By Anne Saunders Associated Press Writer CONCORD, N.H--With the celebrations over, Episcopal Bishop V. Gene Robinson settles into the hard work of leading a diocese that includes at least two congregations who reject him as bishop. Robinson, the Episcopal Church's first openly gay bishop, took over leadership of the diocese on Sunday in a ceremony known as investiture. His election and consecration sent shockwaves through the Episcopal Church and the worldwide Anglican Communion of which it is a part. Many argue his homosexuality violates God's laws. Robinson has lived with his partner, Mark Andrew, a state administrator, for 15 years. "(A bishop) is called to be above reproach," said Jerry DeLemus, senior warden at Church of the Redeemer in Rochester. Robinson may be "a nice guy, but he's a bad example," DeLemus said. In January, church members there elected a new governing council that voted to affiliate with the American Anglican Council, a fledgling group formed by a dozen conservative bishops angry over Robinson's consecration. That group has since launched a new Network of Anglican Communion Dioceses and Parishes. Already, Redeemer has pasted an insignia over its sign marking it as affiliated with the new group. Now they are waiting for the network to assign a conservative bishop to serve them in place of Robinson. St. Mark's in Ashland has taken similar steps to apply for membership and is waiting for word it has a new bishop. Robinson says he's willing to consider alternatives for these two congregations but they will have to work with him, not around him. "If there were to be any kind of alternative arrangements, I am the person that Rochester or Ashland would need to deal with. And I'm perfectly willing and happy to work with them," he said. Robinson has already defused tensions at Redeemer by assigning them a priest who shares their view that homosexuality is a sin. Former Bishop Douglas Theuner fired Redeemer's longtime priest in November, saying he was insubordinate. Churchgoers were outraged. That outrage has since eased. "Gene actually called me at home," DeLemus said. "He was very decent to me on the phone. We've got definite scriptural differences - that's certain - but it was very cordial." Redeemer's new priest, the Rev. Gordon Allen, opposes Robinson's consecration but agreed, at Robinson's request, to come out of retirement to serve at Redeemer. Members of Redeemer say they are very happy with their new priest. "He's just a scriptural man and he's doing his best to serve God's word," DeLemus said. But leaders at Redeemer still want a bishop who shares their view of biblical law. Robert Newton, a member of St. Mark's, was doubtful that Robinson would allow a bishop who opposed his consecration to work within the diocese. "I don't think Robinson would pick someone like that," he said. Robinson says otherwise. "There are plenty of bishops who voted against my consent ... whom I would be happy to have come in and minister to those folks," he said. However, he'd need assurances that they would not try to undermine his authority, he said. By church law, the bishop of a diocese has certain responsibilities, including periodic visits to parishes, guiding people within the diocese who wish to become priests or recognizing a new Episcopal fellowship. The latter is not just a hypothetical situation. About 40 Episcopalians from the Seacoast who opposed Robinson's consecration have been meeting in Durham as the Seacoast Mission Fellowship. "They're not an Episcopal mission. There is a process and they've not even inquired about it as far as I know," Robinson said. If they wish to be part of the national Episcopal Church, they'll have to affiliate with the diocese, he said. But Christopher Klukas, one of two seminarians working with the Seacoast group, says they have no intention of approaching Robinson. The group doesn't want a visiting conservative bishop, they want a conservative "to be our bishop," he said. They will look to the new Anglican network to provide them with that leadership, he said. Despite the divisions that Robinson's consecration triggered, there is less talk now about a split within the Episcopal Church. The American Anglican Council says it will remain within the church but provide an alternative affiliation for conservative churches. Lewis at Redeemer said her church is "committed to being included in the Episcopal Church." Robinson said he's not surprised at these developments, despite earlier threats of a schism. "I think we're going to find a way to live with each other as we have with other controversial issues," he said.

By Jonathan Petre, Religion Correspondent THE TELEGRAPH 3/11/2004 Worldwide Anglicanism edged closer to disintegration yesterday after the liberal Canadian Church defied calls for restraint and paved the way for homosexual "marriages". To the dismay of conservatives, it announced that its General Synod would be asked to affirm that there was no bar to Canadian dioceses authorising the blessing of "committed same-sex unions". One Canadian diocese has already unilaterally approved a rite for such blessings, and officials believe there is little doubt that the Synod will validate its decision. Although illicit gay blessings are widespread in the Anglican Church, such a vote would be seen as the first clear endorsement of the practice by an entire province. It would represent a fresh blow to the authority of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams. The Canadian decision to debate gay blessings in May, rather than deferring it, also represents the first serious test for Dr Williams's Lambeth Commission, set up in October to head off schism. Dr Williams and the commission have strongly urged the warring parties to avoid exacerbating tensions until the commission has had time to report at the end of the year. One of the strongest critics of homosexuality, the Primate of the Southern Cone in South America, Archbishop Gregory Venables, said this was "another symptom" of the schism that already existed. "It is clear that the irreconcilable contradictions in ... Anglicanism can no longer be disguised by the mask of inclusive language and jolly photo-calls," he added. A spokesman for the Canadian Church said, however, that the motion was merely to recognise the status quo in Canada, rather than make a final ruling on the morality of homosexuality. "Whatever we do to try to face our reality here is likely to cause some stress within the Communion," said Canon Eric Beresford. "But I hope we can attempt to do it in a way that minimises that." Dr Williams and his fellow primates - the heads of the 38 individual provinces which make up the 70 million-strong Anglican Communion - declared in May last year that they could not support rites for same-sex blessings. Within hours, however, the liberal Canadian Bishop of New Westminster, the Rt Rev Michael Ingham, published a rite, and Anglicanism's first officially sanctioned gay "marriage" took place in a Vancouver church. The damage was compounded in November by the consecration of Canon Gene Robinson in New Hampshire as Anglicanism's first openly gay bishop, despite a warning from primates that this would "tear the fabric" of the Church. In spite of Dr Williams's efforts at conciliation, the conservatives in Africa and Asia and liberals in America and Canada have become increasingly entrenched. Several other Canadian dioceses have said they want to follow New Westminster and approve gay blessings if the province gives the go ahead.

By Greta Gaffin THE LIVING CHURCH November 26, 2025   The American Academy of Religion and the Society of Biblical Literature host an annual conference dedicated to the academic study of religion. This year it met on November 22-25 in Boston. The Living Church attended panels that included Anglican theologians, as well as one about Protestant relic collecting.   The Rev. Dr. Molly James, an Episcopal priest and interim executive officer of the Episcopal Church, gave a presentation on membership trends and the future of the Episcopal Church.   “The data bears out what we hear everywhere: We are declining. We have fewer people. The only thing that might surprise you is the finances,” she said. The plate and pledge numbers have stayed mostly consistent despite the significant decrease in membership, but for the first time church expenses are exceeding church incomes.   This financial twist is not evenly distributed throughout the church. Some parishes, particularly in the Northeast, are extraordinarily wealthy, but others are not. Half of Episcopal churches have an Average Sunday Attendance under 50. On the other hand, five percent of congregations contain 30 percent of Episcopalians, and these tend to be the churches with the largest endowments.   The Episcopal Church’s numbers peaked in 1965. James argued that this decline is primarily because of a decline in birth rates: Episcopalians simply have fewer children than they did during the mid-20th century. While this is true, it seemed to neglect other factors. One individual asked why there was no discussion of the Anglican Church in North America. Neither was there a mention of data on retention of the children Episcopalians have.   James emphasized that Episcopalians today are not worse at evangelizing than their grandparents. They simply are not beneficiaries of the societal structures of the 1950s. The United States has grown significantly since the 1960s (from 179 million in 1960 to 329 million in 2020), and most of those people are not Episcopalians. “We have a tremendous opportunity for growth in the church. It just won’t come as easily as it did in the 1950s and 1960s,” she said.   James is hopeful about the future of the church. “We have communities whose primary characteristics are hospitality and love, who seek to offer a place to help people make meaning in their lives,” she wrote in her full presentation.   The Rev. Dr. Charles Bączyk-Bell, a Church of England priest and a psychiatrist, lectured on what it means to be an Anglican in the 21st century. “What exactly constitutes the Anglicanism we believe we all belong to?” he said.   “You have to be willing to have fellowship with other Anglicans because they call themselves Anglicans,” he said. Anglicanism, in his view, is more about the church’s stance and approach to the world than anything else.   One thing he was frustrated by is the focus on institutional structures over anything else. He spoke about his meeting with a bishop in Southern Malawi who said what really matters to him is who he can call and know he will receive a response.   “We think we do synodality, but we don’t. Just because you call something a fish doesn’t make it a fish,” he said. Is Anglicanism one church, or numerous autonomous churches? What do different ecclesial gatherings mean, and who do they serve? How much power should Lambeth conferences or the Archbishop of Canterbury have?   The Very Rev. Dr. Michael Battle, an Episcopal priest and professor at General Theological Seminary, discussed his book series, Conversations in Global Anglican Theology. The second book in the series, Culture, will be out in December. (The first, Faith, appeared in December 2024.)   Battle is American, but spent part of his career in South Africa, and so including the voices of Anglicans from non-Western countries is important to him. “Many voices are not being heard,” he said.   “Culture is vital to understanding Anglicanism,” he said. What it means to be Anglican for a woman in Kenya or Pakistan is very different than what it means for an American or Englishman, and so he hopes his book will be able to share these experiences with the broader church. “If we become one with God, we can’t help but be one with another,” he said.   