Will Christian churches actually come under internal pressure to bless polyamorous unions?
Suppose, contrary to facts as they stand, that secular American society ended up legally recognizing polyamorous unions, so that one could go to a justice of the peace and have one's polyamorous union given legal standing by civil authorities. What should the Church do, as a matter of general policy, in such a case?
One would hope the Church has by that time developed a better theological understanding of marriage, so that it can render intelligible, if not persuasive, to civil society whatever it ends up doing. I would hope the Church could mount a convincing defense of--how shall we call it?--binary marriage unions, and this is what it would likely do.
But why? What makes binary rather than polyamorous unions so special? Can we say anything persuasive? Suppose the Christian polyamorist argued:
(1) The Bible supports unions exhibiting fruits of the Spirit;
(2) The Church is permitted to bless unions that the Bible supports;
(3) Some polyamorous unions exhibit fruits of the Spirit;
Thus, (4) the Church is permitted to bless those polyamorous unions that exhibit fruits of the Spirit.
Will GC resolutions follow on (4)? What's wrong with that argument? Or do you think that anything is wrong with it? I have some ideas about what's wrong with it that I'll share in a bit, but I wanted first to ask the question.
Archbishop Williams' Latest Missive
+Williams' latest missive directed to the Anglican Communion, concerned with GC2009, should not come as much of a surprise. If anything, there is a softening to his rhetoric around the Covenant and his curious notion of--what shall we call it?--diocesan autonomy. In particular, the menace implicit in his near-closing remarks (4.25),
the question is being more sharply defined of whether, if a province declines such an invitation, any elements within it will be free...to adopt the Covenant,
is softened by the parenthetical--and new?--
granted the explicit provision that the Covenant does not purport to alter the Constitution or internal polity of any province. A year or so ago he might have encouraged dioceses to break away, discounting the reality of what he here calls the "local church" altogether; we should be thankful for this small movement in his apparent ecclesiology.
I.
My main concern is with section 2, where there does not seem to be much movement in his thinking (his pre-office writings now ancient history), and where he seems to take sharpest issue with TEC's actions. He opens with a wonderfully crisp Modus Tollens (spread out over 2.6-8) which may well represent the hardest and most recalcitrant element in his thinking on display in the missive:
(1) If the Church is free to recognize SSUs..., then there would be a strong consensus and solid theological grounding in the Church for that freedom.
(2) There is no such strong consensus and theological grounding in the Church.
Thus, (3) the Church is not free to recognize SSUs....
I am pretty sure Williams' MT is unsound, as (1) looks false to me. It seems the New Testament offers evidence of liberties taken before there was strong consensus, or--please--at least solid theological grounding. It is hard to imagine the earliest generations of the Church as capable of providing a strong theological grounding--in a sense univocal with Williams'--for any of the innovations they developed. It seems rather that such a capacity took centuries to develop, and that in fact what was developed is now seen as largely in error: who takes the impassible God of the Creeds seriously high up in the AC anymore? Or the Creeds' substance metaphysics? Do we have to accept Leontius of Byzantium's interpretation as truth, or, rather Truth?
(2) might be true, but it is decidedly odd. He is not saying unanimity is required, and he later on implies the lack of "strong consensus" may be an error (3.14-15)--so exactly where is the line where "strong consensus" is achieved? I would bet he has absolutely no clear idea, and he is not nearly fool enough to offer anything definite. Should we read "strong" as requiring a supermajority, so that we should see God as moving through overwhelming numerical superiority? That seems rather unbiblical to me, or at least ad hoc--a concession to the sorts of cultural feelings of propriety whose normativity for the Church Williams elsewhere questions.
But then what? An ecumenical council? Could such a provision be maintained for other areas of innovation over which he presides in the CoE and AC? Is there strong consensus in the Church--not merely a local church like the CoE mind you, or a mere clot of locals like the AC, for ordaining women to the episcopate? It seems to me a double standard is not a particuarly good standard. Williams does not--after all this time and all this wrangling--have a defensible standard to offer the Anglican Communion, and while that is no sin, it is worthwhile noting.
II.
I think Williams' opening argument in section 2 is unsound--but that is not the worst part of section 2. Things deteriorate precipitously after the second sentence of 2.8, right through 3.11.
First, there is what seems to me like a bone-headed error, a possibly revealing slip which he might wish to have edited out. He thinks it follows on (3) that:
a person living in such a union [a SSU] is in the same case as a heterosexual person living in a sexual relationship outside the marriage bond....
According to Williams, the case of a same sex couple that has sought out the blessing of the Church (big "c"), and irregularly received such a blessing, is equivalent to the case of a single heterosexual person--not even a couple--living outside the marriage bond. It is not merely that the situation of a hetero couple that merely cohabits but does not want marriage--having the real possibility of marriage open to them--is being compared to a same sex couple that wants to marry but cannot, not having the possibility open.
That would be bad enough for Williams, because their situations are obviously different: optional mere cohabitation and cohabitation without the marriage option are different, and, um, the difference seems morally relevant. How on earth could he discount it? Now add in that the relevant same sex couples want to be married, but cannot be--the difference is even more glaring. Irregular blessings do not exist for Williams; let us pass over them for his sake.
Anyhow, Williams is implying that for the Church, these obvious differences amount to no moral difference which the Church is free to take into account when delivering blessings; indeed, more: no moral difference, period. But that is just wrong. If the Church were mistaken about not getting behind blessing same sex unions--something Williams has implied is possible--that would not affect their sacramental character. They would have a sacramental character even without the recognition of the Church; so the Church regards the marriage sacrament. That is to say, pace Williams, the truth of (3) would not imply there is no difference between the same sex couple and the hetero single, as the Church could be wrong and the sacrament could be present for the same sex couple.
However, the real kicker is his likening the same sex couple to a heterosexual individual sleeping around, as if the couple's bond is nonexistent, as if there is nothing there that would make the couple more than one individual sleeping around and another individual sleeping around. That is, to say the least, insulting. But it also seems to defy reality; there are lifelong, exclusive, loving homosexual unions. That seems, one would think, to be different from the swinging single's case in a way that the Church, and Williams, should register.
