Why You Should Care About "Ecclesiology"

...even though you aren't a nerd.

Why are there so many different Christian churches? Is there a "right one"?

Ecclesiology (the study of the Church) is my favorite sub-discipline of Christian theology. For me, it's not so much a series of questions about congregational government or who as proper sacraments, or even if I'm in the "right" church, but about exploring what it means to be God's people together, and to learn what it looks like for us to live with God together and participate in his ongoing transformation of real human lives. I'm excited about ecclesiology because of a strong conviction that the way we live together can really hurt or really help us move forward with God.

I also realize that it's a topic attractive to religion "nerds." It has taken me a few years to realize that the question, "Is there a 'one true church'?" is an intrinsically meticulous (read: nerdy) question that doesn't occur to a lot of people. I think it really should occur to people who take their religion seriously, but I suspect many folks just want to be part of a church where they like the people and understand themselves to be helped along in their relationship with God as they understand it.

If you're not a religion nerd, but you are a Christian, here's why you should care: Jesus made a lot of promises to his apostles: to lead them into the fullness of truth, to give them authority and power to help people towards God, and to make of us a battalion that can crash the gates of Hell John 16:13; Matthew 16:13-19). I suggest that the more our individual and corporate lives line up with his purposes - the more faithful we are in our common lives - the more we will benefit from those promises.

Over the next several posts, I'll introduce some of the basic discussions Christians have about what makes a church, as opposed to a group of people hanging out and being religious.

Question: Are you a nerd like me? Did you ever wonder about whether there's a "one, true Church" and if you're part of it? Do you wonder still?

Introduction to Anglican Christianity 1.1

As some of you may recall, I started designing a parish-based course on Anglicanism last summer. I don't teach all of the sessions, but I thought I'd share my outline for them.

Part I: The Formation and Mission of Christ's Church

Missio Dei / the Mission of God

When Jesus ascended to the Father, to reign from that dimension where God lives and reigns (a.k.a. "Heaven") he left behind his band of followers to apprentice others to the Jesus way of living with God in the world, and invite them to be joined to His own Life through baptism. The Church is the new Humanity: a community of persons who are meant in their life together with God to demonstrate what it looks like "when God is in charge." Followers of Jesus have stories to tell about how God has saved the world - and saved them - in and through Jesus Christ. If we are faithful to this charge, our lives will have the transparency to demonstrate what it looks like when God heals, restores, and loves people.

Jesus calls the Church to continue his ministry of teaching, healing, meal sharing, and exorcism.

Divine Gifts

God created a physical world, and called it good. God continually affirms the goodness of creation by mediating his presence and power to his people through the Sacraments. The Church itself is offered as a gift to the world, a community in which people can find healing and an "abundant life" - the kind of life Jesus came to give. In this the Church actually becomes a vehicle of transformation as we learn to live with God. The Church is also gifted with particular orders of ministry, specific ways in which Christians serve the world and one another, and are invested with holy power for these purposes.

The Laity, or "people" of God, is the first order of ministry. We are called to engage spiritual disciplines in our life with God in the Church, and to teach the faith and guide others into the Christian way.

A deacon, or "servant," is a minister oriented to carrying for the poor in the name of Christ's Church, and to guide and empower the whole People of God in their service to the last, least, and left out. This order emerged in the middle of the first century, when Stephen and several others were set apart for service to the community's widows based upon the servants' reputation as being "full of the Spirit, and wisdom" (Acts 7). For this reason deacons are often called upon to serve in a ministry as teachers of the Faith.

The order of presbyter, also known as "priest" or "elder," is established to preside over each community's sacramental rites, to guide community members in their spiritual development, preach the Good News of God in Christ, and teach the Faith in its fullness.

The "local church" in place is typically understood as the collection of local congregations in a particular geographic area. A bishop is called to serve as a figure of unity, to teach the Faith, guard the flock of Christ from heresy, and to represent Christ as shepherd to the churches in his care. The bishops of the Catholic Church share this charge, and the unity of Christians with one another is bound up on the mutual recognition of episcopal ministries.

