Advent now shifts into the manifestation of God’s good will in the Nativity feast. So too the church takes its self-scrutiny and penitence, and turns in hope to the gift of God’s own and new life among us.

The final text of the Anglican Covenant has now been sent out for adoption by the churches of the Communion. The slow process by which this text and its official dissemination for action has occurred has frustrated some, yet its persistent progress forward to this point at last puts the lie to the naysayers and early eulogists of the Covenant’s purpose. Joined to the restarting of the Anglican-Roman Catholic international dialogue, to be focused on substantive matters of ecclesiology and moral decision-making, what seemed merely slow now appears to be the visible sign of a tectonic shift in global Anglicanism and Christianity itself. It is one in which the Episcopal Church in the United States has placed itself on the far side of a widening channel separating the ballast of Christian witness, Catholic and Pentecostal, from marginal spin-offs of liberal Protestantism in decline.

And so some stock-taking is in order. I would like to speak as honestly as I can about the Episcopal Church, of which I am and remain a member, as we enter this new decade. The purpose of doing so is not to provoke response or to encourage reactive apathy. Honesty is necessary, simply and straightforwardly, for anyone who seeks God’s will, and surely that is all of us, and especially those of us who are Anglicans in America and in the Episcopal Church.

To be sure, this is not a favorable time or place for honesty. I am about to speak what, from my point of view, are hard things to receive. But I do not wish at all to play into the greed for TEC’s failure that is fueled by the anger of some former Episcopalians and former Anglicans. I do not count myself in this group. Nor do I want to confirm the consistent dismissal of traditional Episcopalians by others as defeatist and in love with misery. The moment of the Covenant’s finalization and ARCIC’s reinvigoration are far from miserable; they betoken new promise! More importantly, I do not want to discourage the many faithful Episcopalians who look for hope in the face of too many voices of hopelessness about their church and about most Christian churches. There are many people, especially among the young, who are seeking to serve because they are in fact called; and I believe they are called by God to serve in this strange Anglican place, but they are rightly questioning. And there are many who are wearied of the struggle in this church over the past few years, and simply afraid of their own anger; they neither wish to be challenged anew nor reminded again, and in so doing have failed to speak to the genuine questions that are now in our midst.

But true encouragement comes from honesty before God and self and the strength of purpose to serve in the face of disappointment or uncertainty. Or so it should. I know a young person who sneered at the faith of an Episcopalian — a more conservative person — who chose to leave TEC for another set of ecclesial structures. “You would do such a thing,” this young person said to him: “yours is the generation, after all, who invented no-fault divorce.” In fact, in this case, the complaint was less directed at a purported hypocrite, than at what he perceived to be the witness of an impotent God, unable to garner the sacrificial steadiness of His adherents. But either way, faith is scandalized by those who do not have the strength, nor certainly seek the strength, to stand in the face of upheaval.

I will come back to this at the close of my remarks: honesty need be neither angry, miserable, nor defeatist. It should be the seed for hope, because it is the first and necessary turn to God who alone saves.

The Current Season

What is the difficult thing to speak, honestly? It is this: the Episcopal Church, as it has been known through the past two centuries, is no more, in any substantive sense. TEC is simply no longer the church filled with even the strength of purpose we saw only 10 years ago — yes, even then, a church with a good deal of vital diversity and disagreement; but a seeming sense of restraint over pressing these in ways that overwhelmed witness and mission. And as a result, even then, it was church that was growing in outreach and faith. That church, shimmering still with some of the vibrancy of love spent for the Gospel seen140 years before, even 90 years before, is now gone. And TEC will not survive in any real continuity with this past and its gifts.

This is something we must face. To be sure, I am not speaking here of this or that diocese or bishop or congregation or clergy person within TEC: there are many through whose service the Gospel shines bright and the witness of the Kingdom flourishes. I am speaking of an institution as a whole — not even in terms of its legal corporation, but in terms of its character and Christian substance given flesh in the Spirit’s mission.

1. There are some rather stark objective or quantifiable elements that force this taking stock. For instance:

a. TEC, over the past decade, and after a few years of reinvigorated growth, has plummeted in its active membership. The statistics for Average Sunday Attendance (ASA) show a decline inching up towards 20% — or one fifth — from 1998-2008. In many dioceses, the decline hovers around or over 30%. In a diocese like Colorado (my own), the decline is 25% — a full quarter! — and much of this comes after the defection of congregations and clergy to the AMiA in 2000. These statistics are not newly publicized, although the national leadership rarely acknowledges them. But they are, in the absolute sense, shocking. TEC has lost between a fifth and a third of its participating membership in many of its vital geographic areas in but a few short years. [1]

b. The fact that average financial giving to the church per pledging family has actually increased over this time is a sign of willing support by this dwindling membership. But it is also an indicator of a likely terrible collapse in resources some time soon. One cannot expect fewer and fewer people to support to greater and greater extents the financial demands of a failing institution. This is a bubble that is bound to burst soon, for personal and demographic reasons, and the result of this bursting threatens to be an astonishing unraveling in resources that will affect dioceses far-flung and poor, as well as nearby and seemingly well-off. We shall hear of bankruptcies soon enough.

