The Vexed Question of Authority

This is the text of a paper from which I will be speaking at the March 2007 meeting of the Organization of American Historians in Minneapolis. Questions and comments are welcome. I should stress that this is only a point of departure for me and I hope to explore these ideas in greater depth at a later date.

National Denomination or Worldwide Communion?

Ecclesial Authority, Anglican Identity

and the American Episcopal Church, 1953-2003

In the early years of the twenty-first century, with controversy and rumors of schism running rampant within the American Protestant mainline, the Episcopal Church, for so much of its history the embodiment of establishment values and good taste, has finally been forced directly to grapple with the hitherto unresolved nature of the authority by which it determines doctrine. The Church’s evasion of this issue for much of the twentieth century owes much to its eschewal of strict confessional statements and to the singular way in which Episcopalians have understood their status within the American denominational setup. During the fundamentalist-modernist debate of the 1920s, for example, Episcopal Church leaders finessed the issue of Scriptural authority by appealing to the authority of the historic creeds of the Church as the litmus test of orthodoxy, even though this merely postponed the crisis over authority. [1] Though active in ecumenical dialogue, moreover, the Episcopal Church for most of its history has refused to define Christian reunion in exclusively catholic or protestant terms, favoring the notion of itself as the “bridge-church,” resolving the disagreements of the Reformation era.

The changing nature of the debate in the years since the Second World War can be attributed to three main causes. The first relates to the shifting character of the American episcopate. Despite significant theological conflict during the nineteenth century, Episcopal bishops generally constituted a united front in their relations with the outside world. Following the model established by John Henry Hobart, Bishop of New York from 1811 to 1830, most eschewed active engagement in the political controversies of the day, whether in matters of economic justice or moral regulation, which helped sustain a sense of unity in the episcopal college. [2] The ecclesiastical authority implicit in the House of Bishops began to fall away during the 1960s, however, as a number of articulate and controversial bishops sought to substitute their prophetic witness for the corporate authority of the Church. Whatever the merits of individual actions (and not all were equally meritorious), together they weakened the ability of the House to affirm a doctrinal standard of any sort and strengthened the belief that doctrine was ultimately determined solely by the legislative fiat of the Episcopal Church’s General Convention.

A second contribution to the crisis of authority has been the rise of an Evangelical subculture within American Anglicanism. Although a minority within the Church as a whole, Anglican Evangelicals achieved spectacular successes in a number of parishes during the 1970s, which helped propel a process of denominational renewal that led to the creation of a new seminary and a number of influential missionary and evangelistic agencies. [3] In the process, they developed close ties with Evangelical Anglicans in other parts of the world, instilling in them a much greater appreciation for the catholic nature of the Church. Even as a majority within the Episcopal Church began to question the value of a relationship with the rest of the Anglican Communion, Evangelicals sought further to promote it.

The Evangelical commitment to the wider Anglican family demonstrated a commonality of theological outlook and an appreciation of the numerical concentration of the Anglican Diaspora within the nations of the Global South. The spectacular growth of this portion of the Church has evoked a new sense of responsibility on the part of Third World bishops for the doctrinal health of the Anglican Communion and sympathy for those in the United States whom they perceive as persecuted for adhering to traditional teaching. As the theological divide has widened, so the dissenting American minority has increasingly looked for leadership outside the boundaries of the United States, a complete disruption of the American paradigm of denominational conflict in which disputes tend to be resolved by the creation of a new sect. Episcopal congregations that have fled their Church in recent years have sought refuge under the oversight of foreign bishops in other provinces of the Anglican Communion. From the former’s perspective they remain Anglicans submitting to the duly constituted authority of the Church; from the perspective of their opponents, they have defied the only legitimately constituted authority permitted within the United States. Ironically, both cases can be made with a degree of plausibility, given the currently undefined status of authority within the Anglican Communion in general.

Holding Firm to the Sure Word:

Bishops in the postwar Episcopal Church [4]

The years immediately following the Second World War represented the high tide of what Ian Douglas has called the corporatist phase of the Episcopal Church. Under Presiding Bishop Henry Sherrill (1947-1958), the Church consolidated a national ecclesiastical apparatus instituted in 1919, opening branch offices in Connecticut and Chicago in the 1950s and moving to resplendent new offices at 815 Second Avenue in New York City in 1960.[5] The sense of connection between the religious and political establishment was perhaps the strongest that it ever been in the Church’s history, with future radical Paul Moore, elected Suffragan Bishop of Washington in 1963, attesting to the sense of kinship and trust that he felt towards those members of the Kennedy administration “who had had the same upbringing as I, who had attended the same kind of private Church schools and gone on to Harvard and Yale.” [6]

The corporatist mentality was not confined to the national scene and the pastoral component of many bishops’ lives was increasingly compromised by, in the words of one observer, “the exacting routine that governs the hours of a busy executive’s life.” [7] Professional staffs and commissions isolated bishops from the warp and woof of diocesan life, thrusting them ever more and more into circles of like-minded acquaintances. Compounding this problem was a significant theological shift within the Episcopal Church that owed much to the influence of New York’s Union Theological Seminary (UTS), which trained many of the faculty who went on to serve at Episcopal seminaries throughout the country. The most notorious UTS graduate of the era was James Pike, the charismatic dean of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City (a popular radio broadcaster), elected Bishop of California in 1958. Pike’s subsequent proclaimed unhappiness with classical Christian understanding of such doctrines as the Trinity and the Virgin Birth signaled a new phase in Anglican theology in America and one initiated by a bishop. Taken in conjunction with the emerging social witness of some of his episcopal brethren, it presaged a disintegration of the existing church order. [8]

Though Pike offered the first challenge to the status quo, it fell to John Hines Bishop of Texas from 1945 to 1964, to bring about the formal shift to prophetic leadership. A bishop with a marked distaste for administration, he was the dark horse candidate for Presiding Bishop in 1964, defeating the more establishmentarian Stephen Bayne. Known as a Southern bishop committed to racial reconciliation, Hines caught the imagination of those in the Episcopal Church desirous of breaking down the barriers of race and class. Challenging the episcopal principle of broad local autonomy, Hines pressed for a prophetic and Gospel-centered response to the challenges pose by Southern segregation and working class poverty in the urban North. [9]

If there was a flaw in Hines’ approach, it was that the structures needed to bring about such an all-encompassing transformation had either never existed or were in a process of disintegration. As early as 1958, critics were lamenting the absence of mediating institutions between the diocesan bishop and the national headquarters and that situation only worsened as the 1960s wore on. [10] Conservative and even moderate Episcopal opinion lamented the absence of oversight mechanisms that characterized such racial initiatives as the General Convention Special Project of 1967. [11] Collegiality of the House of Bishops was further undermined by the impulsive activism of such bishops as Paul Moore and by the conflict arising over the pronouncements of Bishop Pike, which culminated in his trial for heresy in 1966. The inconclusive resolution of the latter (the House of Bishops merely censured Pike) did nothing to reconcile Pike’s admirers (including his theological heir John Spong) with his detractors, and only served further to divide the House of Bishops into warring camps. [12]

The precedents established during the Hines’ years (1964-1973) generally informed the actions of the Church over the next thirty years. Although his successor, John Allin – a conservative Southerner opposed to the ordination of women – represented a step back in the eyes of progressives, [13] the overall mood of the House of Bishops favored a continuation of the struggle for full inclusion of those groups perceived as excluded. In the words of Paul Moore, “If a movement of justice or a trend, such as the feminist movement, is of God, the Church should become part of it . . . This is true not only of feminism, but of the peace movement, the ecological movement, and even the demands for gay rights.” [14]

The decision of three retired bishops to anticipate the decision of the General Convention by irregularly ordaining eleven women in Philadelphia in 1974 spoke volumes about the weakness of the Church’s authority although, as with Pike, the House of Bishops censured their brethren’s actions and deemed the ordinations null and void. In 1976, when the General Convention approved the ordination of women, the House of Bishops insisted upon a conscience clause that would protect those who, for theological reasons, felt unable to recognize the validity of female ordination. While for some Anglo-Catholics even this compromise was inadequate, it prevented a wholesale exodus of the more catholic-minded from the Episcopal Church, but it testified to the increasingly polarized understanding of authority that underpinned the ecclesial apparatus. [15]

