Category Archives: Episcopal

Friday Advent Song: “How Far From Home?”


Advent is an occasion to learn some lesser-known hymns that are as beautiful and haunting as any Christmas carol, and haven’t been ruined by Alvin and the Chipmunks piping them over the speakers at Wal-Mart. The Daily Office today featured one of my favorites (click here to sing along):

“How far from home?” I asked as on
I bent my steps – ­­the Watchman spake:
“The long, dark night is almost gone,
the morning soon will break.
Then, weep no more,but speed your flight,
with Hope’s bright star your guiding ray;
’til you shall reach the realms of light,
in everlasting day.”

I asked the travelers in the way,
this was their soul­-inspiring song:
“With courage bold,we’ll journey today;
the road won’t be too long.
Then, weep no more, but well endure,
the highway ’til your work is done.
For this we know, the prize is sure,
and victory will be won.”

I asked again; earth, sea, and sun
seemed with one voice to make reply:
“Time’s wasting sands are nearly run,
eternity is nigh.
Then, weep no more,with warning tones,
portentous sights are thickening round;
the whole creation waiting groans,
to hear the trumpet sound.”

Not far from home? O, blessed thought!
The traveler’s lonely heart to cheer;
which oft a healing balm has brought
and dried the mourner’s tear.
Then, weep no more since we shall meet
where weary footsteps never roam.
Our trials past, our joys complete,
safe in our Maker’s home.

Words: Annie Rebekah Smith (19th C)
Music: Tis Midnight Hour (anonymous)

Being a Local Missionary


Episcopal missionary Jesse Zink, formerly of Mthatha Mission in South Africa, is now a student at Yale Divinity School and blogging at Mission Minded. I’m beginning to think that someday my home parish of St. John’s in Northampton will be famous as “the place where Jesse Zink grew up”. Warm, personable, and humble, he’s an engaging preacher who combines orthodox belief with a commitment to social justice.

Last weekend he visited us and preached an inspiring sermon on Mark 13:1-8. He has a way of issuing a challenge without shaming his listeners. Here’s an excerpt from the sermon, which appears in full on his blog:

…So when we return to the question of why Jesus would predict the destruction of the Temple I think it has to do with the idea of vulnerability. This is an idea we in this western society don’t like to hear. In this culture, we seek control over everything – no vulnerability! I wanted people to come to me in the community area in Itipini so I could control the interaction on my terms. The temple in ancient Israel was the dwelling place of God. It was the way the priests centralized worship so they could control God.

Standing opposite this is Jesus. This is the Jesus who makes himself vulnerable in his life and ministry. “Let the little children come to me,” he says, when the disciples shoo them away. You can just imagine what those disciples would say today. “The children, Jesus? They probably have swine flu!” Jesus hears his name called out by the beggars when he walks through town. Everyone traveling with him wants to control Jesus and his schedule. “C’mon, Jesus we have to get to Jericho on time,” you can hear them saying. But Jesus is the one who stops, lets go of control, and finds out what the beggars want. And of course there’s the greatest act of vulnerability ever, willingly taking up a cross and dying, voluntarily subjecting himself to a painful and dehumanizing death.

For Jesus this vulnerability is a choice. It is a choice he can make only because he comes from a position of great power. He is, of course, God Incarnate. God had this great power and could have stayed in heaven. But God didn’t. God choose to “empty himself” as Paul later writes and take the form of a human. God sacrifices God’s immense power to become human, that is to say, powerless.

This church gives us a lot of power. Just the fact that this building is standing here means someone at some point had the economic power to build it. The fact that people have been worshipping in this place in this community for so long is a source of power. The education and wealth of the members of this congregation is a source of tremendous power. And that leaves us with a choice. Do we lock all that power up behind these beautiful walls and make people come to us on our terms or do we choose vulnerability and venture forth?

And if we do venture forth, how do we do it? Which direction do we go? I think there’s a clear direction we head and it was embodied in a word I used earlier to describe myself when I said I was a missionary of the Episcopal church. That word “missionary” can be so difficult to hear in our day and age. It has – to say the least – a mixed history. Missionaries have too often in history been associated with events that tear down the kingdom of God rather than build it up. But I want to hang onto it.

A missionary, to state the obvious, has a mission. And to whom does that mission belong? Does it belong to the missionary? The missionary’s congregation? The missionary’s diocese? The national church? The “church” as an abstract entity? It is none of these. Mission belongs to God. And God’s mission has been the same throughout the history of the Bible. God yearns for people to exist in right relationship with each other and with God. To put God’s mission into one word, God yearns for reconciliation.

If we think of mission this way then mission is not about sending people across the world to baptize the masses and found churches. It’s not even just about sending people across the world. The need for reconciliation is as strong in Northampton and Western Massachusetts as it is in a place like Itipini. The need takes a different shape and our responses will be different but there is a yearning for reconciliation here nonetheless.

