In a Godward direction

Charles, then and now

2012-01-30T18:50:00.001-05:00

The following is my address to the 2002 Convention of the Diocese of New York in support of adding King Charles to the Calendar. Portions of it seem oddly timely, so I dig it out in honor of the day. By the way, the motion passed overwhelmingly, but did not make it through the next General Convention.

It feels odd for me, as a lifelong democrat, to be urging support for including King Charles I on the Church Calendar. I have no interest in the divine right of kings.

But it would be unfair for me to criticize Charles for supporting the monarchy. He was, after all, a monarch, one who took his office seriously, believing God had given him a divine responsibility to serve his subjects.

What is important to me, as a member of an Anglican Religious Community, is that Charles supported the first such community, and protected Nicholas Ferrar of Little Gidding against Purtian attacks. When Charles visited that community and saw their first English Harmony of the Gospels he was so moved by it, that he commissioned a harmony of the Books of Kings and Chronicles, so that he might better study the biblical record of the kings who ruled God’s people.

As kings go, Charles was well-meaning, but unsuccessful. And it would be a mistake to think that those who brought him down were democrats with the people’s needs at heart. On the contrary, Charles’ defense of poor farmers alienated the squires who sought to enclose and strip the land. His insistence on raising the wages of textile workers offended the cloth merchants. Military failures turned the army against him so that they twice staged coups to purge Parliament of his supporters. And Archbishop Laud’s untempered enforcement of the Prayer Book gained the ire of the religious extremists who wanted neither bishops, nor religious communities, nor Prayer Book, nor no not Christmas nor Easter neither! These weren’t Enlightenment Protestants, but religious fanatics who wanted nothing but a theocratic police state in which no one would be free from the dictatorship of the pure and the elect. If you want to know what Charles was up against, you need look no further than the Salem Witch Trials.

Charles is relevant to us today, when power brokers call for “small government,” not out of interest for the poor, but so they can profit through deregulation; when military strongmen join religious extremists to threaten the good of society, and the peace of the world.

Not that Charles was perfect. He was as flawed as any saint on the Calendar, the BVM excepted, of course. But in the day of decision, he stood for something — not only as a lay leader defending the episcopate, or as a pious Christian defending the Prayer Book, but in witness to a whole religious way of life, a way we call Anglicanism.

I urge you to vote to encourage the Episcopal Church to join our sister churches in the Anglican Communion who already commemorate Charles, not for his monarchy but for his fidelity and courage unto death in defense of the Anglican vision of the Christian faith and life.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

More on Doll's Paper

2012-01-29T14:22:00.001-05:00

Another thought struck me this morning concerning Peter Doll's essay in support of the proposed Anglican Covenant. Yesterday I read Lionel Deimel's exhaustive response to Doll's paper, and I commend him for his endurance and effort, though he reminds me that the danger in such thorough fisking is that one is drawn into the largely fantastic tar-pit, and the simple wrongness of the thesis is lost in the multitudinous wreaths of assertion piled on high. It is helpful that Lionel calls him on a few factual errors, but these tend to be lost in the shuffle of vague assertional legerdemain.

For the simple fact is that Doll's paper rests on faulty premises leading towards a predetermined conclusion. It makes basic confusions of concepts: speaking of unity when he means uniformity, or of "communion" when he means "institutionalism." He appears not to recall that Anglicanism has historically rejected conciliarism as the means to settling disagreements, preferring a balanced comprehensiveness-in-autonomy that has been a characteristic mark of Anglicanism since the Articles of Religion and the Elizabethan Settlement..

In the long run, for all the high-falutin' language, the Anglican Covenant holds conformity to peer pressure as both the highest value and sole indicator of "communion." It is, thus, suited for an adolescent body, but not for self-differentiated adults. Perhaps the reality is that much of the Anglican Communion is not prepared to live in the adult Christian world where difference of opinion — even on important matters — does not and cannot sever the robust reality of communion in Christ. Perhaps much of the Anglican Commuion is frozen in the realm of middle-school "conformity to the in-group or exile" model of fellowship. But I know which of these models is the actual strength of Anglican Christianity, and the one of which I hope to remain a part.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

UPDATE: an additional thought.
To use an analogy, Doll is like someone for whom the essence of matrimony lies in the wife's vow to obey her husband; all the rest is beside the point in that view. Needless to say, this is an inadequate understanding of a responsible adult relationship: one of the reasons that particular vow has dropped from the liturgy! (Even in England — though it is still there as an option in the "Series One" liturgy — so this is not another surmised American thang.)

That Choice of Lifestyle

2012-01-28T14:07:00.001-05:00

It is a lifestyle choice, built around a set of behaviors and practices. As such it is a self-constructed "identity."

There is no evidence that it is genetic or biological in origin, and it appears to be almost entirely due to nurture rather than nature. The fact that it may run in families is a result of context, not biology.

Because their behavior is not inherited and does not arise spontaneously, they have to recruit to maintain their existence, and are particularly focused on the young, the elderly, and the economically vulnerable.

It causes dissension and division in families, undermines the good order of society, and has been the cause of societal collapse. Nearly every past fallen civilization was riddled with this practice.

It has often been criminalized or otherwise discouraged or controlled by many governments.

In spite of efforts to suppress it, it often flourishes in a shadowy, underground world on the edges of society. They communicate with each other with symbols and code language, forms of dress, or mannerisms. They gather regularly in groups to share in its practice.

Some are bold enough to flaunt the behavior in public.
 

In spite of it being a self-generated identity based on entirely optional personal behaviors, they insist it be granted special protection as a "right" and even portray it as a "natural" right.
 

Many of them are active in the media and entertainment industry, and exercise disproportionate influence on the culture.
 

They form a particularly powerful "special interest group" and lobby extensively in support of their "agenda." Once they achieve a degree of power they usually become intolerant of all who disagree with them.

In case you haven't guessed by now, it is religion.
Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG 
in a satirical vein 

York Preaches to the Choir

2012-01-28T10:22:00.000-05:00

Archbishop of York John Sentamu is wagging a primatial finger at Prime Minister David Cameron from the relatively safe and supportive context of Jamaica, know for its robust defense of all that is good and holy.

In his statement, the Archbishop reveals himself to be almost completely innocent of familiarity with sacred and secular history, and the rudiments of political science. Most importantly, he seems not to be aware that marriage is not a Christian invention, nor are Christians the only ones with a right to determine who may or may not marry, or how, or for how long — though, to be fair, the Church of England itself has shown remarkable adaptability in changing its own rules to accommodate folks down through the years.

Ultimately, the notion that the state is dictating to the society represents an ironic example of failing to recognize ones own visage in the glass. Sentamu wants the Church of England to be able to dictate to the civil society on a subject which only partially concerns it. The idea that the State will insist that any church perform same-sex marriages is absurd, particularly when every effort has been made to clarify just the opposite.

Scare tactics, red herrings and straw men: The Church of England welcomes you!

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Doll on the Covenant

2012-01-27T14:16:00.000-05:00

Jonathan Clatworthy has penned a rebuttal to Peter Doll's essay in support of the Anglican Covenant. Doll's paper relies a great deal on a supposed American ethos that is clearly recognizable as an eccleiastical cousin of the “Ugly American.” Doll draws heavily on the early days of the foundation of the Episcopal Church and its revised Prayerbook, as if the rationalism of the Enlightenment was an American invention that passed the English by! He also engages in the sort of circular reasoning in favor of the Covenant to which we all have become accustomed: we should do this because we must do this because it is best we do this. He entirely begs the question that a "closer union" is in fact a good thing, and seems not to know that the root of the word federation is foedus, foederis — the Latin for Covenant — while calling for more submission to the group-mind of the Communion.

For me the greatest irony in Doll’s essay is the amount of projection it reveals: the urge for empire and control and subordination that he says America wants for the Communion is actually what the Covenant proposers want for themselves: in short they do not want a fellowship of autonomous churches, but a Federation in the legal sense, bound by a Covenant pledging submission by each to all.

Doll even quotes the misused maxim, "What touches all" — missing the point (as has been missed since Windsor) that it was designed to protect the rights of the minority, not insist upon their submission to the majority. As with so much else, Doll has it precisely backwards.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

UPDATE: See also, More on Doll's Paper

Thought for 1.26.12

2012-01-26T19:27:00.001-05:00

Why do Defense of Marriage people insist on a zero-sum game? There is enough marriage to go around, as the supply is increased by every couple who wish to make use of it.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Monstruous Regiment Redivivus

2012-01-24T17:40:00.000-05:00

Andrew Brown writes in the Guardian concerning the various schemes proposed to answer the famous riddle, When is a bishop not a bishop? with the obvious answer, When the bishop is a woman! Above all, it seems, the beliefs of some must be protected at all costs, even if it means creating structures of virtual non-episcopacy within the episcopate. Those who do not accept either the reality or even the possibility of women in orders of any kind (except possibly the diaconate — and definitely not the episcopate) must be insulated from any challenge to those beliefs. The schemes themselves may not go far enough to please the most fervently opposed, who do not wish a woman bishop even to delegate authority to a “safe” male bishop, since the very act of delegation offers a tip of the biretta in acknowledgement of her office.

I am reminded about houses divided against themselves. I see the irony of simultaneously arguing on one hand that gays can't be bishops because they can not serve as a focus for unity, and on the other hand that a scheme should be enforced whereby women ought to serve in precisely that unfocused, double-vision office of divided disloyalties. And I marvel at the extent to which some think it is salutary to believe impossible things before breakfast, as the White Queen suggested, or would have done, if women were allowed to function in such a capacity.*

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
*The first blast of the trumpet against the monstruous regiment of women, by John Knox, was directed against female monarchs.

A Note on John 4

2012-01-21T13:20:00.000-05:00

The story of the Samaritan woman in the fourth chapter of John’s Gospel has formed a part of the readings at Evening Prayer this week. This has led me to reflect once again on that curious middle: the question of the woman’s husbands. I don’t have time for an extended essay but want to flag a thought to which I might return later for elaboration.

I have long felt that when Jesus says, “The one you have now is not your man,” he is referring to himself. I checked a number of commentaries on John’s Gospel and discovered that my view may be a novel one — and yet it seems rather obvious to me. First to the commentaries, then to my sense of things — again very briefly.

Most of the commentaries put the focus of this section of the encounter on the woman and her moral status. Arguments are raised as to whether the rabbinic “three husband rule” applied to Samaritans — or even if it was a rule. Allegorical interpretations also come to play: reflective of a supposed pantheon of five Samaritan deities — the sixth being the God of Israel imperfectly accepted. Even further afield an allegory of the five senses as opposed to the sixth sense of the Spirit has been suggested.

All of this seems rather far from what appears to me to be going on in this encounter. First of all, this is John’s Gospel — an intense theological work rather than a mere historical record. In addition, certain key words and phrases with emphatic meanings in John’s language show up in the passage in question — not just in the part about the husbands, but throughout the pericope. Crucial among these words is one used by Jesus in his response to the woman: Now.

Second, the whole passage is about Jesus — note how he keeps turning the conversation back to himself. In a way it reminds me of the joke about the actor at the cocktail party, who after going on and on about himself, finally says to his host, “But enough about me. What did you think of my performance?” On this ground alone a detour-with-badinage into the woman’s marital life seems quite beside the point if in the end it does not turn back to Jesus — as do the surrounding passages that make up this dominical sandwich.

In the first case Jesus asks for water but then displays himself as the source from which a living spring will well up to eternal life. In the third case the issue about where to worship is settled by a pointed now (again, the hour coming and here), and in the person of Jesus the Messiah. In between is this seemingly off-topic persiflage about “her man.” Why would Jesus ask for her man if she didn’t have one — as she says she doesn’t. (The ambiguity is exacerbated for us because the passage does not use a distinctive word for husband; it would seem that if she was living with a man, he would be, well, her man even if not her husband, if such a distinction could even be made.) And so the one she “has now” is Jesus — right then and there by the well of Jacob — and he isn’t “her man” because she has not grasped him for Who He Is, or accepted him as He Who Is... yet.

So, in each section of this short three-act play, the focus begins with the woman and her concerns but turns back to Jesus. This triple construction is not at all foreign to the Johannine way of thinking or constructing (e.g. Way, Truth, Life), and the whole incident fits in well with, and has echoes of, the other encounters in which Jesus reveals his true identity to people who do not seem at first to grasp what is being revealed to them — in particular in contrast to the Baptist, who does recognize and testify. Note the dialogue with Nicodemus in the preceding chapter; and also more significantly the verbatim resonance of the woman’s “Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob?” with the later “Are your greater than our father Abraham?” — which leads in the end to another of the great “I Am” proclamations. John 8:53,58).

In short, then, I think it misses the point to read this passage as about the woman’s marital history, and obscures the reason Jesus raised the question in the first place: as a way to point her back to himself. Which is, as I remind us, the stated purpose of John’s Gospel. (20:31)

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Equus ex machina

2012-01-18T17:47:00.002-05:00

a brief comment on Stephen Spielberg’s War Horse

I saw the film this afternoon and thoroughly enjoyed it, blubbering helplessly a couple of times, in spite of the sheer unbelievableness of it all. A miraculous horse indeed to survive the horrors wrought by humanity and emerge with its equinity intact. Horses such as this are clearly more humane than most humans.

This is a refreshingly old-fashioned film, the progress of its episodic story unimpeded by the presence of mega-star actors. A few faces were familiar enough to invoke recognition without being distracting, and there are fine moments all around. The message is simple, and obvious, and though the denouement is utterly predictable, when the whistle blew it struck a note so right that I dissolved. The catharsis was salutary and timely, as the recent state of affairs in church and world and politics has gotten me right depressed. It was very good to let go of these frustrations when faced with simple goodness, even if idealized and fantastic.

There aren't too many films about the “Great War” but this one will rank equal in value but at the sentimental end of the shelf opposite such brutal classics as Paths of Glory and Johnny Got His Gun. War Horse has its brutal moments, but is bouyed aloft with a sentiment of innocent, and perhaps therefore all the more poignant, hope.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Thought for 1.18.12

2012-01-18T16:15:00.000-05:00

Why is it that gays and lesbians get blamed for starting the slippery slope towards loose sexual morals, but it is the heterosexuals who merrily ride down the slide of premarital or casual sex, serial monogamy, and easy divorce and remarriage, while the gays and lesbians are stuck immobile at the top of the ride, if they are even allowed to climb the ladder?

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Martin Luther King jr

2012-01-16T13:46:00.000-05:00

Although the feast of Martin Luther King jr falls on the day of his "heavenly birthday" — that is, the day of his death — it seems that the people of God are choosing to follow the secular practice, and many churches observe him on his birthday, January 15, or the Monday designated as a holiday. This morning, the parishes of the Bronx gathered at Church of the Mediator and celebrated the life and ministry of Dr King, with a fine sermon by Archdeacon Parnell, and the opportunity for Bishop Coadjutor-Elect Dietsche to celebrate. It was an uplifting and joyous celebration, and the offering will support the Martin Luther King Jr Memorial Scholarship Fund of the Bronx Council.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
ikon by TSH

Good Intentions

2012-01-10T10:52:00.000-05:00

Archbishop Thabo of Southern Africa has issued a supportive response to Archbishop Rowan's recent Advent Letter urging adoption of the Proposed Anglican Covenant. He suggests we look past the present dissension over sexuality and look to possible future disagreements, and the Covenant's possible tole in keeping the peace, as all of the members of the Communion vow to remain mutually submissive.

Sadly, this continues several of the themes purveyed by those who see the Covenant as a benign or helpful document. To them I commend a careful rereading of Section 4.2, which places into the hands of the Standing Committee the capacity to commend what amounts to the essential dissolution of the Anglican Communion, or at the very least the expulstion from it of any member whose behavior is judged "incompatible." I am not making this up. It is, of course, quite true that there are already mechanisms in place to do this, at least insofar as the Instruments are concerned; that is, the Archbishop of Canterbury sets the table and arranges the placecards at both Lambeth and the Primates' Meeting, and the ACC is capable of amending its charter of membership with the cooperation of the Primates. But up until now we have not had a Damocletian Clause hanging over the Communion, and section 4.2 of the PAC places this threatening weapon over all our heads, suspended only by the narrow thread of good intentions.

As I've written before, even were it not for the punitive mechanisms laid out in the PAC under the Newspeak terminology of "relational consequences," there is something deeply wrong about the notion of mutual submission. The main problem with this idea is that it consists in practice of submission of the few, or the one, to the many. In this it stifles the Holy Spirit, which does not suddenly inspire everyone everywhere with the same insight, but always starts locally, often individually, and then spreads like the good infection it is. This is a reflection of the Incarnation itself. The PAC represents a kind of diffuse gnosticism of goodwill, which in operation will mean the submission of any new insight to the judgment of the old and possibly calcified views of a majority. It will convert the Communion into a Sanhedrin or Bet Din, the wisest of whose members will at best be able to say, Let us wait and see; and in the meantime, the decision of the body will prevail: to let these innovators be disciplined -- or crucified.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Jesus and the Law

2012-01-09T09:28:00.000-05:00

It is sometimes said — I think I’ve said it myself in the past — that Jesus extends the scope of the Law in his moral teaching. An early morning train of thought leads me to want to revisit this concept. Jesus does not expand on the Law, in the manner of the Rabbis; he deepens it by finding the moral foundational spirit behind and under the letter.

To contrast the two: the Rabbis, in the interest of “putting a fence around the Torah,” enacted protective measures that helped ensure that the Law would not be broken. For example, though the Law requires that a kid not be boiled in its mother’s milk, the Rabbis, in order to prevent that possibility, ordained that no meat or milk should be prepared or eaten together; this later came to mean separate sets of cooking and serving ware for meat and dairy, and rules about the amount of time that had to pass before an item from the other food group could be consumed.

Jesus, on the other hand, doesn’t deal with such fine points of corollary laws and regulations, but literally cuts to the heart of the matter. In response to the law that says “Do not kill,” Jesus advises, “Do not hate.” In response to the law that says, “Do not commit adultery,” Jesus advises men not to look with lust at another’s wife, committing adultery in the heart.

Ultimately Jesus doesn’t just amplify the Law, he reorients it inwardly, moving it from legality to morality. He declares to be immoral things that are strictly legal (such as hatred or lust), and holds as moral things that are technically illegal (such as breaking the Sabbath to do good).

The irony is that many in our own time take the path of refined and insistent literal legality rather than looking to the heart of a generous and self-giving and spirit-filled morality.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Thought for 1.5.12

2012-01-05T21:30:00.001-05:00

Love is the bridle to authority and the spur to obedience.

— Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Thought for 12.30.11

2011-12-30T17:05:00.000-05:00

Patience and charity are renewable resources, replenished by repeated exposure to the Son.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

The Outer Limits (of Communion)

2011-12-28T18:27:00.000-05:00

We will control the horizontal. We will control the vertical... We can change the focus to a soft blur, or sharpen it to crystal clarity. — Not The Joint Standing Committee of the Primates Meeting and the Anglican Consultative Council

“Communion is the fundamental limit of autonomy.” So proclaimed the Windsor Report (¶82). This observation could be merely the recognition of the harsh reality that people often break up when one does something of which the other disapproves, even when the action is objectively within the competence, authority, or right of that other person. But “limits” here has a stronger, and more intentional meaning. It is not a mere marker of a transition point, but an attempt to bar the transition — not a mere border marker but a sentry point, armed and at the ready to prevent any incursion.

At its most generous reading, this represents an aspirational and idealistic approach to human and ecclesiastical affairs. The sentries do not want to shoot anyone; they do want everyone voluntarily to submit to the discipline. They want no one to do anything to offend anyone else. This must mean, when push comes to shove in the situational and real world, that some are expected to refrain from doing something — something they feel strongly about, something they think is right and that they have the right to do, something which the failure to do would be wrong — on the basis of the possible (or real) offense such action may (or will) give to someone else.

This becomes particularly difficult in our touchy times and even touchier Communion, in which a pervasive neuralgia and hypersensitivity seems to have afflicted portions of our former fellowship — to the extent that fellowship is now actually broken. A recent instance of this is the “Dear John” letter from Archbishop Daniel Deng Bul of the Episcopal Church of the Sudan to the Presiding Bishop of TEC. It is a masterpiece of high dudgeon, closing with, “We will not give TEC advice anymore, because TEC ignored and has refused our advices.” Clearly, either you do as they think right, or that’s the end of it. If you do not take Sudan’s expert advice on the interpretation of Scripture, they will have nothing more to do with you.

All of this leads me to see things rather differently from Windsor, and from the optimistic view of the Communionists and Covenanters, and to place the shoe delicately on the foot of the one taking offense. It is not the exercise of autonomy that ruptures communion, but the abreaction of those who find that exercise intolerable. Thus: tolerance is the limit of communion. As I wrote back in December 2010

It is not possible to “agree never to disagree”; [but it is possible to adopt] a commitment “never to allow any disagreements to lead to a severance of communion or any other consequences to the covenanted relationship.” The short message is in this maxim: “It is never possible not to give offense; but it is always possible not to take offense.” ...It is always possible to forgive, in the manner of Christ, even those who do not think or know they need forgiveness. It is possible not to insist that all do as I do, or think as I think. This is the way of Christ...

It is, in the long run, more Christlike and more practically possible to “agree to disagree” while remaining committed to one another, “for better, for worse,” than to walk on ecclesiastical eggshells for fear of doing anything others might not like.

Case in point

Over at Thinking Anglicans, an interesting comment stream developed in response to the post about Jonathan Clatworthy’s worthy essay on the proposed Anglican Covenant. One commenter, in response to the appeals (such as my own) for an essentially laissez-faire model for the Communion, threw down the gauntlet (or the other shoe for the other foot) of lay presidency at the Eucharist as proposed in Sydney, Australia.

A few responded that such a thing would be a move beyond the pale, but a number of others, including myself, reflected that this is precisely what I would see as something to tolerate even while disagreeing with it — that is, I could tolerate, and believe the Communion could tolerate, Sydney approving such a novel experiment. I hasten to repeat that I would not personally support such an innovation and would oppose its introduction in my own province. Frankly, while I don’t see the idea catching on, I have my reasons for not feeling this need be a communion-breaking issue.

My general reason is that lay presidency is, as far as I can see, similar to the question of same-sex marriage or the ordination of bishops engaged in such marriages, to the extent that these questions cannot be answered by a sole appeal to Scripture. In Reasonable and Holy I have laid out at some length how I feel Scripture, Tradition, and Reason can support the broadening of marriage to include same-sex couples, and I won’t belabor that here.

But let me sketch out a few of the reasons I see lay presidency as a tolerable experiment, even though I do not support it, except perhaps in the emergency “desert island” situations in which I think the commandment of the Lord to “do this in remembrance of me” outweighs the church’s tradition requiring a priest or bishop to preside at the remembrance.

First, that “desert island” scenario is a good example of “the exception proves the rule.” There is a rule, no doubt about it, from very early on in the church’s history, that the eucharistic assembly is to be presided over by a bishop. This presidency came eventually to be shared with and committed to presbyters. But that evolution itself reveals that the rule is not hard and fast, and bears exceptions as it evolves. No doubt there were those in that transitional period who felt short-changed or took offense that the bishop was not the chief celebrant in their assembly, as the officiant’s task in a growing and spreading church was committed to mere “country-bishops” (chorepiscopoi) — who are very likely the genetic ancestors of our later “parish priest.”

This reveals a church willing to experiment — as experiment it must if it is to survive in a changing world, and evolves new ministries such as the diaconate and presbyterate as part of that experimentation. Look at Paul’s advice to Titus concerning establishing presbyters in Crete, for example. This is evolution and experiment at work.

