Hills of the North

Could Madoff's swindle have saved thousands of lives?

2009-01-12T19:30:00.003-05:00

It's hard to see how much good could come from a swindle such as the Ponzi scheme orchestrated by Bernard Madoff. But read this Catholic News Agency article, and you'll see why perhaps God is using this tragedy for many to save the lives of many others.

It seems one of the entities whose funds Madoff "managed" was the Picower Foundation, which with its billion dollars in assets aggressively support the abortion agenda. The (blessed) results?

Slate.com blogger Nancy Goldstein on Wednesday reported that abortion advocacy groups are facing financial shortfalls because of the Picower Foundation’s collapse.
“Picower was one of a handful of foundations willing to stick their necks out and significantly fund the three organizations that handle virtually all major reproductive rights-related litigation and legal advocacy in the United States,” the pro-abortion rights Goldstein wrote. “Now the Center for Reproductive Rights needs to make up a $600,000 shortage in 2009; Planned Parenthood is out $484,000; the ACLU's Reproductive Freedom Project is off $200,000.”

And now Planned Parenthood's headquarters is laying off 20 percent of its staff as a result.

It's hard not to see the providence of God in this.

Moving soon

2009-01-09T17:23:00.002-05:00

Just a heads-up to readers to watch this space. Hills of the North is moving soon to another platform. If the transition is successful, all the articles here should transfer over, although undoubtedly there will be issues with media and links, some of which I'm trying to resolve now. I'll post the new URL when done with the move, and will try to alert those of you who link to the blog.

Best wishes to all the blog's readers for a Blessed and Happy New Year.

Shame on Christ Church Alexandria

2008-12-20T09:16:00.006-05:00

If you are a parishioner or vestrymember at Christ Church, Alexandria, you should feel really, really ashamed and embarrassed this morning. Judge Bellows in his final opinion in the Virginia cases (ruling against the diocese and the national church) categorically rejected the last-minute assertion that Christ Church Alexandria was in fact the owner of two acres of property belonging to the Falls Church (TFC). Without exactly calling the claim ludicrous, disingenous, and dishonest (because that was hardly necessary), the judge noted it was "wholly at odds with the historical record, with numerous court orders and petitions over the past century and a half, with the land records of Fairfax and Arlington Counties, and with ECUSA's and the Diocese's own repeated assertions and admissions recognizing TFC as the legal owner of this two-acre parcel." The judge exposed the claim as farce and fiction, noting that "prior to the instant litigation, Christ Church, Alexandria never asserted a claim on this two-acre parcel, nor contributed to its development, maintenance, repairs, or improvements."

The parish, you'll recall, was rushed (some might say bullied) into asserting this ownership claim well into the litigation by the diocese and a rector no doubt eager to please the bishop. Something about the parish and rector and vestry made Bishop Lee bet (successfully) that Christ Church Alexandria could be counted on to act more as Christ Church Stepford--even at the risk of humiliation such as the court handed them yesterday. This was in spite of the fact that everyone at Christ Church knew, if they were honest with themselves, that there was no such ownership interest. After all, had they ever done anything that would suggest they thought they owned the Falls Church property? Had the rector or bishop or any of the others who pushed the vestry and parish into this ill-considered assertion ever spoken of Christ Church's property at the Falls Church? Had Christ Church ever thought they had a dog in this fight before they were cajoled into becoming partisans in a lawsuit against other Christians in other parishes with whom they had no issue?

And what does this tell us about the sort of church Christ Church has become? Are the parishioners at Christ Church truly so pliant and nonquestioning that they would allow themselves to be associated with a position so plainly at odds with what they knew were the facts? Were they at all concerned by participating in what was in the view of many (including the court, it turns out) a baseless sham--merely to cause financial harm to fellow Christians?

The court was charitable not to call out Christ Church further, leaving the question of whether they acted mendaciously or haplessly (or both) to others. (And, truly, what are the alternatives?) But if I were a parishioner at Christ Church, I would insist on some answers from the rector and vestry and diocese, and demand some accountability for making the once-venerable parish such a public laughing stock (or worse). Certainly those in the pews at Christ Church should ask themselves if this sort of folly, or funding those who led them down this path, is what they want their tithes and offerings going to.

For background on Christ Church decision to support Bishop Lee's Folly, there's a good summary here: BabyBlueOnline: A Bridge Too Far?

Colson on Blagojevich

2008-12-12T14:34:00.005-05:00

Chuck Colson, on Rod Blagojevich: "If anyone knows how Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich feels right now, I do," writes Colson. Reading this is a good reminder that the governor deserves our prayers, and that perhaps from this God could work a miracle in the governor's life, as he did in Colson's. Colson concludes his piece thus:

"If Blagojevich is guilty, the best thing that could happen to him is to be tried and convicted. He's going to have to reach rock bottom -- just as I did -- before he will be able to escape his own prison of pride, self-delusion and self-righteousness. But that's a transformation we can never accomplish on our own. I can vouch for the fact that human pride is simply too strong.

"[C. S.] Lewis was right: Pride is a spiritual cancer. And the only cure, for any of us, is to stop looking down and to look up. The cure can only be brought about in someone who has come to realize that the will and power to do good and not evil comes from God alone."

Read it all.

The Archbishop of Canterbury as carmaker

2008-12-11T06:06:00.004-05:00

Does this sound at all familiar?

In so far as we are admired as a nation for the health of our political life and for our freedom from civil dissension and upheaval, it is largely due to that British pragmatism which brushes aside theoretical issues that might arouse furious controversy, and gets on with the immediate job in hand. The English philosophy in this respect is a simple one. If six people disagree violently about where they want to go, the best thing to do is set them to work making a car so that, in the long run, they can go somewhere, easily and comfortably. Meantime one hopes that something external may occur which will provide an obvious reason for going to one destination rather than another. Or indeed the finished car might, by a lucky fluke, turn out to have a convenient if unforeseen technical bias in its steering which inclines it to turn in on directions rather than another. And until the hour of decision arrives, there is a tacit understanding among the six makers of the car that all reference to its future use will be rigidly excluded from their conversation. They will do their best to compensate for any frustrations on this score by talking fast and furiously about the mechanics of manufacture and the relative merits of various petrols, lubricants, plugs, and batteries. This arrangement once accepted, the fellow who persists in raising awkward questions like--Where are we going to go? or, What is the point of making a car anyway? and Why not make a washing machine instead? --this fellow is regarded with contempt by his companions as being ill-bred, fatuously literal, absurdly doctrinaire, totally unpractical, and in the last resort a bore. He merits, in the upshot, the ultimate condemnation of the British mind. He can't get on with people.

Another excerpt from Harry Blamires' now-45-year-old book, The Christian Mind.

Friendly fire

2008-12-05T06:14:00.011-05:00

Comments included in this post about the Anglican Communion Institute prompted some sharp responses over at StandFirm from those who share the ACI perspective, or at least felt that this blog was too harsh in its comments toward the ACI (suggesting they appeared bitter and should be a bit more Anglican and a little less institutionally Episcopalian). One friendly commenter suggested "pastorally" that this writer should re-read the second chapter of James.

This is not the first time those who dare criticize the ACI have been accused of being overly harsh and unjust. We should not, it is said, denigrate those who prefer the so-called "inside strategy," just because we might have opted for the "outside strategy." The converse should also be true, though. Therein is the problem. But more on that in a moment.

First it should be noted that the ACI has done phenomenal work producing scholarly analysis on a whole range of issues. Their work has been so well done--often to the point of being unanswerable--that it has put the lie to many of the assertions of the Episcopal Church. These include assertions theretofore unchallenged (or challenged only in polemical fashion) about the Episcopal Church's polity, history, and doctrine. There is no denying these impressive and important ACI contributions to orthodox Anglicanism in this country and the Communion.

It is no secret that the ACI opposed any new Anglican province in North America. They view this undertaking--at best an innovation in their view--as an ecclesiological matter rather un-Anglican, as unnecessarily contributing to schism in the Anglican Communion writ large, and as a practical matter ultimately doomed to failure. Their concerns were serious ones, and ones that many others (including this blogger, still an Episcopalian) have shared. And there's no indication these concerns have not been taken very seriously by those involved in the original Anglican Communion Network (ACN) and now the proposed new province. The ACI was right to raise these concerns, and do so as they did in a thoroughgoing and scholarly fashion. Some may have disagreed with their perspective, but plainly it was offered in a way that contributed meaningfully to the debate. Equally plain was that the ACI was committed to orthodox Anglicanism in America and throughout the Communion.

At the end of the day, though, the ACI lost the argument about whether a new province should be brought into being. They lost less because of the weakness of their arguments, or their small and shrinking constituency, than because of the mendacity and corruption of the Episcopal Church and the bulk of its bishops. The political reality was that there was a determined and orchestrated marginalization and purge of the orthodox from the Episcopal Church that was not going to be stopped--not by the plain language of the canon of Scripture, not by the plain language of the canons of the church, and certainly not by ACI white papers. Even if the ACI's arguments were the better ones, they never had a chance of success. This was not the ACI's fault (although I suspect even they would admit to some naivete about how corrupt the Episcopal Church had become). It was likewise not the fault of those leaving the Episcopal Church.

One can infer from the words of ACI supporters, though, that they attribute this failure precisely to who have left. This is certainly an understandable perspective, and as a purely mathematical proposition it probably is true--if none of the orthodox had left through the years we would not be where we are today. It does become progressively more difficult to argue an inside strategy when there's virtually no one left inside. And surely they must feel abandoned. Not only have the orthodox left by the thousands, many, if not most, of those orthodox once fully shared the ACI perspective of staying in and at least making a witness (about all that can be done now, as the ACI admits; there really is no inside strategy, and can't be.) It is easy to understand how they must feel, since there's hardly an orthodox American Anglican who has not been exactly where they find themselves: trying their darnedest to be an authentic orthodox voice within the Episcopal Church while all around everyone else is bailing.

What the ACI did not seem to understand was that for many the decision to leave has been a gut-wrenching one, involving not just grown-up, mature believers who could have perhaps make the sacrifices to continue fighting within what has become an apostate church. No, this was a decision involving children and those not so mature in the faith, where positive and lifelong harm was likely to be done if they stayed. It was not an issue of being more comfortable--indeed, the effect of leaving the church of one's birth or choice was often to be thrown into a wilderness of sorts, without any Anglican church of any sort. For those leaving it was almost always simply an issue of faithfulness.

Moreover, the decision to create a new Anglican province was an affirmative decision to remain Anglican, with the alternative being to abandon Anglicanism entirely (as many, perhaps most, of those who have left had done). However flawed the new province may be, it is in fact an effort to maintain an Anglican witness, and not have all North American Anglicanism disappear as the Episcopal Church descends into irrelevancy.

It always seemed the ACI viewed the entire matter mainly as an issue of ecclesiology. But to most of those leaving it has been a quintessentially pastoral matter, begging for a pastoral response--something seemingly outside the ACI's ken and reflex and remit. To be fair, the ACI has been trying to approach the issues dispassionately and in scholarly fashion, so in their view to maximize their effectiveness. At some point, though, such an approach seems very much stuck in an ivory tower, and very much removed from what's happening to individual families in real churches. To those reading the various ACI missives, it was akin to going to a doctor to get treatment for a painful condition, only to have the physician review with you all the great scientific work that was happening in the area and its many implications--before sending you on your way no better off.

Or, perhaps, referring to James 2 as I was advised to do, it seems a bit like being told to "go in peace, be warm and filled" without having been given any means to accomplish that.

In short, it's pretty easy to understand why the ACI vexes so many as they do, even though for some reason it's not so easy for ACI sorts to grasp.

The ACI lost the argument. That's lost--past tense. The argument is over because the province is here. Discussion now about whether the province was a smart thing or not is purely academic. And as an academic matter it belongs to the historians, and it's far too soon to start making historical judgments now. Which is to say there's very little at this point the ACI can say about the new province that will be constructive, either to the situation at hand or to history (that is, unless they accept the province as reality and begin to offer thoughts as to how it can be assimilated into the Communion).

But still one gets the sense that some on the ACI side feel it necessary to justify their criticism of the new province, doing so even long after it was clear that the effort would proceed. ACI quotations critical of the new province showed up in press reports of the new province's launch. One has to wonder what possibly is motivating them at this point to spend such energy against the new province, instead of against the heterodoxy, canonical abuse, and Communion-breaking actions of the Episcopal Church. As the ever-irenic Dean Munday earlier wrote, "I believe the ACI's efforts would win the support of a greater number of people if they spent more time telling us how they propose to save the ship and less time knocking holes in other people's lifeboats." Surely he was right.

It is this lifeboat vandalism that those of us who now criticize the ACI object to, not their valiant efforts to maintain a witness still within the Episcopal Church. Yes, there are some now on the outside who do not understand why the ACI fights on, and who view the ACI's work as quixotic and irrelevant. There are some who are now experiencing the elation of being free from the sickness that is the Episcopal Church who feel it necessary to condemn those who remain, forgetting that not so long ago they were in the same place. This is surely unhelpful. The ACI and all those faithful Christians still in the Episcopal Church deserve the support and prayers of those who have chosen to leave.

But it is high time for the ACI and its supporters to stop the unhelpful friendly fire, to quit complaining about those who have left, to quit doing all they can to undermine the new province, and instead focus their attention on the witness they say they are called to make within the Episcopal Church, in support of the Communion Partners and the rest of the faithful remnant within. When they do otherwise, they should not be surprised that others (correctly or not) think them a bit too institutionally focused, and just a tad bitter.

More on at-large ACNA membership

2008-12-04T12:54:00.007-05:00

The considerable amount of feedback that's been forthcoming regarding this article suggests that the idea of some sort of "at-large" or "watchcare" membership in the new Anglican Church in North America resonates with many of this blog's readers. Several have asked that I be more specific in how this might work. So instead of answering all those queries individually, I offer this postscript to my earlier post, if only to prompt some discussion. Here's how an alternative form of membership might work:

1. The default for church membership should continue to be involvement and association with a parish in a diocese under a bishop. Nothing should be done to dilute that, and the goal of any other form of membership should ultimately be to steer the person into normal membership in an ACNA parish as quickly as possible. So alternative forms of membership should always be viewed as transitional in nature.

2. Certain benefits that flow to church members by virtue of their membership should not attach to those in an at-large membership. Those members should probably not have voting rights, and should likewise not be counted in the censuses taken to determine diocese size, even if the persons are within the geographical area of the diocese.

3. At-large membership should not be available to those who have an ACNA parish within a certain distance of their home--perhaps 20 miles. In no way should such membership undercut existing ACNA parishes or church plants. That one is not keen on the "flavor" of a nearby ACNA parish (e.g., charismatic or Anglo-Catholic) is not reason to violate this rule. We certainly don't need to encourage any more Balkanization than there exists already.

4. Those allowed to have at-large membership must otherwise meet the requirements for church membership (baptism, confirmation, etc.). They would have to already have had prior membership in a church (preferably Anglican of some sort).

5. Those seeking alternative membership will have to be current members of another church, or at least certify (or provide evidence) that they are involved regularly with another church.

6. Such membership would have to be reviewed periodically, with recertifications made if necessary by the members. Such memberships could be canceled after a certain period of time if the members come to be within close proximity of an ACNA parish or plant.

7. Those seeking at-large membership should be expected to financially support the ACNA through annual pledges, even if they also have membership in another church.

8. The ACNA should not count these at-large members in their membership or ASA numbers, but always report these number separately (if at all).

9. Those with at-large membership should be assigned to the pastoral care of an ACNA bishop. That bishop could provide services (or arrange for such services) that the at-large members could not receive in their current churches, such as Anglican confirmation instruction.

10. At-large membership can be held at the same time as regular membership in another (non-ACNA) parish is held. But if one needed to transfer letters from one's previous church (an Episcopal Church, for example) before having another church home, those letters could be received and held by ACNA in the same way as regular membership transfers are done. This could be an option for those who can't abide having their numbers attributed to the Episcopal Church rolls, but who do not yet have another place to go.

11. At-large members should in every way be made to know they are in fact members of the Anglican Church of North America--through membership certificates, communications, and in all the ways members should be treated. They should know that this is their Anglican church. They should be able to say that they are Anglicans, not only by affection, but by affiliation.

12. For those for whom at-large membership would not be available (those close to an ACNA parish, for example) or those who prefer a less formal membership association, there could be "supporting members" who belong upon making a donation of a certain amount or paying a stated membership fee, much as one would join any other non-profit. These supporting members would not be assigned to a bishop or have access to the pastoral resources that at-large members would. But this would provide another source of financial support to the denomination.

Stephen Noll in a StandFirm comment asks whether the American Anglican Council might take on such an endeavor. While they might have the best list of prospects for such members at large, what's envisaged (save in #12 above) is actual membership in the new Anglican Church in North America, something transcending what the AAC currently provides. But it may well be that the AAC--now led by a bishop in the new church--would be a very good group within the Anglican Church in North America to provide such support.

As noted in the earlier posting, many who are leaving the Episcopal Church have gone to non-Anglican churches. Often this is out of necessity, owing to the lack of any Anglican alternative. But as time marches on, the chances increase that these families will be lost to Anglicanism forever, as people like the stability of staying put in a church. They get used to what they weren't used to before. This proposal may not be able to stop this reality. But it can serve in the long term to help folks maintain their Anglican identity, so that they might be more prone to join an Anglican church plant when one comes their way.

"We're Anglican and you're not"

2008-12-04T08:20:00.002-05:00

That was pretty much what the snide and graceless reaction of the Episcopal Church headquarters was to the announcement of the new Anglican Church in North America. "We will not predict what will or will not come out of this meeting, but simply continue to be clear that the Episcopal Church, along with the Anglican Church of Canada and La Iglesia Anglicana de Mexico, comprise the official, recognized presence of the Anglican Communion in North America," said the Rev. Charles Robertson, canon to Presiding Bishop.

If 815 was so convinced of the insignificance of the undertaking, and wanted to use the opportunity to appear like the mature, established ecclesiastical presence they take such pride in purporting to be, the statement would have perhaps expressed regret, but at the same time noted the commonality of heritage and mission, and express hope for cooperation in the future as together with all of Christ's church they work for the spread of the Gospel.

That, of course, isn't possible, though, because the leadership of the Episcopal Church rejects that heritage, save in outward manifestations like buildings, frocks, and finery. And in no sense do the Episcopal Church's powers-that-be even understand what the Gospel is, or what mission is as Christ defined it to be.

So what else could they say, but "We're Anglican and they're not." It remains about the last distinctive the Episcopal Church has. And that does nothing to bring in new members, or these days even keep the old ones. It has no persuasive power to keep young people a part of the church. It's the ecclesiastical equivalent of the headstone inscription for a deceased motorist that reads, "He had the right of way"--although perhaps one day the claim of the Episcopal Church may be even less compelling. Though intended to denigrate the new undertaking it served in fact to do little more than point to the inherent weakness and shallowness of a church whose statistics released this week strongly suggest its demographic death is fast approaching.

Another wag, the Rev. Frederick Schmidt at SMU, raised the question of whether one can build a church around a negative. Good question, that, and fair warning to the new province. But in truth it is the Episcopal Church that is now a church existing on negative premises: that others are not Anglicans, that others are bigots, that others aren't as socially enlightened as they are; that others aren't sophisticated enough to stop having children; that others are "fundamentalists" that others haven't apologized for the sins of others as it has; and so forth. Very little the Episcopal Church does these days does not carry with it implicit condemnation of other Christians, past and present, so to build up its own pride, and perhaps convince itself that it is better than its empty pews would suggest.

Bishop Duncan volunteered in his press conference that of course the new province is not the official branch of Anglicanism in North America, and that the Episcopal Church and Anglican Church in Canada were. That is the nature of the undertaking: creating a new province that one day might be in position to be recognized. The Episcopal Church may succeed for many years, many decades even, in keeping the Anglican franchise, even well after a majority of the world's Anglicans recognize the new North American Church and its archbishop. But what Bishop Duncan was saying was that this is not everything, not now and not ever. Christ and his Gospel are everything. And therein is the crucial difference in perspectives.

A modest suggestion for the new province

2008-12-04T06:15:00.006-05:00

Much will be written today elsewhere about the fledgling Anglican Church in North America, which yesterday came into being, at least in a provisional sense. Surely it is time for such a move, if only to stem the flow of orthodox Episcopalians out of the Anglican fold entirely. And the anecdotal evidence (and the numbers not adding up) suggests that's exactly what is happening to most of those orthodox who have been leaving the Episcopal Church. Certainly in this part of Georgia, if one leaves one's Episcopal parish there is no other alternative. It continues to astound this writer that the ACI does not see merit in the new proposed province if only for this reason: that it offers hope for a continued, robust, and numerically significant Anglican witness in North America that they would acknowledge (by their surrender on the issue of reform) that the Episcopal Church no longer can, given its heterodoxy. If the ACI were truly Anglican, instead of merely Episcopal, one would think they would want those who will out of conscience leave the Episcopal Church to go somewhere other than the local Methodist or Presbyterian or non-denominational church, or to Roman Catholicism or big-O Orthodoxy. One senses, though, no small amount of petulant bitterness on their part toward those who do not share their institutional loyalty. It says much that they would apparently prefer those leaving the Episcopal Church abandon Anglicanism altogether.

There are many shortcomings in this new enterprise, ones that are evident in the constitutive documents--meaning they are ones that the founders acknowledge, which is a good thing. The model of subsidiarity that Bishop Duncan spoke of does give hope that some of the differences within the entities that make up the new province can be accomodated. That said, there will be a need for identity, in nomenclature so as to prevent confusion, and in structure so as to ensure efficiency. This will have to be more than merely another alphabet-soup collection of Anglican-ish entities if it is to succeed. Right now it appears to be more Articles of Confederation than Constitution, and one suspects therein may now be its strength, but later its weakness.

Perhaps the greatest weakness, though, is that it does not yet provide anything, save a spot of hope, for those not near any parish that's in the new province--and that is most of North America. That's not the fault of the new province; indeed, to have the 700 parishes and church plants they have is extraordinarily impressive. But it will be many years before there is parish coverage across the country.

So here is my modest suggestion for the new province. Enable a class of at-large membership, membership that does not supplant or discourage membership in a local church, but that gives an orthodox Anglican either stuck in a heterodox Episcopal Church, or having to affiliate for the moment with another sort of church because of there being no orthodox Anglican church, a way to keep their Anglican identity. There are models for dual membership already, particularly for college students who are away from their home church, or "snowbirds" in Florida--called "watchcare" membership in some places. Such an affiliate membership would have many benefits:

1. It would significantly expand the membership base of the new province.

2. It would provide financial support for the province beyond the current membership base, and provide those with affiliate membership a place they can send their tithes and offerings if they are unable by reason of conscience to give it to their local church.

3. It would enable the province to gauge where there is a critical mass for a church plant.

4. It would provide a mechanism for affiliate members to find one another for fellowship or to work toward a church plant.

5. It would actually make it more palatable for those where there is no Anglican church, but who have stopped attending their Episcopal Church, to move their letters from an Episcopal Church to the non-Anglican church they now attend, as they would not in the process lose their Anglican identity. And the Episcopal Churches would then, if honest, have off of their rolls numbers they now legitimately claim as members, but who in fact have nothing at all to do with the Episcopal Church.

6. If it were possible to transfer membership to the new province from a local parish, this would also provide a rather visible way for those still in the Episcopal Church to register their disapproval for what they see happening in the denomination.

7. If structured so, it could provide services and resources to those stuck in non-orthodox or non-Anglican churches--alternatives for confirmation instruction, for example, and involvement in the various ministries (men's, women's, youth, college, etc.) that one presumes will soon have to spring up as part of the new Anglican Church in North America.

We are as Anglicans quite wed to the parish model of membership, and that does not have to be jettisoned or diluted. But the times call for a bit of creativity, and one way the new Anglican Church in North America can expand its ministry is to consider new forms of membership that show the same flexibility as has been shown in putting together this enterprise so far. This is fact could be the key to a much more rapid expansion than those leading the new province have thus far considered possible.

Blamires on the incarnation

2008-12-04T06:03:00.003-05:00

From Harry Blamires' 1963 classic, The Christian Mind:

Into such a situation as this our Lord came. The world was rotten. Vice was rife. The wealthy lived in luxury: the poor were oppressed and down-trodden. There was debauchery and corruption in the cities of the Roman world as now in our own cities. There was slavery and injustice as in the darker parts of the world to-day. There was drunkenness and perversion. Bureaucracy prospered. Men bribed their way to power. There is no evil now which did not exist then, two thousand years ago. Nevertheless our Lord came. He came into the midst of it. And he found the shortage of residential accommodation so acute that he had to be born in a stable like the child of refugees or squatters. But he came, and he grew here, talked and taught here. He didn't come in style. He didn't wear an old school tie. He didn't flourish duplicated testimonials. He didn't have a good Oxford accent or an assurance bred of Public School conditioning. He came from a working-class home; he spoke a provincial dialect; and he had a body of followers some of whom might well have failed their eleven plus or their college entrance examination. He came here at the humblest level because, as God , that was where he wanted to be; where best he could work and serve and love. At the level of the factory-worker and the farm-worker, at the level of the under-privileged. He came. And he wasn't a great success in the world. He didn't have a brilliant career of climb the social ladder. He didn't acquire more and more prestige, status, and possessions. He didn't get on. He was more like you and me than those expensively suited gentlemen in the glossy magazines who are surrounded by sleek cars, sleeker women, and smart furntiture. He came, by every act and word to show up the world's evil, yet never to pretend it was not a world fit for him, the divine, to be in, and on the bottom floor.

Tamzine

2008-11-16T21:49:00.011-05:00

Her name was Tamzine, and there was nothing formidable or impressive about her. Not even 15 feet long, and with a draft of just 18 inches, one would hardly have thought the little wooden fishing boat capable of military service of any sort. She was certainly no troop transport ship. She had none of the capacity, protection, armament, or speed of the Royal Navy's warships or of the Merchant Marine's cargo fleet. She was certainly no match for the weapons the enemy could bring to bear.

But there was no time to wait for the perfect ship, the ideal vehicle, if you were a British soldier trapped in Dunkirk in May of 1940. Indeed, the larger draft vessels could not get as close to shore as could little boats like Tamzine, and the larger ships were also larger targets for the Luftwaffe. So in what Churchill was later to call a "miracle of deliverance," Tamzine and some 700 other small craft and lifeboats did what the larger ships alone could not do: rescue over 338,000 stranded and imperiled British and allied soldiers, bringing them to safety in England. The boats and ships of that rag-tag flotilla in fact proved to have been the perfect vessels for the task.

What must at first have seemed like a desperate, ill-conceived, and amateurish response to a dreadful military disaster in fact provided the great rallying point for the British. What must have to the Germans seemed laughable and foolish in fact not only succeeded but also gave Britons the resolve to defend their island nation and (with a spot of help from the Yanks) win the war. Churchill's rousing "We will fight on the beaches" address was prompted by the events of Dunkirk. And that "Spirit of Dunkirk" lasted far longer than the operation itself, and remains still part of how Brits define themselves.

"Wars are not won by evaculations," Churchill told the Commons afterward, keenly aware that the heroism of "Little Ships of Dunkirk" was made necessary by a colossal military failure, for which he was largely responsible. "Operation Dynamo," as it was called, also came at the cost of six British destroyers, and many hundreds of artillery pieces, countless tanks, and other critical materiel left behind in France. And the end of the war was nowhere in sight.

Today, of course, we know how important that rescue was, especially to morale. The little fishing boat Tamzine is in the Imperial War Museum, the oldest and smallest of the surviving Little Ships, as representative of a bold and risky undertaking that saved countless souls and helped save a nation. Churchill was right not to "assign to this deliverance the attributes of a victory." But he was perceptive enough even then to realize that "there was a victory inside this deliverance."

We learned today that on December 3rd in Wheaton, Illinois, a new Anglican church in North America will come into being. It will not be perfect. In many ways it will be decidedly imperfect, insufficient, and ill-equipped. But there is not time--and it is now plain there never could be--to create the perfect vessel to bring safely home the many thousands of stranded Anglicans in North America.

