Entangled States

"The middle is always evil"

There's been a resurgence of interest in the objectivist moral philosophy of Ayn Rand. If you listen carefully you can hear much of her thought in the speeches of the extreme libertarians. I've wondered for years whether or not Rand is Rush Limbaugh's primary philosophical influence.

There's an article on Rand and her thinking in the Globe and Mail today. In the middle of the article, the author points out the shadow side of Rand's arguments. She connects something I hand't thought about before. Rand's hyper positivism argues for an objective truth - and totally rejects any sense of subjectivism. In an perfect world, the disputation of competing claims leads one to determine what is true and what is false. And the false must be rejected and the truth followed.

But casting the Universe into binary terms, while naively useful scientifically, can have deadly consequences in terms of morality:

"In pure form, Ayn Rand's philosophy would work very well if human beings were never helpless and dependent on others through no fault of their own. Unsurprisingly, many people become infatuated with her philosophy as teenagers only to leave it behind when concerns of family, children, and aging make that fantasy seem more and more implausible. For some, she becomes a conduit to more sensible small-government philosophies.

But Ms. Rand's work also has a darker, more disturbing aspect – one that, unfortunately, is all too good a fit for this moment in America's political life. That is her intellectual intolerance and her tendency to demonize her opponents. Speaking through her hero John Galt, Ms. Rand declared, ‘There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil.’ She lambasted free-market theorists such as Friedrich A. Hayek for their lack of purity in allowing the government a legitimate role in alleviating poverty and its effects. In her novels, supporters of various forms of collectivism – moochers and looters – are shown as acting by stealth to take over and corrupt society and culture."

From here. (H/T to Kendall Harmon)

I've had any number of conversations lately with folks about the broken legislative processes in Congress, and the parallel inability of even the Church to find ways of allowing people to feel included in its common life. One of the reoccurring themes of modern debate is that the people in the middle are basically weak, timid obstructionists who need to decide one way or the other so that the final decision can be made. You can hear this from both sides in modern debate. The moderates are to be pitied at best and converted one way or the other if at all possible. It's apparently inconceivable that there can be any value in moderation to many.

Bishop Marshall once remarked of conflicts in the Church that we tend to "learn and then adopt the values of our oppressors". I wonder if the Episcopal Church in the 20th century, which has been forced again and again to try to justify her existence to people and a society who believe we've grown beyond that need, and who have elevated the individuals right to happiness over that of the needs of the broader community, hasn't fallen into that trap Bishop Marshall describes.

Stanley Hauerwas on the Reformation

Stanley Hauerwas was asked to preach on Reformation Sunday (what some Lutherans and many other protestants call the Sunday of All Saints). Prof. Hauerwas, as you might expect knowing his thinking, not going to choose the obvious path of lauding the reformers who managed to split western Christendom:

"I realize that this perspective on Reformation Sunday is not the usual perspective. The usual perspective is to tell us what a wonderful thing happened at the Reformation. The Reformation struck a blow for freedom. No longer would we be held in medieval captivity to law and arbitrary authority. The Reformation was the beginning of enlightenment, of progressive civilizations, of democracy, that have come to fruition in this wonderful country called America. What a destructive story.

You can tell the destructive character of that narrative by what it has done to the Jews. The way we Protestants read history, and in particular our Bible, has been nothing but disastrous for the Jews. For we turned the Jews into Catholics by suggesting that the Jews had sunk into legalistic and sacramental religion after the prophets and had therefore become moribund and dead. In order to make Jesus explicable (in order to make Jesus look like Luther — at least the Luther of our democratic projections), we had to make Judaism look like our characterization of Catholicism. Yet Jesus did not free us from Israel; rather, he engrafted us into the promise of Israel so that we might be a people called to the same holiness of the law.

I realize that the suggestion that salvation is to be part of a holy people constituted by the law seems to deny the Reformation principle of justification by faith through grace. I do not believe that to be the case, particularly as Calvin understood that Reformation theme. After all, Calvin (and Luther) assumed that justification by faith through grace is a claim about God’s presence in Jesus of Nazareth. So justification by faith through grace is not some general truth about our need for acceptance; but rather justification by faith through grace is a claim about the salvation wrought by God through Jesus to make us a holy people capable of remembering that God’s salvation comes through the Jews. When the church loses that memory, we lose the source of our unity. For unity is finally a matter of memory, of how we tell the story of the Reformation. How can we tell this story of the church truthfully as Protestants and Catholics so that we might look forward to being in union with one another and thus share a common story of our mutual failure?"

Read the full sermon here. I think it would qualify as a sort of mitzvah.

The BCP as Anglican Covenant

People have always asked Episcopalians to describe what sort of Episcopalians they are. That's because there's a very diverse lot of us under the Episcopal Church's umbrella. Gosh, there's a very diverse group of us under my own Cathedral congregation's umbrella. There are High Church Anglicans, Ultramontane Anglicans, Calvinists, Low Church, Charismatic, Broad Church, Deists, Theists and cultural Anglicans. To name just a few.

Lately thanks to the writing of folks like Christopher Evans and Derek Olsen (see sidebar) I think I've come to understand my own place on the spectrum as being a "Common Prayer Anglican". Our genius within Anglicanism is our decision to find our unity in prayer, not in a binding Confession or in a Teaching Magisterium. And we find that unity by agreeing to pray the words of Book of Common Prayer with each other.