We must respond to the mission of God by asking this question: where is God’s mission around us and what role are we privileged to play in that mission? To ask it another way, where is reconciliation needed and how can we help bring it about? The variety of answers to this question will be as varied as the people in this congregation. Some people are called to make music because music is a way that people connect to God and to one another. Some people are called to make this a welcoming place so that when people enter they know that God is here with them. For some people, these callings may be a new challenge, a stepping beyond what we are used to, a call to go from a position of power to vulnerability.

Now let me say there is a lot of vulnerability in this world and not all of it is holy. The wife in an abusive relationship is vulnerable to the violence of her husband and there is nothing holy about that. The workers being exploited by their boss are vulnerable in that situation and that is also not holy. The wife and workers are not operating from positions of power and not choosing vulnerability. That is not the kind of vulnerability I’m encouraging us to embrace here.

This Gospel passage is calling us to deliberately embrace a sense of vulnerability in this way: look around you, think about yourself – how are you powerful right now? What skills and talents and resources do you have that give you power and the ability to control a situation? Now, ask yourself how can I sacrifice this control? How can I venture beyond these great big walls that are around me? How can I journey in a new way, a way that is guided by God’s mission of reconciliation?

The truth of mainline Protestant churches in these early years of this new century is that the church is falling down around us, stone upon stone, literally and metaphorically. It does us no good to deny this reality. But what if we were to embrace this new reality and the vulnerability it creates and take it as an opportunity to venture beyond what we have so long known, beyond what have been our traditional sources of power and control? What if we gave up trying to control every last thing? What if we moved forward in the spirit of the mission of God?
…

Other notable posts at Jesse’s blog include a sermon on incarnation and healing, and a consideration of the best terminology to describe all the different groups within the LGBTQA acronym. As he says, “You think about different things in New England than you do in South Africa.”

To support Jesse’s upcoming mission trip to Ecuador, send donations to 63 Nash St., Floor 3, New Haven, CT 06511.

Two Thoughts on an Inclusive Vision of Salvation


Does it matter what you believe? I would say yes…and no.

The question of religious pluralism is often collapsed into the question of salvation, though they are distinct issues. Partly this happens because a popular form of evangelism portrays Jesus as the sole dispenser of “get out of jail free” cards. The baseline assumption is that we’re all going to hell unless we sign on to the program.

There are many good reasons for finding this position repugnant and/or implausible, simply as a matter of compassion for human suffering. Liberal Christians and others who share this opinion, though, tend to overshoot the mark and claim that “all paths lead to God”.

Both the exclusivist and the pluralist view, in my opinion, unhelpfully sever the means of salvation from the nature of salvation. To be saved, in the Christian sense, is to experience eternal life in communion with a loving God. If one believes that Jesus embodied the nature of God on earth, then becoming a follower of Jesus is not merely a means to an end. It is an earthly foretaste of and preparation for that heavenly life.

Other religions are not equivalent because their goals and methods are not the same. They may reveal aspects of the divine nature, or contain helpful spiritual practices, but to call them “means of salvation” is to impose a Christian framework on a quite different system of thought, potentially in a misleading or imperialistic way.

John 14:6 is frequently quoted to proof-text an exclusivist understanding of salvation. Let’s look at it in context (NIV translation):

2In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. 3And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. 4You know the way to the place where I am going.”

5Thomas said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?”

6Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 7If you really knew me, you would know[b] my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.”

It seems to me that Jesus is not even addressing the problem of other religions. His followers, all Jews, are asking the (Jewish) messiah to give them some information, some program to follow, so that they can get a closer knowledge of God–the God of their own Hebrew Bible. And Jesus replies that they are already in closer fellowship with God than they imagine, and they can experience this for themselves if they get to know Jesus as he really is.

I sympathize, nonetheless, with Christians who worry that a more inclusive position on salvation makes the gospel seem irrelevant. It trivializes the rich complexity of Christian tradition, and the rigors of discipleship, to suggest that any old religion is as good as any other. A recent post on the Creedal Christian blog articulates this quite well. Again, we can get out of this box if we see the gospel as good for something more than saving our skins after death. For more on this point, see N.T. Wright’s latest writings on Christian misunderstandings of heaven.

Two of my favorite Christian bloggers have lately weighed in on salvation of non-Christians in a way that I found most helpful. What they are calling “universalism” I might prefer to call “inclusivism”, since the former term implies a level of certainty about all people’s eternal destiny that the authors themselves don’t assert.

Christopher at Betwixt and Between is a Benedictine oblate in the Episcopal tradition. In his post Universalism and Anglical Careful-Generous Reserve, he writes:

…We can proclaim definitively Who salvation is without claiming definitively who will or will not be saved outside of Him.

Salvation is through, with, and in Jesus Christ finally, only, uniquely, definitively.

That need not imply an obverse declaration about where salvation is not or who will not be saved.

