Second Thoughts

A couple of years ago I posted something here regarding my vote of no confidence in the Anglican Continuum with respect to the future of orthodox Anglicanism.  I think it's time to revise that, especially after what happened at the recent International Congress of Catholic Anglicans, and also in light of much of Realignment Anglicanism's inablilty to come to an orthodox understanding of the role of man and woman in the home, society and church viewed in the light of orthodox triadology, christology, and the apostolic and catholic understanding of the created order. 

Joel Wilhem believes that when ACNA makes its decision about women's ordination, possibly this January, it won't be a wise one.  If and when that happens, that will very possibly cause a split in ACNA, and if so, there may be some interesting talks between its traditionalist faction and the Continuum, which had a significant present at the recent Congress.

I for one will not participate in any way, shape or form in the future with any Realignment province or diocese that countenances the ordination of women to the priesthood.  There are not "dual integrities" with respect to this issue.  There is only one integrity, one "tradition" (παράδοσιν) that has been passed down to us by the Church.  Anglicans were never at liberty to change it.

"PhD Anglicanism" and the Anglican Disease

As some readers may have noticed,  on Friday evening I took down an article I posted entitled “Anatomy of an Unfriending” regarding a spat I had with Trinity School for Ministry theology professor William Witt over a comment I made on his Facebook page, to wit, that women's ordination to the priesthood is an "uncatholic monstrosity".  I came to the conclusion that my comment, which concerned the role that Anglican “academic theologians” (Witt’s term) played in foisting women’s ordination on Anglican churches and how this only further complicated the problem of Anglican identity, was over the top rhetorically.  I privately apologized to Dr. Witt for the tone of my remark and took down my blog post.  After explaining to me privately and at his Facebook page his distaste for online theological debate, he subsequently re-friended me.  

As I explained to Dr. Witt, however, while I felt I must apologize for the sarcastic tone of my remark, I cannot and never will apologize for its content.   Implicit in that qualification is my belief that Witt and other “conservative” Anglican theologians who defend women’s ordination are guilty not only of muddying further the question of Anglican identity but of departing from Catholic faith and practice.  Anglicans claim to be Catholics, “Reformed” Catholics, yes, but Catholic enough to desire communion with or at least acknowledgment from Rome and Orthodoxy as a “branch” of the Catholic Church, analogous in certain respects to the Old Catholics, the Oriental Orthodox Churches, and the various provinces of Eastern Orthodox miscellany. 

Well, let me revise that a bit.  That has been the stated desire of many classical Anglicans and Anglo-Catholics for a long time.  There is another version of Anglicanism, however, that has been throwing caution – along with Catholic faith and practice - to the wind for quite some time.  I’m speaking, of course, of the liberal Protestant party in the Church of England and the Anglican Communion, which was first hatched in the backwaters of infidelity that came to be associated with “Oxbridge” learning and later in other Western academies.  In the early 20^th century, Orthodox-Anglican relations were so good that a number of major Orthodox jurisdictions had affirmed the validity of Anglican orders and certain of them gave economic sanction to Orthodox believers receiving Holy Communion from Anglican priests if an Orthodox priest was not available.  That dialogue imploded when the Church of England, the Protestant Episcopal Church USA, and other provinces in the Anglican Communion began ordaining women.  This in spite of ample warning from Orthodox notables such as Fr. Alexander Schmemann.  

When the churches of the Anglican Realignment, many of which were rightly termed “neo-Anglican” because of the several ways in which they departed from classical Anglicanism, began forming at the turn of the millennium, a number of Evangelical Anglican theologians and clergymen (and women) brought the deal-killing theology and practice of women’s ordination with them into the Realignment, though the theology was tweaked in an attempt to baptize it as a “conservative ” construct.  These folks relied in no small part on the exegetical and theological work of Evangelicals such as Gilbert Bilizekian, Berkeley and Alvera Mickelsen, Millard Erickson, and Doug and Rebecca Groothuis.  A number of them are affiliated with  Christians for Biblical Equality, an organization dedicated to egalitarian hermeneutics (and thus women’s ordination). 

Dr. Witt is a prominent defender of women’s ordination to the priesthood in the Anglican Realignment.    Judging by a comment he made in the aforementioned Facebook discussion, he also gives "PhD Anglicanism" very high marks:

Perhaps this just reflects the difference between PhD Anglicanism and the home-grown variety. . . . I sometimes get the feeling that people I encounter on Facebook are still fighting battles that have long been forgotten about in academic theology.

It was that drippingly condescending remark that prompted my sarcastic comment about “academic theology” and it’s relationship to the “uncatholic monstrosity” of women’s ordination, but let’s overlook its condescending tone and focus rather on its substance.  What Dr. Witt is saying here, in essence, is that what ultimately matters for the church is what takes place in the rarified realm of the theological academy, that is to say, in the crania of the brahmins of “PhD Anglicanism.”  That, my friends, has historically been, as it is now in our time,  the heart of what I will call the “Anglican Disease”.

The Anglican Disease, as I mentioned previously, was incubated in the great centers of learning associated with the Church of England.  The Disease later spread to other Anglican centers of higher learning in the West.  It began in the 17^th and 18^th centuries when Anglican academic theologians began flirting with Enlightenment philosophies, theological and political, and later with the theories of higher criticism and other destructive theories associated with the rise of liberal Protestantism, and then finally with the kind of theological radicalism we see throughout the Anglican Communion in the Northern hemisphere and Oceania today. (For an excellent presentation on how Anglican Latitudinarianism morphed very naturally into Anglican radicalism, see Aidan Nichols’ The Panther and the Hind: A Theological History of Anglicanism.  I give a brief review here.)

The Anglican Disease’s main symptom is seen in the proposition that the Anglican academe knows better than the historic and contemporary college of Catholic bishops about what’s good for the Church.  That is a complete reversal of the ecclesiology of the past, to which classical Anglicanism is supposed to hold, which is that it is the consensus of a group of Catholic bishops known as the “Church Fathers” and certain councils of bishops, primarily those deemed “Ecumenical”, that determine what is good for the Church, not the late untethered-from-orthodoxy invention known as the “theological academy".  That the Anglican Disease has taken a heavy toll on the Anglican Communion is evident.  Many Anglicans have concluded that it is better to leave the diseased body and start afresh with new, undiseased bodies that are dedicated once again to the apostolic and Catholic faith expressed in the Creed, the teachings of the Church Fathers.

Alas, we still find evidence of the Anglican Disease even in some of these new bodies: “Perhaps this just reflects the difference between PhD Anglicanism and the home-grown variety. . . .  I sometimes get the feeling that people I encounter on Facebook are still fighting battles that have long been forgotten about in academic theology.”  Being a “conservative” is no guarantee that one is immune to the Disease.  It is entirely possible for "conservatives" to depart from the Faith.  This is one reason I’m so thrilled about the existence The Center for Pastor Theologians.   Their idea is to return the task of theologizing to pastors, an idea that is consonant with the way the Catholic Church did theology up until modern times.  Not to say that the there is no role whatsoever for the academic theologian, or that obscurantism should be the order of the day, but rather that the goal of theology for orthodox believers is to foster the well-being of the Church, not the reputations and careers of academic theologians, whose “learned” views are all too often out of accord with the faith and practice of the Catholic Church.  Exhibit A: the “conservative” exegetical and theological case for women’s ordination to the priesthood.