The Very Rev. Dr. Kelly Brown Douglas, an Episcopal priest and theologian, was one of the panelists at a panel dedicated to responding to Immaculate Misconceptions: A Black Mariology. This new book by Protestant Mariologist Amey Victoria Adkins-Jones is about the figure of the Black Madonna and how she can challenge notions of race and gender in Christianity. Brown Douglas is currently a visiting professor at Harvard Divinity School and canon theologian at Washington National Cathedral, and she was previously interim president and dean of Episcopal Divinity School.   “Adkins-Jones reminds us that theology is not benign and never a luxury for subjugated people,” said Brown Douglas, who is a womanist theologian. Womanist theology centers on the spiritual experiences of Black women.   Discussions of Mary are often rooted in a Catholic theological context. But, Brown Douglas argues, evangelical views on good and evil foster a particular dichotomy between Mary and Eve. She believes this has led to the demonization of Black women. “It requires a Black Eve as a foil to a white Madonna,” Brown Douglas said.   Brown Douglas challenged one aspect of the book. “How do we avoid fetishizing Black suffering?” she said. While she wants to acknowledge the struggles of Black women, she wants to see more works that include Black joy as well.   Jamie Brummitt, a religion professor at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, talked about her new book, Protestant Relics in Early America. In it, she looks at relic collecting by American Protestants—relics of notable figures like George Whitfield and George Washington and the way some individuals kept relics of dead family members.   Collecting Washington’s relics has a connection to the Episcopal Church beyond Washington’s Anglican background. The Rev. Herbert Burk, an Episcopal priest, acquired Washington’s tent and other Revolutionary war objects for the Washington Memorial Chapel at Valley Forge. Today, much of this collection is at the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia, where it can be more effectively conserved.   The Rev. Dr. Daniel Joslyn-Siemiatkoski of Boston College presented a paper on Anglicanism and comparative theology at a panel dedicated to Protestant understandings of comparative theology.   Comparative theology is a discipline developed in the late 20th century, primarily by the Rev. Dr. Francis X. Clooney, S.J. “Comparative religion is phenomenological. Comparative theology is much more interested in asking what happens when someone with specific commitments to a theological tradition deeply investigates another tradition, and how do they reflect back upon their own tradition as a result?” Joslyn-Siemiatoski told TLC.   His presentation focused on a very non-contemporary Anglican theologian: Richard Hooker, who wrote in the 16th century. “Against the claims of some that only the recent reformations of the 16th century had established God’s true church, Hooker used Israel’s history to show the continued existence of God’s church even amid great scandal and sin,” he said. “Postulating the reality of a faithful church existing since the time of ancient Israel allowed Hooker to argue for the existence of this church not only amid Protestants but also to admit the possibility of the preservation of the true church within the corruptions of the Church of Rome.”   The Rev. Dr. Joshua Kulak, an Episcopal priest and associate rector at St. Michael’s Episcopal Church in Austin, Texas, spoke about “Migration with Dignity” and what it means to support immigrants today.   The Migration with Dignity framework came from environmental law, and touches on four points: movement, security, equality, and standard of living. To Kulak, these are reflected in the baptismal ecclesiology of the Episcopal Church that sees Christians as needing to respect the human dignity of all people.   “If Episcopalians stand for Migration with Dignity, they must wholeheartedly embrace their baptismal identity, join with God in the reconciling work of beloved community, and practice migration with dignity through reparative actions rooted in restorative love and justice,” he wrote in his paper.   The Rev. Dr. Robert MacSwain, OGS, an Episcopal priest and professor at the University of the South’s School of Theology, discussed his new book, Essays Anglican and Analytic: Explorations in Critical Catholicism, published in April 2025. It connects Anglicanism with philosophical theology.   He was inspired to write the book by his love for Church of England theologians Austin Farrer and David Brown, and by what he sees as the marginalization of Anglican voices within theology. He said that when he looked at a reading list for a major divinity school, the only pre-21st century Anglican theologians included were John Locke, John Wesley, and John Henry Newman.   At the same time, he sees Anglican philosophers of religion as getting much more attention, something he also wanted to highlight. He wants those interested in Anglican studies to realize the importance of Anglican analytic philosophers, but also those interested in systematic theology more broadly to see that Anglican theologians have made valuable contributions.   Dr. Thomas Noakes-Duncan, a lecturer at St. John’s Theological College in New Zealand, presented on the Rev. George Armstrong, a priest and activist in New Zealand in the 1970s.   Noakes-Duncan touched on a protest over the New Zealand rugby team playing the South African rugby team—which was entirely white because of apartheid. Armstrong brought numerous seminarians with him, clad neatly in cassocks and holding processional crosses, to protest. The protests led to the game being cancelled, something that did not endear him to the majority of white New Zealanders.   Armstrong was also known for his other radical views, such as engaging in protests against the Vietnam War and for blockading harbors to prevent entry by nuclear ships. “Racism and a nuclear apocalypse cannot ever belong in salvation history,” Noakes-Duncan said.   The Rev. Dr. Jesse Zink is a priest in the Anglican Church of Canada and a professor at the Montreal Diocesan Theological College. He discussed his book Faithful, Hopeful, Creative: Fifteen Theses for Christians in a Crisis-Shaped World (2024), which aims to give both clergy and laity a way to understand numerous difficult situations today.   The idea for the book came to him during COVID. “But nobody wanted to read a book about the pandemic, and I didn’t want to write one,” he said. He decided instead to write a book about many overlapping crises. He sees three main issues: climate, migration, and economics.   The book was shaped by his experience in the Diocese of Montreal, which has experienced numerous problems in recent years. “I got tired of church meetings that were a series of well-meaning rhetorical questions that were asked and never quite answered,” he said.   Greta Gaffin is a freelance writer based in Boston. She has a master of theological studies degree from Boston University and a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

The Beacon Lecture Series at All Saints, Chevy Chase, Maryland I have two topics on my mind that I propose to disclose gradually rather than announce them at the beginning. The two are related to one another. I propose to divide this presentation into two parts, pausing in the middle for some discussion. I understand that I am inside the Beltway here, and in a presidential election year at that; therefore I know that everything I say will be in a political context. I am certainly capable of making a politically partisan speech, but as a preacher of the gospel I do not do that... [Content explores the human condition, moral ambiguity, the universality of sin, critiques simplistic “good vs. evil” narratives (including in The Lord of the Rings and The Pianist ), and emphasizes Pauline theology: There is no distinction; all have sinned...God has consigned all men to disobedience, that he may have mercy upon all.Christ died for the ungodly. ] The General Confession of the church is meant to embody these truths about the human condition. We say it all together without any distinctions being made among us... I worry about American arrogance. Our two greatest Presidents understood something about the need for collective repentance before the divine judgment. George Washington and Abraham Lincoln both called America to repentance. It is hard to imagine any President doing that today... Sin came into the world through one person and death through sin, and so death spread to all humanity because all humans sinned (Romans 5:12). This is repeated in 1 Corinthians 15:22: In Adam all die. Human solidarity in bondage to the power of sin is one of the most important of all concepts for Christians to grasp. This doctrine of original sin, as it’s called, is unique to Christianity. Likewise unique therefore is the meaning of the Crucifixion. In the Cross we see the Son of God taking into himself the entire force and power of Sin. This is what the Mel Gibson movie will never be able to teach... END OF PART ONE   TRUE INCLUSIVENESS ACCORDING TO THE WORD OF GOD (PART I) - BY FLEMING RUTLEDGE**   The Beacon Lecture Series at All Saints, Chevy Chase, Maryland   I have two topics on my mind that I propose to disclose gradually rather than announce them at the beginning. The two are related to one another. I propose to divide this presentation into two parts, pausing in the middle for some discussion.   I understand that I am inside the Beltway here, and in a presidential election year at that; therefore I know that everything I say will be in a political context. I am certainly capable of making a politically partisan speech, but as a preacher of the gospel I do not do that. I did not do it last Advent when I preached at the National Cathedral on the eve of the Iraq war, and I am not going to do it now. What I do intend to do is raise questions that all American Christians should be thinking about in these dangerous times. I am also aware that I am speaking in the midst of a volatile situation in our Episcopal Church. I hope that when I am finished you will see that I have addressed that situation, but indirectly, by focusing on something else that I think is even more important than the issue that divides us at present.   I have extensive files on my two topics and I am adding to them all the time. A recent addition is a review of a new book called In the Land of Magic Soldiers . The title refers to the widespread belief in the sub-Saharan African countries that there are certain magic rituals, going even to the extreme of cannibalism, that will guarantee immunity to bullets, hence, “magic soldiers.” The book is about the gruesome civil war in Sierra Leone. The section of the review that caught my attention begins, “What is of value in this book is less what it says about Sierra Leone than about the human condition.”   I am always interested in what people are writing about the human condition. The review discusses “the most haunting figure” in the book, a white South African mercenary who flies a combat helicopter for the Sierra Leone government, indeed the only one that the government owns. This white man from South Africa says that the thrill of machine-gunning people on the ground from the air is “better than sex...There’s a lot of adrenaline going. You’re all keyed up, and when you realize you’re on target, that you’ve taken out the enemy, that’s a great feeling.” This same man pays for schooling for local children out of his own pocket and plans to start a local burn center because there isn’t one anywhere in Sierra Leone. The reviewer observes that this man “is so memorable because the strange blend of killing and healing in his life is a reminder of how precarious is the balance between them, and of how easily it can be tipped one way or the other by the societies we build for ourselves.”   