The Purpose Driven Life

At the beginning of this year the small groups in our congregation began a study of Rick Warren's The Purpose Driven Life. I had skimmed the text fairly thoroughly before we started working with it, and at the time wasn't quite sure what all the fuss was about this book, but certainly didn't think it could doo any harm. It seemed to me to be a pretty unremarkable guide to Christian living by a man who has been successful in church planting and spreading the Gospel.

Each week I have prepared for each chapter of the book a small bible study to accompany Rick Warren's material, thinking (rightly, in this case) that the book while long on good advice for Christian living, is a little short of actually getting into the text of Scripture. These studies and sets of questions have, for the most part, been well received, and we are now in the home straight as far as completing the book is concerned. (If you would like copies of these let me know and I will see how we can get them to you).

While I wouldn't say that The Purpose Driven Life has grown on me, I would say that I am much more enthusiastic about it, because there is a lot of good sense about Christian growth and discipleship within these pages. One of our congregation said to me that she felt I wasn't that enamoured by it because lots of the substance within it is something with which I have been familiar for a long time. "For someone like me, for whom all this is such new stuff, it is a most exciting book." That's probably right.

One reason why this book is a such a winner among so many Christians, I think, is because so much of postmodern life is without shape, purpose, or objective values, and people crave these things. Here, at last, is something that tries to fill that gap and give them the essence of what living purposefully as a Christian believer is all about. Each chapter of the book focuses on one issue or doctrine only, and each is practical and helps the individual apply the lessons to their daily life. I am wondering now how we are going to follow up on this study.

My sense of Rick Warren has changed as we have taken this journey together. I don't know what I thought of him before we started, but there was a certain snootiness toward him that made me take him less than seriously. Then there was that young woman in Atlanta who used "The Purpose Driven Life" to talk that escaped murderer to give himself up to the authorities, and suddenly Rick Warren was on every news program, as was the book.

I caught him on CNN with Larry King, and was deeply impressed by the way he talked and presented himself and the Christian message. What impressed me more was when he told Larry King how he has from his royalties paid Saddleback Church back his whole salary over the last quarter century that he has been their pastor, as well as making considerable other donations. He sounds to me as if he has put money in the right perspective, and it using it to the glory of God rather than self-gratification or self-aggrandizement. Here is a man who walks the talk. I am glad that he will be speaking at an Anglican gathering in Pittsburgh in November, because we need to hear more from men like him.

Now, I have not become a Purpose-Driven junkie, but I have been given a fresh set of insights into Gospel living by a man from a tradition very different from my own -- and his teaching has been a great blessing to people I pastor. This makes me profoundly grateful for him.

Once or twice in the last year or so I have seen reviews or comments by Episcopalians who disparage the contribution Warren has made. While I respect those who have weighed up Rick Warren's book and found him wanting, I would humbly suggest to those who have discounted it because he is a Baptist, or something absurd like this, take a serious look at what Warren is saying. There are some fundamental lessons that we can learn from this man who has planted a single congregation that is much larger than many of our dioceses.

Something is Stirring

Something seems to be stirring deep within me. I tend to find that when some kind of inner rearrangement is taking place, the discomfort is at times almost physical. I continue my daily round and appointed tasks as vicar of a small, but beginning to grow, congregation, as well as the various responsibilities I have in the diocese, but the stirring does not go away. I have abandoned any work in the wider church, or perhaps it is fairer to say that the wider church, especially the denomination, has abandoned me; yet now able to stand back from the whole sorry picture I find that an immense task of reassessing going on.

Somewhere at the root of all this is what I would describe as yearning for spiritual integrity: a consistency of life and faith that is more than just a few small successes in the on going quest to narrow my own personal hypocrisy gap. What I think I am feeling after is a manner of life as a Christian that has a cascade effect outward from the re-formation and renewal taking place within.

I know that my life is confronted by constant transition, and that if I am to grow I must engage that transition that the Spirit through the circumstances of existence are pressing upon me. Yet I also realize that the place I have reached in my development as a human being is one that demands thought and prayer that I might be generative in this later chapter of my allotted span. This is something of a wrestling match because for the first time in my life I can hear the siren song of retirement, and there are moments when it is enticing.

The question behind this is whether I want to retire, or whether that is, indeed, a faithful thing to do. Besides, if the actuarial tables are anything to go by I could still have a good few thousand miles of servicabilty before me yet. I have watched far too many priests and pastors during my years of ordained life reach their sixties and then slow down and begin to prepare for retirement while they are still on the job. As I think and pray I believe God has something more significant for me to do than that.

And yet during the last couple of weeks I have found myself in the presence of enthusiastic young leaders from other traditions. Watching and listening to them talking about the new ministries they had launched has been exhausting, because although this is something that has been a hallmark of my ministry over the last thirty years, I know that I no longer have the resources to take the world by the scruff of the neck and attempt to have visions and dream dreams that would require me to build something new. Exciting as it is to watch younger men and women who are so in love with the Gospel that they will go to the ends of the world, that door is now closed. It is no longer my calling.

Sure, I work in a relatively new ministry, and long for the Church of the Apostles to acquire land (something that looks as if it might be happening), construct our first facility, become a self-sustaining congregation, and then call into leadership a younger priest who will be able to take the reins from me and lead this fellowship forward. However, doing that is the task to which God called me several years ago, and I am merely doing my duty to the Lord who invited me to take up this challenge. It might take two, five, or seven years, but we will see.

Meanwhile, against this backdrop the inner work goes on, and what I am finding is that I am being attracted to folks who, like myself, are discomforted by what the future holds for our culture and our church, but who are engaging the possibilities constructively and without rancor. Much of what I see in the churches in general, and our denomination in particular, is the triumph of various self-interests over collective responsibility, which is a recipe for a slow, drawn-out death. We need real change, but most of us do not seem willing to engage the change necessary, and instead hold onto past forms and past resentment. Of course, that change begins within the heart, which brings it back to my own inner spiritual work to be done.

The couple of years since August 2003 have been for me years in which I have been in mourning, and as Shakespeare put it, "He that lacks time to mourn, lacks time to mend." I have been mourning in order that I might mend. While romantic longings about an idyllic past that never existed within the Episcopal Church are immensely attractive, such notions are neither tenable nor relevant any longer. We have been asked to adjust to new circumstances, and then to make something beautiful for God out of those circumstances.

Right now, none of this is taking place. The underlying reason seems fairly simple, on the political left of the controversy that has torn us apart is a triumphalism that seems determined to push forward with an agenda that is having the domino effect of pulling both ECUSA and the Anglican Communion apart. While on the political right of the issue is an anger that is either forcing people to give up and leave (which is what the left wants), or to dig in and be obnoxious. Now, I realize this is an over-simplification, but anyone with any sense of reality must be able to see that this is a pitched battle in which there can be no winners.

If we take seriously the observations of Elisabeth Kubler-Ross on the grieving process, those of us on the orthodox side of this conundrum have not done the work necessary for health because we have not yet got beyond denial, anger, and depression, and to move into acceptance. Meanwhile, those on the left are oblivious to the fact that they might have done anything amiss. While two armies are dug in like this, death and destruction are the guaranteed outcomes.

Now here comes my confession, and it is one that might alienate me further from my conservative brothers and sisters, and that is that while I believe it vital to stand firm upon Scripture's revelation, it is an issue of how we stand. I am either too old or too stupid to want to continue being mad at the revisionists, not because I think they are right but because I do not believe this is the way to build for the future. As Robert Quinn puts it, "When internal and external alighment is lost, the organization faces a choice: either adapt or take the road to slow death" (Robert Quinn: Deep Change, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1996, page 5).

Quinn goes on and says, "Usually the organization can be renewed, energized, or made effective only if some leader is willing to take some big risks by stepping outside the well-defined boundaries. When this happens, the organization is lured, pushed, or pulled into unknown territory. The resulting journey through the unknown is a terrifying experience, with the possibility of failure or death a reality rather than a metaphor. At such times, organizational memebers face wicked problems, problems for which there are no existing answers" (page 5).

Now, if that does not describe the situation in which we find ourselves, I don't know what does. The truth is that if we are to take such a journey, then we need to be prepared for deep changes to take place within us personally. The question is whether we are prepared to open ourselves to such changes, or whether we want to dig comfortably into our present destructive pattern. The time has come to lay ourselves on the line, to step outside the safety of our traditionally prescribed roles and strive for the new birth that is inherent in faithful Christian believing and living.

Thus the inner struggle goes on. The choice before us is to make significant changes based upon the wholeness of the Gospel, or alternatively to commit ourselves to a pathway whose end result is death, entangling us in a web of fear, anger, helplessness, while we inexorably move toward what we fear. The future does not belong within the boxes in which we still live, boxes that were constructed in the past. The challenge before us is to go back to the roots of what it means to be a Christian, which is what happened at the Reformation, and then to see how that rooted faith propels us into a different, more Christlike and generative kind of tomorrow.

What I guess I am saying is that I find myself uncomfortable with the stance of just about everyone. I find my inner being want to dive back into the faith of our fathers (and mothers), and then to see what we can make of this under God. As I have scratched my way deeper and deeper into 2 Corinthians this year, I find in Paul an instinct both to affirming the truthfulness of truth, while at the same time seeing within Christ and his redeeming death a focus for reconciliation.

Those on the left who have been shouting for reconciliation have done so on terms that are unacceptable to orthodox believers, because they want us all to finesse revealed truth, while those on the right who affirm truth seem determined to do all they can to avoid any kind of reconciliation. In all this I have to confess that I do not find myself looking into the face of Christ.

As I have already intimated, however, I find that there are a handful of fellow-travelers who share my angst, but right now few want to walk this road. The reason is simple. If we are to remake the church, we must first allow Christ to remake who we are. Going in this direction will be a difficult, even terrifying journey, that is why I find myself almost in physical pain over this for we are, as Scott Peck put it, "traveling naked into the land of uncertainty." I have gone this way before, and, quite honestly, it is neither easy nor nice. It is, however, only by getting lost and losing those landmarks that are so familiar to us that we will be able to explore our way into a new kind of future and ecclesial organization.