I can think of no better example than the support of William Witt and other Anglican academic theologians for this uncatholic monstrosity.  Dr. Witt recently preached a sermon at a service where two of his students, a married couple, were both ordained to the diaconate.  The couple "will be ordained as priests"  in the near future.  In the course of his  sermon Witt remarked, "I do not have time to give an entire lecture on the theology of ordination. . . ."

Indeed, because for Anglican "latcon" proponents of women's ordination to the priesthood the development of that particular "theology of ordination" has proved to be yeomen's work, as I explained to a defender of Witt's pro-WO stance here:

His (Witt's) is a tall order. Nary a word in the Bible in support of WO, and 2,000 years of tradition and the changeless stances of Rome and Orthodoxy to overcome, but by golly let's change Catholic order by employing an argument that just so happens to have originated in the Anglican church about the time feminism began making inroads. He certainly deserves an "A" for effort.

Sorry, Dr. Witt, but an "uncatholic monstrosity" is what it is at the end of the day.  It is the practice of women’s ordination in the Anglican Communion, and now in the Anglican Realignment, that has in essence shut down ecumenical relations with the Church of Rome and the Orthodox Churches of the East.  These, our Catholic brothers and sisters with whom we say we desire communion, believe as I do that women’s ordination is in fact a monstrous departure from Catholic faith and order.  So do most classical Anglicans and Anglo-Catholics in ACNA, AMiA, and the Continuing Churches, and that’s why at the recent International Catholic Congress of Anglicans in Fort Worth a strong message was delivered in certain statements to all the “academic theologians” and non-theologians in ACNA who support women’s ordination.  If these statements are any indication, Witt and those desirous of maintaining Realignment Anglican unity can't be too happy, because the statements not only reflect EXACTLY what I've been saying to him and other defenders of WO in ACNA for some time now about how the practice of women’s ordination is viewed by many orthodox Anglicans, but the logic of those statements could also imply a separation down the road.  Say, when the ACNA Task Force on Holy Orders issues its final report, perhaps as soon as this January.  You would think that Dr. Witt, whose sentiments expressed in this Facebook discussion express the hope for keeping us all together, wouldn't be so dead set on alienating classical Anglicans and Anglo-Catholics.  But maybe it’s that in the final analysis neither Dr. Witt nor all the other supporters of “biblical equality” in ACNA care about Catholic order.  (See also An Exchange Between William Witt and Me on Women's Ordination.)

Excellent Article from Canon Arthur Middleton

 FT. WORTH: The Congress and Restoring the Anglican Mind.

As Middleton explains, this article was read to the Catholic Congress of Anglicans, which is now in session, in lieu of him being there personally to deliver it.  Defenders of women's ordination in the Realignment are not going to like it.  Excerpts:

The Church of England's General Synod celebrations after the vote for women bishops indicated that the members had not realised how the vote signalled the death of the Church of England, becoming what Richard Hooker would describe as a sect of politically correct ideology. Fundamental in this Anglican Communion Crisis is the emergence of two incompatible and competing religions within the Church, that are not mere differences of "emphasis" but profound differences about the content of Christian belief and the character of Christian life. They express themselves in the authority of experience, over against the authority of Divine revelation that is the basis of Christian orthodoxy.

For the orthodox Christian "Truth" (with a capital "T") has been definitively revealed in Holy Scripture, and authoritatively interpreted in the Christian Tradition. The Christian's response is in terms of belief, understanding, and obedience. "Relevance" then becomes a matter of seeking to apply established doctrinal and moral standards to the situation in which he finds himself. He sees his church as divinely commissioned in faith and order to maintain the faith "once for all delivered to the saints", with the responsibility of maintaining those standards essentially unchanged from one age to another. The issue of women in the Apostolic Ministry is fundamentally a matter of order and not of human rights, which is not surprising, when we speak about the Apostolic Ministry as Holy Orders. As the Preface to our Anglican Ordinal puts it:

It is evident unto all men diligently reading Holy Scripture and ancient Authors that from the Apostles' time there have been these Orders of Ministers in Christ's Church: Bishops, Priests, and Deacons. {Book of Common Prayer (Canada, 1959), p. 637.

Their divine source and authority is God to whom they belong and not men which explains why these ancient Orders are called holy, because they were given by God and because they were not devised by humans. Our Prayer-book Collect for Ember days which is a prayer for Ordinands acknowledges this in praying to God, who of His "divine providence hast appointed divers Orders" in His Church.' . . .

The process that has promoted women in the apostolic ministry is a management exercise determined by politically correct ideology and not theological principle and it reduces Holy Order to a functionalism, alters God's plan for Holy Order and ignores our paramount duty to the universal Church. In England the appointment of a Reconciler is part of the management method which according to the ACAS style of settling Trade Union disputes, is to reconcile differing views. But this issue is not about human relations. It is about deeply held theological convictions that are diametrically opposed to the politically correct ideology. There can be no reconciliation.

The vote signifies that the Church of England and where this has happened in elsewhere in other provinces of the Anglican Communion, Anglicanism is not being true to her Anglican mind. She has rejected the Judaeo-Christian Tradition, the historic episcopate, and in other matters of fundamental doctrine and morals this can happen again. She has ignored her own Formularies expressed in Canon A5 of the English Church, the BCP and the Ordinal where Apostolic Order is therein enshrined. She has ignored her membership of the universal Church and has been in a process of creeping schism from it for years. The ecumenical achievements of the past century, including ARCIC, have been destroyed for there has been a total disregard for Christian unity and an unwillingness to take seriously the warnings of the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church. So what is the point of the Archbishop of Canterbury's words to his ecumenical partners stressing the fact that we need each other and the importance of unity, after an action that has placed an insuperable obstacle in the way of full Communion. Actions speak louder than words.

Professor Owen Chadwick wrote of Anglican divines in the seventeenth century (Preface, From Unifomity to Unity 1662-1962, edit, Geoffrey F. Nuttall and Owen Chadwick [SPCK, London 1962], pp. 13ff), '... if High Churchmen of that age like Bramhall or Thorndike had been asked what led them not to compromise, they would have replied in terms like the following:

Our paramount duty is to the Catholic Church; our sub¬ordinate and derivative duty is to the Church of England as the representative of the Catholic Church in this country. The Catholic Church is known by its faithfulness to the primi¬tive model. The Church of England has no choice but to follow that model, must seek to apply the principle rigorously and exactly.

"I am satisfied", wrote Thorndike in 1660," that the differences, upon which we are divided, cannot be justly settled upon any terms, which any part of the Whole Church shall have just cause to refuse, as inconsistent with the unity of the Whole Church ("The Due Way of composing Differences on Foot," Works, vol. v. p. 29)

Chadwick went on to say that any act which divides the Church of England from the universal Church of the centuries is to be eschewed, even if that act offers temporary or local advantage; and the test of universality, in this sad, divided state of Christendom, may be found in appeal to the ancient and undivided Church of the first centuries. . . .

It has always been the Anglican claim that in faith and order the Anglican Communion is continuous in identity with the Primitive Church. It is no new Church. Today's contest is between modern liberal ecclesiology and the Anglican mind in a time when the majority of people in the Church and the nation have been brainwashed by the secular mind, which they use to displace the claims of the Anglican mind. It is the presuppositions of this secular mind and its politically correct ideology that is determining the Faith and Order of the Anglican Communion that must be displaced. This is not a matter of politics but a matter of faith and theology. Like the divines of the seventeenth century the way forward is by pursuing the Anglican way back to prescriptive sources by upholding Canon A5 which states that the doctrine of the Anglicanism is grounded in the Holy Scripture and in such teachings of the ancient Fathers and Councils of the Church as are agreeable to the said Scriptures. In particular such doctrine is to be found in the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion, the Book of Common Prayer and the Ordinal.

