All Hallows' Eve

On this Eve of All Hallows, The Creedal Christian very helpfully links to an essay by the now Bishop of Virginia on why "the so-called 'exposure' of Halloween is nothing more than a skewed, self-serving agenda from various churches that make up only a tiny minority of Christianity, indeed a minority within Protestantism".  The essay emphasises why Christians can celebrate Hallowe'en with traditional festivities:

Halloween is the time when Christians proclaim and celebrate the fact that Satan and the occult have no power over us and cannot disrupt our relationship with our Lord and Redeemer, as long as we live faithfully to Christ. We show this by making fun of such pretenders, lampooning them in their face. This is why our costumes and decorations certainly be witches, devils, and ghosts. In the victory of Christ, Christians are privileged to do this and we must not be timid about it.

On this day - amidst pumpkins, witches, wizards and ghouls - we can recall the quotations placed by Lewis at the outset of The Screwtape Letters:

"The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn" - Luther


"The devil ... the prowde spirite ... cannot endure to be mocked" - Thomas More.

As we prepare to rejoice in the glory and light of the communion of saints, and the promise it bears of the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting, it is indeed fitting that we mock and scorn that proud spirit and his angels.

Communion and ecclesiological humility

The Conciliar Anglican has given marvellous expression to something which those of us who support the Covenant need to remember - that to be Anglican means to be called to an ecclesiological humility:

This is the one that has kept me the most grounded in Anglicanism over the years. One of the things that I love about Anglicanism is that it is slow to change, but change is possible. That change is always rooted in the past, of course. We should never make changes in what we believe to accommodate new ideas and cultural flux. Nevertheless, it is a blessing to be a part of a tradition that can sometimes admit that we get things wrong. In 1559 there were no prayers for the dead in the liturgy, in part out of a fear that such prayers might lead to a belief in things like purgatory and also in part out of a mistaken notion that such prayers were a medieval invention. In 1662, after much careful consideration of the witness of Scripture and the early Church, the prayers for the dead were added back into our liturgy. Our skepticism of our own ability to make choices about faith should not be limited just to ourselves. We should also have a healthy skepticism of our collective ability to do so. Does the church you are in have some mechanism for correcting errors? Can it even admit to error? Is there room within the Church for challenge and constructive debate?

"An authentic continuation of the original Yes"

On the feast of Ss Simon and Jude, apostles and martyrs, words from von Balthasar on the relationship between the apostolic proclamation and martyrdom:

In this process of clarification, however, a boundary also becomes apparent, that limit to which a Christian can still responsibly go and which marks the stage at which he must say No.  This No, which classes the Christian as a confessor and if necessary as a martyr, is nothing less than an authentic continuation of the original Yes, accepting God's eschatological action for the world.  If we look at it objectively, martyrdom is nothing less than pure triumphant joy that 'the Son of God, Jesus Christ, whom we preached among you, Silvanus and Timothy and I, was not Yes and No; but in him it is always Yes.  For all the promises of God find their Yes in him.  That is why we utter the Amen through him, to the glory of God' (2 Cor 1:19-20).  When the Christian confesses his faith in God's Yes, this is a sign that God has finally committed himself to the world (von Balthasar Engagement with God: The Drama of Christian Discipleship).

When the letter kills

I am not sure I agree with +Nick Baines' view that Dawkins' refusal to debate with William Lane Craig should be condemned.  In his Guardian article, Dawkins' focus was on Craig's reading of the Old Testament's 'texts of terror', in particular Deuteronomy 20:16-17 - the command to Israel to "annihiliate" the peoples of Canaan. "You must not let anything that breathes remain alive".   Dawkins takes delight in quoting Craig's interpretation of such texts:


But why take the lives of innocent children? The terrible totality of the destruction was undoubtedly related to the prohibition of assimilation to pagan nations on Israel's part. In commanding complete destruction of the Canaanites, the Lord says, 'You shall not intermarry with them, giving your daughters to their sons, or taking their daughters for your sons, for they would turn away your sons from following me, to serve other gods' (Deut 7.3-4). […] God knew that if these Canaanite children were allowed to live, they would spell the undoing of Israel. […] Moreover, if we believe, as I do, that God's grace is extended to those who die in infancy or as small children, the death of these children was actually their salvation. We are so wedded to an earthly, naturalistic perspective that we forget that those who die are happy to quit this earth for heaven's incomparable joy.  Therefore, God does these children no wrong in taking their lives.

Even Dawkins acknowledges that "you would search far to find a modern preacher willing to defend" such an interpretation.  Craig's words are, indeed, staggering.  What is more, they surely fail to communicate the manner in which the Christian tradition from the outset has wrestled with the Hebrew Scriptures in general and 'texts of terror' in particular.  For Paul, the story of the banishment of Hagar at the insistence of Sarah "is an allegory: these two women are two covenants" (Galatians 4:24).  For the writer to the Hebrews, the intended sacrifice of Isaac is to be seen as a foreshadowing of the cross and resurrection of Jesus (Hebrews 11:19).