As the Scripture gives no clear evidence as to who the celebrant must be, other than by commission of the apostles or someone commissioned by them, the question can turn to the various means by which this commissioning has been performed since their times. Although laying on of hands holds pride of place, insufflation, anointing, and the handing over of the instruments essential to the performance of the rite all have formed part of the elements of the rite by which a person was authorized to take on the office of Eucharistic presidency. The crucial factor is authorization, not the form or sign by which that authorization takes place, since the form or sign is of human origin. Late patristic scholar the Rev Canon Richard Norris was once asked, “What do you call a lay person authorized by a bishop to preside at the Eucharist?” His pert response, “A priest.” Celebrating the Eucharist is a“faculty” that when conferred, is conferred.

Moreover, old models of “confection” of the Eucharist by the celebrant have in more recent years given way to a much broader community-based understanding of the sacrament even in many “catholic” contexts. Sydney is not, as I understand it, talking of a kind of informal “anyone like to officiate?” model for the Eucharistic assembly, but the designation of certain individuals to take up this function. This may press the buttons of those — including myself — who favor the rich and sacramental understanding of ordination. But the buttons marked “Break Communion” or “Schism” need not be among those pressed.

Again, let me state that this is not meant to be an argument in favor of lay presidency. It is, however, an argument for toleration of such an experiment, for mission needs in face of pressing situations. Meanwhile, such a local experiment will either catch on or not, and no other province need participate or copy, and the economy of God will cover any other deficits. Or so I trust.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

You have a personal message waiting

2011-12-25T17:20:00.000-05:00

The Original Word is reissued in a new edition, bound in flesh and blood -- and swaddling bands... a sermon for Christmas Day

Christmas 2011 • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son.

When I was working on the 150th Anniversary history of Saint James Church, I had a good deal of material at my disposal. One of the most important resources was the 100th anniversary history, the “gold book” as it used to be called because of its cover. Actually I had a copy of this book from long before I came to be Vicar at Saint James Church, left to me as a bequest from my brother-in-Christ William Bunting, who served over at Saint Andrew’s Church in the east Bronx for over thirty years.

The only problem with this “gold book” is that it is what historians call a “secondary source.” The authors of this book handed along to posterity their own understandings of all that went before, tinted by the views of what was important to them at the time they wrote Even concerning its own time, the 1950s, it turned out not to be a reliable source for me today, as folks were so accustomed to things of their own time — the 40s and 50s — they did not think it important to record them, since “well, everybody knows that.” So, fifty years later, some important information was no longer recoverable to me, now, because everybody back then, knew it at the time and no one thought it was necessary to write it down.

Fortunately, the “gold book” was not my only source: I also had the parish records at my disposal. In the safe there were old papers and documents, what historians call “primary sources” — records from the actual times that things happened. And these records bear the mark of personal testimony and connection. Among them are letters from young soldiers serving in the First World War, writing from the horrors of the trenches to their priest back home in New York. There is the pencil entry in the parish record book, of the burial of the curate’s wife with no further comment — and it was only through correspondence with her great-granddaughter (now that’s a real primary source) that I discovered that the reason for the silence was the fact that she had taken her own life.

There are the more prosaic items like the last cancelled check to Tiffany & Co. to pay for the Saint Augustine and Monica stained glass window, probably the last surviving work of the great artist Louis Comfort Tiffany, or the receipts of sixty-five years earlier from the quarry for the very stones that form the walls of this church, signed and approved by the head of the building committee, Mr. Gustav Schwab.

And the difference between the secondary documents like the “gold book” and the primary sources like these handwritten notes, is that the primary materials speak for themselves, while the later records come second-hand, with interpretation and editing, and most importantly, omissions.

+ + +

John opens his Gospel with an affirmation that the Word was God and was with God at the beginning. This is the Original Message — the first “text,” if you will — that God spoke to creation, the Word through whom all things were made, the source of light and life, the primary source of all that is, but at that point seemingly distant, past and inaccessible to us in the present day. In between come the messengers, such as the Letter to the Hebrews refers to — the secondary sources — most importantly John the Baptist, who comes as a witness to testify to the light, and John the Evangelist, another testifier. But then, surprise surprise and Merry Christmas, the Word becomes flesh: not the secondhand word of a transcribed or translated message, but the Original Word itself, coming with all the power that it had in the first place: the primary source issued in a new edition, bound in flesh and blood — and swaddling bands.

The author of the Letter to the Hebrews affirms this, this distinction between the secondhand word from the prophets, to the word of the Son himself, the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being. This Jesus, this Son of God, this Messiah is no mere messenger: he is the message!

+ + +

Yet still, John tells us, some turn away — the Word comes to his world which owes its existence to him, yet that world refuses to know him. He comes to his own, but his own people do not accept him, or at least not all of them. Those who do, who accept the message, the powerful message, the personal message who has been waiting to be delivered from the beginning of time, waiting for the moment the right instant when it is meant to be spoken — those who accept this message, who believe in his name, receive power themselves to become children of God.

This is the miracle of Christmas, that the power and the person of God became a human child so that we — we might through him — become children of God. He came to us, not through interpretation or translation, not through secondary sources or a third party, but directly and personally. The Original Word, the Original Text, appeared in a new, living, cloth-bound edition — a Christmas present for each and every one of us. As the great old hymn says

He sent no angel of his host
to bear this mighty word,
but him through whom the worlds were made,
the everlasting Lord. (Hymn 489)

+ + +

Beloved, we have a personal message waiting. He’s been waiting for two thousand years, for us. Let us, once again, open our hearts to receive him, open our minds to learn from him, open our eyes to behold his light, which enlightens everyone who will receive him and believe in his name, even Jesus Christ our Lord. O come, let us adore him.+

Nan’s Christmas Village

2011-12-22T13:49:00.001-05:00

Visited my old friend Nan Marvel last night, and was floored by her annual setup of the Christmas Village, which has grown mightily since last I saw it. So charmed was I that I decided to grab a rough video on my cell phone. Hope this gets across some of the charm...

Modern But Not Modernist

2011-12-21T10:34:00.000-05:00

I heartily commend Jonathan Clatworthy’s essay Instead of the Anglican Covenant over at the Modern Church website. It is a calm and measured call for engagement rather than schism (de facto via the incursions, severances and refusals by some of the provinces of the Global South; or de jure via the imposed relational consequences of the proposed Anglican Covenant.)

He offers a much more sane, safe, and traditionally Anglican way forward in our Anglican disagreements, and I hope his words will help persuade those seemingly held captive by the “Only Way Forward” scenario to perceive that there are other ways, and better.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
h/t to Thinking Anglicans

Radical Jesus — O Radix Jesse

2011-12-19T12:17:00.001-05:00

We are not called to serve the poor because we recognize Jesus in them. It is in serving the poor that we come to recognize Jesus for who he really is.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
Inspired by a comment on the previous post

Occupy Jesus

2011-12-18T20:56:00.002-05:00

Now mark that—this is the Gospel truth. If you are prepared to say that the Anglo-Catholic is at perfect liberty to rake in all the money he can get no matter what the wages are that are paid, no matter what the conditions are under which people work; if you say that the Anglo-Catholic has a right to hold his peace while his fellow citizens are living in hovels below the levels of the streets, this I say to you, that you do not yet know the Lord Jesus in his Sacrament. You have begun with the Christ of Bethlehem, you have gone on to know something of the Christ of Calvary—but the Christ of the Sacrament, not yet. Oh brethren! if only you listen to-night your movement is going to sweep England. If you listen. I am not talking economics, I do not understand them. I am not talking politics, I do not understand them. I am talking the Gospel, and I say to you this: If you are Christians then your Jesus is one and the same: Jesus on the Throne of his glory, Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, Jesus received into your hearts in Communion, Jesus with you mystically as you pray, and Jesus enthroned in the hearts and bodies of his brothers and sisters up and down this country. And it is folly—it is madness—to suppose that you can worship Jesus in the Sacraments and Jesus on the Throne of glory, when you are sweating him in the souls and bodies of his children. It cannot be done.

There then, as I conceive it, is your present duty; and I beg you, brethren, as you love the Lord Jesus, consider that it is at least possible that this is the new light that the Congress was to bring to us. You have got your Mass, you have got your Altar, you have begun to get your Tabernacle. Now go out into the highways and hedges where not even the Bishops will try to hinder you. Go out and look for Jesus in the ragged, in the naked, in the oppressed and sweated, in those who have lost hope, in those who are struggling to make good. Look for Jesus. And when you see him, gird yourselves with his towel and try to wash their feet.

Bishop of Zanzibar Frank Weston
From his concluding address to the Anglo-Catholic Congress 1923

Calling Out

2011-12-17T19:10:00.000-05:00

I was very pleased to see a letter in the December 18, 2011 issue of The Living Church, rebutting the misrepresentations and straw-man arguments which the Rev. Dr. Philip Turner raised in response to the "liberal" or "expansionist" authors of the House of Bishops Theology Committee report on sexuality, published in the Winter 2011 ATR. As the Rev. Robert MacSwain, the author of the letter, demonstrates, Turner assailed the gay-marriage-urging authors for a position they explicitly rejected. The argument he attacked is that gay and lesbian marriage is a move towards personal self-satisfaction and sexual happiness. The argument actually made in the papers is about the hard discipline of marriage as a form of sanctification towards holiness — just as for mixed-sex couples. Careful readers will note the resonance of this argument with my own work on the subject.

But why is it that someone as bright as Turner feels the need to concoct such a misrepresentation? Does he truly not perceive the difference? I begin to think that some "conservatives" may in fact have such a blind spot.

That is in part because I have been experiencing something similar over the last few weeks. An obviously intelligent and well-read anonymous blogger posting in the comments section of Peter Carrell's Anglican Down Under criticized me for adopting arguments in defense of same-sex marriage which I have not made, and persistently attempted to paint a picture of a kind of liberal modernism that is very far from my work (as any who have read it know). Let me hasten to add that I do not find Peter himself to be guilty of this sort of reaction, and regard him as a model interlocutor!

Then, over at Titus One Nine, another anonymous commenter declared that I was responsible for leading the charge in trying to depose Bishop Mark Lawrence, and that in a "raging and fulminating" way. That really surprised me, as I was not aware of any rage or fulmination, or even much by way of comment or interest, in or on the subject. When challenged, this person proudly produced three shorter than 50-words each comments separated by over a year — one from the House of Bishops / Deputies list-serve and two from blogs. None of these three line comments called for action against Bishop Lawrence, and the two most recent merely noted, as a point of canon law, that were action to take place it would likely be because of property concerns. As far as I know, and I've done the Google search, these are the only things I've said in reference to the good Bishop of South Carolina in the past year. I assured this irate denizen of Kendall Harmon's comment stream that were I intent on pressing a case against the Bishop I would certainly do more than make three three-line comments over the course of a year!

The point in all this is, What is it with "conservatives?" (Not all, just some.) Does their own upset with how they perceive things to be going blind them to what is actually happening? Is it simply a want of charity that takes everything someone dubbed "liberal" says at its worst possible, and often wrong, interpretation? Is it perceptual set, or a form of neuralgia and heightened sensitivity?

In this season, I plead for better understanding and calm. There are sane and sober "conservatives" out there, able to converse across even strong disagreement. I have had many such conversations so I know this to be true. The key, of course, is listening, and being able to describe to someone with whom you disagree their own position in ways they can recognize and affirm, and especially not telling them what they "must have meant" when they explain that they didn't. Kendall always espoused that, and I admire him for it; and I wish some of the folks who populate the comment-streams at his blog would follow his example. As to Turner, I hope he will re-read the essays which he misrepresented with newly opened eyes and attempt to wrestle inwardly with the arguments as they are actually made. He may still not agree with them but at least then be able to do them the courtesy of responding to them on their own terms. And that may advance the discussion.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Have You Seen This?

2011-12-14T16:37:00.000-05:00

I'm taking advantage of the Internet age to ask if anyone has come across this wood-carving that was part of a Gospel Book. It was used by the Brotherhood at its liturgies and stored at the friary of the Society of the Atonement, Graymoor, in Garrison New York when we were not using it. It went missing about a dozen years ago, and I thought now might be a time to ask if it has turned up anywhere. It's about 12 by 14 inches or so, carved in oak (or that color anyway), if I recall correctly, with touches of gold leaf here and there. It was my second effort at wood carving. I hope it is serving somewhere, as a Gospel Book cover or in some other sacred setting; but if anyone were to come across it, the Brotherhood would love to see it back in our use. Thanks to any for information.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Those Were the Days (Lambeth 1878)

2011-12-13T17:57:00.001-05:00

from the Encyclical letter of the 1878 Lambeth Conference, section 1.5

There are certain principles of church order which, your Committee consider, ought to be distinctly recognised and set forth, as of great importance for the maintenance of union among the Churches of our Communion.

1. First, that the duly certified action of every national or particular Church, and of each ecclesiastical province (or diocese not included in a province), in the exercise of its own discipline, should be respected by all the other Churches, and by their individual members.

2. Secondly, that when a diocese, or territorial sphere of administration, has been constituted by the authority of any Church or province of this Communion within its own limits, no bishop or other clergyman of any other Church should exercise his functions within that diocese without the consent of the bishop thereof.

3. Thirdly, that no bishop should authorise to officiate in his diocese a clergyman coming from another Church or province, unless such clergyman present letters testimonial, countersigned by the bishop of the diocese from which he comes; such letters to be, as nearly as possible, in the form adopted by such Church or province in the case of the transfer of a clergyman from one diocese to another.

It appears to me that most of the troubles in the present Anglican Communion stem from the failure of some provinces to observe and abide by point 1. Some of those same provinces have gone on to violate point 2, and the recent trouble in AMiA seems to reflect a bit of the mess one gets into by not observing point 3.

But point 1, in one sentence, is the key to any real Anglican unity. No further "covenant" is needed. And the one currently on offer provides a mechanism to frustrate point 1, by shifting from respecting the actions of the provinces to placating those offended by them. The proposed Covenant is government by discontent and disrespect.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Cb4B was CwoB

2011-12-12T11:33:00.001-05:00

Over at the Episcopal Café a discussion has appparently drawn to an inconclusive close on what is variously known as "communion before baptism," "communion without baptism," and (more confusingly for those who remember or still use the term in its older sense) "open communion." The discussion was launched from an unlikely port: the story of a Japanese UCC minister disciplined for this practice.

I have many concerns about this practice, by whatever name, and with the arguments used to support it, about most of which I have written in the past on this blog. This includes the irony of emphasis on the Baptismal Covenant while diminishing actual baptism to what seems an optional or at best secondary place in sacramental life; the loss of Morning Prayer as an alternative form of worship in many places, precisely at a time when a larger number of the unbaptized might be present; and a general interest in being hospitable and inclusive. But ultimately it seems to me that Cb4B is the wrong answer to a very real problem, or set of problems.

My greatest concern is not that the odd unbaptized individual might receive communion, or even the disciplinary lapse by which clergy in this church think it within their competence to issue a general invitation for those not baptized to receive communion.

Rather — and this comes through in some of the comments following the story cited above — it is that we risk a great devaluation of baptism, or a confusion about what baptism means in relation to being a member of the Body of Christ, at least from our perspective as part of a sacramental and catholick church.

Part of the problem, as I tried to address it at the Café, is the emphasis on sin in the Western tradition, thanks largely to Augustine of Hippo and those who emphasized this element in his work at the Reformation, including Cranmer. Thus sin becomes a lens to see both baptism and the eucharist, in ways not quite so highlighted in the Gospels and Epistles that give us what little we have to go on about either rite — both of which, if truth be told, evolve and develop in the Apostolic and Patristic era into something like their present forms.

This much can be said, however: baptism is primarily a rite of initiation into a new life, through death to self and sin, in union with Christ. The reason it rids of sin is not just by means of a "washing" or purification as in the baptism of John, but rather a union with Christ in his death. As Paul draws out this theology in Romans 6-7, it is about our being no longer subject to the law because we have died, or been liberated from its slavery. (Paul, as usual, tries to balance two analogies simultaneously, not always successfully!) It is through baptism that we come to be "united with him in his death" and come "to share in his resurrection."

And the Holy Eucharist is the celebration of that resurrection, which is not just a future event but is made real in our own bodies as we join at the Eucharistic table and are re-em-bodied and re-membered into Christ's living Body on Earth, the Church. Cranmer, and the Protestant Reformers generally, tended to fix the Eucharist to Calvary, and focus on the Paschal and Last Supper aspects of the celebration, and concerns of individual salvation: but these need not be the only emphases in our approach to this Sacrament. The rich material of the post-Apostolic era (the Didache, for example) show that early on the emphasis shifts from the personal to the corporate, and to celebration of the unified body of the Church, Christ's Body on Earth, typified in the grain gathered together and made one bread, which is only broken so that we can consume it and thereby be made One.

So, in brief, this is my argument for maintaining the traditional pattern: initiation followed by celebration. You become a member of the Body before you celebrate you membership in it. The practical concerns of a larger number of unbaptized seekers, the urge to be hospitable and inclusive, and so on, can — and must — be addressed: but there are more effective and theologically coherent ways to do so than through inverting this sequence, which tends to rob baptism of its fundamental character as a liminal rite by which one passes from this life into the risen life of God, as a member of the Body of Christ.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Brother Louis (Thomas Merton) 12.10

2011-12-09T16:41:00.001-05:00

Gracious God, you called your monk Thomas Merton to proclaim your justice out of silence, and moved him in his contemplative writings to perceive and value Christ at work in the faiths of others: Keep us, like him, steadfast in the knowledge and love of Jesus Christ; who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Merton was a major influence in my life, in a number of ways. Most importantly, he began to introduce some of the ideas that would merge into what is sometimes called “the new monasticism” — of which my own community is but one example of new models that emerged in the late 60s in response to a new wave of spiritual hunger, of which Merton was part of the avant garde. In my own thinking, his Contemplation in a World of Action formed a very important part of my coming to seek to follow a life of Christian service and devotion.

Merton lived in tension with the model of monasticism to which he made his commitment. His human frailty makes him, to my mind, all the more important in that witness.

Thank you, Brother Louis, for all you have meant and done for so many.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
ikon from the "quick ikons" series

Thesis for 12.07.11

2011-12-07T18:09:00.001-05:00

The Anglican Communion has no mechanism to determine or express its mind apart from the decisions and actions of the individual member provinces.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Maxim 20111207

2011-12-07T11:43:00.001-05:00

Anyone unwilling to live with tension is unworthy of marriage.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Maxim (20111205)

2011-12-05T21:19:00.001-05:00

Better an honest disagreement than a false consensus.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Short Story

2011-12-04T16:36:00.001-05:00

There was once a man who was always writing stories. It occurred to him one day that he had never written a story about himself, and so he did. And this is the story he wrote.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Wounded healer

2011-12-02T18:29:00.001-05:00

a review of Hugo, a film by Martin Scorcese

Hugo is a rich film with much to commend it to a wide range of audiences. There is enough action and youthful characters with whom the thoughtful younger set can identify, as well as some poignant older characters with whom any adult who has experienced disappointment or loss will be likely to resonate. The primary theme is brokenness and loss, but the film is about triumph through and over these obstacles. That a child is the bringer of healing — it does not go too far to say salvation — is all the more appropriate to this season.

That child is played by young actor Asa Butterfield, whom I’d only just seen in The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas the day before. He is a bit older and much wiser in this film, and I am very happy to say that unlike the sad emptiness and pathos with which I was left at the end of the earlier film, Hugo left me uplifted and bright with hope. All is not lost, it reassures us. It is just important to be sure you have all the pieces, and they must be there somewhere because that is how things are made. Things can break, or be lost or misplaced, but there is hope for repair, renovation, and restoration.

This film of many films within a film is also a love song to cinema, from one of its more daring artists. He has tried many things in the past, but this is Scorcese’s first foray into 3-D, and I’m not entirely sure it was necessary, even though the result is spectacular. I have to confess that while I find 3-D fascinating, I remain unsatisfied as it presents an image that is not really quite as the pair of human eyes sees it, since our brain wants to focus on whatever holds our attention. This leads me to become even more aware of the artifice, rather than suspending any disbelief. But then again, this is a film about artifice, so perhaps that is all to the best.

Ben Kingsley is his usual excellent self as a man slowly pulled from the depths of bitterness and despair into the literal magical light in which he had once reveled. Sacha Baron Cohen makes the most of what could have been a totally two-dimensional figure, and fleshes it out with poignant effect, as another broken man who finds his own completion and restoration. The other supporting players are quite fine, though I would have liked to have seen more of Christopher Lee as the bookseller — I wonder if something was lost in the cutting room, as his story seems a bit of a loose end. Keep an eye out for James Joyce and Salvador Dali in the crowded train station; I spotted the first but have to say I missed the second.

Enjoy this film this season of expectancy and restoration. There is much to delight the eye and lift the spirits here. And we could all use some of that.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Shedding some light

2011-12-01T18:37:00.001-05:00

Further to the previous post...

In what seems a very disingenuous statement, I just noticed (thanks to Rod Gillis for pointing it out in the comments to the report at Thinking Anglicans) the irony in another portion of the Archbishop of Canterbury's Advent musings:

In spite of many assurances, some Anglicans evidently still think that the Covenant changes the structure of our Communion or that it gives some sort of absolute power of ‘excommunication’ to some undemocratic or unrepresentative body. With all respect to those who have raised these concerns, I must repeat that I do not see the Covenant in this light at all. (¶ 7)

Beg pardon, but it is the Archbishop who introduced language of two tracks or two "tiers" for the future of the Communion. Moreover, the invitation not to participate in, or be suspended from, one or more of "the Instruments" is spelled out in the Covenant at 4.2.5. And further unspecified "relational consequences" concerning the actual status of communion between members churches, is also threatened (4.2.7).

If these are not "change to the structure of the Communion" then what are they? It seems to me they are fundamental changes to the only structure we have. Evidently, the Archbishop thinks otherwise, which leads me to wonder what he means by "structure."

But perhaps the light in which he sees the Covenant is the gloomy light of the doomsayers who are convinced that the Covenant is the last best hope for Anglican humanity. My hope is that the Archbishop might come to see the Covenant in a different light. I suggest daylight, at the very least, if not the illumination of the Spirit.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Noises off...

2011-11-30T16:53:00.001-05:00

The Archbishop of Canterbury has issued an Advent Letter to the Primates of the Communion, and in it made some comments about the proposed Anglican Covenant, in which he clarifies that

it outlines a procedure, such as we urgently need, for attempting reconciliation and for indicating the sorts of consequences that might result from a failure to be fully reconciled...It alters no Province’s constitution, as it has no canonical force independent of the life of the Provinces. It does not create some unaccountable and remote new authority but seeks to identify a representative group that might exercise a crucial advisory function.

Once again we are presented with something "urgently" needed, but which ultimately creates nothing new, more, or other than a procedure for giving advice as to how to get along, or face the consequences of not getting along. One of the reasons the Archbishop offers for adopting the Covenant is the supposed greater "coherence" following these advisory processes will bring about, allowing us better to interact with other Christian bodies.

We should bear in mind that our coherence as a Communion is also a significant concern in relation to other Christian bodies – especially at a moment when the renewed dialogues with Roman Catholics and Orthodox have begun with great enthusiasm and a very constructive spirit.

But, of course, this "coherence" will only arise if and when disagreeable provinces of the Communion settle their disagreements — for which the Covenant, once again, provides only advice and the exercise of what amounts to peer pressure to conform — or those who continue to resist this pressure are edged out of being "representative" of Anglicanism towards these other supposedly more "coherent" ecclesial bodies.