Rather, we rest in the generosity of this reconciling God. To do otherwise is to skirt into proclaiming a God, often vicious, who is other than the one revealed in Christ, who at heart in the Cranmerian notion of our formulae, is all-merciful, and perhaps no more so than as found in the Rite I canon, heir to 1549, 1637, and 1928, especially in the Prayer of Humble Access. Chesed, Coverdale’s lovingkindness or Cranmer’s mercy is the very heart of God, and we know this God personally in Jesus Christ. This is in Whom we rest all our life and trust and hope.

And such a careful-generous reserve does not make one unorthodox, unless we care to count among such company the Orthodox Church, the Greek Fathers, and C.S. Lewis.

And we Anglicans also tend to avoid locating God only in the Church in a crude way. “Wherever Christ is” says Andrewes, and Maurice will follow after Him, making clear Christ’s explicit availability in the Church through the Sacraments, while not locating Him there in the crude ways many early Anglo-Catholics did in pipeline theories of grace.

Unlike cruder views that would locate the activity of the Word and Spirit only in the life of the Church, rather than explicitly and visibly therein, Anglicans have tended to acknowledge than though explicit and visible in the Church, the Word and Spirit are active in the world if hidden, unknown, and often unacknowledged. Indeed, as Stringfellow reminds, it is precisely our job as Christians who proclaim this God in Christ explicitly and visibly available in the Church to name God’s activity in the world as precisely the activity of the Word who revealed Godself by becoming one of us. Hence, ongoing discernment….

Eric Reitan, a self-described progressive Christian and philosophy professor at Oklahoma State University, writes about debating an audience member about John 14:6 during a recent lecture he gave to OSU’s interdenominational Christian fellowship:

…I began by distinguishing between two interpretations of John 14:6: the interpretation which takes the passage to say that no one comes to the Father unless they adopt the right beliefs about Jesus and/or make the right choices with regard to Him, and the interpretation which has it that no one comes to the Father except on account of the work that Jesus does on sinners’ behalf. While the former interpretation entails that only Christians who explicitly accept Jesus as savior are saved, the latter interpretation does not imply this at all….

…One of the greatest fruits of a theology of grace is that it liberates us to think, to question, to doubt, to admit uncertainty, and to take challenges to our views seriously. If we believe that our salvation does not hinge on our getting it right, we become free to be humble, to admit our finitude, to admit our inability to get it right—in short, to be intellectually honest about the human condition. And as I see it, an absolutely crucial feature of the human condition is that the fundamental nature of reality is beyond our grasp. We can theorize and speculate in ways that are more or less in line with what reason and evidence reveal, but we cannot know.

Our enormous material universe might be catalogued, its structure and mechanisms and history described to the minutest detail, and we would still face the same fundamental questions: Is there more than this? Is this world of immediate sense experience, this world whose structures and patterns we can describe, just a surface appearance? Or is it just a small part of something far vaster that is beyond description? Or is it, instead, the whole story?

We cannot know. We can be moved by the voice in our heart that encounters a hopeful vision, the voice that says, “Yes! Yes! Yes!” We can treat its urgings as emerging out of the part of us that IS, rather than the part of us that experiences and knows—the self insofar as it is a part of reality, rather than the self that stands back from it in an attempt to understand reality. We can treat our deepest longings as if they are a homing beacon, and their YES as an instinct that immediately apprehends what the discursive intellect cannot grasp. Or we can be moved by the voice that says, “I’ll believe it when I see it”—knowing that this is something we can never, ever see.

We can be moved by longing or evidentialism, but we cannot know. And the theology of grace allows us to admit this. Paradoxically, if we are convinced of this theology, we are freed from the pathological need for certainty. And while such certainty may not be the root of all hostility and intractable conflict, it is one fundamental source of these things. When we can admit we do not know, we can come together and hear each other and be more fully open to each other’s humanness. And insofar as the theology of grace facilitates that, it bears pragmatic fruits that speak in its favor. We have pragmatic reason to live as if the theology of grace is true, as if our salvation doesn’t hinge on getting it right, because only then can we break free of the psychological forces that push us into trenches of false certainty….

Thank you, Eric.
That’s the heart of why I became, and remain, a Christian.

Bishop Spong Says: Equality Is Beyond Debate


Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong has written an eloquent and impassioned manifesto explaining why he will no longer debate Christians who oppose full equality for gays and lesbians. I’m not generally a fan of Bishop Spong because, like some of his fellow liberal Christian theologians, he can sound arrogant and dismissive towards those who still cherish belief in the divinity of Jesus, a personal God, and other elements of traditional Christology. In this manifesto, though, he really knocks it out of the park. Hat tip to the Soulforce e-newsletter for this link. An excerpt:

