Salt

Is there Salsa in Columbus?

That would be a great reason to go.  England beat Trinidad.  This bodes well for the true church.

it's my 10th anniversary to the ordination today, June 15th.

The Daily Episcopalian reports that ECUSA did vote on the Cucumber Sandwich being the official food of the church.  He does not report if it won.  I hope it didn't.  The proper dish is either Jamaican Beef Patties or Chicken Tikka Masala, even if I mentioned that this convention was about cucumber sandwiches.

Rowan gives a big "hello" but a theologian friend of some prominence really wants to kill him.  "say, mr Cantuar, we will truly enjoy seeing you this year." 

"Um, my calandar is full."

"Full?  You always come.  At least for tea on  Sunday, when we elect our Mostest of the Rightest."

"Um, no, I've got to go bless some small animals, read some Balthazar and brush up on my Latin.  And my hat is very messy.  Been meaning to take it to the cleaners."

"Well we could change the date."

"Uh, no, I'm pretty packed."

"when is a good time for you."

"Uh, never.  Is never good?"

...

I always knew Greg hated pink, but he also hates green.  One thing for certain, he still gets his news from Fox.   I think he can tell the difference between universalism and paganism.  One thing for sure, he wants a fight. 

Good to see the Episcopal church support the Peace Movement in Israel, rather than the handful of Republican Jews who control AIPAC, and a rational, pro-market policy for Cuba.   You would think that if a policy hasn't worked for 46 years you might want to change it.  Just an idea.

But not too soon.  Once that happens, getting a cheap cuban will be impossible!

Greg Griffiths redefines sociopath and reveals his anti-theological tendencies.  I think he defines "sociopath" as one who makes a really stupid comment.   Greg knows whereof he speaks.  He is clearly sociopathic.  In this new sense, that is.

Matt is unsure of why liberals are so friendly (its because they are taking over the world!!).  That's why we are so good at charity.  We want to take over the world with our Gay Agenda.  Which is Jesus. 

Oh, but that's your agenda. 

We can share.  If you want. 

Here at Seabury, with 8 other priests who love the church - from center to liberal to radical, all working in parishes of varying sizes, we just want to get to work at loving the Lord.  And in the end, our suspicion is that conservatives will just keep taking and taking.  Nothing will make them happy.  charity is beyond them. 

They can spend their time worrying about gay sex.  For us, we've got a mission.  Bishop Curry preaches the word!  Via

Follow me--and I will make you more than you ever thought you could be! Follow me--(applause drowing out some words)  Follow me, and I will show you a life of love, that hate cannot defeat. Follow me, and I will show you a life of justice that injustice can *never* tear down. (Amen) Follow me, and I will show you life that not even the power of death can take away.

You shall receive power. We have already received power, for the Holy Spirit has already come among us, and we are His gifts. So go forth. Witness to a love that will not let you go. Witness to a compassion that knows no bounds. Witness to a kingdom and a dream of God, where all of us can find life, and hope, and happiness.

Blogging the Blogs

Greetings everyone.  Looks like Fr. Jake is on his way to hell.  God Bless Him for taking this journey.  I think he must be a sadomasochist or something.  It's part of the religion.  So are all my bishops. 

the delegation from the Diocese of NY rocks.  Jim Burns - his spirit is so calm you just want to share all your anxieties with him.  Jerry Keucher - with enough common sense to make most vestries tremble.  And Tobias.  Conservatives just can't lay a hand on him.  And the alternates are pretty good also, although I think they just want to go drink.  My bishops - talented and excellent to a "t."

Whatever that means. 

I think it means they have excellent t-shirts. 

The cardinal gets tempted a bit too easily.   The Romans really hate the idea of listening to women.

Especially my mom.  All that nagging. 

The Lord seems to be avoiding Andy Figueroa.  He's probably with Brad Drell and Bishop Bennison.  Brad, when I get to convention, I'll bring a couple Cubans, because that is exactly what Jesus would smoke. 

Well, I think Jesus would smoke other things as well.

So I'm blogging here from Seabury, with a few new friends, about to walk to the lake.  And while the devil does his work at convention, I will see what God has wrought upon the lake - a beautiful sky, wonderful water.   The Lord is here among a few revisionists at Seabury (and a couple moderate people).

