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Written by The Very Rev. Robert Giannini
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Saturday, 05 June 2010 12:29 |
Our beloved world is not in a very happy shape. Israel is acting with crude belligerence in its attempt to safe-guard its shores. They are destroying relationships with the few remaining allies they have in their part of the world. North Korea threatens war. Iran insists on building nuclear weapons. The horrendous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is causing environmental and political crises. Drugs flow into the United States and people kill to get them. Illegal immigration is spawning draconian measures that undermine many of our basic understandings of what it means to be civilized. Our ability to protect ourselves from terrorists is minimal. The stock market is anemic and our whole economic structure is tenuous. Non-profit institutions – which often give voice to the soul of a nation - are suffering financially. The Cleveland Orchestra and the Philadelphia Orchestra, two of America’s finest, are close to bankruptcy. So are a number of Roman Catholic Dioceses, and if truth be told, so are many Episcopal Dioceses, Presbyterian Synods, and Methodist Districts. Selfishness is a predominant characteristic of much political rhetoric. The anti-government ‘tea party” people are stirring the pot in ways that can only continue America’s predicament of being only barely governable. Anti-intellectualism reigns. To have expertise, know-how, and a good education are drawbacks if one wants to be elected to serve in government. History is supposed serve as “a distant mirror.” The mirror into which I look most often takes me back a century. I have just finished reading three books on the love of war in the late 1800s and early 1900s – a book about Europe’s three principle (though reluctant) warmongers (all cousins): George of England, Wilhelm of Germany, and Nicholas of Russia; a book about three Americans who simply loved the idea of a war with Spain in 1898: Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Cabot Lodge, and William Randolph Hearst; and a book about bellicosity within liberal, mainstream American Protestantism during World War One. Our ancestors a hundred years ago had access to sophisticated and intelligent psychology, philosophy, theology, and historical analysis. But they didn’t dwell there. Instead, they used these disciplines simply to further their predetermined understandings. They wanted war. They thought it was a good thing. And religion, more than any other human discipline, was used blatantly to further war. Religious leaders quickly caved to the aggressive warlike desires of the State. Religious leaders equated Christ and the State and saw honor in killing.
Religion, as far as I can tell, has always had a rough time ever being detached. It is extremely difficult not to be swayed by the pressures of one’s own historical moment. The broader perspective is denied to most of us. Dispassionate religion was certainly not very much in evidence during the First World War. Conservatives narrowed religion to the realm of personal salvation. The progressives – the bulk of the leaders of the mainline churches – had developed a theology in which God was seen to be immanent in social progress. Every day in every way they were getting better and better and it was God working in history who promoted that progress. Rather than see the war as a repudiation of their over-simplified equation of God and human effort – they saw it as a demonstration of America’s role as the new Messiah. “As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free” became the battle-cry that equated Jesus as Messiah with America as Messiah. Soldiers were sent not only to die to make men free but to kill as well, and all under the imprimatur of the Prince of Peace, They saw the war as another sign of God’s presence and God’s righteous activity. Germany was vilified and America was deified. God, they held, was using America to straighten out the whole world so that progress would eventuate in the Kingdom of God (one pastor started calling it the “Democracy of God”) becoming planted on earth firmly and forever. This could get the blood stirring. God’s will and the government’s will were one and the same.
That way of thinking is still with us. In those days it was called liberal. It no longer is. But this understanding of war won’t go away as long as people see war as some sort of cleansing agent, see their own nation as righteous and the other nations as flawed, and refuse to take seriously the demonic slaughter on the battlefields and the senseless death and devastation cruelly wrought on countless people. War will not go away as long as we think that God is necessarily on our side and is using us to shame the enemy, to teach the enemy a lesson, or to bring the enemy to his senses. It will not go away as long as we think that Jesus did not really mean it when he told us to love our enemies.
Many pastors and theologians of the early Twentieth Century later repudiated their war rhetoric. Looking back at 1914-1918 at a time when Mussolini, Hitler, and the Great Depression arose out of the War’s ashes, they were amazed to see how thoroughly deluded they were.