With the retirement of John Allin in 1985, the stage was set for an increasingly bitter confrontation between the progressive majority in the House of Bishops and a vocal and talented minority of Evangelical bishops who in 1987 founded the Irenaeus Fellowship to uphold the primacy of Scripture and the Tradition of the Church. [16] Theological debates during the late 1980s and early 1990s became increasingly bitter and at the General Convention of 1991 these tensions spilled over into internecine strife. Writing of a 1992 meeting of the House of Bishops, Bishop Alden Hathaway of Pittsburgh prophetically commented: “Unless the bishops honestly and directly face the root issues that divide us, as they divide the church, no amount of process management or interpersonal management can establish working relationships that will provide the pastoral leadership our church desperately needs.” In 1995, ten conservative bishops brought charges against Walter Righter, retired Bishop of Iowa, who had ordained a non-celibate homosexual. The determination of a church court that Righter had violated no doctrine or discipline of the Episcopal Church convinced many conservatives that no appeal to Anglican tradition could now be counted on to sustain their theological beliefs. The stage was thus set for a complete breakdown of collegiality in the House of Bishops.[17]

Making Disciples of All Nations:

The Evangelical Challenge to Authority [18]

Complementing the erosion of institutional authority within the Episcopal Church was the emergence of an Evangelical Anglican community within the Church. The paradigmatic Evangelical event of the nineteenth century had been the departure of a vocal minority of Evangelicals to form the Reformed Episcopal Church and American Evangelicalism had been virtually eradicated by the 1880s. [19] Its subsequent revival owed much to the development of transatlantic relationships with Evangelicals in the Church of England. [20] The most profound influence was English Evangelical John Stott who, in contrast with the historic Anglican emphasis on the Creeds and the Prayer Book, emphasized the vesting of ultimate authority in Scripture. In contrast with much postwar theological debate that stressed the role of early Christian communities in the construction of the Gospel narratives, Stott laid stress on the revelatory and inspirational qualities of the New Testament. Significantly, he set much less store by denominational integrity than was generally the case in Episcopal circles. “[Evangelicals] deplore the proliferation of churches and sects,” Stott declared in 1967, “but at the same time we would point to the impressive unity of evangelical proclamation which exists in spite of it, and which is often overlooked.” [21]

With the encouragement of Stott, Peter Moore and Philip Edgcumbe Hughes organized an American branch of the Evangelical Fellowship in the Anglican Communion in the early 1960s. In response to the Keele Conference of 1967, which helped elevate the status of Evangelicals within the Church of England, the American branch was renamed the Fellowship of Witness in 1968 and based at St. Stephen’s Church in Sewickley, Pennsylvania, whose rector, John Guest, was a born-again English Evangelical. The Fellowship sought to offer Evangelicalism to the wider Church as a model for conversion and renewal, [22] with Philip Hughes maintaining that the Church should be a missionary church, since “genuine authority [is found in] the energy of evangelical witness throughout the whole world,” and indicting bureaucratic structures and centralizing tendencies within the Church as a threat to the autonomy of independent mission societies and newspapers. “One of the greatest threats to the Church’s spirituality today,” Hughes concluded, “is the pursuit of over-organization as a means to the achievement of unity.” [23]

Hostility to centralization in no way presupposed an aversion to institutions. In response to the increasing theological chaos within the Episcopal Church, which had prompted the emergence of a movement for general renewal of the Church, [24] Evangelicals promoted the establishment of the Church’s first new seminary in decades: Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry (TESM). Based in Ambridge, Pennsylvania, TESM’s goal was the preparation of candidates for Holy Orders faithful to classical Anglican teaching and committed to congregational renewal. [25] That same year witnessed the establishment of an American affiliate of the South American Missionary Society, which sent its first missionaries to Peru in 1978. [26]

The localization of the renewal movement to southwestern Pennsylvania was enhanced by the election of Alden Hathaway, then president of the Fellowship of Witness, as Bishop of Pittsburgh in 1979. Hathaway offered moral support to the fledgling seminary, even as he championed the renewal movement at the national level, but many bishops proved reluctant to sponsor candidates for ordination to TESM and few staunch Evangelicals were elected to bishoprics during the 1980s. [27] While opportunities for TESM graduates broadened considerably during the 1990s, the seminary’s counter-cultural message and its close ties to Anglican dioceses in Africa and South America, many of whose bishops held advanced degrees from TESM, proclaimed its ambivalent relationship with the already compromised authority of the national Church.

By the early 1990s, many Evangelicals viewed the long-term prospects for renewal of the Church as increasingly unlikely. Unwilling to countenance many of the programs of the national Church, some called for withholding of funds to national agencies. Typifying this view was Father James Simons (a TESM graduate) who in 1993 denounced the failure of the Church to play an active role in mission work of any kind. Simons further added that his active parochial ministry (including social programs) was doing a far more positive work than any initiative planned from New York. “The ministry of 815 Second Avenue may be viable,” he went on, “but who knows? . . . I have never seen a report that shows a correlation between what we send to New York and how lives are being changed.” [28] The same theme was proclaimed by Bishop Fitzsimmons Allison of South Carolina, when he complained that the national Church always placed a low priority on programs devoted to education, evangelism and mission. “Projects of transferred enlightenment or ingenuous claims to hear the innate goodness of another culture are poor substitutes for the good news,” the bishop warned. [29]

If such pronouncements revealed a separatist impulse, the deliberations of the 1998 Lambeth Conference pushed American Evangelicals toward solidarity with the overwhelming majority of Bishops from the Third World. [30] The Conference established benchmarks for Anglican witness that had not previously been enunciated in any coherent fashion and Evangelical Episcopalians could with credibility maintain that the views they held were now far more in harmony with the Communion-wide consensus that the majority view in the Episcopal Church. The late 1990s also witnessed the emergence of a number of renewal organizations determined to confront what they viewed as the erosion of the Biblical foundations of the Faith, most notably the American Anglican Council (1996). [31] Solidarity with like-minded Anglicans worldwide would increasingly come to define the Evangelical modus operandi.

No Other Foundation?

The Anglican Communion and Christian Unity [32]

The divisions that have driven the Episcopal Church to the position that it now occupies must also be viewed from the perspective of the shifting character of the Anglican Communion. In 1953, the Communion was very much a British affair, with most Third World bishops selected by the Church of England or the provinces of Canada, Australia and New Zealand. With the coming of political independence, an indigenous leadership took charge of the provinces of Africa and Asia. Most of the Third World provinces adhered to the same criteria for Christian ministry popular among American Evangelicals and expressed disquiet about the changes that were occurring within the Episcopal Church. [33]

During the 1950s and early 1960s, American Anglicans grew more appreciative of the new potential of their global family as a result of the Anglican Congresses that met in Minneapolis in 1954 and Toronto in 1963 and the appointment of an American bishop, Stephen Bayne, as the first Executive Officer of the Anglican Communion. A believer in the potential of a more united Communion, Bayne repudiated the idea of synodical authority inhering in the Lambeth Conference. “The authority of this meeting, while considerable as expressive of the common mind of the Anglican episcopate, is not coercive or synodical,” he declared in 1963, “A Conference may point the way to desired action; but the essential dynamics of the Anglican Communion remain in the several churches; and the conference retains its character as the central but informal occasion of common counsel among the bishops.” Bayne nevertheless promoted the concept that came to be known as “Mutual Responsibility and Interdependence in the Body of Christ” (MRI) and a number of American dioceses cultivated companion relationships with Third World dioceses that sought to come closer to meeting these goals. [34]

While the emerging ecclesial entities of the Anglican Communion necessarily reflected a great diversity in constitutional structures and understanding of the nature of the Faith by Anglicans worldwide, they generally shared a belief in the Biblical nature of the Catholic faith, the importance of the ecumenical councils of the Early Church to the shaping of Anglican theology, and value of worship according to the forms prescribed by the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. [35] Progressive observers like Ian Douglas argue that the search for new ways for Anglicans to relate to one another provoked a reaction within established power structures that disdained any effort to adapt Anglicanism to local cultural realities. “Pluralities and multiple ways of seeing the world are an anathema to modernity,” he writes, “and thus to many who have been in control of the Anglican Communion for most of its history.” [36]

What is debatable about such a proposition is that it assumes the submission of Third World church leaders to an amorphous privileged power structure in the developed world. Since 1988, the Global South has made it very clear that it has an understanding of authority that is universal and prescriptive. [37] While clearly unwelcome to many progressive leaders in the United States, it cannot be dismissed as an attempt by wealthy conservatives in the United States to undermine duly constituted authority structures in the Episcopal Church. [38] The steady collapse of Episcopal Church authority has only accelerated since Lambeth 1998, with the consecration of missionary bishops from the United States by foreign archbishops in 2000 [39] and the decision of the 2003 General Convention to confirm the election of Vicki Gene Robinson, a divorcee who had living openly in a homosexual relationship, as Bishop of New Hampshire,. By approving Robinson, the Episcopal Church publicly committed itself to a course that would dramatically widen the gulf between a majority of Anglicans in the United States and Canada and their co-religionists in Africa and Asia. It would lead to the commissioning of The Windsor Report – a concerted effort to come to grips with the problem of inter-provincial relations regarding disputed theological issues within the Anglican Communion – by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the increasingly vocal assertion by the metropolitans of the Third World provinces for a greater say in Communion-wide affairs.

