's guess. Or, to be more precise, the Area Dean's guess. But the parishes are still being asked to pay for the privilege.

And most important of all, and again I wonder whether this is just a local version of a wider trend, there is a strong sense of divide between clergy and people. The clergy propose and the people follow. And it is not surprising that the people feel increasingly ignored and sidelined and that nothing they say will make any difference at all.

But I guess this isn't new. It just weighs heavy at the moment.

I believe we are the church, all of us. And all of us should be valued as members, and heard and regarded as important in local decision making - not least when people are members of what should be the local governing body.

Draft Anglican Covenant - TEC's Response

The Executive Council of The Episcopal Church have published their formal response to The Draft Anglican covenant here.

The TEC's response follows a wide consultation and is very sensitive to the differences of opinion this has thrown up. A draft (presumably) of the Church of England's response, by contrast, was leaked to the Daily Telegraph and headlined "C of E to empower foreign bishops". Thanks to Pluralist for following this story.

This is my (largely) cut and paste summary, and original is worth reading in full.

• The Episcopal Church deeply and sincerely desires to continue in the life of mutual responsibility and interdependence with the other churches of the Anglican Communion.
• The tensions of the present moment notwithstanding, we believe that there is a strong common identity that unites Anglicans worldwide. Anglicanism flourishes in geographical and cultural contexts of remarkable diversity. Yet we share a distinctive character that is familiar wherever it is found.

• In this age of globalization and post-colonialism, our Anglican identity fosters a powerful and creative dynamic between the particular and the universal, the local and the global, the contextual and the catholic. The question then, before Anglicans today, is: how can we live more deeply into what God, in Jesus, empowered by the Holy Spirit, is calling us to be in the variety of our local circumstances while, at the same time, remaining in unity with sisters and brothers in Christ who live in different circumstances? and What role can an Anglican covenant play in negotiating the life of the Anglican Communion lived between the local and the global?

They set out three possible roles for a covenant:

• A covenant can describe structures, relationships, or a process by which members of the communion settle disputes.
  
• While many feel that a covenant is neither necessary nor helpful, nonetheless the Episcopal Church remains committed to the effort to perfect this draft so that the resulting Covenant can be a beacon of hope for our common future.

They deal with each section of the draft in turn:

• The Introduction is broadly approved
• The Preamble described as useful. But Some are concerned that the language "to grow as a Communion to the full stature of Christ" could, in this context, imply that Anglicanism is intended to grow into a singular global church rather than a communion of churches.

• Section 2: "The Life We Share" In addition to the first three articles of the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral, namely: that the Holy Scriptures contain all things necessary for salvation, that the standard of faith is set forth in the creeds, and that two sacraments, Baptism and Eucharist, duly administered, are necessary for the church. they would like to see the fourth item ... the embrace of the historic episcopate locally adapted, included at this point.

• The Thirty-nine Articles and the 1662 Book of Common Prayer do not have the status in TEC that they are accorded in the Draft.

• Section 3: "Our Commitment to Confession of the Faith"

• While the commitments contained in Section 3 are commendable, the language used for some of them is subject to various interpretations and misinterpretations. It seems to many of us unwise to place language of this sort within the Covenant without having a clear and agreed-upon definition of what these terms mean. According they propose dropping this section.

• Section 4: "The Life We Share With Others" (drawn heavily from the Standing Commission on Mission and Evangelism in its report to the Anglican Consultative Council 13, known as "Communion and Mission.")

• Many in The Episcopal Church would prefer to see a covenant based largely on the terms of the Covenant for Communion in Mission. This, they believe, would create an Anglican covenant based on relationship rather than structure and more appropriately focus on the missional nature of our interdependence. But, as discussed below, others believe that relationship without structures for determining the shared identity on which relationship is based is not sustainable. This is the critical division with the TEC response.

• Section 5: "Our Unity and Common Life"

• The principal concern voiced by many ... is that it focuses our unity almost entirely on the office of bishop.... While we are indeed an "episcopal" church, the relation of that episcopacy to the baptized, on the one hand, and the emphasis on an increasing role of primates, on the other, raise a variety of concerns. ... Because of The Episcopal Church's embrace of lay people in the governance of the church since 1789, the exercise of episcope is always in relationship to the role and authority of the baptized. Further, most in the Episcopal Church believe that decisions taken by the church should always include lay people, deacons, priests and bishops as a structured part of the decision making process.
• We believe the description of the role of the Instruments of Communion in this section needs further clarification and discussion.

