TEC GENCON '09

An intriguing perspective on the recent goings-on in The Episcopal Church by a former Anglo-Catholic Roman Cistercian monk. Let us not forget the Anglican Province of America in the list of Anglo-Catholic bodies...

I suppose I should say a word about the recent General Convention of The Episcopal Church in Anaheim. And that word would have to be “Bully for you!”

Why, you might ask would, a Roman Catholic monk and former Anglo-Catholic say that? I say it because strains of Anglicanism as old as Cranmer and the Enlightenment are moving the American Province of the Anglican Communion toward a clarity of identity and mission previously unknown in the Episcopal Church. Since her election at the last General Convention, the Presiding Bishop has consistently articulated her vision for the Episcopal Church in the 21st Century and, as of this month, she and others have moved TEC a step closer to consensus around that vision. It is not the outcome I spent many years praying for, but, at long last, the stalemate has been broken and a decisive victory won.

Anglican traditionalists and sympathetic outside observers cast these developments as a story of departure and betrayal, but to understand what is happening, I think it is important to look through the eyes of many of the deputies at Anaheim, who see the events there as progress toward long cherished goals. Before I was a Roman Catholic or even an Anglo-Catholic, I was once just such an Episcopalian. Maybe I can still explain to those who have never lived in this world what a progressive Episcopalian sees, because it is very important to understand that these folks aren’t cardboard cutouts. They’re mostly bright, thoughtful, conscientious, and likable people who happen to hold a worldview that is drastically different than that held by most Roman Catholics who read this blog.

From the time of the Elizabethan Settlement, there have been a large number of formidable broad church thinkers who have believed that Anglicanism is a Reformed tradition, confident that in the Anglican via media, unfortunate doctrinal and disciplinary accretions have been stripped away and that God-given reason gives men and women the competence to confront and engage with changing circumstances in every generation. These reappraisers, to use the term coined by Kendal Harmon, grounded in the classic Protestant heritage and the confidence of the Enlightenment, at last have a church that speaks largely with their voice and is able to move proactively.

Glancing at the news stories yesterday and today, it is clear that sex dominated the headlines—after all, it’ sex—but I think the resolutions dealing with ecumenical and interfaith relations are much more significant for seeing where Episcopalians are moving.

Resolutions were reaffirmed or approved that allow sharing of the Eucharist with Methodists and Presbyterians. When full communion was reached with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America 12 years ago, it was with the understanding that, over time, the Lutherans would adopt apostolic succession through the presence of Episcopal bishops at its consecrations and irregularities in orders would be overlooked in the meantime. This is never likely to be the case with these two bodies. In effect, the Episcopal Church, its load lightened by the departure of the last large blocks of Anglo-Catholics, is free to adopt a sacramental theology consummate with the theology of its own Articles of Religion and the theological orientation of a majority of its current members. The bonds of charity—and I mean this genuinely—prevented rapid moves in these directions when there were larger, vocal numbers of traditionalists. Today this is no longer the case. A Catholic (and I here mean capital “C” as in Roman Catholic) understanding of the sacramental priesthood has been set aside in favor of a contemporary ecumenist’s understanding of the nature of church order built on a familiarly Anglican interpretation of a patristic frame. Seemingly archaic and divisive theological nuances—fights of centuries long past—need no longer trump what is seen to be the larger good of Christian unity.

A second statement on interfaith relations significantly presents the idea of salvation through Christ in terms that are intended to be more palatable to dialogue partners of other faiths. Here again, the idea of unity in the service of love overrides dogmas that divide.

For as long as traditional Anglicans—a broad term encompassing many agendas—have mourned what they see as apostasy, broad church progressives have chafed at what they see as the alien incursions of the Evangelical movement and the Catholic revival inhibiting and retarding the theological developments of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. The current positions of the Episcopal Church on a variety of issues and its evolving self-understanding have clear antecedents in the ground laid by Hooker, the 18th Century deists, F.D. Maurice, Percy Dearmer, and William Temple to name a few. These names may not be familiar to non Anglicans, but they represent some of the most distinctive and respected Anglican theological thinking of the last century in particular.