Another recent article in The New York Times features an interview with Dr. Allen Keller, the kind and self-sacrificing director of the Bellevue/NYU Program for Survivors of Torture. The interviewer is clearly appalled by the ghastly stories that Dr. Keller tells him about his patients. The doctor says, “How could people do such things? I’m scared that it’s easier than we think.” That is in part why he opposes torture to extract information from terrorists. “We mustn’t go there. It cheapens who we are.” Clearly this doctor who ministers to victims is aware that our propensity for harming others is closer to the surface than we like to think.   Adam Michnik, the enormously wise philosopher of the Solidarity Movement in Poland, wrote these words in his classic letter from prison:  I am not afraid of the general’s fire. There is no greatness about them; lies and force are their weapons... I am sure that we shall win...we shall leave the prisons and come out of the underground onto the bright square of freedom. But what will we be like then? I am afraid not of what they will do to us, but of what they can make us into....I pray that we do not change from prisoners into prison guards.   I have collected these thoughts, and dozens of others like them, into a file which has become my constant companion in recent months. I am offering some of them now in the context of the movie that a lot of people think is going to win the Oscar—*The Lord of the Rings*. I am not a fan of the movie but I am a lover of the book, and indeed I have a book on the subject myself coming out some time this spring, a book called The Battle for Middle-earth . The title is significant because I wanted to convey the sense of a great conflict. Because of the movie, this conflict is now being widely misinterpreted as a clear-cut battle between Good and Evil. The Danish-American actor who plays Aragorn in the movie, Viggo Mortensen, has been campaigning against this misunderstanding. Here is some of what he wrote in the illustrated guide to the second movie in the series:  The second installment of The Lord of the Rings comes to theatres in a world that is no more secure than the one in which the first was released last year...It would seem from even a cursory reading of world history that there is no new horror under the sun, that we will perhaps always have to contend with destructive impulses in ourselves and others...The most enlightened beings in Middle-Earth are conscious of the ubiquity of good and evil in neighbors, strangers, adversaries, and most important, themselves.   Everywhere I go I hear people talking about the Lord of the Rings movie as a battle of Good vs. Evil. This would have displeased the author, J. R. R. Tolkien, a great deal. He made it very clear in his many letters that he did not mean it to be interpreted that way. All of his characters are vulnerable to the power of evil. Not even Gandalf, the archangel figure, is immune; some of Tolkien’s angels (the Valar) and Elves were themselves responsible for all the evil that had come into Middle-earth. All of this mythology is based on the Christian tradition, suggested in the book of Isaiah, that the angel Lucifer had rebelled against God. In Tolkien’s letters, he often put quotation marks around the word “good” as if to say, this person that thinks he’s so good may not be so good after all.   One of the most challenging things about growing into Christian maturity is learning and acknowledging one’s own faults and weaknesses. When we have done this, we are not so quick to assign others to the category of “bad” or “evil.” In Shakespeare’s play, All’s Well That Ends Well , two young noblemen are discussing the mixed motives of the characters around them. One says to the other, “The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together.”   I was at a dinner party the other night consisting of some exceptionally intelligent people, some of whom were political conservatives and some liberals. The conservatives kept talking about “evil.” One of the liberals burst out, “I don’t believe in evil!” The others looked at him in shock. I was shocked too, at first, but something told me he hadn’t meant it quite the way it sounded. Upon being questioned further he admitted that he didn’t mean to say there was no such thing as evil. What he didn’t agree with was the way the others were talking so readily about who was evil and who was not.   The reason that Europeans look askance at Americans when we talk about evil is not that they don’t know evil when they see it. It’s that we Americans love to think of ourselves as innocent and good. (Graham Greene’s cynical journalist in The Quiet American is typical here: “God save us always from the innocent and the good.” ) We feel injured when other countries don’t like us. I encountered anti-Americanism for the first time on my first trip to Europe when I went out on a date with a Dutch boy. I have never forgotten how wounded I felt when I learned that there were people who thought American intentions were malign. I took it personally. We Americans are used to thinking of ourselves as supremely well-intentioned, so we are outdone when others don’t see us that way.   Polls are regularly released about the religious beliefs of Americans. A majority of Americans, especially in the “red” states that voted Republican in 2000, believe in heaven and hell. Of these, close to 90% believe that they themselves are going to heaven. An equal percent think they know someone else who is going to hell. This should not surprise us. Twenty-two years of parish ministry showed me that most people consider themselves entitled to judge the motives and actions of others in a negative way while giving themselves a pass.   If we read the Psalms regularly, as all Christians should, we will readily come up against a contradiction. Many of the Psalms contain passages in which the speaker declares a distinction between the righteous and the wicked. For example, Psalm 1:  Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous; for the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish. (Psalm 1:5–6)   When I started looking through the Psalms for examples of this, though, I got a surprise. I was expecting to find many Psalms where the speaker (singer) calls himself righteous and the other person wicked. But there were far fewer examples of this than I thought. Even in the Psalms where the speaker prays for terrible things to happen to his enemies, the imprecations are always provisional. The general sense is, “God, this is the way I feel about these wicked people, I’d like you to bash their children’s heads against the wall, but I realize it’s up to you, not me, to make these judgments.” It’s as if the speaker is hoping that he is one of the righteous but isn’t quite sure; there is always a proviso that only God can determine and only God can punish. Throughout the Psalms the words of the singers seem to indicate that no matter how bitterly angry they may be at the “wicked,” they are never—in the final analysis—exempting themselves as if they were beyond judgment.   In any case, the imprecatory Psalms are balanced by those written (and sung) in the voice of a worshipper who knows himself to be a sinner before God, no better than anyone else, and unable to save himself by himself.   Remember not the sins of my youth, or my transgressions; according to thy steadfast love remember me, for thy goodness’ sake, O Lord!.... For thy name’s sake, O Lord, pardon my guilt, for it is great. (Psalm 25:7, 11)  Day and night thy hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. I acknowledged my sin to thee, and I did not hide my iniquity; I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord”; then thou didst forgive the guilt of my sin. (Psalm 32)  O Lord, rebuke me not in thy anger, nor chasten me in thy wrath! For thy arrows have sunk into me, and thy hand has come down on me. There is no soundness in my flesh because of thy indignation; there is no health in my bones because of my sin. For my iniquities have gone over my head; they weigh like a burden too heavy for me. (Psalm 38)   Those of us who are over sixty will remember how we used to say “there is no health in us” in the General Confession. That last Psalm is one of the sources for that declaration:  There is no soundness in my flesh... there is no health in my bones because of my sin.   The point of all this is to show how the line that the Bible draws between the “bad guys” and the “good guys” is not as sharp as we think it is. Jesus makes a great many statements about what will happen to the unrighteous, but he almost always makes these statements to those who think they are the righteous, especially when he perceives that they were congratulating themselves on being better than others. There is much wisdom about this in the book of Proverbs:  All the ways of a man are pure in his own eyes, but the Lord weighs the spirit...Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall. It is better to be of a lowly spirit with the poor than to divide the spoil with the proud. (Proverbs 16:2, 18–19)  Another Proverb, stated more strongly, asserts: There are those who are pure in their own eyes but are not cleansed of their filth. (Proverbs 30:12)   At last year’s Academy Awards you will remember that two major Oscars were given to The Pianist . A whole new marketing strategy was promptly rolled out to pull in a new audience. From the new ads, you would never have known it was a movie about the Holocaust. The illustration looked like My Big Fat Greek Wedding —it shows a happy, smiling family raising glasses and toasting one another. OK, fair enough, maybe that would attract more people to see the film. But the new pitch—and here’s my point—was “Experience the Triumph of the Human Spirit.” Those of you who have already seen this superb movie will know that it is not in the least about the triumph of the human spirit. It is about human beings exhibiting extremes of wickedness and goodness often within the same person. It is about the way that enormous evil takes over people in wartime so that so-called “good” people often do shameful things and seemingly “evil” people occasionally do good things. It is about the pressure of forces spinning out of control, causing people who were friends or neighbors or even blood relatives to turn against one another because of the moral chaos and loss of context that occurs when evil runs rampant, and who—who?—can say what he or she would have done under those circumstances?   So this evening I am placing the emphasis on the predicament that you and I share, every single one of us in this room. Evil lies close at hand. Who said that? Well, actually, it was St. Paul. I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. And he continues: I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate...I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin which dwells within me. (Romans 7:15–20) Is there anyone here tonight who does not recognize this?   