Oh, and I think Matt Kennedy is saying something.   My prediction:  his church would really like some "clarity."  God bless him - trying to parse the dull into the interesting.  I hope he likes Geneva.  It's nice in the summer.

Chicago

Off to Chicago for three weeks.  I'll be studying at Seabury, beginning my D.Min course.  I love Chicago - I spent three years in graduate school here.

I will be blogging various sundry things about any gossip I get at General Convention, which for all you non-Anglicans is the big sherry and cucumber sandwich festival we have every three years.  This time, we elect one person who gets to wear a bigger hat than anyone else.  He then gets to be called "the hostest with the mostest" but, we usually just call him "The Most." 

We get a much wider variety of choices this time!  One's from Columbia.  He might be related to Pablo Escobar.  Another's a woman.  She's pretty smart.  And then we have five nominees from the south.  Because to be truly holy, you need a southern or an English accent.  I'm a revisionist because I have a nasally tenor voice.

The mostest reverend gets the most of one thing, but no-one knows what.  It's a secret that is locked in the paintings of the National Museum, and encrypted with musical codes in the music of Vaughn Williams.   We don't have an Opus Dei.  We have TESM. 

(Ooh.  Unfair, Fr. Wilkins. Did you really say that?)

We'll also be talking a lot about sex, which is fine because I'm not getting any. 

I am the embodiment of chastity, but it's not because I'm trying.  "Hey, I'm a priest" is a very poor pick-up line.  Try it.  Especially in Manhattan. 

Predictions abound.  I predict that prayers will be said, and people will get all in a huff because of who they stand next to.   Jesus will be present, but people won't find him.   

He'll be watching the World Cup.

A Long Reply to William Witt

William Witt is one of the more persistent and eloquent writers about sexuality and the church.  He has written one article for the Anglican Communion Institute that merits some reflection.

I do not have his erudition or his expertise.  I have read far less than he has and do not write as well.  I am merely a parish priest in a small, suburban church in White Plains, NY.   

Professor Witt refers to his Southern Baptist inheritance as formational.  Clearly this frames his relationship with God, and his appreciation of scripture.   I come from a family very different that Professor Witt’s.   My mother from a prosperous interfaith Indian family, and my father from Yankee scientists.   They met in a doctoral program.  My mother went to the Anglican church next to a prominent Music Conservatory; my father, the neighboring Unitarian assembly one block away. 

So my instinct is charity towards other faiths.  I am grounded in skepticism of any sort of easy, reductionistic, foundationalism articulation of faith.  I also have been deeply inculcated with the ideas that science and empiricism are powerful methods of discerning truth, although I have some sympathy for the philosophical anarchism in epistemology, that allows for Christianity to hold some ground against science. 

But I digress.

My own faith journey included, as with professor Witt, encounters with very holy men of generosity and magnanimity.  For me, the person was The Rev. Canon Cyril V. Roberts, the chaplain to the Eastman School of Music.    And, to be perfectly honest, music was my entry into the church.  I am convinced that if Jesus were music, he would be, could be, a Bach fugue.  This was before I heard Ray Barretto’s Acid or Tito Puente’s Hong Kong Mambo.

Roberts embodied a free openness that represented, for me, the hallmark of being an Anglican.  Even though my own parents were secure and generous, Roberts was also joyful.    So let me confess that in every way my first experience of Christianity was Joy – the joy that is almost impossible to resist when listening to Bach, as exemplified when being greeted by a man of profound, inexplicable happiness.

I was also never told that homosexuality was anti-Christian or unchristian or Christian.  My mother did reflect some upon her instinctive homophobia, but as she was a poet, there we had many people at our dinner table who were gay.  Admittedly, I don’t really care much about homosexuality, nor do I have any particular love for the category.   And honestly, I spend far lest time thinking about sexuality than economics.   So when I have read scripture, the codes against homosexuality seem quaint and mythological.  The words of Christ Jesus, and the lives of the apostles still commanded my attention and inspired my faith.   

So Witt and I come from different worlds, and I think this matters.  I do read scripture, but with a much different intent than he does.  Recently, as I was feeling a bit discouraged, I began reading the psalms; I then read a few chapters of Isaiah.  And I felt a deep affection around me.    I didn’t read the genealogies; nor did I read the Levitical codes.   I was being selective:  I read the scripture that reminded me of the Joy and security that God has promised through Christ.