Roman Catholics believe that at the heart of the church there is the Deposit of Faith—a collection of divinely revealed and unchanging truths that stand beyond the tides of culture. We believe in the limits of human reasoning and in original sin that muddles our desires and impulses. Anglicanism has never had an agreed upon locus for core dogma perhaps beyond the statement in the Articles of Religion that, “the Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary for salvation.” It is a tradition profoundly influenced by the Enlightenment’s optimism about man’s power to discover truth. And, as for original sin, Pelagianism, which is the repudiation of the idea of original sin, was always also known as the English heresy.

Anglicans have increasingly emphasized that “God saw the world and it was good” and have, following Temple, adopted and incarnational theology stressing that creation was hallowed a second time when the word was made flesh. In short, the recent General Convention did little more than take a few more steps forward in embracing an essentially Anglican and essentially optimistic view of the human condition. To see Anaheim as a tipping point or a radical break is to ignore the good-faith efforts of many people over more than two centuries. Instead, the promise in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer’s Baptismal Covenant to “respect the dignity of every human person” has, at last, completed its slow march to become the de facto core doctrine of the Episcopal Church.

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Now it’s very easy for one who’s moved on to pompously expound that time has proven that the Oxford Movement was really only a fly in the ointment in the larger Anglican story. I’m not that sort of person, however bombastic and unmonastic I may sometimes be. The idea of a resurgent catholic party that would reclaim Anglicanism from the excesses of Luther and Calvin was a beautiful dream or, as one writer put it, a “vision glorious,” and I cherished it. Even as its influence as a force for change fades in the Episcopal Church, it leaves behind an appreciation for tradition and an understanding of the practical value of ritual that were absent from the Protestant ethos into which it was born. Anglicans understand with great sophistication that the manner of their praying shapes the form of their believing and maintain a unique respect for mystery and beauty.

Nor does Anaheim necessarily make it plain that the only road for those who do not embrace this clarified vision of the Episcopal Church leads to Rome. Anglicanism has never been primarily a body of doctrinal statements and theological propositions. Anglicans of most stripes are more likely to look for truth in common prayer and poetry than in Scholasticism. To leave Anglicanism is, in a very real sense, to leave your tribe and to become a stranger in a strange land. It is to leave the prose of the Prayer Book, the greatest hymns in the English language, a body of great architecture, T.S. Eliot, the adventures of Lord Peter Wimsey, the C. S. Lewis, and the characters who make up coffee hour at Trinity Church, Any Town. This may sound trivial, but they are as real, grounding, and dear to the average Episcopalian as Flannery O’Connor, Notre Dame football, Fulton Sheen and Camelot are to American Catholics. Of course, I pray fervently for more of my former brethren to see that, with a little looking, they will find kindred spirits in the American Catholic Church who look to the world of Byrd, Shakespeare, Tolkien, Pugin, and Waugh, for the Catholic Church was their home country too. (And fairness requires me to say that I knew these folks existed in significant numbers because they were always turning up in the back pews at St. Clement’s in Philadelphia .)

The lights have not yet all gone out on Anglicanism, nor are they likely to. There will still be able expounders of the Anglican tradition working from a small “c” catholic perspective. The great hymns will still be sung along with Anglican chant and Renaissance polyphony. Marriages will be blessed, babies christened, and thoughtful people will be impressed with the tradition’s tolerance, good will, and frank discussion of difficult questions. And, for all the very genuine concern about peace and justice, the Episcopal Church is likely to remain a good address. There will be many new developments that some or many who remain will find distasteful and ignore, just as a many American Roman Catholics do with any number of the teachings of our own church.

Episcopalians are people who usually have a good time and the majority are likely to continue to do so. Yes, the Episcopal Church is graying and shrinking, but it remains an attractive option from those moving out of more restrictive traditions. As long as there are college towns and book clubs, there is likely to be a demand for the Episcopal Church.