But it doesn't register with him, and--alas--its not registering does not seem to be a cognitive slip or a mere fault of expression. He writes
In other words, the question is not a simple one of human rights or human dignity. It is that a certain choice of lifestyle has certain consequences.
Does he know better? Who knows. Is being gay a lifestyle? What exactly is a lifestyle? Is being gay something that gays choose? All of them? This seems comic. I submit what seems to me to be obvious:
there are cases of gays who are homosexual without there having been an occasion, a time t, in each of their cases at which they effectively chose to be gay.
Bulletin to the Archbishop: that's not how it works. Being gay is not, and certainly is not always, a mere lifestyle that is chosen. There are, for instance, habits, dispositions, nonconscious desires and mental content, and socialization to take account of; extend the list ad plac.
Strictly speaking, Williams' argument in 2.6-8 may be ignored if--as it seems--he means to address people who choose to adopt a gay lifestyle. It seems to be that the Episcopal Church means to minister to, and has baptized, genuinely gay people, men and women who--shock!--really are gay through and through, and not just sampling the wares like Williams' single heterosexual on the prowl. If we are to take Williams at his word, then contrary to what might have been his intention, he is not addressing what TEC intends to do by blessing SSUs. A fort, he really has nothing to say here about ordaining gays.
In a deep sense, we are talking past one another.
III.
There is more to say; someone should take him to task for positing the separation of sacred and secular realms, as if there are secular facts really distinct from the religiously significant. I hope he does not believe that, but the missive seems to presuppose such a distinction.
I will stop with just one more point. Williams wrote (2.7)
In the light of the way the Church has consistently read the Bible for the last two thousand years, it is clear that a positive answer to this question....
Ugh. Is there really a single way the Church has read the Bible over the course of its existence on any question, much less the one of blessing SSUs? Why all the make-believe? There's the obvious problem that there have been several different ways the Church has read the Bible over its history, and not merely one way. There's the problem too that there is no one Bible for the Church, even now, that could be read or referred to as object for this fictional One Way of Reading. And then there is the problem that the Church existed for some time without a Bible, but merely with its "Scripture" being a version of pre-Jamnia Hebrew Scripture not quite the same as our Anglican OT--likely the LXX, with some really wild stuff like the Enoch literature added on. In other words, he should be a little more circumspect before perpetuating partisan fictions.
But the main point is, even if there were exactly one Bible and exactly one right way of reading it, would we be reading about people who are gay? That seems to me to be a substantive question, and one pressed by Williams' bizzare picture of gays having chosen a gay lifestyle. If the Bible on homosexuality merely addressed heteros who tried to exchange their hetero orientation for a gay one (a la Romans), that would not carry obvious implications for people who are gay simpliciter, without any exchange. If it did not seem to recognize there were gay Israelites in speaking to men having sex with men, the same question arises: is this speaking to people who are gay? It may be, even if Williams were right about the Bible and reading, the impressive historical consensus on homosexual activity does not speak directly to people who are gay. For all the years and all the unanimity, there is a yet a gap, a question about whether all of that addresses people who are gay, who really are gay. And alas: the Bible will not speak of itself to that question.
What makes this worse: it seems the Church will succeed in avoiding this gap if it can. TEC and gays in general are not powerful enough to compel the Church here below to take the question up qua question. Those on whose behalf the question would be taken up are--considering them worldwide--among the weak, the marginalized, the unseen.
the question is being more sharply defined of whether, if a province declines such an invitation, any elements within it will be free...to adopt the Covenant,
is softened by the parenthetical--and new?--
granted the explicit provision that the Covenant does not purport to alter the Constitution or internal polity of any province. A year or so ago he might have encouraged dioceses to break away, discounting the reality of what he here calls the "local church" altogether; we should be thankful for this small movement in his apparent ecclesiology.
I.
My main concern is with section 2, where there does not seem to be much movement in his thinking (his pre-office writings now ancient history), and where he seems to take sharpest issue with TEC's actions. He opens with a wonderfully crisp Modus Tollens (spread out over 2.6-8) which may well represent the hardest and most recalcitrant element in his thinking on display in the missive:
(1) If the Church is free to recognize SSUs..., then there would be a strong consensus and solid theological grounding in the Church for that freedom.
(2) There is no such strong consensus and theological grounding in the Church.
Thus, (3) the Church is not free to recognize SSUs....
I am pretty sure Williams' MT is unsound, as (1) looks false to me. It seems the New Testament offers evidence of liberties taken before there was strong consensus, or--please--at least solid theological grounding. It is hard to imagine the earliest generations of the Church as capable of providing a strong theological grounding--in a sense univocal with Williams'--for any of the innovations they developed. It seems rather that such a capacity took centuries to develop, and that in fact what was developed is now seen as largely in error: who takes the impassible God of the Creeds seriously high up in the AC anymore? Or the Creeds' substance metaphysics? Do we have to accept Leontius of Byzantium's interpretation as truth, or, rather Truth?
(2) might be true, but it is decidedly odd. He is not saying unanimity is required, and he later on implies the lack of "strong consensus" may be an error (3.14-15)--so exactly where is the line where "strong consensus" is achieved? I would bet he has absolutely no clear idea, and he is not nearly fool enough to offer anything definite. Should we read "strong" as requiring a supermajority, so that we should see God as moving through overwhelming numerical superiority? That seems rather unbiblical to me, or at least ad hoc--a concession to the sorts of cultural feelings of propriety whose normativity for the Church Williams elsewhere questions.
But then what? An ecumenical council? Could such a provision be maintained for other areas of innovation over which he presides in the CoE and AC? Is there strong consensus in the Church--not merely a local church like the CoE mind you, or a mere clot of locals like the AC, for ordaining women to the episcopate? It seems to me a double standard is not a particuarly good standard. Williams does not--after all this time and all this wrangling--have a defensible standard to offer the Anglican Communion, and while that is no sin, it is worthwhile noting.