c. It is a bellwether of this set of dynamics that several of our seminaries have faced or will soon face their own inability to continue in existence. The demise of Seabury-Western, the selling off of the Episcopal Divinity School’s real estate assets, the well-known financial travails of Church Divinity School of the Pacific and General Seminary, not to mention the long-standing challenges of the Seminary of the Southwest — all this suggests not just that theological education in TEC needs a more rational institutional basis (something argued for some time), but that the “institution” is incapable of sustaining the theological education of its ministers, period. This incapacity, it needs to be said, threatens more conservative as well as liberal seminaries.

On the latter front, and from my own particular experience as well as from an admittedly more subjective perspective, I would note that Episcopalian ministers and scholars generally have received some of the best-resourced educations within the Christian churches; in their ranks are some of the most lively minds and engaging personalities. (Oh, how I wish we could better invigorate and sustain one another!) But they remain among the most intellectually lazy Christians I know, most of whom stopped reading rigorously years ago, prefer arguments based on prejudice, and have contributed virtually nothing to the Anglican and larger Christian theological forum for decades now. There are exceptions, of course, some of them wonderful; but the problem frankly colors the leadership across the board, from the top down and the bottom up, from Left to Right, Liberal to Conservative. The Anglican intellectual tradition that is embodied by and that has derived from TEC is bankrupt, long deflated in comparison with even recent witness from other parts of the Communion.

The goodbyes here are hardly debatable as far as I can see, and the fact that they are shared, to some extent, by several other Christian denominations hardly mitigates the farewell’s stinging force.

2. Perhaps more debatable is the moral unraveling of TEC — debatable among conflicted Anglicans, in any case, although not much among onlookers to our arguments.

a. For 6 years now, TEC has descended into a morass of public and expensive civil litigation among its members and former members, mostly about who has the legal right to hold on to church property. The excuses made by all sides in this travesty of evangelical witness, clearly and pointedly condemned by our Lord and by the apostle Paul, make for pathetic reading. Meanwhile, upwards of $30 million dollars, by my reckoning — probably more — has been expended by the gentle Christian leadership of North American Anglicans, all the while claiming to take Luke 6:27-31 (among many Scriptural texts) seriously. It is blasphemy, pure and simple, not entered into through passion’s fury, but through deliberation and careful, cold planning.

b. Meanwhile, the public malice exhibited by Anglicans — many still members of TEC, others who have left — one towards another, on blogs, and in public statements, has so tarnished the image of decency and sobriety among the followers of Christ in this family of churches that it is hard to see how the “woes” of the Jesus could possibly escape us. May the Lord be merciful!

c. Bound up with this spiritual disintegration, given voice in lawsuits, idolatry (greed), and anger, have come calculating and Pharisaic twisting and whole-scale negligence of canonical order, ignoring precedent, creating it on the fly on Left and Right as if leaders were immune from the responsibility of their vows and unaccountable to the laws by which common life is properly secured, let alone gained through the grace of Christ Jesus. Much — but by no means all — of this has come most visibly from the leadership of TEC, but it has trickled down to parochial levels — ignoring Eucharistic discipline and the responsibilities of being “stewards of the mysteries” of Christ; altering the gifts of liturgical order on personal whims, spewing misinformation from pulpits while indulging idiosyncratic spiritual predilections with complete disdain for the gifts of former generations.

d. To be sure, much of this is simply bound up with TEC’s rapidly accelerating habits of despising tradition, and this from across the board of the theological spectrum; something that amounts to the rejection of the Communion of Saints, and therefore a rejection of the Creed itself. For some generations, the Episcopal Church was the guardian of liturgical and spiritual order among Anglicans, as much from a practical as from a scholarly perspective. But this too has long slipped through our church’s fingers.

e. I leave aside the notorious matter of sexuality, at least from a theological perspective. But even from the vantage point of some kind of common sense prudence, what shall we say to this? It is hardly “homophobic” to make this observation: The attempt that the majority of TEC’s leaders have made to normalize the sexual behavior of a tiny minority of people, and then to build normative moral and even biological principles upon this behavior designed to restructure the form and character of human relations in general, including marriage, family, and civil order, will surely go down as one of the great follies and social distortions of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. That TEC has now so clearly committed itself to this project remains an astonishing act of moral betrayal, intellectual irresponsibility, and self-destruction, done brazenly in the face of the endemic needs of the Communion’s majority of members whose own social fabric — again, leaving aside theology altogether — cannot sustain such self-regarding actions by their “friends.”