Clearly, this is the place where the inner journey of the individual and the outer journey of the fellowship meet and merge. There is a lot of hollering and finger-pointing going on, and I have done my fair share of it, but this solves no problems. This is the place of discomfort beyond which we need to be prepared to move if something new is to emerge. The alternative, as I see it, is both a spiritual dying and an slow institutional death.

A Country Parson's Advice To His Parishioner

A few years ago my old friend, George Koch, a priest in West Chicago, Illinois, gave me a copy of a book that had been written and published anonymously during the reign of Charles II. A Country Parson's Advice had never been reprinted or republished until George re-edited it to make it accessible to contemporary people, but it seems to have been an influential book in the development of English-speaking Christianity.

Samuel Wesley, father of John and Charles used it in his ministry, as did his illustrious sons, who made sure that their younger contemporary, George Whitefield, thoroughly digested the volume. Its teaching on small groups was clearly seminal to the whole Methodist movement, as well as being to cell group ministry in congregations today.

George Koch writes in his introduction to the book, "I first came across a reference to this book during research I was doing on evangelicals in the Anglican and Episcopal Church. Early attempts to locate a copy of it proved fruitless, and only after several worldwide book searches was a microfilmed copy found" (page 21). These words should be a warning to any author who thinks he/she has written something significant that will have a long shelf life!

This book had sat unread on my shelves for several years until I had some time to kill while manning the church for evacuees from Hurricane Katrina who live across the street to come and go if they wanted. The earliest pages fed straight into some thoughts I had been having about the post-Christian lifestyle, the rampant secularity of Europe, and the impact this has had upon my own family. My ponderings about Europe are largely true of the scene in North America, as well.

In some ways the opening chapter of A Country Parson's Advice To His Parishioners is a 300-year-old prologue for The Purpose Driven Life! The opening sentence is a difficult one (and Koch has simplified it), but sets the tone of the rest of the book. "Foreasmuch as you know that you are God's creature, and received being and life from him, and subsist altogether in him, you must necessarily acknowledge that you are and ought to be at his disposal, and to live and act according to his intention, and the end for which you were made" (page 31). In a long-winded way he is saying roughly what the Westminster Confession has said, that a human's purpose is to worship God and enjoy him forever.

That is the Christian presupposition for life. A couple of paragraphs later he asks, "Can you think, when you consider your own faculties and capacities, that you were made merely to get a little money by burdening and caring, by toiling and sweating, by plotting and contriving? A poor business surely for such an excellent creature! And you debase yourself extremely, and reproach your maker, if you imagine it. But you know that money is not a thing desirable for itself, but for its usefulness as it procures necessities, and pleasing to appetites and desires. Therefore, you must enquire further, whether you were made only to eat and drink, and having made provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof" (page 32).

When I read these words they tuned into precisely what I had been thinking about our extended clan. I am deeply attached to my family, being something of a patriarch of the brood these days, and I look at my relatives who are financially so much more successful than me living what they believe to be the good life. They are on a treadmill of getting and gaining so that they might go a-pleasuring. I see huge sums of money being shelled out on nice cars, fancy hotels, rich dinners, lovely homes, trips to the opposite side of Europe just to go to the theatre, and so forth.

As I listen to them talking what I hear is men and women whose entire raison d'etre is literally to eat, drink, and be merry, and therefore they are in the marketplace enduring rather than enjoying their work in order that they may have more leisure time to indulge. What comes after this life is over? Well, nothing, of course, so let's make the best of what we have in the here and now. The older the members of our tribe are, the more they seem to be into this lifestyle, desperately seeking to eke out their remaining years according to the "pleasure principle."

Ours truly is what Christopher Lasch described it to be three decades ago, a culture of narcissism, and as I have treated myself to a tour of the Internet in the last weeks I have found this being reinforced again and again. The Country Parson writes, "Here is your end, and this is your work, a work worthy of so excellent a creature: to serve God" (page 33). With every thoughtful believer I say "Amen to that."

But then the Country Parson restates this even more strongly, "We were made in the image of God, not to live like beasts, no, nor to please ourselves in any way; but to serve and please and glorify God here, and to possess and enjoy him for the hereafter" (page 34).

During the last years we have heard a lot from our political leaders about defending and preserving what they describe as 'our way of life.' After the London bombings in July, this seemed to become Tony Blair's mantra, and we have heard the same song being sung by everyone from George W. Bush to John Howard, Prime Minister of Australia. But the question should be what is the way of life that we are supposed to be defending from attacks? Certainly, there are freedoms that we cherish, but what are we free for... to cram every moment with pleasure, living in fear that it might be our last?

Hurricane Katrina has been nature's way of jolting us, challenging the triviality of our culture. Yet the other morning I almost choked on my coffee when I heard a report that suggested the most important thing to do in Biloxi was to get the gambling boats functioning again because they are such a source of income for the state of Mississippi. Is this the best lesson we learned from the storm?

What was it that the Rich Fool said? "Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry." And what was God's reply to the Fool: "Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?" (Luke 12:20-21).

While there are components of our culture that I am most passionate to preserve, there is much about our way of life that I think should be challenged. It is obvious that we are called to be counter-culture people, rather than allowing the prevailing culture to squeeze us into its image. Indeed, I think I would assert that if we are to live holy lives then they will be counter-culture lives.

One of the reasons I am at such odds with the denomination to which I belong is that it has like a puppy dog with its tongue hanging out, followed every twist and turn of the sensuous narcissistic culture to which we belong. A little later on in his book, the Country Parson writes, "Ity was the sayings of a devout man many years ago, 'That it had been better for us never to have been, than to dwell in ourselves and to our selves" (page 39). This, I fear, is exactly what we have done, shaping the faith to suit the culture, rather than challenging the values of the culture with the essence of the revealed Gospel.

I haven't finished with the Country Parson yet, and I am even a little frightened what the implications will be when he has finished with me.

*******

(If you want to buy a copy of A Country Parson's Advice to his Parishioners, then go to www.georgekoch.com. The book was first published in 1680 and George Koch's edition of it was republished by Monarch in London in 1998)

Katrina Blows In On The Church of the Apostles

All of us have been staggering under the blow of Hurricane Katrina, and suddenly the whole business landed right in the front yard of our little congregation. Here we are worshiping in an old boot warehouse and suddenly the city of Franklin, TN, the Red Cross, and Lasko Products, agreed to house 500 evacuees from New Orleans in the facility immediately opposite our church.

We have prayed for visibility in the community: we now have it in spades! Yet it is stretching our slender resources - human and financial - to the limits, and we are attempting to draw on other parishes and other denominations to help us.

We have offered the Church of the Apostles to the community as a place where volunteers, all the churches, etc., can hang out, see folks, and perhaps even be a "safety valve" from the institutional living of the Red Cross Shelter for the folks who will be there 90-180 days.

God is being wonderfully good, however. This afternoon our volunteer who is there at the moment had to leave and I found myself wondering how we would have the place covered. At that very moment that I winged an (angry) prayer to the Lord, my computer intimated an email, and I hear from a college student from St. Bartholomew's, Nashville, saying he has time right now, can he help for the next few hours!

We believe that God has given us a great opportunity, right now we are working out how to use that to the glory of God, as well as in the service of those who have experienced the loss of everything. I have during the last 48 hours been heartened by the kindness of people as well as infuriated by some of the meanness we have seen.

We don't know what this means about how Church of the Apostles develops in the future, but it does mean that we have more than we are able to say grace over for the present. Please keep us in your prayers.

Katrina, 2 Corinthians, and Giving

As some of you are aware, I have spent most of 2005 immersed in Paul's Second Letter to the Corinthians, and have found it one of the most fruitful bible studies that I have undertaken for a long time. While I feel that I do not spend enough time in in-depth study of the text, I believe this is a shortcoming in all church contexts -- and accounts for the incredible ignorance of Scripture that there is in so many settings, even those that claim to know it. Much of the narcissism we confront in the churches comes from an ignoring of Scripture because we remain ignorant of it, but that discussion is for another time.

The other evening I got an email suggesting that in the light of the response we now make to the catastrophe along the Gulf Coast, it might be helpful to have some insights into Paul's thinking on giving from 2 Corinthians. As you know, 2 Corinthians 8-9 are two of the key chapters about the nature of Christian giving in the New Testament. In past times I confess that I have come to this passage with stewardship eye, wanting to interpret what the Apostle says in terms of what the church's needs might be. In other words, how can I use Scripture to help people to understand the nature of Christian giving? This has been selfish eisegesis -- reading into the text what I want to be there.

Behind that, of course, is the realization that there is a budget that needs to be met, and it is one of my responsibilities to raise those funds. Thus, how can I tweak the Word of God so that it means what I want it to? I became conscious of my bias when handling 2 Corinthians a couple of years ago when a member of my congregation quizzed me on what I was actually trying to say when I preached a short series on this passage.

However, it was not until this year, when I started to look at this section within the context of the whole letter, and with the help of half a dozen commentaries written by far greater minds than my own, that I was able to face up to the fact that I was coming at the text in a totally wrong manner. These two chapters are about grace, God's riches poured out upon us. The key verse, if there is one is 8:9, where Paul writes, "For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich."

The starting point for giving must always be the person and work of our Lord Jesus. As Tom Wright puts it, "What counts is a work of grace in the hearts and lives of ordinary people," not whipping up sympathy or guilt over a particular project so that people will shell out in support (Paul For Everyone: 2 Corinthians). It was about four or five months ago that I found myself suddenly reading these chapters through the eyes of grace and not the eyes of giving, and I found them making sense as never before.

The word "grace" (charis) appears a number of times in these two chapters, yet as you go through the text word-by-word, sentence-by-sentence it is implied or described time and again. Grace is about the God who gives, Paul tells us. Paul was Christocentric through and through, and as he coaxes the Corinthians to think about fulfilling their commitment to this great project of sending relief funds to the church in Jerusalem, he effortlessly links the liberality of God's giving (which is his grace), with our responsiveness.

