With everyone and their aunt responding to the Primate's Communique, it is hard for a busy parish priest to keep up with the welter of words, and until this morning I haven't even tried. However, I spent some time on this, my day off, scanning the various offerings that are being dished up here. Occasionally I have stumbled over a helpful nugget, but most of the time there is little that inspires (on either right or left).
As was to be expected, there are few people who seem to be hearing what the Communique says, or have perhaps even read it with care. Instead they have rushed into asserting the rightness of their own position over against the wrongness of those they consider their adversaries. There are several thoughts that I have been having as I have attempted to plough my way through this tangle of non-communication, and I tentatively share these.
The first is the observation that for many Anglicanism seems to have ceased being a historic Christian tradition rooted and grounded in the Gospel of Jesus Christ as it was understood by the Church of England, and then developing outward, eventually spreading around the world. It is almost as if the notion of "Anglican" has become to many a convenient hold-all into which can be poured whatever you want to pour.
So for some it seems that Anglicanism, which has always been a generous approach to the faith, is now so generous that there are no boundaries to its inclusion of all and sundry -- even that which will destroy it. As we look back at the Elizabethan settlement and then at the manner in which the church and communion have handled differences in the past, while we have always leaned over backwards not to exclude, there have inevitably been limits to our openness because of clear theological, biblical, creedal, and ecclesiastical mandates.
Our problem is that North American Anglicanism has, at least in the past several generations, become profoundly non-biblical and untheological, with the result that we measure what is going on more in anthropological and socio-political terms than using Scripture within the context of the church's on going tradition - and place within Catholic Christianity.
This means that the language being used in so many of these statements tends to be the language of human and civil rights and not the language in which the faith is cast. The picture that is then painted by bishops and others is that God is the God of such rights, and what the Communion's leaders are doing is trampling on those rights, and therefore flying in the face of God's will and purpose.
Human and civil rights are obviously extremely important and as churches we have struggled with their implications for a long time. However, what Scripture teaches about the nature of humanity made in God's image and about ethics and morality are also extremely important, and those of us in the mainstream of Anglicanism are saying that these cannot be over-riden.
This is not to suggest we don't reach out in love to all people, but it does mean we must with the utmost seriousness bear in mind what Scripture and tradition teach about the pattern of life of those in leadership in the church. Christian leadership is not a right -- it is a fearful responsibility and a heavy privilege. The pastoral challenge is how to be welcoming of all while recognizing that all offices of the church cannot be open to all as if the church were a golf club putting in place a new president or captain.
Then many of the responses seem to weigh heavily on the canonical and procedural way of doing things in the Episcopal Church -- and certainly this needs to be taken into account. But this seems to me to be a "business as usual" mentality in the midst of a vast crisis that the Episcopal Church has triggered by going it alone rather than working with the wider Communion.
What is clear is that the ones who call upon those of us who are a minority within the Episcopal Church to knuckle under and be team players, are not prepared to listen to the Communion when it says in a pastoral but clear way that they should do something similar for the good of the wider Anglican family. There is a mutuality to communion, and that is hard to find in many of these statements.
Some on the left are making comments which, in effect, say that they really don't want to be part of the Anglican Communion any longer. That is fair enough, as they break away from the wider church then they should not prevent those of us who are Anglicans wanting to continue to remain. One writes, "If the Anglican Communion must separate over this fundamental issue of human rights, then so be it. To everything there is a season. Perhaps this is the season for the growth of the gospel in truth and in love in ways that we could never have imagined" (Steven Charleston of EDS).
In the midst of all this are plenty of "victim" statements. For example, a group calling themselves InclusiveChurch state, "As the debate becomes more disconnected from the reality of everyday life of those we serve, it is increasingly clear that TEC is becoming a scapegoat." Now obviously I sit in a different place and this debate is not disconnected from the reality of my life and ministry, but when a province has, in effect, given the finger to the rest of the Communion and then the Communion acts upon it that action is hardly scapegoating. Rather, it is the majority trying to find some way to maintain a measure of order and biblical discipline.
This raises just one more element of many of these statements, and that is the loose or loaded use of language. This is the way it has been all along, and does little to help along a process that might somewhere or other have reconciliation and the Cross in it.
In the midst of all this some are eloquently counseling patience and care, which is most valuable - and vital. A first step, perhaps, in humility.
What the Communique does reflect is Archbishop Williams' concern that all parties should keep talking, for it is when the talking stops that the most destructive kind of fighting begins. In all its components it also reflects the fact that the willingness of a large part of the Communion to allow the Episcopal Church to continue forestalling the majority is now wearing thin.
Monday, February 26, 2007
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Radical Ecclesiastical Reconfiguration
Between the procession of Ash Wednesday services today I have found myself looking today at some of the things I wrote in Brave New Church (Morehouse Publishing: 2001) a few years ago about what was then the coming "radical ecclesiastical reconfiguration." I have looked at these as I have read with more care and then started to study the documents coming out of Dar-es-Salaam. While I never expected the players to take the field in the way they have, in various things we have said we seem to have foreseen some of the bits of what might happen.
The past few years those of us who are historic Anglicans in North America have been grieving over the passing of the old denomination in which so many of us were shaped and reared. However inadequate your parent might have been, it is always difficult to see them decline, deteriorate, and ultimately die. We have been watching those structures from the past with their accompanying rules and regulations begin to shuffle off, while a raucous new wave of structures are noisily (and sometimes rancorously) are testing the waters.
The tentative structural steps outlined in the Communique from the Primates concerning a Pastoral Council and Primatial Vicar in the United States, appears to me to be the Communion now catching up with and attempting to give some order to the changed realities that are all around us.
Of course, we are hearing howls from those who are still living in what Leonard Sweet called a state of "persistent make-believe" over the old structures. They are saying things like "This document is demanding the biggest change in the polity of the Episcopal Church by people who have absolutely no authority to even ask." (http://anglicanscotist.blogspot.com/2007/02/just-say-no.html). This is an interesting statement from a writer who cries foul to changing structures, but who consents to changing of fundamental doctrine -- but has absolutely no authority to do so!
It is hard to see what the long term outcomes of the Communique's proposals are likely to be, and I am certainly not eager to make brash predictions, but this does appear to be the first formal step down a road that will ultimately result in something rather different emerging, gathering strength and authority, and enabling Gospel ministry in this century.
The Primates are attempting to honor the received approach to being church while at the same time taking into account the effect of the anomalies which have surfaced with increasing intensity since August 2003. A dozen years or so ago when we were thinking about future structures we had in mind a network of networks -- now that possibility of that is beginning to emerge.
What I find so fascinating is that the so-called "progressives" are so retrogressive about and hostile to all this. One would have thought that those with an eager desire to recast Christian doctrine and behavior in a more contemporary mode would readily embrace a recasting of the old-fashioned way in which the church manages itself, but quite to the contrary. The only thing any one can say about this is that perhaps there is some other reason for their penchant for the tired and worn-out...
I love the words of Loren Mead written in the 1990s, and Loren is hardly a theological conservative. "Both the church and the world are always in flux, but usually we bring to that constant change a stable and unchanging paradigm, a mind-set that sometimes last for centuries. Sooner or later, however, the thousands of minute shifts and changes bring such pressure to bear that the stable mind-set cracks, shifts, or falls apart. That has happened to us" (Once and Future Church, 1991).
Amen!
The past few years those of us who are historic Anglicans in North America have been grieving over the passing of the old denomination in which so many of us were shaped and reared. However inadequate your parent might have been, it is always difficult to see them decline, deteriorate, and ultimately die. We have been watching those structures from the past with their accompanying rules and regulations begin to shuffle off, while a raucous new wave of structures are noisily (and sometimes rancorously) are testing the waters.
The tentative structural steps outlined in the Communique from the Primates concerning a Pastoral Council and Primatial Vicar in the United States, appears to me to be the Communion now catching up with and attempting to give some order to the changed realities that are all around us.
Of course, we are hearing howls from those who are still living in what Leonard Sweet called a state of "persistent make-believe" over the old structures. They are saying things like "This document is demanding the biggest change in the polity of the Episcopal Church by people who have absolutely no authority to even ask." (http://anglicanscotist.blogspot.com/2007/02/just-say-no.html). This is an interesting statement from a writer who cries foul to changing structures, but who consents to changing of fundamental doctrine -- but has absolutely no authority to do so!
It is hard to see what the long term outcomes of the Communique's proposals are likely to be, and I am certainly not eager to make brash predictions, but this does appear to be the first formal step down a road that will ultimately result in something rather different emerging, gathering strength and authority, and enabling Gospel ministry in this century.
The Primates are attempting to honor the received approach to being church while at the same time taking into account the effect of the anomalies which have surfaced with increasing intensity since August 2003. A dozen years or so ago when we were thinking about future structures we had in mind a network of networks -- now that possibility of that is beginning to emerge.
What I find so fascinating is that the so-called "progressives" are so retrogressive about and hostile to all this. One would have thought that those with an eager desire to recast Christian doctrine and behavior in a more contemporary mode would readily embrace a recasting of the old-fashioned way in which the church manages itself, but quite to the contrary. The only thing any one can say about this is that perhaps there is some other reason for their penchant for the tired and worn-out...
I love the words of Loren Mead written in the 1990s, and Loren is hardly a theological conservative. "Both the church and the world are always in flux, but usually we bring to that constant change a stable and unchanging paradigm, a mind-set that sometimes last for centuries. Sooner or later, however, the thousands of minute shifts and changes bring such pressure to bear that the stable mind-set cracks, shifts, or falls apart. That has happened to us" (Once and Future Church, 1991).
Amen!
Monday, February 19, 2007
Canterbury and Rome
As I sat down to my breakfast at Gatwick Airport this morning I was greeted by the headline in the London Times that said, Churches back plan to unite under Pope. What followed was an article by Ruth Gledhill, doyenne of religion journalists who recently managed to get her hands on a leaked document that will be published later in the year. The document suggests that the wheels are already being greased as to how Anglicans might reunite with Roman Catholics under the leadership of the Bishop of Rome.
By the time I got to Atlanta Airport some eleven hours later, the place where I am now sitting, there had been some correction and clarification of the Gledhill article, stating that this is part of the 35-year-long conversations that have been taking place between the two ecclesial bodies, but there is no doubt that Ruth Gledhill's timing is elegant.
Clearly the crisis within Anglicanism that was triggered by the inappropriate consecration of Gene Robinson in 2003 has contributed in many ways to a greater willingness on the part of Anglicans to reassess what the relationship between Rome and Canterbury might look like. In a rather cheeky manner Ms. Gledhill thinks there might be ways "to seek reunion with the Church of England's own mother church."
Obviously a couple of thousand word article summarizing a 42-page document at a time of high drama in Anglicanism is not enough to be going on, so we will need to wait until we have more data before we can make a clearer assessment, but it seems that there are up sides and down sides to all of this.
The up side is that in an increasingly hostile world Christian unity needs to be more than something we just chatter about. Our fragmentation in a postmodern age is itself a slur on the Gospel, and we need to start taking that reality more seriously. I can certainly see ways in which I might be able to acknowledge the leadership of the Bishop of Rome, but having said that there is a significant doctrinal gulf between what Rome affirms and where classic Anglican Christianity stands.
Now, I suppose that if I had to choose between Benedict XVI and Dr. Schori, Benedict wins hands down. At least the Pope affirms the fundamental doctrines of historic Christianity, in light of her early month os statements as Presiding Bishop, Schori doesn't even seem to know them - and seems perfectly happy to harass those who do.
Having said that, like most evangelical Anglicans there is much about the Roman obedience that I find hard to digest and the list can grow so long that it is sometimes hard to know where to begin. Rome's theology of the eucharist is highly suspect, for example, and calls into question the once-for-all efficacy of the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ upon the Cross. Together with this goes a theology of the priesthood that to me would be untenable.
Then there is Rome's theology of authority which raises tradition to an inappropriate level and, I believe, diminishes the place of Scripture as containing all things necessary to salvation. From this over-emphasis upon tradition comes all sorts of no-nos as far as an Anglican is concerned such as Marian devotion and the accretions that have gathered around Mary like, for example, the Immaculate Conception. Add a retinue of saints and the like and all sorts of alarm bells begin to go off.
As uncomfortable as I am with the Episcopal Church's loose and often almost illiterate use of Scripture, and a desire to go beyond it, I am no more happy with Rome's sense of Scripture, which seems to allow for all sorts of add-ons.
I suspect that some of my anxieties are that Anglican distinctives might well get swallowed up in the vastness of the Roman Church, the numerical majority ultimately swamping the minority. But I suppose it could be possible that Anglicanism could act like a healthy virus that starts to positively influence Roman values, beginning a process of re-forming and re-making it. While Roman Christianity could enrich Anglicanism, Anglicanism would certainly challenge Romans, asking some very difficult questions about belief and theology that Rome may not want to address.
At the heart of these concerns is th authority of the Papacy. It is here that the Roman Church most compromises the authority of Scripture and I, for one, have to reject the notion of magesterium that is so focused in that office. The Bishop of Rome might be the "senior bishop" of the Western church, but to me he can never be allowed to be more than that. If I am asked to concede more, then I must politely decline.
Personally, I would much prefer conversations of this kind with the Patriarchs of Constantinople and Moscow than with Rome, although there is certainly a lot of Orthodoxy that makes me an outsider. However, given the mess Anglicanism is in as a result of The Episcopal Church's unfaithfulness, the issue of relationships between ecclesial bodies becomes relevant in a new way.
Continued division and bad blood are counterproductive to the Gospel in today's world, but we cannot afford to sacrifice doctrinal clarity for unity. Somehow or other Christians must learn to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with each other as we face today's challenges.
By the time I got to Atlanta Airport some eleven hours later, the place where I am now sitting, there had been some correction and clarification of the Gledhill article, stating that this is part of the 35-year-long conversations that have been taking place between the two ecclesial bodies, but there is no doubt that Ruth Gledhill's timing is elegant.
Clearly the crisis within Anglicanism that was triggered by the inappropriate consecration of Gene Robinson in 2003 has contributed in many ways to a greater willingness on the part of Anglicans to reassess what the relationship between Rome and Canterbury might look like. In a rather cheeky manner Ms. Gledhill thinks there might be ways "to seek reunion with the Church of England's own mother church."
