A coda on bishops

Overnight I have uncovered the accusations made against certain bishops of The Episcopal Church (names hidden to protect the innocent):

Bishop X voted for Gene Robinson. Therefore Bishop X does not believe in the virgin birth.

Bishop Y laid hands on Gene Robinson. Therefore Bishop Y does not believe in the bodily resurrection.

Bishop Z laughed at a joke told by Gene Robinson. Therefore Bishop Z does not believe in the second coming.

Bishops of this kind are revisionists, heterodox bishops who propagate error and flee from the truth. All other bishops, those who did not vote for Gene Robinson, lay hands on him, or laugh at his jokes, are reasserters, orthodox bishops who guard and teach the true faith.

Who are those bishops?

The following comment on another blog is typical of what one hears these days: "The very fact that bishops who deny the bodily resurrection, the virgin birth, and the second coming will be present is a travesty, not to mention Lambeth 1.10." All right, I'll ask the question. Who are those bishops who deny the bodily resurrection, virgin birth, and second coming? (Let's not get into Lambeth 1.10, since full and honest compliance with Lambeth resolutions is rare even in the conservative dioceses of the former Confederacy. What's worse, the Lambeth phrase dangles like a single lappet from the accusatory sentence.)

Does the list of heterodox prelates include Katharine TEC? Her answers on questions of faith may not satisfy those who wish to purge the church of every suspicious utterance, but she has openly addressed accusations of this sort, and no bishop has followed up with a charge of heresy. John Spong is no longer around to aggravate the faithful with eccentric theology. So who else? Speak up or keep your thoughts to your nightmares.

Update: Louie Crew, who knows just about everything about everybody in The Episcopal Church, says he knows of no source for information about bishops' orthodoxy and heterodoxy, short of polling the bishops themselves. I suggest we challenge these bullies every time they make an unsubstantiated accusation against our bishops.

Another MDG

Bishop Marc Andrus of California has proposed a ninth Millennium Development Goal (added to the original eight), called "healing and reconciliation." I think that's a good idea. It draws upon the experience of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, it adds a spiritual dimension, and it rounds out the numbers to nine (or three times three, if you like Trinitarian symbols).

So the new goals would be:

1. eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
2. achieve universal primary education
3. promote gender equality and empower women
4. reduce child mortality
5. improve maternal health
6. combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases
7. ensure environmental stability
8. develop a global partnership for development
9. healing and reconciliation

Weekend journal

On Saturday night my wife and I went to hear Louie Crew speak. Louie and I are friends from many years at General Convention and email inbetween. His talk was about sexuality, part of a series on justice at St. Anna's, New Orleans. Louie agrees with Desmond Tutu, who told BBC the other day that all this talk in the Anglican Communion about gay ordinations and same-sex blessings, in a world filled with disease, war, and poverty, has become "an extraordinary obsession." I found Louie's talk calming. There has been a lot of shrillness lately, a lot of ugliness. Just look at the comments on Stand Firm, just to mention one blog out of many. The quality of discourse in the church has degenerated so much that the two sides in the sexuality war are calling each other "revisionists" (left) and "reasserters" (right). Are those supposed to be insults? Probably just bad language.

On Sunday the bishop paid his annual visitation to Trinity. I was in charge of hat and stick and didn't make too many mistakes. A young Marine was introduced at announcements. He has just gotten his wings as a pilot and will probably go off to war soon. We baptized two infants and an adult. We confirmed a bunch of seventh graders. We should also have read the names of those killed in Iraq last week.

Bedae Venerabilis

On this day in 1984, I was at Notre Dame University in Indiana for a Conference on the Diaconate. As president of the old National Center for the Diaconate (precursor of the North American Association for the Diaconate), I was in charge of worship, and I scheduled myself to preach at mass.

It was the feast of Bede the Venerable, and the guest celebrant was the Bishop of Northern Indiana, William Sheridan, a cherubic, rotund Anglo-Catholic with old-fashioned ideas about women and just about everything else. He wasn't keen on deacons, who hadn't been to seminary and were bound to cause trouble in his diocese.

I set him up with two deacons (one a woman), vested in dalmatics, who attended him at chair and altar. For the homily I told the story of Bede, pretty much as Padre Mickey tells it in his blog today, ending with the charming legend about an angel writing "venerabilis" on his tombstone. (In the eighth century "venerabilis" meant "beloved." It wasn't until eight or nine hundred years later that it became the pompous designation of an archdeacon.) I closed by asking for Bede's prayers for the bishop and all of us.