It would appear that the Macedonian believers, far poorer folks that the Corinthians, had already been overwhelming in their support of the Jerusalem project, and Paul does not want either the Corinthians or himself to be embarrassed by footdragging (9:4). In this, he spoke like every fundraiser I know!

We also see woven within this Paul's recognition that checks and balances should be in place to ensure financial responsibility. It isn't just him that is involved with this purse, but there is also Titus, "the brother who is famous among the churches," and depending on how you read the text there are others. Just as Christ was above reproach in what he did sacrificially on our part, Paul implies, so he is above reproach when it comes to raising and handling funds. This is a lesson we should all take seriously.

But from beginning to end the theme of these chapters is the gift of God. 8:1 begins with we want you Corinthians to know about the grace of God that has been shown by the Macedonians in their response to God's loving self-giving, and at the end of chapter 9 he writes, "Thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift!"

One of the problems with those of us who are preachers is that we tend to concentrate on passages about God loving a cheerful giver (9:7), and less on God being an overwhelming giver to whose grace we respond. We also play up the rewards of giving, as it were, with great play on verses like those who sow bountifully will reap bountifully (9:6) -- in effect functioning like hucksters who always want there to be something in it for the donor... "Have I got a reward for you!"

What is in it for the donor is that in giving we are reflecting the nature of God, at whose heart is the determination to give and give and give. This isn't going to appeal very much to those who are not overwhelmed by God's love and grace.

The Creator gave us the universe, the planet on which we live, the air we breathe and the food we eat. Above all, and capping all other gifts, he gave us our salvation in the person of Jesus, the Messiah who Paul had persecuted but now whom he served with all his being. 2 Corinthians is about what apostolic service and ministry really mean. Three times in the letter Paul spells out what it costs to be an apostle, but there is nothing whining about his description because he gives of himself willingly, just as God gave to us willingly of himself.

Throughout Chapters 8 and 9 there is the steady reiteration that giving can never be coerced, but must be from the overflow of the heart as we look at what God has done for us in Christ (9:12). We give because God has given, and with all our being what we want to do is reflect in our lives and actions the face of God.

What does this mean in our present circumstances? Well, I believe that as we look at those who have suffered and lost everything, we need to understand that we see the face of God. Didn't Jesus tell his disciples in the parable of the sheep and goats (Matthew 25:40), that "as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me?"

As I have watched in horror rescues taking place from streets that I know from my own visits to New Orleans, fellow-Episcopalians worshiping in Mississippi on the concrete slab of what once used to be their church, children screaming from hunger and fear as they hung on their mother's clothes outside the Superdome, and the hopelessness on the faces of elderly people sitting resignedly in lawn chairs, I realize that I am seeing the face of Jesus Christ, my Lord and Savior, and these words of Jesus have eaten themselves into my heart with fresh urgency.

We respond to our fellows in need because of our common humanity. We respond because we cannot imagine, perhaps, what it would be like to be in their shoes. We respond because we have friends and family caught up in this tragedy. But whatever our subordinate reason for responding, we do so because of what Christ has given to us, and because the compulsion is upon us to reflect by our giving the indescribable gift of grace and salvation.

Paul wrote to the Corinthians in flattery, "It is superfluous for me to write to you about the offering for the saints..." (9:1), and it should be superfluous for us to remind our fellow-believers of their obligations to give as God has given to us. Yet, here's the rub, while it might be relatively easy to open our hearts and give to fellow-Americans who have fallen foul of the worst the climate can throw at them, the test of our generosity will come when the crisis is overtaken by other news and we see other faces further away and in different lands who require our generosity, faces that are "the least of these my brethren."

The rub will also come when the bill is totted up for this crisis in the USA and the government, perhaps despite its instincts about taxes, requires us to pay more of our own means to underwrite the expenses that are being incurred. We have been shocked, perhaps, by the fact that the response was so slow in coming, but now, having demanded that response, are we prepared to pay for it? I like taxes no more than anyone else, but there is a place were civic responsibility in obedience to the Gospel takes over from my desires or wants. Will we be generous givers or will me-first materialism take over?

One of the things I have always loved about America is that it is a place of possibilities. I have been given opportunities and possibilities here that I would probably never have received in my homeland, and for that I am profoundly grateful. By and large, the USA has given me a fulfilled and fulfulling life, but part of the reason for this is that before America came onto the scene, the Lord Jesus reached out and redeemed me, calling me to be his own. So in the end, as Paul writes so clearly, it all comes back to him. If my life is surrendered at the foot of the Cross, what can I do but to give it all back to him. The question for each of us is whether we are prepared to glorify God in our response to his grace with overwhelming generosity(9:13-14)?

Let me leave the last words with Tom Wright, the Bishop of Durham.

"When Jesus, for the sake of us all, became poor, we became rich; now, when people who follow him are ready to put their resources at his disposal, the world and the church may benefit, not only from the actual money but from the fact that when the Jesus-pattern of dying and rising, of riches-to-poverty-to-riches, is acted out, the power of the gospel is let loose afresh in the world, and the results will be incalculable" (Page 91).

Katrina and How Others See Us

It is my practice each morning to get up sometime between 5.00-6.00 a.m., make tea, and then ride my exercise bike for 20-25 minutes while watching the News on BBC America. Not only do I usually get a good overview of what is going on in the world, but I catch up on important issues like how England are doing against Australia in cricket, and the latest goings on in the world of rugby football! Obviously, much of the focus of the last few days has been on Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. A news source outside the country also allows one to see ourselves as others see us.

Yesterday evening I happened to be home and tried to first read, and then to watch a movie, but my mind wouldn't stay on it and I found myself hungry to know every minute detail of what was going on 400 miles or so to the south of us. Several times yesterday, particularly when watching babies airlifted from Charity Hospital, New Orleans, I found myself in tears imagining how I would feel if one of those little ones was my granddaughter.

Like everyone else I am horrified at the slowness of response and the total breakdown in law and order. Which brings me back to the BBC this morning. As I watched they wheeled in the Professor of Organizational Psychology from the University of Lancaster. I shrugged as I peddled and thought, here's another Brit about to pontificate about the misfortunes of the USA.

Well, this professor turned out to be an American (although surmising from his online profile, he is now a UK Subject) who is watching from that distance and obviously is intensely involved in what is going on -- much as people in Britain were when 9/11 happened, or Americans were when the terrorists bombed London in July. He was asked the usual questions and then he started to make some of the most incisive comments that we in the United States, and especially in the churches, ignore at our peril.

New Orleans and the Gulf Coast have deteriorated to worse than Third World status in a matter of days, he pointed out. Within 24 hours there was news of looting in the Big Easy, and yesterday there were reports of shootings, women being raped, babies being abused, and there were the awful, awful pictures of thousands of sheep totally lost and without a shepherd. Also, it cannot have escaped anyone's attention that most of the faces of suffering that we saw on our screens from N. O. were those of a permanent black underclass.

Professor Cary Cooper from Lancaster was saying this ought to be a wake up call for the United States as we review our values in the wake of this catastrophe. I cannot remember his precise words but he suggested that a lot of what we are seeing is the fruit of a materialistic, me first society, in which dog-eat-dog individualism prevails, and where an impossible gulf exists between the rich and the poor that there is virtually no sense of commonality and community. The professor was, in effect, asking America not only to get its organizational act together, but also as a result of this to look very carefully at its soul.

I realize that there are a lot of folks doing heroic things at the moment in circumstances that are close to impossible. However, I think that when inquiries take place after the event there will be an awful lot of blame to go around, not least to our politicians and leaders who not only feed off, but also feed, the radical individualistic selfishness that is at the root of a lot of the anarchy that we are seeing. Now, it is easy to blame our politicians, but we should not forget that they probably reflect our values because we put them there.

A lot of what we have seen in the last few days is rooted in generations of history in the United States, a corporate history that we all of us, native-born and immigrants, in one way or another share. We have tended to avoid or downplay issues like the lasting legacy of slavery, or the manner in which our social structures provide such a limited safety need for the needy. The middle class and wealthy were the ones who fled the city and the Gulf Coast before Katrina hit, but who gave a thought to the plight of those without money or vehicles who would be left behind whether they liked it or not? They got warehoused in the Superdome.

I admire Bishop Charles Jenkins for coming straight back to Louisiana and into the eye of the hurricane from his visit to Hawaii, as soon as he knew what was happening. I pray for him and his clergy and lay leaders almost every hour, that God will use them in some way as a result of this horrific crisis. Yet how does one pick up after a crisis this big?

This morning I feel guilty and have a nagging depression deep inside. I am implicated in Professor Cooper's indictment, and I find myself asking how now do I... we... honor God in the midst of this appalling crisis. Perhaps one of the fruits that will come out of this situation is that we have been jerked around enough by what has happened to start asking questions about our core values, and then as Christians might begin to be able to work toward a modification of them.

The core values that have until now shaped most of our lives have more to do with American capitalism than with what it means to be the servants of King Jesus, and this is something I will be sharing with my congregation on Sunday. I don't know what the right way forward is, but perhaps a starting point is to strip down and examine the message that we proclaim, its undergirding worldview, and the values that we live by, and to ask ourselves, whether we are conservative or liberal, how much of this is selfish narcissism and how much is from the Lord.

American brothers and sisters (and I chose to become an American), we have been humbled by the weather and we have been humbled by the inadequacy of our response to this situation. The time has come for us to sink to our knees to confess our sins, and then to rise onto our feet and do our part in making both a church and a country so that when the day comes when we meet him face-to-face our Master will say, "Well done, good and faithful servants, enter into the joy of your master."

Hurricane Katrina

On Saturday afternoon Bishop Charles Jenkins of Louisiana got an email to some of his friends asking for our prayers and saying, "Living below sea level, we are particularly vulnerable." I have also had in prayer at this time my good friend, Chris Colby, Rector of Trinity Church, Pass Christian, Mississippi, whose church bukldings literally sit on the edge of the beach right in the eye of Katrina's storm. Trinity lost its building with Camille in 1969, and certainly they seem to be facing major damage today.