TEC has no more moral capital in the bank. It is all gone.

3. And so, to the missionary accounting.

For the consequence of this squandering of resources is simple unfaithfulness in the great calling of the Christian and Christian Church: proclaiming the Good News of Jesus and His Kingdom, drawing others to such faith, teaching the commandments of the Risen Lord, and praising God before creation as a people redeemed and reconciled.

Of all times to run from this calling, when the roots of Christian faith and life have been so steadily and severely weakened in the West, and when that faith and life are but new shoots elsewhere, however vigorous in the short run, nonetheless under enormous threat! Every study made of Christian commitment in America (and in the West more largely) demonstrates the current vulnerability of Christian witness, especially among the young. Yet TEC has become the (necessarily shrinking) institution of the aging, who have less and less to offer to others of the light given in Christ in a time of increasingly desperate spiritual need.

Meanwhile, there are all kinds of reasons to think that an ongoing economic and political “progress” among non-Western nations — Africa especially — is unlikely. The imbalance of resources among nations shows every sign of continuing and increasing here, and with it, the peculiar relationship of Christian responsibility between West and “global south.” In the face of this, TEC’s insouciance to its location economically, morally, and historically, is hard to accept as anything but hardness of heart. The notion that TEC’s moral agenda will ever be of use to other cultures springs in part from a refusal to see that American material blessing hangs like a curse around the necks of those who take such blessing as an excuse to see everyone else in their own image and to insist that the world belongs to them and they have nothing to give up.

As if there were nothing to fear, in a world where all things of importance come upon us “like a thief”! Do we think that we will escape when others have not? Our laziness before the inevitably gripping realities of death, procreation, sacrifice, and necessary and hard-won courage has left us empty before the future. As an integral ecclesial institution, TEC has become a hollow vessel.

And it is hard for me to say all this — after almost 30 years of ministry, once high hopes, and actual experience for some brief but glorious times, if mixed with struggle, of witness in all of its giving, forgiving, and abundantly receptive modes, bound to persons whose lives once shared are now the fodder of division without quarter. There are days we weep.
<center>• • •</center>
But one must say all this, nonetheless. The young especially — but all of us! — need honesty and bravery, not collusion in whitewashing and indulgence. The poor need strength and perseverance and generosity, not constantly re-jigged strategies of self-justification from the wealthy. The sinful need the offer of God’s promises of redemption and newness of life, not the insistence that those who offer are something other than the beggarly sick like them. All is not well, and this we have long known: thanks be to God who gives us the victory in Jesus Christ!

It is on this promise of victory in Christ, not on the integrity of the Episcopal Church or something called Anglicanism or even some “greater” Christian body apart from the body that is Christ’s, that we move forward. The world’s and the Christian Church’s moral compromise, economically and politically has, over the past century (not decade!), provided a sad spectacle of ecclesial treachery, marked by only some brushes of light, though with countless individual offerings enlivening the more somber scene. Few have resisted this compromise, from either Left or Right on the theological spectrum. Certainly not Anglicanism as a whole, such that our Anglican vocation could arise from a deserved self-satisfaction. This could never be.

The New Season

But there is a reason to be brave and to be strong, through the pleading for divine grace and its promised self-giving. For Anglicanism’s witness has been valuable in all this, and still has a gift to offer other Christians and the world at large. If not to a superior moral achievement, her witness has been to a certain realism and penitence, politically and otherwise. And, to a remarkable degree, Anglicanism has also embodied a persistent hope that has been peculiar in its modesty, and in its willingness to humble itself before the Spirit of Christ, a convergence that has in fact meant missionary release along with its internal disarray. To me, this moment, in which the tectonic shift of the Anglican Communion now surfaces into view, is one of enormous hope and a testimony to the grace of God in a continued calling.

The Anglican Covenant, in its final form, points to the likelihood of a growing core of covenanting Anglican churches — the Covenant becomes “active” as soon as any church adopts it — whose critical mass will soon shift the character of decision-making as a whole among the Instruments. TEC’s place in this process, even should she presume to adopt the Covenant (which at present could only be in a posture of already-set disregard of its meaning and purpose), is simply one of entering a current that is now gathering force in another direction than her own insistence on isolated and unrecognized sexual prophecy. She has become irrelevant to Anglicanism’s own missionary calling and the rising willingness to meet it.

I am not counseling people to “leave” TEC; I have never done so and do not do so now. One must let the processes of the common church unfold, obediently. God shepherds His people, wherever they may be. These processes, however and now more clearly than ever before, involve the Anglican Communion’s movement into a more focused global witness that will no longer be substantively restricted by TEC’s official distractions. And the Covenant, founded on a commitment to mutual care and accountability in the gifts of Christ, will prove a means by which faithful Anglicans, in TEC and elsewhere, will also be able to join in this movement. [2] How exactly that will happen, in terms of structure and institution, is not yet known; but happen it will. That I am willing now to say clearly.