The undertaking will appear to some an act of desperation, and its success is by no means certain. As there must have been in late May 1940, there will be naysayers who rather than help this small boat into the water and speed it on its way would rather preserve the ability to say they "knew all along" it wouldn't work. We know who they are and we expect as much--and now we all need them simply to step out of the way. And this evacuation is not a moment of victory--far from it: we still need the help of others distant from our shores. The work is only beginning, and there will be many efforts designed to ensure this rescue (for that is what it is, in every sense of the word), will fail and come to naught. There will be great losses, and there will be property left behind. But as with Dunkirk, we can hope those losses prove ultimately to be costs of victory, not signs of failure.

All Britain in late May and early June of 1940 united in prayer for the success of their Little Ships. In the days ahead every orthodox Anglican in North America should unite in prayer for the success of our own Tamzine and wish those who steer her course Godspeed, so one day we will all be able to look upon this undertaking as the miracle of deliverance we so desperately need.

Conquering my addiction

2008-11-14T15:46:00.002-05:00

“Hi, I’m . . . and I’m an Episcopalian, too.”

These were the welcoming words I heard recently at a (non-Episcopal) church I visited, where a church member introduced me to another Episcopalian who had totally quit attending his Episcopal church. When I heard those words, they instantly struck me as the sort of introduction one would hear in an AA meeting. And then as I thought about that more, I realized that in many ways I’ve had my own unhealthy addiction, and—as the greeting suggested—it was to the Episcopal Church.

Like most addicts, I have plenty of rationales for my addiction, and plenty of arguments why it is not a harmful one. I do love the liturgy, and I do think the current Prayer Book does in the main reflect orthodox Christian belief—its occasional 70s trendiness and the Trojan horse baptismal covenant notwithstanding. The hymnody is uplifting, and the 1982 book, despite its weaknesses, does have orthodox, Biblical teaching set to music that surely gives God glory. I’m able to ignore the sermons for the most part, enjoying and benefiting from the occasional Christian bits without getting angry about the secularism and heterodoxy, since that does little good and I doubt anyone will remember them. I take comfort in a way to see so few young people corrupted by the sermons, as there aren’t many around, and those who are there simply don’t pay attention, those in my family included. I saw one older fellow doing the Sunday crossword during the sermon; he had stuck it in his leather-bound prayer book, plainly knowing before he came to the service he’d have the chance to work on it during the sermon. That, too, made me think that perhaps not too much damage was being done. On the ride home with my family I’m dutiful about pointing out the errors we’ve all just heard. And I can always get the Christian sermon I missed from a podcast or by reading one. I also know I’m not the only orthodox Christian in the pews. So if I have an unhealthy addiction, I’m not the only one.

Besides, it’s not like I’m contributing to the problems. I am careful not to fund the enterprise—I long ago reached a point where I could not give in unrestricted fashion or beyond my parish, and so I can sleep at night knowing that I’m not funding the heterodoxy or the silliness of our diocese or national church. I’ve taken care to ensure that there’s no way a single penny of mine would make its way to lawsuits, either directly or indirectly by giving to some other budgeted item such that other monies were freed up to sue other Christians.

By staying in the Episcopal Church, I’m having a positive influence, right? I’m helping hold that “little stone bridge” Sarah Hey writes about, am I not? And, sure, I don’t see the influence I’m having, but surely I must be having some, or perhaps will. Or so I tell myself.

Plus, I tell myself, the Episcopal Church is the church of my youth and my adulthood, the church of my family and my forebears, the church in which I was married and the church in which my children were baptized and confirmed. So surely given that it is in my religious DNA, I can be excused on those grounds as well, right?

So what’s the harm, and why should I consider changing?

Perhaps the answer is in the number of times in the paragraphs above one can find the first-person singular: Gene Robinson could hardly do better. For like every addict, my primary concern has been myself: my comfort, my habits, my family heritage, my doing what I like, my making a difference, my doing what’s necessary to assuage any guilt, my neatly protecting myself from criticism, my justifying to God what I’m doing, my trying to have the best of all worlds, my being able to call myself Episcopalian and so on and so on. Like all addictions, this one has skewed my perspective, increasingly elevating my own perceived needs and desires above all other considerations. Maybe it’s time I started thinking about others, and most especially about God. It’s hard to see how I can do this within an Episcopal parish, when my focus is, quite naturally perhaps, self-protection and then self-justification. Perhaps it’s time I thought of worship beyond my own ability to sing a proper hymn or say a proper Prayer-Book prayer or kneel or even take Holy Communion every week. Perhaps it’s time I thought about opening myself to hearing God in a sermon, instead of thinking of the sermon as a chance to pat myself on the back for not grimacing or excusing myself or saying something snide to the preacher on the way out of church.

And perhaps in thinking outside myself, I will realize that I have deluded myself in my addiction by telling myself that others weren’t being harmed. Didn’t Jesus say something about millstones around the necks of those who would lead the little ones astray? And even if I am successfully protecting my own children from the distortions of the Christian faith so pervasive in the Episcopal Church, have I not deprived them of the strong discipleship, the solid instruction in the faith that they might have gotten elsewhere? And without that, and with their only experience growing up being the Episcopal Church, where does that leave them when they are ready to go out in the world on their own? At best, am I not merely preparing them to approach church with the same addiction that I have had, and all the lost opportunities that come with it? (And at worst, am I not complicit in their being led astray?)

It’s a truism that the first step in dealing with an addiction is admitting that one has the addiction. And that’s where I am—at that first step. I don’t know yet how I will deal with it. I just know that I must.

And soon.

The End

2008-09-19T08:03:00.009-04:00

I suspect through the years many death certificates have been prepared for the Episcopal Church, and many obituaries have been written. And certainly there are armchair physicians out there diagnosing the ills of this very sick patient who would feel some satisfaction if their diagnoses and prognoses are proven correct. But the fact is that the Episcopal Church as an organization is not going to die, however chronic its many maladies. It has the life support of substantial assets, assets that would be there even if every disgruntled parish and diocese were allowed to take their property with them. It has endowments that will enable it to continue however small its membership may be, and however irrelevant it has become. In short, it is almost impossible to envisage the Episcopal Church dying as an institution. After all, if Revolution and Civil War did not bring about its demise, it's hard to see what would now. Those orthodox believers who seek vindication in such a demise are destined to be forever disappointed and tragically distracted.

That said, for all intents and purposes the Episcopal Church as a church died yesterday. In purporting to depose Bishop Robert Duncan, two-thirds of those bishops who attended the House of Bishops meeting did something so blatantly and brazenly unlawful under the canons and so patently violative of Robert's Rules that they in effect announced that within our church words and laws and truth no longer matter. All that matters is power. Not the power of the Gospel, mind you--but raw human secular power, exercised for political purposes. Those bishops who voted to depose (and the one cowardly Judas who changed his vote after being sure it wasn't needed to destroy his brother bishop) openly and proudly embraced what was a lie--that there had been abandonment of Communion--and did so by embracing transparent lies about what the canons and parliamentary procedure actually said. Those charged to guard the truth yesterday gleefully showed their fealty to the very opposite.

The purported deposition did, though, lay bare the extent of the cancerous corruption that afflicts those who have hijacked our church. Henceforth it will be very difficult to hide the Episcopal Church's true condition, as the the lies about what was done were so amateurish and so obvious as to assume stupidity in those who actually might believe them. The vote in a sense revealed how weak these corrupt leaders are, as, after all, they were unable to accomplish this treachery legitimately, or with the numbers required, or under the relatively undemanding requirements of the canons.

It was interesting that two of the three bishops of the largest diocese, Virginia, reportedly voted against deposition.* Perhaps Bishop Lee, an institutional liberal, and his coadjutor realized more than most what this meant, as the Diocese of Virginia has borne the brunt of the Presiding Bishop's scorched-earth warfare more than any other. They have seen what was once a financially secure diocese expend millions of dollars on needless litigation that has accomplished nothing but the further loss of members. Many rightly pilloried Bishop Lee for succumbing to the pressure brought against him by the Presiding Bishop and her chancellor, and commencing lawsuits he almost certainly did not want. But his vote yesterday perhaps could be read as a pretty open vote of no confidence in her, and a condemnation of the devastation she has wrought. Maybe, just maybe, he was having a Cranmerian moment.

Years from now, this action by the House of Bishops may well prove to have been a tipping point for the Episcopal Church. There are many for whom this will be the final straw, not because they have any association or necessarily even agreement with Bishop Duncan, but because it reveals what a corrupt organization they find themselves a part of. Others will realize that they cannot any longer do business with (and certainly not follow) those for whom words are meaningless, law is nothing more than an instrument of power, and truth is nonexistent. And still others will leave weary of the fight, and yearning for spiritual refreshment they cannot get from what is now indisputably a secular organization (and actually something less than most secular organizations, since few could abide such dishonesty in their leaders). In short, the exodus of the orthodox will continue and likely accelerate. This is likely exactly what the Presiding Bishop and her minions want, as they undoubtedly believe that if all the retrograde evangelicals and Anglo-Catholics would just go away, there's no limit to the greatness a progressive Episcopal Church can achieve. The evidence, of course, has been quite to the contrary, but perhaps the accelerating membership loss will help put the lie to this fantasy. The Presiding Bishop may think that in supposedly beheading the orthodox movement, she will have caused disarray in their ranks. On this she is likely to be unpleasantly surprised also.

If there is any hope on the Presiding Bishop's part that this will deter those stalwart orthodox bishops outside North America who have supported Bishop Duncan and the orthodox, she is likely to be further disappointed. There is now little to deter them from recognizing another North American province, and recognizing Bishop Duncan as the legitimate Anglican primate in North America. And in doing so they will be speaking for a majority of the world's Anglicans. She can dismiss that, citing whatever old Anglican bureaucratic and colonial structures she cares to, but the fact will be that most of the world's Anglicans will soon see the bishop she tried to depose as legitimate, and her as irrelevant. And while the Episcopal Church in numbers and assets will make this new province appear inconsequential, the real story will be told in growth percentages, a concept foreign to most Episcopalians.

Finally, it's worth considering what difference yesterday's events will have in an average Episcopal Church, ones such as our two parishes here. I think it's plain enough that there will be little if any effect in the short run. The chances that even a half-dozen parishioners knew the House of Bishops was meeting is pretty small, and fewer still probably have any idea who Robert Duncan is. What happened doesn't affect the work the altar guild has to do, or the music the choir is rehearsing. It doesn't affect a parish's social outreach. It doesn't change the liturgy (yet), or alter the service times. Certainly it won't occasion the interest of reorienting the furnishings in the church, or getting a new stained glass window. If the Presiding Bishop is betting on the ignorance or nonchalance of the average pew dweller, she is making a pretty sure bet.

That's not to say there won't be an effect eventually, and a pretty potent one. The average age of those in Episcopal Church pews is high and increasing, and it's not as if the average Episcopal Church is full of children and young people and young families. There's a reason churches all around ours are opening and growing, and ours are at best in a steady state, despite population growth. And the trajectory to which the larger Episcopal Church is now committed is not one that is likely to spur growth or giving. In time that will affect the average parish church, and the average parish church here. And some years from now when we wonder why our numbers are down, and why people aren't pledging, and why no new families are joining, and how this all happened, we will be able to point to the House of Bishops meeting of September 18, 2008, as the day our church, as a church, died.

*Updated to reflect the sad news that the third Virginia bishop, David Jones, voted to depose.

"Keep your eye steadily fixed"

2008-09-19T08:03:00.007-04:00

The perfect devotional for the day after, courtesy of Pat Dague.

The coward stands aside

2008-08-04T09:21:00.004-04:00

And so now "new occasions teach new duties."

This is the hymn the orthodox should today be singing, to mark the leadership of the Anglican world having passed to GAFCON as Lambeth ended.

Once to every man and nation,
comes the moment to decide.
in the strife of truth with falsehood,
for the good or evil side;
some great cause, some great decision,
offering each the bloom or blight,
and the choice goes by forever,
'twixt the darkness and that light.

Then to side with truth is noble,
when we share her wretched crust,
ere her cause bring fame and profit,
and 'tis prosperous to be just;
then it is the brave man chooses
while the coward stands aside,
till the multitude make virtue
of the faith they had denied.

By the light of burning martyrs,
Christ, thy bleeding feet we track,
toiling up new Calvaries ever
with the cross that turns not back;
new occasions teach new duties,
ancient values test our youth;
they must upward still and onward,
who would keep abreast of truth.

Though the cause of evil prosper,
yet the truth alone is strong;
though her portion be the scaffold,
and upon the throne be wrong;
yet that scaffold sways the future,
and behind the dim unknown,
standeth God within the shadow,
keeping watch upon his own.

Vacuum

2008-08-01T07:53:00.000-04:00

Nature abhors a vacuum, and it's pretty clear that when Lambeth is behind us, and the vacuum created by the Archbishop's weakness is not filled as it should be, all manner of forces will seek to fill that vacuum.

The plan to do just this is already in place on the American side. While Episcopal Church bishops have dishonestly tried again to deny that same-sex blessings are happening with authorization, all they have done is underscore their mendacity. But even these dissembling bishops have not tried to deny that what lies ahead in the Episcopal Church after Lambeth is a full-bore push to make same-sex blessings--if not marriages--officially sanctioned as a good and holy thing. Some institutional liberal bishops will understand the dangers this poses, but they now have no power or authority, as the inmates are plainly running the asylum. And the revisionists do not have to worry about the next Lambeth invitation just yet, and the hard leftists among them frankly are already wondering whether the Anglican Communion is worth the bother. In short, once Lambeth ends, there are no governors remaining on their behavior.

The only counterbalance to this is GAFCON. This may not be what the more institutional of us would have wanted to see, but it is now fact, and we must accept and embrace it. And this is no "power grab": right now there are more bishops, clergy, and laity represented by GAFCON than any other structure, province, or power within the Communion. The moment Lambeth is over, the baton is effectively passed to GAFCON, whether the Archbishop likes it or not. And GAFCON must be ready to assume that leadership. It must pay due deference to the Archbishop, as any new leader ought to do to a predecessor. But it must not hesitate in moving forward, in exercising the leadership it has been given. It cannot afford to be viewed as a handmaiden of existing structures, the Archbishop included. It must be beholden to the Gospel, and the Gospel alone.

This is not effrontery toward the Archbishop. He has ceded this power to GAFCON, and whether he is happy with himself for doing should be of no moment to GAFCON's leaders. And GAFCON can also take some comfort in knowing that they may in the end make him a better archbishop, as we know the only bit of spine he has ever shown has been a result of the reality of the Global South and GAFCON. GAFCON alone right now can save the Communion, and--ironically--GAFCON alone can probably save Rowan Williams.

There will be some among the orthodox who will have great difficulty accepting this, but absent a change of residents in Lambeth Palace, they also have no alternative at this point. There are not enough Tom Wrights and John Howes and ACI sorts to make any meaningful difference, and at some point they will have to acknowledge this, and make peace with GAFCON.

There is one change that could change the necessity for GAFCON to exercise this leadership in the Communion, and that is a change in the Archbishop of Canterbury. If a decisive orthodox bishop were to succeed Rowan--even one institutionally oriented like Tom Wright--there could be hope for discipline, for clarity, for restoring trust, for keeping the Communion together. Indeed, there is perhaps no one better suited for that task than Tom Wright. Yes, he's been loyal to Rowan Williams, and yes, he's been exasperated with GAFCON. But he is also quite clear what the source of the problem has been--the North Americans--and seems more willing to deal with it. But GAFCON cannot wait for Rowan to return to his books, and hope that British politicians will give them someone better than the disaster that has been Rowan Williams. They do not have that luxury if the Communion is to be saved; they must act now.

Will GAFCON exercise this leadership? The recent Times editorial piece by Archbishop Orombi seems to signal they are ready. The days ahead will be interesting ones, to be sure.

Justifying Lambeth

2008-07-31T07:15:00.001-04:00

How to justify Lambeth: this must be a question weighing heavily on the minds of the organizers and the Archbishops of Canterbury. They are at somewhat of a disadvantage by their own plan for the Conference--that it accomplish nothing. They not only have to justify the expense of the gathering, they also have to justify the incredible debt incurred. Moreover, they will have to show that those who did not attend were wrong when they dismissed Lambeth as another gab-fest, with little substance likely to be forthcoming. That this quarter-plus of the world's bishops--arguably representing a majority of the Communion--were self-evidently correct will make it even more difficult to justify Lambeth.

Undoubtedly the talking points for the simple question, "Was it really worth it?" are already in draft, and one can imagine the sorts of points that will be made. The bishops got to know each other. They formed relationships. They may not agree, but at least they see Christ in one another. They pledged themselves to more conversation. They built a foundation of trust they can build upon in the months ahead. They all seemed to agree that a Convenant "of some sort" was not a bad thing. They all agreed they had to work harder to prevent the Communion from fracturing further. And so forth. In essence: they met. There's not much more than can be said. Certainly the Reaganesque question, "Are you better off today as an Anglican than you were three weeks ago?" can hardly be answered in the affirmative. And ten years hence no one will be able to cite anything that this Lambeth actually did. Indeed, such a waste was this Lambeth that it will interesting to see how another Lambeth Conference will be justified at all.

The documents that come forth from Lambeth will either have no binding or even persuasive power, or they'll be merely "reflective," meaning they will be little more than musings on paper. They will, owing to the structure of the Conference, lack any democratic imprimatur, and thus command very little stature or respect. Unlike the signature resolution of the last Lambeth Conference, they will not speak for the Communion--not even for those who did come. Because the documents do nothing, they will soon be forgotten. In short, the conference and thus its byproducts by the most important measures--actions, participation, and democratic decision-making--simply lack legitimacy.

Perhaps the Archbishop's great hope for Lambeth was that he could get through it without a formal split in the Communion. Undoubtedly he will the morning after think he has at least accomplished that, and he will be encouraged in that fantasy by the British papers, which will likely give him credit for that minimal achievement. But in fact the split is at hand, and in fact worsened these past few weeks, as the Americans made crystal clear that they will not be detoured from their path of "inclusion." Likely some of those hoping for better, like the Sudanese, will leave disillusioned with the reality that GAFCON already recognized. And it will not be long before it's quite plain the American radicals have been emboldened by the lack of discipline, as any petulant, selfish toddler would be in an analogous context. Moreover, the contrast with GAFCON, which love it or hate it actually did accomplish some things, will become ever more stark in the days ahead. One can already see in the remarks of Tom Wright, Mouneer Anis, and others a more generous tone toward those who felt they could not be a part of the Lambeth confab. Even the ACI folks are sounding much more like the GAFCON contingent these days.

There has been a smug (and bitter) implication from the Archbishop and others that somehow those who did not come to Lambeth would be sorry they missed out. But at least at this point it's hard to see why they would regret their absence. They missed being told they were wife beaters by a radical feminist bishop from the States. They missed being called "demonic" by another bishop from America who has a soft spot for the world's most hideous tyrants. They missed a Bible studys from a guy who viewed homosexual rape as nothing more than the sin of "inhospitability." They missed the blatant lies from American bishops about how no same-sex blessings were being done or were authorized. They missed a meaningless protest march in the London streets against poverty and the excessive feast that appeared to be the real main point of the exercise. They missed having to walk out of a highly offensive and accusatory session in which males were portrayed as inherently prone to abuse of women. They missed being surrounded by Americans whose excessive numbers underscore the colonialist reflex of the church's white, liberal, Western overlords. They missed the freak shows happening at the fringes of the conference. But what else did they really miss? Truly there was nothing that happened at Lambeth that would cause them to think twice about their decision. And the same can't be said about the decisions some of their orthodox colleagues made to attend.

There will be something Neville Chamberlain-like about Rowan Williams announcing the great successes of the Lambeth Conference in a few days, when the Churchills of the Communion know well that the Episcopal Church is readying for a major revisionist offensive that will, with no small amount of glee by its stormtroopers, make him look the fool. And while there may be a sense that Rowan Williams has survived Lambeth, and so will survive as Archbishop, it may not be long before, as with Chamberlain, there will simply be no question but that he must go. If he truly is able to tell himself that getting through Lambeth was a signature achievement, perhaps he'll feel more at ease with returning to the life of a scholar at his own initiative in the weeks ahead. We can only hope.

But because Rowan Williams is weak, the Communion is now weakened. Lambeth might have been a chance to save the Communion from final schism, had he only exercised some leadership. But he didn't, and so the destruction of the Communion will increase at an ever-quickening pace. Ultimately that lost opportunity will be the legacy of this Lambeth Conference, if it does not also earn the distinction of being the last one.

How can this Lambeth Conference be justified? It can't be.

Where's Gene?

2008-07-30T09:06:00.006-04:00

Has anyone else noticed how the Simple Country Bishop has effectively vanished? There's hardly been a news story about him since the Sudanese archbishop's plainspoken words about the error of Gene Robinson's consecration, and the necessity of his standing down if any healing is to happen in the Communion. The stream of ENS stories about Gene has even dried up. And Gene's disappearance act is not one that he's engineered: he's certainly not returned to New Hampshire, or discontinued his self-absorbed and disturbing blog entries, or ceased talking about himself. And we know he's busy making a film about (what else) himself. But the Ubiquitous Me is not to be found in newspaper articles or TV stories or in the pronouncements of his fellow bishops. So what's happened?

Perhaps there's really nothing more for the media to report about him. After all, the story is pretty much been told: Gene is a bishop. Gene is gay. Gene was not invited. Gene is victim. Gene is hurt. Gene only wants people to talk to him so they'll like him. Etc. Once that story's told, there's really not much more to report. Only Gene can talk about Gene as much as Gene would like to talk about Gene, after all.

But it seems there is more going on. The American bishops abandoned their effort to get Gene admitted to Lambeth. They quit talking about him entirely. They are pretending he doesn't exist. Why is this so?

Simply put, it's because they never really cared about Gene Robinson in the first place. It was never about Gene, except to Gene. In a very real sense, they are as self-absorbed as Gene is, and he was important only to the extent that Gene served their purposes. As Bishop Iker observed, if they did really care about Gene's exclusion, they would have removed themselves from Lambeth in solidarity with their brother bishop--and they didn't even think about doing that. No, Gene Robinson provided them with their progressive bona fides, their token "victim of hate," their evidence of courage in standing up for the "downtrodden." And he was only that insofar as he did not prove an embarrassment or an inconvenience.

But that's what happened. Gene Robinson, in all his gayness, proved to be a terrible embarrassment. He destroyed what undoubtedly the Americans thought was going to be a nuanced and effective wooing of the Sudanese. And they found that even with the Nigerians, Ugandans, Rwandans, Kenyans and others missing, they were still a minority on the issue of homosexuality, and all Gene Robinson did was make it worse. He was a totem for everything the majority of the Communion finds odious and offensive about the American church. And he had to go.

Of course as anyone who's seen Robinson interviewed or read his writings about himself can quickly discern, the man's self-awareness is nil. So there's no chance he realized he was becoming an embarrassment and withdrew from view himself. No, it's almost certain one or more of his fellow bishops, or perhaps the Presiding Bishop herself, had to do the dirty deed of throwing him under the bus, to borrow a metaphor from his Integrity friends. It's not clear how it happened, but undoubtedly someone "had a talk" with Gene, and told him to be a little less visible--in essence to go away. Certainly it was put in gentler terms, cleverly leveraging that lack of self-awareness. Probably he was told that in order to advance the cause of gay rights the issue needed to be decoupled from him and his consecration, and so forth. But the bottom line was Gene needed to go and needed to be told to go.

Bishop Iker was right to call out his fellow bishops for their rank hypocrisy. Their shunning of Robinson--for that is what it is--proves that they really don't care about the causes they champion, so much as they care about being viewed by themselves and others as noble for championing their causes. And at the end of the day, they aren't inclusive or tolerant or loving or accepting, save to the extent it makes them feel good about themselves and encourages others to think better of them. They certainly aren't so toward the orthodox, but they aren't even so to their token gay colleague Gene.

And even though there may be a bit of poetic justice in the same narcissistic instinct so evident in Robinson being what has seemingly led to his being abandoned by his fellow revisionist bishops, one has to feel a bit sorry for Gene Robinson. After all, he was led to believe that they really liked him, that they really supported him, that they would really stand up for him, and that they would not abandon him. And the fact that Robinson is abnormally obsessed with what others think about him can only make his hurt worse, if he's ever able to confront the ugly truth that they never really cared for him except to the extent he served their purposes and egos.

Robinson may have been sidelined, but there remains plenty of evidence for the rest of the Anglican bishops showing why the American revisionist version of Christianity is pretty repellant. And ironically, the crass, utilitarian treatment of Gene Robinson by his fellow revisionist bishops speaks pretty potently to how a religion focused on self and worldly politics shows none of the charity or other fruits of a faith centered on the saving grace of Jesus Christ.

After Lambeth

2008-07-24T13:51:00.003-04:00

It's not hard to predict what will happen at Lambeth: absolutely nothing of substance. Those who guessed this early are being vindicated, not least by the seething anger of the liberals (including the Archbishop of Canterbury) who needed them there to "listen," which in liberal parlance means "carefully taught until they learn to agree with us and tell us we were right all along." The conference is in shambles, frustrations are very high, and the chances of anything useful being done are less than nil. The autocratic reflex of the liberals is in full force, with the numbers of bishops attending (apparently an embarrassment) a state secret, and the identity of the bishops even more highly classified. One can guess that the figures show that a greater number stayed away (and have left) than previously estimated, and that the North American presence is thus even more out of whack than thought.

The revisionists can always be counted on to overplay their hand, and so they have done at Lambeth, their self-satisfied (if not racist) bullying inviting the plain words of Sudan's archbishop and others. The whinging fellow at the narcissism display in the Marketplace is also getting a wee bit tiresome--even for his liberal buddies. Despite their advantage in numbers and cell phones, it's likely becoming clear to the Americans that they are indeed seriously out of step with most of the Communion. That might become incrementally more obvious today when what some have described as a "bombshell" is dropped. The operative word here might really be "shell," as even more strong words are really not going to make a difference. The Americans have their script cards, and they are reading from them and will not deviate. It's "prophetic" action they've taken, after all, they keep telling themselves.

So if Lambeth doesn't matter, what will? Certainly GAFCON will appear more, not less, important when the do-nothing Lambeth Conference is over. But what will really matter most is what the Americans do. And what they will do is exactly what they want. Greg Griffith at StandFirm nailed this in a comment, reprinted here at Chris Johnson's site. There is nothing to deter the Presiding Bishop and her attendants from pushing ahead on same-sex blessings and unions, on revision of the Prayer Book, and many more fronts: GC 2009 will seal this. And, as Greg also understands, it doesn't stop with these innovations. The nature of so-called progressives is that they must continue to find "justice" issues to champion, or else they lose their reason for existence. There is no end-game--there's only the game. Most of us would never have thought we'd be at this point 10 years ago. And what's coming down the pike 10 years hence is likely something none of us could even dream up.

It is post-Lambeth actions by the Americans that will ultimately decide this thing. That's because whereas the Lambeth invitations have been the only governor on American behavior so far, that goes away very soon, once the bishops are feet-wet from Heathrow. Does this mean that suddenly Rowan will "do something"? No, of course not. But it does mean GAFCON will look more and more like an exercise in prudence and reality. It will also make it more difficult for the Tom Wrights of the world to continue arguing for the status quo. The ACI will likely get a bit of spine--as they are already showing now that they (and largely they alone) are trying to carry on the "inside" strategy. And the split will continue, with ever-greater clarity.

Could the Archbishop of Canterbury stop this split from happening? Certainly he could--by throwing over the Americans. When the Americans start getting silly again after they get back home, he could provisionally withdraw their 2018 Lambeth invitations and disinvite them from other Communion activities, and say he's doing nothing more than acknowledging their own withdrawal from Communion. He could reengage the Primates. He could seek a rapprochement with GAFCON, by strengthening the Covenant. He could delay the property portions of the purportedly merely decorative canon law treatise that has been promulgated this past week, saying they need "further study" to address what happens in the event a province decides to leave the Communion. He could, most effectively, resign, and make way for someone more likely to act to hold the Communion together. Even a Tom Wright as Archbishop of Canterbury would drive home the point to the North Americans that they have effectively removed themselves from the mainstream of the Communion.

These are but musings. What is sure now is that Lambeth is likely to accomplish nothing, as it was designed to do, and that the Americans--however chastened--are going to continue their innovations with greater fervor, if only to make them "permanent" so they can then say it can't all be undone now. And the Episcopal Church will become less and less relevant, at an ever-increasing pace. And GAFCON, representing a majority of the Communion as it does, will become ever more important, whatever the Archbishop of Canterbury does.

