Deceptive rhetoric erodes confidence in our leaders,
as they ask us to follow them down an uncertain path
When in 2004 renegade Episcopal bishops announced formation of an Anglican Communion Network, they assured clergy and lay people in their dioceses that it had the full support of the Archbishop of Canterbury.
In the Diocese of South Carolina, Bishop Salmon even claimed that Archbishop Williams himself suggested the idea.
When word got back to London, the Archbishop was not amused. His spokesman quietly let it be known that he, as putative leader of the Anglican Communion, had nothing to do with creating an organization aimed at tearing down the Episcopal Church. The way the dissenter bishops had described their plans to Williams and what they were actually doing were two very different things.
Yet the ACN bishops and their spin doctors continued undeterred promoting the mythology.
In this Diocese it was the cornerstone of a decision to affiliate with the ACN and start down a reckless path that would consume its financial resources, distract it from the work of the Gospel, and lead its people ever more deeply into spiritual alienation and confusion in the wider Church.
Mark Lawrence is not Ed Salmon, and there was hope that he would bring some integrity to the public conversations about the direction of the Diocese.
However, not only has that failed to happen, Bishop Lawrence’s hyperbolic claims of apostasy and abandonment of Communion by the Episcopal Church now threaten to take a very misinformed diocese down a roller coaster ride for which it is ill-prepared and badly misinformed.
On October 24th, a special closed-door convention of the Diocese was convened in Mount Pleasant to consider five resolutions carefully crafted by those who despise the national Church leadership.
Four of the five passed. However, the real agenda was much deeper and far more radical than the high-minded language and theological nuances of the resolutions suggested.
In approving the resolutions the delegates voted to move father down a road that will dramatically alter our relationship with the Episcopal Church and the theological traditions that have guided our Diocese for more than 300 years.
In fairness, our Bishop says that passage of these resolutions only signify a restructuring of the Diocese's "engagement" with the other 110 dioceses in the Episcopal Church. However, there can be no doubt that this is a critical moment in an uncertain course that is risky, unnecessary, and not particularly well-considered.
In many ways, less-than-straight-forward rhetoric and misinformation in weeks following the General Convention have made it difficult for people in the Diocese to decipher what is going on.
The following commentary is intended to help clarify some of it.
1. Trashing the Episcopal Church. Contrary to the impression given by Bishop Lawrence and Canon Harmon, the General Convention did not reject God, Jesus, The Trinity, Scripture, or the Anglican tradition. Their sky-is-falling rhetoric has been cloaked in throw away lines that they surely realize will enrage their listeners.
We did a fact check on a couple of them.
Rites from the Book of Common Prayer. In an address to clergy on August 13th, Bishop Lawrence said,
“At the last three General Conventions, I have been concerned about the lack of Eucharists according to the rites in the Book of Common Prayer. Even this I might be able to overlook if the rites that were employed were not so devoid of references to God the Father.”
Records of the General Convention show that all the rites used at the Eucharists came directly from the Book of Common Prayer, except on three occasions when officially authorized trial liturgies based on Rite III were used. A review of the rites used in the 2006 and 2003 Conventions show that there were no liturgies used that were not from the Book of Common Prayer.
When SC Episcopalians asked several delegates from other dioceses about the Bishop’s allegations, none had any idea what he was talking about.
The following is a listing of Eucharistic rites employed at the most recent General convention.
July 8 BCP, Rite II, Eucharistic Prayer B
July 9 BCP, Rite II, Eucharistic Prayer A
July 10 Official Trial Liturgy, Eucharistic Prayer III
July 11 Official Trial Liturgy, Eucharistic Prayer II
July 12 BCP, Rite II, Eucharistic Prayer B
July 13 BCP, Eucharistic Prayer B
July 14 BCP, Rite I, Eucharistic Prayer II
July 15 Official Trial Liturgy, Eucharistic Prayer I
July 16 BCP, Rite II, Eucharistic Prayer A
uly 17 BCP, Rite II, Eucharistic Prayer B
Attacks on the Trinity. Just
as the Bishop’s comments about the use of the Book of Common Prayer
could not be substantiated, so too were his claims that the references
to God as Father were omitted from official liturgies at the Convention.
According to Bishop Lawrence, “One of the doctrines under barrage in our Church is an orthodox understanding of the Trinity.”
