Are we wrong?

A friend asked me an interesting question the other day. With revisionist Anglicanism ascendant in ECUSA, has it ever occurred to me that they may be right and we wrong? Certainly both honesty and humility requires that indeed we may be in error. Proper confidence (to employ Lesslie Newbigin’s term) resides only in God.

That being said, I have problems with my friend’s question. While I can imagine myself as wrong, I cannot imagine my revisionist Anglican friends are right. (Now bear with me here. I am not trying to be ungenerous or belittling.)

First, let us ask what it means to say that the revisionists might be right? It is not merely about sex. Windsor is correct to say that it is the presenting issue. In order to make the theological affirmations that our revisionist friends wish to make one has to engage in a hermeneutic and theological method that constitutes a dramatic shift in the Christian faith to the extent that while the outward form looks similar, the inner substance is radically different. In brief, what we find is that the primary locus of religious authority resides in experience that then finds its reflection in scripture and tradition. The Episcopal Church represents an aggregate of religious experiences joined by a common symbolic language and practice, which is adjudicated through procedural democratic structures. Furthermore, this symbolic and ritual language is not descriptive of an objective reality, viz. the being of God, but of our experience of the divine. Other symbolic languages and rituals, Christian and otherwise, are other ways of articulating the experience of the divine, which cannot be ruled out as authentic a priori. While many revisionists would claim that they are orthodox and creedal Christians (and indeed still are as individually they have not worked out the implications), I think the theological method required to make the affirmations about homosexuality will lead eventually to this conclusion.

If we are honest this does not constitute a mere variation on historic Christianity, but is actually a significantly divergent religious paradigm. Indeed, I believe that it has much in common with the various private cults that competed for adherents with the Roman Empire in the first few centuries after Christ. Liberal Christianity is sect among many other sects, never claiming for itself any exclusive revelation, but giving spiritual expression to the inchoate numinous experiences of its adherents within a common ritual framework. Other sects do this, with varying levels of spiritual authenticity, for their devotees. If I am right in claiming this, then our opponents should better be understood as Christopagans. This is to say that Liberal Christianity is a pagan sect of spiritual enlightenment with Jesus providing a symbolic narrative.

(Similarly, from this perspective all world religions would be simply other pagan sects. This, of course, leads to the question of who it is that arbitrates between sects when they are in conflict, and who judges what texts and rituals are spiritually authentic or not. In short, who plays Caesar? Interesting question for another post.)

To say “they” are right and “we” are wrong is not to say merely that we need to make adjustments to our theology, but that a thorough going shift in theology is required. We would have to cease being Christians as we have been. This is not the same as coming to believe, say, in the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary. Were I to make this shift I would have to wonder why I am still an Anglican, but the shift required would affect my pension more than my ability to recite the Creed. I would still be an adherent of historic Christianity.

So it seems the question is not between two variations of Christianity, but between historic Christianity and a Christianized neo-paganism. And if Christianity or paganism is the choice, then, frankly, I’m going to choose a more robust and sensuous form of paganism than the Christianized form.

Signs

There have been of late several ominous signs concerning possibilities of a break-up of the Anglican Communion and perhaps of ECUSA as well.

The first sign I will note here is the move by the Church in Nigeria to remove any reference to being in communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury as being a defining characteristic of Nigerian Anglicanism. Archbishop Akinola has assured us all that this does not mean a split, but I am not so sure. Folks such as Stephen Noll have told us that the African Anglicans are incapable of the type of dissembling we see in their Anglo-American counterparts. We’ll see.

The second sign (and this one is a BIG one, folks) is to be found in a recent article on the Rt. Rev. V. Gene Robinson in the Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/23/AR2005092301185.html. In the article Robinson tells us that he now predicts a split in the Communion. This came about after attending the unofficial meeting Jon Bruno called in July of about twenty bishops from a wide variety of theological positions. While all were sworn to secrecy, Robinson has now broken silence to tell us that while he went to the meeting to “talk about how we can live together,” the conservatives wanted to “divvy up the property of this divorce.” This convinced him that a split is inevitable.

Let us leave aside Robinson’s disingenuousness and imputation of base motives to his opponents for the time being. The importance of his comments is that he has discarded 815’s party line that all is well in ECUSA and the Communion. To have Bishop Robinson concede that we are on the verge of a crack-up is HUGE.

While the end will be more like “The Hollow Men” than Beneath the Planet of the Apes (OK, two really weird and disparate cultural references), thus allowing Griswold to opine that everything is still peachy, it does begin to look inevitable.

I am sure that there are other signs out there, enough to fill an M. Night Shymalan movie (Another totally gratuitous pop reference). In any event, I think the grand ecclesial experiment that was the Anglican Communion may be coming to an end.

Why don't he write?

“Someone back home is sayin’ ‘Why don’t he write?’”
-Dances with Wolves

I realize I have been pretty quiet on this blog since my vacation. My apoplogies.

What I do realize is that writing a blog is not an easy thing to keep up if you have in mind writing something of substance in the vein of Pontifications or Kew Continuum rather than the endless prattle of blogs such as… well you name ‘em.

But on top of that, as I watch things unfold in ECUSA and the Anglican Communion I all too often find myself reduced to bemused sighs. (But more on this anon.)

Another aspect of the experience of blogging as I am doing it now is that I am largely engaged in monologue here. I would be much more energized by a conversation.

So here is a suggestion to those who might be reading. Might we want to have a group blog to supplant Selva Oscura where we can respond to each other’s posts? (I wouldn’t want it to be a cyber food fight, however. We should just invite folks we are comfortable with. And I would like to observe a level of anonymity.)

Anyway, if any of you are reading this (Laudate, Moderate, Senior Priest, et al.) let me know.