Next, Part II: The History of the Anglican Church, the Reformation, and the present Anglican identity crisis...

Christian Education Projects

I'm back, I think. Anybody still out there? I've started my new job at library technician at the Georgetown College LRC, and I've been appointed as missioner for the college and town. You'll see my promotion soon at LOLAnglicans (a-puh-STOL-ik Xianity: let me show you it).

More on that to follow. In the meantime, here are some of the sessions I've been working on for our occasional Christian education work:

• Fear and Loathing in the Spiritual Life: How to Practice an Incredibly Rigorous Fast
  
  
• Listening: The Practice of Centering Prayer
  
  
• Respect Your Mother: Praying the Angelus
  
  
• Respect Your Mother, Session 2: Building a Grotto
  
  
• Lectio Divina // Holy Reading
  
  
• "Intinction Cup? What Intinction Cup?" An Introduction to Eucharistic Piety
  
  
• Ora Pro Nobis: Sucking up to the Saints (bring $15 for holy cards and Chinese-made ceramic statues)
  
  
• Praying the Office

Clowns to the left of me / Jokers to the right

A middle aged man in a polo shirt stopped by the table of my Christian author friends to ask where they "go to church." They told him. He responded, "If you ever want to go to a church that really knows how to rock, check out Quest." Then he walked away. Quest is increasingly notorious for trying to evangelize people who are already committed Christians.

I spoke to a Disciples of Christ minister who told me he was thinking of using Tolle's A New Earth (think new age teacher that Oprah loves) in his church to "expand their horizons." I thought about suggesting he teach them the Christian religion, but decided to leave it alone (I was at work, after all).

To Live and Die in the Catholic Faith

Cardinal Kasper recently challenged Anglicans to ask themselves whether they belong to the ancient Churches of the first millennium, or the Protestant churches of the 16th century. The Dean of Nashotah House, Robert S. Munday, responds with a short post on the nature of Catholicity (think Vincentian Canon) and the nature of Anglican protesting.

You Want It

In case you've missed my cantankerousness...

I continue to be disturbed at my recent discovery that in our present ecclesial culture in the United States, Christian worship is a spectator sport. It's not an issue at Saint Patrick's Church, but if I were the rector of a congregation that refused to participate in congregational singing, I would eliminate the music program. I'd also put the choir/worship band/charismatic worship leader in the back of the nave rather than the front.

Hell, who am I kidding? I might celebrate Mass facing east, for that matter.

The Unity of the Church, part II

Seriously folks, read this and come back at me - I know this is muddled, so help me out.

We discussed in a previous post how catholic Christians understand the unity of Christ's Church in terms of church order and doctrine. I now intend to expand that to cover mission and sacraments, but first let's consider why it's even needful to have the conversation. Catholic Christians by definition have a particular vision for the unity of the Church: in every place, there is a "local church," understood as the diocese. This is the whole Christian community in a particular geographic area with one pastor, the bishop, with subpastors (his priests) holding the charge of particular congregations/parishes. This community as a whole is understood to believe, practice and teach the Catholic faith as found in the Bible, the Creeds, and the Councils, to celebrate the Sacraments (chiefly baptism and Eucharist) and to engage in mission and Christian formation. We seek to become like Christ, and to invite others to be part of God's plan for saving the world.

Here's the awkward question: what shall be our view of other religions, like Methodism?

But seriously: remember that I started the discussion by insisting that everyone should be scandalized by Christian division, because it is a scandal. Everyone should be scandalized by any instance of people who take the name of Christ treating other people in unloving or destructive ways. It should go without saying (but I shall say it) that inter-denominational fighting and punditry is something I have no time for whatsoever, as it hinders both my transformation and yours. You will not hear me sitting around talking about "those awful benighted ______s, who are scarely Christians at all." Not. Interesting.