The key hermeneutical principle at work is that the Scriptures of the Old Covenant can only be read by the Church in light of the cross and resurrection of Jesus the Christ.  For Augustine the former Manichee - who ridiculed the Hebrew Scriptures - it was this to which he was introduced by the preaching of Ambrose:

I was also pleased that when the writings of the Law and the Prophets came before me, they were no longer read with an eye to which they had previously looked absurd, when I used to attack your saints as if they thought which in fact they did not think at all.  And I was delighted to hear Ambrose in his sermons to the people saying, as if he were most carefully enunciating a principle of exegesis: 'The letter kills, the spirit gives life'.  Those texts which, taken literally, seemed to contain perverse teaching he would expound spiritually, removing the mystical veil (Confessions VI, iv(6)).

From the extracts of Craig's work provided by Dawkins, it would seem that Craig fails to read the 'texts of terror' in such a Christocentric fashion.  He appears to fail to read them from the perspective of the God who is the Victim of violence, the bloodied One, who in the resurrection has triumphed over the violent powers and inaugurated the peaceable kingdom.  It is only in this light that we can read Deuteronomy 20:16-17.  It cannot be read literally by the Church - because the letter kills.

This is not only a case of the 21st century Church responding to the previous century, defined as it was by genocide and Holocaust.  Rather, this is the Church being the Church: grappling with the Hebrew Scriptures (and not just 'texts of terror' - consider the apostolic churches wrestling with the command to circumcise) in light of the Crucified and Risen One.  To say, as Craig states, that "God does these [Canaanite] children no wrong in taking their lives" is not representative of how the Church has read the Hebrew Scriptures.  That being so, perhaps we should be grateful that Dawkins is not debating with him.

Atheists, the new atheists and the Archbishop

Two recent columns on Comment is Free belief have provided an interesting commentary on the new atheism - and both columns are by atheists.  The philosopher Julian Baggini (who delivered an 'atheist sermon' in St Paul's in 2007), powerfully rejects the notion that scientific knowledge is inevitably oriented towards atheism - a view presupposed in, for example, Sam Harris' The Moral Landscape:


Atheism does not own the scientific method, and nor does good, secular thinking reduce to scientific reasoning. What is too often forgotten is that modern atheism was born in a humanistic way of thinking that drew as much on arts and humanities as it did natural science, if not more so.


Most problematic of all, however, is the sometimes glib way in which science is supposed to vindicate, or even determine, the secular humanist approach to life ...


The rapturous reception Harris's book received from many atheists – though thankfully far from all of them – is a symptom of an unhealthy desire to raise science to the level of our saviour. That is the kind of mythologising [that philosopher John] Gray is right to warn against. Science is indeed one of our highest human achievements and we should respect it, admire it and draw on its findings to inform our world view. But it cannot provide the entirety of such a view and nor can we blithely assume that it will always support our most fundamental beliefs. Atheists need to accept that they are not of one flesh with science, and that their love and admiration may not be requited as passionately as they suppose.


Baggini's words challenge both the intellectual and emotional appeal of the new atheism, urging a much greater respect for science - its method, purpose, limits and knowledge - than the new atheism's leading thinkers demonstrate.  Science is not, in other words, merely a rhetorical device to wield in the culture wars.  It is much, much more significant.


Scientist Fern Elsdon-Baker echoes Baggini's view with her rejection of the new atheist narrative that science must be at war with faith traditions.  She terms this "an extreme and fundamentalist form of scientism":


Up until a few years ago I felt no need to articulate my atheism as a facet of my identity within my work. It is only since the "new atheism" narrative took hold, one which has come to demarcate a rather intolerant and simplistic view of the world, that I have felt compelled to talk about my own perspective lest I am accused of being a secret creationist theologian for seeking an open dialogue around science and belief ...


Science is a fundamental part of society both past and present. It is a misconception to assume that being religiously minded means an inherent rejection of a scientific method or approach to understanding the world around us. To take this path lends itself to the ridiculous and totally ahistorical assumption that religious teaching has always been, and should continue to be, anti-scientific. Or that science communication should be inherently anti-religious.


That atheists should be challenging the Dawkins creed should be noted by the Church.  One of the most significant themes of +Rowan's time at Canterbury has been his openness to public discussion with the new atheism as a means of demonstrating its lack of theological knowledge and its unscientific scientism.  (Indeed, Dawkins states that he is "looking forward to my imminent, doubtless civilised encounter with the present archbishop of Canterbury").  Amidst evidence that Dawkins et al are shaping some public attitudes towards religion, such encounters are a profoundly significant expression of the Church's witness in the public square.  


The atheist tradition of philosophical and moral reflection should be approached as a significant conversation partner by the Church.  The new atheism, however, is a loud but stunted expression of this tradition.  By gracefully challenging in the public square the new atheist narrative, the Church is ensuring that this loud and harsh scientism meets with the authentic voice of the Crucified and Risen One.

