The Da Vinci Code and Company

A few evenings ago I slipped down to Barnes & Noble, and spent an hour going through the religion shelves looking for books that are riding the rapidly rising Da Vinci Wave. I ended up with nine or ten volumes that I spread out on a table in the Starbucks section of the place and perused. I finally chose three or four to read and returned the other volumes to their shelves.

The last few days have found me going over these books in an attempt to get to the bottom of the Da Vinci Code phenomenon that has been riding high now for several years, and which is reaching something of a fever peak as the relase date for the move of the best-seller draws near. The hardback of The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown has now been on the New York Times Best Seller list for 159 weeks, and this week was its second week on the top of the paperback lists. There is now an illustrated Da Vinci Code, Da Vinci Code tour guides, and I expect all sorts of other ephemera will appear in coming months. This has become a big cultural "event."

Maybe it was fitting that I read The Da Vinci Code soon after it was published, on my way home from Minneapolis in July 2003, where I had been addressing a pre-convention gathering. (Needless to say, I have not be invited to speak at any gatherings in Columbus in June, and probably never will be again!). The book was commended to me be someone as a great read, and so it is. If you are looking for a page-turner, then this is it! However, from the supposed factoids on the first page, I was irritated by the way it played so fast and loose with facts, and was so badly researched.

Don't get me wrong, The Da Vinci Code is a terrific yarn, my problem was that its author seemed unable to separate fact from fiction -- which makes him a very contemporary kind of person! The book leans heavily on Holy Blood, Holy Grail, which when I read it some years ago struck me as a puzzling piece of pseudo-religious exotica, a book that seemed determined to make a massive case with a minimal amount of evidence. The Da Vinci Code is very much the same in its use of facts, scholarship, and evidence.

This week's New York Times Best Seller list has no fewer than three of these kinds of books on the non-fiction lists, and then The Da Vinci Code is there in the fiction lists. One of those non-fiction pieces is The Jesus Papers, written by Michael Baigent, one of the co-authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail. He and his colleagues recently challenged Dan Brown in the British court system for plaigerizing. They lost their case, but gathered huge amounts of publicity, which translated into book sales, and in the midst of it out comes this latest offering that is sub-titled, Exposing the Greatest Cover-Up in History. Coincidence?

There seems to be a cycle of these kinds of books. Every few years out comes another little batch filled with what purports to be 'new evidence' that Jesus did not die, Jesus did not rise, Jesus did not exist, Jesus married Mary Magdalene, or whatever the latest flavor of the month might be. With some of his own flourishes, Michael Baigent actually warms over and adapts the arguments of Hugh Schonfield, whose book, The Passover Plot, was published while I was in seminary -- and I remember clearly the delight I had in watching Michael Green, who taught me New Testament, using careful scholarship to demolish it and show was a shallow piece of work it was.

Well, just like alien space craft crashing near Roswell, NM, or extra-terrestrial research taking place at Area 51, there are some bad ideas that never die. Indeed, what Baigent and, earlier, Schonfield mostly do is re-present notions that have been around for at least 1900 years and regularly come up for air. Baigent writes well, and some of the things he asserts are fascinating, but the book is a little bit like attempting to make a fine Persian rug with colored grasses!

What fascinates me about all these kinds of books is that there are extraordinary juxtapositionings of ideas, facts, half-facts, and fictions, and then they are all tied together and something is made of them. Furthermore, they read like papers I wrote when a student, where I would attempt to make a huge case with very, very limited information. For a time, I thought I was a master at making one or two pertinent points stretch for ten pages, until a professor called my bluff and threw the paper back with a failing grade. At that point the penny dropped, if I was going to write something with substance I needed to do the requisite research and preparation.

As I read Baigent, I find that he doesn't stack up well against the great New Testament and Church History scholars whose work I have delighted in over the years: Oscar Cullmann, Joachim Jeremias, Tom Wright, Leon Morris, E. Earle Ellis, Howard Marshall, William Barclay, C. H. Dodd, Charlie Moule, and so many others. Reading his stuff is like watching a club golfer trying to make his way in an Open Championship at St. Andrew's. He might get some good shots off here and there, but he is no match for the real pros.

Again, as I read Baigent, I found my own brain putting some interesting connections together. There is a flavor about his writing that seemed to ring bells with me and I found myself asking where I had read material presented in this kind of way before. Finally, I realized that there seemed to be an affinity between Baigent and the way that John Shelby Spong writes. A pleasing style takes limited scholarship, evidence, and facts, and somehow manages to weave something interesting but highly questionable out of it.

The problem with The Da Vinci Code and its flotilla of other products is that these things get the kind of marketing that rebuttals will never get. Tom Hanks playing the lead role in the movie of The Da Vinci Code is going to be heard and believed by far more people than the attractive written response of a Lee Strobel (which I would thoroughly recommend).

People have always loved stories, and what these detractors from Gospel truth have done is to hijack the story and make it their tool for presenting their question mark that they want to raise over the Christian faith as it has been revealed. Somehow or other, in this age when narrative and illustration goes far further than careful argument, we have to learn how to repossess the form of the story so that it grabs the attention of those who are seeking after truth, much as Jesus's parables did for his followers two thousand years ago.

This is the point where scholarship, faithfulness, artistry, media talent, and resources intersect. It is not that the church does not have access to these (although perhaps not the financial resources that are available to Hollywood, etc.), but it does have an abiding story that when artistically presented catches imaginations. I find myself wondering whether it is an accident that this latest surge of pseudo-scholarly attacks on the faith come three or four years after "The Passion of the Christ" was in the cinemas, or maybe I am paranoid.

Yes, it is important that we challenge with evidence these cases which are made with such slender evidence, but it is also important that somehow we find a way to winsomely and wonderfully present the alternative case.

The other day a friend suggested I look at the Author's Note at the end of Anne Rice's Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt. Anne Rice is not a writer I have taken a lot of interest in, but at my friend's urging I got the book and found myself fascinated, for here is a novelist who really understands the importance of careful, methodical research and scholarship. In this afterword she tells of her journey from old-fashioned Roman Catholicism, through atheism, and back to the Christian faith.

As she had prepared to write this book she had expected that she would find fellow travellers among the more skeptical writers and scholars who have flourished since the Enlightenment, "and that Christianity was, at heart, a kind of fraud" (Page 312). She goes on, "In sum, the whole case for the nondivine Jesus who stumbled into Jerusalem and somehow got crucified by nobody and had nothing to do with the founding of Christianity and would be horrified by it if he knew about it -- that whol picture which had floated in the liberal circles I frequented as an atheist for thirty years -- that case was not made. Not only was it not made, I discovered in this field some of the worst and most biased scholarship I'd ever read."

Her assessment becomes even more tart: "I was unconvinced by the wild postulations of those who claimed to be children of the Enlightenment. And I had also sensed something else. Many of these scholars, scholars who apparently devoted their lives to New Testament scholarship, disliked Jesus Christ. Some pitied him as a hopeless failure. Others sneered at him, and some felt an outright contempt. This came between the lines of the books. This emerged in the personality of the texts" (Page 314).

I, too, sense that there is this dislike of Jesus in certain corners of the church, but that dislike turns to something stronger in the writing of a Dan Brown, a Michael Baigent, and others. All this means that those of us who love Jesus with heart, soul, mind, and strength, have our work cut out.

Outside of Logic and Reason

Some Holy Weeks and Easters have been a romp for me, others have been more like marathons -- this one has fitted into the latter category. So here I am on Easter Monday, exhausted and shell-shocked, sitting at my computer mulling over the last few days. Two things have kept coming back. The one is what I would consider to be the interrelated furor of the Gospel of Judas and the renewed interest in The Da Vinci Code sparked by the outcome of the High Court trial in London. The other was a conversation I had at our Easter Egg hunt with a young father whose family are on the fringes of our congregation.

While mothers and kids were scampering around the yard of the home where the Easter egg hunt was taking place, this young dad and I got talking about video games and gaming. That morning, as I had "chaplained" the YMCA Soccer Field opposite the church, and had noticed a geeky looking guy sitting apart from other parents. I had approached him with the eagerness of a Golden Retriever puppy, only to be held at bay by an icy glare.

It was then that I caught sight of the magazine he was reading while supposedly watching his seven-year-old daughter play soccer: an online games publication. It didn't take a split second to deduce that this parent was a loner whose life to some degree revolved around the fantasy world of an online game (or two). I backed off, but raised the subject in the afternoon when talking to this dad about his first grader's interests and how they are attempting to steer him away from getting lost in games.

The afternoon dad is in the retail business, and began talking about how big the games industry already is, and how big it is going to become. I was already aware of some of this from television, radio, and other news outlets, but Adam quickly gave a seminar in its growth curve, and how deeply it had dug into the lives of so many of their contempories and their children. I confess that my computer game experience has been limited to an occasional round of Freecell and variations on Tetris, but I have been amazed when browsing through places like Circuit City to see how realistic so many games now are. I can fully recognize how easy it would be for an impressionable or compulsive person to get caught up in this fake world to the exclusion of reality.

