Let's play "TIME TO SET THE RECORD STRAIGHT"

A familiar "urban myth" has resurfaced in recent discussion on the House of Bishops/Deputies listserve. The myth goes something like this:

Back in the halcyon days of yersteryear there were to be two allowable theological positions in the Church concerning the ordination of Women. One "No women", and the other allowing Women. The two were to be considered valid, and one could take no vengence on the other. In 2000 those who disagreed with the ordination of Women were made heretics.

So let's play now ... TIME TO SET THE RECORD STRAIGHT:

1974 was year eleven women were ordained in Philadelphia

1976 was the General Convention where those ordinations were "regularized"

1977 was when the bishops met at Port St. Lucie and came up with their "conscience clause" suggesting that individual bishops had the right to refrain from ordaining women as a "matter of conscience"

I've never -- in all my increasingly-long years of doing this church stuff -- met anyone who argued that bishops who did not believe in the theological efficacy of the ordination of women should be "required" to ordain them.

Rather our position has been -- and continues to be -- that parishes within a diocese where the bishop held a position contrary to the canons of the church on the ordination of women should be allowed to receive the ministry of ordained women if they are so inclined.

What happened in Denver 2000 was about conforming to the canons of the church ... not about turning people into "heretics."

After 30 years there continues to be a theological minority of folk within the Episcopal Church who do not accept as valid the orders of women in ministry. It is their prerogative so to do. They are and continue to be welcome at the table -- they just can't expect to be agreed with. And they can't expect their re-writing the history of this church to conform to what they wished would have happened to go unchallenged.

Here endeth the history lesson.

Sauce for the Goose

From Episcopal Cafe by Andrew Gerns

Do you know the old saying: What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander? The ruling handed down by a South Carolina judge in the cases of a breakaway parish versus the Diocese of South Carolina is most certainly sauce for somebody.

Episcopal News Service presents the facts of the matter. But the “takeaway” as editors like to say, is that if you want the Episcopal Church to violate its constitution and canons to advance your agenda, don’t be offended when the offer is refused, and don’t expect civil authorities to back you up.

The significant parts of the South Carolina ruling are these:

• In a hierarchical church such as ours, Diocesan and Episcopal Church canons concerning of membership supersede parochial by-laws.
• A judge may determine if a congregation is departing from the "doctrine, discipline and worship" of this church by how the congregation adheres to the constitution and canons of the church. Judge Thomas W. Cooper, Jr., wrote that a "quintessentially religious question is left up to the church authorities" and defined that authority in terms of the constitution and canons of the church.
• He said it "constitute(s) a fraud" to take a parish into a new denomination when all of the current members freely chose to enter the existing Church.

The judge may have tried to avoid knotty theological questions, but his ruling reiterates a fundamental element of what it means to be the Church. Entering the Church means not only enjoying the style of worship and teaching, but entering into the common life of the whole Church, a life that includes adherence to the Church’s constitution and canons.

If the ruling in South Carolina is embraced by other states, the strategy of those trying to break up the Episcopal Church will collapse under its own weight.

Support Our Troops: BRING THEM HOME!

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Canterbury to Nigeria: Please Stay Home!

Lambeth Palace today confirmed the Archbishop of Canterbury has written to the African Primate asking him to cancel his trip to Virginia to carry out the service. A spokesman for Dr Rowan Williams confirmed a letter had been sent to the Archbishop of Nigeria ....
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Not holding my breath on this one. Had a call from a reporter yesterday who wanted to know if I'd be in Virginia on Saturday ... ??????????? No -- I told her -- my vocation isn't lurking around other people's events/meetings ... I've got plenty of my own work to do here at home.

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Besides, it's Cinco de Mayo so I'll be eating nachos and hoping for a Margarita somewhere along the day which will include a Garden Party at our bishop's lovely home to celebrate the ministry of the Bishop's Commission on Gay & Lesbian Ministry.

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Do I have a COMMENT about Saturday's CANA happenings? Sure -- it's one more indication that those hell-bent on creating a church in their own image and calling it "Orthodox Anglicanism" will stop at nothing to make that happen. Our job in this Episcopal Church USA is to get on with OUR vocation -- and that's about proclaiming the Good News of God in Christ Jesus available to ALL.

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UPDATE: Mark Harris makes this important point over at PRELUDIUM:

What will happen on Saturday is not just about the installation of BISHOP MINNS. What will happen on Saturday is not just about ARCHBISHOP AKINOLA acting across boundaries and other ecclesastical no-no's.

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What will happen on Saturday is that a CHAIR - an outward and visible sign - will have someone seated in it (INSTALLED) and the CHAIR belongs to some body, in this case the Church of Nigeria.

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And most importantly, that CHAIR will be in the United States, a geographical territory in which The Episcopal Church has jurisdiction. In putting his chair in this new place, namely the Diocese of Virginia and in the Province of The Episcopal Church, Archbishop Akinola is not simply installing a bishop, he is inaugurating a diocese or a proto-diocese, or a missionary diocese.

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He is, in other words, staking a claim on the soil of The Episcopal Church, putting his chair there, and welcoming someone (Bishop Minns) to sit there. Saturday is the inauguration of a new diocese-like thing, and by all accounts a province in waiting.

Theological Reflection

Christ Died Because of Our Sins, Not For Our Sins
by J. Edwin Bacon, Rector
All Saints Church, Pasadena
[from this week's edition of Saints Alive ... our weekly newsletter]

Is God’s capacity to forgive limited or is it mea­sureless and lacking desire for retribution?