Time before Advent: remembering the eschatological

In the Church of Ireland's BCP 2004, the weeks before Advent commence this coming Sunday, the 5th before Advent, one week before the CofE's Common Worship calendar.  The CofI provision ensures that Cranmer's collect for Advent 2 - "Blessed Lord, who has caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning" - is placed in the eschatological context of time before Advent, rather than left merely as "the last Sunday after Trinity" as in Common Worship.

Tom Wright did, of course, launch a broadside against the idea of a "Kingdom Season"/time before Advent in his For All the Saints?  Wright considered this provision as "grievously misus[ing]" the concept "Kingdom":

To make the 'Kingdom' a heavenly rather than an earthly reality is to miss one of the central points of the New Testament.

To state the obvious, however, the Kingdom has an eschatological as well as a 'realised' dimension.  For Wright, this is what Advent proclaims:

The so-called 'Kingdom Season' drastically weakens Advent.  Of course, that may have been the point.  The robust traditional Advent teaching about death, judgment, heaven and hell has long been held at arm's length in some mainstream churches ... More especially, the 'Kingdom Season' dismantles the storyline of the Christian year.

The pastoral reality of Advent is, needless to say, radically different.  As Gordon-Taylor and Jones note in their Alcuin Study Celebrating Christ's Appearing:

It is very common for Christmas Carol Services to take place before Christmas, and, given the pastoral and evangelistic opportunities provided by such celebrations, there are now very few purists who would prohibit this.

What the 'Kingdom Season'/time before Advent does is to ensure that the very eschatological dimension emphasised by Wright - "death, judgment, heaven and hell" - is restored to the liturgical calendar.  In the words of Common Worship's Time and Seasons introduction to "All Saints to Advent":


Redemption is a work of God’s grace; it is God who redeems us in Christ and there is nothing to be done beyond what Christ has done. But we still wait for the final consummation of God’s new creation in Christ; those who are Christ’s, whether or not they have passed through death, are joined in prayer that God’s kingdom will be revealed finally and in all its fullness.We also sense that it is a fearful thing to come before the unutterable goodness and holiness of God, even for those who are redeemed in Christ; that it is searing as well as life-giving to experience God’s mercy.

There is, of course, liturgical precendent for this extension of Advent's eschatological themes.  Some of the older Western rites - the Ambrosian and Mozarabic - had a 6 week Advent season.  It is in a similar manner that time before Advent enriches the liturgical year, reminding the Church that we journey "in the darkness of this age that is passing away" towards "the heavenly city where night shall be no more" (opening prayer at Morning Prayer from All Saints to Eve of Advent, Common Worship).

Liturgy, the mystery of faith, and the drama of salvation

Those Christ Church, New Haven posters have resulted in quite a bit of commentary across the blogs.  Derek Olsen (Haligweorc) has an excellent reflection on the posters at the Episcopal Cafe:

After hearing and participating in “worship wars” for well over a decade, I think such discussions often fail by being too narrowly focused. That is, people argue over music, liturgy, and ceremonial. But more often I think what they really intend is the overall package—the ethos of a worshipping community—and considering elements in abstraction can’t grapple fully with the issue of ethos.

The posters communicate an ethos. The black-and-white shots depict worship that is traditional—very traditional—yet the faces in the photos and the “voices” of the tag-lines are young. The ethos communicated is of a parish that worships well, that cares deeply about its liturgy and the traditions that inform it. It’s traditional, but not traditionalist; it takes God seriously, and itself a little less seriously.

In and amongst the photos of silver and smoke, we are invited to a mystery. Not so it can be explained away or talked to death—but that we can dive within it and find at the center of the mystery the key to our longing.

That last paragraph really does summarise what liturgy should be - an invitation to the mystery of faith, a means to enter and live within the mystery. 

In his study Augustine and the Catechumenate, William Harmless notes that while the ancient pagan world sought to capture hearts through its dramatic stories, the Church captured hearts through "the liturgy itself [and] the biblical drama of salvation".  They are, of course, inextricably connected.  The liturgy enacts the biblical drama - in the ordered reading of Scripture, in the celebration of the Eucharist, in the rhythms of the liturgical year, in the practices of prayer, confession and peace. 

The challenges posed to Anglicanism's experience and practice of this understanding of liturgy's relationship to the Church's mission are all-too obvious.  Theologies which disregard the biblical drama leave the liturgy rootless and insipid.  Pastoral approaches which undermine liturgical practice leave the biblical drama as an abstract proposition of which we are, at best, mere observers.  Both, ironically, leave the Church prey to the culture of modernity.  It is, then, through the liturgy as the enactment and proclamation of the biblical drama that the Church is delivered from its captivity to modernity.

Parish, rootedness, silence and a new monasticism

Conversations between contemporary Christian communities and Benedictine monasticism are among the most surprising and promising in the church today.