At first glance, the Episcopalian contention over the boundaries of sexual expression (and the related issue of women in Holy Orders) would seem to be no different from that affecting most mainline American Protestant churches. In the case of the Episcopal Church, however, the debate over authority is not one that can be resolved solely at the national level, given the exterior relationship with other national churches sharing a common Anglican heritage. While many American Protestant denominations adhere to worldwide federations, member churches exert only moral authority over one other. [40] By contrast, the historic Anglican inclination toward conciliarism presents a considerable challenge to those who feel that the authority of the national church must not be compromised by any exterior relationship. [41]

For half a century the Episcopal Church has been moving toward a confrontation over the nature of authority. At issue is not simply a debate over theological interpretation but a widely diverging understanding of ecclesial practice. On the one side stands a largely progressive constituency whose views may be described as autonomist. For them, American Anglicanism is simply a subset of mainstream American Protestantism, adhering to democratic norms of participation and resolving theological controversy through consensus, if possible, but by parliamentary action if necessary. Bishops are viewed, first and foremost, as executive officers charged with the efficient management of an ecclesiastical enterprise. Fraternal bonds with the wider Anglican family are seen as of great importance, but always with the understanding that national church is final arbiter of what is proper Anglican behavior in its locality.

A minority – many of them Evangelicals – favor a confessionalist approach. Confessionalists understand Anglicanism (wherever located) as an expression of Western Christianity. While they do not reject the idea of church democracy, they have serious reservations about leaving determination of doctrine to the mercy of ephemeral parliamentary majorities and accord much greater priority than autonomists to the selection of bishops on the basis of their pastoral and, above all, theological gifts. For confessionalists, the Lambeth Conference takes on a particular significance because it is composed solely of bishops (progressive critics frequently indict the Lambeth Conference precisely because it has no clerical or lay representation). While there is room for diversity on such matters as liturgy, there is no such discretion when it comes to matters of doctrine. Seeking the approval of the other provinces for dramatic departures from the existing church order is less a courtesy than a necessity. While a process of “reception” can be constituted for ecclesiastical innovations that do not raise immediate objections, this cannot be entered into unilaterally. [42] Autonomy, for the confessionalist, remains heavily circumscribed in the areas of faith and morals.

NOTES

[1] 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), 28-35; William H. Katerberg, “William T. Manning: Apostolic Order and Evangelical Truth,” in Modernity and the Dilemma of North American Anglican Identities, 1880-1950 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2001), 107-134.
[2] On Hobart’s philosophy and influence on the polity of the Episcopal Church, see Robert B. Mullin, Episcopal Vision / American Reality: High Church Theology and Social Thought in Evangelical America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986). Such episcopal detachment frequently drove their more socially aware clergy to distraction. See Jeremy Bonner, “‘An Account of My Stewardship’: Mercer Green Johnston, the Episcopal Church and the Social Gospel in Newark, N.J., 1912-1916.” Anglican and Episcopal History 72:3 (September 2003): 298-321.
[3] It is interesting to compare this process with Joel Carpenter’s account of the shift from separatism to cultural engagement by American fundamentalists from the 1920s to the 1940s. See Joel A. Carpenter, Revive Us Again: The Reawakening of American Fundamentalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).

[4] [A bishop] must hold firm to the sure word as taught, so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to confute those who contradict it. Titus 1:9.
[5] Ian T. Douglas, “Whither the National Church? Reconsidering the Mission Structure of the Episcopal Church,” in Robert B. Slocum, ed., A New Conversation: Essays on the Future of Theology and the Episcopal Church (New York: Church Publishing, 1999), 60-78; Henry Knox Sherrill, Among Friends (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1962), 225-234; Robert Prichard, A History of the Episcopal Church (Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse Publishing, 1999), 229-234.
[6] Paul Moore, Presences: A Bishop’s Life in the City (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997), 207.
[7] Powel M. Dawley, The Episcopal Church and Its Work (Greenwich, CT: Seabury Press, 1955), 129.
[8] Robert W. Prichard, “The Place of Doctrine in the Episcopal Church,” 35-43; William Stringfellow and Anthony Towne, The Bishop Pike Affair: Scandals of Conscience and Heresy, Relevance and Solemnity in the Contemporary Church (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), 5-20.
[9] Kenneth Kesselus, John E. Hines, Granite on Fire (Austin, Texas: Episcopal Theological Seminary of the Southwest, 1995), 202-206, 232-3, 240-271. On Episcopal attitudes to civil rights, see Gardiner H. Shattuck, Jr., Episcopalians and Race: Civil War to Civil Rights (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2000).
[10] “The bishop who is a tyrant and the one who is weak and indecisive, are in the American Church deprived of . . . that moderating influence that in Canada and the other parts of the Anglican Communion come from the metropolitan and other bishops of the province.” Revd. Canon Albert duBois, “The Provinces: Groupings of Weakness Under a Canon of Straw,” Living Church, June 15, 1958. On institutional decline during the 1960s, see Douglas, “Whither the National Church?”
[11] Kesselus, John E. Hines, 272-286, 303-345.
[12] Moore, Presences, 173-91; Stringfellow and Towne, The Bishop Pike Affair, 57-2, 140-159.
[13] As John Spong charmingly put it: “John Maury Allin would succeed John Elbridge Hines. It was like having George Wallace succeed Abraham Lincoln.” John S. Spong, Here I Stand: My Struggle for a Christianity of Integrity, Love, and Equality (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1999), 232.
[14] Moore, Presences, 258.
[15] Prichard, A History of the Episcopal Church, 255-257; Spong, Here I Stand, 235-236. “Allin’s brand of leadership, concerned as it was with reconciling and placating, turned the House of Bishops into the Hall of Compromise,’ writes Walter Righter, “Efforts to compromise produced more tension than reconciliation.” See A Pilgrim’s Way (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998), 90.
[16] These included William Frey of Colorado, FitzSimmons Allison of South Carolina and Alden Hathaway of Pittsburgh.
[17] Prichard, A History of the Episcopal Church, 283-293; Spong, Here I Stand, 310-312, 388-390, 401-409; Righter, A Pilgrim’s Way, 35-37, 55-84, 100-114, 128-131. Hathaway is quoted in the newspaper of the Diocese of Pittsburgh. See Trinity, March 1992.
[18] Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Matthew 28:19.
[19] On nineteenth century Evangelicalism, see Allen C. Guelzo, “Ritual, Romanism and Rebellion: The Disappearance of the Evangelical Episcopalians, 1853-1873.” Anglican and Episcopal History 62:4 (December 1993): 551-577; Ibid., For the Union of Evangelical Christendom: The Irony of the Reformed Episcopalians (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994); Diana H. Butler, Standing Against the Whirlwind: Evangelical Episcopalians in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995).
[20] This relationship worked both ways. English Evangelicalism was at low ebb prior to the revivals led by Billy Graham in the early 1950s. One of the products of these revivals was John Guest, who later came to the United States and became a leading voice in Anglican Evangelicalism. See Randle Manwaring, From Controversy to Co-Existence: Evangelicals in the Church of England, 1914-1980 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 87-95.
[21] John R. W. Stott, “Jesus Christ Our Teacher and Lord: Towards Solving the Problem of Authority,” in J. I. Packer, ed., Guidelines: Anglican Evangelicals Face the Future (London: Falcon Books, 1967), 39-66. For a profile of Stott, see Roger Steer, Church on Fire: The Story of Anglican Evangelicals (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1998), 268-76.
[22] See http://www.episcopalian.org/efac/articles/efachst.html. On the Keele Conference see Manwaring, From Controversy to Co-Existence, 174-90.
[23] Philip Edgcumbe Hughes, “The Credibility of the Church: Understanding the Church in an Ecumenical Age,” in Packer, Guidelines, 147-79 (quotes on 151 and 157).
[24] Alistair E. McGrath, The Renewal of Anglicanism (Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse Publishing, 1993), 49-64. Renewal took both charismatic and non-charismatic forms. On the former, see Dennis and Rita Bennett, The Holy Spirit and You: A Study-Guide to the Spirit-Filled Life (Plainfield, NJ: Logos International, 1971). One of the popular texts for non-charismatics was Richard F. Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiritual Life: An Evangelical Theology of Renewal (Downers Grove, IL: Inter-Varsity Press, 1979).
[25] TESM was founded in 1976 and moved to Ambridge in 1978. Despite the Evangelical ethos that motivated its founders, a decision was made early in the seminary’s existence that mutual respect would be shown to the three ‘streams’ of Anglican liturgical practice: the Evangelical; the Anglo-Catholic; and the Charismatic. Thus, while TESM undertook to prepare women for Holy Orders, it also guaranteed that the consciences of Anglo-Catholic seminarians – who opposed the ordination of women – would be respected. See Steer, Church on Fire, 348-361 and Janet Leighton, Lift High the Cross: A History of Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry (Wheaton, IL: Harold Shaw Publishers, 1995).
[26] http://www.episcopalian.org/efac/articles/efachst.html.
[27] The exceptions were Terrence Kelshaw, a former TESM professor, and John Howe, rector of Truro Church in Fairfax, Virginia, who were both elevated to the episcopate in 1989.
[28] Simons’ article, entitled “Parish-Eye View of Ministry and Structure,” first appeared in the newsletter Anglican Opinion. It was reproduced in the diocesan newspaper. See Trinity, September 1993.
[29] Fitzsimmons Allison, “Evangelism: The Transformation of Trivialisation,” in Timothy Bradshaw, ed., Grace and Truth in the Secular Age (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1998), 119-27 (quote on 125).
[30] See the essays in After Lambeth in Mission and Ministry 11:2 (Spring 2000).