The Archbishop also asks a question, and then assumes his question has no takers as he rushes back to square one.

I continue to ask what alternatives there are if we want to agree on ways of limiting damage, managing conflict and facing with honesty the actual effects of greater disunity. In the absence of such alternatives, I must continue to commend the Covenant as strongly as I can to all who are considering its future.

I can, of course, think of any number of "alternatives" to what I continue to see as a deeply flawed and, by its own self-confession, ineffectual effort at conflict management:

Reliance on the Covenant for Communion in Mission from IASCOME
Restoration of the purely consultative function to Lambeth, with a staunch refusal to adopt any resolutions at all, other than those that directly empower mission and ministry
Expansion of ministry and mission cooperation between provinces, focused not on the mechanics of the Communion or disagreements on policies, but on doing the things Jesus actually commanded
Continuing to provide forums for the sharing of views between provinces, as in the Continuing Indaba and Mutual Listening Process which is “a biblically-based and mission-focused project designed to develop and intensify relationships within the Anglican Communion by drawing on cultural models of consensus building for mutual creative action.”

That last one sounds like a particularly good alternative, doesn't it. I could go on, but I think the picture is clear. I note that two of the alternatives listed above are on the Anglican Communion website. It is not as if these things are hidden away or unavailable. Whatever role the proposed Covenant might take in the future of the Anglican Communion, it is by no means the principle player, and could well simply be put in the category of offstage sound effects.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Inhumanity

2011-11-30T11:40:00.001-05:00

a review of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

This film has been around for a few years, but I only had the opportunity to view it last night. It contributed to troubled sleep the rest of the night.

Naturally for any film attempting to address the Holocaust, this work deals with the horrors of that surpassing act of inhumanity. But by placing the primary focus on a child, on two children, this work evokes an emotional level not reached by many other films. For behind these children’s suffering always lies the child’s unanswerable question, Why?

The film naturally addresses the reality of inhumanity, but neatly summarizes how easy it is to dehumanize others and then treat them inhumanely. When young Bruno asks his father about the people on “the Farm” (as he imagines the camp to be), he receives the halting answer, “Those people... well, they really aren't people.” That is it, in a chilling nutshell.

The film is beautifully made, with fine performances and skillful direction. It builds rather like a Mahler symphony to its inevitable and tragic end, and is profoundly moving and disturbing, perhaps most of all because that question is left hanging in the air: Why?

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Uneasy Accommodations

2011-11-28T14:54:00.001-05:00

England is embroiled in a debate over whether any religious premises, of whatever faith or denomination, should be free to celebrate a civil partnership with religious trapping or within its walls.While some would like to see the Church of England do this, the powers that govern that church seem dead set against it. But there also seems to be pressure against allowing even the faith-groups that want to do it, i.e., Quakers, Unitarians, and Liberal Jews, from doing so. This angst seems to derive from a sort of slippery-solipsism; that what is allowed to some today will be required of all tomorrow.

And indeed that sort of clamor after uniformity is a part of the Church of England's problem, particularly under Establishment, and particularly surrounding marriage. There was a time in England when the only legal marriages were those in the C of E (and the early exceptions were made for Quakers and Jews then, too!) And unlike the US, where, for instance, an Episcopal priest is free to refuse to officiate at any marriage he or she chooses, the parochial rights of English folk to be married in church even if they have absolutely no other connection than residence remains a sticking point.

However, the legislation permitting houses of worship to provide religious services or a venue for registering civil partnerships will no more require the Church of England to do so — and the act specifically guarantees the protection — than the General Synod measure permitting women bishops (when it is adopted and effective) will require the Roman Catholic Church in England to do the same. Permission is not requirement.

If (or should I say, when) Parliament passes a law for marriage equality, then the church will have to make a decision. It might then take a cue from Roland Allen, who over a century ago resigned his cure in protest about having to baptize those he felt showed no real commitment to the baptismal promises, and the "sham marriage" tradition in English parishes -- that is, unchurched people exercising a legal right to use the church as decorative backdrop for "doing the baby" or for their nuptials. Surely that is a real problem, isn't it? And one well worth solving over a hundred years after Allen's resignation on principle.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
h/t to Thinking Anglicans

Lies and Consequences

2011-11-26T12:41:00.001-05:00

a review of J.Edgar

Clint Eastwood’s latest film is a biopic in the more or less classic/modern mode, telling the story of the long and tortured life of a short and troubled man, J. Edgar Hoover (Leonardo DiCaprio). Although there are some fine performances, the film doesn’t click at the level of morality tale that one suspects Eastwood was reaching for, and falls short of the grand tragedy it might have been. The most effective elements are the touching interpersonal and domestic tragedies of Hoover’s relationship with Tolson (Armie Hammer), and the insidious relationship Hoover had with his mother — and let me say Dame Judi Dench is riveting as a twisted and twisting mother out of some private Hell.

But the larger tragic theme never quite seems to click: how a man supposedly so devoted to truth and justice could remain so blind not only to the lies he told himself but the lies he told others, and how by setting himself up as private arbiter of justice committed great injustices against the country he loved. The theme almost clicks in the late scenes in which Hoover (perhaps) recognizes in Nixon some of his own foibles and failings, but the connection fails to link with a satisfying chunk of dramatic inevitability.

Perhaps I’m asking too much — but it seems to me that here was a story of possibly Shakespearian proportions, complete with subplots and levels of resonance. Yet the personal and public levels of the story fail to align in this dramaturgical dance, and remain as clumsy as Hoover’s own first efforts at terpsichore.

The film could have been a morality play for our time: when the well-meaning and self-righteous commit crimes in the cause of justice, and promote real falsehood in support of some abstract truth. Perhaps in retrospect the film will be seen in that light, but for the present it fails to make the connections.

There is much to admire in the technical aspects of the film, in terms of decor, costume and sense of period, but the make-up imposed upon Hoover and Tolson in an effort to age the actors has to be the worst I’ve seen in decades. The high-resolution camera is a harsher critic than I will ever be; but it is astounding to me that the make up on the men is so poor (you can practically see the seams) while Naomi Watts’ is so subtle and convincing. (Different make-up artists were involved, and it is easy to see who has the knack and who doesn't) A minor point, to be sure, but a distraction in engaging with the characters, who, to the actors’ credit, do manage to move and engage.

So this remains an actors’ film rather than a director’s. See it for the performances, and perhaps with a goal to find among the remnants some hint of what it might have been.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

R I P Wally Coberg

2011-11-26T09:59:00.000-05:00

The Internet is a funny thing. Particularly given the emergence of social media. I've found myself connecting with folks I've not seen or been in touch with for thirty or forty years. A case in point is Wally Coberg, whom I first met in the early seventies when I was part of The Electric Shakespeare Company performing outdoors in the Baltimore summer at Towson State College. We reconnected via Facebook last summer, and had planned to get together on my next trip to Baltimore, but then early this week I received word from another old colleague, director Paul Berman, that Wally had died. Today his obituary appeared in the good old Baltimre Sun.

The Electric Shakespeare Company performed two plays that summer, with the same company on the same set — which was Wally's design. Both plays were of a post-apocalyptic sort, about the collapse of society: Troilus and Cressida and Lear: A Rock Musical. Yes, you heard that correctly. I played Thersites in the first, which was set in a sort of pre–Mad Max world of motorcycle gangs — the Greeks — and cobbled together sports and military equipment — the Trojans: Priam looked like Alec Guinness in River Kwai. In Lear, I was one-half of the Fool (look, it's complicated: there was a young Fool and an old Fool). In any case, Wally's set was marvelous, especially in the outdoor setting of the natural amphitheater of Towson's "Glen." It resembled a half destroyed relic of the Globe theater, with many levels suitable for Thersites to clamber about on — which made the famous "spy scene" in T&C especially effective as there were literally three levels of action and commentary going on. The photo herewith is a picture which I didn't have, but which Wally sent me last fall, from that production, which I hope gives a tiny glimpse of his wonderful set. That's me on the left and the late Dennis O'Keefe (as Pandarus) on the right, in the closing scene of this dark comedy.

Wally's career had taken off in new directions recently, including work on Edgar Allan Poe, who used to live right around the corner from where I now abide. Small world. And smaller, in many ways, for Wally leaving it, though he did much to enlarge it with his art. God bless him.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Role Model

2011-11-25T10:00:00.001-05:00

Mary, with your human nature
God himself was pleased to dwell.
Every priest should imitate your
Hosting thus Emmanuel.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Thanksgiving and our Role

2011-11-24T13:02:00.001-05:00

While preaching my extempore sermon for Thanksgiving Day, just prior to feeding the hungry in our parish hall, I realized I'd picked the Gospel for Year B insead of Year A (I'm already thinking next Sunday!) Perhaps this was a serendipity, though, for it struck me how well this Gospel about not worrying about what you will eat, drink, or wear fits in with this past Sunday's Gospel of judgment upon those precisely who failed to provide food, drink and clothing to the least among the king's family. God provides most of us with so much. Yet others have nothing. Isn't it then, through us, that "God provides" them with food, drink and clothing?

It is a scandal that today — this very night — people will starve to death while others scrape wasted food from their plates that they are unable to eat for surfeit and satiation.

Lord, have mercy. Even in thanks, remember. And more than remember, act!

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Anglicans Down Under

2011-11-23T10:57:00.001-05:00

One of the joys of the Anglican Communion is being able to share conversation and reflection with folks from literally the other side of the world, either virtually or in person. One of my favorite interlocutors is Jenny Plane Te Paa — seen here with me at the recent conference in South Africa. She and I enjoyed Bible study together, and lively conversation about Communion affairs, and the life of the church in her own New Zealand / Aotearoa. (Photo by Jon Richardson)

Another New Zealander with whom I've had some good conversation is Peter Carrell, although he represents a view very different to mine or Jenny's. I commend a recent long and winding discussion that while it strays off-topic from time to time has, I think, some definite virtues. There are times I would rather I could chat with Peter over a pint than via comment-boxes, and perhaps that may one day happen.

I'm also fond of the writing and postings of Ron Smith, who blogs at KiwiAnglo. And let's not forget Bosco Peters for all things liturgical. All in all, the connections with the Southern Hemisphere are a vibrant part of my own warm feelings towards our Anglican Communion.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Axios!

2011-11-21T16:03:00.001-05:00

On Saturday, the Convention of the Diocese of New York elected the Rev Canon Andrew M L Dietsche as Bishop Coadjutor, by a very large majority on the third ballot. Shortly after the election, members of the Brotherhood of Saint Gregory who were present for the election managed to recruit Alito Orsini of the diocesan staff to snap this picture next to the great pulpit — with its representation of Gregory the Great at the left. In the photo are (l to r) James Mahoney, Tobias Stanislas Haller, Thomas Mark Liotta, Bishop-elect Dietsche, James Teets and Millard Cook.

Andy has been Canon Pastor in the diocese, and has been a support and friend to many of those who serve in the parishes of a complex region. God grant him many years of service in his new capacity.

Sideways

2011-11-18T17:58:00.000-05:00

Contrary to Graham Kings' repeated assertion (scroll down to the first long comment here, the Proposed Anglican Communion Covenant is not "the only way forward." It is one of many ways sideways.

The Proposed Anglican Covenant (Part 4) attempts to manage disagreements by assigning a supervisory task to the Standing Committee of the Communion, and the power to make recommendations not terribly unlike what can now be done without a recommendation, but simply by each province on its own to refuse to have to do with innovations elsewhere that it doesn't like.

Surely this is not the only way to manage disagreements, nor even the best. The simplest way, Gamaliel's laissez faire and provinces ignoring what they don't like in other provinces (as they are free to do, and have done) seems much more likely both to keep some relative peace and lead to eventual reform or reception.

There is no need to manage disagreement. People can be quite disagreeable on their own.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Anglican Disunion: The Issues Behind “the Issue”

2011-11-15T09:50:00.000-05:00

A talk to the Albany Via Media Annual Meeting
St George’s Church, Schenectady, November 12, 2011
Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Introduction

I’m delighted to be here, and the first thing I want to do is bring you greetings from “your sister who is in Pittsburgh” — the Progressive Episcopalians of Pittsburgh, that is. Lionel Deimel asked me to bring that greeting, and I’m very happy to do so. You are not alone in this great church of ours, in being in a minority in a situation where patience and endurance, just as in the opening chapters of Revelation, is called for.

My plan is to speak somewhat formally at first and then break into a more informal discussion. My theme is Anglican Disunion: the Issues behind “the Issue.”

And I want to begin, as an historian, to ask, Was there ever union? What do we mean by unity as opposed to uniformity? I do believe we have a very deep union in the church, and I’ll be getting to that in my talk. But there is clearly a good deal of disunion on the surface of Anglicanism.

So let me start by asking, What is this thing called “Anglicanism”? Is there such a thing as “the Anglican Church”? What do we have in common with the other parts of the Anglican Communion? The old joke was, “The BCP and Wippell’s.” But there is no more common Book of “Common” Prayer throughout the communion, and Almy’s competes with Wippell’s...

We have the bonds of affection — but just how affectionate have they been in recent years?

So what do we have in common besides our genetic heritage as descendants of the Church of England (and let’s not forget our godmother, the Scottish Episcopal Church), with other siblings and our own offspring around the world? (While we’re not forgetting, let’s not forget that it was The Episcopal Church that is responsible for founding most of the Anglican provinces in Central and South America and much of the Pacific, and even Liberia in Africa). A number of these are now independent Provinces of the Anglican Communion, such as the Philippines, Brazil, and Mexico; but others are still part of TEC — Haiti still being part of our own Province II!

Let me first say a word or two about where I don’t think we find our identity. And that, ironically, is in the very “Instruments of Communion” which the Proposed Anglican Covenant appears to wish to install at the center of our ecclesiastical life.

The Windsor Report called them “instruments of unity,” which is not a little blasphemous since our unity is in Christ. But those instruments don’t in any case seem to have had the effect of improving unity. The four are the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lambeth Conference, the Anglican Consultative Council, and the Primates’ Meeting. These are all relatively recent entities not only in Christianity but even among Anglicans.

Obviously the Archbishop of Canterbury has been around since the late sixth century, But the office only began to function as anything like a voice in a “communion” with the beginnings of that “communion” when the Episcopal Church became an independent entity in 1785-89. Canterbury’s role at the time was to offer an unenthusiastic critique of movements in the formation of the American church (and I don’t mean just tinkering with liturgy but dropping two out of three Creeds and editing the third)— and the suggestions Canterbury made were not entirely accepted. (The Athanasian Creed didn’t make it back into our BCP until 1979!) Nonetheless, Canterbury, York, and Bath and Wells obtained the guarded permission of Parliament to extend the episcopate to us former rebels, only on the condition that neither the first bishops they ordained (White and Provoost), nor anyone they ordained (nor anyone ordained by anyone ordained by them) would ever minister within His Majesty’s dominions. So much for Canterbury being “in communion” with the nascent Episcopal Church. As Bishop Pierre Whalon points out in an excellent article in the ATR, for the first 80 years of TEC’s life, we were treated with benign neglect by Canterbury.

It was not until 1867 that the first Lambeth Conference was called, largely to deal with problems in the by then much more widely dispersed collection of provinces in the Anglican family. It was a full century after that, in 1968, that the Anglican Consultative Council, a representative body including for the first time laity and clergy as well as bishops, was created. Ten years later, in 1978, the Primates of the Communion gathered for the first time as a separate body.

Obviously these entities can hardly be held to be either “foundational” or “essential” or “definitional” of what it means to be the Anglican Communion, which appears to have gotten on well enough without them for much of its life. Yet since the Windsor Report they have loomed rather larger in the picture. And the pressure towards a single unified body has taken form in the Proposed Anglican Covenant.

I don’t want to get bogged down in the Covenant discussion — though I’d be happy to make it part of our open discussion. What I’d rather do is attempt to focus on some of the things that I do underlie what unites the Anglican Communion and our identity as Anglicans.

I’m sure you are familiar with the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral: the statement of four doctrinal and ecclesiological principles that chart out the boundaries for dialogue between churches wishing to join in closer common purpose and mission. The Quadrilateral thus describes the essentials, from an Anglican perspective, for church union or reunion.

I would like to suggest that alongside the familiar Quadrilateral we consider another structure that for want of a better term I’ve called the Anglican Triad (with apologies to those who use this term for what is often known, incorrectly, as “Hooker’s Three-Legged Stool.”) This Triad consists of three elements which I think are particularly characteristic of Anglicanism — not necessarily unique to it, but together constituting a unity which I fear is at present very much under assault.

For shorthand I will call these three elements Humility, Provinciality, and Variety. They stand in the via media between Humiliation, Provincialism, and Chaos at one extreme, and Pride, Centralism and Uniformity at the other. All three are well attested in foundational documents of the “Anglican Way.” (The Articles of Religion, the Prefaces to the English and American Books of Common Prayer) and in the work of those who first focused the Anglican vision, such as Richard Hooker. I’ll limit my citations to the Articles of Religion. (They are in the BCP, and I’ve always thought it good of the church to provide us with something to peruse during a boring sermon, if only to remind us that there are things more boring than sermons!)

1. Humility

“The church... hath erred.”(19, 21)

The admission that the church makes mistakes is profoundly revealing of the nature of the church we understand ourselves to be part of. It reflects the Pauline judgment that “our knowledge is partial” — that we “see as in a glass, darkly”; and it asserts an attitude of faith and hope — and one hopes, love — rather than of certainty and judgment. This admission of uncertainty renders all but the most fundamental dogmatic matters to some extent provisional. Understood in this way, Humility is not a weakness, but a strength. It stands midway between abject humiliation and overweening pride.

This acknowledgment that the church makes mistakes is followed by a corollary: mistakes can (and should) be corrected. The church is not trapped within an immutable legal structure such as that attributed to the Medes and Persians. This is why Anglicanism can embrace and advance the development of doctrine and moral theology. We are not stuck, because we can admit that we’ve gotten it wrong, and move on. This does not mean that every development will necessarily be correct — as the principle notes, the church makes mistakes, even as it changes. But the ability to admit to mistakes is the first step in correcting them. (Those familiar with 12-Step programs will at this point I hope recognize a resonance with the Serenity Prayer.) It is very easy for the church to become addicted to the need to control, the need to have a final answer, especially to control others through the claim of unassailable infallibility of judgment — to which Humility is a counterpoise and corrective.)

Humility stands as a meek (which does not mean “weak”) witness against domination by so-called consensus. As the Articles (21) testify, since individual human beings may err, there is no guarantee that an assembly of such errant beings will not also err. Humility points out that even an overwhelming consensus can be quite profoundly mistaken — Galileo can testify to that! So consensus in itself cannot form a term in an argument when a given proposition is being reexamined: to suggest that something must be true either because “we’ve always believed this to be true” or because“everyone says so” is simply a form of logical fallacy — for the truth of a proposition is established neither by being long held or popular: the church can err.

Consensus, after all, means a “common mind with little or no opposition” — so the moment opposition — a new questioning, a new challenge — appears, consensus ceases to exist, and the new proposal must be examined on its own merits against the possible errancy of the formerly unchallenged position. (This is, by the way, why Hooker rejected tradition as an authority in and of itself. He was wise to know that many errors have long lives.)

Anglicanism thus humbly rejects concepts of inerrancy and infallibility; for itself as well as for others. Even the Scripture is not held to either such standard, but is “sufficient” for the end for which it was intended: salvation (6). Human understanding, even of the Scripture, is likely to be fallible as well. And so our human understanding of the sacred texts is subject to a constant review, constant reexamination, as the church bears its responsibility as the “keeper of Holy Writ.”(19)

Humility also stands as a warning against the tendency to adopt unanimous statements for the purpose of apparent unity, in spite of real disagreement with one or more parts of the adopted document. This sort of curate’s-eggery produces the appearance of agreement that cloaks with a light whitewash the underlying division. Better humbly to acknowledge the division of opinion, as the collect for the feast of Richard Hooker puts it, seeking “comprehension for the sake of truth” rather than “compromise for the sake of peace.” For as solutions such as Lambeth 1998.1.10 and the Primates’ Communiqué from Dromantine showed us, such peace will be no peace, as different people then go off with their own interpretations of what was said or meant, but which in theory all agreed to. It may well be that the current Proposed Anglican Covenant is simply the latest in half-baked or watered-down solutions on offer — solutions for problems that don’t exist.

2. Provinciality

“The Bishop of Rome hath no jurisdiction in this Realm of England.” (37)

Few things could be clearer than that the Church of England reasserted its ecclesiastical independence from Rome at the Reformation. It thought itself free and competent to do this, and believed it was returning to an ancient principle that had been more successfully preserved among the Eastern churches than it had in the West: the basic unit of the church is the national church or province.

It is sometimes said — it may be said in Albany; I don’t know... You will have to tell me! — that the diocese is the basic unit of the church. However, a diocese cannot be self-sustaining in terms of the essential thing that makes it a diocese, the requisite episcopate; it requires the participation of at least two bishops from other dioceses in order to continue to be a diocese with a bishop, in order to maintain its existence even at the basic level of ordination. In TEC polity even more is required: no diocese can obtain a bishop without the express approval of the majority of those already diocesan bishops, and of the lay and clergy leadership of a majority of all of the other dioceses, either acting through their standing committees or at General Convention. Can you imagine the outcry in our civil government if it were to be required that the governors and legislatures of a majority of all of the other states had to approve the election of a governor in any given state? So much for the claims that the polity of The Episcopal Church resembles Federal polity of the United States! No, the diocese is not the basic unit of the church. It is an organ in the body of the province, and cannot subsist on its own; it depends upon the province for its continued existence as a diocese.)

Some have lately taken to claiming that the idea of a “national church” is somehow novel. However, this understanding of the structure of church governance goes back to the earliest days of Christendom: to whom, after all, were those letters written in the opening chapters of Revelation: to Ephesus, Sardis, and Philadelphia and so on. True, these were city-states, rather than nations in our modern sense — but in the post-Apostolic era it was into national churches that they evolved, and so remained in the East, while in the West things took a different course, as the church fell under a too close alliance with the faded glory that was Rome. Even at that, the myth of Roman supremacy was largely that — a myth — and even in Italy the church of Milan maintained much independence for many years, to say nothing of the churches in Northern Europe and England, where the debates over who was in charge had raged for centuries prior to the tempests raised by Henry VIII’s dynastic dilemma.

In any case, from the days of the declaration of English liberation from the Roman yoke, Anglicanism became marked by this characteristic notion of national churchdom. On our shores this understanding was so well ingrained in our collective psyches that, as the preface to the 1789 Book of Common Prayer puts it “When… these American states became independent with respect to civil government, their ecclesiastical independence was necessarily included.” This attitude carried over to the time of the Civil War, when the leaders in the South felt that they had to form the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Confederate States of America, while in the North those who supported the Union had to pretend that no such thing had happened, and kept calling the role and listing the bishops and deputies merely as absent from sessions of General Convention. And at the end of the war, everything was neatly folded back, and everyone acted as if nothing had happened. The one bishop elected in the Confederate States was simply welcomed into the House of Bishops, no questions asked.

So much for the historical background to this concept of a national church. In practice, Anglican Provinciality is expressed through the concept of provincial autonomy. A significant element of our state of “disunion” is brought about because of this. We are now a very large collection of autonomous provinces, with independent churches now part of nations with very different histories, and very different cultures — as I’ll get to in our informal discussion. The world, and the communion, is very different to what it was in the mid-19th century, when every face at Lambeth was white. The world and the communion have fundamentally changed, and all of those cultural differences that were subsumed by colonial or missionary dioceses, are now finding their voice in independent churches — and this comes to a head when the bishops gather at Lambeth or any other setting. They bring their nationhood with them.