So that what I am doing now is offering both an assessment of where we are, but also a prediction of where we are headed. I am not at all sure what will take the place of the atrophied TEC that we now see embodied in our governing structures. But I believe that, from the Communion’s missionary perspective, this will include, surely, the reinvigorating reconfiguration of existing and healthy dioceses, and the refashioning of broken ones and the building up of new things. Anglicans have been through these upheavals before in similar and different ways: 1559; 1658; 1785; 1918; 1960’s Africa or 1990’s Rwanda. At each stage, an opening up, that emerged from a going down. And at each stage, there emerged a larger breadth in Christian communion, however contradicted by the failings of our apostolic calling. God’s grace is bigger and wider — and so Anglicanism, with its evangelical-charismatic and scripturally ordered worship, is now called to enter the mission of reconciling grace the contours of which Catholicism and Pentecostalism have most clearly described for the coming century, with Eastern Orthodoxy offering a parallel vocation.

And we — older and younger — can, because we must, bear with a continued hope that, though still demanding new orderings, does not seek the overturning of the hope of the past. Still, in Christ, we hope for common prayer in the Scripture’s formation; still we hope for ordered debate and discernment; still we hope for mission that reforms us even as it touches the world; still, for unity. These have been among the Anglican essentials of life in the face of challenge; they remain so; and they continue as means of grace that can strengthen the ministry of other Christian bodies and draw us closer together. But now we must appropriate these essentials, in all humility, for a deliberate mission of seeding the Kingdom — every one of us, a sower who walks in the wake of the great Sower’s passing through the fields. What could be more enlivening than such a vocation and invitation? Let those young people who are called to service in this way be encouraged at this time, above all times!

It is important that grand plans and strategies be put aside now that the direction of our future has emerged so clearly. The legal maneuverings will continue with who knows what fruits; but we know the larger outcome now and the larger outcome’s fruits are more clearly promised, and perhaps we can lay aside the anxiety of the past few years more fully and carry forward with the mission we have been given. Anglicans in North America, encouraged by the Covenant Working Group itself (see its most recent Commentary on their revisions), can, through their dioceses and otherwise, formally “affirm” the Covenant, and in so doing formally join themselves to the core of the Communion that will, I hope, quickly adopt the Covenant and become the motor quickening the shift now taking place. Even as some of us are still members of TEC, we are no longer standing on the far shore of the widening channel but, like the worthies of Hebrews 11, we are joined with those “not apart from whom” we will have our faith made perfect.

The legal and institutional aspects of this are less important to nail down, frankly. For there is much to cooperate on, as Anglicans even in America become anew missionaries of the Gospel of Jesus in the expanding landscapes of unbelief. There is much over which to mend relationships with a view to going forward. But we cannot go forward without properly understanding that this is now God’s work, and not the arena for individual self-assertion, including the building up of structures only loosely capable of breaking free of individual rancor. God has not yet finished breaking us down in order to make us strong in hope and gentleness. At least, we should be ready for such work, because it is a work we need for the sake of the world.

My wife has been studying the miracle of grace that permitted the small village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon to harbor and save scores of Jewish fugitives during the 1940’s in France. Recently, she procured some copies of sermon notes written by the village pastor, André Trocmé, sermons now preserved at Swarthmore College. That Trocmé formed this village in its capacities of witness no one disputes. In one sermon, given to his flock in June, 1940, he speaks of the need for all the people of the parish to “humble” themselves before God, seeking pardon for the sins in which they are complicit, sins that have caught France up in the Nazi grip and collaboration. But self-humiliation, Trocmé says, must be properly understood. “We must not confuse self-humiliation with discouragement … faith is not lost; … rather humiliation takes our faith more deeply into God, and kindles within us a stronger will to serve Him.” Nor should our humiliation somehow be projected onto anyone else but ourselves! Finally, in humbling ourselves before God, we must guard against giving ourselves over to anything other or less than the Gospel itself. We must “abandon all our Christian divisions … abandon our suspicion and hatreds … abandon our slavery to the ways of the world … We resist the world by loving it freely, without cowardice, but bravely.”

The Episcopal Church, as we have known it and given ourselves to its ministry, is over. But the Gospel is alive, and the Church that is Christ’s Body given, takes us to a new place.

Notes

[1] ASA in domestic dioceses increased from 1998 to 2001 and then began to decline markedly. 1998: 842,408 2001: 858,566 2008: 705, 207. Colorado 1998: 14,201 2000: 14,658 (high point) 2008: 10,772 (off 26.5% since 2000).

[2] See the accompanying “Committing to the Anglican Covenant,” an ACI discussion of the procedures for adopting the Covenant, according to the final revision.
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Simply put: Wow.  Thank you for sharing so artfully these words of candor and encouragement, Ephraim.  Like buying land in Jerusalem as it burns, it seems.

