The Lord is risen indeed!

Matthew 28:1-10

The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the greatest event in the history of the world—except, perhaps, for one other event, the one that happened three days earlier—namely, his death.

This is what I conclude as I ponder the two claims of Matthewm, chapter 28:  (1) that Jesus was crucified; and (2) that Jesus has risen from the dead and is alive and will be with us to the end.   There would have been no need for the resurrection if Jesus had not died; and there would be no saving significance to His death if He did not rise.  Both are utterly crucial.

I. Jesus Has Been Crucified  –  The time is early Sunday morning.   Mary Magdalene and the other women have come to the tomb of Jesus.  They see an angel whose appearance is like lightning (Matthew 28:3).  Then, according to Matthew 28:5-6, “The angel said to the women, ‘Do not be afraid; for I know that you are looking for Jesus who has been crucified.’”  This is the first important fact in this text: “Jesus has been crucified.”

Jesus said to His disciples several times that this was His destiny.  For instance, in Matthew 17:22-23: “Jesus said to them, ‘The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men; and they will kill Him, and He will be raised on the third day.’”  In Acts 4:27-28, the disciples prayed these words to God: “Truly in this city there were gathered together against Your holy servant Jesus, whom You anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever Your hand and Your plan predestined to take place.”  The death of Jesus was not an accident or merely the result of a great injustice.  It was the plan of God.

This is the teaching that runs throughout the New Testament: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son . . .” (John 3:16).  “[God did] not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all” (Romans 8:32).   Jesus was crucified by design, not by accident.

II. He Is Risen  –  But the Cross of Christ can’t be precious to us if Jesus is still dead.  So the resurrection of Jesus is just as crucial as his crucifixion.  And so we see the second important claim of this Gospel passage: “The angel said to Mary and the others, ‘He is not here, for He has risen, just as He said. Come; see the place where He was lying.’”

The resurrection of Jesus demonstrates His triumph over death and His authority over all things.  From there He works out His saving purposes in the world—with authority over all nations and industry and business and science and education and entertainment and weather and stars and light and energy and life and death. He is Lord over all; and His purposes and His promises cannot fail.  And, as we are in Him and living for Him, He is with us—in all His majesty and power and authority—to the end of the age.

Wisconsin Governor Refuses Atheist Demands to Remove Scripture from Social Media Pages

From here:

The governor of Wisconsin is refusing the demands of a prominent atheist activist organization to remove a Scripture citation from his Twitter and Facebook pages.

As previously reported, the Madison-based Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF) sent a letter to Walker this past week after becoming aware that he had simply posted 'Philippians 4:13' as his status on his social media accounts last Sunday. The Scripture reads, "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me."

"This braggadocio verse coming from a public official is rather disturbing," FFRF wrote in the letter. "To say, 'I can do all things through Christ, who strengthens me,' seems more like a threat, or the utterance of a theocratic dictator, than of a duly elected civil servant."

It demanded that the governor delete the post, contending that it is unlawful for Walker to endorse religion on his official social media pages.

"On behalf of our membership, we ask you to immediately delete this religious message from your official gubernatorial Facebook and Twitter," the letter stated. "May we hear from you at your earliest convenience?"

However, Laurel Patrick, the press secretary for Walker, told reporters this week that the governor will not bow to atheist demands.

"Governor Walker will not remove the post on his social media," she wrote in an emailed statement. "The verse was part of a devotional he read that morning, which inspired him, and he chose to share it."

Read it all.

Truer words...

An article in the Daily Telegraph dealing with the challenges ahead for Church of England Archbishop Justin Welby elicited the following comment from a reader:

Religion is founded on a notion that it has teachings or scriptures from a divine (supernatural) source, and this source is provides insights into ultimate truths which can not be discerned by mere mortals investigating nature.

Any religious institution which believes it needs to modernise its beliefs is admitting that its beliefs have never had such a divine source - they are man-made and, like all man-made things, need to be modernised periodically.  Consequently, that institution no longer represents a spiritual belief system, but is simply a political organisation which pretends to be founded on spiritual beliefs.

That pretty much sums up the Church of England.

This comment is not only my quote of the day, it may be the quote of a lifetime.  And it reminded me of something I said in a recent sermon:

I have an abiding distrust for what C. S. Lewis called "chronological snobbery."  Chronological snobbery is the notion that the ideas of our own day are better than the ideas of a bygone day just because the ideas are in our day.  Chronological snobbery feels that things are truer because they are newer.

Now there is a difference here: Truth in areas such as science is a matter of discovery.  So, indeed, new discoveries may invalidate previously held ideas and replace them with new ones.  The discovery that the Earth revolves around the Sun, instead of the older idea that the Sun and other celestial bodies revolved around the Earth, is just one example.

I remember when I was young, being at my grandparents’ house and looking up the word “atom” in an old dictionary (from around the year 1900).  The definition said that the atom was the smallest particle of matter and could not be divided.  Well, by then (early 1960’s), even as a child in grade school, I had already been taught about protons, electrons, and neutrons—and, indeed, I knew that the atom could be split with powerful and sometimes destructive force.  In science, new discoveries teach us new truth.

However, in Christian faith and theology, truth is a primarily a matter of revelation, not discovery.  Oh, we may discover new insights out of what has been revealed in Scripture.  But we do not discover new truth that invalidates the clear revelation God has given us.

For example: we will not come to a new discovery in theology that God is an impersonal force, not a Person, that Hell does not exist, that human beings are not sinners because of the Fall, that the atoning death of Jesus Christ is not necessary for salvation—though there are theologians writing, teaching, and holding distinguished professorships who will try to tell you each of those things.  These theologians and denominational leaders and people who follow them believe that theologians today can formulate ideas that make the truth of Holy Scripture, the faith once delivered to the saints, obsolete.

A pointed example from our own day:  Some people want to redefine marriage, and they say that Jesus never said anything that would prohibit doing so.  What Jesus did say that bears on the issue is this:  Speaking to a group who had asked him about divorce, Jesus says, “Have you not read, that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’?” (Matthew 19:4-6)

So the teaching of Jesus is that this is God’s design for human sexual relations, and he grounds it in the creation order (Genesis 2:24).  And, sure enough, whether you are Chinese, or Indian, or a member of a tribe living in the jungle, men marry women and women marry men, and that is how we got 7 billion people living on the planet.  Because the creation order is a reality even in cultures that have never been influenced by the Bible.  So when we talk about redefining marriage, we are talking about not merely something that the Church has never done before, we are talking about something that human civilization has never done before.

Observing truth from the creation order that is consistent with the truth of God in revelation is known as “natural law.”  Natural law refers to the use of reason to analyze human existence and deduce binding rules of moral behavior.  In jurisprudence it serves as a means by which the laws of given political community or society may be critiqued.

If you follow confirmation hearings of Supreme Court justices you may remember nominees being asked what their views were on natural law (such as Justices Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia, and Chief Justice John Roberts).  You see, there are politicians who don’t want justices who believe that there is a “givenness”—a revealed nature—to the way things are, and that there is a natural order of things with which laws must be consistent.  It interferes with the idea that we can make up laws to do whatever we want.  But I digress.

