Covenant, Consequence and Intent: A Second Exchange with Father Jim Stockton

Another discussion that began with a House of Bishops and Deputies posting by Father Stockton of Church of the Resurrection, Austin, Texas. Father Stockton gave his permission for these to appear.

The original post:

Still no reason for a covenant -

He has made himself abundantly clear: the Archbishop of Canterbury is intent on imposing a covenant upon the Churches of the Anglican Communion. One can only wonder why he is intent on this end, for he has offered no real purpose for it. The sum of all his apologetic is that a covenant is an end that justifies itself. He fails to offer a genuine and theological purpose for it. On the one hand he notes that the Churches do function and serve in effective partnership with one another. On the other hand, he implies that without a covenant the Churches will not be able to continue to do so. His reliance upon a false and implied logic exemplifies a plain truth of the matter: neither he nor anyone one has yet offered a serious reason for pursuing a covenant. Many have offered justifications for the concept of covenant per se, but no one has offered anything that approaches a compelling inspiration for this particular effort. This effort was initiated bureaucratically through the Windsor Report (even though the Primates themselves meeting at Dromantine expressed reservations toward the pursuit of a covenant) which was itself a response to the use of parliamentary bullying and the socio-politcally 'conservative' propaganda by emerging-world primates who were then and are still being funded and manipulated by hard-right American money. The Archbishop of Canterbury, apparently possessed of a curious notion of his role as somehow the head of a single global Church, now seems intent upon imposing this view of his own rights and privileges upon the wider Anglican Communion.

His address to the recent meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council help exemplify his position. "The Anglican Communion has never called itself 'a church' in its official documents and yet as a world-wide communion -- not just a federation -- it has claimed for itself and claimed particularly in relation to its ecumenical partners that it is precisely more than just an assembly of local churches that happen to belong to the same bureaucracy. It has tried to behave in a church-like way: recognizing ordained ministry, sharing sacraments, sharing teaching and to a large extent doctrinal formulations and canonical positions" (ENS May 5, 2009). Reality contradicts the Archbishop's claims. In fact, the Churches do not belong to the same bureaucracy. In fact, the Churches have not "tried to behave in a church-like way;" unless such behavior equates to the efforts of autonomous and autocephalous Churches working cooperatively on specific goals and ministries. If this is the case, then where lies the need, much less the inspiration, for a covenant? Further, it is a fact that the Churches of the Communion do not universally 'recognize ordained ministry, share sacraments, teaching, and doctrinal formulations and canonical positions' any more than, for instance, the Episcopal Church and the Lutheran Church. An American clergy person's ordination does not automatically translate to ordination in the Church of England; he or she is not an English priest and is not allowed to function as such without application for license to do so. As is true respectively for each Church of the Communion, the Episcopal Church in the United States ordains clergy in and only for the Episcopal Church in the United States. Any exception to the rule is exactly that, an exception. It may be that the Church of England, or just the Archbishop of Canterbury, would prefer it to be otherwise. Nevertheless, we are not a Roman Catholic style Church. The reality simply is not what the Archbishop describes in his remarks. In fact, the reality of the Anglican Communion is ecumenical in the sense of the ancient Church. Rather than trying to change this to recreate the Anglican Communion in the image of jolly old England or of the Roman Church, we should be celebrating the distinctive gifts that this venerable model offers the world.

It is, I think, manipulative and unkind of the ABC to imply that Churches who may not look favorably upon a covenant are somehow lesser in their faithfulness to Christ-like fellowship and ministry. Yet he does exactly this when he declares "that provinces of the communion that choose to adopt the proposed Anglican covenant when it is made available will be showing that they 'want to create a more intense relationship between them -- a fuller and freer exchange between them.'" (ENS May 12, 2009). He goes on to suggest that once a covenant is in place, then more will need to be added: "Others," he says, "are not choosing that (i.e. "to adopt the proposed covenant") and the difficult question is: what is the best and most constructive relationship between those who do choose and those who do not" (ibid.). He declares that with some Churches signing on and "others" not doing so, what will be needed then is "some other kind of structure with 'groups of Anglicans associated for different purposes in different ways'" (ibid.). Again, he implies something that simply isn't true. He implies that if all the Churches, rather than only some, will adopt a covenant, then all will be well. I suggest, to the contrary, that whether the adoption is partial or wholly Communion-wide, any adoption of "the covenant." will require a new structure. And, I suggest, the ABC fully anticipates exactly this.

The ABC's remarks strike me as a thinly veiled warning to those Churches that would dare consider non-compliance. Despite the fact that the Church of England, bound by its status as a national institution, is well ahead of TEC on recognizing same-sex civil unions, the Archbishop of Canterbury is singling out the Episcopal Church in the United States as an example of those likely "others" among the Churches. He suggests that we of TEC had best not dare to set aside B033 of our last General Convention and return to observing our democratically established canons forbidding discrimination around sexual orientation in discernment of a person's fitness for and call to Holy Orders. He claims that "'holding back' on the episcopal ordination of people living in same-gender relationships 'ought not to be seen as a denial of the place of lesbian and gay people in the life of Christ's body'" (ENS May 12, 2009). This twisted logic may make some illusory rhetorical sense. However, it denies the reality that 'holding back' is an autocratic assignment of a particularly and amorally defined group of people to a remnant margin. The Archbishop of Canterbury is issuing an official call for the Churches of the Anglican Communion to continue participating in official discrimination, and he does so for reasons that are purely and pathetically political.

Yet, he suggests that, should TEC ignore his endorsement of the moratoria, we will be demonstrating our choice "not to go down the route of closer structural bonds and [of] that particular kind of mutual responsibility" (ibid.). Does anyone see anything 'mutually responsible' about the ABC's circumvention of the Anglican Consultative Council's decision not to forward to the Churches the proposed covenant? For my part, I pray that TEC chooses exactly as the ABC uncharitably characterizes he fears we will do. The Archbishop's description of 'some other kind of structure' sounds very much like the one that is now being demanded by the self-anointed 'Anglican Church in North America' and their boundary-crossing foreign prelates. It also sounds like one that the ABC will be able successfully to sell to the English Parliament and the Queen. With "the covenant" as the fulcrum and the Archbishop of Canterbury (and thus the English monarchy) firmly in place as authoritative head of this new covenanted global Church, the new structure will resonate well with hard-dying English imperialistic impulses.

Watch for it. The ABC will continue to impose upon our conversations about a covenant his own vocabulary, speaking more frequently and plainly of the Anglican Communion as a 'Church.' I anticipate that he will use these terms purposefully, hoping that, after having repeated them long enough and often enough, he will have succeeded in creating a new perception of reality, replacing fact with fantasy, reason with dogma. Undoubtedly, the Archbishop will continue to tell us that the Anglican Communion is not 'just a federation', not merely 'an assembly of local churches,' hoping to train us to assume that there is more and that we should want it. He will then begin more overtly defining for us what that 'more' is. My guess is that he will soon begin to imply, and then overtly to tell us in no uncertain terms, that we 'are' already and 'historically have been' a Church, albeit in a unique way. We will continue to hear and see the same from all those whose sense of institutional inadequacy drives them similarly to try create an Anglican imitation of Rome.

My prayer is that the Episcopal Church in the United States and the Anglican Church of Canada, along with some of our fellow "others" of the Anglican Communion Churches, will not succumb. Institutionally, structurally, no Church of the Anglican Communion is an appendage of a global "Anglican Church". However, organically, spiritually, ministerially, and missionally, we are already united one to another, and with no further covenant that the historic creeds of the Church catholic. We are united not by virtue of our Anglicanism, which is secondary at best, but by our kinship in Christ. TEC and our fellow "others" need to lead the way in listening past the increasingly shrill demand for a covenant. We need to reject the use of rhetoric that includes talk of 'The Covenant,' as though such a thing is already established. We will, I pray, not be misled to assume that it is an accomplished fact. It is not. There is no such thing as 'The Covenant.' It does not exist, and language that speaks of it as though it does is inaccurate at best and deceptive at worst. There is only 'a' proposed covenant. And it is a proposal without any express inspiration. It is a proposal awash in desperation. It is merely a proposed covenant. And I pray that we will reject it as a conceptual artifact.

My first response:

You and I have differed before as to the nature of the Communion relationship and neither of us are likely to change. I would ask, though, that you reconsider the use of the term "funded and manipulated by hard-right American money." In the first place, it is demeaning to the Global South episcopate, implying their inability to discern motive and willingness to surrender principle for filthy lucre. Even a scholar like Miranda Hassett (a fellow presbyter of yours and with progressive credentials) concluded from her researches that conservatives (North and South) adopted their theological stance out of principle (and took seriously their own moral deficiencies).

The simple truth is that there are many "money trails," both liberal (the "new" listening process) and conservative. Isn't a simpler explanation that people committed to their faith are willing to put their money where their mouth is? When one thinks of those cases of the 1990s when people stole from the national church for personal benefit, it seems sad that things like Anglican Relief and Development (which, at some level, sought to provide alternative sources of revenue to Global South provinces that had refused TEC help) should be viewed in the same way.

Naturally you reject the "theological dogmatism" of ACNA and the disloyal opposition (if I may so put it) but you don't have to reduce it merely to power politics. If you read any economic article that Kendall Harmon posts on T19, you'll immediately see a lot of economic liberals come out of the woodwork; it's unusual to find a corresponding rush of economic conservatives on liberal sites (though there must be some).

Can we not just assume that there are two visions and that both are assumed out of a conviction of what the Gospel message implies? That's certainly how I view the progressive approach. It has its own logic; I just can't reconcile some of the premises with my understanding of Scripture.

Father Stockton's response:

The hard-right sources of American money are fully open that they are after political power. I don't underestimate the several Primates of African Churches and those of the Southern Cone. I have every expectation that they, too, know exactly what they are doing. If it were about anything truly more than power politics, then, pray tell, why are they adamant about the property? I'm quite sure that people on all sides are using the Gospel to convince themselves of the righteousness of their nefarious behavior. I'm just not sure that God is convinced. I'm quite that I am not.

My second response:

As far as the property is concerned (and while I think it perfectly legal, it wouldn't be my approach) I think we've inherited the Episcopal predilection with institutionalism - that property is one of the defining marks of church. Perhaps it's naivete on my part, but I suspect that if there had been greater willingness to concede Anglican identity to those departing we would have seen less resort to the courts (even if that meant abandonment of property), but the Presiding Bishop apparently didn't want that.

How is it that conservative money (and behavior) is always "nefarious" and liberal money (and behavior) never is? Miranda was in a perfect position to write a stinging expose of the "conservative conspiracy" (and when I saw the title of her book I thought she had), but did not. There are liberal projects funded (I lived in the Diocese of Washington for some years, so my money ended up going to things of which I did not approve) and liberal coalitions organized for General Convention and yet these always seem to be described as "principled." Surely you're not saying that majority sentiment is the ultimate arbiter of moral correctness?