Did Jesus die because of our sins or did he die for our sins?

In this debate about the nature of God, Jesus actually had quite a strong point of view. Jesus’ image of God was one of un­conditional love as he described the forgiv­ing parent in the parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11–32). Quoting Hebrew Scripture (Hosea 6:6; by the way, don’t ever let some­one tell you that “the God of the Old Testa­ment is a God of punishment”), Jesus said, “Go and learn what this means. I desire mercy and not sacrifice.” (Matthew 9: 9-13).

Much of institutionalized Christianity has taught a theology that disagrees with Je­sus. Rather than seeing God with a power­ful eagerness to forgive simply because of the nature of God’s love, which has no need for bloodthirsty sacrifices, the church has often expressed a competing theology (based on an 11th century theory of St. Anselm referred to as “substitutionary sacrificial atonement”). That theology has held that the very essence of Christianity is that without Christ’s sac­rificial death on the cross, “we would for­ever be guilty, ashamed and condemned before God.” (Mark Dever, “Nothing but the Blood,” Christianity Today, May, 2006, p. 29, quoted in Borg, Marcus, Jesus; Un­covering the Life, Teachings, and Relevance of a Religious Revolutionary, pp. 267-268)

The Rev. Dr. Giles Fraser, says about this theology, “the idea of God murdering his son for the salvation of the world is … morally indefensible. It turns Christianity into cosmic child abuse.” (Giles Fraser, “Cross Purposes,” The Guardian, April 4, 2007) Furthermore, Dr. Fraser (the Vicar of St. Mary’s Church, Put­ney, in London and lecturer at Oxford) argues that it promotes a heretical theological basis for the death penalty, refusing to believe that pure and simple forgiveness without punish­ment can ever be a proper response to sin. Such a conditioned form of forgiveness is the basis of retributive understandings of justice (a debt has to be paid off in full) instead of restorative understandings of justice.

Restor­ative justice has been at the heart of Desmond Tutu’s ministry in the Truth and Reconcilia­tion Commission in South Africa -- “No Fu­ture Without Forgiveness.” This is why it is important for us to reexamine this skewed theology of justice-as-revenge which also functions aggressively beneath a foreign poli­cy that initiates unjust, immoral wars of choice and then calls on religion to bless those wars.

I would like for us to make some occasions to discuss these matters as a faith community. In our reassessment of an injurious theology cer­tain hymn texts and Eucharistic prayers need to be examined. Thus, on May 13, Elaine Pa­gels and I will lead a conversation in the Rec­tor’s Forum about these matters. On June 10, James Carroll will be here to offer his resourc­es to our reflections. In addition, Giles Fraser will be in residence at All Saints in October for additional teaching. Finally, we are inviting Marcus Borg to be with us in 2008. I hope that you will join me in these efforts to bring our theology into alignment with that of Jesus.

Recommended Readings:

Marcus Borg,

Jesus; Uncovering the Life, Teachings, and Relevance of a Religious Revolutionary

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James Carroll,

Constantine’s Sword; The Church and the Jews: A History.

(Read especially the last section of the book on Church Reform)

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Giles Fraser,

Comment is Free

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Elaine Pagels,

Beyond Belief; The Secret Gospel of Thomas

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Joanne Marie Terrell,

Power in the Blood? The Cross in the African American Experience

Catching Up ...

OK ... I'm back. Sent Jamie off to Iraq (via Atlanta via Germany via Kuwait) yesterday after a great week-long visit that included lots of friends and family, BBQ & beer, slide shows and stories. Of course I hate that he's heading back to this mess of a war that only gets worse ... (See also: Mission Accomplished My Ass!) ... but I am reassured that he feels good about the work he and his colleagues are doing in support of the troops who are there for as long (or as short!) as they ARE there!

And now, back to our regularly scheduled programming:

As the Anglican World Turns:

Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori has written to Nigerian Primate Peter J. Akinola asking him to reconsider plans to install Martyn Minns as a bishop in the Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA), an action she says "would violate the ancient customs of the church" and would "not help the efforts of reconciliation."

Not surprisingly, the Nigerian Primate was unmoved by her suggestion to reconsider, writing a letter in response that reiterated his position that nothing short of the Episcopal Church "abandon[ing] its current unbiblical agenda" would heal the breech between the American and Nigerian Churches.

And in Canada, the House of Bishops issued a pastoral letter on same-sex blessings that managed to both annoy the schismatics by not going far enough and scapegoat G&L families by once again relegating their relationships to a separate-and-inherently-unequal status.

Meanwhile, former governor James McGreevey's interest in exploring vocation in the Episcopal Church has engendered a flurry of interest ... EpiScope has several news stories from yesterday's papers and Fr. Jake has an interesting discussion about the "Windsor Bishops" including comments from Mark Harris and Jim Naughton ... some of which have raised the ire of Brad Drell. (See also: you really CAN be offline for a week and pick right up where you left off!)

In other news:

HR 152 -- The Hate Crimes Bill -- passed in the House today ... and then, of course, The Current President (whose approval rating is now, I believe, at 27%) is already threatening to veto the legislation which is expected to pass the Senate as well.

Rosie O'Donnell was included in Time magazine's list of 100 people who shape the world.

All I have to say today is ...

May 1, 2003

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED

MY ASS!

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