These words are from the foreword to Inhabiting the Church, a 2006 reflection on the 'new monasticism' by three authors from Emerging Church backgrounds. It is, perhaps, less surprising to find Anglican communities engaging with monastic traditions - but it is no less promising.

The Curate's Desk has recently pointed to an initiative by Christ Church, New Haven - Ascension House, "a semi-monastic community":

We seek to found a community of post M.Div. interns whose vocation it is to provide an oasis of prayer, silence and peace in the “desert” of modern cities. The multi-faceted community will live out the call to common life, prayer, work and welcoming others “in the heart of the city”, while striving to dwell always “in the heart of God” using the Ascension Church worship space and rectory in New Haven.

A key aspect of the program is the development of significant and comprehensive community service with a goal to nurture individual and community health and flourishing. The program would also be responsible for building a new Eucharistic community perhaps centered on a Saturday evening community meal and mass and would also share in the daily office which would be open to the community as well.

The formation last year of the Benedictine Companions of St Paul in St Paul's K Street, DC provides another example of an Anglican parish seeking to build community in the midst of the post-modern city.  According to the Rector of St Paul's, this new monasticism can answer some of the longings of the contemporary city-dweller:

I'm hoping that that rhythm of worship can influence and connect with the rhythm of people working in the city ... I think urbanites have, often, an unarticulated desire for rootedness and silence ... So, in the midst of the fray, this becomes a kind of oasis or desert, depending on which kind of imagery you want to use, in the midst of the battle.

Here we have two different models of the new monasticism.  Ascension House will be a community of priests, who for a period of time will live together in community.  The Benedictine Companions of St Paul embrace both those who have taken vows and lay companions, who support the monastic community.  What is common to both, however, is that desire to enrich the local church's vocation to be a community in which communion with the Triune God is experienced in the "desert" of post-modernity's cities. 

There is a sense in which this vision should be integral to the Anglican experience.  Cranmer's provision for the public celebration of the daily offices provides a framework for parish communities gathering day by day around the Scriptures, in adoration and prayer.  The 1559-1662 rubric that "in Cathedral and Collegiate Churches, and colleges, where there are many Priests and Deacons, they shall all receive the Communion with the Priest every Sunday at the least" is suggestive of a network of quasi-monastic communities of priests and deacons, marked by frequent celebrations of the eucharist alongside the daily offices.

The new monasticism recalls us to this vision while also deepening it.  In the 'broken societies' of the North Atlantic world, shaped by a pervasive, ideological economic and social individualism, the areas served by very many parish churches lack the characteristics of community.  To renew parish community and to model authentic community, the wider Church needs the diverse expressions of a new monasticism. 

"The inn ... is the Church"

On the feast of St Luke the evangelist, words from St Augustine on the Parable of the Good Samaritan:

You remember, beloved Brethren, that man who was wounded by the robbers, and half dead by the way, how he was strengthened, by receiving oil and wine for his wounds. His error indeed was already pardoned, and yet his weakness is in process of healing in the inn. The inn, if you recognise it, is the Church. In the time present, an inn, because in life we are passing by: it will be a home, whence we shall never remove, when we shall have got in perfect health unto the kingdom of heaven. Meanwhile receive we gladly our treatment in the inn, and weak as we still are, glory we not of sound health: lest through our pride we gain nothing else, but never for all our treatment to be cured (Sermon 81.6).

The Centre and the sacramental nature of the Daily Office

What they attribute to Sermons only, and what we to readinge also (LEP V, 22).

Hooker's defence of the reading of Scripture in the Daily Offices apart from a sermon recognises a sacramental quality to the practice.  Against his Disciplinarian critics - who declared the sermon to be the means of God's Word being communicated - Hooker affirmed the reading of Scripture in the Daily Office as a means of grace:

The Church as a wittnesse preacheth his meere revealed truth by reading publiquely the sacred scripture ... That which offendith us is, first the greate disgrace which they offer unto our custome of bare readinge the Word of God, and to his gracious Spirit, the principall vertue whereof thereby manifestinge it selfe for the endless good of mens soules, even the vertue which it hath to convert, to edifie, to save soules, this they mightelie strive to obscure (V, 19.1 & 22.1).

His defence of responding to the ordered reading of Scripture in the Magnificat, Benedictus and Nunc dimitts - "everie daie rehearsed" - also suggests something of this sacramentality.  By sharing in these canticles we are caught up into, we participate in, the saving acts of the Triune God:

They are the first gratulations wherewith our Lord and Saviour was joyfullie receaved at his entrance into the world by such as in theire hartes armes and verie bowels embraced him ... the mysticall communion of all faithful men is such as maketh everie one to be interested in those precious blessinges which anie one of them receiveth at Gods handes (V, 40.2 & 40.3).