This chronological snobbery of which I was speaking is irrational because being new is no guarantee of being true.  It’s pure arrogance to think that a thought in my head is better than a thought in the head of St. Athanasius, Thomas Aquinas, or Martin Luther, just because I live in the twenty-first century and they lived in centuries past.  There is no logical connection between the truth of an insight and the century when God puts it into somebody’s mind.

Many of the theological errors we see today are really the heresies of a past age in new packaging.  So I try to flee every temptation to be a chronological snob.  C. S. Lewis prescribed at least one antidote.  He said that every third book you read should be from outside your own century.  It was good advice.

Numerous commentators have noted, for more than twenty years, that there are two religions in the Episcopal Church.  (Just try Googling the phrase "two religions in the Episcopal Church" to see the copious number of references.)  By extension, this might be said as well for the Anglican Communion.  If one is willing to take a step back and look at the larger picture, is probably most accurate to say that there are two religions today both calling themselves Christianity, and the battle between the two is being fought in every historic Christian tradition.

The difference between these two religions is described succinctly by the comment I quoted from the Daily Telegraph.  It is the difference between what J. Gresham Machen called "Revealed Religion" and "naturalistic liberalism," which, as Machen said, "is not Christianity at all."

How the conflict between these two religions will play out remains to be seen--except I believe I can say with certainty that when, in response to Peter's confession, Jesus promised, "upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it," it was not the false Christianity of naturalistic liberalism that he was talking about.

This means that "revealed" Christianity will ultimately be seen as the victor (at least by God, whose verdict alone matters), even if it is the martyr's victory.

The great frustration in the meantime is that there are ostensibly orthodox Christian leaders (be they bishops, seminary presidents, trustees, etc.) who do not realize there is a battle or, if they do, are not willing to fight it if it means martyrdom—or even a loss of temporal position, prestige, or institutional connections.

I don't need to dwell on what our Lord thinks of such worldly compromises and lukewarmness.  Scripture is abundantly clear on that.

But it is, as I say, frustrating to see orthodox Christians ostracized for raising the alarm and to see institutions lost so that their leaders can remain in comfortable slumber.

The Prayer of Saint Patrick

The Prayer of St. Patrick (Sometimes also called The Lorica of St. Patrick — from around the year AD 377)

I arise today
Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,
Through a belief in the Threeness,
Through confession of the Oneness
Of the Creator of creation.

I arise today
Through the strength of Christ's birth and His baptism,
Through the strength of His crucifixion and His burial,
Through the strength of His resurrection and His ascension,
Through the strength of His descent for the judgment of doom.

I arise today
Through the strength of the love of cherubim,
In obedience of angels,
In service of archangels,
In the hope of resurrection to meet with reward,
In the prayers of patriarchs,
In preaching of the apostles,
In faith of confessors,
In innocence of virgins,
In deeds of righteous men.

I arise today
Through the strength of heaven;
Light of the sun,
Splendor of fire,
Speed of lightning,
Swiftness of the wind,
Depth of the sea,
Stability of the earth,
Firmness of the rock.

I arise today
Through God's strength to pilot me;
God's might to uphold me,
God's wisdom to guide me,
God's eye to look before me,
God's ear to hear me,
God's word to speak for me,
God's hand to guard me,
God's way to lie before me,
God's shield to protect me,
God's hosts to save me
From snares of the devil,
From temptations of vices,
From every one who desires me ill,
Afar and near,
Alone or in a multitude.

I summon today all these powers between me and evil,
Against every cruel merciless power that opposes my body and soul,
Against incantations of false prophets,
Against black laws of pagandom,
Against false laws of heretics,
Against craft of idolatry,
Against spells of women and smiths and wizards,
Against every knowledge that corrupts man's body and soul.
Christ shield me today
Against poison, against burning,
Against drowning, against wounding,
So that reward may come to me in abundance.

Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me,
Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ on my right, Christ on my left,
Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down,
Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of every man who speaks of me,
Christ in the eye that sees me,
Christ in the ear that hears me.

I arise today
Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,
Through a belief in the Threeness,
Through a confession of the Oneness
Of the Creator of creation.

Words for Our Time (written 107 years ago)

I am distressed by some common theological tendencies of our time, because I believe them to be false to both science and religion.  How men who have ever felt themselves to be lost sinners and who have once received pardon from their crucified Lord and Savior can thereafter seek to pare down his attributes, deny his deity and atonement, tear from his brow the crown of miracle and sovereignty, relegate him to the place of a merely moral teacher who influences us only as does Socrates by words spoken across a stretch of ages, passes my comprehension.

Here is my test of orthodoxy: Do we pray to Jesus?  Do we call upon the name of Christ, as did Stephen and all the early church?  Is he our living Lord, omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent?  Is he divine only in the sense in which we are divine, or is he the only-begotten Son, God manifest in the flesh, in whom is all the fulness of the Godhead bodily?  What think ye of the Christ? is still the critical question, and none are entitled to the name of Christian who, in the face of the evidence he has furnished us, cannot answer the question aright.

Under the influence of Ritschl and his Kantian relativism, many of our teachers and preachers have swung off into a practical denial of Christ’s deity and of his atonement.  We seem upon the verge of a second Unitarian defection, that will break up churches and compel secessions, in a worse manner than did that of Channing and Ware a century ago.  American Christianity recovered from that disaster only by vigorously asserting the authority of Christ and the inspiration of the Scriptures.

We need a new vision of the Savior like that which Paul saw on the way to Damascus and John saw on the isle of Patmos, to convince us that Jesus is lifted above space and time, that his existence antedated creation, that he conducted the march of Hebrew history, that he was born of a virgin, suffered on the cross, rose from the dead, and now lives forevermore, the Lord of the universe, the only God with whom we have to do, our Savior here and our Judge hereafter.  Without a revival of this faith our churches will become secularized, mission enterprise will die out, and the candlestick will be removed out of its place as it was with the seven churches of Asia, and as it has been with the apostate churches of New England.

I print this revised and enlarged edition of my “Systematic Theology,” in the hope that its publication may do something to stem this fast advancing tide, and to confirm the faith of God’s elect.  I make no doubt that the vast majority of Christians still hold the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints, and that they will sooner or later separate themselves from those who deny the Lord who bought them.

When the enemy comes in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord will raise up a standard against him.  I would do my part in raising up such a standard.  I would lead others to avow anew, as I do now, in spite of the supercilious assumptions of modern infidelity, my firm belief, only confirmed by the experience and reflection of a half-century, in the old doctrines of holiness as the fundamental attribute of God, of an original transgression and sin of the whole human race, in a divine preparation in Hebrew history for man’s redemption, in the deity, preëxistence, virgin birth, vicarious atonement and bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ our Lord, and in his future coming to judge the quick and the dead.  I believe that these are truths of science as well as truths of revelation; that the supernatural will yet be seen to be most truly natural; and that not the [faithful] theologian but the narrow-minded [skeptic] will be obliged to hide his head at Christ’s coming.

Augustus Hopkins Strong (President and Professor of Biblical Theology, Rochester Theological Seminary), Systematic Theology, published in May 1907.

