Bad Anglican Day

Friday 14 December has been a Bad Anglican Day. First of all it was the day that the rest of the world (after the Primates) saw the Archbishop of Canterbury's Advent Letter. I have of course read it and made a basic comment (scroll down) on Thinking Anglicans ahead of considering it further, but already that letter affects the Christmas message out the same day from him that, as a result, had a particular impact of hollowness as my comment on that shows (scroll down). I have been summarising the Advent Letter for myself and thus setting it up for comment here later.

Summarising is a process of careful reading: as I summarise each paragraph I ask myself whether I have the meaning right. I try not to rely on verbatim reproduction but to change the words via a text processor and get the meaning as close to what could be the original, and shorter. This is underway now. This way helps me think, though I am sure that the flaw in the Advent Letter is to do with the Anglican Communion again being treated as if it is a Church. Nevertheless the boundaries are being drawn in to the point of how to read and interpret the Bible, and I suddenly feel like leaving not just the Anglican Communion but the Church fo England. How we read the Bible is up to us, following various methods in scholarship, not some aparent crypto-authoritarian who elevates purple (who'd have once thought it, from Rowan Williams!).

It is has been a Bad Anglican Day also in that I wrote, a little ahead of the final week, my own feedback criticism of the intended 2008 Lent Course in the Lincoln Diocese. It is just bad, as said previously for the first three weeks, and this course should never see the light of day. The intention is for the group to produce a collective response, so mine may be limited to my website (though I will take it with me). It will be updated after the last week's session on Thursday.

Celtic Liturgy

We took over the rather disastrous Taste and See course that is getting a trial run in Barton-on-Humber, as mentioned here earlier. Ending a rather low level description of Celtic spirituality with an unrelated task about silence last session, we decided to set our own tasks. This included writing a Celtic type prayer or Celtic type liturgy as in a Daily Office.

I have done the latter and more ambitious task, and the result is added to my Spiritual Area. It is available there (top menu) and then under Liturgies and then Celtic Liturgy for Late Evening. In other words it is like Compline.

Mine focuses in on the crossover with neo-Paganism and indeed with expressions in faiths about nature and place, and the spiritual significance of place. Much is taken from Judaism, the structure is Anglican Christian plus, and the theology liberal (but not exclusively) and the content Celtic inspired. I also focus on activity in the day. There is a central ceremony, which is my nod towards the esoteric, though I don't particularly follow that line. What I do respect is doctrinal flexibility and variation, and a late evening liturgy and ritual such as this should be available to as many as would want to use it. So there is much about the moon and the sun and time and places, as well as what we do.

Institutionally then it crosses between Anglican (structure, some theology and content), Unitarian (some theology), neo-Pagan/ New Age (some content), and Independent Sacramental Ministry (because of the combination of liturgical, theologically different and even esoteric). Although Judaism and Buddhism were used, the content is so altered as to move beyond both, because of the Christian elements and because of the theism.

Not exactly what a Lent course might expect. However, I am working things through, pushing my theology in several directions as far as it can go, and this is the result.

San Joaquin

So the Diocese of San Joaquin Votes to disassociate with The Episcopal Church.

A while ago I jumped the gun a little saying that Bishop Don Harvey, moving to the Southern Cone Anglican province, in order to organise a continuing Anglicanism within Canada against the existing Canadian Anglicans, would force the Archbishop of Canterbury to act. He does not invite bishops who go from one Anglican province to work against another sitting Anglican province. The symbolic way the Archbishop does this is to invite all bishops to the Lambeth Conference, coming up in summer 2008. To invite such a boundary crossing bishop is to give approval of his bishoping, which he has not so far. However, Bishop Don Harvey was retired Canadian and then became full time Southern Cone. He did not need to be de-invited, as the retired are not invited.

However, now we have Bishop John-David Schofield of the Diocese of San Joaquin who, via a diocesan vote to remove from The Episcopal Church (TEC), and secondly by joining under the Southern Cone, is a full timer with an invitation to Lambeth 2008 (though he may not have accepted - many have not). This time sitting on the fence is not an option for Rowan Williams. If he continues to invite John-David Schofield then he is approving of this intervention while not approving of any other. However, if he disinvites John-David Schofield then Rowan Williams will have shown a definite approval that sides with TEC and goes against the Archbishop of the Southern Cone, Gregory Venables, who has been a key figure in the Windsor Process (and probably still is). Gregory Venables is clear that the Diocese of San Joaquin stays in the Anglican Communion, but no other incursion is so recognised.

In the end not acting is acting, and this point is reached.

Dioceses do not move between different national Churches; TEC will simply replace him and whoever else has gone, and seek to recover any property they take. It is the national Church that handles the Canon Law and makes the dioceses.