Anglicanism and the Benedict Option

An excellent article by Fr. Lee Nelson writing at the Anglican Pastor.

What is needed is a charter for extra-parochial communities of prayer, life-giving fellowship, and solidarity in the midst of marginalization, a charter for a new rule of life – not for the individual, but for whole multi-generational groupings of Benedictine Option Christians. We need communities oriented towards the pursuit of the good, the true, and the beautiful, communities in which virtue can flourish. Let me put all my cards on the table. I believe that Anglicanism offers just such a charter. We have forms for daily prayer and common intercession, forms for confession, and litanies for ourselves and for the world. We have an emphasis upon the domestic church and family catechesis. We have in our DNA a way for families to join together in their neighborhoods for evening prayer and cookouts, for students to come together for morning prayer and intercession for one another, for baptismal promises to become enfleshed in sacrifice for the sake of our brothers and sisters. In one of the great ironies of Anglicanism, what was intended for the chapel works best in the home! What was intended for the parish church comes to life outside her four walls! Thanks be to God, for we have a goodly heritage.

Is Anglicanism Catholic or Reformed?

The answer is yes, but with needed qualifications.  My readers know how much time and space I've devoted to the proposition that Anglicanism is a Protestant church.  I have given hints, however, that, following much of Anglican divinity, it is exceedingly important to claim our Catholic nature as well.  My readers know how fond I am of this quote from blogger Death Bredon:

The genius of the Protestant Reformation is the recognition that, during the Middle Ages, "ecclesial creep" in both the Western and Eastern portions of the Church had for all practical intents and purposes replaced Old-Law works righteousness with a new works righteousness based on the respective "New Law" of the West (the Penance-Merits-Purgation-Indulgences doctrinal phalanx) and of the East (the imposition of the Monastic Typicon upon the laity).

Furthermore, . . . the formularies of classical Anglicanism did a better job of retaining the wheat of the orthodox catholicism of the ancient Church while jettisoning the chaff of innovative medieval accretion than did any other segment of the Reformation. This is why Anglicanism can, perhaps uniquely, lay equal claim to the appellations Protestant and Catholic and affirm both without any sense of inconsistency or incoherence. Indeed, strictly speaking, in proper understanding of each term, to truly be one, you must be both.

"To truly be one, you must be both."  Newman said that to be deep in history is to cease to be a Protestant.  I agree, rather, with Death Bredon: To be a true Protestant is to be deep in (Catholic) history and to believe all the Catholic doctrines and practices that are not in opposition to Scripture.   In fact, to the extent that Protestantism becomes uncatholic, it becomes inherently unstable, as Protestant amply demonstrates, and as the current defection of leftist Evangelicals amply demonstrates. 

This article by Peter Leithart entitled The End of Protestantism pretty much reflects my thinking on this matter, and is indicative of the kind of things I will be writing in the future on this matter.  Toward that end, I have deleted from my sidebar all the links critical of Anglo-Catholicism, Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, though the OJC articles lnked there still exist.  (You'll have to search for them if you want to read them.) 

CANA Affirms Classical Anglicanism

Story here.  And I know of at least one Anglo-Catholic priest who voted for it.  A positive sign, I hope.

Martin Thornton’s Syllabus on the Anglican Spiritual Tradition

H/T Matthew Dallman at the Catholic Anglican.

Martin Thornton’s Syllabus

[from the appendix to English Spirituality: An Outline of Ascetical Theology According to the English Pastoral Tradition, rev. ed. 1986.]

A Course of Study in Ascetical Theology for Parish Priests and Theological Students of the Anglican Communion

After delivering lectures on this and kindred subjects, I am invariably asked for a “reading list” by those of my audience whose interest has been stirred, or more likely, by those whose politeness and charity wish to give that impression. It is an immensely difficult request: we are not dealing with a “subject” with its own clearly defined literature, but with an approach to theology springing from, and leading back to, prayer. Neither are we dealing with scholars for whom theological study is their main job, but with busy parish priests and students whose burdensome curriculum does not include ascetics as such. This practical point is frequently forgotten by the compilers of such reading lists or courses of study; nothing is more frustrating to serious students and parish priests than to be given prescribed reading at the rate of twenty tomes a month, or to be exhorted to such scholarly ideals of sticking to original sources and eschewing simple commentaries. Since those giving this advice frequently spend their lives writing commentaries, one is forced to wonder what is the point of them all.

The following scheme is an attempt to avoid such impractical ideals. It is, I think, the sort of scheme that a serious reader of this present book—itself no more than an introduction—might naturally compose for himself. Spread over two years, in eight quarterly periods, the scheme suggests ten books to be seriously studied, which is possible to a parish priest giving only five hours a week to it. These books are listed in the first column. Column 2 lists twenty more books which might be “read through” rather than pored over; almost bedside books; or which may be referred to casually at odd free moments. The third column contains a selection of “devotional” books for use in private prayer, which fit in with the reading and which should give a fair picture of English spirituality in action.

My scheme is obviously suggestive: details may vary with personal choice, and it is not meant to be adhered to rigidly. The daily Office is of course assumed, as is meditative use of the Bible throughout. Anyone who finds difficulty with the Office might well bring in some of the Caroline devotional teaching much earlier than the last six months of the two-year period. I have omitted the fundamental “background” books like Harton, Pourrat, and Scaramelli: these might be regarded as general works of reference. I have also kep rather too strictly to the English School: we have seen how St Ignatius Loyola and the Carmelites can be usefully incorporated, while slight acquaintance with, say, the Rhineland Dominicans brings English spirituality into relief by contrast.

I have tried to keep only to books currently in print, and have included devotional books most of which are now available cheaply in paperback form. A few visits to a good theological library, however, would reveal extra riches, particularly in the form of seventeenth-century manuals of private devotion.

If five hours a week of serious study (column 1) are backed up by a similar period of mental prayer or spiritual reading, I think we might have a creative scheme not unduly arduous to the type of reader in mind. Remembering the central speculative-affective synthesis, the main columns also tend to become interchangeable: Anselm and Julian can obviously either be studied or prayed. With a little fluidity and ingenuity it will be found that the four yearly quarters more or less fit with the liturgical season (Advent-Septuagesima, Septuagesima-Easter, Easter-Trinity 10, Trinity 10-Advent). I do not think a parish priest following such a scheme need spend much time on sermon preparation or devotional addresses: nor do I think these would be sub-standard!

My own scheme here appended is neither perfect nor invariable, but as a pattern I hope it may be practical and of use.

The British State's Silent War on Religion

It is increasingly clear that the UK government’s failing attempt to promote British values has inadvertently turned into a sanctimonious and intolerant campaign against traditionalist religious institutions. Since most of the targets of the British-values campaign are culturally isolated – Jehovah’s Witnesses, Hasidic Jews, fundamentalist Christians, radical Islamists – many otherwise sensitive observers have not picked up on what is a silent war against religion.

This unrestrained and insidious turn taken by the disoriented British-values campaign was exposed last month when it emerged that young Muslim children in one primary school were given a test to assess their predilection for radicalisation. The stated purpose of this intrusive Big Brother-style initiative was to ‘identify the initial seeds of radicalisation’. Judging by the questions posed, it appears that the marker for the precrime of radicalisation was the strength of infants’ feelings about the way of life of their families. To discover how pupils felt about their beliefs, the test asked them to indicate whether they agreed, disagreed or were unsure about the following statement: ‘I believe my religion is the only correct one.’ Any child agreeing with this statement was deemed to be in danger of becoming radicalised into anti-British values.