Later, at a reception, I called for a toast for the bishop: "Ad multos annos!" (God grant him many years). Bishop Sheridan was delighted. Solemn pontifical mass, invocations of saints, toasts in Latin. These deacons must be all right, and women deacons can be just as catholic as men. Soon he ordained his first woman as deacon, Sarah Tracy, and later made her archdeacon of the diocese. Sarah talked back to the bishop a whole lot, and he loved it.

Christ in Hades

There have been several online comments about Hilarion Alfeyev's article "Christ the Conqueror of Hell: The Descent of Christ into Hades in Eastern and Western Theological Traditions" (see here). The Russian Orthodox bishop gave this lecture in 2002 at St. Mary's Cathedral in Minneapolis.

The surface issue is whether Christ in Hades offered salvation only to the righteous of Old Testament times (a common western view) or to all humanity (eastern view). The deeper issue concerns the inclusive nature of salvation. Is Christ's action on the cross just for a chosen few or for all? The Orthodox believe that Christ offers salvation to all persons of all times, dead or alive. Western Christians, heirs of Augustus and Aquinas and their juridical views of salvation, aren't sure whether to admit those whom God hasn't chosen.

The eucharistic prayers in BCP say that Christ's blood "is shed for you [those at the last supper] and for many for the forgiveness of sins." But "many" awkwardly reflects an Aramaic idiom meaning "all," and the prayers in Enriching Our Worship give the more accurate translation: "poured out for you and for all for the forgiveness of sin." (Note the singular "sin.") This is one example of new liturgy correcting old error.

Autocephaly

It is common to refer to the provincial churches of the Anglican Communion as autonomous churches. The term comes from the Greek autonomos, or self-law, one who gives oneself one's own law, free from external authority. Autonomous churches govern themselves. As the term is generally used for churches, however, the head bishop of a mother church appoints the head bishop of an autonomous church. This is not true of the Anglican Communion, in which the Archbishop of Canterbury is only primos inter pares, first among equals, without significant authority over the daughter churches.

A similar ecclesiastical term is autocephalous, or self-headed, referring to churches in which the head bishop does not report to any higher-ranking bishop. This describes the situation in the Anglican Communion. Since each Anglican province governs its own affairs, appointing its own head bishop, it is more accurate to speak of our churches as self-headed.

My church quiz

I took the following quiz online and find the results strange, since on one of the questions I swore firmly that the Pope is not the head of the church. I identify myself as an Anglo-Catholic with brains, i.e., liberal in social and political areas. The quiz doesn't have that as a category, so maybe RC is somewhere in the vicinity. I'm high on church but haven't the faintest idea where to find "ecclesial authority" these days. Vatican II produced some good stuff, but those bishops weren't my guys. The seven councils of the first millennium will have to do. I'm glad I flunked fundamentalist.

You scored as Roman Catholic. You are Roman Catholic. Church tradition and ecclesial authority are hugely important, and the most important part of worship for you is mass. As the Mother of God, Mary is important in your theology, and as the communion of saints includes the living and the dead, you can also ask the saints to intercede for you. Roman Catholic 86% Neo orthodox 79% Emergent/Postmodern 71% Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan 61% Charismatic/Pentecostal 36% Classical Liberal 29% Modern Liberal 29% Reformed Evangelical 18% Fundamentalist 0% What's your theological worldview? created with QuizFarm.com

Voudou in New Orleans

From The Times-Picayune this morning:

Edgar Jean-Louis, 84, a Haitian Voudou priest, will perform two public ceremonies Tuesday and Wednesday at 7 p.m. at Achade Meadows Peristyle at 3319 Rosalie Alley, off North Rampart, between Piety and Desire. $50 donation requested. Spectators are asked to wear white clothes and a white headscarf.

For a city with a desperate shortage of mental health care, abandoned by many psychiatrists and psychologists, voudou may be just what we need. In the past voudou has earned a bad reputation for its use of gris-gris and mojo, love potions and evil spells, but voudou is really a West African term for several related faiths, all involving spiritualism, pantheism, and ancestor worship, all close in touch with the created world, and is thus about living a healthy life, spiritually, mentally, physically, and socially. Some of its practices are compatible with Christianity and can be used in Christian worship.

Since the earliest days voudou has had a strong following in New Orleans, sometimes underground, sometimes on the surface. At home and even in church, local Christians have mixed pagan and Christian rituals. Sometimes Christ comes out on top, sometimes the African gods. It's called inculturation, or spiritual gumbo. I've heard that the worship at St. Augustine's Catholic Church in Tremé involves voudou materials, cups of wine, salt, and the like, offered by parishioners. When I was at Grace Episcopal Church in Mid-City, we once used some voudou objects at mass, a practice that never caught on among our mainly eurocentric congregation.