Many church members today who do not know much about the Bible have been led to think that Jesus was loving, embracing, inclusive and so forth whereas St. Paul was harsh and punitive and enjoyed excluding people. This is a very serious misunderstanding of Paul’s relationship to the witness of the four Gospels. If we had only the four Gospels we would not have fully understood the radicality of the new society that our Lord was creating when he sat at table with those who were considered notorious sinners. Paul is the one who spelled it out for us. It is Paul who says In Christ Jesus you are all sons [children] of God, through faith. For all who were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3:26–28) It is Paul who said For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit. (1 Corinthians 12:13) Above all it is Paul who wrote Romans 9–11 which gives us the most comprehensive vision of salvation across boundaries that we have in the entire Bible.   So it is crucially important to understand how the Epistles—those by Paul and those by others—interpret the theological consequences of the stories that are told in the four Gospels. I have been in conversation with the religion editor of Time magazine. He is doing a story for Time about the Crucifixion, slated to appear on Ash Wednesday when the Mel Gibson movie is finally released. The religion editor is Jewish and knows very little about Christian faith, though I found him eager to learn. The thing that I tried to stress in our conversations is that what’s missing from all the movies about Jesus is the apostolic preaching, that is, the post-Easter preaching. The movies tell the story of what happened, or what the Gospel writers say happened, but they can’t tell us very much about why it happened or what it meant unless they include some of the apostolic preaching, which they never do. (Of course the apostolic preaching shaped the Gospels, but that is more implicit than explicit. The Epistles are wholly explicit in their teaching.) St. Paul is the one who fought for the inclusion of the Gentiles in the gospel, and by extension the inclusion of anyone who lay outside the boundaries of what was considered righteous and godly. That is why he wrote in Romans 5 that Christ died for the ungodly.   The most radical of Paul’s equalizing, inclusive statements, are in Romans. For instance:  All human beings, both Jews and Greeks [godly and ungodly], are under the power of sin; as it is written: “None is righteous, no, not one...All have turned aside, together they have gone wrong;...There is no fear of God before their eyes.” (Romans 3:9–18)  You may be turned off by this, but just wait. The next one is the most radical of all. It is from Romans 11:  God has consigned all men to disobedience in order that he may have mercy upon all. (Romans 11:32)   I would argue that this is the most inclusive verse in all of Scripture, yet many resist it, partly because it seems to put all the responsibility on God, and partly because the typical human being does not like to think of himself as “consigned to disobedience.” Yet only yesterday I saw a big feature story in the Norfolk paper about all the people who are feeling guilty because it’s only February and they have already broken their New Year’s resolutions. Consigned to disobedience! Have you taken a look at the Ten Commandments lately? If you are honest about yourself in relation to them, you will understand that if you were left to yourself you are consigned to disobedience.   The General Confession of the church is meant to embody these truths about the human condition. We say it all together without any distinctions being made among us. “We have left undone those things which we ought to have done, and we have done those things which we ought not to have done...we have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts...and there is no health in us.” Last weekend I talked with a woman who is a chaplain on Death Row in a Virginia prison. When she is with a prisoner and they say the confession, there is no distinction between them.   I wonder if you caught that quotation from Scripture as it went by. From Romans 3: There is no distinction; all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. (3:22–23)   One sign of a true Christian, and a true Christian society, is a recognition of this truth. Humility and repentance are therefore hallmarks of our faith, because they are based in the knowledge that the entire human race without distinction is imprisoned by disobedience until God has mercy on us. The Church’s role is to take on this repentance and this humility for those who will not do it for themselves. That is what we do on Ash Wednesday. As the first Epistle of Peter says, The time has come for judgment to begin with the household of God. (1 Peter 4:17)   I worry about American arrogance. Our two greatest Presidents understood something about the need for collective repentance before the divine judgment. George Washington and Abraham Lincoln both called America to repentance. It is hard to imagine any President doing that today. It is strange that in the controversy about President Bush’s overt references to God, no one has mentioned Lincoln. Lincoln was a theologian profound enough to stand alongside the giants of Christian history. I am quite serious about that. A recent book discussing his theology is an examination of the Second Inaugural called Lincoln’s Greatest Speech , which I urgently recommend to you.   It is well known that Lincoln changed his mind about slavery. This shift on his part has often been negatively construed by Southerners as an insincere political move, but his writings do not support that conclusion. Lincoln wrestled long and hard with theological questions raised in his mind by slavery and the Civil War. He thought deeply about the South and the North before God. Lincoln never spoke of “evildoers” or “the evil ones.” Slavery was a great wrong, he came gradually to understand, but he did not cut up the nation neatly into good and evil with the Union on the good side and the Confederacy on the evil side. In this respect he was profoundly biblical in his understanding. He had read and pondered the Psalms and prophets. For example, when the Lord spoke to the prophet Isaiah saying, Destruction is decreed (Isaiah 10:22), he did not mean that he was going to destroy the bad guys. He meant that he was going to chasten his own people, the people of Israel. I will be developing these themes and quoting further from Lincoln on Sunday morning.   Paul writes further in Romans 5: Sin came into the world through one person and death through sin, and so death spread to all humanity because all humans sinned. (5:12) This is repeated in 1 Corinthians 15:22: In Adam all die. Human solidarity in bondage to the power of sin is one of the most important of all concepts for Christians to grasp. This doctrine of original sin, as it’s called, is unique to Christianity. Likewise unique therefore is the meaning of the Crucifixion. In the Cross we see the Son of God taking into himself the entire force and power of Sin. This is what the Mel Gibson movie will never be able to teach, no matter what its merits and demerits may be. The Cross is radically equalizing in a way that we have not always fully appropriated. The distinctions between human beings and groups of human beings that we are accustomed to making are invalid in the sight of God. This is what Paul knew and what Paul preached; this is what the apostles proclaimed throughout the Mediterranean world, giving up their lives for the sake of the gospel.   END OF PART ONE WHAT EXACTLY IS THE GOSPEL (PART II) - BY FLEMING RUTLEDGE   Part one of this address had to do with the subject of good and evil, righteousness and sinfulness, godliness and ungodliness—and how the line between them runs through each person. The classic theological term for this is simul peccator et iustus (sinner and saint simultaneously).  The second subject is the doctrine of the Word of God in our present situation.   I don’t need to tell you that the Episcopal Church is in turmoil. I want to look briefly at the mainline churches in general. That’s the Lutherans, the Presbyterians, the Methodists, the Episcopalians, and the United Church of Christ. These American denominations in direct descent from the Reformation are being challenged as never before in our history. Weekly if not daily, it seems, a new article declares that the mainlines are “losing ground” or are “in decline,” if not “collapsing” or “imploding” or “in free fall.” At the same time, the denominations themselves are splitting along lines described as “liberals” vs. “conservatives,” “revisionists” vs. “traditionalists.” Perceptive observers of the American scene emphasize the chasm between the intellectual and media elite, on the one hand, and the huge, politically influential “Christian Right” on the other. The mainlines are barely holding their traditional center. Although many individual congregations are actually thriving, the overall statistics and projections for the traditional Protestant churches are dire.   With all due respect to those who might think me presumptuous, I think I know what the problem is, and I don’t think it’s the homosexuality issue. Speaking as one who has traveled extensively through the mainline churches and listened to hundreds of sermons over a number of years, I believe that the essential problem can be precisely identified in just a few words, and they are the words of our Lord himself as he spoke to a group of Sadducees: Is not this why you are wrong, that you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God? Jesus’ point against the Sadducees is that the power of God is able to create an entirely new reality that transcends all human categories.   The link between the two—the Scriptures and the power of God—is the key. The power of God is manifest through his Word. This is the power that called the creation into being, it is the force that created the Church in the first place, it is the engine that drove the Reformation—yet this power today is increasingly less heard from mainline pulpits, either as thunder or as still small voice, for we have largely ceased to believe that God speaks. All the symptoms arise from that cause. That is the underlying ailment that is producing the morbid effects.   Flannery O’Connor, patron saint of those who care about language and Christian doctrine, wrote to a friend:  One of the effects of modern liberal Protestantism has been gradually to turn religion into...therapy, to make truth vaguer and vaguer and more and more relative, to banish intellectual distinctions, to depend on feeling instead of thought, and gradually to come to believe that God has no power, that he cannot communicate with us, cannot reveal himself to us, indeed has not done so and that religion is our own sweet invention.   We have gradually come to believe that God has no power and has not revealed himself to us. That, I think, is exactly what has happened. The current emphasis on “spirituality” puts the focus on us and our religious activities, rather than on God. It is anthropological rather than theological. Underlying all of this is the question of power, of dunamis . The idea that the Word of God is powerful in and of itself has been fading in the mainlines for a long time.   I am reminded of a characteristic locution in the African-American churches. A church member will say, “Who is going to bring the message today?” or, “Thank you, Reverend, for bringing the message.” We don’t say that in the mainlines. We say, “Who’s preaching today?” or “Thank you for the sermon.” The idea of a message coming with its own power seems to lie outside our set of convictions; yet the entire biblical story is founded on that reality, and without it, the essential meaning of biblical revelation is lost.   