I have written before about my concern over our increasing inability to relate cause and effect, or action and consequence. Now here I was being given the alarming picture of just how big is another component of our culture that is facilitating this separation of reality from fantasy or imagination. It would seem that it is a sign of inner health to be able to allow an interplay of your inner being with the world around you so that each is appropriately interpreting the one to the other. All of us have mental boltholes into which we escape, but the majority know the difference between a pleasing fantasy and the reality around us.

However, I found myself wondering whether this indulgence in online entertainment is yet another erosive factor attempting to give the fantasy world a far higher profile than is appropriate for mental, emotional, and spiritual health. It may be harmless for two small boys to slip into the character of their favorite figure in Star Wars and then to spend several happy hours acting their imaginary world out, but is there a point in a person's development where such an ability is first counter-productive and then even dangerous?

I don't have any answers to such questions, but it seems that in the world of entertainment and illusion in which we live today, there are increasing numbers of individuals for whom this is a relevant question -- and will it go further? Aldous Huxley's Brave New World was made bearable for its inhabitants by large doses of illusion and consequence-less sex: how far have we proceded down this road?

This all then ties into what I perceive to be the fraying of the edges as we look at the wider world and irrational or a non-logical disconnect between actions and consequences. It may be good that postmodernity takes intuition more seriously (something I rejoice in as an off-the-Myers-Briggs-chart intuitive), but we cannot allow intuition and the warm fuzzies to take over in such a way that we abandon reason and logic.

Not only do we seem to be doing so, but this in turn is doing damage to the fabric of our culture and society. For example, falling in love (clearly a non-logical experience informed by Hollywood romances) has in the minds of millions become more important than remaining married -- with the most awful consequences. Or individuals are eager to buy themselves out of melancholy with ther credit cards, all the time ignoring the fact that eventually the bills need to be paid. In politics, business, world affairs, the life of the churches, we see equally abherent behaviors.

Which brings me to The Da Vinci Code and the Gospel of Judas. I love the comment of Ben Witherington of Asbury Seminary following a conversation with A. J. Levine of Vanderbilt Divinity School, recorded in his blog about the Gospel of Judas before it was aired on National Geographic, that "we need to all have our baloney detection meters set to 'heightened alert' as we watch the special on the Gospel of Judas tonight."

In the following days Dr. Witherington in his blog (http://benwitherington.blogspot.com), unpacks this 2nd or even 3rd Century Coptic Gnostic piece using all the tools of modern biblical and historical research to demonstrate the baloney factor. He then goes on through Holy Week in his blog to take on James Tabor's book about Jesus founding his own dynasty -- with the same acute baloney meter in play. Here is a scholar using reason and intelligence to debunk something that is rather interesting but has very limited foundation in facts.

Yet, alas, our culture does not listen to the Ben Witherington's of this world, but the Dan Brown's who then take this half-baked scholarship and make a ripping yarn from it, and there is no doubt that The Da Vinci Code is a fabulous story. However, here again we see the inability of people to separate truth from fiction because having enjoyed the tale, there are many who have swallowed the Mary Magdalene mother of Jesus's children thesis. A few years ago it was "The Celestine Prophecy" that filled this kind of role.

There is much that was lost in the modern Enlightenment Age which we have in recent years begun to recover, and to our enrichment, but we do ourselves untold harm if we do so at the expense of rational and logical thinking. If I ruled the world, as the old song goes, I would insist that every high schooler take at least two or three semesters of good old elementary logic as a requirement for graduation. I would also provide remedial courses in logic in colleges, universities, and workplace in-service training.

The value of learning to think logically is that it helps you ask the right questions and to root out the fallacies upon which more and more of our postmodern life is founded. It feeds our internal baloney meter. It is like a correctional lens that helps us to see reality with a clarity that we might otherwise be missing. It is when we see reality clearly that we are able to recognize the place of Christ within this brew that is human life, and to minister Christ appropriately.

The Millennium Development Goals

The other day one of our deputies to General Convention wrote to several of us, "There will be a great deal of pressure on us... to support the MDGs. In principle it is difficult for Christians to be against such lofty goals." The email then raised several concerns that this particular deputy had, asking for insight from this little group.

If you don't know or don't remember what the Millennium Development Goals are they are as follows:

1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
2. Achieve universal primary education
3. Promote gender equality and empower women
4. Reduce child mortality
5. Improve maternal health
6. Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases
7. Ensure environmental sustainability
8. Develop a global partnership for development

The goals were established within the context of the United Nations in 2000, and have resulted in unprecedented efforts by many governments and groupings around the world to respond to these international needs and challenges.

Just glancing at them, they are hard to gainsay, especially for citizens of God's Kingdom. Having worked in global ministry until relatively recently and done a lot of traveling around the world as a result, I can from experience and observation say that each one of these targets is vital for the health and future of humanity. So, in many respects this should be a no-brainer for believers.

It seems that the problem with the MDGs comes in the unpacking and the application of them. As a Christian who has the privilege of a roof over my head, food on my table, adequate healthcare and access to education, then I have the obligation laid upon me by the compassion of Christ to take seriously the wants and needs of those who have few of these blessings -- which is a huge slice of the world's population. The conversation that Jesus had with his disciples which is recorded in Matthew 25:1ff makes clear the obligation of the agape (love) to which we are bound as the greatly blessed followers of the Lamb of God.

Yet the question is just how we are going to attack even the small sliver of these goals of which we are capable. This seems to be one of the places where we come apart because the bodies engaged in this task that some trust others do not. In response to this question about the MDGs were responses, for example, that denigrated the United Nations or praised it. (BTW, I think there is a different perception of the UN among those of us who come from smaller, weaker nations, than that held by so many Americans, citizens of the most powerful nation in the world). There are also very mixed feelings about the Christian and church agencies that might involve themselves in this work.

Having worked internationally, as well as being concerned about those we support who are able to put boots on the ground, food in bellies, and schoolbooks on desks, there is also the huge issue of accountability. After having been misled by even the most godly people, when I was working with Global South dioceses and in Russia, it became my practice when visiting somewhere that might be the recipient of resources to ask to see the accountant. I would also try to discover the network of interrelationships among those who would administer work at the receiving end, for in some places those with a job have a primary obligation to family, clan, or tribe.

The reason for this carefulness was simple: it did not matter how good people's theology might be, or how much they said they loved the Lord Jesus, money and resources going into so many places where they were a scarce commodity would too often get channelled off into other pockets or to meet other needs than those being funded. We might tut, tut, over this, but quite honestly it happens in the developed world as has been seen from some of the scandals that have surrounded certain significant philanthropies. Those of us called to administer funds and resources not only have a responsibility to the recipients, but also to the donors.

So, when trying to assess things like the Millennium Development Goals there are a whole series of questions that need to be asked and answered. Not only if these are appropriate goals for Christians to put their weight behind, but also how we are to approach the challenge, which challenges we are going to take on for ourselves, who is going to administer the work we commit to undertaking, and who is going to be accountable for the right use of funds and resources at every stage of the process. There are more questions, but these are a good starting point.

A further concern has to be what will happen to monies that might released for other work as a result of donations from the rich world, especially if one of the key partners is the government of a nation. If, for example, we put funding that might help with the area of public elementary education, will the government then withdraw funding from there and use it to help buy the president a jet or add another armored vehicle to that country's army? And if this happens, would this be a good thing or a bad thing?

Which brings us back to the goals themselves. In principle they all look pretty good to me, but the way I might interpret them, given my biblical Christian worldview and presuppositions, might be very different from the way that a secular body would interpret them. For example, having seen child mortality at first hand in needy countries, I am deeply moved by the reality behind simple song we all learned that "Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world..." This means feeding, clothing, medicating, and educating must be on the front burner, but how do we relate to those for whom challenging child mortality means preventing the birth of "unwanted" children by means of abortion?

Since being asked this far-reaching question I have found myself trying to frame my own personal response to the Millennium Development Goals, which I have not had to this point. I have concluded that they are in principle a valuable tool to use to measure our involvement with the needs of the world, and that we as Christians will be failing in our discipleship if we do not support them. However, I would further suggest that there should then be a multiplicity of ways of responding creatively to them in our policy-making, giving, and involvement.

First, passing ecclesiastical legislative affirmations of them is cheap and easy, and is something American mainline Christians love to do, but developing a trusted partnership in the Global South requires a lot more effort -- and then the willingness to back that effort with years and years of support and follow through. We are even worse at that.

For a number of years now, my wife has worked with a particular Sudanese refugee camp in northern Uganda providing scholarships in an elementary school that is run by one of the Sudanese dioceses. Each year seventy or more students, primarily girls, have had their needs covered by parishes and individuals in the Diocese of Tennessee. This isn't big, but it makes a huge difference that could be amplified over the years as Southern Sudan settles down to nation building. I like such hands-on micro-partnerships very much because there is a relationship that does good and by its very nature demands accountability.

But there is a component of these goals that I have not looked at yet, and that is to "ensure environmental sustainability." This one comes home to each of us and our lifestyles. Those of us in the developed world, however responsible we seek to be, are the most profligate in the use of the world's resources. This is having its impact on the climate globally, which is surely going to lead to a lot of tears as a relatively short period of time passes. When the environment is handled irresponsibly, the poor and needy are almost always the first to be hurt.