The wise folks over at Anglican Online have taken this idea a step further than I have in my own thinking, and I like where they're headed. They suggest that rather than the proposed Covenant for the Anglican Communion, we circle back and look at what we already do have, The Book of Common Prayer:

"At first glance, it's easy to dismiss this concept of BCP-as-covenant as a conceit: really, some will say exasperatedly, the 1662 BCP was book of liturgy, not a covenant. But within a empire that crossed continents and oceans, where postal mail took months and news could be delayed by years, it was theological framework of the 1662 BCP that shaped the understanding of English Christianity. The two great sacraments of Baptism and the Holy Eucharist — as well as the lesser sacraments — were defined within an Anglican understanding. Their definition was sufficient for most to read, mark, and inwardly digest. The catechism was the school book for millions of children — and what is the catechism other than a theological FAQ? The rubrics, if not quite canon law, were observed diligently for the most part and provided additional theological guidance. Lex orandi, lex credendi was perhaps truer during the hegemony of the 1662 BCP than it can ever be again.

We might now argue that the use of Elizabethan English in, say, the Sudan was absurd; part of a misguided, wrong-headed attempt to 'civilise' the world and produce Victorian gentlemen and ladies rather than promote the spread of Christianity. But English Christianity was spread by Victorian (or Elizabethan, Jacobean, Carolinian, or Regency) gentlemen, by word and sometimes weapon. And the vector* was the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. All these little oases of English Christianity — Elizabethan thees and thous in the Mongolian desert, 'The Day Thou Gavest' heartily sung in Delhi, clergy dressing for dinner in Zanzibar — eventually joined together in strangely named dioceses such as Mashonaland and Ruwenzori and became the building blocks of the Anglican Communion. But the ties that bind were pages of the 1662 BCP bound in morocco, cloth, or paper. They held the communion together before any covenant was a glimmer in any disaffected bishop's eye."

Read the full article here.

Obviously such an idea isn't a panacea, and it glosses over the real differences between the prayer books in use in different Provinces. The Book of Common Prayer in Sudan is very very different than the one in use in New Zealand. But at least this idea takes us back to our foundational roots and the fundamental defining characteristic of our polity.

I like this idea very much. Good on 'em.

Abandoning the religion and politics of exclusion

Speaking of human need to figure out which group is "in" and which group is "out" - even to the extent of being willing to kill the "out" group members in a vain attempt to maintain social cohesion...

See this article linked below that describes the arc of biblical revelation in terms of God's constant call that we must learn to love one another just as God loves us.

Simon Barrow writes:

"In identifying his critics’ hypocrisy, in other words, Jesus was attacking a form of religion which neatly categorized people as good or bad according to whether they were in ‘the right group’ and did or believed ‘the right things’. What he says, again and again, in his healings and in his arguments with the religious authorities, is this: ‘You think God loves you more than these scruffy types – like my followers – who are rendered impure by your increasingly pernickety interpretations of the Law. You couldn’t be more wrong. What you are doing is usurping God, who actually loves us like a perfect parent and therefore wants the best for us all. In fact you’ve got it so wrong, that even prostitutes, whose very existence breaks every rule in the book, are entering God’s realm before you are!’ That’s in St Matthew’s account, by the way. One wonders how it might play out in our contemporary ‘Anglican wars’, and other wrangles among the churches that claim to be Jesus’ body today.

What becomes clear the more we immerse ourselves in these awkward (for us) Gospel narratives is that the way and the life and the truth that is Jesus, in his embodiment of God’s uncontainable love, challenges every method of a priori exclusion we human beings try to set up against one another – especially when it employs a ‘religious’ label. Instead, Jesus invites people into a new community where we recognize each other not as competitors for God’s love, but as fellow citizens in a realm of unfathomable generosity made possible by the kind of love which is truly dispossessing – it doesn’t operate from some secret self-interest, like ours often does. Rather, its redemptive quality is so amazing, so divine, that it even enables us to treat the enemy as a friend.

Elias Chacour, the Melkite Catholic archbishop, has put it like this with regard to one modern example of how Christ’s love could transform us. Palestinians and Jews, he says, presently see each other mostly as a threat that must be contained or eliminated. That is why conflict often seems the only logic. This will only change when the different parties can see each other, instead, as two wounded peoples loved equally and unsparingly by God. In that way they will be able to look each other properly in the eye. And then, instead of wanting to kill, they will want to cry over the hurt they have caused each other. Because by recognizing the wounds of the other, rather than first finding fault, we find ourselves in the presence (whether we name him or not) of the crucified and risen Jesus who makes this possible in his body."

"Who are you to criticize the servant of another?" (Rom 14:4)

Read the full article here.

Compare this idea to the language of a conservative Episcopalian who writes of the need the orthodox have in the Episcopal Church to withdraw from possible contagion by liberal believers:

"If there was one word spoken more by +MacPherson than any other last night it was some form of the word "differentiate." Though the Bishop made clear that he was not necessarily calling for us to separate from TEC (in terms of a formal withdrawal), he was clearly advocating that we find ways to make ourselves different, distinct and separate from the agenda being pursued by TEC and The General Convention.

Though I am okay with the concept of patience and not feeling an urgent rush to attempt any sort of formal withdrawal from TEC, I do think it very important to be sure that we do not let ourselves get caught up in rhetoric and merely talk the talk of differentiation. We must walk the walk of differentiation so that what people around us see when they watch us walk is clearly recognizable as church men and church women carrying high the cross of Christ crucified as we unashamedly proclaim to the world our belief in Christ as the Son of the living God and as the only means to salvation and eternal life with God, the Father.