Here is at least one lesson for us. We need to appreciate that our sureties, too, may very well look absurd when viewed from a later time and from different perspectives. In 1914 theological liberals spoke of “peace with righteousness”; their modern equivalents speak of “peace with justice.” We now can see how our predecessors’ understanding of righteousness was flawed. No doubt our understanding of justice is flawed as well. Wherever we stand we are, to one degree or another, in error, or at best only partly correct. It would assist us greatly if we began to incorporate large doses of humility, silence, and sheer faith into our religion.
Today’s philosophical atmosphere can help a bit in this. Postmodernism recognizes that human constructs beg to be “deconstructed,” that is, taken apart and reduced to their most basic elements. All religion, all creeds, all ethical systems are capable of, and beg for, such deconstruction because all of these are created by fallible human beings. The real God can not be deconstructed, but at this point the Second Commandment rears its massive head: every time we talk about this real God we risk taking God’s Name in vain. Before we speak at all of the Living God we might do well to remain a long time in an awe-full silence.
The Christian leaders during World War One did not see things this way. Many Christian leaders do not today; they claim to know, in precise detail, what God is all about. Their forbears knew what God was about. In the name of God they equated moral and material growth. They thought that war was a way to end war. Having an enemy was vital: the maligned enemy allowed them to boast in their own righteousness. The armistice had yet to be signed after World War One when Bolshevism became the new enemy. (In 1989, when Bolshevism ceased to be the enemy, we almost instantaneously invented a new one.)
Our ancestors lacked humility. Are we any different? Taking one’s self with utter humility is not religion’s most popular trait. Humility for many is not a virtue but a flaw. Old timers like me will write stirring words of patriotic encouragement from the safety of our studies. We will continue to create enemies in order to make us feel superior, and we will continue to recognize the God-given need to teach them a lesson or two. We will expound in spellbinding rhetoric the contents of the will of God. And teenagers from different nations will continue to slaughter each other and nothing of any substance will change. But we will feel justified.
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Mentioned in this essay are George, Nicholas, and Wilhelm: Three Royal Cousins and the Road to World War I, by Miranda Carter (2009); The War Lovers: Roosevelt, Lodge, Hearst, and the Rush to Empire, 1898, by Evan Thomas (2010); and The War for Righteousness: Progressive Christianity, the Great War, and the Rise of the Messianic Nation, by Richard M. Gamble (2003). |
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Last Updated on Saturday, 05 June 2010 12:37 |
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Written by The Very Rev. Robert Giannini
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Sunday, 30 May 2010 07:04 |
It may be that we are seeing one of America’s gods drowning to death in the Gulf of Mexico. For over a century we have been in thrall to technology. Whatever the challenge, whatever the mishap, we have put our faith in the genius of technological know-how. That may be over. In the Gulf, that god may have demonstrated that it has very strict limits, that it has failed, that it is not worthy of our trust much less our worship, that it is not a god at all. Technology is a gift that is derived from the God-given faculty of reason with which humanity has been blessed. It is a good. But moral reason has generally failed to keep pace with technological reason. We can do many things, and in the future will be able to do even more things; but we have not been able regularly to assess just what we should actually do or not do. Examples abound. We tame the atom but make weapons of mass destruction with that knowledge. We are able to cure deadly diseases but are unable to make those cures available to much of the world. We discover the energizing properties of oil but allow that to deflect us from developing other, safer and more plentiful energy sources.
We know that the Gulf’s giant oil spill is the result of many intertwining factors. But the Christian understanding of sin compels us to go deeper than simply acknowledging the inability of government and industry to get along. It goes beyond the recognition of the greed of industrialists and the rigidities of environmentalists. The Christian formulation of sin – which modern Christianity tends to overlook – calls us to question our most basic desires. It calls us to question everything; and additionally, it calls us to question sin’s power within our own selves rather than simply amongst “them.”