(Now exposing the deep poverty of certain dessicated practices, like the care and cultivation of praise bands, is another matter all together. People need to hear that.)

Keep in mind, then, that I share the concerns of the folks whose opinions I'm about to criticize. Many well meaning Christians conflate Christian charity and fraternal love with the rationalization of division by saying something like the following: "We all have different ways of worshipping and serving God, so it's okay if I go the Baptist church and you go to the Lutheran church, and they go to the Methodist church, as long as we all love Jesus and preach the gospel." This is a charitible stance, and the intent is worthy of respect. However, it is an unintentionally dishonest statement. Even if we imagine that there is some form of "the gospel" that we can understand both outside of and within our own culture and language, all of these separated Christians who want to affirm each other in their separation are actually testifying by their own choices that all of those groups understand the story of the Gospel and its demands for discipleship in radically different ways, and that these ways are radically different enough to be Church divding.

The unity of Christ's church has never been predicated upon warm feelings, but rather unity in teaching the faith and living according to the Christian story. If I really agreed so wholeheartedly with my separated breathern that we teach and live what is essentially the same Christian religion, why we do we consider our Christian communities to be different churches?

To live in separated churches, we have to have a particular reason to do so that we consider more important than the basic blanket demand for Christian unity that we find in John's depiction of Jesus? In the above example, the particular reason is ... personal preference. Does anybody really think it comes down to that?

So let us ask together: what are the important church-dividing issues? What are the ways that our different communities have of teaching and living the Gospel that justify our separation? If we can find no justification, what shall we do to end the separation?

On Choosing a Church

I read a wonderful bit of wisdom on Amy Welborn's blog today. Marcel Lejeune shared this on a comment thread:

A friend recently asked me what I “need from the Church”. My response boiled down to - I need the Church to make saints. Not in naming someone a saint, but rather in calling us all to holiness and perfection. Making modern-day saints out of the ordinary. We have a crisis in holiness in the Church. Holiness would solve every problem.

There is a great temptation to think about the work of the Church (caring, healing, celebrating and teaching) as equivalent to some kind of service industry or retail job. At the bookstore, I want the place, and particularly my religion section, to be the kind of place to which people will want to come and spend time and buy books. There is a needful and legitimate extent to which I have to think about what people want, and try to have that on offer. It's my job to sell books, and other concerns are secondary. I do have the opportunity to serve in some creative ways: there are a number of books in Joseph-Beth's selection that I make sure we carry, and do indeed sell, that you're not going to find in other places, and that we wouldn't have if I didn't put them there. If you want them, you will come into the shop and find good Christian books that are good for you. It will not be hard to find them. This is not true at chain stores or Christian bookstores (depending, of course, on who you trust to declare something "good.") Of course, you will also find Joel Osteen's stuff. I work for a "secular" business, not a confessional one. I don't go out of my way to get book that I think are bad for people just because I think they'll sell. But I don't try to prevent the stocking of titles that already sell. And of course if I'm indifferent about a title, I want to carry it if it will sell.

The work of the Church ought not to follow the same logic, however. "Give the people what they want" is a sound business practice and marketing strategy, but it is deadly to the life of any church that seeks to organize itself in such a fashion. The shape of the liturgy is not decided by popular vote, and we must not be interested in doing things because they are "neat." The Church has a reason to exist that comes before anybody else's agenda: it is the People of God, the new humanity that has been created in Jesus Christ to worship the Father along with Him, and to participate in the renewal of Creation in the power of the Spirit.

The Church doesn't exist in order to bring a large number to its Sunday gatherings for any reason, or to be "useful" in the social order or to split up responsibilities for poor folks with the government. The Church is called to give people Christ through the Sacraments, and Christ through their own presence in the dark and broken places of human life. The Church is called to mimic and extend Jesus' own ministry of healing, teaching, meal sharing and exorcism. That can look like all kinds of things, but the Church is not at liberty to make up activities unrelated to those things, and call it "ministry."