Obviously a couple of thousand word article summarizing a 42-page document at a time of high drama in Anglicanism is not enough to be going on, so we will need to wait until we have more data before we can make a clearer assessment, but it seems that there are up sides and down sides to all of this.
The up side is that in an increasingly hostile world Christian unity needs to be more than something we just chatter about. Our fragmentation in a postmodern age is itself a slur on the Gospel, and we need to start taking that reality more seriously. I can certainly see ways in which I might be able to acknowledge the leadership of the Bishop of Rome, but having said that there is a significant doctrinal gulf between what Rome affirms and where classic Anglican Christianity stands.
Now, I suppose that if I had to choose between Benedict XVI and Dr. Schori, Benedict wins hands down. At least the Pope affirms the fundamental doctrines of historic Christianity, in light of her early month os statements as Presiding Bishop, Schori doesn't even seem to know them - and seems perfectly happy to harass those who do.
Having said that, like most evangelical Anglicans there is much about the Roman obedience that I find hard to digest and the list can grow so long that it is sometimes hard to know where to begin. Rome's theology of the eucharist is highly suspect, for example, and calls into question the once-for-all efficacy of the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ upon the Cross. Together with this goes a theology of the priesthood that to me would be untenable.
Then there is Rome's theology of authority which raises tradition to an inappropriate level and, I believe, diminishes the place of Scripture as containing all things necessary to salvation. From this over-emphasis upon tradition comes all sorts of no-nos as far as an Anglican is concerned such as Marian devotion and the accretions that have gathered around Mary like, for example, the Immaculate Conception. Add a retinue of saints and the like and all sorts of alarm bells begin to go off.
As uncomfortable as I am with the Episcopal Church's loose and often almost illiterate use of Scripture, and a desire to go beyond it, I am no more happy with Rome's sense of Scripture, which seems to allow for all sorts of add-ons.
I suspect that some of my anxieties are that Anglican distinctives might well get swallowed up in the vastness of the Roman Church, the numerical majority ultimately swamping the minority. But I suppose it could be possible that Anglicanism could act like a healthy virus that starts to positively influence Roman values, beginning a process of re-forming and re-making it. While Roman Christianity could enrich Anglicanism, Anglicanism would certainly challenge Romans, asking some very difficult questions about belief and theology that Rome may not want to address.
At the heart of these concerns is th authority of the Papacy. It is here that the Roman Church most compromises the authority of Scripture and I, for one, have to reject the notion of magesterium that is so focused in that office. The Bishop of Rome might be the "senior bishop" of the Western church, but to me he can never be allowed to be more than that. If I am asked to concede more, then I must politely decline.
Personally, I would much prefer conversations of this kind with the Patriarchs of Constantinople and Moscow than with Rome, although there is certainly a lot of Orthodoxy that makes me an outsider. However, given the mess Anglicanism is in as a result of The Episcopal Church's unfaithfulness, the issue of relationships between ecclesial bodies becomes relevant in a new way.
Continued division and bad blood are counterproductive to the Gospel in today's world, but we cannot afford to sacrifice doctrinal clarity for unity. Somehow or other Christians must learn to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with each other as we face today's challenges.
Sunday, February 18, 2007
Moving 3,900 miles East
From: Birmingham, EnglandIt is Sunday morning and I am just coming out of what has been a tunnel of total exhaustion. Four heavy weeks of ministry followed by a transatlantic flight, followed by a long an grueling selection process, followed by a several hour drive through the Friday evening rush hour traffic across the middle of England, and yesterday I was dead meat for much of the day -- wondering what on earth I had done and what on earth God had in mind for us.
All this is prefatory to say that on Friday evening I was offered the position of Development Director at Ridley Hall, Cambridge, and accepted. Ridley is the evangelical Anglican theological college that is situated there, and is expanding in a variety of ways to become a major center in the life of the Church of England -- and beyond (www.ridley.cam.ac.uk). I suspect that given these crisis of Anglicanism in North America, it is well positioned to play a role on the western side of the Atlantic as well.
There are some huge challenges ahead because although Job One is to raise five million pounds in the next several years for desperately needed accommodations and teaching facilities, there is strategic planning to do, pastoring to undertake, and we are having significant conversations that relate to the area of stewardship -- something that concerns the Archbishop of Canterbury, so that he has been eager to see me at Ridley.
There are obviously more details to get sorted out than I can shake a stick at, but right now I am enjoying a couple of days with our daughter Olivia, son-in-law Joe, and our granddaughter, Hannah, in Birmingham, before catching a morning flight back to the USA tomorrow from Gatwick so I can celebrate Shrove Tuesday and then the solemnity of Ash Wednesday with my congregation. There is that sense of anticipation about what lies ahead, as well as the beginnings of grieving as we prepare to say goodbye to our home and so many friends in Tennessee where we have now lived for nearly 22 years, with 31 in total in the United States.
However, there is a real sense that God's hand has been upon us. As I look back over decisions we have made during the last couple of years I am now able to see how they have all fitted together into the remarkable pattern that God weaves in our lives. I have that sense that the Lord Jesus is calling Rosemary and myself back not only for the benefit of ourselves and our kith and kin, but also because we have a part that we can play at this crucial moment in preparing the next generation of leaders for the challenges of ministry in Great Britain in coming days -- and the challenges here are truly enormous.
We would value your continuing prayers, and as we eventually get ourselves settled in the Cambridge area you can be assured that there will be a warm welcome for you -- about half the congregation at the Church of the Resurrection, where I am interim rector, have promised that at some point they will appear on our doorstep.
My promise is this -- you have certainly not seen the last of me in North America. I leave a daughter on those shores so regular visits will be part of our life, plus the fact that we want to see Ridley playing a part on the reshaping of the American church in years ahead. I am actually now the third American citizen who is part of the "permanent" Ridley community, and there are several American students.
Some will, no doubt, identify this as me leaving the Episcopal Church. Nothing could be further from the truth. I will remain a priest in good standing of the Diocese of Tennessee, and am doing what I have done before, and that is transfer my ministry from one province of the Anglican Communion to another.
Meanwhile, the Daily Devotions will keep on coming, Toward2015@listserv.episcopalian.org will keep on trucking, and the Kew Continuum will still be found at http://richardkew.blogspot.com.
Thursday, February 15, 2007
Loyalty?
I have an XM Radio in my car, which means that I regularly listen to the BBC World Service. A few weeks ago a large part of a business program was given to the horrible mess that the Ford Motor Company finds itself in having swallowed a $13 billion loss in 2006.
It was a piece that was well done and extremely fair, but what fascinated me was the reactions of the workers interviewed as they came off shift at one of the Ford plants in the Detroit area. Several of the folks talked to were bombastic about Americans who bought foreign vehicles, either directly or indirectly questioning their patriotism. Several were very worried about their jobs, while others obviously shrugged and said words to the effect that there wasn't much they could do about it.
It was the response of one particular man that caught my attention. He was measured and thoughtful and said something like, "Of course I'm worried. It seems to me that we have a huge problem here, and Ford is not going to pick up again until it starts producing the sort of cars with the kind of quality and fuel efficiency that attracts purchasers."
If I hadn't had my hands on the wheel I would have applauded him -- it was a perfect answer. This individual was the most loyal of all these Ford-ites because he was prepared to address the problem head on, and say that as much as he loved the company it didn't deserve to dig itself out of the mess until it does what it was founded for: to make cars that folks are willing to spend their hard-earned dollars on.
During the last several years I have heard all sorts of calls to loyalty to the Episcopal Church, especially among those who affirm a "progressive" agenda. These, I think, are the sort of folks who are like the Ford workers who asserted that Americans ought to buy cars produced by American manufacturers. This is not loyalty, this is papering over the cracks and pretending that there is nothing wrong. The most extraordinary thing about our whole sorry state of affairs is that this is an agenda of denial.
It comes in all sorts of flavors.
Dr. Schori's favorite flavor is that there is only a small disgruntled minority that are functioning in this way. Well, hundreds of congregations have voted with their feet, including several of the church's largest, but still the disinformation campaign continues that those who stand with worldwide Anglicanism and no longer the Episcopal Church are a bad-tempered handful.
In our diocese where we have changed the canons so that individual congregations can designate whether or not their funds find their way to the Episcopal Church Center, there is great discomfort among some, who feel this is dropping the ball on our obligation. Now it doesn't seem particularly loyal to me to fund those who have not only consented to that which flies in the face of Scripture and historic Anglicanism, but rejoice in it; so why reward those who have done damage with more money with which to do even more damage?
A third approach is to bad-mouth those of us who are mainstream and biblical Anglicans, and label us as schismatics. This division of the church was caused by those of us who have taken the denomination down the homophile road. The schismatics were the ones who set that ball in motion in August 2003 and then followed up with an inadequate response to Windsor in June 2006.
I am a loyal Anglican, and am trying to be loyal within an Episcopal Church that has in pride and error taken a very wrong turn and is now trying to whitewash its actions by projecting the blame on those of us who are, dare I use the word, its victims! Loyalty is telling it as it is, like that Ford worker. So here is my act of loyalty.
The Episcopal Church has messed up really, really badly and is basking in error rather than the truth. This is not going to win people to Jesus Christ, so the church is not going to grow -- and will continue to shrink, with consequent attending problems. We are not going to learn the lessons these circumstances should be teaching us if we refuse to face up to facts. I spent an hour today with the widow of a man who died of an aggressive form of cancer a couple of months ago because the doctor misdiagnosed the symptoms he was suffering.
I'm sorry, saying that all in the church is fine and dandy is misdiagnosis. The tragedy is that denial is now the name of the Episcopal game, and the reality is that these "loyalists" will wake up and realize the extent of their error when it is too late. I have no desire to see ECUSA go down in flames, and I have no particular desire to be forced out by those who are preaching "another gospel." However, the strategy that is being pursued can only end in tears.
It was a piece that was well done and extremely fair, but what fascinated me was the reactions of the workers interviewed as they came off shift at one of the Ford plants in the Detroit area. Several of the folks talked to were bombastic about Americans who bought foreign vehicles, either directly or indirectly questioning their patriotism. Several were very worried about their jobs, while others obviously shrugged and said words to the effect that there wasn't much they could do about it.
It was the response of one particular man that caught my attention. He was measured and thoughtful and said something like, "Of course I'm worried. It seems to me that we have a huge problem here, and Ford is not going to pick up again until it starts producing the sort of cars with the kind of quality and fuel efficiency that attracts purchasers."
If I hadn't had my hands on the wheel I would have applauded him -- it was a perfect answer. This individual was the most loyal of all these Ford-ites because he was prepared to address the problem head on, and say that as much as he loved the company it didn't deserve to dig itself out of the mess until it does what it was founded for: to make cars that folks are willing to spend their hard-earned dollars on.
During the last several years I have heard all sorts of calls to loyalty to the Episcopal Church, especially among those who affirm a "progressive" agenda. These, I think, are the sort of folks who are like the Ford workers who asserted that Americans ought to buy cars produced by American manufacturers. This is not loyalty, this is papering over the cracks and pretending that there is nothing wrong. The most extraordinary thing about our whole sorry state of affairs is that this is an agenda of denial.
It comes in all sorts of flavors.
Dr. Schori's favorite flavor is that there is only a small disgruntled minority that are functioning in this way. Well, hundreds of congregations have voted with their feet, including several of the church's largest, but still the disinformation campaign continues that those who stand with worldwide Anglicanism and no longer the Episcopal Church are a bad-tempered handful.
In our diocese where we have changed the canons so that individual congregations can designate whether or not their funds find their way to the Episcopal Church Center, there is great discomfort among some, who feel this is dropping the ball on our obligation. Now it doesn't seem particularly loyal to me to fund those who have not only consented to that which flies in the face of Scripture and historic Anglicanism, but rejoice in it; so why reward those who have done damage with more money with which to do even more damage?
A third approach is to bad-mouth those of us who are mainstream and biblical Anglicans, and label us as schismatics. This division of the church was caused by those of us who have taken the denomination down the homophile road. The schismatics were the ones who set that ball in motion in August 2003 and then followed up with an inadequate response to Windsor in June 2006.
I am a loyal Anglican, and am trying to be loyal within an Episcopal Church that has in pride and error taken a very wrong turn and is now trying to whitewash its actions by projecting the blame on those of us who are, dare I use the word, its victims! Loyalty is telling it as it is, like that Ford worker. So here is my act of loyalty.
The Episcopal Church has messed up really, really badly and is basking in error rather than the truth. This is not going to win people to Jesus Christ, so the church is not going to grow -- and will continue to shrink, with consequent attending problems. We are not going to learn the lessons these circumstances should be teaching us if we refuse to face up to facts. I spent an hour today with the widow of a man who died of an aggressive form of cancer a couple of months ago because the doctor misdiagnosed the symptoms he was suffering.
I'm sorry, saying that all in the church is fine and dandy is misdiagnosis. The tragedy is that denial is now the name of the Episcopal game, and the reality is that these "loyalists" will wake up and realize the extent of their error when it is too late. I have no desire to see ECUSA go down in flames, and I have no particular desire to be forced out by those who are preaching "another gospel." However, the strategy that is being pursued can only end in tears.
Monday, February 12, 2007
Above All Earthly Pow'rs -- A Book Review
Above All Earthly Pow'rs - Christ in A Postmodern World by David F. Wells (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2006)
A Review
Of late I have been feeling a lot of sympathy for old Augustine as he sat in Hippo watching the world that he knew disintegrating around him as the seven centuries of Roman power collapsed. When it came, Rome's end happened relatively quickly, ushering in several centuries of confusion and uncertainty before Europe started to climb out of the hole, dust itself off, and start moving in a somewhat different (and far less developed) direction.
I have this nasty kind of feeling that we are living through the lead up to a similar kind of collapse as Western culture trivializes or entertains itself to death, with swathes of the Christian tradition following rapid suit. Reading David Wells's Above All Earthly Pow'rs during the last couple of weeks has merely intensified such thoughts.
The Distinguished Professor of Historical and Systematic Theology at Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary, and a mentoree of John Stott, completes his four book series on the way in which the faith encounters the emerging culture with this remarkable tour de force. In it he undertakes a remarkably clear analysis of postmodernism, and then how the classical formulation of the faith addresses Jesus Christ into today's environment.
