The Deep Breath

...before the plunge.

So the House of Bishops meets next Thursday, September 20th, and the Global South merrily continues to consecrate bishops for their missionary bodies in North America. Leaders of the Episcopal Dioceses of Pittburgh, Fort Worth, San Joaquin, and Quincy, are now all in various stages of planning to divorce themselves from The Episcopal Church. The effort seems afoot to attach as much weight as possible to the HoB response to the Primates this month. It's a shrewd, albeit classic political ploy, because it allows the Network and the Global South band to blame the HoB, and perhaps the Archbishop of Canterbury as well, for whatever endeavor they have set their hearts on -- even schism. Whether it's deeply honest or not in the light of Christ is quite another question entirely. And many of the tangible repercussions are sadly ending up thrown to the secular courts, where they will play out in costly ways for years to come.

Here are some links for gaining perspective on the present situation:

An advisor to the Archbishop of Canterbury's office has declared that the Primates' Dar Es Salaam Communiqué does not represent an ultimatum to The Episcopal Church. I disagree to some extent, as the language seems very much like a veiled threat or demand. . . but of course without any real teeth. The Primates in particular have no authority by themselves to enforce any policy internally in The Episcopal Church or even see us trotted out of the Communion.

My quibble aside, it seems clear at any rate that the Archbishop of Canterbury has no intention of arriving in New Orleans bringing threats of excommunication, let alone hell-fire and damnation. And it does me well to grant that the Archbishop of Canterbury was at Dar Es Salaam in February and I wasn't!

So September 30th is not D-day, although some would wish it so. Ironically, the "invasion" has already begun. Indeed, it is well under way.

If you ask me, the schismatic dioceses and their allies in other Provinces have already stacked the deck. They are in advanced stages of planning to leave and set up an alternative Anglican Communion that will look and behave very different from the old one. Whether it will succeed or not, and who or what will ultimately be in charge of it, is another question entirely. But it is hard to ignore that indeed, "things are now set in motion that cannot be undone."

The upshot of all this, it seems to me:

Our bishops would do well to respond to whatever is real, and I trust that they might indeed do so. Their initial response in March was a hopeful sign. Speaking in person with the Archbishop of Canterbury and others in the Anglican Communion might make cutting through the bluster and red herrings coming from some quarters all the easier.

Our Presiding Bishop offers a succinct overview of the House of Bishops, their authority, and what we can expect at next week's meeting. My takeaway is a general sentiment is that there is every intention to move forward with a sense of Spirit-filled mission, and to continue conversation with the greater Communion according to the rules: both those in The Episcopal Church, and according to the structures in place in the Anglican Communion, particularly the Anglican Consultative Council.

Some might mock appeals to polity and rules at this stage, claiming that the Bible trumps all, or, even more rightly, that Jesus comes first. Fair enough. But there is always a danger of excusing ourselves from moral responsibility for our actions by hiding behind Scripture, or even the name of Christ himself. Rules, imperfect as they are, help us navigate that important distinction, and more importantly, bound us in a community of mutual assent while we work out our disagreements.

Tom Woodward addresses the schismatic rejection of time-honored principles of Anglican Christianity in four well-worth-reading essays over at Episcopal Majority.

Tobias Haller is continuing an illuminating discussion over sexuality in the context of Christianity and Scripture, speaking to the heart of the manifesting issue that is driving much emotion around the present discord.

Granted there will be a great deal in the Anglican blogosphere about the HoB meeting next week. If you want to keep up, I suggest heading on over to Episcopal Café, where Jim Naughton plans ongoing coverage and to host a great deal of commentary from a variety of authors.

But a lingering concern for me these days is how many of us, myself included, have forgotten how the spin-doctors and a handful of bishops and their the enemy of my enemy is my friend alliances have, in various ways, hijacked the focus of the Anglican Communion with a very narrow set of issues now for over four years.

Perhaps it is past time to begin wresting it back. Some are already hard at it.

So I'll close this reflection by returning to the more personal, referencing an essay I posted recently on children's baptism over at Episcopal Café, where it received some well-worth-reading comments in reply.

I look forward to attending our diocesan clergy conference late this month that will welcome our Presiding Bishop, and we are doubly blessed with Archbishop Ngundane's visit to this diocese during our annual convention in October.