As I was getting out my online daily devotions yesterday evening to my congregation and other friends who receive them, I went looking for a prayer to be used in natural disasters to replace what I had put in there already. I found none -- even though I have about 15-20 books of prayers and collects. However, this morning after another prolonged search I did find one that is appropriate to pray now there is nothing else that we can do except prepare for the aftermath of this horrendous hurricane.

Lord of compassion and power,
be with those who have survived this disaster:
minister to their needs of mind and spirit,
body and circumstance;
heal those who are hurt;
give peace to the dying;
comfort and support the bereaved;
and to all who are working to bring relief and restore order
give strength and resilience to do their work well;
for the sake of Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen

This prayer was composed by Dick Williams from Britain.

Meanwhile, today is going to be spent preparing for Katrina's arrival here. We are being told to expect high winds, heavy rain and storms, power outages, and the possibility of tornadoes -- and we are 450 miles from where the storm came ashore. Between there and here, of course, there are folks who are facing a great deal more than we can expect.

For weeks now I have been praying for rain. It looks today as if the Lord will answer that prayer -- but why is it that he always has to overdo things?!

On Turning Sixty

It is a dreary, sticky, overcast day here in Middle Tennessee. Last night we got the first measurable rain that we had seen at our house for weeks, and today the grass is turning several shades greener, while the trees look a great deal more perky. Weather patterns seem to be changing, bringing a welcome relief after an exhaustingly hot, dry summer.

Tomorrow, on the Feast Day of St. Augustine of Hippo, I cross another of those human thresholds and turn sixty! I have been sitting here quite a while trying to see what sense I can make of it. As I look back over the course of my life it has always been the years ending with a nine that have been the most challenging, and certainly this is true of much of the last twelve months -- and the twelve months prior to that.

But Rosemary and I have weathered the spring and summer better than could have been anticipated, both as individuals and as a congregation. Tomorrow I intend to cast the vision for the Church of the Apostles for the coming year, confident that after many trials we are ready to move forward. I have found myself saying of late that the Church of the Apostles is about where I wished it had been when I was parachuted in to pick up the pieces several years ago.

Yet there is a destructive potential akin to Hurricane Katrina looming in the not too distant future as the Episcopal Church stumbles toward its next Convention in 2006. However, for the moment, that is in the future. Closer at hand on the ecclesiastical scene is the business of electing a new bishop in Tennessee, and surviving our own diocesan convention. I never thought events like these would become such horrifying punctuation marks sent to try God's faithful people to the limits!

When I was in seminary and then first ordained the life of the institutional church was one of those necessities, as it were, that went with being Christian. Through the middle part of my life, the institutional church may have loomed too large in my estimations, but I truly believed (as I copiously wrote) that it might somehow be turned into a blessing rather than being either neutral or a curse. As I move toward senior status my thinking has reversed again, so that today I see it as the least unappetizing aspect of the Christian journey, getting in the way of our mission -- especially the national church.

In many respect, however, I am no less excited about the redeeming power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ than I was more than forty years ago when this journey began. With all the experience now under my belt I can still say with all my heart that as far as I am concerned it is the power of God unto salvation for those who the Lord is calling into his Kingdom, and the games-playing of regiments of ecclesiastical politicians are so much dross when set alongside it.

While I believe it vital that we seek to understand and explicate the Good News with every ounce of our intelligence, I happily join Karl Barth in repeating the old chorus that "Jesus loves me this I know, for the bible tells me so!"

I am also excited by the task that lies ahead of us of translating the Gospel into the language of today's post-Christendom culture. I first came across the words of Dean W. R. Inge when I was in seminary. The good dean said that "he who marries the spirit of the age will soon become a widower." This pithy little saying made good sense to me then, and today it makes even more sense.

During my ministry I have had ring-side seats to watch this remarkable slide away from any pretense of Christian values within the wider culture, and have looked onw ith distates as the church, like an eager puppy dog wagging its tail, has gone right along with that fall from grace. As Graham Leonard, who ordained me to the diaconate said when leaving the Church of England for Rome, "The Church today, having lost her nerve, shows at times an almost pathetic desire to be loved by the world."

Yet as morose as all this sometimes makes me feel, my whole being seems to brighten when I realize the extraordinary privilege that God has entrusted to us of discovering how we might make the story of the central event of all human history, the Cross and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, meaningful to a band new kind of culture. I know that in this there is a role for oldies like me to play, perhaps rather like the defense in a soccer game, but we can no longer be the forwards scoring the goals, that is for the next generation.

So, on this murky late summer afternoon, I am heartened by the grace and wonder of the Good News that has been committed to us, and I want to walk in the footsteps of the Apostles. I find myself encouraged that I am called to serve the congregation that I do, and within the diocese in which I am situated. I look forward to finding exactly what role the Lord would have me play in the years ahead, and I pray that God will give me the grace to play that role wisely and well.

Yet this sense of delight is tempered by the distress that has dogged so many faithful Episcopalians during the last couple of years. That sense that we have allowed our denomination to be hijacked, and that in human terms we do not have the capacity to do anything about it, and our voices are being ignored.

But hope springs eternal. I have been pondering something I read not long ago that 50 passionately committed people can change the world. I think that there is more than a grain of truth in that. The Gospel is about this world-changing business, not the tawdry relativism that is being hawked around as the church's business. Perhaps what we are looking for is those 50 passionately committed people to step up to the line and take up the challenge. If that is the case then, aging as I am, you can count me in.

The Threatened Pandemic Approaches?

In March 2003 I wrote the following words:

In the wake of the First World War a huge influenza pandemic swept the
world, and it is estimated to have killed around 20 million people.
600,000 died in the USA and another 20,000 in Canada -- the so-called
Spanish flu often being brought home by soldiers returning from Europe. That epidemic was one in a regular series of mutations of the structures of influenza which have resulted in major infections around the world.

The question is, has this happened? Last week a new pneumonia came piling out of China, and through Hong Kong is beginning to spread its tentacles around the world. Already two Canadians have died from this disease that has been dubbed Severe Acute Respitory Syndrome, while two more have died in Hong Kong and Vietnam, and there are five possible victims in southern China. The good news is that researchers in Hong Kong have identified the nature of the disease today, which means they are now able to proceed to finding ways of treating it or ameliorating the symptoms.

However, the jury is out on whether this is the "big one" that folks have been expecting; but, as researchers say, even if it isn't, it is only a matter of time before influenza or something akin to it mutates, jumps from other species, and begins to wreak havoc. They remind us that it isn't a case of if something like this happens, merely when. We can hope that when it does researchers will be able to concoct vaccines that might help minimize its impact, especially in the lives of those of us who are fundamentally pretty healthy; but it is among the old, the young, the weak, and the sickly that such epidemics really "do their thing."

Well, SARS did not turn out to be the "big one," at least, not yet, but if you have kept your eyes and ears open you will have noticed way down on the news docket, behind the soap opera of Brad Pitt and Jennifer Anniston, that there is a rising level of concern about the avian flu that is creeping its way westward from China and Indochina, carried along by the wild birds that have been infected. These birds have in turn infected domesticated poultry, and now there are isolated cases of this virus jumping from birds to humans. In Holland it is now illegal to keep domesticated birds out in the open.

All we are waiting for now is the leap from human to human and then the "fun" really begins. Leslie Garrett, one of America's leading authorities on pandemics writes in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs: "In short, doom may loom. But not e the 'may.' If the relentlessly evolving virus becomes capable of human-to-human transmission, develops a power of contagion typical of human influenzas, and maintains its extraordinary virulence, humanity could face a pandemic unlike any ever witnessed."

With words like these, you are tempted to drop to your knees in long bouts of fervent intercessory prayer, while at the same time reaching for the anesthetic power of the brandy bottle! But Leslie Garrett continues, "Or nothing at all could happen." She writes, "Scientists cannot predict with certainty what this H5N1 influenza willd do. Evolution does not function on a knowable timetable, and influenza is one of the sloppiest, most mutation-prone pathogens in nature's storehouse."

OK, we say, putting the brandy bottle down for a moment, but still maintaining a posture of prayer, what might all this mean? If all I have read in following through on this is anything to go by, then the likelihood of this virus completing the transition from birds to human-to-human transmission is substantial if not 100% certain. What we don't know is how virulent it will be when it makes that jump, but let's suppose it is as lethal as the Spanish flu of yesteryear.

The Spanish flu epidemic of 1918-1920 probably killed a lot more than the conservative estimates of 40-50 million deaths. However, if we take that figure and project it onto the world's population today it would be a deathtoll of about 300 million -- or the rough equivalent of the population of the United States spread worldwide. The most vulnerable elements of the population are the very young, the elderly, those whose health is already compromised, and caregivers. There was no escaping the Spanish flu, either: isolated villages in Alaska were found where everyone had died, for example.

The effects of a flu epidemic, if it is only of Spanish flu proportions are hard to predict. The economy would take a beating, that's for sure, and some countries around the world would probably see a precipitative decline in population. Here's another thing to keep your worried in your bed at night, even if they could get the flu vaccine cocktail right to include avian flu, the pharmaceutical industry has never ever been able to produce more than 300 million doses in a single year. "The slow pace of production means that in the event of an H5N1 flu pandemic millions of people would likely be infected well before vaccines could be distributed."

So I ask again the question that I asked when SARS looked like the killer, "Are Christians ready to confort the afflicted, and offer Christ's love and attention to those who are dying or seriously ill? Are we aware of ways that we can protect ourselves from whatever comes down the pike if we are called to minister in an infected situation?"

What baffles me is that I have heard nothing from anyone in any of the churches about how we might pastorally and medically handle this eventuality if it presents itself. Indeed, I would say that the churches are like western culture in general, and have buried their collective heads in the sand.

So, as summer begins to turn to fall, and as the flu season approaches, it is possible (note the word possible) that within the next months or year or two flu could become the synonym for a killer, not something unpleasant that has to be endured. Are we ready?