This is why it is dangerous to choose which group of Christians you'll make your life with on the basis of musical tastes, your "enjoyment" of the "worship experience," or the activities they put on offer. In most cases, those things will have very little to do with whether you can find healing and wholeness in Jesus Christ along with that community, or whether they are a people who can or will come alongside you to stay in the dark places of your life.

We need to be involved in communities that will participate actively in God's work of making us all saints - bringing us all to completion of who we really are.

Just for fun

Of course, sometime in the next 5 years, I'm thinking about planting a new Anglican parish in Georgetown, Kentucky, to bring the Catholic religion to that poor benighted land. Now, you may be aware that it is traditional for protestant groups to name their communities after numbers, or the streets along which the meetinghouse sits, or something that shows good marketing sense while resonating with the language of Scripture (e.g. "New Hope" or "Living Water, and so on). The Catholic churches (Rome, Canterbury, and the East) will often name their communities for notable saints, or events in the life of Christ. While there's not a hard and fast rule, many hardcore Anglo-Catholic churches will pick the latter option. For example, Church of the Advent in Boston is so "high up the candle" that the local Roman Catholic Archbishop gets a nosebleed when he passes on the street.

While I might have fled to the Church of the Holy Hierarchical Authoritarianism, I've got enough tra-la-la tree-hugging namby-pamby egalitarianism in me that I'd probably go in and start the "Georgetown Anglican Fellowship," and then when we numbered around a dozen, start discerning an appropriate name/patron/commemoration for the parish. But just for fun, here are my top five name choices for a new parish I'd like to start, somewhat in order.

1. Saint Clement of Rome. We have one document extant from this early leader of the Roman Church, his Epistle to the Corinthians in which he lovingly chides them for their disunity. The community had recently overthrown their college of presbyters and apparently brought in some upstarts to replace them. I've written on the Epistle here. I believe that American Anglicanism has an ecumenical and unifying mission in the life of the Church as it seeks to live and share the Gospel, and looking to Clement and his writing as an example would be good for a young parish.
   
   
2. Saint Mary Magdalene. Mary is known for her loving dedication to the Christ who exercised and healed her of demonic oppression. In a neurotic, materialistic suburban culture, we need this model. Also, this is the name of a famously exuberant Anglo-Catholic parish in Oxford. Which is braggable. Heh.
   
   
3. Church of the Resurrection. This really shouldn't need any explanation at all. We need Jesus Christ, the second Adam, to heal us and make us alive.
   
   
4. Saint Cyprian of Carthage. Haha, not really. I just wanted to see who was paying attention.
   
   
5. Church of the Incarnation. Take that, latent gnosticism! Meditation on the Incarnation will guide us to sacramental and catholic imagination, to understand that matter can and does bear the glory of God.
   

What do you think?

Why Ecclesiology is a Rough Subject

As soon as one decides that the nature of the Church is a first-order rather than a second order question (see here), things begin to get very difficult. One can no longer say that the constitution, identity and practices of different Christian communities amount to a matter of preference. If one believes that one's life in the Christian community (what kind of life, and what kind of community) will impact the nature or extent of one's connectedness to Jesus, then comments like, "I go to x church because I like the music and you go to y church because you like the education program ceases to make any sense. Preferences, no matter how fastidious or well-meaning they are, are not the reason for the Church's existence.

For better or worse, I always need a reason.

I find that when I am no long prepared to speak about preferences as a theological category, I quickly have to start pinning down what the concrete attributes are of those concrete communities that are connected to those communities started by Jesus. As I work these things out, I find a two-edged sword.

1) If I really get hardcore about this, I'll have to face up to the real and potential inadequacies of my own (adopted) tradition. The Roman, Eastern Orthodox, and Reformed Christian traditions all have particular criticisms of what Anglicanism would seek to be, even at its best. I have to do business with those criticisms, and I might well find my "spiritual home" lacking.