There are few really trying to grapple with such topics, and there are fewer still whose grasp of both faith and Zeitgeist is deep and extensive enough that the end product is of use to both pastoral and preaching facets of ministry.
I have been reading Wells during the build up to the Primates' Meeting in Tanzania, replete with posturing, politicking, and prediction, but there has been little theological analysis and reflection on the decisions and actions that have brought us to this present pass. I think that Wells's book does a sterling job in crafting a picture of the environment that has spawned this crisis, and what the faithful response might look like in this setting.
What makes David Wells' latest work so fascinating is that he is not exactly addressing either the Episcopal Church or the other mainline denominations, but rather is talking to those who self-select as evangelicals. Fifteen years ago Wells wrote movingly of the way in which biblical faith in America had been, over several centuries, turned from something meaty and substantial into little more than a thin veneer. In this book he goes beyond that to show how postmodernity's infiltration of the churches has cracked the veneer -- indeed, many of those who present what they assert is a biblical faith are toying with little more than a pale shadow, a parody of the real thing.
In effect, Wells is saying that in a slightly different way the evangelicals have set off down exactly the same road as the minimizers of earlier generations, the so-called "liberals" who have got the mainline denominations into such serious trouble. If the father of the liberals was Schleiermacher, the parents of this evangelical slide are marketing and seeker sensitivity.
Wells is far from opposed to proclaiming the faith in such a manner that the unreached are reached and lives are transformed as they enter a grace-filled relationship with Jesus Christ. What he asserts, however, is that in their efforts to make Christ accessible there has been a flushing of the baby with the bathwater for they are "operating off methodologies for succeeding in which that success requires little or no theology" (p. 265).
The seeker sensitive approach panders to the consumer mentality with the intention of gathering numbers, but the accumulating evidence suggests that fewer truly life-transforming conversions taking place, with self-surrendering disciples being made. Professor Wells is horrified by evangelical willingness to look for "success" by using the methodologies and business models like those of the folks at Disney. The result is that we are dishing out pablum, when all the time we are ignoring a robust, meaty, biblical faith, strong and serious enough to encounter the ennui and afflictions of the postmodern world.
Truth not technique is the resource God has given us as we weave our way through today's landscape in which the self, whatever that is, has become the be all and the end all. Wells demonstrates how the richness of truth actually addresses the shallowness of our world.
The brilliant core of the book are several chapters in which Wells expounds a meaty Christology and how it addresses how the children of postmodernity, radical individualism and relativity, who have swept aside the substance of what remained of Christian and Enlightenment cultures. Relativism and radical individualism are now in the process of reshaping almost every facet of the Western person's life within the context of a bored culture, but the answer to their corrosiveness is immediately available in our biblical heritage.
As you read you have the impression of a skilled physician carefully explaining what he is doing to his patient as he goes forward with the right treatment of a nasty ailment. What he is trying to tell us is that BandAids, whether liberal or conservative, will not do the trick. His exposition of both God's grace and Christ's atoning work is among the best that I have seen in a very long time. These doctrines are strong medicine, especially when compared with the shallowness of seeker sensitivity and the vacuousness of those that veer off down the progressive, liberal, radical, or whatever you want to call it road.
I came away from this with a renewed sense of awe and wonder at what God has achieved on our behalf through the work of Jesus Christ upon the Cross, and a deepened commitment never ever to settle for anything less. In this determination I sometimes feel in my own denomination that if I am not a lone voice, then I am part of a tiny minority. All around me I can see the heart-breaking damage that has been done when we settle for little, this leading inexorably toward the destructiveness of error that now prevails.
As I have watched, I have had this growing sense over recent years that the conservative churches, in a different way, are making all the same mistakes made in our tradition several generations ago, and that ultimately unless they alter their modus operandi they are going to finish up with similar kinds of unfaithful and erroneous outcomes. This is bad news indeed.
Which brings me back to Tanzania, and the gathering of the Primates. Part of their task will be to continue pointing out to the North American churches the error of their believing and their doing, and that actions have profound consequences. Action of some kind will in all likelihood be taken, but we are a long way yet from the body ceasing to writhe.
The very emptiness of those on the left illustrates Professor Wells's case for him. All he needs to do is to point out to his evangelical constituency the pitiful creature that the Episcopal Church is and to say to them, "Now do you really want to be like that?" At the same time, however, he needs to look at the Global South churches, as well as conservatives, evangelicals, catholics who remain in ECUSA or who have recently split from the denomination and say to them, "Never, ever, ever forget these great truths -- you do so at your own peril."
A Review
Of late I have been feeling a lot of sympathy for old Augustine as he sat in Hippo watching the world that he knew disintegrating around him as the seven centuries of Roman power collapsed. When it came, Rome's end happened relatively quickly, ushering in several centuries of confusion and uncertainty before Europe started to climb out of the hole, dust itself off, and start moving in a somewhat different (and far less developed) direction.
I have this nasty kind of feeling that we are living through the lead up to a similar kind of collapse as Western culture trivializes or entertains itself to death, with swathes of the Christian tradition following rapid suit. Reading David Wells's Above All Earthly Pow'rs during the last couple of weeks has merely intensified such thoughts.
The Distinguished Professor of Historical and Systematic Theology at Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary, and a mentoree of John Stott, completes his four book series on the way in which the faith encounters the emerging culture with this remarkable tour de force. In it he undertakes a remarkably clear analysis of postmodernism, and then how the classical formulation of the faith addresses Jesus Christ into today's environment.
There are few really trying to grapple with such topics, and there are fewer still whose grasp of both faith and Zeitgeist is deep and extensive enough that the end product is of use to both pastoral and preaching facets of ministry.
I have been reading Wells during the build up to the Primates' Meeting in Tanzania, replete with posturing, politicking, and prediction, but there has been little theological analysis and reflection on the decisions and actions that have brought us to this present pass. I think that Wells's book does a sterling job in crafting a picture of the environment that has spawned this crisis, and what the faithful response might look like in this setting.
What makes David Wells' latest work so fascinating is that he is not exactly addressing either the Episcopal Church or the other mainline denominations, but rather is talking to those who self-select as evangelicals. Fifteen years ago Wells wrote movingly of the way in which biblical faith in America had been, over several centuries, turned from something meaty and substantial into little more than a thin veneer. In this book he goes beyond that to show how postmodernity's infiltration of the churches has cracked the veneer -- indeed, many of those who present what they assert is a biblical faith are toying with little more than a pale shadow, a parody of the real thing.
In effect, Wells is saying that in a slightly different way the evangelicals have set off down exactly the same road as the minimizers of earlier generations, the so-called "liberals" who have got the mainline denominations into such serious trouble. If the father of the liberals was Schleiermacher, the parents of this evangelical slide are marketing and seeker sensitivity.
Wells is far from opposed to proclaiming the faith in such a manner that the unreached are reached and lives are transformed as they enter a grace-filled relationship with Jesus Christ. What he asserts, however, is that in their efforts to make Christ accessible there has been a flushing of the baby with the bathwater for they are "operating off methodologies for succeeding in which that success requires little or no theology" (p. 265).
The seeker sensitive approach panders to the consumer mentality with the intention of gathering numbers, but the accumulating evidence suggests that fewer truly life-transforming conversions taking place, with self-surrendering disciples being made. Professor Wells is horrified by evangelical willingness to look for "success" by using the methodologies and business models like those of the folks at Disney. The result is that we are dishing out pablum, when all the time we are ignoring a robust, meaty, biblical faith, strong and serious enough to encounter the ennui and afflictions of the postmodern world.
Truth not technique is the resource God has given us as we weave our way through today's landscape in which the self, whatever that is, has become the be all and the end all. Wells demonstrates how the richness of truth actually addresses the shallowness of our world.
The brilliant core of the book are several chapters in which Wells expounds a meaty Christology and how it addresses how the children of postmodernity, radical individualism and relativity, who have swept aside the substance of what remained of Christian and Enlightenment cultures. Relativism and radical individualism are now in the process of reshaping almost every facet of the Western person's life within the context of a bored culture, but the answer to their corrosiveness is immediately available in our biblical heritage.
As you read you have the impression of a skilled physician carefully explaining what he is doing to his patient as he goes forward with the right treatment of a nasty ailment. What he is trying to tell us is that BandAids, whether liberal or conservative, will not do the trick. His exposition of both God's grace and Christ's atoning work is among the best that I have seen in a very long time. These doctrines are strong medicine, especially when compared with the shallowness of seeker sensitivity and the vacuousness of those that veer off down the progressive, liberal, radical, or whatever you want to call it road.
I came away from this with a renewed sense of awe and wonder at what God has achieved on our behalf through the work of Jesus Christ upon the Cross, and a deepened commitment never ever to settle for anything less. In this determination I sometimes feel in my own denomination that if I am not a lone voice, then I am part of a tiny minority. All around me I can see the heart-breaking damage that has been done when we settle for little, this leading inexorably toward the destructiveness of error that now prevails.
As I have watched, I have had this growing sense over recent years that the conservative churches, in a different way, are making all the same mistakes made in our tradition several generations ago, and that ultimately unless they alter their modus operandi they are going to finish up with similar kinds of unfaithful and erroneous outcomes. This is bad news indeed.
Which brings me back to Tanzania, and the gathering of the Primates. Part of their task will be to continue pointing out to the North American churches the error of their believing and their doing, and that actions have profound consequences. Action of some kind will in all likelihood be taken, but we are a long way yet from the body ceasing to writhe.
The very emptiness of those on the left illustrates Professor Wells's case for him. All he needs to do is to point out to his evangelical constituency the pitiful creature that the Episcopal Church is and to say to them, "Now do you really want to be like that?" At the same time, however, he needs to look at the Global South churches, as well as conservatives, evangelicals, catholics who remain in ECUSA or who have recently split from the denomination and say to them, "Never, ever, ever forget these great truths -- you do so at your own peril."
Monday, February 05, 2007
Thoughts on Anglican Covenant & Katherine Grieb
I didn't have time carefully to read the Episcopal News Service's piece on the Anglican Covenant Design Group meeting in Nassau, Bahamas, until last Monday -- after we had consecrated a new bishop and had undertaken our diocesan convention. I was reassured by the comments of Ephraim Radner, who is probably one of the finest two or three theologians in North American Anglicanism today, but it was the reported words from Prof. Katherine Grieb of Virginia Theological Seminary which I had to mull over. (http://www.episcopalchurch.org/3577_81748_ENG_HTM.htm)
As one might expect given the bias of the ENS, Grieb was quoted extensively and in the midst of her comments she talked about the varying approaches to Scripture that were gathered around the table in the Bahamas.
"One tradition... understands faithfulness to the text as being a non-complicated reproduction of what was said in the past without embroidery, without modification, taking those great, ancient -- some might even say eternal truths -- and applying them in out life today, no matter how difficult that is. It intends to preserve ‘the faith once delivered to the saints.'" The other tradition "understands the Bible in closer continuity with Judaism that sees the Torah as a living, breathing word, like a tree that has new leaves."
I don't have a razor-sharp mind so when someone makes a statement like that I need to spend a few days trying to get under the skin of what is actually being said. That I have done over the last week, and as I have done so my discomfort with her analysis has increased, for it seems what she is parodying the approach to Scripture which she seems to disdain, while giving more exaggerated credence to the one she holds.
Obviously selected quotes by a journalist must always be suspect for they reflect the editorial bias of the publication and the reporter, but if we have in this quote the essence of what Professor Grieb said, then it seems she does not want to understand what is a catholic and historic approach to handling the Scriptures.
Her analysis is that orthodox people are wooden and unbending in the manner that they handle Scripture, rather than handling Scripture as the living Word of God. Behind her representation is the perceived notion that revelation is wielded inflexibly as we attempt to impose Scripture in an unyielding way upon today's world, however difficult such a task might be.
Katherine Grieb seems to be thinking of Scripture like laws that find their way into the statute book and might be highly relevant in one era, and yet in another they become dead letter because they longer work as society has moved on. For example, there were laws in the past about gentleman and their swords, or regulations about dumping human waste into the streets of a medieval city before modern sewerage was put in place. Folks, she suggests, who hold this view of Scripture are inclined to impose what is no longer relevant upon the contemporary environment in which they find themselves.
In contrast to this, the more enlightened approach to handling Scripture has a fluidity to it, it is rooted and grounded in the past, and parallels the manner in which Judaism approaches the Torah. It is, she says, a "living, breathing word, like a tree that has new leaves."
Implicit in her comparison is that the intelligent way of handling Scripture is the latter, and the immature approach is the former. Also in the way in which she presented herself in what she said to the press, she seems concerned that the eventual Anglican Covenant will not be shaped as she wants it to be (but that is another story).
One of the easiest ways of dismissing an opponent or someone with whom you disagree is to parody them, and all of us are guilty of that. I confess that the approach to authority held by those on the ideological and theological left puzzles me immensely because I cannot see how their positions are tenable in light of the substance of the Gospel, but I have to accept that few of them are really that cynical, so their position reflects their intellectual integrity.
By casting everyone who looks authoritatively to the Old and New Testaments as God's word written in the same rather unreflective mold, Dr. Grieb is playing the sort of game that so many of us in the Episcopal Church have battled against for a long time now, in an effort to makes the likes of me appear to be leftovers from a past that is thankfully now behind us. I sometimes wish I had a dollar for every occasion on which it has been asserted that I have fundamentalist blood flowing in my veins (often from people whose theological education is far less substantial than my own!).
As a biblical Christian I believe, like Dr. Grieb, that Scripture is a living and breathing entity. It is God speaking to us, and asking us to use our intelligence to apply its values and principles to every facet of our lives. Scripture is not to be woodenly dumped down on people, and often its substance requires significant wrestling if we are to understand how it applies to the circumstances in which we live today.
The point, obviously, that Dr. Grieb does not like, I would suggest, is the actual values that are there enshrined within the text. Thus, if we can find some way to manage what it says so that we ameliorate what makes us uncomfortable, then we are going to be able to feel so much more at home.
However, as I read what Dr. Grieb is saying I am wondering whether her approach to the text and doctrine is actually that she wants to re-interpret what the words and phrases are actually saying. The relativism of our culture so often wants us to find our own meanings in the words that we happen to be using, even if that means turning those words upon their heads.
As I understand the mainstream approach of Judaism to Torah, it is to expound the text in such a manner that clarity is given to the ancient and eternal truths that are imbedded within it. Such exposition does not have as its goal the modification of those truths, but allowing such truths to speak with force and vigor into today's world and the lives we now live.