The sentiments underpinning this infant-radicalisation test also inform the work of Ofsted school inspectors, assorted government programmes and the outlook of the political establishment. From this elite perspective, those who believe that their religion is the truth contradict the unstated official version of British values – namely, that all religions are correct. According to the jargon of the day, an inclusive, non-judgemental and respectful attitude towards other people’s beliefs is mandatory for school children. This demand for non-judgemental respect implicitly negates the freedom of conscience of millions of ardent believers for one simple reason: many religions assume that only they possess the truth. For Christians, Jews and Muslims, the idea that all religions are correct makes little sense. Indeed, if all religions are ‘correct’, then living in accordance solely with one particular faith is absurd. . . .

The right to religious freedom is the cornerstone on which the ideal of tolerance was founded. It is paradoxical that in the 21st century, when the right to be different is so widely celebrated, that the right to act on your religious beliefs is so readily pathologised.

Read the entire article here.

There is only one thing for these religious communities to do, and that is to tell the Enforcers of PC orthodoxy to go pound sand, followed by a campaign of unified, stubborn resistance. Worked for the Jews in the Roman Empire.  Here's Jim Kalb on the question, "How bad will things get?":

Right-wingers are alarmed by totalitarian features of advanced liberalism: its insistent universalism, its theoretical coherence and simplicity, its resolute suppression of alternative principles of social order, its principled rejection of common sense, inherited ways, and the very concept of human nature. In the long run, they ask, how much difference can there be between “inclusiveness”—putting all persons and all human goals and actions into a single relation to a single universal and comprehensive order of things—and “Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State”? If anything, the former aspiration seems more unlimited and therefore more frightening.

From the liberal standpoint, of course, all this is a joke. The liberal state is different from every other state. It’s a system of power that isn’t a system of power. It has a ruling class of experts, functionaries and lawyers that is reliably disinterested and moral. By controlling everything it sets everything free. That’s why it’s not fanaticism but moderation to say that only liberal states are legitimate. Worrying about “totalitarian liberalism” is like worrying about “oppression by neutrality” or “enslavement by freedom.” It might be an interesting paradox, but as a practical matter it just shows there’s something wrong with you. Above all, liberals are good people and don’t do bad things except to the extent they fall short of liberalism.

Still, what are the practicalities? It may be right—I think it is—to shrug off the liberal self-image as hopelessly self-deluded, but there are some things to say in its favor. In principle, liberalism may be far more ambitious than Mussolini’s fascism, and its ultimate goals may be far more inhuman, but it habitually proceeds by much softer means. Rather than crush an opposing force directly it weakens it by a thousand influences that make it unable to function and assert itself. Criminal prosecutions, when they come, are just a way of formalizing and putting beyond dispute a principle that’s already all but universally accepted. The Swedish government didn’t decide to toss Ake Green in the slammer for a sermon denouncing homosexuality until the Swedes had abandoned religion, made the provident state the basis of everything, and decided that since family relationships no longer served a serious function the sole public standard for sexual connections would be universal equal acceptance. When they came for Pastor Green, no one defended him and they could do what they wanted without being forced outside their comfort zone.

In the end, the liberal state is not principled, and nothing built into liberalism limits how far it can go. Nonetheless, it’s enduringly squeamish. It will use the final measure of force only against weak opponents whom everyone that matters has agreed to hold in contempt. Groups and institutions that stand firm, present their views forcefully and confidently, and keep on going in the face of abuse—who preach the word in all settings, in season and out of season—will prevail. That’s something Catholics, among others, need to remember. How bad things get—and they could get very, very bad—is up to us.

Though liberty in the United States, is, in theory at least, protected by state and federal bills of rights, it is clear that American liberal statists are angling to rule its religious minorities via end runs around constitutional provisions, following the example of liberal states in Europe.  We need to muster the intestinal fortitude to tell them "no", we will not be ruled by them, and be willing to do anything necessary to protect our liberty when they refuse to take "no" for an answer.

The Unbreakable Unity of Word and Sacrament

From a convert to Anglicanism from the Baptist church.  Out there in the Roman Catholic, Orthodox and Anglican worlds, the unity has been broken.  Those places must recover that unity if they want to be genuinely catholic and apostolic.  It's all about the Gospel, which is why the severing of word and sacrament is not an option. 

I am an Anglican myself now, and my views of preaching have shifted from what they once were. Truthfully, I can’t imagine going back to forty-five-minute oral commentaries on a biblical passage. I also don’t think recordings are really “sermons,” strictly speaking; if preaching is in some way sacramental, surely it requires the bodily presence of preacher and hearers to each other? And I have enough Lutheran in me now to think that it’s perfectly possible to preach a faithful, verse-by-verse exposition of a biblical passage and still miss the Gospel. If the point of preaching is to publicly exhibit Jesus Christ as crucified, per St. Paul’s lapidary summary in the epistle to the Galatians, then no sermon, however “biblical” it might be, is complete without that. If it doesn’t lead inexorably to the Lord’s Table, at which the word of forgiveness becomes tangible and edible, then it isn’t really gospel preaching.

Admittedly, though, I worry as much or more these days about the disillusionment with preaching I find among many Anglicans my age. Many of us were raised in low-church evangelical traditions with strong pulpit ministries, and part of what has drawn us to the Anglican fold is the weekly Eucharist, which was marginal in our upbringings. (My childhood Southern Baptist church took Communion quarterly, with disposable cups of Welch’s and cufflink-shaped saltines.) At the evangelical Wheaton College, where half my friends, it seemed, discovered Anglicanism during their undergraduate years, I frequently heard sighs of relief: “I’m happy to go to a church where the altar, not the pulpit, is at the center.” If they had read Ishmael’s homiletic paean in Moby Dick, “Yes, the world’s a ship on its passage out . . . and the pulpit is its prow,” my fellow students would have substituted altar for pulpit without batting an eye.

I worry about this tendency not just because I am nostalgic for serious, rich, demanding sermons. Rather, I worry about it because I persist in believing that preaching—the proclamation of the good news of Jesus Christ from an appointed text or passages of Scripture—is inseparable from the deep sacramental life I’ve found in the Anglican church. “When the sacrament is severed from proclamation and so from scripture,” as George Hunsinger wrote in a recent essay, “it threatens to become an object of priestly manipulation and superstition.” But when the sacrament fulfills and interprets the preached Word, then preaching comes into its own. “The word,” Hunsinger continues, “proclaims Christ in his saving significance as the Incarnate Saviour” and is thus brought to completion when its hearers commune with that same Christ by receiving his body and blood.

I hope that my church will rediscover and do its part to guard and advance what the Orthodox theologian Alexander Schmemann has called the “unbreakable unity of word and sacrament.” I pray we continue to be a Eucharistic community, feeding on Christ each week in our hearts by faith with thanksgiving, as the liturgy has it. And may we also celebrate the rootedness of that feeding in the preached word. May we, as Schmemann puts it, celebrate preaching as what gives the sacrament its “evangelical content,” what prevents it from becoming a free-floating magical exercise shorn of its proclamatory character. May we, still and again, defend and love the pulpit.

The Pulpit is the Prow.

Assorted Recent Comments from the ELCA's Metropolitan New York Synod Facebook Page

With reference to this photo.

“This year's Synod Assembly was very active, with resolutions adopted to divest from fossil fuels, commit to addressing racism in church and society, adopt a Disaster Plan, hold a ministerium, support the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land, and more. Download the full Summary of Actions here.”