But what impresses me about Père Edgar is that he's 84 years old. Voudou apparently doesn't have a canon law forcing its clerics to resign from all positions at age 72, as TEC does. As far as I'm concerned, if you can proclaim the good news and heal the sick, you can function as a priest or deacon.

And in New Orleans you have to read some significance in a ceremony that takes place between Piety and Desire.

The PB is coming?

I've been wondering when Katharine is coming to the Diocese of Louisiana. The national canons require the Presiding Bishop to visit every diocese at least once during her tenure of nine years. She'll be here in September for the House of Bishops confab with Rowan of Canterbury, but that doesn't count.

The purpose: "(i) Holding pastoral consultations with the Bishop or Bishops thereof and, with their advice, with the Lay and Clerical leaders of the jurisdiction; (ii) Preaching the Word; and (iii) Celebrating the Holy Eucharist" (Canon I.2.6)

Her picture (the one here) has appeared on the home page of the Diocese of Mississippi, so maybe she's getting ready to come there, and we can pop over and see her. I like her hat, with all those colors. She looks as if she's second-lining in a parade at Jazzfest, or maybe with the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club, or the Jefferson City Buzzards. She ought to switch the stick for an umbrella with tassels, if only to keep the sun off her face.

Rumor or fact

An article today in the blog Fr. Jake Stops the World contains the following:

Bishop Iker [Fort Worth] has instructed his clergy not to include Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori in the local parish's Prayers of the People.

Since intercessions are the business of deacons (among others), I asked on the anglodeacons list whether any deacon in Fort Worth cared to comment. Is this statement true? A Fort Worth deacon replied that she had not heard of this restriction, and she was sick of rumors about her bishop.

So I checked further. The Jake piece cites a July 7, 2006 letter from Fort Worth Via Media to then-PB Frank Griswold, containing this accusation:

At a clergy gathering called by Bishop Iker after General Convention, Bishop Iker instructed rectors not to include Presiding Bishop Elect Katharine Jefferts Schori in the Prayers of the People.

I grant that this is not first-hand evidence. It's questionable, since it comes from an organization opposed to Iker's policies. And a charge to "rectors" about a PB "Elect" (Via Media version) is slightly different from a charge to all "clergy" about the "PB" (Jake version). Nevertheless, since this charge has been made on a widely read blog, it needs to be clarified by someone who was at the clergy meeting, perhaps by Bishop Iker himself. Until then, I think we should assume that he never issued the instruction.

Update: Three Fort Worth deacons have reported that Bishop Iker has never issued an instruction forbidding prayer for anyone.

Father Jake says he stands by Fort Worth Via Media's account. Bishop Iker nixed PB Katharine because he doesn't think a woman can be a bishop. How can you pray for someone who doesn't exist?

Schism healed

The New York Times reports today:

MOSCOW (AP) -- Church bells pealed as leaders of the Russian Orthodox faith signed a pact Thursday healing a historic, 80-year schism between the church in Russia and an offshoot set up abroad after the Bolshevik Revolution.

You can read the whole story here.

One sentence: "Worshippers wept and incense wafted up into the cathedral's soaring cupola." Now there's the secret to reconciliation--holy tears and holy smoke, both in abundance.

APLM Montreal Statement (a summary)

COMMUNION IN CHRIST
An executive summary of the liturgical-theological reflection.

In reflecting on the proposed Anglican Covenant, Associated Parishes for Liturgy and Mission’s (APLM) Council grounded its response in Paul’s words to the Corinthians “Just as the body is one and has many members and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of the one Spirit” (1 Corinthians 12:12-13).

Our Basis for Unity—The Church is already one because it is one with the Lord, belonging to Christ and participating in Christ’s ministry and mission in the world. Our communion does not depend upon either juridical structures or doctrinal agreements. These, at best, may reflect our unity in Christ, but they do not effect it. In Baptism and Eucharist, God both brings about and reveals our participation in Christ. The intimate connection between Baptism, Eucharist and the ordination of bishops, deacons and priests has revealed that baptized divorced persons, gay men and lesbians as well as women may not be excluded as a class from any of the sacraments of the church, for they are full members of Christ.

We are concerned that misplaced anxiety about unity may drive us to forced uniformity, as though we had to fear communion in diversity. We appeal to our church to address our present divisions, drawing on the charisms that have shaped who we are, including the Anglican comprehensiveness expressed in the Elizabethan Settlement; the authority of scripture, tradition and reason; the integrity of each diocese and Province; and finding our unity in work for justice so that mission, rather than doctrine, gives outward expression to the unity found in Christ.

The Proposed Covenant—We believe that the proposed covenant is deeply flawed, as it attempts to bring about Church unity through enforced conformity. The unity of the church cannot be enforced, as unity is already given in Jesus Christ. It is one of the marks of the Church and an article of faith. We do not believe that the Church should be one, but that it is one. The Covenant places certain persons in the role of being ultimate arbiters of what is and is not Anglican.