Thank you, Dr. Radner, for this post.

The Anglican Communion has a choice before it.  Either TEC will not be part of a larger Anglican Communion or the Anglican Communion will devolve into something less than a federation where the word “Anglican” has little or no meaning.

I weep for what has become of the Church of my youth and my adulthood.  I learned to love Jesus and to serve God and others within the Episcopal Church.  Now it seems that TEC loves self more than others.  This is not what I learned as an Acolyte at Trinity Cathedral in Omaha.  It is not what I learned in the vibrant youth groups in the Diocese of San Joaquin.  It is not what I learned as a lay reader and Acolyte Master in San Angelo or Dallas.  It is not what I learned at the Anglican School of Theology.  It is not what I have learned from those who are incarcerated.

But while I weep, I also rejoice because God always brings new life out of death.  God uses our faithlessness to prove His faithfulness.  God’s grace will bring new life to Anglicanism - with or without TEC.  I believe that God will even bring TEC back to Himself - but only after it has killed its self love and desire for autonomy over all else.  While the shekina may have left TEC and its leadership, God’s glory is still known and visible in leaders such as yourself and others around TEC.  There are still faithful layity, Bishops, Priests, and Deacons who work within TEC, not to reform it (that’s God’s job) but to witness to the power of Jesus Christ to make all things new.

I do not trust in the Covenant.  I do not trust in the Instruments of Communion.  I do not trust in TEC or even in my Bishop. I do not trust in myself or the Gifts that God gave me.  I trust in God.  I faith that God will bring life out of death and that He will continue to raise up leaders and prophets within TEC to call her back to Himself.

YBIC,
Phil Snyder

I am certainly glad that Dr.Radner spoke “honestly” here, but this is little more than a rehash of positions the ACI has held right along in its effort to destroy TEC.  We are the only ones at fault, sure there is a mention of some sort at those who take joy in our demise, but as you read through this document, especially section 2 only TEC is at fault. I would expect little else from Dr.Radner.

He finds hope in the renewed conversation between some Anglicans and Roman Catholics, but those conversations live within a shared bubble of scapegoating glbt folk. There is little chance for anything good to come from a discussion of like minded people based in religiously inspired bigotry.  The Pope, to his credit has eschewed bills like those progressing in Uganda, at the same time as he has purged gay clergy after falsely accusing them of being responsible for the scandals in his own church.

If Dr. Radner hasn’t liked the litigation inspired by coldly calculated jurisdictional trespass and the carefully and seceretly planned illegal alienation of property and assets, he will hardly like the litigiousness to be found in the Anglican Covenant.  As people parse out each section with respect to the possibility of carping at other Anglicans, he seems not to understand that the new Star Chamber of the Anglican Communion will be busy adjudicating disputes.  And conservatives who read the AC will find that they are as much behind the eight ball as TEC is there is any actual honesty to be found in the application of the AC’s covenant in a fair and dispassionate basis.

Dr.Radner once again shovels the hysteria about shrinking numbers.  He seems not to mention that everyone is shrinking, and in terms of gross loss the Roman Catholic Church as lost the most people, only to be saved by immigrant populations.  I acknowledge the losses, but dispute the causes.  I would suggest that given all the bombast hurled at TEC for the last dozen years or more by the likes of the ACI, we have lost only about as much as everyone else.  Some significant part of our loss has been addition by subtraction as the most toxic portions of our church have decided to walk only with the like minded.  Toxins in a body always aggregate somewhere and I am delighted they have aggregated to ACNA and CANA.

Soon we will come to pure field for testing, a field in which TEC, free of its constant stream of abusive treatment, can rebuild without the constant barrage of vituperation from ACI and its fellow travellers.  At the same time, the opposition can show how the spirit is active in its own life, bringing the multitudes to it. It should be simple enough to see. We can them measure the progress of both against the general decline of religious observance in America, which Dr. Radner never seems to acknowledge.

TEC is hardly dead, but it is shed; shed of its despisers and abusers.  And it is time for y’all, in all honesty, to let it go and just focus on the positive message you have.  Forget us, never mention us again, just go about the business of making Christians without reference to us at all. Really, you are wasting more of your precious time perseverating in your worry about TEC, time that could be spent saving souls.

My guess is that y’all can’t do that, but I sure hope you’ll try hard in the “New Season.”

And Moses said to Pharaoh “Let my people go!”
“No,” said Pharaoh “I will pursue them in the courts until they are destroyed.”
At this season we remember not just the wonderful nativity, the blessed incarnation of Jesus Christ.  We remember too the Holy Innocents and Herod.