So this is from where I begin reading his essay.  I read scripture for my own edification and encouragement.  But I’m also not the sort who places science in a subordinate role easily.   I would not have thought to read scripture to determine if homosexuality is disordered or not.   For me, it is almost like asking scripture to figure out how cars are made.    

Church of England reports on Youth Spirituality

It is just as I suspected.  I was never, myself, convinced by Christianity through appeals to the afterlife, divine punishment or "sin."   Christianity may be a language that we teach people to speak - and it just isn't being spoken by those immersed in contemporary culture.

Ruth Gledhill writes: 

THE Church of England has debunked the widely held view that young people are spiritual seekers on a journey to find transcendent truths to fill the “God-shaped hole” within them.  

 

A report published by the Church today indicates that young people are quite happy with a life without God and prefer car boot sales to church.  

If they think about church at all, the images young people come up with are “cardigans”, “sandals and socks”, “corrupt”, “traditionalist” and “stagnant”.

Alright.  We clearly need better fashion.

The authors began their work believing that even if the young had little knowledge of Christianity they would still have religious or spiritual yearnings. They were shocked to find that they did not.

Personally, the premise is pretty faulty.  I remember thinking more about girls than God.  And it was a lovely young violinist at Evensong that converted me to the mysteries of the church.   The music!  What kids are interested in is power. 

Nevertheless, young people do not feel disenchanted, lost or alienated in a meaningless world. “Instead, the data indicated that they found meaning and significance in the reality of everyday life, which the popular arts helped them to understand and imbibe.” Their creed could be defined as: “This world, and all life in it, is meaningful as it is,” translated as: “There is no need to posit ultimate significance elsewhere beyond the immediate experience of everyday life.” The goal in life of young people was happiness achieved primarily through the family.  

The researchers were also shocked to discover little sense of sin or fear of death. Nor did they find any Freudian guilt as a result of private sensual desires. The young people were, however, afraid of growing old.  

In their advice to the Church, the report’s authors say that the first thing to do is “avoid panic”. It recommends means of reconnecting with young people such as through alternative worship forms, traditional buildings, church schools and civic occasions where Anglican clergy often officiate.  

However, the authors also note the obvious contrast between the view of Generation Y that life is generally benign with the figures showing rises in eating disorders, substance abuse, teenage suicide, bullying and sexual abuse.  

The authors conclude: “We live in an instant culture, which c

ann

ot be reached by instant missionary tactics.” And the desire for happiness is valid and should not be criticised by clergy. “It can only be outclassed by a Christ-like way of life, for in him alone is true happiness to be found.

So what is at stake here?  What is God telling us through this study?  I think it is pretty clear that the traditional forms of evangelizing just won't cut it.  We'll have to spend a lot more time thinking about who we are in relationship to youth culture.

Of course, it is possible that youthfulness should not be idolized.  It is just one way of being fully alive.

Mark Andrus

Bishop of California.

Alright, I'm a little peeved that the media is spinning this hets win, gays lose.  Everyone breathes a sigh of relief.

Andrus has the skills.  Its ok to select the straight man when he is the best candidate. 

Just like its OK to select the lesbian or gay candidate. 

What is most remarkable is that it didn't make a difference in California. 

It makes a difference to some people, and that's OK.

But makes no difference to the holy spirit. 

May I be so bold?  Andrus - Presiding Bishop, 2015.

Speaking of Presiding bishop, I have odds on Alexander, although I think Schori has the brains and Sauls will have the necessary legal skills for what will inevitably occur after 2006. 

Future Clergy and Seminary Education

I recently received a fundraising letter from “Funding Future Leaders,” an organization that is attempting to address the seminarian debt crisis. The average debt, halfway through seminary, is nearly $40,000 a year. And the Episcopal Church “is the only major denomination in the United States that does not have a central funding source to support seminaries in their education and training.” This was the reason I went to the Divinity School rather than General. The Divinity School gave me a full scholarship. 

Building an endowment will not solve the problem that churches can't pay clergy, and that the education clergy get is too expensive. What is missing is a comprehensive examination of what we can expect of clergy, many of whom are on their second career and have families; and a reconsideration of how we might educate them. Why should we have full-time clergy and education always done on location? 