Now, autonomy has gotten a bad name in some circles recently. Autonomy should be understood not in terms of not wanting to have anything to do with anyone else, but rather in terms of the rights, powers and responsibilities exercised within and for a national church in terms of its ability to govern itself. It relates to the concept of subsidiarity: things should be done at a higher or more central level only when they cannot be accomplished more locally. Thus priests are ordained by the diocese for the parish; bishops by the province for the diocese; all governed at a national level by canons which leave a good deal in the particulars to the local structures.

Above all, autonomy, properly understood and exercised, is not the enemy of fellowship. It is, I believe, its precondition: for only the mature and independent can choose voluntarily to enter into truly adult relationships of interdependence and truly mutual submission. You have to be truly confident in yourself in order to have a deep relationship with other selves. You need a clear sense of who you are if you are to give yourself to someone else. Otherwise we get into dependence or codependency, or at its worst, tyranny or lordship of one over another, or many over a few.

Provincial autonomy is tempered by Humility, in that while each province asserts that it is fully the church, yet it does not assert itself as the only church. Rather than a “Branch” theory, this represents a more holographic understanding of the nature of the church’s fullness: the church is complete within each province, as Christ is fully present in every Eucharistic celebration, and in each fragment of the broken Bread — and yet there are not many Christs, but one. The external divisions between Christian churches insofar as they may lead to mutual non-recognition, constitute a scandal in that they impede the mission and work of Christ, and a failure to recognize that we do indeed share one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism; but it is not necessary that there be single world-church institutional structure take the place of a fellowship of independent and self-governing provinces. Instead of a human-instituted system of authoritative government, the provinces are called to a work of service and mission, together, in the recognition that the church is already “One” through its faithful response to the dominical command to baptize all nations. It is to be hoped that Christians may one day recognize this baptismal unity, and remove the various obstacles they have set in place that prevent our sharing in the one Bread at one Table. This unity in the two dominical Sacraments forms an essential element of the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral. If we could find unity in those, any institutional church structure would be for the purpose of mission, not identity.

Humility and Provinciality taken together reveal the process by which development in doctrine is both possible and limited within the Anglican Communion. This is both a possibility for change and a safeguard against error. Cardinal Newman came to believe that development of doctrine could only take place under the watchful eye of the Bishop of Rome. Anglicanism broadens the scope for the source of innovation and correction to the whole communion, the various national churches themselves being the determiners of what and how things are to change or remain the same: each determining for itself those matters that concern it. If I can offer an analogy: the RC Magisterium is like a boarding house where you eat what is set before you or go hungry; any change in the menu is purely up to the kitchen. The Anglican approach is more like a restaurant with a finite but various menu from which to choose; and the fact that I like mushrooms and you like asparagus should not keep us from eating at the same table.

An even better analogy might be to say that Anglicanism is like the parish pot luck supper in which each brings a dish in which all can share — but I can politely avoid the Jell-O mold you brought while you can forego my oxtail stew. Yet all are fed in one fellowship.

Provinciality means that changes and developments may be made within a province and need have no effect upon the governance of any other province. One example of this was the decision of the Episcopal Church to move forward with the ordination of women to the episcopate. No other province was forced to recognize or approve this decision, and it had no impact on the governance, rights, privileges, or responsibilities of any other province. As time passed, other provinces chose to adopt — or not adopt — this innovation: this is the process of reception, and it is not complete even now: there is at present no Anglican consensus on the rightness (or the wrongness) of the ordination of women to the episcopate. In the meantime any difficulties that may arise — such as the inability to license a visiting woman bishop to function as such in a province that does not [yet] ordain women to the episcopate (such as England), or to license or transfer clergy ordained by a woman bishop — are readily dealt with by the canonical provisions already in place within each of the provinces; it is a matter of record keeping that need engender any ill will or severance of communion, even if in the particular case it may mean our Presiding Bishop not being allowed to wear a miter in one or another church.

The principle, What touches all shall be decided by all, comes to play under the rubric of Provinciality. The Windsor report misapplies this concept, so I want to say a word on it. “Touches” does not mean, “having an opinion about” or “creating a situation which might lead to difficulties with a third party.” “Touches” means having a direct effect upon ones rights and privileges. The legal principle, Quod omens tanget, as the 16th century political philosopher Johannes Althusius clarified in early modern terms, is about rights, privileges and authorities of each province that can only be restricted by each province’s individual consent to the restriction. Thus, Lambeth 1998.1.10.e would have overstepped its bounds if it were anything more than the advisory recommendation that it is — a fact we tend to forget, since people treat it as if it were a rule laid down — since it would place a restriction on the right of provinces to ordain and bless whom they choose — and these are rights pertaining to each province that must be explicitly foregone by each, and which cannot be taken away even by all of the other provinces combined. All, save even one, is not all, and what touches all must be decided by all.

Provinciality thus provides a balance and a means to implement development in conjunction with Humility: it allows innovations to be tested locally before anyone else considers implementing them in their own locale; and there is no provision for them being globally mandated until all agree — at which point, of course, no mandate is needed as agreement has been arrived at by an organic process of reception. This is, of course, how the church has generally functioned through the ages. One could note, for example, that the adoption of vernacular liturgy by various national churches at the Reformation finally after several centuries had impact upon the very Roman Catholic Church that so bitterly opposed the development.

Going further back in history, the emergence of the Gentile church began in isolated communities, and it took some while — even after the conference of the Apostles in Jerusalem — for the church more widely to accept this innovation that non-Jews could be saved through Baptism. “What about circumcision? Scripture says you have to be circumcised!” There were some who held to that, until they became a tiny minority that faded away, as the church moved on.

After the collapse of an old consensus due to the action of the church in one place or a few places, a significant period of reception will be necessary before a new consensus is established. Ultimately, this movement from particular to universal is reflective of the Incarnation itself. Jesus was born in a particular place, at a particular time — he entered into human history in one spot, and yet that birth echoes to the edge of the cosmos and has filled the whole world. Things happen someplace before they can happen in every place.

3. Variety

“Every particular or national Church hath authority to ordain, change, and abolish Ceremonies or Rites of the Church ordained only by man’s authority.”
(36)

This is where we confront the issue of disunity most directly. It must be admitted that Anglicanism has always experienced tension between uniformity and variety. However, as another example of the importance of Provinciality, this citation from the Articles demonstrates (and a reading of the Preface to the 1549 BCP will support) that the concern is for uniformity within a national church, and permits variety between or among them. Everyone in a church is to use its BCP, but the BCP in America — extensively modified when we became an independent church, even to the extent of modifying the Creed (and those of you old enough to remember the 1928 BCP will recall that little rubric that allows different wording for “he descended into hell” — that was one of the bones of contention with Canterbury back in the 1780s.)

It has also to be acknowledged that among the “issues” currently causing distress in the communion there loom two that concern rites and ceremonies: in particular ordination and marriage, neither of which, as the Articles say, “have any visible sign or ceremony ordained of God” (25), and so appear to fall within the rubric of permitted change. (This is an edgy argument, but I stand by it.) It will quickly be pointed out, however, that the limit on Variety in this regard is set by “God’s Word written”(20, 36).Some contend that the present innovations have crossed that boundary.

The question though is, Who is to make that determination if not the national church? If the rites and ceremonies in question concern only a given province and its governance — for under Provinciality, any other province is free to reject or refuse these rites and ceremonies, in principle or in the persons of those who take part in them — as indeed they do — then as with all such matters the error is limited to the province which has erred in the opinion of the others. No one else need by “touched” by these errors. Are rites and ceremonies — even if errant — matters over which to break communion — as a number of provinces have done, not just with the individuals immediately representing the innovations, but with any who even approve of them? It was no big surprise, after all, that Gene Robinson was not invited to Lambeth. But need the churches divide over this issue? If he is the problem, don’t invite him to the party. He understands; he is a grown-up who knows he is a controversial figure, and he won’t crash the party and grab a seat. In fact, he knows he scores more points being outside!)

Are these matters over which to shun Christ’s table, as some have done, when the Primates gathered and some would not share with Frank Griswold because of what he represented for having ordained Gene Robinson? How many degrees of separation do you have to have from the “error” in order to be “clean.” I believe these are not things to be divided about — not here, not at this Table. I hope that there is yet time for those who have walked apart from Christ’s open embrace and invitation to “take and eat” with their fellow Christians, to reconsider their breach of communion.

Ironically, even the Windsor Report — which has given rise to so much talk of “restraint” — suggests this very openness to Variety, to variation. It did this in part by bidding a moratorium on the ordination of bishops who live in same-sex unions until a greater consensus on the appropriateness of such a manner of life can be reached, and also in part by asking for further exploration of how this might be consistent with the traditional understanding of bishops as moral exemplars to the flock of Christ.

This leaves the door open for such developments — it did not say, “no how, no way, you’re wrong, go away” — it said, “could you please hold off on this while we discuss it further.” That leaves the door open for development; after all, a moratorium is by its own standards a temporary restraint rather than an outright prohibition — Windsor thus reveals that this is not a matter of fixed and immutable doctrine. One could scarcely imagine the church issuing a document calling for further study of the Incarnation while we waited to see how things come out, for example. Windsor therefore revealed that the “issues” of same-sex blessings and the ordination of bishops in such relationships, while in its view inadvisable, is not a matter of final doctrine: the old consensus is no more, even if a new one has not yet emerged. (143)

The difficulty with the moratoria is that they require a de facto acceptance of an “as if” — as if a consensus actually exists, but which in fact no longer exists, and submission to an authority that has yet to establish either its legitimacy or its trustworthiness.

For instance, the Windsor Report stated (127) that the “Communion has made its collective position clear” when actually only Lambeth and the Primates and the bishops of a number of Provinces had spoken. The “communion” had not made its position clear, because the “communion” has no means to do so. This set up an illegitimate and arrogant (in the strictest sense of the word) assertion. It is, after all, one thing for a club to enforce rules that all its members have actually agreed to; but it is quite another for gatherings of bishops meeting in bodies which specifically and historically state they have no power to legislate on matters of doctrine suddenly to begin to do exactly that, calling for obedience to a constitution that does not now and never has existed. This is not consensus.

When we more closely review the history of Lambeth’s positions on sexual morality, a clear pattern emerges. Three such issues have come before Lambeth over the years (marriage after divorce, birth-control, and polygamy), and on all three Lambeth first upheld but later reversed or radically amended its recommendations as the consensus changed. I invite you sometime to look up the 1908 Lambeth resolution on birth control, and the report prepared by the committee studying it, to see how adamantly opposed the bishops were to any suggestion that this practice of what the report called “preventative abortion” should be permitted. This position was modified in 1930 and by 1950 Lambeth not only said the pope was wrong but that birth control was good and should be used in some circumstances.

So for the present, one might ask, is this Lambeth walk really necessary? Do we trust that the bus-driver knows where we are going? Who hired this bus-driver? Is there even a bus? Isn’t it rather pointless and divisive to continue to draw line after line in the sand that time and tide will only wash away? Why not just allow the organic process to work rather than freezing a moment in time that incarnates the very things that divide us, that perpetuates our disagreements as permanently disagreeable?

Ultimately the burden of proof (as the Articles of Religion require) lies upon those who wish to make strict adherence to this one aspect of traditional sexual morality a matter of salvation. Although they may have at least one strand of the tradition on their side, those same Articles point out, as I noted, that tradition is often in error. At the same time, contemporary biblical scholarship is clearly tending towards limiting the scope of the negative judgments on same-sex acts to the same range of relationships and circumstances as mixed-sex acts: infidelity, abuse, rape and idolatry. The “reasserters”(as they call themselves) deny this. But they must do more than simply reassert, they have to address the arguments, and to date they have been unable to make their case— and it is the responsibility of the “prosecution” to do so. The “defense” need only demonstrate a reasonable doubt and show, as Windsor put it, that “...what is now proposed not only accords with but actually enhances the central core of the Church’s faith.” (WR 60) As I have argued in my own work on the subject, fidelity is a moral value, gender is not.

When it comes to offering an explanation in defense of this manner of life, since there are an unknown but real number of Anglican bishops living in same-sex relationships (all but less than a handful of them surreptitiously), and they are all serving (or retired from having served) as exemplars to the flock of Christ, isn’t that sufficient evidence of the rightness of their lives and a better proof than further merely theological debate on an issue which seems to have precious little theology to back it up? Do not the gifts of the Spirit count for anything? Do not actions speak louder than words? They were enough to convince Peter, and through him the church, that Gentiles were worthy of salvation.

And when John’s disciples sent to know if Christ was the expected One, he did not offer them a reasoned point-by-point from scripture, but rather he offered them himself and his acts — the acts of liberation from blindness, brokenness, and death. He ended with those telling words, “Blessed are those who take no offense in me!” (Luke 7:19-23)

I have, as you know from my bio, done a good bit of study on the subject of same-sexuality (the “issue” behind the issues, and over and under and beside the issues) — in particular as it relates to ordination and marriage — and how it can be addressed within a biblical, reasonable, and traditional framework; that it need not be seen as an unscriptural and unbearable innovation.

But matters are proceeding apace. The world is changing. The Global South objected to the consecration of a gay bishop with a partner, but Gene Robinson is no longer alone in that category even in the US House of Bishops (If he ever really was...). They objected to the idea of bestowing a blessing on a same-sex couple, and yet now in many states of this Union, including our own, the church is not only bestowing its blessing, but either seriously considering or already solemnizing the civil status of marriage.

In short, the process of organic development is afoot, it is not going to stop, and reception is or isn’t happening as I speak. In the meantime, the mainstream via media of the Episcopal Church is steadily reasserting our understanding of our authority to vary— to live out the variety of rites in our own context, which is very different from that in much of the Global South. As I learned intimately and personally at the conversation I attended in South Africa just a few weeks ago. The people in those places represented at that conference are free to maintain their various rules and traditions, suitable as they are for their contexts. I will say more in the open discussion about the extent to which the friction between the North and South has been exacerbated by misunderstanding and misinformation. But it is my sincere hope that corrections to those misunderstandings, and better information, through the mandated listening process and the Continuing Indaba — in both of which I have been involved — will assist to lessen the friction and perhaps even help calm the storms that have swept through our beloved Anglican Communion — not just the issue, but the issues behind the issues of Anglican disunion.

Some of this talk is based on an earlier blog post “The Anglican Triad.” I consider this the more informative and complete exposition.

Et in Albania Ego

2011-11-09T14:24:00.001-05:00

I will be in the Diocese of Albany this weekend, speaking at the Annual Meeting of Albany Via Media on Saturday afternoon and celebrating the eucharist and preaching on Sunday (9 and 11:15 am): all events to take place at the historic St. George’s Church, Schenectady.

The talk will be about “Anglican Disunion” — which is to say, about the realities of Anglicanism, and how to live with them! I hope friends in the area of upstate NY might make it to one or more of the events.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Elegy for a Past that Never Was

2011-11-09T11:23:00.001-05:00

a short review of Never Let Me Go, a film based on a novel by Kazuo Ishiguro

I came across this little film last night while scrolling through the offerings on HBO and thought it sounded interesting. It was more than that — it was riveting and disturbing and moving. Some have apparently found the formal element of its being “alternative reality” — or science fiction set not in the future but the past — confusing, but it added to its haunting quality. It would make an interesting double feature with the more spectacular Children of Men.

Some have wondered how people could treat other people in the manner they are treated in this film, but I think the evidence from the not so distant past is overwhelming, and the evidence from the somewhat more distant past (say the antebellum era in the American South) conclusive. People can and do treat other people as if they were not people. Q.E.D.

However, it would be a mistake simply to see it as a story about medical ethics or even the larger issue of how society “commodifies” everything. Rather, the situation and the story provide a matrix for a meditation on impermanence and what the poets call “intimations of mortality.” The title, ironically, says it all: ultimately letting go is part of the human condition. As the film's last line observes, using its own peculiar jargon, "We all complete."

This is a relatively “quiet” film — its emotional impact is cumulative rather than sharply punctuated. Like the author’s earlier Remains of the Day this film dwells in the subtle, muted world of restrained emotions and conformity to values and structures that seem irrational and oppressive, and yet which people seem willingly to embrace. And that is its terror.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

ps An interview with the author on some of the themes in his work. Thanks to Paul Halsall for the link.

The Wedding Banquet

2011-11-07T11:45:00.000-05:00

Saint James Fordham • All Saints Sunday 2011
a sermon by Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
The angel said to me, Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.

There is an old tradition that on the night before a marriage, the future bride and groom are separately wined and dined by their friends at bachelor or bachelorette parties — with perhaps more emphasis on the wining than the dining! Well, All Saints Day is the day on which the church celebrates the marriage supper of the Lamb. And since the marriage supper is yet to begin — we’ve received the invitation but it isn’t dated; we’ve just been told to be ready and alert — in one sense the church’s whole vigil here on earth is like a long bachelor or bachelorette party as we anticipate the great day to come. We who have yet to cross over to the life of the world to come, we in what is called the Church Militant (as opposed to the Church Triumphant), we who feebly struggle while they in glory shine, we, Christ’s body still at work, remember and give thanks for those who rest from their labors.

+ + +

Now one of the things about the parties surrounding weddings, is that the guests usually bring gifts for the new bride and groom. But what can we possibly bring as a gift for someone who has everything already! For the wedding we are talking about is the wedding of Christ and the Church, the wedding supper of the Lamb! And if anyone ever deserved the title The Man Who Has Everything, it is Jesus Christ, the one who draws the whole world to himself.

The answer is that Jesus wants one other gift, one thing we possess but which we can hold back if we will, or choose to let go of and give to him. And that is ourselves. We can choose to keep to ourselves, or we can choose to give ourselves to the one who gave us everything; we can give our selves, our souls and bodies, as a reasonable and holy sacrifice.

The Saints in glory, both the big famous saints with churches named after them, whose likenesses are enshrined in stained glass and icons, (or on the wall outside the parish office!), and the less well-known saints with likenesses preserved on our own little remembrance board there under the altar, the saints are those who gave themselves to God. And their example can help us to be as generous with ourselves as they were with themselves. The wonderful thing about the communion of saints — and I mean all of the saints, living and dead, including us here as much as the saints in glory — the wonderful thing about the communion of saints is that we help each other become gifts to God. We bear each other up when we are tempted to slide back and away from our best efforts to serve our Lord.

Ultimately all of us come to the wedding banquet carrying some of our brothers and sisters and being carried by others of them. No one gets in empty-handed! We are called and invited to the wedding, and we are to come bearing love for one another, which ofttimes means literally bearing each other up. The only wedding invitation we will have to show at the door to heaven is each other. No one gets in unaccompanied.

Remember the stern question that God asked the first murderer, and his cavalier response: Where is your brother? and Am I my brother’s keeper? Think of the sadness that pierced the heart of God when he heard those words in answer to the question, and left unsaid the response, “Of course you are." We are responsible to and for each other, connected through the bond of our common humanity. That bond is stronger than mere nationality or culture, and is fundamental and basic to our very being as human beings.

The weight of each other, as we bear each other and each other’s burden — as indeed Christ bears us — is the gentle and easy yoke of Christ. All of us are brothers and sisters in him, because it is through him that we become children of God.

What form that family will take, what we will become when we arrive, remains to be seen — it is not yet revealed. All of the blessedness that Jesus describes in the beatitudes is sometimes only perceived in that retrospective glance. In the present, most of those things are not pleasant while they are being endured! The road of sainthood is hard, no doubt about it. Being persecuted for righteousness sake is no bed of roses. It is only once we have arrived at the goal of the heavenly call — only when we look back to see our lives laid out in testimony, that we will see what a journey we have taken.

And more importantly, who has been with us and bearing us up along the way. What unknown hands lift burdens from our backs? What unknown saints walk at our sides and help us over obstacles of which we may not even be aware? Only when we’ve reached the goal will we be able to look back and see.

And what we will see will be worthy of the vision of Saint John the Divine. All the church through time and space, all the prophets and apostles and martyrs, all the saints in their festal company, and all the holy people of God will be displayed as a huge inverted wedge of souls and saints carrying and being carried by one another, an inverted pyramid that focuses its sharp, heavy point on a man nailed to a cross outside the walls of Jerusalem — who bears it all, with arms outstretched.

Though that weight pushed him down to the very depths when he descended to the dead, yet the power of God working in him raised him up again, and the power of God working through him can and will push that whole great pyramid of charity right on up and out of time and space and into eternity. And the first shall be last: the first fruits of the resurrection, Jesus the Bridegroom, is behind us urging us on, bearing us forward, ushering us into the banqueting hall.

+ + +

God is full of surprises. We thought we were coming to the wedding banquet as servants, then found we were no longer servants, but friends. Then we were surprised to find that the bridegroom would act as usher. But a far greater surprise awaits us. We had just settled into the notion that we were to be guests at the banquet, friends of the bridegroom. But it turns out that we are much more even than wedding guests. All this blessed company — ironically blessed in poverty, meekness, thirst for righteousness, hunger for mercy and peace, and even under persecution — all this company of blessedness will gather at the banquet, as more than guests: we are the Bride herself.

We, in company with all those who have gone before, the apostles, prophets, and martyrs, all the holy people of God, the blessed company of all faithful people, the saints militant and triumphant are the Bride!

This is the mystery we celebrate today. We and all our beloved ones, together with the unnumbered saints who have gone before us, participate in God’s great saving act in Jesus Christ our Lord. We as the Church in the communion of saints are eternally united to him by his gracious gift of himself once offered for us all — for what God has joined together shall never be put asunder. And so, to our Lord and God — and loving Spouse — let us with grateful hearts ascribe all might, majesty, power and dominion, henceforth and forevermore.+

With You Anon.

2011-11-04T17:16:00.000-05:00

I saw Anonymous on my day off, in an almost empty but palatial new movie theater in Yonkers.

Let me say from the start I am no fan of the “WS didn’t write the plays” theories. My major objection is to the Main Premise, with which the film starts off in its Prologue (and with which it doesn’t advance much further): the poorly educated son of a middle-class suburban glove-maker could not have had the mental or experiential bounty to bring forth the richness of these plays and poems. This accusation, reeking as it does of Good Old English Classism, reminds me of the thesis that the Egyptians couldn’t have built the pyramids because such backward people were incapable of doing so; it must have been aliens.

I utterly reject this premise because I was, in my former career, an actor. Actors with whom I have worked are among the most well-rounded and culturally well-informed people I know, as are not a few of the directors and playwrights. The upper-class English twits I’ve encountered over the years couldn’t hold a literary candle to some of my actor friends. I’ve sat backstage in dressing rooms with actors wiling away their off-stage moments doing the London Times crossword, or working on a monumental thesis on Finnegans Wake. In my undergraduate school, actors were treated to a superb course on “Theater in the Humanities” where faculty from across the college were brought in to lecture on the history, culture, science, literature, art and religion of the various eras in which plays were written and set — producing an enviably well-rounded liberal arts education that would put the specialists in other of those fields to shame. So don’t get me started on the impossibilist assertion in re WS’s capacity for brilliance. Oxford himself gives the verdict, of course, when he tells Jonson, “People like me don’t write plays.” Aristocrats are often the most boring and ill-informed people.

What about the film as film? Well, the underpinning “theory” and the attendant revisionist history aside, it was diverting and beautifully produced. Someone got the “secretary’s hand” down pat, and the costumes and CGI scenery were impressive. The use of the theatrical Prologue in the manner of Larry O’s Henry V was clever. The snippets of the Bard’s own words are inspiring and rather well spoken (Henry more than Hamlet, but I digress...). Vanessa Redgrave is as quirky and brilliant as ever, and there are other creditable performances.