[31] http://www.americananglican.org/site/c.ikLUK3MJIpG/b.564139/k.A6A2/How_We_Began.htm.
[32] According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and another man is building upon it. Let each man take care how he builds upon it. For no other foundation can any one lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. 1 Corinthians 3:10-11.
[33] On the origins of the Communion, see Stephen Platten, Augustine’s Legacy: Authority and Leadership in the Anglican Communion (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1997), 57-72. The implications of the rise of Christianity in the Global South are discussed by Philip Jenkins in The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002).
[34] John Booty, An American Apostle: The Life of Stephen Fielding Bayne, Jr. (Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International, 1997), 96-119. The memorandum is quoted on 98.
[35] Philip H. Thomas, “A Family Affair: The Pattern of Constitutional Authority in the Anglican Communion,” in Stephen W. Sykes, ed., Authority in the Anglican Communion: Essays Presented to Bishop John Howe (Toronto, Canada: Anglican Book Centre, 1987), 119-143; David Hammid, “The Nature and Shape of the Contemporary Anglican Communion,” in Ian T. Douglas and Kwok Pui-Lan, eds., Beyond Colonial Anglicanism: The Anglican Communion in the Twenty-First Century (New York: Church Publishing Inc., 2001), 71-98.
[36] Ian. T. Douglas, “The Exigency of Times and Occasions: Power and Identity in the Anglican Communion,” in Douglas and Pui-Lan, Beyond Colonial Anglicanism, 25-46 (quote on 30).
[37] See http://www.globalsouthanglican.org/index.php for some examples. Some centralization of function has also taken place within the office of the Archbishop of Canterbury. See Platten, Augustine’s Legacy, 133-148.
[38] This is the subtext of James Solheim’s Diversity or Disunity? Reflections on Lambeth 1998 (New York: Church Publishing, 1999).
[39] http://anglicansonline.org/archive/news/articles/2000/000130a.html. One of those bishops was John Rodgers, retired dean of Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry.
[40] Some American denominations also have members in other nations. In the United Methodist Church, for example, 25 percent of the bishops, 20 percent of the laity and 15 percent of the clergy belong to jurisdictions outside the United States (which are also among the fastest growing). American-born leaders continue to exercise denominational authority, however. For statistics on the United Methodists, see http://archives.umc.org/interior.asp?ptid=6&mid=2119#8
[41] See The Windsor Report, Section C, Paragraphs 97-104, and the discussion of the nature of Anglican conciliarism in Frederick H. Shriver, “Councils, Conferences and Synods,” in Stephen Sykes, John Booty and Jonathan Knight, eds., The Study of Anglicanism (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1998), 202-216.
[42] Note the discussion of the process by which women’s ordination was accorded reception status within the Anglican Communion in The Windsor Report, Section A, Paragraphs 12-21.

Episcopal Vows and the State of the Church

This all started when I read Father Woodward’s post on the House of Bishops and Deputies discussion list, a post he subsequently reproduced on his website. While I remain unconvinced of the wisdom (and charity) of some of the actions (and comments) made by those with whom I am in theological sympathy, I have always tended to feel that my bishop (Robert Duncan of Pittsburgh) has been an honorable man in his dealings with those with whom he disagrees. (In the interests of full disclosure let it be noted here that, insofar as Bishop Duncan represents the Diocese that has hired me to write its history, he is my employer.) The wider issue of what the vows taken at consecration mean (to whom and to what they are made) also interests me and Father Woodward provided an opportunity to explore the topic. Father Woodward was kind enough to permit me to publish this exchange, so for whatever historical value there may be, I do.

Father Woodward queried my use of the term “Continuers,” which I intended as shorthand for ‘those who joined the Continuing Churches’ in 1976 and thereafter. My intention was not to express an opinion on whether or not they were right to do what they did, but to contrast their approach to that of Bishop Duncan. They could not claim (any more than the Reformed Episcopal Church could claim in the 1870s) that they represented the mind of the Church (understood as the Anglican Communion); Bishop Duncan can plausibly claim that he does. Of course, if Father Woodward is right about where the locus of authority lies, then Bishop Duncan is in breach of his consecration vows. Clearly, I do not believe this and our exchange illustrates the extent of the divide. At least we can both say that our dialogue was conducted with relative civility.

The original post:

The Breaking of Vows

Two images come to mind in reading Pittsburgh’s bishop, Bob Duncan, explain his reasons for seeking Alternative Primatial Oversight for his diocese, even though he knows and his attorneys know that such is illegal and completely against the polity of The Episcopal Church, which he has sworn to honor:

1. St. Paul in Romans 9-11 goes to great pains to assert that when God makes a promise, that promise is unbreakable. Otherwise God would be untrustworthy. The same is true with our Lord's promises of faithfulness to his vocation -- the Cross is preferable to the slightest deviation from his promise. When we break our ordination or consecration vows, we undermine the credibility of the Christian Church, the Body of Christ we were ordained or consecrated to serve. To do so, in two words, is to commit spiritual abuse.

2. When dealing with a married couple when one of the couple wants out to begin or continue with a different partner, the advice of professional is almost always the same: deal first with the stresses and anguish within your marriage -- and divorce if you must. Only then and only after a period of time should you consider any new affiliation.

My own conclusion is that Bishop Duncan should first deal with his ordination and consecration vows of loyalty to The Episcopal Church and its doctrine and discipline. He should have done so without involving his clergy or the people of his diocese. The honorable thing to have done would have been to take a leave of absence to sort things out with peers or spiritual advisors, then announce his decision to leave The Episcopal Church's ordained ministry because he could no longer honor his vows (without which he would not have been ordained or consecrated) or hold a private ceremony of recommitment to his ordination and consecration vows. Once separated from his vows, he would be free to seek out whatever succor or position he wanted in the church of God. Encouragement of one's clergy to follow anything but this process is, I believe, conduct unbecoming. From my own experience of leadership in the civil rights movement and the Sanctuary movement, I know how beguiling power and the attraction of opposition is -- those of us who have been more or less successful in resisting the evil hold of those things are fortunate while those who succumb end up doing more damage than any good they could have envisioned.

From: http://turningthingsupsidedown.blogspot.com/2007/02/breaking-of-vows.html#links

My comment:

Forgive me if I'm missing something here (and I will admit my own partiality) but could not one make the case that Episcopal Church leaders are just as desirous of having their cake and eating it as the Anglican Communion Network. Much of my reading suggests that, until very recently, the understanding of the Episcopal Church (at least by those who discussed theology) was decidedly catholic. (When the Continuers went out in 1976, one feels they did so at least in part because they sensed that the Communion would ratify reception of women's ordination and so Anglicanism, as such, would cease to be apostolic.)

Ordination and consecration vows, by their very nature, are made to a Vincentian notion of doctrine (if not of discipline). In other words, we are not sectarians (or at least so we have proclaimed for much of our history). We can debate to what extent TEC crossed the line last year, but we already have indications - and not just from the usual suspects - that the response was inadequate. The suggestion of infidelity to vows on Bishop Duncan's part implies that any effort to try and keep faith, in a catholic sense, with what the Church worldwide is proclaiming, is somehow insincere.