Whatever Happened to Charismatic Renewal?

The other day a friend shared something he had written about what the future might look like for Anglicans in North America. It was, as is always the case with his work, clear and insightful. I had heard the talk on which the piece had been based, and had liked it very much, now he was asking for input before finalizing what he had written.

I slid his text into a file and took it to a meeting with me on Saturday, so that in the dull moments I might chew it over (I call that redeeming the time rather than letting my mind wander!). Just as the gathering started to get interesting and I needed to concentrate something occurred to me, and that was that there was no mention of the Charismatic Renewal in what he wrote -- although he had played a key role in that renewal himself a while back. I replied and pointed this out, sharing my response with another friend who had been part of this discussion. His immediate words were, "But why has the Charismatic Renewal disappeared in the Episcopal Church?"

Having written this far, I am certain that there will be an outpouring of responses that will say that the Charismatic Renewal has not died, that it is alive and well, and that they resent the implication that it is no longer part of the picture. Yet the truth is that while there are many, like good folks in my own congregation, for whom charismatic renewal was their springboard into a committed Christian faith, the movement as such seems to have run its course. I don't want to necessarily write its obituary but to ask where it has gone to.

I have been conscious of the Charismatic Renewal since 1965, the year I entered seminary. At that time Dennis Bennett visited the seminary and so began a heady time in that student and faculity community. Some rather crazy things happened, but there was much good that came from it. While for several years the charismatics "stood apart" from those of us who were more comfortable with the label "evangelical," by the time I was ordained and starting out on my active ministry, there was something of a merger that was starting to take place, and gathered apace.

In the years that followed many of the insights of the renewal movement found their way into the mainstream of Anglican evangelicalism, while at the same time the rather ragged theological base of the renewal movement was clarified and refined by the intellectual discipline brought to it by "renewed evangelicals." Add to that the rapprochment that took place with Anglo-Catholics who were drawn into renewal, together with a handful of broad church types, and something interesting seemed to be going on.

Yet this pattern did not seem to shape the ECUSA experience at all. When I arrived here one of the things that struck me was how weak evangelicals were in the Episcopal Church, and the other was that the renewal movement was a great deal more about experience, and lacked the firm theological undergirding that I had seen in Britain. Whereas in Britian the renewal had, by and large, shed its rather ungainly pentecostal theological and cultural trappings, that was not necessarily what had happened here.

Now in the years since then it has seemed to me that there has been something of a coming together of evangelicals and renewal people, particularly as a result of the influence of Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry; but there has also been a contraction of that distinctly charismatic base, and I suspect it would be unusual to find an Anglican parish of any Anglican jurisdiction these days that is as overtly charismatic as many used to be.

Part of that may be that God does a work for a particular time in a particular place, and then as balance is corrected, the church moves on. We needed to be reminded of the power and grace of the Holy Spirit in the 60s and 70s and early 80s, but a lot of those lessons have been learned by faithful people, even if a lot of seed fell on thin soil. These days I expect the Spirit to do things that thirty or forty years ago I would have been extremely dubious about in my evangelical uptightness.

Part of this decline in overt charismatic witness may be that God has, in fact, withdrawn his Spirit from parts of the church. As the Spirit is the Spirit of truth, when a church toys with overt error, then the Lord has, as Revelation puts it, no alternative but to remove the lampstand. I suspect that we are seeing some of this.

Another component may be that because the Renewal Movement in the USA was not as theologically rooted as it should have been, there has been a trickling away of many of its blessings into the sands. When Christians rev up experience and become hungry for experience, miracles, healings, or whatever, while ignoring the rooting, grounding, and discipline of God's Word that is necessary, then a diminution is going to take place. Experience that is genuinely from God, in these circumstances, gives way to the manufacturing of experience, which ultimately is going to shrivel and die.

One of the tragedies of these last 20 years has been watching folks who were once leaders in renewal moving away from biblical values because they have made experience one of the defining components of their theology, rather than a historic grounding in Scripture. This is certainly the case with at least one individual who comes immediately to mind, and the values he now affirms are in stark contrast to what is taught in the Old and New Testaments.

I am inclined to think that all of these above thoughts have some merit, but I would go further and suggest that the Charismatic Movement broke upon us at a certain time, and enabling a particular generation or two to meet God in an intimate way -- which might not have otherwise been possible for them. It might have borne more lasting fruit if the blessing of the Spirit had not been squandered in some many instances, being reduced to a rather self-centered revelling rather than seeing that experience as the starting point for equipping for ministry and selfless mission.

Not too long ago one of the venerable leaders of the Renewal Movement in the Episcopal Church at its prime was talking to me about the various Holy Spirit and Evangelism congresses that took place in the 70s and 80s. He shook his head and said that he felt they were of far less value than they could have been because they were 90% about experiencing the Spirit and only 10% (if that) about mission and evangelism. I have to endorse his insights. I would add that this is probably true of the Cursillo movement, too.

My observation of the rising generation is that the whole charismatic thing cuts very little ice with them. The best insights of it have already been mainstreamed into the life of the church, but it is too frothy for many of them. They are looking for rooting and grounding, being the children of a culture (and often families) that is rootless. The generational cycle has moved on, and as this has happened we find a searching back for the ancient treasures of our faith within the context of a throwaway culture, rather than redressing other balances that were necessary 30-40 years ago.

I don't know what others think. I admit that I have always viewed the Renewal Movement more as an interested outsider, rather than one who identified with it. This means that I might suffer some innate myopia which the insights of others can correct.

Ecumenical Jihad?

There was yesterday an Op-Ed piece in the New York Times (Sunday, July 31, 2005) in which the writer did what I would describe as the "Prudery Polka." The article is about books for young people, and draws attention to a novel that is built around teenage oral sex parties. What we got was the I'm-not-easily-shocked-or-particularly-prudish routine that we tend to hear when the ethically laissez-faire elite have yet to digest and come to terms with something that revolts them.

I guess that I am going to do something a little bit similar as I get into this piece today. I don't want you to think that anything I say is meant to be a support or endorsement of terrorism or terrorist activities. Indescriminate destruction of ordinary human beings is never justifiable, and however angry or disgruntled one might be about anything, violence is very seldom the answer to that problem.

And this brings me to another piece in the Sunday New York Times, a well-written and well-researched article attempting to get to the roots of terrorism in the British Muslim community. Amy Waldman, the author, spent a lot of time combing the back streets of the Yorkshire city of Leeds from which three of the four July 7 bombers came. She tracks the generational changes in attitude from those who came to Britain forty years ago and who believe it to be as one said, "the greatest country in the world," and their chldren and children's children who dismiss the older generation and the mainstream mosques as "timid."

Ms. Waldman suggests that behind the rise of aggression in British Islam is a deep-down identity crisis for they don't know whether they are Muslim, British, or both. "Going religious" seems to be the way they describe beginning to take their faith seriously, and when they do so they find themselves being radicalized not in the staid mosques but in fringe Islamic centers and bookshops that has popped up over the last decade or so. In these settings the sins of the Crusades are brought into play, and they are coaxed along by visual materials that, for example, "superimpose a cross dripping with blood over Iraq and Afghanistan."

Yet there is something else, and this is what I have been aiming toward, and that is the struggle they have to live as Muslims in the West with its lack of values, profusion of scantily clad women, endless television programming that is corrosive in every way. As Waldman states, "The transformation (of these returnees to Islam) has had positive elements: the men live healthier and more constructive lives than many of their peers here, Asian or white, who have fallen prey to drugs, alcohol or petty crime."

There is something about this young Muslim quest with which I find myself deeply sympathetic because there is little doubt that they are right in diagnosing our culture as decadent beyond words. When a novelist commenting on teenage books tries to swallow her revulsion at the success of a book that focuses upon horribly promiscuous behavior among adolescents, then we have a pretty clear example of the sexual nihilism of our culture. Add to that the demolition of values and the juggernaut of materialism that has ridden over us in the last forty years, and it is not difficult to see why the alienated are turning to what are, in effect, self-destructive behaviors.

The irony is that these young Islamic extremists in their protest against the world in which they live (and on behalf of world Islam), are merely turning to a different kind of self-destruction than their contemporaries of all races raised on the streets of cities like Leeds, Chicago, or Sydney, as members of an angry underclass. Rather than falling into an unthinking alliance with the culture as their peers have, their response is to lash out and try to destroy it.

The truth is that mainstream Christians, Jews, and Muslims have a great deal upon which they can make common cause, living as we do amidst the decay of the West. This was a point that Peter Kreeft was making a decade ago in his book Ecumenical Jihad, and subtitled, Ecumenism and the Culture War.

In his introduction Kreeft (A Roman Catholic originally from a Reformed background), writes, "One of the main points of this book is that we need to change our current categories and our current alignments. We need to realize, first, that we are at war and, second, that the sides have changed radically: many of our former enemies (for example, Muslims) are now our friends, and some of our former friends (for example, humanists) are now our enemies" (Page 9).

The first chapter of Kreeft's book is a stellar pen portrait by a witty and highly intelligent philosopher of the damage done by everything from the sexual revolution ("the most destructive revolution in history"), to the deconstructionist thinking that persuades us that "'Truth' is only a hypocritical mask on the face of Power" (Page 20). The reality is, he says, that those of us who adhere to the absolutes given by the absolute God are allies on the battlefield that is now before us. "We are living in that split second between the disappearance of God and the disappearance of His image in the human mirror. The image is the life of our souls, our consciences. That is what our present'culture war' is about" (Page 20).

We live at a time of unprecedented moral and cultural confusion, and some of what motivates young Islamic extremists motivates me. Again, that is not to justify their response, but it does help me understand them. When I committed my life to Jesus Christ nearly 46 years ago, one of the initial fruits in my life was a sense of moral exasperation with myself and the world in which I was living. My conscience had been heightened, and while it prodded and shaped my choices and lifestyle, it also made me take a good look at what was going on in the world around me -- and much that I saw seemed alien to my understanding of the desire of the Creator God who had redeemed me.