But it is in how the film failed to make use of the ample possibilities of WS’s architectonic genius that it was most profoundly disappointing. One of the things WS was so brilliant at was the layering of multiple stories in parallel and counterpoint. Here we had two stories, both reflecting the issue of anonymity, running side by side: the authorship of the plays, and the “authorship” of the progeny of ER I. Yet this rich material just sits there, never truly woven together in the delightful way that WS could do, so that the great “A ha!” moment of revelation is more of a “Huh? Oh...” The things that ought to have clicked into place didn’t. There is little or no humor in the film, none of that brilliant interplay of “conceptual rhyme and rhythm” that carries you through scene upon scene. The time-shifting was not well handled (again, providing the audience with too few of the kinds of visual and verbal cues that would enable them immediately to know when was when and what, what — the very thing the Prologue of Henry V knows must take place in the viewers’ minds — and of course this lack is fatal to the story as the author intended it to be understood.

In short, it goes to show that not everyone can write with the genius of a Shakespeare — or perhaps even be aware of the technical aspects of what make Shakespeare’s plays so enduring: it isn’t just the stories, for goodness’ sake, or even the poetry, but the resonances and braided layers of a highly refined narrative art.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Thought for 11.04.11

2011-11-03T12:38:00.001-05:00

One problem with the Anglican Covenant Process is not so much that it is a case of closing the barn doors after the horses have bolted. Rather, it is like proposing to engage in a process to consider building a barn after the horses have bolted.

We have never had a barn. We don't need a barn. We have the field and hills before us, ripe for the galloping mission of God.

Tobias Stanislas Haller

Hidden in (Not So) Plain Sight

2011-11-02T10:04:00.000-05:00

One of the more interesting discussions at the recent conference I attended in South Africa concerned the nature of homosexuality in those parts of Africa where its presence is most vehemently denied or persecuted. Several of the lay and clergy leaders from those areas indicated that “homosexuality” was widely seen as some kind of alien import. They allowed, however, that as long as a man was married and had children, a concurrent sexual relationship with another man could — while still being viewed with opprobrium — likely be given a pass. Such a man would not be labeled as “homosexual.”

This reminds me, of course, of the situation in many communities even in the United States — thinking in particular of some Latino and African-American communities — based on their cultural construction of homosexuality. That is, a “man who sleeps with men” might well not be seen as “homosexual,” while an effeminate man or sissy-boy might be described as such even if he is a virgin and completely heterosexual in his orientation.

This is in part due to the confusion of the many variable axes that combine in human personality to define one’s identity. It isn’t just a matter of male and female (biological sex, and allowing for the reality of intersexuality), but of feminine and masculine (cultural or societal gender), attracted to one’s own sex or the other (sexual orientation), and so on. The simple fact, put simply, is that many gay men are not effeminate, and many effeminate men are not gay.

More importantly, the African situation reminds me of how it is that David and Jonathan’s relationship (with the emphasis on Jonathan’s attraction and attachment to David) can also be covered from perception as a same-sex relationship (which it no doubt is, regardless of whether acted upon erotically). The fact that both are “manly men” and warriors, both married (in David’s case we have quite a bit of evidence along that line), shields them — in cultures that cannot distinguish sexual orientation from notions of gender — from any suggestion of being what C.S. Lewis so revealingly called pansies. (The Four Loves, 62) While it is questionable to attempt to craft a psychological profile at such a remove, it is fair to say that David’s relationships with women all seem to be based either on the desire to possess and control or some kind of political or dynastic interest (as indeed may be true of his relationship with Jonathan in taking advantage of the latter’s attraction to him), while the relationship of Jonathan to David appears to be one of deep and lasting love. At least that is the language of the text. “Pansies”? No. Oriented towards a romantic relationship towards each other?” Very likely yes. At least David is not reported to have shed any tears over his female partners, and Jonathan’s testimony of complete dedication and what the text reveals as “love at first sight” is amply clear.

The role of choice

The question, “Is homosexuality natural or a choice?” also came up at the Conference in South Africa. The implication is that if it is a choice, it is a wrong choice, or at the least a choice that need not have been made, or could have been made otherwise. In earlier times it was assumed that the choice was a conscious act to choose wrongly — a perversity: doing deliberately and willfully what is known to be wrong.

Most gay and lesbian persons do not feel their orientation to be a choice, but something about which they become aware at some point in their life — just as do heterosexual persons of their sexual orientation. Most people, it seems, do not have much of a conscious awareness of sexual attraction in very early childhood, and begin to become aware of sexual attraction later in childhood or in early adolescence.

At this point the question of choice arises: do I choose to accept my inclinations? to act on them? to suppress them? Some people choose celibacy, while others choose relationship.

This leads me to reflect on the question, “Is choice a bad thing?” Aren’t we blessed to be chosen by the one who chooses us for life? The language of choosing and taking to oneself is intimately (!) connected with both salvation history and the life of human relationships; so much so that marriage is held to be an image of God’s relation to God’s Chosen.

Can this apply to same-sex relationships? Let me take another look at the relationship from Scripture that is often held up (and at the same time denied) as being homosexual, to which I alluded above: the story of the love of David and Jonathan. This is clearly a relationship between two men, but some do not see it as sexual in nature. It is true that sexual acts are not clearly recorded (though in a few places suggested) in the text — but this is true in large part of the Scriptural attitude towards descriptions of sex, which are usually veiled in metaphor or euphemism.

But let me start with a strongly negative view of the relationship between David and Jonathan from the text of Scripture itself. Jonathan’s father Saul verbally assails his son, when he says, “You son of a perverse, rebellious woman, do I not know that you have chosen the son of Jesse to your confusion, and the confusion of your mother’s nakedness.” (1 Samuel 20:30) Jonathan’s choice, is of course a choice, but it does not come from perversity. He has no wish to see the kingdom of his father fall to confusion, and to see the swift end of that dynasty. But Jonathan knows that he had little power not to chose the one whom he has chosen; the one to whom he knew his whole being to be bound when he first laid eyes on him, the one whom he loved as his own soul. (1 Samuel 18:1) This covenanted love (1 Samuel 18:3; 20:8,16,41-42; 23:18) was the greatest love he would ever know, the love for which he would eventually risk everything (1 Samuel 20:33) and lose his life; this wonderful love surpassing the love of women. (2 Samuel 1:26)

Was Jonathan wrong so to choose? I don’t think so.

Tobias Stanislas Haller

Two Thoughts for 11.01.11

2011-11-01T11:33:00.000-05:00

Due to travel and the press of other work, blogging has been light. There will follow a series of relatively short posts about things that have been on my mind. Here is the first.

The May 2011 issue of Scientific American (yes, my magazine reading is backlogged, too) had two interesting articles. The first was a short piece on Bayes’ Rule by Sharon Bertsch McGrayne, author of a book on the subject, The Theory That Would Not Die. The rule (or theorem) has a more complicated definition in probability theory, having to do with linking the uncertainty concerning the likelihood of an event prior to collecting evidence with the uncertainty after trial evidence has been collected. As McGrayne puts it in plain English, “the formula is a simple one-liner: Initial Beliefs + Recent Objective Data = A New and Improved Belief.”

It struck me that this is the way all systems of human knowledge should work, but that in the real world objective data often seems not to have much impact on people’s beliefs.

The second and more interesting article, “The Hidden Organ In Our Eyes,” by Ignacio Provencio, dealt with the discovery that certain special neurons in the eye are responsible for sensing light — not for the purpose of vision but in relation to the circadian cycle — the internal clock by which we adjust to day and night. Thus the eye serves two purposes. This reminded me of something I cited in my Reasonable and Holy (7):

The difficulties with ends-based natural law arguments in this regard, which are advanced against birth control as much as against same-sexuality, in particular those that focus narrowly on the mechanics of sexual intercourse, are well summarized by Gerard J. Hughes in The Westminster Dictionary of Christian Ethics.
It is one thing to say that the natural function of the eye is to see. But even bodily organs can and do serve several functions. And if one asks of the body as a whole what its function is, the answer is much less clear. Even less clear is the answer to questions such as “What is the function of a human life?” or “What is the function of sexuality in a human life?” The way one might try to answer these questions seems quite unlike the way one might try to answer questions about the function(s) of the endocrine glands or the heart in the human body. The notion of “function” at this point becomes much more a matter of moral assessment than a scientific inquiry. (“Natural Law,” 413)

I reflected on this issue in parabolic fashion with the short fable, On the Island of Silence. I am fascinated by the extent to which some people insist that anatomy — or their understanding of the nature of anatomy and biology — must be determinative of moral values. Fidelity is a moral value. Gender isn’t. Those who insist that only heterosexual relationships are capable of moral value are in fact insisting that there is a moral value to “male and female,” and ultimately, therefore, to the Y chromosome.

The fact is that we are more than our bodies. What we do with them is important, but just as the eye is not only for seeing, so too the body is not only for reproduction. Morality does not lie in our chromosomes, but in how we treat each other as complete human beings.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

DIscordance

2011-10-27T08:17:00.001-05:00

A thing that bemuses me about Communion without Baptism [CWOB] is that it is often favored by some who make the most fuss about the Baptismal Covenant. It is deeply ironic to me that some who advance the slogan "All the sacraments for all the baptized" don't seem to realize the implication of that slogan for CWOB. One of the reasons I do not favor CWOB is my strong support for the Baptismal Covenant and all it requires, including the promise to remain faithful in "the breaking of the bread." Yes, all the sacraments for all the baptized.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

A Prayer

2011-10-19T07:50:00.000-05:00

We have been slumbering while we should have been watching; come, let us rise to go with Jesus, even to the cross and to the grave, and in him to the risen life. Amen.

based on Mark 14:41-42

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

The Place and the Power

2011-10-14T09:41:00.000-05:00

My experience at the conference I've been attending in Durban, South Africa, has been incredibly rewarding. To sit and share in scripture, worship, reflection and dialogue with so many wonderful people from many parts of Africa and the US (and New Zealand and Sweden!) was a rich banquet which it will take some time to digest. This was, in part, my job, as I was a member of the "listening team" charged with collecting and distilling some of the wealth. An official report will be available in due coure, but I wanted to share something of the Bible study, to which I was also able to contribute some observations. Even though a "listener" I was instructed to operate under the "no muzzling the threshing ox" rule and was encouraged to participate fully even while taking notes!

The two major Bible studies were on the woman with the ointment in the house at Bethany (Mark 14:3-9) and the stilling of the storm on the lake (Mark 4:3541). What struck me in both stories was the location. The house of Simon the Leper in Bethany is a key place, as is the house of Mary, Martha and Lazarus (if indeed these are two different houses). Jesus expends a significant portion of his ministry in Bethany -- one meaning of which is "House of the afflicted." And it struck me that all of the really important things in Christ's ministry happen not within Jerusalem, but outside it -- at the margins with the poor and the outcast, not just spiritually and economically, but physically. Bethany is a place of lepers and irregular households, yet Jesus is at home there. The great crescendo of saving acts performed by this marginal man (uneducated and of questionable birth) -- the Crucifixion, Burial, Resurrection and Ascension -- all take place in the liminal and marginal world surrounding, but not within, the "Holy City."

And yet the church it seems so often wants to see itself as trhe Temple, the place of security and pomp and circumstance, rather than to be in the place where Jesus is -- on the margins in the home of the afflicted. As one of the presenters at the Conference, Sathi Clarke, put it, it is the bonds of affliction, not of affection, that truly bind up the church in the paschal mystery. Anglicans in particular seem to want to be -- and to be seen to be -- safe and secure, content in the Temple, rather than risking all on the edges.

And this brings me to the second study. We are so accustomed to reading the story of the calming of the storm as if that was what Jesus wanted to do. In fact it is what the disciples wanted done for them. Jesus' goal was to reach the other side. Perhaps Jesus wanted them to make use of the storm and their skill to reach that other shore. I can imagine Jesus saying, implicitly responding to their lack of faith, "I gave you the storm; I gave you myself. Was that not enough for you." Jesus was with them, though asleep, in the midst of that tossing sea and blowing wind, and he taught them a hard lesson by brining a calm which would give no wind to their sails.

Again, the church so often wants to be "safe and secure from all alarms" rather than to make use of the energy available and the skills at hand. Jesus says to us as well, "I give you the storm; I give you myself; what more do you need, you of fear and not faith?" Perhaps in the end, God has given us the gifts we need, the challenging two edged sword of his Word rather than an earthly peace that would diminish or constrain the powerful wind of the Spirit.

Tobias Stanislas Haller

On a journey

2011-10-08T16:02:00.000-05:00

or, Where I'll be next week...

In mid-October, the Chicago Consultation and the Ujamaa Centre of the University of KwaZulu-Natal will convene a gathering in South Africa to strengthen mission and advocacy connections among Anglicans who are interested in the theology of human sexuality and justice. We believe that deeper connections with each other will make it easier for us to work together in mission and to communicate productively when challenging Communion-wide issues arise. The co-conveners of the consultation are Professor Gerald West, director of the Ujamaa Centre, and Professor Esther Mombo of St. Paul's University in Limuru, Kenya.
The consultation, which will involve about 55 people and last for three days, will be grounded in the Indaba process, prayer and Bible study and will explore theological perspectives on human sexuality and justice. Participants will include theologians, bishops, church leaders, grassroots advocates for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people and other people willing to engage in intensive conversations across cultural boundaries.
The participants in the consultation will share their experiences with the wider church through stories and video reflections and through the report of a listening team led by the Rev. Janet Trisk, a representative to the Anglican Consultative Council from the Church of Southern Africa.

from the pre-event release

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

The Wheel Goes Round

2011-09-29T16:10:00.000-05:00

One aspect of the sexuality debates is the extent to which those opposed to same-sex marriage ground their arguments in circular reasoning. Most of them are aware enough to see how empty it sounds to say, “Same-sex couples cannot marry because marriage is only for men and women.” So their thesis usually takes a more nuanced, but no less circular, form. “Only a man and a woman can marry because only a man and a woman are capable of procreation.” When it is noted that men and women who cannot procreate are still permitted to marry, and that marriages do not end with the end of the ability to procreate, the language shifts to, “Only men and women can marry because only a man and woman are capable of performing a procreative act.” By “procreative act” they mean an act that could be procreative if the couple were procreative.

It is very easy to become caught in the linguistic and logical thicket such thinking is based on, but in the long run it is of the form, “A procreative act is an act which, if the couple were capable of procreation, would be capable of procreation.” This strange thesis entirely begs the question, in part because “acts” aren’t procreative — people are. Procreation is not a matter of form, but of substance and capacity. If the couple aren’t capable of procreation, no act they perform can be “procreative.” In the long run this is just another way of framing the assertion that only men and women can marry.

To get a bit technical, this is the assertion of a counterfactual conditional as if it were an indicative conditional. (The difference is between “X would be if Y were though it isn’t” and “X is if Y is and it is.”) Saying something “is” when it “isn’t” — though “it would be if it were” — is at the heart of this logical fallacy.

One of the exponents of this view declared that it is analogous to angling: even when a fisher fails to catch fish he is still fishing. This is a misleading analogy. The proper analogy, from the traditionalist perspective, is “sex is to procreation as angling is to catching fish” (i.e., sex and angling being the activity and procreation and catching fish the particular and assumed desired result of that activity). Sex without the possibility of procreation is sex, but it is not procreative. It is nonprocreative sex — whether whatever makes it incapable of leading to procreation is artificial (birth control) or natural (temporary or permanent infertility, or the sex of the members of the couple).

The traditionalists simply want to restrict sex to those who formally embody the capacity for procreation, whether they are actually capable of procreation or not. And that is just another way of limiting sex, and marriage, to a man and a woman: the very premise that needs to be proven. And so the wheel spins another round.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Thought for 09.29.11

2011-09-29T11:56:00.000-05:00

In sorting through a pile of old rubber stamps at the parish office today, it struck me that when we say a child is “marked as Christ’s own” in baptism that it is not unlike marking them with the rubber stamp that reads, “Property of Jesus; Do Not Remove From Church.”

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Scriptural Exhaustion or Inclusion

2011-09-22T16:52:00.001-05:00

There are two primary ways to read Scripture. Both are “literal” in that they focus on the text itself, but they differ in how they attribute meaning to the text. The exhaustive view believes that a single correct reading excludes any other and exhausts the possibilities of meaning; the inclusive acknowledges that a given text may be capable of many meanings, including that discerned by the exhaustive school, but remaining open to meanings not yet discerned. The exhaustive view asserts clarity, often assumes perspecuity, and a univocal certainty. The inclusive accepts a degree of ambiguity, recognizes that texts convey meaning, that the meanings can be manifold, and the readings provisional.

The inclusive manner of reading is that of the rabbinic and the Patristic eras, of the Catholic tradition and (ironically) also of liberal protestantism; the exhaustive is represented in several strands of protestant conservatism. The inclusive manner allows the church to hold a number of interpretations, and part with those that science or reason eventually show to be untenable. The exhaustive, in the long run, often finds itself unable to navigate the waters of reality, having run aground, not on the text, but on the inflexibility and failure of their own interpretations to offer a credible word to a skeptical world.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Quick Reviews 09.17.11

2011-09-17T17:02:00.000-05:00

My reactions to some things I've seen recently — in condensed form.

The Debt — The BBC’s “MI-5” (aka “Spooks”) with falafel. Slow-starting but builds nicely towards the end. Some fine performances could have done without the mixed efforts at Israeli accents.

Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark — visually stunning (in del Toro fashion) but otherwise toothless allegory about old house with IBS. Kudos to the housekeeper and the handyman who seem to bring some emotion to the situation. Stepmom with cell phone and midlife crisis Dad... not so much.

“Torchwood: Miracle Day” — far too long mix of insightful political morality and "Huh?"-inducing SF non sequitur of the most Torchwooden sort. John Barrowman, I had no idea Max Factor had started a line in polyurethane. And career note to Lauren Ambrose: find a script about something other than death.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Word of the Circus

2011-09-14T17:50:00.002-05:00

Word is circulating on the English semaphore and heliograph system that the Archbishop of Canterbury is thinking of taking an early retirement.

This has, quite naturally, brought about the commencement of the delicate ballet of succession, much of which happens offstage, of course. Offstage ballet is not nearly so interesting as offstage brass (á la Mahler or Wagner) — but come to think of it there has been a bit of onstage brass by a few of the bishops thought possible to succeed. There has been some furtive edging of mitres ever slightly so much closer to the invisible fairy ring which will ultimately appear, as if by magic, on the day of the announcement, to circle the Chosen One. Would it not come as a surprise to all if Harry Potter were, after all, to be the youngest Archbishop in recent history!

On a more balletic front, it is also rumored that in an effort to portray the drama of this offstage action, Cirque du Soleil is working up their next extravaganza, titled Cantuar. It will be their usual mix of humorous clowning, stellar acrobatics and above all contortionists in rochets. The show is to open with a spectacular example of dexterity called, "Qui? Moi? Mais non!" in which the bulk of the ensemble represent their eagerness to climb a slender rope while pretending they just happen to be hanging around in its vicinity. The buffo humorists will join in a chorus of "J'n'suis pas digne!" as a bevy of tightly clad androgynes (portraying the Crown Commissioners), huddle to one side in a tight-knit circle. Oh, what a show it will be!

With tongue in cheek,
Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Hard to Forgive

2011-09-11T15:56:00.001-05:00

There is no debt ceiling on forgiveness. A sermon for 9/11/11, Proper 19a.

SJF • Proper 19a 2011 • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall give praise to God. So then, each of us will be accountable to God.

It is timely that the Scripture readings appointed for this day should deal with judgment and forgiveness. As you are no doubt keenly aware, this Sunday marks the tenth anniversary of the terrorist attacks on America, the day that will for ever live in infamy by its numeric nickname Nine-Eleven.

It is abundantly clear that much was done on that terrible day that cries out for forgiveness. America was viciously attacked; thousands of innocent people met death in its most terrifying and capricious form, doomed to die by horrible means, suddenly and unprepared. Many were vaporized in an instant, unaware what was happening to them. Others were forced to make that agonized and desperate choice between being burned alive or hurtling to their deaths on the street below. Many more were crushed under the weight of those buildings, suffocated and snuffed out in darkness. None of us who witnessed that horrible day will ever forget it, and the TV news shows will not let us forget even if we wanted to, as they run those video clips again and again, and endlessly analyze.

What makes forgiveness all the harder in this case is that those who carried out these crimes knew what they were doing. They wanted their acts to be as terrorizing as indeed they were — that’s why they are called terrorists: they did not mean only to bring destruction, but to instill fear, horror, and anguish; and this not only in those they directly harmed, but in our society and nation as a whole.

How can we forgive such wrong? How can we forgive such terrible crimes? We know how hard it is to forgive someone even when they say they are sorry — how much harder to forgive those who do not ask for forgiveness, who think that what they did was right and justified, and even think they were doing a religious duty!

If somebody steps on my foot in the subway, and then apologizes, it’s fairly easy for me to forgive, although I may still feel the pain in my foot. If someone steps on my foot by accident and then looks at me like it was my fault, I will not be in such a forgiving mood. But if someone looks me in the eye, and then deliberately stomps on my foot, with a “so there” thrown in — well, what am I to do?

My natural impulse is to feel that only the repentant deserve forgiveness; that forgiveness is something that must be earned and asked for. It is only logical, this calculus of tit-for-tat: only those who acknowledge their faults deserve to be forgiven. This seems fair and square.

Unfortunately, God does not make things so easy for me. God does not say to me, Forgive those who say they are sorry. God does not say to me, Forgive others in proportion to their repentance for the harm they have done to you. God does not give me the option of measuring how much I forgive against how much someone else repents — or doesn’t. I am not told to balance my forgiveness against another’s apology; instead I am told to balance how much I forgive against how much I have been and expect to be forgiven. The wicked slave in Jesus’ parable is punished in the end not for his failure to pay his master what he owed, but for not forgiving the debt that was owed to him.

+ + +

This is a hard teaching, no doubt about it. How much easier to keep it to myself; to treat forgiveness as if it were simply earthly coin of the realm: to balance the books of grace as if grace were a commodity that I could control, so much forgiveness doled out for so much apology; no forgiveness given unless asked for, and certainly not given to those who do not ask for it or to my mind deserve it.

What does God think? That forgiveness should be free? Do I want grace to abound when I am the wounded party and no one says they’re sorry? Does that make sense to you? Don’t we want forgiveness to be costly, to be won from us, purchased from us, earned from us by those who have done us wrong? Like the worst of the medieval bishops who sold indulgences and offered the church’s absolution in exchange for gold, dare we fall into the corrupted tit-for-tat that puts a price on grace?

+ + +

And of course, there was a price for grace — it’s just that we did not pay it. For all the while we quibble and bargain, bartering forgiveness as if it were ours to dole out, a quiet figure hangs before us on a cross. He is the one who committed no wrong, earned no just punishment. He is the one who suffered so much at the hands of those who meant to do him ill, and even thought it was a religious duty to do so, who they were right and weren’t in the least bit sorry for what they did. As that innocent man was dying, after having been unjustly tried and tortured, as he hung up there to die, they did not look with sorrow or pity upon the one whom they hated. They cursed and mocked him as he died, spitting in his direction, putting out their tongues and treating him as the greatest fool who had ever born. All the weight of the world’s wrong gathered there and pressed down upon the crucified Christ: all of the hatred, all of the sin and ignorance and pride that had been stored up or would yet come to be. The sin of the whole world pressed down upon that dying man as he hung upon the hard wood of the cross.