The Rector's Corner has recently reflected on the Daily Office and in Hooker-like fashion has similarly emphasised the sacramental quality of the Offices:


The canticles ... provide a response to the lesson just read. They remind us the scriptures are not “data” to be consumed but encounters with God, moments of transformation to be pondered and integrated into our full being.


In the midst of Anglicanism's current travails, it might be suggested that renewing the practice of the Daily Office (for laity and clergy, communally where possible, individually when necessary) - while a matter far from the political battlefields and agendas - has the potential to refocus the Church on our Centre: to share with those who with hearts, arms and bowels received the Incarnate Word.

Authenticity at Compline

An excellent reflection is provided From the Curate's Desk (h/t Fr Jody) on why a traditional service of Compline in Christ Church, New Haven is popular with young adults:

On Sunday evenings Compline is filled with young adults.  What is it about this very traditional service that is reaching them in some way or another?

1. An encounter with the Holy: There is a real yearning among people for an encounter with the mystery of the divine.  So-called contemporary liturgy (that may have been contemporary in 1979) is not doing it for folks that are yearning for an experience of the transcendent.  Liturgy that does not point toward the sacredness and presence of the Divine is spiritually dangerous for it teaches us to worship not that which we are called to worship, God, but to place human inventions and concerns on a shaky altar of self-regard.

2. A genuine identity (authenticity): This community knows who it is and what it believes.  In a hyper-marketed, oversold, and deeply cynical age, there is a need for the Church to offer a place of real and deep authenticity rooted in the worship of the Almighty.  When people come in, they won’t know everything that is happening, it won’t be “relevant,” and it won’t be immediately decipherable.  But it is deeply and powerfully authentic.  Every movement and gesture kinetically expresses some bit of our faith.  It is inherently and vitally real.

3. It calls us out of ourselves: So much of the modern world is about dwelling ever more on ourselves, our needs, our desires, our rights, our causes, our, our, our.  Worship that is authentic inverts this and drives the believer to the other.  To God, to our neighbor, to our Lord, and to the whole of Creation.  “Love the Lord thy God…Love thy neighbor.”  All of our worship expresses this summary of the law.  We orient toward God and by that turn opens us to serve those around us.  It begins, however, with God.

4. It does not comfort only: Worship is always a challenge when done well for it demands our best.  We are spending lots of time saying “The Episcopal Church welcomes you.” We have “radical hospitality.” Yet if we only open the doors and tell people to come as they are but don’t call for them to leave transformed then we have sold short the Holy Spirit.  People come to be transformed – so preach, worship, teach, and pray with transformation at the heart of your work.  We have gotten far too comfortable thinking people (especially young adults) only want to be comforted.

That contrast between authenticity and relevance is striking, echoing something of Jim Belcher's suggestion that the alternative to 'emerging' and 'traditional' is 'deep Church'.   The fact that Compline has a particular attraction is also worth reflecting upon.  (Nick Knisley has previously mentioned the popularity of Compline in Phoneix Cathedral.)  

Modernity, after all, has dimissed the need for prayer at the day's end, as darkness falls: there is no darkness for modernity (literally and figuratively).  A prayerful, patient waiting as night approaches is thus quietly but provocatively counter-cultural.  It is a trusting expression of our vulnerability: "Lighten our darkness ...".  It is a turn to ancient wisdom - above all in the Psalms - rather than to the distraction of 24 hour entertainment and virtual communication. 

In the flattened, disenchanted landscape of the city of postmodernity, catholic liturgy speaks of another City and enacts the rhythms of that City.  In Compline, amidst the dull pains, the injustices and prevailing emptiness of postmodernity, we turn in quiet trust to the One in whom we discover Grace, Truth and Beauty.

"This godly and decent order of the ancient Fathers"

The first and original ground whereof if a man would search out by the ancient Fathers ... this godly and decent order of the ancient Fathers hath been so altered ... notwithstanding that the ancient Fathers ... much agreeable to the mind and purpose of the old Fathers.

Cranmer's original preface to the 1549 and 1552 BCP came to mind when reading The Conciliar Anglican's summary of the Elizabethan Settlement:

All of these things helped to make the Church of England more Catholic, less Erastian, and fully able to claim continuity with the primitive Church.

The retrieval of a patristic catholicity displaced by late medieval theologies and devotions was the achievement of the Anglican Reformation, finding its definitive form under Elizabeth (and not, thankfully, Edward).  As for its enduring relevance, one might consider a new trend emerging in some Roman Catholic dioceses in the United State (h/t The Continuum).  According to the National Catholic Reporter:

It's officially a trend now. A second diocese, Madison, Wis., has moved to restrict Communion under both species.

"Notwithstanding ... the ancient Fathers" indeed.

St Philip the Deacon and the church as reading community

How can I unless someone guides me?

