Captain Yips Secret Journal

Listening Process

Often it’s more useful to listen to the EpiscoLeft rather than argue with it.  Arguing doesn’t do much good anyway, and listening to what they say, and peeling back glossy surface to find the assumptions crawling around underneath, helps in the much larger mission of Reformed Anglicanism.  Let’s take a look at the opening speechification by Presiding Bishop Schori and President Dr. Anderson.

There’s a common element of which we’ll hear a lot, I think, and that is the emphasis on community and group action.  This is emphasis is, I think, preeminently political and tactical, and would change in a twinkle if it suited their purpose.  At the moment, it suits the EpiscoLeft to emphasize the group, so let’s take a peek.

The Presiding Bishop:

The overarching connection in all these crises has to do with the great Western heresy - that we can be saved as individuals, that any of us alone can be in right relationship with God.

Superficially, this is stunningly ignorant (the Desert Fathers weren’t big on community, I think.  Er, Mt. Athos.  Dame Julian, quoted when handy but ignored here.  The Anglican community of Little Gidding).  I suspect, however, that the purpose of this statement is directed toward the next phrase:

It is caricatured in some quarters by insisting that salvation depends on reciting a specific verbal formula about Jesus.

The PB here is linking a concern for good theology with rampant individuality: amazing and (I think intentionally offensive) statement that is actually aimed at diminishing the importance of theology in favor of community action.

There’s a cunning point to this.  Many Anglican theologians, including Rowan Williams and Tom Wright, share a deep distrust for and rejection of what they perceive as the Enlightenment’s glorification of the individual.  The merits of this position are another story, but suffice it that I suspect it of being a bit overwrought. Not wrong, but overly emphasized.  So Bishop Schori plays to that rejection.  “That individualist focus is a form of idolatry” she goes on to say.  That this is howlingly funny coming from an Episcopal leader we’ll let pass for a moment.  Rhetorically, though, what she’s doing is to say that those who object to the direction of TEC - me, Chris, Greg, and a hundred thousand others, are acting out of an idolatrous egoism - which, if taken literally, means that we are all placing ourselves in the place of God.  Again, howlingly funny. 

President Anderson’s emphasis is slighter, but repeats this theme:

We are only effective in responding to God’s call to the extent that we fully grasp the reality that we cannot do this ministry alone, as individuals. 

It’s easy to get caught up in responding to the historical and theological ignorance that appears (but I emphasize, appears) in statements like this.  But the rhetorical direction is more important.  “The world is in need, in agony, and we must respond,” they say.  “People who niggle about obscure theological points are just being self centered.  There’s a crisis going on!  We have to do something!  We must move ahead!”  And this is indeed cunning.  No one wants to be caught saying that the hungry should not be fed, the naked clothed, the sick healed.  And by identifying the mission of the Church with feeding, clothing, and healing, the opponents of the EpiscoLeft are identified with the wreckers and saboteurs who would allow the hungry to starve, the naked to shiver, the sick to ail.  Any objection amounts to treason.

Even one so ignorant and such as miserable offender as myself could pull some dozens of witnesses from the Bible, the early teachers, and from Anglican tradition to rebut this narrow vision of the Church.  That’s not the point.  The point is in the argument that the EpiscoLeft is framing, that theology is sort of trivial, that personal holiness and growth to Godwards is unimportant, and that Social Work is all.  This is a very potent, very attractive, message.  A passage in President Anderson’s speech is illuminating:

Ellie had decided that if the church had a babysitting co-op it would enable more people to be available to work in the community.

Not to give overburdened parents respite, but “to work in the community.”  In the structure we see emerging from these comments, we might begin to suspect that what God wants is not so much disciples as Community Organizers. 

The message that the Presiding Bishop and the President of the House of Delegates present is that mission is entirely Social (and I guess we must now add, Environmental), that theology is a mere spice, and personal behavior irrelevant.  God is pleased if we act together to help each other.  Very attractive message, and with just enough truth to go down smooth - after all, we’re saved by Jesus’s saving acts, not by what we think about Jesus or because my understanding of Justification by Faith is correct.

The reality we live in, however, is different.  We live in a society increasingly miserable, unhappy, and toxic, and we live in denial of that.  TEC’s refusal to deal with the spiritual poverty, starvation and illness that beset us condemns millions to spiritual darkness and spiritual death.

 

I'm Back

Sometimes we get surprising, and time consuming, challenges, and sometimes several land at the same time.  I set today as a day to return at least partially to normal, though there’s lots of work to be done still.  Don’t worry: no one is diseased, divorced, depraved or dead, and no one here is running for public office (which seems to involve at least some of these calamities).  I might (or might not) answer questions . . .

In the meantime, some disorganized reflections, mostly about the first assembly of the Anglican Church of North America, and the installation of our first Archbishop.

