A Sudden Change in Plans: Lois Humphrey 1943-2009

Even though my wife is due to give birth to our second child in just under four weeks, I will now be in the Anaheim area during the General Convention of the Episcopal Church between the 8th and the 13th, and plan to spend some "down" time there when possible, making myself useful and enjoying fellowship with everyone. This is because my mother died suddenly Wednesday morning, July 1st, in California and I will be staying with my sister in Orange, just a few miles away from the Anaheim Convention Center.

I am strangely grateful that after the funeral I will be able to see the many friends I have all over the country who will be descending upon Anaheim, the city where my mother gave birth to me 36 years ago this July 20th. Her 66th birthday was to be this next Thursday the 9th, but we may be having her funeral that day instead.

My aunt, my mother's sister, was in a major car accident in Holy Week, and she remains in stable but uncertain condition in a rehabilitation hospital in California. When my sister called me on Wednesday, I expected news of my aunt's death, not my mother's. As I haven't seen my aunt since Christmastide, this will be a lot of heavy stuff all at once. Please keep me and my whole family in your prayers.

Quote of the Day: Philip Turner

From A Question for Progressive Episcopalians (Cross-posted at Covenant):

Exclusion of meaningful opposition in respect to the matters now before The Episcopal Church in the end will produce a niche church rather than a catholic church. Progressive claims to inclusivity are in fact false. The logic of their position drives relentlessly toward an increasingly constricted identity. The question progressive Episcopalians must answer is why members of the Episcopal Church that do not share their views ought to think otherwise. To put the issue more directly, progressive Episcopalians need to show the membership of their church and the rest of the Anglican Communion why their position does not end in an exclusive form of church life rather than a diverse one.

I would be interested in non-defensive progessive answers to this question. I think on the other side, certain forms of traditionalism lead to their own "niche church rather than a catholic church," but in those cases, there is no pretense that it is being done in the name of "inclusion" or "justice." The pretense on the other side is that the niche is being done in the name of "truth" and "orthodoxy."

More and more, I am tending to think that any church that is not robustly ideologically diverse (that is, where there are safe spaces for conservatives and liberals to engage in dialogue, discernment, and conflict without the threat of broken communion) will end up a "niche church."

Diversity for diversity's sake is not an inherent good, nor does it necessarily promote justice. Diversity for the sake of maintaining a space wherein all may patiently form relationships with each other that will be mutually converting is more likely to lead to a fuller expression of justice, truth, and evangelical mission than any "niche" where everybody thinks like me.

Exegetical Notes & Questions on the First Reading at Morning Prayer

1 Samuel 12:1-6, 16-25. What caught my attention this morning is in bold.

Samuel said to all Israel, ‘I have listened to you in all that you have said to me, and have set a king over you. See, it is the king who leads you now; I am old and grey, but my sons are with you. I have led you from my youth until this day. Here I am; testify against me before the Lord and before his anointed. Whose ox have I taken? Or whose donkey have I taken? Or whom have I defrauded? Whom have I oppressed? Or from whose hand have I taken a bribe to blind my eyes with it? Testify against me and I will restore it to you.’ They said, ‘You have not defrauded us or oppressed us or taken anything from the hand of anyone.’ He said to them, ‘The Lord is witness against you, and his anointed is witness this day, that you have not found anything in my hand.’ And they said, ‘He is witness.’ Samuel said to the people, ‘The Lord is witness, who appointed Moses and Aaron and brought your ancestors up out of the land of Egypt. Now therefore take your stand and see this great thing that the Lord will do before your eyes. Is it not the wheat harvest today? I will call upon the Lord, that he may send thunder and rain; and you shall know and see that the wickedness that you have done in the sight of the Lord is great in demanding a king for yourselves.’ So Samuel called upon the Lord, and the Lord sent thunder and rain that day; and all the people greatly feared the Lord and Samuel. All the people said to Samuel, ‘Pray to the Lord your God for your servants, so that we may not die; for we have added to all our sins the evil of demanding a king for ourselves.’ And Samuel said to the people, ‘Do not be afraid; you have done all this evil, yet do not turn aside from following the Lord, but serve the Lord with all your heart; and do not turn aside after useless things that cannot profit or save, for they are useless. For the Lord will not cast away his people, for his great name’s sake, because it has pleased the Lord to make you a people for himself. Moreover as for me, far be it from me that I should sin against the Lord by ceasing to pray for you; and I will instruct you in the good and the right way. Only fear the Lord, and serve him faithfully with all your heart; for consider what great things he has done for you. But if you still do wickedly, you shall be swept away, both you and your king.’