For me, the time has come for orthodox Anglican Episcopalians to be very clear that we have eaten all the fudge that we are going to eat. We do not want our bishops or other church leaders to "throw us a bone" now and then that has the aroma of Christian orthodoxy about it; no, what we want, what we need and what we must have, is the full Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ: we can accept no less. We want and we need for the leader of our Anglican Communion to be clear and straightforward in stating what it is that makes us Anglican Christians and how it is that the world is to recognize us. We, and the world, need to understand why it makes a difference for us to be members of the Anglican Communion and, importantly, to be in communion with the See of Canterbury. What we need from the Archbishop of Canterbury is for his yes to be yes, and for his no to be no."

From here.

(H/T to Kendall Harmon for the second link)

I find the call for the full body and blood of Christ on the part of the second writer to be rather ironic - especially given a Girardian understanding of the meaning of those words.

Christopher Evans: Common Prayer Anglicans

Christopher has written up his thoughts on a piece by Nathan Humphrey wherein Nathan suggests a different binary set of lenses to use when viewing the parties in the Anglican Communion: Federalists and Covenanters.

After pointing out that these two categories may in fact be different than those suggested before (liberal/conservative or reasserter/reappraiser), the whole enterprise of trying to put people in camps within Anglicanism automatically leads to throwing the Anglican baby out with the bath-water.

He calls us to a focus our Common Prayer and even suggests a new name:

"I remain committed to being a Common Prayer Anglican. If we lose our common-ness in prayer, we have lost our soul and the Christ we teach, proclaim, and pray. For it is this Common Christ in common prayer Who is the ground of our being a Body (what ecclesiology is supposedly about), not overlay of theories Romish and Genevan or even Eastern. (For those interested in an Anglican approach, see the works of Bp Stephen Sykes.) The latest crisis will pass and if we have yoked ourselves to some other arrangement, we may still be Christian, but we may cease to be Anglican Christians, that is Common Prayer Christians. Party spirit will hasten that day if we're not careful. My opposition to the Covenant does not to make me a Federalist per se, but rather one who desires to retain our way: Common Prayer. Our current default federalism and diffuse authority (spread out over many bodies and actors) is akin to that arising from Benedictine monasticism, rather than a concerted effort or choice on our part. And I'd like to keep it that way"

Read the full article here.

A member of the Cathedral here in Phoenix described himself as a mere-Catholic. I like that term too, but I have to admit that I really resonate much more with Christopher's language.

Losing the devil's advocate

From "Basilica" by R.A. Scotti;

"A mere fifty years after its unity fractured, the Catholic Church was reborn, more confident than ever, but increasingly closed. The resurgent Church became cautious, not humble. Orthodoxy became paramount. What was lost was not munificence but magnanimity - that largeness of spirit that made anything possible, that allowed every voice and cockamamie idea to be aired. The church that had invented the term devil's advocate to raise intellectual challenges became leery of open debate. That is, perhaps, one of the lasting legacies of Protestantism."

A word to our day from the time of the counter-reformation?

Butler Bass: Post-Modern Progressives

Diana Butler Bass has another great essay up - this time she tries to explain why the old categories of "liberal" and "conservative" are failing as we try to describe what is starting to take root in theological and ecclesiastical conversations.

She describes herself as a post-modern, post-partisan, neo-pragmatic progressive and then writes of the rise of post-liberalism:

"‘Post-liberalism,’ a post-modern theology, has transformed into a new sort of post-modern progressive Christianity. It moves beyond (as indicated by the word, ‘post’) and is subsequent to the traditional categories of liberal-and-conservative. Instead, it takes a non-dualistic, discrete, narrative, and situational approach to religion—very different from the former arguments between the Truth claims of older theological structures.

Because of its essential modesty in regard to truth (opting instead for speaking of ‘truthfulness’ rather than Truth), it finds itself as ‘post-partisan’ and doesn’t take sides in the old arguments. As a result, it tends toward theological pragmatism: How does one enact justice in a fallen world? With whom can the faithful make alliances for the sake of shalom in the world? It constructs the world more in terms of a journey of justice rather than a destination of truth. Hence, post-modern progressives are post-partisan, neo-pragmatic pilgrims.

And they do not fit into the categories of ‘purist’ or ‘accommodator.’ Like the ‘purists,’ they are idealistic—they truly believe in God’s reign, in justice, and work (often prophetically) so that the world might be better. But, like the ‘accommodators,’ they are pragmatic, seeing always the ‘both-and’ (or the ‘and-and-and-and’) rather than the ‘either-or.’"

Read the full article here.

She finds a kindred soul in our President - who (like me) is a member of Generation Jones.

She points out that the massive paradigm shift that we are all undergoing is forcing us to rethink our categories, and some folks are further along with the task than others.

I'm giving a talk to the National Workshop on Christian Unity here in Phoenix next week on essentially the same idea, just extended to the topic of ecumenical conversation.

Bishop Whalon reflects on the proposed Anglican Covenant

There's a wonderful essay posted by Bishop Whalon on his reflections regarding the proposed Anglican Covenant.

It's motivated in part by wanting to have something for the Anglican Consultative Council which is meeting this month, but it's driven (it seems to me) by his recent close reading of a book by Prof. Norman Doe on the Covenant process.

