HAWAII: OPEN LETTER TO BISHOP ON IMPENDING SPLIT IN ANGLICAN COMMUNION

June 25, 2004

Dear Bishop Chang:

I know you are forced, by your calling as our spiritual leader, to wrestle with these issues. The attached article, and these considerations of mine, are offered faithfully and in hope, that you may be guided by the Holy Spirit as you lead our Diocese in the one holy catholic and apostolic faith.

Our entire delegation to last year's national convention voted for the action that precipitated the impending worldwide split. Only one among them felt obliged to give any explanation. While admirable in its length and erudition, we heard lectures on social and cultural matters, with no substantive reference to the authority of scripture independent of the context-bound spirit of the age. And who is to say what that spirit of the age is? Spengler and Nietzsche and Heidegger said it was what made Nazism nearly the world conqueror, Marx, Engels, Lenin and Mao said it was what nearly made atheist communism the conqueror of all. I believe that, in our Diocese, it is therefore yet incumbent upon the faithful to return to the scriptures and the dialogue with each other and to seek guidance. Are we to suffer this schism from the Anglican communion gladly? Are we clearly pono and so may disregard the pleas from our more numerous Global South brothers and sisters that we repent?

It's the first place yet that I've seen mentioned the important distinction, worked out in blood and travail through the many European and English religious struggles, between the RITES and CIVIL PRECEPTS of the Old Testament, and the MORAL Commandments. Our church agreed at its founding, in 1801, that the former two are not, but that the latter are, BINDING ON THE CHRISTIAN. That is to say, it is not the ancient social or political order, nor the particular forms of punishment, nor the food rituals, nor the master-slave relationships, nor any "ritual purity" precepts of the Hebrew Bible that we are to follow. But our church's founders agreed, in the Articles of Religion, that in our voluntary actions in our relation to others, we Christians are to follow the MORAL Commandments of the Hebrew Bible.

Christ came not to abolish the law, but to fulfill it. His men, like David's, plucked grain, and He Himself healed, on the Sabbath. This was His open disregard of certain CIVIL PRECEPTS, namely, what to do or not to do, on a certain day of the week. Christ saved an adulteress from a stoning: but he told her to "go and sin no more." He shamed the judges into withholding an awful, though scriptural, punishment. But He did not tell her that her MORAL sin was no more a sin!

American Episcopalians, a tiny (and declining) minority of the world's Christians, are so confident that we honor and ordain an exemplar of the open practice of a specifically forbidden sin. This to many is in apparent defiance of the prior understanding of most Christians as to the faith once received, and in disregard of the leaders of millions of worldwide Anglicans who call us to repentance. Why then are we so timorous in our discussions about it? Do we despair of reason?

Can we be sure that to simply dispense with our anchor in scripture and to lead from the spirit of the age is not to be led by a deceiving spirit? Is tolerance to be tolerance of all things?

Of what do I speak? Leaders in our Diocese who insist that words cannot be relied upon to reliably communicate with each other: this is despair of reason. Assembled church lay and clerical representatives who refuse to even consider the issues at hand: this is despair of reason. A visiting Bishop of the church who freely calls the Bible a fairy tale and a myth, and proclaims a "non-theist" doctrine, yet is welcomed by some in the church: this is tolerance taken to the extreme.

Without the careful use of words, the study of pertinent holy scripture, our historic traditions, and the faithful use of our reason (in obedience to His will) how can we be sure we're pono?

What does our Church reliably rest upon? The constitution and canons alone will most certainly not be enough. The truths revealed to us by the Holy Spirit, per our catechism, are known to be of that Spirit when they are "in accord with scripture" (BCP, p. 852). This is not to call for any "bibliolatry", but for a comparison of new truths, if they be of the Holy Spirit, with God's Word.

Christianity is a religion of the ages and the endless multitudes of saints, it is not a plaything of a temporary sociological subgroup that can, without real and earnest defense of its innovations on scriptural principles, simply disregard the accepted MORAL Commandments our founders agreed are binding.

You cannot persuade millions of believers, many of whom are locked in a life and death struggle for survival, or who find themselves unavoidably subject to persecution and intimidation by Muslims and communists, that the latest pansexual pastimes, no matter how discretely and honorably practiced, among a few urban sophisticates, are the inevitable progressive wing of Christianity that all are destined to follow, without some better reasoning and deeper scriptural understanding than what has been made evident so far.

Love, when it finds a wound, binds it up, but may put a stinging antiseptic on it. The wounded who avoids antiseptic, may feel better for awhile, but will regret it, with much more pain, and the threat of death, as time goes on. Sin, like a wound, needs healing, not tolerance, and not rationalizations to avoid a bit of emotional pain.

To malama our mana will take some ho'opono'pono.

Faithfully,

Boyd Ready

Bishop's Warden, Holy Cross at Malaekahana