The Gulf oil spill is a good opportunity for us to reassess ourselves, our souls and bodies: to examine our love affairs with (among many other things) speed, convenience, combustion engines, modern packaging, synthetic fabrics, and ubiquitous air-conditioning and heating. We can look again at the things we desire and the choices we make in light of our responsibility to be God’s agents in this world and in light of the person of Jesus Christ and the Spirit that emanates from his presence.
Americans have deified oil ever since Colonel Drake drilled his well in Meadville, Pennsylvania in 1859. We, along with much of the West, have deified technology for an even longer time. Technology has created the mess in the Gulf. Technology may be able to fix it, but if it does it will fix it long after its egregious error has spawned utterly horrific results. The world cannot afford much more of this kind of technology.
We must be careful here. The Church has an antidote, an antidote that will be effective only if the Church brings it to the fore with huge doses of humility. No longer can we use our understandings of truth to be clubs to beat others with. The antidote is our understanding of sin. It will need to be a renewed and revised Doctrine of Sin for we have allowed sin to be delegated simply to personal moral lapses. It is that, surely, but it is much more than that; it is much more pervasive and much more difficult to handle. It crops up in all human activities. This is what Calvin meant by total depravity: the totality of the human enterprise is soaked with sin. By our re-introducing a thoroughly-developed idea of sin to the public sphere, the world can begin to learn the proper uses and limitations of its technological prowess. Technology does have saving properties; it can be an instrument of God’s love. Were in not for penicillin (a product of technology) many of us would not be alive; were it not for refrigeration truly healthy diets would be unnecessarily impoverished. But turning technology into the savior is another matter. |
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Last Updated on Thursday, 10 June 2010 11:41 |
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Written by The Very Rev. Robert Giannini
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Friday, 09 April 2010 07:45 |
I encourage you to take a glimpse at a rather seamy side of our current political distress in America and out of that glimpse, see a possible role for your congregation. Here is the seamy stuff. Anger and fear are morphing into racism, hatred and violence in the land. In an essay in the April 6th Christian Science Monitor Thomas G. McGowan says what I had been reluctant to say a year ago: a new spirit of racism is coming to the fore in America. Many of us had hoped that the racist impulse had appreciably diminished over the last decades but it may be that we were overly optimistic. McGowan, a professor of sociology at Rhodes College in Memphis, sees racism’s ugly face in a spate of recent hate-filled episodes – including personal threats against members of Congress and their families - which have been engendered by political disagreements. Health care issues seem too insignificant a reason for the extreme outrage. There is probably something else going on. McGowan writes, “The hate violence against members of Congress may have been triggered by people’s anger over healthcare legislation, but much of it is rooted in a reservoir of hatred created by another historical event: the election of the first black American president.”
People are angry, he argues, and at least some of this anger stems from the election of a black president. However, he backs away from analyzing racism. He shifts focus almost immediately. Instead McGowan asks us to look at “anger,” a category which he finds to be a more fruitful one with which to work. He begins his argument positively, albeit with a controversial premise. President Obama, he believes, has inadvertently and ironically brought about this anger simply by being non-anxious, cool, and by bringing to public discourse a movement away from a politics of distrust and anger. McGowan writes, “The ability of Obama to transcend differences and traditional grievances is new to recent American politics. It suggests a politics that devalues anger, advocates dialogue and engagement, rejects hatred, and promotes hope over fear.”
Of course, Mr. Obama might not be as good as all that. There are surely other interpretations of his presidency. Many regard him as crafty and slippery as any of his opponents and regard his advocacy of bipartisanship as a ploy. Yet, no matter what one’s political bias may be, it can be acknowledged that if what McGowan says has any ring of truth, it may exacerbate racist anger amongst a small but significant percentage of the populace. Most Americans are appalled by racism. But some, seeing a black man acting rationally, and seeing a man who is balanced and willing to listen, will have trouble with this. Beyond that Mr. Obama was educated at Columbia and Harvard. Does the word “uppity” slip back into memory? Racism? Among some, yes; but Professor McGowan’s choice to look instead at anger as a better category is certainly wise. To call someone a racist is inflammatory; to say that one is angry is much more acceptable. Anger, as a friend of mine suggests, is one emotion that is designated as OK for the average American.