• One of the principal defects in the Draft Covenant as perceived by many in The Episcopal Church is its failure to recognize effectively the voices of lay people, deacons and priests in the councils of the Anglican Communion. In fact, even for those who accept the idea of a covenant, many reject the proposal of the increased role of primates alone as presented in this section.

• Section 6: "Unity of the Communion"

• We note a progression in the six commitments in this section from (i) a relational understanding of communion as consultative and communal (koinonia), to (ii) a more conciliar, consultative process of discerning "common mind," and finally (iii) to a synodical or council structure for decision-making in contentious circumstances.

• Most Episcopalians do not want to see the development of a synodical decision-making body in the Anglican Communion. They would strongly prefer communion as based on relationships and shared participation in service to God's mission.

• Nevertheless, some in The Episcopal Church believe that interdependence and mutual accountability require reasonably well-defined structures of consultation and resolution to function effectively. They believe that a communion of Christian churches is based on relationships of shared identity, and shared identity requires a means of defining that identity and what is and is not within its boundaries. Those in this group believe that the absence of structures for defining what can and cannot fall within our shared identity as Anglicans has contributed to the current discord in the Communion. They believe that instituting such structures is the only logical way to maintain the Communion. Further, they see much value, internally and ecumenically, in a global Anglican Communion that can speak with one voice on important issues of doctrine and practice. They believe that the Communion could pursue God's mission in the world more effectively if the Communion's identity were more clear, its structures were better defined and its decision-making processes more transparent and deliberate.

• We are not of a common mind regarding the authority granted by Section 6 to the various Instruments of Communion, and in particular the Lambeth Conference and the Primates Meetings. Many if not most of our members have serious reservations about what we perceive as a drift towards a world-wide synod of primates with directive power over member churches.

• Ultimately, the fundamental question remains: Is there a need for a juridical/conciliar body in the Anglican Communion to deal with "issues" and is such a body consistent with our understanding of what it means to be an Anglican? With all due respect to our sisters and brothers across the Anglican Communion, a great many in The Episcopal Church do not see the need for such a body at present.

• Section 7: "Our Declaration" contains no issues of concern.

• Overall:

  We are prepared to consider a covenant that says who we are, what we wish to be for the world, and how we will model mutual responsibility and interdependence in the body of Christ. We believe we must be open to God's doing a new thing among us; therefore, we remain open to explore such new possibilities in our common life while honoring established understandings.

  
  

Ordsall Churchyard Wildlife Group

Ordsall Church has approximately three-acres of churchyard, now very largely full. About 10 years ago we set up a wildlife group to make a virtue of necessity: recognising that we couldn't maintain much of it which was already overgrown we looked to bring in more volunteers and, with regular but minimal intervention, enhance the the area for wildlife (mostly birds, small mammals, plants).

The irony has been that the people who joined the project have on the whole been much more concerned with keeping the area neat and tidy so in fact we have managed to maintain the area much more attractively that I ever imagined possible.

There are a series of ironies here: that the place of the dead should be regarded as a haven for the living; that we do this in a largely rural area; that we wall off our dead from the rest of life and then visit the garden of the dead with cut or artificial flowers; that we write their names in stone so that their physical decay below ground is contradicted by the words above - and sooner or later they are all forgotten.

Putting that aside, I am very pleased to say that the work of the group was recognised recently by the Bassetlaw District Council - and on behalf of the group Steve Aston, its chair, received a certificate in recognition of all they had done to enhance the area.

Cryptic comment

Do you think that, when you untie a knot, the string will have just one end?

Then why, when untangling problems, do so many people seem to assume there is only one answer?

Plan B: an alternative to The Draft Anglican Covenant

Six months ago it seemed that the Windsor process, and the covenant in particular, were the only serious games in town for rebuilding of Anglican Communion. Partly because there were no alternatives the stakes were very high: risk a covenant or risk no communion. Where would you place your bets?

