A nice story in the Arroyo Monthly: This Bishop’s No Pawn. I’ve known J. Jon Bruno, the Episcopal Bishop of Los Angeles, for many years. Long before he was elected the sixth bishop of one of the nation’s largest Anglican dioceses, I dated his daughter, quite seriously, for several months. During that relationship, I had many memorable theological and political discussions with the man who was then a canon of the cathedral; I remember a particularly animated chat about, of all things, the book of Jubilees. In any case, Bishop Bruno, a former police officer and Denver Bronco offensive lineman, is now one of the leading advocates for gays and lesbians in the entire Anglican Communion.
It’s a nice profile, but I especially appreciate Bruno’s loving dig at the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams. The current holder of Thomas Becket’s office is a brilliant theologian, but more of a muddling temporizer in terms of his leadership of a disintegrating Communion. Bishop Jon says:
It’s time for [Archbishop Rowan Williams] to stop being Chamberlain and start acting like Churchill.
Not many bishops in the church of Christ have played professional football or killed a man in the line of duty; a gentle warrior, Jon Bruno knows how to mix it up. And I’m glad to know him, and glad to see his leadership in the fight for GLBTQ equality recognized.
The American Episcopal church is schisming. As I wrote in July, I don’t think that’s always a bad thing. Just as sometimes divorce is the best end to a marriage that has run its course, so too is schism (when conducted with civility and integrity) often the best way to remain faithful to one’s own understanding of God’s plan for Her church. The vision of the church that Jon Bruno has — a church that is inclusive, loving, and committed to healing — is one I am proud to share.
If you think Rowan Williams is not liberal enough, I’d hate to see who you think would be just right. Rowan Williams’ problem is that he has been altogether too accomodating to secularists, rationalists, Muslims, and the people who want to throw historic Christian teachings out the bloody window. Let the United States recognize gay marriage, I can live with that. But I think that the Anglican Church in its American or any other form, should _not_ allow the blessing of gay unions or the ordination of practicing homosexuals. To do so would be to say that “tolerance”, “acceptance”, “changing with the times” and other such fashionable buzzwords are more important than maintaining the integrity of the true faith as it was delivered to the Apostles. The modern age does not like to hear it, but truth is more important than tolerance.
Far worse than Williams’ attitudes towards homosexuality, of course, is his willingness to be overly accomodating to Islam, and to say things like you can be a perfectly good Christian without believing in the Virgin Birth. Er, no, you can’t. That dogma is absolutely essential, and whoever denies it cannot be a Christian.
Heh. Why should it be surprising, that schismatics will continue to schism? You’re all just sadly misguided lost sheep of the true church, anyway.
It seems to me that a “good schism”, like a “good divorce”, should not involve one party trying to hang on to all the property. Can you comment on +Bruno’s aggressive legal harassmetn of the traditional Anglicans?
Yes, there are many thorny legal issues involved, Sam — and one is that it is by no means clear that in a church whose very name stresses the authority of the diocese (we ain’t Congregationalists), most physical churches are not owned by the vestry or the members but by the broader church. Of course, some churches were planted by the diocese (All Saints Pasadena is one); others were more independent — each church has its own specific legal status.
The tone of your words reminds me of what certain folks said about Mr. Lincoln. Why doesn’t he just let the South depart in peace? Why shed blood to keep the Union together?
My point is that Lincoln was going for a win, not a good division.
It seems there are three possible courses of action:
1) Go for a win. “We make the rules, we can change the rules, if you don’t like it, tough.” (This would be the Roman Catholic choice.)
2) Go for a compromise. “You can do what you want, and we’ll support you in doing it, even if we’d rather do something else ourselves.” (This was the traditional strength of the Anglican tradition.)
3) Accept a “good schism.” “You can stay, you can go–we’ll try to be generous and kind-spirited in either case, and hope you’ll do the same.”
It seems to me that the American Episcopal church has decided to go with option #1; I’d much prefer that they chose option #2, and if that failed option #3–but that is NOT what they’re doing.
Just curious, Sam; what do you think Lincoln should have done? Presuming you aren’t a pacifist, isn’t letting the other side go its own (continuing in injustice) a grave abrogation of responsibility? Lincoln took an oath; Jon Bruno is consecrated — protecting the indivisiblity of the Union and the people of the diocese is paramount.