Michael Russell
TEC is hardly dead, but it is shed; shed of its despisers and abusers.  And it is time for y’all, in all honesty, to let it go and just focus on the positive message you have.  Forget us, never mention us again, just go about the business of making Christians without reference to us at all. Really, you are wasting more of your precious time perseverating in your worry about TEC, time that could be spent saving souls.

What a joy to celebrate the goal of planting 1000 new congregations in the US and Canada - Thanks ++Bob.

Michael,

Do you even hear how angry you sound?  How joyless?  How hatefilled?  You cannot even see that TEC might, just possibly, be the ones who started the break up of the Anglican Communion by pushing this new “inclusivity” of sinful behavior on the rest of the communion.

There is no “Jurisdictional tresspass” because the Bishops and provinces in question did not and do not recognized TEC as an Anglican body.  They are not visiting and performing Episcopal Acts in TEC congregations.  They are providing pastoral support to fellow Anglicans that asked for it. 

(sarcasm warning)
This intervention the Spirit doing a new thing!  We have looked at the lives of congregations that have oversight from bishops in other Anglican Provinces and we see God active in their lives!  We know that God would not be active in their congregations or the persons’ lives if this oversight was not the desire of the Holy Spirit.  We’ve been dialoging about these interventions since the early 90s and it seems good to us and to the Holy Spirit that we make room in our polity for bishops who are not in communion with TEC to have oversight of congregations that have left TEC.
(end of sarcasm)

Note that there are significant similarities between the “arguments” presented above and those in support of blessing the relationships of those who are sexually active outside of marriage. 

Let it go!  Just say that you no longer desire to be part of the Anglican Communion or of Rome or of any other part of the Church catholic and go off and become yet another specialized American sect that has limited appeal. 

Phil Snyder

I echo Philip’s comments and wonder at why Michael is so angry and bitter now that “his faction” has won out in TEC.

But in response to Michael’s comments

Soon we will come to pure field for testing, a field in which TEC, free of its constant stream of abusive treatment, can rebuild without the constant barrage of vituperation from ACI and its fellow travellers.

I think that we have seen this in the uber-liberal dioceses of Newark, Rochester, Minnesota, New Westminster, etc.  These liberal dioceses - largely free of any major conservative elements - have continued to plummet far faster then other dioceses have.  I have a feeling that when this “pure field for testing” works to show that Michael’s narrow, angry, bitter TEC continues its alarming decline, Michael will invent yet more reasons why Dr. Radner is at fault.

But the whole question revolves around by what authority do overseas province declare that TEC isn’t a constituent province of the Communion? Unilateralism simply breeds the sort of lawlessness TEC has specialized since the illegal ordinations of the 70ies.  The activities of overseas provinces have only hastened the breakdown of Communion discipline. Indeed TEC has enjoyed pointing out these Windsor breaches.

James Wirrel - 23 December 2009 06:43 PM

I echo Philip’s comments and wonder at why Michael is so angry and bitter now that “his faction” has won out in TEC.

But in response to Michael’s comments

Soon we will come to pure field for testing, a field in which TEC, free of its constant stream of abusive treatment, can rebuild without the constant barrage of vituperation from ACI and its fellow travellers.

I think that we have seen this in the uber-liberal dioceses of Newark, Rochester, Minnesota, New Westminster, etc.  These liberal dioceses - largely free of any major conservative elements - have continued to plummet far faster then other dioceses have.  I have a feeling that when this “pure field for testing” works to show that Michael’s narrow, angry, bitter TEC continues its alarming decline, Michael will invent yet more reasons why Dr. Radner is at fault.

Golly that is at least as accurate and useful as blaming TEC. I certainly confess to some anger and bitterness, but those I oppose have the monopoly on hate.  One only need read what your surrogates in Africa and South America and Asia have to say and witness what they are doing to see hate at work.  So far TEC has not been condemned by any international Human Rights groups that I know of for proposing draconian laws that will imprison not only people who engage in behaviors they don’t like, but those who fail to report them.

If you support such laws and support the tendentious malarky that is being used to gin up hysteria then so be it. But the blood of people will be on y’all’s hands and those of ACNA and CANA for the actions of the faithful “Anglicans” who enact and implement such laws.

It is likewise not TEC, nor actual Anglicans anywhere, that have made it their business to declare others out of not only Anglicanism, but Christianity.  We are not those who have smeared every Episcopalian with the broad brush of heresy.

So in the end as truth plays out, I suspect that those who consider themselves so morally and theologically pure, will be the ones who will see their extremisms rejected by thoughtful truth seeking folks.  The scandal in Uganda and the belligerence of the position that no one can tell them what to do (a common complaint about TEC!) will show the world the true colors of the most rabidly homophobic “Anglicans”.

In the end you cannot succeed in building a unifying document, because by disposition you are an assembly of hypercritical folk who pick at the speck in other’s eyes while ignoring your own.

Time will tell.