And what did he do? He begged God to forgive them. He stretched out his arms of love. He did not cry out to his Father, “See what they do, O Lord my God. Punish them as they deserve!” No, he cried out, “Father forgive them, they know not what they do.”

Christ is our example and our Lord. He to whom the greatest wrong was ever done, forgave in full, forgave it all. No wrong, however bad, however painful, done to us can match what was done to Christ, yet he called out to God to forgive in full, without being asked by those who most needed the forgiveness, without the repentance of those who sinned against him.

And he challenges us to do the same: to find the strength to forgive those who sin against us, recalling how, in him, our debts have been forgiven. In order to do so, we will need to fight against our natural human impulse for revenge. We will need to quell our anger and our wrath, to recall that God has said, “Vengeance is mine,” and to echo the words of Joseph in the Old Testament passage this morning, and say, “Are we in the place of God?”

After we have quieted our anger, we will also need to go further, to quiet our need to hear the apologies of those who have done us wrong, and what is worse, who continue to wish to do us wrong. This will not be easy. It is not easy to forgive when you have been badly wronged, seriously injured, terribly assaulted. Do you think Jesus found it easy — dying there on the cross? It won’t be any easier for us to forgive. It is not easy to forgive when you know that the hand stretched out to forgive may receive another bite worse than the first. It is not easy to forgive — but it is the only way to be forgiven. The wise man spoke truly, “We will all stand before the judgment seat of God.”

God challenges us to stretch our little fabric of forgiveness until it covers a multitude of sins. Not seven times, but seventy-seven — which is to say, there is no debt ceiling on forgiveness. God reminds us that he is judge, he is the one before whom every knee will bow, every tongue confess, the one to whom we will all be required to render our account: the account of how much forgiveness we have freely given away.

Let us pray. Eternal Father, help us to find the strength to forgive those who have injured us, to pardon those who have assaulted and wounded us, that when we come to the last day to stand as we must before your judgment seat, we may find the wells of your compassion and forgiveness overflowing for us, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

A Poem for the Extraordinary Day

2011-09-10T12:23:00.002-05:00

From 2008, but especially on this anniversary.

Prophecy in Stone and Mist

2011-09-10T08:30:00.001-05:00

This prophetic image was carved in stone at the base of one of the niches in the primary portal of the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine some time in the late 80s or early 90s. I was always struck by this small carving only a few inches across, with its portrayal of the great deluge washing over the towers of human industry and commerce.

The prophecy in stone rang true. However, little were we to know that the waves would also be of human origin.

Some years before the assault, I snapped this picture of Saint Paul's Chapel and the Towers, disappearing as if by an apotheosis into the heavens. These are the Towers of Memory and of dedication of those lost that day, and since, to the need to dominate and control others.

Stone and mist, both speaking towards what was to come, neither heeded quite for what they said.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Thought on Marriage 09.07.11

2011-09-07T16:18:00.000-05:00

The church's role in marriage is essentially decorative. That is what solemnization means — to "dress up" with "solemn" ceremony. The church does not "make" the marriage; that is the work of the couple, whose vowed consent is the crucial element in the matrimonial confection, much as some hold the words of institution to be in the Eucharist. But the church's witness and blessing do not constitute the marriage. Rather they add a level of decorum and ceremonial gravitas. It is a matter of style rather than content, and the Episcopal Church (at least) holds that a couple is just as married in the city hall as in the cathedral.

In all of this the church follows the lead of its Lord, who didn't, as far as we know, ever do more in this regard than "adorn" a wedding feast at Cana of Galilee.

This is what makes the decision to allow clergy to bless same-sex unions or marriages, but not to officiate at the exchange of vows so very odd. The officiant over the vow exchange literally adds nothing to the vows other than the decorous and solemn ceremonial; the blessing, we hope, does add some real substance to the mix, and is surely the properly ecclesiastical share in the event. To allow clergy, in these cases, the exercise of the churchly ministry and bar them from the essentially civil functions of prompter and recorder appears to give more weight to the latter role than it warrants. One might well say that the blessing is as much of a "solemnization" as the assistance given in the exchange of vows and the pronunciation that what everyone has just witnessed has in fact taken place.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Oxford Movement (or not?)

2011-08-31T09:43:00.000-05:00

The No Anglican Covenant Coalition has posted a concise negative review of the equally concise analysis of the Proposed Anglican Covenant prepared for the Diocese of Oxford. The NACC point to the irony of claiming the document will, at one level, "make no difference at all" (5.1) but then go on to claim (5.2) that the PAC may help the churches of the Communion

To articulate and explain the Anglican traditions and faith they have inherited
Express their solidarity with each other, when any is the subject of misunderstanding or persecution
To reinforce interdependence, mutual responsibility, and awareness of each others’ differing cultures

These assertions do not appear to me to stand up very well to close examination. I am not alone in noting the extent to which the PAC

introduces a significantly "different" manner of working and governance for the Communion
departs from several basic elements of "Anglican tradition"
may well formalize forms of misunderstanding and at least marginalization if not outright persecution, and
may impede interdependence by promoting dependency and submission, cultivate irresponsibility in enforcing change on provinces without adequate awareness of the consequences, and attempt to suppress or subsume the differences in cultures that have led to the disagreements in the first place

So, all in all, not a very good analysis from Oxford.

Tobias Stanislas Haller
see my topic tag link to Anglican Covenant for more on the problems with the PAC and its ancestors; you will note that I have waffled a bit on the extent to which the PAC is pernicious or useless, but I have never thought it was a Good Idea, particularly at this time. I never counsel marriage when a couple are having difficulties in their relationship.

On the Faults of Natural Law

2011-08-28T14:26:00.000-05:00

This short essay is not intended as an exhaustive exploration of the subject, but is designed to express in a short space the primary difficulties I have with the concept and application of natural law. This presents a problem at the outset as there are at two very different understandings of the term “natural law.” The 1910 edition of the Catholic Encyclopedia article on the subject begins,

In English this term is frequently employed as equivalent to the laws of nature, meaning the order which governs the activities of the material universe. Among the Roman jurists natural law designated those instincts and emotions common to man and the lower animals, such as the instinct of self-preservation and love of offspring. In its strictly ethical application — the sense in which this article treats it — the natural law is the rule of conduct which is prescribed to us by the Creator in the constitution of the nature with which He has endowed us.

It is the final understanding, and its application, I am addressing at this point — as it is the one that I feel is most pernicious and ethically problematical, and open to the greatest abuse.

However, let me first raise the question of why anyone should feel the need to develop such an overarching theory of morality in the first place. It seems to me that this stems from a desire for objective standards, rather than a willingness to live in a conditional moral universe that is subjective at its heart. The evident problem with such a desire for objectivity lies in the fact that morality itself is necessarily relative — that is, it deals with the interrelations between various entities, and how they interact with each other. This necessitates an inescapable degree of subjectivity. Even behaviors of an individual in relation to some nonhuman entity — the state, the church, or even God — are by definition relational. The desire to declare a given act as moral or immoral divorced from the relation of the actor to the act and to that which is acted upon leaves precious little with which to deal.

For example, theft, which as an act-in-itself is simply the manipulation of some object (real or — in this day and age — even virtual), is only considered “theft” because of the relationship of the thief to the thing stolen, and touches on whole areas of presupposed or unexamined philosophical groundwork such as the nature of ownership itself: what makes something “belong” to one individual and not to another. There is nothing essentially rational or necessary in the concept of ownership — it depends upon other concepts that derive from cultures and their attitudes and have no objective or universal standing.

This exposes the greatest problem with natural law: that the supposedly self-evident truths to which it appeals are themselves philosophical constructs that even if widely shared still reflect the cultural prejudices of those who share them. I commend reading the whole article in the Catholic Encyclopedia (see link below) which, dating from 1910, reveals rather clearer traces of these cultural prejudices proclaimed as self-evident truths than might be risked with such bluntness today.

In short, natural law, as a system, is hopelessly guilty of begging the question. It assumes as its necessary premises answers to some of the very issues it purports to address.

Perhaps the most “question-begging” aspect of the concept lies in the essentially useless conclusion identifying the ultimate principle of natural law. As Aquinas says, (and as the CE reports),

the supreme principle [governing all of natural law], from which all the other principles and precepts are derived, is that good is to be done, and evil avoided (I-II.Q94.2).

Well, that’s settled then. Just do what is good, avoid evil, and all is taken care of. The problem, of course, is that rational people disagree as to what is even the highest good, and what subsidiary goods flow from it, and what actions and relations are in accordance with the highest or subsidiary goods.

The problems begin almost as soon as one begins to attempt to apply the basic premise. As the article in the CE goes on to say, the universality of natural law

pertains not to those abstract imperfect formulæ in which the law is commonly expressed, but to the moral standard as it applies to action in the concrete, surrounded with all its determinate conditions. We enunciate, for instance, one of the leading precepts in the words: “Thou shalt not kill”; yet the taking of human life is sometimes a lawful, and even an obligatory act. Herein exists no variation in the law; what the law forbids is not all taking of life, but all unjust taking of life.

The emphasis above is mine: the authors recognize that the concrete reality and conditions of any action have a role in determining whether that action is in fact good or not — that is, if it is in accordance with natural law. But the natural law itself cannot be used to make that determination because all it says, in essence and in its pure form, is that one should seek the good and avoid evil. In the case cited, all hinges on what is determined to be “unjust” — and of course in some contexts even the meaning of “life” — and so the whole weight of morality has to refer to that universe of conditions and circumstances rather than to any objective, immutable, or universally shared principle.

Take, as another example, the good of procreation — any rational person would say that the continuance of the human species is a good thing. But some cultures or moral systems (such as rabbinic Judaism, see mYebamoth 6.6) have held that the duty to procreate is incumbent upon all men; while others (for example, the Roman Church) have held that celibacy is not only permissible but virtuous. (Aquinas’ way around the problem of celibacy — II-II.Q152.2 — was to note that the commandment to be fruitful and multiply was addressed not to the individual human but to humanity as a species — a rather clever solution, but one that also tends to undercut the very basis of natural law as incumbent upon every human as human! And clearly the Roman Church is not willing to apply this same principle to birth control, but invokes a completely different moral touchstone: the dubious notion that the “procreative function” is not to be separated from the “unitive.” Since these functions are to some extent separate even in nature and can further be separated by human action, and there may well be quite rational causes for doing so — for example, in the case of a woman for whom it has been determined that bearing a child would be a significant danger to her life — the objectivity of this moral law comes into question.)

Additional difficulties arise the further one wades into the defense of natural law. In an effort to define its “essence” the CE continues with these two principles:

(a) The natural law is universal, that is to say, it applies to the entire human race, and is in itself the same for all. Every man, because he is a man, is bound, if he will conform to the universal order willed by the Creator, to live conformably to his own rational nature, and to be guided by reason. However, infants and insane persons, who have not the actual use of their reason and cannot therefore know the law, are not responsible for that failure to comply with its demands. (b) The natural law is immutable in itself and also extrinsically. Since it is founded in the very nature of man and his destination to his end — two bases which rest upon the immutable ground of the eternal law — it follows that, assuming the continued existence of human nature, it cannot cease to exist. The natural law commands and forbids in the same tenor everywhere and always.

Noting already the exceptional cases of those who do not have the use of reason, another problem with this asserted universality arises when particular human actions judged irrational by some are judged rational by others. Who is to set the objective standard as to what is rational? Do we not end at base with reliance upon cultural norms and prejudices, which by definition are not universal?

The usual response from natural lawyers is to say that a culture (or an individual) who fails to follow some precept which the proponents derive from natural law is either depraved or perverse: that is to say, like infants or the insane they simply have not attained or have lost the use of reason or have reasoned in error, or they know full well that what they are doing is wrong but persist in doing it out of some innate disordered desire to do what they know full well is “evil.”

This is, however, merely a cloak for cultural prejudices. Allow me to cite one more example from the CE article, which is at some pains to defend the toleration of polygamy in the Hebrew dispensation (“dispensation” itself being a somewhat uncomfortable fit with a supposedly universal and immutable law):

Under no circumstances is polyandry compatible with the moral order, while polygamy, though inconsistent with human relations in their proper moral and social development, is not absolutely incompatible with them under less civilized conditions.

This blatantly sexist (and vaguely racist) declaration is clearly at odds with right reason. If polygamy is permitted (because it advances a primary end of marital union, i.e., procreation) then surely the same is true of polyandry. The rabbinic ruling (cited above) that commands a man whose wife does not bear a child within a certain term of years to take another assumes that the problem lies in the woman. But a woman whose husband is sterile is forbidden to take another man. This stems not from any truly “natural law” but from a firm bondage to patriarchy, in which tracking the patrilineal descent is considered crucial. Obviously matriarchy and family inheritance by matrilineal descent is not only just as “natural” but arguably more secure, as the occasional doubts about paternity do not arise in the case of maternity. In fact, I recall a woman stand-up comedian some years ago deriving quite a laugh from her line, “I don’t have any kids... [proud smirk] that I know of...!” The allowance of polygamy and rejection of polyandry is not objective and rational, but mere cultural prejudice at work. (I do not, by the way, say any of this in defense of either polygamy or polyandry, but simply to point out the inconsistency and sexism inherent in culturally conditioned “natural law.”)

So, is it possible to develop some objective standard that is actually helpful in guiding moral behavior. Clearly, simply to say, “Seek the good and avoid evil,” is entirely unsatisfactory and only begs the question — perhaps giving a useful definition of morality but no actual particular guidance to what constitutes moral behavior. It is rather like telling someone who wants to learn how to spell to use the alphabet.

Some of the hardest moral questions facing us in our day will not yield to a merely doctrinaire and “objective” conclusion. Acts cannot be judged good or bad in the abstract apart from the actors and what is acted upon, and the circumstances and motives underpinning and enveloping the action. Some will judge acts entirely on the basis of their consequences — and all sorts of ethical systems have evolved which attempt to judge the good or ill of those consequences (pleasure, prosperity and well-being of the greatest number, for example). Others will judge acts on the basis of positive laws and duties — surely a rational approach, but hard to put into practice divorced from motive and circumstance. Others will appeal to the social contract for interactions between human beings. Some, such as myself, will fall back upon the moral advice of Jesus in terms of love of God and neighbor.

My point is that the very existence of all of these various systems of morality seriously damage the credibility of the base assertions of natural law — and of all the systems at our disposal, it is the least likely actually to bear useful fruit, given its question-begging, cultural bondage and sterile dogmatism.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

citations of the Catholic Encyclopedia are from the online version of the article: Fox, James. “Natural Law.” The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 9. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1910. Accessed 28 Aug. 2011 http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09076a.htm. The CE received the approbation of the Roman Catholic Church as follows: Nihil Obstat. October 1, 1910. Remy Lafort, Censor. Imprimatur. +John M. Farley, Archbishop of New York.

No Way to Run...

2011-08-18T14:27:00.000-05:00

Every time I come upon the passage from the 24th chapter of Acts (appointed for the Daily Office today) I am reminded of the resonance between references to the early church as “the Way” to the Rabbinic concept of Halakah: the law as a Way in which one walks.

This struck me particularly this morning because I have been thinking a great deal about the dangers of ideology, and how an ideology or a theory (properly understood as a “way of seeing”) can actually prevent one from seeing a deeper reality. The phenomenon is known as “perceptual set” in some circles, “paradigm blindness” in others. Put briefly, the way you see the world can come to dominate what you see. I referred in an earlier post to the old saying, “If your only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” If as Thomas Kuhn suggests, we need a shift in our paradigms in order to see changes in reality, it seems to me that across the board in many areas of our lives we need a whole new shift-load of paradigms!

For both in church and state these days ideology is at the forefront and reality has become deeply shrouded in veils of preconception. From conversations on climate change to sexuality, the debt crisis to marriage equality, the verbiage — I cannot in good conscience call it conversation for the most part — appears to be dominated by ideologies and theories rather than fact. (I cannot be the only one who is appalled to see what has become of journalism these days: and there are times I long for a supply of bricks next to my easy chair to toss through the television screen when a “news” program cuts from an actual live speech by a world leader to a panel of pundits even before the speech is finished!) Whatever reality there may be is cocooned in layers of opinion, and there is no sign of a butterfly emerging. Not a chrysalis, but a mummy.

But back to Saint Paul and the rabbis, and this idea of the faith being a “way” — and of course acknowledging that the Jewish tradition had long understood various “ways” as being either wicked or good, depending. (See Psalm 1!)

The major contrast I want to note is the difference between a way and a place. In this case I am particularly thinking about how Paul’s alleged insult to the Temple (in fact baseless) led to his having to defend this new Way. And what is ironic is that the old Way of rabbinic Halakah itself turned out to be the means by which this form of Judaism was able to survive the destruction of the Temple — a Temple which God appears, from the early record, not actually to have wanted all that much; God preferring the Tent and Tabernacle, or the terrifying Chariot, to the petrified establishment on the hill of Zion. (Ezekiel sees a new Temple, Revelation assures us there is no Temple in the New Jerusalem. Take your pick.)

So it appears to me that Christianity itself could well be seen as an emergent non-Temple-based Judaism (among the many Judaisms of the first century) that gets detached and takes on a life of its own; much as rabbinic (rather than Temple) Judaism continued the life of that faith because it had come to see the living out of the Way of God was not dependent upon an external institution but an internalized (both individually and corporately) Way of life under the guidance of a transcendent God.

So does this have anything to say to our current ecclesiastical troubles — say, in relation to a proposed Anglican Covenant or the Indaba Process as “ways” of working? Or to our civic, national, or international concerns — government as institution or government as way of being?

Discuss among yourselves and report back!

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

William Porcher DuBose, Priest and Theologian

2011-08-17T14:25:00.000-05:00

Almighty God, you gave to your servant William Porcher DuBose special gifts of grace to understand the Scriptures and to teach the truth as it is in Christ Jesus: Grant that by this teaching we may know you, the one true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Icon above by the hand of Tobias Stanislas Haller
The photograph at the right shows the burial place of W P Dubose at Sewanee.

Florence Nightingale, Nurse and Social Reformer 1910

2011-08-11T17:18:00.000-05:00

Life-giving God, you alone have power over life and death, over health and sickness: Give power, wisdom, and gentleness to those who follow the lead of Florence Nightingale, that they, bearing with them your presence, may not only heal but bless, and shine as lanterns of hope in the darkest hours of pain and fear; through Jesus Christ, the healer of body and soul, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

from Lesser Feasts and Fasts / Holy Women, Holy Men
ikon by the hand of Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Sing to the Lord a New Song

2011-08-11T08:20:00.000-05:00

The Annual Convocation of the Brotherhood of Saint Gregory, 2011. (Photos and video by yours truly; music by Nathanael Deward Rahm BSG, sung by the Brotherhood Schola.)

An Imperfect Union

2011-08-08T15:46:00.002-05:00

One of the issues facing clergy in New York State — joining a handful of other American jurisdictions — is the role they may play in the marriage of same-sex couples. The issue is open to a broad range of interpretation, as both the canons and the Book of Common Prayer are silent on the subject. The range of interpretation is well represented by the bishops of the various dioceses into which the Episcopal Church in the state of New York is divided. Differences of opinions between the bishops is particularly exacerbated in New York City because its five boroughs are distributed into two different dioceses: Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island are in the Diocese of New York, while Brooklyn and Queens are part of Long Island. Bishop Provenzano of Long Island has taken the position that clergy may perform same-sex marriages, while Bishop Sisk of New York has taken the position that they may bless civil marriages but not exercise the civil function in the solemnization of marriage for a same-sex couple.

This would not be a problem — or less of a problem — if we lived under Napoleonic law, in which only civil functionaries can perform the civil function of solemnizing marriage. In France a couple must take part in a civil marriage if they are to be considered married in the eyes of the state (and if they are Roman Catholic they must also have a church wedding in order to be considered married under the Roman Catholic canons.)

But here in New York, as in much of the rest of the United States, clergy are granted the faculty of performing civil marriage on the basis of their being ordained and authorized to celebrate marriages by their churches. The irony, and the misunderstanding (on the part of the civil authorities) is that according to the theology of marriage in place in the West for quite some time, the actual ministers of marriage are the couple — not the clergy. That is, the couple minister marriage to each other. The role of the church, and in particular the clergy, is to record, witness and above all to bless the marriage. But the marriage is made by the couple. So in allowing clergy the civil faculty to “perform” a marriage there was already a significant misunderstanding at play.

Ultimately this bleeds over into the current dilemma. Since blessing the marriage is all that clergy do strictly as clergy, what logic is there in forbidding them to perform the civil act of solemnization which is only theirs by gift of the state? (Except that the state only gives it because it misunderstands what the church is doing in marriage! Oh, what a mess this is...)

Canons to the right of me

The confusion is further exacerbated when we look closely at canonical rules. The first section of Canon I.18 states:

Sec. 1. Every Member of the Clergy of this Church shall conform to the laws of the State governing the creation of the civil status of marriage, and also to the laws of this Church governing the solemnization of Holy Matrimony.

We are off to a bad start with the artificial distinction between “creation of the civil status” and “solemnization.” But let that pass. The primary issue here is the mandatory conformity enjoined upon members of the clergy with the laws of the state concerning civil marriage. Several states and jurisdictions now have laws governing the civil status of marriage which permit marriage to same-sex couples. At present the “laws of this Church” do not address the question of same-sex marriage at all, either to forbid or allow. The laws of the church are designed solely to govern marriage between a man and a woman, primarily to assure that capacity to marry and consent obtain. This is how section 2 describes it:

Sec. 2. Before solemnizing a marriage the Member of the Clergy shall have ascertained:
(a) That both parties have the right to contract a marriage according to the laws of the State.
(b) That both parties understand that Holy Matrimony is a physical and spiritual union of a man and a woman, entered into within the community of faith, by mutual consent of heart, mind, and will, and with intent that it be lifelong.
(c) That both parties freely and knowingly consent to such marriage, without fraud, coercion, mistake as to identity of a partner, or mental reservation.
(d) That at least one of the parties has received Holy Baptism.
(e) That both parties have been instructed as to the nature, meaning, and purpose of Holy Matrimony by the Member of the Clergy, or that they have both received such instruction from persons known by the Member of the Clergy to be competent and responsible.

Clause (b) is a problem on a number of levels¹ but not primarily as a restriction on same-sex marriage. For the “understanding” that holy matrimony involves a man and a woman falls upon the couple rather than the clergy, as does the similar language in the “declaration of intent” that the couple are somewhat redundantly² obliged to sign. The crucial thing to observe is that none of this has any impact on the civil faculty of clergy to solemnize marriage, nor on the ecclesiastical faculty of blessing the marriage (which, as I note above, is the primary clergy task from a strictly ecclesiastical point of view.)

Rite of Way

A further level of complexity concerns the lack of a nationally authorized liturgy for the marriage of same-sex couples. This is where the “generous pastoral response” of the 2009 GC Resolution C056 comes in. This Resolution, which was adopted by overwhelming majorities in both the House of Bishops and House of Deputies, states, among other things:

That bishops, particularly those in dioceses within civil jurisdictions where same-gender marriage, civil unions or domestic partnerships are legal, may provide generous pastoral response to meet the needs of members of this Church...

Taking advantage of the bishops’ constitutional prerogative (Article X, and BCP page 13), to authorize special forms of liturgy for occasions not already provided for in the BCP, it is well within a bishop’s scope of action to do as some have done in allowing use of experimental liturgies such as have already been developed for same-sex marriages.