1. Samuel refers to the king as the "Lord's anointed," yet says that the very request for a king is a "great" "wickedness." How can the Lord anoint someone who is the end result of a "wicked" request? Why would God grant such a "wicked" request? Why doesn't God just say, "No"?

2. The people acknowledge that requesting a king is "an evil" that they "have added to all our sins." One would think that the proper response to this admission would be repentance, that is, a change of mind about having a king. But they don't say, "We were wrong. We won't have a king." They insist on the king, even though Samuel says such a thing is "evil." Why doesn't God punish them for this evil? Why does God let them, in essence, "get away" with it?

3. Despite the fact that the people have "done all this evil," Samuel instructs them "Do not be afraid." He tells them to serve God. Why doesn't he tell them that God will punish them? Why doesn't he say that it's impossible to serve God if they've "done all this evil?"

4. It would appear that even being persistently (perhaps even "unrepentantly"?) "evil" is not wholly incompatible with the intention, nevertheless, to "serve the Lord." This is "because it has pleased the Lord to make you a people for himself." In other words, Samuel seems to be saying that the people belong to the Lord not because they are good or even because they have chosen to follow God, but because God has chosen them. In other words, they are stuck with God, whether they do evil or not. God does not prevent them from doing evil (or at least this "evil" of asking for a king), nor does God punish them. God does not even (in this instance) require their repentance or any change of heart. It seems that God has determined to "go along" with their stubbornness, even though it is (objectively?) evil.

5. Why would God "go along" with the evil intention of the people in giving them a king, who is then known as the "Lord's anointed?" I tend to think it must have something to do with God's modus operandi. God's M.O. is to redeem evil. God works with evil to bring something good out of it, a good that is not inherent in the nature of the thing itself, but which is given despite the nature of the thing so that its nature is transformed into something that may be used to God's glory and the welfare of God's people. So a king, in this instance, can be a good thing, if the king is good. The basic idea of a king is resisted by Samuel, however, because of the greater likelihood that the king will be evil and will abuse his power and will lead the people astray, including away from serving the Lord. (And indeed, this is just what we see happening throughout the books of the Bible that follow.)

6. Despite all the bad ("evil") kings to come (and the evil which even good kings--David & Solomon, especially--will perpetrate), God will redeem the institution of the monarchy in a radical way according to the Christian narrative. Jesus is a descendant of David, and the very notion of a Messiah is rooted in the Davidic kingship which would not be possible without the people asking for this "evil." Is this another instance of an unpalatable "o felix culpa!" theology?

7. I don't like framing this in terms of "o felix culpa!" because that over-states the case. A mistake isn't good because it was redeemed. The redemption is good, but the mistake is still a mistake, isn't it? This gets us off on more abstract tangents, though, so I'll just file this thought away for now.

8. Samuel replies to the people's request that he pray for them by assuring them that he will, and by promising that he will continue to teach them. The passage ends, however, with a threat: "But if you still do wickedly, you shall be swept away, both you and your king." This threat appears to contradict the fact that despite their present wickedness, God has not swept them away. The persistence of God's love and grace in the face of present wickedness does not indicate that God's M.O. is punitive, but redemptive.

9. Can we therefore take away from this passage that we can be indifferent to sin and evil in the Church? That God will not only let us "get away" with doing things that are "wicked" (at least as traditionally understood in the religious understanding of stewards of the tradition, such as Samuel is of his), but will also somehow work to redeem such things? How can the Lord "anoint" a king when having a king is evil? Is this not tantamount to blessing that which cannot be blessed?

10. This passage eludes the rational Western categories that sort things into "good" and "evil" based on an understanding of those things as possessing goodness or evil as intrinsic to their very natures. But is it correct to say that something (e.g., a king) is only good insofar as the king is good? The institution of kingship itself appears to have been redeemed within the Christian narrative so that what is important is not the long line of bad (and a few more-or-less good) kings that Israel (as a whole and in the Divided Kingdom period) had, but the Messianic trajectory inaugurated with the anointing not just of David, but rooted in the "evil" desire of the people that led to Saul's selection as the first king.

11. Passages such as this demonstrate that the redemptive nature of God makes it difficult to regard anything as irredeemable, or to establish with certainty the criteria by which one could declare something irredeemable.

GENCON2009: Occasion for Denominational Schism or Opportunity for Ecumenical Convergence?

Co-published at Covenant:

http://covenant-communion.net/index.php/forums/viewthread/734/

The General Convention/Triennial Issue of The Living Church magazine arrived in my in-box the other day. I braced myself for some depressing reading. What I found, however, surprised me. My reflections here are not so much about any particular action contemplated by General Convention itself, but the larger context in which these actions will be taken, as illustrated by two articles in this issue of The Living Church and some similar examples they called to mind.