I suppose if one reaches the point of seeing things in Manichean terms, then any language used to describe the "other" is acceptable, but most people I know in Pittsburgh are much more "gray" (as are, I suspect, most of the Primates). Shouldn't our objective be to find a solution acceptable to all, even if it involves accommodating the failings of those with whom we differ?

Many people on HOBD seem to assume that now the renegades have withdrawn, there's no cost in exacting whatever penalties can be imposed. Some of my liberal acquaintances would beg to differ. At our last chapter meeting, Lynn Edwards - PEP chaplain and one of the Pittsburgh pioneers of care for those suffering from AIDS - remarked that God had put on his heart to write Bob Duncan a letter of encouragement, even though he was no longer his bishop. Lynn is an unsual presbyter but I thought he caught the sense of ambiguity in our diocesan communities remarkably well.

Father Stockton's response:

By 'acceptable to all' would you mean that the Church would have done better to have found a way to tolerate both slavery and abolition? Should the Church have found a way to accommodate both inclusion of women in clerical orders and clerical discrimination against women at the same time?

And if you'll take a moment to catch your breath, perhaps you'll notice that in my response, which you've copied below, my comment is that "I'm quite sure that people on all sides are using the Gospel to convince themselves of the righteousness of their nefarious behavior." It seems you missed it, so let me emphasize my point that the operative word is "all." However, I'm willing to accept your implication that it is "conservative money (and behavior) [that is] always 'nefarious.'"

In addition, simply 'conceding Anglican identity' is not how truth and fact works. By that logic, why don't we simply call ourselves Roman? Why use the term Anglican at all? But the fact of distinction, and the nature of the particular distinction do in fact matter. Simply conceding that someone is what they wish to claim that they are, does not make it so; not to mention the fact that this approach is equivalent to delusional. What does real identity matter as long as we can all just claim to be what we wish? The Church as an institution AND as an organic community bears responsibility to those who have given to it in the past, those who give to it now, and those who may give to it in the future. People gave their donations of time and money to the Episcopal Church. Yes, they gave in large part to particular congregations, but they were congregations of the Episcopal Church, not of the Lutheran Church or some invented church yet to be named. Those people are owed faithful fiduciary practice by we who follow, we who have built upon and enjoyed the fruits of their giving. And if we now blithely give away Church property to the group that whines the loudest, dare we hope, much less expect, people to give to the Church now? Why would they? They would have glaring evidence before them of our unwillingness to treat their giving responsibly, and in accord with our own canons.

In conclusion, I note that it was he self-proclaimed 'conservatives' who enjoyed dominant influence when Gentiles were told by the infant Church that they were second-class members of God's Kingdom. The 'conservatives' in the Episcopal Church held dominance when slavery was in fact tolerated (remember: it was the Methodist Church, not the Episcopal, who came out during the Civil War and declared itself official opposed to slavery), when bigotry against black Americans was not only tolerated but also part official policy, when women who dared claim that God was calling them to Holy Orders were ridiculed into silence and departure, when people who had been divorced were rendered unworthy of full access to the sacraments, and until a few decades ago, when fags and queers were officially condemned. Certainly you are able to set forward specific examples of incidents of abuses of power by so-called 'liberals.' I challenge you to find an historic thread through the entire history of the Church that can be assigned to 'liberalism' and has caused the massive harm, in Christ's Name no less, that 'conservatism' has inflicted. You'll understand, perhaps, why I'm skeptical now of 'conservatives' cries of injury and offense just because they no longer get to dictate according to their self-serving prejudices.

Gray is fine, but it is only recognizable as such, because the black and white to which it is compared still exist. I don't think truth is measured by popularity. Jesus asked people to make a choice and follow him at a call. I give God thanks the he didn't waste his time trying to find a alternative that was 'acceptable to all,' even though those 'all' in his day believed themselves faithful to God.

My third response:

We could, of course, continue these exchanges indefinitely without convincing the other, so we'll have to draw a line at some point. However, since you raise a couple of interesting issues.

I did not mean by "acceptable to all" (a phrase I don't think I used) to refer to theological positions held, but rather an effort to find a means to recognize incompatibility and deal with it. With all due respect, you know that analogies with slavery and female ordination miss the point. After all, the Episcopal antislavery movement was birthed among those pesky moralizing Evangelicals who were determined to be countercultural. As to women's ordination, again about half the renewal movement (including those contrarian Pittsburghers) are on board with it.

The presenting issue - warped and distorted by all the wrangling - reflects a debate not confined to proof texts but embracing an understanding of sexuality and a theology of the body within the context of heterosexual marriage and procreation and most of the people I'm acquainted with believe that. Of course, there are frequent failures (mine included) but there is a sincere desire to try to practice what we preach.

I note that people like Louie Crewe have questioned whether most heterosexual conservatives actually lived up to their principles before they were married. Well I can't speak for anyone but myself, but I was married five years ago at the age of 34 and I was a virgin then. I don't hold this up as a great virtue (perhaps it was just lack of opportunity) but I certainly had to exercise restraint on occasion while engaged. That by the way.

The real issue is that of two widely diverging understandings of what is involved, whose proponents are much more consistent than the institutionalists in the middle. And, ultimately, one must be right and one must be wrong. The trouble is that there seems to be no easy way to cut the Gordian knot. If conservatives are right in their reading, then to accuse them of a lack of compassion misses the mark; if liberals are right, then to deny sacramental access (Marriage not the Eucharist) is erroneous.

If it is wrong to deny the local majority for innovation, it is equally wrong to deny the majority view across the Anglican Communion and the Church Catholic (at least I so believe). But even if you don't share that view, there is still an argument for a negotiated settlement in that there are many people - even perhaps in Fort Worth - who currently have friendships across the theological divide that will be poisoned and that could have consequences down the road (especially if your argument ultimately carries the day beyond North America). We can't turn back the clock but only deal with the consequences as best we may. The theological stances must remain, but we have it in our power to stop the legal juggernaut. Remember the "Barnburner" sobriquet applied to the extreme political abolitionists - they wanted to burn down the barn to get rid of the rats. Can't you see that unfolding in the here and now?

I did note your phrase about using the Gospel, but to me that was way removed from any sense of mutual recognition; more a sense of progressives "applying" the Gospel and conservatives "using" it as justification. My point was that both sides are using it consistently and in as principled a fashion as they can (with some exceptions on both sides). That was not what I inferred from your communication.

As far as fiduciary duty is concerned, what does that mean? Of course we honor the Church Expectant, but we also recognize that the church has evolved and grown over time (liberals even more than conservatives). So our fidelity is simply to the fact that they gave money to a body carrying the same name (actually, of course, not the same, since most gave to the Protestant Episcopal Church). Historic Anglo Catholic and Evangelical identities have vanished from those churches in which they were first manifested, while southern parishes, whose former members believed devoutly in social and religious segregation, now campaign for civil rights, and parishes that opposed the ordination of women to the presbyterate now have female incumbents. Most of the dead would never have given money to the Episcopal Church as currently constituted. That's fine, things change, but it's hardly an argument for keeping the property merely to comply with the wishes of the dead.

Why should one give in to the "most shrill" voices at this time? Because this time, unlike any other, there are facts on the ground - in the US and abroad - that promise a substantive jurisdiction in the Americas with or without Episcopal consent and because the issue under debate is fundamental - and acknowledged by liberal and conservative alike to be so. This wasn't true for the REC (most Evangelicals had either left prior to the rupture or chose to stay - the best analogy would be with AMIA).

You ask whether liberalism or conservatism has done more damage. Surely that in itself is a loaded question, predicated on one's theological perspective? Or, to put it another way, it depends on who is "right" in a transcendent sense.

I've always had a fondness for the Social Gospelers (countercultural to a man) and I can applaud those who led the civil rights protests (though I think John Allin got a raw deal). I do think Pike and Spong did great damage to doctrinal teaching of the church, but what I resent most is less their speculation than the Episcopal Church's surrender to prevailing cultural mores both on divorce (and conservatives have to answer for that too) and on abortion. As the author of a recent history of this diocese, I can tell you that what jumpstarted the renewal movement here were moves at several conventions during the 1970s to take a more pro-abortion stance. It is interesting that some of the more prominent advocates of same-sex inclusion (in its broadest sense) are also promoters of pro-choice perspectives. It does point to a rather selective view of human dignity where the rights of the most vulnerable are neglected (and yes, I know the counter-arguments).

If your position is that many conservatives are judgmental, self-righteous and frequently unwilling to dialogue, I would answer that this may well be true. The problem is that (a) the same holds good for many liberals and (b) when people talk of deeply held convictions they are apt to "sound" that way to the unconvinced. No doubt you resent your former bishop far more than Lynn Edwards resents Bob Duncan (and perhaps you have reason), but then I think of Andrew Smith's "raid" on St. John's, Bristol, several years ago and suspect that there are also conservatives with good cause to resent (or worse). History is not going to deal kindly with this period of our common life and how much better a legacy it would be if people like me could document a resolution that conceded nothing in essentials but recognized the good faith of all parties. None of us would be the poorer for that.

Father Stockton's response:

You are, I think quite right, that we are not to convince one another to change our respective opinions on inclusion of gay people and gay couples in the life and ministry of the Church. For instance, I believe that analogies with slavery and "female ordination"(?) are exactly to the point. With respect, to you and to Louis Crewe, whether or not you, he, or gay or straight persons anywhere at anytime have lived up to vows of fidelity matters not at all to the moral and spiritual right or wrong of a particular view. Just because someone does or doesn't keep his of her marriage vows, this has nothing to do with whether or not the concept of said vows is morally good and spiritually responsive to God. If practice trumps ideals, then let's quite prescribing behavior and just describe instead. I think Louie's point is that the self-proclaimed 'conservatives' (what they really are is for God to discern) are naming gay people and lesbians as intrinsically immoral, and that they would do well to challenge their own immorality before levying that charge against someone else. But again, practices hypocrisy does not nullify the verity or morality of a position per se.

As for your argument about fiduciary responsibility, let's suppose we extend that argument beyond merely TEC. By you logic, we should now turn over all property of the Church of England to the citizenry at large for their use as they determine, since the absence of most of Britain from Church life indicates clearly that the C of E is largely irrelevant in their lives. Now let's apply this logic to the Roman Church. The institutional Church holds title to the properties. The Church isn't simply invention our of thin air its duty to go to court and retain property that it owns. What's the mystery in this? If we want to go with squatters' rights are regards material property, we'd better be careful, since we'll be surrender the protection that the courts offer us in keeping what belongs to us. There are in place already, via civil law, processes for the selling of real estate. Dioceses and the Church as a whole need to pay attention to these. If a bishop decides that it would be prudent to sell a piece of property to a dissenting congregation, then let that bishop consult with the title-holder, the TEC holding a determinative share of that title, and with the proposed purchasers. I'd suggest also that the property be put up on the open market, as well, in order to secure a fair price. However, cries of injustice from those who wish to leave TEC but take TEC's property with them have no grounds in reality. One can sympathize with their emotional grief or resentment, but ignorance of the canons is no excuse for them to claim property that does not belong to them. Once donations are made to the Church, they belong to the Church. If people are doubtful about that, then they need to offer loans instead of gifts, and then not take the take credit for their donations.

