Appreciated

I like this entry as a whole, but especially this point made I'll highlight here:

The designers of GAFCON have made it clear that their future will happen regardless of what anyone else thinks or wants or needs: witness the blatant disregard for the Bishop of Jerusalem and their disinterest in the local situation. For the GAFCONites, Jerusalem is not a place where real people live but it is an historical and religious theme-park to be viewed from bus windows, hotel conference rooms and through guided tours. It is a backdrop that makes a political statement.

Andrew Plus does not agree with my response to the video news conference by The Rev. Dr. Ian Douglas and the Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts-Schori. He avoided a quick response, whereas I reported on it, but he is pleased he did contemplate about it first and then came to a more positive view.

For him to be right, over all, that the Lambeth method facilitates what is positive, needs the active positive mindset of those going. I just don't see that positive mindset there, even among a sufficient number to lend weight to that approach. I take the view that The Episcopal Church presentation put the best spin on the method that coincides with its own aims and intentions, but it almost denies what is the predicament being placed down. Of course there is much to talk about and can be done so building on the positive, but it is the zero-sum aspects that won't go away and indeed are made worse by the theme park people in Jerusalem.

I'm not sure that the semi-adoption of the Indaba process is equivalent to Appreciative Inquiry, nor are those going in appreciative mood. It may be face to face pain: that is not the same as Appreciative Inquiry. The idea that face to face absorbs the pain seems overly optimistic. There still has to be resolution; the Windsor Report and invitations are still very much of this face to face - meaning resolution exists elsewhere, via some committee, or the Archbishop, and not in the ownership of the Indaba process. No, it won't work.

The list in the blog entry of what Anglicans value, by the way, is a good one, and a very positive approach. If the predicaments were not there, I am sure these or like them would be background or even foreground part of the whole 'better bishops' event.

No Kneeling

As someone who does not kneel, bow, scrape, face a book except to read it, or move my hands about my chest (but not that mad about any of these), I rather warm to Dougal's viewpoint:

"It is better to die on your feet, than to live forever on your knees." (La Pasionara) It struck me that could be a very good motto for anyone like me who has broken away from a life inhibiting, soul destroying Conservative faith and theology and found a more positive, liberating and life affirming one. It could also be a powerful battle cry for progressive Anglicans as we approach Lambeth. We are not going back into kneeling position in thrall to a reactionary theology to please a majority or even ++Rowan Williams (who has an awful job, but who really seems to have given up on his progressive principles in the quest to preserve a rather spurious unity). Jesus prayed standing up: as a beloved yet mature child facing the Father as he had been destined to. We are children of God through Grace and Adoption and it is better for the Anglican experiment to split in two than for us to default as requested by Archbishop Akinola et al into the kneeling, whimpering infant begging for forgiveness.

I never had a conservative type faith. It started with liberality (John Robinson' Honest to God and ever onwards) and has remained at the liberal and radical area. I often wonder about the emotional anchor that continues to operate when a faith began as something different, that was perhaps altered during theological college or down the line with continued reading.

I rather agree with him now about Anglicanism: better for it to split. However, we should not be under any illusions. For the GAFCON types to come on their raids, and to set up Instruments and control centres, they have to retain the pretence of one Communion for as long as possible. It will, in effect, be two, but entryism needs the way in - the host is needed.

Did She Say This?

I was reading the latest Epistle of Bishop David Anderson. If you want to know what the "opposition" is doing, it is best to read them and try to do it carefully. His letter is about good things and bad from his perspective over recent days.

Here we are again, with heresy hunting and specifically the TEC Presiding Bishop, Katherine Jefferts Schori. He writes that she said:

The Presiding Bishop, Katharine Jefferts Schori spoke recently at the University of the South, saying "Diversity is a vital part of the Anglican Communion. That can be a problem for those who think their way is the only way." She goes on to make a comparison of those who believe in a specific Christology of Jesus as "the Way, the Truth, and the Life," as sinning against the Holy Spirit, "It’s like the sin against the Holy Spirit, believing that there is no other possibility. Believing that we’ve got the whole thing right now and God can’t possibly do anything else, anything unexpected." Although Schori earned a Ph.D in marine biology, her grasp of the Holy Scriptures and her comprehension of theology are far removed from her area of learned expertise, and it would appear from her remarks that if you believe what Jesus said about himself, you are sinning against the Holy Spirit. It simply takes your breath away...