I can't help but feel that the insistence of Bishop Lee (and others) on deposing the clergy of seceding parishes sends its own message. Had Bishop Lee made the statement that he was doing so not because they had committed any offense worthy of deprivation from the priesthood but only because he did not believe that letters of transfer could be given unless the person in question moved to the relevant province, that would have been one thing. However, I have yet to see a statement of his attesting to their priestly and pastoral character. To the uninformed outsider it will appear as if they have been deprived of Holy Orders for conduct unbecoming.

That speaks volumes about how TEC intends to deal with provinces that disagree with them and also about the Church's claim to be still within the Communion. If Bishop Duncan were to do what you suggest, could that not simply be treated as further evidence of schismatic tendencies? If the validity of CANA is denied by the Presiding Bishop, why should such a move by Bishop Duncan be treated any differently? If one views the matter from a more catholic standpoint, Bishop Duncan is waiting upon the Instruments of Unity to make the necessary changes.

I don't think either side is free from impulsive actions and pejorative language, but until there is some consensus as to what - or who - constitutes the Communion, the present mess is likely to continue.

Father Woodward’s reply:

Thank you for your response.

The term "Continuers" is new to me -- I assume it refers to those who left The Episcopal Church over the issue of the ordination of women. I do not understand how the ordination of women would have anything to do with TEC being apostolic. Strictly speaking, of course, those ordained by our Lord were all Semitic. In that sense, if apostolic means absolute fidelity to the life of the very early church, we ceased to be apostolic in the early years of the second century. If apostolic means that we have been sent rather than self-starters, we continue to be apostolic whether we ordain women or not.

Regarding Windsor responses, the Windsor Report suggested a process, not a final exam. There are no requirements in the Report, though some have misinterpreted the document to include them. Your bishop swore allegiance to the doctrine and discipline of The Episcopal Church, not to what an African or South American primate wants it to be. That doctrine and discipline is of The General Convention of The Episcopal Church, not what any bishop wishes it were, instead. If we obey only those matters we agree with, there is no real meaning to obedience or vows. We are under discipline -- and it is under discipline of the General Convention of TEC, not a group of primates. If you can no longer accept the discipline of TEC, you are required to leave the church or to abandon your orders. TEC has been more than lenient with Bishop Duncan.

Bishop Lee went way beyond the bounds of charity in dealing with the clergy he eventually deposed. The record on that is very clear. They were in clear rebellion against TEC and, given their ordination vows and our Constitution and Canons, Bishop Lee had no other alternative. He has been generous and kind and has received nothing of that sort back from the 21. As you may know, Martyn Minns - despite his protestations - dumped those parishioners who did not agree with his leaving the church and undermining the continuing Episcopalians. Letters Dimissory, which bishops provide clergy entering other jurisdictions, are a serious matter -- and given the actions of the 21, attesting to their character and loyalty to TEC would have been scandalous and would have opened Peter Lee and the Diocese of Virginia to lawsuits.

My experience of Bishop Duncan is that he has expressed scorn for The Episcopal Church and with his bellicose language has declared war on TEC. To use the analogy of a married couple, he has trashed his spouse, calling her all kinds of names in public and attacking her and her friends, but does not want to divorce her until their is another woman willing to marry him before his first marriage is over. That lacks integrity in my world.

I am aware that Bishop Duncan has been a good pastor to many and that he is on fire for the gospel he believes. I know too many clergy, though, who have been mistreated and abused by his single-mindedness and by his disdain for those who believe differently.

One last note. There is no question about who and what is the Anglican Communion -- and who belongs to it. That is spelled out in great simplicity in our Constitution and Canons. Unfortunately, Bishop Duncan either disregards them or is unacquainted with their contents. Were he better informed, we all would be in a much better place.

The Real Falls Church?

A Response to an Editorial in the Falls Church News-Press

See http://www.fcnp.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=812&Itemid=34

Dear Mr. Benton,

With reference to your editorial of February 1, 2007, I am uncertain whether you are speaking as an Episcopalian or merely a concerned citizen. If the former, I hope that you appreciate that acts of conscience are not confined to the Church's progressives. We can debate the wisdom of seeking to retain church buildings, but I must confess that I am curious what Bishop Lee will actually do with the properties when - and if - he inherits them. It is not as if there are masses of churchless Episcopalians in northern Virginia currently seeking a building. Furthermore, The Falls Church (and Truro) are in the condition they are today largely because of thirty years of sacrificial giving by committed Evangelicals. They trusted Bishop Lee to hold the line in 2003 and he chose not to do so. When is he going to offer to compensate them for his change of direction?

Can you also clarify the civic issues? I would imagine that most large churches use their influence to improve access and space. Is there a qualitative difference between how The Falls Church has behaved and how other churches (or secular enterprises) work within the system? If not, it would seem that you are complaining only because The Falls Church expresses views with which you disagree, not because they have employed unethical methods. With regard to the public schools, I'm puzzled as to how they were able to make inroads. No religious body ought to be able to witness on school property. Do you mean that they have evangelized young people in malls and other public places? I was under the impression that freedom of religion included the right to evangelize. Or is it that you believe that "non-inclusive" churches do not enjoy such rights. If so, who has the responsibility for making that determination?

What do the overall voting patterns of the City of Falls Church have to do with anything? Would you not be shocked if a liberal congregation in Fort Worth were told that it should not be there because the Democratic inclinations of its members conflicted with the Republican sentiments of the city? What else does the separation of Church and State mean if not that? As for The Falls Church being a congregation whose members live outside the city, you must know that this has been a Protestant phenomenon in America for decades. The notion of the territorial parish has been a dead letter, at least since the Second World War, and even in Roman Catholic circles it is nothing like what it used to be.

You claim that The Falls Church does not "represent the character of the civic community in which they’re operating" and that the city must seek to become "famous for a welcoming and affirming disposition toward racial, ethnic, sexual, gender and lifestyle diversity." But not diversity of opinion? I suspect that during the Byrd era many local newspapers used somewhat caustic epithets to denote those civil rights protesters who did not "represent the character of the civic community in which they're operating." As Bishop Lee rather injudiciously put it some weeks ago, "Nigerian congregations occupying Episcopal churches [do not represent] the future of the Episcopal Church envisioned by our forebears.” (New York Times, December 18, 2006).

We are in a situation that pleases no one. There are people of good conscience on both sides who are being torn apart in the struggle. I ask merely that you do not descend to the level of dismissing any and all contributions that The Falls Church might make to your community simply because you do not share their Evangelical theology. Unless you wish to go down the road of proscribing any and all religious practice that does not reflect your personal values (which would certainly not be in line with historic American practice), this is merely a recipe for further disintegration of the social contract.

Sincerely, Jeremy Bonner

Beneath the Cross of Jesus

Beneath the cross of Jesus I fain would take my stand,
The shadow of a mighty rock within a weary land;
A home within the wilderness, a rest upon the way,
From the burning of the noontide heat, and the burden of the day.

O safe and happy shelter, O refuge tried and sweet,
O trysting place where Heaven’s love and Heaven’s justice meet!
As to the holy patriarch that wondrous dream was given,
So seems my Savior’s cross to me, a ladder up to heaven.

There lies beneath its shadow but on the further side
The darkness of an awful grave that gapes both deep and wide
And there between us stands the cross two arms outstretched to save
A watchman set to guard the way from that eternal grave.

Upon that cross of Jesus mine eye at times can see
The very dying form of One Who suffered there for me;
And from my stricken heart with tears two wonders I confess;
The wonders of redeeming love and my unworthiness.

I take, O cross, thy shadow for my abiding place;
I ask no other sunshine than the sunshine of His face;
Content to let the world go by to know no gain or loss,
My sinful self my only shame, my glory all the cross.

Elizabeth Cecelia Douglas Clephane (1830-1869)

A Pastoral Relationship: Trinity Cathedral and Shepherd's Heart Fellowship

The first Sunday after the Feast of the Epiphany marked the launch of a new pastoral ministry for the congregation of Pittsburgh’s Trinity Cathedral, as we embarked upon a partnership ministry with Shepherd’s Heart Fellowship in the city’s Uptown District. Shepherd’s Heart [1] remains one of the more innovative ministry arrangements to come out of the Diocese of Pittsburgh. Begun in 1993, as a ministry of pastoral care (both material and spiritual) to the homeless residents of Oakland (home of the University of Pittsburgh), it moved to its current location, just blocks from Pittsburgh’s Mercy Hospital, in 2006. Regular worship takes place on Sunday evenings at 5:15 PM, followed by a meal supplied in rotation by different congregations. Although many of its members are only nominally on the rolls, the ratio of average Sunday attendance to membership is one of the highest in the Diocese, and its members, though some of the poorest, contribute liberally from what they have.