As I did earlier, I do here again, concede that you can always find example of misuse of power and authority by so-called 'liberals.' You have done so again. However, I note that you offer no counterpoint to my proposition that the propagation of bigotry and groundless discriminations that pepper world and Church history stem from self-identified 'conservative' defenders of the faith. Yes, rejection of the Gentiles by the early Church, the horrors of the Inquisition, slavery, racial segregation, ordination of clergy who are women, and now official discrimination against gay people and anyone else whose manner of life might offend someone else are all examples of the influence of misuse of power by 'conservatives.' You will, perhaps, recall, that I've also challenged the self-serving hypocrisy of those calling themselves 'liberals' who are joining the call for waiting, for validating the bigotry of the Communion's bigots by TEC's participation in "the Covenant." These are the folks who themselves enjoy a place at the table, but somehow persuade themselves that it is conscionable to turn to those forced to remain outside and tell them, 'Hey, I'm on your side.' However, as loathsome a creature as he or she may be, the well-intentioned arm-chair liberal is merely a passive enabler of the aggressive bigotries of 'conservative,' bigotries that have plagued civilized societies and the Church through history.

I encourage you to re-read Martin Luther King, Jr.'s essay 'Why We Can't Wait.' He, like Ghandi before him, like Oscar Romero after him, understood that bigotry harms all, the bigot as much as the object of the bigotry. Knowing this, I find it unconscionable to label as Christian a position, like that of the Archbishop of Canterbury, that urges continued moratoria on offering the option of blessing of same-sex and on denying the constitutional consideration of someone for election to serve as bishop simply because that person's 'manner of life' may, possibly, perhaps, could, be offensive to someone overseas in another Church. Every major argument, i.e. tradition, scripture, historical precedent, social norm, and majority opinion, being offered now to justify continued bigotry and prejudice against gay people has been used formerly to justify similar discrimination against people of color, people of lower social status, enslaved persons, and people who are women. Aside from adjustments of the specific examples offered to suit the specific prejudice being defended, I suggest that there is very little you can do to deny that this is true.

Finally, I believe that, if you go back and re-read your previous message, you'll find that you mentioned seeking a resolution to the discord that is 'acceptable to all.' My response is intended to encourage you and others recognize that insofar as both sides, i.e. the Church and the departers, are claiming ownership physical property there is no solution that is acceptable to all. One will win this one, and one will lose. This is as it should be when it comes to intransigence born of and fueled by bigotry, don't' you think? It's past time for TEC to grow up and grow a conscience.

Out of the Mouths of Babes

I got this in a paper from one of my religious history students describing one of the consequences of Billy Graham's English crusades of the 1950s (I trust the sage of Grove Farm will appreciate it).

"John Guest was an Anglican who converted to Christianity."

Timely Words from Bishop Mark Lawrence

No matter how pressured we feel by the events around us, (and they are there to be sure—as individual priests and deacons, as a Church, as a diocese—within and without—and in each of our parishes); no matter how buffeted we have been by our calling—the weariness of our ministry; the hours of silent toil; those weeks when the Word seems silent; those Saturday nights when sermon work and study have yielded what seems like only a thin broth (we’ve all been there), and you plead with a seemingly cold heaven for a word to give to your people; when the faithful in your flock seem to have no patience with solid food and itchy ears for whatever is new; when you are heartsick from your own sin; parched and dry throated in your own personal spiritual desert—it is then you dare not forget that this ministry is given to you by the mercy of God. That is, your calling is not only rooted in the mercy of God, it has been given to you as God’s mercy—to you. And remember this: it is not only given to us who are ordained; it is the case for all who have been called into relationship with Jesus Christ—who have come to know his saving grace—the forgiveness of sins. We all have this ministry by the mercy of God. It is only the wonder of this mercy that can sustain us when we are tempted to neglect our duty, or grow weary in our work.

Certainly if you are an academic you can preach powerfully with an academic bent. If you are a poet you can preach with a poetic grace. God will honor what he has made. But you cannot seek to create a favorable opinion of yourself and at the same time preach the gospel. To be truthful with God’s word is to let the truth of Jesus Christ—his cross, his resurrection, his Lordship—take center stage. You see, we each face a decision. We can put ourselves on the center stage of our ministry and we will bring people to ourselves, perhaps for a season; or we can put Jesus Christ on the center stage of ministry and bring people to him for all eternity. But we cannot do both. They are mutually exclusive. We know well enough self will feed neither ourselves nor those we are called to serve.

Read it all at http://www.dioceseofsc.org/mt/archives/000402.html

Another Year, Another Chrism Mass

A year ago, I reported on the "Last Chrism Mass" in the Diocese of Pittsburgh. Of course, it was not exactly the last. This year, Trinity Cathedral - again in the spirit of our resolution - is hosting two Chrism Masses, one for the continuing Episcopal Diocese (today) and one for the realigned Episcopal Diocese (tomorrow).

Since I teach a class at Duquesne University on Tuesday mornings, I am not able to be present tomorrow, but I put in an appearance today. As near as I could judge there were around 35 priests and Bishop Robert Johnson in attendance. To my surprise, the laity present (all three of us) were invited to present the clergy to the bishop, prior to the renewal of vows, a pleasing touch in my humble opinion. (It's a nice point whether I actually should have have been doing the presenting, since I'm not yet clear to which body I belong, but then nor does anyone else at Trinity, so I figure it's excusable).

Bishop Johnson preached an irreproachable sermon, alluding to those presbyters from whom members of this body were now sadly separated. When he went on to talk of rebuilding the diocese (which obviously has to be done) I did feel he went a little over the top in making a comparison with St. Francis, but perhaps he merely meant to emphasize the magnitude of the task ahead. He spoke of the feelings of wonderment that most must feel at being a priest in this place at this time (he did not anticipate being in Pittsburgh a year ago, he admitted) and urged the clergy not to forget their calling in the passing anguish of the moment.

Among those present were many of the communion conservative clergy (some of whom I know personally and others by repute) to whom I feel theologically closest. It is nonsense, at least in this place, to see only sheep in one jurisdiction and goats in another. While I can often appreciate the logic of the federal conservative arguments, this doesn't translate for me into a belief that only in ACNA can one be faithful. At today's Mass there were present those who have experienced the agony of Gethsemane every day since realignment. May it be that those at tomorrow's gathering will be equally appreciative of what has been lost as well as what has been gained.

Pittsburgh's Diocesan History Now Available

The history of the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh through the General Convention of 2006 is now available for purchase from Wipf & Stock.

ENDORSEMENTS

Called Out of Darkness Into Marvelous Light is a scholarly, accessible and timely history of one of the most important forces in the present Reformation of Anglicanism and, in turn, of contemporary Western Christianity. Dr. Bonner examines the factors contributing to the realization of Dr Sam Shoemaker’s vision (that someday Pittsburgh would be “as famous for God as for Steel”) in the context of 250 years of Anglican witness in Western Pennsylvania. This book has relevance far beyond the ministry and mission of the particular Christian community it chronicles.

The Rt. Revd. Robert Duncan, Bishop of Pittsburgh; Archbishop-Designate of the Anglican Church in North America.

Jeremy Bonner presents a detailed, thoughtful, and even-handed account of the history of the Diocese of Pittsburgh, now central to struggles over Anglican identity and authority. Bonner’s work combines the satisfying weight of local history with the thought-provoking breadth of national and global implications. This is a fascinating and rewarding read for those seeking to understand the history of the “culture wars” within the Episcopal Church.

The Rev. Dr. Miranda K. Hassett, author of Anglican Communion in Crisis: How Episcopal Dissidents and Their Anglican Allies Are Reshaping Anglicanism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007).

In recent years when I have mentioned that I am from the Diocese of Pittsburgh some have responded by giving me a hug while others have (literally!) turned their backs and walked away. What has made even the mention of this diocese so polarizing? Jeremy Bonner’s detailed but readable study of the 250-year history of Anglicanism in western Pennsylvania sheds light on this surprisingly important epicenter in the modern story of Christianity in America and Anglicanism worldwide. Most local histories are relevant and interesting to those who call that place home. This volume should be much more widely read because this particular local place has become such a focal point both for conflict and for renewal.

Grant LeMarquand, Academic Dean and Associate Professor of Biblical Studies and Mission, Trinity (Episcopal) School for Ministry.

Becoming Icons: Trinity Cathedral’s Search for Graced Space

Today, members of the chapter of Trinity Cathedral, Pittsburgh, met for their annual retreat, seeking to discern the new fields of mission to which their Lord was calling them. No great novelty, except for the fact that attendees included elected representatives of the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh (Southern Cone) and the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh of the Episcopal Church of the United States of America and – seated next to one another – Bishop Robert Duncan of the Province of the Southern Cone and Assisting Bishop Robert Johnson of the Episcopal Church. Back in June, when we first passed our now infamous resolution pledging continued participation in both prospective Anglican entities, few would have imagined such a gathering, yet here, in the shadow of renewed legal rumblings in Pittsburgh, Trinity Cathedral continues her mission as mother to, as Bishop Duncan put it, “two children it both wants to prosper.”

For those outside Pittsburgh, our story may require elaboration. In the last decade we have lived a precarious existence, groping for identity as our congregation hemorrhaged members and maintenance costs steadily increased. Fewer and fewer people have been willing to navigate the confusing byways of Pittsburgh’s business district to join us in worship, while the pastoral needs of the local homeless population have taken their toll on the small body of parishioners with time to contribute to outreach. Maintenance-to-mission may have been the slogan of the Duncan episcopate, but it is been hard to get beyond maintenance when one has a structure of our size with which to contend. Now, as the recession slashes our endowment to the edge of fiscal viability, we are obliged to contemplate a dramatic change in vision.

In this context, it is excusable for outsiders to read our resolution as simply an effort to remain a viable congregation, while staying out of the present legal fray. Such is not out intent. Composed as we are of a blend of institutional liberals and moderates, communion conservatives and a few federal conservatives, we recognize that our resolution can be effective only with a degree of self-discipline. We are not Laodiceans. Our vision – “To Be a Missionary Cathedral Building Up a Missionary People of God” – embodies a commitment to the continued need for relationship between those recently parted by realignment. Both new ecclesiastical entities contain within them the DNA of the former Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh. Looking toward the future, we must still account for our past. The commitments to “to forgive rather than retaliate” and “to heal hurts rather than nurse grudges” are not legalistic boilerplate, but an attempt to live into the ambiguities of our recent division.