Update Tuesday 11 December

It is now clear that there was no approval from Canterbury and that there has been some perhaps self-misleading going on in a number of quarters, partly as a consequence that the lack of comments from Canterbury about many of these issues leads too many to hang on to every word and every nuance. An Advent Letter is due from Canterbury, and perhaps it is a good idea to wait for that. No doubt it will be squeezed dry for the significance of every punctuation mark. Apparently it is a little late appearing. The Convocation of Anglicans in North America has just consecrated four more Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion) bishops as part of its drive in the United States and Common Cause is about to try its hand as an alternative province from about 18 December. Wanting legitimacy means that they claim to be part of the Anglican Communion, but though he is no pope the fact that Rowan Williams says so little means people hang on to his every word and nuance.

Religious Jokes

There is a fictional area of the Pluralist website. This doesn't see a lot of change, but recently I visited some jokes of a religious nature and it inspired the sad creature that I am to take the jokes much, much further. So now there is the Religious Lingerie Department (yes, you can associate religious denominations with bras and knickers) and some additional Anglican and Unitarian jokes, somehow managing to combine them in places.

Building Relatively Historical Bridges

Rowan Williams gave a Lecture at the Building Bridges Conference in Singapore on Thursday 6th December 2007. This is my summary.

The argument is that the Enlightenment brought upon religious faiths their own restrictions, often ignored, not to opt for a will to power. Faiths have a quality that, even if their argument is defeated, that the transcendent continues them on, so that there is no defeat - and therefore they can opt for peace not power. However, when the Enlightenment rationality was caught up in its own limitations via coupling with biological determinism, nationalism, Marxism, Freudianism, and postmodernism, then it lost its universal nature. However, if everything is relative, then a defeat of the argument means it can never return. Thus the temptation to power.

The continuation of religious differences shows that people keep to their robust positions, but under pressure they can do so and will not be lost. This robust defence shows that there are values that are maintained. Those transcendent values also suggest that failure might be more in keeping than the consequence of maintenance by force.

The paradox is that without force and without universal reason (that can justify force) religious difference held and maintained enhances social cohesion through negotiation. Difference maintained means a common security - and we enhance society by maintaining the right of the other faith to exist and be in that negotiation.

The communities can look for these values of being in the world space, not producing a tempting global ethic (there are protocols and statements about what is believed to be essential in defending each other), and not a signle religious tradition can organise a programme in public life (but they can make statements of witness against those values when non-religious rationality presses for certain kinds of change).

What is common is a pragmatic approach about values and the right of each community to practice its faith and engage in the freedom to debate and negotiate - never settling the matter between themselves.

Social unity is not created by marginalising religious traditions or leaving behind the most strongly held or distinctive principles, or that secular principles are superior.

Diverse religious values even stand against even a liberal state absolutism. They have a stake in the state's moral direction; they have to persuade a public in a democratic society as they have no overall rights of their own.

Social values and priorities are not timeless, and religions demonstrate that they have a history. Religious diversity presents several histories, and in discovering these there is a heritage to be shared at points in history as they intersect.

No religious system answers every human question. Looking back we see a kaleidoscope of human perceptions and social cohesion involved adjustments, some in huge tension. Religious diversity stimulates towards a more inclusive history for social cohesion. The UK is rethinking its history as its religious diversity has grown in a largely secular social environment. It sees how Islam passed on intellectual thought to Christianity and it responded. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks has called it building a home together and the dignity of difference. It is not about a utopia or about reasonable people ending up with the same view. It's about fullness, resources, and non-negotiable transcendent principles, that human unity is in relation to the sacred (what the Jewish and Christians call the image of God). Marginalise religion and you marginalise the human subject.

Whilst not saying how dialogue should happen, honest and careful interfaith dialogue is for the ultimate good of society. No beliefs are compromised at all and yet to acknowledge the conviction of your truth is still to respect the depth and richness of what they have received as truth - and no one has received the truth as God knows it. The relationship between the passionately committed to their own truth is a gift giving a plural society hope for coherence, justice and peace.

I hope this is a fair and sufficiently accurate summary.

The core of this is an argument about social cohesion and having it because of religious cohesion via diversity of packages. The old Durkheim style argument was of having one set of values shared by all to have a cohesive society. Linked to religious diversity are transcendent values, though of course no one can describe what they are except from within each religious tradition committed to their defence. Transcendent values mean that an argument pointing to them can never be truly lost, as they (being transcendent) will return the argument. Thus failure can be more peaceable, itself pointing to a transcendent value or values.