Looking ahead, it seems to me that we who have been, however slightly, engaged with what is increasingly The Very Silly Church (and wisecracks about Presiding Bishop Katherine Littlesquid Airplane F’tang F’tang Bottle-of-Merlot are taken as given) need to be aware that we are damaged, often in ways we don’t understand.  The formation of Christians in what TEC has been flawed for a long time.  A lot of us are carrying around very incomplete understandings of what we’re doing, so heavy doses of humility and kindness are in order.  I’ve been reading a such solidly but old fashioned Anglican writers as Austin Farrer, Henry Chadwick, and Michael Ramsey.  The depth of the Christianity and their knowledge comes like spring rain (and boy, do I know spring rain this year).  The second part to this is the need to give up our pain.  Everyone has taken some damage from the last couple of generations of TEC follies.  Alright.  Time to put that down and move ahead.  Not move on, as the modern lingo puts it.  Move ahead. 

Along with the preceding, we need to realize that Archbishop Duncan’s (and isn’t it cool to finally be able to write that?) Call for a push on evangelism is not only appropriate, but necessary.  We can’t just be lifeboats.  That time is over.  A time when North American Anglicans rediscover what Anglican Christianity is, and shares it with those around us, is beginning.  There are many, many people now who will be surprised at what we have to offer. 

Just Nodding In

A lot going on right now, and maybe I'll write about it one of these days, but in the meantime, thanks to Chris (who reads Episcopal Life so we don't have to) for pointing out these comments from one Mariane Schaum of Portland OR:

What kind of fear is driving those who oppose this man (Kevin Thew Genpo Forrester)? His alternative baptism is desperately needed. My own children will not baptize their children because of the outdated language, concepts, and theology of the baptismal service. I can hardly stand to hear it myself anymore. I believe that 30 years from now, Episcopalians -- if any are left -- will wonder why their parents were so pathetically naive and backward.

Presumably she's talking about the 1979 Baptismal, er, Covenant.  Wow.  If that's outdated, just imagine her dealing with something really old:

Wash him and sanctify him with the Holy Ghost; that he, being delivered from your  wrath, may be received into the ark of Christ's Church; and being steadfast in faith, joyful through hope, and rooted in charity, may so pass the waves of this troublesome world, that finally he may come to the land of everlasting life, there to reign with you world without end; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
(1662 Baptism, gently modernized)

Wow, huh. "Steadfast in faith, joyful through hope, and rooted in charity." Now that's a Baptismal service.  Take a look at the whole service - an eye opener, it is.

2009 Flowers of the Week - IV

Violas in a boot:

Beach Blanket Bingo

I wouldn't touch the Alberto Cutie story with a ten meter cattle prod.  Of course he's becoming an Episcopalian.  I'm waiting for Obama, myself.  Born Episcopalian, that man, just doesn't know it yet.   And Fr Frankie Alberto had to want to be caught; well known guy, out on the beach, canoodling.  But I was amused by this line from the news report.

The Episcopal Church allows its priests to marry and date.

What, at the same time?  Or is it first one, then the other?  Do tell. 

For those who want to know, the strangely anonymous Episcopalian Bish in the scene was probably Leo Frade, who seems to have powerfully irritated Archbishop Favarola, who seems to have been sandbagged here.  Didn't see that one coming at all, poor man.

Madness

Many are the threats to sanity that stalk this world.  The Chicago Cubs - why?  The government of North Korea - an entire country led by the sort of people who seem to dominate MMORPGs - only for them it's not a game! The world financial "system."  Of these threats, one of the most pernicious is the effort to understand why Rowan Williams does things.  Fortunately for world sanity, those affected are few in number, even among the world's Anglicans.

But for those who are afflicted by Rowanomania, each "Rowan event," as they're called, elicits cries of "now he's really shown his true colors (or colours, if writing from the evangelical CoE point of view)."  Puzzlement is understandable.  Consider:  here we have an acute scholar, yet he turns a blind eye to the theological bankruptcy of The Litigation Church.  He is himself opposed to abortion, as a rule, but he takes no note of Katie Rags' theory of sacramental abortion.  An intelligent man, he sacrifices the chance of real Anglican unity for the sake of the demographically imploding western establishment.  He is a firm British Lefty (by American standards, very left indeed), yet he cannot seem to grasp that a contributing factor to the Anglican miseries is a degree of post colonial feeling among the younger Anglican Churches, especially in Africa, who quite rightly feel left out of the Anglican power structures.

And so we come to the new Anglican Covenant Working Group, announced today.  3 liberal westerners, 1 moderate conservative from South East Asia.  The three like minded liberals will vote together, and will ensure that whatever the Anglican Covenant eventually may contain, it will certainly contain nothing enforceable.  It won't matter at all.  It will change nothing, if it doesn't simply come to naught.  And next week, or the week after, or the week after that, another Rowan event will bumble along that makes conservatives say, "well, he's not so bad."

Well, dude has power only because we give him power.  Anglican macrostructures don't work?  Build better ones.  Archbishop havers?  Ignore him.  Stop paying attention to the bearded man behind the curtain.  He's not doing anything.

 

2009 Flowers of the Week - III

Lilacs!

2009 Flowers of the Week - II

Daffs, of course.  Tulips I avoid, because the rabbits and squirrels feast on them.  Daffs rarely disappoint.