Our unscientific survey of Convention delegates produced not a single person who could verify the Bishop’s recollection about criticism of the Trinity, much less some sort of “barrage” or assault against it.
There is nothing in the official records of the Convention to indicate that there was any kind of debate or proposal to debate the traditional understanding of the Trinity. Similarly SC Episcopalians was unable to find a single bishop who could recollect a discussion of this nature in any of the meetings of the House of Bishops Lawrence has attended.
“He (Lawrence) complains that he is not taken seriously,” said one delegate, “but when he says these preposterous things, it makes it very difficult.”
2. The "War" against the Diocese of South Carolina. In his August address Bishop Lawrence employed combative language and military imagery to suggest we need to be ”awakened and mobilized“ for some sort of doomsday scenario.
[Note: These paragraphs have been revised from earlier copy. 11/11/09]
”There is an increasingly aggressive displacement within this Church of the gospel of Jesus Christ’s transforming power by the “new” gospel of indiscriminate inclusivity which seeks to subsume all in its wake. It is marked by an increased evangelistic zeal and mission that hints at imperialistic plans to spread throughout the Communion. This calls for a bold response.”
“This indiscriminant inclusivity,” he continued, “is coming to a neighborhood near you. If you are in TEC and resisting this aggressive march you are already on the front lines. If you have a stomach to engage the battle you are rightly situated. It is now a matter of whether one is prepared to engage the challenge or not.”
This polarizing language was similar to that he used prior to his election when he challenged Episcopalians to “wake up and choose sides”.
In fact, SC Episcopalians has discovered there is no war against the Diocese of South Carolina or those among us who erroneously refer to themselves as “orthodox.”
There are no radical liberals out there plotting to do us in. The Episcopal Church is not training agents of evil to take away the sacred traditions and understandings of the Church that we value, or raising some sort of army to take us down.
The Bishop's vision of pending warfare is, at best, an intentional distortion of reality and, at worst, delusional.
3. Emerging Anglicanism in the 21st Century - Making Biblical Anglicans for a Global Age. This lovely suggestion is more wishful thinking than anything close reality. There is no evidence whatsoever that there is a brave new Anglican world emerging out there. If anything, its structures are imploding.
Don't misunderstand. There are many wonderful, inspirational church men and women in the Anglican Communion. Those who value the Communion do so because of the Christian relationships they find there, not the petty politics of its Primates or its antiquated governing structures and their peculiar authority in the British monarchy. Those
Episcopal lay people who have worked in other Anglican provinces say
they find no animosity among those Anglicans with whom they interact. The angry tone is more typical of the clergy and Primates than of the people in the pews.
Unfortunately, the spin machine of the Diocese touts a vision of the Anglican Communion as some sort of Church with a structure that could be equated to that of the Episcopal Church. They make it sound like all we have to do is vote to change sides, and everything will work itself out. .
Actually, the Anglican Communion has no Sunday schools, no youth groups, no church building funds (since it has no church buildings), no vestries, and no priests. It is an association based on tradition and being "in Communion" with the Archbishop of Canterbury.
The worldwide Anglican Communion is composed of some 77 million members in 164 countries, including the “mother church,” the Church of England, and the Episcopal Church.
Other than apostolic succession and traditions of worship and theology, there is a limited formal structure that binds the Communion. The line of apostolic succession in the Episcopal Church did not even come from the Archbishop of Canterbury, who refused to consecrate bishops in the United States because we wouldn’t swear allegiance to the King of England. Imagine that.
Ironically, the largest financial supporter of what structure there is in the Anglican Communion is the Episcopal Church. Without the Episcopalians, there is a good chance the Communion will disintegrate into squabbling camps of egotistical Primates racing to exotic locations to issue angry communiqués and pronouncements.
Just a year ago after one of these international hoe-downs, Bishop Lawrence said that he saw no reason for the Diocese to formally realign itself with another “orthodox” Anglican structure because “they are as much a mess as the Episcopal Church.” Times change... and fast.
The only issue that seems to be binding members of the Communion just
now is their shared loathing of homosexuals and contempt for
Episcopalians. In fact, the most accurate statement that can be made about the Communion is that it is hopelessly fractured.
Rather than being seen as some hopeful opportunity for the future, the debate around the world is whether the Anglican Communion is even relevant.
From a theological perspective Bishop Lawrence is naive if he thinks the Anglican Communion, especially the Church of England, is going to reject its central theological “three-legged stool” of scripture, tradition, and reason for Biblical literalism.
