A GAFCON Observation

I am deeply troubled not only by the growing apostasy of the American Episcopal Church, but also by the influence of American Evangelicals and Charismatics who have exported their theologies to the African scene.  

The problem is this: 

Many of us who had significant conversion experiences and experiences of the Holy Spirit in the sixties and seventies had our basic theological training in American seminaries with little exposure to classical Systematic Theology or Church History, and in some cases no Ascetical Theology whatsoever.  The positive work of the Holy Spirit fell upon those who did not have enough of grounding in the theology and history of the Church to understand what had happened to them.

Some of these men have risen to positions of leadership in the Church and I know personally of some who have had, and still have, a strong influence on the African Churches.  Some of the ones that I have known personally have demonstrated serious problems with authority and when I see them leading the fray I am disheartened.  It is enough that we are exporting the Prosperity Gospel to Africa, but we are also exporting a shallow view of the Church along with a “come out from among them and be ye clean” mentality.

I have some familiarity with Uganda and Nigeria and enough experience to know that by and large, where they are unaffected by us, they are soundly orthodox; but often their orthodoxy rests on the same shallow foundations as that of their American advisors. It is fashionable among American Evangelical Christians to view the African scene through rose coloured glasses.  In point, the East African Revival is a movement of the Holy Spirit in the past and what we are now looking at is the heirs of that Revival who are strongly influenced by American theology with all of its problems.  Do not idealize African seminary training; guess who they have been trained by.  

When GAFCON meets it runs the danger of perpetuating a divisiveness born in the American Church scene.  There are some good reasons why many of us with Evangelical of Charismatic backgrounds have remained within the Episcopal Church.  Despite all claims, the grass is not greener on the other side.

Reflections of an Immigrant

I had a student visa when I married my wife Diana who is from Philadelphia and I had received my Green Card, when we moved to Watertown, Massachusetts where I became the rector of an Episcopal Church.  During our time there, the height and the fall of the Nixon era, I realized that to continue to minister in an American setting I needed to take a greater responsibility by applying for citizenship.  The process was somewhat onerous.  Among other things I had to return to Canada and apply at the United States Embassy in St. John, New Brunswick.  Never having been to that part of Canada it seemed odd, but one does what one has to do.

            I remember four questions from the interview for citizenship.  One was the question, “Are you now, or have you ever been a Communist?”  Like many young Canadians in my generation I voted NDP [New Democratic Party] because it was the Socialist-Communist coalition and I was a Fabian Socialist, but I also realized that I had never joined the Communist Party; so the answer was, “No!”  Putting that in context for today, voting NDP was like voting for Obama.  I felt like asking, “Why don’t you ask, ‘Are you now, or have you ever been, a Fascist?’”  Experience shows that many of us who voted socialist in those days slid to the right the longer we were employed and the saner we became. 

The second question, stemming from my application form that included questions on memberships was “What is Foreign Missions?”  My answer was not at all interesting to the interviewer.

The third question was “Are you now, or have you ever been a habitual drunkard?”  It was clear from my application that I had joined AA several years before.  So I said, “Alcoholism is a disease, not a habit.”  The interviewer said, “Just answer the question.”  So I answered, “No.”  By the way as of this July I have been sober for 44 years, so I guess my answer was right. 

The fourth question, or rather demand, was, “Please say in English “I would like to become an American citizen.”  I retorted, “I speak better English than you do!”  The interviewer was not happy and said, “Just say it!”

When Nixon was pardoned by President Ford I wrote Ford a letter explaining that as the Rector of an Massachusetts Episcopal Church, and as a Democrat who had voted for Ted Kennedy, I was of the opinion that although Nixon was pardoned rather than brought to the bar of justice that the country had had enough of the whole painful saga and that Ford had done the right thing.  I was amazed to receive a thank you letter from Ford who also let me know that he had forwarded my letter to Ted Kennedy.  Subsequently I received a scathing letter from Kennedy asking how, as a man of God, I could take such a sinful position?  To which I replied that as one who had voted for him, but was not as wealthy as him, I wasn’t sure that justice had been done at Chappaquiddick, and if I were he I wouldn’t say anything.  Shortly after that two men in conservative blue suits turned up during a Sunday morning Eucharist, took notes through the sermon, and left at the passing of the Peace.  My guess was that, like many dissenters during that era, my name was on a list somewhere.

I was never really asked where my true allegiance lay.  My allegiance lies with the Kingdom of God and with its King, Jesus Christ the Son of the Living God.  That allegiance determines the nature of my response to citizenship in the United States.  By the way, yes, The United States of America is the land of opportunity, and for immigrants who are willing to go through a legitimate application process, speak the language and work hard the rewards are great.

Lecher Priest

God save us all, we have a lecher priest

Whose every word and smile is oily sweet,

Whose love denying love is just a cheat,

Whose words and actions show his inner beast.

He did not start thus, no, not in the least.

He once longed with ev’ry trembling heartbeat

To be a star, to be a true athlete,

Presiding at the altar and the feast.