Fr. Tony Clavier - 23 December 2009 08:16 PM

But the whole question revolves around by what authority do overseas province declare that TEC isn’t a constituent province of the Communion? Unilateralism simply breeds the sort of lawlessness TEC has specialized since the illegal ordinations of the 70ies.  The activities of overseas provinces have only hastened the breakdown of Communion discipline. Indeed TEC has enjoyed pointing out these Windsor breaches.

And indeed they violate the text of the final Anglican Covenant document. Those who participated in the mid seventies ordinations were disciplined at the time, Tony, but you are right that a genie was loosed.  And though you disagree with TEC’s positions, I appreciate that you acknowledge that those foreign bishops who took over congregations has no authority whatever to recognize or refuse to recognize TEC’s place in the Communion.

By the way, in general TEC has hardly been “lawless” since it has lived within processes generally agreed upon.  It has refused to allow Anglican tea parties like Lambeth and the Primates’ meetings to dictate Communion policy or even declare the “mind” of the Communion.  It is as fair to say that ++Carey acted lawlessly in attempting to make a legislature out of Lambeth 1998.

Michael’s point about just how nasty the actions of other provinces can be reminds me of the sort of tit for tat one gets in pointless arguments between spouses. Perhaps it is natural but is it mature?

Tony,

No One (not Uganda, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, SE Asia, Southern Cone) has said that TEC is not a constituent member of the Anglican Communion.  Indeed, they see the fact that TEC is still in the Anglican Communion and has not been disciplined for its innovations is part of the problem.

However, to say that foreign bishops are “poaching” on TEC congregations is like saying that Roman Catholic or Lutheran or Methodist bishops are violating the territorial integrity of TEC because they also perform Episcopal Acts within the territory of TEC.  What I understand AMiA, CANA, ACNA, et. al. to be saying is that the bishops of these dioceses are not in communion with the bishops (or at least most of the bishops) of TEC.

I do not support the AMiA, CANA, Southern Cone, etc. efforts within the United States.  As you correctly said, they are a distraction that takes away from TEC’s innovations.  But it seems rather hypocritical of TEC to complain about provinces unilaterally changing the historic faith and order of the Church.  After all, TEC has been doing that for over 30 years!

That is why I had my “sarcasm warning” in the post. 

Michael, You write:  “but those I oppose have the monopoly on hate.”  I would urge you to look very closely in the mirror and find the hate that creates this statement!  Can you not see that the very act of TEC trying to export its “inclusivist” agenda is what may be driving the legislation that we all find so objectionable?  Because of the cultural imperialism of the United States in General and TEC in particular, many countries feel it necessary to protect their cultural morals.  In Africa, this includes a strong aversion to homosexual activities.  In the later half of the 20th century, English replaced French as the language of international diplomacy.  The French reacted to this by becoming even more French and not importing words like “floppy disk.”  Their language aversion was a result of what they saw as an attack on their langauge and culture from the United States.

Likewise legislation like this can be seen as a reaction to the cultural imperialism of Hollywood, New York, and TEC.  I would hope that you agree that our popular “culture” is far too sexualized and openly promotes fornication, adultery, and homosexual activity.

As I said earlier, you seem full of anger and hatred of anything that mitigates against your goal of “full inclusion.” 

If you want to change the teaching of the Church on homosexual behavior, then let’s have that discussion.  Bring up your arguments from Scripture, Tradition, and Reason.  But let’s not act on you new understanding until the communion as a whole either agrees that the new understanding is closer to God’s will or that it is not a communion breaking issue.  If you are not willing to abide by the Communion’s discernment, then why are you stil part of it?

YBIC,
Phil Snyder

I find it difficult to understand the CP and ACI position of staying within pecusa as pecusa continues to distance herself from the Anglican Communion.  Given the unilateralism that demonstrates pecusa has no interest in unity or catholicity and the innovations that demonstrate that pecusa has no interest in holiness or apostolicity, what claim can pecusa make to being in any real sense a church?  The spiritual disintegration that Dr. Radner cites, is it not at the level to which pecusa is no longer recognizable as a church?  In a previous back and forth with Dr. Radner I mentioned Athanasius as one who fought the apostasy of his day from exile.  Dr. Radner countered with an obscure saint whose name I can’t remember at this point.  This time around I cite Hilary (the following is from a post at my DCNY blog):

Take the fourth century days when Hilary of Poitiers was bishop.  As the “Life and Writings of St. Hilary of Poitiers” in Volume IX of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers explains, “It was, in fact, the custom of the West to take the orthodoxy of its bishops for granted, and an external impulse was necessary before they could be overthrown” (p. ix).  That external impulse in the fourth century was the Arian heresy. 