II.
I think Williams' opening argument in section 2 is unsound--but that is not the worst part of section 2. Things deteriorate precipitously after the second sentence of 2.8, right through 3.11.
First, there is what seems to me like a bone-headed error, a possibly revealing slip which he might wish to have edited out. He thinks it follows on (3) that:
a person living in such a union [a SSU] is in the same case as a heterosexual person living in a sexual relationship outside the marriage bond....
According to Williams, the case of a same sex couple that has sought out the blessing of the Church (big "c"), and irregularly received such a blessing, is equivalent to the case of a single heterosexual person--not even a couple--living outside the marriage bond. It is not merely that the situation of a hetero couple that merely cohabits but does not want marriage--having the real possibility of marriage open to them--is being compared to a same sex couple that wants to marry but cannot, not having the possibility open.
That would be bad enough for Williams, because their situations are obviously different: optional mere cohabitation and cohabitation without the marriage option are different, and, um, the difference seems morally relevant. How on earth could he discount it? Now add in that the relevant same sex couples want to be married, but cannot be--the difference is even more glaring. Irregular blessings do not exist for Williams; let us pass over them for his sake.
Anyhow, Williams is implying that for the Church, these obvious differences amount to no moral difference which the Church is free to take into account when delivering blessings; indeed, more: no moral difference, period. But that is just wrong. If the Church were mistaken about not getting behind blessing same sex unions--something Williams has implied is possible--that would not affect their sacramental character. They would have a sacramental character even without the recognition of the Church; so the Church regards the marriage sacrament. That is to say, pace Williams, the truth of (3) would not imply there is no difference between the same sex couple and the hetero single, as the Church could be wrong and the sacrament could be present for the same sex couple.
However, the real kicker is his likening the same sex couple to a heterosexual individual sleeping around, as if the couple's bond is nonexistent, as if there is nothing there that would make the couple more than one individual sleeping around and another individual sleeping around. That is, to say the least, insulting. But it also seems to defy reality; there are lifelong, exclusive, loving homosexual unions. That seems, one would think, to be different from the swinging single's case in a way that the Church, and Williams, should register.
But it doesn't register with him, and--alas--its not registering does not seem to be a cognitive slip or a mere fault of expression. He writes
In other words, the question is not a simple one of human rights or human dignity. It is that a certain choice of lifestyle has certain consequences.
Does he know better? Who knows. Is being gay a lifestyle? What exactly is a lifestyle? Is being gay something that gays choose? All of them? This seems comic. I submit what seems to me to be obvious:
there are cases of gays who are homosexual without there having been an occasion, a time t, in each of their cases at which they effectively chose to be gay.
Bulletin to the Archbishop: that's not how it works. Being gay is not, and certainly is not always, a mere lifestyle that is chosen. There are, for instance, habits, dispositions, nonconscious desires and mental content, and socialization to take account of; extend the list ad plac.
Strictly speaking, Williams' argument in 2.6-8 may be ignored if--as it seems--he means to address people who choose to adopt a gay lifestyle. It seems to be that the Episcopal Church means to minister to, and has baptized, genuinely gay people, men and women who--shock!--really are gay through and through, and not just sampling the wares like Williams' single heterosexual on the prowl. If we are to take Williams at his word, then contrary to what might have been his intention, he is not addressing what TEC intends to do by blessing SSUs. A fort, he really has nothing to say here about ordaining gays.
In a deep sense, we are talking past one another.
III.
There is more to say; someone should take him to task for positing the separation of sacred and secular realms, as if there are secular facts really distinct from the religiously significant. I hope he does not believe that, but the missive seems to presuppose such a distinction.
I will stop with just one more point. Williams wrote (2.7)
In the light of the way the Church has consistently read the Bible for the last two thousand years, it is clear that a positive answer to this question....
Ugh. Is there really a single way the Church has read the Bible over the course of its existence on any question, much less the one of blessing SSUs? Why all the make-believe? There's the obvious problem that there have been several different ways the Church has read the Bible over its history, and not merely one way. There's the problem too that there is no one Bible for the Church, even now, that could be read or referred to as object for this fictional One Way of Reading. And then there is the problem that the Church existed for some time without a Bible, but merely with its "Scripture" being a version of pre-Jamnia Hebrew Scripture not quite the same as our Anglican OT--likely the LXX, with some really wild stuff like the Enoch literature added on. In other words, he should be a little more circumspect before perpetuating partisan fictions.
But the main point is, even if there were exactly one Bible and exactly one right way of reading it, would we be reading about people who are gay? That seems to me to be a substantive question, and one pressed by Williams' bizzare picture of gays having chosen a gay lifestyle. If the Bible on homosexuality merely addressed heteros who tried to exchange their hetero orientation for a gay one (a la Romans), that would not carry obvious implications for people who are gay simpliciter, without any exchange. If it did not seem to recognize there were gay Israelites in speaking to men having sex with men, the same question arises: is this speaking to people who are gay? It may be, even if Williams were right about the Bible and reading, the impressive historical consensus on homosexual activity does not speak directly to people who are gay. For all the years and all the unanimity, there is a yet a gap, a question about whether all of that addresses people who are gay, who really are gay. And alas: the Bible will not speak of itself to that question.
What makes this worse: it seems the Church will succeed in avoiding this gap if it can. TEC and gays in general are not powerful enough to compel the Church here below to take the question up qua question. Those on whose behalf the question would be taken up are--considering them worldwide--among the weak, the marginalized, the unseen.
Surrender, Dorothy!
From the Archbishop of Canterbury comes this most disturbing document, "Communion, Covenant and Our Anglican Future," subheaded "Reflections on the Episcopal Church's 2009 General Convention from the Archbishop of Canterbury for the Bishops, Clergy and Faithful of the Anglican Communion." (If I'd known this was coming, I'd have saved the title Reflections in a Jaundiced Eye for it. Ah, well. Turns out Florence King beat me to it, anyway).