The first article was the sad news, already reported elsewhere at Covenant, of the departure of the All Saints Sisters of the Poor in Catonsville, Maryland to the Roman Catholic Church. The All Saints Sisters is a traditional Anglican religious order whose convent is located within the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland, but not controlled by it. One minor detail that sticks out from the article is that the Superior of the order "added it is possible that one sister will choose to remain with The Episcopal Church." Other sources have told me that it was two sisters--perhaps one has since changed her mind. I have been told that for the time being, the remaining sister(s) will stay with the community and continue to pray the office with the others even beyond the community's reception into the Roman Catholic Church on September 3rd. I have been told that an Episcopal priest will be provided to celebrate mass for the remaining sister(s), presumably until such time as a more suitable place may be found.

I would like to challenge that presumption that there is another suitable place for someone who has already taken life vows within a particular religious community, however. Not that this can't be the case, but that it isn't necessarily the case. I was reminded of other intentionally ecumenical expressions of the religious life such as Taize. Who is to say that this arrangement could not be made permanent, and even attract other ecumenical vocations? This is a matter for orders such as the All Saints Sisters themselves to discern, of course, but it seemed to me, as an admittedly outside observer, that an ecumenical opportunity may be presenting itself. It would not surprise me if the ecumenical dimension of this situation were overlooked or undervalued, but an intentionally ecumenical focus could stand as a powerful witness to the churches at large.

The second article, entitled "Reaching a Godly Consensus," recounted just the sort of ecumenical, out-of-the-box thinking that I wish we had more of in The Episcopal Church and throughout the churches. This article recounts the discernment of Blessed Sacrament Church in Placentia, California. The rector reports, "Most of our people will remain in The Episcopal Church...A significant number of others will align with the emerging Anglican Church in North America but continue to worship--as Anglicans--with the Episcopalians of Blessed Sacrament. A few--perhaps fewer than a dozen--will enter the Roman Catholic Church and receive sacramental ministrations there while also retaining their participation at Blessed Sacrament. All ministries will be done jointly/ecumenically. In this way, the parish is intentionally expanded rather than divided." The rector now refers to his church as a "diversified parish."

I was delighted to learn of the results of this parish's discernment, because it has the hallmarks of, as the article's title asserts, "a godly consensus." It reminded me of the Church of the Holy Apostles in Virginia Beach, Virginia, a joint Episcopal/Roman Catholic parish that shares the Liturgy of the Word but maintains separate altars for the Eucharist so that "Roman Catholics in good standing may receive from the Roman Catholic priest; all other Baptized Christians in good standing with their own church may receive from the Episcopal priest." This parish is sponsoring one of the seminarians who is doing field work at my own parish, St. Paul's, K Street in Washington, D.C., and I was intrigued to hear of how this congregation presents a way for Roman Catholic/Episcopal couples to maintain their ecclesial integrity while also not ignoring the painful symbol of separate altars--a scandalous reminder of the reality of schism and its implications on the local level, implications that we can conveniently ignore when separate altars are enclosed within separate buildings. The liturgy of the Eucharist that has developed there, however, apparently allows for as much convergence during the consecration(s) as possible, with the principle of "waiting upon the other" so that at crucial points, the priest on one side of the church waits for the priest on the other side of the church before proceeding. I cannot describe it adequately since I have not experienced it first-hand, of course; perhaps I shall sometime soon.

The other reason I was pleased with Blessed Sacrament's actions is that the parish is doing formally what my own parish (and many other Anglo-catholic parishes) have been doing for some time now informally: including Roman Catholics in our worship insofar as their consciences and the teaching and discipline of their church permits, welcoming Anglicans from other provinces and the Continuum, and being a parish in good standing in The Episcopal Church. You can have it all, if the "all" is the Gospel: The Gospel does not demand schism. Rather, being faithful to the Gospel calls us to confront the painful realities of schism and to find ways of living together in communion that recognize the scandal of schism without papering it over but also do not allow the threat of schism to impede our mission as local incarnations of the Body of Christ. The forces within the church and world that would rend local communities asunder cannot stand up to a robust understanding of the ground of one's ecclesial commitment in Christ if, as with Blessed Sacrament and Holy Apostles, as with Taize and perhaps even, in its fragile and tentative way, the All Saints Sisters of the Poor, we can learn to live in a real, if imperfect communion with each other, rather than allowing the imperfections of our communion to lead to even more division and estrangement.

