Cross-posted at The Living Church

A pastoral letter to the Episcopal Church:
Pentecost continues!

Pentecost is most fundamentally a continuing gift of the Spirit, rather than a limitation or quenching of that Spirit.

The recent statement by the Archbishop of Canterbury about the struggles within the Anglican Communion seems to equate Pentecost with a single understanding of gospel realities. Those who received the gift of the Spirit on that day all heard good news. The crowd reported, “in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power” (Acts 2:11).

The Spirit does seem to be saying to many within The Episcopal Church that gay and lesbian persons are God’s good creation, that an aspect of good creation is the possibility of lifelong, faithful partnership, and that such persons may indeed be good and healthy exemplars of gifted leadership within the Church, as baptized leaders and ordained ones. The Spirit also seems to be saying the same thing in other parts of the Anglican Communion, and among some of our Christian partners, including Lutheran churches in North America and Europe, the Old Catholic churches of Europe, and a number of others.

That growing awareness does not deny the reality that many Anglicans and not a few Episcopalians still fervently hold traditional views about human sexuality. This Episcopal Church is a broad and inclusive enough tent to hold that variety. The willingness to live in tension is a hallmark of Anglicanism, beginning from its roots in Celtic Christianity pushing up against Roman Christianity in the centuries of the first millennium. That diversity in community was solidified in the Elizabethan Settlement, which really marks the beginning of Anglican Christianity as a distinct movement. Above all, it recognizes that the Spirit may be speaking to all of us, in ways that do not at present seem to cohere or agree. It also recognizes what Jesus says about the Spirit to his followers, “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. 13 When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come” (John 16:12-13).

The Episcopal Church has spent nearly 50 years listening to and for the Spirit in these matters. While it is clear that not all within this Church have heard the same message, the current developments do represent a widening understanding. Our canons reflected this shift as long ago as 1985, when sexual orientation was first protected from discrimination in access to the ordination process. At the request of other bodies in the Anglican Communion, this Church held an effective moratorium on the election and consecration of a partnered gay or lesbian priest as bishop from 2003 to 2010. When a diocese elected such a person in late 2009, the ensuing consent process indicated that a majority of the laity, clergy, and bishops responsible for validating that election agreed that there was no substantive bar to the consecration.

The Episcopal Church recognizes that these decisions are problematic to a number of other Anglicans. We have not made these decisions lightly. We recognize that the Spirit has not been widely heard in the same way in other parts of the Communion. In all humility, we recognize that we may be wrong, yet we have proceeded in the belief that the Spirit permeates our decisions.

We also recognize that the attempts to impose a singular understanding in such matters represent the same kind of cultural excesses practiced by many of our colonial forebears in their missionizing activity. Native Hawaiians were forced to abandon their traditional dress in favor of missionaries’ standards of modesty. Native Americans were forced to abandon many of their cultural practices, even though they were fully congruent with orthodox Christianity, because the missionaries did not understand or consider those practices exemplary of the Spirit. The uniformity imposed at the Synod of Whitby did similar violence to a developing, contextual Christianity in the British Isles. In their search for uniformity, our forebears in the faith have repeatedly done much spiritual violence in the name of Christianity.

We do not seek to impose our understanding on others. We do earnestly hope for continued dialogue with those who disagree, for we believe that the Spirit is always calling us to greater understanding.

We live in great concern that colonial attitudes continue, particularly in attempts to impose a single understanding across widely varying contexts and cultures. We note that the cultural contexts in which The Episcopal Church’s decisions have generated the greatest objection and reaction are also often the same contexts where women are barred from full ordained leadership, including the Church of England.

As Episcopalians, we note the troubling push toward centralized authority exemplified in many of the statements of the recent Pentecost letter. Anglicanism as a body began in the repudiation of the control of the Bishop of Rome within an otherwise sovereign nation. Similar concerns over self-determination in the face of colonial control led the Church of Scotland to consecrate Samuel Seabury for The Episcopal Church in the nascent United States — and so began the Anglican Communion.

We have been repeatedly assured that the Anglican Covenant is not an instrument of control, yet we note that the fourth section seems to be just that to Anglicans in many parts of the Communion. So much so, that there are voices calling for stronger sanctions in that fourth section, as well as voices repudiating it as un-Anglican in nature. Unitary control does not characterize Anglicanism; rather, diversity in fellowship and communion does.