So I thought, this is plain enough; I will see what is published. She must be attacking those who state that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life and who build a specific theology around it. Quite risky then for this leader of a Church. So I listened to her sermon given at the University of the South (May 13 2008). It was about provoking based on hope and love an students going out into the world to address need. She referred to Julian of Norwich and love as our Lord's meaning. Desmond Tutu provokes, she said. She talked about a female ex-student with the Magdalen community with humble rules and an enterprise called Thistle Farms offering jobs and skills which were taken into Rwanda. Thistles are beautiful and provocative. Graduates are to be thistles in life's fields.

I admit that this was a very this-worldly sermon and nothing first-hand supernatural in it. So I looked around a little more and found this report at Tennessean.com:

BOB SMIETANA • Staff Writer • May 17, 2008

...Diversity is a vital part of the Anglican Communion, Jefferts Schori also said. That can be a problem for those who think their way is the only way.

"It's challenging to live in a community with a variety of opinion when you think yours is the only right one," she said. "That is the hard part - finding the grace and humility to admit the possibility of some difference of opinion."

She added that those who believe they have all the answers are mistaken.

"It's like the sin against the Holy Spirit, believing that there is no other possibility. Believing that we've got the whole thing right now and God can't possibly do anything else, anything unexpected."

This is very interesting, when compared with Bishop Anderson's letter. He slipped in an example of a fixed opinion, and put it in the same quotation marks. So he put (to repeat):

That can be a problem for those who think their way is the only way." She goes on to make a comparison of those who believe in a specific Christology of Jesus as "the Way, the Truth, and the Life," as sinning against the Holy Spirit, "It’s like the sin against the Holy Spirit, believing that there is no other possibility.

By doing that, he makes it look as if she has directly criticised those who focus on this part of the Gospel of John's Farewell Sermon. Having done it, he then launches into a more personal attack about her education and her theological inadequacy. In fact she had made a more general point against those who think they have all the answers and do not allow God to act on unexpected bases. She made no comment about those with one kind of Christology or another. After all, there are those who do believe in specific (though we are not told which specific) Christologies of Jesus based on that Gospel sermon, indeed on those very words, and yet who do not think that they know it all and do allow for God to act surprisingly and with difference.

It is all inference, all sleight of hand, but once again it is not accurate. It is ideology. Now I here rely upon a report, but then I am not stating any more than is in that report. I have added nothing in.

Notice how in this letter, as elsewhere, Archbishop Mouneer Anis is being attacked for his comments about why he is going to Lambeth 2008 and not to GAFCON. The letter states:

His words about his decision to absent himself from GAFCON, blaming the trouble on northern agitators, are poorly chosen as well as factually wrong. GAFCON is the creation of some Global South Primates, and in their invitation to other orthodox bishops, clergy and laity, naturally some come from the north, even as Egypt is north of Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, and Rwanda.

Isn't that last comment silly! Egypt is north of these African states. Bishop Anderson knows perfectly well what 'northern' means. It has an ideological and cultural connection. It means people in Northern or Western Christianity who have a particular outlook that some of us would call sectarian. They have joined up with these Africans whose faith has another cultural setting. What concerns Mouneer Anis is that the African cultural setting relates to that of the rest of the Global South, and yet under this Northern agenda is likely to split the Global South. Some of us indeed do see Northern or Western advisors with hands well on the GAFCON steering wheel.

Now I do make the analytical abstraction (and clearly so, that this is my commentary) that it is typical that a generous in tone letter from Mouneer Anis to GAFCON receives nasty attacks back: it is typical of what I call religious trotskyism, that is to say the core control of this GAFCON agenda and its intended entryism has the strategy that those who should be on board and who refuse get attacked.

Of course the issue of whether Mouneer Anis will achieve anything at Lambeth is moot, something he has wondered himself (if a Covenant is possible, how to rearrange the Communion with a more leading role for the whole of the Global South).