The Ethopian Eunuch's answer to St Philip the Deacon (his feast is today in some parts of the Communion, 6th June in others) is a stark illustration of the need for the Church to be the reading community if Scripture is to be received rightly.  Apart from Philip as a bearer of the apostolic witness and testimony, the Ethopian is left with only questions concerning Isaiah's great prophecy: he cannot by himself comprehend that it speaks of the Crucified One.  He is, we might say, left where most exponents of biblical criticism are left when reading Isaiah - bereft without the Church's witness and testimony.

In a similar fashion, Hooker contends against his Disciplinarian opponents that, contrary to their assertion that understanding John 3:3 to be a reference to the Sacrament of Baptism is "a false interpretation", this has always been the Church's reading of Christ's words:

To hide the generall consent of antiquitie agreeinge in the literall interpretation they cunningly affirme that certaine have taken those wordes as meant of materiall water, when they knowe that of all the ancient there is not one to be named that ever did otherwise either expound or alleadge the pace then as implyinge externall baptisme.  Shall that which hath alwaies received this and no other construction be now disguised with a toy of noveltie?  (LEP V, 59.3).

The weight placed by Hooker on 'the general consent of antiquity' and how the Church across time has read Scripture contrasts radically with the individualist reading ethic of both the Enlightenment and much populist Evangelicalism.  If the individualist reading ethic of modernity places us with the Ethopian Eunuch, St Philip the Deacon represents our incorporation into the church catholic as the reading community in whose communion we read and understand.

Exile in the secular city

Since the beginning of 'Ordinary Time' after Pentecost, the Church of Ireland's daily office lectionary at Morning Prayer has been reading through the Old Testaments historical books.  On Saturday past, that came to an abrupt halt with the haunting words of the conclusion of II Kings - Nebuchadnezzar breaks down the walls of Jerusalem, the people are carried into exile, while those who refuse to co-operate with Babylon "set out and went to Egypt".  It is as if Israel's story has ended.  The nations have prevailed and the Exodus is reversed.

It is against this background that we will hear over succeeding weeks the voice of the prophets who gimpse restoration and renewal.  It is against this background that we say the Benedictus and the Magnificat, the hope fulfilled of deliverance from enemies and the promised overthrowing of powers and thrones.

Soon the weeks after Trinity will become the weeks before Advent.  The daily office assumes a greater eschatological edge.  And we realise that it is in exile that that we are renewed, called back to our foundational identity - in neither the security of Egypt nor the power of Babylon, but in the gracious acts of Yahweh. 

In a post-liberal reflection on the experience of mainline Protestantism in the United States, three pastors describe how 'exile' can be a place of renewal:

It is now clear to us that our understandings that arise out of our own experiences are not enough to sustain us.  They are little more than a cup of bouillon, not substantial enough to nourish us for the long haul.  We respond to Goethe's observation that those who do not draw on three thousand years are living hand to mouth.  And so we turn to Scripture for insights that are beyond anything we might come up with ourselves, for a word that does not come from our own experience but instead reshapes our experience.

Such is the blessing of exile.  We are reshaped by the Word which addresses us from outside our captivity to the secular city.

On the vocation of liberal theology

The Ugley Vicar (John Richardson) is a well-known conservative evangelical and (not uncritical) member of Reform.  That makes his recent post asking "what's good about Liberal Christian theology?" distinctly interesting:

Reading around the blogosphere, the old 'liberal vs conservative' battles are clearly alive and kicking amongst Christians - usually each other rather than the forces of evil. (Well, I suppose insofar as each thinks the other represents the forces of evil they are, in their own terms, 'getting on with the job', but that's not what I mean.)

I suddenly had the thought this morning, however, that I really don't have a contemporary handle on Liberal Christianity apart from keeping up with the trading of insults, and so I wondered if readers might recommend some resources.

There are three areas on which I'd really like to focus:

• Human nature and our place in the universe.
• The person of Christ and the nature of the gospel.
• The future fate of the universe in general and humans in particular.

What I'm trying to get a grip on is the core of Liberal theological thinking in these areas today - what are the big ideas and who are the big thinkers?

This desire to approach liberal theology as a serious conversation partner represents a refreshing change in the highly partisan theological landscape of contemporary Anglicanism.  At its best, theological liberalism has much to contribute to Anglican witness, driving us to address the knowledge and questions of contemporary society.  At its best, theological liberalism prevents the Church's creedal confession from retreating into an orthodoxy that is irrelevant rather than vibrant and engaging.  This has been the historic role of liberal theology within Anglicanism, perhaps exemplified by Lux Mundi.

To be a serious conversation partner, however, liberal theology needs to be serious theology.  This means Ian Bradley's Grace, Order and Diversity and not - as one of The Ugley Vicar's readers ridiculously recommends - Spong's A New Christianity for a New World (or, indeed, anything at all by Spong).  There are serious works of liberal theology out there, works which seek to meaningfully interact with the Church's Trinitarian and Christological confession.  Those of us who are not liberal Anglicans can be enriched by engaging with such thinking.

But remember - not Spong.