Theologically speaking, the sources of church unity have traditionally been understood as:

• The life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ
• The two dominical sacraments of Baptism and Eucharist
• Ongoing participation by Christ in these sacraments, constituting our communion with a bishop, who in turn is in communion with the see of Canterbury.
• A common liturgical source tradition (see the Prague Statement of the International Anglican Liturgical Consultation)

The doctrinal expression of our unity is contained in the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral, inasmuch as it describes the essential points of agreement for union with other churches.

Conclusion—We are called to the risk of bringing all of humanity into the Reign of God—especially those who are most unlike ourselves. To try to effect an artificial unity of the Body of Christ through doctrinal enforcement will only lead to yet another scandalous division in the Body of the Lord. It is also idolatrous, substituting a written agreement for the saving work of Christ on the cross and the living, catholic call of the Gospel to incarnate Christ’s ministry in all places and in all times. In Baptism and Eucharist we will find unity—beyond any enforced conformity—which is the real basis for our Communion and our common life in Christ.

Schism?

Reports (or rumors) are circulating on the web this afternoon that Fort Worth and maybe a few other Network dioceses are getting ready to split from The Episcopal Church. See Ruth Gledhill of the Times of London.

Update: The news appears to lack a basis in fact. The dioceses in question are merely stirring their usual mess of dissension.

APLM

Just to clarify: The previous post is a reflection written by the Council of APLM, meeting in Montreal.

APLM Montreal Statement

COMMUNION IN CHRIST
A Liturgical-Theological Reflection

We must speak out of love of the Anglican Communion and its tradition. For the last sixty years, The Associated Parishes for Liturgy and Mission (APLM), a group of liturgists, musicians, pastors, theologians, and educators from the Anglican Church of Canada and The Episcopal Church, have explored, supported, and worked for the renewal of the worship and mission of the Church. Soon after the Covenant Design Committee of the Anglican Communion published a draft Covenant for the consideration of the Provinces, the APLM Council met in Montreal from April 25 to April 30, 2007.

We gathered in deep concern for the tenor of current conversations taking place in the Communion regarding church unity. In true Anglican fashion, recognizing that "Praying Shapes Believing", we have explored the matters at hand by basing our theological insights upon our experience of worship, seeking to answer the question: "Who are we as the People of God together at prayer?"

The Gift of Unity

Common prayer and the life of loving discipleship are the ways through which we enter into the living gift of the Gospel. Faithful liturgical renewal always places the call of the living Gospel at the center. In the liturgical renewal of the Church, especially over the past one hundred years, we have learned again how God makes us one in the person of Jesus Christ, his death, and his resurrection. All members of the Church, which is his Body, participate in Christ’s mission and authority through our incorporation in Christ in Baptism and in the Eucharist, thus sharing in God’s mission to the world.

The unity of the Church is a gift of God, born of the death and resurrection of Jesus. It is not a human project to be managed and achieved by our own efforts.

Jesus Christ is one—one in himself and one with the Father and the Holy Spirit. The Church is made one by his reconciling death on the cross, joining all humanity to the life of the Triune God. As the unity of the Triune God is enhanced rather than impaired by the diversity of three distinct persons, so is the oneness of the Body of Christ enhanced by the diversity of its members. As St. Paul writes to the Church in Corinth:

Just as the Church is one and has many members, and all the members of the Church, though many, are one Church, so it is with Christ. For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of the one Spirit. (1 Corinthians 12:12-13)

Thus the Church is already one because it is one with the Lord, belonging to Christ and participating in Christ’s ministry and mission in the world. For St. Paul, this oneness is an accomplished fact, not a hoped for reality. As St. Paul says, ". . . this is a great mystery—I speak of Christ and his Church."

God reveals this unity in the Church’s sacraments making present at all times and places the saving and unifying work of Christ on the cross, reconciling human beings with each other and with God. This is expressed in the letter to the Ephesians:

But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, and might reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it. So he came and proclaimed peace to those who were far off, and peace to those who were near; for through him both of us have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but also citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God. (Ephesians 2:13-22)

Brother and sister Anglicans throughout the world, we call us together to return to a traditional Anglican vision of church unity. This vision is centered in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, mediated through the sacraments of Baptism and Eucharist.

Baptism and Eucharist

In Baptism we are revealed as children of God and members of Christ’s one Body.

In the Eucharist, we are revealed as members of Christ’s one Body, "that he may be in us and we in him".