This requires each of us to look at the way we live, the way we do transportation, the way we do church, the way we educate our children, and so forth, to ask some pretty fundamental questions, and then to act upon them. It may be politically correct to trumpet the value of the MDGs from the housetops, but are we prepared to take these goals into our own houses and start asking what the real implication is for ourselves and the way we manage our lives? This is where the rubber really does hit the road.

There is a lot to be dealt with in a question like the one that was asked by our deputy, and I am grateful to have been asked it. I do not know how adequate my responses are, but I would hope they are a springboard from which those who are brighter, more intelligent, and more dynamic than myself might launch themselves.

How Are The Boomers Aging?

It was an article in last Sunday's New York Times (March 26, 2006) that brought back to my mind the plight of Boomers. On the business page was a relatively small piece about the median size of the inheritance that Boomers are receiving from their parents' generation. Many had been hoping for gazillions, but what they are getting is around $29,000. As the article pointed out, once nursing home bills are paid, and so forth, the average Boomer will get about enough to buy little more than a new car.

But that isn't all. Social Security is now on an age scale that is sliding upward, and 65 is no longer the assured retirement age for this generation and those coming afterward. Then there are all these corporations who have found their traditional pension schemes too onerous and are transferring across to 401k plans. This means that those in their forties and fifties who are caught in the middle of this alteration are suddenly looking at far less in the way of a retirement haul than they had anticipated.

Add to all this the fact that the Boomers have been famously profligate with their funds, and it looks as if this a good portion of this generation is facing a financially bleak old age. All this is before assessing the price of healthcare, something all of us are going to need a lot more of in years to come, and is being
delivered through an expensive and tottering system. It would seem that a huge number of Boomers are going to have to work, and work hard, well into what we consider today to be old age. In addition, they are often going to find themselves doing it without the family support that they want and need.

Programmed to be self-actualizing, Boomers have not only been profligate in the way they have used their money, they have also been profligate with relationships. Marriages too often have been treated as disposable, which has meant that relationships with children (spouses, and former spouses) have been tenuous or badly damaged. While past generations of aging parents have been able to look to their offspring for assistance with growing old, many in this generation are in a big fix on this front.

As the first wave of Boomers is reaching sixty and is beginning to think about its golden age, it is discovering that the currency of these "bonus years" has acquired quite a tarnish. I have been talking and writing about this for quite a while now, but most of the time my observations have been greeted with the "How interesting" kind of response, and the page has been quickly turned so the subject can be changed. For many a Boomer just the idea of being old is hard to digest!

This does not mean that all Boomers are going to have a rough time of it. We are both sixty, and while Rosemary and I will certainly not be rich, as things look right now we are well placed for an active "retirement" that will be adequately financed (unless the whole world economic system collapses, and then we will all be in trouble!). There are millions like us who have paid our Social Security, have good pension funds, have salted savings away, have taken care of our real estate, and have managed to educate our children and maintain an excellent relationship with them.

As we look at the Boom Generation, it seems likely, however, that there will be a strong mismatch between the Haves and the Have-nots. Some of us will be able to travel, live in our dream house, and watch our grandchildren grown from toddlerdom to adulthood, while others could well find themselves living in seedy isolation, working as greeters at Walmart, and be attached to the world through our Internet umbilical cords. My nightmare vision for certain males of our generation is that they will live alone in a one-room apartment indulging as they are able in the excesses of gambling and pornography that the online world is able to offer.

One thing that we can be certain of is that retirement is not going to be the same for the rising generation of elders. While the G.I. and Silent generations were able to look forward at a relatively early age to hanging up their cleats and settling into an easier and less stressful existence, possibly in some resort area in the country, Boomers face a much more bracing time, and this will present some
extraordinary challenges to those in ministry.

For example, as we get older we spend more time pondering our mortality. I am watching my contemporaries succumb to various complaints and diseases of aging, whether it be cancer or arthritis. Some of my peers are beginning to die as a result of their ailments, while others are unable to live the active and freer lives that they had anticipated by this point in their earthly journey. As these realities press in upon us, there is every reason to do what Boomers have spent little time doing, and that is wondering if there is anything after this.

I first focused on this in a big way when I wrote Brave New Church several years ago, and as I look back over the chapter about The Fast Approaching Gray Wave in that book, I see few reasons to radically modify my forecasts. This is a great opportunity for the churches, but I do not see us taking it seriously, and few if any have any strategies in place.

During the last couple of years we have been thinking about what might come when in due course we hang up our spurs here. What should we do, if our health holds steady, with those years that God gives to us when we do not have to be out there in the marketplace earning our keep any more. Right now we only have ideas, but they will be relatively easy to flesh out as the reality approaches and we become more focused on the task. What we are certain of is that ministry will not cease but will go on. Freed from the need of a package of salary and benefits it is possible that we will be able to take on tasks for which there are no funds available, or even to focus our ministry on working with our peers who have spend the whole of their lives at odds with the Christian faith and organized Christianity.

There are, in fact, all sorts of wonderfully creative things that churches and elder Christians are able to pioneer and to do. There is also a huge amount of incredible talent that is being wasted on golf courses all over the country, as Christians with fabulous skills to share have no outlet, so as a result they let themselves go to seed.

In a culture that is as youth-oriented and youth-fixated as ours, it is extremely difficult to raise much interest in the elder generation, but in many ways it is the next ministry frontier, and there are profound possibilities for the future. The problem is that these possibilities will not be noticed until they are upon us. Actually, with an older than average membership, North American Anglicans are beautifully placed to begin doing something about all this, but I suspect we are too engrossed in our own ecclesiastical navel-gazing to be able to do much constructive about it.

Email Daily Devotions

One of our ministries at the Church of the Apostles, South Williamson County, Tennessee, during the last three years has been an email Daily Devotion.

Each Monday to Friday it is delivered to your email box every morning and provides a Scripture Reading, a Thought for the Day, a Topic for Thanksgiving, a Topic for Intercession, a short Collect, and the readings from the Daily Lectionary for that particular day.

It is now being used by people in various parts of the world, and we invite you to receive them. If you would like to give it a try then email me at RichardKew@aol.com.

If you don't like it after you have given it a try you can always email to get yourself removed from the list...

We are working on putting together a new website for the Church of the Apostles, and it will include not ony the usual stuff, but access to the Daily Devotions, as well as audio and video from our worship each Sunday. Our website has not been updated for a while because we are in this transitional period, but you can find us at

Ecclesiastical Meditions from a Lawnmower

It is that time of the year again in Middle Tennessee: plenty of rain, warm sunshine, sweet breezes, all of which make the grass grow and bring the mower back to the lawn. Just as against all reason my wife enjoys ironing, so I get pleasure from mowing the lawn, especially during these last couple of years that we have had a riding mower! Mowing gives a person time to think, and this afternoon I did.

As is always the case with lawnmower meditations my mind was initially all over the place, but little by little it became focused on one concern. In this case it was a comment made by a lay friend who left ECUSA for AMiA, and who said to me the other week, almost in wonderment, that it amazed him that folks like me had hung on for so long. I confess there are days when it amazes me, and regularly I have to ask myself whether it has to do with native stubbornness, the fact that I am so deeply entrenched in the Pension Fund, or what?

Besides, aren't evangelicals like me supposed to be sticklers for correct theology, so why on earth am I clinging to the hopeless wreckage of a church that is so compromised some folks find it difficult to think of it as a church? Yes, we are sticklers, and I think that in the last few years I have become more of a doctrinal stickler than ever, but this is precisely the reason I stay rather than taking my toys elsewhere, although elsewhere would a lot more comfortable.

As I rode my mower, the spring breeze in my face, I started to ennumerate reasons why I stay. As I have said before, it is certainly not because I still love the Episcopal Church as a denomination. Respect for ECUSA has long since evaporated, and my attitude toward those in leadership is somewhere along a continuum from disdain to despair. But as my friend, Bishop Ed Little, wrote in Christianity Today just recently, quoting another friend, Bishop Jeffrey Steenson, "The true identity of the church as Christ's body is in no way diminished by the imperfections of its human members."

Bishops Ed and Jeff are neither of them saying something new, because doesn't the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion state that "in the visible Church the evil be ever mingled with the good, and sometimes the evil have chief authority in the Ministration of the Word and Sacraments?" (Article XXVI). The compilers of the Articles did not make this up, they were standing on the shoulders of the likes of St. Augustin of Hippo, and neither was Augustine out on a limb of his own because he was merely extrapolating from the words of our Lord Jesus.

When Jeffrey Steenson was a seminarian and I was his field education supervisor, I remember having several conversations about Jesus's parable of the wheat and tares (Matthew 13:24-30), and about the Net (Matthew 13:47-50), where the Lord makes it blatantly clear that it is not for us to measure the visible community of faith. It is when time is wrapped up and eternity begins that the Sovereign Judge who knows the secrets of all hearts will work that one out, separating sheep from goats.