Emissions

2008-07-01T11:02:00.006-04:00

The Presiding Bishop yesterday in her reaction to GAFCON in one word underscored why GAFCON was so necessary, and why it is impossible for Christians to do business with her. That word was emission.

There was much that was offensive in that immature tantrum, including her denigration of GAFCON participants as [sounds of spitting] "true believers." She also predictably fell back on her tiresome and dishonest practice of falsely describing the numbers of those who disagree with her, in this case characterizing the world's largest gathering of Anglican bishops in almost a decade as only [harrumph sounds] "a few leaders" who sought to "narrow the gospel." And her statement, of course, made no mention of our Lord Jesus Christ or his Great Commission.

But it was that word emission that says the most about the Presiding Bishop's character. One has to assume it was carefully chosen. The word is derived from the Latin verb for to send, and arcane usages of emission included things published or proclaimed. But as she would be quick to remind us, we don't live in the 18th or 19th Centuries. And the modern usage of the word is almost always confined to two contexts.

The first is that of pollution, as in emissions of toxic substances or waste products into air or water. As we know from the Presiding Bishop's Earth Day genuflection to sporks, she certainly is environmentally aware, so well knows this usage. She was happy to have others think she was saying what her fellow bishops at GAFCON were saying was nothing better than poison or excrement.

The second common usage of emission pertains to bodily fluids being exuded, usually in an involuntary or reflexive fashion. We speak of animals emitting scents (usually repellant ones, as with skunks). And squids out of fear to protect themselves have ink emissions. But in the context of humans, emissions almost always refer to one of two things. First, the term is used as a humorous euphemism for flatulence--which is unpleasant and possibly rude but of little consequence (unless from evil cows out to drown Pacific Islanders) . More commonly in the context of humans it refers to seminal fluid, as in nocturnal emissions. We can only assume that in choosing the word she did the Presiding Bishop was also happy to have others think she was saying the GAFCON statement was noxious or inconsequential, was born of animal (i.e., subhuman) reflex instead of careful thought, or was perhaps something somehow emanating because of the sex of those gathered, comparable in her view to male ejaculate.

Undoubtedly the Presiding Bishop is as proud of herself for her oh-so-clever word choice as some of her minions have made plain they are. But (as others of her supporters have already noted) this language demeans her and it demeans the office she holds. It was chosen to dehumanize her non-white-Western-liberal opponents in sneering fashion. (But it did rather nicely provide a Q.E.D. to the GAFCON assertion that Western revisionists have treated the Global South in a colonialist manner, did it not?). It is stunningly amateurish, crudely undiplomatic, and wholly lacking in class. It is decidedly un-Christian by any measure.

That the Presiding Bishop of a once-great mainline denomination now resorts to comparing the words of those she disagrees with to toxic pollution or waste products or repellent smells or flatulence or semen says a great deal about what sort of leader she is and what sort of person she is. It says a great deal about the nature of the faith she purports to hold and how it informs her words and dealings with others. It makes plain how disingenuous she is whenever she talks about "conversation" or "listening" or "relationships." And perhaps more than any other single word that has been uttered in response to GAFCON, her use of the word emission shows why it is utterly fruitless for the world's Anglicans to trust or engage in exchanges with the leadership of the Episcopal Church.

Initial thoughts on GAFCON

2008-06-29T07:35:00.002-04:00

Though most Episcopalians headed to church this morning in this corner of Northwest Georgia will have never heard of GAFCON (and our priests won't be telling us--of that you can be sure), there is something very different about being an Episcopalian and an Anglican this Sunday than there was last.

It's not going to be clear for some time what differences the monumental Jerusalem gathering of orthodox Anglicans will herald, but few observers in the mainstream press doubt that this was a serious blow to the North American churches and to the Archbishop of Canterbury. It is not but a matter of time before a majority of the world's Anglicans recognize an entity other than the Episcopal Church as the proper Anglican church in the United States--indeed that is the first order of business of the new Primate's Council of what has been termed a "Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans." And in asserting that being Anglican is not merely a matter of recognition as such by the Archbishop of Canterbury, GAFCON is underscoring that this move (and others) will go forward irrespective of what Rowan Williams thinks.

Certainly this changes the equation for Rowan Williams, as he is now facing a stark choice between throwing over the North Americans or losing more than half his flock. Mind you, he won't lose them immediately in an official sense, but he'll lose them as the Church of England lost the Methodists--although in this case the numbers far exceeds the Methodists, in souls and percentage. Inaction hardly seems an option any longer (although for Rowan Williams it is always an option, for that is what he does best). Certainly, though, when Her Majesty the Queen and the C of E's Supreme Governor reads her Sunday papers, she will not be pleased that her Archbishop of Canterbury has appeared overnight to have lost more than half the Anglican Communion. And the Anglican Communion is an unstated but critical component of her Commonwealth, the achievement of her reign she has always viewed as the most important. What she will say about this, if anything, no one will know. But she will not be pleased, to put it mildly.

The Lambeth indaba groups now look even sillier than they did before. The whole Communion is unraveling, and the Archbishop and his American minders and financiers want Lambeth to be nothing more than 60s-style rap sessions. The format that he believed would keep the Communion together now seems poised to underscore his flaccid and ineffectual leadership at the very moment decisive action seems most important. And Lambeth as currently structured will against the GAFCON backdrop not merely appear as a waste of time--it will now be viewed as protecting the North Americans, something the Archbishop simply cannot afford at this point.

It looks increasingly like the best option for Rowan Williams now is simply to resign. He has been tried and found wanting, and if the Communion is to be saved, there will have to be discipline and accountability for the North Americans--and those in his own Church of England who seem emboldened to follow the American example. The longer he waits to return to teaching and writing, the more difficult it will be for his successor to put the toothpaste back in the tube. Events now are moving at such a pace that he is simply not able to keep up. He has in effect been declared irrelevant by more than half of his flock, and so is now unable to slow down anything by his inaction--the only way he knows how to deal with anything.

Back here in the States, it's not clear that GAFCON will have any immediate effect, save at the margins. This will not change the bad conduct of the Episcopal Church's liberal leadership--indeed might increase the frenzy of the ongoing purging of the orthodox (which we should expect after Lambeth anyway). The claims of "all is well" and the fiction that there was no "division" were risible already, as the court in Virginia made rather plain. The dramatic numerical decline will continue, despite revisionist dreams that their faux inclusiveness will bring in floods of new members. And St. Peter's can keep their "Anglican Communion" sign for now: just because GAFCON bishops refuse to recognize the American church as anything but a case study in heresy doesn't mean the American church is not still part of the Anglican Communion. But the increasingly public and international labeling of our church as "heterodox," "apostate," and teaching a "false gospel," will have its effect on Christians toying with the notion of visiting their local Episcopal church. This sort of talk has little effect on single, urban liberals. It's powerful, though, when parents are trying to find a church safe for their children and teens.

In time, though, GAFCON will have an effect on us here, even if the Archbishop does nothing, as is likely. Its recognition of a new North American province, when combined with what will surely be continued bad behavior by the Episcopal Church (and the endorsement of that bad behavior at the 2009 General Convention), will not only make ejection from the Communion more likely, but there would then be a province-in-waiting to take its place--something that has been lacking until now. The revisionists in our church can be counted on reliably to overplay their hand, and there's no indication they won't continue to do so. They are pretty good at "winning." They are pretty bad at counting the cost.

GAFCON, if nothing else, finally puts a cost on that bad behavior. It will be interesting in the months ahead to see what that cost is. Certainly if Episcopalians of any stripe were to ask themselves the classic Reagan question four years into the Jefforts-Schori reign, "Are you better off today than you were four years ago," it's hard to envisage any of them answering that question positively after this week, with the folly of the lawsuits becoming more plain, and now an effective expulsion from Anglicanism by more than half the world's Anglicans.

PLEASE don't read this e-mail

2008-06-28T07:15:00.006-04:00

We now know that those who put together the Episcopal Church's daily propaganda e-mail realize that there are a whole bunch of folks who are not likely to open that compilation of stories when it hits their in-boxes.

That's because in the first edition to come out after a Fairfax judge for the second time ruled in favor of departing parishes--and again not so subtly slapping the Episcopal Church for disingenuousness--here is the irresistible subject line they put on the e-mail:

Jerusalem friends launch schools appeal, seek development officer

Let's give the ELO editors credit for this much: they certainly know how to design a headline to get people to delete the e-mail, don't they? It's pretty funny when their most effective propaganda tactic is leveraging the fact that most folks who get their e-mail don't read it.

The e-mail itself included the Virginia loss as a top story, as it rather had to, but one wouldn't know that unless one opened the e-mail. (And the only reason I opened it is because it seemed supremely odd that such a non-story would be the subject line just after the Virginia loss).

Of course 815, no doubt in panic mode because of this loss, could not care less about a job opening for a fundraising hack, and they really don't care about money needs of schools in Jerusalem. It's possible, of course, that this had the ancillary benefit of making happy with the Bishop of Jerusalem during GAFCON, which looks more and more as if its communique due out tonight will have some harsh words and actions about the North American churches. But the real purpose of this subject line was to deter anyone from finding out that, well, churches and parishes really can leave the Episcopal Church, and that there's no constitutional impediment to their using a state "division" statute to accomplish that.

That was the gist of Judge Bellows's opinion in the Old Dominion's Fairfax County, where after millions and millions of dollars have been spent suing churches that overwhelmingly voted to leave the heresy of the Episcopal Church behind and associate themselves with the majority of the world's Anglicans, who are solidly orthodox. The court's opinion was a thorough and extraordinarily well-reasoned one, deliberately written to make its being overturned on appeal unlikely. It was a significant blow to the Diocese of Virginia and especially the Presiding Bishop, whose edict to Bishop Peter Lee forced these lawsuits. With early pronouncements about how "clear" the law was, and how obvious it was that these churches were in effect stealing property, this opinion suggests that the Episcopal Church and the Diocese of Virginia have really bad lawyers, or have been deliberately misleading those in the pews about the rightness of their cause--or both. Certainly were I a pew-dweller in that diocese I'd have questions about why so many dollars were being flushed away in such mean-spirited fashion. And even if I weren't prone to asking the questions, I'd not throw my money into that hole every Sunday morning, that's for sure.

It's no news that the propaganda-writers at 815 are shameless in their attempts to twist the news: they're transparently obvious, after all (meaning they're really bad at their craft). It's certainly no surprise that they'd want to deter people from knowing about the Virginia cases: even their slanted take on this decision can't hide the fact that this was a catastrophic legal loss, and a massive embarrassment to the Presiding Bishop and her chancellor.

I tend to think this shows that the very people who compile these noxious e-mails know in their heart of hearts that few people actually read them, and that they probably know that their writing, as with most spam, is simply deleted unless there's a subject line creating enough curiosity to prompt someone to open the e-mails.

But there is another way of looking at this deliberately dull subject line, though: the people at 815 really do believe that their propaganda is how most Episcopalians get their news about the church, that what they say really does matter and is noticed, and that they are really making a difference. And because they are so powerful and persuasive, when bad news like the Virginia decision hits, they have to try really hard to keep all the people who so love their news from ENS from reading their daily dose.

That, of course, would be far more consistent with the hubris and detachment from reality that characterizes our national church headquarters--and that prompted the disastrous lawsuits whose results 815 is now so eager to hide.

"3000 miles wide and only three inches deep"

2008-06-24T10:29:00.004-04:00

So says Rice University sociologist of religion Michael Lindsay, in describing American religion, in an apt and accurate reaction to this Pew Forum survey:

America remains a nation of believers, but a new survey finds most Americans don't feel their religion is the only way to eternal life — even if their faith tradition teaches otherwise.

The findings, revealed Monday in a survey of 35,000 adults, can either be taken as a positive sign of growing religious tolerance, or disturbing evidence that Americans dismiss or don't know fundamental teachings of their own faiths.

Among the more startling numbers in the survey, conducted last year by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life: 57 percent of evangelical church attenders said they believe many religions can lead to eternal life, in conflict with traditional evangelical teaching.

In all, 70 percent of Americans with a religious affiliation shared that view, and 68 percent said there is more than one true way to interpret the teachings of their own religion.

As disquieting as these results should be to orthodox believers, they can hardly come as a surprise. It's not just secular culture that's elevated what passes as "tolerance" to such an ultimate and inviolate belief. And it's not only in post-Christian denominations like our Episcopal Church where one finds this creeping universalism (although Episcopal numbers of those who believe this way must surely be higher). A significant majority of supposedly evangelical church attenders think this way.

That is certainly evidence for what Mark Noll famously called The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (that there was not much of one at all). Logically one cannot reconcile two (or more) mutually exclusive truth claims (A and not-A cannot both be true). But as Tim Keller marvelously observes, the assertion that all religions lead to eternal life is itself an exclusive truth claim (albeit one less sustainable than those of individual religions, given its logical incoherence). So those who repair to such a position are not really escaping a truth claim at all: they are just being incoherent.

Orthodox believers--be they Reformed, or Roman Catholic, Big-O Orthodox, or Evangelical--have plainly not done a good job asserting the truth of orthodox, creedal Christianity. Perhaps more accurately, we've not done a good job explaining what it means to assert that our beliefs are true, since one cannot believe in the truth of an assertion without necessarily choosing to believe that assertions in conflict with such truths are necessarily not true. So to say that opposing beliefs can both be right--in this case can both lead to eternal life--is really to say that one doesn't have any controlling belief at all. I suspect if given opportunity to think about this, most orthodox Christians, evangelicals perhaps especially, would bristle at knowing that's really what the so-called "tolerant" position entails, and would reject it.

A first order of business in the ongoing Anglican realignment must be to educate ourselves and our youth on what it really means when we stand and say the words, "I believe."

Who or what is the most dishonest entity in your life?

2008-06-23T12:09:00.003-04:00

Think for a moment: who or what is the most dishonest entity in your life?

Chances are it is not your boyfriend, girlfriend, or spouse, because eventually most people cannot abide pervasive lack of trust in a relationship. They will simply end the relationship to protect themselves.

Chances are it is not your employer, because most people of even marginal scruples could not stand for long being part of an enterprise where each day one was left to wonder about one’s position and future. And no one wants to have tainted paychecks or be assumed by others to have or assent to the bad habits of a dishonest boss or company.

Chances are it is not a friend—because we tend to avoid forging friendships with dishonest sorts, and we tend to shed those friendships quickly where it’s plain we’ve been deceived, or very likely might be. And, as with our employer, most of us aren’t keen on absorbing the bad reputations of others as we’re judged by the friends we keep.

It’s probably not a political party or politician, either. We might want our political views to prevail, but we are deeply ashamed when the standard-bearer of those views turns out to be a dissembler. Both Nixon and Clinton discovered that they could not count on the loyalty of those they assumed would always support them, for just this reason. And politicians, for all their slickness, well know that lying can have serious political consequences, and if only for that reason try to at least appear as if they are being truthful.

The same is true of a government. For those of us in Western democracies, the tolerance for dishonesty in government is very slight. People do not like being lied to by their governments, and will demand reform. (And as the 20^th Century showed us, even totalitarian governments are ultimately not immune from disgust at dishonesty.)

Likewise, it’s probably not a business, because businesses which make a habit of lying tend to destroy themselves, as they, too, depend upon trust. We simply don’t buy goods or services from those we don’t trust. Shareholders and investors demand transparency; customers demand the products and services they buy come as advertised. The consequence for dishonesty is ultimately the extinction of a business.

Think about all the other entities in your life, be they individuals or organizations. And then see how you can possibly avoid this conclusion: The Episcopal Church is the most dishonest entity in your life.

A shocking thing that is, of course—that what should be a part of the Body of Christ would be the most mendacious and untruthful part of our lives. But the number of lies—outright falsehoods—that emanate from our church’s leaders leaves for many of us no other conclusion. There are lies about how good the state of our church is, lies about the number of people who have left, lies to other provinces about our intentions as a church. A presiding bishop lied about the consecration of Gene Robinson, and then proceeded to be central to the very act he pretended to condemn. Another presiding bishop agrees to provide oversight and stop suing the orthodox, then promptly ratchets up her offensive against them, lying about what was agreed to. Numerous bishops and priests and lay leaders lie publicly about whether same-sex blessings are happening. (And even those who slip up and tell the truth quickly feel compelled to deny their honest statements with yet more lies.) There are lies in court proceedings. There are lies about whether the plain language of the canons is being followed. There are lies about votes required. There are lies about how money is spent. There are lies about who is suing whom. There are lies about “listening,” “conversation,” and “reconciliation.” Would-be bishops falsely pretend to be orthodox when they know they have little use for Scripture and believe very little of the Creeds. Bishops lie about being “Windsor” bishops. An entire “news” organization in our church bureaucracy exists to shade the truth, to spin, and at times tell blatant falsehoods. Truly, can you think of any organization where so much lying occurs so frequently, and with such seeming ease?

What enables such deep and pervasive dishonesty? Most assuredly it reflects a rejection of any notion of truth qua truth. Likewise, it comes from those whose very belief system is predicated on deconstructing that which others have accepted as truth—so to show their own intellectual superiority and cleverness. And should we really be surprised? If there is no truth, and words no longer mean anything in Scripture and the Creeds, how could they truly be expected to carry any meaning or reliability in everyday affairs? Words to such people are in essence nothing more than malleable tools to help one get one’s way—nothing more. Certainly this is not a Christian way of viewing language, or even a moral one. It dehumanizes and degrades those who receive those words and trust them, playing them for fools as it does. But it is self-evidently the way most of our bishops and their associates view words.

But in every other context cited above, there are governors on such dishonesty—consequences that deter those inclined to lie, or destroy them if they do. Why is it that those basic incentives and disincentives do not work in the context of the Episcopal Church?

The answer to that should distress anyone in the Episcopal Church. It’s not that there aren’t ample incentives to tell the truth, and ample disincentives to lying. Indeed, for those possessed of the Gospel, there could be none greater, because souls are at stake. But these supposed leaders of ours are not possessed of the Gospel. They do not care about the Great Commission. They do not care about bringing glory to God. They do not care if people come to salvation in Christ—indeed they deny that such a notion exists. They do not care if the church shrinks into oblivion. They do not really even care if the buildings survive, as the Presiding Bishop made plain in her deposition. And at the end of the day, most don’t even care that they have the Anglican pedigree—something that will be quite plain once Lambeth is over and they are unfettered for the next decade. Quite simply, they care about themselves—their political positions, their presumed stature, their frocks and perks. And even if the recognize that what they are doing is destroying the organization, they know the consequences are unlikely to ever reach them, financially or otherwise. They’re enjoying the game as they see it, and they’re really enjoying winning it. And why in what is basically a religion of self, should they act any differently?

Theology aside, it’s increasing difficult to see how any of us can remain part of an organization that is so dishonest at its core. After all, we don’t stay affixed to those other people or groups in our lives who cannot be trusted. We do we stay? We tell ourselves it’s because perhaps we’ll make a difference—although in most cases we know we’re not. We tell ourselves that as long as there are faithful orthodox about, things won’t be even worse—although there’s no evidence that’s worked at all. We might even say we’re there to keep our adversaries honest—although the lies have seemingly worsened. Most of us are well used to dealing with different opinions and perspectives, and probably as Anglicans have tolerance for theological waywardness far greater than we ought. But surely none of us like being continually lied to and lied about, or being associated with those who are so transparently dishonest.

Years from now, people will debate what caused the death of the Episcopal Church as an effective organization. There will be many opinions offered, from the theological to the financial—and most will have some validity, because nothing now appears healthy in the Episcopal Church. But to this observer, of all the cancers now afflicting our church, it is this metastasizing dishonesty that will be the ultimate cause of its demise.

Good to be back?

2008-06-16T16:32:00.003-04:00

Sometimes it's good to take a step back now and then. That's the opportunity my unexpected and unavoidable respite from blogging provided. And if for a moment I deluded myself into thinking that maybe the self-destruction of the Episcopal Church would take a similar summer break, it was very soon plain that wasn't the case. Indeed, if anything it appeared to accelerate, and bring along other Anglicans.

We've had an Episcopal bishop apparently direct the breaking and entering and seizure of property that belongs to another Anglican denomination, without any court imprimatur. We've had two priests pretend to marry in Britain, and expropriate and defile orthodox language and a sacred place in doing so--as well as blaspheme God, as Archbishop Orombi was right to point out. We've had narcissist poster boy Gene Robinson playing the June bride he always wanted to be, taking pains to wear cutish whimsical slippers for attention just in case anyone would think for a moment this wasn't All About Gene. A trojan horse bishop in California lies about his intentions with respect to same-sex unions and blessings, playing his new flock for fools, as all around him other Episcopal bishops get all excited about all the growth they'll soon experience in providing the only picturesque gay wedding chapels in the state. We've learned that the ugliness of the Bennison statutory rape episode was hardly confined to the odious brothers Bennison; the bishop who should have had some interest in the minor victim's well-being instead essentially blamed her, while the revisionist Presiding Bishop was content to do nothing of consequence, even though he apparently knew all the sordid details. Need I continue? (For most assuredly I could.)

You see, when one reads these stories day in and day out, one becomes somewhat numb to them. As horrendous as they are in isolation, they come so frequently and predictably that it's almost surprising when the Stand Firm feed doesn't include at least one story like this each day. They become what's "normal" for our church. But if you look at them all together, in even the relatively short time I've been away from this blog, the picture painted is one of deep, systemic sickness: distortion, dishonesty, and ugliness that borders on the repulsive. The real shock is not that these things are happening in our church and communion, it's that we still have any semblance of a church or communion at all.

And we might not for long, at least not as we now know it. Yes, Lambeth will happen, and everyone, including perhaps a few ACI types, will proclaim that all is well, because now we all know each other and have listened and have had a conversation and can respect each other, etc., etc., etc. After which the entire Communion will begin to fall apart, as the Americans, having gotten what they wanted so desperately (that invitation) will then have no governor on their behavior, either with respect to the orthodox within the Episcopal Church or with respect to the greater Communion. Lambeth will have been the sham many of us know now it will be. And the entire Anglican enterprise will fall apart, the tipping point having been passed.

What we've seen in the last month will indeed seem like a summer break after all.

"Where have you been?"

2008-05-27T23:17:00.003-04:00

Thank you to those who have written asking why there have not been posts recently: it's nice to be missed!

The truth is that a serious health crisis in my family has pulled us all away from our normal activities. I hope to be back posting very soon--I miss it very much, and there's been so much rich, rich material in the last few weeks. The Presiding Bishop and her squire Gene Robinson are truly the gifts that keep on giving for any orthodox Anglican blogger, are they not?

In the meantime, I'd be most grateful for your prayers. I promise this will be my only "summer vacation."

Back soon, I promise.

The trashing of parliamentary procedure

2008-05-14T13:10:00.005-04:00

Parliamentary procedure is at its core about democracy at its best: achieving in decent and orderly fashion the will of the majority while fully respecting and protecting the minority (or as one writer put it, "to give the minority a fighting chance.") There is a reason that every democratic voting organization uses a form of parliamentary procedure (in this country, usually Robert's Rules of Order Newly Revised), whether it be church, or city council, or stockholders' meeting, or legislature. Those who object to parliamentary procedure, or who abuse it, are almost inevitably those who have no patience for democracy or dissent, or those who simply do not like the result that would be forthcoming when the ayes and nos aren't to their liking.

In our church we have two recent and regrettable examples of antipathy toward parliamentary procedure. The first, of course, is the Presiding Bishop, who has lawlessly decided to ignore the very basics of Robert's and the canons themselves in a whole range of actions where she can't be bothered to follow the rules, or where she worries she might not get the votes necessary to do what she wants. She has, in essence, with the apparent acquiescence of a majority of bishops, turned parliamentary procedure into a sham--something no more meaningful to them than, say, a Book of Common Prayer liturgy. This certainly reflects her anger at, disrespect for, and, some say, hatred of the minority orthodox, who after all have the temerity to do what minorities generally do--object and disagree and attempt to obstruct the majority. And in a sense her suspension of parliamentary procedure (for that is what she has done) is evidence of her own weakness, her inability to reason with those with whom she disagrees, and her intolerance of those who do not see the world exactly as she does. It is a rejection of democracy, since the rules came about by democratic vote, not by fiat. And it is with her, as with Mugabe in Zimbabwe and every other tinhorn dictator who cannot accept the norms of democratic procedure, an unequivocal admission of defeat.

But the Presiding Bishop is not alone. Now comes the sharia-loving Archbishop of Canterbury himself, writing from that cradle of parliamentary democracy, Great Britain. He says that Lambeth will avoid parliamentary procedure. "We have listened carefully to those who have expressed their difficulties with Western and parliamentary styles of meeting," he writes, before announcing he is chucking parliamentary procedure for "indaba" meetings--groups that are preselected and designed to preclude any decisions from being made. In short, he is taking from Lambeth any semblance of democracy, because the result might be inconvenient. He wants consensus instead of the bother and unpleasantness of true democratic debate. But as Michael Crichton wrote, "the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming the matter is already settled."

Note that the Archbishop doesn't say who are those who have expressed these difficulties. Almost certainly they are not the Majority World bishops, many of whom are from Commonwealth countries that cherish the parliamentary tradition they received from Britain. Rather, the objections undoubtedly come from the same crowd that so loathes parliamentary procedure across the Pond: the Americans and Canadians and their pals. (After all, who loathes things "Western" more than self-loathing Western elites?). The reason they would be pleased with this ditching of parliamentary procedure is because were a vote actually permitted and taken, the Americans would find themselves bounced out of the Communion on their keisters, the Communion's overwhelming opposition to the innovations of the American church reinforced, and a reaffirmation of the Gospel as it is given to us in Holy Scripture. We can't have that now, can we? Little wonder so many orthodox are refusing to play this game.

The left has always found democracy inconvenient (strangely, even when they win), and so by reflex warms to and seeks control by way of inherently non-democratic mechanisms (the courts, international organizations, NGOs, etc.) They are the ones who were apologists for Mussolini and Mao and Stalin, and who today fawn over Iranian mullahs and celebrate Castro and Chavez. That's because deep down they wish they could like their heroes achieve what they want to achieve without the bother of obstreperous "dissenters," as they define anyone who can't see things exactly as they do. After all, they have great and prophetic things to do, and their trains simply must run on time.

The trashing of parliamentary procedure in our church has served to frustrate both purposes of parliamentary law. The Presiding Bishop does it here so to dispatch with her troublesome orthodox minority. And the Archbishop of Canterbury does it in Lambeth so to preclude the majority achieving its ends. In both cases it reflects a profoundly undemocratic instinct that we should all lament, and an abandonment of law that will ultimately hasten the end of both the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion.

Good try, Ruth

2008-05-05T17:47:00.005-04:00

Ruth Gledhill is the first journalist to put to Gene Robinson the questions he should answer about the in-your-face timing of his civil union and his need for the "legal protections" a civil union purportedly provides someone being threatened. She is the first person to press him about the exact nature of the threats against him.

She specifically asked him what "protections" it was he needed that required his nuptials so soon before Lambeth. He did not answer the question. There's a reason he did not answer the question. That's because it is simply not true that he gets any legal "protections" from a civil union that he could not otherwise have in some other fashion. And if, as he says, the threats are the reason he needs these protections, then why is he not singing "for God's sake get me to the church on time" and getting on with it--since he says he's already getting such threats? Gene Robinson is lying. He is getting civilly unionized when he is just so he can make a point. But he is too much of a coward to be honest, or is too invested in his lie, or he truly believes everyone listening to him is too stupid to realize exactly what he's doing and that he's lying. Or maybe he thinks he's being clever and cute. Most likely it is all of these.

Ms Gledhill admirably pressed him on what the nature of the threats were. At first he said he could not talk about them, given counsel he had received from "the security people" that he works with. (Interesting he did not mention the police--why would he not have involved them if there were real threats to his person?). But then he just couldn't help himself, and went on to talk about messages just left on his home phone from British callers that he apparently interprets as threats, suggesting that they were prompted by newspaper articles in Britain about him. He could not pass up the opportunity to again portray himself as victim (and not-so-subtly adding the British press to his growing list of persecutors). Want to bet we'll never hear of any arrests, despite the ease with which such calls can be traced?

It's a good thing that Gene Robinson keeps talking about himself (and talking, and talking, and talking, and talking . . . .). In doing so he makes it ever more apparent that this is a fellow with some serious problems of self-image, a seriously inflated need to be the center of attention, a serious neediness for the affirmation of others, and a seriously weird absorption with himself. Whether this is a result of his choice to move from bisexuality to homosexuality, or his recurring alcoholism, or his genetic predisposition, or his tragically odd upbringing is hardly relevant. Someone with this distorted a personality and outlook has no business being a priest or bishop.

Rowan Williams, whatever his views about homosexuality, must be shaking his head in amazement that this guy is the reason the whole Anglican Communion is about to shatter.

The 'I' of the Storm [Updated]

2008-04-25T17:43:00.004-04:00

Once again, the high priest of narcissism simply must be swept to the center of attention.

Critical to Gene Robinson's psyche is playing the victim, so in 2003 he went to great pains to ensure that everyone knew that at his consecration he wore the ultimate vestment of victimhood--a bulletproof undergarment. He claimed--without ever producing an iota of evidence--that there were credible death threats against him. Of course many public figures have threats made against them, but few don Kevlar so proudly and publicly as Gene did. (And of course if he were seriously threatened, the last thing he would have done was announce what sort of countermeasures he takes to protect himself.) His claims of death threats were never scrutinized by the media, nor was he ever called upon to provide details. And somehow when the consecration was over, he no longer saw a need to wear a bulletproof vest--even though there was also no evidence any threat had been neutralized.

But now he's at it again. He's apparently claiming that his life is again at risk as he travels his Via Dolorosa to Lambeth martyrdom this summer. Reports the New York Times: "He planned his civil union for June, he said, because he wanted to provide some legal protection to his partner and his children before he left for England for the conference. Bishop Robinson has received death threats, and he wore a bulletproof vest under his vestments at his consecration in 2003."

It's pretty plain to most observers exactly why Gene so wanted to be a "June bride," as he described himself in his first attempt to explain the provocative timing of his nuptials. The point all along was to insult the majority of the world's Anglican bishops as they gathered weeks after in Lambeth. Of course his plan was that he'd be there, pseudo-spouse in tow, just to make all the orthodox unhappy, and force Her Majesty the Queen, among others, to acknowledge him. While that part of his honeymoon didn't work out as he had hoped, he'll of course still be there, in the bazaar for those peddling their causes and wares. (He said he would not do that--but of course couldn't pass up the attention, so reversed himself.) He still aims to offend--and he will. He still aims to bring attention to himself (for he can do no other)--and he will. He's still offered no reasonable alternative explanation for his timing--because he can't.

But while his first explanation was supposed to be cute in a gay kind of way, his new explanation is at best disingenuous. That's not just because there's been no evidence offered for these supposed death threats. It's because there is nothing legally that his New Hampshire civil union will accomplish for him or his children that could not be accomplished easier through very simple estate planning, assuming he is bravely heading into harm's way and in need of putting his affairs in order. This is just another statement designed to bring attention to himself, to inflate his importance, to secure his victimhood, and to provide some sort of explanation for his timing.

Gene Robinson can't shut up, but at least he needs to put up. What are these death threats he claims to have received? Exactly what "legal protections" is he talking about providing his consort and children that requires a civil union before he travels? Since the New Hampshire civil union law was in effect in January, why if he needs these protections is he willing to wait until June to get them, if there really is a death threat against him? If this really is the reason for his timing, does that mean he was lying when he earlier said it was all only about having a June wedding?

-----------------

UPDATE (27th April): In case anyone thinks I have overstated Robinson's connecting the timing of his civil union with death threats, listen to his BBC interview this morning [starting at 36:40]. Radio Four's Sunday program interviewer Roger Bolton challenged Robinson about his saying, on the one hand, that homosexuality was being given more attention than it should have, while then inserting himself so provocatively into Lambeth. Listen to the whole interview, if you want to hear a case study in megalomania. But here is a transcript of the remarks pertaining to Robinson's martyrdom complex:

Bolton: And of course there's one other thing you'll be doing this summer, I understand, in June. You are going to go through a civil union with your partner. Do you think when you do that you will be in God's eyes "marrying" your partner?

Robinson: No, this is not marriage. The civil authorities here have passed a civil union law, and frankly when I head to Lambeth and really put my, not just my spiritual life but my physical life in danger, I am unwilling to attend and put myself in danger without at least some of the protections that are provided to me and my family are in place by virtue of this civil union law. I think that's what any husband or wife would do for their spouse, and I can do no less for my partner of 20 years.

Bolton: Does that mean, Bishop, that you fear for your life?

Robinson: One of the great things about being a believer in Jesus Christ is that we need not fear death. On the other hand, I'm not stupid, and I need to provide for my family just as anyone would want to provide for their family. And so, while I am not fearful--I do not think about that very often--at the same time I need to be prudent.

Interesting how he says it's not marriage, but then asserts he's acting as "any husband or wife would do." Pity that Mr. Bolton, as tough an interviewer as he is, did not press Robinson about exactly what "protections" he is referring to; why if he needs these protections, he's willing to wait until June to get them; and why he's just now offering this (different) story about why he is having his civil union just before heading to Lambeth. Someone needs to call Robinson on what appears to be a rather transparent and contrived falsehood that depends on others not pressing him for details.

For a fellow says he doesn't think of being killed very often, he sure talks about it a whole lot, doesn't he?

Leave Gene alone!

2008-04-25T13:44:00.002-04:00

Matthew over at Billy Ockham beat me to it.

Why can't they just leave poor Gene Robinson alone? Where is Chris Crocker when we need him:

How friggin' dare anyone out there talk about Gene being the Gay Bishop after all he's been through. He went through a divorce. He has children. He was burdened with those awful marriage vows, and the vows he took as a priest.

They made him a bishop, which he never, ever wanted. He never wanted anyone to know he was gay, but they made him say it. All he wanted was to be a simple country bishop. And now he's going through a battle to be accepted at Lambeth. He's trying to avoid anyone seeing him in the Marketplace there and talking to him and making him say he's gay. And they're forcing him to take a world tour outside his diocese to talk about being the Gay Bishop.

All you people at the New York Times (and Time and Newsweek and Episcopal Life and Anglican blogs . . . ) care about is readers and making money off of him as the Gay Bishop.

HE'S A HUMAN!! He hasn't been able to be a country bishop or priest for years. He can't even spend time in his diocese because all you people want is more, more, more, gay, gay, gay bishop---LEAVE HIM ALONE. You're lucky he's even done press availabilities and book signings and TV interviews and book tours and gay award ceremonies and parades and magazine articles and rallies for you bastards.

LEAVE GENE ALONE!!. . . PLEASE.

Is it professional to publicly bash a bishop who is going through a hard time and to keep calling attention to him?

Leave Gene Alone Please . . . Leave Gene Robinson alone . . . right now . . . I MEAN IT.

Anyone that has a problem with him you deal with me, because he is not well right now.

LEAVE HIM ALONE!

Falsehood of the week

2008-04-23T20:50:00.003-04:00

"There are a handful of archbishops who are unhappy with us and the Anglican Church of Canada."

--Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefforts Schori at Miami's Trinity Cathedral

Sporks and carbon footprints

2008-04-22T19:33:00.010-04:00

Somehow when the most prominent world religious leader and shepherd of the largest Christian church is in New York, the Presiding Bishop just had to be in Utah. That's because there the unbaptized diocesan bishop was celebrating the building of an obscenely expensive bureaucratic center. And of course property, especially of the expensive variety, is what is most important to the Presiding Bishop--certainly more important than hearing anything a boundary-crossing pope would have to say. (In fairness, given how fast the Diocese of Utah is atrophying, perhaps it's good they have some sort of cenotaph at which future generations can learn that there was once a religious cult in Utah other than the Mormons.)

But when there's God's Business to be done in New York, my how fast the Presiding Bishop hurries home. As Chris Johnson reports, the Presiding Bishop made it back to deliver this sermon on the highest of her High Holy Days--Earth Day. Every Episcopalian should watch this, and then compare it with any of the sermons given days earlier by Pope Benedict. That the Episcopal News Service thought it so good to post the video says a great deal about what passes for "preaching" in our church, and what passes for "Gospel."

Chris has made fun of the Presiding Bishop's heralding a spork as a "green" implement. It's actually much worse in the video, where she suggests one should carry a spork around so to avoid using disposable cutlery. One can simply lick it off, she suggests, and save it for future use, and so presumably save the planet. Remind me never to sup with the Presiding Bishop. And perhaps she should hold her tongue a bit when denigrating Majority World bishops for their backwardness. I do believe they all use clean and washed cutlery when eating the many chicken dinners that have proven such powerful bribes to ensure their orthodoxy.

That said, the spork is a useful metaphor for her view of the Christian religion, and if American elites had proper armorial bearings, her arms would no doubt sport the spork as heraldic device. A spork, after all, is a syncretistic implement that attempts to combine the best attributes of fork and spoon, but ends up failing to do anything well at all. The tines are too short to properly spear food with, and the bowl is, owing to the tines, unable to hold anything for which a spoon is necessary. The spork has its fans, but one senses mainly because the nomenclature is catchy and the implement rarely encountered. So people talk about the virtues of sporks, but they don't actually use them. Syncretistic religion of the sort that appeals to the Presiding Bishop is the same: it sounds oh-so-tony and sophisticated, but it offers nothing worthwhile, and so ultimately has no use or lasting appeal. Because it has no tines, it cannot capture the truth; because it has no integrity it cannot hold or preserve it either.

What was most offensive about this so-called sermon, though, was what the Presiding Bishop suggested as a way to reduce our carbon footprint:

How can we participate in reducing the carbon output of the buildings in which you and I worship on Sundays, or elsewhere? That's a major challenge. It's a prophetic act. And as I've pointed out to people, we could do it almost instantaneously if we shared a building with another congregation. You know most buildings, unlike this one, that are used for church purposes sit empty most of the time. How can we use that blessing that we've been given for the benefit of the larger community the other six days and 12 hours--18 hours--on Sunday? A challenge, but I think a very, very important one.

Uh, one way, Kate, that you can meet this "very, very important" challenge "almost instantaneously" is to stop creating those empty church buildings. You can do your part to reduce the carbon footprint by not spending millions of parishioner dollars to sue fellow Christians just for the express purpose of making those buildings carbon-wasting empty. Goodness knows, you could even reconsider your preference for turning those buildings into pubs, and actually agree to share them with Anglicans who want only to have a place to worship God--since you say we should share them. But of course you don't really care about carbon footprints, any more than you really eat with a dirty spork. And you don't want congregations to share those buildings, either, save when "merging" Episcopal parishes that are sailing toward extinction into a single lifeboat so they may die together. So your words are simply not true. Because if they were, you would not be creating the wasted spaces you so decry. You would be eager to share those spaces, if not for Christian purposes, at least to "save the planet."

But now we at least all know that your environmentalism is as authentic as your Christianity.

Credit where credit's due

2008-04-14T16:58:00.002-04:00

Word has come via the Living Church that the Presiding Bishop has apologized for the timing of the inhibition she placed on retired Bishop Edward MacBurney, and has for the time being lifted the inhibition. It is not in the Presiding Bishop's nature to back down, and likely there are those around her who counseled not to, so this must have been exceedingly difficult for her. She is to be commended for not only reversing her position, but also having the decency to telephone the bishop and talk with him. Moreover, it was good that she let others know (and in a very public way) that she had erred--she didn't have to do that, and that, too, speaks well of her in this situation.

There have been plenty of strong words on this blog condemning her original action, so it is certainly not necessary to revisit here that decision or the sort of mindset that produced it. But perhaps whatever (or whoever) brought her to this change of heart will lead her also not to reinstate the inhibition at all, as it truly does not meet the requirements of the canons, as maybe she has now realized. Perhaps, too, she will have opportunity to revisit on a larger scale how she treats those she views as opponents. To the degree she was relying on the counsel of others, such as her chancellor, in making the original decision and others like it, perhaps she will question whether they are serving her well. They are not.

It's appropriate now, though, to take her action at face value and to give credit where credit's due, and--as always-- to pray for the Presiding Bishop and our church.

If a church is "post-Christian," is it really still a church?

2008-04-12T07:12:00.004-04:00

Dean Munday's excellent blog has a superb quotation from Mark Steyn's new book, America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It, wherein Steyn absolutely nails it in describing the decline of mainline Protestantism--and the Episcopal Church in particular. Representative excerpt-of-an-excerpt follows, but do read Dean Munday's longer selection. One question that this raises: if a church is "post-Christian," how can it in any sense of the word still be termed a "church"?

Most mainline Protestant churches are, to one degree or another, post-Christian. If they no longer seem disposed to converting the unbelieving to Christ, they can at least convert them to the boggiest of soft-left political cliches, on the grounds that if Jesus were alive today he'd most likely be a gay Anglican bishop in a committed relationship driving around in an environmentally friendly car with an "Arms Are for Hugging" sticker on the way to an interfaith dialogue with a Wiccan and a couple of Wahhabi imams.

Q.E.D.

2008-04-11T06:43:00.008-04:00

This blog asserted that the Presiding Bishop's conduct with respect to octogenarian Bishop Edward H. MacBurney was reprehensible and indefensible, sending him as she did an inhibition knowing his son was very soon to die, and after having been asked to forestall that action until his family crisis had passed. I was quickly assailed for having made a "scurrilous" allegation against the Presiding Bishop by saying what she did was deliberately cruel.

So I challenged anyone to offer a plausible explanation other than intentional cruelty for why she would have done what she did. And to date no one has. No one has said she didn't know the bishop's son was at death's door, because the evidence is that she did know. And none of the Presiding Bishop's followers have been able to explain why, given that knowledge, what she did was not un-Christian, was not lacking charity, and was not entirely avoidable.

That, of course, is not wholly a bad thing: it makes the point that what the Presiding Bishop did was so beneath contempt that even her most ardent disciples do not care to come to her defense in any substantive fashion. It suggests that some of them have a conscience and sense of morality that she wholly lacked in this situation--or at least have some cognitive dissonance. For them to say what she did was good or even acceptable would be to say something quite terrible about their own humanity and their own Christian ethics, and that they cannot do. That is itself, of course, silent condemnation of the Presiding Bishop's actions. Q.E.D.

But it also suggests that they are rank hypocrites, especially if they are the decent human beings or even Christians that most presumably wish to be. That's because they do not condemn what they know was very, very wrong. It suggests that even knowing this they are willing to subordinate to their political aims what is right and honorable and decent and Christian--much in the same way they stay silent when they know the rights of fellow Episcopalians under the canons are being transparently trampled upon and ignored. They destroy their very souls in order to get what they think they want. (And what, then, will they truly have gained when they do get what they want?)

At some level they recognize this hypocrisy, and cannot face it. So when called out, all some can do is throw up invective, resorting to accusations, for example, that the issue is all about being jealous because the Presiding Bishop acts without male sexual organs, or because we orthodox Anglicans are akin to male sexual organs. (A bit odd that recurring fixation.) Or they suggest, incorrectly, that perhaps the Presiding Bishop had no discretion under the canons, and was forced to do what she did. This of course shows that in their heart-of-hearts they hope she had no choice--because they know that what she did otherwise would have been quite horrible. Others fall back on an equivalency argument, that somehow a violation of the canons excuses a violation of the norms of civilized behavior. They don't think this one through very well, since the primary violator of the canons has been the Presiding Bishop herself, and surely they would not defend such cruelty against her if she had just lost her child (or if such cruelty was directed against themselves, for that matter). If this equivalency is admitted, what would not be allowed to do to an accused canon-breaker? And asserting an equivalency is still an effort to avoid facing the character of her conduct on its own terms.

What leaves the Presiding Bishop so exposed here are the canons themselves, for they make plain that what she did was entirely discretionary--both the inhibition itself, and its timing. The very canon she cites (Title IV, Canon 1, Section 6) says she may issue the temporary inhibition--classic legal language of discretion. There are no time dictates, and the action is one entirely tethered to circumstance. The next section (Section 7) then warns and mandates that such an inhibition "shall be an extraordinary remedy, to be used sparingly and limited to preventing immediate and irreparable harm to individuals or to the good order of the Church." [Emphasis added.]

Here is the reason there has been no defense made for the Presiding Bishop based on the canons, for it is her beloved canons that indict her, and highlight the totally volitional nature of her choice to inhibit Bishop MacBurney at the very moment his son was about to expire. Moreover, for her to satisfy the requirement of Section 7, she has to conclude that there is "immediate and irreparable harm to individuals or to the good order of the church." [Emphasis added.] Of course the bishop's great sin--confirming young people into the Anglican faith--was already done, so that was not an ongoing or immediate harm. (We'll leave aside the very open question of whether his confirmations rise to the level of the canon's requirement for inhibition.) So she would have to argue that unless she inhibited him at that very moment of family crisis and grief, Bishop MacBurney was likely to leave his son's bedside or casket and immediately go engage in some unauthorized episcopal acts. Even Katharine Jefforts Schori cannot say that with straight face.

So we are left with what this blog suggested initially: that the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church acted with deliberate and calculated cruelty against an elderly, grieving retired bishop. For all of Frank Griswold's heterodoxy, for all of his dissembling, to my knowledge no one ever could make the case that he was deliberately cruel. His successor has made that case about herself in spades with this indefensible action.

That is not something any of us as Episcopalians would want to believe, no matter what our views of the current crisis. We don't want to believe it because, if true, it tells us something quite awful about the ethics of those charged to shepherd us, and the depth of moral decay at the very highest levels of an institution that is supposed to be the Body of Christ. We can all hope that this conclusion is the wrong one, that in fact she did not know about the bishop's family crisis, or that she did not intend the inhibition to be delivered to him until long after his grief was abating, or that the entire inhibition was never meant to happen, given the strictures of the canons. We can all hope to hear that she has asked forgiveness of Bishop MacBurney for what she did. We can all hope that this blog will have reason to say mea culpa and say that the evidence shows the Presiding Bishop was in no way cruel to Bishop MacBurney and his grieving family.

We can also all hope that this is a terrible dream about a once-fine institution now corrupted and perverted in the very core of its being, and that soon we will awake and discover it never happened.

Fanatic in the full flood of her atrocity

2008-04-08T22:30:00.005-04:00

Victor Hugo's Inspector Javert, unlike our Presiding Bishop, was a stickler for the law, and would never have so cavalierly ignored its demands as she does, even in his pursuit of Jean Valjean. But Javert's lack of kindness, empathy, and mercy seems eerily familiar, as does his obsessive pursuit of a man so much better than he. Like Javert, Katharine Jefforts Schori can utter self-righteous platitudes, but apparently cannot comprehend the essence of Christian charity. No one seemed inclined to stop Javert, perhaps because they were cowed by his power, perhaps because it was clear early on he would eventually destroy himself. Will anyone stop Katharine Jefforts Schori?

In case you've not read Les Miserables and have only seen the musical, here's an incentive to read the book, and a reminder of the sort of person Javert was. See if you find him at all familiar.

The instant that Madeleine's glance encountered Javert's glance, Javert, without stirring, without moving from his post, without approaching him, became terrible. No human sentiment can be as terrible as joy.

It was the visage of a demon who has just found his damned soul.

The satisfaction of at last getting hold of Jean Valjean caused all that was in his soul to appear in his countenance. The depths having been stirred up, mounted to the surface. The humiliation of having, in some slight degree, lost the scent, and of having indulged, for a few moments, in an error with regard to Champmathieu, was effaced by pride at having so well and accurately divined in the first place, and of having for so long cherished a just instinct. Javert's content shone forth in his sovereign attitude. The deformity of triumph overspread that narrow brow. All the demonstrations of horror which a satisfied face can afford were there.

Javert was in heaven at that moment. Without putting the thing clearly to himself, but with a confused intuition of the necessity of his presence and of his success, he, Javert, personified justice, light, and truth in their celestial function of crushing out evil. Behind him and around him, at an infinite distance, he had authority, reason, the case judged, the legal conscience, the public prosecution, all the stars; he was protecting order, he was causing the law to yield up its thunders, he was avenging society, he was lending a helping hand to the absolute, he was standing erect in the midst of a glory. There existed in his victory a remnant of defiance and of combat. Erect, haughty, brilliant, he flaunted abroad in open day the superhuman bestiality of a ferocious archangel. The terrible shadow of the action which he was accomplishing caused the vague flash of the social sword to be visible in his clenched fist; happy and indignant, he held his heel upon crime, vice, rebellion, perdition, hell; he was radiant, he exterminated, he smiled, and there was an incontestable grandeur in this monstrous Saint Michael.

Javert, though frightful, had nothing ignoble about him.

Probity, sincerity, candor, conviction, the sense of duty, are things which may become hideous when wrongly directed; but which, even when hideous, remain grand: their majesty, the majesty peculiar to the human conscience, clings to them in the midst of horror; they are virtues which have one vice,--error. The honest, pitiless joy of a fanatic in the full flood of his atrocity preserves a certain lugubriously venerable radiance. Without himself suspecting the fact, Javert in his formidable happiness was to be pitied, as is every ignorant man who triumphs. Nothing could be so poignant and so terrible as this face, wherein was displayed all that may be designated as the evil of the good.

Monstrous

2008-04-08T21:04:00.007-04:00

She is reportedly a mother. And she even thinks it's oh-so progressive and modern to call Jesus "Mother." So at some level one would would have thought she had regard for the attributes ascribed to any normal mother. But when confronted with the opportunity to show any semblance of maternal kindness, and display any understanding of parental love (or love of any sort), the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church goes out of her way to deliberately do the opposite, and so rightly conjures up every horrifying fairy-tale caricature of the cold, cruel, vindictive, heartless, ugly woman.

What did she do? She inhibited 80-year old retired Bishop of Quincy Edward H. MacBurney. She did so after being told that his son was on his deathbed, and despite pleas that she forestall any such action until the crisis in the bishop's family had resolved. And her response? A mere two days before Bishop MacBurney's son died, she deliberately proceeded with her cruel and callous and truly unnecessary act. Today, while undoubtedly still experiencing grief that no parent should ever have to endure, Bishop MacBurney was informed of the inhibition.

Because we know she was told fully of the situation, there can be no other conclusion but that the Presiding Bishop deliberately did this in a time and manner that would cause the maximum distress to a grieving parent. We have learned from her repeated violation of the canons that she is lawless. Now we also know she is evil. Because truly there is no other word to describe such vile and sadistic cruelty.

Is there any person who can defend this sick and twisted act--at any level? How can any bishops of our church--liberal or conservative--countenance this? Where is the outrage from the downtrodden Gene Robinson--surely is not such callousness at the death of a colleague's child worse than not being invited to a Lambeth tea party? And where are all the so-called "liberals" who are always accusing the orthodox of not being sufficiently welcoming, loving, and accepting? Where are our friends at the Anglican Communion Institute, who act as if these people are honorable Christians with whom we can reach accommodation? If this is the example set by the leadership of our church, is it the sort of church that any of us can remain in?

This is not a matter of theology or polity or even property. The behavior is so far below the threshold of Christian conduct that there's not even a question about whether it comports with Christian notions of morality or is a proper witness for our Lord. No, this is a question of basic human decency of the most minimal sort. And Katharine Jefforts Schori has shown she cannot even measure up to that standard. Yet she has the unmitigated gall to speak the words reconciliation and tolerance and inclusion and justice.

Ask yourself this: have you ever in any part of your life--in your family, your business associations, your neighborhood, your social life, or any other dimension of your life--known anyone to be so truly cruel to someone who is losing their child and then grieving that loss? The answer is surely no, as even the worst person we know would understand the gut-wrenching pain of losing one's child. Then ask yourself what it means when such an unspeakably mean and inhuman act is done by the senior leader of the church of which you're a member.

Church of the rip current

2008-04-07T17:53:00.005-04:00

Tim Keller on the church:

The church of Jesus Christ is therefore like the ocean. It is enormous and diverse. Like the ocean there are warm and clear spots and deadly cold spots, places you can enter easily without danger and places where it will immediately whisk you away and kill you.

You can probably guess what kind of water I think best describes today's Episcopal Church.

(Quotation from Books and Culture's review of Tim Keller's The Reason for God--recommended earlier on this blog here.)

Firm is his promise, and his mercy sure

2008-04-04T23:05:00.004-04:00

Today's good news from the Old Dominion is probably what prompted this joyous hymn to be stuck in my head all day. Bishop Timothy Dudley-Smith, one of the finest hymn-writers of the past half-century, wrote the hymn in 1961, after reading a review copy of the New English Bible New Testament. The hymn is an adaptation of the Magnificat, taken from that translation. (Here is a BBC Songs of Praise singing of the hymn.)

Tell out, my soul, the greatness of the Lord!
Unnumbered blessings give my spirit voice;
tender to me the promise of his word;
in God my Savior shall my heart rejoice.

Tell out, my soul, the greatness of his Name!
Make known his might, the deeds his arm has done;
his mercy sure, from age to age to same;
his holy Name--the Lord, the Mighty One.

Tell out, my soul, the greatness of his might!
Powers and dominions lay their glory by.
Proud hearts and stubborn wills are put to flight,
the hungry fed, the humble lifted high.

Tell out, my soul, the glories of his word!
Firm is his promise, and his mercy sure.
Tell out, my soul, the greatness of the Lord
to children's children and for evermore!

Another version of what happened today

2008-04-04T19:19:00.002-04:00

A child, however, who had no important job and could only see things as his eyes showed them to him, went up to the carriage.

"The Emperor is naked," he said.

"Fool!" his father reprimanded, running after him. "Don't talk nonsense!" He grabbed the child and took him away. But the boy's remark, which had been heard by the bystanders, was repeated over and over again until everyone cried:

"The boy is right! The Emperor is naked! It's true!"

The Emperor realized that the people were right but could not admit to that. He thought it better to continue the procession under the illusion that anyone who couldn't see his clothes was either stupid or incompetent. And he stood stiffly on his carriage, while behind him a page held his imaginary mantle.

Blinking at reality

2008-04-04T18:00:00.004-04:00

There is much to like about Judge Bellows's opinion in the Virginia cases, in which he found the Commonwealth's "division" statute applied. But what was most gratifying was his calling out the Episcopal Church--meaning most especially the Presiding Bishop and her chancellor--for what in essence was a lie. Not just any ol' white lie, mind you, but a bold, deliberate, calculated lie--and one that insultingly assumed the judge was too stupid or too weak or both to identify it as such.

The lie, of course, was that despite massive departures from the Episcopal Church, and parishes and dioceses leaving, and the Episcopal Church effectively declared out of communion with many of the world's Anglicans, that there was no "division." A division, the Episcopal Church asserted with stunning hubris, could only exist if they said it existed--therefore it didn't exist. The judge begged to differ. He found the case overwhelming that there was in fact a division, and even quoted the use of the word division by the plaintiffs back at them (citing Bishop Lee's words as but one example).

Of course the judge was too polite to use the L-word. Instead he said "it blinks at reality to characterize the ongoing division within the Diocese, ECUSA, and the Anglican Communion as anything but a division of the first magnitude."

"Blinking at reality" is perhaps the best expression that anyone's used to describe the mendacity of Episcopal Church leaders. First, it confirms there is a reality that exists--not just some pluriform truth that is nothing more than a function of clever word use and dictated perception by whomever is in power. Second, it suggests the reality is one that the Episcopal Church well knows--since a blink is but an interruption of sight, and a very brief one that rarely distorts perception. Finally, although a blink can be voluntary or involuntary (i.e., an attempt not to see or a conditioned reflex of closing one's eyes), it neither changes reality nor precludes one from truthfully reporting that reality. In short, one who blinks at reality is one who lies without any excuse.

This is behavior we have seen for some time: an ease in dissembling that can only be caused by a long, desensitizing habit of lying, or an utter lack of conscience--or both. It's a behavior that in a Christian context is so awful to believe is happening that many find it difficult to accept, hoping and praying that it just isn't so. And when the reality of being so deliberately lied to finally hits, it is a terrible realization--whether you are an African bishop, or the ACI, or a Windsor bishop, or an average pew dweller. That's because with that realization comes the realization that in fact one probably is not dealing in a Christian context at all, but with people with a very different view of the world, a very different set of values, and a very different notion of God.

Of course the judge had opportunity to see this along with everyone who saw the video deposition of the Presiding Bishop, in which her sneering disdain for the judicial process and for the truth (in her attempt to evade answering questions) was on evidence for all to see. It could not have been difficult to conclude after that performance that the entire case for the Episcopal Church was based on a lie. But the evidence was so overwhelming that he didn't even have to consider the sort of person who was responsible for bringing this whole matter so unnecessarily into his courtroom.