We emerged from our retreat with the belief that we have the potential to promote our vision, even if the prevailing climate would have us act otherwise. Meditating on Ephesians 2: 11-22, we came to fresh understanding of the reconciling work of Christ on the Cross. We saw once more the ability of Jesus to lessen the pain even of the hurts that have recently been inflicted and endured in this part of Pennsylvania. Again and again, we heard from representatives of the realigned and reorganized dioceses, talk of what could still be shared, of ways in which we might still be in relationship with one another.

Our first acknowledged task is to define our identity as a congregation, for we have a need to grow and be fruitful and without vision we most definitely will perish. We have to learn to suit our very limited resources to what is achievable, to use the spiritual gifts of our congregation to best advantage, and to identify those constituencies whom we are best placed to serve. All of this is, of course, the standard work of parish profiling, yet beyond those fundamentals lies a deeper and more challenging objective: to model Christ in such a fashion that non-Anglican Pittsburghers will no longer think of us as the denomination that’s always in legal battles and that the Anglican community will have cause to downplay the adversarial nature of the conflict.

For some – perhaps for many – what we are seeking to do may seem at best fruitless and at worst harmful, and yet there is no other congregation with the institutional history to attempt it. We are the mother church that John Henry Hopkins fostered and from which Alfred Arundel sought to project a vision of pastoral care to those who would never have considered becoming Episcopalians. We have fought with bishops and with each other and yet have endured though the many twists and turns of Anglicanism in Pittsburgh. In 2008, the cleaning of our exterior as part of the diocesan anniversary celebration saw Trinity Cathedral emerge from the blackened deposits that had accumulated in the course of a century of industrial development, to reveal the almost golden sheen that it enjoyed at its erection. As an icon for our soon-to-be-released diocesan history – “Called Out of Darkness Into Marvelous Light – it reflects the hopes of those who seek a deeper reconciliation than a mere equitable division of assets (not that this would necessarily be a bad thing). Ultimately, however, we seek only to live out the vision to which we believe we have been called, always aware that “Our Help is in the Name of the Lord, who Hath made Heaven and Earth.”

A Historical Response to Jim Stockton

My first post of 2009 is a response to a posting by Father Jim Stockton of Church of the Resurrection in Austin, Texas on the House of Bishops and Deputies discussion list (HOBD) on the dangers of endorsing the proposed Anglican Covenant. Subscribers to HOBD are asked not to publish postings without the permission of the author, but readers can still, I hope, get a sense of what is in dispute.

Update: Father Stockton has posted his original article in the comments section.

While the issues that Father Stockton raises are, for the most part, practical and theological, and, as such, not a part of my remit, I would like to take issue with some of his historical assertions.

One of the things that I, as a historian, find a little frustrating about the progressive position are the simultaneous assertions that Anglicanism represents as much an organic as a legalistic version of catholicity – which I think is true – and that because there are few, if any, examples of formal transnational structures, this is implicit proof that no one down the ages ever desired or anticipated them. If Anglican structures have historically been informal, undocumented and organic then there will inevitably be no paper trail, but that proves little about how people have anticipated the future.

Father Stockton asserts that historically there was never an intention to create a Communion. If he means there was never a proposal to create a curial structure, then I suppose he is right, but why is it that it was the American and Canadian bishops who pressed most strongly for Lambeth 1, at least in part to address the questions arising over Bishop Colenso? He further states that the American church never sought to sustain a relationship with the Church of England. Here, I believe he is wrong. The Episcopal Church in the early national period did have to live down its reputation for residual Toryism and disloyalty to the Republic and Bishop Hobart’s approach, as Robert Mullin has demonstrated so well, was designed to emphasize American Anglicanism’s detachment from statist projects, but I have read little that suggests that the Church, at least after 1815, had any other reason to downplay its English credentials.

The evidence from Pittsburgh is rather that the Episcopal Church saw itself as midwife to new immigrants from the British Isles. Our first bishop, John Kerfoot, was instrumental in establishing the notion of letters of transfer to be presented by English immigrants to Episcopal rectors on arrival in the United States. While there certainly are statements that imply a purely advisory role for the Lambeth Conference there are equally existential statements – by bishops and others – that seek to dispel the notion that members of the Episcopal Church belong solely to an American denomination. One might just as well say that any American reserve stemmed from the fact that a largely High Church body – especially after 1873 – viewed with some disquiet efforts to propitiate English Evangelicals, including such legislative instruments as the Public Worship Regulation Act.

I have no way of knowing what Father Stockton would consider “deep and abiding affection,” yet there would seem to be a fairly constant record of clergy exchanges and a strong sense of “Britishness” within the American Church that antedated the Second World War. Clearly this did not amount to a view of the archbishop of Canterbury as even a titular pope, but I think it implied something more than just a common historic point of departure. Anglo Catholics have always seemed good at sustaining transatlantic connections, and the Broad Church had the Social Gospel to share (Charles Gore was read on both sides of the Atlantic).

When Evangelicals started reconnecting in the 1950s and 1960s – John Stott’s visits to America and Billy Graham’s English tour were both part of the same phenomenon – they were merely doing what previous generations of American Anglicans had done. Where they broke with the past was in being more pan-Anglican than their nineteenth century forbears, most of whom had preferred to think in terms of a pan-Protestant alliance extending across the denominations. That is where the real difference between then and now is to be found. Contemporary Evangelicalism may be dismissed by its critics as outside the Anglican mainstream, but it is being shaped much more within an ‘Anglican’ world view than it was 150 years ago. Again, people may not like the Anglican Church in North America, but it is a very different entity than was the Reformed Episcopal Church when it was first formed.

Father Stockton may well be right, however, in his belief that voluntary federations are now inevitable. Those now fighting for a Covenant may well be seeking to preserve a catholicity that is unsustainable. But asserting that a high view of bishops and primates can be seen only as making the former “dictatorial headmasters of an infantilized laity,” also does less than justice to bishops of the past who would certainly not have understood their role solely as that of chief executive officer of their diocese. If apostolic succession is to have any meaning, surely it implies an episcopal charism in relation to matters of doctrine? I would strongly question whether even the most avid of nineteenth century proponents of lay democracy desired to hobble the authority of bishops to pronounce on matters of theological significance.

“The Church of England,” says Father Stockton, “never had a covenant. The Episcopal Church purposely has never had a covenant.” It might be more true to say that neither ever had a confession, but to insist that Episcopalians (and members of the Church of England) never thought in covenantal terms seems much more of a stretch. It would be interesting if other dioceses would take up the question from a historical perspective so that we might gain a deeper understanding of just what it was that American Anglicans believed in times past. It is most unprofitable for either side to project onto the Church Expectant a vision derived from present-day events.

The Work Goes On, The Cause Endures: Diocese of Pittsburgh (Southern Cone) Convention, November 7, 2008

With apologies to Teddy Kennedy almost thirty years ago, the second day of the special convention convened today to reelect Robert William Duncan as Bishop of Pittsburgh. "We've all been waiting so long," declared Christopher Leighton, rector of St. Paul's, Darien (Connecticut), a member of Trinity School for Ministry's first graduating class, who headed one of three visiting delegations from parishes outside Pittsburgh, and most of those present undoubtedly agreed.

Convention delegates agreed unanimously to make their selection by paper ballot. Prior to reading aloud the relevant statutes, the Chancellor quipped that it had been suggested "that we read this responsively by whole verse." Gladys Hunt Mason of St. Stephen's, McKeesport (a parish that has opted not to realign) presented the report of the nominating committee, which "unanimously and with great joy" recommended Bob Duncan for the position. There being no nominations from the floor, the Veni Creator Spiritus was sung and the ballot cast. It was announced that Bob Duncan had received 78 of 79 clerical ballots (one was invalid) and 100 of 100 lay ballots - blessed unanimity! Bishop Scriven read aloud a letter from Primate Gregory Venables commending the election as a "positive and significant step in the advance of the Gospel." Did the bishop-elect accept his election? Standing Committee President David Wilson inquired. "I have a few things to say," the bishop-elect replied.

He did indeed. After thanks to the Standing Committee for the 50 days (take note) that they had stood guard in his absence and to the diocesan staff, +Bob brought his wife Nara up on stage and commended her to our prayers. Given the Bob Duncan buttons that had made an appearance after his deposition, he suggested an updated version inscribed "He's Back!"

He spoke of the past, most especially of John Kerfoot, the first bishop of Pittsburgh who strove for reconciliation at the first post-Civil War General Convention, but also of the future. There is no time to wait to recover from recent traumas, he insisted, but rather we must get on with the mission. At the 1995 convention that elected him bishop, so many spoke of the extraordinary sense of the presence of the Holy Spirit, even when the diocese had been terribly divided. "We're not divided any more . . . we're free and without excuse not to do mission. Will you join me in the mission? Are you willing to do it?" He invited all those willing so to commit to rise. When all did, he observed quietly: "Then I consent."

There followed presentations both from the new parishes admitted in October and from some of the outside observers. The latter included Anglicans from Arkansas, Connecticut, Georgia (Christ Church, Savannah), New York, North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia as well a our "sister congregation" at Christ Church, Grove Farm. What we're doing, the Bishop went on, carries a cost, as witness the Pittsburgh priest recently expelled from Connecticut for voting in favor of realignment, but it served as a beacon for Christians throughout the world. Indeed, Archbishop Donald Wuerl of Washington (the former Catholic Bishop of Pittsburgh) had called him just before the convention to let Duncan know he would be praying for him.

Jenni Bartling, overseer of new church plants, spoke of how she had felt "postpartum blues" on behalf of her new congregations who had received only cursory attention in October. The four new congregations and three other plants over the past seven years testified that "moving forward in mission" was not empty rhetoric in Pittsburgh and the congregational leaders echoed her sentiments. From Seeds of Hope, Bloomfield a reminder that if you want families and children in your congregations you need to do child and youth ministry. From Grace Anglican, Slippery Rock, an emphasis on the need for constant prayer, which could turn a community of eight into a congregation of 150, most of them tithing and 40 percent organized in cell groups, and ten people considering ordination (five of them since the realignment vote). From Charis 247, Coraopolis, a reminder of the need to build community relationships (Practice, Pray and Partner). Finally, from Somerset Anglican Fellowship - this I really liked - a reminder that it is possible to leave everything except the people and still grow. "Getting rid of the building has turned out to be a blessing in our case," declared their spokesman and they still wish the 20 percent of the congregation who opted to remain with TEC well and continue to pray for their spiritual health and well-being.