Finally, last Wednesday, I was privileged to be elected Rector of Church of Our Saviour, Mill Valley, California, where I have been serving for the past year as priest-in-charge ("Long-Term Interim"). So Hiroko, Daniel, and I are planning to stick around these here parts for quite sometime with some really loving and (thankfully) patient people!

Naturally, the concerns of the greater Anglican Communion, while important, have been taking a back seat for me recently to more local matters of Christian life and ministry.

But then, that is probably just as well...

Scoring Points

Many seem to be trying to make hay out of the upcoming meeting between the Archbishop of Canterbury and our House of Bishops. The latest to join the fray is John Shelby Spong, retired Bishop of Newark, whose name and perennial reputation places him at the center of the Anglican equivalent of Godwin's Law.

A word to Bishop Spong from a (not so humble) parish priest: No thank you!

While many of us who agree with Bishop Spong on some matters and disagree with him on others have learned to tune out his condescending style, at this stage, I frankly cannot see how this point scoring is helpful. In fact, I worry that it undermines the very witness that is needed to effectively address the concerns that I and many others share with him.

There are so many better counterpoints to play against the hateful rhetoric that has been spewing forth in recent days. All the best prayers for our House of Bishops and the Archbishop of Canterbury in that regard.

Home to Roost

Now, at last, the long-brewing situation is coming home to roost for all parties involved.

Fr. Jake, Susan Russell, Davis Mac-Iyalla, Greg Griffith, and Kendall Harmon have all joined in repudiating outrageous statements reportedly coming from the episcopate in Nigeria. The real hatred and violence of rhetoric in parts of the Anglican Communion is now being shouted from the rooftops, it seems.

I am struck by the self-fulfilling prophecy, almost apocalyptic in tone, that this September is already coming to embody for the greater Church. It is a bold, raw moment for true Christians to step forward and show the light of Christ to one another. . . or to recoil into the darkness of schism and vituperation.

This will provide a true measure of the Archbishop of Canterbury and, to a lesser degree, our House of Bishops, and their sisters and brothers across the Communion.

Who will stand and be counted, indeed?

We watch, pray, and speak with hope of our God in Christ, who is the light "when all other lights have gone out."

Proportion and Absurdity

So here's a concluding snapshot of Archbishop Drexel Gomez' sermon at the recent consecrations of two new missionary bishops. . .
. . . for former members of The Episcopal Church . . .
. . . who have now joined the Church of Kenya:

My brothers, you are entering the Episcopal ministry within the Anglican Communion at a time when the Communion is being severely challenged in each of the three related areas of the patristic tradition concerning Episcopal ministry. I refer to:

* The maintenance of eucharistic communion

* Continuity and apostolic teaching.

* Oversight of the churches.

The present impaired state of the Communion is due mainly to actions taken by the Episcopal Church of the United States of America in respect of human sexuality with special reference to the consecration of a bishop living in an opened homosexual relationship. The actions of the Episcopal Church have created a situation in which some Anglicans in the United States and throughout most of the Provinces of the Communion are convinced that the gospel of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ is clear in its teaching and must take precedent over culture. Holding fast to this belief, they cannot accommodate those who believe the contrary. The issue is not primarily on of sexuality but one which seeks to answer the question "which relationships correspond to God’s ordering of life, and violate it?" It is a division of opinion between those of us who firmly believe that homosexual practice violates the order of life give by God in scripture and those who seek by various mean to justify what scripture does not hounour. We, in the Global South, whole heartedly support the position outlined by Richard Hays in ‘The Moral Vision of the New Testament:’

‘Paul singles out homosexual intercourse for special attention because he regards it as providing a particularly graphic image of the way in which human fallenness distorts God’s created order. God the Creator made man and woman for each other, to cleave together to be fruitful and multiply. When human beings ‘exchange’ these created roles for homosexual intercourse, they embody the spiritual condition of those who have ‘exchanged the truth about God for a lie.’

We believe that faithfulness to the gospel of Jesus Christ prevents us from compromising the truth so clearly revealed in holy scripture.

There is so much material here, that it would require days of careful writing to address in full. An assumption of responsibility is laid "mainly" at the doorstep of The Episcopal Church, laden with a quote based on a very narrow and disputable reading of a brief passage of Scripture, homosexuality is roundly condemned as "exchange" of choice. . .

And upon this the entire ecclesiological framework of communion, apostolic ministry, and oversight seems placed.

Despite all this, it is acknowledged that the current disagreement is a "division of opinion."