In Conclusion

It seems to me that it is fully appropriate for a bishop to authorize clergy of a diocese in which the civil law allows the solemnization of same-sex marriage to perform both the civil function of solemnization and the ecclesiastical function of witnessing, registering, and blessing the marriage, using forms authorized by the bishop to that end.

__________

1. The main problem lies in the word “spiritual” — since the tradition, and the liturgy, do not define marriage as a “spiritual union” in the Western tradition, which holds that marriage ends at death. This biblical point of view (cf. Luke 20:35, 1 Cor 7:39) is not accepted in the East, which is one of the reasons the Eastern Orthodox are not sanguine about second marriages even in widowhood.

The secondary problem concerns the marriage being “entered into within the community of faith” since as the canon states (repeating a BCP rubric) only one of the parties need to be baptized and there is no requirement at all that the witnesses be baptized.

It would probably be best to delete this whole section “b” as superfluous.

2. The Declaration of Consent contained in I.18.3.e-g repeats the language of the BCP. That a couple should have to sign this declaration prior to making the declaration as part of the marriage liturgy seems a completely unnecessary requirement, rather like requiring an ordinand to sign the Oath of Conformity before signing the Oath of Conformity in the ordination liturgy.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Hammers and Nails

2011-08-05T14:54:00.000-05:00

The first chapter of Acts shows Jesus telling the Apostles to go back to Jerusalem and wait for the coming of the Spirit. With understandable impatience, and some initiative, they decide instead to fill the absent spot in their number left by the betrayal of Judas, with the essentially backward-looking criterion that the candidates have been witnesses to all that Jesus had done from the beginning They elect Matthias, who is enrolled among their number — and about whom nothing else is heard.

For it appears that the Holy Spirit, for which the Apostles were too impatient to wait, had other ideas about the shape of ministry for the emerging church. The Apostles were concerned about office while the Holy Spirit was more concerned to raise up ministries.

The pattern repeats a few chapters later when the Apostles are called upon to address the complaints of the Greek-speaking community’s widows, cleverly appointing seven Greek deacons to this newly created office, to placate the complaints and address the concerns. But once again, Stephen, notable among the deacons, very quickly overleaps his job description and engages in a prophetic ministry of preaching and proclamation that ends in his martyrdom, perhaps even sowing the seeds of Saul’s later conversion.

The church — and let’s face it, almost any institution — is very often caught between the expressions of charismatic ministry emerging to meet unexpected needs, and the tendency almost immediately to stamp these ministries with some kind of official recognition. In many cases the office is maintained even after the need for which it was created may have changed or ceased altogether. In doing this the church loses the flexibility to address the actual needs presented to it by the world, and stumbles about trying to fit people with a truly rounded charismatic call to serve an emergent need into the square hole of an office not ideally suited to that work. Or the leaders may despair of finding a suitable candidate for an office that is really no longer needed — such is the power of the office itself to conform or induce conformity. There is an old saying that if your only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail, and this can happen with ministry as well as carpentry.

This is true not just of individual offices but of programs — a church begins a ministry of feeding the homeless, for example, to meet a real need. But after some years, when changes in the neighborhood or the demographics have reduced or eliminated the homeless population, the church still feels that it must perpetuate this program even though the need has lessened or disappeared. The church has become so identified with that program that it is no longer able to see the new and emerging needs staring it in the face.

The Spirit calls us to sit lightly in our offices and our programs, to keep our eyes open to the world around us. Parishes, dioceses and even national churches can be paralyzed into inaction when they become so set on filling offices that they miss the crying needs, and the Holy Spirit’s abounding grace providing ministries emerging in their midst.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

A Different Gospel

2011-08-02T17:04:00.000-05:00

And Jesus, when he came out, saw much people, and was moved with compassion toward them, because they were as sheep not having a shepherd: and he began to teach them many things. And when the day was now far spent, his disciples came unto him, and said, “This is a desert place, and now the time is far passed: Send them away, that they may go into the country round about, and into the villages, and buy themselves bread: for they have nothing to eat.” He answered and said unto them, “Give ye them to eat.” And they say unto him, “Shall we go and buy two hundred pennyworth of bread, and give them to eat?” He saith unto them, “How many loaves have ye? go and see.” And when they knew, they say, “Five, and two fishes.” And he commanded them to make all sit down by companies upon the green grass. And they sat down in ranks, by hundreds, and by fifties. And he drew near and said to the disciples, “Give ye me the loaves and the fishes, that the people might be fed.” But they drawing back said unto him, “Socialist!” And looking up to heaven, he rolled his eyes and sighed deeply.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Man of Crisis and Soul

2011-08-02T11:46:00.001-05:00

Gracious God, we thank you for the witness of William Edward Burghardt DuBois, passionate prophet of civil rights, whose scholarship advanced the dignity of the souls of black folk; and we pray that we, like him, may use our gifts to do justice in the Name of Jesus Christ our Liberator and Advocate; who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God for ever and ever. Amen.

ikon by the hand of Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Albert John Luthuli of South Africa

2011-07-18T08:21:00.002-05:00

Eternal God, we thank you for the witness of Chief Luthuli, Nobel Laureate for Peace, who was sustained by his Christian faith as he led the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. Strengthen us, after his example, to make no peace with oppression and to witness boldly for our Deliverer, Jesus Christ; who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

For his feast on July 22 — posted early as I will be on retreat.
Ikon written by Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Four for Freedom

2011-07-18T08:18:00.000-05:00

O God, whose Spirit guides us into all truth and makes us free: Strengthen and sustain us as you did your servants Elizabeth, Amelia, Sojourner, and Harriet. Give us vision and courage to stand against oppression and injustice and all that works against the glorious liberty to which you call all your children; through Jesus Christ our Savior, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

For their feast on July 20 — posted early as I am going on retreat.
Ikon written by Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Thought for 07.14.11

2011-07-14T12:44:00.000-05:00

Same-sex marriage is no more a threat to marriage than universal suffrage is a threat to democracy.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

The Cost of Bigotry

2011-07-13T12:26:00.002-05:00

Last month watched a very interesting film on Netflix. A Film Unfinished is based on a recently discovered cache of Nazi film footage and outtakes from the Warsaw ghetto. As the outtakes reveal, what appears to be a documentary on life in the ghetto is actually a highly crafted example of propaganda — the goal of which was to portray the Jews in the ghetto in the worst possible light, emphasizing the characteristics imposed upon them by the racist bigotry of Nazi ideology: as greedy, uncaring and uncharitable to the suffering among them, and bestial in that suffering. Of course, there is no suggestion that the conditions in the ghetto were caused by the Nazis!

I should probably run this past Counselor Godwin, but this film on the Nazis reminded me of another film I saw recently on PBS, a documentary about Stonewall, which included clips from “educational” films from the 50s and early 60s that portrayed the “depravity and tragedy” of homosexuality. The major theme in this propaganda is that homosexuals live furtive, dirty, and depressing lives. Again, there is no recognition that such conditions might almost entirely result from the larger society’s criminalization and marginalization.

I would love to come up with a catchy name for this syndrome: when Group X forces Group Y into a situation in which it acts in certain ways which Group X then condemns as proof of the inferiority or depravity of Group Y. Perhaps I should call it Bachmann’s Effect, in honor of the aspirant to the presidency whose comments on homosexuals are remarkably similar to those of the bigoted “educational” films of the 50s.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Nathan Söderblom of Uppsala

2011-07-12T15:50:00.000-05:00

Almighty God, we bless your Name for the life and work of Nathan Söderblom, Archbishop of Uppsala, who helped to inspire the modern liturgical revival and worked tirelessly for cooperation among Christians. Inspire us by his example, that we may ever strive for the renewal of your Church in life and worship, for the glory of your Name; who with Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

ikon by the hand of TSH+

Oh, England

2011-07-11T09:08:00.000-05:00

Colin Coward has some choice words concerning the Church of England's entangled state of affairs concerning the ordination of gay (and eventually) lesbian persons who are living in partnerships (and one foresees, some day, marriages). In the meantime, he correctly observes that this is simply an invitation to duplicity and a step back into the closet.

It is good to remember that the official motto of the Anglican Communion is, The Truth Shall Make You Free. The fact on the ground, in England anyway, is "The Lie May Make You Bishop."

This is a shameful situation, and has nothing to do with any overarching understanding of morality. I hope that in their reexamination of the "Issues"* the leaders of the Church of England will finally come to understand that morality is not based in "the flesh" and come to see that the virtues of fidelity, self-giving, love and charity are applicable to same- as well as mixed-sex couples.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

* See my earlier analysis of the successor to "Issues in Human Sexuality" — which was hardly an improvement. It is time for a wholesale revision and reexamination.

Doing What Comes (Un)Naturally

2011-07-10T11:44:00.000-05:00

A Sermon for Proper 10a

SJF • Proper 10a 2011 • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
The mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law—indeed it cannot, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

Some of the philosophers of the romantic era and in the 17th to 19th century came up with the idea that people living in simplicity in the time before civilization were somehow more innocent, more “natural” and hence unspoiled. The notion is sometimes referred to as that of the “noble savage.” The concept became attached to Swiss philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, but it isn’t exactly his idea. Still, he shared the tendency somehow to idealize human beings in their uncivilized condition. He saw civilization itself as a kind of introduction of morality and consequent decline.

The idea as Rousseau espoused it is that people in their primitive state were morally neutral, and that it was only with later civilization that evil entered the world as society began to corrupt the natural innocence of primitive existence. As Rousseau put it, the problems began “when the first man staked out a bit of land and said, ‘This is mine,’ and convinced others foolishly to agree.”

The Christian tradition is said by some to see things rather differently, but a closer reading may reveal that it is not quite so different. People sometimes look to the story of Adam and Eve and think of the innocent perfection of life that they enjoyed in paradise. But surely the point of the story is precisely that they were not innocent. They sinned — disobeying what at that point was just about the only thing God had commanded them — while they were in paradise. They may have been created innocent, but they were also created capable of committing sin, and it took them almost no time to do so.

+ + +

Theologians have wrestled with the question of human nature for thousands of years — whether people are good by nature or bad by nature, or started good and became bad, or whatever.

It seems to me that Saint Paul had it right, and made the most sense both out of that ancient story of the Garden and the Fall, and the practical reality of his own human experience. Human flesh — with its cravings, devices and desires — is weak. Human beings also have a natural tendency towards self-preservation, like most living things. And human beings develop very quickly the sense of property: at least when it comes to their own property. Much as Rousseau observed, children don’t take long to get to the point at which they have learned the first person possessive: Mine! It’s just that he saw this as part of a decline rather than natural, in contrast to another earlier philosopher, John Locke, who took the view that property was a natural right. Whether a right or a tendency, though, as a child, I had to be taught that not everything was mine — I had to learn how to share with other children.

For Saint Paul, this natural tendency is a part of the “mind set on the flesh.” It derives from our creaturely existence — our neediness. We need things; we need air to breathe, we need to eat. All of that is natural, natural to us. And that neediness has to be governed and ordered and civilized by some kind of regulation. Thus far Paul would be in agreement with Rousseau and the English philosopher Hobbes, with the exception that Rousseau was a bit more optimistic about the short-lived innocence of primitive humanity.

+ + +

But Saint Paul stands apart from all of these secular philosophers, in that, while they saw from rather different angles that law was society’s answer to the problem of human weakness, Paul saw that law was an insufficient solution to the problem. It is like a drug that comforts but does not heal. He saw law as an insufficient means of bringing peace to the warring hearts of fallible human beings. Even the law given by God could not bring compliance: in fact, God’s law only laid down the penalty: “Of the tree in the midst of the garden you shall not eat, for in the day you eat of it you shall die.” That was the law that God gave to Adam and Eve, and it was the law they broke, before the proverbial ink was dry.

So what is the answer? What does Saint Paul offer us as an answer? Paul looks to God again — for something different this time; not for the law, but something different — after all, God is the source of all good — the fountain of all goodness, as we sang in our hymns today: it is from him that everything comes, the source of all good — but Paul did not look to God for the same old kind of law that God had given in the past, the law that was weakened by the flesh and so could not bring true righteousness.

Instead God sent his Son, but not, as the evangelist John would say, to condemn the world. God sent his Son precisely to relieve the world of that endless cycle of law-giving and law-breaking that was getting us nowhere, as we spun our wheels in the dry soil or the mud of our own failings.

+ + +

For Paul had observed something in that old, old story: you may recognize it too — let me ask you, when was it that Adam and Eve sinned? While God was away from them, while they were on their own. (Of course God was not really “away” but that is how the story goes — and we had best pay attention to the details of that story.) And Eve was off on her own — away from Adam — when the Serpent whispered sweet nothings in her ear and tempted her to violate the only law on the books at that time. And her weak flesh — the desire to live forever and become like God (even though, as the text shows, she and Adam already were like God, being made in God’s image) — as I say, her weak flesh gave in, and then she persuaded Adam’s equally weak flesh to join her: all of this while God was “away.”

So the answer to all of this, Paul says, is to be always “with” God — such that God is never “away.” And this is made possible both through the fact that Jesus Christ came “in the flesh” — that is to say, in and through and by means of the very human flesh that was the problem in the first place. And further to know that God is always with us, always present to us through the Spirit. If the Spirit of Christ dwells in you, God is with you, and even though the flesh might still seek to drag you down to death because of sin, the Spirit — God’s presence — is life because of the righteousness of Christ.

This is the hopeful message that Saint Paul brings: Christ came in the flesh and remains with us in the Spirit, and his spirit is at work in us and there it can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine: even though we have no power in ourselves to become righteous, his spirit working in us is life because of his righteousness.

And it is a life that contains within it the promise of new life, the resurrection life. The Son of God, the Word of God, is at work within the soil of our human flesh. Remember how the story tells, what God made us from, at the beginning. Our soil, our flesh, comes from the earth. It is like the seed of the word received and nurtured, which grows in the soil to bear fruit for righteousness, “in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty.” We are not good by nature, but by grace: our soil cannot bear fruit on its own, unless the seed of God be planted in it.

And so we do not trust in what is merely natural to make us good, but in the supernatural goodness of God to make us his. That is the message of salvation and grace through Jesus Christ our Lord.+

Thought for 07.07.11

2011-07-07T13:30:00.001-05:00

We do not trust in what is merely natural to make us good, but in the supernatural goodness of God to make us his.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG, from next Sunday's sermon...

Matter of Substance

2011-07-03T16:27:00.000-05:00

The Proposed Anglican Covenant (PAC) is not structured as a means to reach agreement on difficult issues, but as a means to manage disagreements on any issues whatsoever when they happen. It has nothing to offer as a way forward: all brake and no engine. As a nobbled runner in the race for new models for the governance of the Anglican Communion, it is never going to win, precisely because it does not govern, or propose to govern. It still leaves the traditional autonomy (in any and all things, let’s be honest and clear) up to the individual provinces, and by its own account shields their local constitution and canons from outside interference like the sensitive private parts they are. The PAC can manage some of the interrelations between the provinces — but again only to the degree that the provinces are willing to take up the recommendations of the official recommenders. That is what it says.

If this is beginning to sound like the elderly dowager in the upstairs bedroom banging her stick against the floor to quiet her fractious and disruptive heirs and assigns gathered in the parlor, the analogy may not be too far off. To what extent is the Anglican Communion in danger of becoming a provincial staging of Gianni Schicchi?

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Taking Council or Leaving It

2011-07-02T18:13:00.001-05:00

My brief post (a "thought" really) seems to have struck a nerve in some circles. In part, I think it has not been well understood. Fr. Jonathan, at the Conciliar Anglican, has read far too much between the lines, and come to conclusions utterly at odds both with my intent and with what I actually said.
But he dissents courteously from the position he imagines I maintain, and all is well. For example, he says,

Communion for him equals autonomous churches (geographically oriented, presumably, though he does not say this explicitly) that share in something called “mission” and “ministry” rather than sharing in doctrine.

This is fine up through the word ministry but that "rather" completely misses my point in the whole thought — i.e., that it is precisely the shared minimalist doctrine that "goes without saying." Anglicanism classically professed not to be innovative in doctrine, but to be faithful to the biblical and ancient core of the faith. In this sense they were "catholic" — proclaiming the universal faith of the early church.

Of course, he and others disagree with, or wish further to explore, a position I actually do maintain, which is that classical Anglicanism is geared from the outset, not to a centralized conciliar form of polity, but to a distributed model in which, as it developed, the various member churches of the communion (most of them originating almost genetically) inherited certain characteristics, including the notion of strong autonomy from outside influence, even from other members of the Communion.

The group I'll call "conciliarists" hold the contrary view, that a deep conciliarity is part of the Anglican ethos. The "test" for this understanding of conciliar catholicity as engrained in classical Anglicanism is to look closely at what the classical Anglicans said to the Roman Catholic Church of their day, and how they felt themselves competent to judge the "errors" of ecumenical Councils, and reject them; and to accept the Creeds and other acts of the early Councils not on the authority of the Councils themselves, but because in their judgment the Creeds and doctrinal findings of the (first four) Ecumenical Councils were concordant with Scripture. (Note they did not go along with the disciplinary decrees of even the first four Councils, and felt themselves competent to disregard the three later Councils — again, on the basis of their own judgment.) This is all laid out in the Articles of Religion.

The point is that the classical Anglicans did not think of themselves as conciliar, but patristic or even apostolic. They were interested in "primitive Christianity" unadorned with the accretions of later traditions.

I have, of course, no objection to a discussion of the relative merits of the conciliar model, and it has many attractions, but I am finding the revisionism that wants to retroject a hankering after conciliarism onto primitive Anglicanism unhelpful. The Conciliar Anglican makes a number of claims, including this

Our notions of unfettered autonomy for individual churches are very recent and not at all tied to classical Anglicanism which balanced the doctrine of self-governing, national churches with the much more central doctrine that Holy Scripture, interpreted through the lens of the Fathers and the creeds, is our highest authority, through which the Lord governs His Church.

that does not quite pass the test of historical accuracy, or at least make sense as a complete thesis: that is, it was precisely the "unfettered autonomy" of the Church of England that allowed it to make the claims about the centrality of Holy Scripture, rather than the authority of the papacy or the councils, for establishing doctrine. The classical Anglicans did not look to the Bishop of Rome or the Councils of the Church for answers, but to Scripture.

This tendency continued, as I say, with the successive foundations that grew to become the Anglican Communion. Look deeply into the memoirs of William White concerning the founding years of the Episcopal Church, and you will find that TEC did not in fact adopt all of the doctrinal or disciplinary positions commended to it by the Church of England, and felt competent to do so. Examine the full record of the Lambeth Conferences down the years and see how various provinces have ignored its recommendations, until the things Lambeth sought to control became so common that Lambeth adopted what had been so long opposed. (I can cite birth control and reluctant toleration of polygamy as just two examples off the top of my head, but I know there are others.)

I think an accurate handle on the reality of our situation is the most helpful way to move forward. Conciliar government has its strong points -- it does not need a specious claim to historical roots in classical Anglicanism. I would find such a discussion helpful and interesting, and although I am a conservative at heart, I also am open to examining proposed revisions to old customs. This is one of the reasons I have been devoted to the Covenant Process and the discussion surrounding it, as I am not utterly opposed to the idea of improvements to the structures of contemporary Anglicanism. I just haven't seen them yet.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Update: Fr Bryan has added some thoughts to the conversation, and ends with some challenging questions:

Is the fact that we argue and disagree with each other on such basic questions as "What is Anglicanism?" and "Is there a unique Anglican doctrine?" itself revelatory about the nature of Anglicanism?
Is the term "Anglicanism" too monolithic and insufficiently descriptive of actual faith and practice? If so, would it be better to speak of a variety of Anglican identities (to borrow from the title of a book by Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams)?
Can Anglicanism be anything anybody wants it to be? If not, what are the boundaries?
To quote from Fr. Tobias' initial posting, is "the idea of being a fellowship, a communion — not a 'church' or a 'federation' — of self-governing churches whose individual decisions do not bind the others, even as they cooperate in mission and ministry" a sufficient basis for stemming the tide of communion-breaking division and schism?
Can unity or communion in practice ("mission and ministry") take precedence over unity or communion in belief and order?

I assayed a response as follows:

Dear Fr Bryan,Thanks for your thoughts. If I'd known what a response my short thought would generate I'd perhaps have taken greater care! Maybe with it and your musing questions we might have something challenging for the GOE.

To take a stab at your questions, they are much the ones I have. I'm still wading through all of this, but my sense is that the very delicate balance of the Anglican model was "disturbed" when Lambeth, in 1998, tried to act as a Council, "settling" a matter that was really far from settled. It is the effort to build Babel as a center of unity in se that leads to the dispersion of the people. The focus of unity ought to be in service pro alia. This is what I mean about turning the focus of unity outward: in common service to others we find out identity with Christ and each other.

The difficulty on practical terms is that no one can declare what is adiaphorous at the time of the conflict. It seems to me the genius of Anglicanism up till now has been the very graciousness to close one eye and look the other way instead of engaging in head-butting or mutual anathemata. We lose our sense of the really large deposit of the faith we hold in common when we become obsessed with those things on which we differ.

I realize that is not really in the form of an answer to your question. But it is where my musings have taken me...

Thought for 06.30.11

2011-06-30T17:53:00.001-05:00

The proposed Anglican Covenant threatens to destabilize, deface or destroy the one thing of value that Anglicanism has to offer: our polity as a comparatively loose fellowship of self-governing churches. Anglicans have little to offer world Christendom by way of doctrine, except in the choice language of some of the very best English around. We do have (variably throughout the communion) some wonderful liturgy, again in rather fine language and music (some of which has indeed been borrowed by other traditions.)

But it is the idea of being a fellowship, a communion — not a "church" or a "federation" — of self-governing churches whose individual decisions do not bind the others, even as they cooperate in mission and ministry, that forms our only peculiar offering to the tapestry of world Christendom. It is a model of service and fellowship, of work with rather than power over, commended by Christ himself as a model of churchly governance. If that is not worth preserving, then we have little else to offer.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Harriet Beecher Stowe, 1896

2011-06-30T15:34:00.000-05:00

Gracious God, we thank you for the witness of Harriett Beecher Stowe, whose fiction inspired thousands with compassion for the shame and sufferings of enslaved peoples, and who enriched her writings with the cadences of The Book of Common Prayer. Help us, like her, to strive for your justice, that our eyes may see the glory of your Son, Jesus Christ, when he comes to reign with you and the Holy Spirit in reconciliation and peace, one God, now and always. Amen.

It is said that when Stowe met Abraham Lincoln, the President observed, “So you are the little lady whose book started this war.” Such is the power of prophetic witness for justice.

ikon written by Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Thanks, Savitri

2011-06-30T08:36:00.000-05:00

Happy to see this morning that Savitri Hensman of the Guardian has cited my work, Reasonable and Holy, as an Anglican resource in the continuing sexuality discussions. Thanks, Savi!

TSH

How to Approach the Covenant

2011-06-26T13:40:00.001-05:00

Mark Harris has penned a thoughtful reflection on the state of the Anglican Covenant, in particular in light of the finally released opinion of the Standing Commission on Constitution and Canons. (All such committees and commissions are very conscious of the fact that only the General Convention can speak with final authority on the meaning of its own documents; which may in part have been behind the, shall we say, shyness about the release of this report. No harm done, and it is good to see their thoughts, even though they are not the last word.)

One of the long-term concerns about approaching the Covenant is the awareness that its genesis was in part in response to actions of the Episcopal Church (and the Anglican Church of Canada), and given our unwillingness to refrain (after a season of restraint) from acting on our best determinations, some have said that we cannot in good conscience sign the Covenant.