I have made a decision. I will no longer debate the issue of homosexuality in the church with anyone. I will no longer engage the biblical ignorance that emanates from so many right-wing Christians about how the Bible condemns homosexuality, as if that point of view still has any credibility. I will no longer discuss with them or listen to them tell me how homosexuality is “an abomination to God,” about how homosexuality is a “chosen lifestyle,” or about how through prayer and “spiritual counseling” homosexual persons can be “cured.” Those arguments are no longer worthy of my time or energy. I will no longer dignify by listening to the thoughts of those who advocate “reparative therapy,” as if homosexual persons are somehow broken and need to be repaired. I will no longer talk to those who believe that the unity of the church can or should be achieved by rejecting the presence of, or at least at the expense of, gay and lesbian people. I will no longer take the time to refute the unlearned and undocumentable claims of certain world religious leaders who call homosexuality “deviant.” I will no longer listen to that pious sentimentality that certain Christian leaders continue to employ, which suggests some version of that strange and overtly dishonest phrase that “we love the sinner but hate the sin.” That statement is, I have concluded, nothing more than a self-serving lie designed to cover the fact that these people hate homosexual persons and fear homosexuality itself, but somehow know that hatred is incompatible with the Christ they claim to profess, so they adopt this face-saving and absolutely false statement. I will no longer temper my understanding of truth in order to pretend that I have even a tiny smidgen of respect for the appalling negativity that continues to emanate from religious circles where the church has for centuries conveniently perfumed its ongoing prejudices against blacks, Jews, women and homosexual persons with what it assumes is “high-sounding, pious rhetoric.” The day for that mentality has quite simply come to an end for me. I will personally neither tolerate it nor listen to it any longer. The world has moved on, leaving these elements of the Christian Church that cannot adjust to new knowledge or a new consciousness lost in a sea of their own irrelevance. They no longer talk to anyone but themselves. I will no longer seek to slow down the witness to inclusiveness by pretending that there is some middle ground between prejudice and oppression. There isn’t. Justice postponed is justice denied. That can be a resting place no longer for anyone. An old civil rights song proclaimed that the only choice awaiting those who cannot adjust to a new understanding was to “Roll on over or we’ll roll on over you!” Time waits for no one.

I will particularly ignore those members of my own Episcopal Church who seek to break away from this body to form a “new church,” claiming that this new and bigoted instrument alone now represents the Anglican Communion. Such a new ecclesiastical body is designed to allow these pathetic human beings, who are so deeply locked into a world that no longer exists, to form a community in which they can continue to hate gay people, distort gay people with their hopeless rhetoric and to be part of a religious fellowship in which they can continue to feel justified in their homophobic prejudices for the rest of their tortured lives. Church unity can never be a virtue that is preserved by allowing injustice, oppression and psychological tyranny to go unchallenged.

In my personal life, I will no longer listen to televised debates conducted by “fair-minded” channels that seek to give “both sides” of this issue “equal time.” I am aware that these stations no longer give equal time to the advocates of treating women as if they are the property of men or to the advocates of reinstating either segregation or slavery, despite the fact that when these evil institutions were coming to an end the Bible was still being quoted frequently on each of these subjects. It is time for the media to announce that there are no longer two sides to the issue of full humanity for gay and lesbian people. There is no way that justice for homosexual people can be compromised any longer.

I will no longer act as if the Papal office is to be respected if the present occupant of that office is either not willing or not able to inform and educate himself on public issues on which he dares to speak with embarrassing ineptitude. I will no longer be respectful of the leadership of the Archbishop of Canterbury, who seems to believe that rude behavior, intolerance and even killing prejudice is somehow acceptable, so long as it comes from third-world religious leaders, who more than anything else reveal in themselves the price that colonial oppression has required of the minds and hearts of so many of our world’s population. I see no way that ignorance and truth can be placed side by side, nor do I believe that evil is somehow less evil if the Bible is quoted to justify it….

Speaking Justice Versus Living It


One of my challenges as an activist, and as a Christian, is finding the proper balance between speaking about my values and living them out. Too much discussion keeps me unhealthily engaged with self-justification against opponents, while too little can be a form of selfish quietism in the face of widespread misinformation about what the Bible says.

The Epistle of James has a lot to say about closing the gap between hearing and doing God’s word. This recent installment of the Human Rights Campaign’s Out in Scripture lectionary e-newsletter includes some fruitful reflections on that text (boldface emphasis mine):

Our conversation about this week’s lectionary Bible passages began with James 1:17-27. What is the way of God’s wisdom? The book of James suggests that it is the “law of liberty” (James 2:12). And that law starts with doing. Doers of the law’s basic justice requirements place themselves in risky outreach settings in which we are inevitably challenged to know who we really are. Acts of justice hold up the mirror that enables our transformation of heart, while doctrinal obsessions and arguments merely keep us in bondage.

Deeds and words both matter in the book of James. And at the beginning of today’s reading, we are called to be quick to listen, not to speak (James 1:19). This is a kind of listening that calls for inward listening. Sarah, a transgender woman, reminds us: “Before my transition, I needed to step back and away from all the outside advice I was getting from people. I needed to really listen for God’s voice inside, in the midst of all the other voices.” Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people know that it is often a matter of life and death that we distinguish the voices and learn to trust inner listening. The author of James provokes us, however, to remember that such times of contemplation cannot be divorced from habits of service and justice.