While I recognize that there are alternative streams within Judaism, I hope that Dr. Grieb is not implying that the Jewish faith is willing to subsume the Torah to the values of the prevailing culture. She certainly seems to be coming close to suggesting such a thing.
I have during the last few months made the whole period following the return from the Exile one for study. One of the points that shouts loudest to me from this era of the People of God is that they were wrestling against being swallowed up by the surrounding culture and its values. For Haggai and Zechariah, for example, building the Temple of the Lord of Hosts was of pre-eminent importance because that was as much as anything a tangible act of obedience to the living God. For Ezra and Nehemiah the challenge came from detractors like Sanballat and company, who wanted to join them and then bring in their own syncretistic notion.
Talmudic Judaism developed within the context of those struggles in order to maintain the distinctives of the People of God, and their witness as a covenant community in a difficult kind of world. It is my belief that if we in the Anglican tradition in North America are looking for a period that best parallels our own, then that post-exilic era is the best, for it required the asserting of the truthfulness of God and strong discipline in order to remain faithful.
Faithfulness in the society that has emerged calls forth a different set of emphases than in the past, but those emphases are all to be found there within the pages of the Bible. Our task is to recognize that it is the living, breathing Word of God, and to take both its challenges and its chiding seriously.
Saturday, January 27, 2007
2007 Anglican Blog Award for "The Kew Continuum"
I walked into our diocesan convention the other afternoon to be greeted by one of the more exhuberant members of our diocese who wrapped her arms around me and said, "We are so proud of you."
I looked quizzically at her. I had no idea what this effusive congratulation was about. In the conversation that followed I finally was able to work out that this blog had been given an award.
That, I thought, was nice, because I am paranoid enough to think that throughout life I have received far more raps than accolades. I also wondered who on earth would even think about doing such a thing.
It's Saturday. This afternoon the convention now over, a new Bishop of Tennessee consecrated this morning, a nap having been taken, and the dog given his statutary walk around the field behind our house (in the company of the cat on this occasion), I decided to log on to see what I could find out about this miracle that had come to pass!
Sure enough, there on the Stand Firm site (www.Standfirminfaith.com) was the announcement that The Kew Continuum has been voted as having the Best Focus on Theology in the Anglican Blog Awards for 2007 -- amazing!
This got me wondering how I should respond. More thinking time was needed, so I tuned into the latest episode of This Old House while drinking my afternoon cup of tea, and I pondered. A builder's son, I have always loved houses, so watching an old East Boston home being renovated is right up my alley, and much more exciting than any serialized thriller. But it didn't help me with a response.
Well, these aren't the Oscars, so there's no red carpet to sweep down with my wife on my arm dressed in the most expensive outfit she is ever likely to buy. Neither is there a chance to strut myself before a crowded theatre, weeping profusely, and oozing "Thank you, thank you, thank you" to my peers. All I have received is a nice little logo that I guess I will find some way of putting somewhere on the blog.
So, to the folks who voted The Kew Continuum the Best Focus on Theology let me in true English fashion, quiet and restrained, to be grateful for such a vote of confidence. I will try in the coming year to keep up the standard.
It was only while trying to work out how to download the little logo that I discovered people were actually commenting on these awards, and would you believe it, someone accused me of rigging the result! What audacity! Now how does a soul answer such impugnities? I guess the only thing is to shrug, reckon that you are never going to please all the people, look at your watch and realize it might soon to time to break out the bubbly -- or at least, if there is nothing from the Champagne district of France in the house, another strong cup of well-steeped Yorkshire tea.
Obviously I am surprised that my scribblings have received such attention, but let me end on a more serious note.
I don't profess to be a great theological brain, but I have been puzzled for years now that we are in the midst of one of the biggest struggles in the church's life for generations, and there has been so little legitimate theological reflection on what is going on, and how our faith interacts with the culture that has played a part on bringing this about. While there are many reasons for this, the fact is that discussion polarizes and turns political or personal long before anyone really engages the profound theological realities that should be behind what is going on.
I guess I wish there were more sites out there that were doing a good theological job, for that would mean that the meagre gruel that I try to dish up would be put in its right perspective.
I looked quizzically at her. I had no idea what this effusive congratulation was about. In the conversation that followed I finally was able to work out that this blog had been given an award.
That, I thought, was nice, because I am paranoid enough to think that throughout life I have received far more raps than accolades. I also wondered who on earth would even think about doing such a thing.
It's Saturday. This afternoon the convention now over, a new Bishop of Tennessee consecrated this morning, a nap having been taken, and the dog given his statutary walk around the field behind our house (in the company of the cat on this occasion), I decided to log on to see what I could find out about this miracle that had come to pass!
Sure enough, there on the Stand Firm site (www.Standfirminfaith.com) was the announcement that The Kew Continuum has been voted as having the Best Focus on Theology in the Anglican Blog Awards for 2007 -- amazing!
This got me wondering how I should respond. More thinking time was needed, so I tuned into the latest episode of This Old House while drinking my afternoon cup of tea, and I pondered. A builder's son, I have always loved houses, so watching an old East Boston home being renovated is right up my alley, and much more exciting than any serialized thriller. But it didn't help me with a response.
Well, these aren't the Oscars, so there's no red carpet to sweep down with my wife on my arm dressed in the most expensive outfit she is ever likely to buy. Neither is there a chance to strut myself before a crowded theatre, weeping profusely, and oozing "Thank you, thank you, thank you" to my peers. All I have received is a nice little logo that I guess I will find some way of putting somewhere on the blog.
So, to the folks who voted The Kew Continuum the Best Focus on Theology let me in true English fashion, quiet and restrained, to be grateful for such a vote of confidence. I will try in the coming year to keep up the standard.
It was only while trying to work out how to download the little logo that I discovered people were actually commenting on these awards, and would you believe it, someone accused me of rigging the result! What audacity! Now how does a soul answer such impugnities? I guess the only thing is to shrug, reckon that you are never going to please all the people, look at your watch and realize it might soon to time to break out the bubbly -- or at least, if there is nothing from the Champagne district of France in the house, another strong cup of well-steeped Yorkshire tea.
Obviously I am surprised that my scribblings have received such attention, but let me end on a more serious note.
I don't profess to be a great theological brain, but I have been puzzled for years now that we are in the midst of one of the biggest struggles in the church's life for generations, and there has been so little legitimate theological reflection on what is going on, and how our faith interacts with the culture that has played a part on bringing this about. While there are many reasons for this, the fact is that discussion polarizes and turns political or personal long before anyone really engages the profound theological realities that should be behind what is going on.
I guess I wish there were more sites out there that were doing a good theological job, for that would mean that the meagre gruel that I try to dish up would be put in its right perspective.
Friday, January 12, 2007
Words That Word -- A Review
Words That Work by Frank Luntz (New York: Hyperion Books, 2007, US$24.95)
Over the last couple of days my movements have been severely restricted as I have undergone one of those unpleasant medical procedures that is fast becoming a rite of passage into one's more senior years. Work has been almost impossible, and at times even reading has been difficult. However, I did manage to complete reading Frank Luntz's book, Words That Work.
Luntz is a bright spark with the kind of gifts that are valuable (and obviously profitable) in an information and knowledge-driven society. The sub-title of his book is It's Not What You Say, It's What People Hear. This isn't a book that I would have even have known about, let alone picked up if I hadn't seen Dr. Luntz on C-SPAN early on Christmas morning after the cat had awoken me from heavy slumber demanding to be let out.
As Luntz says in his introduction, You can have the best message in the world, but the person on the receiving end will always understand it through the prism of his or her own emotions, preconceptions, prejudices, and preexisting beliefs. It's not enough to be correct or reasonable or even brilliant. The key to successful communication is to take the imaginative leap of stuffing yourself right into your listener's shoes to know what they are thinking and feeling in the deepest recesses of their mind and heart. How that person perceives what you say is even more REAL, at least in a practical sense, than how you perceive yourself (Page xiii).
All this is just plain common sense. After having introduced the idea he then sets out to clarify and illustrate from his experience as a consultant and pollster to politicians and commercial interests. I am not sure that if I were to know him that Frank Luntz would be exactly my cup of tea, but he is certainly a gifted communicator who has important lessons that all other communicators need to either re-learn or learn for the first time.
Luntz, who holds an Oxford doctorate, is a master at taking someone's message and helping them put it in words that speak to the people they are trying to reach rather than not be heard, or worse, be turned off altogether. He claims to be the one who guided the Republicans away from talking about Estate Taxes to Death Taxes, thereby gaining support for their policies, and to talk of Climate Change instead of Global Warming.
He is known among those who despise him, or have absolutely no time for him as an unrepentent spin meister, but that is not how he sees himself. As he says, I do not believe there is something dishonorable about presenting a passionately held proposition in the most favorable light, while avoiding the self-sabotage of clumsy phrasing and dubious delivery (Page xix). This is a fair response on his part.
The battle, he says, is about comprehension, and that means getting over ideas in the best possible way that we can, for all human enterprises involve ideas and the communication of ideas. The truth is that if your audience does not hear (or understand) what you are saying, then you are not going to win an election, sell a product, or enable someone to get excited about Jesus Christ and his Gospel.
I have spent my whole life falling in love with words and struggling how best to use them as a servant of Christ. While there is a lot that Frank Luntz says that I have discovered myself by trial, error, or study over the last few decades, it is always good to see these spelled out clearly and put in order within the context of the present cultural challenge as he does. I would say that Luntz's lessons are extremely helpful to just about anyone who has a passion to get across the message of the Gospel as well as those who want to sell more potato chips.
He begins by outlining ten rules of effective language, which means successful communication and he begins with simplicity. You can argue all you want about the dumbing down of America, but unless you speak the language of your intended audience, you won't be heard by the people you want to reach (Page 5).
I don't know how many sermons and how much Christianspeak I have heard that fails just on this ground alone -- and some of those sermons have probably been my own! To be honest, some of the worst communicators of what are in reality dynamic ideas are to be found in pulpits on a Sunday morning.
The he talks about how essential is the credibility of the communicator. Credibility is established very simply. Tell people who you are or what you do. Then be that person and do what you have said you would do. And finally, remind people that you are what in fact you say you are (Page 11). Much Christian failure in recent decades stems from the fact that we are not who we say we are neither do we seem to mean what we say, and you can point your finger at any Christian tradition for loads of examples illustrating this.
The saddest cautionary tale I know is of the man who was beginning to show and interest in the Good News and is invited by a friend to come and share in the life of his church. "Good heavens, no," the man responds, "I've got enough problems of my own already, why would I want to be part of the church?" The tragedy is of such a cautionary tale is that it is uncomfortably true.
But the fact is, Luntz tells us, even with the best will in the world we all have a tendency to make message mistakes, and often this is by making calamitous assumptions about where our audience is coming from. While Luntz does not accept the postmodern premise that words change their meaning depending on what the receiver of them is hearing, he does warn us that if we are to persuade then we should use language to inform and enlighten rather than obscure and exclude.
Our listeners' preconceptions through which they filter what we say are influenced by their gender, their education, their political affiliations and biases (or lack of them). It also depends on ethnic background, national origins, cultural and generational conditioning. These all need to be considered when we are about the business of trying to communicate. So he tells us to ask ourselves what we want the result to be and then to use language to aim at that outcome.
And we should not forget that as culture changes so do words change their meaning. This man has a good feel of youth culture, which is shaped by the streets and hip-hop, and also invites us to remember that email and the Internet have also played a role in coarsening our language.
We may deplore such a thing, and throw up our hands in horror, but the fact is this is the reality and we are called to communicate into this reality. Because many of us within traditions with an elistist bias do deplore such things, we ignore the reality on the ground and end up by being terrible communicators.
A number of years ago, soon after the collapse of the Soviet Union I was in Moscow with Orthodox friends and broached the question of the Russian Orthodox Church's use of Old Church Slavonic rather than modern Russian for their liturgies. Old Church Slavonic is the Russian ecclesiastical equivalent of Chaucerian English, but several hundred years earlier. I suggested that it would be increasingly difficult to hold onto the hoards of young people thronging the churches because they did not understand what was going on. "Ah," I was told, "If they want to be part of the church then they will be willing to learn it." Old Church Slavonic might not be our problem, but there's a lesson here that we need to learn even as the liturgical revision language of the mid-20th Century ages while we use it.
Words That Work is readable and has lots of fascinating case studies from politics and commerce. It isn't difficult to see how Luntz's lessons translate into the language of the faith. As far as I have been able to discover there is absolutely no mention of faith and spirituality even when the author talks about morals and values. This should remind us that a huge proportion of the movers and the shakers do not have much interest in who we are and what we are about, especially when the message we proclaim is one thing, and then the way we live and behave directly contradicts it.
Words That Work is a helpful tool and its lessons can be applied in all sorts of settings. For a start, preachers and speakers would benefit from reading it, giving clues as to how they should project their message. It would be good to look at the contention in the church through its grid because I am convinced that a lot of the time we determinedly use words in such a way not to communicate with "the other side" but to deliberately rile them.
It should also be a challenge to us to keep studying language, studying the culture in which we use the language, and being prepared to make changes in order to communicate more effectively.
Over the last couple of days my movements have been severely restricted as I have undergone one of those unpleasant medical procedures that is fast becoming a rite of passage into one's more senior years. Work has been almost impossible, and at times even reading has been difficult. However, I did manage to complete reading Frank Luntz's book, Words That Work.
Luntz is a bright spark with the kind of gifts that are valuable (and obviously profitable) in an information and knowledge-driven society. The sub-title of his book is It's Not What You Say, It's What People Hear. This isn't a book that I would have even have known about, let alone picked up if I hadn't seen Dr. Luntz on C-SPAN early on Christmas morning after the cat had awoken me from heavy slumber demanding to be let out.
As Luntz says in his introduction, You can have the best message in the world, but the person on the receiving end will always understand it through the prism of his or her own emotions, preconceptions, prejudices, and preexisting beliefs. It's not enough to be correct or reasonable or even brilliant. The key to successful communication is to take the imaginative leap of stuffing yourself right into your listener's shoes to know what they are thinking and feeling in the deepest recesses of their mind and heart. How that person perceives what you say is even more REAL, at least in a practical sense, than how you perceive yourself (Page xiii).