This was but the first in a series of legal issues that must be settled, and cannot be viewed as telegraphing anything about how the judge will rule on the constitutional questions or other matters. It doesn't tell us how an appeals court will ultimately decide the cases. But however it turns out, it is very reassuring to know that when exposed to the light of day, the dishonesty of the Episcopal Church leadership--their blinking at reality--is plain for all to see.

The real numbers

2008-04-01T21:03:00.003-04:00

Matthew over at Billy Ockham reminds us that the real membership losses of the Episcopal Church have been much worse than the nominal losses reported. That's because the population of the United States has not been static, and the percentage of the population that identifies themselves as Episcopalian should have increased concomitantly. [Note that Matthew generously defers to the Episcopal Church's official membership numbers, which almost everyone agrees are grossly inflated, given the disparity with Average Sunday Attendance, which is now below 800,000.]

In the year of my birth the population of the United States was 180,671,158. The membership of the Episcopal Church was 3,444,000. In 2006 (the last year we have current figures for) the population of the United States was 296,410,404. The membership of the Episcopal Church was 2,205,376.

I know most Episcopalian loyalists are going, "Ok, we lost 1,200,000 people in 45 years." That is where you are wrong. The population of the US grew by 64% in that time. The membership of the Episcopal Church ought to be 5,650,000. We lost 3,444,000 members. We lost 3/5's of our numbers. Where did they go? In a church that says everyone is special, everyone is important, everyone has a place, why are they not missed?

One would think that confronted with a catastrophic loss of members, the Episcopal Church would be desperate to recruit to reach out to evangelize and also to retain the members it already has. One would be wrong. The Episcopal Church is desperate to retain the property to which it has any form of legal claim, but that is all.

Fools

2008-04-01T16:58:00.002-04:00

I gave up trying to come up with April Fools’ news stories for an Anglican audience. The best Onion-quality ones all seem to have been done before:

Episcopalians consecrate divorced, sexually active gay man as bishop
Episcopalians pick squid specialist from tiny diocese to be presiding bishop despite no experience as parish rector
Episcopal priest is a practicing Muslim
Episcopalians dress up as clowns to distribute the body and blood of Christ
Episcopal priest is Druid and pagan
Episcopal Church presiding bishop’s Easter message unequivocally condemns gas-passing cattle
Episcopal Church leader says Jesus only one 'vehicle to the divine'
Episcopal Church presiding bishop blames America for Sep 11 attacks
Episcopal Church bishop covers up child sex abuse by brother; blames victim
Episcopal bishop is twice divorced, thrice married, albeit to women
Episcopal bishop, sadomasochists, and unclad gay men performing sex acts are highlights of this year’s San Francisco gay parade
Episcopal Church presiding bishop says she’d rather see churches used as pubs than Anglican places of worship
Episcopal Church leaders claim denomination is thriving, in spite of leading all denominations in rate of decline
Episcopal Church claims ‘democratic polity’ precludes its following orthodox Christianity; presiding bishop attempts to depose orthodox bishops by less that a majority of bishops entitled to vote
Episcopal Church bishop denies same-sex blessings are occurring in his diocese, even though he presided at them
Episcopal Church encourages replacing Good Friday Stations of the Cross with UN Millenium Development Goal ‘stations’
Episcopal seminaries close, discontinue programs, and sell buildings; church leaders herald moves as positive
Episcopal gay bishop says he only wants to be country bishop from New Hampshire; commences world book tour to tell his story as gay bishop and protest exclusion from Lambeth

So I tried again with these—but they were so unbelievable they couldn’t have fooled anyone:

Episcopal Church leaders reaffirm belief in Nicene Creed and 39 Articles
Episcopal Church urges members to recommit themselves to study of Bible as the inspired Word of God
Episcopal Church presiding bishop says Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life
Episcopal Church leaders reject litigation as un-Christian and unbiblical
Episcopal Church presiding bishop declines to proceed with deposition of octogenarian bishops, citing ‘Christian charity’ in light of their family hardships
Episcopal Church presiding bishop admits Schofield and Cox depositions were flawed, emphasizes the importance of following canons ‘honestly and with integrity’
Episcopal Church’s chancellor to the presiding bishop admits legal missteps, refuses to accept payment for services
Episcopal Church leaders disclose litigation costs, noting importance of ‘transparency’ in a Christian organization funded by average church-goers
Episcopal Church commences heresy trial of John Shelby Spong for ‘denying virtually every tenet of the orthodox Christian faith’
Episcopal Church average member is 42 years old.
Episcopal Church average member is 47 years old.
Episcopal Church average member is 52 years old.
Episcopal Church average member is 57 years old.
Episcopal Church membership and attendance soars with innovations in belief and worship
Episcopal Church membership and attendance holds steady with innovations in belief and worship
Episcopal Church membership and attendance shows slight decline with innovations in belief and worship
Episcopal Church membership and attendance declines in line with other denominations with innovations in belief and worship

I give up.

The Reason for God

2008-04-01T07:02:00.009-04:00

Read Tim Keller's masterful The Reason for God and you will see why his Redeemer Church in New York is resonating so. Each Sunday some 6,000 New Yorkers attend one of the several services he has in various rented locations around Central Park, and each week twice that number are involved in Redeemer's activities. Keller is not watering down the Gospel, Episcopal style, in order to draw his largely theretofore unchurched parishioners. His message is the opposite of one saying we're all just wonderful. Instead he is unabashedly orthodox, and brutally honest about the sorry state of our lives without God. Keller's model is also not a seeker-sensitive one, offering emotional services with PowerPoint, praise bands and what John Stott calls "sweet ditties for Jesus." With the exception of high-quality jazz and classical music, the services are largely traditional--always including the Creed, for example--putting the lie to the notion that traditional has to be boring. But Redeemer's draw is plainly the thoroughly orthodox and erudite Keller himself and his messages, and therein is the real lesson for Anglicans.

Keller does not shy away from meeting head-on the objections to Christianity, or to showing respect for the intellect of those to whom he preaches. Despite his Presbyterian-length sermons (35 minutes of so), people line up to hear him and to be challenged. He is systematic and organized in his talks, offering a structure for his topics that make his content memorable, without using clever rhetorical tricks or histrionics. His Christianity is not easy, intellectually or otherwise. But he manages to delve into the intellectual riches of the faith without in any way reducing it to a mere mental exercise. He has no problem admitting the faults of Christians, but he is an apologist--not an apologizer--for the orthodox Christian faith.

Here is a video of Keller recently at Berkeley [click watch webcast], in which he addresses the various potential responses to exclusive truth claims by religions. It's long--90 minutes--but will give you a taste of what Keller is like, and why his approach is so appealing. The first half is lecture, the second Q&A. Even though some of the questions put to him border on inane (it's Berkeley, after all), you can also see why his question-and-answer sessions are so popular and have become his hallmark. He doesn't shy away from any tough questions about Christianity, or from giving straightforward answers. And yet his tone is always irenic and respectful, his manner approachable.

The Reason for God has moved up to Number Eight on both the New York Times and Amazon non-fiction best-seller lists. Last I checked the local Barnes and Noble had sold out. But it seems more and more in Rome I talk with people who have read it. In separate conversations this week I've run into a Baptist, a Presbyterian, a Methodist, and an Episcopalian who have read the book, each of whom loved it and were eager to recommend it to me, not knowing I had read it. That reaction to the book is understandable: I finished torn between reading it again or lending it to someone else. (I cured the dilemma by buying a second copy.)

Keller, who is very much a student of C. S. Lewis, begins the book by tackling head-on the seven major objections to Christianity. Then in the second half of the book he puts forth a positive and compelling case for the Christian faith. The book is not long, and the language is simple and straightforward. Keller's points, though, bear reading and re-reading, and so to do justice to the book and the thinking it requires, it's best to consume it one chapter at a sitting (which, I should add, I was incapable of doing: I couldn't stop reading). Check out the book's web site to learn more about it; there's also a brief video of Keller explaining his rationale for writing the book.

This is a book that every Christian should read and share. But it seems to come also at a particularly good time for Anglicans seeking to define themselves in a post-Episcopal world. Episcopalians make much of how "you don't have to leave your mind at home" as an Episcopalian, with much smug self-congratulation for how bright and intellectual we supposedly are. But in truth our church has some of the worst Bible literacy of any Christian denomination, and an even less impressive understanding of the great doctrines of the Christian faith. There is very little effort to show how our faith is entirely consistent with reason. What passes for intellectual inquiry is often nothing more than a self-loathing eagerness to deconstruct the very faith we say we are part of, so to gather accolades from the secular world for how sophisticated and open-minded we are, and thereby in theory attracting them to the Episcopal Church. (The numbers suggest this doesn't work, any more than would a restaurant owner enjoy success by telling everyone how terrible his food is.)

A reaction to over-intellectualizing the faith is to over-emphasize the emotional aspects of our faith . And so many new evangelical Anglican churches are (save for vestiges of Prayer-Book liturgy) almost indistinguishable from the thousands of non-denominational and community churches out there, providing plenty of emotion and very little challenge to the mind, no doubt thinking that this would be a deterrent to new people coming to the church. Tim Keller's approach would suggest this is selling people a bit short.

I had dinner this week with two young people who no longer regularly attend church in Rome, largely because they have found the offerings here shallow, superficial, and lacking any sort of challenge to their mind. They simply did not believe they were learning about their faith or the Bible in any substantive fashion. Instead each Sunday they have been listening to Tim Keller's sermons, downloaded from the Internet. While I do not endorse their retreat from a church community (and certainly Tim Keller wouldn't), after listening to Keller I can understand why they feel so unfulfilled in what is on offer from Rome's pulpits (including, it must be said, our own Episcopal Church pulpits). Why is it, they asked, in a college town like Rome, with so many orthodox Christians, is there not a church for them? (Perhaps here was yet another bit of evidence that Rome is a very fertile field in which to plant an orthodox Anglican church?)

So don't stop going to church, but do get to know Tim Keller, first and foremost through The Reason for God. And beyond the benefits you will receive from reading it, ask yourself as an Episcopalian or as an Anglican what this approach tells us about where we might be successful as a church in the days ahead, here and beyond. Keller's New York model may or may not translate seamlessly to a town like Rome, or even a city like Atlanta. But there is much to be said for his manner of communicating Christian orthodoxy so bravely and with such openness and intellectual honesty.

Congratulations, Stand Firm

2008-03-26T17:15:00.006-04:00

I'm on a spring break of sorts, but had to post a hearty "Well Done" for Stand Firm, the most important of all the Anglican blogs out there. Greg Griffith has just rolled out a much-improved format for the site, and it's truly superb. If you are not a daily Stand Firm reader, you really should be. Nowhere else can you get as clear a picture of what's going on in the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion than at Stand Firm. And nowhere else are there such robust, intelligent, and insightful reader comments. Now it's even more readable, and more professional.

In that vein, let me add another word of congratulations to Stand Firm--for not following Kendall Harmon's lead in shutting down comments for Easter Week. Comments on orthodox blogs are the on-line equivalent of fellowship for orthodox Anglicans--many of whom do not have benefit of other outlets for fellowship with their like-minded Anglican brothers and sisters in Christ. When Kendall shut down comments at his excellent TitusOneNine blog, he was in fact cutting off an important avenue for fellowship for many of his readers--locking the church doors in a sense--and that was truly a shame. Should orthodox Anglicans quit thinking and sharing their views during Holy Week? Or might that not be a particularly good time, from a particularly good perspective, to approach the issues of the day? Perhaps he thought at Easter folks should focus on things other than Anglican troubles--but then that didn't keep him from making posts, did it? That this action followed a post where he congratulated his readership on the maturity of comments was also rather odd.

Blogs such as TitusOneNine and Stand Firm are more than news streams or on-line op-ed pages. They truly are gathering places--social networks for orthodox Anglicans. Stand Firm seems to understand this better than TitusOneNine--or perhaps TitusOneNine does not view its role in this way. I'm Kendall Harmon's biggest fan, but on this one he got it wrong--and Stand Firm got it right.

Plunging into the heart of our insoluble difficulty

2008-03-20T15:10:00.000-04:00

J. B. Phillips on Good Friday, from his great classic, Plain Christianity.

"In all our minds, sometimes lurking deep beneath the conscious level, there lies a sense that there is this gulf between us and God, and that something ought to be done about it. We make our good resolutions, we turn over new leaves--or we try to laugh the whole thing off--but there remains the sense that we are a long way from God and that there is nothing we can do to close the gap. Sometimes we feel a passing sympathy with those heathen religions which make sacrifices, or go through complicated rituals of atonement to make themselves right with God, but we of the twentieth century feel we have grown beyond that sort of thing, though we have not grown beyond the sense that something ought to be done to atone for our sins and failures.

"When we look at the Cross, without sentimentality, but with a little thought and imagination, we realize that what we could never do, what we are always powerless to do has been done, by Christ. This is the Act of Reconciliation which we could never make, the Bridge which we could never build. No longer do we see God as the Fearful Judge isolated in splendid Majesty, but right down among us, taking upon Him our flesh and plunging into the heart of our insoluble difficulty. When we see what sort of a God the Cross reveals to us, it is no exaggeration to say that a revolution takes place in our thinking and our feeling. It is not too difficult to hurl defiance at a high and mighty God who, secure in His majesty, makes us mortals feel guilty and afraid. But it is impossible to be unmoved when we see our very Creator down in the sweat and dust of the arena, going to that awe-inspiring length to make the Reconciliation. It may come quietly into our hearts, or it may break over us like a wave, that the nature of God is not, as we supposed, that of a Tyrant, a Spoilsport, or a Jesting Fate, but Love--not sentimental love, but real Love, that would face the grim degradation of the Cross to reconcile us to Himself."

Learning voting rights from Southern segregationists

2008-03-17T20:29:00.018-04:00

"If they don't like the way we register voters here, then the black folk can elect their own candidates and they can change it. It's a democracy, after all."

That was the sort of snide condescension offered by white segregationists in black-majority Southern towns who illegally did everything in their power to keep blacks from registering to vote.

And that is basically the same kind of defense that is now being made for the Presiding Bishop. "No one challenged her ruling," we're now told. So it stands.

As with the disenfranchised blacks in the Mississippi Delta, that might just have something to with the fact that a majority of those the Presiding Bishop and her chancellor say should have objected were effectively disenfranchised. Their absentions, which under an "all-eligible" vote have the same force as no votes, were simply tossed out.

Moreover, there is no requirement for an objection when someone does something that is under the clear rules a legal and factual impossibility--a nullity. That is nothing more than an attempt to blame the minority that just had its rights violated. (And, truly: does anyone think that an objection by anyone would have made one bit of difference?)

Suppose the House of Bishops had voted to elect Hillary Clinton President of the United States. She would not suddenly become president simply because the Presiding Bishop after the vote declared, "I declare Hillary Clinton is president." That's not because those there can't vote for president: undoubtedly they're all registered voters and can. But they aren't by themselves, in those numbers, at that time, and in that setting legally competent to make that happen. And they likewise can't overcome that by simply saying that no one objected to their electing her.

Consider the implications of this new line of defense.

The Presiding Bishop could gather together three bishops and declare them a quorum of the House of Bishops. If no one objected, it would be a quorum because the Presiding Bishop pronounced it so. She wouldn't even have to give notice of the meeting (no matter what the canons require), so long as none of the three objected.

The House duly assembled (all three of them) could then vote to depose anyone they cared to (as long as more than half--in this case, two--voted to depose).

And if anyone subsequently complained, all you would have to say is "no one objected to the Presiding Bishop's ruling."

And they'd sure be right about one thing: no one does understand their "democratic polity." That's because usually there are other more accurate terms to describe that form of governance and the kind of people who like it.

This isn't the only line the Presiding Bishop's defenders are using that was heard in the segregationist South. Remember these? "Well, it wouldn't have made any difference anyway. The blacks didn't have any qualified candidates and they weren't organized, so the result would have been the same. They'll be better off anyway: they didn't need to waste their time voting."

The Presiding Bishop's groupies put it in terms like these: "It's clear that a majority of all the bishops would have voted the same way. We haven't heard enough complaints to suggest that isn't the case. It would be a waste of time to take another vote, as the result won't change. We just need to move on."

All this means that to the Presiding Bishop, her chancellor, and a whole bunch of our bishops, the rights of minorities and the rights even of majorities to vote do not mean anything. It means the process is meaningless, as were the democratic votes to establish that process--and as are the votes of those whose job it is to change the canons if they need changing. That means whatever your place in our church, lay or clergy; whatever your point of view, revisionist or orthodox: you are also disenfranchised when the Presiding Bishop takes such power unto herself.

It's not so unusual for some liberals to grumble about democracy when they are in the minority: they can't stand knowing they are right and not have others reflexively accept that. But when they are so obviously in the majority and loathe democracy and voting rights so, it tells you something very troubling about their character. And one thing it tells you is that there is nothing liberal or democratic about them at all. This is, as it was in the segregationist South, all about the exercise of raw power of the majority over the minority by the extinguishing of voting and other procedural rights.

Isn't it fascinating that the church which proudly sent civil rights workers to Mississippi, and marched for voting rights for blacks, is today so blatantly violating our voting laws as a church? Isn't it amazing the glibness and glee with which they violate minority rights? And isn't it interesting they then so reflexively defend their abuse of voting procedures with the same sort of lines as the segregationist thugs they once so rightly opposed?

Abortions can lead to mental illness

2008-03-16T19:48:00.002-04:00

You won't read this in Episcopal Life Online:

The Royal College of Psychiatrists recommends updating abortion information leaflets to include details of the risks of depression. “Consent cannot be informed without the provision of adequate and appropriate information,” it says.

Several studies, including research published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry in 2006, concluded that abortion in young women might be associated with risks of mental health problems.
The controversy intensified earlier this year when an inquest in Cornwall heard that a talented artist hanged herself because she was overcome with grief after aborting her twins. Emma Beck, 30, left a note saying: “Living is hell for me. I should never have had an abortion. I see now I would have been a good mum. I want to be with my babies; they need me, no one else does.”

From The Sunday Times (London)

On the other hand . . .

2008-03-16T16:31:00.004-04:00

In an earlier post I listed some of the reasons it would be really, really hard for the Presiding Bishop and her chancellor to admit their cock-ups in the attempted deposition of Bishops Schofield and Cox. Today let me list a few of the good things that could flow their way if they "grasped the nettle" and just did the right thing.

1. They could reassure the bishops that they really are trying to be fair and respect the rights of their fellow bishops. (Even though this procedure wouldn't be used if they were so doing, most of the bishops don't seem to have a problem with the notion that going to another Anglican province is abandonment.)

2. They could regain their liberal credentials. It's hard to crow about justice and due process and reconciliation and the rights of the downtrodden when procedurally you're stomping with cleated jackboots on the face of a kindly 87-year-old bishop. (Note, for example, how almost no one remembers that the House of Bishops at the same meeting also pontificated on the moral outrage of waterboarding and no one is talking about their supposed emphasis on reconciliation at the meeting. Gee, I wonder why not.)

3. They can solidify their legal position in the soon-to-be-filed San Joaquin cases, not only removing the distractor of whether or not Bishop Schofield is still the Episcopal Bishop or not, but also demonstrating that they are scrupulous about following the rules.

4. They can, if they have any sense, use this gift of an opportunity not to proceed again against Bishop Cox. This has been nothing but a black eye for them, and there's really nothing to be gained by attempting to depose him again. They would make moot the issue of consents in his case, and get big points for charity, restraint, forbearance, and moderation--right before going after Bishops Schofield and Duncan.

5. They can, if they move quickly enough, increase the chance that the Archbishop will disinvite Bishop Schofield. Right now, they've actually increased the likelihood that his invitation will not be pulled.

6. Even though they'll look very foolish in the eyes of their supporters, at least the Father Jakes of the world would be off the hook in trying to defend them, for which they might actually at this point earn some gratitude.

7. Even though they'll look bad in front of their fellow bishops, they might win back the support of institutional liberals who no doubt have been raising questions--if not raising hell--about what happened, and how they've been made to look really bad.

8. If there is going to be press coverage of this (and so far there has been none of note), it would be far better to have the story be that they realized there were questions about the legitimacy of the action, so magnanimously decided in the case of Bishop Schofield to put it to a vote again with all the bishops eligible to vote, and decided not to sign the deposition in the case of Bishop Cox. Otherwise, the story will undoubtedly paint a picture of ineptness or mean-spiritedness, and could be a PR disaster. There will be quotations from lawyers, and judges, and parliamentarians all saying how disingenous and violative of rights this was. The bishops do not want wire-service stories read by parishioners about how they just ignored their own rules.

9. They will get a much more decisive vote to depose than they otherwise would have had.

10. They might get a billable-hours refund for the really sorry legal advice they seem to have gotten at the House of Bishops meeting counseling them to go forward with this vote.

Ride On, Ride On in Majesty!

2008-03-15T20:43:00.001-04:00

A glorious Palm Sunday hymn. The Reading Phoenix Choir in England's Benedictine Douai Abbey .

Bless you, Bishop Cox

2008-03-15T20:14:00.002-04:00

Nashotah House Dean Robert Munday reminds us what a decent, godly man Bishop Cox is. Bishop Cox, at 87 the oldest living Episcopal bishop, is one of the two bishops who recently survived a bungled but venemous attempt to depose him by the Presiding Bishop and her chancellor. (Although for the moment the official TEC line is that he was in fact deposed, he can take solace in knowing that the vote failed by any reasonable reading of the canons--plus the required consents were never sought in his case, also making the deposition a legal nullity.)

Good for Dean Munday for providing this picture of Bishop Cox. What a wonderful thing it would be if bishops like William J. Cox were leading us, instead of the nasty and mean-spirited sorts that would try to put an elderly saint like him through such hell.

Good advice, indeed

2008-03-15T12:39:00.003-04:00

Some really good advice for the Episcopal Church's top lawyer over at Billy Ockham. It will be interesting to see whether Matthew's advice is heeded or not. It seems rather obvious it ought to be, but the chancellor's admitting such a basic mistake is not without considerable cost. Here's why.

1. So far, there has been great deference given to him and to the Presiding Bishop by their fellow revisionists in the House of Bishops. This is despite the fact that the current legal strategy is causing severe financial distress to many of them, as well as (if they admit it), loss of members. Until now they've bought the "All Is Well" line. But if those selling them on this strategy prove to be this incompetent, there will undoubtedly be fractures in that support. Will they really continue to believe they're getting such remarkable value in their legal support? And will this stunning bit of incompetence not magnify the fury that will ensue if there are losses in the Virginia or California cases?

2. To admit an error of this magnitude would also call into question other canonical end-runs that have been done and are in the offing--most especially that which is planned against Bishop Bob Duncan, the most prominent orthodox bishop. Are you sure we can do that? is undoubtedly a question they will now ask every time--but especially if it turns out that the chancellor and Presiding Bishop just made them look like fools. They are so invested in canonical short-cuts, that to admit grievous error in the first significant one could slow down their campaign, and they might not wish to risk that.

3. To admit this mistake is to admit that you were running roughshod over the rights of two bishops. That's because if you're going to do the ecclesiastical equivalent of a death penalty, you take care to make sure every i is dotted and every t is crossed. Plainly that did not happen, in the rush to get these bishops deposed. So far canons uber alles has been the anthem they've been singing, and accusations of mean-spiritedness, intolerance, and even cruelty have been answered by the mantra "we're just following the canons." If they now admit they have been ignoring the canons or have been cavalier with them (and, really, what other explanation is there?), it undercuts their entire defense of their actions, and really leaves few conclusions available except that they're being mean-spirited, intolerant, and cruel.

4. If they admit this error, it's hard not to admit others they have made, including the stunning admission by the Presiding Bishop that they did not seek the required consents in the case of the elderly Bishop Cox. Perhaps someone will even ask the obvious question why this canon is being used at all, since plainly it does not fit and it only being used to avoid giving the bishops the rights they should have at a proper trial. And what other simple errors are we not being told about, the bishops must surely be wondering.

5. Admitting error will make it much more difficult not to disclose the amount of fees (read offerings) being spent on litigation. Most folks don't want to give money to pay for lawyers to sue other Christians. But no one wants to give money to pay incompetent lawyers to sue other Christians. It's much harder to resist disclosure when it appears you're truly wasting funds and getting wretched legal advice.

6. Admitting error will permit the Archbishop of Canterbury to leave intact the invitation to Bishop Schofield, and that has to be highly offensive to the Presiding Bishop, especially in view of the rebuff she received in trying get a place there for Gene Robinson.

7. If they admit their mistake, it will certainly magnify in the Archbishop of Canterbury's mind any perception that the Americans are acting in cowboy fashion and are simply out of control. At what point does he say it's simply not worth covering up for the American church?

8. Admitting such clumsiness will cause anger among their own constituencies, who surely expect better of them than such incompetence.

Great advice from a great blogger at Billy Ockham. But I wonder if admitting error is even possible in people with such hubris. And even if it is, can they afford to do so?

Lawless

2008-03-15T09:39:00.003-04:00

And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!

--Sir Thomas More to Roper in the play (and film) A Man For All Seasons

Rule XXXI of the House of Bishops’ rules make the latest edition of Robert’s Rules of Order the governing rules for that body. It would be helpful if the members of the House, or at least the Presiding Bishop, the chancellor, and the parliamentarian had a rudimentary understanding of Robert’s, not to mention the church’s canons as well.

Apparently they don’t. They took a vote to depose Bishops Schofield and Cox, and although they had a quorum sufficient to conduct general business, they did not have sufficient votes to depose. Because they do not understand what a quorum is, however, the chancellor has now declared it is his and the parliamentarian’s “position” that the vote was sufficient for deposition simply because there was a quorum. In fact, the votes in both cases failed, meaning not only were the two bishops not deposed, their inhibitions are now lifted and they are restored fully to their position before any action was taken against them. The House of Bishops is in essence on record as declaring that these two bishops did not abandon the communion of the church.

A quorum is, very simply, the number of members of an organization required to be present in order to conduct business. That is not the same as the number of votes required for a particular matter. A quorum is usually (and under Robert’s is, by default) half of the members of an organization. A vote is usually a majority of those voting at a meeting. But a vote may also in extraordinary cases be based on a percentage of the entire membership. This is usually for matters of great importance (amendment of constitutive documents, for example) or to safeguard the rights of minorities (as in rescinding and expunging from the minutes without previous notice), or to protect the rights of individuals in serious displinary proceedings. So it's entirely possible to have a quorum sufficient for normal business, but not have sufficient numbers for a particular kind of vote.

Canon 3 recognizes the distinction between the usual case and such exceptions: “Except where the Constitution or Canons of the General Convention provide to the contrary, a quorum of any body of the General Convention consisting of several members, the whole having been duly cited to meet, shall be a majority of said members; and a majority of the quorum so convened shall be competent to act.”

In other words, a) unless the canons say otherwise a quorum is a majority of a body’s members and b) unless the canons say otherwise a majority of that quorum shall be competent to act. This makes sense, because if the canons elsewhere require more than a majority, it would be absurd for the lower requirement of a quorum to vitiate those provisions to the contrary. The higher requirement trumps the default.

In this case, the quorum was satisfied, but the competence of a majority of that quorum to act was not—since the canons in fact “say otherwise.”

We know they “say otherwise” because in a stark deviation from the canons’ usual “present and voting” requirements, the vote for a deposition of a bishop requires a super-majority. It reads, “If the House, by a majority of the whole number of Bishops entitled to vote, shall give its consent . . . .” This makes perfect sense, because in something as serious as deposing a bishop without trial for abandonment of communion, one would think that more than a mere majority of half of the bishops gathered would be required. Note, too, the emphasis here added by the word “whole,” so to ensure there is no ambiguity: this is not just the number of voting-eligible bishops gathered at a House of Bishops’ meeting, it is the whole number eligible to vote.

The quorum permitted the vote to be taken, but the numbers present were insufficient to pass the motion to depose, as there were not a majority of the "whole number of Bishops entitled to vote" voting to depose. The chancellor apparently acknowledges this, as he defends his position based on quorum, not based on the numbers. And he certainly understands the mistake as well, as he has now slipped into advocate’s language by saying it is their “position”—i.e., their legal posture.

There is no "correcting" this, as there was no procedural error. There was a proper vote taken with a proper result--the motion failed. Of course the Presiding Bishop can pretend that these two bishops are deposed, and her fellow bishops can hold to that fiction if they'd like. They can even hope the Archbishop of Canterbury plays along, too. But it would be highly unlikely for any court to recognize these depositions as valid, if the issue of who is the Bishop of San Joaquin is ever litigated, as 815 seems determined it will be. She also has the option of beginning the process all over again, and bringing the abandonment charge back before the House of Bishops for another vote at a future meeting, where presumably she would bring in enough bishops to get the majority of the "whole number of Bishops entitled to vote" that canon law requires her to have.