What about this? Are we now living with a politics of anger and fear rather than one of dialogue, engagement and hope? It looks like we may be headed there. Watching the Senate in operation recently did not show us anything very admirable. The churches have done little better in the midst of their own various squabbles and scandals. Anger, diatribe, and the hurling of epithets have abounded.
On the other hand, there is an area of regular communal life where this is rarely the case. I believe that in the realm of individual religious congregations we find a straightforward rejection of the politics of backbiting, cynicism and fear. When these negative forces erupt in a congregation they are readily rejected. People simply do not want to be a part of a vicious community. On the contrary. In my more than 40 years as a leader within the Church I have found that people in parishes long for forms of governance and oversight replete with dialogue, hope, and openness. Clergy who are angry and turn away from dialogue and engagement acting as if they alone were the possessors of wisdom do little but cause distress and even destruction. McGowan suggests that in our nation “a line is emerging between the politics of dialogue and hope, and the politics of fear and hatred.” It is almost ludicrous to suggest that this is a line that members of any congregation will draw. In no parish would there be anyone happy with a rector who operates with fear and hatred rather than dialogue and hope. We simply don’t tolerate that sort of behavior. Search committees never look for such a rector, and if a clergy person turns out that way, the vestry knows immediately that they have a serious problem. Likewise, if a member of the vestry begins to engender fear and anger, other vestry members know that this, too, is of great concern. The dysfunction that Professor McGowan sees in our national politics may exist as well in our Churches, but only rarely on the local level. When toxic behavior erupts at the local level of a parish, the destruction it brings is obvious and the outcry against it is almost immediate.
McGowan’s worry is that when “anger is allowed to become hatred and hatred becomes politicized,” the right to disagree is threatened. A central core value of a coherent society is jeopardized. Can one disagree with Mr. Obama and his policies? Certainly. Can one’s disagreements provoke anger? Surely. But sooner or later if anger is unchecked it will erupt into hatred and violence and thereby devastate the very basis of civilized society.
Anger is natural. It has a role to play. Its function is to inform us. It is a red-flag that lets us know where we must focus our energies. But anger should never decide what we are to do. When decisions need to be made rationality must step in. We are told “Be angry and do not sin” (Ephesians 4:26), a verse which is a succinct statement of a sentiment that abounds throughout the entirety of the Scriptures. Anger should never grant us warrant to do destructive things. Acting out of anger produces sin.
We may be at a point now where rationality can very well give way to anger and even hatred in American politics. Of course, no politician of any political persuasion would ever admit this. No bishop would, and on the local scene, no rector would. We quite readily see ourselves as rational, balanced, sensible, and correct. But self-deception here can be intensely destructive. Pride is the quintessential sin.
This is where the typical congregation can serve as a beacon. The parish can be a vehicle for a light that will enlighten others within its community. The parish faces the same forces of competition, distrust, and pride that is faced by larger social entities; it faces the same propensity for disease. Yet because of its size, the proximities of its constituents, and the regularity of its worship, it is in a better position to take steps toward a more grace-filled, sane, and civilized approach to governance and the common good. And even if a local congregation does not “have its act together” it can be a witness to the determination of its members to express its discontent with unhealthy behavior and its willingness to step away from toxicity and bring the community into a better place. The lethargy engendered by the enormity of the national dis-ease can be mitigated in the small, local community. In the smaller setting helplessness can be much more easily replaced by a genuine hope and positive action can be found to be a better alternative than whining, fighting, or destroying.