If those transcendent non-negotiable values can be found, then there is of course a global ethic. Hans Kung used to address the global ethic. It is a religious version of the secular high modernist argument of Habermas, that beyond all the material and sectional interests that skew thought, purely disinterested rational thinkers will still come to agree on core values. If we do not, it is because we cannot find these pure rational values, or cannot find these transcendent values.

Either there are such transcendent non-negotiable values, or there are not. The postmodern world, in undermining the sort of rationality to which Habermas held fast, also undermines those transcendent values, not just an impossibility of agreement. The transcendent values could be just one, the value to agree to differ, but that is not what Rowan Williams means when he points to pragmatic and peacemeal efforts, and that religions agree to their defence as bodies in promoting such values. Religions contain transcendent values but these are not the same as each and every religion, but are pointed towards, protected and defended by what is non-negotiable.

It is as if religious convictions operate at a second highest level, with everyone piling in their convictions at that level. They thus defend religions and their values, their contribution, as pointers to those transcendent values, by regarding those transcendent values as expressed within their own tradition.

Except Rowan Williams then undermines these convictions at a second level, by saying no one has received the truth as God knows it. In other words, he recognises and admits the second level nature of Christian or any other religious thought.

For me, the argument is undermined by the admission.

The fact is that people are not necessarily (nor should they be) committed to a religious package. What history also tells us, because they are a history, is that beliefs change. These packages do get compromised, because they did intersect and make changes. Christianity has changed, changed hugely due to the impact of the secular academic world. Rowan Williams forever wants to deny the key importance of the secular academic effect - that has stripped some of the interest and skewing from religious thought, thus allowing actual, critical, biblical study in theology departments that can go where it will whatever some Christian doctrine may state. In that the secular is not universal does not mean it is not important. If not important, why does he think that religions should pass their convictions via democracy, which is a secular approach to organising political life bound up with secular views of liberty? He seems to require religions to pass on their convictions indirectly into the body politic that organises social cohesion, via persuading people and not directly.

There is no guarantee that one religion will recognise the right of another religion to share social space. Scriptures and traditions contradict themselves on this. At their core many justify aggression and offence, never mind defence, as well as justifying peace. This has to be recognised. Islam, for example, is the organisation of a peaceable communal tribe, with no guarantee of peace outside. Christianity developed evangelising and orthodoxy that was far from being peacable to the unbeliever and the differently believing. Sections of Judaism marginalises Reform and Liberal expressions. Indeed, given religious behaviour to their own towards uniformity, why should anyone expect them to create space for others in social diversity?

The argument of liberty does inevitably involve some liberalism, even if limited in the social sphere or in restraint. There is that subtle shift to the world of convictions necessary. Jonathan Sacks affirms that Judaism is not for everyone, and never was, and so there must be difference, and that the rest do not simply just follow on those who were chosen, but have a right to their full expression; and Christianity has had to shift towards allowing others to be and stay non-Christian and for such to be valid (and not second division) - a move that many traditionalists and contemporary evangelicals simply cannot accept. That shift in Christianity is a shift towards liberalism, like it or not. Western Islamic scholars speak of a Reformation for Islam and that only with such can it adopt to being fully accepting of a plural world. In other words, there must be internal change. Some faiths like Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, Bahaism and Hinduism already have, built in, forms of relativity and syncretism that allow them to participate in a fully plural world. All these faiths develop liberalised, rationalised, thought-forms, as indeed has Rowan Williams with all his cultural assuptions and personal influences.

Rowan Williams basic position is that of the story, developed through history, through time. The religions develop their convictions. He delves into the detail of one, and knows that there are so many others with their details. They represent transcendent values, although the story approach never allows us to prove such (they may only be signals of transcendence). This is the world of religious relativity already, one story irreducible by another. Yes, they can be a clash of objective values, but no one can know how they can be objective when set one against another - and not finding any global values or global ethic.

The story leads to a "don't know" about transcendent values, or indeed one cohering transcendent - completely indescribable, of neither Buddhism's non-theism nor Christianity's theism, never mind anything such as a Holy Trinity or Christ's incarnation. To describe gives the transcendent a history, and brings it down a peg or two. This is why Christianity has believed in a self-limiting God revealing via Greek culture with Jewish background (ask Pope Benedict). These concepts are all historical, not eternal (then). Is this not so?

Mapping the Anglican Communion

Andrew Goddard (see earlier posts) keeps on mapping, and it is useful to analyse and then see how the Anglican Communion is shaping up to the process towards accepting, or not accepting, a Covenant. He has altered his mapping analysis to semi-detach from it the pro and anti Windsor Process positions the issue of homosexuality (in ministry and same sex blessings) as they do not match completely.