Bishop Whalon's essay really deserves to be read in full. Here's just a taste:

"The large majority of comments and responses collected by Doe and later, Lambeth Indaba, as well as very recent comments on the Ridley Draft, show that few people wanted a Covenant that could be used to decide that a particular church is no longer part of the Anglican Communion. Overwhelmingly, people were far more content with a document that presents a theological, biblically-grounded notion of covenant. The rich and varied experience of the Reformed churches, for whom ‘covenanting’ is of first importance in their understanding of what is a church, also points to the desirability of continuing to define relationships among Christians in the terms by which we became Christians. The Ridley Draft delivers a panoply of theological statements, supported by a lot of texts that have received unanimous acceptance by the constituent churches of the Communion. There is a final section that sets forth a consultative process for determining whether a church has violated the Covenant. It is then up to the Instruments of Communion—the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lambeth Conference, the Anglican Consultative Council, and the Primates Meeting—to decide what to do next. It unequivocally states that each church remains independent in terms of its own internal life. Signing on to the Covenant does not confer any power on outside jurisdictions to interfere in any church’s affairs.

[...]But, 'Within any important issue, there are always aspects no one wishes to discuss', as George Orwell purportedly remarked. One such aspect has to do with churchmanship. Now, whether one is Low, High, or Broad is not supposed to matter anymore—everything boils down to ‘Liberal’ or ‘Conservative,’ cutting across confessional lines. But clearly, in the comments and responses, including the most recent, the church parties re-appear in what people say is lacking in the Covenant. The Low-church folks want doctrine, clearly stated, accepted Or Else, about Scripture and how it is to be interpreted, and could we have the 39 Articles, too? The High-church folks want as much prelacy as possible, some citations of the Church Fathers thrown in, and why not a little Aquinas, and many more references to sacramental liturgies and quotes from them. The Broad-church folks, the ‘hazy ones’ (‘High and crazy, Low and lazy, Broad and hazy’), would rather have no document at all. But if we must, then let it be a brief reminder to us that the poor we will always have with us, never mind all this palaver about doctrine and liturgy and (ecch!) Bishops! —and that we should go out and get on with doing justice, making peace and feeding the hungry. Since none of the parties get what they want in this Ridley Draft, which would be in effect to bend other Anglicans to their party agenda, this is certainly a strength."

Read the full article here.

I find that his identification of the reemergence of the classic church parties in Anglicanism is spot on. I come out of the High Church wing of the Episcopal Church and as such am much more comfortable with the traditions of prelature and discipline based on patristic thought. It's interesting to see how in some places that leads folks to make common cause with the Low Church (reformed) voices from whom the whole idea of Covenant first comes. But it's Bishop Whalon's recognition of the role of the Broad Church, especially within the Episcopal Church, that is rejecting the Covenant pretty much out of hand that is both surprising and accurate to me. I hadn't recognized what he points out, but now that he has, it makes good sense to me. I want to spend some time thinking that through - it's a simultaneously exciting and somewhat disappointing development.

Bishop Whalon ends on a very irenic tone, with a call to the American church to fully participate in the Covenant process, even recognizing that it is likely that the ACNA proto-province will sign on as well.

I have to say that I agree with him. I'm grateful for any connection, any relationship, no matter how tenuous with other Christians and other Anglicans. Because if I refuse to pray with them, how can they convince me that I'm wrong on an issue - or I them?

Jesus' silence and the questions facing the Communion

Wonderful post by Ben Myers entitled "Alfred Hitchcock, the Church, and the silence of Jesus" of which this is just a part:

"In his remarkable book, Christ on Trial, Rowan Williams suggests that what we mean when we speak of God’s transcendence ought thus to be refracted through what he calls the ‘obstinate uselessness’ of Jesus’ silence before his accusers.

‘If we are really to have our language about the transcendence – the sheer, unimaginable differentness – of God recreated, it must be by the emptying out of all we thought we knew about it, the emptying out of practically all we normally mean by greatness. No more about the lofty distance of God, the sovereignty that involves control over all circumstances: God’s ‘I am’ can only be heard for what it really is when it has no trace of human power left to it.’

It is in this way that Jesus’ silence could begin shaping the practice of the Church. To participate in Jesus’ silence would mean to commit ourselves afresh to an alternative, non-instrumental mode of communal life. It would require that we abandon that perverse moral calculus that implicitly – and, at times, even explicitly – determines what is worthwhile and useful and constructive in Western society.

That is how I understand Stanley Hauerwas’ oft cited axiom: that the first task of the Church is not to make the world a better place, but to make the world the world. In other words, the sheer difference of the Church’s common life – what one might call our sacramentality – represents a kind of refusal to convey upon our given social, political and economic structures any moral legitimacy. It stands for the refusal to resign itself to the soulless Realpolitik that now structures and defines our societal sanity."

Read Ben's complete post here.

Not resigning ourselves to the World is not the same as overthrowing the World, or just simply rejecting the World. It is, to paraphrase Neibuhr, a call to stay engaged with the World so as to transform the World.

I guess at the core, this the reason that I see the Covenant process as being worth pursuing. (For what it's worth there was a new draft of the proposed Anglican Covenant released yesterday. I've not really had a chance to do anything more than skim it, and won't until next week.) Following the same reasoning as Hauerwas' I think it's worth staying engaged with the Covenant process because I think the Episcopal Church with our uniquely American polity has something to bring to the table. I don't particularly like that we're all being asked to sign on to something, but since we Episcopalians lost that Anglican Communion vote, the best course of action now is to stay at the table.