And then the outsiders. Christopher Leighton from St. Paul's, Darien, where the renewal movement had some of its earliest beginnings, noted that his congregation was currently engaged in planting two new Anglican congregations and thanked his former diocese for its leadership. Art Ward from St. Bartholomew's, Tonawanda, New York, spoke from the perspective of a congregation who chose to leave everything behind and noted the "gracious" behavior of their reappraising bishop on the issue. This had been the year to choose, he said, and if staying was not an option, neither was litigation. Finally David Drake of Holy Trinity, Raleigh, North Carolina: "People who are wounded can still preach the Gospel . . . I had never seen people come to Christ in a church before."

Given the asides that had been dropped throughout these presentations, Bishop Duncan at one point took the stand to address the question of a new province. It was "very near" he said, and recognition might come as early as December. Certainly, it is hoped that a draft constitution will be presented at the December meeting of the Common Cause Partnership. Proceedings were closed with Geoff Chapman introducing a Sense of the House resolution that parishes and diocesan bodies prayerfully consider the Jerusalem Declaration as a standard of faith to be adopted at the next regular diocesan convention, should delegates so approve. On that note convention was adjourned with delegates admonished to sign the testimonials on Bishop Duncan's behalf required by the Province of the Southern Cone.

Notable and Quotable

There will come a time, God willing, when we can look back on these years with some measure of detachment and perspective, and consider ourselves wiser and maybe even holier for having lived through them. May that day be hastened.

Fr. Dan Martins

http://cariocaconfessions.blogspot.com/2008/10/naming-names-as-sadness-continues.html

Episcopal Dawn, Anglican Sunset: A Scholar's Reflections on Pittsburgh's Episcopal Experience

This lecture was delivered at St. Andrew's Episcopal Church in Highland Park,
Pittsburgh, on October 17, 2008. My thanks to Bruce Robison and all those who attended.

“The effectiveness of the Episcopal Church is hampered by its own peculiar faults.” So spoke the Bishop of Pittsburgh not in 1985 or 1995, but in 1955. “In some quarters it bogs down in ritualistic trivialities and dissensions over unimportant issues. In other places, it becomes deflected from its goal by what amounts to an idolatry of scholarship and biblical criticism. Or again, the energies of the Episcopal Church become drained off by the belief that the future of the faith hinges upon new educational techniques and round table discussions. Or the Church may become so broad and liberal that it agrees with everybody and stands for nothing.” [1] Such sentiments, it would appear, have a longer lineage than one might imagine from casual perusal of today’s newspaper headlines.

It is both a privilege and a pleasure to address you tonight on the subject of 250 years of Anglican and Episcopal history and witness in this comparatively remote corner of western Pennsylvania. History is being made and never more so than in the past five years as global Anglicanism has reeled from crisis to crisis and relationships between provinces, dioceses and parishes have been irrevocably altered. A mere 20,000 Christians we may be, but we enjoy a notoriety out of all proportion to our numbers not just in the United States but across the world.

I would like to begin with an expression of thanks to Bruce Robison and the Adult Programs Committee of St. Andrew's Church. I know of no better place to address some of the present ambiguities of our situation – less than two weeks from the historic vote on realignment – than in a heterogeneous parish that has chosen to remain Episcopal. Next in importance – though first in my heart – my wife Jennifer, who, in addition to being the principal breadwinner, has had to endure four years of married life in which “churchy” affairs have formed a frequent topic of conversation (or perhaps monologue would express it better).

To the newest Bishop of the Province of the Southern Cone, I am grateful both that he considered it worthwhile to commission an official history and that, having done so, he refrained from seeking to exercise editorial judgments. In the course of two years, the only criticism Bob Duncan ever offered of my work was that he would like to see more attention given to the earliest phase of Anglican mission work, a criticism to which, I suspect, even the most ardent progressive would have little objection. As a scholar, I cannot begin to express my gratitude for the contribution of the diocesan archivist. Lynne Wohleber’s commitment to archival preservation, despite the limited resources with which she has been gifted, is worthy of high praise. Finally, every pledging member of the Diocese of Pittsburgh contributed to the stipend that I received between 2005 and 2007, an addition to our household income that was gratefully received. I hope that when our history is published in its entirety by Wipf and Stock next year, all will feel that this was money well spent.

For me, this project has had both a personal and a professional aspect. I have been a member of Trinity Cathedral – which recently adopted a unique approach to the problem of governance in a post-realignment era – have served on its Chapter and have been a delegate to Diocesan Convention. Even those aware of my Communion Conservative tendencies may well be inclined to assume that the diocesan history is a puff piece intended to validate the course pursued by Robert Duncan in his years as Bishop. While I esteem Bishop Duncan and share many of the concerns that he has expressed over the years, I have had occasion to differ with him on a number of issues and have continued to entertain reservations about the wisdom of realignment even as I have come to accept its historical inevitability.

Those who read my account of this year’s convention proceedings will have noted how I prefaced it with an extract from the last chapter of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Return of the King, in which the Elves, accompanied by Frodo, Bilbo and Gandalf, depart into the West, leaving Sam to mourn their departure on the shores of Middle Earth. The scene amply captures own feelings as I watched the 2008 convention proceed to its denouement. If you prefer a Biblical analogy, consider that passage from Deuteronomy, where Moses, foremost among the Prophets, is denied entry to the Promised Land on account of his faithlessness at Meribah, even while the Lord permits him a vision of what will be.

And Moses went up from the plains of Moab unto the mountain of Nebo, to the top of Pisgah, that is over against Jericho. And the Lord shewed him all the land of Gilead, unto Dan, And all Naphtali, and the land of Ephraim, and Manasseh, and all the land of Judah, unto the utmost sea, And the south, and the plain of the valley of Jericho, the city of palm trees, unto Zoar. And the Lord said unto him, This is the land which I sware unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, saying, I will give it unto thy seed: I have caused thee to see it with thine eyes, but thou shalt not go over thither. [2]

In a touching pre-convention message, Joseph Martin, rector of Church of Our Savior in Glenshaw, wrote of how God had emancipated him from his fear of leaving the Episcopal Church, where all doubts boiled down to one essential question: “What will ministry life be like outside of the comfort, security, and status I had known all my life in the Episcopal Church? A question I had talked a good game about but never really faced seriously, and it was daunting.” [3] I have no doubt of the genuineness of his conviction and call, and yet I also do not doubt the convictions of those who find the view from the Anglican Pisgah as remote as did Moses. Since at least 2006 many diocesan leaders have preferred to stress the potential of new beginnings rather than lament what is, for them, already lost. Most of them, as Philip Wainwright, rector of St. Peter’s, Brentwood, so eloquently noted at St. Martin’s, Monroeville, have been engaged in an increasingly rearguard action for most of their adult life and perhaps welcome the opportunity finally to be free of constraint and conflict.

It is not the historian’s task to predict the future but rather to focus on what is passing. In some respects, the assertions frequently made in discussions of realignment over the past five years – that the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh has not changed its position, but stands where it has always stood – seem to me misleading. While the Episcopal Church in the past half-century moved a considerable distance from what church historian Robert Prichard has called the “Mere Christianity” consensus of the 1920s, [4] postwar Pittsburgh did not remain in ecclesiological stasis in the meantime. In a world where the definition of Anglican is increasingly contested – not least because Anglicanism no longer boasts a source of ultimate authority that commands universal respect – Pittsburgh Episcopalians have contributed their mite to redefining it. It is easy, too easy, merely to note the conflicts between the liberal minority in this diocese and their conservative counterparts, but ecclesiological conflict is not confined to simple liberal/conservative dichotomies.

If you doubt me, take Ohio River Boulevard to Sewickley, where you may stand in the lobby of St. Stephen’s Church and marvel at the throng that gathers to worship God in contemporary liturgy and praise music. Then follow the signs that point south and east to Charleroi, climb the steep Mon Valley hill and enter that shrine to working class Anglo Catholicism. Geoff Chapman and Bill Illgenfritz today, John Guest and Joseph Wittkofski forty years ago, practitioners of two traditions, both deeply rooted in the Anglican way and completely incompatible in terms of nineteenth century theology! And if we argue that both still express the essentials of the faith, then how do we account for those conservatives who today have chosen not to follow the path of realignment? Sometimes it is not the open opponent but “our companion, our guide and our own familiar friend,” [5] whose perceived betrayal hurts the most.

Renewal, at its best, begins with a consciousness of the Cross on which sinful thoughts and wills are crucified, a theology that stands in radical contrast with the liberal Protestant view famously – and critically – defined by the Neo-Orthodox theologian Richard Niebuhr that “a God without Wrath brought Man without Sin into a Kingdom without Judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a Cross.” [6] Sinfulness remains a universal constant, as Bishop Duncan pointed out at this year’s Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) in Jerusalem: “Over the last five decades,” he testified, “we have made more than our share of compromises when issues of Scriptural Truth were debated or challenged . . . Moreover, the witness of our personal lives has been scarcely better than the record of those whom we now forthrightly confront: divorce and remarriage, sexual sin, addiction, material possessions, careerism, children who wander far. Further to our shame, we have sometimes as orthodox battled one another – splintering into factions and sects, competing with one another for territory or adherents, even at times condemning one another – publicly proclaiming the Truth while privately operating for our own advantage. So it is not just the progressives who have allowed sin to masquerade as righteousness, but sometimes the orthodox as well that have disgraced, disrupted and divided the whole Anglican Communion.” [7]

For the last few years, I have been uniquely privileged as a historian, to write a work of historical context for an ecclesiastical organization undergoing the most profound transformation of its 142-year history. While I sat in a little side office and read issues of the diocesan newspaper from more than 100 years earlier, I could overhear conference calls with other Anglican Communion Network bishops (rarely the substance, unfortunately). From time to time the arch purveyor of diocesan propaganda – that is to say our esteemed director of communications – would intrude his head to inquire what tidbit of diocesan scandal from far-off days was currently preoccupying me. So I sat and recorded history, while all around history was being made. Four years ago, as my wife and I prepared to move to Pittsburgh, I knew next to nothing about the diocese (though I confess that Bob Duncan’s name was not entirely unknown to me). It has been an interesting journey.

What then of my title? Episcopal Dawn is, I hope, self-explanatory. With much of this region barely settled during the 1790s, the birth of the Episcopal Church and the emergence of an Anglican witness largely coincided. That pattern held in Pittsburgh for over 150 years: a strong Evangelical presence in the early nineteenth century gradually supplanted by a more Anglo Catholic outlook; an embrace of the Social Gospel – though hardly on the scale of some other urban dioceses – during the early twentieth century; and a period of contraction during the 1920s and 1930s.