Another Pluralist World

Matt Kennedy gave a three talks on Mere Christianity in a Pluralistic World posted at Stand Firm on Tuesday, May 13, 2008, Sunday, May 18, 2008 and Wednesday, May 21, 2008.

It's another claim that The Episcopal Church has abandoned the historic Christian faith, this time focusing on the effects of pluralism and the pluralistic position.

Given my Internet name, I am interested, though the origin of this name is a stance within the Unitarians of years ago. Fulcrum also have used a pluralist name (the thread became somewhat variable in content), this time regarding Anglican Churches and their organising.

These talks may have one more to be posted, but there is enough to go on for now. They derive from two talks given to an LCMS Atlantic District pastor's conference.

Very soon in the first talk he claims the Episcopal Church is sick. It was the intellectual Church, but one without a grip on classical doctrine to be replaced by love and social justice. The Episcopal Church has engaged the culture and pluralism, and Anglicanism in the West was "so susceptible to cultural subversion". He states:

a pluralist culture is one that embraces a myriad of choices, paths, and pursuits, many of them mutually exclusive, as valid and legitimate.

This is not the same as relativism:

Relativism is self defeating because the relativist assertion that all is relative and nothing is absolute asserts an absolute.

This is not necessarily so. Just as a pluralist can be agnostic about absolutes, so there can be an agnosticism or relativism about relativism. These, though, are not the same. The first allows the possibility of some absolutes whilst thinking much is relativist; but to be relativist about relativism is to be part of an intense deconstruction not only of all other concepts but about relativism itself, and this represents a kind of implosion of meaning that turns structuralism into poststructuralism, everything into a spin. In fact it can produce a kind of virtual world, or a bubble world of word-plays and meanings where an impression of absolutes is nothing but a relationship of relativities.

Matt Kennedy is talking about objective truth and lack of certainty. He says:

The pluralist answer is that human knowledge of the absolute is absolutely limited and being limited very few definitive statements about the absolute can be made.

Not quite. This sentence contains an assumption that there is an absolute. Limitation of knowledge involves the question at least of whether there is any absolute anything. We do not know this either. This is one reason why relativism can become a working hypothesis, but another hypothesis is the Isaiah Berlin position of clashing values all claiming objective truth.

There is, though, another position that is both objective and stranger - that reality may end up, as in quantum science, full of paradoxes and multiple states. Ideas that clash may well have possibilities that they do exist as truth even though at a larger and surface level they seem to be completely competitive. That paradox thus leads to another kind of relativity, a more objective relativity, and it can be a road to a very broad universalism of paradoxes.

Anyway, he then jumps to something else, "though it might seem like a detour at first" which is Christian pluralism, the position of John Hick - that religions themselves provide salvic ways to the Real. This is different from the Christian inclusivist position where it is still Christ that saves via what is legitimate in other faiths and unknown regarding Christianity. Matt Kennedy is an exclusivist, but just about allows for the inclusivist - but not the pluralist. He thinks the pluralist position asserts that:

...Christianity and Islam and Buddhism are all equally valid, equally able to provide access to the divine in themselves.

I don't agree with this, and I doubt John Hick does either. My view is that John Hick is an inclusivist of the Real, that all are aiming towards the universal ultimate. A pluralist position says, rather, that each religion, like a language, has is its own process of "salvation", that salvation or equivalent being understood within that religion. The problem with Hick's view is that he imposes a Real on religions and groups and individuals that they do not themselves accept. As soon as he describes the Real, he has described his own package. It is rather like this: the Gospel of John gives Jesus the words that he is the only way to the Father. Well he is to the pluralist, just as Buddha is the found way of the Dharma. Buddha is not even seeking the Father. The concepts are internal.

Well they are except the pluralist can be playful - and just as languages steal words and even phrases from other languages, so you can get combinations of phrases and understandings. The social anthropologist tries to translate. But join elements together and they form packages: a new one every time.