If he were a bishop in the Church of England today, he’d be having heartburn over its abandonment of so-called orthodoxy, just as he perceives the Episcopal Church doing now.
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For example, the late Archbishop of Canterbury William Temple (d. 1944), in his book Nature and God, said, “...there is no such thing as revealed truth.”
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In 1961, Archbishop of Canterbury Michael Ramsey said, “... heaven is not a place for Christians only. ... I expect to see many present day atheists there.” (London Daily Mail, Oct. 2,1961). Sounds like our Presiding Bishop has been stealing his lines.
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In 1968, the Church of England’s Lambeth Conference voted that Anglican clergy were no longer required to agree to the denomination’s 39 articles of faith.
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In 1978, Anglican Bishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa said the Holy Spirit shined through Mahatma Gandhi, who is a Hindu (St. Alban’s Cathedral, Pretoria, South Africa, Nov. 23, 1978).
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In 1982 Archbishop of Canterbury Robert Runcie said he was an agnostic as to why Jesus suffered on the cross (Sunday Times Weekly Review, London, April 11, 1982).
- In 1996, conservative Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey lashed out at
fundamentalists who place the Bible “above and beyond human inquiry”
(Christian News, Dec. 9, 1996). That same year, the doctrinal
commission of the Church of England said hell is not a place of fire
and eternal torment.
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In 1997, a survey found that 31% of Anglican vicars in England do not believe in the virgin birth (Alliance Life, March 12, 1997).
4. Denial of the Personhood. There is a reason why Bishop Lawrence refers to homosexuals as “those who believe themselves to be homosexual” or engage in “same gender genital activity.”
Biblical literalists seem to view the present world through the mindset of those in first century Palestine, and espouse a theology that was extracted from that world over the next four centuries. They don’t see God as revealing anything new beyond that. When Scripture appears to be at odds with modern science, psychology, and advanced learning, it is the modern that is rejected.
Bishop Lawrence does not believe that there are such people as homosexuals or that people are born with an inherent sexual identity. He sees sexual activity as a simply a series of choices, some of which lead us closer to God and others of which lead us away.
This is pretty much the same way Biblical writers saw it: same gender sexual acts were things that some otherwise normal – usually pagan – people engaged in every now and then.”
Similarly, in his August address the Bishop seemed to reject the idea that women may have a unique spiritual nature with which the masculine nature of the Church’s theology in Fourth Century may not resonate. He ridicules them as “radical feminists”. To Bishop Lawrence God is male and full of maleness and any attempt to discover a “female” side to God is a denial of the Trinity.
In both instances the Bishop is denying the essential personhood of those he finds objectionable or whose spiritual journey is not one with which he can identify. It is saying that even though I don't know you, I know you are wrong about who you are and how you have experienced God in your life.
5. Marriage as a Sacrament. Bishop Lawrence and others do us a great disservice by suggesting that the General Convention did something that would violate the traditional understanding of the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony and the institution of Marriage as between a man and a woman.
The resolutions passed by the Convention that he so detests have nothing to with traditional marriage or the sacraments, yet he continues to muddle his statements by implying that the blessing of a same-gender relationship is the theological equivalent of the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony.
The Bishop and others like Canon Harmon routinely interchange the word "same-sex marriage" with terms like "same sex unions", as if they are one and the same. This is not the position of the Episcopal Church nor was it the position taken by the General Convention this year.
What is true is that, for the past 40 years, those Dioceses with significant gay members have attempted to engage the wider Church in dialogue on how it should meet the pastoral needs of gay couples and their families. The issue has become more pressing because increasingly states are recognizing these relationships as entitled to the same legal status as marriages between men and women.
We
in this Diocese have refused to participate in this dialogue other than to condemn homosexuals and demand that they "repent" of being homosexuals. The Diocese of South Carolina has never considered how it should respond to the
needs of the children of these same-gender couples or their parents and families, especially if they refuse to denounce their gay parents,
brothers, sisters, children, and grandchildren as "abominations" in the eyes of God.
Our Diocese resists any dialogue other than that which condemns homosexuals as being outside the realm of the righteous. The issue for the Diocese of South Carolina begins and ends with a sexual act.
The resolutions at the General Convention have to do with “blessings”. The key word here is “blessing,” not “marriage.”