Fr. Keith Roderick, Requiescat in Pace

I received word this morning that Fr. Keith Roderick, who most recently had been serving as Provost of St. Paul's Cathedral in Springfield, Illinois, died in his sleep during the night.  Fr. Roderick had faithfully served for many years in the Diocese of Quincy and was one of my canonical examiners when I was ordained nearly 25 years ago.  Fr. Roderick was also a son of Nashotah House.  His death will be a personal loss for so many.

My condolences to his wife, Mary Beth, and the Roderick family.  May his soul rest in peace and may light perpetual shine upon him.  

Deacon Terry Star, Requiescat in Pace

From Episcopal News Service:

The Rev. Terry Star, a 40 year-old deacon in the Diocese of North Dakota and a member of the Episcopal Church’s Executive Council, has died suddenly at Nashotah House Theological Seminary in Wisconsin, where he was studying for ordination to the priesthood.

Read the full article.

Rest eternal grant to him, O Lord, and may light perpetual shine upon him.

My condolences to Deacon Terry's family and friends, and to the Nashotah House community.

A Clarification

Part 5 in a series: Salmon Invites Schori to Preach at Nashotah House

A recent graduate of Nashotah House, whose opinion I value highly, has written in response to an earlier post to say that it sounds like I was impugning the orthodoxy of the three students who requested that Bishop Salmon invite Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori to preach at Nashotah House on May 1.

So I want to clarify that it was not my intention to impugn the three students, and I have revised that piece in order to make this clear.  The point I was making is that, when you follow Bishop Salmon's strategy of reaching out to Episcopal dioceses where the Presiding Bishop's teaching and actions are viewed more favorably and less critically, you are going to attract students to Nashotah House who think it is perfectly all right to invite Katharine Jefferts Schori to preach in the Chapel.  My issue is not with the students but with the invitation.  Students ask deans for things all the time; and it is the Dean's responsibility to know when to say yes or no.

On a purely human level, I understand where these students are coming from.  Whether you are relatively new to the Episcopal Church or you have been brought up to respect Episcopal Church structures and leaders, and you have the opportunity to get to know the Presiding Bishop, I can understand that you might want her to approve of your career path and the seminary that you are attending.  If you love the seminary you are attending and discover that it is a place where she would actively discourage you from going, you would want to do something to remedy that situation, including inviting her for a visit.

So what would I have said if I were still the Dean, and these three students had come to me with the suggestion to invite her?  I would say this:

First of all, the Presiding Bishop spoke in Milwaukee just last year.  (All three of these students, whose identities I have since learned, and for whom I have deep respect, were students at the House at that time.)  There was an opportunity for students at Nashotah House who wanted to hear and and interact with the Presiding Bishop to do so then.

I would say to these students that while Episcopal Presiding Bishops have been getting progressively more liberal since Edmund Browning, Katharine Jefferts Schori in some ways represents a radical departure, actively engaging in false teaching about the nature of God, the unique divinity and saving work of Jesus Christ, as well as the authority of Scripture--an example of which is her handling the account of Paul's healing of a demon possessed girl in Acts 16 in a way that I am forced to conclude reflects a deliberately perverse interpretation of that passage.   

Further, this particular Presiding Bishop has deposed and sued (and is still suing) bishops on Nashotah House's Board of Trustees and numerous alumni and loyal supporters of this House.  Currently, she is engaged in lawsuits against supporters of the House in the Diocese of Quincy including suing the Bishop, the clerical and lay members of the Standing Committee, and the rectors of each parish personally and individually with an un-Christian and heartless disregard for their personal circumstances--all in an effort to get back buildings that the Episcopal Church does not need and cannot use.  (The Episcopal Church tried the same tactic unsuccessfully in its current lawsuit against the Diocese of South Carolina, headed by Bishop Mark Lawrence--another Nashotah Trustee.)

Indeed the Presiding Bishop has spent a reported $40 million on lawsuits against Christians, many of whom support this seminary and what it stands for.  If she would like to heed the clear teaching of 1 Corinthians 6:1-8 and cease her un-Christian hostility toward our Trustees, alumni, and supporters, then we could perhaps discuss an invitation, not to preach in Chapel, but to come and see, and dialogue.  I doubt that will happen in the 16 months remaining in her term as Presiding Bishop, so let me say to you that, in the larger scheme of things, you really do not need this woman's advice or approval on your path as you seek to serve Jesus.

But there is one other thing:  During my time as Dean and President, this House has exemplified what one Trustee Bishop dubbed the "Pax Nashotah."  This term refers to the relative peace that exists in our community between those who are called to serve in the Episcopal Church and those who are called to serve in other jurisdictions.  We are not concerned with the jurisdiction our students come from or in which part of God's vineyard they will serve after graduation.  We are simply here to help our students become the best priests and ministers they can be.  Having a preacher whose teaching stands so clearly stands outside our Statement of Identity and whose actions have been so harmful to our trustees, alumni, supporters--and even to the parishes from which some of our students come--would cause great distress to your fellow students and to the peace and welfare of this community.  I am afraid I must say no to your suggestion that I invite the Presiding Bishop to preach here.

[I would pray that, if it were explained this way, the students themselves would understand the inappropriateness and potential harm of this invitation to the community.]

Finally, I am reminded of the words of the Apostle Paul:

Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood.  I know that after my departure fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things, to draw away the disciples after them.  Therefore be alert, remembering that for three years I did not cease night or day to admonish every one with tears.  And now I commend you to God and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up and to give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified.  (Acts 20:28-32).

Phil Ashey: Why Our Seminaries are Strategic

Part 4 in a series: Salmon Invites Schori to Preach at Nashotah House

I highly recommend the latest column by the Rev. Canon Phil Ashey of the American Council, reflecting on the importance of seminaries in the renewal of Anglicanism in the Gospel:

The struggle for Gospel truth in The Episcopal Church (TEC) was really lost many years ago when most TEC seminaries abandoned any faith in Christ as the one, unique Lord and Savior of all people everywhere, and lost faith in the Holy Scriptures as the divinely inspired word of God and the ultimate authority in all matters of faith and practice. This battle was lost long before the 2003 unilateral TEC innovation of consecrating a non-celibate homosexual as bishop and leader for the whole church, and the Canadian Diocese of New Westminster’s authorization of rites for the blessing of same-sex unions—both in direct violation of settled Biblical and Anglican teaching (Lambeth 1998 Resolution 1.10)

Read it all.

Sarah Hey Responds to Bishop Salmon’s Video Explanation

Part 3 in a Series: Salmon Invites Schori to Preach at Nashotah House

On the Stand Firm website, Sarah Hey has written an eloquent response after watching a video in which Bishop Ed Salmon explains (defends) his invitation of Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori to preach at Nashotah House on May 1 of this year.  I invite you to read Sarah's whole response.  Below is a comment that I shared on Stand Firm, which also helps to explain my own deep concern and involvement in this matter.

“I have rarely been more heart-destroyed than tonight.”  Yes, Sarah.  Thank you for this.  I had the same reaction when I first read the news.  If my comments elsewhere have seemed somewhat impassioned, or if I have crossed the bounds of propriety in commenting on the actions of my successor, imagine spending the prime years of your adult life—age 46 to 56—leading the institution that has now done this. 