His heart was never silver, only tin,

His feet were partly iron, partly clay

When he began to show the beast within.

Hidden within his heart was sad dismay

And all alone he faced his inner sin.

Where was the Church upon that fateful day?

Relax.  It’s nobody you know! Or is it?  Everybody is going to wonder who I have in mind.  Nobody specific, well at least, nobody in the same time zone.  Be careful before you try to apply this to someone you think you know.  Always remember that for priests, ministry is a contact sport that's not always fair.

A Re-examination of Contextualization

If we learn to “read the Bible with the eyes of los pobres”[i] [the poor], as well we ought, there is an inherent danger.  That danger is a backlash effect in which the truth we are attempting to communicate is altered by the very context in which we communicate it.  That dynamic comes into play today as the Church wrestles with the challenges and claims placed against it by alternative sexual life styles.

Now truth is not in fact malleable.  By its very nature truth is stable so that as contextualization attempts to mold it to an acceptable form in the immediate context, the truth itself will resist, even as the truth, as it is in Jesus, resisted the contamination by the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees, and even the leaven of the hoi polloi, the common people.  At that point the effort of contextualization will bend, crack, and shatter.  It is the old problem of pouring new wine into old wineskins.  Something has to give, and it won’t be the new wine of truth. 

At the back of my mind are John Calvin and Jacobus Arminius, one emphasizing the sovereignty and keeping power of God, and the other emphasizing the freedom of the will and the responsibility of choice.  There is truth in both, but contextualization creates for both Calvin and Arminius a new problem.  How does the new wine of truth shatter both Calvinism and Arminianism? 

On another level the question has to be asked: was the context of either Calvin or Arminius the only consideration, or even the primary consideration, in their attempts to contextualize the truth in a meaningful way to the children of God?  There is an unspoken problem.  The eyes with which I read the Bible are inevitably my own eyes, my presuppositions and oft un-examined personal context.  The attempt to read the Bible with the eyes of los pobrés is only one element in the problem of contextualization. 

I am another element, I and my own salvation history, the record of how I personally both found and perceive the truth.  The Lord says to Ezekiel, “Receive in your heart,” your inner man, before he says “See with your eyes”.  Then he says “go and say to the people.”  Initially the order in Ezekiel seemed wrong to me, but the order is a tacit acknowledgment that receiving in the inner man is prior to seeing and/or perceiving with the eyes that which has been received.  Here the truth spoken to my heart in the morning lections comes into play” “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for out of it springs the issues of life (Prov. 4:23).  My encounter with the internalized logos is a formative part of the proclamation. 

In this sense Marshall McCluhan was getting near a truth because the medium has, for good or ill, become part of the message.  We are called not to proclaim paradosis [tradition], but to witness to what we have internalized in our own encounter with the living God.

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[i] Obispo Adrian Caceres on contextualizing the Gospel in Latin America, 1988

The Therapist's Boots

I am reminded of a therapist at Yale who always turned up for sessions with his clients wearing green rubber boots.  When I asked  him why, he explained that every morning he cleaned out his dog run, then he hosed off his boots and came to work; and I knew, as sure as I’m sitting here, that after talking with me he was going to hose off his boots one more time before going home.  His whole life was wading in crap from morning to night.

Many of us from the more liberal seminaries received no training in the theology of worship and prayer, or in systematic theology. Instead we received enough training in psychology and counseling to become cheap therapists. Got ordained, gonna get me some green rubber boots, and get to work. I hear tell from them what knows that this is still goin' on. When you think of it, it's kinda terrifying.

What were we trained in?  Altizer and Hamilton’s “Death of God Theology”, Joseph Fletcher’s “Situation Ethics,” that bloodless theologian Paul Tillich, biblical skepticism and social relevance.  There wasn’t enough weight to save a soul, not even our own.  What are the seminaries teaching today?  “Foundations for Theological Praxis,” “MCC Polity and General Convention,” “The Role of the Debates of Human Sexuality in Global Christianity and Mission,” “Third World Feminist Theology,” and “The Social Gospel and the New Social Creed.” 

There was an old bumper sticker seen around Harvard Square that advised “Eschew Obfuscation.”  If you don’t have a grasp of the simple basics of the Christian Faith and can’t apply them to yourself, you don’t have anything but obfuscation.  What is amusing in a sad sort of way is that the American Episcopal Church doesn’t understand why it is mistrusted in much of the two-thirds world.

"You will arise and have compassion on Zion, for it is time to have mercy upon her; indeed the appointed time has come.  For your servants love her very rubble and our moved to pity even for her dust," [Psalm 102;13,14].

Purple Fever: A Retrospect

The honour I never almost had:

Purple Fever is an awful disease, it was candidate’s night, and the next day was the election of a Bishop.  I who was never nominated, and did not desire to be nominated, am somewhat chagrined that not only will I not be elected, but I will not even have bragging rights of saying; “Back in two thousand and something I was nominated for Bishop.”  Even the possibility of a small self-glorifying exaggeration is clean cut off, I fortunately can’t even say, “I was almost elected.”