And oddly, perhaps paradoxically, I say this out of the line of reasoning that Myers is enumerating above. Walking away is the worldly response. It is an abnegation of Hope.

Walking away would be a form of rejection and would seem to me to choose the path of resignation and not engagement.

Stop scapegoating the "other"

I've written here before of the danger of trying to find ways to blame others for the tensions that exist in society and personal relationships. Some of the most noxious examples of the last century were the ways that anti-semitism was used in Eastern and Western Europe to rally people during the times of economic depression by blaming the hard-times on the capitalist "jews".

In this past ten years here in the United States most of that scapegoating has either been of "liberals" or "the gays". Sadly, because of our cultural hegemony, our own shortcomings are being exported.

One of the most virulent users of rhetoric of scapegoating within the Anglican Communion and in Africa has been the Primate of the Anglican Church of Nigeria, Peter Akinola.

In a series of recent statements regarding draconian legislation in Nigeria to further outlaw any non-heterosexual relationships, he's used almost classic language. But now, as Seni Hensman points out, he's trying to tar the GLBT community with the responsibility for a perceived decay of traditional morals. The danger is that this is happening at a "powder-keg" moment during the global economic downturn, in a time not dissimilar to the 1930's.

She points out:

"Attempts to justify the hardening of Nigeria’s already harsh anti-gay laws have been strongly resisted by human rights campaigners locally and internationally. The reasons being used to try to justify the Same Gender Marriage (Prohibition) Bill, in which anyone who attended their son’s or daughter’s partnership ceremony or even rented a room to a same-sex couple could be jailed, may seem odd.

For instance, one of the most vocal champions of the Bill is Archbishop Peter Akinola. According to him, "As with every other thing in human development, globalization has both good and bad sides… individualism is one of the marks of secularization and post-modernism… Same sex marriage is out to foist on the world a false sense of the family which will bring disastrous consequences to mankind."

Indeed, he argues, same-sex marriage will "endanger human existence" and "is capable of engendering moral and social holocaust in this country".

In trying to link lesbians and gays with the ill-effects of globalisation, he seeks to blame them for social trends over which they have no more control than any other Nigerian, projecting genuine anxieties on to a convenient scapegoat."

Read the full article here.

Hensman is making the same point I've been. Almost all the "wedge issue" use of gay marriage hysteria is specifically working out the social dynamics of scapegoating.

It's worth paying attention to as we stand on the brink of Holy Week when our ancestors managed to do the same thing to God by seeking to find common ground between the sacred (Herod and the Sanhedrin) and the secular (Pontius Pilate) by killing God. It's only by God's willingness to die for us that the cycle has had the possibility of ending. Sadly we've managed to avoid the cure for most of our history since.

The cure, as Girard and other theological writers have pointed out, is to stop seeing the "other" as alien and to start seeing that God has actively identified himself with them in the life and death of Jesus.

Maybe Iowa's ruling today is a sign of light?

Reading the tea leaves, what the Bishop of Rochester's surprise retirement signifies

I've tried to avoid talking about the internal politics of the Anglican Communion for the last year or so. My doing so wasn't helping resolve things at all, and it wasn't good for the people that I serve in ministry. When I have commented on such things, it's been over on Episcopal Café, a site that is more focused on all things Episcopal/Anglican and where we do careful reporting on what's going on.

But the news last this past week of the surprising retirement of Bishop Nazir-Ali from the see of Rochester in England is worth me returning for a moment to the Anglican Opera.

If you're not familiar with Bishop Nazir-Ali, let me point out to you that he has been a rallying point figure for theologically conservative (and Calvinistic) Anglicans around the world. He was at one time a serious possibility to be named the next Archbishop of Canterbury. He has been very involved in the Global Anglican Futures Conference (GAFCON) planning and its subsequent work. He was part of the leadership of bishops who decided to boycott the Lambeth Conference this past summer, protesting actions taken by the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church in Canada.

George Pitcher, writing in the Telegraph, puts some perspective on what this sudden removal of a figurehead from the conservative constellation portends. In a nutshell, he believes that the conservative movement within Anglicanism's attempt to "take over" the Communion has passed its high-water mark:

"[Bishop Nazir-Ali] must be pondering how quickly the optimism of last year's rebel schismatics has turned to dust. Then there was talk of an end to neo-colonialist rule in the Anglican Church, with a new biblical hegemony that would isolate homosexual bishops and build a new Communion out of Africa.

Where is it now? Some 230 bishops, including Dr Nazir-Ali, boycotted the decennial Lambeth Conference at Canterbury last summer, many of them expecting the old order to fall. Yet at last month's Anglican Primates' meeting in Alexandria, not one primate was absent for doctrinal reasons. Importantly, the Archbishops of Uganda and Nigeria were present and correct.

The traditionalist schism has fizzled out. Today, type Gafcon into Google News and practically the only items are from Virtue Online, the website run by the alternative Communion's cheerleader, David Virtue. The Anglican Church has returned to what it is best at, accommodating the richest diversity of Christian witness without any one faction imposing its authority on those who demur. [emp. added] It's a reformed talent that distinguishes it, inter alia, from Roman Catholicism."

Read the full article here.