“Did you folks address things like rightly preaching the Gospel or properly administering the sacraments?”

“Why in God’s name is there a man in his underwear?”

“Beckie, just pretend you don't see anything. If you call too much attention to him, he might not be wearing the undies next time. Come Quickly Lord Jesus.”

“The Scandinavian Lutheran Hans Christian Anderson wrote the famous story about an honest little boy who was willing to point out the emperor's nakedness, while the adults pretended that the absurd was normal, prodded on by pride and fear borne of peer pressure. I bet if children were at this assembly, one of them would have certainly asked why that man wasn't wearing any pants.”

"’Tighty-Whities’??? Really????? Just out of curiosity, what *exactly* kind of answer am I supposed to give when asked about this???”

“I invite anyone offended by the idea of a man jumping around in his underwear during ‘worship’ which is apparently affirmed by this church group, to look up the closest LCMS church this weekend...we still believe that worship should be reverent."

Here is one such LCMS church.  This is what church is really all about right here, folks.  LCMS still understands, and parishes like this one really understand:

Fruit of the Loom Advert?

Photo of liturgical dancer at the opening of the recent Metropolitan New York Synod Assembly (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America).

Comment at the Synod's Facebook page from Lutheran Satire: "The main difference between the ELCA and the LCMS is that, in the ELCA, this is called worship, and in the LCMS, this is called an anxiety dream."

From Robert A. J. Gagnon, Associate Professor of New Testament at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary

Here.

The President Declares Us to Be Bigots and Enemies of the State (Again)

Once more President Obama proclaims June to be the "Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender [don't forget Transgender] Pride Month." Every federal worker and member of the armed forces received this presidential proclamation in their email (a FB friend who works for the federal government notified me this morning that he just received his). It labels all opposition to homosexual behavior as "prejudice," which, in effect, declares us all to be bigots and enemies of the state's ideology of sexual "diversity."

"... We celebrate the proud legacy LGBT individuals have woven into the fabric of our Nation, we honor those who have fought to perfect our Union, and we continue our work to build a society where every child grows up knowing that their country supports them, is proud of them, and has a place for them exactly as they are.... I call upon the people of the United States to eliminate prejudice everywhere it exists, and to celebrate the great diversity of the American people."

"Proud Legacy"?

I do not celebrate as a "proud legacy" the advancement of an agenda that provides incentives for young people to dishonor the Creator's stamp of gender by treating their maleness or femaleness as only half intact in relation to their own sex, as though they were half-males or half-females needing to supplement their sex structurally through sexual union with someone of the same sex.

I do not celebrate as a "proud legacy" a form of behavior that, owing to the absence of a true sexual complement and thus a moderating influence on the extremes of a given sex, increases the risk of high numbers of sex partners, high relational turnover, sexually transmitted infections, and mental health problems.

I do not celebrate as a "proud legacy" the raising of children in "families" where such self-dishonoring, unstable, and harmful practices are modeled before vulnerable children.

I do not celebrate as a "proud legacy" profane, hyper-sexualized "gay pride" parades and workplace celebrations.

I do not celebrate as a “proud legacy” the elimination of public recognition of gender differences such that men confused about their sexuality are permitted to use female restrooms, young people are encouraged to cross-dress, and persons of all ages are given help to mutilate their bodies in a vain effort to become the sex that they are not.

And I do not celebrate as a "proud legacy" the attendant deprivation of civil and religious liberties and the persecution of those who rightly believe the Scriptures from Moses to Jesus and Paul that homosexual practice is sin.

Assault on Our Liberties and Persecution of Our Children

According to Obama, that makes me (and you) a proponent of prejudice and a denier of diversity who must be eliminated.

Why would any Christian vote for a politician who treats his beliefs about human sexuality as bigotry and seeks to codify that view into law, such that it leads to the persecution of his or her family?

Obama is the one person most responsible for Christians being persecuted today inasmuch as he has used the bully pulpit and awesome powers of the presidency to advance the homosexualist agenda both nationally and internationally from day one on. And what is the result?

*Christian organizations deprived of federal contracts and grants if they don't practice affirmative-action hiring of homosexually active applicants who don't share the Christian values of the organization.

*Members of the armed services, including officers and chaplains, required to promote the celebration of sexual "diversity" or face the prospect of disciplinary action.

*Religious ministries, seeking to help persons struggling with same-sex attractions, banned from helping willing minors and sued by multi-million dollar homosexualist advocacy groups.

*Christian colleges threatened with loss of accreditation if they do not allow homosexualist advocates to present their views on campus.

*Christian broadcasters and sports writers terminated if they post on FB that they are against "gay marriage."

*Christian florists, bakers, and photographers fined up to $130,000, plus court costs, if they decline to contribute their artistic talents to the abhorrent ritual of a "gay wedding."

*Christian teachers fired if they don't extol in the classrooms the virtues of a homosexualist agenda.

*Christian children forcibly indoctrinated to accept the notion of two fathers or two mothers and that it is a beautiful thing for boys to dress up like a "princess"; and Christian parents denied the right to have their children excused from presentations that promote perverse sexual activity with graphic images and descriptions.

*Christian college students ridiculed in the classroom for their stance on homosexual practice and denied voice, whose Christian groups are refused college recognition and funds if they do not permit homosexually active students as officers and are required to pay for extra security for speakers defending marriage as a union between man and woman (even though campus homosexualist advocates are responsible for the unsafe environment).

On and on the list goes, and it will only get worse because SCOTUS appointees of Obama (and Clinton) will ensure that "gay marriage" becomes the law of the land, even though such action is clearly legislating from the bench without constitutional authority.

Christians who previously cast their ballot for politicians who promoted the “LGBTQI” agenda are now causing us all to reap the whirlwind. It is already late in the hour of protecting our rights as free citizens of this great republic. Act for our children’s sake while you still can.

You know, I've purposely avoided this subject here at The Old Jamestown Church for a couple of reasons: 1) I have friends and colleagues who are gay, and I have just found it impossible not to be compassionate toward them, since gayness is something they haven't chosen.  Most gays and lesbians live a quiet life, want to be left alone, and desire to leave others alone.  And because we are all sexually fallen, I just don't think any heterosexual Christian is in any place to judge; 2) That traditional Anglicans are leaving the Anglican Communion (or realigning within it) in droves largely because of this issue is implicit in everything I write about the Continuing and Realigning churches, so I find no need to elaborate on it.

However, as Gagnon indicates it is becoming clear that powerful elites in Europe, North America and elsewhere are not content to live and let live.  They want a war.  Well, if they want a war, we'll give them a war.  ¡Viva Cristo Rey!

¡Viva Cristo Rey!