Here he is knocking The Episcopal Church's own leader:

Katharine Jefferts Schori, the current Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church articulated the Christian Pluralist view with precision in an interview with Time Magazine on July 10th, 2006. She said, "We who practice the Christian tradition understand him as our vehicle to the divine. But for us to assume that God could not act in other ways is, I think, to put God in an awfully small box."

This could be Christian inclusivism, actually. Clearly there are other religions around, and at least on theory that God acts these have been formed in time and in place. The definition of God may be that of the Christian, but clearly there are other paths by which there can be a judgment of salvation that derives from Christianity. As for Bishop Schori, lack of certainty that there are not other ways regarding the fullness of God may in fact be no more than an agnosticism about those other ways, while she is fairly certain about her own. Such is not affirming an inclusivity of a higher Real, let alone pluralism.

A person who may actually be pluralist as I understand it is Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury. This is because from time to time he addresses Hindus, Buddhists and Muslims about their scriptures and them having their own integrity and form, and generate communities (about which we can be multi-cultural) whilst he operates within Christianity. We can compare communities, of course, and have laws, but religions are something that form around us and indeed form us as individuals.

The second section identifies pluralism as coming from the impact first of Kant - that we receive the physical world through our senses and that leaves the metaphysical world high and dry, with reason suggesting there might be a divine, but that Schleiermacher said that our feelings of utter dependence give us a route to the divine.

I am not sure what this has to do with pluralism at all.

Pluralism arises because institutions have ideological output and they do not agree and they make claims on others. So we once had in a geographical area basically one religion (other than for the persecuted Jews) and we lived in a hierarchical sacred canopy. That canopy absorbed and regulated the baseline of magic and superstition. There was a flowering on non-sacred knowledge at the Renaissance, but the real change came with the Reformation and religious competition. With the rise of rationality came a whole non-religious space too, which was another basis of ideological competition. Some historicist ideologies arose that were similar to the Judeao-Christian-Islamic linear schemes but secular. Eventually we lived in a world of many religions, many Churches, and a large space where we think practically and ordinarily without any of them. There is a fragmented superstition left, much of it forming miniature religions and consumer spirituality. As well as competing dogmas there is a stress on non-dogma regarding the spiritual. Much seems to be subjective. In the neither objective nor subjective postmodern situation, the large claims of competing ideologies collapse, forcing everyone of commitment to a particularist language be sectarian in a sense.

In other words, pluralism is a social issue - it is about the sociology of knowledge and how this alters with changed institutional relationships. Kant and Schleiermacher are bit players in this.

Matt Kennedy then jumps to scripture and revelation. He does not tell us how he knows that these are objective sources of exclusive knowledge: how he escaped the experience trap that apparently found everyone else.

He should also realise that in the postmodern situation there are those who are equally narrow in their selection of authoritative sources of revelation who have no objective basis for the selection - none at all. They just run with them. Thus we have George Lindbeck (discussed regarding Fulcrum and the pluralist position) and John Milbank of Radical Orthodoxy.

Inside the bubble may be as real as inside any other bubble - the pluralist again says that each bubble decides the terms of its own understanding and engagement.

The origins of this are Karl Barth, that neo-Calvinist of sorts, whose God was anti-cultural and anti-religious. It was all a one way encounter. When such a God is so remote, he is in danger of disappearing. Thus Harvey Cox's The Secular City was a combination of Barth and Bonhoeffer. Theologically I also identify the subjectivity of James Martineau, who produced such a cultural view of religion that it becomes subject to transience and difference. He was a collective universalist of theism that actually was subjective in authority regarding every individual. It just breaks down. From opposite poles both end up with postmodernity.

As for experience and Schleiermacher, it is arguable that since William James the theological view is that you express and then experience. You cannot experience without a symbol-system interpretation - otherwise it is mu (a Buddhist word for utter nothing). Well there may be a pure transcendence or mu (Hick again) but not a dicky bird can be said about it.

I have no idea how Matt Kennedy knows that he is backing the correct horse, with his exclusivist Christianity. Apparently Rowan Williams (the pluralist and narrativist?) believes that without a historical dissolving of bones into the resurrected Christ he would stop celebrating the Eucharist and resign. But he has no historical method to know whether that happened or not, and for it to happen would involve changing our understanding of biology and physics - not exactly full humanity (in that sense - I don't know beyond that sense how "full" humanity is measured).