All this is just plain common sense. After having introduced the idea he then sets out to clarify and illustrate from his experience as a consultant and pollster to politicians and commercial interests. I am not sure that if I were to know him that Frank Luntz would be exactly my cup of tea, but he is certainly a gifted communicator who has important lessons that all other communicators need to either re-learn or learn for the first time.
Luntz, who holds an Oxford doctorate, is a master at taking someone's message and helping them put it in words that speak to the people they are trying to reach rather than not be heard, or worse, be turned off altogether. He claims to be the one who guided the Republicans away from talking about Estate Taxes to Death Taxes, thereby gaining support for their policies, and to talk of Climate Change instead of Global Warming.
He is known among those who despise him, or have absolutely no time for him as an unrepentent spin meister, but that is not how he sees himself. As he says, I do not believe there is something dishonorable about presenting a passionately held proposition in the most favorable light, while avoiding the self-sabotage of clumsy phrasing and dubious delivery (Page xix). This is a fair response on his part.
The battle, he says, is about comprehension, and that means getting over ideas in the best possible way that we can, for all human enterprises involve ideas and the communication of ideas. The truth is that if your audience does not hear (or understand) what you are saying, then you are not going to win an election, sell a product, or enable someone to get excited about Jesus Christ and his Gospel.
I have spent my whole life falling in love with words and struggling how best to use them as a servant of Christ. While there is a lot that Frank Luntz says that I have discovered myself by trial, error, or study over the last few decades, it is always good to see these spelled out clearly and put in order within the context of the present cultural challenge as he does. I would say that Luntz's lessons are extremely helpful to just about anyone who has a passion to get across the message of the Gospel as well as those who want to sell more potato chips.
He begins by outlining ten rules of effective language, which means successful communication and he begins with simplicity. You can argue all you want about the dumbing down of America, but unless you speak the language of your intended audience, you won't be heard by the people you want to reach (Page 5).
I don't know how many sermons and how much Christianspeak I have heard that fails just on this ground alone -- and some of those sermons have probably been my own! To be honest, some of the worst communicators of what are in reality dynamic ideas are to be found in pulpits on a Sunday morning.
The he talks about how essential is the credibility of the communicator. Credibility is established very simply. Tell people who you are or what you do. Then be that person and do what you have said you would do. And finally, remind people that you are what in fact you say you are (Page 11). Much Christian failure in recent decades stems from the fact that we are not who we say we are neither do we seem to mean what we say, and you can point your finger at any Christian tradition for loads of examples illustrating this.
The saddest cautionary tale I know is of the man who was beginning to show and interest in the Good News and is invited by a friend to come and share in the life of his church. "Good heavens, no," the man responds, "I've got enough problems of my own already, why would I want to be part of the church?" The tragedy is of such a cautionary tale is that it is uncomfortably true.
But the fact is, Luntz tells us, even with the best will in the world we all have a tendency to make message mistakes, and often this is by making calamitous assumptions about where our audience is coming from. While Luntz does not accept the postmodern premise that words change their meaning depending on what the receiver of them is hearing, he does warn us that if we are to persuade then we should use language to inform and enlighten rather than obscure and exclude.
Our listeners' preconceptions through which they filter what we say are influenced by their gender, their education, their political affiliations and biases (or lack of them). It also depends on ethnic background, national origins, cultural and generational conditioning. These all need to be considered when we are about the business of trying to communicate. So he tells us to ask ourselves what we want the result to be and then to use language to aim at that outcome.
And we should not forget that as culture changes so do words change their meaning. This man has a good feel of youth culture, which is shaped by the streets and hip-hop, and also invites us to remember that email and the Internet have also played a role in coarsening our language.
We may deplore such a thing, and throw up our hands in horror, but the fact is this is the reality and we are called to communicate into this reality. Because many of us within traditions with an elistist bias do deplore such things, we ignore the reality on the ground and end up by being terrible communicators.
A number of years ago, soon after the collapse of the Soviet Union I was in Moscow with Orthodox friends and broached the question of the Russian Orthodox Church's use of Old Church Slavonic rather than modern Russian for their liturgies. Old Church Slavonic is the Russian ecclesiastical equivalent of Chaucerian English, but several hundred years earlier. I suggested that it would be increasingly difficult to hold onto the hoards of young people thronging the churches because they did not understand what was going on. "Ah," I was told, "If they want to be part of the church then they will be willing to learn it." Old Church Slavonic might not be our problem, but there's a lesson here that we need to learn even as the liturgical revision language of the mid-20th Century ages while we use it.
Words That Work is readable and has lots of fascinating case studies from politics and commerce. It isn't difficult to see how Luntz's lessons translate into the language of the faith. As far as I have been able to discover there is absolutely no mention of faith and spirituality even when the author talks about morals and values. This should remind us that a huge proportion of the movers and the shakers do not have much interest in who we are and what we are about, especially when the message we proclaim is one thing, and then the way we live and behave directly contradicts it.
Words That Work is a helpful tool and its lessons can be applied in all sorts of settings. For a start, preachers and speakers would benefit from reading it, giving clues as to how they should project their message. It would be good to look at the contention in the church through its grid because I am convinced that a lot of the time we determinedly use words in such a way not to communicate with "the other side" but to deliberately rile them.
It should also be a challenge to us to keep studying language, studying the culture in which we use the language, and being prepared to make changes in order to communicate more effectively.
Monday, January 08, 2007
Blink or Think?
I had been intending to review of Michael R. LeGault's interesting book, Think!, a response to Malcolm Gladwell's Blink, which I drew attention to several weeks ago. However, the more I have looked at the two productions together the more I realize that what we are seeing here is the delineation of the two radically different ways of thinking that have emerged. As I have thought them over I realize that what we see here is the competing mindsets that underlie the crisis in the church today.
Michael R. LeGault challenges the increasing dominance of the intuitive way of thinking and decision-making that Gladwell highlights. Furthermore, LeGault believes this is doing untold damage in the western world, particularly North America. He argues that Gladwell's thesis that the mind possesses extraordinary power to absorb information and sensory data, correctly size up a situation, and then solve problems without ever having to lean too heavily on formal thought just does not stand up under examination.
Gladwell's book, Blink, fills "a growning market niche, a new-age, feel-good pop psychology/philosophy" that has "sprung up to bolster the view that understanding gleaned from logic and critical analysis is not all that it's cracked up to be" (Page 8). While I think that LeGault is being a little too hard on intuitivity, his rejoinder to Blink certainly stands up under careful prodding better than Gladwell's thesis. As one who has a highly intutive side I think I understand very well what Gladwell is trying to say, but having said that I am profoundly grateful that I was in my formative years equipped with a good set of critical tools that enable me to think rationally and with logicality.
LeGault's 300+ pages can be summarized in a statement to the effect that the seeds of terminal decay are to be found in taking our feelings and intuitions so seriously that we end up avoiding difficult thinking and hard reasoning. His Chapter 11 is worth the price of the book alone(US$13.00). Entitled Hearing the Harmony of Reason: Embracing Objectivity, Thinking Critically, he starts out by saying, "Both history and daily experience have confirmed time and again that critical thinking is a vastly superior method of solving problems and making decisions than an intuitive random approach. It sometimes relies on number crunching, and statistics, but the basic elements are the same for all the criticial-thinking approaches used to write a report, figure ways to improve sales, of fix a jammed garage door. These elements are the use of empirical evidence (gathering data, knowledge), logical reason, and a skeptical attitude" (Page 274).
This illustrated the manner in which the book is written because it applies solid critical, empirical thinking to the alternative approach to thinking that Malcolm Gladwell so winsomely champions in Blink. LeGault's book not only has more far substance, but his careful thinking and writing lay the axe to the roots of the edifice that Gladwell tries to construct. However, I suspect that when the sales and influence of the two books are measured against one another, Blink will have won hands down.
Part of the reason for this is that most people today are conditioned to think with their hearts and not their heads, and this is encouraged everywhere from the media to many parts of academia. They have been taught to treasure feel-good intuitiveness that does not require much in the way of intellectual heavy lifting. Gladwell's insights are certainly going to ring more bells with an instant, easy-come, easy-go generation. Logical, rational thinking is not something that is caught but needs to be taught -- and it is a long time since anyone was seriously teaching it to anything but a handful of people.
I believe that the hardest classes I took were Logic and Philosophy, but as I soldiered on with them for several years they bore fruit that I have carried with me for the rest of my life. I am not a great philosopher or logician, but what I have gained have helped me better assess what is going on inside my brain, as well as ideas others are presenting to me. I might be emotionally swayed by someone's argument when they present their case, but after the emotions have died down I know how to intellectually pick through it and work out whether it was built upon rock or sand.
The Greeks and Romans took rhetoric seriously as a subject, coaching those who will communicate in ancient society to speak wisely and well, framing their arguments rationally, yet we no longer do this and we are poorer for it. I have listened to a huge number of sermons in my time, for example, and I shudder to think how many of these productions might succeed emotionally, but then fail miserably because the case being made is built either on froth or feelings, or has no logical and rational consistency.
The way in which the churches in general, and the Episcopal Church in particular, have been shepherded along the road that they have taken is that they have followed this intuitive, feelings-driven approach to thinking and have shut out the more traditional, rational, logical way of handling facts and ideas. Having read both Gladwell and LeGault, I would say that those on the progressive side, the left, or whatever you want to call them, lean heavily in the direction of being Blink-ers.
Because of the absence of objective, empirical, critical reasoning across the board, the Blink-like mindset and approach is also displayed by those who are more conservative, yet unlike their leftward brothers and sisters the presuppositions of their positions are rooted in theological presuppositions shaped by Scripture, and the minds of the likes of Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calivin, Edwards, and a host of others -- which means that rationality takes precedence over uninformed intuition. When it comes down to it there is probably more Think than Blink on the right, but it sure lacks the intellectual rigor that it needs.
The fact is that every grouping lacks the rigor of approach that will enable us to build the case for our beliefs upon the deposit of knowledge and observation. We need to know how to think our way to sound judgments and good decisions that are rooted and grounded in an objective, revelational understanding of the Truth. We are never going to think our way constructively forward unless Logical reasoning is at the core of this process. LeGault gives us a very good summary of the principles of elementary logic that have more or less been lost and need
to be recovered.
Almost everywhere we look we see the stand-off between Blink and Think!. Several years ago on Mars Hill Audio there was a piece by a legal scholar bemoaning the demise of logic and reasoning in the courtroom. He said that takes its place is emotional manipulation and storytelling as each lawyer tries to trump the other in performance in order to psychologically win the case for their client. Here we see the Think of the old way of doing law giving way to the new approach of Blink! The same is true in marketing, and an entertainment-driven culture has more or less disconnected us from higher logical and the rational side of our minds!
Yet it is to the life of the church that I want to apply this thesis. Other than Columbus 2006 I have attended just about every General Convention in the last twenty years, and have watch the standard of debate (which was never great) spiral downward. The last so-called debate of the House of Deputies to which I listened was, quite frankly, more postmodern theatre than it was rational discussion. The same is true of the preparatory hearings.
The Think approach to reasoning and theological deduction was absent, and those who applied such an approach were hardly listened to and certainly not heard. Blink, with intuitive stories about relationships feeling good and right, ruled the roost. In such settings it was increasingly difficult even to enter into discussion with those with whom you disagreed because Blink-ers and Think-ers function so differently that they talk past each other and end up merely shouting at one another.
What is more disturbing is that words and knowledge seem to have become the victims. While language always changes and grows, in the deconstructionist world (of which Blink is at least a reflection) words are reworked then given the meaning we want them to have. A recent example of this is the blatant redefinition of the word "evangelism" by the Presiding Bishop and her entourage.
When rational objectivity is replaced by reader receptiveness, then we are set free to diddle with meanings to suit own subjectivity as well as sitting loose to fact. Taking the human sexuality debate as an example, I have sought the best I can to keep up with all sides of this conversation, and hear those on the left presenting as indisputible fact certain statements about sexuality for which there is at least at present no scientific or factual basis. Then when something has been repeated enough such a notion become accepted more and more as factual.
What I find more disturbing is the unwillingness of most people on every side of this Blink/Think debate to even consider looking at data that comes a position with which they disagree. This means that all cases end up being one-sides, and polarization that does every kind of damage is the outcome.
A traditional way of approaching ideas and circumstances is to gather as much information as you can from across the board, to analyze it with care, sifting and discarding that which does not stand up under scrutiny, and then building a case from what remains. This is hard work and it means delving deeply into positions with which we disagree or may find unpaletable. One of the benefits of having studied theology both at an undergraduate and a postgraduate level in places whose preferences were at odds with my own was the value of learning to see a question
from all sides in the process of discovering the truth.
This kind of discipline is virtually absent and needs to be recovered post haste. This is what Michael Legault advocates in Think!, and it is an approach to learning and thinking that we need to recover. Certainly, it behooves those who are concerned for the future wellbeing of the Christian faith in this land and in the West generally, to get back to the hard, hard work of the logical, rational, empirical measuring of thought.
Are we willing to live in the world of Blink, or are we willing to graduate into a world of Think!?
Thursday, January 04, 2007
Meditations on a Bible Study
Yesterday evening we had a wonderful conversation at the bible study I lead each week. Since the beginning of December we have been working our way through Paul's Letter to the Romans and have just got to the tail end of Chapter One where Paul is talking about the whole raft of sins that separate us from God, with a particularly strong reference to sexual sins -- especially those of a same sex nature.
The group of thirteen or fourteen people was well-educated and made up of folks like a printer and a psychiatrist, a retired school superintendent and a college professor. This is not one of those hop, skip, and a jump studies through Paul's magnum opus, but is an attempt to take the text seriously within its original context so that we can then work out what it is saying to us today. It is a joy for me to be leading such a group as it is a long time since I have had the opportunity to work with the Greek text of Romans in this detailed way.
Within the context of studying a particular passage of Scripture must always come the business of application. Last night this happened toward the end of our study after we had worked hard at dissecting precisely what the Apostle was saying. At first the conversation was slow to develop, but after a few minutes it took on a life of its own, full of sensitivity and fluency that I had not expected.
This was a pretty orthodox bunch of people, some of them deeply distressed by the actions taken by the Episcopal Church in recent years, the kind often represented as hard and inflexible when it comes to dealing with such issues as these, but there was none of that. Yes, there were expressions of distress at the positions taken by the likes of the General Convention, but there was also a genuine desire to reach out in love to those who have a particular struggle with their sexuality.