Memory, grace and hope

This day three months ago - 6th July - many Anglicans would have been commemorating Thomas More and John Fisher, papalist catholics martyred under Henry VIII in 1535.  Today we commemorate an inveterate theological opponent of More, a man More regarded as a traitor and a heretic, William Tyndale.

It does, of course, suggest something of Anglicanism's identity as both catholic and reformed that we liturgically celebrate martyrs from across the Reformation divide.  More's concern for the unity of the Church and Tyndale's concern for Scripture in the vernacular should both have their place in the Church's life and witness. 

Beyond Anglican identity, however, our commemoration of More and Tyndale, Fisher and Cranmer, Laud and Bunyan, speaks of a fundamental aspect of the Church's identity.  In Tokens of Trust, +Rowan points to the Church's acknowledgement of its failings as integral to its mission:

The miracle is that a repentant community, a community of people who are daily aware of their untruthfulness and lack of love and are not afraid to face their failures, is a community that speaks profoundly of hope.  The Church does not communicate the good news by consistent success and virtue ... but in its willingness to point to God; and repentance, which says that you don't have to be paralysed by failure, is thus one of the most effective signs of the Church's appeal to something more than human competence and resource.

We speak of hope when we commemorate martyrs from across the Reformation divide.  Beyond the hatreds of that era, beyond the persecutions, beyond the sectarian narratives, the Church speaks of grace, hope and reconciliation when it honours the martyrdoms of More and Tyndale.  In stark contrast to Richard Dawkins' denial that the Soviet Union was an atheistic regime, our commemoration of martyrs from across the Reformation divide is a penitential act.  These were our acts.  The Church did this.  But the grace and hope of the Crucified One are stronger.

Nothing must stand in the way of TEC's 'manifest destiny'

Should we be even slightly surprised? The TEC establishment cannot be unaware that the disciplinary move against South Carolina Bishop Mark Lawrence will send shock-waves across the Communion.  But then again, why would the TEC establishment begin to take cognisance of the wider Communion?

At the beginning of the evidence presented against +Lawrence, a 2009 resolution of the Diocese of South Carolina is quoted.  The resolution in question declared South Carolina's support for the Covenant.  Therein lies South Carolina's chief crime ... being Anglican.

The move against +Lawrence is an integral part of the TEC establishment's fundamental rejection of communion ecclesiology in favour of the ecclesiology of unilateralism.  It is a potent declaration that TEC's leadership - and its ideological belief in TEC's 'manifest destiny' - will not tolerate recognition of the truth that being Anglican, being catholic, is to be in communion.

When the world was growing cold

On this feast of St Francis of Assisi we can give thanks for the witness of Francisican communities across the globe, particularly those within the Anglican Communion.  The collect provided by the SSF liturgy for the stigmata of St Francis provides a beautiful image of Francisican vocation:

Lord Jesus Christ,
who when the world was growing cold,
to the inflaming of our hearts by the fire of your love
raised up bléssed Francis ...

The 'foolishness' of St Francis did indeed speak to a world - and Church - grown cold.  While referring of a different form of monastic living, perhaps the essence of the vocation of all monastic communities - of whatever tradition - is best summarised by Thomas Merton's essay 'The Philosophy of Solitude:

Withdrawal from others can be a special form of love for them.  It should never be a rejection of others or of society.  But it may well be a quiet and humble refusal to accept the myths and fictions with which social life cannot help but be full .  To despair of the illusions and facades which men and women build around themselves is certainly not to despair of mankind.  On the contrary, it may be a sign of love and of hope ... As such a time, some men and women will seek clarity in isolation and silence, not because they think they know better than the rest, but because they want to see life in a different perspective.  They want to withdraw from the babel of confusion in order to listen more patiently to the voice of their conscience and to the Holy Spirit.  And by their prayers and their fidelity they will invisibly renew the life of the whole Church.

From the myths and fictions of social life, the 'foolish' witness of the Francisicans and other monastic communities recalls us to our vocation as ecclesia.   With St Francis, we are called to be shaped by a different Story.  To again quote Merton:

Is not our involvement in fiction, particularly in political and demagogic fiction, an implicit confession that we despair of humanity and even of God?

'We' are church

Recently almost 10% of Austria's Roman Catholic clergy supported a 'We are Church' petition calling for the end of compulsory clerical celibacy and for those remarried after divorce to be admitted to the Eucharist.  In a rare public reference to the organisation, Benedict XVI used an address to seminarians during his visit to Germany to reflect on the meaning of 'church':