Matt Kennedy thinks that reliance on experience is the way by which the Episcopal Church has innovated against his interpretation of scripture. Experience needs interpretation:

the corporate experience of the contemporary church has become the sole measure of theological truth. Sola scriptura is replaced by sola ecclesia.

This does not follow at all. The Church can believe in continuing revelation: it can believe in the continuing and ever new witness of the Holy Spirit, for example. It can be as dogmatic as him.

It might, alternatively, be agnostic and therefore just become more inclusive on a social basis. Arguing that this is theological and of revelation is not pluralist at all: it is another form of exclusivism. It says it knows that this is being revealed, or at least this seems to be the case.

Indeed there can be a revelation argument about cultural change and the move to inclusivity all around. The incarnate world follows God's revelation into particular culture. This is not postmodern at all: it is realist. It is not pluralist either (other than that there are a variety of cultures). It need having nothing to do with it.

The third talk gets into the effects of "pluralist subversion" regarding forms of Marcionism (that God is always good, equalitarian, etc., on the grounds of the love of Christ) and Gnosticism in the Church (privileged spiritual knowledge).

Is Marcionism based on experience? Has it anything at all to do with pluralism, even if it can be shown to exist now?

All a Marcionite-avoiding position involves is taking into account the yuck of the Judaeo-Christian tradition as well as its good bits. It does not mean treating them equally: it does mean asking why they are there and what they convey, and whether any of it can be translated to the now. Experience often flies in the face of a Marcion type position, rather than upholds it, given that so much in the world is ugly and destructive. Ah - perhaps this is why we keep the rough stuff as well as the good in the Bible.

Gnosticism is definitely not equivalent to a 'Christ of faith' and 'Jesus of history' discernment. In fact the starting point is often the material world, and affirms it, which Gnosticism does not. It just states, for all what dogmatists assert, that there is no sure historical method by which you can find out that much about the Jesus of history. There are no primary documents and the New Testament is a series of theological documents from the early Churches - secondary and about faith. The Jesus Seminar votes: so what? It does so after indirect methods are employed.

Pluralism matters here in so far as the multiplicity of institutions including secular ones, and the shifting of religious authority away from secular authority, has allowed for a critical historical approach to be made to religious formation using historiographical understanding.

Theology that then says we shall be symbolic, or narrative, or radical, is not a pure knowledge, but rather a stance of faith - just doing. It is to walk the path. The creed writers had no more historical insight than we do: indeed, they had less and did not apply it. They just came to philosophical conclusions that made the faith a coherent workable Empire faith. Early Christians may have developed various formulas, but they hardly needed sealed doctrines - nor did they need anything other than the sacred mythology that they lived within. So today the importance is to walk the road; trust in the faith-path.

The real Gnostics today are perhaps those who think they can override historiography and "know" it is all historically true. They don't know.

The "pluralist" Church doesn't divide flesh and matter. If it exists then all it means is that there are different views and tendencies. Most liberals and radicals are quite earth rooted.

It might have taken some intellectual muscle to put down Arianism and Marcionism, but it does not take much to put down the arguments as presented by Matt Kennedy. They are just a collection of misapplied points. In the end, he makes assertions he cannot support. He does not tell us how he knows, only that he does. He is the Gnostic, him and his New Puritanism Church. They have history all wrapped up - except they have not.

How Long?

June is not far away; and we are now getting a picture of fault lines and how developments may go. It is based on what is likely to come out of both main Anglican Conferences, and the likely pressure on remaining centres of geographical monopoly. Anglicanism can either plan or descend into a more autocephalous route (by design or accident respectively) - which does involve overlaps and competing Churches even Communions.

One asks how long the map above will continue - and here is a little game to play: can you identify which colours represent which Anglican Church? Click on it to make it bigger.

(I could do an image map to identify each Church but it may only have historical value.)

More Betting

Right, so we have the Lambeth as a kind of semi-Indaba-marshmallow, where "incarnate" face to face conversation of huge differences has no resolution, at least not produced in a clear sense for the world to see with participants' ownership over any decisions. Not without revolution in the ranks to overturn the method.