Stories were told that were intensely moving. While there was no attempt to walk away from the clarity with which Paul deals with the issue of same sex relationships, there was also a yearning to work out how to be pastoral and caring without any desire to walk away from what the Scriptures say in their plainest sense.
Little has been gained as we have polarized during the last few years and at times shouted at each other until we are hoarse. Yes, theology, values, ethics, and morality are vitally important, but equally as important is the manner in which we talk with one another about such things.
As we move into 2007 I guess I find myself asking is there are ways that we can discover how to handle the crisis that has burst over us graciously and gracefully. I don't think I am even seeking agreement and I am certainly not asking that we try to find some way of finessing away what Scripture says, but to ask if there is a way beyond our present pouting polarization so that we can start demonstrating in the debate attitudes with which the Sermon on the Mount might feel at home.
We didn't get very far in our conversation last night, but the mood and the comments led me to believe that perhaps there are a goodly number of folks out there who passionately yearn to move beyond our present destructive stuck-ness.
The group of thirteen or fourteen people was well-educated and made up of folks like a printer and a psychiatrist, a retired school superintendent and a college professor. This is not one of those hop, skip, and a jump studies through Paul's magnum opus, but is an attempt to take the text seriously within its original context so that we can then work out what it is saying to us today. It is a joy for me to be leading such a group as it is a long time since I have had the opportunity to work with the Greek text of Romans in this detailed way.
Within the context of studying a particular passage of Scripture must always come the business of application. Last night this happened toward the end of our study after we had worked hard at dissecting precisely what the Apostle was saying. At first the conversation was slow to develop, but after a few minutes it took on a life of its own, full of sensitivity and fluency that I had not expected.
This was a pretty orthodox bunch of people, some of them deeply distressed by the actions taken by the Episcopal Church in recent years, the kind often represented as hard and inflexible when it comes to dealing with such issues as these, but there was none of that. Yes, there were expressions of distress at the positions taken by the likes of the General Convention, but there was also a genuine desire to reach out in love to those who have a particular struggle with their sexuality.
Stories were told that were intensely moving. While there was no attempt to walk away from the clarity with which Paul deals with the issue of same sex relationships, there was also a yearning to work out how to be pastoral and caring without any desire to walk away from what the Scriptures say in their plainest sense.
Little has been gained as we have polarized during the last few years and at times shouted at each other until we are hoarse. Yes, theology, values, ethics, and morality are vitally important, but equally as important is the manner in which we talk with one another about such things.
As we move into 2007 I guess I find myself asking is there are ways that we can discover how to handle the crisis that has burst over us graciously and gracefully. I don't think I am even seeking agreement and I am certainly not asking that we try to find some way of finessing away what Scripture says, but to ask if there is a way beyond our present pouting polarization so that we can start demonstrating in the debate attitudes with which the Sermon on the Mount might feel at home.
We didn't get very far in our conversation last night, but the mood and the comments led me to believe that perhaps there are a goodly number of folks out there who passionately yearn to move beyond our present destructive stuck-ness.
Friday, December 29, 2006
PoMo Shopping and the Church
Those who know me realize that for many years now The Economist has been one of my favorite publications. The great thing about this particular news weekly is that it provides a huge array of background materials that help us understand the news and the culture against which the world economy is doing all sorts of things. Unlike so many of its counterparts it does not talk down to its readers, assuming that we have their capacity to digest and discuss serious issues is fearfully limited.
The Christmas-New Year edition of The Economist is always worth looking forward to because it provides what can best be called holiday reading in the shape of all sorts of op-ed style pieces. This year we have a multi-page analysis of the way the brain works, a charming piece on conversation, and a stimulating longish essay on advertising, shopping, and postmodern philosophy.
I have re-read this latter piece several times, because it seemed to have a message that we in the churches need at least to be listening to. Perhaps it could have been re-titled something like Foucault and the Demise of the Department Store, for the point it is making is that the old-fashioned way of selling goods is dead, gone, and buried, and radical new alternatives are being born out of the deconstruction of yesterday's way of retailing.
Let me confess that I rather like department stores, which makes me a less than post-modern person. Their orderly presentation of goods with lines of counters and a careful attention to understated decor always seemed somehow soothing, if an emporium dedicated to commercialism could, indeed, be such a thing. But, we are told, Selfridges, what in days gone by was the epitome of department store chic in London, almost went out of business in the 1990s, while that other British bastion of one-stop department store shopping, Marks and Spencer, is struggling to remake itself after a horrible nose dive.
If you go into a Selfridges store in England today you find that order and standard decor have given way to every brand being given its head to shout the loudest. "There is no hierarchy of goods; watches compete with perfume, luggage with high fashion, cafes with fast food. Shows, action and stunts break up the day. Selfridges calls it 'shopping entertainment.' So successful is it that two years ago a panel of style gurus voted it Britain's coolest brand."
The thesis of this article, Post-modernism is the new black, is that if you think of old-fashioned approaches to retailing as 'meta-narratives,' in today's market they have to be deconstructed, setting people free from externally imposed categories in which traditional retailers want to imprison them. The modern consumer needs to be free to choose... the mainstream has been shattered "into a zillion different cultural shards."
Mass markets are out, yet even as they are being blown apart and fragmented these fragments have wily marketers catering to them. A commentator by the name of Chris Anderson states that "When mass culture breaks apart... it doesn't re-form into a different mass. Instead, it turns into millions of microcultures which coexist and interact in a baffling array of ways." How exciting, frightening, unsettling, destablizing.
The message is that in the post-modern deconstructed environment fragmentation is not a bad thing, indeed fragments become valuable niches, and we do not have some anonymous outsider 'editing' the choices that we want to make. The secret of success in this environment is knowing which niche you are attempting to market to. The possibility of an endless array of niches into which we can all dip gives the individual the chance to become "the artist of his own life."
As I read this, and it is one of those items where you aren't quite sure whether the author is being serious or whether there is a degree of tongue in cheek, I found myself thinking about the Episcopal Church. It seemed that some of the things being drawn attention to were a bit like what is happening to us.
If you think of the Episcopal Church as an old-fashioned department store of faith with declining market share, then could it be that what we are experiencing is its shattering into a zillion different religious shards? Each one of these shards is an individual group, congregation or networks of congregations becomes a niche reaching into a particular social or cultural grouping. In such circumstances the believer is free to make choices that suit particular perceptions.
But here's the problem, right now everyone only wants to follow this particular logic part of the way.
Those who hold the power (something postmodernism knows a lot about) think that while we can be creative artists of our own individual faith journey, we don't want to apply this kind of thinking of the structures and presentation of our faith. Like the seried ranks of counters in a traditional department store, there are particular interpretations of canons that are being used to keep us all in order -- their particular take on order. The truth is that when you destroy the meta-narratives you have laid the axe not only to dogma and beliefs, but also to the very tree that contains them.
On the other hand there are those who are happy to fragment, find a bishop of choice, be global, emancipating themselves from this rather tired Enlightenment way of being church, and concentrate on presenting the faith once delivered to the saints. However, these folks have their own likes and dislikes as well as theological convictions that hardly mesh at all with those who think it is entirely right that we can develop a mix-and-match approach to theological discipline.
I'm not one of the world's great shoppers, but I find the Selfridges approach to doing things rather refreshing. There is a huge DaDa-esque Selfridges store in the center of the English Birmingham, not far from my daughter's home. While it can be incredibly confusing, with top class fudge being sold immediately alongside leather briefcases, there is a sense of non-rational order that makes you believe that you are freer to make the choices that you want to make.
Perhaps the time has come to say that we have reached a total impasse in the Episcopal Church, that rather the ripping the whole thing to shreads, let's try and find a postmodern approach to our problems that embraces a similar semi-controlled anarchy rather than fighting against it and each other. This would then allow all the other Anglican jurisdictions in North America to get in on the act like creative mom and pop operations, plugging in to those components of each other and us that they think will work for them. I could go on pursuing this line of thought, but I think readers will get the idea!
In a setting like this there would be no need for General Conventions or the bits of Enlightenment palaver that are left over from the denominational age, and we could have a total free market. Then in that free market we would see what would sink and what would swim, with like-minded networks supporting and promoting what they believe in and all of us getting on, doing our own thing, being our own faith artists.
At first blush this seems more rational than the way we are carrying on at the moment. Those who have driven the agenda for years have been steadily deconstructing the received meta-narrative from our catholic Christian heritage, but for some extraordinary reason want to hang onto the structural meta-narrative. Open up the structural meta-narrative to freedom of choice, and a market-driven economy of faith, and we have a much more inclusive approach to doing things.
Now, I wonder, am I being serious, or is this a little tongue in the cheek?
The Christmas-New Year edition of The Economist is always worth looking forward to because it provides what can best be called holiday reading in the shape of all sorts of op-ed style pieces. This year we have a multi-page analysis of the way the brain works, a charming piece on conversation, and a stimulating longish essay on advertising, shopping, and postmodern philosophy.
I have re-read this latter piece several times, because it seemed to have a message that we in the churches need at least to be listening to. Perhaps it could have been re-titled something like Foucault and the Demise of the Department Store, for the point it is making is that the old-fashioned way of selling goods is dead, gone, and buried, and radical new alternatives are being born out of the deconstruction of yesterday's way of retailing.
Let me confess that I rather like department stores, which makes me a less than post-modern person. Their orderly presentation of goods with lines of counters and a careful attention to understated decor always seemed somehow soothing, if an emporium dedicated to commercialism could, indeed, be such a thing. But, we are told, Selfridges, what in days gone by was the epitome of department store chic in London, almost went out of business in the 1990s, while that other British bastion of one-stop department store shopping, Marks and Spencer, is struggling to remake itself after a horrible nose dive.
If you go into a Selfridges store in England today you find that order and standard decor have given way to every brand being given its head to shout the loudest. "There is no hierarchy of goods; watches compete with perfume, luggage with high fashion, cafes with fast food. Shows, action and stunts break up the day. Selfridges calls it 'shopping entertainment.' So successful is it that two years ago a panel of style gurus voted it Britain's coolest brand."
The thesis of this article, Post-modernism is the new black, is that if you think of old-fashioned approaches to retailing as 'meta-narratives,' in today's market they have to be deconstructed, setting people free from externally imposed categories in which traditional retailers want to imprison them. The modern consumer needs to be free to choose... the mainstream has been shattered "into a zillion different cultural shards."
Mass markets are out, yet even as they are being blown apart and fragmented these fragments have wily marketers catering to them. A commentator by the name of Chris Anderson states that "When mass culture breaks apart... it doesn't re-form into a different mass. Instead, it turns into millions of microcultures which coexist and interact in a baffling array of ways." How exciting, frightening, unsettling, destablizing.
The message is that in the post-modern deconstructed environment fragmentation is not a bad thing, indeed fragments become valuable niches, and we do not have some anonymous outsider 'editing' the choices that we want to make. The secret of success in this environment is knowing which niche you are attempting to market to. The possibility of an endless array of niches into which we can all dip gives the individual the chance to become "the artist of his own life."
As I read this, and it is one of those items where you aren't quite sure whether the author is being serious or whether there is a degree of tongue in cheek, I found myself thinking about the Episcopal Church. It seemed that some of the things being drawn attention to were a bit like what is happening to us.
If you think of the Episcopal Church as an old-fashioned department store of faith with declining market share, then could it be that what we are experiencing is its shattering into a zillion different religious shards? Each one of these shards is an individual group, congregation or networks of congregations becomes a niche reaching into a particular social or cultural grouping. In such circumstances the believer is free to make choices that suit particular perceptions.
But here's the problem, right now everyone only wants to follow this particular logic part of the way.
Those who hold the power (something postmodernism knows a lot about) think that while we can be creative artists of our own individual faith journey, we don't want to apply this kind of thinking of the structures and presentation of our faith. Like the seried ranks of counters in a traditional department store, there are particular interpretations of canons that are being used to keep us all in order -- their particular take on order. The truth is that when you destroy the meta-narratives you have laid the axe not only to dogma and beliefs, but also to the very tree that contains them.
On the other hand there are those who are happy to fragment, find a bishop of choice, be global, emancipating themselves from this rather tired Enlightenment way of being church, and concentrate on presenting the faith once delivered to the saints. However, these folks have their own likes and dislikes as well as theological convictions that hardly mesh at all with those who think it is entirely right that we can develop a mix-and-match approach to theological discipline.
I'm not one of the world's great shoppers, but I find the Selfridges approach to doing things rather refreshing. There is a huge DaDa-esque Selfridges store in the center of the English Birmingham, not far from my daughter's home. While it can be incredibly confusing, with top class fudge being sold immediately alongside leather briefcases, there is a sense of non-rational order that makes you believe that you are freer to make the choices that you want to make.
Perhaps the time has come to say that we have reached a total impasse in the Episcopal Church, that rather the ripping the whole thing to shreads, let's try and find a postmodern approach to our problems that embraces a similar semi-controlled anarchy rather than fighting against it and each other. This would then allow all the other Anglican jurisdictions in North America to get in on the act like creative mom and pop operations, plugging in to those components of each other and us that they think will work for them. I could go on pursuing this line of thought, but I think readers will get the idea!
In a setting like this there would be no need for General Conventions or the bits of Enlightenment palaver that are left over from the denominational age, and we could have a total free market. Then in that free market we would see what would sink and what would swim, with like-minded networks supporting and promoting what they believe in and all of us getting on, doing our own thing, being our own faith artists.
At first blush this seems more rational than the way we are carrying on at the moment. Those who have driven the agenda for years have been steadily deconstructing the received meta-narrative from our catholic Christian heritage, but for some extraordinary reason want to hang onto the structural meta-narrative. Open up the structural meta-narrative to freedom of choice, and a market-driven economy of faith, and we have a much more inclusive approach to doing things.
Now, I wonder, am I being serious, or is this a little tongue in the cheek?
Monday, December 25, 2006
Writing Daily Devotions
Four years ago I started writing online Daily Devotions. It began for the congregation which I was then pastoring. I was discovering in the lives of parishioners what wider polling had been picking up -- that fewer and fewer Christians were spending time each day reading and studying the Scriptures. Even folks with a high commitment did not seem to understand the importance of a daily prayerful encounter with Scripture, and most did not know how to unpack what the Bible was saying to them.