In that earlier post, though, I'd suggested that both "sides" of the dispute have a right to feel as if they have been baulked by the Archbishop of Canterbury. This continues to be the result of Archbishop Williams' lucubations. I for one am appalled at several rhetorical moves in the Archbishop's writing that suggest to me that the Episcopal Church is being asked to submit to subordinate status within the Anglican Communion, while remaining its milch cow.
1. The One Way Door
First, in no place of his reflections does the Archbishop note the repeated,and indeed now systemic breach of the Winsdor recommendations which were intended to serve as reciprocal promises to the moratoria asked of TEC. As I have recently pointed out, the much-vaunted "Listening Process" has been paid only the barest lip service; the requested suspension of incursions by other provinces into TEC have not been even paid lip service. The defamation of the Episcopal Church and the claim that it is not a Christian Church likewise go unaddressed, as does the pain of gays and lesbians who find their relationships derogated by the Archbishop to "a certain choice of lifestyle" which "has certain consequences" for membership in the Christian community. (Williams par 9). Indeed, the Archbishop explicitly rejects the arguments for same sex marriage rites (let alone consecration or ordination) based upon justice or civil rights. (Id. par 4-6).
Weirdly, there is a fleeting reference in par 20 to "the current appeal for a moratorium on cross-provincial pastoral interventions," but with no reference to the status of these interventions.
But what does Williams find worth responding to? Despite describing "[t]he relationship between the Episcopal Church and the wider Communion" as "a reality which needs continued engagement and encouragement," the Archbishop finds that "The repeated request for moratoria on the election of partnered gay clergy as bishops and on liturgical recognition of same-sex partnerships has clearly not found universal favour." Everything else that he finds commendable at General Convention (and it's a healthy list), fades into irrelevance: "My way or the highway."
In other words, the only party to comply with the morotoria shall be swiftly put in the dock for possibly not continuing to comply; the violators shall go unrebuked--indeed, unmentioned.
2. The Shape of Things to Come
Additionally, the Archbishop's rejection of the case for same sex rites is pitched in a way that makes future success well-nigh impossible:
Moreover, the Archbishop asserts--absent any citations, and I think this is because there are none--that to allow the local settlement of these issues "would be to re-conceive the Anglican Communion as essentially a loose federation of local bodies with a cultural history in common, rather than a theologically coherent 'community of Christian communities.'" (Williams para 18). Er, that's a pretty slim difference, and the notion that we've been "theologically coherent" is a bit steep. Certainly the Archbishop is going well beyond the classic Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral here.
But how lovely he makes it sound:
After all, the Archbishop is merely describing "two styles of being Anglican, whose mutual relation will certainly need working out but which would not exclude co-operation in mission and service of the kind now shared in the Communion." Moreover, "[i]t should not need to be said that a competitive hostility between the two would be one of the worst possible outcomes, and needs to be clearly repudiated."
Of course! Those who refer to our Presiding Bishop as a heretic, and call us the Episcopal Organization, and a social justice club--or, to quote Robert Duncan "Babylon" for short--would never be hostile or competitive.
In other words, Americans, we'll take your money and mission efforts, but please--do keep your lowly, second-class place.
3. Enabling Bigotry
Beyond the description of homosexual committed partnership as "a certain choice of lifestyle" which "has certain consequences," this vision is one which sacrifices the interests, dignity, and position of our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters on the altar of unity and centralization--the Archbishop concedes that any of the centralization he describes can only claim about a half century of history, and yet we should in the interests of such unity reduce the acceptance of our brothers and sisters to the lowest common denominator within the Communion.
In return, the Archbishop offers a tepid, non-specific condemnation of anti-gay bigotry. Of course, he immediately denatures that already weak sauce by finding within the expressed need for "penitence" on the part of the Communion no implication for the discipline of the Church:
Simply put, this seemingly moderate document asks TEC in the politest possible way, to buy peace with the tears and blood, if the Church of Nigeria has its way) of our brothers and sisters. If we love them, we will answer firmly "No deal!" Or, more pointedly, "here I stand. I can do no other."
In that earlier post, though, I'd suggested that both "sides" of the dispute have a right to feel as if they have been baulked by the Archbishop of Canterbury. This continues to be the result of Archbishop Williams' lucubations. I for one am appalled at several rhetorical moves in the Archbishop's writing that suggest to me that the Episcopal Church is being asked to submit to subordinate status within the Anglican Communion, while remaining its milch cow.
1. The One Way Door
First, in no place of his reflections does the Archbishop note the repeated,and indeed now systemic breach of the Winsdor recommendations which were intended to serve as reciprocal promises to the moratoria asked of TEC. As I have recently pointed out, the much-vaunted "Listening Process" has been paid only the barest lip service; the requested suspension of incursions by other provinces into TEC have not been even paid lip service. The defamation of the Episcopal Church and the claim that it is not a Christian Church likewise go unaddressed, as does the pain of gays and lesbians who find their relationships derogated by the Archbishop to "a certain choice of lifestyle" which "has certain consequences" for membership in the Christian community. (Williams par 9). Indeed, the Archbishop explicitly rejects the arguments for same sex marriage rites (let alone consecration or ordination) based upon justice or civil rights. (Id. par 4-6).
Weirdly, there is a fleeting reference in par 20 to "the current appeal for a moratorium on cross-provincial pastoral interventions," but with no reference to the status of these interventions.
But what does Williams find worth responding to? Despite describing "[t]he relationship between the Episcopal Church and the wider Communion" as "a reality which needs continued engagement and encouragement," the Archbishop finds that "The repeated request for moratoria on the election of partnered gay clergy as bishops and on liturgical recognition of same-sex partnerships has clearly not found universal favour." Everything else that he finds commendable at General Convention (and it's a healthy list), fades into irrelevance: "My way or the highway."
In other words, the only party to comply with the morotoria shall be swiftly put in the dock for possibly not continuing to comply; the violators shall go unrebuked--indeed, unmentioned.