Listening to others without a prayerful discerning heart can lead to powerlessness. Words can be hurtful, dangerous and affect others in ways that the speaker may not realize. Those in power in our denomination, local church or civic settings may have power to name the “tradition” or to label others: for example, when only men decide about women’s ordination or only heterosexuals decide about the ordination of LGBT people in the church. Fatigued by the struggle against endless pronouncements, LGBT people may come to this place: “I just don’t know if I can listen anymore.” We cannot ignore the reality of power by idealizing an uncritical, non-discerning listening posture. We can, instead, lift up a reminder that those in power may themselves be transformed when they have the courage to listen to LGBT people for God’s voice.

Visit the Out in Scripture archives and sign up here.

Upcoming GLBT Conferences: Send Me Your Reports


Three conferences of interest to GLBT Christians and straight allies are coming up this autumn. My heteronormative family responsibilities are likely to keep me from attending any of them. So I’m counting on you, dear readers, to send me your reports from the field. Write up your impressions and I’ll consider them for publication on this blog, or send me a link to your own blog post about any of these events.

Why Homosexuality? Religion, Globalization, and the Anglican Schism
Yale Divinity School, New Haven, CT
October 17, 2009

This interdisciplinary conference is sponsored by the LGBT Studies Department at Yale. “Rather than restaging the arguments for and against the ordination of openly gay clergy, this day-long conference analyzes the threatened schism in the Anglican Communion in order to examine wide-ranging and interrelated issues of religion, secularism, globalization, nationalism, and modernity. How and why, we ask, has homosexuality come to serve as a flash point for so many local and global conflicts?”

The Ivy-League roster of panelists includes Harvard’s Kwame Anthony Appiah and Mark Jordan. Registration is a dirt-cheap $10, which includes lunch and conference materials. I so, so want to be there…please, someone go and videotape this for me!

Translating Identity Conference
University of Vermont, Burlington, VT
October 24, 2009

“The Translating Identity Conference is a free conference focusing on transgender communities and gender identities. Open to the public, this event hopes to reach out to the University of Vermont, the Burlington community, and the nation as a whole to further educate us all about gender. With multiple sessions and workshops to choose from at any time, some will be directed specifically towards trans-identified people, while others will be for families, friends, and lovers of trans persons. Some will be for those already well versed in this subject area and some will be for those who are fairly unfamiliar with the transgender community and the topic of gender identity. This conference is a safe space for everyone to come, learn, and enjoy themselves!”

Registration is free, but donations are gladly accepted. The 2009 speakers’ list is not yet available online. Last year’s participants included Kate Bornstein and Gunner Scott. In this informal 10-minute video, the young transpeople who are organizing the conference introduce themselves and talk about the upcoming events.

Soulforce Anti-Heterosexism Conference
West Palm Beach, FL
November 20-22, 2009

Co-sponsored by Soulforce, Truth Wins Out, the National Black Justice Coalition, Beyond Ex-Gay, Box Turtle Bulletin, and Equality Florida. The purpose of this conference is “Building Community to End the Harm Caused By Heterosexism & Reparative Therapy”.

“The 2009 Anti-Heterosexism Conference is open to everyone who cares about the welfare of LGBTQ people and wants to help stop the harm caused by heterosexism, reparative therapy, ex-gay ministries and other sexual orientation change efforts. Conference attendees come from all walks of life and many professional backgrounds, including LGBTQ people, clergy, educators, mental health professionals, and allies. By attending this conference you will learn to:

* challenge heterosexist attitudes that exist on personal, interpersonal, institutional and cultural levels.
* speak out publicly against the dangers of reparative therapy, ex-gay ministries, and other “conversion” efforts.
* build community to advocate for LGBTQ people and support them in leading successful, happy, and productive lives.

“The 2009 Anti-Heterosexism Conference also serves as a counter to the misinformation and harm perpetuated by the national antigay group NARTH (National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality) which will be holding its annual conference in West Palm Beach on the same weekend.”

Conference registration is $145, going up to $195 after Oct. 5. Visit Soulforce’s website to make a donation to support this event.

Read the American Psychological Association’s recent report opposing “ex-gay” conversion therapy here.

Scripture, Tradition, and…?


Anglicans’ faith is said to rest on the “three-legged stool” of Scripture, Tradition, and Reason. In a recent discussion on the Creedal Christian blog (one of the few places in the blogosphere where gay-affirming and traditionalist Anglicans can carry on a civil and sophisticated dialogue), one commenter sought understanding and advice for Christians who may be convinced of the pro-gay position according to reason, but can’t find warrant for it in Scripture and tradition.

I’m not going to try to answer that question here. Rather, I would like to explore some ways in which this whole debate has made me doubt my old assumptions about Scripture. Consider the following ideas not as the ex cathedra pronouncement of Reiter’s Block but as experiments in finding a way forward.

Power in the New Testament

The human understanding of power is antagonistic and zero-sum–what James Alison would call “over-against another”. We keep reverting to this understanding, even within the church, despite what I see as the strong message of the New Testament that God’s idea of power is wholly different.