We can only ever believe within the 'we'. I sometimes say that Saint Paul wrote: 'Faith comes from hearing' – not from reading. It needs reading as well, but it comes from hearing, that is to say from the living word, addressed to me by the other, whom I can hear, addressed to me by the Church throughout the ages, from her contemporary word, spoken to me the priests, bishops and my fellow believers. Faith must include a 'you' and it must include a 'we'. And it is very important to practise this mutual support, to learn how to accept the other as the other in his otherness, and to learn that he has to support me in my otherness, in order to become 'we', so that we can also build community in the parish, calling people into the community of the word, and journeying with one another towards the living God. This requires the very particular 'we' that is the seminary, and also the parish, but it also requires us always to look beyond the particular, limited 'we' towards the great 'we' that is the Church of all times and places: it requires that we do not make ourselves the sole criterion. When we say: 'We are Church' – well, it is true: that is what we are, we are not just anybody. But the “we” is more extensive than the group that asserts those words. The 'we' is the whole community of believers, today and in all times and places. And so I always say: within the community of believers, yes, there is as it were the voice of the valid majority, but there can never be a majority against the apostles or against the saints: that would be a false majority. We are Church: let us be Church, let us be Church precisely by opening ourselves and stepping outside ourselves and being Church with others.

It is a powerful rebuttal to parochial, sectarian notions of church as opposed to understanding church as catholic communion.  In the midst of Anglicanism's current debates, we would do well to listen to Benedict's reminder that 'we' cannot merely be a diocesan synod or province: 'we' is the church catholic.  (T'he issue of interest here to Anglicans is not the requests made by 'We Are Church': our discipline on clerical celibacy and divorce is well-established and has - at the very least - as much claim to Scriptural and patristic support as contemporary Roman discipline.  The issue, rather, is ecclesiology.  In other words, this reflects the current Anglican debate: the presenting issue is not sexuality, it is ecclesiology.)

There is, however, another aspect of Benedict's comments to be reflected upon.  While dissident priests in Austria may assert that 'we are church', one of Benedict's predecessors made a very similiar claim - Pius IX's proud boast "I am Tradition".  Benedict's words are not only a rejection of the ecclesiology of 'We Are Church'.  They are also a rejection of Pius IX's ecclesiology:

'we' is the whole community of believers, today and in all times and places.

To be catholic is not to be shaped by 'we', if 'we' is one grouping, a synod or - indeed - one bishop.  To be catholic is to be 'We':

We are Church: let us be Church, let us be Church precisely by opening ourselves and stepping outside ourselves and being Church with others.

Anglican-Lutheran dialogue and the catholic vocation

The announcement this week that a pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada (ELCIC) is to become Dean of St. John’s Anglican Cathedral in Winnipeg is an indication of one of the most significant consequences of Anglican ecumenical dialogue - the rapprochement with Lutheranism.  In the northern hemisphere, the full communion agreements with Lutheranism entered into by Anglicans in the British Isles, the United States and Canada have healed a Reformation breach.

The Waterloo Declaration - the statement of full communion between the Anglican Church of Canada and ELCIC - caught something of the similarities in the vocation of Lutheranism and Anglicanism in its phrase "we share a common heritage as catholic churches of the Reformation". The Porvoo Agreement provides a more expansive description:

The faith, worship and spirituality of all our churches are rooted in the tradition of the apostolic Church. We stand in continuity with the Church of the patristic and medieval periods both directly and through the insights of the Reformation period. We each understand our own church to be part of the One, Holy, Catholic Church of Jesus Christ and truly participating in the one apostolic mission of the whole people of God. We share in the liturgical heritage of Western Christianity and also in the Reformation emphases upon justification by faith and upon word and sacrament as means of grace. All this is embodied in our confessional and liturgical documents and is increasingly recognized both as an essential bond between our churches.

At the heart of the Anglican-Lutheran rapprochement has been the rediscovery by Lutheranism of the historic episcopate and the formal acceptance by Anglicanism of Lutheran eucharistic formulations, overcoming the hesitancy expressed in some of Anglicanism's historic formularies.  The Waterloo Declaration noted how in 1997 the ELCIC took "the constitutional steps necessary to understand the installation of bishops as ordination".  As a result:

The Anglican Church of Canada and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada affirm each other's expression of episcopal ministry as a sign of continuity and unity in apostolic faith. We thus understand that the bishops of both churches are ordained for life service of the Gospel in the pastoral ministry of the historic episcopate.

In terms of eucharistic doctrine, the Porvoo Agreement quite explicitly employed the historic Lutheran terminology:

We believe that the body and blood of Christ are truly present, distributed and received under the forms of bread and wine in the Lord's Supper.

In light of Hooker's critique of "the Lutherans' interpretation" and Article 28's high Calvinist doctrine of a 'real feeding', there can be little doubt that if Anglican-Lutheran dialogue has led to Lutheranism adopting a catholic understanding of the episcopate, it has also led Anglicanism to endorse a more catholic rendering of eucharistic doctrine than has been historically the case.

Here, then, is a sign of how Anglican-Lutheran dialogue is serving a catholic vision and understanding of the Church: overcoming the wounds of the 16th century, restoring the historic episcopate, renewing eucharistic doctrine. 

(The picture is of a Lutheran eucharist in Estonia.  The Estonian Evangelical Lutheran Church is part of the Porvoo Communion.)