That was the cry of the Cristero warriors, Catholic Christians who took up arms against an oppressive socialist government in the early part of the 20th century.   The Cristero War was one resistance movement in recent Christian history where Christians took up arms to fight political oppression, a weapon they added to martyrdom, and which was based on Christian resistance theory that finds its incipient expression in the works of St. Augustine.  Other modern examples would be the overthrow of the Ottoman Empire's rule of Greece and the Balkans in the 19th century, the Catholic resistance against leftist republicans in the Spanish Civil War, and the overthrow of the brutal communist dictator of Romania, Nicolae Ceaușescu, by Romanian Orthodox Christians wielding Kalasnikov rifles and other weapons.   Christianity is not a pacifist religion, despite the sophistic arguments of the John Howard Yoders in the church peddling their unbiblical wares.  Western Christians have long believed Just War principles can be applied to Just Revolutions, and even though Orthodoxy does not have a Just War doctrine, it has more or less operated on the assumption that the Just War theory is true.  (One notable example can be found in Metropolitan Antony Khrapovitsky’s essay The Christian Faith and War.)   ACNA Archbishop Foley Beach recently made the unfortunate comment in a Martin Luther King Day sermon that "violence is not the answer. Violence only leads to more violence. It is non-violence which brings lasting social change".   I'll give His Grace the benefit of the doubt here and say that he was just trying to say something nice and profound about the civil rights luminary on MLK Day, whose model of activism was indeed based largely on Gandhian pacifism, as noted in the linked article.   But Archbishop Beach's comment is flat wrong when viewed in a biblical and Christian-historical contexts.  Plus, it's just flat wrong empirically.  The Orthodox Serbs and Greeks will tell you that their violent resistance against the Ottoman Turks brought lasting social change to their lands.  Gandhi does not represent Judeo-Christian though on this question.

Violence is not the answer. Violence only leads to more violence. It is non-violence which brings lasting social change. - See more at: http://www.anglicanink.com/article/foley-beachs-martin-luther-king-day-sermon#sthash.BRfg6HNt.dpuf

Violence is not the answer. Violence only leads to more violence. It is non-violence which brings lasting social change. - See more at: http://www.anglicanink.com/article/foley-beachs-martin-luther-king-day-sermon#sthash.BRfg6HNt.dpuf

Violence is not the answer. Violence only leads to more violence. It is non-violence which brings lasting social change. - See more at: http://www.anglicanink.com/article/foley-beachs-martin-luther-king-day-sermon#sthash.BRfg6HNt.dpuf

As I have indicated previously, this blog will feature the occasional article on political matters, and one that is near and dear to my heart is the right of resistance to tyranny, awhich has for almost a millennium been considered a right of Englishmen.   Now that it is becoming clear to all of us the extent to which the liberal, secular (which is now to say, antichristian) state in Europe, North America and Oceania is willing to go in forcing its will upon the Church of Christ, fresh thought is being given by many Christian writers about what our response should be when things start getting bad. 

Eastern Orthodox author and blogger Rod Dreher has fired up a discussion of what he calls the “Benedict Option”,  based on some musings of philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre in his book After Virtue.  The discussion surrounds the question of what strategies of withdrawal, if indeed withdrawal becomes the only option, the church might embrace.  Dreher's Benedict Option idea is based loosely on the model of the monastic societies created by St. Benedict of Nursa and the influences they brought to bear in buidling Christendom after the fall of the Roman Empire.   The discussion at The American Conservative, where Dreher published his first article, can be seen here.   A recent article by Damon Linker at The Week, The Benedict Option: Why the religious right is considering an all-out withdrawal from politics, deserves a close look.  Linker begins his article:

Have you heard of the Benedict Option? If not, you will soon.

It's the name of a deeply pessimistic cultural project that's capturing the imaginations of social conservatives as they come to terms with the realization that the hopes and assumptions that animated the religious right over the past 35-odd years have been dashed by the sweeping triumph of the movement for same-sex marriage.

From the start, the religious right has been marked by two qualities: optimism and a faith in majoritarianism. The qualities are connected. Think back to Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority. The name conveyed its ideology: A majority of Americans are morally and religiously conservative. To the extent that the nation's politics and culture don't reflect that, it's because they have been co-opted by a secular liberal minority that has placed itself in control of such elite institutions as the media, Hollywood, the universities, the judiciary, and the federal bureaucracy. The proper response is to take back these institutions using democratic means, primarily elections.

In other words, play by the rules of the democratic game, and social conservatives will eventually triumph.

This sounded like a fantasy at first, since the movement began among evangelical Protestants, who never made up more than about 25 percent of the population, and whose style of worship and belief was profoundly off-putting to non-evangelical Christians, let alone to more secular Americans. But ecumenical and inter-religious efforts throughout the 1980s and early 1990s helped to forge an alliance among conservative believers in many faith traditions: evangelicals, but also Catholics, Mormons, Jews, and Muslims. This made talk of majorities at least plausible, and seemed to vindicate the optimism, too.

That no longer being the case, and will likely never be the case again, Linker mentions a previous episode in American history where conservatives had given up the notion that the collapsing American experiment could be salvaged:

Before the present moment, the one flicker of genuine gloom came in 1996, after a series of court rulings seemed to signal that secular liberalism was using the judiciary to thwart the will of the people. That inspired the conservative religious magazine First Things (for which I later worked) to run a notorious symposium titled "The End of Democracy?" An unsigned editorial introducing the symposium suggested that religious Americans would soon have to decide on options ranging "from noncompliance to resistance to civil disobedience to morally justified revolution."

The First Things symposium Linker references can ge read here.  It caused a number of conservatives, such as Midge Decter, to desert the First Things culture wars project, as the periodical had jumped the shark by starting to preach sedition.   However, one must take into account just how bad things were back in that day.  Author Ambrose Evans-Pritchard provided a glimpse into how bad it was in his book The Secret Life of Bill Clinton, mentioning the First Things symposium in his description of the times:

In Washington, Clinton moved with ruthless efficiency to take control of the federal machinery of coercion. While the U.S. watchdog press barked and howled with pitiful irrelevance about Clinton’s $200 hair cut, he quietly fired every U.S. Attorney in the country and then made his move on the FBI, which would be transformed gradually, one appointment at a time, into a replica of the Arkansas State Police. When he sacked William Sessions in July 1993, it was the first time in American history that a president had summarily dismissed an FBI director. The putsch passed without protest. This is how a country starts to lose a democracy.

I have not lost my faith in the American people. In the end, I believe, it is the ordinary citizens who will cleanse the institutions of the country before they become irretrievably corrupt. They are the heroes of this book. Ultimately, this is an optimistic essay, a paean to the American spirit. But let me tell you, I am astounded by the bullying and deceitful conduct of the U.S. Justice Department, the FBI, and other law enforcement agencies under this administration. No doubt there have been abuses in the past, but I believe that malfeasance has become systemic over the last five years. It is spreading down, by example, lodging itself in the institutional apparatus of government. Whether it is the Internal Revenue Service targeting foes of the president, or the Immigration and Naturalization Service expediting citizenship for “Democratic” voters in time for the 1996 elections, or the prostitution of the Lincoln Bedroom, the Clinton reflex is in evidence everywhere. To put it with brutal honesty, you can sniff the pungent odors of decay in the American body politic. I expect that this is what it smelt like in continental Europe in the 1920s, even as the boom rolled on.

When you are living through events day-by-day it is hard to know whether you are witnessing an historic turning point in the life of a country, or just mistaking the usual noise of politics for something meaningful. But there can be no doubt that the undercurrents in the era of William Jefferson Clinton are unprecedented. It was driven home to me by a symposium in November 1996 held by Father Richard Neuhaus, a respected Catholic intellectual and editor of First Things. Neuhaus warned that the experiment of the founding fathers was in danger of failing, and he pointedly spoke of the “the trail of abuses and usurpations” that set off the first American Revolution. Has it reached the point, he asked, “where conscientious citizens can no longer give moral assent to the existing regime?”

Yes, he said “regime.”

Something about Bill Clinton—his ineffable caddishness, perhaps—is changing the political discourse of the country. Every year that he continues in power, he eats a little deeper into the eroded legitimacy of the political order. The importance of this cannot be exaggerated. Three-quarters of the American people now tell pollsters that they do not trust the government to do the right thing. If ever there was a time when a leader of stoic virtue was needed to restore the authority of the national institutions, it is surely now.