Jesus appropriated Roman imperial rhetoric in an ironic, subversive way. “King of kings” and “son of God” were titles belonging to Caesar. The “kingdom of heaven”, unlike the kingdoms of earth, is best understood by looking at the lowliest things, from a mustard seed to a beggar, and seeing the infinite riches they contain.

If one believes that God revealed His true nature in Jesus, by becoming human and dying on a cross, think about what this means for the definition of power. No one is more powerful than God. But when He wanted to show us what was most essential about Himself, He became a vulnerable and marginalized human being–a peasant baby born to an unwed mother–and then submitted to an ignominious death at the hands of secular and religious authorities whose power was based on violence, exclusion, fear and pride. By rising from the dead, He showed that the power of self-giving love is ultimately more real than the power of domination.

While the picture is more complex in the Epistles, I believe they also support this view, on the whole. At times, Paul and the other authors seem to be encouraging Christians to accept existing social hierarchies, so as not to provoke unnecessary conflicts. Anyone whose way of life challenges mainstream cultural values must make careful moment-by-moment decisions about how to balance the imperatives of peace and justice. Impatience for change can make us prideful and unkind to those who don’t see what we see; on the other hand, conflict-avoidance isn’t always the most loving course of action.

But overall, when Paul is not dispensing merely pragmatic advice but talking about spiritual fundamentals, he often returns to the theme of mutual submission, in personal relationships and also within the church. And he relates this ideal to Christ’s self-emptying in the Incarnation:

1If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, 2then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. 3Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. 4Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.

5Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
6Who, being in very nature[a] God,
    did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
7but made himself nothing,
    taking the very nature[b] of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8And being found in appearance as a man,
    he humbled himself
    and became obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
9Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
    and gave him the name that is above every name,
10that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
    in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
    to the glory of God the Father.

12Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, 13for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose. (Phil 2:1-13, NIV)

The doctrine of the Trinity is not fully worked out in the Bible, but within the first few centuries of the early church, Christians were developing the idea of perichoresis–God’s very nature as a dance of loving, reciprocal submission. (Buy the book from the 2008 Wheaton College conference to read excellent essays on this and other Trinitarian concepts.)

Scripture’s “Authority”?

Returning to our opening question of Anglican Biblical hermeneutics, it seems to me that the debate nearly always relapses into the human understanding of power. We treat “Scripture, Tradition, and Reason” like “Rock, Paper, Scissors”–which one “beats” the other?

I am still searching for a better alternative, but I believe there is one. Much as it would be nice and simple to pretend otherwise, the three voices in this conversation don’t always agree neatly. I just sense that something’s wrong with the way we play them off against one another. Those who always come down on the side of Scripture or tradition may do violence to the facts of a changing world (not to mention the people living in it), whereas those who brag about unfettered reason can be hurtful and dismissive toward Christians who have experienced the Bible and the church as life-saving.

Would it be so wrong (warning: this is where I really drive the bus off-road) to work out a model of cooperation and mutual deference among the three authorities? In other words:

Why must Scripture always win?

(Substitute “Tradition” if you’re a neo-conservative Catholic and “Reason” if you’re a liberal-modernist Protestant, and resume being infuriated.)

First-Hand and Second-Hand Knowledge

Psychologically speaking, Scripture and Tradition are second-hand sources of knowledge about God. They are the record of how God has communicated with other human beings. If we understand “Reason” broadly as the independent judgment of the individual Christian, encompassing emotional and experiential knowledge as well as intellectual understanding, we can see that it adds an element not found in the other two: how God personally and directly speaks to me.

That God does speak to me, without requiring permission or mediation from other humans, is the promise I’m given by my justification in Christ. His gracious forgiveness has set me free to trust myself, not because I will always be right, but because I must live obediently the life I’ve been given and the perspective that arises from it, leaving the final verdict up to Him. I don’t need to hide in the herd. Their assent or dissent adds nothing to whether God will forgive me for getting His intentions wrong–which is always a possibility, whether we are on our own or part of a collective.

“Reason” could also be understood as the present-day response of the church to changing factual conditions or information that was not available when the Scriptures or traditions were being formed. Reason is the ability to process information outside of “Christianity” that is nonetheless pa
rt of God’s creation: biology, history, psychology, and the facts to which these disciplines are applied. It balances timeless revelations and past wisdom with open-minded awareness of the present. It reminds us of our ongoing responsibility to interpret God’s word, and our concomitant need for His mercy because of the fallibility of our interpretations. Grace, too, risks becoming merely second-hand information if we have never felt the awful weight of that responsibility.

Taken alone, reason-worship can degenerate into pure individualism and trend-following in a culture already inclined in that direction. Scripture and tradition (Chesterton’s “democracy of the dead”) remind us that our faith is part of a fellowship that spans geography and time. The consciousness of the individual is never a purely autonomous creation; it picks up its structures of thought from the contemporary community, though critical reflection can reshape the given framework up to a point. Scripture and tradition help ensure that when we do rely on second-hand knowledge, we’re resting on Christian ideas rather than unexamined values and assumptions from an antithetical culture.