I have decided to do my own map in response. It looks like this below. These are understandings of the Church by believers who are in favour of a Covenant and who are against.

The text, however, called Mapping the Anglican Communion, I have added to my Christianity - Denominations section in the Learning Area (Religion) because it is a basic overview and useful to add in the main website. In that the article sets out some basics, there is a little background that seasoned readers of the coming Anglican motorway pile up might skip past quickly. Andrew's effort, and it is worth examining itself (the links are there), is a means by which I have offer my own analytical description.

As regards individuals, Rowan Williams would be counted as in the red text, whereas my own view is found in between the brown and green text - Churches are or should be, basically, autocephalous, but I have a good dollop of liberal Protestantism in me too. I might even be found on the circle's edge (cropped off) where two curves cross.

Lent Course in Advent

Some of us are undergoing a Lent course in Advent. The Lincoln Diocese wants some churches to trial run a course it intends to run in Lent 2008. So a small group is doing so.

Given that the Christmas season in the Western calendar is barely over before Lent begins, one wonders quite what the point is of trial-running a course that will be used so quickly. Perhaps a few small changes were expected, to be run through before distribution (and even that is a challenge).

Now the actual doing of the course, involving spirituality, is of course confidential, but the feedback is not, though I am not identifying anyone and not linking feedback opinions together (except me and mine).

The course offers tasters in forms of spirituality - prayer life. If it had been successfully put together, it would have opened up issues of depth and personality and would need careful handling by facilitators.

Let me be gentle. The course is a disaster. It is appallingly put together without co-ordination. Half way through six sessions we decided that feedback had to go in now. The first session treats participants like spiritual idiots, and does not set up the task so that people can benefit flexibly and fully. The second is at a higher level, but again lacks different strategies for individuals. The third, however, is dreadful. It has no reasonable entry level, is garbled and causes anger and frustration. I suspect it has been rewritten from copyrighted material, and has been made indigestible.

I abandoned the feedback form. I have instead written a 15 page feedback essay, I hope forensically taking this mess to task and suggesting how it could have been done in places. It is half way through the course only. Others have sent their extended feedback in too.

My advice is simple. The first week's session and its weekly task needs rewriting. The second needs some improvement. The third is appalling, and needs thoroughly rewriting. Given that the people who produced this have not got time to make such changes, the Lent course in the Lincoln diocese should be abandoned. If it is launched on the diocese it will do damage, and could have an immensely negative effect on the confidence of people and their prayer lives.

The HTML version of this feedback is for all to see. If you are asked do this course in Lent 2008, don't say you were not warned.

Update Thursday 6 December - After Taste and See session for Week 4

As part of the task setting section of the course, I read what was in the handbook about Celtic Spirituality to the group. It was all right as far as it went, but it was not written with any conviction or expertise. Then likened the experience to being led up a path and falling off a cliff. Indeed as I turned the page and arrived at the exercise, it was about silence only again and I said, straight away, "What has this to do with Celtic Spirituality?" I then said, "Surely the most obvious exercise is to write a prayer centred around what you do or where you live or a special place." This was the point at which even the most charitable realised that this course was finished. There were Bible readings to look at, but not only were they (just) about silence, but they were very unCeltic. As someone said, the word silence was "googled" and they came up with this. Indeed, look back at the descriptive content, and it gives a real sense of weak reproduction and second hand knowledge. I said this wrong exercise is because the person does not know what he or she is talking about. The facilitator decided to write a collective response immediately after the session to add to the feedback being posted tomorrow.

This course is a disaster. Then there is the curious puzzle of the letter asking groups to evaluate the course, and whether we would recommend the course should be given wider distribution. We wondered why that was written (could be just innocently written, but the doubts may have been there already). The answer is a very clear No. There was the matter whether this might be the views of the awkward squad of the town - and I said no, and this is why I did write those 15 pages forensically tackling the content and why it cannot work. I said this will have a seriously negative impact on people's spirituality.

I said I thought it could not get any worse after last week, but it has. As it happens, we decided to take over the course at this point, as no proper task was set anyway. The feedback session for the following week is based on - well, what exactly? No one could tell. There is a reference to a book no one will have and there is no resource offered. Now we will indeed either write a prayer about what we do, or do something like a craft, or reflect upon images in the margins around decorated spiritual writings (e.g. the Book of Kells) or write a liturgy for a time of day based on Celtic understandings. I shall have a crack at the last of these.

I didn't say this but it would take me two weeks to rewrite this course, and make it consistent and sensible. I would dump huge sections of it, and write it as clearly as possible each part being task focused, with options, strategies and warnings. How on earth this mess of a course got even sent out even for a trial run I do not know.