Now That's What I Call Quality

I returned home this evening to find Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance bookmarked with a green pamphlet: " 'Contraception': Abortion in Disguise." I wonder which one of my roommates is reading Pirsig at the moment.

And Now For Something Completely Different

Today, the Rector mentioned in his sermon that he was still mulling over why he received a standing ovation after last week's sermon. He then read a letter from a parishioner, a gay man who almost had been driven to suicide in his adolescence by his Baptist upbringing. Some time later, he found ILEOS and was baptized there last year. He presently was discerning whether he wanted to be confirmed, especially after the Primates' Meeting in Tanzania. But when he saw so many enthusiastically applauding the Rector's sermon last week, he felt that he would be welcome in the Episcopal Church. The crux of the sermon was that "four graces of ILEOS were under attack":

However, there are four graces I want to hold up as graces that are being tested right now as severely as Jesus’ baptismal grace was tested in the desert. One is the grace of our knowing that Christians are not advantaged before God more than Jews, Muslims, and other people. The very theology of God's universal grace which makes the sun to shine on everyone alike, that very theology of grace is under attack by conservative forces in the Anglican communion. Another is the grace of women who are ordained as clergy. There are certain bishops who are interested in regressing to a time when we will not ordain women to the priesthood. Another is the grace of open communion – “whoever you are and wherever you find yourself on the journey of faith, you are welcome to receive the bread and wine made holy”. The fourth grace I want to bring to mind is the grace of blessing same-gender unions
publicly and joyfully.

Problems abound here. The universalistic spin on common grace ignores that Jesus' point about common grace and God's providence in general was intended to demonstrate that we have no advantages before God in consequence of our birth. A Jew in isolation has no merit in himself just for being a Jew, nor a Muslim (likewise claiming descent from Abraham), nor an American, nor an Afrikaner, nor the countless other peoples that claimed being the chosen people of God made their injustice justice. The chosen people of God instead are those who do his will. And though I suspect this will not be a popular sentiment, a key part of His will is participation in Jesus Christ, which is not to say that there are not Jews and Muslims and Buddhists etc. who participate in his will revealed in nature or their scriptures. In fact, many seem to show the fruit of prevention by Christ far more clearly than some Christians, because Jesus is also the Wisdom of God at the heart of the world. But there remains something crucial about Christianity.

And, of course, let us not forget the third grace, which if universally implemented, would require a complete revolution in Christian identity. Wesley may have called the Eucharist the sacrament of conversion, but he preached in an era in which it was highly normative for people to be baptized as infants. Moreover, the Eucharist is the sacrament of conversion in that it is the visitation of Christ, the most fully of all human beings. It turns us to God in the most intimate way possible and reveals to us our imperfections. Despite a recent Salon article that suggests that it can convert the skeptical unbaptized, I still continue my objections to open communion. The inclusion of the Lord's dining fellowship should teach us not to wall ourselves from the evils of the world but live in hospitality with those with whom we differ. But we also should recall the table in the Upper Room, where Judas (as baptized as the rest of the Disciples) ate unworthily and was driven to great evil. An overly inclusive table could be a spiritual danger. And if that is what open communion is doing, it's bad hospitality.

As for the second grace, I doubt that this was really challenged in the Primates' Meeting. Many of the strident Global South Provinces ordain women to the priesthood. I understand that in Uganda the ordination of women seemed especially culturally appropriate. If certain conservative bishops and priests in their dioceses in ECUSA are as misogynistic as some liberal Episcopalians claim, they may find themselves quite uncomfortable in the future as their friends may continue to think that ordaining women is not a serious matter of doctrine or ontology but simply a matter of culture.

What the Primates' Meeting challenges is the fourth grace. Let us be clear. The Episcopal Church envisioned by the Primates in their pneumatological unity (a sort of average for theological purposes that smears much subtlety and disagreement) is one in which same sex unions are not blessed by the church (in public or in private or in Timbuktu, definitely not in Timbuktu) and those in such unions are not admitted to Holy Orders. Of course, some Primates would prefer far more repression, encouraging exclusion from lay leadership and reparative therapy. I still am unsure what Lambeth I.10 mandates for those ordained before they entered into same sex unions, but +VGR being degraded (though not deposed) follows fairly logically. But if they quote Lambeth I.10 to us as law, they have asked the letter of the law and no further. The Rector is right to see this as an attack. Complying with Lambeth I.10 would change the community he pastors radically. Even if much of the lay leadership weren't excluded, they would feel unwelcome.

So the sermon was a mixed bag. And so when much of the congregation rose around me in applause, I stayed seated and reflective. I do not applaud after sermons, not necessarily to follow Chrysostom's ban on applause in church, which could violate the Scriptural mandate to encourage one another at potentially appropriate times, but because God is the approver of the sermon. But the man who wrote to the Rector saw the incident as a measure of his dignity in that place, which is not something I want to deny him.

More Related

I still have no idea of what really is happening with the Nigerian legislation, but I am now a frequent (but very friendly) lurker here. This week I felt very frustrated with the whole issue. I have no influence with Martyn Minns or Peter Akinola. So I wrote the Archbishop of Canterbury's Press Officer an e-mail. I am afraid that no copy was saved for posterity, but I basically told the Archbishop of Canterbury that I thought it was obscene that the Anglican Church in Nigeria was promoting legislation that would prohibit the activities of Changing Attitude Nigeria, which just seemed like a bunch of Evangelical Anglicans who happen to be gay and have meetings very much Intervarsity Christian Fellowship (like the CU in the UK). I said that the legislation was analogous to the Conventicle Act. Good times. The Archbishop of Canterbury, of course, has not responded to me personally nor publicly on the issue, possibly because he has been too occupied with General Synod. But he may surprise us yet. Doesn't he know that liberal Episcopalians revere his words in this country. I barely heard anything specific about the Scriptures in today's sermon, but one of the Archbishop's essays was the central theme?