It is because I want to be faithful to Scripture that I am still part of the Episcopal Church of the USA. The seamless robe of Christ has been torn just too many times for me to want to be part in ripping it further. I understand the discomforts that have led so many to leave, but understanding does not give me permission to follow.

Another significant reason is rooted in the history of our Anglican tradition, especially its evangelical emphasis. We evangelicals look particularly fondly upon Thomas Cranmer, the Reformation Archbishop of Canterbury, who did not demolish the historic structures of the church, merely renewed them by cleansing from the tradition unnecessary accretions that had attached themselves to English Christianity during the centuries leading up to the 16th.

Deep within our spiritual DNA is the assumption that if God could reform then, then he will enable reformation again. Of course, we assume reformation is essential for within our consciousness is the Reformation's watchword, Semper Reformandum. The church is, in one way or another, always in need of reformation, and that reformation will not take place if all those with a reformation vision march rapidly for the doors as soon as things get uncomfortable.

But as well as being the spiritual children of Cranmer, Latimer, and Ridley, we are also the spiritual children of those Puritans who stayed after the Restoration of the monarchy following the English Civil War and Commonwealth. With so many of their fellows leaving as part of what became known as the Great Ejection in 1662, it was not easy for those stalwarts who stuck with the Church of England to do so, but they did and much that was good in following generations can be traced back to this particular root.

Since then there have been other opportunities to leave, like the rise of Methodism, and the cruel demise of Anglicans on this side of the Atlantic following the War of Independence, but often from that tiny handful who have stuck it out have come the seeds of future renewals and revivals of faith. Evangelical Anglicanism has this tenacious streak, and deep within it is a providential sense that God has put us in this tradition for an hour like this.

There is still more, for it is love of biblical truth that makes us want to challenge the excesses of overt error. We are not given the truth to keep it carefully protected, wrapped in cotton, hidden in a bank vault, but to be put to use. Being a bearer of truth means willingly entering into debate and dialogue with those who have missed the point when measured by revelation and the catholic faith, for it is only by engagement that minds, hearts, and souls are changed. This does not mean that we believe we have got it right, for all of us are called to measure our convictions against the scrutiny of Scripture's message.

I guess this is why I echo the words of Ed Little:

Why do I not join those who have left or are leaving? Why do I stay? Serving a broken and divided church is a hard calling, and I do not minimize the difficulty of the task or the inevitable disappointments that I will encounter on the journey. But the Lord, for his good purpose, has (I humbly believe) thrown into one church Christians of radically different and sometimes theologically incompatible perspectives. Is it possible that in the midst of this painful discontinuity, he may do a work that none of us can foresee? It is in that hope and in remembering that he is Lord of the church and in charge of the big picture that I follow Jesus in the Episcopal Church.

An Appreciation of Alec Motyer

Since I posted a piece the other week in which I mentioned Alec Motyer, various folks have been in touch with me who, in one way or another, have had their lives touched by the Motyers. It seemed that it might be worth saying a few more things about Alec and Beryl Motyer because they have always been a model and example to Rosemary and myself.

I first met Alec Motyer toward the end of my first year in seminary, and then as my second year began I became field education student at his parish, St. Luke's Church, West Hampstead, London, a position that I held for two full years. In many respects those two years were the most influential part of my theological education because not only was Alec a fine scholar, but he was (and is) an extraordinary expository preacher, and a loving pastor.

Before coming to St. Luke's, Alec had been the Vice-Principal of Clifton Theological College, Bristol, one of the three seminaries that was eventually to be merged into Trinity College, Bristol. Alec had left under something of a cloud not long before I became his field education student. While I never knew nor sought to find out the details, it was an experience that I believe tempered the man so that a few years later when he became Principal of Trinity College, Bristol, he was ready for that work and excelled in it. His successor there was none other than George Carey, former Archbishop of Canterbury.

Alec is Irish, born and raised in the Repubic of Ireland, education at Trinity College, Dublin, and ordained in the Church of Ireland, where he served as Curate at St. Kevan's Church, Dublin, before moving to England with his wife, Beryl. What is remarkable about him is that in many respects he looks no different now than he did forty years ago, although his flaming red hair is sandier as a result of streaks of grey. He still has the brightness of spirit and agility of mind that those of us who came under his influence loved and appreciated.

For two years, every Sunday morning and evening, I was privileged to sit under Alec Motyer's powerful preaching ministry. In some ways it is oratorically from another time, but beneath it was a profound and devout respect for the Word of God, and his belief that it is through these inspired words that God speaks to human beings and shapes their lives. It is not the preacher's task to get in the way of the Word, but to rightly apportion the Word so that it forms the lives of those who are willing and obedient enough to put themselves under its authority.

What I gained from these years was not only from his example of obedience, but also an understanding of how God speaks to us through Scripture, and how I might, as a pastor, open Scripture so that it speaks to those for whom I have spiritual responsibility. When I was first ordained my preaching style was a fourth-rate aping of Alec Motyer, although as the years passed and we went our separate ways I was able to develop my own distinctive manner of handling the Word. Yet to this day I often sit during preparation and wonder how Alec would handle the piece of Scripture that I find myself wrestling with.

Actually, Alec's life and mine did not go separate ways immediately after seminary. My first ordained ministry was as assistant in a parish just up the road from St. Luke's Church in North London, and then when a couple of years later Alec became Principal of Trinity College, Bristol, at his prompting I found myself as assistant on the staff of the large congregation in whose parish boundaries Trinity College sits. If as a seminarian I had the privilege of sitting under Alec's ministry, as a junior priest he had the more dubious privilege of sitting under mine!

That was not as daunting as I had imagined it might be, and it enabled me to continue learning from this man who had become so important in my life. He and Beryl were important not just for ministry reasons but for personal reasons as well, as I am about to recount.

On October 9, 1966, the second Sunday of the month, as I was standing with Alec in the gathering dark on the steps of the church in the gathering dark following the evening service this woman, a student at the London University college next door to St. Luke's came bounding up. To cut a long story short, within a couple of minutes we had been introduced and set to work putting back together the middle school group that had languished following the ill-health of its former leader.

I confess that for the first few weeks we were thrown together I couldn't stand this female. But Alec and Beryl believed with all their heart in the biblical mandate that it is not good for a man (or a woman) to be alone, and so they nurtured and stoked our relationship. Twenty-one months later this woman became my wife at a ceremony presided over by none other than Alec Motyer! Nearly thirty-eight years later I agree with Alec, it is not good for a man or woman to be alone, and I am thankful that he helped me find my life's partner, Rosemary, even if I was not initially too impressed by her (or she by me).

Alec is a product of an Anglicanism that is a significant part of our tradition, but which is perfectly happy to have full fellowship with those beyond our tradition, particularly on the conservative and Protestant end of the spectrum. He is a low churchman who is still happiest celebrating the Lord's Supper from the north end of the communion table, and who believes pulpit takes priority over sacrament. While most orthodox American Anglicans might regard the Catholics as their nearest denominational neighbors, for Alec it is Presbyterians of a more conservative color. He is very much a product of the definitely Reformational Church of Ireland in which he was reared.

He also taught us to have a healthy skepticism of the excesses of modern scholarship. While he encouraged us to be use our brains and be scholars, which meant reading and learning from the stuff that was being published at that moment, he also made sure that we asked significant questions of it, not necessarily accepting the validity of dominant theories.

For example, the central focus of Alec's intellectual life has been his study of the prophecy of Isaiah, and since retiring he has published two substantial commentaries on this great book. While benefiting from those students of the text who believe that there is actually an Isaianic school and that you can point to two or three different voices within that school, Alec has never been convinced and believes most of that magisterial book came from God's inspiration of Isaiah of Jerusalem. I hazard that Alec has read just about everything ever published in English on Isaiah, but he has not allowed academic orthodoxy to turn his head.

While I have not always agreed with Alec's theses, I am profoundly grateful for his example and teaching that I need not be carried along by what is intellectually fashionable. Rather than being an anti-intellectual or obscurantist mindset, what this does is lead to an independence of mind that does not allow itself to be "tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine..." (Ephesians 4:14).

Alec, like his former colleague and another mentor of mine, Jim Packer, has drunk deeply at the wells of the Puritan tradition. Now sneered at, particularly in many Anglican circles, there was a richness of theological reflection and pastoral faithfulness among Puritans that we would do well to listen to today. The Puritans certainly had their shortcomings, but there was a faithfulness to their theologizing and pastoring that sought to bring the rich essence of biblical theology to play in ever facet of human living and personal holiness.

This stream of Anglicanism continued to have a dynamic life within particular elements of the evangelical movement in the Church of England, parts of Australia, and in other pockets. It is richly composted soil, enabling us to recognize that theological developments that seek to sidestep the normative values of the Christian faith as found in the 66 books of Holy Scripture are ultimately theological and spiritual missteps. This, probably, is something that makes some of us us awkward partners and bedfellows to those who would be more cavalier in their understandings.

Alec Motyer is around eighty now, and despite some ill-health a few years ago, is a spritely energetic man. He and Beryl live on the outskirts of Manchester, England, not too far from their daughter, Katie, who was born, appropriately enough for an Irish couple, on St. Patrick's Day, 1967. When Rosemary and I were ministering in Bristol, Katie was in our Sunday School, but now has children of her own of that age!