Take for example the characteristic self-introduction of Elijah the prophet:  Now Elijah the Tishbite, of Tishbe in Gilead, said to Ahab, “As the Lord the God of Israel lives, before whom I stand, there shall be neither dew nor rain these years, except by my word.” And the word of the Lord came to him. (1 Kings 17:1–2)   This resounding declaration sets forth some fundamental presuppositions of biblical faith:  — Our God is a living God.  — Those chosen to be his servants stand before him to receive their commissions.  — His word comes to us from outside ourselves with power to execute what it demands.   It is quite possible to be flexible on the issue of homosexuality without relinquishing these foundational beliefs. What worries me is that Episcopalians are going to take this or that position on that particular issue without addressing the more basic problem: How do we go about reclaiming the Church’s confidence in the living God who speaks and acts? How are we clergy to make this God known to our people if we are not convicted ourselves? How are we to shake off our timidity before the culture and its apparent imperatives? If the trumpet gives an uncertain sound, who shall prepare herself for the battle? (1 Corinthians 14:8) The vitality of the churches will come in the present as it came in the past, through the power of the Word itself—the reinvigorating, recreating and revolutionary dunamis of the Holy Spirit, enlivening and interpreting the message.   In Romans 10:14–17 Paul speaks of the preaching of the gospel:  But how are they to call upon him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without a preacher [better translated as “one heralding” or “one announcing”—the root is kerygma*]? And how can people preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of the ones who announce [the root is evangel ] good things!”...So then faith comes from the message, and the message is through the word of Christ.* (NEB)   Paul is saying that the power in Christian proclamation is God’s message itself. The emphasis is not on the human hearing, but on God’s revelatory and performative word. The action is God’s, not ours. This is the message, the evangel , understood as victorious power, the power that removes human “spiritual” capacity to the margins altogether, so that God says (in Isaiah):  “I have been found by those who did not seek me; I have shown myself to those who did not ask for me.”   As if to underline his meaning, Paul quotes from this paradoxical Isaianic passage in order to show that the Word of God is able to penetrate even the will that is set against God. The emphasis is on the message as invading, victorious power. As Paul reminded the Thessalonians, “Our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction.” (1 Thessalonians 1:5) The difference between ordinary messages and the Christian gospel is that the gospel is unconditional. It does not stand back and wait to see how the human being will respond. It is an announcement that creates its own conditions. The kerygma makes something happen. It does not ask for something to happen, it does not suggest that something happen, it does not question whether something might happen if the congregation cooperates. Rather, in the very words themselves, it is already happening.   In this second portion of my address I am therefore arguing two things:   First , we need a renewed confidence in the Scriptures and the power of God. Another way of saying this is that we need to recover the theology of the Word of God. This means that the training of clergy in seminaries for preaching and the training of congregations in parishes for participating needs to be overhauled. There was a time when great preachers were not uncommon in the Anglican Communion. Indeed, a candidate for greatest preacher ever in the English language is John Donne, 17th century dean of St. Paul’s in London. This supremacy is no longer the case. The Episcopal seminaries barely teach preaching at all, and the lay people do not raise a single protest. The doctrine of the Word of God is barely taught, partly because it is associated with the Reformation, and the Episcopal Church does not want to be Protestant any longer. This move has been accepted with astonishing passivity by the congregations, which I must admit I find difficult to understand.   When we lose our confidence in the power of the Word of God to bring a new reality into being, we have fallen back on our sinful selves and our flawed and distorted “spirituality.” And so I am arguing also that,   Second : We need a stronger theological basis for inclusivity than we have at present. The underlying reason that ECUSA is in danger of splitting is not that people disagree about homosexuality. The reason is that a strong minority (yes, granted, a minority, but with strength disproportionate to its numbers) of Episcopalians are beginning to recognize—however inchoate their understanding may be—that the theological foundation of the new teaching about sexuality is insufficient, and that the Scriptures are not being interpreted with the sort of reverent searching that believers would like to see from their leaders.   Many of our distressed church members are beginning to fall back on the labels “liberal” and “conservative.” This is unfortunate. Perhaps it is too late to reclaim the word “liberal,” but its connotations surely belong to the spirit of the Christian gospel: generous, open-handed, free, spacious, abundant, bountiful. How can “conservative” compete with that? It sounds narrow, pinched, fearful, retrograde—and for that very reason many Christians who stand on the Scriptures and the Creeds refuse the term.   Theological liberalism in the mainlines today, however, is open to serious criticism because of its sentimental insufficiency. To give just one of many possible examples, the slogan of the Episcopal Church during the nineties was, “No outcasts.” This sounded wonderful; who could object to it? Surely this is in the spirit of Jesus who made a special point of befriending outcasts. But because the slogan lacked theological grounding and was never connected to the full biblical story—which does after all have something to say about the universal reign of sin and judgment for all parties—it was by default associated with the specific administration of one Presiding Bishop. The “conservatives” in the denomination soon began to feel, with some justification, that they were the new outcasts. The slogan, in other words, lost its connection to the story of God and became an identifying tag for a particular kind of human project with all the prejudices that necessarily accrue to such ventures. The foundation for inclusivity was not strong enough or broad enough to include those who were, rightly or wrongly, labeled as evangelicals, conservatives or (worst) fundamentalists.   By the same token, of course, the litmus tests administered by the conservatives for full status within their assemblies have left various people feeling marginalized as well. No matter how “Christ-centered” and “Bible-believing” (to use some of the code words) those persons might be, there was no room for them if they did not toe the line on such matters as abortion, stem-cell research and homosexuality. Many sincere evangelically-minded clergy have known the pain of being declared “not sound.”   Speaking generally of church life today, neither on the right nor on the left have we seen a truly radical understanding of what the gospel declares to be true about our status before God and one another. The doctrine of justification by grace through faith alone is given much lip service, but the reality on the ground seems to be justification by right doctrine, whether it be a narrowly conceived biblicism on the right or a set of politically correct dogmas on the left. These polarizations have become so predominant in mainline church life that it is difficult to point to exceptions. Many congregations claim to be largely free of conflict, but that is usually for one or two reasons:  1) those who disagree have gone elsewhere; or  2) the difficult issues—homosexuality in particular—are being studiously ignored.   Our urgent need, I would therefore argue, is a serious and intentional theological examination of the question, “On what basis can we be truly liberal?” I was much struck by the recent testimony of Andrew Young, whose liberal political credentials are beyond question. In a wide-ranging interview he spoke of his concerns for the world we are bequeathing to his grandchildren, “the confusion we’re creating in the global order.” He is described as the most popular Democrat in the state of Georgia, black or white, but even so, he is intensely disliked by Georgia Republicans, and remains the butt of hateful racist jokes. Yet he said this about his days in Congress: “Almost everything I tried to do in Congress I was able to do because I worked both sides of the aisle. Conservatives were always in the prayer groups, and I attended. Every Wednesday morning, we had Bible study. Almost everybody there was an extreme conservative. But they saw me as sincere, and I could also share their religious conviction—but give it a little different twist.”   We should not romanticize or idealize African-American Christians, but as the spirit of the black church has led the way for us before, it might do so again. Andrew Young’s model is one that the liberal mainlines might ponder. In the black church there is a tradition of forgiveness and tolerance, a faith in the power of redemption for every person, which perseveres in spite of endless slights and hurts. At the same time there is among many African-American Christians a mighty faith in the living God whose Word is like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces (Jeremiah 23:29), a faith that makes our weakened liberal anthropology seem like a very thin brew. In this combination of a high value placed on inclusion and an unquenchable zeal for the Word, might we not see a hint of a new type of genuine liberalism? The model is based in a sincere love of Scripture and a trust in its power to create a new reality, the power of the God who “makes a way out of no way” in a formulation made famous by the Rev. Mr. Young and his colleagues. This is the God who “raises the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.” (Romans 4:17)   The lay Episcopal theologian William Stringfellow has been dead for some years now. He was a polarizing figure in some ways, and the body of work that he left us suffers from sloppy editing and unchecked polemical ire, but there can be no question that he knew both the Scriptures and the power of God. That is what continues to make him unusual as a figure who is cherished by the liberal wing in the church. His vision of what a Christian should look like was (and is) enthusiastically embraced by the left, but his theological stance was actually more encompassing than many realize.   Stringfellow’s theological project was able to accommodate the likelihood that God was working not only through the politically correct Left but also through the supposedly fundamentalist and discredited Right. This was even more true of another radical figure who is still with us, Will Campbell. It was Campbell who, from his post on the frontier of the darkest hours of the civil rights movement, kept his ties to the Ku Klux Klan in spite of everything.   Like many other theologians who have drawn deeply from the well of the Reformation, Stringfellow and Campbell both refuse to declare anyone innocent, either on the Right or on the Left. By the standards of the Epistle to the Romans, beloved of them both, these two theologians were and are as thoroughly Pauline as anyone in the Church today in their conviction that the power of God’s Word will overturn all our conventional assumptions and cause something completely new to come into being—something that will bring surprise and shock to absolutely everyone across the spectrum, as in Matthew 25 where both “sheep” and “goats” are confronted with a message that they clearly did not expect. Again a key text here is Romans 11:32: For God has consigned all men to disobedience, that he may have mercy upon all.   Therefore the difference that really counts between liberals and conservatives in the Church is not specific issues such as homosexuality or even peace and justice, because individual Christians may disagree in good faith about exactly how peace and justice are to be achieved. Nor, I think, is it even the problem of fundamentalism/fanaticism. My sense is that the question that really counts is whether or not there is a living God. I do not say “loving” God, because the mainlines are not failing to preach a loving God. The issue that divides us is not the centrality of agape in the proclamation of the gospel; it would be difficult to disagree about that. The question, rather, is whether God and his Word are “living and active.” END