It is under this president that domestic terrorism has become a feature of daily life in America. For decades the country was largely free of the political violence that has afflicted much of western Europe. Indeed, Europeans looked across the Atlantic with envy, marveling at the way this huge bustling nation managed to order its affairs with such cohesive goodwill. Not any longer. The actions and character of President Clinton have engendered the most deadly terrorist movement in the industrialized world. I choose the word “movement” advisedly because I do not accept the Justice Department claim that Terry Nichols and Timothy McVeigh were acting alone when they killed 168 people in the Oklahoma federal building in April 1995. There has been a steady campaign of bombing since then: three in Atlanta alone, including the deadly pipe bomb that eclipsed the 1996 Olympics. The attacks are so ubiquitous that they do not make the national news unless somebody is killed. To a foreign eye, America looks like a country that is flying out of control.

Again, it is under Clinton that an armed militia movement involving tens of thousands of people has mushroomed out of the plain, an expression of dissent that is unparalleled since the southern gun clubs before the Civil War. People do not spend their weekends with an SKS rifle, drilling for guerrilla warfare against federal forces, in a country that is at ease with itself. It takes very bad behavior to provoke the first simmerings of armed insurgency, and the militias are unmistakably Clinton’s offspring.

Here in 2015 under the Obama regime and with another possible Clinton regime in the wings, things are immeasurably worse.   As Linker intimates, therefore, maybe First Things had it right.  I for one believed they did when I read the symposium back in 1996, and I believe it with fervor now.

Hence the “Benedict Option”, where, as Linker put it with respect to the conclusion of the First Things symposium, “religious Americans (will) soon have to decide on options ranging from noncompliance to resistance to civil disobedience to morally justified revolution.’"   Three things, in that order.   The Just Revolution, like the Just War, is always the last resort.  But a justifiable resort it is.

Charles Murray has recently jumped onto the resistance bandwagon in his new book, By the People: Rebuilding Liberty Without Permission.  A review published yesterday at the Washington Post can be read here.  What Murray says about resisting an out-of-control bureaucracy can apply to any out-of-control behavior of the government, including the unconstitutional  assaults on free speech, right to keep and bear arms, right to privacy, states right. . . and freedom of religion.   And that’s what I will be addressing from time to time here at OJC.

I recently stumbled onto a related article at First Things from 1998 entitled, The Neo-Augustinian Temptation, by Robert Benne.   The author is critical of the writings of a number of authors from this movement because of their desire to opt out of cultural and political engagement.   Early Benedict Optioners, in other words, though of an Augustinian stripe.   Their suggestions are interesting:

The movement, if it is cohesive enough to be called that, is committed to the construction of an independent and distinct churchly culture based upon the full narrative of Israel and the Church as it has been carried through the ages by the Great Tradition. Theologically, the neo-Augustinians are anti-foundationalists who believe that a religious tradition like Christianity is a cultural-linguistic system that cannot and should not be compromised by any standards not its own. They learned that from Lindbeck.

Biblically, they argue that the early Christianity depicted in the Pauline letters was a churchly “public” or culture of its own, flourishing along side of but radically distinct from the Roman, Jewish, and Hellenistic cultures of the time. “Paul already regards the Church as a new public order in the midst of the nations with its own distinctive culture,” argues David Yeago. Christians who entered such a culture were “dying to the world” in the sense that they were entering a new ecclesial world.

Ethically, they contend that the practices of this distinct, living tradition form the Christian virtues that sustain such an ecclesial world. The Church’s worship, preaching, teaching, and communal life shape the virtues that maintain the practices of marriage and family life, charity, hospitality, governance, art, and thought that provide a real alternative to the dying world about us. The Church essentially needs no sources other than its own for the ethical task. Milbank asserts that the Church produces its own “ecclesial society,” with an attendant ontology, social theory, ethics, and economics.

Ecclesiology, that formerly unexciting branch of systematic theology, takes on urgency in the neo-Augustinians’ writings. The Church is a constitutive dimension of the Gospel, manifesting a comprehensive new life. It is the Body of Christ in a direct and literal way, a people in continuity with the people of Israel. It needs to live truly from its own sources and forget about worldly relevance. “The Church is a public in its own right,” says Hütter. “The world,” when pressed hard, is simply another religious vision of life that is a poison when ingested uncritically by the Church. . . .

Above all, they are contemptuous of the “modern settlement,” to use Yeago’s term, in which secular, liberal society, with its procedural definition of justice, has succeeded in marginalizing the religious vision. The modern settlement has insisted on a “naked public square” in which religion is relegated to the private sphere of life. Meanwhile, modernity’s own “scientific” way of understanding life is dogmatized as the only public meaning available. Rather than being “objective” or “scientific,” secular social theories are, Milbank argues, “concealed theologies or anti-theologies.” In this “settlement,” Christian belief becomes a weekend hobby in no real competition with the really serious ways of understanding life in this world-sociology, psychology, economics, and political science. . . .

Almost as objectionable are the desiccated religious bodies that have accepted the modern settlement, albeit unconsciously. Mainstream church bodies have tacitly bought the argument that politics and therapy are more important than Christian faith, and have allowed their theologies to become handmaidens of ideology or psychology. They give sacred legitimation to secular knowledge and action and thereby become “relevant.” (Several of the neo-Augustinians have made the surprising charge that the theology of Reinhold Niebuhr is best understood as a religious legitimation of liberal democracy.) These mainstream bodies, though they think they are involved in “transformation,” are more likely being acculturated more deeply into the modern settlement. According to Hütter, such attempts ironically “deepen the Church’s irrelevance and undermine its public (political) nature by submitting and reconditioning the Church according to the saeculum’s understanding of itself as the ultimate and normative public.”. . . .

The neo-Augustinian project strikes some critics as a new sectarianism, but it is far from that. Its proponents believe in culture-Christian culture. They are not inimical to the arts, music, politics, economic life, education. But these cultural activities, they insist, will have to be renewed-if not entirely rebuilt-on Christian assumptions. Culture under the modern settlement is depleting its inheritance from the Christian past and is gradually descending into perversion and chaos. A new culture must arise from the Church.

The neo-Augustinians are also catholic-even if they are Lutherans, Methodists, or Presbyterians. They transcend modern Christian divisions by attempting to retrieve a premodern Christian consensus. They have a “high” Christology, sacramentology, and ecclesiology and are committed to maintaining strong continuity with the great catholic tradition. They emphasize Catholic substance over Protestant principle.

There is much that is attractive and compelling in this movement. Its confidence in and clarity about orthodox Christianity is highly persuasive. It is refreshing to encounter serious thinkers who argue unabashedly that the Christian vision is true and trustworthy and that it matters ultimately.

This neo-Augustinian outlook is particularly tempting in moments when one is convinced that the current culture of the West is unraveling. Modernity’s commitment to individual rights and procedural justice seems to have no way of affirming substantive moral notions as to how we should live together in community. Indeed, “rights talk” is used as a trump card to override the inherited moral substance of our common life. The Protestant culture that provided the social glue for most of American history is in shambles and shows scant prospect of being revived or renewed. What little remains of the Protestant Establishment indicates no commitment to such traditional Judeo-Christian notions as the sanctity of life at its beginning and end, of marriage as a lifelong convenant of fidelity between a man and a woman, of intrinsic, non-utilitarian moral norms, or of the grateful acceptance of given conditions of life.