The Gospel promises reconciliation. It may take a while. People will have to offer themselves in its service. It may take a lot of hard work, sacrifice, and suffering. The results may not look anything like what had been expected. But reconciliation is promised to the community of faith. The fig trees can wither, disciples can be dismayed, but in the midst of precisely such destruction Jesus reminds us that faith has the power to move mountains. Such faith is found explicitly and tangibly within the congregations, seemingly insignificant communities of seemingly insignificant people, but people and communities replete with enormous life-giving opportunities. |
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Last Updated on Saturday, 01 May 2010 14:55 |
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Written by The Very Rev. Robert Giannini
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Wednesday, 24 March 2010 05:49 |
Many good people are unhappy with the health care bill that was passed by the House late on the night of the Fifth Sunday in Lent. On the other hand, many are euphoric. Unfortunately, the issue has made a small number of people violent and has led to bitter and hate-filled demonstrations. In light of this, and in light of the reality that this new law will remain at the center of much heated debate, we should remember the following things that we prayed and that we will pray.
The bill was passed by the House on the day we all prayed to the God who “alone can bring into order the unruly wills and affections of sinners.” Unruly wills, and unruly affections abound and we hear of them regularly on the news. Let us not forget that we prayed, and continue to pray, to the God who brings all this into order. We prayed that “among the swift and varied changes of the world our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found.” We asked to be grounded in the midst of turmoil. With such grounding we can, divided as we may be about this legislation, be a light to enlighten the world. The next Sunday, Palm Sunday, our prayer is always that in light of Jesus’ death on the cross, “we may walk in the way of his suffering.”
Between that fifth Sunday and Palm Sunday we celebrate the feast of the Annunciation, the day we remember that the angel of God spoke to Mary and she became the bearer of the Christ. On that day we pray that we“may be brought to the glory of his resurrection.”
Let me recapitulate. Within just a few days of Congress’ historic vote we pray that unruliness be brought into order, that we be grounded in a Godly reality, that we may courageously walk in the way of his suffering, and that we be brought to the glory of new and eternal life.
We ask that our unruliness be brought to order. We may have to endure some excruciating pain as this prayer is in the process of being answered. The grounding, too, means we will be stopped short and planted in a love that surpasses our understanding, a love that we are bound to share as painful as that sharing may prove to be. To be grounded implies, at least to the child in us, new limitations that we may think are unjust. To be grounded in a yet misunderstood love can be disconcerting and overwhelming. And we do more than ask to endure our own suffering – we ask that we may walk in the suffering of Jesus, share in it, and as his Body, mediate to this world the blessings of that suffering. He gave his life – what part of our lives do we give as we walk in this holy week? Our bishop has often reminded us that resurrection only happens to dead things. In light of this momentous week, and in light of the prayers we have uttered, what is it that we must let die? |
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Last Updated on Saturday, 01 May 2010 15:02 |
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Written by The Very Rev. Robert Giannini
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Thursday, 11 March 2010 09:01 |
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Last week the television star Glenn Beck said that Christians should leave churches that preach "social justice" and “economic justice.” Here are his words:
“I'm begging you, your right to religion and freedom to exercise religion and read all of the passages of the Bible as you want to read them and as your church wants to preach them . . . are going to come under the ropes in the next year. If it lasts that long it will be the next year. I beg you, look for the words 'social justice' or 'economic justice' on your church Web site. If you find it, run as fast as you can. Social justice and economic justice, they are code words. Now, am I advising people to leave their church? Yes.”
They are code words, he believes, for Nazism and Communism.
A Roman Catholic priest’s response is entitled, “Glenn Beck to Jesus; Drop Dead.” According to Fr. James Martin, beck is saying “leave Christianity.” Here is Martin at some length: “Again and again in the Gospels, Jesus mentions our responsibility to care for the poor, to work on their behalf, to stand with them. In fact, when asked how his followers would be judged he doesn't say that it will be based on where you worship, or how you pray, or how often you go to church, or even what political party you believe in. He says something quite different: It depends on how you treat the poor.” Our homework, of course, is to reread the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 25, verses 31 through 46.
Here is more from Father Martin: “Standing up for the rights of the poor is not being a Nazi, it's being Christian. And Communist, as Mr. Beck suggests? It's hard not to think of the retort of the great apostle of social justice, Dom Helder Camara, archbishop of Recife, "When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist."