Why on earth would the House be concerned that the Presiding Bishop doesn’t like the House or desires people not to attend the House?  *Of course* she wouldn’t like the House! It favors the Gospel.  *Of course* she wouldn’t want seminarians to attend the House.

This is precisely the attitude I kept in mind throughout my deanship.  And one of the things that saddens me most about this whole affair is that students at the House are no longer being led to view the situation this way.  Instead of being taught to be valiant for truth and to take risks for the sake of the Gospel, they are being led by example to “go along to get along,” and that dialogue with heretics and even having them in your pulpit is a good thing if it promotes better relationships.

“Heartsick.”  “Heart-destroyed.”  Yeah, that describes it.

Claim: “Schori discouraged attendance at Nashotah”

Part 2 in a Series: Salmon Invites Schori to Preach at Nashotah House

As more information becomes available about the invitation of Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori to preach at Nashotah House on May 1 of this year, Bishop Salmon has made the claim that the invitation stems from a concern that the Presiding Bishop, either directly or through representatives, tried to discourage three students (a male deacon who serves on the Episcopal Church's Executive Council and two women students) from attending Nashotah House.  The thought seems to be that this invitation might improve relations between the House and Bishop Jefferts Schori and cause her to say nice things about the House in the future, or at least not discourage students from attending.

As I pondered this claim, several observations occurred to me:

1.  In 15 years on the faculty of Trinity and 12 years at Nashotah House, I met many postulants for holy orders who had been told by their bishops or Commissions on Ministry they would not be ordained because they were too conservative.  Most of those students moved to more conservative dioceses and succeeded in coming to seminary anyway.  (Many of them became very fine priests.)  There were others who were told they would be dropped from the ordination process if they chose to go to a conservative seminary (or refused to go to the liberal seminary where the Bishop or COM wanted them to go).  These, too, usually succeeded in being adopted by a more conservative bishop and coming to TSM or Nashotah anyway.  But, in 27 years, I never met a student who had directly or indirectly received career advice from the Presiding Bishop as to which seminary he or she should or shouldn’t attend. 


2.  Over the years, I met a lot of liberal bishops and COM members who said they would not send students or give money to the seminary I represented unless we ___________.  (Fill in the blank.)  The truth is that they were never going to send students or give money to the seminary I represented anyway.  They just wanted to put pressure on us to change to fit their liking.  Which leads to a third observation that governed my deanship at Nashotah:

3.  A seminary that is intent on being truly orthodox is never going to give Episcopal liberals the "warm-fuzzies" the way General, or Virginia, or any of the other TEC seminaries will.  So stop trying!  Stop trying to play the Episcopal game!  Try being a faithful evangelical and catholic seminary that honors our Lord and that can serve the larger Anglican tradition and beyond.  Go fish in ponds where conservative students can be found.  Go to the Forward in Faith Assembly, the AMiA Winter Meeting, the ACNA Assembly, and meetings of CANA, PEAR, the REC, and the continuing Anglican churches.  Recruit on the campuses of Wheaton College, Gordon College, Taylor University, Asbury, Biola, and other Christian colleges.  Reach out to those Evangelicals who are still on the Canterbury Trail.  Reach out to those orthodox Anglo-Catholics who can’t possibly find another seminary in North America that will meet their needs.

At the rate the Episcopal Church is shrinking, you aren’t going to have that pond to fish in much longer anyway.  So concentrate your energies on the vibrant Global South and those expressions of North American Anglicanism that are associated with them.  Think long term.  Think what your seminary is going to look like 20 years from now.  Think about whether it will still glorify God 20 years from now.  Because, realistically, a seminary that tries to appease the Episcopal Church will not only have a liberal PB preaching in the chapel 20 years from now, it will be performing same sex marriages in the chapel 20 years from now (or much sooner)—and engage in a lot of soul-destroying, heretical teaching along the way.

So “Schori discouraged attendance at Nashotah.”  That’s an outstanding recommendation if ever I heard one.

If I had it to do all over again

Part 1 in a Series: Salmon Invites Schori to Preach at Nashotah House

On August 1, 2001, I became Dean and President of Nashotah House Theological Seminary.  I had spent the previous fifteen years as a faculty member at Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry, where I had directed the library, been an associate dean in three different capacities, and gone from assistant, to associate, to full professor in Systematic Theology.  Trinity had been formed in 1976 because a growing number of both Evangelical Episcopalians and those who had been involved in the Charismatic movement were convinced that none of the existing Episcopal seminaries could ever be reclaimed from the heterodoxy into which they had fallen or produce biblically faithful clergy who were capable of leading congregations in spiritual renewal.

From the beginning, people associated with Trinity realized that, if they were to be part of a spiritual renewal in the Episcopal Church, they would necessarily have to be somewhat counter-cultural to it.  One could not seek to be part of renewing the Episcopal Church while buying into the status quo.  Although I never heard it explicitly articulated, I think there was an implicit understanding on the part of some that, if the Episcopal Church could not be spiritually renewed and returned to biblical orthodoxy, an alternative would have to be found--or created.  This explains why so many Trinity alumni were among the early members of the Anglican Mission in America (AMiA), and John Rodgers, the Dean/President under whom I first served at Trinity (and one of the wisest and godliest men I have ever known), became one of the first two bishops consecrated for the AMiA.

During my years at Trinity, I happened to meet the professor who was then teaching Systematic Theology at Nashotah House (around 1994).  We were discussing which textbooks we used for teaching theology, and he remarked that he used John Macquarrie's Principles of Systematic Theology.  I gulped, and explained that, at Trinity, we treated Macquarrie in a separate course on Contemporary Theology where we did apologetics against him.  (I should add that this theology professor left Nashotah House before I began as Dean, and I had the opportunity to select his successor, who is thoroughly orthodox.)

Macquarrie was originally a Scottish Presbyterian who eventually became Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at Oxford (from 1970 to 1986), but who, in 1965, had become an Episcopal priest in the United States while teaching at Union Theological Seminary.  Timothy Bradshaw, writing in the Handbook of Anglican Theologians, described Macquarrie as "unquestionably Anglicanism's most distinguished systematic theologian in the second half of the twentieth century."

After I moved to Nashotah House I discovered that the House had made Macquarrie an honorary Doctor of Canon Law in 1986.  But the fact is that Macquarrie's understanding of God is best understood as panentheism, "the belief that the Being of God includes and penetrates the whole universe."¹  Macquarrie is a bridge between the existentialism of Martin Heidegger, the pantheism of Paul Tillich ("God is being-itself, not a being.") and Process Theology.  This existentialist and panentheistic foundation underlies the metaphorical theology of Sallie McFague, quoted approvingly on a number of occasions by Katharine Jefferts Schori.  I mention all this merely to make the point, once again, that ideas have consquences; and the current state of the Episcopal Church and other Western mainline traditions is the consequence of academically respectable theology that has gone from speculative, to heterodox, to pagan.