Given the lawlessness displayed so far, however, and the abuse of the canons, it's unlikely the Presiding Bishop will deal with this in honest, much less Christian, fashion. This is about the exercise of raw power to obtain a result, with the ends justifying the means. And save for a civil court's calling this what it is, there is little to stop her from Roper-like continuing to cut down every law to obtain what she wants. Remember, even the use of this canon in the first place was an abuse, since both bishops went over to another province of the Anglican Communion with which the American church presumably viewed itself in communion. It was simply a way to avoid giving the bishops the rights they would have in a proper trial.

Update: The always-wonderful BabyBlue adds this important bit of information. She reports that at the Righter heresy trial, the same "eligible to vote" language was read in its normal and more forbidable sense, not in the tortured and de minimis way the chancellor now tries to read it.

Forty days and forty nights

2008-03-12T18:39:00.001-04:00

A Lenten hymn from St. Bart's in London, sung by the Exmoor Singers.

Bovine flatulence

2008-03-12T06:52:00.009-04:00

Apparently when you don't believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus, you have to really strain to find something to say at Easter if you're in a leadership position in what was once considered a church. So the theme of this year's Easter Message from the Presiding Bishop: bovine flatulence.

You think I'm kidding? Read for yourself.

After a vague obligatory reference to the "resurrected Christ" to mislead those who might think she meant Christ who physically emerged from the tomb on the third day, she spends the rest of her so-called Easter message demonstrating her cred as a left-wing environmentalist.

First she engages in some ritual liberal self-loathing, blaming Christians and Jews for harm to the environment. Never mind that the worst polluters in human history were the 20th Century communist governments, long popular among leftists like the Presiding Bishop. Odd, but for some reason I just don't remember their being run by Jews and Christians.

Then she gives us fair warning that very soon the baptismal covenant that is already fast being turned into to a left-wing political loyalty oath will likely be amended to demand lifelong fealty to her brand of environmentalism. She laments that "our latest prayer book was written just a bit too early to include caring for creation among those explicit baptismal promises."

And then she gets to the heart of the gospel, as she sees it: "When atmospheric warming, due in part to the methane output of the millions of cows we raise each year to produce hamburger, begins to slowly drown the island homes of our neighbors in the South Pacific, are we truly sharing good news?"

Never mind the bad and discredited science. Never mind that the earth appears to be cooling, and that the sun seems to have more to do with climate change than CO2. Never mind that it might be just a bit of a stretch to equate eating a Five Guys burger to intentially drowning an unsuspecting Fijian in salt water. Never mind that we are now supposed to feel guilty when beef cattle break wind in the pastures. (And they are not usually "cows," as any decently trained animal scientist would know.) No, set these inanities aside if you can and ask some far more important questions:

Is this truly what she believes the Easter Good News to be?

Is this truly what she believes the death and resurrection of our Lord and Savior was all about?

Is this truly what she believes the worship of God, especially on the church's highest holy day, pertains to?

Is this truly why she believes thousands of Christian martyrs went to their death?

Is this truly what she believes is the Christian hope?

For if the answer to these questions is yes, as they appear to be, those who question whether Katharine Jefforts Schori is a Christian have good reason to do so. That's because this is not the Gospel. Her Easter message is utterly bereft of the Good News that those who have experienced the saving grave of salvation reflexively want to celebrate and proclaim on Easter Sunday. No Risen Lord. No empty tomb. No victory over the grave. No New Life in Christ. No reference to the cross. No atonement. No salvation. No forgiveness. Nothing. A non-Christian could easily have written these words and meant them. They are nothing more than a pompous, preachy political screed--and a bad one at that.

Let's put it more plainly, and say what few seem willing to say. If this is what what the Presiding Bishop believes is the Gospel, and this is what she believes Easter is about, then the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church is not a Christian.

First person singular

2008-03-11T06:41:00.006-04:00

One would think that someone like Gene Robinson, so eager to dispel stereotypes about homosexuals, would go out of his way not to be a rank stereotype himself. One of the most frequent assertions about gays is that at the core of their orientation and actions is a deep-seated narcissism, displayed to various degrees, that springs from an abiding need for self-affirmation, often owing to the lack of acceptance they might have felt earlier in life. (One would be forgiven for inferring more than a wee bit of that in the life and writings of Louie Crew, for example.) Bishop Robinson, undoubtedly aware of this perception of him, would presumably endeavor in his own public persona go the extra mile to demonstrate that this is but a calumny, another manifestation of bigotry against gays.

But he just can't help himself.

It's been clear to everyone apparently except Gene Robinson that he was not going to be invited to Lambeth, for that would have ensured that Lambeth would not have happened--even in its current diminished form. But this week the House of Bishops was told the final-final-final answer from Canterbury: Gene Robinson is not invited.

Bishop Robinson's statement to the House of Bishops on the matter is absolutely stunning in its self-absorption. Please take the time to read it. Let's set aside for the moment whether he should have been consecrated given his active homosexual life and later-revealed alcoholism. Should any person so fixated on himself be a clergyperson of any sort, in any church, much less a bishop in ours? Far beyond the almost comical whining in the statement (at least Chris Crocker's Britney lament was for someone else), there is something deeply, deeply disturbing about one who views himself in such messianic fashion. How possibly could someone like this be a shepherd of a flock?

That in the statement he uses first-person singular pronouns over 70 times is perhaps the first clue something's not right about this man. It's all about his pain: there's nothing here about the situation the church finds itself in. There's no understanding here how he has just a bit to do with that state of affairs. There's plenty of martyrdom in his words, but no setting aside of self. There is only one tiny mention about his diocese, now unrepresented at Lambeth--telling from a guy who protests he only wants to be the Bishop of New Hampshire and not just "the gay bishop." No, it's all about Gene (and perhaps the gays he claims to represent). He is the one who has been "cut off." He has been in "considerable pain." He's had a difficult 48 hours. And on and on and on it goes: I, I, I; me, me, me.

A church where the leaders are wholly fixated on themselves is either not a truly Christian church or will not be one for long. And that's true whether the leader is Jimmy Swaggart or Gene Robinson. Yes, the matter of homosexuality may be the presenting issue that is now tearing the church apart. But it will be the ongoing displacement of the worship of God by worship of self that will in fact be what destroys our church. For that is in its essence idolatry and the worship of a false god.

And if one is to take this statement to the House of Bishops as anything other than bad parody, there seems to be no better exemplar of this new religion than Bishop V. Gene Robinson.

From St. Asaph Cathedral

2008-03-09T21:04:00.005-04:00

A singing of the hymn that gave this blog its name, from BBC's Songs of Praise at St. Asaph Cathedral, Wales--Britain's smallest cathedral. (They use the modernized lyrics.)

Tolle lege

2008-03-08T21:00:00.008-05:00

Here's a site for anyone who loves beautiful Bibles: J. Mark Bertrand's Bible Design and Binding blog. Bertrand reviews all the best new Bibles for design, ease of use, and durability. He doesn't do detailed textual or theological comparisons (although he will discuss pros and cons of translations and features). He instead focuses primarily on the actual quality and usability of the bound product. He does give his opinion about whether single- or double-column Bibles are best, whether a gutter is wide enough, whether the leather is supple enough to bend, and whether the printing and imprinting are clear. He is biased, plainly, toward well-made, beautiful Bibles, but won't excuse a Bible that is not readable and practical. Not only will you get early reviews and first looks, but you'll see very clear and detailed photographs of the books (such as the one above). This is helpful, as most of these Bibles are not ones you will find in Barnes and Noble or your typical Christian bookstore. Some are from Bible-makers like Glasgow's incomparable R. L Allan & Sons that you might never have heard of before.

Even if you're not now in the market for a Bible, you'll learn more about how to shop for a quality product at J. Mark Bertrand's web site than you could have imagined. Plus you'll learn how best to store a leather Bible (flat, unless it's a Cambridge with a box sleeve), whether the new imitation leathers are any good (better than many cheap genuine leathers, amazingly), and what to use to write in your Bible (the Fisher space pen apparently works well).

Check it out.

A worthwhile prayer for orthodox Anglicans

2008-03-06T21:20:00.002-05:00

Our Father in Heaven, give us the long view of our work and our world. Help us to see that it is better to fail in a cause that will ultimately succeed than to succeed in a cause that will ultimately fail . . . .

Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

--From a prayer by Peter Marshall

"Cutting edge"

2008-03-06T20:11:00.009-05:00

Indeed. Like a straight razor on one's wrist. But that's the happy face that President and Dean Steven Charleston is trying to put on the sell-off of more than of a third of Episcopal Divinity School's buildings--to a secular university that mainly trains teachers. Simply put, this act of desperation was necessary because the seminary couldn't sustain itself financially. Lesley University gets buildings. And EDS gets $33.5 million to keep itself on life support for some years to come while the bleeding continues apace. And there's more bad news to come, plainly. The ENS propaganda piece reports that plans for the future include further sales or leases of property. And Bishop Charleston acknowledges that some of the changes yet to come will be "discouraging."

As with the earlier announcements about Seabury Western and Bexley's Rochester campus, this one is entirely disingenous. The sell-out is called a "partnership," which is risible given the absolute lack of any common mission between the schools (and somewhat embarrassing given Lesley's stature). There is the obligatory reference to how tough life is for other seminaries, ignoring the fact that there are orthodox seminaries across the nation that are doing very well. Bishop Charleston says it's time for the school to take this "big step forward." But his richest line was the suggested delight that EDS can now "get out from under that burden of being property owners," a line I last heard from a fellow whose car had just been repossessed.

The problem at its core for EDS is the same as the Episcopal Church writ large: it has abandoned the Gospel message. It has abandoned the Word of God. It has abandoned the Faith Once Delivered. It has embraced the culture and made itself indistinguishable from the world. It cannot "go into all the world" because it is the world. It cannot "preach the Gospel" because it does not recognize or believe or teach the Gospel. It cannot "make disciples" because whatever religion it offers, it is not one that demands change from anyone, save in political and social views. It cannot prepare to "baptize in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit" because it is fast becoming Unitarian. In short, EDS is dying for the same reason the Episcopal Church is dying: it offers nothing to a world crying out for the saving message of the Gospel.

Not that Bishop Charleston or anyone there recognizes that the innovations are the problem. Besides getting some much needed jack, he says this sell-off will "open EDS up to continue its innovative work in theological education for the church."

Without any firm plans, Bishop Charleston, having administered the cutting edge, is outta there come June. He won't have to deal with these changes, or watch the continued bleeding and eventual death throes. He won't have to convince postulants that EDS really isn't dying so they should come there instead of to a school that still has all its buildings and even a real dining hall of its own. He won't have to try to convince donors to invest in an institution where buildings given today may be sold tomorrow. He won't have to deal with the anger of alumni, students, and faculty who know, happy words aside, that it is only a matter of time before all the buildings belong to Lesley and EDS is no more.

Just keep telling yourself: All is Well.

No overlapping episcopal jurisdictions?

2008-03-06T18:41:00.003-05:00

If there's one thing that our Presiding Bishop believes in other than raw power and those canons she finds convenient for the moment, it is the principle that there cannot be more than one episcopal authority in a given geographical area. She is joined in her unwavering adherence to this infallible gospel by her Canadian counterpart, Fred Hiltz. He ran crying to the Archbishop of Canterbury recently when he started losing churches to the Southern Cone, whining that this all-important rule of the Anglican playground was being violated. ("Not a valid expression of Anglicanism," he pouted.) You see, Scripture and all church teaching and traditions must fall prostrate before this, the Church's One Foundation: one bishop per jurisdiction.

Uh, but wait. What about the new "National Indigenous Anglican Bishop" in Canada?

You see, the Canadian liberals are just pleased as punch to have a bishop, Mark MacDonald, who is to exercise “pastoral oversight over all of Canada’s indigenous Anglicans." This would be the equivalent (the racist equivalent) of the Episcopal Church appointing a bishop for all black Americans. What it means in Canada is that if you are a so-called indigenous person, you have a bishop other than (actually, in addition to) your diocesan, because this new bishop's jurisdiction is wherever in the country there is an indigenous person. The ancient and unchangeable rule has been discarded, because it got in the way of being a good liberal, and the opportunity for self-congratulation. So you can't have another bishop if you are an orthodox believer, but you can have one based on the color of your skin.

A wee bit of hypocrisy here? John Stackhouse thought so when the appointment was made. Since then orthodox churches north of the border, including Canada's largest church, are leaving, and the Canadian church is responding by locking doors, threatening legal action, and again asserting this one non-negotiable of Anglicanism.

But one has to wonder what damage to their legal position the Canadian church did when they violated this principle themselves: they certainly now can't with straight face argue that it is an impossibility to have more than one Anglican bishop operating in a region. For all the whackiness of having a bishop who only ministers to a particular ethnic group, however, this has had the benefit of exposing the revisionist church leadership north of the border as entirely unprincipled and unscrupulous. And those descriptors, more even that the holy writ of no overlapping jurisdictions, seems to be what defines episcopal leadership in the American and Canadian churches these days.

Dan Martin on the new Non-Jurors

2008-03-05T23:12:00.005-05:00

A must read over at Fr. Dan Martin's excellent blog. Truly forgotten in the departure of almost all of the churches of the Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin (along with their bishop) are those faithful orthodox clergy and laypeople who felt they could not depart, but who are no less repulsed by what they see in the national church. Particularly offensive to them, and properly so, was the blatant noncanonical exercise of power to dismiss the diocese's Standing Committee, all with the acquiescense of the revisionist remnant, and undoubtedly with the blessing of the short-sighted liberals in the House of Bishops (who by acquiesing in this are actually greatly weakening the independence of their dioceses as well). What will happen to those orthodox clergy that stayed with the Episcopal Church, but who now are having an illicitly selected bishop forced upon them? Unfortunately, they are in the most precarious position of any, as the distraught missive from one of them (which Fr. Martin reprints) to Bishop Howe makes plain.

Unfortunately, while Bishop Howe is one of the few bishops to whom such a clergyperson could repair for help, such help is unlikely to be forthcoming. Bishop Howe has virtually no influence with his fellow bishops, and his weakness could hardly be any more evident after his cutting a deal with the Presiding Bishop designed to buy him and his diocese a bit of peace. But as fine and decent and orthodox a fellow as John Howe undoubtedly is, it is understandable why so many of his fellow reasserters now view him as the Philippe Pétain of American Anglicans. He plainly has little fight left in him, and is at this point most interested in accommodation. There is simply no reason for his fellow bishops to heed him. He is unlikely to be able to help protect those in his own diocese, much less able or inclined to put himself at risk protecting those in San Joaquin.

One can only guess what is ahead for orthodox Episcopal clergy in the San Joaquin diocese. Almost certainly there will be a purging, via required loyalty oaths (although they won't be called that) that will be very difficult to take for those who believe the Presiding Bishop and her minions are heretics acting without any legal authority. One has to feel terrible for the horrendous position that these faithful Christians, faithful Anglicans, and faithful Episcopalians now find themselves in.

They deserve and must have our prayers.

Sissel sings Gospel

2008-03-04T20:09:00.001-05:00

Wow. Who knew Norway's beautiful and versatile megastar Sissel (Sissel Kyrkjebø) sang Gospel. But here she does a brilliant version of Andrae Crouch's My Tribute (To God Be the Glory). Enjoy.

It is well with my soul

2008-03-04T19:47:00.001-05:00

Now and then we all need a bit of encouragement. And the best encouragement comes when we stop and remember the providence of our loving God, and the depth of his love reflected in the saving grace of his Son. This hymn, and the story behind it, speaks to the transforming power of that love, and to the transcendent hope that belongs to every Christian, regardless of circumstance.

Knock and the door will be . . . locked

2008-03-04T18:21:00.002-05:00

It would seem to this observer that the action of a church most opposite of being "inclusive" is physically barring someone from entering. But that's what the revisionists have done--honest--up in Canada. They have changed the locks on the doors of St. Chad's, one of the churches that has voted to depart the national Anglican church there (their Episcopal Church). Worshippers could go to--well, you know--as far as they're concerned.

What can one infer from this? First, that they don't think twice about keeping Christians--adults and children--from worshipping God and from coming to his altar in obedience to Christ's command. Second, that they have entirely discounted the possibility that someone might just be seeking an encounter with God that day, and come to the church down the street--for any seekers have been shut out as well. Third, that more important than everything is retention of property that will be empty and of no use save when converted to lucre. In short, mammon, has become the God of the liberal Canadian church, and they are seemingly unashamed and even proud to broadcast that fact.

(H/T: StandFirm)

Rowan Williams . . . again

2008-02-27T21:36:00.002-05:00

Has he no minders? The Archbishop of Canterbury has done it again, saying something stunningly naive or stupid or both. This time he has suggested that gangs of yobs (young hoodlums) roaming British streets are simply trying to find a "safe public space" where they can feel secure from "unfriendly adults." That's why they join gangs, he says.

Reaction has been swift and almost entirely negative. One Daily Express reader, though, expressed concern for the Archbishop: "How does he eat and drink when he only seems to open his mouth to change feet?"

Romper Room for Episcopalians

2008-02-25T18:59:00.013-05:00

Here's how it works: the priest says part of the Nicene Creed. If you like it and believe it, stand up. If not, sit down. And of course it's perfectly fine if you do either, since this is not a Christian church, it's the Episcopal Church. So it's not important whether you actually believe what you're saying, it's the "dance" and the Romper Room-like game that matters. The Rev. Tom Woodward suggests this exercise results in something like a "rebellious exercise class." Perhaps a more apt description would be "rebellion against God."

But Episcopal Life Online is giddy: "Great idea: Creedal gymnastics teach about community," the 815 house organ gushes. Creedal gymnastics indeed: that's what used to be called heterodoxy. Call me an ol' fuddy-duddy. But I find it shocking that the Episcopal Church, a church where each week before the Almighty we stand and say the Creed, is actually encouraging disbelief in the tenets of the Faith--and thinks doing so is "a great idea." Many have died proclaiming and defending that faith. But to the Rev. Tom Woodward and his groupies at 815 it means nothing more than would a fun game of Romper-Stomper.

Lord, have mercy.

Rowan's Diaries

2008-02-24T10:20:00.002-05:00

Canada's National Post publishes a week's worth of entries from Rowan Williams's diaries (entries as they imagine them to be, that is). An excerpt, addressing the tendency of some when thinking "Rowan" to think of the hapless Mr. Bean or Blackadder (played by Rowan Atkinson):

Ever since this Sharia uproar, there has been a consternation in my office over a number of nasty phone calls from America telling me to stick to acting. Some say they loved Blackadder, but cannot see why anyone would care about my religious views. Some are just rants against Muslims with vile threats to inflict sexual atrocities on Mr. Bean. Nigel seems to have solved the problem, though, by changing the voice mail. "Thank you for calling Lambeth Palace," it says. "For Rowan Atkinson, press one..." That seems to distract the crazies, and we forward those messages to Mr. Atkinson, who I am told is grateful for the attention.

It should be noted that to confuse Mr. Bean and the present Archbishop of Canterbury is really quite inconceivable. Mr. Bean, however hapless, would never have had gotten in this particular spot of trouble, since he says very little. And even the few utterances he does make, however difficult to understand, make infinitely more sense than most of Rowan Williams's pronouncements.

Place your bets

2008-02-24T10:03:00.004-05:00

Things must be grim when you're an Archbishop of Canterbury, 13 years out from expected retirement, and the bookmakers have already started setting odds and taking bets on who your successor will be.

This follows a poll of the supposedly most influential Britons, from which the happiest finding for the Archbishop was that 36 percent thought he was "misguided." Fourteen percent of these movers and shakers thought he should resign, though, with one calling him an "offensive twit." While the numbers demanding he stand down were small, far smaller were those supporting him outright--a mere two percent supported what he was saying.

Of course those polled were from the upper stratas of British society. As the tabloid coverage pretty much made plain, the Archbishop's support among the working classes is pretty much nonexistent.

I'm speechless

2008-02-24T09:45:00.003-05:00

A pedophile priest uses "a shared interest in music" to groom his 13-year-old male victim, whom he abuses for a period of two years.

He is convicted for molestation and is sent to jail.

Now he sings in a church choir with children.

Is something wrong with this picture?

And another

2008-02-23T18:55:00.003-05:00

The second Episcopal seminary in as many days has announced it will close. Bexley Hall Rochester is shutting its doors. "Not only surviving, but growing," the Dean pronounces, since its massive 20-student Ohio campus is just bursting at the seams. That's 20 students total. Even if all 20 were candidates in the three-year M.Div. program, that would be only six or seven per class.

There's nothing surprising about another seminary in our dying denomination closing up shop. But I must confess that I am still shocked at the brazen efforts of our church's leaders to mislead us into thinking nothing is wrong.

Sold out: please make another selection

2008-02-21T21:39:00.005-05:00

This just in:

Coca-Cola announced today that it will no longer manufacture or supply its flagship soft drink, Coca-Cola, or any other beverages. Additionally, with the exception of pending orders for Fanta Grape in cans, the company will not honor orders for its products. The company said it will assist retailers in locating suitable Pepsi-brand substitutes.
"There is both good and bad news in this decision," a Coke spokesman explained, without elaborating on what the good news was.

The company denied this meant it was going out of business, instead calling this a "period of discernment." Coke officials said that they looked forward to providing a new model for meeting soft drink demand that doesn't require the manufacture, distribution, or consumption of soft drinks.
"Coca-Cola will continue to be the great company it always has been," a spokesman said.

Preposterous, of course. But switch out Coke for Seabury-Western Seminary, and you've pretty much got this statement from the school's trustees. (Save for the fact that there is actually demand for Coke products, and there seems to be very little for what Seabury-Western has on offer.)

That statement includes weeping and wailing about how rough things are these days for Episcopal seminaries, with a "stand-alone" model being oh-so Nineteenth Century, and therefore unsustainable. Plus there are "fewer resources" to allocate to seminarians, basically ensuring their impoverishment.

Nothing said about how many other seminaries outside the Episcopal Church are doing just fine, thank you--in their residential and nontraditional programs. Nothing said about how somehow Nashotah and Trinity manage to do okay. No dots connected about the lack of resources being connected to folks simply not willing to keep investing in seminaries like Seabury, and the sort of theology that's taught there. No discussion of how the millions spent on litigation could actually have paid full tuition, room and board for all of Seabury's students, and probably all the faculty salaries as well. No discussion of layoffs of 815 bureaucrats instead of faculty members.

This is unlikely to be the last Episcopal seminary to shut its doors (oops, I mean "enter a period of discernment"). And of course so long as Nashotah and Trinity stay tethered to the Episcopal Church, even they may suffer as the Episcopal Church implosion worsens. But for now add this to the quickly lengthening list of presenting symptoms of our dying church.

So many books, so little time

2008-02-19T08:11:00.003-05:00

Book love, my friends, is your pass to the greatest, the purest, and the most perfect pleasure God has prepared for his creatures. It lasts when all other pleasures fade. It will support you when all other recreations are gone, it will last until your death. It will make your hours pleasant to you as long as you live. --Anthony Trollope

Anglicans, whatever their flavor, tend to be bibliophiles. And so with that Anglican angle I thought I'd use this space to recommend LibraryThing, a phenomenal Web site where you can enter the books in your library, and build your own library catalog on-line. The program goes out and finds details of the books and fills in most of the blanks. Even older books (those without ISBNs) may have had their details entered by other book owners, saving you the time. The program finds the cover art for the books, either from publishers and on-line booksellers, or from others who have scanned their covers. You can view your library in multiple ways, emphasizing text or the covers.

As simple as entering the books is, it is made even simpler still for books with an ISBN with a USB CueCat scanner, which LibraryThing sells for $15. It takes only seconds to upload a book when you've scanned the ISBN.

The site is quite rich. You can find out how many others share your tastes, get recommendations based on the books on your shelves (and these are spot-on), and even connect with others with your interests through groups, if you so choose. The site is free for the first 200 books (not many books for most Anglicans), but only $25 for unlimited entries for life if you decide you like what's on offer.

Readerware is a popular database program for books, and in its database functions is more robust than LibraryThing. But it does not make your library available to you wherever you are as the web-based LibraryThing does. Plus, it's more expensive ($40). It does have some useful tools lacking on LibraryThing, such as the ability to "check out" books to others and so note that, plus location fields. LibraryThing can do the same thing, but via tags and comments, where one can assign any information one cares to, and then search on that. (You can have a tag for "Attic," for example, and then find all the books that are in your attic.)

You don't have to choose between the two, however. You can export your database in an Excel spreadsheet from LibaryThing at any time. You can also do a mass import from your Readerware database into LibraryThing. For me, though, since there is not a seamless sync function between the two, I decided to choose between them. And I thought Library Thing was the better option for me. What it's lacking (private tags, for example) I am confident will be added, given the demand.

LibraryThing has a bit of a cult following, and once you've used the site it's easy to understand why. For those with a great many books, it's nice to be able to easily check if you have this book or that. It's good to have a place to record to whom you've lent a book (I do this in the private comments fields). And it's probably saved me money, as I will find a book I forgot I owned but haven't yet read instead of going to buy another at Barnes and Noble.

Check it out.

What denomination declined the most last year?

2008-02-18T18:50:00.002-05:00

And have you heard this from your rector?

You guessed it: Number 15 in the denominational rankings, the Episcopal Church, dropped 4.15 percent of its members last year. That was the biggest drop of any denomination (indeed the biggest percentage change up or down of any church).

But things are just going swimmingly, if one listens to the Presiding Bishop and her attendants in the House of Bishops.

At last a joyful rain

2008-02-18T08:30:00.004-05:00

What a rain we've had, and what an answer to prayer it was. Here from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer is a Thanksgiving for Rain:

O God, our heavenly Father, who by thy gracious providence dost cause the former and the latter rain to descend upon the earth, that it may bring forth fruit for the use of man: We give thee humble thanks that it hath pleased thee, in our great necessity, to send us at the last a joyful rain upon thine inheritance, and to refresh it when it was dry, to the great comfort of thy unworthy servants, and to the glory of thy holy Name; through thy mercies in Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Massive GOP defections to the Democratic Party

2008-02-17T19:10:00.013-05:00

I don't usually do political stories on this blog, but this one's worth your attention:

In the past year, 11 serving and retired Republican U.S. Senators have switched to the Democratic Party. Most were lifelong GOPers who had risen to positions of prominence in their party and the Senate. Capitol Hill sources say still other GOP senators are likely to switch parties soon.

At no other time in the country's history has there been such a wave of party leader defections. All who crossed the aisle in the past year have been Republican. No Senate Democrats have switched to the Republican side in recent years.

This party-switching seems to be tracking similar trends among the electorate. There has been a steady decrease in Republican Party membership and affiliation, and entire county and state organizations have walked away from the GOP, some leaving behind vacant party headquarters.

President Bush, the leader of his party, dismissed suggestions that these defections showed the Republicans were in trouble. "There's always a tiny minority of people who aren't going to be happy and who choose to go their own way, and that's okay. That's what America's about. They're leaving us with a stronger, more vibrant Republican Party," he asserted. "Numbers and votes and winning aren't everything in politics, you know. Republicans are too smart to think that way."

Of course this isn't a real story, unless you start by replacing "Republican Party" with "Episcopal Church." What would seem cataclysmic in any other context is dismissed as inconsequential by the Episcopal Church leadership--or ignored altogether in hopes no one will notice. But in the last year an astounding 11 bishops have left (or began the process for leaving) for other Anglican jurisdictions or for the Roman Catholic Church, and more are expected to follow. BabyBlue has the current list, and the link to Jill Woodliff's StandFirm comment where she tallied them up.

All is well, indeed.

A sea of bishops

2008-02-17T10:52:00.003-05:00

James Lipton, in his classic and somewhat tongue-in-cheek dictionary of collective nouns, An Exhaltation of Larks, offers this homophone of see (as in the seat of authority of a bishop) as the collective noun of choice for bishops. Sea also suggests expanse and volume, and in the current Anglican realignment, there do seem to be bishops everywhere. The churches in Nigeria, Rwanda, Kenya, and Uganda, for example, have consecrated bishops to oversee their parishes in North America. Whether these are “regular” or “irregular” consecrations is of course a question; what doesn’t seem to be at issue is the validity of their ordination. They are bishops, and made so by churches in the Anglican Communion.