Me, I’d probably let the churches who want to go, go. But I’m often a peace at any price guy (ask my accountant what happened in my last divorce!)
What should Lincoln have done is a vexing question–in the “which hat are you asking” category.
Wearing my Mennonite hat, Lincoln did the right things, as a ruler, in seeking to make the world more just.
Wearing my Southern hat, there was no essential unity to the union. If a State wanted to leave, it could–and attempting to keep the South in and continue exploiting it for the North’s benefit was unjustifiable on any criterion other than “might makes right.”
I don’t see the US as much like either a church or a marriage. In a marriage, the vow is for better or worse, until death. There are no legitimate reasons to leave the marriage. (There are legitimate reasons to separate, but not to divorce or remarry.) In a church, the allegiance is tricky–it’s both to the organization and to its principles. The traditionalist side insists that they are the ones who hold to the principles; at this point, there isn’t enough agreement on what the principles are to hold the organization together.
Just to reclarify: I don’t see +Bruno’s actions as necessarily wrong. I just don’t see them as at all in the category of an “as peaceful as possible” separation. If the Episcopal church wanted an “as peaceful as possible” celebration, they’d support another Anglican body in the US, and let congregations and priests go to it with property and pension.
What should Lincoln have done is a vexing question–in the “which hat are you asking” category.
Wearing my Mennonite hat, Lincoln did the right things, as a ruler, in seeking to make the world more just.
Wearing my Southern hat, there was no essential unity to the union. If a State wanted to leave, it could–and attempting to keep the South in and continue exploiting it for the North’s benefit was unjustifiable on any criterion other than “might makes right.”
I don’t see the US as much like either a church or a marriage. In a marriage, the vow is for better or worse, until death. There are no legitimate reasons to leave the marriage. (There are legitimate reasons to separate, but not to divorce or remarry.) In a church, the allegiance is tricky–it’s both to the organization and to its principles. The traditionalist side insists that they are the ones who hold to the principles; at this point, there isn’t enough agreement on what the principles are to hold the organization together.
Just to reclarify: I don’t see +Bruno’s actions as necessarily wrong. I just don’t see them as at all in the category of an “as peaceful as possible” separation. If the Episcopal church wanted an “as peaceful as possible” separation, they’d support another Anglican body in the US, and let congregations and priests go to it with property and pension.
Peace is A good, but not necessarily a higher good than justice. A leader whose first principle is “peace” may find herself overwhelmed by warring factions soon enough. Discerning justice here is tricky, but since secular contract and property law is involved here, it may be best to defy Paul’s words about Christians suing each other and just let the courts settle it.
but since secular contract and property law is involved here, it may be best to defy Paul’s words about Christians suing each other and just let the courts settle it.
Yeah. Even though I am sure in Paul’s time, lawsuits were about … well … secular contracts and property law.
You can’t “defy Paul’s words” without defying black letter scripture, Hugo. And that does seem to be the crux of the matter.
Hugo,
Aren’t you assuming that the liberal side is correct here, and on the side of ‘justice’? I deny that, very thoroughly. I believe that the traditionalist wing of the Anglicans is closer to the truth than the liberals (although, of course, neither side is 100% correct).
Well, to be fair, Gonz, many of the lawsuits were filed by traditionalists with the bishop as the defendant. If you’re gonna talk peace, why not leave without the property?
Hector, I think there’s room for faithful Christians to disagree with integrity about God’s plan for sexuality and for the church; plenty of worldclass scholars with impeccable theological credentials can be found on all sides. We see through a glass darkly.
Hugo,
Can you find me a theologian who believes, one the one hand, that homosexual acts are morally OK, and that gays should be ordained, and ALSO accepts the following:
Hugo,
No doubt you’re right that some very smart theologicans think homosexual acts are OK. But that’s not the point. Many theologicans today are more fluffy-headed Arians than genuinely Christian (and I’m not referring to their views on homosexuality, but rather their Christology).