Until now, Shepherd’s Heart has been open as a place of rest and refreshment from 8:00 AM to 12:00 PM on weekdays. Under the new partnership with Trinity Cathedral, it will now be open on Sunday mornings. The impetus for Trinity’s involvement was spurred by our recognition that many of those using cold weather shelters come to be with us on Sunday mornings because we are one of the few downtown churches willing to admit them during regular worship hours. Our dilemma has been that most (though by no means all) are looking for a safe environment (and shelters frequently cannot be so characterized) where they can obtain a few hours of slumber and do not wish to participate in regular congregational worship. Lacking a secure environment of our own, we wished to provide an atmosphere better suited to rest and food more nourishing than that commonly available at coffee hour. Shepherd’s Heart was willing to open its doors for this purpose provided we could supply volunteers.

While hoping for the best, I will admit that, as Outreach Committee chair, I prepared for the worst in the days leading up to January 7. I was to be pleasantly surprised. The only fly in the ointment came in the late morning when the temporarily rented van bringing Trinity visitors to Shepherd’s Heart (about three-quarters of a mile away) died without warning, requiring a call to AAA. Together with another Trinity parishioner and one of the assistant priests from Shepherd’s Heart, we hosted a gathering that peaked at around ten guests (I suspect that once word gets onto the street, attendance will increase). We offered food and coffee, distributed numerous items of clothing, talked with some of our guests and together read Morning Prayer. Pastor Jim Morehead led us in an interactive homily, during which one of our attendees proved to be remarkably well-informed in Holy Scripture. There are always moments in pastoral ministry that stay with you: mine came when one parishioner knelt to tie the laces of the shoes of a guest afflicted with arthritis. In that moment, the deeper meaning of the foot washing rite of Maundy Thursday became more than usually evident.

Life at Trinity frequently seems far removed from that of Uptown, and yet it is the neighborhood closest to the Cathedral. In the faces of those whom we served today, I saw men and women who, like me, have been saved by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Knowing how much “we all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” [2] we as a congregation should indeed be grateful that we have been given this opportunity to serve. When we pray with St. John “that we all may be one,” [3] we tend to think, especially in these troubled times, of our unity as Christians, and yet the message of today’s epistle [4] is that in Christ “there is no partiality” between the churched and the unchurched. Our ministry at Shepherd’s Heart bears the same message, the same search for healing and unity in Christ, the same redemption by grace through faith that is proclaimed at Trinity Cathedral. All that we do in the one place must inform what we do in the other.

Notes

[1] http://shepheart.com/luke

[2] Romans, 3:23.

[3] John 17:20.

[4] Acts 10: 34-35.

Lord Of All Worlds

Lord of all worlds, let thanks and praise

To Thee forever fill my soul;

With blessings Thou hast crowned my days,

My heart, my head, my hand control.

O, let no vain presumptions rise,

No impious murmur in my heart,

To crave the boon Thy will denies,

Or shrink from ill Thy hands impart.

Thy child am I, and not an hour,

Revolving in the orbs above,

But brings some token of Thy power,

But brings some token of Thy love;

And shall this bosom dare repine,

In darkness dare deny the dawn,

Or spurn the treasures of the mine,

Because one diamond is withdrawn?

The fool denies, the fool alone,

Thy being, Lord, and boundless might;

Denies the firmament, Thy throne,

Denies the sun’s meridian light;

Denies the fashion of his frame,

The voice he hears, the breath he draws;

O idiot atheist! to proclaim

Effects unnumbered without cause!.

Matter and mind, mysterious one,

Are man’s for threescore years and ten;

Where, ere the thread of life was spun?

Where, when reduced to dust again?

All seeing God, the doubt suppress;

The doubt Thou only canst relieve;

My soul Thy Savior Son shall bless,

Fly to Thy Gospel, and believe.

John Quincy Adams (1767-1848)

Why Not Leave?

From William Witt's Blog

"If I were ever to leave Anglicanism, it could only be with a sense of loss, that a noble vision of what it meant to be Christian had been tried for a few centuries, had produced some remarkable successes, and had brought much good to the world. Sadly, it had come to an end, and its loss would be much like that of those parts of the Byzantine Empire that were obliterated by Islam, or the Celtic Christians who faded after Augustine of Canterbury. For me, this would mean that the Church of Cranmer's liturgy, and Hooker's theology, and Donne's preaching, and Herbert's poetry, and Traherne's meditations, and Shakespeare's plays, and Butler's keen intellect, and Jane Austin's novels, and Wilberforce's and Gore's social vision, and Westcott's and Hort's and Hoskyn's biblical scholarship, and Arthur Michael Ramsey . . . . and Evelyn Underhill . . . and . . .C.S. Lewis, Dorothy Sayers, Austin Farrer . . . This Church would be gone forever. But wasn't it a glorious thing while it lasted!

So why not leave? I can only give my own reasons.

So, first. Leave for what? Rome or Orthodoxy would be the obvious choices. At least they are the ones that are usually offered. When as a young man I left the Evangelical denomination in which I was raised, I became an Anglican because I believed that the Reformation was a reforming movement in the Western Catholic Church, and I was convinced that Anglicanism had come closest to getting that job done right. For the Roman Catholics, Vatican II was successful just to the extent that it incorporated many of the changes that had taken place at some time or another in Anglican history. Liturgy in the vernacular? Check. Communion in both kinds? Check. Renewed emphasis on Scripture? Check. In good critical translations? Check. Religious liberty? Check. Focus on salvation by grace alone and reconsideration of justification by faith? Check. Married clergy? Well . . . Vatican II didn't do everything.

At the same time, one thing has not changed. As I have always understood it, one only has two choices about the Roman Catholic Church. One either must become a Roman Catholic, or one can not. There is no maybe about becoming Catholic. To become a Catholic, one is required to accept all of that Church's claims, including its claims about itself. If one accepts those claims, then one has no choice but to convert. But if one does not, one also has no choice. In that case, one cannot become Roman Catholic. And the Roman Catholic Church itself says that one cannot.

I am unable to bring myself to believe Rome's claims. Without going into details for now, as someone trained in theology (at a Catholic University, no less), I am convinced that the choices here are between Newman's understanding of the development of the doctrine of the Trinity and Barth's. And I think Barth was right, and Newman wrong.

Well, then? What about Orthodoxy? I want to claim the Greek Fathers for my own, of course—Athanasius, Cyril, the Cappadocians. I am even excited about learning from such lesser known lights as Leontius of Byzantium and Maximus the Confessor. And I recognize that the Eastern Church never accepted the authority of the bishop of Rome in the way in which Rome came to understand it. And I think they were right in that.

However, as with Rome, there are a number of things that Orthodoxy demands that I cannot quite bring myself to accept. Some are doctrinal niceties, for example, the somewhat abstruse distinction between the divine essence and energies. Or the doctrine of the filioque. I think the Western view is correct on both points. But at bottom, as I said above, I became Anglican because I believed Anglicanism was a reforming movement in the Western Church, and I
am a Western Christian.

Mine is the tradition of Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, but also of Hooker, and Luther, and Barth. A Western Orthodoxy that was able to embrace and incorporate this Western tradition (including the Reformers) as well as its own would be an Orthodoxy that I would find attractive, perhaps irresistible. But, to the contrary, Orthodoxy often seems rather to be suspicious of this entire Western tradition, including Augustine, and all who followed him. And, of course, such a Western Orthodoxy would look a lot like . . . historical Anglicanism.

As for leaving Anglicanism for another Reformation Church . . . what would be the point? All of the mainline Protestant churches are struggling with the same issue as is Anglicanism. The Episcopal Church is just ahead of the parade. The non-sacramental free church Evangelicals alone have stood their ground, and I admire them tremendously. But I left that tradition for a reason."

Extract from http://www.willgwitt.org/blog/index.cfm/2006/12/21/Why-Not-Leave

The Challenge of the Moment

Over at Titus One Nine, I've noticed a number of comments (on various posts) drawing parallels between the apocalyptic banquet scene in C. S. Lewis's That Hideous Strength and the present unravelling of the Episcopal Church. In a book so rich with eschatological imagery, are there not other moments in the story that could be drawn upon for solace in the present crisis?