As churches become poorer, they will call bi-vocational clergy. These clergy may be, for example, social workers, academics, nurses, lawyers and businesspeople. They may work full or part time in other professions. This may be a blessing. Mormon elders, for example, typically have full time work, and I have heard that most Mormon services are shared by the members. 

Articles on the American Episcopal Right

Two interesting articles have appeared connecting conservative politics and control over the denominations.  To be sure, a lot is at stake:  the spirit of the nation... and lots of property. 

the Christian left was instrumental in raising awareness about human rights and torture in Latin American during the 70's and 80's.  It helped end Apartheid.  It claimed the prophetic witness of social justice that has been ignored by the religious right - in part because such witness undermines the political ideology of the political right. 

From the Episcopal Diocese of Washington.  And the Witness.   

IRD, in particular, was formed in response to the sympathies of the religious denominations with those central American Organizations resisting the  brutal dictatorships we were allied with. 

The Spirit of this Age and Fudge

I often hear the comment that reappraisers are succumbing to “the spirit of the age.”  My ears perk up when I hear it, as they usually do when they sense philosophical confusion.  The phrase has a slightly condescending, pietistic tone, as if charity toward another’s journey in Christ is last year’s fashion.   The keepers of the eternal flame, of the “Faith Once Delivered” insist upon their own authority to determine what is pure and what is not, usually with the rallying cry, the church has always done it that way.

One obvious objection to such a statement is that “classic” fashions always start somewhere.  They can easily be responses to newer challenges.  The church did not always have cassock-albs or women’s clerical blouses from Almy’s, nor did we sing African choruses during the Gloria.  Some of us didn’t like candles on the altar, and some of us aren’t used to bagels or Jamaican meat patties during coffee hour.  These could all, I suppose, indicate something about the spirit of the age, or demonstrate how the current spirit reveals the eternal spirit.   The current spirit, for example, as embodied by civil rights, does reveal something about the eternal spirit. 

So what is the “spirit of the age”?  Is there only one?  I doubt it.   Capitalism, if it means anything, may be a spirit that includes both competition (obviously) and cooperation.  Similarly, The spirit of public works allows individuals to explore their own personal livelihoods with greater intensity.  So my impression is that there are different sorts of interrelated “spirits,” and not a unified one.

Reasserters tend to minimize the way our age is different, misunderstanding the roots of the reappraiser position.  Our society, for example, includes large, protected institutions that organize our system of economic relationships.  They can powerfully move large amounts of property from one place to another.   This interdependence allows us to be seemingly self-sufficient and make choices apart from one another.  The consequences are enormous.   We have created a world that would be unrecognizable by peasants in the provinces.   

Another example of our age’s difference is that our technological and medical understanding of the human body is, simply put, far more accurate than when the bible was compiled.  I’m always perplexed by the reasserter response, which seems to be along the lines, “you think you are so smart, huh?  Well, you’re not!”  Even though viruses, germs and Salma Hayek were nowhere in the church’s worldview, if you read a reasserter casually you’d think that such knowledge was irrelevant.   And Salma makes a lot of difference.

Institutions transmit more information more rapidly than ever before.  Reliability hasn't increased, necessarily - but misunderstanding has.   More interestingly, television, in particular, has revolutionized our society so that images are more common than written words.   Bibles do not need to be physical texts anymore – they can fit in a tiny chip, and manipulated by sharp interpreters using electronic concordances.  The accidental insights that come through flipping through the holy scripture is replaced by search engines.   

By no means does the amount of information establish any sort of universal meaning. If anything, it reveals how much the same information can be interpreted differently.  I do wonder, as our culture becomes more visual, what will happen to scripture?  After all, what if we had a video of the resurrection?   What would this mean about our understanding of sexual ethics?   The movie, the Passion, made the story much more available, for example, in a different way than previously.  The movie becomes part of the sacred imagination, a lens with which to read the text.    More interestingly, movies assert human authorship - authorship that is rendered invisible, or conveniently forgotten, in an anonymous, reprinted text. 