God willing, the last bolded statement will come true. Mind you that there's a danger of the rise of another group within the Episcopal Church or the Anglican Communion that would hope to do the same sort of take-over but from the other side of the aisle. I'd oppose that just as much as I've opposed the take-over attempt from the right.

The fundamental characteristic of Anglicanism in my mind is our insistence that "we pray together". That sure seems easy to do at first glance. But looking at the history of schisms in our denomination, clearly it's not been. Finding ways to preserve what is valuable in the idea of common prayer, whilst allowing people of passionate beliefs the freedom to hold their beliefs with integrity, even when they are in the minority, is to my mind the hardest part of being an Anglican.

Human mental chaotic metastates - the Brain is Anglican!

This is just cool. Apparently there's a recent study that finds that human mind (biologically speaking) functions by existing in a meta-stable equilibrium state that is just bordering between total chaos and organization.

The equilibrium state is a critical phenomenon! (I know it as a regime of phase transition very very close to the boundary between one phase and another, which was the area of my doctoral research.)

According to a report:

"Self-organized criticality (where systems spontaneously organize themselves to operate at a critical point between order and randomness), can emerge from complex interactions in many different physical systems, including avalanches, forest fires, earthquakes, and heartbeat rhythms.

According to this study, conducted by a team from the University of Cambridge, the Medical Research Council Cognition & Brain Sciences Unit, and the GlaxoSmithKline Clinical Unit Cambridge, the dynamics of human brain networks have something important in common with some superficially very different systems in nature. Computational networks showing these characteristics have also been shown to have optimal memory (data storage) and information-processing capacity. In particular, critical systems are able to respond very rapidly and extensively to minor changes in their inputs.

'Due to these characteristics, self-organized criticality is intuitively attractive as a model for brain functions such as perception and action, because it would allow us to switch quickly between mental states in order to respond to changing environmental conditions,' says co-author Manfred Kitzbichler."

Read the full article here.

What I find most evocative about this is that our minds are constantly teetering on the edge of being one or the other state. If it should spin into one or the other and lose it's delicate balancing it no longer functions.

Reminds me of Anglicanism and the Episcopal Church. We intentionally and (frustratingly to many) insist on walking a tightrope between opposing views. It's a rather draining way to live. But if we decide to hop down off the rope, we'd lose what it is that makes us so able to muddle on somehow.

Actually - it's no such much a muddle as it is a lose-tight sort of ability to respond to random shocks to the system. (The Internet has a similar ability.) A friend of mine remarked once, many a hammer has been worn out on the anvil of Anglicanism.

Maybe this willingness to live in the tension is why. It's not a sign of lack of fortitude. It's a survival strategy.

Wintertime in Phoenix

I woke up this morning and the bedroom was 70 degrees. So I climbed out of bed, wearing my warm sleep pants, turtleneck and thick socks and added a fleece vest, slippers and a warm robe. It’s good to be well fortified against the cold.

The odd thing is that I’m not exaggerating. Having lived here in Phoenix for three winters now, 70 degrees really does feel uncomfortably cold. Going outside in 50 degree weather requires a cap, jacket, scarf - and if I’m going to be outside for any length, gloves. I don’t think the temperatures are comfortable anymore unless they’re in the 90’s. My family is now the same way. My daughter who used to insist she was plenty warm when it was in the 30’s and she was just wearing a light jacket, is now complaining about how cold her room is and sleeping under a great pile of blankets.

People who’ve lived in Phoenix for a while tell me that this isn’t all that unusual. After about three years it’s common to hear people say that your blood “thins”. There’s truth to the fact that there’s a change, but it’s the other way around apparently. After a few years of living in the hottest city in the US, your blood actually thickens, not thins. But either way, it’s a real and very noticeable change. It’s obvious in town during these months who lives year-round in Phoenix, and who’s a winter visitor (snow bird). The Phoenicians are walking around in this 70 weather all wearing jackets. The visitors are all walking around wearing shorts. (It’s really quite striking when you walk down the street.)

What’s particularly striking to me is how this adaption happens automatically. It’s really just a matter of living here. You immerse yourself in this climate and in a few years what you perceive as hot or cold changes.

I’m thinking it’s like that in our ability to perceive the world around us as well. Here in America we’ve been living in period of our history where the culture around us has tacitly decided that the greatest common good is most efficiently found by the free market models of Adam Smith. The character Gordon Gecko coined the phrase “Greed is good” in a movie back in the eighties, and because we’ve lived so long in a culture that acts on the belief, we’ve come to think of the desire to acquire goods and power as not just normal but laudatory.

Mind you, there’s something to this idea. It turns out that when we model various different kinds of economic systems, the most equitable distribution of goods and resources happens if every agent involved acts in the most personally greedy way possible. The problem is that not everyone acts equally greedy, not everyone plays fair, and most distressingly, the equilibrium state can take generations to achieve. The latter seems to me to be the root cause of most of the pain people experience because we are living in a period when the true equilibrium is yet to be achieved. And since it’s not clear that we as a society are willing to live into the pain it will cause to allow the market forces the freedom they require to find their optimum function, it may be that the economic disparity and inefficiency we endure will be never ending.

I wonder if the present recession/depression is going to be the catalyst for changing our perception of what is normal and acceptable for our common economic life? I’m told that the Great Depression had that effect. The reason the “greatest generation” was the greatest generation was because they discovered the interconnectedness needed in society to navigate their way through that particular economic downturn. The seeds of our present greed were sowed in the time of great abundance in the 60’s and 70’s when it seemed that resources were limitless and upward economic trends would continue forever.

