My fluttering Pelagiometer

The Anglican Covenant may well not end up accomplishing as much bad or good as it is cracked up for, but the discussion around it has been worthwhile and fascinating, and at last something of a broader debate seems to be starting up, for example Andrew Goddard and Jonathan Clatworthy, here and here. People are still, however, often picking over the bones rather than addressing the big questions around having such a thing in the first place, and it seems to me those are where the action is. Many thanks to all who have offered comment on this blog for their clarity, honesty, and will to try and understand the whole picture.

If Christians are alienated from each other, culturally, sociologically and psychologically, how high a formal fence should they erect between themselves? Enough, surely to give reflective space to both and a chance to relate their partial interests in the whole gospel picture whilst they live in tension and await, in joyful hope, a new heaven and a new earth. But temporary fencing, as low and light as possible, has to offer the best way forward if it’s relationships that count.

The wall is too high if it prevents interchange, and dangerous if it resorts to cantonment — a strategy that promises much short term, but has been historically, literally, bloody disastrous all over the world in the 20th century — Ireland, Kashmir, Germany, Cyprus, Israel/Palestine, South Africa... the examples of how disastrous it is are obvious and I can’t think of a single example of it bringing long term peace. In the end, people have to get together, especially if we are all aiming for the New Jerusalem, the sooner the better, the more porous the boundaries the better.

Whatever the virtues of the Covenant text, or not, it is inconceivable that people will hold themselves accountable to something they never wanted in the first place and don't believe in. Many TEC people the Windsor process was aimed at see it as abusive and biased interference. Meanwhile Conservatives are increasingly seeing it as a Chocolate Teapot (e.g. here). Windsor is increasingly and profoundly tainted for both, and, cuts diminishing amounts of ice with either. Why bother, then, with a blow-up Windsor process? The only people such a thing would would work for are people who don't need it or care about it anyway. This is a profoundly Groucho Marx place to end up.

If this were The Apprentice, I would be underwhelmed by the Covenant marketing department. Vituperative defensive ad hominem spiel sounds hollow and does not answer the broader question above. Perhaps nobody needs Section 4, even in its current toned-down form. The whole idea that a few more primates’ meetings would do the trick is very improbable. There may have been all too many primates meetings, used for grandstanding as much as mutual personal and spiritual engagement. Perhaps we don’t need additional structure; just to learn from our recent history and move on, resolving to use what we’ve got more wisely before we try to grow the apparatus further from a tainted root.

Meanwhile, all this talk of declaring actions in or out of court, and impaired communion, has got my Pelagiometer twitching. My Pelagiometer measures how much personal energy I am investing in faith or works, in other words whether the things I do arise from grace, or whether my awareness of grace is being clouded by anxiety, fear or politics. It tells me when I am taking myself or my faith more seriously than the Holy Spirit.

When “impaired communion” was the relational consequence for everyone to discuss, I used to wonder with whom couldn’t I share Communion in the light of the cross, except for grave and urgent scandal (Book of Common Prayer) where hot anger would obscure and compromise the sacrament?

Whatever Anglicanism is, it is Augustinian in extraction and has to contend with Pelagianism in all its forms. My Pelagiometer is very sensitive, because I recallibrated it when I worked in a prison. I shared communion with “Graham.” He was convicted a major fraud, but for various reasons he sincerely believed he had been in the right to do what he had done, and had squared the transaction that was held to be fraudulent with his boss. He ended up going down for three years anyway. I don’t want to undermine the courts, or the ten commandments. “Graham” and I would probably have to agree to differ about whether he was guilty or not, but never in a million years would I have refused to sit down with him at the Lord’s table. Nor with “Andy,” who probably murdered his girlfriend, but claimed he hadn’t. I took a charitable view that it was the Lord’s supper not mine, and left the judging to God.