Can you find me a theologian who believes, one the one hand, that homosexual acts are morally OK, and that gays should be ordained, and ALSO accepts the following: that Jesus Christ was the Incarnate God; that he is coeternal and coequal with the Father; that he that he was prophecied by Isaiah and Elijah; that he was literally born of a perfectly sinless virgin; that he was tempted by the devil; that he raised the dead, healed lepers, gave sight to the blind, and exorcized demons; that he was crucified as a blood atonement for man’s sinful nature; that he died and was buried; that on the third day he rose from the dead in fulfillment of the scriptures; that ‘he was scourged for our transgressions, and by his wounds we are healed’; that he ascended into heaven on the Thursday before Pentecost; that he will come again in glory to judge the living and dead, and His kingdom will have no end; that bread and wine become His flesh and blood in the eucharist; and that the prophets from John the Baptist to John of Patmos literally saw visions by the Spirit.
I should tell you that I do know one man like that: a celibate Anglo-Catholic priest who more than any other person, led me to become a Christian. (I don’t _know_ that he thinks homosexual acts are OK, but he does support gay marriage and homosexual priests.) So it’s possible. But not common, I think.
As far as I’m concerned, a Christian theologican who denies those basic articles is one who has already cast grave doubt on his own good judgment, and has proven himself to be overly susceptible to error. It is my suspicion that to accept homosexual acts and homosexual marriage inevitably leads to the denial of basic Christological truths, and that denial of Romans 1 can lead, by a slippery slope, to denial of the divinity of Christ. If you can prove me wrong with real examples, then I will admit that I’m wrong and will consider your arguments more seriously.
Hector, who decided that that list ought to constitute the litmus test for faith? The council of Nicea is hardly universally accepted by believers, nor is the Westminster confession or the 39 articles. Christianity is a huge body — and the idea of the blood atonement (an eleventh century idea, for heaven’s sake, read your Anselm) as a critically important part of faith is anachronistic and silly.
And that the bread and wine become his flesh? Kiss most evangelicals goodbye. And me. I am not a Catholic — it is a memorial, nothing more, we have in communion. And plenty of Christians believe that.
Your God is very, very small, Hector.
And plenty of Christians believe that.
No they don’t. Plenty of Unitarians who haven’t quite had the nerve to just put Jesus on the shelf and worship (if you want to call it that) the First Principle or whatever the pablum is, but who still want to call themselves “Christian”, believe that.
I’d endorse Hector’s list. It’s certainly possible for someone to have quibbles here and there; revelation isn’t complete and there is room for discussion and debate. But those are key elements of the faith.
Uh, Robert, do you know what the Presbyterian view of the eucharist is? How about the Anabaptist view? Transubstantiation, consubstantiation, memorial — all are acceptable views of what happens for Christians. It’s not just Unitarians.
And I am quite confident you would reject the Mormon claim to be Christian, by this standard. Small God indeed.
Hugo,
I didn’t say that you couldn’t disbelieve any of those dogmas and still be a Christian. You certainly can. Your Christianity would be, however, deficient (at least in my opinion- and since you appear to be trying to convince me to come around to the gay-affirming viewpoint, it’s my view that is at issue here.)
So yes, it’s perfectly possible to be an liberal Presybterian theologian and deny the Eucharist while affirming gay rights. There’s a reason why I don’t take my spiritual guidance from liberal Presbyterians, you know. If I think that modernist theologians have a gravely deficient Christology, then why would I feel confident in believing what they have to say about homosexuality? Unless you can find me a good number of gay-affirming theologians with a healthy belief in the miracles and mysteries, I am not going to give them much credence.
Well, to be fair, Gonz, many of the lawsuits were filed by traditionalists with the bishop as the defendant.
I don’t know what they are teaching in California, but at a very young age “She started it!” and “He did it too!” was unacceptable from my children.
If you’re gonna talk peace, why not leave without the property?
Papist dog, remember? From my seat, that whole bucket has a lot of holes for any part of the Anglican Communion to try to carry water with it.