2. The Shape of Things to Come
Additionally, the Archbishop's rejection of the case for same sex rites is pitched in a way that makes future success well-nigh impossible:
7. In the light of the way in which the Church has consistently read the Bible for the last two thousand years, it is clear that a positive answer to this question would have to be based on the most painstaking biblical exegesis and on a wide acceptance of the results within the Communion, with due account taken of the teachings of ecumenical partners also. A major change naturally needs a strong level of consensus and solid theological grounding.Clearly, Cantaur has raised the bar--we need to bring around not just a majority of the Communion, but its entirety, and, seemingly, that of our ecumenical friends, the RC Church and (I suspect) the Orthodox. So much for Article XXXVII; the Bishop of Rome hath jurisdiction not only in this relam of England, but in this realm of the United States! And so do a lot of other people. Who knew?
8. This is not our situation in the Communion. Thus a blessing for a same-sex union cannot have the authority of the Church Catholic, or even of the Communion as a whole. And if this is the case, a person living in such a union is in the same case as a heterosexual person living in a sexual relationship outside the marriage bond; whatever the human respect and pastoral sensitivity such persons must be given, their chosen lifestyle is not one that the Church's teaching sanctions, and thus it is hard to see how they can act in the necessarily representative role that the ordained ministry, especially the episcopate, requires.
9. In other words, the question is not a simple one of human rights or human dignity. It is that a certain choice of lifestyle has certain consequences. So long as the Church Catholic, or even the Communion as a whole does not bless same-sex unions, a person living in such a union cannot without serious incongruity have a representative function in a Church whose public teaching is at odds with their lifestyle.
Moreover, the Archbishop asserts--absent any citations, and I think this is because there are none--that to allow the local settlement of these issues "would be to re-conceive the Anglican Communion as essentially a loose federation of local bodies with a cultural history in common, rather than a theologically coherent 'community of Christian communities.'" (Williams para 18). Er, that's a pretty slim difference, and the notion that we've been "theologically coherent" is a bit steep. Certainly the Archbishop is going well beyond the classic Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral here.
But how lovely he makes it sound:
For those whose vision is not shaped by the desire to intensify relationships in this particular way, or whose vision of the Communion is different, there is no threat of being cast into outer darkness – existing relationships will not be destroyed that easily. But it means that there is at least the possibility of a twofold ecclesial reality in view in the middle distance: that is, a 'covenanted' Anglican global body, fully sharing certain aspects of a vision of how the Church should be and behave, able to take part as a body in ecumenical and interfaith dialogue; and, related to this body, but in less formal ways with fewer formal expectations, there may be associated local churches in various kinds of mutual partnership and solidarity with one another and with 'covenanted' provinces.Williams par. 22.
After all, the Archbishop is merely describing "two styles of being Anglican, whose mutual relation will certainly need working out but which would not exclude co-operation in mission and service of the kind now shared in the Communion." Moreover, "[i]t should not need to be said that a competitive hostility between the two would be one of the worst possible outcomes, and needs to be clearly repudiated."
Of course! Those who refer to our Presiding Bishop as a heretic, and call us the Episcopal Organization, and a social justice club--or, to quote Robert Duncan "Babylon" for short--would never be hostile or competitive.
In other words, Americans, we'll take your money and mission efforts, but please--do keep your lowly, second-class place.
3. Enabling Bigotry
Beyond the description of homosexual committed partnership as "a certain choice of lifestyle" which "has certain consequences," this vision is one which sacrifices the interests, dignity, and position of our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters on the altar of unity and centralization--the Archbishop concedes that any of the centralization he describes can only claim about a half century of history, and yet we should in the interests of such unity reduce the acceptance of our brothers and sisters to the lowest common denominator within the Communion.
In return, the Archbishop offers a tepid, non-specific condemnation of anti-gay bigotry. Of course, he immediately denatures that already weak sauce by finding within the expressed need for "penitence" on the part of the Communion no implication for the discipline of the Church:
10. This is not a matter that can be wholly determined by what society at large considers usual or acceptable or determines to be legal. Prejudice and violence against LGBT people are sinful and disgraceful when society at large is intolerant of such people; if the Church has echoed the harshness of the law and of popular bigotry – as it so often has done – and justified itself by pointing to what society took for granted, it has been wrong to do so. But on the same basis, if society changes its attitudes, that change does not of itself count as a reason for the Church to change its discipline.
Simply put, this seemingly moderate document asks TEC in the politest possible way, to buy peace with the tears and blood, if the Church of Nigeria has its way) of our brothers and sisters. If we love them, we will answer firmly "No deal!" Or, more pointedly, "here I stand. I can do no other."
My World With John Houseman
When I was a boy, I stumbled on the film and series The Paper Chase, and was quickly engrossed in it--something about the relationship between the professor and his students, the thrust-and-parry of the dialectic, and the way in which a welter of details could build up to a picture of right and wrong, gripped me. When PBS broadcast the old series, and added panel discussions of legal questions to fill out the hour, I was even more hooked. I began looking for books on law in the library, and found a handful of Supreme Court reporters containing decisions of the 1970s (in a funky red binding I've never seen since) and formed my political views from reading the opinions of Justices. I quickly learned to distinguish the pompous nonsense of Warren Burger and the tendentious writing of William Rehnquist from the often blunt but always grounded reasoning of William O. Douglas. I grew up a lawyer and a politics addict in a family that had neither on either side.
In high school and then much more in college, I found theater, and loved acting, working backstage, even assistant directing. That's when I discovered the enormous contribution Houseman made to the theater, both before and after his collaboration with Orson Welles. I saw Houseman lecture twice; once at Molloy College and once at Fordham, where I got to meet him. He was charming; funny, self-effacing, anecdotal, and with great manner with a punch line. I've read his memoirs, and they convey something of that quality.