I have always believed that preaching is not only for the immediate edification of the congregation, but cumulatively the preacher models how on a regularly basis Christians may feed themselves from God's rich revealed diet. A daiy devotional is merely a way of extending that approach to teaching the Scriptures. With virtually everyone online in my former congregation, I had the chance to help them meet the incarnate Word in the written Word first thing every morning when they logged on.
Over the years the readership of the Daily Devotions has grown, and now they are used all over the world. I am not quite sure how many people are receiving them each day because in several parishes they are fielded by one individual who then sends them on to a wider network. My guess is that what began for a couple of dozen folks is now reaching at least 1200-1500, and I have joked that whether I like it or not I have a job for life.
Writing Daily Devotions can be a bit of a chore. When I started doing it our bishop suggested, rightly, that such a thing is very hard to keep up, and doubted whether I would manage it! This is true, but the discipline of writing and sending the devotions is one that has fed me as much or more than those who might receive them, therefore I now do it for my own benefit as much as anything else. I am forced to dig into short passages of Scripture, see what the text is actually saying, and then apply it to the lives that we live today. Sometimes the texts that come up in the lectionary cycle are not particularly easy when trying to teach a crisp little lesson in a few well-chosen sentences!
What has also been a joy is the business of choosing an appropriate collect (short prayer) for the day. During the last few years I have gathered a self of books of prayers from all over the world, and these supplement what can be found in the various rich strands of the Anglican, Catholic, and Orthodox traditions. One observation I would make is that the relative absence of such materials in the USA suggests that Americans are not particularly adept at composing prayers in this way, although the feedback I have received suggests that they love using them.
When I committed my life to Christ on August 5, 1959, one of the earliest things I was taught was the importance of regular devotional reading of the Scriptures, and I was started out with simple bible reading notes. Like a pair of training wheels these got me going, and although I was less than regular at first, little by little the discipline entrenched itself in my life so that today there are no parts of the Bible that I have not read several dozen times, and there are few biblical books that I have not studied in significant depth. By the way, I do believe that constructive biblical scholarship should enrich and feed the devotional use of the Word.
As the years have passed my appetite has grown (and changed). The sweet tangy diet of those teenage years has given way to a palate that, like that of someone who has discovered fine wines, gives great pleasure, edification, and satisfaction. In dark moments as well as in the joys of life, the Lord who sustains my life has met, comforted, nurtured, and challenged me. This, in the Daily Devotions, is what I have wanted to pass on to others, and I know from the correspondence I have received that it is doing just that in the lives of some.
One of the problems of writing Daily Devotions is to keep them from becoming sentimental or overly individualized. In one of my former parishes we had a woman who had made little butterflies and smiley faces her personal trademark whenever she wrote a long-hand note or letter. Much devotional writing is, as it were, flavored in this way. While there might be an occasional place for such a thing, a regular diet is cloying. Over the years I have had to tussle to prevent myself from sliding down this slope.
I believe that the Daily Devotions are meant to be a place where the meaty doctrines that are embedded in the narrative and text of the Bible are brought out and presented in such a way that readers are building a base of solid knowledge of what the Scriptures say, and what they actually mean so they can live them out. They are meant to be mini-works of exegesis, that is extracting from the flow of words what God was saying then, and then how he is addressing us with these words now.
I confess that there have been times when I have shied away from something difficult in the particular paragraph. Sometimes that has been because it is impossible to explain what the writer is actually saying in the space needed, but at times it has been because, perhaps, of a loss of nerve. Scripture can be comforting and nurturing, but it also calls us to account, and asks us to deal with difficult questions from which many of us might withdraw in discomfort or horror.
So, the Daily Devotions are entering their fifth year in January. I hope and pray that those using them will be enriched in their faith. I also hope and pray that the one who writes them week by week will find his mind and heart kept open to all the huge possibilities that God has in store.
I have always believed that preaching is not only for the immediate edification of the congregation, but cumulatively the preacher models how on a regularly basis Christians may feed themselves from God's rich revealed diet. A daiy devotional is merely a way of extending that approach to teaching the Scriptures. With virtually everyone online in my former congregation, I had the chance to help them meet the incarnate Word in the written Word first thing every morning when they logged on.
Over the years the readership of the Daily Devotions has grown, and now they are used all over the world. I am not quite sure how many people are receiving them each day because in several parishes they are fielded by one individual who then sends them on to a wider network. My guess is that what began for a couple of dozen folks is now reaching at least 1200-1500, and I have joked that whether I like it or not I have a job for life.
Writing Daily Devotions can be a bit of a chore. When I started doing it our bishop suggested, rightly, that such a thing is very hard to keep up, and doubted whether I would manage it! This is true, but the discipline of writing and sending the devotions is one that has fed me as much or more than those who might receive them, therefore I now do it for my own benefit as much as anything else. I am forced to dig into short passages of Scripture, see what the text is actually saying, and then apply it to the lives that we live today. Sometimes the texts that come up in the lectionary cycle are not particularly easy when trying to teach a crisp little lesson in a few well-chosen sentences!
What has also been a joy is the business of choosing an appropriate collect (short prayer) for the day. During the last few years I have gathered a self of books of prayers from all over the world, and these supplement what can be found in the various rich strands of the Anglican, Catholic, and Orthodox traditions. One observation I would make is that the relative absence of such materials in the USA suggests that Americans are not particularly adept at composing prayers in this way, although the feedback I have received suggests that they love using them.
When I committed my life to Christ on August 5, 1959, one of the earliest things I was taught was the importance of regular devotional reading of the Scriptures, and I was started out with simple bible reading notes. Like a pair of training wheels these got me going, and although I was less than regular at first, little by little the discipline entrenched itself in my life so that today there are no parts of the Bible that I have not read several dozen times, and there are few biblical books that I have not studied in significant depth. By the way, I do believe that constructive biblical scholarship should enrich and feed the devotional use of the Word.
As the years have passed my appetite has grown (and changed). The sweet tangy diet of those teenage years has given way to a palate that, like that of someone who has discovered fine wines, gives great pleasure, edification, and satisfaction. In dark moments as well as in the joys of life, the Lord who sustains my life has met, comforted, nurtured, and challenged me. This, in the Daily Devotions, is what I have wanted to pass on to others, and I know from the correspondence I have received that it is doing just that in the lives of some.
One of the problems of writing Daily Devotions is to keep them from becoming sentimental or overly individualized. In one of my former parishes we had a woman who had made little butterflies and smiley faces her personal trademark whenever she wrote a long-hand note or letter. Much devotional writing is, as it were, flavored in this way. While there might be an occasional place for such a thing, a regular diet is cloying. Over the years I have had to tussle to prevent myself from sliding down this slope.
I believe that the Daily Devotions are meant to be a place where the meaty doctrines that are embedded in the narrative and text of the Bible are brought out and presented in such a way that readers are building a base of solid knowledge of what the Scriptures say, and what they actually mean so they can live them out. They are meant to be mini-works of exegesis, that is extracting from the flow of words what God was saying then, and then how he is addressing us with these words now.
I confess that there have been times when I have shied away from something difficult in the particular paragraph. Sometimes that has been because it is impossible to explain what the writer is actually saying in the space needed, but at times it has been because, perhaps, of a loss of nerve. Scripture can be comforting and nurturing, but it also calls us to account, and asks us to deal with difficult questions from which many of us might withdraw in discomfort or horror.
So, the Daily Devotions are entering their fifth year in January. I hope and pray that those using them will be enriched in their faith. I also hope and pray that the one who writes them week by week will find his mind and heart kept open to all the huge possibilities that God has in store.
Friday, December 22, 2006
The Theology of the Cross and the Church's Crisis
Ever-changing circumstances force us to revisit theological convictions, for it is within the fluidities of our lives that we find ourselves find it necessary to confront blind spots or inadequates in our believing.
Following General Convention 2003, for example, I spent much timereconsidering human sexuality. I wondering if perhaps I had missed something or was so stuck in a personal and theological rut that maybe the convention had actually been correct and in my obtuseness I had not picked up on it. Could it be, I thought, that they are being faithful to God's revelation but my preconceptions are preventing me from seeing it?
After several months spent praying, immersed in Scripture and reading all that I could lay my hands on, on both sides of the argument,and weighing the evidence, the conclusion seemed inescapable. While there were areas upon which I needed to tighten up my thinking, what is taught in Scripture and how Scripture has historically been interpreted are closer to God's standards than the direction the Episcopal Church had decided to take. Not only did alternative epistomologies not stand up under critical examination, but neither was the use of evidence outside Scripture being used particularly appropriately by those who would have us think and act differently.
We have now moved on and are watching the wholesale de-construction of the Episcopal Church, as I had expected would happen. The biggest agony of times like these is the parting of friends. Seldom does a week go by without congregations peeling away from the Episcopal Church, often amidst angry accusations, counter-accusations, and often, vituperation. I have dear friends in many of those parishes. The question with which I now struggle is how such behavior by Christians can in any way be considered acceptable, especially in light of the teaching in God's revelation about the restorative power of the Cross and the healing efficacy of the Holy Spirit.
Having spent my entire adult life in the ordained ministry of either the Episcopal Church or the Church of England, and having seen more of the dark underside of church life than I would have wished, I have few illusions about people who call themselves Christians. As well as being steeped in the generosity of our Anglican heritage, my own personality gives me a profound distaste for division and schism, while at the same time as an evangelical believer I am convinced we must take with utmost seriously what God has revealed to us and is recorded in Holy Scripture.
So I set off on this exploratory journey several months ago, and now with Christmas upon us I find myself attempting tentatively to draw a first batch of conclusions. The path I have taken has been anything but direct, but the place where I now find myself is digging afresh into the implications and meaning of the Cross of Christ. I rather expected this was where I would end up, for it is in the hardest of work that Christ wrought on Calvary that we discover the hard work and hard things that he would have us do.
If my studies several years ago regarding human sexuality gave me a much richer understanding of what it means to be humans made in the image of the triune God, my more recent pondering has resulted in a more robust understanding of Christ's nature as the second person of the Godhead, and the significance of Good Friday. It is all very well to effusively assert the glories of the nature of Christ's finished work for year after year of one's life, but new vistas seem to be opened up when one asks certain questions of that work and the manner in which it relates to our immediate struggles.
The conclusion I have found myself reaching has been that while neither "side" in our present unhappiness actually denies the work of Christ upon the Cross, all of us seem to be functioning with a less than adequate theology of what the Lord Jesus Christ has actually done, and how his work applies within our context of contemporary discipleship.
If the Cross is the source of our redemption and was the ultimate purpose for the Lord's coming, then Christ did not fail in what he did when he died, but it is we who are failing now in our ability to apply its tincture to our lives and the life of the Church.
Now I realize that there is much more going on in our crisis than merely imperfect theologies of the Cross, and that we are now seeing the outworking of generations of error, hostility, exclusion, inclusion, etc., etc., but if the Cross is the heart of God's action on human behalf, then we are not even starting to interpret adequately all that is going on unless we bring the Cross into play, seeking to see how its power addresses our circumstances.
A major part of our problem is that all of us, I believe, are working out of a distorted or curtailed understanding of Christ's work in redemption. Indeed, our inadequate grasp of this most significant action of God in the affair of humankind puts us in danger of becoming what Paul called "the enemies of the Cross." We may not hate the Cross and the love which eminates from it, but for most of us ours is hardly an adequate response to such a supreme act of grace for we have cut it down to what we consider to be a manageable size.
A clue to understanding our dilemma is to recognize the divergent courses that have been taken by differing groups within the same faith community for a considerable time. The outcome of this is alienation, the pursuit of mutually exclusive paths, endless finger-pointing which asserts the other side is wrong, the failure to listen to one another or God, and now separation complete with self-righteousness from all quarters, lawyers, courts, winners, losers, pain, agony, and for some, glee. Did we so learn Christ, and where in the midst of all this is the Lord of the Church and the pitilessness he received on a spring day in Jerusalem two thousand years ago?
It is easy to set ourselves up as being right and the other side as being wrong if we can demonstrate that those who stand against us have missed the point altogether. However, what if as we apply the rich doctrine of the Cross to what is going on now, both sides are amiss (or partial) in their grasp of this most cardinal of truths?
While I don't wish to go into the differing perceptions of the Cross in depth, let it be suggested that those on the left have tended to see God's atoning work more in terms of Jesus our great example whose selflessness we must seek to emulate, while those on the right tend to think more of Jesus as the one who shed his blood to cleanse me from my sins. I know this is a parody, but it is close enough to the facts for us to be able to recognize that a more accurate theology of the Cross is so much more than these.
P. T. Forsyth writing just before World War One said that when we speak of the atonement "we are speaking of that which is the centre, not of thought, but of actual life, conscience, history, and destiny. We speak of what is the life power of the moral world and its historic crisis, the ground of the Church's existence, and the sole meaning of Christ himself. Christ is to us just what his Cross is... You do not understand Christ till you understand his Cross." (From his book The Cruciality of the Cross).
Martin Luther, after many years spent in mature reflection upon the Cross, tells us that it speaks of God's solidarity with the downtrodden and suffering, and with all those who the world rejects as weak, foolish, and irrelevant. By its very nature Christ's crucifixion challenges each of our standards of judgment. Jurgen Moltmann, borrowing a phrase from Luther, described Jesus in his magnum opus as the work of "The Crucified God."
The truth is that when we truly allow ourselves to be confronted by the Cross we discover there is absolutely no room for a self-indulgent, self-actualizing mindset. "Many modern spiritualities are very human-centered, stressing their advanges for human mental health and wholeness," (Alister McGrath) or the notion that in our time we know better than our forebears did. Being the people of the Cross turns upon its head many of the attitudes that seem to prevail in much of our thinking these days -- especially when we look at church battles. We have heard too much of the I'm-going-to-get-my-own-way mindset, regardless of the costs and consequences.
But neither does a fair theology of the Cross allow us necessarily to pursue our own agendas, our own ambitions, or to lift high our own desires and expectations. Just as the "health and wealth" Gospel trivializes precisely what Christ taught and did on our behalf on the conservative side of the spectrum, the same can be said to be true of the more subjective attitude toward moral, ethical, and other questions on the progressive side. As Alister McGrath puts it, "To be, or to become, a Christian is to do yourself no favors... To be an authentic Christian is to pass under the shadow of the Cross, not to avoid that shadow" (Roots that Refresh, page 86).