So it seems that most reasserters, to me, are unclear when they say bland, general statements about ECUSA being a victim, or reflecting the spirit, of its age.  Is there such a church?  If so, I doubt that what distinguishes this “age” is first about sexuality or sex.  Instead, it might be that the nature of our institutions has rendered it easier to avoid direct conflict, allowing us to form balkanized churches.  It may be that the relationship between private and public behavior has changed.  It might be that the church reflects the paucity of love in a society that has minimized the sacrifices inherent in committment.  But we have certainly become much more aware of the impact of private behavior in our public choices, asserting that secrecy, in the most crucial parts of our self-knowledge, requires a shaming mechanism that cruelly violates the integrity of the God-given soul. 

The other word I hear a lot is “fudge.”  I love fudge, and if reasserters are against fudge then we are clearly in different churches.  On Easter, I’m serving ice cream, with lots of it.  Heated, no less.   

Keep your dry, stale and bitter saltines.

Fudge is delicious.  Chocolate.  Butter.  Sugar.   The lovely fruits of capital: knowledge, creativity, cooperation, wealth. 

The true spirit of the age.  ;)

Mark Sisk Preaches the Word

The bishop is a talented church builder and has a wonderful group of people working at the cathedral.  He absolutely rocked today, and fortunately, it is online....

...Therefore, though the rocks that I see lining up are frequently the actions of our government, it would be a mistake to see these actions as separate from, part from, the prevailing views of society.  Make no mistake the underlying danger is always a society complacent with its certainties: a society that is, on the one hand, quick to blame, and on the other, equally quick to ignore. 

One very worrisome rock in our line is that we have become a remarkably anti-intellectual nation.  Education funding is routinely cut.  Our own New York State leadership has fought for years to resist court ordered support for New York City schools.  We, as a people, seem capable of denying everything from evolution, to global warming, to mistakes in foreign policy.  And we, in the Church, seem all too ready to dismiss the importance of a well educated priesthood.

Another development, another rock in the line, that indicates to me tough times to come is, first and foremost, the remarkably passive national response to the discovery that our government has been eavesdropping on American citizens without court authorization, jailing American citizens without providing recourse to the judicial system, to say nothing of the torture of prisoners.   These outrages are routinely defended in the most sober terms, by senior administration officials.  And just as routinely those defenses are accepted by the majority of our leaders, as well as a majority of the American people, with little more than a shrug of our collective shoulders.

Looking more specifically at the life of religion, things are just as disturbing.  I think for example of the IRS investigation of All Saints, Pasadena with its threat of removing their tax exempt status, based upon one sermon by a former rector.  And though there may have been similar investigations of conservative Churches, as the IRS claims, we have yet to hear about them.  This has, in and of itself, cast a pall on the spirit of free expression from the pulpit.

Personally, I was surprised to find myself complimented on my courageous preaching after I had made a sharp but passing comment critical of our government.  This compliment led me to wonder, just what have we come to as a nation if it is imagined that it takes courage for a preacher to make even a generic criticism of their government? 

Another rock in the line is my perception that there is subtle discrimination against more liberal minded clerics, and the communities that they lead. 

Recently the Bishop of Delaware told me that all his requests to visit the morgue at Dover Air Force Base, located in his Diocese, where the bodies of those killed in Iraq are first brought, on their return journey home, had been ignored.  At the same time conservative Protestant leaders regularly are authorized to make such visits.  In this same vein I was interested to read of the hour long meeting that some of the most conservative bishops in the Episcopal Church had with our President, while liberal bishops have yet to have such an audience. 

All of this to say nothing of the attempt to criminalize the offering of a cup of cold water to the little ones, as members of Congress have attempted to do, in their remarkably ill conceived Immigration bill.

Finally, and to my mind, complementing it all, is the President's faith based initiatives program.  What better way for churches to be rendered quiescent than for them to become dependent on the flow of government funds.  What better way to make them docile then to threaten with the loss of tax exempt status on the one hand, and, with the other, offer the reward of fodder in the food trough. 

You've all heard of the modern Golden Rule: "He who has the gold rules."  To which the corollary might well be: "The one who rules does so by rewarding their friends and punishing their enemies."

This is the era in which we find ourselves exercising our ministry.  It is a complex and dangerous world that I do not believe we are negotiating very well.  It may be that I am over-reacting.  But I don't think so.

What I hope I have made clear is that what troubles me far more than any specific governmental act (governments are always given to doing outrageous things), is the response of the people.  The failure of public out rage is nothing less than frightening.

Read it all...