So why do I mention this now? Because I've just finished the two volumes of a three volume biography of Welles published to date by Simon Callow. They are awfully good, and in volume 1, Callow draws off a deathbed interview with Houseman. The stories are more tinged with sadness as Callow tells them; he feels for both men, caught in a highly emotional partnership, which grows and dies in a few concentrated years.
And Houseman? His own feeling that he was a chameleon, playing a series of roles in his early life is one which any lawyer--or, I should think, actor--can identify with. We lose ourselves in the parts. But, at some point,we have to find the essential person behind the personae. I don't know if Welles managed it. The last volume of Houseman's memoir suggests that he did.
And me? Ah, that would be telling.
In high school and then much more in college, I found theater, and loved acting, working backstage, even assistant directing. That's when I discovered the enormous contribution Houseman made to the theater, both before and after his collaboration with Orson Welles. I saw Houseman lecture twice; once at Molloy College and once at Fordham, where I got to meet him. He was charming; funny, self-effacing, anecdotal, and with great manner with a punch line. I've read his memoirs, and they convey something of that quality.
So why do I mention this now? Because I've just finished the two volumes of a three volume biography of Welles published to date by Simon Callow. They are awfully good, and in volume 1, Callow draws off a deathbed interview with Houseman. The stories are more tinged with sadness as Callow tells them; he feels for both men, caught in a highly emotional partnership, which grows and dies in a few concentrated years.
And Houseman? His own feeling that he was a chameleon, playing a series of roles in his early life is one which any lawyer--or, I should think, actor--can identify with. We lose ourselves in the parts. But, at some point,we have to find the essential person behind the personae. I don't know if Welles managed it. The last volume of Houseman's memoir suggests that he did.
And me? Ah, that would be telling.
Cooties
The Times reports that the Blackburn Cathedral will offer three percent of their worshipers (and their Bishop and Dean) communion bread specially consecrated by boys whenever a female priest celebrates the Eucharist. This way, I presume, these boys won't get "cooties."
They need not be ashamed. A vaccine is available. Here is what you need to do to get the "cooties shot."
Before you go to receive communion from a girl say the following:
Here is an instructional video.
Now the Bishop and Dean of Blackburn and the six people in their Sunday worship will not have to worry about getting cooties from the Sacrament.
They need not be ashamed. A vaccine is available. Here is what you need to do to get the "cooties shot."
Before you go to receive communion from a girl say the following:
circle, circleTo be liturgically correct and clinically most effective, have another person use their index finger and draw the circles and dots on your forearm.
dot, dot
now you've got the cootie shot
Here is an instructional video.
Now the Bishop and Dean of Blackburn and the six people in their Sunday worship will not have to worry about getting cooties from the Sacrament.
Simplified, illustrated and painless
Updated. After every General Convention, I try to round up the Big News and the Big Trends that come out of General Convention for the people of my parish, Trinity Episcopal Church, Easton. So here is my triennial simplified, illustrated and painless round-up of what took place at General Convention. With, as Bill Lewellis would say, "spin."
This time my perch was not on the Convention Floor but through the blogs, news reports and other sources that made this the most accessible General Convention ever.
Read it here.
Read it here.
Back in DC
The recent er, exposure, of South Carolina Mark Sanford, John Ensign, and, now, Rep. Charles Pickering, Jr., have brought to light their membership in a secretive mutual aid society and frankly pretty weird "Christian" organization (I'm pretty sure that approving references to Hitler, Genghis Khan, and a worship of secular power earn you scare quotes).
According to Jeff Sharlet, members include Senators Don Nickles (R., Okla.), Charles Grassley (R., Iowa), Pete Domenici (R., N.Mex.), John Ensign (R., Nev.), James Inhofe (R., Okla.), Bill Nelson (D., Fla.), and Conrad Burns (R., Mont.), as are Representatives Jim DeMint (R., S.C.), Frank Wolf (R., Va.), Joseph Pitts (R., Pa.), Zach Wamp (R., Tenn.), and Bart Stupak (D., Mich.). And that's in addition to Pickering, Sanford and Coburn.
Hmm...theocracy, neo-fascism and adultery, with a Christian veneer. Sounds like a Russ Meyer film that never was.
According to Jeff Sharlet, members include Senators Don Nickles (R., Okla.), Charles Grassley (R., Iowa), Pete Domenici (R., N.Mex.), John Ensign (R., Nev.), James Inhofe (R., Okla.), Bill Nelson (D., Fla.), and Conrad Burns (R., Mont.), as are Representatives Jim DeMint (R., S.C.), Frank Wolf (R., Va.), Joseph Pitts (R., Pa.), Zach Wamp (R., Tenn.), and Bart Stupak (D., Mich.). And that's in addition to Pickering, Sanford and Coburn.
Hmm...theocracy, neo-fascism and adultery, with a Christian veneer. Sounds like a Russ Meyer film that never was.
Intitial Reaction to GC2009
Taking D025 in the context of C056, I think the Episcopal Church has decisively moved away from its earlier de facto moratoria on ordaining openly homosexual candidates to the episcopate and performing same sex unions. It is notable that the moratoria held from GC2006 until now; this suggests to me that GC2009's moves are deliberate ones, as circumspect as we can reasonably expect from such institutions as the HoB and HoD. There is no practical way of returning to a status quo ante.
Various schismatic Anglican movements will be re-invigorated by GC2009; what had been a rather disappointing denouement may turn out to be meaner-spirited and more divisive than anything we have seen up until now. Here is one well-informed comment from a priest who may be something of a conservative-moderate:
This convention (when the Deputies concur with the Bishops tomorrow) has abrogated every positive gesture it has made toward the Anglican Communion since 2003. Everything we did three years ago in response to the Windsor Report is down the drain.
Moderates who feel this way may find it increasingly difficult to remain moderate and not to join in some schismatic Anglican movement; they may find this to be a time of trial.