In his recent article to The Witness, Fr. Harris presents us a post-modern justification for the actions of the General Convention of ECUSA in 03. For despite his analysis of Anglican history, he shows himself well aware of the possibility that the Global South primates representing the majority of the Anglican Communion may well take some type of action. This is why he makes interesting claims in his paper that I doubt would stand up to profound analysis. Among them are equating "unity of the faith" with fascism, and charging that wars are a result of the desire for a "unified world view"?this despite the fact that philosophers and scientists have been searching for a such unity for centuries, whether one calls it metaphysical or cosmological unity, without going to war. Moreover, in his historical analysis, he seems to have often lost the forest for the trees, confusing diversity with "the discomfort of a more fractured world and a shadow of a substance," and unity with a forced "common ecclesial culture." It may help the reader to understand Fr. Harris' article if it is deconstructed using two key paragraphs of his monograph and some key historical facts. The key historical facts are (of course): the overwhelming vote at Lambeth 1998 where nearly 90% of the assembled bishops voted for the approved sexuality statement, the Primates' statement of 03, and the request of the Archbishop of Canterbury. These are the statements with which Fr. Harris has to contend. First paragraph: The western world was brought kicking and screaming into modernity, and parts of the church never got over it. To some extent the missionary efforts of the western churches gave voice to faithful people who found modernity difficult. In new places the old worldview could still be voiced without the need to make science and religion mesh. And now, as modernity is undergoing a transformation into we know not what that is, as we enter the post-modern period the church is kicking and screaming again. And now the discontented are both the holders of a classical or pre-modern worldview and those who took on modernity in all its complexity. Those opposed to what the Episcopal Church is doing represent a cloud of witnesses from increasingly un-useful worldviews, and it is no wonder these brothers and sisters are often at odds with one another as well as with the actions of General Convention. Three charges are made in this paragraph. The first charge is that many, if not most, of the missionaries who went out and evangelized large parts of the Global South were non-adaptive personalities who were incapable of integrating their lives to allow science and religion to mesh. This is an incredible generalization that I doubt is backed up by any scholarly studies. It rather reads more like some Hollywood mythos or a progressive's wish-fulfillment than of solid fact, given the charges that follow. The second charge is that the "discontented" hold a "pre-modern" worldview, that is a primitive one. This connection between missionaries and primitive worldviews makes it obvious that Fr. Harris is charging that 90% of the Anglican bishops hold "un-useful" worldviews, and, by implication, that most of those bishops are the ones located in the old mission lands, which means Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Oceania. There is a third charge that those bishops are conflictive personalities who cannot even get along among themselves, a most interesting charge given the unity of statement on these issues. Who then is capable of a correct post-modern viewpoint? It is no surprise that his conclusion is that, "what the Episcopal Church is doing," is holding up the banner of post-modernity and correct thought. However, to people of color, this does not sound like post-modernity and not even like modernity, but like old-fashioned Victorian colonial thinking. That a mostly white Eurocentric denomination considers most of our viewpoints "un-useful" and "pre-modern" and that they do not need to listen to us but us to them is of no surprise to us. We were told that back in the 1800's heyday of British imperialism. This makes it the more interesting that Fr. Harris mentions colonialism by the third paragraph, contending that the plethora of Anglican cultures makes this impossible now. It seems that it is not as impossible as Fr. Harris contends. Additionally, Fr. Harris shows a high level of naivete about American culture. He fails to consider the possibility that the actions of General Convention do not show any principled stand but rather show only typical American behavior. It is not that difficult to show that The Episcopal Church's rejection of the resolutions the Lambeth Conference and doing what it wishes is no different than President Bush's (and Congress's) relationship to the UN. That The Episcopal Church then fails to carry out an agreement reached at the Primates' Meeting is no different than the failure of President Clinton to present the Kyoto treaty to the Senate. That The Episcopal Church is upset over the possibility of repercussions and possible discipline, arguing that no one can judge us, is a typical USA attitude towards the world. That many in The Episcopal Church insist that any expressions of disagreement, or demonstrations, or financial boycott show disloyalty is no different than the way those who strongly opposed Iraq were charged with lack of patriotism. It needs no appeal to the Holy Spirit to explain ECUSA's actions, only a study of modern American culture and European attitudes to its colonial holdings during the 1800's. Harris: Second paragraph: ...We are in the church mess of our times because national churches, denominations, and world church structures cannot stand solid in a world where the notion of a single overarching narrative is no longer considered either relevant or possible. While it is true that post-modern scholars make the claim that an overarching narrative is not possible, it is precisely the opposite claim that Christianity makes. Apparently 90% of the bishops appear to think that such a narrative is possible, which is why Fr. Harris found it necessary to dismiss their viewpoints as "un-useful" and "pre-modern." They are certainly un-useful to the cause he wishes to support. The claim of classical Christianity is precisely that in Christ we have our overarching narrative, that which unites heaven and earth and makes sense of all of history. "He is before all things, and in him all things hold together," (Col. 1:17, NRSV). The Christological principle is the beginning point of our philosophy. Moreover, to classical Christianity, it is not surprising that outside the Christological principle, it does become impossible to reach a metaphysical overarching narrative. Interestingly enough, science still searches for its Holy Grail of a Grand Unified Theory, uniting electromagnetism, gravitation, the strong nuclear force, and the weak nuclear force believing that an overarching cosmological narrative is not only quite possible, but also attainable. But I digress from Fr. Harris. It is in the context of these two paragraphs that the rest of Fr. Harris' monograph can be interpreted. In order to support his post-modern claims, Fr. Harris does two things. One, he exaggerates differences among Churches, as though any difference, cultural or theological, is proof of a different fundamental narrative. That is, he forgets the difference between adiophora and essencia. Two, he implies that the "unity of the faith" always included an ecclesiastical unity of culture, something which it actually never included. It is helpful at this point to give an extremely brief summary of early Christian history that will be helpful in answering the question of how to establish a truth claim. From the earliest days of the Church, we have a picture of both diversity and unity that belies Fr. Harris' claims. The Pauline arguments with Peter over whether it was necessary to establish an ecclesiastical unity of culture are well documented. The decision of the Church was that the unity of the faith did not demand a unity of practice, as is documented in Acts, Galatians, Colossians, etc. Nor did it require that all agree on all theological points, as the vigorous discussions recorded in Scripture attest. In one of the books called by Peter's name, it is even admitted that Paul's writings are sometimes hard to interpret. Sub-apostolic and post-apostolic Church History continue this pattern. The Ecumenical Councils consistently decided for minimalist statements of faith, allowing wide-ranging theological discussion to continue. The well known schools of Biblical interpretation, the Antiochene, the Alexandrian, etc. attest to this healthy and ongoing theological dialogue. Neither was full unity of practice necessary. The various liturgies of that time period attest to the variety allowed within the Church. And yet those liturgies had a common skeleton which attested to a received apostolic practice. While the Councils did bring ecclesiastical order, varieties of expression, as diverse as the Eastern monarchial bishop and the Celtic peripatetic bishop existed alongside one another. Thus for Fr. Harris to argue that the developing variety in the Communion somehow destroys the possibility of unity is to ignore that very same development of the early Church. Variety of expression and the unity of the faith go side by side with each other. What the Church did insist was that on the things in which it had made a decision, obedience was required. It also insisted that a truth claim could not be decided by one culture alone. A Council of Jerusalem or a later Ecumenical Council was a gathering of peoples from different tribes, nations, peoples, and tongues. Local mono-cultural decisions could be overturned by a multicultural Council. The Early Church was not as "pre-modern" as Fr. Harris would have us believe. They realized that truth claims require input from various worldviews and a healthy presence of the Holy Spirit in order to test them. This is why the Orthodox will not change doctrine or worship to this day. While we may not agree with them, they are making a claim that they cannot change their received truth