Both prior to joining the faculty at Trinity and throughout my tenure there, at various times I studied with and had good collegial ties with a number of faculty in other Episcopal seminaries, some of them legends from whom I learned a great deal.  But these professors, all of whom are now retired or deceased, were the exceptions, and the Episcopal Church isn't likely to see their kind again.  If I may be excused a bit of hyperbole, theological education in Episcopal seminaries for most of the past 50 years has been like the Curate's Egg--excellent in spots, but, on the whole, rotten.  To be more precise, Episcopal seminary education has concentrated on preparing men and women for a career in the Episcopal Church (note my choice of words) but has been utterly incapable of equipping them for biblically-faithful, Gospel-centered, Spirit-empowered ministry.  In short, I experienced first-hand, through my own studies and relationships, the precise reason why the founding of Trinity School for Ministry was necessary.

So, when I became Dean and President of Nashotah House, I had the same perspective.  It was not enough to prepare people for careers in the Episcopal Church.  It was vital to prepare them to be faithful to Holy Scripture and the Catholic faith and order of the Church, and to enable them to minister in the power of the Holy Spirit.  Though I make no pretense to Solomonic wisdom, upon becoming Dean and President at Nashotah House, I did pray Solomon's prayer:

Give your servant therefore an understanding mind to govern your people, that I may discern between good and evil, for who is able to govern this your great people?” (2 Kings 3:9)

To understand much of what happened during my time at Nashotah House, it is necessary to look at trends that have occurred in the Episcopal Church in recent decades and to understand some trends--what futurists such as John Naisbitt call "megatrends" that are having an inevitable impact on the Episcopal Church in the US and the larger Anglican Communion.   

There have been two competing (and irreconcilable) trends in the Episcopal Church for the past fifty years:  A growing spiritual renewal and a growing theological heterodoxy.

Most observers generally agree that the Charismatic movement in the Episcopal Church began with the Rev. Dennis Bennett's experience of the Holy Spirit while he was rector of St. Mark's Church in Van Nuys, California, in 1960.  The next thirty years saw a remarkable spiritual renewal that included leaders such as the Rev. Terry Fullam, from St. Paul's Church, Darien, Connecticut, and a list of other leaders and parishes that is much too long to list here.

Alongside that Charismatic renewal, Evangelicals in the Episcopal Church, which had long been a small and beleaguered minority, began to find new life and strength, and a sense of their own identity.  They were aided in their self-discovery by Evangelicals from the UK, Australia, and elsewhere.  There were organizations dedicated to promoting renewal in the Episcopal Church, but there were numerous, seemingly spontaneous examples of spiritual renewal popping up all over the Church as well.  Several entire dioceses began to take on the character of the renewal movement.  Those who had been touched by the Charismatic renewal and the Evangelical resurgence came to grips with the realization that no existing Episcopal seminary was capable of training biblically faithful, Spirit-filled clergy to serve and lead parishes.  This realization led to the founding of Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry.  

Increasingly, those affected by spiritual renewal and those being led in the direction of theological heterodoxy began to diverge.  In large part, this divergence occurred as theological liberals in the Episcopal Church became even more radical and began to act in ways contrary to the biblical and historic faith and order of the Church.  The Rt. Rev. Thad Barnum chronicles the liberal trajectory of the Episcopal Church and the orthodox response in his marvelous book, Never Silent.

During the 1990's and 2000's, I was a Deputy to the General Convention five times and observed this trajectory first hand--a growing rejection of biblical authority, a growing acceptance of departures from historic Christian norms in faith and morality, and a complete unwillingness to discipline those church leaders who departed from these norms.  In addition, I witnessed the growing marginalization and persecution of orthodox Christians in the Episcopal Church.  In the space of a few years, it seemed as though the Episcopal Church had become an environment that was toxic for an orthodox Christian.  The formation of the Anglican Mission in America (in 2000) and the Anglican Church in North America (in 2009) were the inevitable result.

In 2008-2009 two things happened that affected Nashotah House: (1) The Great Recession; and, more significantly, (2) the departure from the Episcopal Church of four of Nashotah House's most supportive dioceses: Fort Worth, Quincy, Pittsburgh, and San Joaquin.  They would later be joined by another diocese that sent a considerable number of students to the House: South Carolina.  

During my time as Dean and President, I tried to make Nashotah House a place where Anglicans of whatever stripe could prepare for ministries in the Church.  Students from TEC, AMiA, ACNA, continuing Anglican churches and other jurisdictions worshiped and studied side-by-side.  Jurisdictions didn't matter; students were there to become the best clergy and lay leaders they could be and to prepare to serve wherever God called them.  The House was a wholesome and peaceful place.  It was a time one faithful Bishop referred to as the "Pax Nashotah."  But it was not to last.

In 2010, in response to a growing number of Episcopalians in the Milwaukee area who were feeling alienated from their parishes, I led Nashotah House to begin holding Sunday morning worship services that were open to anyone (as were all of Nashotah House's daily services).  Several parishes in our area had been decimated in the years following the consecration of Gene Robinson as a bishop in TEC.  One local parish went from an Average Sunday Attendance of nearly 300 to only 100 in the space of a few years.  The parish my family and I attended had gone from nearly 150 ASA to 35 in the same period.  Another local parish went from 160 ASA to 60.  The Diocese of Milwaukee didn't seem to care where these departing Episcopalians were going; they were just upset that a portion of them started worshiping at Nashotah House.

The Sunday morning congregation, which took the name St. Michael's (after the historic bell tower on Nashotah's campus) did not start out to be an ACNA parish.  Despite rumors to the contrary, it was never my intention for it to be an ACNA parish.  As with students who came to Nashotah House, I was not concerned about jurisdictions, I was merely concerned to create places for faithful worship and teaching; and I thought that a congregation that was, to some degree, integrated into the life of a seminary could be  beneficial for both students and congregants.  In fact, members of the Sunday morning congregation did not become an ACNA parish until after I stepped down as Dean and left St. Michael's to work with another congregation in the Milwaukee area.  It was only then that St. Michael's formally organized as a parish separate from Nashotah House, called another priest to be their rector, and affiliated with the ACNA Diocese of Pittsburgh.  

The opposition to my remaining as Dean was driven ostensibly by Bishop Ed Salmon's contention that I was getting Nashotah House in trouble by being too closely allied with those who were outside of TEC.  The reason I use the word "ostensibly" is that it should have been apparent to all concerned (and should be doubly apparent in retrospect) that Bishop Salmon was using his position as Chairman of the Nashotah House Board of Trustees to undermine my position as Dean and President and to take the job for himself.  

Bishop Salmon could point to the fact that in the period 2009-2011 we saw a downturn in enrollment and contributions.  In answer to this, it should be obvious that four of our most supportive dioceses in terms of students and contributions had left the Episcopal Church, experienced a reduction or even a freeze on new postulants for holy orders, had their parish and diocesan funds frozen by the courts, and were having much of their current income consumed by litigation costs.  In addition, the US was experiencing the worst economic recession since the Great Depression. 