While I support these resolutions, having supported GC2003, I am haunted by a sense that the Church lacks the cognitive means at this time for conducting a debate on--or even for collectivelyruminating over--the issues these resolutions raise. I don't just mean the Episcopal Church, but all the Church's bits and bobs. We are living through an era of inescapable theological pluralism, where different parties in the Church operate from within different conceptual frameworks whose overlap on basic points does not preserve an overall common intelligibility. For instance, I might approach these questions from a Thomistic or Scotistic point of view--but nearly nobody else will, and the result is that I will not mean what most other Christians nowadays mean by "God", "Christ", "Trinity", "Incarnation", etc. We might be using the same words, but we will not mean the same things by them: we will be equivocating in the course of arguing with each other, or even discussing peaceably.
One upshot of this conceptual pluralism is that it is likely most people are wrong on every substantive question of theological detail. That is, most Christians will live out their lives here below in a state of material heresy on virtually every matter of dogmatic detail. Our sincere efforts will fall short in ways we will not realize, regardless of our sincere efforts.
This is worth keeping in mind when deciding how to react in days and weeks and months ahead, as the sounds of GC2009 reverberate throughout the Communion. Right practice will come to matter even more where right belief slips through our fingers. We just cannot quite manage right belief, but we must still live with each other, pray with each other, and commune with each other. It will help perhaps if we hesitate to regard each other as wicked--as formal heretics--because we disagree and cannot even meet each other on common conceptual ground. We should hope for the grace to mutually bear the burden of our all-too-human inadequacy.
Various schismatic Anglican movements will be re-invigorated by GC2009; what had been a rather disappointing denouement may turn out to be meaner-spirited and more divisive than anything we have seen up until now. Here is one well-informed comment from a priest who may be something of a conservative-moderate:
This convention (when the Deputies concur with the Bishops tomorrow) has abrogated every positive gesture it has made toward the Anglican Communion since 2003. Everything we did three years ago in response to the Windsor Report is down the drain.
Moderates who feel this way may find it increasingly difficult to remain moderate and not to join in some schismatic Anglican movement; they may find this to be a time of trial.
While I support these resolutions, having supported GC2003, I am haunted by a sense that the Church lacks the cognitive means at this time for conducting a debate on--or even for collectivelyruminating over--the issues these resolutions raise. I don't just mean the Episcopal Church, but all the Church's bits and bobs. We are living through an era of inescapable theological pluralism, where different parties in the Church operate from within different conceptual frameworks whose overlap on basic points does not preserve an overall common intelligibility. For instance, I might approach these questions from a Thomistic or Scotistic point of view--but nearly nobody else will, and the result is that I will not mean what most other Christians nowadays mean by "God", "Christ", "Trinity", "Incarnation", etc. We might be using the same words, but we will not mean the same things by them: we will be equivocating in the course of arguing with each other, or even discussing peaceably.
One upshot of this conceptual pluralism is that it is likely most people are wrong on every substantive question of theological detail. That is, most Christians will live out their lives here below in a state of material heresy on virtually every matter of dogmatic detail. Our sincere efforts will fall short in ways we will not realize, regardless of our sincere efforts.
This is worth keeping in mind when deciding how to react in days and weeks and months ahead, as the sounds of GC2009 reverberate throughout the Communion. Right practice will come to matter even more where right belief slips through our fingers. We just cannot quite manage right belief, but we must still live with each other, pray with each other, and commune with each other. It will help perhaps if we hesitate to regard each other as wicked--as formal heretics--because we disagree and cannot even meet each other on common conceptual ground. We should hope for the grace to mutually bear the burden of our all-too-human inadequacy.
And Away We Go...
Yesterday's vote by General Convention to affirm that “any ordained ministry” is open to gay men and lesbians (as the New York Times puts it; the actual text of D 025 does not overturn B 033 but does significantly undermine its authority) has already been seized upon as by Bishop N.T. Wright as " telling the Archbishop of Canterbury and the other 'instruments of communion' that they were ignoring their plea for a moratorium on consecrating practising homosexuals as bishops." Bishop Wright goes on to state that:
TEC is one of the very few churches to actually observe the Windsor Report's recommendations to date. While we have complied with the request "to effect a moratorium on the election and consent to the consecration of any candidate to the episcopate who is living in a same gender union until some new consensus in the Anglican Communion emerges," both in fact and in policy, what has happened to the reciprocal requests made of those provinces who took exception to TEC's decision to grant consent to the consecration of V. Gene Robinson?
The requested moratorium on cross-boundary interventions has been flouted by Nigeria, Kenya, the Southern Cone, and Uganda. (A helpful timeline is here). Now, the various Anglican spin-offs are trying to create an alternative North American province to entirely supplant TEC as the "Anglican entity" in the United States. I think we can call that one Windsor recommendation most effectively dustbinned.
Well, how about the Listening Process? You know, the joint provincial agreement that "We commit ourselves to listen to the experience of homosexual persons and we wish to assure them that they are loved by God and that all baptised, believing and faithful persons, regardless of sexual orientation, are full members of the Body of Christ.” To take but one example, Nigeria, the final report--ten years after Lambeth 1998--stated "The Primate of all Nigeria has said “Our argument is that, if homosexuals see themselves as deviants who have gone astray, the Christian spirit would plead for patience and prayers to make room for their repentance. When scripture says something is wrong and some people say that it is right, such people make God a liar. We argue that it is a blatant lie against Almighty God that homosexuality is their God-given urge and inclination. For us, it is better seen as an acquired aberration." It commended the Same Sex Marriage (Prohibition) Act (2006) "because we understand that it is designed to strengthen traditional marriage and family life and to prevent wholesale importation of currently damaging Western values." The Act, according to the Church of Nigeria, "bans same sex unions, all homosexual acts and the formation of any gay groups."
Nice listening, folks. Very in the spirit of Lambeth. But aberrational, right? Not according to conservative Peter Ould
For Bishop Wright to accuse TEC alone of "walking apart" reflects at best stupendous ignorance coupled with arrogance, and at worst confirms my suspicions that, for reasserters, rules, agreements and other strictures only count when they are directed at TEC, and not at themselves.