I have written this appreciation because I want to honor this man who means so much to me. My life and ministry would have been far poorer without his presence, guidance, and wisdom. As far as I am concerned he is a giant of the Twentieth Century. He is not so proud that he had to get ecclesiastical accolades, for he ended his ministry pastoring a small congregation on England's South Coast. This is a man who has not been in ministry for a good "career in the church," but because he was prepared to accept whatever call the Lord Jesus made upon him. I pray that I might continue to learn this lesson from him.

p.s. You can get an idea of the extent of Alec's writing by Googling his name, or by going to http://www.ivpress.com/cgi-ivpress/author.pl/author_id=278

Making Sense of Tennessee

We are living through tumultuous times in the Diocese of Tennessee. Had we been a simple majority diocese I suspect that by now Neal Michell would have been bishop-elect, and we would be starting to think about how we move forward together in mission in this weird and wonderful century. But we are not a simple majority diocese, we require 2/3 in each order to elect, which is difficult enough in less troubled times, but given where we are today it seems to be a North Face of the Eiger that needs to be scaled. We gather again on May 6th to give it another try.

But what is behind this? Although the mix is distinctively different, in many ways this is akin to the stand-off that is happening in other parts of all the churches, not just the Episcopal Church. The Diocese of Tennessee has changed enormously in the last dozen years, going from being a jurisdiction whose previous bishop had died in office amidst enormous confusion. Tennessee, despite its ancient name, was, in effect, a new diocese carved out of one that used to cover the whole state, and the previous bishop never really grasped that -- and the dynamics that go with it.

The present bishop, Bertram Herlong, did grasp that reality and began giving the diocese focus and visionary leadership. Virtually all its vital signs show remarkable health, even with some almighty hiccups after the events of August 2003, when the General Convention determined that the sovereign self takes priority over the revelation of the Sovereign God. Yet not everyone in the diocese sees what has happened in this corner of God's Vineyard as progress, and this perception is what has been playing itself out over the last two Saturdays.

The tragedy is that those who have managed to prevent the election of a bishop here have a deep affection for the Episcopal Church of the USA, and do not want its genius to be lost. One can admire their love for the institution that many of us have served for a long time, but if we were to tot up the evidence it would seem to suggest that their approach will further damage this little corner of the church rather than strengthen the institution for mission in the bracing climate that lies ahead.

We live in a very different kind of age from the one that spawned the church structures that we have been used to, and part of the unraveling that is taking place right now is due to the fact that yesterday's structures are totally inappropriate for tomorrow's church in tomorrow's world. It is hard to let go of what is old and familiar in order to move into a different kind of age, but that is what is being asked of us. However, some seem unable to do that, and while seeing themselves as champions of the institution, they are in fact endangering it by trampling over seeds of new life.

This is a postdenominational age, as my friend, Kevin Martin, has pointed out, and one of the challenges to old-line denominations is how we should adapt, function, and fullfill our ministry in an era like this. What is required of us is the ability to modify, to take calculated risks, to see how what we have inherited can be made to work on the different kind of landscape that is emerging.

In the midst of this a good chunk of the received historical structures of North American Anglicanism are obsolute or irrelevant, getting in the way rather than enabling the mission. Indeed, they are wedded to outmoded ideologies and a top-heavy bureaucracy with the result that they seem completely absorbed in their own agenda that there is little room for God's agenda to make itself known.

Those who hold a major portion of the balance in the Tennessee vote are non-parochial and retired clergy, many of them wonderful men and women, but folks whose ministry was exercised in a different time, or outside the steady pattern of parish life that is the front line of the church's mission. I was a non-parochial priest for 18 years, so from personal experience I fully understand the lesser sense of accountability that such folks have to the congregational and diocesan framework of day-to-day church life.

But there are other factors. One is that those who are leading the charge on both sides of this divide are Boomers, and as the history of this generation has shown, we Boomers see things in terms of competing visions. About twenty years ago William Strauss and Neil Howe published their remarkable book, Generations, in which they said that "Unlike their G.I. fathers, who excelled at overcoming crisis, Boomers are attracted to the possibility of fomenting crisis" (Page 314).

Strauss and Howe, in their more recent book, The Fourth Turning, posit that sometime during the first decade of the 21st Century we would encounter an enormous Crisis. Written before 9/11, it is possible that what took place then either triggered it or was the ominous early warning of a lot that was (and still is) to come. Older and wiser, they now say that "When the Crisis hits, Boomers will need to defuse the Culture Wars at once. Their pro-choice secularists and pro-life evangelicals will need to move beyond their Unraveling-era skirmishes and unite around an agenda of national survival, much as Missionary elders (an early prophetic generation) did during the depression and war. Bommers must also display a forbearance others have never associated with them" (Page 325).

The question before us in Tennessee is sobering because there are many difficult choices and decisions attached to it. Those of us who are Boomers in this battle are, perhaps, being forced to face up to what Strauss and Howe call the dark side of our collective persona. We require wisdom that comes from above that will prevail over being hot-headed. We require grace and holiness that will counter self-centeredness. We also need to grapple with what it means to be a people committed to the truth wherever such a commitment might take us. Without the aid of a mighty God these challenges could be considered dilemmas that are mutually exclusive.

Yesterday, between ballots in Christ Church Cathedral I began reading Eugene Peterson's latest volume, Eat This Book: A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading. In its second chapter there is a paragraph that I wanted to shout from the rooftops because it precisely addresses what we are dealing with.

Peterson writes, "I want to counter this widespread practice of taking personal experience instead of the Bible as the authority for living. I want to pull Christian Scriptures back from the margins of the contemporary imagination where they have been so rudely elbowed by their glamorous competitors, and reestablish them at the center as the text for living the Christian life deeply and well. I want to confront and expose this replacement of the authoritative Bible by the authoritative self. I want to place personal experience under the authority of the Bible and not over it. I want to set the Bible before us as the text by which we live our lives, this text that stands in such sturdy contrast to the potpourri of religious psychology, self-development, mystical experimentation, and devotional dilettantism that has come to characterize so much of what takes cover under the umbrella of 'spirituality'" (Page 17).

But as I have read these words again today I realize that if I am to be a person who lives his life under the authority of God's revelation, then I personally have to take responsibility for the part that I have played in the stand-off here in Tennessee. Whether our intentions are the very best, and I hope that mine have been, because of our fallenness we cannot help but complicate things. I want to discover in the next few weeks how I might, with others, find a godly resolution to this impasse, and one that will bring such glory to God that the heavens will trumpet forth their praises.

A New Thing?

Several weeks ago I wrote a piece about the theological vacuum that there is among those who believe the whole issue of rethinking our understanding of human sexuality is of God. As I have before, I asked at that time if anyone could come up with an adequate theological response to orthodoxy, and as usual, there has been a resounding silence. I guess it should not surprise me because few 'reappraisers' visit this blog, but stuff does get around on the Internet and I had hoped that somehow or other it would get into the in-box of some of those leading this charge away from received biblical values.

However, I have raised the issue with one or two 'progressive' friends, and it would appear that the only approach they can come up with that gives them permission to move forward is that God is doing a new thing. That is, to assert that God is doing something that is above and beyond anything that has ever happened before in the history of monotheism, outside the canon of Scripture, and having little to do with the on going tradition and life of the church.

What this allows for is an end run on the last 4,000 years or so, and seems to obviate any need for a response to careful historical analysis, and the mindset of the church catholic through the ages. It also obviates any need to respond to careful and disciplined theological analysis that makes it very clear that a revisionist understanding of sexuality has no place in the Christian story.

The manifesto in the Episcopal Church of those who are going down the path that God might be doing a new thing is a document that was presented to the Anglican Consultative Council in Nottingham, England, last year, and which goes by the unlikely title of To Set Our Hope on Christ. Shallow and thoroughly postmodern in its approach toward Scripture, it asserts that "For almost forty years, members of the Episcopal Church have discerned holiness in same-sex relationships and, have come to support the blessing of such unions and the ordination or consecration of persons in those unions" (TSOHOC 2.0). It believes that this is the gift that we have to offer the rest of the world.

It is not my intention to respond to this document, although obviously I find it totally lacking, but to move forward to discuss the wider implications of what it means for God to be doing a new thing like this in our midst.

First of all, we have to get a clear answer to the question why God has broken completely will all precedent that was set by... God! If we are to be trinitarian Christians believing in the God who has revealed himself, then it is essential that we accept that this deity is eternal, almighty, and immutable. This means that God was, is, and always will be unchanging and changeless, and that in this Almighty God we live and move and have our being.

This also means that what we believe (and have always believed) about this God and God's self-revelation is either wrong, or was revelation just for a limited period of time and now has been superceded. This would mean that we are part of some kind of evolutionary continuum, and not only have we evolved 'upward' but so has God.