That understanding of God has, I hope, strengthened and matured over the years. I wish I could say that I have always followed the promptings of my own conscience, but alas I have not. But for the grace of Jesus Christ I would be a lost cause. However, as the years have passed I have a deepening sense of dis-ease at the world in which we live, our selfishness, our consumerism, our inability to control our bodily appetites and compulsive behaviors that run riot. I see a culture that has abandoned a constructive worldview in favor of something that is going nowhere fast, and whose dangers are hidden by psychologizing and intellectual subtleties.

Within this context I look at the churches and see that they have compromised with this culture, much as the medieval Catholic church was compromised by the culture in which it functioned in the 15th and 16th Centuries. It took a renewing work of the Holy Spirit to begin making new, and that is what it is going to take again in our own time. I am not just railing against the obvious shortcomings of the Episcopal Church, but of the failures and blindspots of the whole Christian community.

In the churches sexually-related offenses are often the presenting problem; as Kreeft puts it, Modernism has broken the link between God and our gonads! However, this is merely the presenting issue of a far deeper and darker woe. We have, it seems, abandoned those things that make us the salt, the light, the leaven, in the world in which we live. Clearly, there is not only the need to call upon the Holy Spirit for his renewing work, but also for an intentionality on our part -- in our personal lives, in our thinking, and in our church lives, to restore the essence of who we are and what God intends us to be.

"The Enemy's battle-strategy has been the oldest and most obvious in military science: divide and conquor. Insofar as he has been able to foment civil wars and divide God's people, he has been able to weaken them. And he has fomented wars not only between churches but also within them" (Page 14), writes Kreeft. Clearly, the time has come to move beyond this and make common cause with those who are eager to be agents of transformation in a society that is being flushed down the toilet.

Again and again after July 7th, Tony Blair, the Queen, and George W. Bush, among others, asserted that we will not allow terrorists to destroy our way of life. But the truth is, while law, order, and peace on our streets and trains is of paramount importance, how much of our present way of life is worth defending? We value our freedoms, but has the point been reached where freedom has become license, which is itself then self-destroying? Could it be that the lineups we saw in Britain of bishops, moderators of churches, presidents of mosques, and so forth, be the starting point from which common cause on a whole variety of issues can be found?

That our culture is under attack from forces that have been raised in our culture should give us cause for thought as we move forward into an uncertain future. The challenge is enormous, and we avoid to confront it, and to confront it with all the allies we can get, at our own peril.

Dawkins' God - A Review

Dawkins' God: Genes, Memes, and the Meaning of Life by Alister McGrath (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005. 159 pages. US$18.95 <$12.89 at Amazon.com>)

A Review by Richard Kew

If you ever doubted that Alister McGrath is a very clever chap, then his latest book should put such doubts to rest forever. What is remarkable about this book is that here is a world class theologian with a chair in that discipline at one of the world's leading universities, who also holds a doctorate in biochemistry, and who was deeply engaged in postgraduate work in that field before, as it were, changing horses. What he does in this book is examine the works of Richard Dawkins, one of the foremost exponents and popularizers of an atheistic brand of scientific Darwinism, and who also teaches at the same university as McGrath -- Oxford.

Dawkins' God is not so much a theologian critiquing Dawkins from the remoteness of a divinity-laden perch, but a scientist bringing rational scientific argument to bear on Dawkins' assertions and arguments, and doing so from a strongly held and significantly reflected-upon Christian presupposition. If nothing else, Dawkins' God is a classic example of how intelligent and gracious apologetic should be undertaken.

"(Richard) Dawkins raises all the right questions," McGrath tells us as he concludes this book, and then damns him with ironic faint praise by saying, "and gives some very interesting answers" (Page 158). Richard Dawkins came from a traditional Anglican background, but like so many of our generation, was innoculated against the real thing during his time at Oundle School, a once all-male preserve of which my elder daughter was in the first class of girls! For purposes of full disclosure, my mother-in-law was employed by Oundle for many years, and my younger daughter also studied there.

Dawkins read zoology at Oxford, and did further research at the University of Sussex. Following his time on that delightful campus by the English Channel he crossed an ocean and a continent and spent a few years at Berkley, that delightful campus overlooking the Pacific, before returning to Oxford University where he has hung his hat ever since. It was Dawkins' assertions in books like The Selfish Gene and The Blind Watchmaker, that turned him into a popularizer of an atheistic spin on Charles Darwin's insights.

It is Dawkins belief that Christian theology is "cosmic sentimentality," and that to believe in God today is to be "hoodwink'd with faery fancies." Do not think that because Professor Dawkins has, unlike so many scientists, a great facility with words, that his statements come from someone who hops, skips, and jumps across the surface. Dawkins has been an influential thinker in his field, although as McGrath suggests, his grasp of the ontological, theological, and a-theological, dimension is not as secure as his grasp of the interpretation of the science upon which he bases his position.

This is a classic contest between science and religion. The trouble is, as McGrath, a towering student of theology, philosophy, and the history of ideas, the so-called battle between science and faith was greatly exaggerated when it erupted in the Victorian era, and things have moved on considerably since that time. Today, for example, there is more and more research that suggests a faith dimension is healthy rather than destructive, and that there is a deepening cooperation between the scientific community and the faith community. Dawkins conveniently overlooks this.

McGrath finds Richard Dawkins' earlier works, (all of which you are likely to find on the science shelves of any Barnes and Noble or Borders), more convincing than his later ones, because they are based in the scientific method with evidence-based arguing. His later works tend to deteriorate in McGrath's opinion as they reiterate "the same stale old atheistic equivalents of the 'mad, bad, or God' arguments use by some Christians to prove the divinity of Christ... It became increasingly clear to me that the grounds of Dawkins' atheism might ultimately lie beyond the sciences, not within them" (Page 10).

This is as far as McGrath is prepared to go in personal inuendo, and that is a lesson all of us can learn when engaged in debate. I know that I have at times been guilty of arguing against opponents by allowing personal invective to take the place of reasoned discussion, so there was an object lesson here. Character assassination should not prevail in intelligent debate over ideas, ethics, facts, and perceptions. While the Apostle Paul has some pretty tough things to say about his detractors, he always does so within the context of the discussion of faith, doctrine, and practical Christian living, not solely on the basis of his detractors' characters. So it should be with us, and McGrath models this for us.

Early on in his research and teaching career Richard Dawkins hit upon the very effective technique of looking at evolution from the viewpoint of the gene. He wrote, "Life is just bytes and bytes of bytes of digital information. Genese are pure information -- information that can be encoded, recoded and decoded, without any degradation or change of meaning." Organisms that are able to replicate this genetic coding and pass it on to the next generation are there to enable this digital database to survive -- and not the other way round. Thus -- the Selfish Gene. In the process of unpacking Dawkins, McGrath unpacks Darwin and Mendel, too, and as effectively as I have seen either of these great gentlemen explained.

For Dawkins evolution by natural selection, Darwinism, "is a worldview, a total account of reality." Darwinism is a "universal and timeless principle capable of being applied throughout the universe." In comparison worldviews such as Marxism are "parochial and ephemeral. Where most evolutionary biologist would argue that Darwinism offers a description of reality," McGrath comments, "Dawkins insists that it offers more than this -- it is an explanation. Darwinism is a worldview, a grand recit, a metanarrative -- a totalizing framework, by which the great questions of life are to be evaluated and answered" (Page 42-43).

With grace, subtlety and intelligence, McGrath spends 159 pages gently but firmly challenging and demolishing the integrity of Dawkins' case, and questioning his presuppositions. He makes it clear by the use of both ideas and evidence, that whatever the legitimacy of Darwinian thought, Darwin's presuppositions do not necessarily lead to atheism as Dawkins is convinced, and neither does an evolutionary framework make sense of the manner in which culture develops and functions.

I have not read a lot of Richard Dawkins, but what I have read has always seemed to me to reflect a personal agenda against religion, as much as stating a position which he believes to be emminently defensible. Yet Dawkins has influenced a lot of people, yet at the same time I suspect he has been under-estimating both the ability and the intelligence of those who believe he is incorrect in his forthright rejection of any notion of God or a First Cause.

It is clear that in Alister McGrath he has met his intellectual and scholarly match. McGrath is someone who uses the scientific method and the explications of facts, the arena in which Dawkins considers himself king, to undermine the arguments Dawkins is making. What excites me about this book is not just the case McGrath makes, but the manner in which he makes it.

I commend Dawkins' God as a tutorial in godly apologetics and a model for the manner in which we need to learn to address ourselves to an unbelieving world. It is also an extremely useful guide to follow as we within the Christian community engage in debate and dialogue with one another.

Something Completely Different: The Elizabethan Homilies

A few days ago my good friend, David Bailey, asked about the Homilies, and their role in the Anglican tradition as seen through English eyes. As in the midst of this heatwave it is far too hot to go outside and do anything, I am sitting in the air conditioned comfort of my study and getting a reply out to his question.

Article XXXV of the Thirty-Nine Articles reads, "The Second Book of Homilies, the several titles whereof we have joined under this Article, doth contain a godly and wholesome Doctrine, and necessary for these times, as doth the former Book of Homilies, which were set forth in the time of Edward the Sixth; and therefore we judge them to be read in Churches by the Ministers, diligently and distinctly, that they may be understanded of the people."

There was a reworking appended to Article XXXV by the General Convention of 1801 was
valid, building upon the principle of comprehension found in the original Article itself: "This Article is received in this Church, so far as it declares the Books of Homilies to be an explication of Christian doctrine, and instructive in piety and morals. But all references to the constitution and laws of England are considered as inapplicable to the circumstances of this Church; which also suspends the order for the reading of said Homilies in churches, until a revision of them may be conveniently made, for the clearing of them, as well from obsolete words and phrases, as from the local references."

The Homilies were model sermons introduced into what had been essentially a non-preaching, non-biblical tradition of the old, unreformed Catholicism that preceded the establishment of the Church of England as an entity separated from the papacy. Also, not every priest by any means was licensed to preach, but they were given the Homilies to address to their congregations. As someone has pointed out, they did a pretty good job in their impact upon the English people because the generation who listened to them the most was the generation of Hooker, Spencer, Shakespeare, Marlow, and Sidney!