We are distressed at the apparent imposition of sanctions on some parts of the Communion. We note that these seem to be limited to those which “have formally, through their Synod or House of Bishops, adopted policies that breach any of the moratoria requested by the Instruments of Communion.” We are further distressed that such sanctions do not, apparently, apply to those parts of the Communion that continue to hold one view in public and exhibit other behaviors in private. Why is there no sanction on those who continue with a double standard? In our context bowing to anxiety by ignoring that sort of double-mindedness is usually termed a “failure of nerve.” Through many decades of wrestling with our own discomfort about recognizing the full humanity of persons who seem to differ from us, we continue to work at open and transparent communication as well as congruence between word and behavior. We openly admit our failure to achieve perfection!

The baptismal covenant prayed in this Church for more than 30 years calls us to respect the dignity of all other persons and charges us with ongoing labor toward a holy society of justice and peace. That fundamental understanding of Christian vocation underlies our hearing of the Spirit in this context and around these issues of human sexuality. That same understanding of Christian vocation encourages us to hold our convictions with sufficient humility that we can affirm the image of God in the person who disagrees with us. We believe that the Body of Christ is only found when such diversity is welcomed with abundant and radical hospitality.

As a Church of many nations, languages, and peoples, we will continue to seek every opportunity to increase our partnership in God’s mission for a healed creation and holy community. We look forward to the ongoing growth in partnership possible in the Listening Process, Continuing Indaba, Bible in the Life of the Church, Theological Education in the Anglican Communion, and the myriad of less formal and more local partnerships across the Communion — efforts in mission and ministry that inform and transform individuals and communities toward the vision of the Gospel — a healed world, loving God and neighbor, in the love and friendship shown us in God Incarnate.

May God’s peace dwell in your hearts,

The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori
Presiding Bishop and Primate
The Episcopal Church
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I am troubled at the lack of explicit grounding of the Presiding Bishop in both Scripture and tradition on why she defends the actions of TEC.  She does not seem to value the catholicity of unity of doctrine and witness at all times and in all places, to quote St. Ireneus.  That troubles me since the Lord prayed so fervently for unity among his disciples.  She seems to feel that many times the church has committed cultural violence against indigenous populations.  Surely that has been sadly true,but it is not the whole history.  If missionaries sewed mummus for Hawaiians, missionaries like the Jesuits, who fought for the cultural diversity of their South American and Asian converts. In her condemnation of past councils, like Whitby, there is more than a touch of the cultural elite’s embrace of the world view of Avatar, where the good native Celtic Christians were oppressed by the evil Roman or Earth military industrial empire. I worry about the lack of worry about the pervasiveness of human sin in all cultures and all times.  We are bad to the bone, and will demonstrate that, as individuals and in our cultures, without the grace of God.

While it is true that the Spirit has developed themes in the life of the church, the hallmark of such development is a humility that is anxious to answer the arguments and a willingness to defer change in teaching to such time as there is consensus in the wider church.
Yes, a portion of a portion of the leadership of the TEC has been discussing this for years, however, but for far less than ten years has there been anything like a theological majority of bishops with this view, even in TEC. 

The arguments that Bishop Jefferts Schori make a progression of development of revelation and an examination of Scripture from a assumed lens of the Civil Rights movement.  God surely has acted in both church and society in the seeking of human freedom, freedom is what God sought for His people from oppression in Egypt, but with freedom comes the necessity of conforming to the Torah of God.  In his Epistles, St. Paul explores this freedom, and the need to conform to the law of Christ, and the teaching of the apostles.
 
None of what the Presiding Bishop says is unexpected.  I think that the new fashion in the Episcopal Church will be a passionate rediscovery of the Monroe Doctrine.

Victoria Heard

Sadly, this does not read like a pastoral letter.  I was in Minneapolis for GC2003 and recall well the triumphalism of that hour.  Sadly, that tragic, in our faces, triumphalism continues with missives like this.

There are so many factual errors in what she’s written that it’s hard to know where to begin. But that is to be expected. There is also a strange math being done here to create theological consensus out of thin air (the idea that we’ve been heading to this inevitable place for fifty years is offered without a shred of evidence and goes well beyond even what was claimed in “To Set Our Hope on Christ.” But again, this is not new for the PB. What strikes me as bizarre—and utterly so—is the choice of this particular moment and this particular target to break out the heavy rhetorical artillery. The ABC’s Pentecost letter focused on relationships within communion, not specifically on the theology of same-sex blessings or anything else. And in the end, all that the ABC has done is to say that one of the consequences of breaking relationships is that those provinces that do so cannot and will not represent the Communion in ecumenical dialogue. That’s hardly an imperial attack. It’s barely a slap on the wrist. I realize that it’s not pleasant, but still, why react so incredibly strongly in response to something so incredibly restrained? It’s like taking a sledge hammer to a fly. What’s the point of doing this now, so dramatically? What is there to gain in this particular moment that wasn’t there before?