2) In the same way, if I were to write about this journey, I would have to admit the ways in which I believe other Christian traditions to be lacking. I've not often been shy about this, but I don't believe that it's necessarily an edifying discussion to have. Surprise, even the folks to look to me for encouragement or challenge in the Faith (in this space or otherwise) are not eagerly awaiting any pronouncements on which churches are real churches. I'd probably end up sounding like the Pope, but with different conclusions, i.e., the requirements for being understood as fully and properly "the Church" are ABCD, and while it's nice that you've got BCDE over there, if you don't have A, you're Christians but don't experience the life of the Church in its fullness. I suspect the Holy Father and I would just pick different letters.

I might talk about what I think those letters consist of later on, or I might not. We'll see.

Still Thinking About the Church

We've just passed the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. I wanted to write, but really felt as if I have nothing to contribute to such a thing. I've been thinking and reading on the subject of ecclesiology for some time now (more thinking than reading lately), and it always seems to be a very divisive subject.

I have no use for Christians who take deep pride in their particular spiritual pedigree or denomination. In this region that pride is often in the form of their supposed lack of a "denomination." "I'm a non-denominational Christian," many will say gleefully - as if that were possible or desirable. Perhaps it is, but I cannot treat it as such a foregone conclusion.

Why even think about "ecclesiology" - what makes the churches "the Church" at all? If a Christian shares perspective with most forms of Protestantism, there is little reason indeed. In contemporary Christian life, it is commonly agreed that Jesus did not "found" any church at all, and that our churches are our own little man-made organizations that try to carry out the work of spreading the gospel and converting the heathen more efficient. I know this sounds glib, but that's what it comes down to: that the church exists because it is useful to our version of the Gospel (which we believe to be a separate thing from the church) simply because Jesus wants his people to "meet together."

On the other hand, what if Jesus didn't come to impart some information about God and a revised moral code? What if he didn't come with a way for us to have an individual personal relationship with God that we could practice with other people if we wanted to? What if Jesus really did found a community that really did have a real and physical existence in the world? What if being joined to Jesus through baptism and being joined to this real physical community really is the same thing, the same Godward movement that makes us alive and saves us from death?

Upon Christian initiation, one becomes part of Christ - in Pauline language, the Body of Christ. While I understand that one should avoid an ultimate identification of Christ and those who make up the Church (it is full of sinners, after all, for Jesus loves the riff-raff), we must say that if Jesus founded a "community of salvation," that an impaired communion with that Church entails an impaired communion with Christ himself. If that is a worthy question and a valid concern, our ideas about what makes up "the Church" really matter very much.

The bottom line is this: if the bedrock of the Christian life and God's work of transforming love in the world is a "personal relationship with Jesus," then theories about "the Church" are non-essential issues. However, if our membership in that community determines in some way our relatedness to God and his work of salvation for the world, than it is a first-order theological problem.

What's Next?

A few friends and kind readers have asked me about my plans now that I've finished my M.Th. I've been thinking about a lot of different things, but here's the outline...

I really enjoy what I do at the bookstore, and the people with whom I work. While I didn't get the marketing position I wanted, I have been given leave to plan and execute at least one author event that I've been pushing for.

The work that I do with the people of Saint Patrick's Church is very important to me, and I'm working on two long term projects in Christian education and formation.

The first project is to design a standard program of Anglican catechesis and introduction to Saint Patrick's Church. St Pat's receives a lot of interest from folks who have come from evangelical protestant denominations, and while they might have been away from the life of any church for months or years, there's still an element of "culture shock" when people are introduced to our liturgy and philosophies of ministry. While we can't make the life of our parish less weird (because we are convinced that it's weird in a good way) we can take people aside to welcome them, answer questions, and provide a basic introduction to Anglican Christianity and its peculiar grammar so that folks will have the theological tools to "read" and therefore better understand what's going on in the life of our parish. We'd like this to be a four week, informal class that we provide 3-4 times a year, as needed. I hope that after a year or two of this, we'll have some well-formed Anglo-Catholics running around the place. Ahem.