I’m with Gonzman, you guys owe us a whole bunch of churches! ;P
Hugo, of course previous schisms have created their own innovative new ways of committing Christological error. Like Hector, that doesn’t mean that such folk are automatically non-Christian – but certainly, they’re a lot farther away from the Platonic ideal of Christian. And like Hector, I’m a lot more open to discussion of new ideas when it comes from someone who endorses the traditions of the church, than I am when it comes from some radical. Of course the radical has a new idea; that’s his whole reason for being. It means a lot more for Nixon to say “we can have peace with China” than it does to hear it from the hippie on the street corner who thinks we could have had peace with Hitler.
Mormons, by the way, are pretty plainly non-Christian. Jesus-flavored paganism, at best, while being fine people with pretty decent values nonetheless. Their insistence on holding obviously false historical doctrines as core church teachings by itself would make chaining Christianity to the Mormon experiment perilous in the extreme – let alone taking seriously their theology. Previous schisms had the wit not to stake their claim to legitimacy on historical events that could be disproved with archaeology; Joseph Smith was a poor long-term thinker.
If you want to assert that our rejection of Mormons as not being part of the communion is going to narrow our faith, feel free – but the vast majority of conventional Christians agree with excluding the Mormons, not with including them. Your “very large God” is going to end up with a very small flock.
Well, I’d go a bit further than Robert. I think the Mormons are wrong theologically, but I wouldn’t say they are not Christians. They do, in a sense, believe that Christ was the son of God (I think- I confess to not knowing a lot about the Mormon doctrines.) I’d say they were Christians in the same sense that Arians, Modalists, Marcionites, Docetists, and practicioners of Santeria are Christians- that is to say, seriously unorthodox.
I have some unorthodox views of my own, of course- my problem with Mormon beliefs isn’t that the are unorthodox, but that I think they can be shown to be false. The idea that men can become Gods, for example, is riven with some pretty deep contradictions.
Gay-friendly theologians who would likely fit Hector’s creedal criteria include James Alison, Peter Gomes, Samuel Kader, Charles W. Allen (www.therevdrcharleswallen.com), our old pal Gene Robinson (read his book “In the Eye of the Storm”), and John D. Caputo. And, of course, me
I find this discussion opens a whole interesting set of issues. On same-sex marriages and the ordination of individuals in a committed same-sex relationship, I have no doubt that robustly orthodox beliefs can coexist with a viewpoint that accepts these practices as a matter of the overriding emphasis on love and relationship in the Bible. Challenging the assumptions about same-sex commitment we have inherited from the relatively recent past does not mean discarding Paul or Romans. It means looking critically at the assumptions that have come our way about what Paul actually meant.
But reading your recitation of dogmas, two things strike me:
1) I can’t believe these things the way the medieval scholastics did
Note the word “can’t”. Not don’t. In fact, I do believe the majority of the dogmas listed by Hector. But I believe them with the intellectual and emotional background of a twenty-first century systems analyst, which differs profoundly from the viewpoint of a thirteenth century scholastic. I live in a time when we have pushed the frontiers of knowledge out, not much but a little, enough that mystery does not touch us at quite so many points as it did the scholastics, and our culture has some confidence in the possibility of tracing our observations to their causes. So that, for example, when athiests challenge me, as has happened, to find a metaphor for the Creator not based on any human model, I can produce one. At the same time, my contact with things I can understand sharpens my appreciation of mystery, so that when I say I believe, I do so with a strong sense of the limits of my understanding.
2) Traditionalism in modern times involves paradox and disconnect
I recently reflected on the peculiarity of the traditional church that has somehow, however uncomfortably, swallowed the camels of Copernicus and Darwin while straining at the gnat of Kinsey.
Well it’s certainly true that until recently we understood little about the biological genesis of deep-seated homosexual desires, and did not appreciate that there can be much good in homosexual relationshps (whatever your opinion about the actual sex act) or that these desires were often innate. However, I’d steer clear from invoking Kinsey. His statistical methods were abysmal, and have been overwhelmingly discredited and mocked by the scientific community. See what John Tukey, one of the founders of modern statistics, had to say about Kinsey’s methods. Moreover, it now appears that Kinsey sheltered sexual predators from the law in order to gain better access to interviews with them.
Hector:
To avoid getting into the endless dispute over the personal moral and academic probity, accuracy, and reliability of Dr. Kinsey, let us just propose to use “Kinsey” as a shorthand for the research done on the psychology and physiology of human sexuality since the 1940s.