In this context, General Convention 2009 in Anaheim, California has an opportunity to take actions with ecumenical convergence as the goal. I believe that those on the left and the right of our church are capable, with God's help, of charting a course forward that will not give aid and comfort to those on the left and right who would like to see us divide. While the odds are against convergence, perhaps we can pray that for once, General Convention will be more concerned with godly consensus than moving a particular ball (liturgies for blessing same sex unions, the proposed Anglican Covenant) a yard or two up or down the field toward some predetermined "end zone" on either side.

Admittedly, General Convention is not well-structured for finding consensus. It is much better at dividing the church into winners and losers, and each wing of the church has felt both the embittering sting of defeat and the hubristic elation of victory. Winning and losing are spiritually dangerous spaces to inhabit. Only that space wherein all can say, "It seems good to the Holy Spirit and to us" (Acts 15:28) is a space worth occupying--that space is where the Church is to be found.

Quote of the Day: Q & A

"Christianity both answers our questions and questions our answers."

--Page 124, Rowan's Rule by Rupert Shortt

Thought of the Day: The Blame Game

Sex-and-gender conservatives blame sex-and-gender liberals for ruining the church.

Sex-and-gender liberals blame sex-and-gender conservatives for ruining the church.

Today, I blame sex-and-gender idolaters for ruining the church.

Who is a sex-and-gender idolater?

Anyone who thinks that his or her notions about sex and gender are more important than the church, or who believes that if those notions are not conformed to, the church can't be fully the church.

Hogwash. The Church is the Church, warts and all, whether my notions on the hot button issues are the official policy of my denomination or not. The question is: Will my notions keep my denomination from carrying out the mission of the Church to reconcile all people to God and each other in Christ? If I am a sex-and-gender idolater, my notions will.

It's not the other person's notions that's ruining the Church--or my denomination within the Church. It's the way I use my own notions as a litmus test for the Church, and the way I try to recruit others to use those notions as a litmus test, as well.

Thesis 07. Issues are church-making when they are used iconically, that is, to point beyond themselves to God as the focus of the community’s energy. Issues are church-breaking when they are used idolatrously, that is, to point to themselves as the focus of the community’s energy.

Dostoevsky in Jamaica

The Archbishop of Canterbury is in Jamaica and I am in London. Soon he will be back in London and I will be back in North America. I am on study leave at the moment, writing an essay entitled "Dostoevsky and the Future of the Anglican Communion." My essay has at its heart the question: What does Rowan Williams' recent book, Dostoevsky: Language, Faith, and Fiction have to teach us about how the archbishop approaches questions of conflict and community? My thesis is that Williams' approach to the crisis in the Anglican Communion has been greatly influenced by the fiction of Dostoevsky, and that it was no coincidence that he chose to meditate upon this author on the eve of the Lambeth Conference during his sabbatical at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.

Far from being a diverting academic exercise, I see this book as powerfully practical. It is an extended theological reflection on how one imagines the life of faith within a fallen world and a church that does not live up to one's hopes and dreams for it. The very first page of the book indicates as much when Williams writes, "The novels [of Dostoevsky] ask us, in effect, whether we can imagine a human community of language and feeling in which, even if we were incapable of fully realizing it, we knew what was due to each other; whether we could imagine living in the consciousness of a solidity or depth in each other which no amount of failure, suffering, or desolation could eradicate." Practically every page is pregnant with implications for the future of Anglicanism--though the book is at the same time simply about Dostoevsky.

On one level, the book is an insicive piece of literary criticism that can be read as just that: one careful scholar's well-researched thoughts on Dostoevsky and an important contribution to Russian studies in general. Nevertheless, I am deeply aware that the context out of which this book has come into being is bound up with the role that Rowan Williams plays as an archbishop in a church in conflict. The questions that Dostoevsky asks intrigue Williams not simply on their own terms, I believe, but because they are important questions to address within his own context as a church leader.

I hope that it is not overstating my case to say, therefore, that the future of the Anglican Communion will depend to some extent on whether the archbishop is able to apply his insights gained from his study of Dostoevsky to our current struggles. If the archbishop succeeds in his project, we may one day say that the Anglican Communion owes much of its shape not just to Hooker, but to Dostoevsky, via the thought and Christian discipleship of Rowan Williams.

Much of the above was written as a precis of my project in an email to an Anglican bishop who expressed interest in the undertaking. I am now in the thick of it, and while the essay itself is not ready for prime time just yet, it struck me how incredibly, eerily relevant it was to the proceedings (some would say debacle) of the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) in Jamaica this past week.