In the last few months a number of things have become clearer: the covenant is no longer seen as the way forwards; some in the TEC are making serious provision for schism; some African Provinces (and the Southern Cone) are actively establishing structures within the territory of the TEC in schismatic actions; and yet the Anglican Communion is not necessarily tearing down the middle. Instead of the ejection of TEC (and possibly the Anglican Church in Canada) from the Anglican Communion it seems that some of their accusers are walking away. It is still unclear where the paths pursued by Archbishop Akinola and Archbishop Jensen will lead but, in my estimation, as the reality of schism comes close so some of the fire for schism has burnt out.

In effect the schismatic actions of some have created the beginning of an alternative to the Windsor process.

The covenant stood on the conviction that unity and order are to be found in greater uniformity of doctrine and practice, and thus in less tolerance of difference. Uniformity is an ideal which is visibly not reality. The desire for uniformity has been a strong current setting the direction of discussions – and the attempt to achieve it has driven people further apart.

Turning this ideal around might offer the possibility of an alternative vision of the future. Perhaps Anglicanism could develop in new and surprising ways, and still stay together, valuing both its shared history and its present diversity.

The Anglican Communion is currently held together by bonds of affection, of history, and by a range of written agreements. If each of these strands were disentangled and each formally recognised as entailing different levels of mutual accountability – and therefore differing degrees of distance from one another – there would be much greater room for co-operation.

Bonds of affection, with an inherent presumption of mutual hospitality, could sustain cordial relations between groups which did not, for example, recognize the full range of each other’s orders (of women as priests or bishops, for example). Bonds of affection would continue to reach across cultural and doctrinal differences at the level of personal friendship, mutual aid between parishes and dioceses, and support though missionary and other organizations.

Bonds of history might focus as much on distinctive developments as on commonality of origin such that scholars, liturgiologists, and canon lawyers, for example, could keep talking to one another even where the divides between their respective churches seemed wide and deep.

Bonds of history and friendship need not entail or imply any test or endorsement of other members’ doctrine or practice. They could sustain relationships of hospitality, exchange and mutual learning, and avoid the temptation to insist that anyone take sides on divisive and contentious issues.

Bonds of agreement, on the other hand, could fully or partially recognize the unity and uniformity of doctrine and practice between autonomous churches. Agreements could be global, regional, or bi-lateral; they might concern liturgy or orders, or the exchange of clergy and training; they could be brief statements of unity or detailed specifications of shared canon law. What is key is that they do not have to be uniform: multiple layers of agreement can bind together as effectively as one single covenant while allowing for much greater diversity of practice. In effect this has been the pattern the Anglican Communion has followed since the uneven process of recognition of the Church of South India and the differing practices on the ordination of women.

New groupings could not be restricted to provinces. Already groups based on common interests and shared convictions such as African churches in the USA and British Provincial Episcopal Visitors cut across provinces and dioceses, some formally accepted and others seen as intrusions. New affinity groups would develop. The outcome would be an uneven, lumpy, energetic Communion. The points of conflict would be sharpest wherever new groups seek to cut across existing jurisdictions and formal agreements.

All of this would entail a new Anglican ecclesiology. A diocese would no longer be a geographic entity which would require re-thinking the nature of the episcopacy. Conversely the voluntary nature of church adherence would be embodied in a much more varied church.

The Instruments of Unity would have to change as a consequence. Bonds of history would keep the Archbishop of Canterbury as the focal point of communion. The Lambeth Conference would no longer meet (already the Global South are considering an alternative meeting of bishops in 2008). The Primates’ Meeting would be re-cast in scope and membership.

The Anglican Consultative Council would become pivotal to holding the Communion together. It would monitor and share formal agreements and weave together the fraying threads of the Communion. It would be broker, facilitator, and communicator. Its work would rest on bonds of history and affection, always conscious of the voluntary nature of participation.

Like real life this is complex, untidy and, I think, hopeful. It makes a virtue of necessity, finding treasures in the mess. The Anglican Communion is no longer dependent on the Church of England nor on the Archbishop of Canterbury but, as a family of adults each of whom lives their independent life, there is much that has been shared that no-one wants to throw away and much that we value in one another, even if we meet less often and don’t see eye to eye in the way we used.