In the parable of the Talents and the parable of the Shrewd Steward Jesus seems to be telling us that we need learn to connect with the community and work cooperatively if we want to be able to survive and prosper. (See my sermons on these topics this past fall for the full explanation of why.)

Maybe it’s time we gave Our Lord’s counsel a try? The idea of everyone acting in their own self-interest doesn’t seem to have born the fruit we were promised.

A Place to Know the Other

As I write this message there are less than 24 hours until the early results of the 2008 Presidential election are to be announced. We don’t know who is going to be elected whether to the Presidency or to a number of Senate seats around the country, or to the House seats that are suddenly being fought over even here in Arizona.

What we do know is that no matter what happens there are going to be people who are deeply disappointed in the result just as there will be people who believe that their long held beliefs are finally being vindicated. There was a report a few hours ago that emotions are already starting to spill over the top. A man in California has taken his flag and his gun and has shut down a major highway in San Diego as a protest about the direction he sees the country heading tomorrow. I’m praying that this will be a singular incident, but a number of folks I talk to are afraid it may not be. They are seeing people with deep and passionate beliefs who are feeling cheated and are lashing out against the “other” as a result. This blaming of the “other” for bad events has been happening in America for years and now because of the tension in a nation at war and in economic distress it threatens finally break out into widespread pandemic again.

What can we do in response? We are the followers of Jesus, the Prince of Peace. Certainly there must be something that we can do.

Actually I think we’re already doing it. We’ve been doing it at the Cathedral for years. We are intentionally being a place that has a mission to be the crossroads of the city where people from all walks of life have a chance to encounter one another in the presence of God.

Yesterday for instance, there were more than one hundred people who came to a service for Dias de los Muertos/ All Souls. We gathered in Olney Hall to pray, to write the names of our family members who now sleep in Christ, and to witness to their memories. We followed the Cathedral cross and our mariachis around the block in a solemn yet joyful procession. And then we gathered in front of our special altar to pray. I was most struck by the voices of those who led the prayers. There was a woman from Texas who’s first big job in the Church was running a seminary in Honduras. There was a failed scientist from Pennsylvania. There was a bishop of the Indigenous people of Southern Mexico. There was a native arizonan who worked off-broadway and in investment banks. There was an Italian language teacher. There was a mexican-american day laborer. There were brown, red, black and white people, rich and poor, literate and illiterate, natives and immigrants all gathered together in prayer.

It was just another Sunday at the Cathedral. One service out of the five held yesterday. About twenty percent of the five hundred people or so who were in the building at one point or another yesterday. It’s a snapshot of our city and a glimpse of the diversity of our nation and world.

In uncertain times like this it’s easy to blame the other for whatever we’re afraid is happening in our community. The details of the identity of the “other” changes from year to year (the Germans, the Irish, the Italians, the Blacks, the Indians, the Poor, the Gringos, the Rich...) but the act of blaming the “others” for our problems continues.

The thing is that it’s almost impossible to see the person that you kneel beside to receive Christ at the altar as the “other”. And as we kneel beside each other each Sunday, the rich tapestry of humanity that we are, we manage to catch hold of a new way of living with each other in which we see each other not as “other” but as friend. As neighbor.

I don’t expect many of you are particularly vulnerable to blaming “others” for whatever we believe is wrong in the world. But you may know people who are. Instead of arguing with them, maybe you could invite them to church with you some Sunday? Because we will always welcome the “other” into our midst. It’s the most proactive response that I can imagine. If we took it seriously and did it, we could begin to change the world.

Andrew Brown: The discussion of religious differences online is not a game | Technology | The Guardian

Andrew Brown has written an extraordinarily helpful piece about the effect that online discourse is having on our common-life in the Church and in the State. He focuses on the effects the discourse is having on religious discussion but his points could just as easily be applied to the civil.

Brown describes the online behavior thusly:

"On the web the participants are often sober and they spare no pains to offend and insult one another, even when there is nothing at stake. I nearly wrote 'nothing but prestige' but prestige in whose eyes? Who is watching? The strange, weightless intimacy of online communication has enabled complete strangers to hate each other passionately within minutes. This has had measurable effects in the real world. In the US, for instance, the breakup of the Anglican Communion has already resulted in some huge and juicy lawsuits and will certainly result in many more as conservative parishes try to remove their churches from the liberal central body. The schism could never have happened without the internet, which allowed each side to see exactly what the other was up to, and then deliberately to misunderstand it."

Read the full article here.

And we being fallen, lather, rinse, and repeat until madness ensues.

Jeremy Taylor

Today the Episcopal Church is observing the feast of Bishop Jeremy Taylor.

I was scanning through his biographical details, which are primarily concerned with his role as a royalist and traditional Anglican during the time of Cromwell's protectorate, and his career following the restoration of the monarchy.

I was struck by this particular paragraph in his Wikipedia article:

"His great plea for toleration is based on the impossibility of erecting theology into a demonstrable science. It is impossible all should be of one mind. And what is impossible to be done is not necessary it should be done. Differences of opinion there must be; but heresy is not an error of the understanding but an error of the will. He would submit all minor questions to the reason of the individual member, but he set certain limits to toleration, excluding whatsoever is against the foundation of faith, or contrary to good life and the laws of obedience, or destructive to human society, and the public and just interests of bodies politic. Peace, he thought, might be made if men would not call all opinions by the name of religion, and superstructures by the name of fundamental articles. Of the propositions of sectarian theologians he said that confidence was the first, and the second, and the third part."