Science provides a good model of how first-hand and second-hand knowledge cooperate in the search for truth. Science moves forward by direct experimental observation. However, the backdrop for any experiment is a vast body of other knowledge, not directly observed by this individual scientist, which enables her to frame the hypothesis and understand what would prove or disprove it. She takes this knowledge on “faith” in the sense that she has good reason to believe that her predecessors’ observations were reliable, and it would be impossible for her to test them all first-hand. At the same time, there is the chance that her experiment will expose a flaw in the original “tradition” and prompt its revision.

Such an event does not call into question the entire practice of relying on others’ scientific conclusions; it is, in fact, the way those conclusions themselves were generated. In a sense, the practice of science is one of Christlike humility and gracious boldness. The scientist submits to the discipline of her tradition in order to ask a meaningful question in the first place, but shows no disrespect by improving past knowledge in a way that is broadly consistent with that discipline. She, in turn, knows that her achievement is not a once-for-all monument to her ego, but an invitation to future scientists to improve upon it further. (Thanks to Prof. Larry Alexander’s law review article “Liberalism, Religion, and the Unity of Epistemology,” 30 San Diego L. Rev. 763 (1993) for some of these ideas about the philosophy of science.)

This brings me back to my original question: why must we assume that Scripture’s “authority” depends on never deferring to or being influenced by the other two? Must we always prefer second-hand knowledge of God’s will?

To say yes, it seems to me, is to act as if God’s grace is merely formal–as if my mind is still darkened and my will still depraved, but God accepts the “legal fiction” of my righteousness thanks to Christ. I know a lot of Protestants believe this, but it’s logically incoherent, because Scripture always requires interpretation, and to mistrust one’s self simply means to trust other, equally depraved humans. (For a truly slam-dunk explanation of this point, read the philosopher Eric Reitan’s “authority without inerrancy” blog post series, particularly this one.

Beyond a Hermeneutics of Patriarchy?

Pushing the Trinitarian analogy a bit more, let’s assume that Scripture is like the Father, the prime authority. Nonetheless, when we defend Scripture against contradiction or reinterpretation from outside sources, aren’t we really acting more like a defensive human father–the elite men of priesthood and empire who saw their prerogatives threatened by the radically egalitarian Jesus movement? And might not this insistence on Scripture’s impermeability–I would even say, impenetrability–be more than coincidentally related to the fear of submission and penetration, the loss of the traditionally dominant male identity, that has always fueled homophobia?

Christianity messes with physical and social boundaries in ways that Christians have never quite found comfortable. The Lord of the universe took the form of a slave. While on earth, he continually overrode purity laws to show that social order was not as important as extending healing, economic justice, and God’s love to all. Where Jesus does speak as a rigorous and passionate moralist, his temper is always exercised about actual harms to others. I can’t recall a place where he treats obedience to authority and tradition as an end in itself. I’m sure he never views rule-breaking as a sin so great that in order to avoid it, we can ignore the suffering of our neighbor–even when the rule seems to come from Scripture.

And now, of course, we eat the flesh of this Lord and Father and drink His blood, a sensual ritual that combines destruction and healing, the ultimate reciprocal exchange of power. God trusts us enough to be consumed and transformed by us. Why should the Bible be afraid of us, when He isn’t?


Anglican Allies: The Chicago Consultation


The Chicago Consultation is a group of Episcopal and Anglican bishops, clergy and lay people who support the full inclusion of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Christians in the Episcopal Church and the worldwide Anglican Communion. Their website offers theological essays, Bible studies, videos and links to other materials that support an inclusive reading of Scripture. Their support for GLBT Christians is part of their wider mission to “strengthen the Anglican Communion’s witness against racism, poverty, sexism, heterosexism, and other interlocking oppressions.”

Here’s an excerpt from the sixth of a series of articles on sexuality and Scripture, by the Rev. Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG, the Vicar of Saint James Episcopal Church Fordham:

…Several biblical authors use marriage as a symbol for the relationship between God and Israel, and Christ and the Church. But, as with many of the issues surrounding sexuality, the picture is far more complex than mere equivalence. Not only is marriage only one of many symbols for this relationship, but the marriage symbolism itself is ambivalent, capable of standing for both good and bad relationships between God and God’s people.

There are many earthly phenomena — and Jesus assures us (Matthew 22:30, Mark 12:25, Luke 20:35) that marriage is an earthly phenomenon! — that the biblical authors use (in addition to marriage) to represent the relationship between God and Israel or Christ and the Church: monarch and people, tree and branches, father and children, shepherd and sheep, master and slaves, head and body, cornerstone and building. These symbols all depend on the cultural understanding of those to whom they speak. As noted in an earlier portion of this series of essays, the Letter to the Ephesians collects and intertwines a number of these symbols, in addition to marriage. As Paul himself recognizes, his blending of these symbols gets a bit confusing, as he spins out the various cultural themes of leadership and authority, the relationship of one to many, the nature of organic or bodily union, and love and care.