In my last year as Dean and the year following, a majority of the student body at Nashotah House came from ACNA dioceses.  The downturn we were experiencing was a temporary one as the ACNA found its legs and began to take off.  The House could have weathered this period and emerged as a seminary that, while continuing to train any students from TEC who wanted an orthodox seminary education, was free from TEC's unwholesome influence.  As proof of this one only has to look at Trinity School for Ministry, which took Episcopal out of its name and the Episcopal shield out of its logo.  In  recent years, Trinity has had no students from TEC in their incoming classes.  Yet, they have not only survived, they are thriving.

My experience at both Trinity and Nashotah House has led me to conclude:

1.  You can be an Anglican seminary outside the control of the Episcopal Church and still survive.
2.  You cannot be a seminary in the Episcopal Church and remain orthodox.

In witness to that, I point to the following news I received today: Bishop Iker Resigns in Protest From Nashotah House Board (because Bp. Salmon has invited Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori to preach in Nashotah House's Chapel), an event that is shocking and tragic to many alumni.

Just as my "getting the House in Trouble" by reaching out to the AMiA and the ACNA and starting a congregation in the seminary chapel may have been the low point (as some would reckon it) of my deanship, the scandal of inviting Katharine Jefferts Schori to preach in the seminary chapel will probably go down as the low point of Bp. Salmon's deanship.  I can only say that I would put the low point of my deanship up against the low point of Bp. Salmon's deanship any day.  (I would also gladly compare the high points of my deanship with the high points of his.)

In Bp. Salmon's first interview as Dean and President, Doug LeBlanc reported:   

Salmon said he plans to strengthen relationships, both among seminary faculty and staff and between the seminary and bishops of the Episcopal Church. (Emphasis added.)

Well, now we see where that has led, don't we?  Salmon is further quoted as saying, 

"The name of leadership is relationships - people connecting with each other and working together," he said. "Our broken relationships in the Church are a testimony against the Gospel." 

No, Bishop, the heterodoxy of the Episcopal Church, in general, and of Katharine Jefferts Schori, in particular, is a testimony against the Gospel.  We are called to separate ourselves from false teachers; and a shepherd, whether of a diocese, a parish, or a seminary, is called to protect his flock from wolves.  In the words of the ordination vows Bishop Salmon took:  “Are you ready, with all faithful diligence, to banish and drive away all erroneous and strange doctrine contrary to God’s Word; and both privately and openly to call upon and encourage others to do the same?”  To lead a seminary like Nashotah House in these days, and to fail to keep that ordination vow, is to see your seminary turn into another Seabury-Western, or General, or worse.

In conclusion, let me point to three overarching conclusions:

1.  There is no movement today in the Episcopal Church capable of sustaining orthodox Christians or fostering the growth of orthodox congregations.

2.  In the absence of any movement designed to promote repentance, renewal, resurgence, and revival among orthodox Christians in the Episcopal Church, those Christians who remain in TEC are fighting a holding action and will ultimately lose through attrition.

Which leads to a third conclusion (which I say with great sadness):

3.  You can have orthodoxy or you can have the Episcopal Church, but you can't have both.

"Wait," some will say, "I am still in the Episcopal Church and I am orthodox, so I have both."  If that is true, then you are part of the remnant that is involved in fighting a holding action (whether you realize it or not).  So while your present situation may be safe for the moment, apart from divine intervention, the faith you hold, and the parish or diocese to which you belong (if they are still orthodox) will be lost in the next generation, if not in your lifetime.   

There are some, like Bishop Salmon, for whom relationships are more important than orthodoxy; and, in their cases, my words will fall on deaf ears.  History and the Righteous Judge before whom we both will stand will have the final say.  But, if I had it to do all over again, I would gladly, proudly, do the same.
-----------------

[Postscript:  I originally wrote the autobiographical part of the material in this post months ago but did not publish it because I was determined not to criticize my successor.  I wrote it mainly for my own journaling and reflection.  It is only this latest news of Bishop Salmon's decision to invite Katharine Jefferts Schori to preach at the House that has caused me to change my resolve.]

"The Reconciliation Thing"

Recently, a longtime friend of mine, the Rev. Dr. Tory Baucum, Rector of Truro Church in Fairfax, Virginia, was named by the Archbishop of Canterbury as one of the Six Preachers of Canterbury Cathedral.  Tory is an outstanding preacher, pastor, and leader, and is worthy of this honor quite apart from any other accomplishments that might be mentioned.  However, this honor cannot be viewed apart from the fact that, as the press release from Lambeth Palace states, "his appointment is also recognition of his commitment to reconciliation, which is one of Archbishop Justin’s ministry priorities."

That set me thinking about the Archbishop's ministry priorities:  What is this reconciliation thing?  What does it mean?  And how should we view it?

At the time of Justin Welby's enthronement as Archbishop of Canterbury, he was quoted as saying:

“We are struggling with very, very significant divisions, different ways of looking at the world coming out of our context, coming out of our history....  Learning how we deal with those differences — which are of themselves valuable things — is really significant.

Welby went on to say,

“It is the key theological concept for Christian faith: reconciliation with God and the breaking down of barriers between people,” he said. “And therefore for me, I have this sense that part of the church’s role is to be reconciled reconcilers.”

Reporters at the time noted that Welby's role as Archbishop of Canterbury, "will be no easy task."

For the past decade, the Anglican Communion has been in turmoil after the Episcopal Church consecrated two openly gay bishops and moved to approve blessings for same-sex unions.  Several African and Asian jurisdictions accused the U.S. church of heresy.  Some conservative American congregations have broken away from the Episcopal Church and aligned themselves with Anglicans from other parts of the world.  There have been a series of contentious lawsuits over church property, and bitterness still prevails in many quarters throughout the Anglican Communion.

In response to the challenges ahead of him, Welby attempted to clarify his view of reconciliation:

“Reconciliation is extraordinarily painful for those involved in the conflict,” he admitted.  He said his view of reconciliation is not a “fuzzy wuzzy tolerance, sort of fluffy, where it would all be nice if we were nice to each other sort of rubbish.”

Frankly, it is on this last point that I am going to need convincing.  And the longer I see Dr. Welby in action, the more doubtful I become.

First of all there was the conference at Coventry Cathedral last year.  Anyone who has been around what I call (for lack of a better term) "professional religious dialogue" for very long knows how this sort of conference works:  Learned papers are shared; there is a lot of "deep" discussion; everyone shakes hands warmly and goes home feeling good--and nothing really changes.  With all due respect to those who met in Coventry, it seems that it was precisely one of those instances "where it would all be nice if we were nice to each other."  I am still waiting to see any real outcome from that conference that can affect the problems in the Anglican Communion. 

Today, I read the following headline:

Archbishop of Canterbury appeals for 'gracious reconciliation' in divided Church

The article was about Dr. Welby's presidential address to the Church of England General Synod, in which he said, 

"There is going to have to be a massive cultural change that accepts that people with whom I differ deeply are also deeply loved by Christ and therefore must be deeply loved by me, and love means seeking their flourishing."

He called on the Church to exhibit a love of the kind described in 1 John 4:18, which says "perfect love casts out fear".

"We all know that perfect love casts out fear. We know it although we don't often apply it," he said.

He pointed to the importance of the Church staying together in the midst of disagreement and how this could be an excellent witness to wider society.