Revival during the 1950s, while owing something to the positive demographic trends that sustained much postwar Episcopal resurgence, proved significantly different in Pittsburgh than in other parts of the Episcopal Church. The twin presences of Bishop Austin Pardue and Sam Shoemaker fostered the cultivation of a prayer-centered Anglican culture considerably more introspective and personally transforming than the more mainstream spiritual nostrums of Norman Vincent Peale. The notion of a local witness intended to convert the broader culture was thus birthed in Pittsburgh twenty years before the diocese had begun to gain its present notoriety in religious circles as a center of the parachurch movement. “It is encouraging,” remarked Bishop Pardue in 1966, “to see how many new and expanded ministries have developed within the Diocese. They are not Diocesan initiatives and for them the Diocese has no financial responsibility. . . . Yet, they are fostered by our clergy and lay people and by individual parishes and missions of zeal and vision.” [8]

The contributions of undertakings as diverse as the Pittsburgh Experiment, Trinity School for Ministry, the South American Missionary Society, Anglicans for Life and Rock the World Youth Alliance should not blind us to the realities inherent in this form of spiritual identity. What developed in Pittsburgh during the 1970s and 1980s was a profoundly different understanding of “being church” from that found in most Episcopal dioceses. Its strengths were and are undeniable. It meets the unchurched where they are and focuses on bringing them into right relationship with their Lord and Savior. It confronts secular culture, refusing to make concessions on matters of doctrine merely to conciliate the secularist. Finally, it undercuts the fatal tendency of institutional Protestantism to descend into bureaucratic obscurantism by keeping its organization simple and suiting its structures to the task at hand.

Such discipleship is of a high order and yet through it runs potential contradictions, the same that drove the Reformed Episcopalians into schism. Modern Evangelicalism operates within the context of a wider conservative American Protestantism. Sometimes the suggestion that “they’re not really Anglicans” can be understood as a coded attempt to remove conservative voices from the debate, but the present discussion of the “two integrities” on female ordination inherent in the realigning movement testifies to enduring tensions. “People have a deep need to express their faith in ways that are culturally relevant to them,” observed one Evangelical priest in 1992, “we don’t really need pipe organs and medieval dress and archaic language and music.” [9] Taken at face value, such observations reflect an obliviousness to the fact that an attachment to the “archaic” can be its own form of religious counter-culture, if it is a truly lived experience and not merely a liturgical performance.

Such pronouncements could be heard as early as the 1970s. The future Bishop of Central Florida, John Howe, then a fiery Pittsburgh-based Evangelical, caused some alarm in 1973 with his denunciations of established Episcopalianism. “Our churches,” he observed, “are ‘filled’ with baptized, confirmed, committee-serving, Sunday School-teaching, bill-paying, loyal Episcopalians who have never been reborn of the Spirit. And it usually isn’t their fault. How will they be converted unless we preach conversion? And why would we ever preach conversion if we shared [the] opinion that they don’t need it?” [10] In response, the Pittsburgh writer Emily Gardiner Neal savaged Howe as a “reformed Protestant minister, who has totally rejected Sacramental principles.” Let it be noted here that Neal was no liberal; an Anglo Catholic who had authored books on devotionalism, she was strongly to oppose the Episcopal Church’s decision to ordain women to the priesthood. [11]

It is in this context, then, that I would speak of Anglican Sunset, even as the more fervent proponents of realignment would doubtless prefer “Episcopal Sunset, Anglican Dawn.” Anglican identity is changing even as we sit here and we are party to that transformation. The global reformation is at our door, as postcolonial Anglicanism assumes the driving seat. For some, however, reformation and realignment increasingly take on the character of the view from Pisgah. There is an element of tragedy amid the promise, one which I think we would all do well to appropriate. Too often, the eagerness to be gone clouds awareness of the heritage that will be sacrificed on the altar of fidelity. It is sometimes hard to escape the feeling that the legacies of Kemper, Huntington and Brent may be unavoidable casualties of the realignment process.

What then has Anglican identity meant for Pittsburgh Episcopalians down the years and what does it mean today? We all claim the identity as our heritage, but in vastly different ways. “From its origin immediately following the American Revolution,” declared the rector of Calvary Church in February 2007, “until this date the heart and soul of this church is that it is an American church based upon democratic self-determination, American morality and not subject to foreign domination . . . . Since the 1780s, our church has been predicated upon American values and American morality. The American value system and the evolving American concept of non-discrimination should govern our future as they have our past.” [12]

“We call ourselves Anglicans,” the Bishop of Pittsburgh observed in Jerusalem in June. “Canterbury (Ecclesia Anglicana) achieved dominance in the first millennium . . . in the second millennium, the British Church (and her colonies, in turn) took the Gospel across North America, Australia, Africa, South America, Asia and to the ends of the earth . . . What is remarkable next, however, are the astoundingly British and overwhelmingly Western (Caucasian) systems that guide the thirty-eight Provinces of this worldwide Christian family as the third millennium begins. This ecclesiological framework has now become an obstacle to the story.” [13]

Here, then, is the classical division between what church historian Miranda Hassett recently called diversity globalism and accountability globalism, [14] in which proponents of the latter strive to shake off that peculiar relationship with the secular state which the Church of England bequeathed to its daughter church in the Americas in the form of the “national church idea,” a vision of Anglicanism as a communion of nationally distinct ecclesiastical bodies united in a common expression of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. From the mausoleum that housed the earthly residue of the national church idea has arisen a confessional fellowship spanning oceans and continents. “As long as the systems were working,” to quote Bishop Duncan once again, “as long as the systems were not obstacles to the story – there was little reason to question them.” [15]

So often is the notion of the birth of a new American Anglicanism established in 1789 brought to our attention that we sometimes forgot how much the Protestant Episcopal Church (as it was then known) retained a fascination with its English roots. When one considers how much of nineteenth century American religious history must be viewed through the lens of ethnocultural identity (German Catholic, Norwegian Lutheran, Dutch Reformed), it is not too much of a stretch to speak of an English Episcopalianism, understood less in terms of an immigrant church (though Pittsburgh could report a fair number of immigrant Anglicans) than in a mindset that continued to bind the church of a former colonial dependency to the mother church. “Ask them concerning the religion of their forefathers,” declared Joseph Doddridge, one of Western Pennsylvania’s first Episcopal evangelists, in 1816. “They all answer, they were Church people. Many of these people still retain an old Prayer Book as a venerable relic of antiquity. They still have a reverence for Baptism and the Lord’s Day. The Church, they say, was once pure and good, but it is now fallen, and, they fear, will never be revived again.” [16]

In 1875, Pittsburgh’s first bishop, John Kerfoot, swore to devote his energies to succoring the “old-country church people” drawn to the region by the promise of work in the iron and coal industries. It was Kerfoot who encouraged Church of England clergy to advise immigrants bound for America that the Protestant Episcopal Church was a constituent member of the Anglican family. He later persuaded Archbishop Tait of Canterbury to institute the practice of letters commendatory, issued by English clergy for their congregants to present to their Episcopal counterparts on arrival. [17] Several years later, on a visit to Greene County, Pittsburgh’s second bishop, Cortlandt Whitehead, met an Englishman who had resided in the district for thirty years without once seeing an Episcopal priest. Visibly moved, Whitehead baptized his six adult children and confirmed them together with their mother and the family then all received Holy Communion together. [18]

Awareness of the English presence was part and parcel of Pittsburgh’s Episcopal modus operandi well into the twentieth century. In May 1937, Trinity Cathedral hosted a service of thanksgiving for the accession of King George VI, attended by the British Consul in Pittsburgh. “I think, wrote one Wilkinsburg resident who attended the service, “that we have . . . a Consul who will mean something to us the British in Pittsburgh and one who will do his utmost for the cementing of good fellowship between the peoples of America and the British Empire.” [19] Only four years later, as Pittsburghers absorbed news of the devastation inflicted on London by the Blitz, the diocesan convention endorsed a resolution “extending its deepest sympathy with the Mother Church of the Anglican Communion in its titanic struggle to preserve Christianity for the world.” [20]

Continuity with the Church of England went only so far, of course. In the mid-nineteenth century, when the high church Anglo Catholic party was struggling to hold its own in England, its American counterpart was carrying all before it. In Pittsburgh, the first two episcopal leaders of the diocese helped consolidate the ascendancy of Anglo Catholicism over a 57-year period, despite a residual Evangelical presence. “Hearty Prayer-Book teaching and modes are everywhere here acceptable,’ Bishop Kerfoot warned a high church acquaintance in 1872, “but ‘advanced’ ideas and gestures make mischief right off. Such a man as you (sic) would call a little ‘Low’ who would be loyal to the Church and to this Diocese, and who is earnest and industrious, would do well.” [21] By the 1890s Evangelical influence was waning. They constantly asserted “the evil of High Churchmanship,” reported one observer, “and solemnly affirmed their opinion that every High Churchman was nothing more or less than a Jesuit in disguise.” [22] Symbolic of their decline was the defeat of efforts to prohibit the erection of a chapel or the appointment of a chaplain (whom Evangelicals feared would be a closet Romanist) at the new St. Margaret’s Memorial Hospital in 1890, a facility made possible by a generous bequest from Episcopal layman John Shoenberger. [23]

As the Progressive Era dawned, another English influence had secured a hold on the American Anglican imagination. [24] Promoted by such mainstream Episcopal leaders as William Reed Huntington, rector of Grace Church, New York, [25] the “national church idea” found favor with such Pittsburghers as Episcopal lawyer Hill Burgwin, who argued that the Protestant Episcopal Church should adopt the name, “The National Church of the United States .” Presbyterians and the Methodists lacked a national organization, Burgwin explained; Congregationalists and Baptists lacked a national territorial organization; and the Roman Catholics were as yet a missionary church. [26] Seven years later, the rector of Christ Church, Greensburg, voiced similar sentiments, while discussing a proposal to drop the word Protestant from the Church’s title. “[Why],” he demanded, “should this comparatively small branch of the one great Anglican Communion be the only branch that holds on to an epithet which . . . gives her a sectarian or denominational name?” [27] The popularity of the national church idea revealed the lingering attachment of many American Anglicans to notions of establishment, though its proponents sought to minimize this by suggesting that the Protestant Episcopal Church would serve merely as the vehicle for the reunion of the scattered strands of American Protestantism.