Read the full article here.

Fits with what Barth seems to cautioning against, and makes perfect sense when viewed against events of Taylor's time in history.

(Which is good because it will give me something to talk about during the sermon at noon in the Cathedral today.)

Communion in Conflict: Behold: A True Prophet

My friend Fr. Nathan has written an essay inspired by what Christopher has written, and which I've posted a link to here.

He ends his essay, which is really worth reading in the entirety:

"So, to my conservative friends, I will say: I agree with you that those churches that tout their 'inclusiveness' are often so wishy-washy and touchy-feely that no one will ever be challenged to repent, that repentance and conversion seem anathema, that their version of the Gospel is even more watered down than my version! They embarrass me.

And to my liberal friends, I will say: I agree with you entirely that those churches that tout their 'faithfulness' to the Bible and its demands of holiness and conversion can be really inhospitable, scary places, that they often do damage to people who seek Christ there, even without intending to, and that they are an embarassment.

But to both of you I say: Listen carefully to what people like Christopher are really asking for. And ask yourself: is my activism, my dogmatism, my judgmentalism, actually providing the sort of care and service such people need? Am I able to serve such a person as Christ 'in the meantime,' between now and when my theopolitical goals have been accomplished (or thwarted)? In the midst of my passionate commitments and conflicts, am I able to be with, and for, such a person in the way that Christ has been with, and for, me?

These questions transcend the issues, without in the least diminishing their importance as issues. But, I hope, they do put things in perspective, that they cast down our pet idols standing in the way of seeing our brothers and sisters as human beings for whom Christ died and with whom we are called to stand...even if we can't stand them or what they stand for."

Read the full article here.

Clarification from Canterbury

The Lead on Episcopal Cafe has the story:

"A response from Lambeth offices to the discussions around the Bishop Howe emails:

'It should be understood that the Archbishop's response to Bishop Howe was neither a new policy statement nor a roadmap for the future but a plain response to a very urgent and particular question about clergy in traditionalist dioceses in TEC who want to leave TEC for other jurisdictions, a response reiterating a basic presupposition of what the Archbishop believes to be the theology of the Church.

The primary point was that - theologically and sacramentally speaking - a priest is related in the first place to his/her bishop directly, not through the structure of the national church; that structure serves the dioceses. The diocese is more than a 'local branch' of a national organisation. Dr Williams is clear that, whatever the frustration with the national church, priests should think very carefully about leaving the fellowship of a diocese. The provincial structure is significant, not least for the administration of a uniform canon law and a range of practical functions; Dr Williams is not encouraging anyone to ignore this, simply to understand the theological priorities which have been articulated in a number of ecumenical agreements, and in the light of this not to increase the level of confusion and fragmentation in the church.'"

This is essentially the interpretation that a number of folks were making - including the Living Church - over the weekend.

Read the rest: The Lead

Abp Williams writes to Bp Howe

A letter written from the Archbishop of Canterbury to the Bishop of Central Florida has been released to the public. You can find the text of the letter here.

There's some real confusion about the implications of the letter. From what I've read on blogs and websites, and in some private conversation, I think the Living Church's sense of how to read the Archbishop's words in this context is most likely the correct one:

"In a letter dated Oct. 14 to Bishop John W. Howe of Central Florida, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams said he will await the views of all the primates before issuing any statement on The Episcopal Church’s status within the Anglican Communion. Archbishop Williams discouraged ‘separatist’ plans [emphasis added], urging all Windsor-supportive Anglicans ‘to regard the bishop and the diocese as the primary locus of ecclesial identity, rather than the abstract reality of the ‘national church’.’"

As a friend pointed out, if a diocese is (by virtue of being committed to the Windsor process) already in communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury, then what is to be gained by leaving the Episcopal Church in an attempt to maintain communion with the Archbishop?

Dutton-Gillett: The Gospel of Both/And, Not Either/Or

There's a wonderful essay on Episcopal Majority this morning, in which the author describes the difficulty of living in tension with people with whom we disagree, and seeing Jesus' life as a guide to our actions today:

"The bishops’ statement, if examined carefully, seems to be attempting to do two things that are almost impossible to do at the same time. On the one hand, the bishops are attempting to preserve some kind of unity within the Anglican Communion and the Episcopal Church. In their clarification of B033 and in the position they took with respect to the blessing of same-sex unions, the bishops are attempting to say, ‘Let’s not walk away from each other just yet.’ On the other hand, the bishops are also attempting to take a just stand with respect to gay and lesbian people, and to insist that their dignity as human beings and baptized Christians be respected. And this is where that place of painful tension is found: in the attempt to value unity and relationship while at the same time valuing and insisting on justice and dignity toward a marginalized people.

This tension is, I think, precisely the tension of the Gospel, the tension in which Jesus himself lived and from which he carried out his ministry. As we look at the teaching of Jesus, it is clear that he refuses to abandon relationships for the sake of justice, nor does he abandon justice for the sake of relationship. He will, it is true, allow people to walk away from him if they choose to do so. But he never chooses to walk away from anyone. He certainly challenges people, and is even directly and indirectly critical of people about the choices they make. But he does not refuse to be in relationship with them or to sit at their table."

Read the rest here: The Gospel of Both/And, Not Either/Or

(Via The Episcopal Majority.)