There's more to be said about Bishop Wright's misguided column, but Rev. Scott Gunn does an admirable job of saying what needs to be said.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, meanwhile, seems to be ready to join Bishop Wright in holding only one side--TEC--accountable. It would be of a piece with his abandonment of his friend Jeffrey John, whom he forced to resign promotion to a bishopric to appease the conservatives in the Communion. If schism is indeed upon us--and I think it clearly is--Dr. Williams may go down as its Neville Chamberlain.
They were rejecting the two things the Archbishop of Canterbury has named as the pathway to the future — the Windsor Report (2004) and the proposed Covenant (whose aim is to provide a modus operandi for the Anglican Communion). They were formalising the schism they initiated six years ago when they consecrated as bishop a divorced man in an active same-sex relationship, against the Primates’ unanimous statement that this would “tear the fabric of the Communion at its deepest level”. In Windsor’s language, they have chosen to “walk apartFor all my very sincere respect for Bishop Wright, I have to ask, who is he kidding?
TEC is one of the very few churches to actually observe the Windsor Report's recommendations to date. While we have complied with the request "to effect a moratorium on the election and consent to the consecration of any candidate to the episcopate who is living in a same gender union until some new consensus in the Anglican Communion emerges," both in fact and in policy, what has happened to the reciprocal requests made of those provinces who took exception to TEC's decision to grant consent to the consecration of V. Gene Robinson?
The requested moratorium on cross-boundary interventions has been flouted by Nigeria, Kenya, the Southern Cone, and Uganda. (A helpful timeline is here). Now, the various Anglican spin-offs are trying to create an alternative North American province to entirely supplant TEC as the "Anglican entity" in the United States. I think we can call that one Windsor recommendation most effectively dustbinned.
Well, how about the Listening Process? You know, the joint provincial agreement that "We commit ourselves to listen to the experience of homosexual persons and we wish to assure them that they are loved by God and that all baptised, believing and faithful persons, regardless of sexual orientation, are full members of the Body of Christ.” To take but one example, Nigeria, the final report--ten years after Lambeth 1998--stated "The Primate of all Nigeria has said “Our argument is that, if homosexuals see themselves as deviants who have gone astray, the Christian spirit would plead for patience and prayers to make room for their repentance. When scripture says something is wrong and some people say that it is right, such people make God a liar. We argue that it is a blatant lie against Almighty God that homosexuality is their God-given urge and inclination. For us, it is better seen as an acquired aberration." It commended the Same Sex Marriage (Prohibition) Act (2006) "because we understand that it is designed to strengthen traditional marriage and family life and to prevent wholesale importation of currently damaging Western values." The Act, according to the Church of Nigeria, "bans same sex unions, all homosexual acts and the formation of any gay groups."
Nice listening, folks. Very in the spirit of Lambeth. But aberrational, right? Not according to conservative Peter Ould
there is huge frustration amongst revisionists that many parts of the conservative elements of the church simply haven’t bothered to engage with listening, even five years after the ACC in Nottingham and ten years after Lambeth 1998. When they hear statements such as "We do not have homosexuality in our country", what they hear is a refusal to even engage with the issue at hand. It is blatantly clear to all those with just a smidgeon of anthropological and sociological understanding that homosexualities exist in every single part of the world. The refusal to admit as much is not to take a clear moral stand on the issue, but rather is a pastoral failure of the highest order, because it is evidence of an unwillingness to engage with people where they are at.Sadly, Ould's principled remonstrance has not garnered any support--anti-gay slurs abound on "reasserter" websites and TEC is subject to widespread ridicule, accused of being un-christian, mockingly referred to as TEO [for "the Episcopal Organization," d'ye see, because, of course we can't believe in GOD if we want to include the you-know-whos].
****
Listening though is more about just hearing stories. It is also to do with, once having listened, building and affirming relationships. What is so often disappointing in the past few years is the failure of those who have had the opportunity to influence, who have had the public ear, to use that privilege to affirm the humanity and dignity of those they disagree with theologically. We all know the websites that refer to "polysexual sodomites", but it is not just the cruder forms of language in this discourse that are a sign of no real intent to listen and build relationships. Despite the fact that there exist texts like Goddard and Walker’s "True Union in the Body" which attempt to engage with the best arguments in favour of monogamous gay unions, some conservatives insist on producing writing that condemns not the best examples of gay life, but the worse. Do we need chapters of books denigrating the promiscuous lifestyle of some, when our opponents are actually those who believe very strongly in "Permanent, Stable, Faithful"? Do we need to concentrate on the way that some in our western society want a "plasticisation" of sexuality and cross-generational affection, when the leadership of Integrity and the like are joined with us in condemning paedophilic and ebophilic relationships of any form, consensual or otherwise?
Unless we as the conservative church are willing to admit that we have sometimes (often?) failed in the call of the Lambeth ‘98 resolution to listen to the experience of gay and lesbian people (and post-gay and post-lesbian, for the conservative church is still shockingly ignorant in how to deal pastorally in this area) then we have no right to ask those whom we disagree with to take such resolutions seriously themselves. What we need at this point then is a serious, critical self-examination. Can we truly say that in all cases we are the ones sinned against? Can we really stand clean in front of the Lord and argue that we have not ourselves sinned in this conflict?
For Bishop Wright to accuse TEC alone of "walking apart" reflects at best stupendous ignorance coupled with arrogance, and at worst confirms my suspicions that, for reasserters, rules, agreements and other strictures only count when they are directed at TEC, and not at themselves.
There's more to be said about Bishop Wright's misguided column, but Rev. Scott Gunn does an admirable job of saying what needs to be said.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, meanwhile, seems to be ready to join Bishop Wright in holding only one side--TEC--accountable. It would be of a piece with his abandonment of his friend Jeffrey John, whom he forced to resign promotion to a bishopric to appease the conservatives in the Communion. If schism is indeed upon us--and I think it clearly is--Dr. Williams may go down as its Neville Chamberlain.
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