without such a gathering in the presence of the Holy Spirit. To put it in post-modern terms, the Early Church was making the claim that in the meeting of the various local narratives, in the presence of the Holy Spirit, Truth could be found, and that such Truth could be enforced on the local narratives. But that Ecumenical Church also recognized the integrity of the local narratives, allowing for much variation, as is well documented. That is, the post-modern claim that there are various narratives, none of which is overarching, is contradicted by the Church, which claims that Truth is possible and that a multicultural multiethnic gathering in the presence of the Holy Spirit is one of the best way to ascertain that Truth. As over against the fascism claim of Fr. Harris, the Church Catholic does indeed claim that a local Church can be held to obedience to Truth, and that such is not fascism. Moreover, there is an illogical discrepancy in what Fr. Harris states. If it were fascism that the Communion insist that ECUSA obey its resolutions, is it not also fascism that Fr. Harris insists that the Communion must remain in relationship with ECUSA? If ECUSA is free to follow its local narrative, so is every Church in the Communion, and thus ECUSA cannot insist on retaining unity lest it also be guilty of that same fascism of which it accuses others. Once a unity of narrative is discarded, no one local body can insist on the compliance of another local body in another situational setting. This is the illogicality of some of the post-modern arguments. Should ECUSA appeal to previous Lambeth resolutions, Fr. Harris has already made the case that such are not binding on ECUSA's narrative, thus they are not binding on anybody else's narrative. All narratives are local, to a post-modernist, there is no way to judge, in post-modernism. However, Fr. Harris does not truly believe in post-modernism. As pointed out above, Fr. Harris makes a universal truth claim of his own, that the worldviews (narratives) held by the 90% are inadequate. When Integrity established an Ugandan chapter, it was making the argument that its narrative is indeed overarching and to be applied even against the opposition of the local narrative. In fact, the use of post-modernism by Fr. Harris is somewhat disingenuous since the advocates of a change in the Communion's position argue in terms of universal human freedom, and seek to base their arguments in Biblical reflection in such a way that it is obvious that they do believe in an overarching narrative of Truth. Thus Fr. Harris is neither a skeptical or an affirming post-modernist. He is simply a modernist who does believe in the ability to construct universal Truth claims. His arguments are, at best, disingenuous. But what troubles me is the eurocentrism of his claim to truth that allows him to discard the call of 90% of the bishops of the Communion and the call of the Primates. Fr. Harris has not answered the question of what claim to knowledge allows a predominantly white, middle-class Church to discard so easily the considered decisions of a multicultural multiethnic assembly. Nor has he answered the question of why that assembly may not choose to either discipline or withdraw membership to such a Church, or to even recognize only a part of that Church. The Rev. Ernesto Obregon is the Hispanic missioner for the Diocese of Alabama. He was ordained in the Southern Cone and served as Archdeacon of the southern region of Peru. WHAT EXACTLY IS THE GOSPEL (PART II) - BY FLEMING RUTLEDGE Part one of this address had to do with the subject of good and evil, righteousness and sinfulness, godliness and ungodliness—and how the line between them runs through each person. The classic theological term for this is simul peccator et iustus (sinner and saint simultaneously). The second subject is the doctrine of the Word of God in our present situation. I don’t need to tell you that the Episcopal Church is in turmoil. I want to look briefly at the mainline churches in general. That’s the Lutherans, the Presbyterians, the Methodists, the Episcopalians, and the United Church of Christ. These American denominations in direct descent from the Reformation are being challenged as never before in our history. Weekly if not daily, it seems, a new article declares that the mainlines are “losing ground” or are “in decline,” if not “collapsing” or “imploding” or “in free fall.” At the same time, the denominations themselves are splitting along lines described as “liberals” vs. “conservatives,” “revisionists” vs. “traditionalists.” Perceptive observers of the American scene emphasize the chasm between the intellectual and media elite, on the one hand, and the huge, politically influential “Christian Right” on the other. The mainlines are barely holding their traditional center. Although many individual congregations are actually thriving, the overall statistics and projections for the traditional Protestant churches are dire. With all due respect to those who might think me presumptuous, I think I know what the problem is, and I don’t think it’s the homosexuality issue. Speaking as one who has traveled extensively through the mainline churches and listened to hundreds of sermons over a number of years, I believe that the essential problem can be precisely identified in just a few words, and they are the words of our Lord himself as he spoke to a group of Sadducees: Is not this why you are wrong, that you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God? Jesus’ point against the Sadducees is that the power of God is able to create an entirely new reality that transcends all human categories. The link between the two—the Scriptures and the power of God—is the key. The power of God is manifest through his Word. This is the power that called the creation into being, it is the force that created the Church in the first place, it is the engine that drove the Reformation—yet this power today is increasingly less heard from mainline pulpits, either as thunder or as still small voice, for we have largely ceased to believe that God speaks. All the symptoms arise from that cause. That is the underlying ailment that is producing the morbid effects. Flannery O’Connor, patron saint of those who care about language and Christian doctrine, wrote to a friend: One of the effects of modern liberal Protestantism has been gradually to turn religion into...therapy, to make truth vaguer and vaguer and more and more relative, to banish intellectual distinctions, to depend on feeling instead of thought, and gradually to come to believe that God has no power, that he cannot communicate with us, cannot reveal himself to us, indeed has not done so and that religion is our own sweet invention. We have gradually come to believe that God has no power and has not revealed himself to us. That, I think, is exactly what has happened. The current emphasis on “spirituality” puts the focus on us and our religious activities, rather than on God. It is anthropological rather than theological. Underlying all of this is the question of power, of dunamis. The idea that the Word of God is powerful in and of itself has been fading in the mainlines for a long time... [Content continues with theological reflections, Scriptural analysis, critique of liberal and conservative polarizations, call for theological renewal, and commendation of African-American witness and theologians like Stringfellow and Campbell.] ...The antidote to mainline malaise in the present moment is a revivifying dose of Scripture and the power of God. Let all the earth fear the Lord, let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him! For he spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood forth. —Psalm 33:8–9 Praise the Lord! ADDENDUM William Stringfellow tells a story both amusing and alarming: I recall, a few years ago, serving on a commission of the Episcopal Church charged with articulating the scope of the total ministry of the Church in modern society... Toward the end of [the first] meeting, some of those present proposed that it might be an edifying discipline for the group, in its future sessions, to undertake some concentrated study of the Bible... The proposal was rejected on the grounds, as one Bishop put it, that “most of us have been to seminary and know what the Bible says; the problem now is to apply it to today’s world.” Stringfellow’s diagnosis is right on target: the life-giving power of the Word of God is unknown to the group’s leaders. Fleming Rutledge was in parish ministry for 22 years. She was one of the first women to be ordained to the priesthood of the Episcopal Church...

SARASOTA (March 9) — Saying the Episcopal Church has “denied Jesus the Christ” for elevating a non-celibate gay priest as the bishop of New Hampshire, the rector of the Church of the Nativity in Sarasota is resigning to form a new congregation under the umbrella of the Anglican Mission in America. The Rev. Jim Murphy’s last Sunday at Nativity will be March 28… In a letter to his congregation… Murphy said the Archbishop of Rwanda… has agreed to accept him as a priest in good standing… to explore “starting a new Gospel-minded, mission-oriented congregation in this area.” Bishop John Lipscomb… will grant Murphy an official transfer… to the Province of Rwanda if Archbishop Kolini requests it. Murphy has been an outspoken critic of the 2003 General Convention… In an open letter… he wrote: “Frank Griswold has arrogantly spurned repeated calls for repentance — he is to be treated as an apostate…” Bishop Lipscomb… nonetheless is committed to encouraging both sides to keep talking… “We must leave the doors open… Anything less is not of Christ!” Murphy is the second priest to leave the diocese for the AMiA… The Anglican Mission in America… is a group of about 60 congregations across the U.S., most of which have broken away from ECUSA… The AMiA was sanctioned by the Anglican provinces of Rwanda and South East Asia… But to date, none of the AMiA’s congregations, priests or bishops are officially recognized by the Archbishop of Canterbury. END

Conservative prelate licensed a priest outside his diocese Solange De Santis, Anglican Journal March 9, 2004 Bishop William Anderson of the northern British Columbia diocese of Caledonia is facing potential disciplinary action after licensing a conservative, former Episcopalian priest in the United States diocese of Wyoming. “Bishop Anderson is acting improperly,” said Archbishop David Crawley… “The canons of our church state that a bishop is not allowed to interfere in another diocese.” On Jan. 18, Rev. Hume “Skip” Reeves… started a congregation in Cheyenne — St. Peter the Apostle and Confessor, a parish of the diocese of Caledonia. “Bishop Anderson… has in fact licensed (Mr.) Reeves and is assuming oversight of the congregation. This action is clearly in violation of church order.” — Bishop Bruce Caldwell, Wyoming Bishop Anderson said Mr. Reeves left the Episcopal Church because he disagreed with Bishop Caldwell’s approval of the consecration of openly gay bishop Gene Robinson. “I got a request… that an orthodox priest wants to preach the gospel… and is looking for an orthodox bishop to support him.” He wrestled with the issue of jurisdiction… but believes that it is Anglicans with more liberal views who are “playing fast and loose with the canons.” Bishop Anderson declined to participate fully in the Jan. 25 consecration of Bishop James Cowan… Though listed… as a co-presenter, he remained in his pew rather than stand with Bishop Ingham… “is doing profound damage to the church and I couldn’t pretend everything is all right.”