The second project is going to be less work but a lot harder: our household is getting together with some other folks in the parish to learn what it's like to share life and a common Rule together with people of different interests and demographics, but who are interested in friendship, monastic practices, and learning to love our Lord better. I'll write on that as it progresses.

Would you believe that it sounds to some folks like I'm a drifter, since I don't have a salary, a title, or an ordination planned?

I won't have a fancy title (unless Father Matthews deigns to give me one) and it's not going to be lucrative. I still have a closet full of fancy dress clothes that I'm not using at the moment. This will not put me on the fast track to the priesthood. But here's the thing: I'm not looking to be a CEO in the Kingdom of God. This is not a matter of "climbing the corporate ladder" - I'm a layman of the Church of Rwanda, so there is no bloody ladder. A friend reminded me this week that there are plenty of people in plenty of churches who have heard a call to ordained ministry, and want to get themselves put into that ontological category ASAP so they can go about the "real ministry" that they're called to do. Right here and now, however, this is the very real ministry that I'm called to do: help build the life of the Church, learn to be a better penitent, and to call other sinners to turn to Jesus and engage fully in the life of God's new Community, and participate now in the life of the world to come. I don't need to be ordained simply to do that. I'm still thinking about priesthood, but any formal process for that really needs to be on the back burners right now, because more important than any institutional process is the question of my own formation in holiness and the life of Christ's Church. Our God has much to do in and with me, and I want to bend my body such that by the time somebody lays hands on me to make me a priest, I have already been formed into the kind of man who should be a priest.

Forming character is like preparing a roast - if you try to do it fast, you end up with something other than you were hoping for.

What is the Church? Questions about Ecclesiology

I've thought often about some advice given me by a colleague at Oxford a couple of years ago. He was a Canadian Mennonite who had been recently confirmed in the Roman Church. (Presumably he's still Canadian.) He suggested that I do some real work getting my ecclesiology sorted before getting anywhere near another potential ordination process.

Presumably my friends won't be free to frolic and play the whole time I'm in Oxford this month, so I'm going to do a bit of study in the RadCam. I want to do some focused reading on ecclesiology so I'll have some things to consider as I work a normal job for a little while. I want to get at the truth of what it's going to mean to spend my life as a Catholic Christian, and to do the theological work such that I'll know whether I can do that with integrity in an Anglican setting. Is there a future for Anglican Catholicism? I think it is our hope of a future, but of course I'm very biased.

So here's where y'all come in: as I consider what the Church is, what questions do I need to ask? What do I need to read? A kind Nashotah House reader reminds me not to neglect Ramsey's The Gospel and the Catholic Church, and I've wanted to dig into Radner's End of the Church and Reno's In the Ruins of the Church for some time now. I might go spend some time with deLubac's work and go back to see what my tutor has on his ecclesiology bibliography.

Suggestions?

Doing My Part in Parish Life

Some of my fellow parishioners have commented at various times that they become confused in the course of the Divine Liturgy, not knowing quite when to bow or kneel. I've volunteered to step up and explain it to people, taking them aside to let them know what's up - when in doubt, it's never wrong, after all, to lie prostrate before the altar of God - as kind of a "liturgical acclimation" ministry.

Father Matthews says my "not acting like a jerk" ministry is more important, though.

Oh, well.

"I carry you, living God, who is incarnate in the bread, and I embrace you in my palms, Lord of the worlds whom no world has contained. You have circumscribed yourself in a fiery coal within a fleshly palm - you Lord, who with your palm measured out the dust of the earth. You are holy, God incarnate in my hands in a fiery coal which is a body.... As you have made me worthy to approach you and receive you - and see, my hands embrace you confidently - make me worthy, Lord, to eat you in a holy manner and to taste the food of your body as a taste of your life."