Those whose pelagiometers have been calibrated in more genteel environments may set the gauge higher, or use denominational conformity to set theirs. As a sinner saved by grace through faith, I have absolutely no will to start making judgments about my sister or brother, or the institutional churches to which they belong, that would compromise my ability to sit down at the Lord’s table with them, let alone put them out of the house.

The best way forward might be to pass sections 1-3, which are unexceptionable, but put Section 4 on hold and reflect on what we do need, then come back and see if something like Section 4 fills the bill. I’d be amazed if this happened, though. Yes there are tensions in the Communion. Leadership is acknowledging real tensions in an organisation that can't be resolved and leveraging them so that their energy works for everybody. This is often not possible, but that’s what we have to do, not corral people in separate camps. Our status as people baptized into Christ is infinitely more valuable and significant, than our membership of any other group, founded on anything less.

Only us, redeemed

From her rather improbably titled office, Canon Alyson Barnett-Cowan, “UFO Director at the Anglican Communion Office,” reminds us that the Anglican Covenant hovering over us poses no threat to Churches whose antics may be referred to the First Fifteen, but they must accept that if processes of mediation have broken down their actions have (Euphemism alert) “relational consequences.”

Frankly, this phrase needs very careful handing before can possibly be wisely applied by to Christians to other Christians. I cannot get away from a queasy feeling that it would belong more fittingly to a Mob Protection Salesman or Gestapo Dentist.

It could even be used as cover for a Pelagian three card trick that horrifies me. Why?

What drives and resources my faith is Jesus’ giving himself up to death on a cross, what BCP calls his “one oblation of himself once offered, a full, perfect and sufficient sacrifice, oblation and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world.” Think on these words. This, in itself, is a mighty powerful mediation process. No talks between factions that do not acknowledge its paramountcy are worthy of Jesus’ name.

When I become a follower of Jesus Christ in baptism, when I receive the bread and wine, I am swept up personally into a process of reconciliation between heaven and earth in which all principalities and powers are disarmed, all sins forgiven, all and, in the end, every tear wiped away from all eyes. The ordinary business of worship is my point of contact, now, with that glorious reality where Christ will one day be all in all.

I really believe this stuff, and, it has, for me, unmistakable “relational consequences” of its own that are far deeper than any merely human falling out however justified. I exercise saving faith when I allow Jesus to break down barriers that divide people, not when I define them. Any label I slap on others who disgust me (what a comical concept in itself) will be torn off anyway, on the day of unveiling. Any dividing wall has been fatally undermined by the earthquake that came after Jesus died. Any protecting veil for what human beings hold, rightly or wrongly, to be holy, been torn in two.

Therefore, in the end, if we take the cross seriously, there can no longer be “us” and “them.” There is only “us,” at the foot of the cross, even though, confronted with the other people involved, some of us find that distasteful for now. Defining people by their acts, gathering them into self-validating camps within which they can huddle fantasizing about their own righteousness and the opposition’s faithlessness is childish, unworthy and sub Christian. All we have to do to find healing and grace is stop doing it. And designing hidiing places where anyone can hide from the true implications of the cross is the silliest and most perilous policy for Christians to contemplate. It really is alien to our best tradition.

Hitting the wall or breaking through?

Things could well be getting what our Caribbean friends call Crucial. Yesterday afternoon’s meeting to share creative ways forward felt rather stuck, with three potential ideas nobody seemed to much want developed in detail. It was OK, but essentially consisted of the same old win/lose thinking from the same old people, the vast majority US or UK. It’s a grim thought but without the indaba process we could have been spending two weeks like this.

This experience does at least establish that we can’t make anything different without thinking different, which was pretty obvious, I suppose.

We’re not quite there yet I realise. Bad experience of old methods certainly vindicates the organisers’ decision not just to re-run the 1998 process. Another bishop said to me today that, actually, to get 650-odd incompatible people from 130 countries to listen to each other and communicate together, breaking bread as Christians, and praying through their problems without rancour or the smack of top-down authoritarianism, is in itself a reasonably unusual thing to happen in today’s world.