Paul’s words to the community at Corinth challenged them for not sharing the Body of Christ unreservedly with all in the assembly saying:

Examine yourselves, and only then eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For all who eat and drink without discerning the body, eat and drink judgement against themselves. (I Corinthians 11:28-29)

By sharing the broken bread, we encounter the "other" at the table, and are able to discern Christ in one another. Knowing the whole to be Christ through our many differences enables us to see differences and diversity as gifts, rather than as threats to our unity.

As the Body of Christ formed by Baptism and Eucharist, the Church becomes a sign to the world of the unity of all humanity—indeed, all creation—with each other and with God. We are one because Christ died and rose, and we share in that unity through a ". . . washing with a formula of words" in Baptism in the name of the Triune God, and a shared meal, "the bread of blessing which we break . . . a communion in the Body of Christ". In these practices, we find our communion with each other and with God.

This is in keeping with the New Testament Church where N.T. scholar Raymond Brown (The Churches the Apostles Left Behind) identified seven ways of being a Christian church, all existing alongside one another so, for example, the Jewish church of Jerusalem benefited from the gifts of the Gentile churches Paul established. All these patterns of being the Body of Christ found their unity in their common Baptism and in the risen Lord known to them through the breaking of the bread in Eucharist.

As St. Paul knows well and the Book of Acts describes at the Council of Jerusalem, the Church lives into God’s vision and work. God is binding us together and revealing God’s reconciling work even when we are still experiencing conflict and deep division.

Our communion does not depend upon either juridical structures or doctrinal agreements. These, at best, may reflect our unity in Christ, but they do not effect it. Furthermore, they can sometimes become signs of disunity, rather than expressions of that unity which we have in the Lord. We are in communion with all with whom our Lord is in communion by virtue of our faith in one Lord, whether or not we live into and express that unity we have in Christ. Orthodox catholic tradition insists that the effectiveness of the sacraments does not stem from the doctrinal or moral correctness of the ministers of the sacrament.

The sacraments bring about our union with each other and with Christ by making ordinary people, actions and things into outward and visible signs of inner grace. These signs constitute and bring about our participation in a new humanity, the Body of Christ, a sign to the world showing forth the holiness of creation in all its diversity.

For this reason the Church has increasingly recognized the importance of keeping its sacramental actions close to the people involved and their cultural expressions, as different Provinces develop Prayer Books and sacramental practices that bring the Paschal Mystery into the present, and form the Body of Christ in local, contextual ways. Nevertheless, this variety of practice does not make the Church any less one with the Lord, but rather enriches our unity in Christ. Indeed, our increased awareness of global differences demands a vision of church unity as unity-in-diversity.

Thus in Baptism and Eucharist, God both brings about and reveals our participation in Christ. In Baptism and Eucharist, we freely respond to God’s call to make us one in Christ. Whether ourselves or through sponsors, we enter freely into the One Body. We are not born into the Body at our natural births or by our citizenship status, but rather we respond in faith to the call to enter the church community, a sign of the Reign of God among us. We are confronted by the death and resurrection of Jesus and choose not to turn away, but rather enter into its life-giving mystery.

Finally, the liturgical renewal of the last eighty years has given rise to a deeper ecclesial understanding of the intimate connection between Baptism, Eucharist, and the ordination of bishops, deacons and priests, and we have increasingly concluded as a Church that baptized divorced persons, gay men and lesbians, as well as women in general may not be excluded as a class from any of the sacraments of the Church, for they are full members of Christ.
As Rowan Williams wrote:

We have had a number of possible definitions of the word ‘Catholic’ . . . but I should like to pick up on something I have said in other contexts about the way in which ‘Catholic’, at least in part, has the sense of ‘telling the whole truth’. I should like to think of Catholic spirituality as having to do with the way in which the wholeness, the fullness of Jesus Christ’s story is made real in us. To struggle with the idea of Catholic holiness is to try to wrestle with the ways in which the whole story of Jesus Christ takes flesh, if you like, in me and you and in the infinite range of particular human identities that there are in the world. How does the story of becoming flesh, of announcing and being a sign of God’s kingdom, of giving yourself into the hands of God, of bearing the cross, and living through the resurrection become particular here? . . . Two sorts of wholeness, then: the whole of that pattern of Christ’s story, the Son’s course; and the whole of me. (from Living the Mystery: Affirming Catholicism and the Future of Anglicanism, ed. Jeffrey John, DLT 1994, pp. 76-77)

The Charisms of Anglicanism

We are concerned that misplaced anxiety about unity may drive us to forced uniformity, as though we had to fear communion in diversity. In our anxiety over the variety of practices in the Anglican Communion, some have suggested that there is a need for new mechanisms to ensure our unity.