We have an ACI participants' message that without a Covenant the Communion divides, but the purpose of a Covenant is now to divide the Communion on more favourable terms for the doctrinaires.

We have a full blown conference in Jerusalem that could well lead to parallel structures that effect a division: Instrument? Common Cause Partnerships? More boundary crossings.

Now we have a bishop in the know adding that the Global South itself could split, as a northern (let's call it) New Puritan agenda drives GAFCON with its northern African and right wing American backing.

So what splits are likely now? The Anglican Communion is as near as dividing as it can be. It will be surprising if it does not. Northern/ Western Churches by and large will not accept a restrictive Covenant or one that goes beyond present Anglican formularies. Against this GAFCON, supposedly renamed, e.g. Instrument of Global Anglicanism, will become a kind of activist agent for the theological right. The Global South will, however, not only feel alienated from the Northern/ Western Churches, but will split with the Global South elements in GAFCON. Also split will be the Open Evangelicals either towards openness or evangelicalness about whether to go with GAFCON types or the Northern/ Western Churches - the Covenant for Northern and Western Churches either being dead or no more than a summary document. GAFCON will also split within, between Catholic and Reform.

No doubt too some Churches will fragment and divide off - losses and gains.

Also clear is that geographical monopoly is gone. There will be different Anglican Churches in the same town, even in the same street. One Covenant may lead to others, or a specific rejection: minimal, detailed, doctrinally heavy, doctrinal minimalism. There will also be gaps in provision, regarding each provider.

Quite a prospect. Once again, go back a few years. When an institution is spinning with centrifugal force the worst thing to do is introduce a policy to rivet its centre and force everything in by centralising. All that does is create a big explosion, if delayed, and then fragments. You have to relax it out and prevent those spasms and try to get the least worst situation that represents the reality of the dispute. Instead the result could be far worse: multiple schisms and much antagonism.

Anis to Lambeth Only

The Most Revd Mouneer Anis, Presiding Bishop of Jerusalem and the Middle East has written a letter saying that he will not be attending GAFCON. He is going to Lambeth and looks forward to GAFCON recommendations before going.

He urges that the Global South stays united and that it should not be driven by a northern agenda. I take this to mean that the likes of Minns and Sugden should not be running the show according to what can be called a 'New Puritan ' agenda.

He also fears that GAFCON might take decisions that actually divides the Global South. He is very concerned for its unity and its meeting in 2009.

He further wants what he calls northern orthodox to stay with southern orthodox. Again one infers that there is a danger of the Global South going it alone. He sees that northern orthodox bishops might affiliate with the south - very GAFCON and potentially against the principle of geographical monopoly. There could be parallel processes for building unity among those loyal to the biblical historic faith and ethics in both the South and the North. He clearly is troubled by his interpretation of doctrinal observance in the United States and Canada.

He also sees that the Covenant may be the non-starter that rejection by some Churches implies:

If there is no prospect of a Covenant that safeguards orthodoxy and unhindered mission within a reasonable timescale, then the possibility of adopting a "holding covenant" may need to be considered. I urge you all to consider participating in the Lambeth Conference.

Such could, of course, come from GAFCON. It might come from the whole Global South in 2009. He thinks the GAFCON people should go to Lambeth.

He makes the assumption that people in the pews may be confused or misled, and have less understanding about controversial issues. I can suggest people in the pews are not baahing sheep but are well capable of understanding the coming division and that a minority in the north, who could never get their way otherwise, are hitiching a ride on some literalist, supernaturalist and magic relating African provinces, to drive their own agenda. In other words: yes, some in the north are driving this, and doing it via GAFCON. The Global South will either have to follow along or, indeed, there could be further division.

One wonders what Mouneer Anis will achieve in addressing face to face and face to face in a method of meeting with no resolution, with people he thinks should not be there (who started the crisis, he claims) in a part-adaptation of the Indaba participatory meeting. Of course there is Bishop Sulheil Dawani in the diocese where GAFCON meets in June and he is opposed to GAFCON and has good relationships with The Episcopal Church.