The indaba process seems to have been honoured. I was talking to our listener today, and he was telling me about comparing notes between the indaba groups for sympathetic resonance, then crystalising the widest held strong convictions into the document. It’s not every English bishop’s cup of tea, but it certainly gives voices to the voiceless, and may well beat Westminster Custard Pie fighting as a basis for real progress.

Here, for example, is a blog entry from George Packard, that is more wonderful the more I reflect on it:

If the Anglican Communion would just turn over their troubles to my 40 member indaba group everything would be fine. We had a break through as an American female bishop likened our church to siblings arguing in the back seat of the family car. There was a murmur of final understanding since there had been a wonder if those Episcopalians were coming unglued. No, just poking each other the way kids do. "But we stay together and that's what makes unwanted boundary crossings by South American and African bishops so confusing." She said.

I was re-playing that fateful day in Minneapolis in 2003 in my mind when we confirmed Gene Robinson's consecration and how no one gave much of a passing thought to how this news would impact anyone in this room. Some have been beaten and called members of "the gay church" in cultures where sympathizers like that were stoned, others have died...not because of Gene but because dioceses have rejected the HIV-AIDS assistance from the American church's tainted money.

The conversation--for the Americans and the Canadians--had real remorse in it: we acted without care for the greater family and we were deeply sorry. I'm not saying the consecration wouldn't have happened but the hurt of disregard for them--which was plain and evident--would not have been there.

Then Bishop Michael of Sudan continued as he said that his church was only getting used to thinking about homosexuals now with that he composed a prayer right on the spot emphasizing his point. After the entreaty to "Our dear Lord" it was as sensitive a summary of their uncertain lives in his land that I had ever heard. We were silent. (I wonder if this Lambeth is about where had hoped the 1998 meeting would have been in the appreciation of basic gay lives and rights.)

The bishop went on to say that we had to give he and his people some time; elevating gay persons into leadership positions of authority was confusing to him and his congregations. "Can't a baptized person get into heaven without you making him a bishop for awhile?" He had us there. As he was speaking I wasn't sure if the nods were in sympathy or agreement. It seemed like both and it came about as there was an acceptance of North American remorse.

The atmosphere in the room had changed. Said our facilitator, "We seem to arrived at a special level of trust." And that seemed to hold true for the heretofore stilted conversations about the Covenant too, that code of conduct we have all been dreading. Now, there was a growing consensus around the things which make us an affirmed, communion of churches in search of a grace-filled process which would come to the rescue when we get out of sorts with each other. It had been the meanderings in recent years for the right venue to discuss this which has been so maddening.

The vast majority of us in the middle, if you like, are now looking to the people who have more absolute ideas, left and right, to raise their game. If a few of them manage to do that, as well as having invented another way of decision making that takes every voice more seriously than our run of the mill synods and councils, we could achieve a significant breakthrough.

Them and Us — The Truth

After a bit of a blockbuster about clergy bullying, with some very interesting comment, something profoundly relevant caught my eye yesterday at our senior staff Eucharist. We were in Christ Church Cathedral, using the millennium Altar commemorating George Bell, Bishop of Chichester, supporter of resistance against Hitler and courageous opponent of saturation bombing during World War II.

The Altar is from a single huge oak, blackened. Renewed humanity is hewn out of, and emerges from, a charred and defaced reality. It carries this quotation from Bell, framed in the context of calls for reprisals in 1945. Today, from parish breakdowns to Iraq, there’s a simplistic sense among otherwise intelligent people that we are OK and they are evil. Bell exposes the root of the matter. In reality, we are all complicit, and in need of redemption:

No Nation, no Church, no Individual is guiltless. Without Repentance, and without forgiveness, there can be no regeneration.

Praying for the peace of Jerusalem?