The Homilies tended to disappear from common use in the 17th Century especially under the influence of the Puritans, who were preachers par excellence, and many of whom considered these to be somewhat watered down theology! However, it ought to be remembered that those older Puritans had also be shaped by being expected to listen to the Homilies, thus shaping the English preaching and expository tradition.

Today the Homilies are more of historic interest than anything, but as Stephen Neill pointed out in his history of Anglicanism, what Cranmer was doing when he created these resources was to revive an ancient Catholic practice of providing homilies to be read in churches where there would otherwise be no preaching.

Neill continues:

"Hearers today (he was writing in 1958) would probably regard the homilies as long, tedious, complex, and unintelligible. But we note once again Cranmer's confidence in his fellow-countrymen's ability to understand and to resond to a reasoned exposition of the Christian faith. In those days everyone had to go to church, whether he wishes or not; in many churches no sermon was ever provided other than the reading of a homily. There is little doubt that, through constant hearing, the
substance of many of these discourses, like that of the Bible and the Prayer Book itself, passed into the consciousness of the hearers, and helped to fashion the characteristically Anglican attitude toward Christian faith."

They also helped promote the gradual acceptance of the notion that the Scriptures are the ultimate standard in all matters of faith and conduct. This latter reality has been lost in the "I feel..." kind of preaching that we hear today that often has no bearing on what the Word says.

While Americans delight in the glories of their written Constitution, it has to be remembered that the Church of England developed in the same way as English Common Law, by the accumulation of precedents -- and they glory in that. I suspect that if the British had been asked to vote on the new-defunct European Union Constitution, there would probably have been quite heated battles about the pros and cons of a Common Law approach to constitutional life, compared to a written consitutition.

The Church of England in its style reflects the nation in so many ways, so it can be said that the Homilies were part of the "Common Law" precedent approach to ordering church life. They provided a model and a precedent, and whether we realize it or not, we stand on the shoulders of those whose lives were formed by these treasurers -- indigestible as many of them might be.

If you want to read the Homilies you can find and download them at http://www.anglicanlibrary.org/homilies/

Why I Remain An Anglican - Part 3

The crises of the last years has forced me, like so many others, to carefully reconsider my stance in relation to my Anglican commitment, and that is probably no bad thing given how stultifying it can be to get into a rut and take one's circumstances for granted. As I have looked at the alternatives, and as well as sought to understand what Anglicanism is, and where it is now, I have concluded that to be faithful I must remain an Anglican, and althought I would prefer a friendlier environment, must do so within the Episcopal Church of the USA.

I am also convinced that a weakening of Anglicanism both here and elsewhere is a weakening of the whole global Body of Christ, for there is a richness in Anglicanism that filters through into the whole broad array of Christian traditions from the Pentecostal to the Catholic. While there is a lot to learn in this present crisis, I am also certain that walking away from this church, even if it is to go to as venerable a tradition as Rome, is not the answer to the problem. This is not to stand in judgment over those who have taken this journey, but to assert it is not the path I will take. Perhaps it is because the Anglican tradition is so flawed that I, a deeply flawed individual, can relate meaningfully to it.

I also believe that in all our splitting and fragmenting there is a giving in to a desire for instant gratification. My observation over the years has been that divisions between Christians are as much about personalities and relationships as they are about beliefs and convictions. As I have been studying Paul's writings to the Corinthians this year I am touched by his way of doing things. It was not to compromise the fundamentals of the faith, but to win over those who attacked him and radically compromised the truth, with loving firmness and attempts as reconciliation in the name of Christ.

As I read Scripture, there is a divine imperative rooted in the person and work of Christ that we always seek reconciliation. There has been a lot of talk about reconciliation, and there is this tendency among those who represent the views of the political majority to think in terms of the orthodox "minority" laying down and playing dead before the majority. This is to misunderstand the nature of Christian truth, which has little to do with democracy and the opinions of the majority, and much more to do with obedience to what God has revealed. Yet the God who has revealed his nature is also the God who has reconciled us to himself in the Cross of Christ, and has "entrusted to us the message of reconciliation" (2 Cor. 5:19). Despite the countless discomforts, our imperative is to continue to seek to end broken relationships within the continuing life of the church.

I am increasingly of the opinion that it is within this environment that we can best learn the truth. I do not trust the carnal me who is perfectly happy to say "I am convinced I am right," and then to turn my back on those with whom I am at odds. This would allow me to luxuriate in my own self-righteousness. While I am convinced of the veracity of biblical values concerning the nature of our humanity, and therefore in the sexuality debate, I am obligated to try to grasp what I might have missed, and this can only happen in an environment where I am not quaranteened from those who think differenly from me, however wrong I believe them to be.

The reality is that God's truth always trumps my limited perceptions. Doctrinal boundaries are vital, but we should not make them barriers. The truth always requires of us humility, on whatever side we are in the debate, and during the last few years we have seen precious little humility. I cannot pretend that I exhibit a rich vein of humility in my life or even in the way I have handled myself in the last couple of years, but I struggle forward knowing that true believing and genuine humility belong together.

Seeking to live according to the Gospel humility pioneered by Jesus requires a sturdiness of soul in these hard times, when one's primary detractors are likely to be those within the church. During the last few years all sorts of nastiness has been thrown at me because I believe the course being taken by ECUSA dishonors God -- and is plain wrong. There may be some truth in charges made against me, but I would graciously suggest that my detractors look at themselves before throwing accusations, perhaps they are just a little guilty of projection.

Then one does not walk away from the circumstances in which God has
placed you. While my careful analysis leads me to conclude that Anglican Christianity is the place where I belong, I confess that it requires a supreme effort to remain part of a province that has made it clear that it doesn't like people like me and wishes we would go away, despite the fact that we are the mainstream of world Anglicanism.

Yet it seems that God is remaking his church, and no good is served by me disappearing from the construction site during preparation of the land for our future. Much of my writing over the past twenty years has been to say that today's ecclesial configuration is not appropriate for tomorrow's missionary task. Rebuilding is by its nature messy, and during reconstruction involves all manner of temporary solutions and contingencies -- and this is precisely what going on around us.

We can only see the reality from a human standpoint, which means we are overwhelmed by the mess, but the truth is that our all-powerful, all-knowing God sees the beginning from the end, and the end from the beginning, and will guide and direct his faithful people through the intervening wilderness, as he has done before.

The history of salvation is constant recapitulation: the Exodus always being the model of God's way of deliverance. The Exodus, like the Way of the Cross, is about discovering the richness of faithfulness, believing that God in his time and manner will show us the precise course we should pursue. For God's people the Exodus journey required much patience as they wandered through the desert for forty years. Some centuries later there was the seventy years of Exile, and now we await the return of the Lord Jesus Christ, who will at that point make all things new. Patience, waiting, as well as periods of discomfort are all part of the faithful journey.

I am convinced there are more immense challenges ahead of Christian people, Anglicans and otherwise, in the 21st Century than we imagine. I agree wholeheartedly with Benedict XVI that "humanity must change course or face even greater atrocities and barbarism in the decades to come." The Pope has in his sights a relativism that says "there is no truth," and from which comes "the looming threat of new anti-human ideologies and philosophies" (Robert Moynihan, Let God's Light Shine - The Spiritual Vision of Pope Benedict XVI, New York: Doubleday, 2005, page 45).

Challenges will descend upon us hard and fast as this century proceeds. I do not actually believe the present crisis is primarily about sexuality, nor do I believe it is necessarily about authority, although that is a component, but I am certain that the nub of the matter is what it means to be human. The question is what it means to be made in the image of God, and thus what God is like. The revealed nature of God is being challenged from every direction imaginable, and those forces seeking to redefine our humanity will only become more ravenous. This is what gives significance to our present battles.

To this must be added the consequences of planetary degradation and the massive demographic shifts going on. The implication of mass migrations and imbalances of age and generation are beginning to be felt in every society, culture, economy, and in religious and ethnic relationships. What we have seen in London during the last couple of weeks is a symptom of this. There is no place in this environment for a weak, unreflective, divided, or diluted Christian voice and witness.

Futhermore, we can expect a new round of diseases and pandemics, as well as needing to find the resources to come to terms with inventions and discoveries that will fill the whole human race with both wonder and unprecedented terror. Superpowers will come, superpowers will go, and we need to recognize in the midst of all this that the whole infrastructure of contemporary life is immensely fragile. I could go on, but you probably get the point.

As I took one last look at my granddaughter sleeping in her crib before leaving England, I saw a person who could conceivably live to see the dawn of the 22nd Century. My prayers for her is that she will be a forthright and obedient servant of Jesus Christ through all of her life, and that she will be engifted by God to contribute to the solution of tomrrow's problems, not their intensification.

Which brings me back to Anglican Christianity, one significant stream within the multifarious channels that combine to form a vast river that is the covenant people of God. Whatever the shape of its future (and its shape will be very different from anything we have known), it has a role to play. Meanwhile, it is our lot to be the generation who are asked to be stewards of this small vessel as we feel our way through difficult times and troubled waters. So be it. As Paul told the Corinthians that "this slight momentary afflication is preparing for us an eternal weight fo glory beyond comparison" (2 Corinthians 4:17).

Why I Remain An Anglican -- Part 2

The earlier part of this was necessarily autobiographic, and what
follows is what I understand the essence of Anglicanism to be. For many
years now my old friend and mentor, Dr. Jim Packer, has spoken and
written about the Anglican identity. We have joked together that this may be because Anglican Christianity has suffered from a permanent identity crisis! This may be true, but I hazard that there are good reasons for this, one of which is that we live in transitional times, and a Christian tradition that is attempting to speak God's truth in a
period of such social fluidity is bound to spend a lot of time wrestling
with who it is.