At the very least the presence of an alternative to the covenant might help lower tension at the table and change the question from ‘covenant or communion?’ to ‘what sorts of communion?’

Doris Lessing

Congratulations to Doris Lessing on the award of the Nobel prize for literature. She's a brilliant writer.
And, even better, I loved her dismissive response, out shopping when the news was made public, and then telling everyone how the committee sent someone years ago to tell her they didn't like her work.

Andrew Plus: The Covenant is dead, but can we get back to square one?

I believe this to be an accurate and balanced account of where the Covenant proposal has got to (October 2007):

Andrew Plus: The Covenant is dead, but can we get back to square one?

There are a couple of outstanding questions about the Covenant if we grant, as would seem to be the case, that it is dead as a regulatory scheme.

1) Given the public endorsements it has had, can it really be allowed to die?
2) Those who want a regulatory framework are unlikely to be satisfied. Even if its main proponents leave the fold, will not those who are left continue to worry at this bone and look for other ways to get to the same goal? There always seem to be people who want to order the church in their own image.

I would guess that, when some of the dust has settled and the membership of the Anglican Communion (Provinces, Dioceses and people) becomes clearer, the issue of a regulatory framework will be revisited. Watch out for those who seek to delegate powers to some innocuous sounding but high-powered international committee.

Wounderful Church

I received an email today that was evidently written in a rush. It was full of mistypings including the phrase: 'wounderful church'.

I think this is brilliant.

The church full of wonder: in worship at its best and in ordinary, in its care for its members and shared prayer, in its ability to nurture holiness in pragmatic loving ways and to offer real service to the people it is set amongst.

It is also a deeply wounded church, and often wounding. Its worship can be banal and off-putting, members and visitors alike can easily be hurt and often are, and prayer can be absent or even used against people. It sometimes seems as though holiness is nurtured despite, or in defiance of, church structures and the ordinary priorities of local church life. And service may be an excuse for arrogantly telling other people how to live or, conversely, it goes unnoticed and unacknowledged.

Perhaps this is the way it has to be. Churches are made up of ordinary people and always have been. Reality and aspiration have never matched. People are mixtures of wounds and creativity, of love and callousness, of ambition, bitterness, generosity and carelessness: why should the church be any different?

And yet I cling to the idea - contradicted by almost all my experience - that it is possible the bend or push or entice the church towards the more positive end of its range: to nurture faith and holiness (in the broadest sense), to care for one another and for strangers, to give in ways that echo God's generosity, to love and be loved.

All these years, all these bruises, and still a romantic dreamer.

The Seminar on Conflict Ecclesiology

I have been invited to join the blog Seminar on Conflict Ecclesiology. I feel quite chuffed.

It's rules are firm: start with a question without expressing one's own opinions. This is a hard discipline. I'm keen to tell, rather than to ask, it's why I'm such a bad teacher. And on the whole a blog is about telling the world - or the invisible unknowable other - who I am and what I think. It will be good to learn.

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.

Anglican Ecclesiology, and mine

I suspect I'm fast heading away from the dominant note in tomorrow's Anglican ecclesiology.

I think this note is: the higher up the hierarchy the closer to divine authority.

On the contrary, I believe in the people of God - the ordinary people in the pew, the not sure and the over-definite, the tired and enthusiastic, and especially in the patient, quiet seeker after God. In the people I know and the millions I don't.

What we believe matters vitally. But the credal what of what we believe is only part of faith. Faith is living as though we believe the creed - the unqualified throwing of ourselves into living in the truth of the Christian faith. Our relationship with God is in its making, in its realising, not in disembodied statements. Our discipleship lies in living out credal faith as though it were true; and in doing so we realise its truth.

Which means such faith is always (this side of death) provisional: it is constrained by our limited vision, our limited capacity to act as though God were God and all creation were God's, our frail faith. It is limited too by logic: no human act (or statement) can ever be complete - it's meaning is only knowable in retrospect and can only be known in the web of all knowledge (speech) and always retains ambiguity, its causes and consequences can only be partially assessed.