I looked over the slate of candidates.  There were two obviously good men who were willing to let themselves be lured into a greater suffering on behalf of the church.  Of the others, two had been afflicted with awful forms of purple fever.  One of them eventually would end up in legal problems of the financial type, the other was just a sad individual.  At least they had bragging rights.   Come to think about it, at an earlier election one devout and holy candidate, or so we were told, was eventually defrocked for child abuse.  Purple fever can, and does, infect the most unsuitable candidates.

This purple fever is an insidious disease that has led some to leave The Episcopal Church in their lust to become bishops.  I know one “bishop” duly consecrated by somebody, somewhere, who has no diocese, no churches, no priests, and works as a gardener, and another who admitted to having only 12 people in his congregation, and six similar sized congregations under his shepherding care; but he’s a bishop and he holds wonderful ordinations for his poorly trained disciples.  I know another who left The Episcopal Church with great fanfare and great expectancy hoping to become a bishop in one of the African dioceses, only to discover too late that they don’t consecrate divorced men as bishops.

It’s a terrible thing, this irony of not being nominated for a job I wouldn’t want and wasn’t even nominated for. It’s somewhat akin to being a guardian cherub desiring ultimate enthronement and then being summarily forced out of heaven by those insufferable angels.  “I, the Morning Star, I have fashioned for myself a coat of many colours, I do not have to dress in white.  I do not want to be dressed in white kowtowing to His royal goodness YHWH.  I almost seized the heavenly throne; a throne I could have had if only, so at least I have bragging rights.”

The great mistake in all this is the attempt to affirm one’s value by becoming a human doing instead of accepting the humiliation of being a human being.  In this unrestrained ambition the greater the doing, the greater the power, the emptier the soul!  The truth is that it is a fatal error to say, “I do, therefor I am,” and perhaps René Descartes missed the truth, “Je pense donc je suis,” “I think, therefore I am.”  It is closer to the mark to say, “I love, therefore I am.”  Ultimately our human identity is defined by our relationships.

Roots: A Prayer

Heavenly Father: Over the years I have often said, “I am an Anglican first, and an Episcopalian second.”  That declaration and awareness has comforted me in the past, but what if the Anglican Communion itself is torn asunder?  I am saddened, but not shaken by the prospect, because the fact is that my roots are sunk even deeper than the few centuries of our specific Anglican history.

I am on the Canterbury Trail to the defaced shrine of the Holy Martyr Thomas á Becket.  Well he understood the problems of royal privilege and its potential for contaminating the Church in England.  As an old colonial boy I find it frustrating that the royals and parliament have so much say in the life of the Church, but you know I love the pomp and ceremony, the skirl of pipes and the rumble of drums

My roots reach back through the long history of the English Church, through Milton, and through Blake who prayed, “And did the Countenance Divine Shine forth upon our clouded hills?  And was Jerusalem builded here Among these dark Satanic Mills?”  Through John Jewel and “ the Coming Down of the Holy Ghost and the Manifold Gifts Thereof,”  through Cranmer and the Book of Common Prayer, through Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe, through Walter Hilton and Richard Rolle, through blesséd Anselm who teaches me that the strength of my salvation is the strength of Christ.

My roots reach further back through Augustine of Canterbury, through Saint Benedict and the ancient Monks of Nursia, through Antony of the Desert and the wild-eyed desert hermits.  My roots reach back through Canterbury, past Roman paving stones to ancient Celts and Britons by their smoky fires smouldering in the damp of an English spring.

My roots reach even further back through wandering missionaries, Christian tradesmen, and Roman soldiers who bearing the cross on their hearts first tread upon the soil of the land of my forefathers. 

My roots reach even further back through the long and dreadful glorious history of the martyrs of the early church, through the letters and missions of Paul and Peter, Jude and James and John and all the Gospellers now radiant in glory.  “So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the Apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord.  In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit” (Ephesians 2:19-20).

It is actually that last declaration that binds together the whole of this tumultuous history of the Church catholic and militant that I have loved, and still love with every fibre of my being.  My Father it is immersion in your Spirit, poured out upon the Church through the hands of Jesus our Head that makes sense of the whole.  It is one of your miracles that the Church in all its brokenness over the centuries still survives. 

Time and time and time again you gather the broken shards together and craft again a golden vessel for honorable use, set apart as holy, useful to the Master of the house, ready for every good work (2 Timothy 2:21).  I find that instead of grieving or despairing, I am excited by the shaking of the foundations of our beloved Anglican Communion.  When “the golden bowl is broken, or the pitcher is shattered at the well” (Ecclesiastes 12:6), nothing less than your holy hands are at work.  My Lord, let me see!  Show me the new golden vessel as it rises like the Phoenix from the ashes.  Break us, mold us, make us, fill us again most glorious Lord and Father.  We are yours, through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.