We appeal to our Church to address our present divisions, drawing on the charisms that have shaped who we are:

1. Anglican comprehensiveness
If the Anglican Communion reduces its traditional broad comprehensiveness it will not be the same Church, and will have relinquished the Via Media. Anglicanism was propelled by Elizabeth I’s genius for bringing about a religious peace based on common prayer. In the Elizabethan settlement, we discovered that we could live a common faith by praying together, and that attempts to define our unity confessionally were neither honest nor effective. Our praying together bound us together more deeply and effectively than any brief or extended definition of faith in a confession. St. Paul dares to say ‘No one can say Jesus is Lord except by the Spirit’. Anglicanism grounds that speaking in liturgical practice. When God draws us together in prayer and thanksgiving acknowledging the Lord we all serve, his Spirit moves among us and makes us One Body.

2. The authority of Scripture, Reason, and Tradition
The draft Covenant lists only Scripture and Tradition as sources of the Church’s authority, leaving out Reason. The genius of the Elizabethan theologians lay in their insistence that Scripture must be interpreted in a dynamic dialogue with tradition and reason. Hooker declared this clearly, and our four hundred-year tradition has continued to find fresh riches and new insights. Reading scripture in conformity to a single interpretation, without regard for critical scholarship, is not true to who we are as Anglicans. We have learned that scripture itself demands of us a critical reading, drawing upon our experience as a faith community and all of our learning of God’s work in creation.

3. The baptismal and eucharistic mediation of Christian unity
The Covenant envisions an Anglican Communion in which some Provinces might no longer be in communion with it. We believe that the Eucharistic table is not ours, but Christ’s, and as members of his body, if we refuse to share the table, we are denying the unity Jesus has accomplished for us in his death and resurrection.

Further, we have said above, Baptism and Eucharist make us one within the Body in Christ. If the proposed Covenant is interpreted as allowing Christians to establish two levels of church membership—the baptized and the ordained, opening the first to all, but limiting the second to a narrower class of persons—we will have left behind the baptismal basis of our membership in the Church and the very basis upon which ordinations take place. It is not of the Spirit to hold that in the Body of Christ a particular class of people may not participate in a sacrament by virtue of belonging to that class. In the same way, as Christ makes each Church and Province one, so we find our unity worldwide in him. However, if the proposed Covenant is interpreted as allowing some Christians to refuse to worship and share communion with fellow baptized Christians, including collegial bishops, we will no longer be true Anglicans.

4. The diocese as the basic unit of the Church
The diocese, as the People of God gathered around a bishop, is the core unit of Anglicanism. These dioceses freely constitute themselves into national Churches or Provinces. The Provinces have elected to bind themselves together in mutual responsibility and interdependence into an Anglican Communion of Churches.

5. Episcopal oversight
In his or her episcope (oversight), a bishop serves the unity, mission, and apostolic teaching that Christ has entrusted to the Church. Following Jesus’ commandment that we all be one, he or she shares in a wider episcopal ministry. However, this collegiality ought always first to nurture the humility that the gift of episcope is a gift of God. To share in a wider episcope means to share in Christ’s care for the Church, and is entrusted to a bishop for particular exercise within his or her local diocese. It does not give rights to exercise that ministry in another’s jurisdiction. The draft Covenant seems to encourage the creation of cross-provincial and cross-diocesan jurisdictions based upon doctrinal conformity, dividing the Church along lines of disagreement. This effectively makes the episcopal office a symbol of disunity, by ignoring the synodality through which a bishop shares his or her ministry, encouraging a narrow and authoritarian episcope foreign to Anglican tradition.

6. Provincial integrity
For centuries, Anglican Provinces have discerned the Lord’s will in their own local contexts. We have encouraged and respected this integrity of the Anglican Provinces. The Spirit reveals mission locally in our several churches; and the respect our worldwide Anglican institutions have afforded Provinces has been an acknowledgement that, even as we disagree and seek our way forward, our churches "have the mind of Christ".

When we centralize or globalize the mission of the Church it loses local aspect, and becomes imposed from outside, reshaping our Church in the model of the Roman and succeeding empires.
Yet current debates pit the categories of "Provincial autonomy" and "Communion belonging" against each other, as though they were antithetical, or at best, paradoxical. One of the illusions is that Provinces are more or less homogenous in values, culture, and practice, and that the challenges of diversity are only encountered globally. This is patently not the case. "Provincial autonomy" refers to the ordering of the ministry and mission of a local church and derives from the concept of the diocese as the basic ecclesial unit (as described above). It ought not to be seen as a retreat into "parochial provincialism" or unicultural security, shutting out "others". The Canadian and United States contexts witness real, lived multiple diversities within our Provinces and dioceses, and a heightened sensitivity to the dynamics of dominant and marginal voices. All local churches need the rights of autonomy given in classical ecclesiology, in order that we might have local, diocesan, and provincial integrity in discerning God’s guiding presence and our responsibilities in Christ’s mission, amongst all the diversities within the Church and without, of who we are.