Most of these Communion bishops (for lack of a better description) are humble, hardworking servants of God. They had established reputations well beyond their parishes, dioceses, and the United States. Most were not prone to calling attention to themselves, and had not spent a career "running" for bishop. They were all well known and well vetted. In another time, in a more orthodox Episcopal Church, many of them would likely have found themselves wearing purple, such is their quality.

Whether there are too many of these new bishops is a different and open question. Whether in creating so many bishops the primates doing so are enhancing or impeding the possibility of unifying the North American orthodox is likewise an open question. Perhaps in some respects the cynicism of many--orthodox included--will propel these new bishops to prove everyone wrong as they work together in the Common Cause Partnership. Time will tell. But history, one must admit, is not on their side.

The “Continuum,” as it is called—in the main those Anglo-Catholic churches that left over Prayer Book changes and women’s ordination in the 1970s and 1980s—fractured early and often, and with each split came yet another group (province, diocese, church, etc.), each with its own default “bishop” (usually the person leading the split). Some of these groups matured into proper, but small, denominations, with their bishops in fact acting as bishops would. Others seemed to produce mainly more splits and more bishops. This Pythonesque bishop factory that was the Continuum is the main reason so many are skeptical about the ability of all these newly minted Anglican Communion bishops to put purple aside and work together. There’s a reason Continuum groups aren't included in the Common Cause Partnership. But whether the new Anglican Communion bishops will do better is an open question, and the onus is on them to distinguish themselves from their Contiuum forebears.

Faux bishops

But definitely not helping the orthodox cause is the presence of Anglican bishop wannabes. It seems like every profession with distinctive garb has those who want to wear it without earning it. There are police officer pretenders, with plenty of places on the Internet they can purchase all the accoutrements. There are faux airline pilots and flight attendants. Probably the biggest group of pretenders are those who falsely say they had military service, even awarding themselves medals. And as long as you’re going to pretend, you might as well go all the way. No Army Achievement Medal for these sorts—it’s a Medal of Honor. No promotion to colonel—they’re going to wear stars.

No profession has fancier frocks on offer, though, than the church, and we have our pretenders, too--especially on the conservative side. Some folks apparently just have to wear purple shirts and pointy hats, and no doubt subscribe to the Almy bishop's catalog above. Some are properly trained clergymen with appropriate theological degrees. Some are not, and have minimal or questionable theological training. They use the prayer book, and perhaps even have genuine affection for Anglicanism, so they call themselves Anglican. They start their own churches and then proclaim themselves not vicar, or rector—but bishop. Or perhaps they’ve been so denominated by someone else of fictional rank, just to make it “official.” And sometimes even that isn’t enough: they have to be an archbishop. And they're usually not really responsible to anyone. There is a difference of significant degree between these “bishops” and even those who are part of the Continuum, as the latter usually do have charge of a group of parishes. And there is a marked difference, far beyond degree, between such “bishops” and those consecrated by primates of the Anglican Communion, as they are each answerable to one of the world’s 38 Anglican primates.

I freely admit great suspicion about these self-appointed, so-called Anglican bishops who have no dioceses or even a substantial number of parishes under their care. Alarm bells ring all over. Why are they not associated with an established Anglican body—even one of the venerable ones like the Reformed Episcopal Church that’s (for now) outside the Anglican Communion? Who decided they would be bishops? Where are their parishes? Who exercises discipline over them? And what is Anglican about an ordinary with no see?

More to the point, if these men are truly committed to the spread of the Gospel, how does it help to award themselves the ecclesiastical equivalent of a diploma-mill degree? Does that enhance their credibility as messenger of the Gospel? Does that set a proper example of honesty? Of servant leadership? The same behavior by those pretending to be military officers is a federal crime, and people go to jail for their masquerades. And the civil arena, posing as someone you're not can rise to the level of fraud. The reason for this is the innate dishonesty in such actions, the propensity to mislead others, and the very real damage that can be caused. Is this not the ecclesiastical and spiritual equivalent? And so, in many respects, is this not far worse?

Of course there’s nothing prohibiting me from calling myself bishop, or Pope, or Grand Pooh-Bah, or President Theodore Roosevelt if I so choose. It might please me greatly to do so. Others would know, though, that I was a silly fellow at best, and potentially a person with some very serious issues. One thing’s for certain: I’d pretty well be telling the world I wasn’t the right person to selflessly lead a church or parish. Regrettably, on the conservative side of Anglicanism we too often see such types. At least one who can be found on the Internet appears to be quite disturbed, and suffering from troubling delusions of grandeur.

This problem complicates greatly the situation of the Anglican seeking a home outside the Episcopal Church. There are parishes and church plants under an Anglican archbishop—those of AMiA, CANA, Uganda, Kenya, and Southern Cone, for example. There are parishes under the Anglican Province of America and Reformed Episcopal Church—both connected to the Common Cause Partnership endorsed by primates of the Anglican Communion (although the APA is there in an attenuated fashion). These are usually good and safe places to go, some of the “little boats of Dunkirk” that folks are now jumping into, with hopes of safely meeting up together on the other side (to switch to another nautical metaphor). Orthodox believers are eager, and sometimes even desperate, to jump into such a boat--any boat--that can provide them and their children a degree of safety.

But every disaster and crisis presents opportunity for fraud, and the Anglican crisis is no different. Waiting to transport these folk away are some very leaky and unseaworthy little skiffs, piloted by those who merely call themselves “skipper,” without any proper qualification whatsoever, men who have their own self-centered courses.

Be very careful what boat you choose to get into. You may want to get to the other side, but surely you want to get there safely. You want to sail with those who care are about you and your family and who are committed to the Faith Once Delivered--and not those interested solely in their own self-aggrandizement. Very sadly, one of the warning signs that should tell you to stop and explore a bit, and validate credentials, is when the person styles himself "bishop."

"The cheapest bargaining chip of liberal guilt"

2008-02-15T23:44:00.003-05:00

"It is at best a form of the racism of lower expectations - the cheapest bargaining chip of liberal guilt."

So writes Mona Eltahaway about Rowan Williams's sharia proposals in today's International Herald Tribune editorial, "Delusions in Canterbury."

"When it comes to Islamic law, or Shariah, words certainly do come easy if you're a man. You can marry four wives, receive double the inheritance a woman gets and you can end your marriage simply by saying "I divorce you" three times. So why not pontificate? Words are especially cheap if you're the Archbishop of Canterbury. . . . "

Read it all.

All things bright and beautiful

2008-02-15T16:58:00.003-05:00

It's good to take a break now and then and think about God's handiwork all around us. This video struck me for its simplicity: it focuses on a single tree, one without leaves or color. And yet against the changing backdrop of the sky it is highlighted as a thing of great beauty. The setting appears to be an English countryside. But all around us here in Northwest Georgia we can see the same, if we stop and take the time to observe. Relax and enjoy.

Find more videos like this on ReelWorship

Appeasing Archbishop

2008-02-14T19:27:00.004-05:00

R. Emmett Tyrell skewers the Archbishop of Canterbury. In "The Archbishop Goes Muslim," he associates Rowan Williams with a tradition of appeasement in the English Church:

. . . I am not surprised by the spiritual capitulation of the leader of the Church of England. Since the 1930s, many in the church's leadership have been classic appeasers. They appeased the fascists. Why would we not expect them to appease religious fascists? It is true that as World War II recedes into the mists of time, almost all big-hearted progressives or liberals (or whatever self-congratulatory term they apply to themselves) denounce Nazism and fascism with the utmost ardor. Yet when these odious movements were on the rise, many among the British elite cautioned prudence in dealing with them; and some actually admired them, including members of the royal family and, of course, clerics in the Anglican Church.

The recent inclination of people such as Williams to appease anti-democratic concoctions such as Shariah law might move the real defenders of democracy among us to contemplate what causes this appeasement. It is not tolerance. Williams would not tolerate most forms of bigotry, yet he tolerates the religious bigotry and authoritarianism of Shariah. Why? It is because he is, as were his antecedents who appeased Hitler, a coward. He is afraid of rousing himself from the comforts of his London manse to oppose even those who hate him. He calculates that someone else will do the job or that the threat will subside. Yet there is, I suspect, another more subtle cause for his appeasement.

The "bien pensant" of Williams' variety have lived in a self-contained society for the morally superior for several generations. They do not like their fellow countrymen who are not a part of that society. In a word, they do not like conservatives and others who, like conservatives, resist threats to Britain. We have the same sort of appeasers here. In both countries, these self-regarding poseurs would rather proclaim tolerance toward those who hate our countries than work with the rest of us to defend our way of life. Have a lovely time at the mosque, archbishop.

All is Well (continued)

2008-02-14T06:19:00.001-05:00

The day after the Queen expressed displeasure with the Archbishop of Canterbury's leadership, Canada's largest Anglican congregation voted to leave the Canadian Church and affiliate with the Southern Cone (the same province to which our San Joaquin diocese fled). Only 11 parishioners voted against the move. Canada's church now joins the Episcopal Church in having its best-attended parish depart. (Ours was Christ Church Plano).

It's only a matter of time before the New Westminster Bishop declares that his diocese is--what was the word?--thriving.

We are not amused

2008-02-13T06:23:00.007-05:00

Just when the Archbishop might have been thinking his woes were receding, here comes the real (temporal) leader of the Anglican church weighing in with what can only be termed a public vote of no confidence. He may be the Archbishop of Canterbury, but Her Majesty the Queen is the Supreme Governor of the Church of England, and by all accounts she takes this role seriously. Of course she will not herself say anything on the subject. But ++Rowan should worry when her couriers, and perhaps Royal Family members, start giving statements to the press about how she is "dismayed" about what's happened, and say "the Queen is worried, coming at such a difficult time in the Church's history, that the fallout may sap the authority of the Church." Perhaps worse is this one, from another courtier: "The whole thing has not been skilfully handled. It can only have undermined the authority of the Church."

These are plainly not unauthorized statements, because those around the Queen do not convey her views without explicit license to do so. That these various statements share some common elements (e.g., "authority of the Church) further suggests they are intentional and coordinated.

It's unlikely, too, that such overt and public statements of concern were made without more subtle and private ones having been ignored. That this comes after his General Synod refusal to apologize is also telling. Presumably if in the Queen's view he had succeeded in putting this matter to rest successfully, there would not have been a flurry of such negative statements coming out of the Palace.

More here.

Some additional thoughts, added next day:

If, as it appears, the church's Supreme Governor has let her unhappiness be known, and after the Archbishop failed to apologize and refused to resign, what exactly is she hoping to accomplish? She would not be one to opine on a matter in the way we bloggers do: she is doing this to make something happen. Otherwise, the unofficial silence would have matched the official silence. But what is that something she's hoping to make happen?

There frankly aren't too many options here. She likely isn't telling him to apologize for and retract his remarks, as he's said he won't do that. Indeed she is probably not addressing sharia at all, as these statements make plain her opinion on the underlying subject is not what distresses her. It is his competence ("not been skillfully handled"). And when her unhappiness is about the "authority of the Church," of which she is Supreme Governor, is it too much of a stretch to think that she is in effect saying that he is weakening and undermining her authority?

What does she hope to accomplish, though, by questioning his competence and calling him to task now for undermining the authority of the Church? Sure she knows he will not change. Surely she knows by openly questioning his skill she will not be herself strengthening the authority of the Church. Try as I might, the more I ponder her words (and I am assuming they are hers), I cannot think of any possible way to read this other than she thinks it's time for him to resign. That she inserts herself so before the Lambeth Train Wreck is also interesting: is she wanting him to go now before that authority is weakened still further? If she is looking for him to stand down before more damage is done, and he does not resign, it will be interesting to see how this ratchets up next.

UPDATE 2: Ruth Gledhill discusses the Queen's concerns and more, and provides an excellent list of links about the Archbishop's blunders.

Aftermath and fallout

2008-02-12T18:50:00.000-05:00

The Archbishop says he won't resign. He gets a tepid and delayed vote of confidence from the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, just before he enters General Synod Monday. There he gets an ovation, undoubtedly one more of sympathy than endorsement. He in effect refuses to apologize, merely noting that his word choice may have been clumsy. In short, at a moment of crisis, it was his wooly-headed liberalism that trumped all else. (And in that should be a cautionary tale for any of the world's orthodox Anglicans.) As bright as he is, he proudly demonstrated that he remains remarkably clueless about the real world.

Anne Applebaum of the Washington Post has a wonderful piece about why what the Archbishop said is so deeply disturbing, and why it should not just all be swept under the carpet. But while the Sun continues its campaign to "bash the bishop," and other editorials continue to take him to task, the papers seem to be ready to move on to other topics, other personalities. But this does not mean the matter is dead--although the Archbishop undoubtedly given his lack of perceptiveness and substandard minders will be led to think it is.

So what is the fallout? Here's my list: feel free to add to it.

1. The Archbishop has lost all public credibility in England. The Sun has taken care of that, nicely, with most of the establishment press, liberal and conservative, doing their part. The average person on the street in Britain who may not have known anything about Rowan Williams now thinks of him as a dotty old fool. He is an object of ridicule. As satisfying as this might be to those who aren't keen on Rowan Williams, in fact the church itself suffers to the degree it is identified with him. How can an institution be relevant when its leader proposes something so daft as integrating sharia with English law? He's just given non-churchgoers another reason to avoid their parish church on Sunday mornings. This won't be lost on your average vicar.

2. Standing ovation aside, Rowan Williams is a much-weakened leader (if one can use that term) within the Church of England. Parse the various "defenses" of the Archbishop, including that of the Prime Minister. Not a one herald his great leadership. They talk about his niceness and his erudition mainly. He managed to alienate virtually every consituency by his remarks. Some in the Cof E will defend him out of ecclesiastical reflex and episcopal loyalty. But no one will actively seek to be identified with him, save to enhance their bona fides as a possible successor in case he does stand down early. One has to wonder, too, what price he paid to get Gordon Brown's statement: did he tell the PM that he would be going soon? It's unlikely that the PM's highly crafted statement, timed as it was, came out of mere sympathy or because he agreed with the Archbishop (the statement makes plain he doesn't).

3. The chances of his resigning have gone up markedly. It's pretty obvious from this latest row, and from his last foray into public policy (in which he suggested criminalizing unintentionally cruel language), that he much prefers the airy-fairy world of the academy to leading the communion. And his "shock" when the public reacts differently than his academic colleagues might, reinforces how out of place he is, and probably knows he is, in the public arena. He knows at some level he has been made a laughing stock, and will soon enough know when a fair number of bishops don't show up to Lambeth, that he has made himself, if not his office, an irrelevancy. No one wants to be irrelevant. There's a good chance after Lambeth he may return to the academic life, just in order to be happy again, and to be respected again, and to matter. He can't do it now, or immediately after Lambeth, as that would appear to be admitting failure--and he doesn't admit failure. (He still in effect is blaming others for not understanding him.) But after a decent interval don't be surprised if he decides that he'd rather write books, and simply disappears.

4. The breach with the Africans has been made much worse, as if that were possible. By ignoring the effects that his words would have on their situations, trying to resist sharia as they must, he was in effect ignoring them and the lives of those in their care. To my mind, one of the most stunning parts of his non-apology, was his failure to recognize how his words caused harm to the Anglican church in such places. At the end of the day, he is more wed to his own liberal intellectual musings than he is concerned about those having to contend with the barbarity of sharia in the real world.

5. He has dramatically weakened the sense that to be Anglican one must be associated with Canterbury. After this past week it seems the last thing anyone wants to be is associated with Canterbury. To the degree those in the Global South didn't realize this already, they certainly will now. To the degree even those in the English church believed that was integral to their identity, they probably don't anymore. And even here in the States, do you as an Episcopalian or Anglican really believe you need to be affiliated with such a chucklehead?

6. His loss of moral authority will only accelerate the Anglican crack-up. Any politician in his situation would run left or run right--to wherever success was most likely. Any normal leader in his situation would take bold action (one way or another) to save the Communion, and thereby his legacy--a Nixon-to-China moment, if you will. But Rowan Williams seems genetically incapable of action. He acts as if his role is as merely the chief observer of all things Anglican, and now and then a commentator--certainly not a decider or a leader. Nature abhors a vacuum, and the vacuum at Lambeth Palace will be filled: by continued bad behavior on the North American churches' part (particularly when Lambeth is over), and by a continued move away from Canterbury on the part of bishops representing a majority of the world's Anglicans. Few commentators have connected the dots between the sharia comments and the future of the Communion. But if the Communion in effect does split, those looking back will see the Archbishop's stunning bad judgment about sharia as a tipping point.

7. The Anglican Covenant is dead. The lack of trust in the Archbishop now makes it impossible to cling to this, his grand idea, as the way out of the Anglican impasse. The weakness in the latest draft was probably enough to kill it anyway. But it all seems truly pointless at this juncture. He will remain focused on it, as might those involved in the process. But it simply won't matter to others.

There are, of course, many other interesting results of the Archbishop's blunders, including his causing a backlash in Britain against multiculturalism, and his probably ensuring no one ever comes close again to endorsing sharia as an adjunct to the English legal system. He has, quite unintentionally, probably also caused relations with Muslims to worsen, doing far more damage than the Bishop of Rochester's comments about IRA-style "no-go" areas in the urban Muslim enclaves in Britain. He has probably advanced the cause of disestablishment. And more. But in the weeks ahead what we're most likely to notice is the incredible effects his ill-considered speech last week will have on the worldwide Anglican church.

He may think it's over. It's not.

Lincoln and Providence

2008-02-12T12:57:00.001-05:00

On this, Lincoln's birthday, John Piper reminds us of Abraham Lincoln's Path to Divine Providence.

Lambeth Walk?

2008-02-11T06:30:00.000-05:00

It hasn't settled down. The Archbishop says he will not resign, but the calls for his mitre continue apace. This from the Telegraph. Hints are that he will try to use his sense of humor to chuckle his way out of this one. But sharia law is one of those subjects, like Xyclon-B, that is well-nigh impossible to laugh about. His speech is mid-morning, Eastern time.

Blogger Ugley Vicar (H/T: StandFirm) has spotted an effort to change the title of the Archbishop's speech after the fact to suggest it really wasn't about putting elements of sharia into British law. Problem is, it seems, that it's hard to say you weren't really talking about that when the billing for your speech was thus:

Islam and British Law: A Lecture by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, given in the Royal Courts of Justice on 7 February 2008 as the Foundation Lecture in the series “Islam in English Law”, part of the Temple Festival 2008.

It wasn't the bland "Civil and Religious Law in England: a Religious Perspective," as the Archbishop's website now says it was. Not very clever that.

The Sun hasn't relented, with its latest screaming headline: "Do the Lambeth Walk, Williams." They note that 97 percent of their readers participating in their poll say he should resign. Hardly scientific that poll, but you'd think he could find more than 3 percent to at least take a bit of pity on him, if only for his bad teeth.

"The Lambeth Walk," of course, is the hit song from the smash West End and Broadway hit, Me and My Girl. I suspect it's not the Archbishop's favorite tune right now. But we can still enjoy it:

Louie Crew: Rome's most influential Episcopalian?

2008-02-10T20:12:00.001-05:00

In January I offered the first of two finalists as answer to my December question: what Episcopalian associated with a Rome-area Episcopal church in the last 150 years has been the most influential? I hinted that the person was affiliated with a Rome-area educational establishment. Martha Berry was an obvious answer to the question, and I gave the reasons why. But there is a second St. Peter’s Episcopalian who has had enormous influence whom we must consider.

In 1959 Anniston native and McCallie boarding-school grad Louie Crew came to Rome’s Darlington School, then a prep school only for boys, to teach in the English department. His courses included what the 1962 yearbook described as an "unorthodox" Bible course (prescient that). He was also faculty adviser to the school's "Y Cabinet," a YMCA offshoot that coordinated student religious activities. He lived in the dorm. He was at Darlington for three years before moving on to another boarding school in Delaware. While in Rome, he left his strict Baptist upbringing behind, and on October 29, 1961, was confirmed at our own St. Peter’s Episcopal Church.

Founder of Integrity

Those who follow Episcopal Church politics will recognize Louie Crew as the founder of Integrity, the numerically unimpressive but politically potent Episcopal gay rights group that has so successfully pushed for and achieved its agenda. It is indisputable that Crew has been an enormously influential figure, in his diocese, in the national church, and throughout the Anglican world. If any one person can be deemed responsible for the state in which the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion now finds itself, that person is not Katherine Jefforts Schori or V. Gene Robinson. It is Louie Crew.

Crew founded Integrity in 1974 when living in Fort Valley, Georgia, to our south. There in his coming out and in what he termed his “marriage” with his boyfriend, he caused endless grief for his parish and for the liberal bishop, Bennett Sims (although Sims later became one of Gene Robinson’s consecrators). The same I’m-here-and-I’m-not-going-away approach Crew took at his parish regarding his sexual orientation he was to then perfect in the wider church, to great effect. Crew’s notable strengths were his willingness to persevere, his boldness in making demands, his mastery of church politics (at the “precinct” level and nationally), and his ability to capitalize on small victories to build larger ones. He leveraged the yearning of those of his troubled generation who wanted to repeat the heady civil rights days--or who missed them and wanted their own experience of exuberant self-righteousness. He defined the issue of homosexuality as one of civil rights, of hospitality, of inclusion, of tolerance—notions that were difficult for nice, decent Episcopalians to object to. As a tactic, he urged “listening” to gays and “dialogue,” endeavors also difficult for broad-minded Episcopalians to decry. And he understood fully that given the nature of his campaign, there was no way any victory would be undone: no one in the Episcopal church will ever vote to take “rights” away.

Louie Crew bet correctly that the conservatives in the church had little interest in, or time for, the sort of political processes that those on the left so revel in. And patiently, step by step, with what probably even he would admit was a minority, he effectively engineered the takeover of the Episcopal Church for the gay agenda. At the peak of his influence, he sat on the church’s Executive Council, from 2003 to 2006. He was involved in all the major decisions of those critical years: some say he was their prime architect.

Today the church that was amazingly once called “the Republican Party at prayer” has leadership as hard-core leftist as moveon.org. Gay and lesbian clergy are commonplace, and it’s widely reported that today well over half of the church’s Executive Council is either gay or allied strongly with the gay-rights agenda. We are likely only one General Convention away from official rites for same-sex blessings or marriages. With winks and nudges, Gene Robinson, the Presiding Bishop and others hint that Robinson is but one of multiple gay bishops in the church. Perhaps the most unambiguous example of how embracing the church is now of the gay lifestyle is the eager participation of the new bishop of California, Marc Andrus, in San Francisco’s openly sexual and bacchanalian Gay Pride parade. Indeed, the church is viewed as so “gay-friendly” that there’s talk of the gay Metropolitan Community Church no longer really having a reason to exist, since the Episcopal Church and the United Church of Christ have taken that role. The amazing scope of Louie Crew’s achievements are the reason gay activists like lesbian priest Susan Russell suggest--seriously one presumes--that Louie Crew will one day end up in Lesser Feasts and Fasts, in essence canonized by the Episcopal Church and placed in the same category as St. Augustine, Martin Luther, Thomas Cranmer, and other great leaders and martyrs of the faith.

Friends, this is not your parents' Episcopal Church.

Admittedly, Louie Crew did not set out to destroy the Episcopal Church, although he did want to break down what he saw as barriers standing in the way to full inclusion, recognition, and blessing of gays and their sexual practices. Of necessity that required some demolition, but even he would probably not have predicted the cataclysm that the changes have wrought (although there’s no evidence that knowledge would have dissuaded him.) Truly, most who were allied with him thought that the Robinson consecration would follow the same pattern as controversial Prayer Book changes and the ordination of women: outrage from a minority, a small portion of whom would leave, followed by socialization of the change and its integration as part of what defines us.

This was a political miscalculation, as was in thinking that the Robinson consecration and the drive toward same-sex marriage would attract waves of new members into the church. Instead, it has accelerated the numerical and financial decline, caused the average age of those in the pew to move upward, and resulted in numerous parishes and now one whole diocese departing—not to mention the thousands of individuals who have walked away. The changes he sought proved of a wholly different nature and quality than Prayer Book revisions and women’s ordination. Perhaps Crew should have paid more attention to the experience of his own bellwether diocese, Newark, which is now a wasteland of closed churches, fleeing members, and diminishing finances.

Rome and Darlington School

Crew’s voluminous web site has very little mention about his years in Rome. In “Growing up Gay in Dixie” [warning: explicit content] he does recount “frequently” having conversations with Darlington’s dorm students about homosexual sex acts he says the boys claimed to have performed on each other. (Why they brought this news to him is not clear.) He says he told them what he knew then mainly from books—that they were not “isolated freaks.” Crew congratulates himself: “I am still amazed at my good sense as I recall those sessions in which I had to play it by ear, instinctively leading persons away from the very guilt that was suffocating me.” One has to wonder what sort of “good sense” it was to talk so freely with minors in a boys-school dorm about homosexual acts. One also has to wonder how Darlington’s administrators, not to mention parents, would have reacted to this sort of discussion by Crew with his adolescent male charges--and his not reporting the misconduct he says was so frequently confessed to him.

There is nothing on Crew’s web site about why he left Darlington, but his sojourn in Rome, and at St. Peter’s, ended in 1962, the summer after his confirmation. One Darlington old-timer who remembers Crew recalls him not fitting in particularly well at the school, and remembers that there was no great surprise or sadness when he left. “Let’s just say others did not share Louie Crew’s very high opinion of Louie Crew,” opined this contemporary of his (a person no longer at the school).

It seems they perhaps underestimated the mark Crew was to make. In the years following Rome, Crew continued an academic career, adding a Ph.D from Alabama to the Baylor and Auburn degrees he brought with him to Darlington. He ultimately became a longtime associate professor at Rutgers University, where he earned emeritus professor status in 2002. But all agree his primary legacy has been, and will continue to be, in the Episcopal Church.

His character and his legacy

Beyond beholding the state of our church today, Episcopalians here can judge for themselves what this former Rome denizen is like and the nature of his legacy by visiting his web site--probably the most comprehensive web site any person has ever compiled about himself. One thing you can say about Louie Crew: his life is one very big open book. You can read there about his accomplishments and his awards. You can also read examples of his writings, including his poetry (must-read example here, another here, some others here--warning: explicit content) and marvel at how Crew, with an obsession worthy of a train spotter, catalogs and counts all things Louie Crew. And as you peruse his site, don’t think for a minute Louie Crew is on the fringes of our church: he is its new mainstream. He is its future. His is the church in which we are rearing our children.

And if you wonder where it all began, it began 46 years ago at a confirmation in Rome, Georgia, in the beautiful stone church on the corner of East Fourth Avenue and East First Street.

I’ll add some final thoughts soon about which of the two Episcopalians I’ve identified is likely to prove the most influential.

Piling on

2008-02-09T15:55:00.000-05:00

It gets worse still for the Archbishop, with Lord Carey and Roman Catholic Cardinal Murphy-O'Conner getting in their blows. What seems plain is not only did the Archbishop score an own goal with respect to his credibility, he has also unleashed great pent-up anger about Britain's drive toward multiculturalism. Today he was heckled in Cambridge while leaving a memorial service, with two boos and one shout of "resign." Being England and all, no doubt they were polite about it.

Muslim peer Baroness Warsi expresses her displeasure as well: "Dr Williams's assertion that implementing sharia would help social cohesion is simply incorrect. It will alienate large sections of society, resentful of preferential treatment. Put simply, the recognition of sharia would simply be the tip of the multicultural iceberg, focusing on what divides us, rather than unites us. Rather than reinforcing social cohesion, it could lead to cultural and legal apartheid." Ouch. Apartheid: rough notion that to accuse the Archbishop of promoting.

And this from Canada's National Post: "The Archliberal of Ditherbury."

Britain must reject craven counsel of despair, writes Spectator editor Matthew d'Ancona.

And so on. The flurry of anti-Rowan articles that have been pouring forth today in all of the British press suggests they might be leading up to something. That something would be editorials in tomorrow's Sunday papers (editorials that we would see by around 9:00 this evening) calling for Rowan Williams to step aside. Those which loathe Williams will hit him on substance; those which admire his liberal instincts might simply say he's no longer effective. But with General Synod beginning Monday, the timing couldn't be better for the papers to create drama by demanding he stand down.