Is it to this that our House of Bishops must rationally and carefully respond? Thankfully, no. But then Gomez was instrumental in the Windsor Report as well as the more recent draft Anglican Covenant. He is not a minor player in the present crisis. So if this is indeed the substance behind the demands made by the Global South Primates through the most recent Communiqué, we have truly left the realms of faithful and rational disagreement altogether.

I do not envy the new bishops just consecrated in Nairobi. They have been handed, and have taken, if the Archbishop's words are to be understood at face value, the episcopacy entirely on the merits of a narrow argument over sexual ethics. Somehow, fidelity to this one way or another is equated in toto with fidelity to Christ. That seems to me to get the cart entirely before the horse. It makes Christ so small next to the specter of "homosexual practice." That is truly a mistake of proportion. Surely Christ for the good Archbishop is bigger than that. I dare say, Christ might be big enough to even belong as well to those of us who conscientiously and prayerfully disagree with the stance that Gomez++, Nzimi++, and other Global South Primates have taken . . . and then together have hung, if not hanged, the Communion upon it.

The question remains: why this particular ethical question, when any of us could name well over a dozen (many pertaining to sexuality) that have been disputed in the Anglican Communion and greater Church for years and some centuries?

I do not agree with the Archbishop's theological or scriptural interpretation, of course. But this is not my point here.

Rather, it is this:

Would I ever want to take up any ministry, regardless of the Order, under the auspices of a narrow and now clearly destructive contention over Christian ethics?

The answer is a simple no.

When I took up my vows of priestly ordination, it was to respond to the calling of Christ and the Church, and not really against or for any one particular issue or a particular understanding of a portion of biblical texts, but about embracing the whole of Scripture as "containing all things necessary for salvation." It was about furthering a life-long Christian vocation by following the lead of the Trinity through the discipline of Orders in the Church.

Archbishop Gomez, probably in an effort to make ecclesiastical-political hay out of a controversial action, hands these new bishops a sermon that seems to me quite sad, simply for its confining the reason for these irregular consecrations to a single issue. In doing so, it makes the present impasse almost cosmic, and relegates the potential for grace in this mess to hardly an afterthought.

And it begs the long-asked question: once the sexuality issue is settled for these new bishops and their flocks (in some ways it already is settled through a purifying march away from all who disagree with them) well what then? What will be left? In twenty years, will they look back and relish a sermon that implies their ordained ministry was re-defined by opposition to homosexuality?

I certainly hope not. To do so would be patently absurd.

My university chaplain warned me once never to define myself or my work by what or whom I am against.

These seem to me wise words for all of us in a contentious time.

For Some Insight

September is now here, and the Dar Es Salaam Communiqué's September 30th ultimatum looms large, especially for those who are desiring a break with The Episcopal Church. The House of Bishops meets later in the month to decide how best to respond, and the Archbishop of Canterbury will join in conversation with them.

Meanwhile, some refreshing clarity is emerging from a number of stalwart bloggers. Here, for what it's worth, is what I have been reading:

First is this piece by Robert J. Brooks over at Episcopal Majority. It addresses the desire of some to expel The Episcopal Church from the Anglican Communion, but more than that explores where the real constitutional authority resides as far as the Communion itself goes. In a word: look to the Anglican Communion Council. Fr. Jake offers a take on this analysis, and lots of commentary follows.

A second is a biblically rooted, pastoral, unflinching and at times scathing reflection by a colleague and neighbor, Rob Gieselmann, who honored me with a glimpse of an early draft before he posted it. I've already quibbled with him over some of the argumentation; indeed, as Jim Naughton writes, Rob has something to offend everyone; but the theme of his writing -- that we should all endeavor to handle the ongoing "crisis" with charity -- seems more than sound to me. Take a look.

Third, Tobias Haller is unfolding an argument on the matter of human sexuality, the manifesting question in all of this. Truly a Hooker scholar and a classical Anglican in the very best sense, Tobias' careful, cool, and pithy analysis is virtually unequaled in the blogosphere at present. His treatment has invited even a refreshingly civil conversation with Matt Kennedy of Stand Firm fame. It's well worth watching where this goes. Despite some efforts, including my own rather inept one, to widen the topic of conversation, Tobias will (quite rightly) not be deterred from a very focused and erudite treatment of the scriptural and theological questions at hand.

When all is said and done by the powers that be on all sides, prayers remain with our bishops, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Communion as a whole.

May Christian hearts and charity prevail, and, indeed, may the will of God.