Much earlier in my ministry a church member held that the word “compassion” was a code word for something nefarious. He thought it masked some hidden and evil agenda. It did not. The only agenda the word conveyed was a call to employ compassion in all our doings.
Glenn Beck's desire to detach social justice from the Gospel reflects the individualistic strain in American religion taken to an absurd and utterly wrong conclusion. Christianity indeed has a strong concern for individuals. It has an even stronger concern for poor individuals, one of whom, Father Martin reminded his readers, is Jesus. |
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Last Updated on Saturday, 01 May 2010 15:01 |
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Written by The Very Rev. Robert Giannini
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Sunday, 17 January 2010 13:25 |
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Television newscaster Britt Hume, demonstrating his unawareness of the fundamentals of a very ancient religion, suggested on the air that the errant Tiger Woods turn from Buddhism and convert to Christianity. “I don’t think that (Buddhism) offers the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith.” Some found Hume’s suggestion perfectly acceptable. Others found it offensive. Some asked what the reaction would be if Woods were a Christian and a Muslim was to testify on national television that the golfer’s adultery cries out for a solid dose of Islam’s strict morality? The implied answer is obvious – most Christians would be enraged.
So, having read a pro-Christian apologetic in the New York Times, I fired off a question to my sometime theological advisor, Deep Thought (who should not be confused with my musical correspondent, Deep Note.) here is the response I received:
“I find myself having to say both yes and no to the two sides of this dispute.
“On the one hand: We Christians (I suspect that this would also be true for members of some other faith communities) cannot consent to be relegated to the private sphere. We will not agree to let the love of God become today's love that dare not speak its name. We must and will speak aloud about our faith and we wish to do so in a matter which will put its beauty on display and thereby commend it to others.
“On the other hand: The "marketplace of ideas" is a poor model for the sort of public discourse needed. Buddhism, in this instance, becomes the 'brand x' that we must denigrate in order to get the religious consumers to buy our product in a competitive religious marketplace. We already have too many religious consumers in the church. We need to offer a shared life devoted to following Christ together so as to participate together in a continuing process of being conformed to Christ. Marketing our faith will not give us a way around our inability to offer our churches as communities that are the sites of such a shared life. Once we have repented from the sin of bourgeois religion and restored the life of community-in-discipleship then we'll have something to offer that cannot be sold like laundry detergent. And it won't require celebrity endorsements from the likes of Britt Hume.”
To this I say “amen.” |
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Last Updated on Saturday, 01 May 2010 15:03 |
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Written by The Very Rev. Robert Giannini
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Friday, 15 January 2010 12:28 |
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Our diocese is having a family retreat in late March at Waycross, our Conference Center in the lovely forested hills of Brown County. It will be a glorious time, good weather, a time for true refreshment. It is advertised on the front page of the current issue of Tidings. Learning will be cross-generational. Kids and adults, children and their parents and grandparents, will learn and grow together.
The teacher will be me. I am honored. And the topic on which I will speak to this family-oriented, light hearted event? The diocesan newspaper says that I will help participants of all ages explore together “Leadership, Post-Modernism, World Religions and Ecclesiology.”
Yes! What fun we will have! People are probably racing to enroll even as I write so that they can be a part of this marvelously designed program. Little children, young adults, and ancient elders, all together exploring exciting, inspirational, and life-giving themes, ah, yes , everyone’s perennial favorites - leadership, post-modernism, world religions, and ecclesiology. And let’s add to this delightful mix Italian cuisine, Britney Spears videos, and a German Oompah band playing scintillating polkas.