In our day we cannot take for granted that Anglican bishops are orthodox and it takes an extremely strong external impulse to overthrow them (remember Bishop Bennison of Pennsylvania?).  Like Athanasius was forced into exile by the Arians, Hilary was forced into exile by the emperor Constantius.  As the biographical notes indicate

  the fundamental difference of the Arian from the Catholic position was not  
  generally recognised.  Arian practice and Arian practical teaching was
  indistinguishable from Catholic; and unless ultimate principles were
  questioned, Catholic clergy might work, and the multitudes of Catholic
  laity might live and die, without knowing that their bishop’s creed
  was different than their own.  (p. xi)

How similar to today!  There are a good number of bishops in pecusa who profess to be orthodox and in their practice and practical teaching they may seem orthodox.  But if these same bishops are asked to uphold the consensual view of Christian marriage they cannot do so.  They profess a false gospel at this point and the decreasing multitudes of pecusa are none the wiser because they have been taught a false gospel for so long that they can’t distinguish the false from the true. 

As in Hilary’s day, when the Arians “were in possession of many of the great places of the Church,” so the pseudo-orthodox hold similar positions today.  The Presiding Bishop can debate a retired evangelical bishop and the two can smile at the end of it and say there isn’t much difference between them. 

The biographer remarks that the Arians of Hilary’s day could not have all been dishonest.  “It seemed incredible that they could be sincerely at home in the Church, and intolerable that they should have the power of deceiving the people and persecuting true believers” (ibid.).  Yet this is exactly what happens in our day.

Hilary acted to persuade other bishops to withdraw communion from Arian bishops.  It was “an importation of the methods of Eastern controversy into the peaceful West” (p. xii).  Except that the peace in the West was a false peace between a false gospel and the truth.  This is where pecusa is with the Communion Partners and their ilk in communion with the false teachers of pecusa.  Even one as esteemed as the Rev. Dr. Ephraim Radner admits that pecusa has no future, but still pecusa conservatives hang on (as Dr. Radner would have them do).  What Hilary taught in his First Epistle to Constantius is that communion with Arians is “a participation in their guilt, a fatal sin” (p. xiii).

Athanasius and Hilary have left pecusa, but the Communion Partners hold on even as the Anglican Covenant moves forward to sideline pecusa.  These are strange times and if history is our guide Athanasius and Hilary will prevail.

Hilary and Athanasius never left and started their own church. They stayed and fought for THE Church.

Fr. Clavier:  Phil is correct that no Anglican primate has unilaterally declared TEC outside the Anglican Communion.  Indeed it is frustration with the lack of Communion discipline which has led to things such as the ACNA.  Part of what I think that Covenant can do is to provide a mechanism by which those Anglican provinces which have agreed to mutually submit to the catholic whole to make declarations on the basis of the covenental relationship.  At this point, the Anglican Communion is too diffuse and decentralized such that the only effective discipline member churches can take is for themselves, and so TEC is “out of communion” with the majority of Anglicans.

Michael:  I would respond to you, but I think that the contrast between the calm, thoughtful, well-supported essay by Dr. Radner versus your angry, bitter, unsupported falsehoods and ridiculous generalizations more then makes my point.

Tony,

Charlie is right that neither Athanasius nor Hilary nor the Capodicans or any of the early reformers left the Church.  Even Luther was kicked out; he never sought to form a rival Church.  Likewise John Wesley was disciplined by the CofE in his day but he died a CofE priest.  From time to time, the World gains mastery over the Church militant.  The Church starts to exhibit the same concerns as the World and becomes almost indistinguisable from the World.  Just when it seems like the World is about to win and that the Church will pass into historic obscurity, God raises up reformers to rebuild His church.  Paul was one; Anthony was one; Athanasius, Basil the Great, Gregory of Nanzianzus, Hilary, Dominic, Francis - all of them were among a long line of reformers who were used by God to bring new life into a dying Church.

We have to make a distinction (and it may sound like a subtle distinct, but it is a crucial one) between the official positions of TEC (as written in the Constituion and Canons and the Book of Common Prayer) and the positions of its political leaders.  Officially, TEC is orthodox in its faith.  The fact that it lacks the will or ability to discipline errant leaders is a symptom of rot at the highest levels.  But the fault lies with those leaders and those who support them. 

What should we do about the heresy and apostacy of TEC’s leaders?  First, we should pray.  Second, we should differentiate ourselves from them, while still witnessing to the power of Jesus Christ to bring new life even into TEC.  Jeremiah and Ezekiel both prophesied during the attack and captivity of Israel.  One stayed in Israel and one went into exile.  As a Deacon in TEC, I am called to bring to the attention of the Church “the needs, hopes, and concerns of the world.”  Most people read this to concern their physical needs - the poor, the homeless, those sick or in prison.  I read it to mean any need of the world.  My witness to the TEC is this:  “The World needs Jesus!  Give us Jesus!”  I will continue to proclaim this both inside and outside the Church while I have breath left in my body.

YBIC,
Phil Snyder