This further means, therefore, that if God is doing a new thing, then God is a process rather than all the things that Christians have declared him to be since 325 AD and the Council of Nicea. If this God is always changing, developing, and altering, because we are always changing, developing, and altering, then this God is becoming a different God than the One he used to be. It is also to say that those who are in the know, gnostics if you like, have a better idea of who God is and what God is up to than the whole of the rest of world Christianity.

To say that God is doing a new thing is an attempt to totally sidestep revelation and all our Christian past in favor of an untried and untested future. It also raises such huge questions that it soon becomes apparent that this solution to a profund theological dilemma is actually no solution at all, unless you want to abandon all that the church believes about God, and start again from scratch. It is to happily declare ourselves out of step and out of communion with the whole Christian faith tradition of the last two millennia. This is nothing less than chronological arrogance that flies in the face of To Set Our Hope On Christ's protestations of humility.

That these 'progressives' are prepared to go to such lengths illustrates that not only does the left not understand precisely what it means to be human and made in the image of God, but also that they have totally lost touch with the nature of the triune God in whose image we have supposedly been made (Genesis 1:27, Mark 10:5-9). This is perhaps the most supreme example of cutting off your nose to spite your face, or of demolishing the whole building in which your apartment is located for fear that your home will be repossessed!

Looking at the history of the church, there has been a steady stream of those who have pronounced that God is doing a new thing going back as far as Montanus, a prophetic individual from Asia Minor at the end of the Second Century. His prophecies were claimed to be of a higher order than what God had already revealed, and were finally declared suspect. There were also a variety of strange practices and values attached to the Montanists.

It would seem that a good few of these movements of new or higher revelation have a sexual component to them. Somewhere within them there are individuals who chafe under biblical standards of sexual morality. We have certainly seen this in plenty of 20th Century groups who have made such claims. And here we have such a claim being made again, except this time instead of being on the fringes it is in the heart of the established churches.

I actually had an experience of this phenomenon early in my ministry. In the early 1970s as the charismatic renewal was cranking up and from America's West Coast came the Jesus Movement, I was the assistant on the staff of a young and dynamic parish in North London. A Jesus Movement group had found its way to London and began preying on our fairly large and lively congregation of teens and twenties. This group was then known as the Children of God.

The Children of God had been founded by a Christian Missionary Alliance pastor who subsequently took for himself the name Moses David. He had been a plain vanilla evangelical minister, but as the phenomenon went forward he began receiving revelations which resulted in the Children of God moving away from revealed Christianity. In a relatively short time they went from being a quirky but basically orthodox outfit, to being something entirely different.

Among the revelations that Moses David had was one that opened the doors for a different kind of sexuality. Certainly, his own appetites were met by a variety of women, and not long after this, supposedly under the guidance of God, they launched their "flirty fish" initiative which based upon the teaching of Jesus that he would make his followers fishers of men, sent out a bevvy of pretty young women into the streets to offer their bodies to men as evangelistic outreach.

For more than a year I lived in proximity to this group, and the problems and damage that they did in the lives of individuals. Indeed, one young woman who had gone off and joined the group for a while until her parents abducted her, lived with us for many months, so we were up very close to all that was going on among these people.

If God is doing something new, then I suggest that those who adhere to this notion rather than ignoring objections to their position should provide solid and strong justification for it that item by item, issue by issue tells us clearly why God's nature has changed, and why God's nature even needs to change. We need evidence, we need hard facts, we need solid research and clear spiritual insights to help us grasp the kind of new thing that God might be doing because God's nature is in a process of evolution. Those asserting that a new thing is taking place are the ones who are obligated to clear away without reason of doubt objections to their position, not vice-versa.

We haven't received this, and certainly To Set Our Hope On Christ does not provide anything but the most tentative grounds for accepting this huge sea change that is being claimed is taking place. This is what I might call as a result of my experience Moses Davidism.

In effect, what I am being asked to do as I climb the mountain of faith is to change midstream to untried and untested equipment. Not only that, but I am being asked to put my whole weight on some new kind of rope that was designed by someone who has never done any research on why the old one doesn't work as well as it should. Sorry, I'm just not in the business of doing such a thing.

On the Horns of a Dilemma

Many of you have been watching the episcopal election in the Diocese of Tennessee, noting that we recessed for a week at around 6.00 p.m. on Saturday evening without having elected a bishop, and will gather again to continue the process next Saturday.

It needs to be pointed out for starters that elections in this quirky diocese are always extended affairs, with 2/3 required in each order for an election to take place. Elections have been known to go to 40, 50, or even 60 ballots in Tennessee in the past, although the present polarized state of the Episcopal Church adds intensity to our immediate set of circumstances.

Having said this, I have a sense that we have become the latest small cockpit in which something much bigger is playing itself out in both church and the culture. I find no enjoyment in such things, but it seems that if we are to be faithful to Christ then we have to graciously and lovingly work our way through what might be a stalemate -- and at the heart of faithfulness is the vital business of theological and doctrinal obedience, which has profound implications in the way we live our lives.

I don't want to go into the pros and cons of our election or the electoral process, but to focus attention on what should be the faithful believer's mindset in the midst of such circumstances. Yes, I wake up in the night worrying about what is happening. Yes, I pray prayers that perhaps are sometimes selfish and self-serving. Yes, I am anxious that we will do the wrong thing or elect the wrong person.

But underneath this very human set of concerns has to be a strong affirmation that we serve the living, sovereign God, and that his ways are not always our ways. Didn't Isaiah write, "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord" (Isaiah 55:8).

This is a lesson that each follower of Christ nees to be reminded of again and again, especially when we sense that our backs are up against the wall, our heart is in our throat, and there is that horrible sinking feeling in the pit of our stomachs. I confess that I woke up this morning feeling nauseous and was weak and tense for most of today. But while I have always lived very close to my feelings, they should not be allowed to take control and rule my existence.

Last summer Rosemary and I spend a delightful day on the outskirts of Manchester in England with Alec and Beryl Motyer. Alec has been a dear friend and mentor for just about forty years, and is one of the finest expository preachers and teachers that I have ever encountered. Alec taught me so much not only about using Scripture to edify others, but also how I can feed myself from God's Holy Word.

Alec is an Old Testament scholar who is spending his retirement getting onto paper the treasures of a lifetime of parish ministry and seminary teaching. As we were parting in July he gave me a copy of his most recent book on Exodus (The Message of Exodus - J. A. Motyer. IVP, 2005) which about a month ago I began using to aid me with my daily bible reading. I could not have picked up anything more appropriate to help me negotiate through a difficult situation like the one we find ourselves in in Tennessee, or the difficulties that confront us in the wider Episcopal Church.

These recent years of ministry have been among the hardest, and there is many a time when I have wondered if somehow I have misread God's guidance. So it came as a needed reminder in those early pages of Alec's book, as he orients us to God's working among his people during the Exodus, that there is mystery in the divine government of history, "whether on a national, domestic or individual level: the great and loving God is in control, and because he is truly sovereign he works out his purposes in his way, not ours... He offers no explanations, but grants his people a sufficient insight into his ways, his character, his intentions and his changeless faithfulness so that, however dark the day, they can live by faith and be sustained by hope" (page 19).

Not only was this classic Motyer, but it is rock-sold biblical theology, neither weak nor sentimental, telling me that I am where I am because the sovereign Lord has put he there, much as he put the children of Israel in Egypt initially for protection but after 400 years in such agony that they were crying out for release. These have been dark days of ministry, but even in the gloom there has been evidence of his hand and the hope of his grace -- and I saw it again in church this morning.

The story of the Exodus is a story of seemingly endless delay, muddle and confusion, then the quick and decisive hand of the Lord, before again wilderness wanderings require much patience. The experience of these Old Testament People of God was akin to those things that we today find ourselves wrestling with. God may be sovereign, and he may be protecting his people, imparting promises to them, and giving them hope, but we need to remember the words of Paul to the Christians in Asia Minor that it is through many hardships that we enter the Kingdom of God (Acts 14:22).

This seems to be a message for our time, especially to those of us who are North American Anglicans. "It is not God's way to explain himself... so the biblical account provides us with no pat answers to our questions, but it does provide us with a framework and context within which we can begin to make sense of the days of darkness which have ever been the lot of God's people throughout history... We see him working out his own schemes in his own way, on his own scale, to his own time plan and according to his own wisdom, and we find the assurance that, although the days were dark, it was all right, it was all planned and it will all be well" (page 31).

So during these weeks I am soaking myself in the way the Lord provided for his people in Egypt, and gently but lovingly my dear old friend has been telling me afresh that "there is a contemporary reality about the word of God, so that when we read Exodus we are not just learning of the past, we are learning for the present" (page 33). I want answers to huge questions as I agonize over the horns of dilemmas of which our episcopal election is only the latest, but instead I am reminded that God is God and that even in the darkest days his loving reassurance is that all is OK, and it will ultimately be well.

Meanwhile, I am where God desires me to be, and while it might sometimes appear to be a wilderness journey into nowhere, God understands precisely where he is taking us and how long it will take. Our responsibility in these circumstances is not to waver, but to be faithful, especially when there is a high price to pay for that faithfulness. We think of the Exodus as a wonderful release from slavery, but often forget that when Israel left, many of them left homes, neighborhoods, gardens, and even Egyptian friends that they loved and cherished. Obedience always involves discomfort and letting go.