"A Church that loves those with whom the majority deeply disagree is a church that will be unpleasantly challenging to a world where disagreement is either banned within a given group or removed and expelled," he said.

What was that again about reconciliation not being a “fuzzy wuzzy tolerance, sort of fluffy, where it would all be nice if we were nice to each other sort of rubbish”?

As I commented in a 2009 post on this blog, "Rowan Williams, Meet Neville Chamberlain," what the Anglican Communion needs is a Winston Churchill; but instead we keep getting Neville Chamberlains who proclaim peace in our time while the world goes to hell in a handbasket.

The problem in the Anglican Communion is not that we don't know how to live together despite our disagreements.  The problem is that Anglican (and other religious) leaders in the West have been so influenced by secular values that they have replaced the Gospel with those values and are incapable of asserting a faith that differs from what the secular culture around them can accept.  This is seen most clearly in matters of sexual morality, but that is only a presenting issue--a symptom of a deeper problem.

The problem in the Anglican Communion is that its leaders in the West have allowed so-called "modern biblical scholarship" and contemporary theologies (influenced by the skepticism and rationalism of our age) to undermine their confidence in the Bible and the message it proclaims.  They are no longer capable of believing that the eternal Son of God truly became incarnate through the Virgin Mary, died an atoning death for our sins, rose bodily from the grave with a body like that which all who believe in him shall someday receive, and ascended into heaven, from whence he shall come again at the end of this age to judge the living and the dead and to complete the redemption begun in his first coming.

Those who have listened to the message of the secular world instead of the authentic Gospel are incapable of believing the good news that is "the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes" (Romans 1:16).  They are incapable of believing that, "there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved" (Acts 4:12).  And they are incapable of believing Jesus' words: "I am the way, and the truth, and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through me" (John 14:6).  

In short, they are lost, unbelieving souls, who should be the objects of evangelism, not partners in religious dialogue.  Which brings us to the biblical definition of reconciliation:

In Romans 5:6-11, we read:

For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.  For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.  Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.  For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.  More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

Do we believe that we were sinners, enemies of God and objects of his wrath?  If not, then we cannot be reconciled.  Do we believe that Christ's death was an atonement for the sins that separated us from God?  Unless we do, we cannot be reconciled.

In 2 Corinthians 5:17-21, we read:

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.  The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.   All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.  Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us.  We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.  For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

Our ministry of reconciliation only exists because, in Christ, we have been reconciled to God; and this reconciliation is grounded in the fact that the Incarnate Son of God, who knew no sin, became sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.  Do we believe in Jesus' substitutionary atonement for us, paying the penalty for the sins that separated us from God?  If not, then we cannot be reconciled.  Have we, in gratitude, submitted ourselves to Christ?  Do we follow his commandments (John 14:21)?  If not, then we cannot be reconciled to God, which is the only basis for our being reconciled to each other.

1 Corinthians 1:10 says, "I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment."  Reconciliation is not living together despite our disagreements.  The basis for reconciliation is agreement in the truth. 

Jesus said, “Every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste, and no city or house divided against itself will stand."  Friends, this is the sad state of the Anglican Communion--a house divided against itself.  And unless there is agreement in the truth, talk of reconciliation is meaningless.

This is what the Anglican Communion must have if it is to survive:  Not a leader who tries to hold a plurality of viewpoints together, but a leader who leads us in the truth revealed in Jesus Christ and the Holy Scriptures and who calls us to follow.

Advice to Priests

On her blog, Held By His Pierced Hands, Meg Hunter-Kilmer has some important and convicting things to say in a piece entitled, "Advice to Priests:"

I was stunned the other day to have a good man, 25 years a priest, ask me for advice.  Not with a specific situation either, just “Do you have any advice for me?”  I didn’t know what to say to this priest of God, this man who speaks and the Word is made flesh, who grasps the hands of sinners to drag them back from the edge of that unscalable cliff, who leads people to Christ in a more real way than I ever will.

“Pray,” I said.  “Love Christ and his Church and pray.”

But he wanted more.  And I always have an opinion, even when I have no right to.  So add this to the list of things I have no business giving advice on.¹

If I could ask one thing of priests, it would be this: celebrate the Sacraments like you believe that they’re real.  I imagine that most of you do believe that they’re real.  And I’ve been privileged to know many priests whose love of the Lord is so powerfully evident in the way they lead their people in prayer.  But that’s not always the case.  Imagine if you celebrated Mass completely attentive to the fact that you were about to call God down to earth.  Wouldn’t it be slower, more reverent, more intense?  Wouldn’t you be awestruck, holding the host in your hand?  Would you really make do with a quick bow if you honestly believed—or maybe remembered is the word—that Jesus Christ was truly there?  More than just doing the red and saying the black (which is a great start), what if you treated the sacred mysteries like they are sacred and mysterious?

In a sacristy in Avila, the words surrounding the crucifix on the wall say, “Priest of Jesus Christ, celebrate this Holy Mass as if it were your first Mass, your last Mass, your only Mass.”  If you can’t excite the emotions your first Mass stirred up, can you try to imagine how you would say Mass if you knew you were about to meet God face to face?  You are, after all.

I don’t mean to imply that all you really need is emotions—or that if you try hard enough you can manufacture pious feelings.  I just mean that your people don’t need good homilies.*  They don’t need good administrators.  They don’t need friendly guys.  Those things are all nice, but what they need are pastors who are showing them what holiness looks like.  They need to see you and wonder at your love of the Lord.  They need to believe that it’s possible to know Christ, and you can teach them that by coming to know him better yourself.

[ Go to Meg's blog to read the rest. ]

* This is the only statement of Meg's with which I disagree.  Christians do need good sermons.  We are fed by both Word and Sacrament--in precisely that order.  Clergy need to preach every sermon as though we are calling God down to earth as well as lifting souls to heaven.  To follow Meg's analogy, we need to preach as if every sermon were our first sermon, our last sermon, our only sermon.

Well, DUH???

A choice quotation from the late John Hick, well known (liberal) philosopher of religion and author and editor of such books as The Metaphor of God Incarnate and The Myth of Christian Uniqueness:

If Jesus was literally God incarnate, the second Person of the holy Trinity, living a human life, so that the Christian religion was founded by God-on-earth in person, it is then very hard to escape from the traditional view that all mankind must be converted to the Christian faith.

(John Hick, God Has Many Names. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1982, p. 19.)

How The Desolation of Smaug Should Have Ended

OKAY!  TIME FOR A TOLKIEN BREAK!

GAFCON 2: Calling the Leadership of the Anglican Communion to Faithfulness

It has been a busy couple of weeks, during which I have not had much time for blogging. But for those who are interested in developments in Anglicanism, especially as they relate to faithfulness to the Gospel, I want to call your attention to David Ould's posts from the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) currently going on in Nairobi, Kenya.

In particular, I want to call your attention to his post from Day 2. To set the stage, the tone for Day 1 of GAFCON was set by reflection on the Archbishop of Canterbury's meeting with the Primates just prior to the official beginning of GAFCON. On Day 3 of GAFCON, the attendees were shown an address by Archbishop Welby on video prepared especially for them and designed to convey greetings and support. It is a gross understatement to say that attendees were underwhelmed by Abp. Welby's remarks and dubious about Canterbury's ability to lead the Anglican Communion in an orthodox, faithful, and missional future.