What of Cecil Dimble's final appeal to Mark Studdock: "I can offer you no security. Don't you understand? There is no security for anyone now. The battle has started. I'm offering you a place on the right side. I don't know which will win." (223)

Or that powerful scene when Mark, the sociologist who has been steadily seduced by the dark forces inhabiting Belbury, is called upon to complete his 'education' by desecrating a crucifix. Interestingly, the salvific effect is not, at least at the time, couched in terms of a conversion experience:

"He was himself, he felt, as helpless as the wooden Christ. As he thought this, he found himself looking at the crucifix in a new way - neither as a piece of wood nor a monument of superstition but as a bit of history. Christianity was nonsense, but one did not doubt that the man had lived and had been executed thus by the Belbury of those days. And that, as he suddenly saw, explained why this image, though not itself an image of the Straight or Normal, was yet in opposition to crooked Belbury. It was a picture of what happened when the Straight met the Crooked, a picture of what the Crooked did to the Straight - what it would do to him if he remained straight. It was, in a more emphatic sense than he had yet understood, a cross." (336)

Most of those in the majority in the Episcopal Church with whom we fundamentally disagree seem much closer in character to Mark Studdock than to those corrupted by Belbury and ultimately condemned because of it. In the early pages of That Hideous Strength the reader is not encouraged to feel much sympathy for Mark and yet he is ultimately spared when the heavenly powers finally descend. This seems a much healthier perspective from which to view those with whom we disagree.

And then there is one of my favorite passages, where the small company of the faithful wait for the powers to descend - so much human emotion, but it is surely that of Mother Dimble with which we are to concern ourselves.

Down in the kitchen MacPhee sharply drew back his chair so that it grated on the tiled floor like a pencil squeaking on a slate. "Man!" he exclaimed, "it's a shame for us to be sitting here looking at the fire. If the Director hadn't got a game leg himself, I'll bet you he'd have found some other way for us to go to work." Camilla's eyes flashed towards him. "Go on!" she said, "go on!" "What do you mean MacPhee?" said Dimble. "He means fighting," said Camilla. "They'd be too many for us, I'm afraid," said Arthur Denniston. "Maybe that!" said MacPhee. "But maybe they'll be too many for us this way too. But it would be grand to have one go at them before the end. To tell you the truth I sometimes feel I don't greatly care what happens. But I wouldn't be easy in my grave if I knew they'd won and I'd never had my hands on them. I'd like to be able say as an old sergeant said to me in the first war, about a bit of a raid we did near Monchy. Our fellows did it all with the butt end, you know. "Sir," says he, "did ever you hear anything like the way their heads cracked?" "I think that's disgusting," said Mother Dimble. "That part is, I suppose," said Camilla. "But . . . oh if one could have a charge in the old style. I don't mind anything once I'm on a horse." "I don't understand it," said Dimble, "I'm not like you MacPhee. I'm not brave. But I was just thinking as you spoke that I don't feel afraid of being killed and hurt as I used to do. Not tonight." "We may be, I suppose," said Jane. "As long as we're all together," said Mother Dimble. "It might be . . . no I don't mean anything heroic . . . it might be a nice way to die.'"And suddenly all their faces and voices were changed. They were laughing again, but it was a different kind of laughter. Their love for one another became intense. Each, looking on all the rest, thought, "I'm lucky to be here. I could die with these." (323-4)

Can we say that of those with whom we share these transitory moments of uncertainty? Are our parishes, our prayer groups, our ministries so ordered? And if not, are we really so far removed from the environment of Belbury as we would like to imagine?

Extracts from C. S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength (New York: Macmillan, 1946).

Commentary: Primates, Parishes and Politics

The past couple of weeks have not been a good time for The Episcopal Church (TEC) in the United States. On December 2, delegates to the Convention of the Diocese of San Joaquin in Southern California overwhelmingly endorsed a constitutional change that would, if confirmed at next year’s convention, declare their diocese to be an ecclesiastical entity in communion with the Anglican Communion but no longer Episcopal. [1] On the other side of the country, members of seven parishes in Northern Virginia voted this week on whether to withdraw from the Episcopal Church, a move to which the Bishop of Virginia, Peter Lee, responded with dire warnings as to the likely consequences of such action. [2] The marked shift in the stance of Bishop Lee – who had previously come to comparatively amicable settlements with departing parishes – was attributed by conservative commentator David Virtue to pressure from the eminence grise David Booth Beers, chancellor (legal advisor) of the national church, not to allow wealthy congregations such as Truro and the Falls Church to take their property with them. [3]

At a time when the situation changes on a daily, if not hourly, basis, it becomes hard to guess how all of this will play out. A parallel shift already seems to be under way within the Church of England, where some conservative evangelicals have proposed a covenant that includes a pledge to no longer be “constrained by an over-centralised and increasingly ineffective control that is stifling the natural development of ministry.” Respect for the authority and jurisdiction of church leaders will become contingent upon their commitment to the “clear teaching of the Scriptures either doctrinally (for example, on the supremacy and uniqueness of Christ) or morally (for example, on issues of gender, sex and marriage).” Money and ministry will be allocated where it is deemed to be most conducive to evangelism and support will be extended to those whose relationship with their appointed and elected leaders is compromised by the latter’s deviation from the Church’s teaching. [4] As Bishop Tom Wright of Durham, a staunch evangelical and an author of the Windsor Report, has already pointed out this covenant demonstrates the same hostility to the catholic nature of the Church that has become evident in the progressive camp and is potentially as destructive. [5]

As we witness the frenzied cut and thrust of the present conflict, we might draw some enlightenment from Allen Guelzo’s superlative account of the events leading to the establishment of the Reformed Episcopal Church in the 1870s. [6] I suspect that many liberal Episcopalians (and some not so liberal) see distinct parallels: a small group of perfectionist Evangelicals ranged against a broad spectrum of mainstream opinion, incorporating a wide variety of theological perspectives and willing to allow a spirit of diverse opinion to persist; a conservative leadership disdainful of the traditional catholic understanding of constituted ecclesiastical authority and so convinced of its own righteousness that it lacks the capacity for honest self-criticism; and a body of clergy and laity so wedded to notions of personal conversion that they neglect the corporate pastoral injunctions of the Sermon on the Mount and the Epistle of James.

As with all parodies, there are elements of truth to some of these characterizations. There is a tendency toward evangelical perfectionism, a distrust of authority structures (even conservative ones) and, on occasion, a reflexive objection to certain types of social action because they are understood to be icons of liberal Christianity. [7] The recent controversy over whether the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) adopted by the Episcopal Church in 2006 represent a substitute for a commitment to mission, have become a debate about the motives of the sponsors as much as about the virtues and limitations of specific relief initiatives in the Two-Thirds World. [8]

Where the analogy with the Reformed Episcopal Church falls flat is in the altered global context. When George David Cummins launched the final attempt to rally Anglican evangelicals against the high church tide, he did so entirely within the context of an American environment. Evangelicals had already lost the grip on the denomination which they had enjoyed in the first half of the nineteenth century, due in large measure to their preference for foreign missions, while the high churchmen focused on evangelizing in the domestic field. As parishes were planted in the west and missionary dioceses received into union, the balance of power at General Convention steadily shifted in favor of the more ‘catholic’ wing. [9] Moreover, establishment evangelicals, like Bishop Charles McIlvaine of Ohio, balked at joining Cummins, whose clerical following was consequently composed largely of the young and restless. [10] The transitory success of the movement in the United States gradually petered out and found little appeal in the Church of England, where evangelicals exercised greater control over the levers of power.

Cummins was not – at least at the time - overly concerned with the principle of episcopal authority. For him, as for many low churchman, apostolic succession was less one of the essential marks of the Christian Church later defined by the Lambeth Quadrilateral (1888), [11] than a form of church governance, valued but not essential. The nature of schism within the Episcopal Church was defined by the example of the Reformed Episcopalians for over a century. For the next 120 years, departures from the denomination (except where they involved a transfer of allegiance to another Christian body) resulted in independent structures that claimed a place in the Anglican family but were not recognized as such by the Archbishop of Canterbury, until recently regarded as the acid test of Anglican authenticity (the Anglican Communion being composed of those national churches in communion with Canterbury). [12]

Since the dramatic consecration of missionary bishops for the Anglican Mission in America (AMIA) in January 2000 by two primates of the Anglican Communion, [13] the whole modus operandi of the traditionalist (or conservative) minority in the Episcopal Church has shifted. Even though the AMIA was not recognized by the then Archbishop of Canterbury and is not recognized by his successor, as a body in communion with Canterbury, it functions under the auspices of primates in Rwanda and South East Asia whose provinces are regarded as in communion. As we have struggled through the turmoil of the last three years, which began with the approval by the 2003 General Convention of the election of Vicki Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire, those who have dissented from the current course have self-consciously identified themselves not with an indigenous purified Episcopalianism (the standard course pursued in the Protestant churches for much of the nation’s history), but with the primates. Most of the recent departures and new church plants have held aloof from AMIA – with its controversial origins – and requested direct primatial oversight. In 2006, following what was generally conceded to be an inadequate response on the part of TEC to the findings of the Windsor Report, a number of conservative dioceses followed suit. [14]

More heat than light has been generated by the seemingly endless exchanges among conservatives and liberals about who is in communion with whom, who is still Anglican and who is not, and what power the Archbishop of Canterbury has to change any of this. Much of it would have little meaning absent the related issue of title to parish property (this will be addressed below) but there is also an important philosophical dimension not only for those within the Anglican family but also for those outside it. A year ago, Archbishop Peter Akinola of Nigeria, addressing the Hope and a Future conference in Pittsburgh, delivered his famous sally: “Are you Network or are you ECUSA?” While an effective rhetorical device for rallying the troops, it nevertheless posed a possible conundrum for those, including, it must be said, his local host Bishop Robert Duncan, who insisted that the conservative dioceses in the Anglican Communion Network continued to be part of the Episcopal Church. How, it might reasonably be asked, can such a circle be squared?