All this puts our Tennessee travails into perspective and reminds me a cold, damp London night in early 1967 when the rubber of Motyer's teaching hit the road of my life. I was Alec's field education student at his then parish of St. Luke's Church in West Hampstead. It was late by the time my responsibilities were finished and he drove me to the Underground station. Sensing that I was in agony about something he lovingly coaxed my problems from me.

"Alec," I remember telling him, "I'm just not happy, I'm not happy."

There was loving sternness in his lilting Irish voice as he responded with words that have, perhaps, been an ever-returning watchword in all the years since then, "Richard, you were not called to be happy, you were called to be faithful."

My record of faithfulness has been patchy, but God's record of faithfulness has outshone my wildest dreams. Alec Motyer is now an old man, and I am getting there, too, but this lesson taught when I was a seminarian I have passed on to others over the years.

I share it now with my brothers and sisters in Tennessee as we live with on the horns of our immediate dilemma. I share it too with those faithful men and women who sense that they are embattled by the storms that have swept over the Episcopal Church, and for whom misery in some form or another is an almost constant companion. I share them not knowing where God is leading or what God has in mind. As the author to the Hebrews puts it,"You have need of endurance, so that when yhou have done the will of God you may receive what is promised" (Hebrews 10:36).

With or Without -- A Review

With or Without: A Spiritual Journey Through Love and Divorce by Cameron Conant (Orlando: RelevantBooks.Com, 2005) US$12.99

A Review by Richard Kew

I met Cameron Conant several weeks ago at a social gathering, a delightful thirty-ish who told me that he had recently published his first book. I had so enjoyed the time I had spent with Cameron that I had soon logged into Amazon.com and ordered With or Without, not really knowing what to expect. I can report that the book was well worth the purchase price.

I wrote Cameron the other day and told him that one of the first adjectives to come to mind about that book was "charming," but that really doesn't work because the topic is a demanding one. It is charming because it is wonderfully written, but the raw agony of marrying, trying to hold the relationship together, and then it coming apart makes this a worthwhile but not a comfortable read.

The next adjective I explored was "mature," because Cameron demonstrates a capacity at handling such an anguished topic that is delightfully GenX-ish, but then at the same time is more perceptive than most folks who are many years his senior. It illustrates how this Christian man was really determined to learn the hard lessons that come from being part of a broken marriage, and to put it in words that will help others struggling in similar ways. He does not settle for flip answers, he does not apportion blame unjustly, and he makes himself agonizingly vulnerable by his stark honesty.

I couldn't help comparing With our Without to the job C. S. Lewis does in A Grief Observed, as he attempted to lay his soul bare as he marshalled all that was going on inside himself following the death of his wife, Joy Davidman. Lewis did not try to hide his innermost being, and neither does Cameron Conant as he worked his way through the death of his marriage. I see in Conant's book a man who has been forced to grow up quickly and move beyond simple answers to difficult questions that will probably plague him forever.

I was touched by the portrait of 'Sara,' his former wife, a woman who he obviously loved with ardor, but who herself was wrestling with familial and personal inner darkness that brought her own cloud into their marriage. I found myself feeling intensely for this woman, and the inability that each of these young people had in completing the other in a manner that would have enabled them to fullfil their vows about their relationship ending only when death intervenes. When I had finished reading the book I found myself wondering where 'Sara' is now, how she has recovered from this trauma, and what she is up to.

I read this book the week before we began The Marriage Course at our church, one of the products of the Alpha family of resources. I had been immersed for several days in Nicky and Sila Lea's The Marriage Book which is a wonderful tool for helping couples strengthen their relationship, and now I spent several evenings hitting the wall of marital breakdown with Cameron. It was a sobering juxtapositioning.

While I find it hard to identify what might be the target audience for this book, it is one that I would commend, not least because I think it entirely possible that Cameron Conant will possibly be a name that you will be hearing a lot more from in coming years. This is a man who is just finding his voice, and I hope that he does so with much grace because I am sure he will speak volumes of God's mercy to his generation -- as well as some of us who are a bit older.

The AT&T Solution?

Last Monday we awoke to the news that for a cool $67 billion the new-look AT&T had taken over our local telephone company, BellSouth. There seems to be a certain irony in the way that things go full circle, for now we are back to having a handful of telecoms after two decades of confusion and an alphabet soup of companies.

However, the telecom world is at a far different place today than it was when old Ma Bell was split up, with cable companies, wireless, satellite, and voice-over-internet outfits muscling in on a business which communicates more data than it does the spoken word, and is growing exponentially. It will obviously continue mutating, but in the midst of all this change that familiar name, AT&T, with a slightly modified logo is there at the front of the pack again.

Yet it isn't the same AT&T that split out the Baby Bells in the 1980s. This company cut itself into a number of pieces, then those pieces shuffled themselves and did some merging, then some other smaller telecoms got in on the act. Meanwhile they were selling bits and pieces of themselves to each other, until finally what had started out as SouthwesternBell took over the remnants of AT&T - and the venerable name. Now, AT&T had already sold its Wireless service to BellSouth, but as it has taken over BellSouth it has the piece back again.

It sounds confusing, and it is confusing. Hardly had these companies started to settle down to a new way of doing business than mergers and acquisitions altered their configuration so that they were forced to work out new ways of doing business again. However I am not sure than there are many people who would want to return to the controlled and truncated service that old Ma Bell used to offer -- or the prices that had to be paid for the privilege of making use of them.

What has this to do with the Gospel and the Church? Quite a lot if you think about it. What the telecoms have been doing is adapting and adjusting themselves to a wholely different world that has come into being in the last quarter century. Pundits have been noting for a long time that changing technology changes the culture which changes the way goods and services are delivered in that culture. This must change those who do the delivering.

The telephone companies are a fine example of how that process goes ahead. Nothing is tidy, there are countless loose ends, and then there are gaps to be filled. For example, BellSouth provide our landline service and until a couple of years ago our local telephone service. Meanwhile, ATT was our long distance provider. When a snafu with BellSouth happened soon after we moved into our present home we switched our local service to ATT, which means we get ATT service over BellSouth lines.

It is more complicated than that because we get our cellular mobile service through Verizon, the other major player in America's telephone galaxy, although for many years we were with ATT Wireless before that. We are now waiting for VerizonWireless to inaugurate their broadband service in this area because we will then get our broadband through that because living in a rural area there is no DSL provided by BellSouth, and the local cable provider hasn't seen fit to hook up houses on our street!

I suspect you are bored out of your minds by the meanderings of the Kews and their communication needs, but I am getting to the point. The Episcopal Church of the USA has been the primary franchisee of Anglican services in the United States, but like old Ma Bell and the lumbering old auto companies, it doesn't work in the world of today. It runs a top-heavy bureaucracy in New York, and demands fealty from its regional clans (dioceses).

On top of that instead of providing services for mission, the denominational structure gets in the way as it works out the implications of theologies that were fresh and shiny in the Sixties but are now as dated as over-sized cars with fins and Beatles haircuts. Like most tired old bureaucracies the denomination not only keeps on doing stupid things (or enabling stupid things to be done), but it also seeks to maintain its fealty over those who are embarrassed to be associated with it.

Whether it likes it or not, reconfiguration is going on, much as the birthing of the Baby Bells played a large part in the development of today's emerging telecom scene. The old structures are trying to force the old top-heavy structure to stay together, with its tidy diocesan lines and money coming from the grassroots up the chain of command, and the grassroots are increasingly deciding that such a dinosauric approach is for the birds. This is like trying to hold dry sand in your hand on a windy day.

For a start, in increasing numbers of places the passage of money along the chain of command is faultering. In other places congregations or whole blocs of congregations have severed themselves in favor of something less onorous and compromised, and are networking themselves into a healthier church in other parts of the world. There is, like in the day of the Baby Bells, a bewildering array of entities that in one way or another are seeking to be faithful, and that see the old structure as beyond retrieval.

Add to this that there are those who remain in the old structure but are less of it than of the healthier global church with which they identify, and the additional fact that some of the older splinterings of the Ma Bell structure are feeling their way back into the mix, like the Reformed Episcopal Church and the Anglican Province in America, and you have something that is far from tidy.

We don't know how all this will play out. The old ECUSA is aging and despite denial to the contrary by those in the boardrooms, the statistics say it is in increasing trouble. I might want to continue pretending that it is Anglicanism in the United States, but that is about as realistic as General Motors believing itself to be America's car company. Because the old ECUSA is in a state of decline something new, streamlined, and healthy could emerge from all these other things that are going on at the moment, and I suspect that we would see this outcome in 15-20 years.

What ECUSA forgot, to use the late Peter Drucker's assessment of the mainline churches, is its core business. It has become absorbed in itself rather than the task that Jesus set the church of making disciples. It has been more interested in protecting its monopoly than seeing ways in which the Good News can be made to work in this topsy-turvy world of today. Just as General Motors has been telling Americans that they should like the cars they produce, Episcopalians and others are shaking their heads and saying, "Nah," and taking their business elsewhere.