7. The mission of the Church, and the work of justice
The unity of the Church, grounded in Christ, manifests itself in the Church’s whole life—service to the poor, work on behalf of justice, respect for all creation, peacemaking—and not only in doctrine. Christian orthodoxy and Christian practice are one. The proposed Covenant dangerously separates confessional and doctrinal matters from the work of justice. A Church restructured as the current proposals would have it would have been unable to end slavery. The Episcopal Church, which was complicit in the slave trade, and among the last to oppose it, is grateful that other Provinces were free to lead the Church in responding to the Spirit’s call for justice before the American Episcopal Church was ready to acknowledge God's gift of freedom to all human beings.

The Proposed Covenant

We believe that the proposed Covenant is deeply flawed, as it attempts to bring about unity through enforced conformity. The unity of the Church cannot be enforced, as it is already given in Jesus Christ: unity is one of the marks of the Church and an article of faith. The proposed Covenant is a worse choice than a confessional document, which can, at the very least, be referred to in the future as a source of agreement. Instead, the Covenant places certain persons in the role of being the ultimate arbiters of what is Anglican and what is not.

The genius of Anglicanism throughout history, however, has been the avoidance of a juridical structure that would force us all to march in lockstep. We have insisted, instead, that God makes us one, by our recognizing Christ in each other as we worship together.

The concept of "instruments of unity" is only as old as the Virginia Report (Inter-Anglican Theological and Doctrinal Commission) of 1988, and fails to provide an accurate account of church unity. Subsequent documents, such as Windsor and the Covenant, have taken up these notions as though they had been formally received by the Provinces of the Anglican Communion. They have not.

The Gospel of Jesus Christ calls us to move beyond finding group identity by excluding the richness and variety of humanity, and beyond defining ourselves over and against those whom we exclude.

The Anglican Understanding of Church Unity

Theologically speaking, the sources of the Church’s unity have traditionally been understood as being:

• The life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ
• The two dominical sacraments of Baptism and Eucharist
• Ongoing participation in Christ by these sacraments constituting our communion with a bishop, who is in turn in communion with the see of Canterbury.
• A common liturgical source tradition (see IALC* Prague Statement)

The doctrinal expression of our unity is contained in the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral, inasmuch as it describes the essential points of agreement for union with other churches. From our first Reformers onward, Anglicans developed an appeal to the practice of the undivided church. This appeal to the undivided church is a typically Anglican gesture, and presents a typically Anglican resistance to insist on a specifically Anglican uniqueness or distinctiveness. Instead, Anglicans have usually claimed our Church’s (and any church’s) share in the heritage of the whole Church. We have not claimed to be the one and only true Church, but we are making the simpler, humbler claim that we are church within a whole that is also church, and belongs to all Christians.

As part of that wider church, Anglicans understand the Church’s catholicity—its wholeness and universality—as manifested in the eucharistic gathering of the local community. Furthermore, our sense of catholicity is compatible with contextual diversity. The Church is one, not because it is the same everywhere, but because its varieties of worship, governance, and theology are necessary expressions of its particularity in specific times and places. Any one church in any time and place is, at best, a broken sign of the true catholicity God seeks to express through Christ’s Body, the Church. Yet in all times and all places, we seek to incarnate the fullness of the Gospel. We do this by telling the whole truth as we have received it in a way which will break forth anew into the lives of those encountering the power of Jesus’ death and resurrection in a given place. We are at once both catholic and incarnate in local contexts.

Conclusion

The gift of God in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is the healing of the divisions among us. The Gospel holds up the hope that our identity and oneness as members of Christ is strong enough, calling us to drop those defenses by which we define ourselves against others. Instead, we are called to the risk of bringing all of humanity into the Reign of God—especially those who are most unlike ourselves. In the world of the Gospel, the only true outsiders are those who, by their own choice, refuse to enter into this ever-wider healing of humanity and creation.

To try to effect an artificial unity of the Body of Christ through doctrinal enforcement will only lead to yet another scandalous division in the Body of the Lord. It is also idolatrous, substituting a written agreement for the saving work of Christ on the cross, and the living, catholic call of the Gospel to incarnate Christ’s ministry in all places and in all times.