1. THE ANGLICAN DOCTRINAL HERITAGE:
The Jack Spongs and Jim Pikes of this word are aberrations in the Anglican universe, as detached from the mainstream of catholic Christianity and classic Anglicanism as the snake handlers who still crop up in out of the way coves and hollows of Appalachia. Yet, because American Anglicanism has been (at the very best) "theology lite," they have been allowed to be the voice of our tradition on American soil. They are, I suspect, the inevitable outcome of the mantra which has been constantly repeated that Anglican Christianity is not confessional -- something which is utter phooey!

Anglican Christianity is theologically rich and thoroughly confessional, being rooted and grounded in its submission to Scripture as God's word written, as interpreted and understood through the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, the historic Books of Common Prayer, and the Homilies. This stream of believing provides an environment that is generous enough to allow for substantial wiggle room, but is without an inquisitional flavor. Yet within our tradition there are clear, substantial, and obvious boundaries that have been set, and we ignore them at our peril.

Classic Anglicanism has had a delightful theological sturdiness that enables it to draw upon the riches of everyone from the Church Fathers to the Puritans, from Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas, to the insights of the whole cross-section of great theologians and thinkers of our time, as well as the emerging theologies that are coming from the Global South. The thin gruel that has been the staple of American Anglicanism in the last several generations has played a role in creating a denomination that is so ignorant of its origins and roots that much of it now hardly bears much of the original family likeness. As Robert Morgan of Oxford has pointed out, "the best insights of liberal theology... do not suffice to nourish a minority church in an aggressively secular society" (Quoted by Alister McGrath in The Renewal of Anglicanism, page 121).

It was inevitable that Anglicanism would become more multicultural because of the explosive growth of the worldwide Communion, drawing upon many ethnicities and social groupings, and that with this expansion would come tensions. However, while much of the church in the wider world has read, learned, and inwardly digested the core at the heart of Anglican believing, it has become obvious in recent years that the church in the West would become so deeply enamored by the relativism, cultural and moral narcissism of our times. Neither did we fully recognize the harm deconstructive thinking and scholarship was doing to the way we understand the content of our Christian heritage.

However, having said this, it is the generosity of Anglicanism that continues to draw me, a generosity that is truly Spirit-given. The Anglican way of understanding the substance of the faith has clarity, but at the same time there is room to move and to explore. So I would contend that there is a generous orthodoxy about Anglican Christianity that is enviable -- clear boundaries, but room to move. Having said that, there have been those within the church who have imposed upon our tradition's innate generosity until the outcome has been utter license -- and with it the abandonment of the catholic distinctives that are at the heart of Anglican believing and acting.

2. THE ANGLICAN CULTURAL HERITAGE:
Having experienced Anglicanism in many parts of the world I would say that although it is hard to clearly define, there is a certain continuity to our expression of faith that is recognizable whether you are in a mud church in the bush of Tanzania or in one of England's great, historic cathedrals. A component of this Anglicanism, like its theology, is both its generosity and its willingness to engage the
prevailing culture with the heart of the Gospel.

I would take issue with those who identify Anglicanism with Englishness, for although that is still so in parts of the West, our approach to the faith has certainly moved through and beyond this in other parts of the world. English-style Anglicanism may have been the jumping off point, but it has developed way beyond that now. Anglicans worship is a babel of languages, a multiplicity of styles, and with several orchestras of different musical instruments, with a variety of liturgies, and its theology continues to have a rich generosity of expression.

Anglicanism is essentially a tolerant and welcoming way of being a Christian, and that is something I revel in and applaud. Speaking personally, throughout my Christian life I have been given the liberty to explore, ask questions, and also to fail -- both in my vocation and my personal life, and I have been picked up and gently nurtured back to health as well. I have also been expected to live alongside and work with those with whom I have the profoundest disagreements. I can only say that I have been immeasurably enriched by this, uncomfortable as it has sometimes been.

I would go further and say that in my own ministry, and in the midst of one of the deepest crisis of my life, I was nurtured and loved back to holistic health by a bishop whose theology I believe to be fundamental flawed. This had a profound impact upon me, ameliorating my own tendency to "write people off," and demonstrating to me that at its best, the generosity of Anglicanism cuts in several ways. It is for personal reasons like this that I find the present crisis so painful, for in
ECUSA, at least, that generosity has fled on all sides, and the integrity of a valuable component of the Anglican culture has been profoundly weakened if not permanently destroyed.

However, one of the reasons we are in the mess we are is because we have acted with appropriate generosity, welcoming all-comers into our midst. Where we have failed is that we have allowed such generosity to be taken advantage of and devalued until it has become cheap grace, and have shrunk from maintaining the boundaries that are there at the heart of the Anglican confession. Doing both these things together is, I realize, a difficult balancing act, but our present circumstances are evidence of our failure.

We have allowed, alas, the culture of rights to prevail, modifying pastoral care until we are asked to accept as normal what is unacceptable. I am not just talking of sexuality here, for this has merely been the tipping point in what is a multi-generational drift from the essence of classic Anglicanism. My hope, prayer, and dream would be to see the balance restored, for with it would come not only a delightful maturity of faith, but also a revitalized Anglican culture.

3. ANGLICAN WORSHIP:
The most obvious thing about Anglicans, perhaps our biggest calling card in the New World, is our liturgical tradition rooted and grounded as it is in the brilliance of Thomas Cranmer and the wisdom of the Elizabethan Settlement. Even with all the tinkering that has gone on through the process of liturgical revision, such good stuff cannot help but shine through.

We are allowed by the church to pray with the communion of saints down through the ages, while at the same time recognizing the need for spiritual spontaneity and for local cultural variation. There is extraordinary substance in our worshipping, even the severely watered down offerings of Rite II in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer. In an age when so much worship is anthropocentric and entertainment-driven, there is great significance in our beginning our time around the Word and the table with the words, "Blessed be God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit."

We believe as Anglicans that we worship with the mind every bit as much as with the body and the emotions. Ideally, worship for us is not a psychological or spiritual game, but is the setting within which our whole being is brought into the divine presence, fed on the Word, and nourished by the sacraments. While there is great danger that our worship will become rote, there is far less danger that it will be vacuous and trite when it is used reverentially, sensitively, and with great care.

I confess that on those rare occasions when I worship in a non-liturgical setting, however good the preaching, I tend to leave dissatisfied, as if something signficant is missing. I would also have to say that there is some sense of inadequacy in those Anglican settings that mess too much with the liturgical order.

I confess to not always finding it easy to worship in the presence of those these days who I believe to be troublers of the church; but at the same time our presence together before the Throne of Grace is a reminder to me that even if I am convinced their perception of God and God's purposes is wrong, I must accept that there are probably woeful shortcomings in my grasp of what it means to be a faithful Christian. The truth is that we all come into the Father's presence as sinners in the need of grace.

If I were to dream about the future shape of Anglican worship it would be for a doctrinal tightening up and restoring of the standards of the 1979 Book of Common Prayer. It seems to me that when compared to the magisterial work that 1662 is, and how that is reflected in the 1928 revision, 1979 while "tasteful" for the most part, our present liturgical standard is theologically weak and often doctrinally sloppy. Looking at some of the revising that is going on in other parts of the Communion, it need not be this way, and we have a lot to learn from other Anglicans.

4. ANGLICAN MISSION:
In the period since the Reformation, Anglicanism has been forced by ever-changing circumstances to grapple again and again with what it means to be God's partners and servants in the work of the Missio Dei. Those of us who are evangelical and take seriously the dimension of individual salvation in the Gospel, have had to come to terms with the social and political dimensions of what it means to bring in God's reign upon earth. We have had mixed success in learning that lesson.

But in terms of enthusiastic proclamation of the truth, we can point to the worldwide Communion of churches that is the product of generations of obedience to the missionary impulse whether that was driven by desire to spread God's Word, or it was seen as the spiritual arm of imperialistic and commercial influences of a bygone era. Neither is it any accident that one of the most helpful tools of evangelism now being employed by Anglicans and a cross-section of other denominations, including Rome, has been Alpha -- as well of the various Anglican knock-offs that have followed in Alpha's wake.

Anglicans of a biblical persuasion have taken seriously the Great Commission, and continue to do so -- just look at the proliferation of missionary enterprises that there has been in the Episcopal Church in the last 30 years! The huge growth of the Communion in the Global South is itself a mark of the manner in which the missionary spirit is deeply ingrained in classic Anglicanism as it is today. Furthermore, the vast majority of new church plants in just about every corner of the world come from a a classic Anglican direction, showing us the extraordinary spirit of enthusiasm for Gospel truth that still marks Anglicanism at its best.

While those of us on the evangelical end of the spectrum have made some progress in our grasp upon the imperatives of the Gospel, and its holistic nature, I do not see that same holism in other schools of faith. Indeed, as I look at the broad church's understanding of its mission, I see a loss of nerve which is often accompanied by a discomfort about the uniqueness of God's self-revelation in Christ, and this blindspot feeds our denominational malaise. It also has to be pointed out that actions of some of our co-religionists have set back missionary initiatives at home, caused great embarrassment, and have put the lives of fellow-Anglicans in danger in other parts of the world.

However, walking away from those who work from an understanding of God and mission that is at odds with classic and orthodox Anglicanism does little good, merely deepening animosities and further rending with great tragedy the seamless garment of Christ. I am increasingly convinced that in a tribalized and fragmented postmodern world further fragmentation of the Christian community does not serve the Gospel, it merely hampers our mission.

Having said that, one of the tragic consequences of our sorry state is that those of us who define ourselves as orthodox are forced to take all sorts of measures to protect ourselves from a rapacious discrimination that is often aimed at us, as well as persecutions that I would not have believed possible a dozen years ago. For me the church, Anglican or otherwise, is a Gospel "game," for many of our fellow-Episcopalians it seems to have become a lethal sport of power politics that is being played against the orthodox minority. This is dangerous for all of us, because I am convinced that the insights into the faith and the missionary dynamic of those of us who are discriminated against make us a major component of the leaven in the lump. For our part, the orthodox have not always acted wisely and well, either.

(The final section of this series will be an attempt to draw some of these threads together)