Or maybe, for those fortunate enough not to be dismayed by the subject matter, it will be a time to watch the Dean Emeritus clawing his way out of a deep, cavernous hole. But I am working on it! I promise that by March 19th I will have turned this theological sow’s ear into a silk purse of veritable delights. Come and see how it all develops. Wheeeeeeeee! |
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Last Updated on Saturday, 01 May 2010 15:01 |
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Written by The Very Rev. Robert Giannini
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Friday, 15 January 2010 12:23 |
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A diocesan convention delegate from another diocese asked for my views of the proposed Anglican Covenant. Some dioceses are assessing that document prior to its discussion in larger church forums. I wrote that I had some very basic issues with the proposed covenant. Here is what I wrote off the top of my head. I had researched many of the details earlier but they did not make it into my response.
1. We have been an Anglican Communion for at least two centuries without such a document. Like the British we have not needed a written Constitution; we have done quite well without one. Now, because of increased communication, we are seeing one another’s warts and don’t know what to do. One person suggested that the Anglican Communion is like a couple who married and for a few years had to have a commuter marriage with both people living much of the time apart. Finally, when they started living in the same house and really begun to know each other, they suddenly discovered some surprises. We have some understanding what Anglicanism is. We are just beginning to know the Anglican Communion.
2. The Covenant seems to be drawn up as a need that addresses one acute issue. Doing this usually creates more problems than it solves. It is over kill. It sounds like a situation any of us may have found ourselves in at one time or another when distraught people will try to create a great new structure rather than dealing straightforwardly with the one concrete problem that faces them.
3. It solidifies “Four Instruments of Unity” – a formula unknown until very recently – a legal fiction that a Covenant could create into a permanent bureaucracy with executive and legislative powers. And just what are those instruments? People use that formula now to refer to the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lambeth Conferences, the Anglican Consultative Council, and the Meetings of the Primates. These four have never functioned together as a mechanism of governance. The Primates Meeting is very new, maybe no more that two or three decades old. These archbishops and presiding bishops decided to meet occasionally to discuss items of mutual interest. They were not asked to do this and were never vested with any power. Now they are beginning to see themselves as having super importance. (One primate is reported sayings after a recent meeting, “I went off to the meeting thinking I was a bishop and got there and found I was treated as if I were a cardinal.”) The other three “Instruments” - the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lambeth Conferences, and the Anglican Consultative Council (the only body in which lay people and priests have voice and vote) have had great suasive importance but have never had legislative powers and responsibilities. Except for the Archbishop, the other two bodies are of a rather recent origin, have been historically flexible, loosely defined, and hardly authoritarian.
4. The proposed Covenant creates an increased hierarchy in an age when a more democratic polity is being called for out of our newly understood theology of baptism. We are increasingly recognizing the lay person as the essential minister of the Church, and from the ranks of the laity certain persons are called out for particular service: deacon, priest, and bishop. Crudely put: they are the coaches, the entire laity are the players. The Covenant could be very fundamentally counter-productive - further increasing the gulf between the clergy and the laity.
5. It could lead to finger-pointing and a reduction in a sense of community. The Fourth Step in the very theologically wise 12 Step Programs is that we take a “searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves” – of ourselves, not of the other guy. We should be trying to develop mechanisms to allow us to take our own inventories rather than take inventories of people with whom we differ.
6. For over 100 years we have held that the basis of Anglicanism is fourfold (the Lambeth Quadrilateral) namely: a) the Bible, b) the Creeds, c) the Sacraments of Baptism and the Holy Communion, d) the Historic Episcopate. The first three sections of the Proposed Covenant are principally an amplification of these. Okay. But they are superfluous. They are not needed.
7. A Covenant might set up processes that diminish the usual Anglican practice of handling tensions pastorally, of recognizing a variety of interpretations of the Scriptural witness as well as a variety of different needs within each locale, and of discovering together how best to help one another take steps that bring us all closer to God.
Many people think the Covenant is an idea whose time has come. They may be right. We will have to see. Could I live with this Covenant? Of course. But I do believe it is hasty and probably unnecessary. |
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Last Updated on Saturday, 01 May 2010 15:04 |
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“Faith Seeking Understanding” - Conversations with The Very Rev. Robert Giannini, the Canon Theologian of the Episcopal Diocese of Indianapolis