We therefore ask our Anglican brothers and sisters to be steadfast in bearing witness to our faith and to resist the temptation to define our unity through the signing of the proposed Covenant. Instead, let us ponder God’s promise, spoken through Isaiah, the promise that God has already given us as a covenant, a living promise to all people:

In the time of favor I have answered you and on a day of salvation I have helped you. I have kept you and given you as a Covenant to the peoples to establish the land, to apportion desolate heritages, saying to the prisoners, "come out!" to those who are in darkness, "show yourselves!" (Isaiah 49:8-9)

Through our Baptism and Eucharist we will find unity, beyond any enforced conformity, which is the real basis for our Communion and our common life in Christ. May we who have been entrusted with Christ’s mission live out with integrity what it means to embody God’s promise, face to face, person to person, that all might share in God’s life, and have that life abundantly.

*The IALC (International Anglican Liturgical Consultation) is the official network on liturgical matters for the Anglican Communion.

Graven images

I had a startling experience in an adult class recently. I was showing them Robert Lentz's dramatic icon of Mary Magdalene (the original is in the baptistry of Grace Cathedral, San Francisco), all clothed in red as she holds an egg and proclaims to Tiberius Caesar (and to all viewers of the icon) that Christ is risen, when one of them announced that the second commandment forbids the making of graven images, including icons. I wondered what that opinion implied for the stained-glass windows that fill so many Episcopal churches.

Momentarily at a loss for words, I recovered enough to cite the Second Council of Nicaea in 787, which made a distinction between sacred images and idols, and between worship and veneration. We worship God, but we venerate (i.e., treat with reverence) sacred images.

. . . just as the figure of the precious and life-giving Cross, so also the venerable and holy images, as well in painting and mosaic as of other fit materials, should be set forth in the holy churches of God, and on the sacred vessels and on the vestments and on hangings and in pictures both in houses and by the wayside, to wit, the figure of our Lord God and Saviour Jesus Christ, of our spotless Lady, the Mother of God, of the honourable angels, of all saints and of all pious people. For by so much more frequently as they are seen in artistic representation, by so much more readily are men [and women] lifted up to the memory of their prototypes, and to a longing after them; and to these should be given due salutation and honourable reverence (aspasmon kai timhtikhn proskunh-sin), not indeed that true worship of faith (latreian) which pertains alone to the divine nature; but to these, as to the figure of the precious and life-giving cross and to the book of the gospels and to the other holy objects, incense and lights may be offered according to ancient pious custom. For the honour which is paid to the image passes on to that which the image represents, and he who reveres the image reveres in it the subject represented.

The second commandment appears in two versions in the 1979 BCP:

Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven image, nor the likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or in the earth beneath, or in the water under the earth; thou shalt not bow down to them, nor worship them. [Rite I, BCP 318]

You shall not make for yourself any idol. [Rite II, BCP 350]

The Rite I version repeats the text of the 1928 BCP (adapted from Exodus 20:4). The Rite II version, a new composition, lacks supporting detail but makes the correct, or at least traditionally catholic, interpretation according to Second Nicaea. God is really talking about false gods.

The commandment prohibits the worship of pagan idols, not the veneration of sacred images. God doesn't want us to worship false gods, no matter how represented. But the incarnation of Christ compels us to broaden our interpretation of the commandment. Because Christ, the Word made flesh, is the image of God, we may--we should--venerate sacred images of several kinds, including icons, crosses, and gospel books. Indeed, Episcopalians who bow to the cross as it passes in procession are following the decree of Second Nicaea.

Maybe what we really need to do is to figure out what the graven images of false gods are in our own time. I doubt very much that they include icons of Christ and his saints, and Andrei Rublev didn't encounter any theological problem with painting the Trinity.

Eliot on words and time

I read this yesterday in the May issue of Worship, in Nathan Mitchell's regular column, "The Amen Corner." It's from T. S. Eliot's "Burnt Norton" (first of Four Quartets), Part V.

Words strain,
Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,
Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place,
Will not stay still.

Mitchell is writing about the language of liturgy, which the bishops at Vatican II, following the tradition of the early church, wanted to "adhere to prevailing modes of expression," but which current bishops in Rome want to reflect "sacred style." I sympathize with the earlier bishops and insist on using "cup" and "plate" for the dishes of the eucharist, to mention just a couple of examples. (BCP uses "cup" in all the eucharistic prayers and "chalice" in the rubrics, p. 407 and elsewhere. A different committee must have written the rubrics.)

The article inspired me to read all of "Burnt Norton," which begins:

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.

Eliot died in 1965, at the dawn of liturgical revision in western churches, and thus probably did not appreciate the similarity, or irony, of our familiar eucharistic acclamation "Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again." But is not the interpenetration of time at the heart of Hebrew and Christian belief and practice? Jews wait for Elijah to appear at the Passover seder. Christians wait for the kingdom, which already is, to appear in all its glory. Alpha is Omega, past, present, and future.