Fr. Jonathan,

You raise a point I wanted to raise. Predictably, conservatives have labeled the ABC’s letter “too little, too late”, but it seems progressives view it as “too much.”

Could it be that the ABC has actually proposed *consequences* for TEC’s actions, and TEC is scared that those consequences might actually happen?

Will ++Williams see the PB’s response as an open challenge? To me it has the sound of, “We are going to do as we please.” I think this has the potential to show the ABC that TEC is set on it’s course apart, and it is time to act accordingly.

Rev Heard said:

We are bad to the bone, and will demonstrate that, as individuals and in our cultures, without the grace of God.

This is the great divide between Evangelicals and Progressives. Progressives don’t believe it. And how you come down on this point determines your view of the Atonement - if people are “basically good” there is no need for atonement.

One last point:

When Progressives appeal to Pentecost and explicitly or implicitly to Acts 10 to justify “a new thing,” it most be forcefully pointed out that Acts 10 makes sense from a consideration of the whole of the narrative arc of Scripture. It is NOT a new thing. There is a traceable line from Acts 10 all the way back to Genesis 12: “...all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”

It remains to be shown how the new view of human sexuality coheres with the *whole* of Scripture.

I was chatting with my older son, Fr. Mark Clavier, on Skype this morning. He made a point which struck home. He remarked that consumerism markets products not with an eye to veracity but with what appeals to the “market.”  The almost adoring responses to the PB’s letter on progressive blogs today suggests that her market responds to a vision of an American led, Spirit authenticated New Deal for TEC and eventually the Communion. Now I do not doubt for a moment that those advocating this “product” are sincere and genuinely convinced and that their meta-narrative drawn from the past makes perfect sense.

How then do those who demur, to whom the “product” has no appeal, and who distrust the historical narrative presented enter into dialogue?  Rather like translating a work from another language, it is not only word meaning involved, but nuance and cultural echoes to be considered.  Some would merely retreat into themselves and regard the work of dialogue/reconciliation to be a waste of time or just plain wrong. Yet Paul himself engaged the philosophers in Athens or the pagans (country folk) at Lystra by seeking to build bridges between them and the Church and Lord he served.

It may be easy to dismiss the TEC leadership as heretics and consign them to the nether regions, but such a position makes nonsense of a determination to remain within TEC. Further the religion asserted by TEC is a pretty good summary of the culture in which we minister, one we must understand sympathetically if we are to apply the Gospel faithfully and with success not merely as a rebuttal, but as a way which leads to the truth in Christ Jesus.

Fr. Jonathan Mitchican - 02 June 2010 11:47 PM

It’s like taking a sledge hammer to a fly.

This was my impression.

It also impressed me considering the restraint that the PB called for at her election. If anything, this letter said that the restraint we have talked about in 2006 (B033) and 2007 (25 September New Orleans statement from the House of Bishops), and the letters to the ABC about D025 and C056, persuading that these resolutions were only ‘descriptive’ and didn’t mean we were going to fly in the face of our pledges of 2006 and 2007, was a lie, however well intended.

Fr. Tony Clavier - 04 June 2010 05:45 PM

It may be easy to dismiss the TEC leadership as heretics and consign them to the nether regions, but such a position makes nonsense of a determination to remain within TEC. Further the religion asserted by TEC is a pretty good summary of the culture in which we minister, one we must understand sympathetically if we are to apply the Gospel faithfully and with success not merely as a rebuttal, but as a way which leads to the truth in Christ Jesus.

I don’t see how staying in TEC requires a commitment to attempt to evangelize or persuade the leadership of anything, at least not anymore than the gospel requires me to do the same with anyone and everyone. It is, of course, an oversimplification to simply write off the TEC leadership as heretics. After all, Origen was, technically speaking, a heretic and no one denies what he gave to the Church. We have to keep open communication and go the extra mile in dialogue with the leadership, even when that requires sacrifice, for the sake of reconciliation, for the sake of the Gospel. But at the same time, I think we have to choose how we spend our energy. Personally, I’d rather spend more of my energy reaching out to the very culture that you mention than running around in circles of meaningless words with the Presiding Bishop and her friends. Is that wrong?