One answer may be found in The Fate of Communion, [15] the new work by Ephraim Radner and Philip Turner that makes the catholic argument for reform of the Church through institutional adjustment rather than impulsive separatism. Both authors make a plausible case for, as far as humanly possible, waiting upon the structures of the Anglican Communion – most notably the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Primates Meeting – to work through the process mandated by the Windsor Report. Until that has run its course and the status of the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada relative to the rest of the Communion has been formally determined, any alternative structure is premature.

Those liberals who feel that the decision of conservatives to remain within the denomination and yet not of it is disingenuous at best need to recognize the possibility that those involved are actuated by a belief that any departure must wait upon the Church Catholic to reach an appropriate determination. Equally, those primates who have been more than usually scathing about conservative American Anglicans who want to have it both ways should bear in mind that the primates themselves have yet to express a collective opinion about what they understand as the future shape of the Communion. To ask people to come out of the Episcopal Church completely, even if “goods and kindred” must be sacrificed, is one thing;, to ask them to come out with no clear indication of what ecclesiastical entity they are entering is quite another. In “The Humiliation of Anglicanism and the Christian Life,” Radner draws on the examples of the seventeenth century English Nonjurors and the “Refractory” Church of the French Revolution to demonstrate how renewal is accomplished less by purification of church structures than by “agony”:

This is the sort of thing, in other words, that we should expect to experience if “life in communion” is to be the church’s vocation and destiny in this world: purity was no guarantee of and granted no rewards; good motives did not preserve moral outcomes; organization led to schism, while confused confession maintained the marks of humbled flesh, “useful” to resurrection; faithful and simple labor, straight ahead, done in the face of persecution and rejection, is seed; holiness and patience is a flame; teaching and catechizing is a gift; where no one triumphs, God reigns. [16]

If the necessary course for some is to remain, what of those who have reached the point at which they feel that their ability to preach the Gospel is irretrievably compromised? As noted above, most of those who wish to retain an ‘Anglican’ identity have developed ties to the bishop of another province and are now members of the (non-territorial) Seventh Convocation of the Anglican Communion Network (whose moderator, Robert Duncan, is Bishop of Pittsburgh). Thus, in the same way that the Episcopal Church currently occupies a grey area within the life of the Anglican Communion, so the Seventh Convocation churches, while still under their extra-territorial primates, occupy a similar grey area on the American scene.

If the departing congregation – or portion of a congregation – simply removes bodily from its current premises, problems do not arise; the issue is when it seeks to retain its property. At the most basic level, it is clearly absurd to look into the original intent of the founders, as it is doubtful if most of those involved would have approved of recent innovations in church practice; appeals by bishops to the idea that property was bequeathed to the Episcopal Church ignore the fact that such bequests were for the Episcopal Church, as it then was. In the situation that we face today, the only safe ground is to deal with the community of faith as it currently exists. Parishes where the majority is narrowly in favor of secession are unlikely to want to contest the issue of property. Pragmatism and Christian charity alike dictate departure and in the case of an aging structure the new congregation will be freed from the burden of expending an ever-increasing proportion of its resources on plant maintenance.

The problem arises with congregations that are products of the evangelical renewal movement that began during the 1970s. These can either be long-established traditional parishes that underwent a dramatic shift in orientation (such as Truro or St. Stephen’s, Sewickley in Pittsburgh) or plants like Christ Church, Plano, founded in 1985, which severed its ties with the Diocese of Dallas and TEC in September. All of these experienced dramatic growth in membership and material resources (which included a related benefit for the Episcopal Church until withholding in the 1990s reduced funding of the national church by evangelicals to a trickle) precisely by adopting methods of evangelization and spiritual formation in which most of TEC, whether by accident or design, expressed little interest. Part of the value of the church plants of these congregations reflects an active response to the Great Commission in which most Episcopal churches have failed to participate. At the very least, these congregations are entitled to compensation for the “value added” to their property by their labors.

The dissenting parishes do have obligations, however. First and foremost, is their obligation to the minority within their congregation, however small. If conservatives have been disappointed in expecting TEC to acknowledge its obligations to the Anglican Communion, they have no license thereby to disregard those who expected their congregation to remain within TEC. It will be essential to reach a settlement that provides for the latter’s pastoral care. Beyond this, are any financial obligations to their former diocese, all of which must assuredly be repaid. It would a gesture of good faith, finally, for congregations to make some commitment to their former bishop as to their future health as a community. Should they proceed to wither on the vine or dissolve into factionalism – the best measure of failure to keep the things of God clearly in view – then the bishop should have the right to reclaim the property.

What is evident is that most of the evangelical plants so described will go out en masse, and there is no bishop anywhere in the United States who has too many people and too few buildings. The watchword for the last thirty years from San Diego to Maine has been closing and consolidation of parishes. It seems almost certain that any bishop inheriting a property these days will, at best, keep it open for a year or two with a skeleton congregation and then will have no choice but to sell it. Unless one honestly believes that the seceders are not Christians as well as not Anglicans, the net result will be one Christian community fewer and the money raised is most unlikely to be deployed into the planting of a new parish. Perhaps those set to lose their property should try and force their bishop to commit either to keep the building open for at least ten years or to use any money raised solely for the purposes of church planting!

Notes

[1] For the text, see http://surrounded.classicalanglican.net/?p=71

[2] While many of the results will be announced tomorrow, after a week of voting, the lopsided vote from All Saints, Dale City of 402-6 (in a church of 500 members) suggests that the exodus in Virginia will be severe.
[3] See http://www.virtueonline.org/portal/modules/news/article.php?storyid=5165

[4] See http://www3.churchtimes.co.uk/content.asp?id=30650
[5] See http://www.fulcrum-anglican.org.uk/news/2006/20061214wright.cfm?doc=171

[6] Allen C. Guelzo, For the Union of Evangelical Christendom: The Irony of the Reformed Episcopalians (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994).
[7] Bishop Wright’s critique cited in Note Five addresses these issues from an English perspective.
[8] On the MDGs, see http://www.episcopalchurch.org/3654_71627_ENG_HTM.htm Commentators on conservative blogs tend to see the MDGs as the Social Gospel minus evangelism. See Gregg Griffith’s comment on Stand Firm: http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/bleeding_heart_do_gooder_frowns_on_the_mdg_gospel/

[9] George E. DeMille, The Catholic Movement in the American Episcopal Church (Philadelphia: Church Historical Society, 1950).

[10] One interesting case is that of Pittsburgh’s Calvary Church. On February 15, 1874, Joseph Wilson – its much loved rector - preached a sermon inviting his congregation to follow him into the Reformed Episcopal Church. Despite a supportive petition from many of the parishioners, the vestry immediately surrendered spiritual charge of the parish into the bishop’s hands and Wilson was forced to organize a separate congregation to which many Calvary parishioners – including almost all of the Sunday School – followed. When Wilson was called to other duties in the REC, however, the dissident congregation soon collapsed. Today, Calvary Church is amongst the most vocal opponents of Bishop Robert Duncan’s effort to uphold a conservative Anglican viewpoint, a course that could ultimately lead to the separation of the Diocese of Pittsburgh (though not Calvary Church) from TEC. How times change!
[11] See http://anglicansonline.org/basics/Chicago_Lambeth.html

[12] Some of these bodies are listed at http://anglicansonline.org/communion/nic.html
For discussion of the schisms of the 1970s, see Bryan V. Hillis, Can Two Walk Together Unless They Be Agreed? American Religious Schisms in the 1970s (Brooklyn, NY: Carlson Publishing Inc., 1991), 99-126.
[13] See http://anglicansonline.org/archive/news/articles/2000/000214a.html

[14] On APO, see http://www.livingchurch.org/publishertlc/viewarticle.asp?ID=2422

[15] Ephraim Radner and Philip Turner, The Fate of Communion: The Agony of Anglicanism and the Future of a Global Church (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2006).

[16] Ibid., 273.