UPDATE from the Sunday papers:

Some good news for Rowan Williams for a change. No, the Sunday Telegraph editorial, "A defender of the faith needs better judgment," is rather blistering. But it doesn't call for his resignation. Given the number of calls for him to resign of late, he should take some comfort in that--even if it does say, "[H]is position as leader of the Church of England requires him to have another virtue: that of judgment. And unfortunately, the events of last week have shown a surprising and regrettable lapse of judgment."

The Sun: "Arch Enemy" (and worse)

2008-02-09T10:56:00.000-05:00

It would be a full-time job providing links to the reaction in Britain to the Archbishop of Canterbury's remarks about integrating Sharia law into the British legal system. Again, I encourage you check out Google News to get a sampling. Likewise, it would be impossible to link to the now tens of thousands of comments on British news sites--almost all extremely negative--about the Archbishop. He has plainly managed to antagonize those on both left and right, churchgoers and non-churchgoers alike. Despite his trying to clarify his remarks, the demands for his mitre seem to be intensifying, not abating.

The tabloid Sun has now started a campaign against the man they have tagged in their headline today the "Arch Enemy." They even conveniently provide the form required to report clergy misconduct. They describe him as "a dangerous threat to the nation," and do a sidebar article on "A Wealthy Leftie with a Life of Luxury." The message: this man is nothing like you, our sensible, hard-working, patriotic readers.

In many ways the Sun's campaign could be the most damaging. British tabloids are not like American supermarket tabloids. While they are given to headline hyperbole and are shameless in their methods of attracting readers (the Sun's buxom and topless "Page Three Girls," for example), they generally aim to be factual in their reporting, given Britain's notoriously tough libel laws. The reason the Sun can damage the Archbishop is because of its wide readership among the working classes. And they can do worse than calling him an "Arch enemy": they can as no other paper can transform him into a national laughing stock.

The name of their campaign, "Bash the Bishop," is in its main British usage a euphemism for male masturbation, which means they are in essence comparing Rowan Williams to . . . well, you get the picture. And it's that demeaning picture the Sun wants its readers to get and to retain: no one will look at Rowan Williams in quite the same way after reading today's Sun. Even those who would never admit to reading the Sun will snicker at the cleverness of the screaming headline they saw when they picked up their Times or Telegraph at the news agent. And in more polite ways those establishment papers will be telling them the very same thing. ("Williams is dangerous. He must he resisted," reads Matthew Parris's Time's column today, for example.)

And if all that wasn't enough, the Sun also provides an on-line "Throw a Sponge at the Archbishop" game. (I admit it is cathartic.)

So three days on and the attack on the Archbishop continues and intensifies. Undoubtedly the Sunday papers--read by virtually all Britons--will feature the row prominently. Rowan Williams will be weakened further. And thereby the future of the Anglican Communion looks ever more uncertain, given the effect of the Archbishop's ill-advised sharia remarks beyond the sceptred isle. Who would have thought he could have been made any weaker than he was already?

UPDATE: Greg Griffith at Stand Firm has a fine round-up of some of the coverage, within and outside the Anglican blogosphere.

A key called Promise

2008-02-08T09:59:00.000-05:00

That key unlocks the Doubting Castle of Giant Despair. Our sufferings can seem unbearable and our lives bereft of hope when we forget that as Christians we carry that key with us always.

So Matthew's powerful post at Billy Ockham reminds us of this critical lesson about despair in the life of the Christian from Pilgrim's Progress, Bunyan's great allegory of the Christian journey.

"Shall we be ruled by the giant?" the desperate prisoner Christian asks Hopeful. Matthew reminds us beautifully (and with appropriate humor) that the answer is a confident and resolute no.

Does Sharia law penalize profound ineptness? [Updated]

2008-02-07T20:39:00.000-05:00

A few days ago I suggested that the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams was a clueless buffoon. That characterization was no harsher than others offered after his daft proposal to criminalize unintentionally cruel speech. But still I wondered if perhaps I was too vitriolic. He is, after all, our Archbishop.

No longer do I question that assessment. The most recent proposal from the Archbishop is that Sharia law be fused into British law. And now almost no one is coming to his defense--even British Muslims. I'm not going to link to all the articles and commentary about this latest inane uttering: you can Google it yourself by typing in Rowan and Sharia. But you should most definitely read Ruth Gledhill's marvelous piece, "Has the Archbishop Gone Bonkers?" She is usually charitable to the Archbishop, giving him the benefit of the doubt, but even she cannot let this one pass.

This blunder by the Archbishop is far more serious than many are yet realizing, for several reasons. First, to the average non-churchgoing Englishman, where the Archbishop of Canterbury stands on the Dar es Salaam communique, or how he will edit the Anglican Covenant, or what he will do about the Lambeth invitation to John-David Schofield are issues of no moment whatsoever. But start inserting Islamic law into English law, and threatening English liberties--that's another matter entirely. For goodness' sake, Brits don't like Euro-crats regulating their beloved flavored potato crisps--they're certainly not going to warm to mullahs meddling in their legal system. As deficient as we have all known Rowan Williams to be in leadership ability, his ineptness up to now had no real impact outside the energized Anglican world. But now Williams has proven himself such an embarrassment that British politicians from every party are rushing to condemn him. He's lost any political support he may have had. It's not outside the realm of possibility that he might have to resign.*

Here to illustrate the point is one of the hundreds of condemning comments posted on the UK newpaper sites since the story broke:

Normally the Archbishop just bumbles along like the saintly old Herdwick sheep he resembles, opening and shutting his mouth like a goldfish, his words of no application whatsoever apart from the pleasure it gives him to utter them, and no-one takes a blind bit of notice, nor should they. But this, this is dynamite under the very foundation of this society - that there is one law and it applies to everyone. No-one may be given the choice of an alternative legal system to which they feel more 'comfortable' 'relating', as Williams would no doubt put it. Citizens who do not accept the law of this land should leave it and go to live in a country where the law is more to their liking.

In the Anglican mess, the consequences of his words--which were not a careless aside, but were a planned and carefully written-out speech--may well be his and the Communion's undoing. Just when he is trying to coax and cajole Global South bishops to Lambeth, he now undermines them, and does so in a way that can cost lives of those they shepherd. In Nigeria and elsewhere, the Anglican church is standing up against Islamism and Sharia law--and now the Archbishop says it is "unavoidable" in England, and should be welcomed as part of the legal system there. How can any African primate now permit his bishops to attend Lambeth, when its host is putting them at risk so? Any African primates who were even thinking of answering the pleas of N. T. Wright and others to attend now must believe they have no choice but to stay far, far away.

Even if the Archbishop hangs on through the coming debacle of Lambeth, he will henceforth have no credibility with any primate who is having to deal with the ugly side of Islam, a crucial part of which is sharia. That includes much of the Global South. Add appeasement toward Muslims to his failure to discipline the American church, and there is simply little reason they should regard the man as trustworthy or possessing good judgment. After calling him to account for the damage he is doing, they will be right thereafter to ignore him, and his Lambeth tea-party, and his now-flaccid Anglican Covenant.

The Anglican Communion has had as its focus Canterbury. Being in communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury has been the ultimate definition of what it meant to be Anglican. But Rowan Williams with these latest utterings has so diminished the office that it's hard to see that relationship as one to aspire to. He has in one monumentally stupid pronouncement laid bare the weaknesses of that traditional focus. Today the African bishops, if not the English ones also, must be asking, "Exactly why should we seek to define ourselves by being in communion with a guy who wants to destroy our civil liberties?" And it's a reasonable question to ask, is it not?

*UPDATE: Friday morning and the furore has not abated, and there are now calls--from inside and outside of the Church of England--for the Archbishop to resign. Irrespective of how he responds to these, he is now hopelessly weakened by such demands, and by the continued distancing from him by virtually every politician and person of importance in Britain, including, apparently, the very multicultural Prince of Wales.

UPDATE 2: (It's Saturday in Britain.) It's not at all good for the Archbishop when both of the establishment dailies in Britain lead with reports of calls for his resignation. "Insiders are wondering if Dr. Williams's moral authority has now been damaged beyond repair," the Times article concludes, after starting with the headline: "Archbishop faces calls to quit over Sharia row." And the Times seems also have understood the African angle, quoting Peter Akinola as saying the Archbishop's remarks were "most disturbing and most unfortunate." Over at the Telegraph, it's "Church members call on Archbishop to resign." Not unexpectedly, Lord Carey has also piled on. Plainly the Archbishop's opponents sense he is weakened and can be brought down. Should be an interesting weekend.

All is well?

2008-02-06T06:13:00.000-05:00

Objects in Mirror Are Smaller Than They Appear (H/T: T19)

One might think a pretty basic measure of whether a parish is surviving, and whether a diocese is viable, is whether there are rectors in the parishes. (And this simple test can be applied to one our local Episcopal churches as well). Of course it would not be fair to hold church plants to this standard, as they usually do have to function without rectors in their beginnings. Likewise, parishes truly between rectors obviously lack one, so it's not fair to draw negative conclusions in those cases. One suspects that even those churches "between rectors" may be permanently so, much in the way a chronically unemployable person might claim for years he is "between jobs." (Read some parish profiles of churches supposedly looking for rectors, and it's plain they have neither the wherewithal to have a priest of their own, nor the potential.)

But in Minnesota, fewer than 23 percent of the parishes have rectors. Anglicat notes that very few are in the interregnums between rectors. Many have no clergy listed. Most have bishop-assigned and controlled priests-in-charge, or so-called "local priests" who lack seminary training, or vicars (in the United States, priests for parishes that are not self-sustaining or which cannot afford full-time clergy).

Perhaps this state of affairs, in Minnesota and in West Rome, is so "usual" now that no one seems to notice. But imagine more than two-thirds--or even half--of our county's Baptist (or Presbyterian, or Methodist) churches without real pastors of their own. It is simply unimaginable.

And yet our church leadership dares to use the word "thriving" to discuss the state of the Episcopal Church. Gregori Aleksandrovich Potemkin would be most impressed.

Thank you!

2008-02-05T13:37:00.000-05:00

Who would have thought this little blog up in the Northwest Georgia hills would have had as much traffic of late as it's had, with hits from as many places around the world as it's had. That's wholly owing to referrals from the heavy hitters in the orthodox Anglican blogosphere who've charitably linked to articles here.

I want especially to thank these brilliant bloggers for their recent links: Billy Ockham, Stand Firm, The MCJ, BabyBlue, Anglicans Ablaze, Drell's Descants. Not for a moment would I put this blog in the same class as those, but they pay the site a great compliment by their hyperlinks. Thank you.

There's been some wonderful e-mail in recent days from: folks up here in this part of Georgia delighted to learn there actually is at least one other orthodox Anglican about; from orthodox Anglicans who have roots in the Rome area and now live elsewhere; from alums from area schools and colleges; and from those writing to encourage. I'll do another "From the pillar box" posting soon.

One bit of mail I wanted to answer now, though. One thoughtful reader wrote in asking why the site had no place to donate money. My answer is: because this doesn't cost me anything save some time in the evenings and early mornings. And that's no cost--it's a joy. I do think it's appropriate, though, to support orthodox bloggers, and to that end recommended to this correspondent, as I would recommend to every reader, to give to the standard bearer for us all: Stand Firm in Faith. Their bandwidth demands must be extraordinary and costly. What they give all of us is of incalculable value.

And if you really feel compelled to donate something to this effort, feel free to give your vote for Hills of the North in the 2008 Anglican Blog Awards in the best new blog category, whenever those polls open.

Yesterday's Tomorrow, Today

2008-01-30T22:37:00.000-05:00

That's the tagline for one of the most interesting blogs out there. Remember all the neat predictions of the future you'd read in Popular Mechanics or Popular Science while sitting in the barber shop or pretending to study in your room? All the cool inventions that were just bound to take the world by storm? Well, at Modern Mechanix they're all captured and catalogued so you can decide for yourself how accurate the predictions were, how commonplace the quirky inventions became. Hibernation rooms for frozen sleep, 1500-volt electric gloves for police officers, marshmallow toasters, vacuum caps to suck stubborn hair out of your bald head: you'll find them all here. Most of the site's hundreds of ideas turned out to be preposterous. (Although a few were frighteningly accurate.) Most "Miracles You'll See in the Next 50 Years" weren't exactly, well, seen in the next 50 years.

As wonderful as that site is, though, it can't hold a candle for laughs to this one, with predictions only a few years old. And--thanks to Frank Griswold, V. Gene Robinson, Katherine Jefforts Schori and their pals--we didn't have to wait 50 years to discount these predicted miracles, either. Remember 20/20? Doubling Average Sunday Attendance (ASA) by 2020 (to 1.66 million, with over 1 million by this year); 401 new church plants by this year; new congregations having ASA of over 300; growth rate of 4.7 percent yearly; parishes "considerably younger"; new youth and college programs; 25 percent of parishes having started after 2000. And this was going to be the legacy of the 2003 General Convention. It was as unstoppable as, say, the Millenium Development Goals: "This Episcopal Church will be bubbling over with possibilities, hopeful, upbeat . . . ," they gushed.

How did things turn out? Instead we have hemmorhaging of members and money; Average Sunday Attendance below 800,000 and in free-fall; congregations and dioceses fleeing; churches being shut down; the church spending millions to sue its former members; bishops bullying successful lay organizations; the average age of those in the pews moving up into retirement years; a membership loss of between 2 and 3 percent yearly; young people leaving and never coming back. In short, an unmitigated disaster now, with a demographic time bomb set to explode in a few years. And we've still got 12 years to go before 2020, with no sign any of these trends will abate, much less reverse themselves.

Somehow after reading about the Episcopal Church's 20/20 program, the pictures of such things as plastic dishes that melt in hot water and then just disappear down the drain and V-shaped beds don't seem so outlandish, relatively speaking. Such ideas might have always been really stupid, but they aren't, even now, wholly outside the realm of possibility.

The same can't be said for the recovery of the Episcopal Church.

So the next time you hear how All Is Well in the Episcopal Church, or you hear explanations of how it was somehow always to be expected that we'd becoming the Incredibly Shrinking Church because we're too intelligent to have babies and such, remind the person making these excuses of what the Episcopal Church itself said was a realistic place for us to be in 2008. This is the standard--one they set in the year of Gene Robinson's consecration--to which they should be held when determining how their New Thing worked out.

Somehow I suspect they know that, which is why one never, ever hears of 20/20 anymore.

Hell hath no fury

2008-01-30T19:07:00.000-05:00

It's not easy to piece together this story, but it appears that the Presiding Bishop is now extending her antipathy toward successful parishes and dioceses to the church's successful voluntary and independent lay organizations.

The venerable Daughters of the King decided at their 2006 meeting, by an 80 percent to 20 margin, to admit to full voting membership their ecumenical chapters. These include Lutherans and Roman Catholics, but also Anglicans in the United States who are affiliated with overseas provinces. Smart move, of course, if the organization doesn't want to rot and die like the Episcopal Church. And certainly they want to be able to support those chapters at churches which leave. But undoubtedly this is what caused the Presiding Bishop to go after the Daughters as she's done, with nary a bow to their "autonomy" and "democratic polity."

Seemingly out of the blue, Province 4 bishops, including our own (but not including Bishop Howe), chastised the elected DOK president. They demanded financial transparency. (That they've got: all financial reports were posted to the DOK web site today.) But what really irked them is plain in this line: “We are further concerned to hear that amendments to the constitution and bylaws and other governing documents of the Daughters of the King have been made without the full consent of the membership gathered in the appropriate assembly empowered to make those changes.”

What they don't like, plainly, is that those stinkin' Anglicans get to vote. Of course this was a year and a half ago. What's changed? The Presiding Bishop. Here's what she wrote her fellow bishops:

My brothers and sisters,

I know there have been questions in many dioceses about the status of leadership in the Daughters of the King. This issue was raised while I was meeting with the bishops of Province IV. Attached is a letter from the bishops of Province IV, expressing concern. I understand that responses have begun, and wanted you to be aware of this. Questions you may have can appropriately be directed to the Daughters in your own diocese, and on their behalf to the national leadership. Given the energy behind this, you may want to share any responses you receive with others on this list, so that all may be suitably informed. I look forward to seeing you all in March.

Shalom, Katharine

The issue "was raised" (quite possibly meaning she brought it up). [Note: I have edited this sentence; see comments for explanation.] And what does she mean by "responses have begun"? There is plainly a move afoot to overthrow the leadership, by hook or by crook, and she is plainly behind it. An "Episcopal Community of the Daughters of the King" has been formed, and there is little doubt it is there to do the Presiding Bishop's bidding, to weaken the leadership of the DOK, to do whatever it can to eject the Anglicans from the organization, and even to effect a putsch. The Daughters rightly ask, "are the efforts of 'The Episcopal Community' rooted in a divisive political agenda promoted by disaffected members, or a sincere effort to strengthen the Order?"

Now why would the Presiding Bishop get so bent out of shape about the Daughters of the King recognizing Anglicans? Well, as Bishop Howe, the organization's chaplain, notes, "This is a direct reflection of the chaos in the wider church. The Daughters were the only Episcopal Church organization experiencing growth.” Ouch.

Growth in the Episcopal Church, of course, almost always equals orthodoxy, and that cannot be abided. And likely that is what this is really all about.

(The men's counterpart to the Daughters of the King is the equally venerable, but smaller, Brotherhood of St. Andrew. They, too, now have provision for chapters at "any church within the fellowship of the Anglican Communion." It will be interesting to see if the Presiding Bishop likewise goes after the Brotherhood. I'll be writing more about the Brotherhood of St. Andrew, a very fine organization, in the days ahead.)

Laughable and pathetic

2008-01-29T21:01:00.000-05:00

Two of the mainstays of the blogosphere, the Volokh Conspiracy and Instapundit, have now picked up on Rowan Williams's astounding assertion that there should be laws proscribing "thoughtless and, even if unintentionally, cruel styles of speaking and acting." [Emphasis added.]

"How about a law against being laughable and pathetic," Instapundit's Glenn Reynolds responds. "Appalling," says Eugene Volokh. ("Pointless man offers stupid opinion," was Chris Johnson's assessment over at MCJ.)

Now this is the sort of nonsense we've been putting up with for years in the Anglican fold. The left within the church, as outside the church, too easily yields to the totalitarian temptation regarding speech, wanting to control what is said because they can't abide disagreement (although usually offering the pretense of wanting to preclude hurt to others). Because people don't conform to what those on the left just know is correct, and because others won't just voluntarily shut up, they want to use the law (canon or civil) to make them. Fortunately in America we have something quaint called the First Amendment that precludes such nannying and bullying in the law, else such inane musings as the Archbishop's might ultimately curtail our freedoms.

As good as it is to see Rowan Williams called out like this by two of the nation's most-read bloggers, it is still embarrassing that the leader of the world's Anglicans can be so supremely stupid in his pronouncements. It's bad enough having to tell folks in Georgia that yes, you belong to "that gay church downtown," or "that rich left-wing church." Now everyone knows that the guy supposedly leading our church is a clueless buffoon.

But on the bright side, at least he didn't compare those with traditional beliefs to child abusers, as our reconciling Presiding Bishop did recently. I suppose the usual Nazi allusions (the sort used last year in one of our own local churches, sad to say) weren't sufficient. She had to pick the most odious predators imaginable--molesting priests--to use in her tantrum about those fleeing the Episcopal Church because of its heresy. That's how tolerant and accepting and inclusive she and her pals on the left are toward those who believe the Bible and the Creeds they recite each week. The Episcopal Church Welcomes You, the sign says.

Of course it probably would never occur to those on the left that comparing Christians who disagree with you to child molesters might just be a "thoughtless and cruel style of speaking," because of course they are always right, and that justifies whatever they might say. And certainly the question of whether such calumny is Christian behavior is hardly relevant, is it, when you reject the basic foundations of the Christian faith.

God is doing a new (math) thing

2008-01-28T21:04:00.000-05:00

I suppose when you lose 42 parishes in an afternoon, it's no big deal to instantly shed 50 folks from a count of those in a single service. That seems to be what happened Saturday at San Joaquin's Church of the Savior, Hanford, where the Episcopal News Service first confidently reported that 350 people gathered there to "Remain Episcopal." By today there were magically only "some 300," so says ENS. (Of course the phrase "some 300" would only be used if there were not 300 there at all--else ENS would have said "more than 300.") Perhaps there was a rapture of a seventh of the original 350, or perhaps the ENS writer realized people were counting heads and coming up with just over 200, and former parishioners were saying there was no way 350 people could fit into that nave. To ENS's credit, the article makes clear the (now) 300 were those from the Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin "and their supporters."

Maybe the supporters had gone home by Sunday, but House of Deputies President Bonnie Anderson at Holy Family Fresno drew only "about 50" (which means "we wish there were 50 but there weren't but please don't tell anyone"). And that was between two services, when the most number of parishioners ("and their supporters") would have been present. Pictures of a service where Ms Anderson "preached" were suitably truncated so as not to show how many were in the pews. But let's just say there wasn't a picture gallery provided this time.

The propaganda would be laughable if it weren't so feeble and insulting. ENS should know better that to go to the trouble to plaster pictures of Saturday's gathering everywhere as if it were important, and have a satellite feed and video, and then expect to get away with transparent falsehoods about the number in attendance.

Revival always

2008-01-27T19:43:00.000-05:00

A word association test would be quite unlikely to yield the pairing: Anglican and revival. Revival--or, quite literally, coming back to life--presumes there is life there in the first place. Sadly, the popular perception of Episcopalians is that we are a lifeless bunch. So revival thus seems nonsensical. That's a problem, when the life we should have and reflect is the life of Christ our Savior, as we are energized by the Holy Spirit.

Dean Munday of Nashotah House understands this. "[J]ust as the greatest work of the Church is Christ's Great Commission to carry the Gospel to all people," he writes, "so the greatest need of the Church is continually to be renewed and empowered by the Holy Spirit. The need is always for revival."

So he's started a new blog, the Anglican Revivalist, a sister blog to his To All the World, to focus attention on the need for revival in our church. It is definitely worth your attention. Start with his inaugural posting, and then read it all and read it often.

I recently watched a video of a service from Billy Graham's 1962 Chicago Crusade at McCormick Place. It followed the usual progression of a Billy Graham crusade, and though by today's standards his physical movements on the stage seemed excessive and distracting, Graham was nonetheless mesmerizing and powerful. At one point he looks right at the television camera and says that if you're an Episcopalian, there is nothing he is preaching that you can't find right in the Book of Common Prayer. It was a jolting and unexpected statement--and of course entirely true. I suspect it shook many of his Anglican viewers to the core. Too often we all forget the essence of our faith. Too often we forget what Christ did to change our lives. And too often we fail to let the love of Christ revive us.

Thank you, Dean Munday, for reminding us, and God's blessings on your new blog.

Self-destruction

2008-01-27T11:51:00.000-05:00

Brilliant, spot-on analysis by David Trimble:

The inexorable desire of PB Schori to exert her perceived ecclesiastical "power" has become little more than a parody of itself, albeit an expensive one, while she at the same time presides over the accelerating decline of TCGC. She has single-handedly derailed semi-peaceful negotiations in Virginia for the departure of eleven parishes and turned that into a multi-million dollar piece of litigation that already has DioVA taking on debt load it cannot handle in light of declining pledge income, and that shows little promise of being resolved for many years to come. She has directed similar litigation to be filed in other states and forums. She and many of her Bishop-allies have thrown about inhibitions and other ecclesiastical charges with an abandon and purposelessness that is decidedly beyond the pale of administration of a supposedly Christian institution. The truly sad upshot of this high-level maneuvering is that it continues to disgust and drive away the rank-and-file membership of TCGC, and no one at 815 or in Diocesan headquarters around the nation even seems to care.

Read it all. For those who've not seen the abbreviation"TCGC," it is shorthand for "The Church of the General Convention," a derisive moniker that describes a church where polity and politics have replaced anything related to doctrine and which is devoid of true Godly leadership.

"Moving Forward"?

2008-01-27T10:31:00.000-05:00

It was an interesting weekend in the devasted ruins of what was once the Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin, where 42 of 47 parishes left the denomination.

First, the national church pulled out all the stops to amass a very large crowd Saturday that would show the viability of those who want to "Remain Episcopal" (as one of the groups calls itself). Preceding the event was all sorts of press hype, including live web streaming from Church of the Savior, Hanford--trumping coverage, interestingly, of the consecration of the new (orthodox) Bishop of South Carolina (who, ironically, hails from San Joaquin).

Then came the ENS story of how "350" people gathered at Saturday's service. Press reports say otherwise (250), and if you count heads from pictures and video of the service, it's very hard to find 350 of them. But the article does say that folks came from as far as San Diego and Seattle--an admission that undoubtedly they had to make, since in the days ahead it will be very clear that there are nowhere near 350 (or 250) local Episcopalians who want to continue with the national church. The church hierarchy knows how bad it is, or else they would not have bussed in outsiders, or chosen such a small gathering place. They know that whether it's 250 or 350, this does not a diocese make.

House of Deputies President Bonnie Anderson admitted the situation wasn't good, from the revisionist point of view. From ENS: "Remaining Episcopalians face complexity and chaos, she said. Some are willing to litigate to keep church property while others aren't. Still others 'voted to remove the Episcopal Church from the diocesan constitution but have now indicated they are willing to stay, and some who are simply on the fence, … some have disavowed themselves and no longer consider themselves Episcopalian. A fifth group of people simply want things to get back to normal so they can worship without all this disagreement.'"

So the national church realizes that those few wanting to stay are not a bunch of Louie Crews. That's probably one reason the Presiding Bishop was not there, save in videotaped greetings.

Interesting, also, were the television remarks of Michael Glass, identified as an attorney for 815. "We're going to be thoughtful about how we proceed in litigating if it comes to that. We're going to be economical about it and we're going to be as charitable about it as we can."

Now you can throw away the words "thoughtful" and "charitable," since that's the sort of language 815 uses before doing really mean things to people. But "economical" is certainly not a word that's ever been associated with Episcopal Church litigation. Save for forcing dioceses to pick up seven-figure tabs for litigation 815 insists upon, there has been nothing "economical" about it. Millions of dollars have been spent on lawyers to regain properties that will be vacant. Is it possible that the national church (or perhaps its lawyers, at least) see how fruitless it will be to litigate this? Is it possible that the national church has been exposed as willing to litigate only when dioceses (i.e., those in Episcopal church pews like you and me) pay for it locally? (As there's no one left in San Joaquin to pay for the litigation, and neighboring dioceses won't want to, either.)

The days ahead will either show 815 to be a legal paper tiger in this case, or horribly reckless with their (our) funds. Neither will be helpful to the Presiding Bishop.

The more likely course of action is for the national church to make this very personal, going after Bishop John-David Schofield with a vengeance, but saving the real effort for destroying Bishop Duncan and his orthodox Pittsburgh diocese as Schori's Gleichschaltung advances. They couldn't stop San Joaquin, but undoubtedly they believe they can't allow another diocese to leave, and Pittsburgh's next up. Duncan is the leader of the orthodox, to the extent we have one, so destroying him will not only "save" a diocese (although if successful, they're likely to get just a bunch of empty buildings there, too), but will also be seen as decapitating the leader of the opposition.

Apt cartoon from Dave Walker's wonderful Cartoon Church.

UPDATE: Do check out the excellent analysis at Billy Ockham of this rather pitiful pep rally for San Joaquin Episcopalians. Pay special attention to the superbly on-point Monty Python allusion at the end, with Michael Palin in the role of the Presiding Bishop, Bonnie Anderson, and countless others you may recognize (even here in Northwest Georgia).

The elephant in the room

2008-01-22T18:38:00.000-05:00

My fellow North Georgia blogger Matthew, over at Billy Ockham, has written one of the finest assessments of what ails the Episcopal Church that I've seen anywhere. You simply must read it all. Here's how he concludes:

The main sin of the Episcopal Church is not lust, homosexual or heterosexual. It is pride. It is our stubborn refusal to admit that there is anything wrong. And there is something wrong. Our leadership says that there is something worthwhile about being an Episcopalian. And some of our members are buying the company line. But no one else is. That is the elephant in the room. As long as we refuse to admit our sin, we can not and will not do anything about it.

We have become a church without sin. We are also a church without God. And we are rapidly becoming a church without members. And our leadership does not or will not see a connection between those three statements.

We are a proud church, and no matter what happens that condition is not likely to continue. Either, as a church, we repent and humble ourselves before an almighty God, or we won't be a church and so will no longer be proud.