In the current political climate it has become increasingly difficult accurately to determine whether the national or global vision of Anglicanism prevailed in nineteenth (and indeed early twentieth) century America. Commenting on the 1899 ruling by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York against incense and processional lights, Bishop Whitehead emphasized that the American Church was in no way bound to take note of opinions generated by Lambeth Palace and further noted that the most recent General Convention had rejected a proposal to establish a board of arbitration under the presidency of the Archbishop of Canterbury to consider questions submitted by the national churches. [28] Whitehead, however, wrote from the context of a church that had neither the means nor the desire to implement such state-sponsored measures as the Public Worship Regulation Act. Elsewhere he seemed to imply a rather different understanding of global ecclesiastical relationship. “[One] does not belong to St. Peter’s, St. John’s, St. Matthew’s parish; nor yet to the Diocese of Pittsburgh; nor indeed to the ‘P.E.C. of the U.S.A.’” declared a diocesan newspaper editorial (almost certainly composed by the Bishop) on the Pan Anglican Missionary Congress of 1908. “We are not baptized into these puny and ephemeral bodies, but into [the] great Holy Catholic Church.” [29]

Of all the bishops of Pittsburgh, only Whitehead’s successor, Alexander Mann, spoke unequivocally to a largely American idiom for Episcopal identity. “[Our] influence is out of all proportion to our numbers,” Mann observed in 1933, “and when the Episcopal Church speaks in her corporate capacity, no Christian Communion in the country commands more truly the attention of thoughtful men. We are one per cent of the population, we are thirty per cent of college and university students . . . We are too Catholic for some of our members and we are too Protestant for others. We are told that our position is illogical, but after all what is it but the position of the family, where one son is an extreme radical and one is an ultra conservative, but where all the children are held together by the bond of a common loyalty, a common love and trust. [30] Mann’s episcopate, however, largely coincided with the social and economic upheavals of the Great Depression. By the time he resigned his position in 1943 (the first Pittsburgh bishop not to die in office) circumstances had radically altered.

It has become an axiom of contemporary progressive discourse that during the 1970s and 1980s the Diocese of Pittsburgh was subject to a takeover by conservative elements not indigenous to the region. In this view, the broad and tolerant Anglicanism of Bishop Robert Appleyard (elected in 1967) gave way to the polarizing and sectarian Evangelicalism of Alden Hathaway (elected 1980) and Robert Duncan (elected 1995). For this shift much blame is also accorded Trinity School for Ministry in Ambridge, whose graduates are accused of infiltrating many mainstream parishes in southwestern Pennsylvania. Such sentiments were voiced as early as 1982 in a meeting of the diocesan Board of Examining Chaplains, according to the then secretary, David Jones. “This entire discussion,” he wrote, “opened a floodgate of words and emotions concerning Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry. A number of strong feelings were articulated by a number of Board members: ‘I have a hard time even calling that place a seminary.” “They claim to be in the stream of Anglicanism – they aren’t.” “We shouldn’t send anyone there; how did the Bishop’s original policy change? There was a good deal of self-righteous indignation filling the room.’” [31]

For many progressives, contemporary Evangelicalism stands outside any recognized canon of Anglican belief. Writing in a recent online edition of Episcopal Life, Dr. Joan Gundersen of Progressive Episcopalians of Pittsburgh described the recently formed Somerset Anglican Fellowship, a breakaway group from St. Francis-in-the-Fields Church that opposed the latter’s decision not to realign, as “evangelical Presbyterians.” [32] While I do not doubt that many in that group would find common cause with conservative Presbyterianism, it is not clear to me that this disqualifies them from Anglican identity, if only because there are so few absolute theological benchmarks.

I still recall my amusement at reading an account of the landmark 1922 ordination service at devoutly mainstream Calvary Church, at which one of the participants was Frederick Emrich, a Congregationalist minister, marking the first time a representative of the Reformed tradition had participated in an Episcopal ordination. [33] Fast forward eighty-two years to 2004 and we find Bishop Duncan authorizing a bishop of the Reformed Episcopal Church to confirm 13 candidates at St. Michael’s Church, Ligonier, a parish whose conservative rector has since confounded many by refusing to participate in realignment. [34] For good measure, I would note the comment of one Calvary parishioner in the early 1920s regarding his rector’s homilies. “The trouble with Mr. van Etten’s sermons,” he complained, “is that they are just as good for the Baptists as they are for us!” [35]

What then has been the reality of Anglican identity here in Pittsburgh in the recent past? My thesis, couched in more formal terms in a recently published Anglican and Episcopal History article, is that Pittsburgh’s shift from Episcopal mainstream to Anglican mainstream – from national to global, if you will – has been at least as much an indigenous development as the product of alien influences encroaching upon the ecclesiastical body politic. What took place between 1953 and 2003 owed as much to Bishop Austin Pardue and Samuel Moor Shoemaker of Calvary Church, as it did to Bishop Alden Hathaway and John Guest of St. Stephen’s, Sewickley.

It is a proud boast of contemporary Evangelicals that they seek to transform secular culture, not to conform to it. Such an undertaking is achieved not by ghettoization but by active engagement with the world around them, with a mobilized body of laypeople willing to share their faith with unchurched members of their community. In 1987, the senior warden of Prince of Peace mission in Hopewell testified that he had been brought into the Church as a result of the efforts of a group of laypeople who had made weekly visits to local neighborhoods. [36] The revival of St. Philip’s Church in Moon Township in the mid-1990s to become one of the largest congregations in the Diocese was also the result of a sustained program of evangelism and outreach. “These evangelism relationships are like plants,” declared the then rector. “They need a little water every day. If they don’t get watered, they’ll die.” [37]

Such activity is impressive but hardly novel. As early as 1952, Bishop Pardue had organized a diocesan commission on evangelism to send out teams of laymen “who have experienced a transformation in their lives by Christianity” to visit parishes and discuss that experience. These presentations frequently led to the establishment of prayer and Bible study groups at the parish level. [38] Another innovation of the 1950s – the parish life conference – also became popular in Pittsburgh. “What I found,” declared one participant “was the Church as a living, freedom-giving, heart-warming Reality – something I always knew existed but which I had never experienced with such intensity.” [39] Certain clergy also won their bishop’s warm approval. “[Father William] Bradbury,” Pardue noted approvingly in 1954, “has trained his people [Christ Church, North Hills] to be missionaries, but he himself sets a fabulous pace. They tell me that he is at the doorstep of every new home before the moving van arrives and that he ceaselessly and constantly rings doorbells and talks to everybody within miles of the church.” [40]

Specialist ministries to neglected groups have also been a hallmark of the Evangelical subculture. Those who have assisted at Uptown’s Shepherd’s Heart Fellowship, a congregation drawn almost exclusively from Pittsburgh’s homeless, are all too aware of the remarkable bonds that exist between the lightly-compensated clergy and lay leaders and the materially impoverished body of the congregation. Upriver, in economically straitened Ambridge, we find the socially diverse congregation of Church of the Savior, which began life in the living room of a Trinity School for Ministry seminarian. This is not your typical middle class Episcopal congregation, but a body of believers inspired by something more than a concern for liturgical propriety.

The territory may have changed since the 1950s but the search for innovative ministry has not, nor the desire to meet people where they are. Walter Righter, seeking to enter the ordination process in the early 1940s, was warned not to do so until Pardue had been installed “because [Bishop Mann] will insist you have an income of $2,400 a year or he won’t accept you.” Righter soon learned that his new bishop expected all future clergy candidates to spend a year working in a mill or factory to gain an understanding of working class culture, yet Pardue was not content simply to give his clergy a taste of working class life but sought to break through the crust of Episcopal custom to embrace the neglected communities of the Mon Valley. To take the Gospel to the lapsed Catholics of Charleroi and Donora was as potentially radical a step as any Episcopal Bishop of that day might have contemplated. [41]

The men Pardue found to answer that call proved more than equal to the task. Consider the case of Michael Budzanoski, an officer of the United Mine Workers and a member of St. Mary’s, Charleroi. “We cannot say that one side has been completely good while the other was wholly bad,” Budzanoski conceded in 1949. “The modern historian knows there have been selfish men on both sides . . . The threat of Communism may be having beneficial results among us. We’re being forced to make our Christianity into a living ideology.” [42] Equally striking is the story of Dave Griffith, the Homestead Works employee and CIO official who organized a committee to monitor workplace conditions during the 1950s that brought together representatives from the workforce, salaried employees and management, encouraged his co-workers to hold regular prayer meetings, and brought them to gatherings at Calvary Church where they mingled with the sons of privileged Episcopalians. [43] Crossing the class divide is nothing new for Pittsburgh Episcopalians.

Protesting racial injustice has been a notable entry in the progressive ledger and Pittsburgh’s progressives have reason to be proud of the achievement. “The Church is all kinds and all conditions of people,” Bishop Robert Appleyard pointed out in April 1968, “Here in our worship, here in our fellowship, we receive God’s friends to go out to the world, to go out to witness to the love, a love that we said in the Creed and in the Lord’s Prayer – ‘Our Father.’ We are then willing to comfort the family existing in its slum tenement, its ghetto, terrified by guns, by fire, by riots, by cockroaches, by utter filth . . . We can identify with those movements that have to do with good government, fair housing to all everywhere, equal rights and the highest standards of education for everyone. We can pray for those whose lives have become so bitter, so empty, so disconsolate, that they are not able to get down on their knees and pray. We can extend the fellowship of the Church into the lives and homes of those who have been rejected, those who have been forgotten, [those] who have been overlooked for years and years. [44]

Progressives had reason to be skeptical of conservatives during the 1960s when a parish like All Saints, Brighton Heights, could host a white-flight school, [45] or when Father Joseph Wittkofski of Charleroi could publicly oppose a convention resolution condemning “Membership in Segregated Organizations.” For all that Wittkofski’s views were shaped by the ethnically segregated culture of the Mon Valley, the former Roman Catholic priest’s right-wing politics were anathema to many and prompted a dramatic walkout by the Holy Cross delegation at the diocesan convention of 1969. [46]

There was, however, another side to this picture, the first steps having been taken by Walter Righter in the early 1950s, when he accepted an African American couple into his parish in Aliquippa, despite the fact that the town was organized as a series of ethnically segregated communities (known as “plans”). There were black churches in Plan Nine, a vestryman told Righter, to which his rector responded that none of them were an Episcopal church. “Well Reverend,” the vestryman answered, “you’ve got yourself a problem,” but Righter insisted on accepting Garfield Shaw and his wife and lost only one family as a result. [47] Yet such ventures were not limited to Righter. In 1964, comfortable St. Stephen’s, Sewickley, accepted Richard Martin as a domestic missionary-in-training and invited him to conduct work in Pittsburgh’s Hill district, which had lacked an Episcopal presence since Holy Cross had left the neighborhood in 1954. From Martin’s work with drug addicts developed an increasingly active Episcopal ministry to the African American community. During the summer of 1966, younger members of the parish helped coach their African American counterparts at the local YMCA, with six of the latter becoming the first African Americans to play in a junior tennis tournament in Pittsburgh. [48]