Cited in Aelred Cody, "An Instruction of Philoxenus of Mabbug on Gestures and Prayer When One Receives Communion in the Hand, with a History of the Manner of Receiving the Eucharistic Bread in the West Syrian Church," in Rule of Prayer, Rule of Faith, ed. Nathan Mitchell and John F. Baldovin (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1996), 63. Cited in turn by Rev. Alvin F. Kimel, Jr, "Eating Christ: Recovering the Language of Real Identification," Pro Ecclesia XIII (Winter 2004): 82-100.

Rich Mullins on the Bible

Rich Mullins' memorial is coming up on 19 September; do yourself a favor and check out any of his albums. The synthesizers on the first album are nuts, but the rest is okay, and the poetic lyrics are amazing.

"The Bible is not a book for the faint of heart. It is a book full of all the greed and glory and violence and tenderness and sex and betrayal that benefits mankind. It is not the collection of pretty little anecdotes mouthed by pious little church mice. It does not so much nibble at our shoe as it cuts to the heart and splits the marrow from bone to bone. It does not give us answers fitted to our smaller minded questions but truth that goes beyond what we even know to ask."

...

"I don't think you read the Bible to know truth. I think you read the Bible to find God, that we encounter Him there. Paul says that the scriptures are God's breath and I kind of go, wow, so let's breathe this as deeply as possible. And this is what liturgy offers that all the razzmatazz of our modern worship can't touch. You don't go home from church going, 'Oh I am just moved to tears.' You go home from church going, 'Wow, I just took communion and you know what? If Augustine were alive today, he would have had it with me and maybe he is and maybe he did.'"

How to Shop for Churches

The other Kyle can't go with us to afternoon Mass at St. Patrick's Church because of his work schedule. In the meantime, we've been sniffing around for a service of divine worship that he might attend on Sunday mornings. There's a local, large Reformed church that I'd heard good things about (in regard to its liturgy), but when I asked a friend who attends, his first comment was that the preacher really loves to talk about homosexuality and abortion, which surprised me. That's probably not a congregation any of us is going to get excited about.

I mean, what business does a pulpiteer have talking about abortion or homosexuality of nobody in the congregation is doing or about to do those things? Why is it interesting? Why is it important? Are preachers at these large evangelical churches really pacing back and forth talking about how non-baptized people should live?

That's not to say that anybody wants to attend a mainline denomination so they can hear about the war in Iraq, either...

Okay, back to the dissertation...

Oooh, snap.

People have been asking me whether I am a liberal or a conservative ... my stock answer is that these are two denominations of a religion to which I do not belong - besides, when one is anti-consumer capitalism, anti-communism, anti-nationalism, anti-abortion, anti-war and all of these because one is convinced that Jesus Christ is Lord of all creation, fully human and fully divine and that the self-giving love of the Trinity is a more truthful model for human beings than the laws of supply and demand or even democracy, one isn't invited to too many parties thrown by either liberals or conservatives.

- Father Rhodes, in a comment below.

Amen, amen, amen.

Anglican Imagination: Liturgy and Worship

Lester: "I don't get tired of kissing my wife, and I don't get tired of the liturgy."

Me: "Ooh, I see. Liturgical revision is like adultery. I agree."

I'm pretty sure he didn't mean to say that, but still...

Earrings

When I don't have time to write, I just tell you to visit Michael Spencer? What's that about? But it's an occasion for a little rant and I wonder what the rest of you might think about it.

At the end of his Internet Monk Radio Podcast #66, Spencer starts criticising the propensity of many folks to fail to see that the Bible is about Jesus. He's recently spoken with someone who was bemoaning the fact that a couple of "great Christian young men" in his family had gotten their ears pierced. the iMonk says,

How long do you have to be around the Bible and church and sermons and prayer meetings before it finally gets through to you that Jesus isn't concerned with that kind of rule keeping? ...