Anaheim does not mean that the Episcopal Church is now a unified whole. There will be those who will want to boldly press forward and those who believe that now that things are settled it is time to rest for a bit. New fractures and caucuses will develop along a political continuum of those who remain. There will be fights over gender and power language in the development of new liturgies. Heated discussions will arise over the permanence and the number of partners to a marriage. (No, I’m not trying to say something flippant or sensational. It’s a discussion that’s already happening and, I think, a quite logical one if you accept some of the basic premises I’ve tried to sketch out above.) Contextual theologians and their more traditional counterparts will continue to wrestle over the boundaries of interfaith dialogue.

As the Episcopal Church lives more fully into its search for radical inclusion and deep engagement with the multiple cultures from which it draws its members it is highly unlikely that TEC will be a dull place. Those who previously thought of themselves as holding the middle ground will find themselves to be the new right of the church. Many who prided themselves on being progressive will suddenly find themselves to be the new voices of moderation.

I expect that for the next year or more the action will move to the international stage where the global Anglican Communion will wring its hands over what to do about the Episcopal Church. Don’t expect much of consequence. While the majority of the Anglican provinces in the developing world are opposed to TEC’s stands on a variety of issues, TEC has its supporters in Canada, South Africa, New Zeeland, Japan, Brazil, Scotland, Wales, and large sections of the churches in England and Australia. There may never again be a Lambeth Conference where everyone gathers together at one altar, but TEC will remain an important part of a truly global fellowship of one sort or another.

Naturally, many will see Anaheim as an opening for the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA), inaugurated this June in Texas from dioceses and parishes that have left TEC as well as some continuing Anglican bodies. I am sure that there will be some short-term gains and the evangelical wing of this body in particular may see some healthy initial growth, but I am not optimistic about the long run. As a body that allows the ordination of women to the priesthood but not the episcopate and recognizes the “integrities” of various viewpoints on various issues, the Anglican Church in North America has essentially recreated the Episcopal Church of 1989, when another large gathering of Anglican traditionalists was held in Texas to organize the Episcopal Synod of America. In 20 years, or less, it will be 2009 again for these well-meaning folks. The constituent bodies of the ACNA agree on a traditional definition of who can be married, but divorce, contraception, the ordination of women, the nature and number of the sacraments, the place of the historic liturgies, and the authority of the Articles of Religion all remain up for grabs. In Episcopal Church, the tolerance of the majority broad church party could keep these warring factions from ripping church apart, but now there will be no filler to balance all of the spice. Expect the alphabet soup of continuing Anglican bodies to continue to grow.

Standing aloof from this latest attempt at traditionalist unity are the Anglo-Catholic bodies who made their exit from the Episcopal Church in the 1970s, including the Anglican Church in America, the Anglican Catholic Church, the Province of Christ the King, the United Episcopal Church, the United Anglican Church, and others. The sheer size of this list tells you that there is not even unity to be found among traditionalist Anglo-Catholics, but discussions are happening here. If there is any hope that some coherent vision of a catholic and reformed Anglicanism can be put together, I’d put my money here, but even if this were to happen, the resulting body would be quite small.

Any of these groups—whether it be the global Anglican Communion wrestling with the Episcopal Church, the Anglican Church in North America trying to pitch a tent that includes charismatics and Anglo-Catholics, or the older Anglo-Catholic bodies who have now spent more than a generation outside of communion with Canterbury—will have to wrestle with the locus of authority: Where and what is the Anglican deposit of faith? For its part, the Episcopal Church seems to be moving beyond this Anglican bugaboo as it moves closer to a framework of legal positivism undergirded by theologies of liberation. Increasingly, the goal will be to create a climate that maximizes liberty and the freedom of expression rather than the agony of the last thirty years of trying to craft doctrinal statements that everyone can live with or that at least keep things patched together until the next meeting of the General Convention.

Foreign prelates may continue to threaten, separated traditionalists at home may continue to cry heresy and doom, and new fissures will open within the Episcopal Church over emerging issues, but for all of that, I expect that the Episcopal Church is entering its smoothest sailing of the last two generations. The only question is now is whither this newly lightened ship will choose to sail.

The headlines have not seen the last of the Episcopal Church.