CCJ Middle East briefing at the House of Commons with Professor Shai Feldman, director of the Crown Center for Middle East Studies at Brandeis. Joke: CNN asked on the streets of Tel Aviv for a summary outlook. One word? “Good.” Two words? “Not Good!”

Wikipedia’s List of middle East peace proposals since 1919, says “this list is incomplete. You can expand it.” But how? Looking ahead to the Annapolis Convention, what exactly could this be whenever it happens?

1. The Crowning moment of a peace process? Lovely idea, but crowning what?
   
2. An opportunity to negotiate, like Camp David? fine, but Bush ain’t no Carter or Clinton in this region, especially not post-Iraq. Post-Iraq?
   
3. a Launching board for a new process phase, as the Madrid conference was? It could be, but will need careful timetabling and focus to reassure the parties they can move forward.

For what could we all focus prayers right now in the middle east?

1. Stabilization — West Bank settlement activity ends / Palestinians end violence. Great idea. All attempts so far to do this have failed...
2. Road Map 2 — “provisional state building” / “Comprehensive armistice” Some kind of recognition thing would be a start.
3. Negotiate permanent status agreement — ideal, but who’s really ready for this, and how?

It would be lovely to think that Annapolis could be more than a high class photo opportunity. But how, I wondered?

1. The cleansing of historical memory on all sides is fundamental. Competing narratives cannot be reconciled right now, not even on the level of “wie es eigentlich gewesen.” They have to be acknowledged for what they are, and how they impact the communities that hold them. Mental note to read the new edition of Benny Goodman’s analysis.
2. The good ol’ British Army Bloody Fool theory says the other lot are just like they are because they are who they are. Because everyone is, to a certain extent, a bloody fool, it explains everything. This thinking produces designer conflicts on the TV news, which the media just feed, like they used to in Northern Ireland. Stereotypes are not enough. Just say no. Progress will only come as people, including “us”, are willing to go the second mile, imaginatively, compassionately, and rationally. This means acknowledging provisionality but not losing hope. It means assessing people’s motives in terms of their basic needs and perceptions, and refusing to create simple goodies and baddies. When tempted to settle for “they just do it because they are...” just say no.
   
3. The Scriptures picture a future that is God’s, and hold out hope. It's always necessary to be realistic about others’ motives and intentions, but all forms of cynicism, including crude instrumentalism, are not enough. Everybody has legitimate needs and aspirations. How could these fit together? Religious people have a special duty, and, theoretically, special resources to cherish and model respect, imagination, compassion and understanding. Religion that doesn't do these things is just licensed insanity.

Friends, enemies and neighbours — Seeing everything as it is?

We took Nick & Anna to the Living Rainforest, which turns out to be near Newbury.
— a lot of greenery, some fascinating critters and a very handsome chameleon.

Over in the Pupa cabinet I saw something I'd never before — a butterfly being born. It said something powerful about how everything hangs together in one seamless whole, and the fragility of it all.

In the Ken Robinson creative thinking talk I posted from TED, he quoted Jonas Salk (the Polio Vaccine pioneer) as saying:

"If all the insects were to disappear from the earth, within fifty years all life on earth would end. If all human beings were to disappear from the earth, within fifty years all forms of life on earth would flourish."

What is this factor about people, this radical rejection of Genesis 2:15, that makes us narrow, unwittingly destructive and toxic? In the bookshop was a book of eco-pioneering voices including, surprisingly perhaps, an artcile on G. K. Chesterton. He was quoted as saying "We make our friends. We make our enemies. But God makes our Neighbours."

Jesus has powerful things to say to his followers about their "neighbours." Your neighbour is not the person you choose, or the person with whom you have affinity. It is any person who is cast into your path in any need. How you respond to the challenge of encountering them is the Test of Discipleship, not your ortho-anything defined by some abstract standard.

In how we do Church, In our interaction with the real world, we need to go figure. We will be known for what we really are, friends of God (or not), by our fruits not our intentions.