This seems to me to lay too much emphasis on the genesis and not enough on the deuteronomy -- that is, on what the Covenant actually says.

As I see it, the way to "not cross our fingers" is to reject Lambeth 1.10 and the Windsor Report as authoritative from the start, and to reaffirm that the "mind of the communion" is not settled on the matters on which some seem to think it is. And to reaffirm our belief that the "objectionable" actions of TEC are in fact in accord with Scripture, Tradition, and Reason, even to the extent and in the manner described in the Covenant. And then move forward from there, whether we adopt or refuse or commit for further study. In other words, to take a stand and allow our response to the Covenant to be informed by that stand.

This approach is possible because, unlike the Jerusalem Declaration, the Covenant does not address specific issues, specifically not the specific issues that brought us to this place. (Hence its rejection by some who wanted a specific checklist on the hot topics, much in the manner of the classic confessions). It is up to us to make our case, or re-make it, if need be, and then have the courage, if the case cannot be accepted, to say, then fare well -- we have no wish to be part of a Communion which imposes doctrinal conditions that cannot be proven from Scripture, itself a violation of a timeworn Anglican touchstone. (Obviously there is disagreement across the communion, and no true consensus on the sexuality issues: a result of this very lack of convincing proof of the moral wrongness of same-sex marriage or the ordination of men or women who happen to live in such covenanted relationships.)

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Cornerstone of Civilization

2011-06-25T09:39:00.002-05:00

New York State has joined a literal handful of other US judicatories and about the same number of international jurisdictions in approving marriage equality, to take effect in about a month.

The response has been elation on one side (my own) and the expected warnings of doom on the other, led locally by the Roman Catholic bishops of New York, who question the state's interference in what they call "the cornerstone of civilization." That this comes from a group of celibate men, who none-the-less appear by all standards to be relatively civilized, does not appear to have dawned upon them.

When it comes to cornerstones, civilization has more than marriage to rest upon. Most social scientists and historians credit agriculture and animal husbandry (quiet in the back!) as more central to the establishment of civilization than marriage — and in fact, most marriage law may more likely be seen as an outgrowth of civilization than its cause.

It is also evident, from the historical record (including the biblical one) that "one man / one woman marriage" has not been the only "civilizing" form even of marriage down through the years. As a reminder, allow me to share once again, my "Biblical Wedding Cake Toppers Bookmark" — suitable for keeping one's place in the tangles of the Torah or the Pauline Epistles.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

James Weldon Johnson

2011-06-23T16:07:00.000-05:00

Eternal God, we give thanks for the gifts that you gave your servant James Weldon Johnson: a heart and voice to praise your Name in verse. As he gave us powerful words to glorify you, may we also speak with joy and boldness to banish hatred from your creation, in the Name of Jesus Christ; who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

A great poet, of many inspired works including "The Creation" and "Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing."

ikon by Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Let Them Have It

2011-06-21T15:42:00.002-05:00

The NY State Senate is still tied up with a resolution that would finally permit same-sex marriage in the state. The tie up is largely due to “concerns” from some religious leaders (by no means all — several Episcopal bishops including Sisk and Singh to name but two have spoken out in support of the resolution). These other concerned religious leaders, perhaps best represented by the one with most to fret about, Archbishop Dolan, wish to have the act amended to provide greater “protections” to various of their members and agencies.

Of course, as we all know (don’t we?) no church can be forced to perform a marriage against its doctrine. Roman Catholics can turn legally divorced persons away without blinking an eye; no rabbi can be forced to officiate at a marriage of non-Jews; nor could an Episcopal priest be required to solemnize a marriage in which both of the parties are unbaptized. There is, in short, no civil right to marriage that trumps a religious right to refuse to solemnize those deemed outside the relevant religious tradition. There is no right to a rite.

So the “concerns” are more removed from the actual issue of marriage itself, at least in the ritual or religious sense. A church that rents its hall for parties may want to refuse to rent it for a gay couple's wedding reception. A church-related agency for adoption or foster-care may want to refuse to place a child with a married lesbian couple.

And my opinion is, let them have it. Let them discriminate on these grounds. There are other halls to rent, and adoption and foster care agencies to place children. (I do feel for the children who may not find or be delayed in finding a loving couple to care for them; but the responsibility for this will lie with the religious leaders who place a premium on their own concept of righteousness at the expense of the little ones.)

This view is not, by the way, meant to accommodate the individual person of strong religious views, but only institutionally related facilities. The homophobic baker should not have the right to refuse to bake a cake for gay couples — though, at the same time, there are other bakers who will be glad to oblige. But we do get into sticky areas of fondant and marzipan when personal beliefs, however deeply held, are granted special privilege to operate apart from some institution committed to that peculiar view, and for specifically doctrinal reasons.

I say this because I believe the arc of history is on our side. Even the baker will soon find herself with fewer customers, were this provision even to be extended so far — which as I say I do not advise. If the Roman Catholic Church wishes to take what it thinks is the high road — let them do it. History — and the Almighty — will be their judge, as history and God are mine.

But I can read history as well as anyone, and conservative churches wed to the bigotries of the past soon are wearing unbecoming widows' weeds. They do not have a particularly good track record in this regard, whether the matter be the treatment of spiritual movements, of slavery, or even of cosmology.

What the Almighty will say when all is said and done... well, that will depend upon who is acting with greater consistency with the Gospel.

Update and clarification: I neglected to mention the issue of church-related agencies that receive state financial support. I by no means want to suggest that, for example, a church-affiliated adoption agency should continue to receive public financial support if it chooses to limit its services on the grounds of religious beliefs. To continue to offer financial support would be precisely to favor a particular religious aspect of their general work. They cannot have it both ways: if they are claiming an exemption from respecting the civil rights of others on religious grounds, then the civil society has every responsibility to withhold its support of what is, by their own admission, an action based on religion.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Basil the Great

2011-06-13T16:04:00.000-05:00

Almighty God, you have revealed to your Church your eternal Being of glorious majesty and perfect love as one God in Trinity of Persons: Give us grace that, like your bishop Basil of Caesarea, we may continue steadfast in the confession of this faith, and constant in our worship of you, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; for you live and reign for ever and ever. Amen.

ikon by TSH

Anglican Communion Bovarism

2011-06-13T11:35:00.000-05:00

What shall it profit you if you gain a whole world church at the cost of your true self?

I rarely repeat posts on this blog, but in light of recent comments about "the Anglican Church" I think this one from almost exactly three years ago, slightly edited, bears repeating.

It seems to me that the effort to transform the fellowship of autonomous national and provincial churches known as the Anglican Communion into some kind of (even loosely) centrally governed world church is placing more of a burden upon the existing structures than they can either bear or even bear with. The genius of Anglicanism is to be a fellowship of autonomous churches who do not need to be bound by each others' local decisions. One province or national church is free to ignore things in another that would not go over well in its own bailiwick.

The real danger to this "blessed liberty" is that of Bovarism. Madame Bovary is probably the most misunderstood novel ever written — people see it as a kind of romance (and if one is to judge from the film adaptations, that is how it is almost universally played). But it is not a romance, rather an anti-romance: a study in the damage caused by romanticism. The "heroine" could have been perfectly happy in her life had she not filled her idle hours with reading fantastic romances, and imagining that this was what "love" was really about. In fact, her ordinary life as the wife of a modest middle-class doctor could have been as loving as she was willing to make it. Instead, she embarked upon one failed and tawdry exercise after another, until at last even her suicide was botched -- instead of downing the swift and romantic cyanide she gobbled the nasty and corrosive arsenic; and even as she lies dying — pathetically clasping at a last shred of fantasy grand tragedy — she is robbed of romantic death as the lyrics of a bawdy street song float through the open window.

"Bovarism" is this tendency to live in a romanticized world, in which real joy is bypassed in exchange for an unattainable and impractical ideal; real joy is destroyed by romantic ambition.

The Anglican Communion can continue to function as it has — a bit disorganized, even dysfunctional, at times, yet still able to do much good. Or it can quest after becoming something it never need become, nor very likely can become, and in the process lose the one gift we Anglicans offer as a model for the church in a day which alternately quests after submission to authority or anarchic disconnection.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

G K Chesterton

2011-06-12T12:44:00.000-05:00

O God of earth and altar, you gave G. K. Chesterton a ready tongue and pen, and inspired him to use them in your service: Mercifully grant that we may be inspired to witness cheerfully to the hope that is in us; through Jesus Christ our Savior, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
image by the hand of Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Glittering Prizes

2011-06-11T08:48:00.001-05:00

Word from Scotland:

The Most Rev David Chillingworth said: “The prize is a global church held together by the richest of aspiration and the most minimal of structure... But we are human — the question is whether we need some structure and some boundaries to help us to live up to that aspiration.”

If a global church is the prize, I'll take what's behind door number two.

If I aspired to be part of a global church there's one down the block. And I've always thought inspiration was more important than aspiration.

Besides, holding something together by aspiration reminds me too much of those Monty Python apartment house blocks built by hypnosis.

I do not think there is, among the members of the Anglican Communion, a common or forceful aspiration towards world-churchdom. If I am mistaken, I await the great groundswell of support for the Anglican Covenant, about which I've seen little enthusiasm apart from a kind of desperate urgency from some quarters.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

The Covenant Crisis

2011-06-08T11:38:00.002-05:00

As I have noted previously, I find myself poised somewhere between the two extremes of the Anglican Covenant debate. At one end are those who appear to think that not only is no agreement needed, but that the very idea of pan-Anglican governance is inimical to our identity as Anglicans. At the other extreme are those who appear to think that the AngCov is not merely the best way forward but the only way forward to settle the disputes that have raged through the Communion over the last two decades or so.

I find myself much more inclined towards the former than to the latter. In fact, I find the latter position not only to be facially absurd — if the member provinces of the Communion cannot agree on the Covenant itself, it cannot very well be the basis or means for subsequent agreement — but contradictory to the historical evidence, and arguably misguided as a way forward even were there signs of widespread willingness to move in such a direction.

The latter view is well typified by this comment from the Rev’d Dr. Alyson Barnett-Cowan, Director for Unity, Faith and Order in the Anglican Communion Office.

It’s become quite clear that if we’re to be a global church, we need something that expresses how we live together as a family.

One of the good things about this thesis is that it recognizes — by expressing it as a goal — that the Anglican Communion is not “a global church.” So what is it? It is “a fellowship of autonomous churches.” This fact raises two questions: 1) what is autonomy? And 2) is autonomy circumstantial or essential to Anglicanism?

The meaning of autonomy

Autonomy means self-governance. In the Anglican usage it is really more like its political equivalent “sovereignty.” When a church is autonomous it means that there is no “superior synod” to which it is answerable. (Mark McCall has argued just the opposite, on the basis of political double-speak that refers to “autonomous regions” within some larger governing structure — but it is double-speak I am attempting to clear away, and there is no need for the church to ape the duplicity of the state! “Conditional autonomy” belongs in the category with “partial virginity” and, as Groucho observed, “military intelligence.”)

One of the catchphrases of the AngCov debate has been the Windsor Report’s, “Communion is the limit of autonomy.” I reflected on this at length almost three years ago, and my views have not changed since. My point is that if autonomy is limited then it isn’t autonomy. Even if it is merely voluntary self-censorship, it is precisely submission to a heteronomous influence.

My sense is that all of this is the heritage of the liberal knee-jerk reaction to past colonialism adopted at the Toronto Congress in 1963 under the mealy-mouthed term mutual responsibility and interdependence. “Mutual responsibility” I can certainly buy — no church is an island, as John Donne might observe were he around to participate in our current discussions. But “interdependence?” While “responsibility” carries with it some idea of gifts, “interdependence” is far too needy a term. This is not to say, with anti-Pauline brusqueness, “I have no need of you.” Rather it is to acknowledge the reality that while the various churches can learn from each other and work together with each other, the idea that we “depend” on each other is both a historical and logical fallacy.

Circumstance or essence?

Which brings me to the second question. The Church of England’s assertion of autonomy from the Church of Rome is not a mere historical accident. The sense of national autonomy was passed down to all of the daughter churches arising from the English colonial and imperial adventures, and the further granddaughters borne by those churches. As I noted in my previous post on this subject, so keen were the English to keep the American church separate from them, that they forbade (by Act of Parliament) the newly consecrated American bishops White and Provoost, and anyone they would consecrate or ordain, from ever functioning within his Majesty’s dominions. (Obviously this Act of Parliament was either repealed or ignored at some point.) This sense of autonomy was so powerful that it led to the formation of a separate Protestant Episcopal Church of the Confederate States of America at the time of the Civil War — a new entity created with some sense of regret at the necessity in the South and utterly ignored in the Union and the General Convention.

I have written before about the practical advantage of autonomy — it allows for provincial testing of contextual developments in discipline and worship and for their gradual reception or rejection by other provinces. (Such developments have happened at a slower pace in the past, and much of the tension in the Communion in our time is no doubt due to the rapid increase in the pace of communication and almost instant reactivity.) Autonomy is the safeguard both of local privilege of development and local insulation from foreign developments judged unacceptable. As I have noted time and again, no other province is forced or even expected to adopt what they regard as innovations in any other province, and autonomy is the bulwark against such pressures, if they are perceived to exist. The true statement is: Autonomy is the limit of communion interference.

Globalism as a confusion with Communion

The Anglican Communion is not a “global church” and I don’t want it to become one, for the very reason that such globalism will stifle the greatest gift Anglicanism offers to world Christendom (and if we have nothing to offer why do we exist?) — autonomy in diversity in a fellowship of churches who are not bound by each other’s local decisions.

This is a different model to the Roman, the church which “subsists” in the college of bishops in union with the heir of Peter. It is more like than unlike the Orthodox model of autocephalous churches pledged to a common inheritance of liturgy and canon law, each Orthodox entity holding itself to be the local expression of the fullness of the whole church.

Anglicans have historically understood the national or provincial church in much the same way, though without the common canon law aspect. It might be helpful to apply to the church the same term the Anglican Founders applied to Scripture: sufficiency. Each national or provincial church is sufficient unto itself for its own maintenance. It does not require or depend upon any input from any other sister church, although it welcomes and celebrates its communion with the other members of the Anglican family. Unlike an individual diocese, which cannot create a successor to its own bishop without the input of the larger church body of which the diocese forms a part, the national church or province is sufficient and competent to its own maintenance.

Finally, the Anglican Communion is, as the good Canon observes, a family. Families do not, in fact, require a written document to govern their behavior with one another. A few basic ground-rules defending autonomy, rather than generating a specious interdependency, would not be bad. Lionel Deimel put together such a list a while back. Such rules, some of which go back to Nicaea, include respect for provincial boundaries, fidelity to the Creeds, Sacraments, and the sufficiency of Scripture for salvation. If we are to have a Covenant, let it be one that preserves what is best in what we have, rather than mooning after something we have never had, and likely don’t need.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

The Latest Anglican Fudge

2011-06-07T11:59:00.000-05:00

A number of my friends have begun to pick apart even what up until now has been perceived by many as the least problematical three-quarters of the proposed Anglican Covenant: sections one through three. It seems to me that their hermeneutic of suspicion is working overtime, and they are reading the document in the most negative light possible. Even direct citations from documents as well established in our Anglican DNA as the Lambeth Quadrilateral are being subjected to the glare of cross examination and judged sinister.

That approach would be wise if the AngCov were a contract, such as could be enforced by some coercive means. But this misunderstands, it seems to me, both the nature of the Covenant, and anything that might come from it; and of the Anglican Communion itself.

The AngCov — particularly in the much edited fourth draft now before us — should be seen in the tradition of AFDs — Anglican Fudge Documents, such as the 39 Articles (as amended in the Elizabethan settlement) and the Book of Common Prayer itself. Although these documents were designed to rule certain extreme positions off the table, the primary intent was to be as ambiguous and inclusive of the big messy middle as possible. As the clever readings the mid-19th century Anglo-Catholics applied to the Articles demonstrate, it was possible for people in good conscience to read [in] readings quite at odds with either original intent or strict construction.

Does this mean that the Episcopal Church — or anyone else who hasn’t already — should adopt, subscribe or accede to this latest batch of fudge? Probably not. Although I cannot muster either the angst or the ire towards the AngCov that my friends in the “No Anglican Covenant Coalition” (NACC) have accumulated or espressed, the reasons for adoption, accession, or subscription seem mighty thin. I say this for several reasons and in light of several things which I take as facts:

Too many provinces have already expressed disdain for one or more hard inclusions in the AngCov for it to provide an acceptable degree of chewy fudgicity — the big tent is already about one-quarter empty.

The Anglican Communion is not, and has never been, a strictly structured united entity — not that this AngCov would make it so (particularly given the confusion of purpose in section four) — but is rather a historical reality, given only a quasi-formal structure through ad hoc and pro tem invitations, recognitions, assemblies, and consultations. It barely rises to the level of a federation, let alone a unified body. The “Instruments of Unity” would better by called “Instruments of Ecclesiastical Networking.” The notion of Canterbury at the center as a hub to which various spokes are joined is a legal fiction. To go further and claim, as the AngCov does, that this office is the “focus and means of unity” is, at least on one reading, not only risible, false and absurdly dissonant with reality, but blasphemous (Canterbury is not Christ).

Depending on how one defines “communion” the Anglican Communion isn’t one. If one uses “mutual recognition and interchange of ministers” as the definition (and this is commonly the touchstone in ecumenical discussions, and their fruit) the Anglican Communion wasn’t “in communion” from the very beginning when Seabury gained his orders from non-jurors and the Canterbury-consecrated White and Provoost (and their successors) were forbidden in English law to function anywhere within the realm or colonies, and latterly when duly ordained women, first as priests and even now as bishops, were prevented from functioning in England due to the English fastidiousness towards clergy ordained abroad having to be ordainable at home. Robert Runcie coined the paradox“impaired communion” — which like “partial virginity” is more or less a contradiction in terms.

So, in light of this, I am moved to ask, as the Almighty did of Ezekiel, “Can these bones live?” Perhaps they can — but not at the insufflation of the Anglican Covenant, which is neither particularly spiritual nor manifestly holy.

I have previously used the example of the unwanted gift of fruitcake, and the unwanted gift of fudge is much the same. Not sharing the dire concerns of the NACC, I still suggest General Convention affirm parts one through three of the AngCov, when read in their best possible light, as consistent with the doctrine and discipline of the Episcopal Church, and promoting — nay insisting upon — further interprovincial discussion of the document as a whole, with special regard to the inner inconsistency and incoherence in section four.

Of course, I may think differently by the summer of 2012. But I doubt it.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Ini Kopuria of Melanesia

2011-06-05T16:22:00.000-05:00

Ini Kopuria, the first Elder Brother of the Melanesian Brotherhood, was born soon after the start of the twentieth century on the island of Guadalcanal in the Solomons.

Ini attended St. Barnabas School on Norfolk Island, an institution started by Bishop J. C. Patterson with the purpose of training young men to teach their own people. Ini’s daily contact with the Anglican Christians at St. Barnabas led to his own developed sense of religious calling. One story about his time there relates his strict adherence to a rule of silence during Lent, and on one Ash Wednesday, when confronted by a teacher who questioned this practice, Ini replied by letter, refusing to break his vow. It was then that many around him began to notice his calling to a religious vocation.

Although it was expected that upon leaving school, Ini would return to Guadalcanal to teach his own people, he surprised everyone by becoming a police officer in the Native Armed Constabulary. Though initially unhappy with his role in the police, he earned the respect and admiration of his superiors with his dedication and wisdom. In 1927, after he had left the police force, he was asked by the Commissioner to return to the police and go to the island of Mala to quiet local unrest. Ini is said to have remarked, “It would be bad if I were to go there with a rifle; I may want to return one day with the Gospel.”

It was during his recovery from an injury in 1924 that Ini came to the realization that only in service to Christ would his life find meaning and fulfillment. Under the direction of his Bishop, John Steward, he took his vows as the first Elder of the Melanesian Brotherhood, an Anglican order devoted to the spread of the Gospel among the non- Christian areas of Melanesia. The Order, characterized by its vows of simplicity, in this day continues its work of peacemaking and includes not only Melanesians, but also Polynesians, Filipinos, and Europeans. (From Holy Women Holy Men)

Two Children, Both Boys

2011-05-30T16:53:00.001-05:00

(in keeping with the Visitation)

Saint John was a precocious child; a womb-
borne prophet, quickening as his Lord came by
—Mary bearing Jesus standing nigh—
Leaping up with hardly any room.

Two very different boys: the first was born
just after summer’s sun stopped in the north;
the other, as the sun stood south, borne forth
into a winter world cold and forlorn.

The barn is cold; the animals stand round,
and shepherds kneel, adoring what they’ve found.
There; listen! You can hear it if you try—
the newborn John, his first breath in a cry
—a prophet's cry of joy, and not of fear—
salutes his Lord from half-way round the year.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Thought for 05.30.11

2011-05-30T14:32:00.001-05:00

Primus inter pares — “first among equals” — is, as a term, an oxymoron that appears to convey meaning but which is a logical contradiction. In reality it is an absurdity and an impossibility. Instead of “first among equals” the Archbishop of Canterbury — or, let’s face it, any bishop or cleric — should be “last of all and servant of all.”

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
h/t to Mimi for the inspiration!

Posthumous Rooftop Shout

2011-05-27T16:31:00.000-05:00

The Guardian’s revelations of the late Colin Slee's observations about leaks and tantrums and tears in the English Episcopal Appointment Process is almost old news at this point, but I do have some thoughts.

The reported behavior of the Primates reminds me of Basil Fawlty, whose leadership style was evident when he said, “You people swan in here expecting to be waited on hand and foot! Well I'm trying to run a hotel!!!” Or the unnamed staff person at an unnamed seminary who complained that it actually cost the institution over $10K per student over what they took in, and if only they could get rid of the students they'd have a perfectly solvent school.

This is the sort of Institutional Blindness we see far too often. The purported good of the many comes to outweigh the actual good of the few, and in the long run no one is either well served or well taught. But the Institution, ah! the blessed Institution, slouches on towards its Byzantine goal, quite the opposite direction from Bethlehem of Judea.

Let us remember a simple truth: Institutional Unity is a false God to whom quite enough sacrifices have been made to satisfy even the most jealous god. As it is an idol, it cannot even appreciate the offering, so much as to mumble a "thank you" or a "not enough."

When the idol in question is a church or communion, how much the worse. It might just be barely comprehensible in a church that completely identified its sectarian self with the sole body of Christ on earth -- if there is such a beast -- but for Anglicans?! How soon we forget that the motto of the Anglican Communion is blazoned round the compasrose as “ἡ ἀλήθεια ἐλευθερώσει ὑμᾶς.” They really ought to have spelled it out in plain English: "The truth shall make you free."

In the one conversation I had with Rowan I told him, in spite of his fears that allowing Jeffrey John to go forward might mean a walk-out of half the bishops, that the Truth might liberate the real power of the Spirit. As I put it at the time, “What would happen; what wave of opportunities for new ministry might break forth across the Anglican Communion if we were to take off our masks — all of us? What would happen if we were to be set free by truth for Truth? I am reminded of the eponymous line from CS Lewis’s great novel, ‘How can we truly know and love each other face-to-face, until we have faces?’”

Since then, however I'd come to imagine Rowan, painfully shackled as he is by his own idolatrous bondage to the false god of Institutional Unity, saying to TEC and C of E leadership, "I have betrayed my conscience and my friends for the sake of unity, and I don't see why you bloody well shouldn't do the same!"

Thus, the Slee memo comes not as a surprise, but a confirmation.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG