Utligacity and the Centrist Ascendancy

There is an odd word you find in the Latin sources of early English law about the time of the Norman conquest (but my memory is not good enough to remember which side), and this word is distinctive in that it is unintentionally onomatopoetic. The word is utliga or "outlaw," surely the creation of a Saxon clerk who knew not of interdiction from fire and water, nor perhaps much else, but had enough Latin for law and some creativity to boot. For an outlaw is a strange hybrid of things, not of German and Latin roots, but simultaneously a claimant of conformity to the law without actually conforming. There is, of course, a bit of the outlaw in the Christian, for our kingdom is not of this world, nor our citizenship exclusively of this city. We are simul iustus et peccator , expecting justification and vindication from our sin from "a great high priest who has passed through the heavens."

But the outlaw simple refuses at appear at any tribunal and so my forebears seized his goods and forbade him from civil life. Contrary to popular belief, his human rights never were terminated. It was still unlawful to murder, rape, and otherwise commit common law offenses against the outlaw. Indeed, the Crown had no especial rights besides the seizure of his goods and body in order to compel him to law. Thus, the outlaw had no especial dignity but the unwillingness to be accountable, either to admit his transgression, prove his innocence, or make appeal against the law itself as against the liberty of an Englishman. In some cases, the outlaw had the reasonable excuse of expecting an unfair trial. In other cases, outlaws were disrespectful or merely negligent concerning the law. There is a case in the reign of James I of a knight elected to Parliament, whose election is argued void on the grounds of outlawry. And indeed one can be an outlaw in court, too, as men like Milosevic, Hussein, and Moussaoui have shown, mainly by seeking to call others to trial or disdaining the law. Most of all, the outlaw is "a law unto himself." And thus the outlaw is also known in our time as the scofflaw, one who is indifferent to the operations of the law against him. Scofflaws are mostly petty offenders, because their strongest argument these days is that their offense is minor and harmless.

Outlawry suffuses certain parts of this Church. It is found in the priest who neglects the custom (as the rubric saith) of mixing a little water in the wine and pays little attention to the titterings of his congregation about it, though they whisper of Him "out of whose side flowed both water and blood." It is found in the parish that decides to institute Communion Without Baptism and fails to warn the parish of the canonical violation until a key element of the parish's common life becomes fodder for schism. I would say it was found in the priest who performed same-sex blessings except that it is unclear whether to me whether it was ever wrong to do so as long as it never was called "marriage" and the bishop approved. It is found in the bishops who allow errant priests to be shuttled from parish to parish where they wound the sheep etc.

One of these examples certainly is petty. And there may be some justification for some but not all of others, And in some cases, the outlaws might further justify themselves by transparency. The clear evidence of the Standing Committee being outlaws is if the membership of the Standing Committee has been kept secret from all who did not attend Diocesan Convention, for instance. The outlaw rarely tells anyone he is an outlaw, or his true identity. And remember, too, that outlawry is popular and almost institutional in America, where the local seeks to be the laboratory for the national. But there, too, there is always the goal of reception.

All of this talk of outlaws does have a point. The centrists are ascendant, because they can endure outlawry no longer. Some work was done to try to goad them, of course. The centrists were taking a wait and see attitude about LGBT inclusion. So the liberals attacked with talk of boundary crossing, church theft, and efforts to kick TEC out of the Anglican Communion. On the Communion level, we hear of lay presidency quietly in Sydney and somewhere in the vicinity of Wimbledon. The conservatives countered with Windsor and Lambeth as law or Communion Without Baptism or liturgical abuses or liberal bishops hushing up child abuse. The two sides figured that their negative attacks might galvanize the centrists in one direction or another, for they figured quite correctly that the centrists do not like outlaws.

Ah, but quam res conversa est (Cicero), General Convention came and went and the burden of outlawry fell more on one side than the other. The centrists were offended by the breaking of the Eucharistic community, the UTO incident, the rumors of conservative bishops alternately electing +Kathryn and denouncing her, and the attempts of both sides to pollute the work of the Convention. But they were most offended by AlPO, for this was outlawry par excellence, maintaining that one's actions were in agreement with the Constitution and Canons (only in that no canon in particular is transgressed) while seeking metropolitical authority other than that of General Convention. And already we hear rumors of great doings in the AlPO dioceses, where liberals and moderates are coming together in order to stop one set of outlaws from their ecclesial banditry. Already we hear that one bishop is soon to be brought to law. You can read Father Jake for the details.

The centrists are finding their voice on the Anglosphere, too. One can read Father Nick and his fellow Father Andrew of the Diocese of Bethlehem. Or you can read Father Jones or at least a half a dozen others. And already the critiques are coming. Canon Harmon cited Robert Gagnon against his fellow Presbyterians. *Christopher has explained rather clearly today that he doesn't care whether someone is liberal, centrist, or conservative but only that they are honest about how they are going to treat him as a faithful partnered gay man. That seems fair to me.

But what of me? Am I an Anglican centrist? I'm not sure. I usually describe myself as a Radical Anglo-Catholic, which suggests that I can reconcile Maurice and Newman somehow (right...). But it's true that I have great angst about outlawry, especially in my present context. And I think this might be the chief mark of the centrists, not a theological bent per se but a commitment to constitutional process and order generally, or a willingness to act in the wilderness rather than stirring up further confusion in the camp. For in doing these things with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, I do believe that I will hand over to each his or her own and live justly. But recall also that the Lord Jesus was a centrist in this way, too, for he rejected all parties and turned over the tables of the moneychangers, but when he could have stirred up all Jerusalem against the authorities and become king over Israel, He decided against this in favor of a painful death and the transformation of the entire order of the world. Being a centrist might mean living sacrificially, too.

And so I'm not going to critique the centrists. I'm going to wait and see what the fruits of their ascendancy may be and pray that God sustain us all in accountability to all the holy people of God who shall judge the world with Jesus Christ.