The exciting thing, if we use the AT&T analogy, is that there is life beyond the present confusion, but that life will look very different from what things are like now. I suspect that General Convention 2006 will be the last that many of us will take much notice of. The way ahead looks distinctly unclear, but who when the Baby Bells were spawned imagined the sort of world that has come to pass? Yet the Lord is sovereign, he will purge his church, he will help it reshape itself for mission, and those who cannot get with his program will eventually wither and die.

A Revolution WIthout A Theology

In the last few days I have heard from several priests who have either said to me something to the effect that the period since the last General Convention has beeon one of the worst in their entire lives, or that they are not sure they can take much more of what the Episcopal Church keeps dishing up. These are not selfish individuals, neither are they soft, indeed one of them is doing extraordinary ministry in the most ghastly circumstances. Each of these pastors has sought to be obedient to their ordination vows, but they have found themselves trapped between a rock and a hard place. Sharing much of their discomfort, I have spent much time in recent months attempting to make sense of this unparalleled time in our ecclesial life.

We are living through a crisis that has many dimensions, but at heart it is a theological crisis. What a church sows that also will it reap, and we are now reaping the 'benefits' of several generations that have been spent cumbering the church with theologies that have minds of their own, and have as good as disconnected themselves from the mind of Christ. After the General Convention in 2003 one of the things I did was to review the teaching of Scripture and read an array of publications on all sides of the sexuality issue, reasoning that perhaps there was something I had missed, something I had accidentally misunderstood.

I came away from that long exercise with a new appreciation of just how deeply imbedded in both God's revelation and classic Christian theology is the fact that humankind is made in the image of God, male and female, and complementary to one another. I also came away realizing that the materials I had read from the leading thinkers on revisionist side seemed to handle the Scriptures and church's received tradition in a one-sided, patchy, and entirely inadequate manner. They were skating over the surface, they were putting novel contemporary spins upon the text, and tended either to ignore or to discount approaches or exposition of the text that countered their own -- they seldom considered them important enough to answer.

The result has been that I have during the past three years consistently asked of those who have plunged the church into crisis to provide a consistent theology to undergird and justify the course that they wish the church to take. I have talked to clergy and laity, I have talked to church activists and politicians, I have spent time with seminary professors and academics, asking them to give me a defense of their actions that I can get my teeth into, when something has been forthcoming (and it hasn't be often) it has at the best been thin and anaemic.

To be sure, there has been fuzzy statements about rights, or about the superiority of our contemporary psychological understandings, but there has been little evidence of careful theological work. At the best, theological responses have tended to be the tired wriggles used to suggest that when Scripture talks it doesn't actually mean what the plainest interpretation of the text suggests that it does mean, or that this doesn't actually apply in 21st Century America. Indeed, there is little to make me think that much effort has been made to seriously address the multitude of questions raised by the likes of Robert Gagnon and others.

What I am hearing from the left of this argument is what might be described as a sticking plaster approach to theologizing. As objections are raised from a substantial theological, ethical, and philosophical perspective questioning the homophile approach, those who adhere to these views come up with something that resembles a sticking plaster that can be placed over a breach in their defenses here, and a breach in their defenses there. Ultimately there are so many pieces of plaster that they have started to overlap one another and thereby have provided a rickety 'wall' that they consider to be an appropriate response.

I am forced to conclude that while there could be a scad of theories that have been rustled up to legitimate this departure from Christian norms, there is no fundamental set of theological principles that can be configured to justify actions. Diarmaid MacCulloch, Professor of Church History at Oxford, and an actively gay man, has admitted as much in an aside in his monumental work on the European Reformation. "Despite much well-intentioned theological fancy footwork to the contrary, it is difficult to see the Bible as expressing anything else but disapproval of homosexual activity, let alone having any conception of a homosexual identity" (Diarmaid MacCulloch, Reformation: Europe's House Divided, 1490-1700, page 705). This means the only way forward is to discount Scripture and historic theology, finding other justifications for actions taken.

If there was such a thing as a consistent homophile theology it would have been trumpeted from the housetops a long time age. While I have not kept up with every turn of the debate in recent months, and it seems that the left is bored by the thought of such intellectual discipline, and does not even consider it worth finding an overarching theology to justify their actions. Indeed, they are riding the tide of the zeitgeist, and right now that crowns them with glory, and separates them from those of us who used outmoded thought forms to pour scorn on this exciting adventure into an unknown kind of future.

Yet this radical, new, exciting approach to sexuality is the jewel in the crown of a whole a significant departure from the manner in which we have understood personhood and identity in the past, and the one who married the zeitgeist is soon widowed. What is taking place is nothing short of a revolution. The problem is that because these revolutionaries lack any consistent ideology, they are in fact allowing the currents to sweep them along. They are like the foolish man in Jesus's parable and are building their house upon sand. The wind and the rain will surely come and beat upon that house...

During the years since the General Convention I have become convinced that sexuality is merely the first salvo in a long and increasingly bitter battle about the nature of our humanity. Either we are made in the image of God or we are just another life form on the relentless continuum of evolution. If, as this latter approach implies, our culture considers that it has "liberated" itself from any notion of divine given-ness about the present status of the human race, then there is nothing of distinctive, permanent, or ultimately of any lasting value about us.

I posit that those who have taken us down the revisionist road have, perhaps unwittingly, aided and abetted deeply troubling trends that as they reach maturity could radically alter the nature of humanity forever, or in a worst case scenario lead to its liquidation. There are enough balls in play in culture and in the sciences whose trajectories could have consequences that are far, far beyond anything that those who are pushing the homophile agenda could ever dream, imagine, and believe to be acceptable. This then points up another component of this whole conundrum, and that is that under the influence of a non-rational prevailing mindset the 'progressives' seem to have severed the tie between actions and consequences, but that is a discussion for another day.

Bird Flu

As I have pointed out on several occasions, the possibility of an avian flu epidemic is something churches have to consider seriously -- but I don't see too many doing it. I have for the last few months been part of the church_emergency_preparedness@yahoogroups.com list, and Dr. Tim Foggin, the owner of the list and a Christian physician from western Canada, has been getting to us lots of good and helpful information.

This group is not filled with hysterical over-hype, much as some of the media outlets have handled it, but contains good information about avian flu and responses we should make to it. Slowly, here and there, people are discovering that Christian communities need to be involved in thinking about this possible reality, and need to be planning with it in mind. Now the Bishops of Toronto, Huron, and Nagara in the Anglican Church of Canada have created a working group to consider the implications of a possible pandemic.

However, I see very limited thinking and preparing going on in the United States. Indeed, while cases of avian flu among birds are in Europe, Asia, and Africa, there is that strange sense that we ought not to be bothered about it, but this is typically American ostrich-like behavior. But we need to be warned that any disease of this kind, if it jumps to humans and then can be spread human-to-human will be global. Period.

This virus has a similar structure to the one that caused the Spanish Influenza epidemic of 1918 in which upwards of 20 million people died, so should it break out and mutate to infect humans with ease, then we can expect that it will cause considerable disruption, and the possibility of significant loss of life. Having said that, if it were to follow the 1918 pattern most of those who catch the disease are likely to recover and then get on with their lives. My father had Spanish Influenza as a little boy and went on to live to the ripe old age of 85!

The time is here for congregations, dioceses, and every kind of ecclesiastical jurisdiction to begin thinking about the protocols that needs to be developed to handle the possibility of a pandemic -- and that may include suspending activities for several weeks. The Department of Health and Human Services has produced a "Faith-base and Community Organizations Pandemic Influenza Checklist" that has good advice in the run-up to a possible health crisis like this. In these highly polarized and divided times this, brothers and sisters, is something we can and should do together: viruses are no respecters of differing theologies...

It is important, for example, that we identify those connected to our congregations who are most at risk: the elderly, the disabled, the very young, and those with particularly complex health problems already. These are the ones who need to be most protected, but there are lots of simple personal hygene activities that would increase our chances of not getting sick. For example, I have already told myself that as soon as there is an outbreak of human-to-human avian flu anywhere in the world I am going to temporarily move our congregation from a common cup to individual "shot glasses." We may even need to think about developing food banks and means whereby our parishioners can get the basics of life, for a lot of commerce is likely to grind to a halt for a season. In addition, there could very well be sporadic rashes of significant unemployment.

The pastoral challenges to pastors will be great, and we need to develop ways of keeping in contact with each of our congregants as many people are going to avoid public places and meetings like church services. We need to be thinking of alternative ways of ministering to spiritual needs, as well as ready ourselves to conduct an increased number of funerals. The last summer I lived in England in the 1970s was one of the hottest on record and I conducted more funerals in July and August than ever in my ministry, this is wearying and spiritually-demanding work -- particularly if the grieving are not known to you and are frightened themselves.

Clergy may not be in the front line of those fighting a possible pandemic, but we are in the mix of helping to feed the souls of society as well as maintaining society's stability -- as you can be sure there will be a lot of hysteria. If people don't come by that hysteria naturally, we can be certain that there will be voices and media outlets that will feed any frenzy.

Meanwhile, we don't know whether this will happen, or when. The message is to be vigilant.