There's no way you can read the gospels and [see] Jesus nagging people about getting tattoos and getting piercings and playing cards and going to the movies, you just don't see that... That whole trip, of the Bible as a set of rules, a set of principles and it's really important that we conform our lives to all these principles, and Christ isn't at the center, that's a dead end.

Which leads us to my rant.

Even coming from northeastern Kentucky, I am continually shocked to learn about how much religious people care about the way other folks dress. Is it possible for me to say with charity, that anyone who's going to be interested in my ears cannot possibly have anything interesting to say about Christ?

My thought is that if someone has been formed as the kind of person for whom wearing earrings or not is a key gospel or lifestyle choice, they really cannot have a good grip on what a gospel lifestyle is.

And of course, I have four earrings. I'm not sure if anybody I know under the age of 50 ever notices, but I know it seems to infuriate anybody over 60. And frankly, I enjoy that, but it's certainly not why I wear them...

Anglican Catechesis: Tradition

We were thinking and talking about the popular notion of "scripture alone"* in one's faith and practice last night, and I've been working through various ways to properly express the problem. Just say that Friend X and I are members of the local Baptist congregation, and we're hanging out and studying the Bible (we're good members of the local Baptist congregation, thank you very much). Suppose that Friend X says to me, "you know, I've been reading Acts and 1 Corinthians here, and I really think that it's proper and right that our church services include periods of public prayer and prophecy by lay people, and as long as it's done decently and in order with appropriate interpretation, some of that prophecy and prayer will be spoken in unknown tongues." We'll have a nice chat about whether the norm in the Corinthian church was glossolalia or xenoglossy (essentially, whether the unknown tongues were human or non-human languages), and then by the end of it, I say to Friend X, "No, gifts like that passed away with the apostolic generation."

(You know that he and I would never really have this conversation, right?)

Here's the problem: Friend X and I have each offered a particular reading of Scripture. It doesn't make any sense to talk about one being "more scriptural" than the other, because we're both two people who worship with the same community, read the same scriptures, pray together, and bring that formation and our broader account of the Bible into our reading. We're each trying to make the most sense out of the biggest part of Scripture as well as we can, and we're good enough friends to assume good faith of one another. As "scripture only," evangelical protestants, we would be unable to appeal to any authority to adjudicate between these positions. There is no authority to declare either reading in or out, because there is not authority that can set boundaries on the reading of Scripture.

The Scripture itself does not tell me whether this disagreement is over core issues, or adiphora - is it something about which we can agree to disagree? The congregation cannot both engage in public prophecy in the manner of 1 Corinthians, and not do this. What authority can say to us, you must stay together as friends and fellow bible readers, or that you must walk apart?

Each one of us is holding onto a particular reading of scripture - an interpretive tradition.

In one sense, tradition is (as Tom Wright says) the history of the Church's Bible reading. It's a very long and quite diverse history, with people running around every which way. When we look for a Tradition (note the capitalization), we're asking the question, "In the long history of the Christian Church, which readings of Scripture have seemed to the broadest parts of the Church to be most faithful to the entire Biblical narrative, and most conducive to the growth in holiness and Christlikeness of the Church's members? In the broadest consensus of holy men and women in the Body of Christ through time and space, which readings of Scripture have been disastrous for the Christian life, and which have been a boon?

If appealing to the "Bible alone" were practically sufficient, we would not need to divide over diverse readings of scripture.

*I didn't use the popular Reformed phrase sola scriptura because I don't have any Calvin or Luther to hand, and it's not the Official Reformation Christian Doctrines® I'm disputing - we can go around all day about What the Reformers Really Meant (as if it matters) and never get back 'round to what real people in real churches really do to the Bible and to each other, and the entire discussion would bore me so badly, I would lose the will to exercise bladder control.