By David W. Virtue March 5, 2004 PHILADELPHIA, PA — A group of Anglicans who want traditional Anglican worship using the 1928 Prayer Book has been formed in the Philadelphia area. Last November, a small group calling themselves “The Anglican Gathering” began worshipping on Sunday afternoons. “To some, it seemed an aggressive move… Episcopalians are everywhere but orthodox Anglicans are few… We knew that many members of our community are uncomfortable with the promiscuous pantheism and revisionist nonsense preached in Chestnut Hill’s two Episcopal churches… We began to pray… believing God would sovereignly draw His people to Himself.” — Hudson Barton, lay traditionalist They found pastoral support from Fr. Eddie Rix of All Saints Church, Wynnewood, PA… All Saints is a Forward-in-Faith, NA parish and is affiliated with “The Network.” “We are now realizing that there is great potential for the Gospel in collaboration… two footholds in the Anglican Communion… will make us safe and strong.” For those who live in the Philadelphia area, “The Anglican Gathering” meets every Sunday for a Vesper service using the 1928 Prayer Book…

March 5, 2004 As violence in Iraq reaches new appalling levels, the foundations are being laid upon which sharia (Islamic law) may be built. With the current figures standing at 271 deaths after the anti-Shia bombings of March 2, the Iraqi Governing Council has declared three days of mourning, and hence a delay in the signing of the interim constitution, or Transitional Administrative Law (T.A.L.). The T.A.L. cites Islam as a source of law — as opposed to the source — which would bode well, were it not for the following qualifying paragraph stating that no law is to be passed which goes against the tenets of Islam. Such tenets are codified in the sharia, which carries inbuilt discrimination against women and non-Muslims. Islam is not merely recognised as the majority religion, but the official religion… There are no commitments to honour Iraq’s signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights… Without such restrictions there will be nothing to prevent sharia-compliant legislation being passed… The T.A.L. enshrines a Bill of Rights and Article 4 does guarantee “freedom, practice and rites of the other religions will be protected,” but what about rights? The emphasis is institutional… There is no protection for the individual’s freedom of expression, no protection for an individual who wants to change his/her religion… Religions not officially recognised, like the Mandeans (followers of John the Baptist), will no doubt continue to be ruthlessly persecuted. SHARIA EATING AWAY AT WOMEN’S RIGHTS …The minister of education has replaced all but three university presidents with Islamists. They in turn have decreed that all women at university should now wear headscarves… A female lawyer in Najaf was barred from being a judge… Dr. Sawsan al-Sharafi was asked to leave her post because certain hardliners would not work for her. ANTI-CHRISTIAN VIOLENCE CONTINUES …On 3 February a Christian residence in Basra was hit by a grenade… On 14 February an American missionary was killed… Five Christian roadside vendors in Basra were shot dead on 15 February by vigilantes with Kalashnikovs… Many Christian Churches have received anonymous threatening letters… Posters have been put up urging Christians to convert to Islam or leave the country… Pray • Praise God that Islam is only a source of law… • Pray for Administrator Paul Bremer’s wisdom… • Pray for Iraqi Christians: peace, faith, hope, and the Lord’s protection. Barnabas Fund works to support Christian communities mainly, but not exclusively, in the Islamic world where they are facing poverty and persecution.

By Sandi Dolbee UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER April 7, 2004 The Episcopal Diocese of San Diego announced yesterday that an independent committee will be formed to investigate accusations of misconduct against Episcopal Community Services (ECS), the church’s social service arm. The announcement comes less than a week after The San Diego Union-Tribune reported the county District Attorney’s Office is investigating ECS to determine if any wrongdoing occurred involving finances and public contracts. “We must get to the bottom of this situation,” Bishop Gethin Hughes said. ECS is one of San Diego’s oldest and largest charities… providing more than $20 million in services each year… But it has also been an embattled agency in the past two years… Hughes sits on the ECS board, though he repeatedly has noted he has no direct authority over the organization… The committee will be a mix of lay people and clergy… “They are people of high integrity who currently have no ties to this office or ECS.” Rolfe Wyer, president of the ECS board: “We’re not going to start a general witch hunt. We’re going to focus on allegations which have been made and not on personalities.” However, he said “some of this is about personalities. There are always differences in operating styles.” The board supports ECS’s executive director, the Rev. Amanda Rutherford May… who said: “Nothing has been brought to my attention that hasn’t been corrected… I know of no fraud… I’m not planning to resign. I feel called to this ministry.” Sources said the DA’s investigation began last month and that among the questions is whether records the charity submitted to the county were doctored… The committee’s investigation probably will take several weeks. “We’re hoping they can get back to us as soon as possible, but we’re not going to rush them…”

Church’s national council sends resolution to triennial meeting By Solange De Santin and Marites N. Sison Staff Writers, Anglican Journal Mississauga, Ont., March 7, 2004 — Council of General Synod (CoGS) voted to ask General Synod in May to decide whether dioceses may offer blessing ceremonies to gay couples. The council… wrestled with the issue… over four days… In the end… “it is very important that General Synod get the opportunity to express its mind on the matter at this time.” The five-part resolution proposes that General Synod affirm “the authority and jurisdiction of any diocesan synod, with the concurrence of its bishop, to authorize the blessing of committed same-sex unions.” The resolution would give dioceses what is known as a “local option.” …The resolution also calls for unity with the church even as it acknowledges disagreement… It addresses the issue of congregations that might be at odds with a bishop or with a diocese over the issue, saying that the church may provide “adequate alternative episcopal oversight and pastoral care for all.” Text of resolutions: Affirms unity in Christ despite differing convictions… Affirms diocesan authority to authorize blessings of committed same-sex unions… Affirms continued respectful dialogue and study… Affirms respect for dialogue in indigenous and other communities… Affirms commitment to fellowship and unity, including provision of adequate episcopal oversight and pastoral care regardless of perspective.

Weekend: All Things Considered HEADLINE: Reverend Canon David Roseberry talks about the theological arguments against gay marriage ANCHOR & HOST: JOHN YDSTIE Gay marriage continued to grow as an issue this week… President Bush stepped into the fray announcing his support for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage… Reverend Canon DAVID ROSEBERRY (Christ Church, Plano, Texas): Good to be here. YDSTIE: Now just so our listeners understand, you’re an Episcopal priest, is that right? ROSEBERRY: That’s correct. YDSTIE: And you are opposed to gay marriage. ROSEBERRY: Yes, absolutely. YDSTIE: Tell us briefly why this issue is so important that you think it might actually require a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage? ROSEBERRY: Well, I think the church has for 2,000 years in the Judeo-Christian understanding from the Bible has recognized that marriage is not a human institution. It is God’s idea… Marriage was created by God as an arrangement that was his crowning achievement. It is not our place… to tinker with something that God has so wonderfully made. YDSTIE: But hasn’t the institution of marriage changed over history? ROSEBERRY: …Same-sex marriage is an oxymoron. It just doesn’t work that way. YDSTIE: If you look—if you came at this from a Libertarian perspective… How would gay marriage negatively affect the institution of marriage for heterosexual couples? ROSEBERRY: …The unanswered question… is about the children. And I think same-sex partners cannot provide the kind of cradle environment that a husband and wife can do… YDSTIE: So your feeling is that a child would be better off in a single-mother household as opposed to a two-mother household? ROSEBERRY: Well, definitely I do feel that. However, I think that what the state should be encouraging and defending is marriage… This is the bearing wall of our civilization… If you start to hinder it or break it down… you’re dealing with forces well beyond our control.