It is worth noting, I think, that concern for minority interests has persisted into recent times. In 1993, while Canon to the Ordinary, Robert Duncan was active in helping establish the diocesan commission on racism, which sought to encourage Episcopalians to undertake such tasks as mentoring, patronage of minority businesses and working to ensure equal access to housing. [49] As bishop, he continued to support the commission’s work and to draw attention to racial division in the Pittsburgh community. [50] In 1998, the commission on racism organized the first diocesan Absalom Jones Day celebration at Trinity Cathedral, which was distinguished by seminars on inequality and injustice, racism in the workplace and affirmative action in college admissions. [51] In 2000, commission member Wanda Guthrie went so far as to praise Duncan for his role in encouraging minority leadership. “I’m amazed at how far we’ve come with the help of the bishop to fill positions in the diocese,” she declared. [52]

“Scholars agree that Jesus founded a religion based on the claim of His own divinity,” Bishop Pardue wrote in 1947. “It is quite evident that you cannot accept Jesus as a great and good man while at the same time you reject Him as the Son of God. No great and good man could be merely that and make such preposterous claims.” [53] The following year, Pardue criticized what might be termed the distinctively American problem of constructing one’s faith for oneself:

Modern destructive liberalism has contributed much toward this individualistic attitude concerning things that belong to God. The debunking of faith, the Bible, the Prayer Book, the Creeds, theology, the Sacraments, and the Church, have all made us more and more disrespectful toward the eternal verities and therefore we have created inadequate little philosophical codes of transitory values which we claim to be ‘a religion of my own.’ [54]

And there’s the rub. At times, are we not all guilty of such a charge? We can look to so many efforts within this diocese to move beyond selfish individualism. To Nancy Chalfant and the Verland Foundation; to Richard Davies and the pre-school for handicapped children at St. Peter’s, Brentwood; to Sam Shoemaker and the Pittsburgh Experiment; to Becky Spanos and Anglicans for Life (formerly the National Organization of Episcopalians for Life); to David Else and the Committee on Alcohol and Drug Abuse; to Lynn Edwards and the Shepherd Wellness Center for AIDS sufferers; to Whis Hays and Rock the World Youth Alliance. Pittsburgh’s Episcopalians have set out to change the culture over the past half-century, not conform to it.

Amidst all this innovation, however, a parting of ways has become ever more apparent between confessing Anglicans (of all theological stripes) and their Episcopal counterparts. It came as no surprise to me last night to hear Joan Gundersen confess that no parish from District One had expressed interest in remaining part of the enduring Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh. The Beaver Valley, secured long ago by John Guest and his successors, is solid for realignment. It is still ironic to recall that in March 1991, it was Bishop Alden Hathaway who was expressing doubts about “the absence of ecclesiastic theology and [lack of] conformity with Anglicanism,” [55] at Orchard Hill Church, (planted by St. Stephen’s, Sewickley, in 1987) and yet nine months later Episcopal Life could feature it as an example of successful church planting. Within days, Orchard Hill’s leaders had announced their departure from the denomination, the first but by no means the last to do so. [56] We can debate the merits of their decision, yet the central fact remains that the shift in theological perspective has occurred at both ends of the spectrum. If Bishop Pardue – hardly a raving fundamentalist – was aware of it in the 1950s, it is pointless to argue a case of overreaction half a century on.

Early in this address I stated the undesirability of a historian predicting the future. Now I choose to exercise the speaker’s privilege. As we enter the twilight world of multiple standing committees and mutual disavowal of the legal standing of each side’s authorities, I confess I am close to despair. One thing I will declare: a protracted war waged for control of assets, while unlikely to destroy communities in Sewickley or Moon Township, in East Liberty and Mt Lebanon, could spell the death knell of all too many small parishes, from Kittanning to Crafton and from Monongahela to Mt Washington. Where, I find myself wondering, is the spirit that will seek first the preservation of a Christian community no matter what its affiliation? I can imagine the question at the Last Judgment: “How did you vote on realignment?” and the immediate follow-up (regardless of the answer): “Following that decision, what did you then do to proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ?” What I cannot imagine is the question: “Whom did you sue (or against what suits did you defend) in order to preserve your property?” If this is an overly simplistic way of putting it, well . . . there’s a lot of that about these days.

And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books,according to their works. [57]

God grant that when that day comes we may all be found worthy of the task to which we have been called.

In closing, let me invoke one whose voice still speaks to us beyond the pejoratives and the pettiness of today, to the very heart of self-denying love – to Nancy Chalfant at that moment when her God and ours revealed that in her care for her handicapped daughter she was permitted to testify to the fullness of divine revelation and redemption:

I knew it must be God’s power, the power of the Holy Spirit . . . Oh, what hope I was filled with then! God’s power was real, and I was actually feeling it as it burned in my heart. I knew that he loved me and Verlinda and wanted her to be whole and well. I saw that I could be a channel through which that power could work, and I didn’t have to sit by helplessly as Verlinda grew in years but not in mentality. Jesus became real to me, no longer a shadowy figure living 2,000 years ago but a person to love and be loved now, today, a person who loved Verlinda, too, and who hurt when we hurt. [58]

If Pittsburgh’s Anglicans and Episcopalians seek a new post-realignment paradigm for relationship, they could hardly do better.

NOTES

[1] Convention Journal of the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh, May 10, 1955, 22.

[2] Deuteronomy 34: 1-4.

[3] http://www.churchworthfinding.org/Confessions.html

[4] See the discussion in Robert W. Prichard, “The Place of Doctrine in the Episcopal Church,” in Ephraim Radner and George R. Sumner, eds., Reclaiming Faith: Essays on Orthodoxy in the Episcopal Church and the Baltimore Declaration (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1993), 13-45.

[5] Psalms 55:14

[6] H. Richard Niebuhr, The Kingdom of God in America (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1937), 193.

[7] Rt. Revd. Robert Duncan, “Anglicanism Come of Age: A Post-Colonial and Global Communion for the 21st Century,” The Global Anglican Future Conference, June 18, 2008, 2, accessed on July 9, 2008 at http://www.acn-us.org/etc/2008/anglicanism-come-of-age.pdf

[8]Convention Journal, 24 May 1966, 38.

[9] Trinity, June 1992.

[10] Church and Community: Christian Social Relations Bulletin, October 1973, RG4A/2.3:1, Box 6DC, Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh (hereafter EDP).

[11] Church and Community: Christian Social Relations Bulletin, November, 1973, RG4A/2.3:1, Box 6DC, EDP.

[12] Revd. Dr. Harold Lewis and Florence Atwood to Rt. Revd. Katharine Jefferts Schori, February 28, 2007, accessed July 9, 2008 at http://titusonenine.classicalanglican.net/?p=18365

[13] Duncan, “Anglicanism Come of Age,” 4.

[14] See Miranda K. Hassett, Anglican Communion in Crisis: How Episcopal Dissidents and Their African Allies are Reshaping Anglicanism. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007).

[15] Duncan, “Anglicanism Come of Age,” 4.

[16] Revd. Joseph Doddridge to Bp. John H. Hobart, December 1816, in Revd. Joseph Doddridge, Memoirs, Letter and Papers: Establishment of the Church in Western Pennsylvania (n.d.).

[17] Convention Journal, June 9-10, 1875, 51.

[18] Convention Journal, June 8-9, 1887, 68-69.

[19] O. Smalley to Rt. Revd. Alexander Mann, June 7, 1937, Nancy K. Pushee to Rt. Revd. Alexander Mann, May 16, 1937, RG2/3.1, Box 6BP, EDP.

[20] Convention Journal, January 28-29, 1941, 14.

[21] Rt. Revd. Dr. John Kerfoot to Revd. Dr. Dix, November 1872, quoted in Hall Harrison, Life of the Right Reverend John Barrett Kerfoot, First Bishop of Pittsburgh Vol. 2 (New York: James Pott and Co., 1886), 493-494.

[22] Revd. George Rogers, “Recollections of the Church in Pittsburgh Thirty Years Ago,” 15, June 15, 1915, RG5/1.1, Box 1DP, EDP.

[23] Convention Journal, June 11-12, 1890, 30, 38-42, 45-46; Rogers, “Recollections of the Church in Pittsburgh,” 8-9.

[24] See Brooke Foss Wescott, Social Aspects of Christianity. (New York: Macmillan and Co., 1887).

[25] William R. Huntington, The Church-Idea: An Essay Toward Unity. (New York: E.P. Dutton and Company, 1870).

[26] Hill Burgwin to Editor of Church Standard, April 16, 1898, RG2/2.2, Box 3BP, EDP.

[27] Church News, April 1903.

[28] Church News, October 1899.

[29] Church News, March 1908.

[30] Rt. Revd. Alexander Mann, “Sermon Preached at the Consecration of TrinityChurch, Geneva, NY,” Memorial Day, 1933, RG2/3.1, Box 6BP, EDP.

[31] Board of Examining Chaplains Minutes, March 3, 1982, RG4A/2.1:2, Box 2DC, EDP.

[32] Episcopal Life, October 5, 2008, at http://www.episcopalchurch.org/81847_ENG_HTM.htm

[33] Church News, January 1923.

[34] Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, May 11, 2004; PEPtalk, May-June 2004.

[35] E. J. Edsall, Three Generations: A History of Calvary Church, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1855-1942. (Unpublished manuscript, 1942), 142.

[36] Diocesan Council – District X Minutes, September 21, 1987, RG4A/2.1:1, Box 1DC, EDP.

[37] Trinity, November 1996.

[38] Convention Journal, May 11, 1954, 41.

[39] Church News, May 1957.

[40] Church News, May 1954.

[41] Walter Righter interviewed by Jeremy Bonner, July 18, 2006, Tape A.

[42] Church News, May 1949.

[43] Helen S. Shoemaker, I Stand by the Door: The Life of Sam Shoemaker. (New York: Harper and Row, 1967), 130-32.

[44] Church and Community: Christian Social Relations Bulletin, May 1968, RG4A/2.3:1, Box 6DC, EDP.

[45] Church and Community: Christian Social Relations Bulletin, August 1967, RG4A/2.3:1, Box 6DC, EDP.

[46] Convention Journal, May 13, 1969, 16, 34; Church News, June 1969.

[47] Righter interview, July 18, 2006, Tape A.

[48] Church News, June 1965; Christian Social Relations Bulletin, November 1966, RG4A/2.3:1, Box 6DC, EDP.

[49] Trinity, December 1993/January 1994.

[50] Trinity, December 1996/January 1997.

[51] Trinity, March 1998.

[52] Trinity, October 2000.

[53] Church News, December 1947.

[54] Church News, January 1948.

[55] Standing Committee Minutes, March 18, 1991, RG4A/1.8, Box 10DRB, EDP.

[56] Standing Committee Minutes, December 15-16, 1991, RG4A/1.8, Box 10DRB, EDP; Trinity, February 1992.

[57] Revelation 20:11-12

[58] D. Chalfant, Child of Grace: A Mother’s Life Changed by a Daughter’s Special Needs. (Wheaton, IL: Harold Shaw Publishers, 1988), 30.