Thus the Scripture does not single out marriage as a unique symbol for the divine/human relationship — and one can carry the analogy or symbol too far — as some have suggested Paul does — as if women should literally treat their husbands as if they were God. Nor should one carry away from this symbolic usage the notion that because marriage is a symbol for the divine/human interaction it is therefore in itself divine — it remains, according to Jesus, a terrestrial phenomenon. (Luke 20:34-35) So to confuse the symbol with what it symbolizes is a category error. More than a few theologians have of late wandered off in a direction more suggestive of pagan notions of hieros gamos than is warranted by strictly orthodox theology. This includes suggestions that the relationship of a male and female somehow more perfectly embody the imago dei than either does individually. This is very shaky theological ground upon which to tread, as I noted in an earlier section of this series, for it undercuts the doctrine of the Incarnation….

…Given that heterosexual relationships can be used as such multivalent symbols, positive or negative, single and plural, and even with a degree of sexual ambiguity, can faithful, monogamous, life-long same-sex relationships also serve in symbolic capacity — towards good? I will explore the negative imagery in later reflections on Leviticus and Romans, but will note here that the same linkage between idolatry and harlotry is made there between idolatry and some specific forms of same-sexuality. But what might a faithful, loving same-sex relationship (as opposed to the cultic activity described in Leviticus or the orgiastic in Romans) stand for as a symbol — not in the cultures of those times, but in our own?

It is clear that the prevailing biblical symbol for heterosexual relationships is intimately (!) connected with the assumption of male “headship” — thus the related analogies with master and slave, head and body, and so forth, assume a cultural notion of male authority, likened to the authority of Christ over the church. So powerful is this imagery that men become “feminine” in relation to God — as C.S. Lewis noted in his emendation to the conclusion of Goethe’s Faust.

But what of Christ — who voluntarily (and temporarily) assumes the position of a subordinate — not only in the great kenosis of the Incarnation, but in the symbolic act of the Maundy footwashing — while remaining Lord and God? When Jesus assumes the position of a servant to wash his disciples’ feet, he is also assuming the position of the woman who washed his feet with her tears. It is no accident that Jesus uses this powerful acted symbol to show his disciples the danger of assuming the position of authority over rather than assuming the position of service to. (It is perhaps ironic that in the Roman Catholic Church only men are to take part in the Maundy ritual as either foot-washers or as those whose feet are washed. How much more powerful a symbol it would be if a bishop were to wash the feet of women?)

Jesus is secure in his knowledge of himself, yet is free to set aside the role of authority to assume the role of a slave, a role played elsewhere in the passion narrative by a woman. As is obvious, in a same-sex relationship there are no stereotypical sex roles for the partners. They are, like Jesus, free to take upon themselves, in a dynamic interchange, various opportunities to love and to serve. This flexibility is no doubt one of the reasons same-sexuality is seen as a threat to entrenched systems of automatic deferral to culturally established hierarchies. Like Christianity itself, same-sexuality “turns the world upside down” (Acts 17:6) by challenging the “natural” roles assigned by culture. Same-sex couples are thus capable of being truly natural symbols for the mutuality of equals, free from the traditional roles assigned by the culture to men and women. Whether the culture sees this as a threat or a promise will depend upon what they value.

Read the whole essay here.

Episcopal General Convention Rejects Moratorium on Gay Clergy, Supports Transgender Inclusion


I’m proud to be an Episcopalian today.

The 76th General Convention of the Episcopal Church USA is meeting this week in Anaheim, CA. You can follow all the news about General Convention at our official website, EpiscopalChurch.org. (Stop by and say thanks to St. John’s parish member Solange De Santis who edits Episcopal Life Online.)

Yesterday the House of Bishops approved Resolution D025, which affirms that “any ordained ministry” is open to gays and lesbians. The amended resolution now returns to the House of Deputies for approval, defeat, or further revision. D025 was first introduced in the House of Deputies as an apparent response to the last Convention’s Resolution B033, which recommended “restraint” in consecrating bishops whose “manner of life” challenged other churches in the Anglican Communion.

Read the full story at Episcopal Life Online.

In other news, General Convention is also discussing various resolutions to make the Episcopal Church more welcoming to transgender Christians. Today, the House of Deputies voted by a large margin to add “gender identity and expression” to the ministry canons regarding non-discrimination. This year marks the first time that General Convention has conducted such an in-depth study of trans issues. Follow Rev. Cameron Partridge’s TransEpiscopal blog for detailed updates.

When we say “The Episcopal Church Welcomes You”, we mean it!

Integrity USA Video: “With God’s Help”


This 7-minute video by Integrity USA explains why the Episcopal Church needs to move beyond its de facto moratorium on additional gay and lesbian bishops during General Convention 2009 in Anaheim. Since 1974, Integrity has been a faithful witness of God’s inclusive love to the Episcopal Church and the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community. Their motto is “all the sacraments for all the baptized”. Visit their resolutions page to find out how you can get involved. (Hat tip to Cameron Partridge for the link.)