A.S. Haley, better known to readers as the Anglican Curmudgeon, wrote an insightful analysis of the political goings-on at the ACC, and my seminary classmate George Conger posted a more first-hand journalistic account on his website. I commend both pieces to political junkies who want the blow-by-blow. Conger's piece maps pretty closely to Haley's analysis, and there appears to be a consensus among conservatives that the archbishop fumbled the ball (to use a sporting analogy) during the proceedings. The Anglican Communion Institute certainly thought so, and urged the archbishop to take corrective action. Stephen Noll, for his part, came up with his own game plan for the archbishop to follow.

Having just slogged my way through 243 pages of brilliant and dense prose by Rowan Williams on Dostoevsky, however, I was pretty well convinced he would not take the approach urged upon him by either the ACI or by Stephen Noll, but would respond in a typically Rowanesque mode. This he proceeded to do in his Presidential Address last night (you can listen to the audio or read a transcript of it), in which he spoke of "glorious failure" and "miserable failure," and what distinguished the two from each other. He appeared to admit, in effect, that he (and, by extension, the ACC) had indeed "failed," but rather than doing anything to "fix" that failure, he took a tack best called, I think, the Dostoevskian-Hegelian Kenotic Approach.

A.S. Haley (our favorite Curmudgeon) reminded readers of the Hegelian dimension of Rowan Williams' approach to conflict by linking to a previous post wherein he shares Giles Fraser's insights into the method behind Rowan Williams' madness. This piece is well worth reading, because it exegetes the archbishop's approach to conflict from the philosophical (Hegelian) side, whereas at the moment I am attempting to exegete it from the literary (Dostoevskian) side.

Rowan Williams consistently resists "fixing" things--and in so doing, paradoxically, opens himself up to the charge of trying to "fix" the process itself, that is "fixing" not in the sense of correcting, but in the sense of manipulating it. Conservative bloggers interpreted his actions as an indication that "the fix was in," so to speak. Williams is "known" to be sympathetic to the "revisionist" agenda, and is therefore a tool of TEC, and concluded that anyone who continues to show up to play the game is a tool, as well. But Williams' goal is not simply to keep people talking to each other, but to keep people talking until they recognize what it is they owe each other. And even if this never happens, the "failure" can still be redeemed by God so that it is a "glorious failure" rather than a "miserable one."

Truly, Dostoevsky was in Jamaica.

In my next post, I will share the rough draft of the first section of my essay, "Dostoevsky and the Future of the Anglican Communion."

Schismatics Anonymous: A Twelve Step Program for the Churches

The Twelve Steps of Schismatics Anonymous:

1. We admitted we were powerless over schism—that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that only a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to unity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves and our churches.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our schismatic wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these schismatic defects of character.
7. Humbly asked God to remove our schismatic shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed through our schismatic thoughts, words, and deeds, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people and ecclesial communities wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory of our schismatic thoughts, words, and deeds, and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and common worship to improve our conscious contact with God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, praying only for knowledge of God's Will for us and for the churches and the power and grace to carry that out.
12. Having had a personal spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other schismatics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

As with AA, "Twelve Traditions" accompany the Twelve Steps, providing guidelines for group governance. They were originally developed in AA in order to help resolve conflicts in the areas of publicity, religion and finances. The Twelve Traditions, adapted for Schismatics Anonymous, are as follows.

1. The Church's common welfare should come first; personal recovery depends upon unity within Schismatics Anonymous--otherwise SA merely reinacts our schism.
2. For our group purpose there is but one ultimate authority—our loving God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Our leaders are but trusted servants; they do not govern.
3. The only requirement for SA membership is a desire to stop thinking, speaking, and acting schismatically, however that may be manifested.
4. Each SA group should be interdependent-in-autonomy in matters affecting other groups or SA as a whole.
5. Each group has but one primary purpose—to carry its message to the schismatic who still suffers.
6. An SA group ought never endorse, finance, or lend the SA name to any related facility or outside enterprise, lest problems of money, property, and prestige divert us from our primary purpose.
7. Every SA group ought to be fully self-supporting, declining outside contributions. [I don't know about this one! I wouldn't mind a Lilly Endowment grant!]
   
8. Schismatics Anonymous should remain forever non-professional and ecumenically non-denominational, but our service centers may employ special workers, both lay and ordained.
9. SA, as such, ought never be organized, or regarded as a church in its own right; but we may create service boards or committees directly responsible to those they serve.
10. Schismatics Anonymous has no opinion on outside issues; hence the SA name ought never be drawn into public controversy, including those issues that currently divide the churches.
    
11. Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion; we need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, and films.
12. Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our traditions, ever reminding us to place principles before personalities.

Hello. My name is Nathan, and I am a schismatic. Where can I find a local meeting?