There is an excellent interview by Tim Stafford, brother of the Dean of the School of Theology, Sewanee, with Tom Wright in the January 2007 issue of "Christianity Today." In it Bishop Wright critiques the contemporary appeal of Gnosticism, whose tentacles have reached deeply into the life of the churches, compromising our message (Right and Left) with this particular flavor of neo-paganism.
Wright tells Stafford, "Because the great emphasis in the New Testament is that the gospel is not how to escape the world; the gospel is that the crucified and risen Jesus is the Lord of the world. And that his death and Resurrection transform the world, and that transformation can happen to you. You, in turn can be part of that transforming work. That draws together what we traditionally called evangelism, bringing people to the point where they come to know God in Christ for themselves, with withing for God's kingdom on earth as it is in heaven... Our Western culture since the 18th Century has made a virtue of separating out religion from real life, or faith from politics."
What does this have to do with our present ecclesiastical unhappiness? An enormous amount, for it is clear that the Cross in all its stark and bloody glory calls into question the very basis from which all of us have approached these circumstances. Selfishness, power plays, intemperate language, exclusion of those we believe to be in error or don't like, judgmentalism, and so forth, have all been part of the mix. The awe-inspiring attractiveness of Christ's self-sacrifice has been lost beneath the barrage, the Gospel is made to appear ugly, and the mission of the church is being damaged for generations to come.
The other evening I did a little meditation to a small group of people on the woman taken in adultery in John 8. I was impressed again by Jesus's words to the accusers: "Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her" (John 8:7). So it is with us in the situation in which we are, we all most slope away because none of us is without sin.
I don't know the way forward or out of the crisis. I do not see anyone backing down, and it may now be that we are so polarized that whether we like it or not are destination may be the bottom of the abyss for both sides of this state of affairs. But the truth is that it is the Cross that puts each one of us, each group among us, to the test. If we are to rediscover, reclaim and regain our mission, then this sign of strength made perfect in weakenss is the one that we should embrace with all our heart, pursuing as if our life depended upon it every implication of it -- for the fact is our life does depend on it.
Perhaps the starting point should be for those of us at odds with one another to gather together at the foot of the Cross, leaving at the door our reservations and dislike of "the other side" or their agenda. God's glory is revealed at the Cross in Christ's powerlessness and weakness, and the Cross gives new meaning to the sufferings we experience. It is out of this that a healthy theology and lifestyle of hope might come.
Miroslav Volf began his extraordinary journey into the theology of reconciliation when, during the midst of the worst troubles in the Balkans in the 1990s, he was asked at a conference if he could embrace a cetnik. The Serbians fighters who were then ravaging his native Croatia, herding people into concentration camps, raping women, burning down churches, killing men, and worse, were known as cetniks.
Volf had been arguing that we ought to embrace our enemies as God has embraced us in Christ, but now as a Croat he was being asked to give his theology real legs. He shook his head after a long pause and said, "No, I cannot -- but as a follower of Christ I think I should be able to." Volf was brought face to face with himself, his faith was challenged, and at its heart was the Cross and how he responded to it. Theologizing was not empty moralizing, it was a spiritual journey, and so it should be for us.
He tells us in his preface to Exclusion and Embrace that the book is about whether we "assign the demands of the Crucified to the murky regions of unreason," or whether we allow ourselves also to be nailed to the Cross in seeking the reconciliatory dimension of redemption. I believe that is the challenge before all of us who call ourselves Episcopalians or Anglicans.
We are not physically killing each other, it is true, but in some ways we are doing the next best thing because we are involved in the process of tearing a church beloved to tens of thousands limb from limb. Our pain may not match that of Christ upon the Cross, but it was on our behalf that the Savior shed his blood, and it is in that blood that we must bathe if we are find any way of being whole again. In fear and trembling, sackcloth and ashes, this ought to be the agenda of us all.
Following General Convention 2003, for example, I spent much timereconsidering human sexuality. I wondering if perhaps I had missed something or was so stuck in a personal and theological rut that maybe the convention had actually been correct and in my obtuseness I had not picked up on it. Could it be, I thought, that they are being faithful to God's revelation but my preconceptions are preventing me from seeing it?
After several months spent praying, immersed in Scripture and reading all that I could lay my hands on, on both sides of the argument,and weighing the evidence, the conclusion seemed inescapable. While there were areas upon which I needed to tighten up my thinking, what is taught in Scripture and how Scripture has historically been interpreted are closer to God's standards than the direction the Episcopal Church had decided to take. Not only did alternative epistomologies not stand up under critical examination, but neither was the use of evidence outside Scripture being used particularly appropriately by those who would have us think and act differently.
We have now moved on and are watching the wholesale de-construction of the Episcopal Church, as I had expected would happen. The biggest agony of times like these is the parting of friends. Seldom does a week go by without congregations peeling away from the Episcopal Church, often amidst angry accusations, counter-accusations, and often, vituperation. I have dear friends in many of those parishes. The question with which I now struggle is how such behavior by Christians can in any way be considered acceptable, especially in light of the teaching in God's revelation about the restorative power of the Cross and the healing efficacy of the Holy Spirit.
Having spent my entire adult life in the ordained ministry of either the Episcopal Church or the Church of England, and having seen more of the dark underside of church life than I would have wished, I have few illusions about people who call themselves Christians. As well as being steeped in the generosity of our Anglican heritage, my own personality gives me a profound distaste for division and schism, while at the same time as an evangelical believer I am convinced we must take with utmost seriously what God has revealed to us and is recorded in Holy Scripture.
So I set off on this exploratory journey several months ago, and now with Christmas upon us I find myself attempting tentatively to draw a first batch of conclusions. The path I have taken has been anything but direct, but the place where I now find myself is digging afresh into the implications and meaning of the Cross of Christ. I rather expected this was where I would end up, for it is in the hardest of work that Christ wrought on Calvary that we discover the hard work and hard things that he would have us do.
If my studies several years ago regarding human sexuality gave me a much richer understanding of what it means to be humans made in the image of the triune God, my more recent pondering has resulted in a more robust understanding of Christ's nature as the second person of the Godhead, and the significance of Good Friday. It is all very well to effusively assert the glories of the nature of Christ's finished work for year after year of one's life, but new vistas seem to be opened up when one asks certain questions of that work and the manner in which it relates to our immediate struggles.
The conclusion I have found myself reaching has been that while neither "side" in our present unhappiness actually denies the work of Christ upon the Cross, all of us seem to be functioning with a less than adequate theology of what the Lord Jesus Christ has actually done, and how his work applies within our context of contemporary discipleship.
If the Cross is the source of our redemption and was the ultimate purpose for the Lord's coming, then Christ did not fail in what he did when he died, but it is we who are failing now in our ability to apply its tincture to our lives and the life of the Church.
Now I realize that there is much more going on in our crisis than merely imperfect theologies of the Cross, and that we are now seeing the outworking of generations of error, hostility, exclusion, inclusion, etc., etc., but if the Cross is the heart of God's action on human behalf, then we are not even starting to interpret adequately all that is going on unless we bring the Cross into play, seeking to see how its power addresses our circumstances.
A major part of our problem is that all of us, I believe, are working out of a distorted or curtailed understanding of Christ's work in redemption. Indeed, our inadequate grasp of this most significant action of God in the affair of humankind puts us in danger of becoming what Paul called "the enemies of the Cross." We may not hate the Cross and the love which eminates from it, but for most of us ours is hardly an adequate response to such a supreme act of grace for we have cut it down to what we consider to be a manageable size.
A clue to understanding our dilemma is to recognize the divergent courses that have been taken by differing groups within the same faith community for a considerable time. The outcome of this is alienation, the pursuit of mutually exclusive paths, endless finger-pointing which asserts the other side is wrong, the failure to listen to one another or God, and now separation complete with self-righteousness from all quarters, lawyers, courts, winners, losers, pain, agony, and for some, glee. Did we so learn Christ, and where in the midst of all this is the Lord of the Church and the pitilessness he received on a spring day in Jerusalem two thousand years ago?
It is easy to set ourselves up as being right and the other side as being wrong if we can demonstrate that those who stand against us have missed the point altogether. However, what if as we apply the rich doctrine of the Cross to what is going on now, both sides are amiss (or partial) in their grasp of this most cardinal of truths?
While I don't wish to go into the differing perceptions of the Cross in depth, let it be suggested that those on the left have tended to see God's atoning work more in terms of Jesus our great example whose selflessness we must seek to emulate, while those on the right tend to think more of Jesus as the one who shed his blood to cleanse me from my sins. I know this is a parody, but it is close enough to the facts for us to be able to recognize that a more accurate theology of the Cross is so much more than these.
P. T. Forsyth writing just before World War One said that when we speak of the atonement "we are speaking of that which is the centre, not of thought, but of actual life, conscience, history, and destiny. We speak of what is the life power of the moral world and its historic crisis, the ground of the Church's existence, and the sole meaning of Christ himself. Christ is to us just what his Cross is... You do not understand Christ till you understand his Cross." (From his book The Cruciality of the Cross).
Martin Luther, after many years spent in mature reflection upon the Cross, tells us that it speaks of God's solidarity with the downtrodden and suffering, and with all those who the world rejects as weak, foolish, and irrelevant. By its very nature Christ's crucifixion challenges each of our standards of judgment. Jurgen Moltmann, borrowing a phrase from Luther, described Jesus in his magnum opus as the work of "The Crucified God."
The truth is that when we truly allow ourselves to be confronted by the Cross we discover there is absolutely no room for a self-indulgent, self-actualizing mindset. "Many modern spiritualities are very human-centered, stressing their advanges for human mental health and wholeness," (Alister McGrath) or the notion that in our time we know better than our forebears did. Being the people of the Cross turns upon its head many of the attitudes that seem to prevail in much of our thinking these days -- especially when we look at church battles. We have heard too much of the I'm-going-to-get-my-own-way mindset, regardless of the costs and consequences.
But neither does a fair theology of the Cross allow us necessarily to pursue our own agendas, our own ambitions, or to lift high our own desires and expectations. Just as the "health and wealth" Gospel trivializes precisely what Christ taught and did on our behalf on the conservative side of the spectrum, the same can be said to be true of the more subjective attitude toward moral, ethical, and other questions on the progressive side. As Alister McGrath puts it, "To be, or to become, a Christian is to do yourself no favors... To be an authentic Christian is to pass under the shadow of the Cross, not to avoid that shadow" (Roots that Refresh, page 86).
There is an excellent interview by Tim Stafford, brother of the Dean of the School of Theology, Sewanee, with Tom Wright in the January 2007 issue of "Christianity Today." In it Bishop Wright critiques the contemporary appeal of Gnosticism, whose tentacles have reached deeply into the life of the churches, compromising our message (Right and Left) with this particular flavor of neo-paganism.
Wright tells Stafford, "Because the great emphasis in the New Testament is that the gospel is not how to escape the world; the gospel is that the crucified and risen Jesus is the Lord of the world. And that his death and Resurrection transform the world, and that transformation can happen to you. You, in turn can be part of that transforming work. That draws together what we traditionally called evangelism, bringing people to the point where they come to know God in Christ for themselves, with withing for God's kingdom on earth as it is in heaven... Our Western culture since the 18th Century has made a virtue of separating out religion from real life, or faith from politics."
What does this have to do with our present ecclesiastical unhappiness? An enormous amount, for it is clear that the Cross in all its stark and bloody glory calls into question the very basis from which all of us have approached these circumstances. Selfishness, power plays, intemperate language, exclusion of those we believe to be in error or don't like, judgmentalism, and so forth, have all been part of the mix. The awe-inspiring attractiveness of Christ's self-sacrifice has been lost beneath the barrage, the Gospel is made to appear ugly, and the mission of the church is being damaged for generations to come.
The other evening I did a little meditation to a small group of people on the woman taken in adultery in John 8. I was impressed again by Jesus's words to the accusers: "Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her" (John 8:7). So it is with us in the situation in which we are, we all most slope away because none of us is without sin.
I don't know the way forward or out of the crisis. I do not see anyone backing down, and it may now be that we are so polarized that whether we like it or not are destination may be the bottom of the abyss for both sides of this state of affairs. But the truth is that it is the Cross that puts each one of us, each group among us, to the test. If we are to rediscover, reclaim and regain our mission, then this sign of strength made perfect in weakenss is the one that we should embrace with all our heart, pursuing as if our life depended upon it every implication of it -- for the fact is our life does depend on it.
Perhaps the starting point should be for those of us at odds with one another to gather together at the foot of the Cross, leaving at the door our reservations and dislike of "the other side" or their agenda. God's glory is revealed at the Cross in Christ's powerlessness and weakness, and the Cross gives new meaning to the sufferings we experience. It is out of this that a healthy theology and lifestyle of hope might come.
Miroslav Volf began his extraordinary journey into the theology of reconciliation when, during the midst of the worst troubles in the Balkans in the 1990s, he was asked at a conference if he could embrace a cetnik. The Serbians fighters who were then ravaging his native Croatia, herding people into concentration camps, raping women, burning down churches, killing men, and worse, were known as cetniks.
Volf had been arguing that we ought to embrace our enemies as God has embraced us in Christ, but now as a Croat he was being asked to give his theology real legs. He shook his head after a long pause and said, "No, I cannot -- but as a follower of Christ I think I should be able to." Volf was brought face to face with himself, his faith was challenged, and at its heart was the Cross and how he responded to it. Theologizing was not empty moralizing, it was a spiritual journey, and so it should be for us.
He tells us in his preface to Exclusion and Embrace that the book is about whether we "assign the demands of the Crucified to the murky regions of unreason," or whether we allow ourselves also to be nailed to the Cross in seeking the reconciliatory dimension of redemption. I believe that is the challenge before all of us who call ourselves Episcopalians or Anglicans.
We are not physically killing each other, it is true, but in some ways we are doing the next best thing because we are involved in the process of tearing a church beloved to tens of thousands limb from limb. Our pain may not match that of Christ upon the Cross, but it was on our behalf that the Savior shed his blood, and it is in that blood that we must bathe if we are find any way of being whole again. In fear and trembling, sackcloth and ashes, this ought to be the agenda of us all.
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