But the address by GAFCON Chairman, Archbishop Eliud Wabukala on Day 2 was critical, in my opinion, in demonstrating what GAFCON means and where it is headed. As David Ould reports, this is the crucial paragraph from that address:

Five years on [since the first GAFCON conference], the paralysis of which we spoke has intensified. And it has become clear that the Communion now needs new wineskins, a new way of ordering its affairs to fulfill the world wide scope of the Great Commission. Even the Archbishop of Canterbury has now come to this conclusion and I am grateful for His Grace’s honesty in acknowledging that the Anglican Communion’s neo-colonial leadership structures need to be replaced when he preached here at All Saints Cathedral last Sunday. However, it is difficult to see how stable and effective leadership can be developed unless the depth of the spiritual crisis we face is acknowledged. Organisational change on its own will not be enough. Even the very weak theological discipline of the Anglican Covenant has failed to win consent despite years of negotiation and the Archbishop of Canterbury is no longer able to gather the Communion.

Or, as David Ould summarizes:

...it’s not enough for Welby to visit GAFCON and tell them that he recognises that the current structures are failing. If he will not deal with the real issues (the apostasy of the American and Canadian churches) then GAFCON will continue on without him. He no longer commands any leadership amongst them.

When I am able to do some original blogging, these are the questions I want to explore: What will happen to God and the Gospel as people pursue the various avenues that are open toward an Anglican future? And are the current structures of the Anglican Communion and its various provinces capable of demonstrating the kind of faithfulness that pleases God and carrying out the authentic mission of the Church that Jesus gave us (Matt. 28:18-20)?

These are the questions being asked by those attending GAFCON and by many Anglicans in both the Global North and South who have been affected by the tearing of the Anglican Communion's fabric in recent decades. As the final conference Communique emerges, I have no doubt that we will gain further clarity as to how these leaders, representing the vast majority of Anglicans worldwide, see the answers to these questions.

Wal-Mart worker: Fired for helping assaulted woman

I'll get back to Anglican and Gospel related matters shortly. But, in the meantime, here's a story that made my blood boil this morning:

From here:

Wal-Mart worker: Fired for helping assaulted woman

A Michigan man says he was fired from his job at Wal-Mart after he tried to help a woman being assaulted in the parking lot of one of the retail giant's stores and ended up fighting with her attacker.

Kristopher Oswald, 30, said he was in his car on his break about 2:30 a.m. Sunday when he saw a man grabbing a woman. He said he asked her if she needed help and the man started punching him in the head and yelling that he was going to kill him. Oswald said he was able to get on top of the man, but then two other men jumped him from behind.

A spokeswoman for Bentonville, Ark.-based Wal-Mart Stores Inc. told The Associated Press on Thursday that while the company understood Oswald's intentions, his actions violated company policy.

"We had to make a tough decision, one that we don't take lightly, and he's no longer with the company," company spokeswoman Ashley Hardie said.

If the story is true (and we'll know from the police reports whether it is true or not), this man should get a medal, not lose his job. As in so many cases, zero tolerance means zero intelligence. I thought Wal-Mart was a smarter company than this. But apparently not.

A Response to Christopher Seitz' "Why Encouragement for North American Parishes and Dioceses Matters?"

 The Rev. Professor Christopher Seitz has posted a piece on the Anglican Communion Institute website entitled, "Why Encouragement for North American Parishes and Dioceses Matters?"  In it he raises the possibility (or hope) that the established structures in those parts of the Anglican Communion that are following a new theological agenda might make some accommodation for traditional Anglicans.

The thing that mystifies me when I read Seitz' piece is that he seems not to take into account much of recent Anglican history.  The American Anglican Council, Forward in Faith, and others asked the same questions for twenty years about accommodation of traditional Anglicans that Seitz is asking now—to no avail.

The Anglican Communion Network of Dioceses and Parishes was formed in 2004 with ten dioceses and twelve bishops and asked repeatedly for some accommodation for traditional Anglicans, or even that the TEC leadership would take the concerns of traditionalists seriously.  No accommodation was forthcoming.  TEC continued its wayward direction and Canterbury did nothing to rein them in—in fact, Canterbury aided or acquiesced in the demotion of the Primates' meeting, the elevation of the Anglican Consultative Council, and the creation of a Joint Standing Committee to make sure the orthodox voices among the "instruments of unity" were marginalized. 

The Global Anglican Futures Conference (GAFCON), which first met in Jerusalem in 2009 and will meet again this month in Nairobi, is precisely the result of this history.  Orthodox Anglicans learned that they could not trust the existing Communion structures and set about creating their own.

Seitz' piece is well worth reading, if only to get that delightful sense of déjà vu.  When he asks, "Can Bishops be given oversight of parishes, if they exist in dioceses which wish to inhabit the new trails and new maps?"  I can't help but wonder where he was during the whole chapter on Delegated Episcopal Pastoral Oversight (DEPO).  We've been down that road.  A number of parishes expressed precisely that desire.  But in only a few cases, where there was a particularly charitable Episcopal bishop, was alternative oversight granted.  Read the Anglican Communion Institute's own proposal from 2004.  It went nowhere.

Seitz asks, "If a new liturgical rite, a new metro-political PB, and probably a new constitution (in the case of TEC, reinforcing a new polity) are now part of the agenda of the new season, will dioceses and parishes be permitted to do what has been done up until this new time, as the church inhabited this time and space previously?"  I think the recent history of the Diocese of South Carolina, as well as several other dioceses, has already given us an answer to that question.

When I read Seitz' statement, "Let justice and mercy kiss each other, as conservatives are permitted to remain on familiar trails, while the larger Episcopal and Anglican bodies in North America forge ahead where they believe God is calling them.  If in time they part ways, at least it could happen in a spirit of charity and loving-kindness," I feel as though I am reading something written in 1998, not 2013.

If in time they part ways???  Hello?  There is already a parting of the ways.  Several provinces in CAPA and the Global South have already declared themselves out of fellowship with TEC and have recognized the ACNA.  In 2008, more than 200 bishops boycotted the once-in-a-decade Lambeth Conference. When the Global South Primates met in Singapore, in April 2010, they invited Abp. Duncan to preside at the Eucharist.  When the Convocation of Anglican Provinces of Africa (CAPA) met in August 2010, the four primates at the head table were the current and outgoing heads of CAPA (Ian Ernest and Henry Luke Orombi), the Archbishop of Canterbury (Rowan Williams) and the Primate of the Anglican Church in North America (Robert Duncan).  How much stronger an indication could one look for that a parting of the ways has happened and that a realignment in Anglicanism is underway?  Now, the question going into GAFCON 2 is whether this parting of the ways is going to be a formal and permanent break. 

So my final question is, in light of all this, when is the Anglican Communion Institute going to stop dismissing the ACNA and GAFCON and recognize that a major and lasting realignment in Anglicanism (I would say the most significant development in Anglicanism since the Reformation) has already begun?