This is a picture of Christian life in which the given data of faith (Creeds, traditions, patterns of worship, customs of prayer, moral standards) meet the transitory, wobbly, ambiguous mess of daily life of ordinary believers. It is in this process that the Christian faith is given life and, like all life, inevitably grows and changes.

And I think that apprehension of God is not focused in the few but is distributed amongst the many, and therefore so too is authority in faith. I entirely accept the need for a structure of ministers (and I think what they do and how they do it is more important than names and labels) and I would argue that they, and academics of all relevant flavours, should have weight in the continuous discernment of what is appropriate in Christian living. Ultimately, however, judgement should - I think - rest with the whole Church, not with slices of it. We need to re-vitalise (or re-invent) the doctrine and practice of reception.

Therefore I wish to assert an ecclesiology grounded in God's faithful people, not in Primates, Instruments of Unity, Bishops or Covenants. Authority is distributed, and so too is wisdom, discernment, knowledge, and faith. I wish to assert an ecclesiology of pluralism, of the recognition of internal conflict as normal, of complexity, uncertainty and provisionality, and of ordinary living faith in an intimate as transcendent God.

Which scarcely fits the desire of parts of the Anglican Communion to simplify, to demand immediate conformity to certain ways of doing things, to agree common global standards of behaviour, to set out a contract by which we can all be Anglicans (as if we weren't already).

And anyway, a hierarchy which leaves its followers behind is somewhat risible.

I bought an antique scythe

It's a long time since I posted anything, and much longer since I wrote a poem (other than haiku). So this is, I hope, a sign of a return to more writing after a long, dry period.

I bought an antique scythe

I bought an antique two-handed

agricultural scythe. A joke:

I looked as risible as death

in the small shop’s mottled mirror

and remembered through my child’s eyes,

crow-sharp and credulous, watching

two men ecstatically swaying,

to the swing of the wheat as it fell:

an easy labour, not scything

but smoking, talking men’s talk, spitting

on stones. This is no time for grief;

I have lost the loss of the scythe.

The curved snath, weathered and bent round

generations of peasants, tall

as a reaper, the curlew blade

dulled, like history, from disuse.

Eyes never saw what my memory recalled

collaged it from folk song, old film,

willed-dream: mowing is mechanised,

misbeliefs purchased with credit.

I shall scour the sweat from its shaft,

burnish the blade and sheath its edge,

fix it to a wall, exhibition

of beyond recollection or,

more daring, set it over a door

dead-locked against the past;

and accidents.

Through a Glass, Darkly, Jeff Sharlet

This article was published in Harper's magazine, though I first saw it on the Revealer.

I found it a fascinating and well-written and disturbing account of US fundamentalist attitudes which both help show some of the differences between US Christian fundamentalists and other species of fundamentalisms, and some of the features common to the genus.

The article is part of a forthcoming 'narrative history of fundamentalism'. Sharlet seeks to set fundamentalism in American history, and also shows how the fundamentalists re-tell history to ground their own account of the present.

Two (separate) quotes:

'Those unable to feel His soothing touch at moments such as these snort at the notion of a god with the patience or the prurience to monitor every tick and twitch of desire, a supreme being able to make a lion and a lamb cuddle but unable to abide two men kissing. A divine love that speaks through hurricanes. Who would worship such a god?'

His thesis is that fundamentalists are not newcomers but 'the natural temperature of the nation'.

Later in the article he recounts,

'Rusty and I talked back by the literature tables. He had something he wanted to explain. He had neglected the twin sins, he said, the two wicked acts that fundamentalists believe to be the collective responsibility of the entire society in which they occur. "Child sacrifice"-by which he meant abortion-"and sodomy. Any nation that condoned those behaviors? That did not challenge them, that did not prevent them from happening? It will be reduced to rubble."

'He shook his head, eyes squeezed shut. The church had allowed women to murder their children and men through sodomy to damn themselves and all their brothers. It was his fault more than theirs because he knew the "blueprint of God's Word." '

Those who know God's blueprint are the most dangerous: they are scarcely containable by what other people would call rational means. Nor can they see that they have set up an image of God, a limited version of the Bible, and have made that their God; technically idolatry.