As one watches the moral norms that make for decency and restraint slowly erode, it is tempting to declare a pox on our national house and opt out of the struggle for a common culture. It would be pleasant to lose oneself in an ecclesial culture that affirms orthodox Christianity and is eagerly building a parallel culture, one built on the rock of faith instead of the endlessly shifting sands of modernity. In such circumstances, one could quit the perpetual struggle with those in both church and society who seem to have wholeheartedly bought into the modern settlement. Who wants always to appear reactionary or nostalgic?

This new vision offers the prospect of creating a genuine “people,” not merely a collection of political or psychological activists or, worse, religious consumers. It aims at incorporating full persons into a full ecclesial culture that can overcome the terrible fragmentation of modern life into semi-autonomous spheres of existence. One would have a coherent and cohesive “world” to live in along side the decaying world around it. Wasn’t this in fact what the early Church provided at the beginning of the common era?

Benne’s rejection of their program because of what he perceives as a failure of nerve or lack of trust in the process is difficult to defend in light of what’s transpired in Western Europe, North America and Oceania since 1998.   I plan to start reading these authors, and I wouldn’t be surprised to find that someone, somewhere has mentioned them in the Benedict Option discussion.

Sounding much like the Neo-Augustinians on these points, Anglican author T.S. Eliot presciently wrote,

The World is trying the experiment of attempting to form a civilized but non-Christian mentality. The experiment will fail; but we must be very patient in awaiting its collapse; meanwhile redeeming the time: so that the Faith may be preserved alive through the dark ages before us; to renew and rebuild civilization, and save the World from suicide.

This, in fact, is where we are.    Whether or not it is God’s will to renew Christian civilization remains to be seen, for it is certainly possible that we are heading into events that will directly precede the Parousia.   But as history shows, it is folly Christians to operate on the assumption that the End is near.  It may be, rather, that Christian history is simply repeating itself.   If so, we need to keep all the tools in our shed, including the option for armed resistance should that become necessary (and, please God, it won’t).

Whatever happens, our battle cry will always be ¡Viva Cristo Rey!, Long Live Christ The King!, for He is our only true, dread sovereign.   All other political authority is delegated by Him, and we obey it only so long as it remains legitimate.

I've created three new categories today in the left sidebar for links to pertinent articles: Resisting Political Antichristianity and Resisting Radical Islam.  Please see the articles I lnked today and check back for more.

Archbishops of Canterbury and York on Women in Holy Orders - 1966

All theistic religions (that is to say, religions in which the God or Gods transcend the created order and stand behind nature and history, as well as acting in them, rather than being merged in a monistic or pantheistic unity) have male priesthoods. Female priesthoods belong to the nature religions in which human nature is sensed to be merely part of society, society part of nature, and nature itself Divine. The Christian Church, rooted in the biblical view of God and his relation to the world, has without question adopted a male priesthood. It is therefore pertinent to ask whether the feature of a male priesthood can be modified by the addition of a female priesthood without altering the essential character of the Christian ministry, and without affecting the human psyche at those deep levels at which it responds to religious symbolism.

Or, as C.S. Lewis put it in his essay, Priestesses in the Church?:

Suppose the reformer stops saying that a good woman may be like God and begins saying that God is like a good woman. Suppose he says that we might just as well pray to "Our Mother which art in heaven" as to "Our Father". Suppose he suggests that the Incarnation might just as well have taken a female as a male form, and the Second Person of the Trinity be as well called the Daughter as the Son. Suppose, finally, that the mystical marriage were reversed, that the Church were the Bridegroom and Christ the Bride. All this, as it seems to me, is involved in the claim that a woman can represent God as a priest does.

Prophetic words, these, from some of the last orthodox thinkers in the Church of England.

What difference will women bishops make? Quite a lot, it seems...

Let God be a 'she', says Church of England women's group

Providing a bit of comic relief in response to this madness, Fr. Charles Nalls provides us with a photo of Libby Lane's new bishop's chair:

                       

Templars

These guys, the first one a commited Christian and the second one an American actor, are fighting ISIS.  A few days ago on Fox News, a condescending Bill O'Reilly interviewed another former member of the US Armed forces who was heading to Iraq to fight ISIS.   He tried to pass him off as quixotic and stupid.  But that young Templar is ten times the man O'Reilly and I are.  As are these two.

An ancient Templar chant in their honor.  May God protect them and grant them victory.  (Bernard of Clairvaux on the New Kinghthood.)

Staying Classy at Anglican Unscripted

In my previous entry, I commented on an episode of Anglican Unscripted (AU 180) in which commentators Kevin Kallsen and George Conger took the AMiA to task for somehow so effectively subverting the delicate state of affairs in the Anglican Church of the Congo as to illegally procure the recent consecrations of two AMiA bishops.

In their most recent video, Mr. Kallen and Fr. Conger preface the episode with two apologies, the first relating to a mistake Mr. Kallsen made on the story of the two gay men who sought to have their son baptized in Fr. Conger's diocese, and the second one from Fr. Conger relating to the aforementioned episode AU 180, which leads me to speculate that Fr. Conger has received some flak somewhere about it.  Here's the text from the pertinent section of the apologies, which begins at 2:01:

Kallsen: George also has a correction.

Conger: Yes, last week we talked about the AMiA as being a “Zombie”, and of course, we were mistaken in saying that.  A zombie, uh, Chuck Murphy’s not dead.   To be a zombie he has to be dead and then come alive, so he’s not a living dead,  so we, we were improper use of terms (sic) there, so we apologize there.

Kallsen: (Laughingly) My apology was serious, George, so you’re just getting us into more trouble.

Again, tsk.  Every idle word, gentlemen. 

A couple of related items:

1) Out of the blue, David Virtue sent me a friend request on Facebook, which I accepted.  Shortly thereafter, I sent him this message:

Hello, David. How did you come to my Facebook page, if you don't mind my asking?

Thus far I've received no response.  Now, I appreciate Virtue Online, and I agree with Mr. Virtue on many issues pertaining to the Continuing and Realignment movements, though I'm intrigued that (so it appears) he's a Baptist and not an Anglican.  But the timing of his request is very interesting, and I'm looking forward to his answer.  If I don't receive an answer, which would suggest to me that he may have desired access to my Facebook postings to see if I've commented there on this matter, which I haven't, I'll report back.

2) AMiA's Apostolic Vicar Philip Jones has sent a pastoral letter to all AMiA clergy explaining why Archbishop Isingoma's objections to the consecrations are mystifying in light of available communiques from him to his dioceses regarding the freedom they have, according to the constitutional norms of PEAC, to enter into the kind of concordats with AMiA requisite for the legality of the consecrations.  What's more, I have it on good authority that there is more where that came from.   Without a doubt, the contents of Bishop Jones' pastoral letter and possibly even the other evidence to which I allude here will make its way into the hands of Kallsen, Conger and Virtue, if it hasn't already.  If and when they do, I here solicit their public response.

Honestly, as I implied in my previous blog entry, I'm really not interested in trading barbs with critics of  AMiA in ACNA and elsewhere, but in moving past the old hostilities and coming together for the cause of the Gospel and the propagation of the Anglican Way.  If our Christian faith is about forgiveness, then all of us should be willing to let go not only of ecclesial offenses, real or imagined, but also perceived rivalries, and press forward from here as brothers in Christ.  This warfare has to end. 

Three Articles Worth Reading

Peter Vermigli on Episcopacy, from the Calvinist International.

Leaving home: The Future of the Faith in England, by Gavin Ashenden, a priest who left the Church of England for the Realignment.

The Faith of My Father, a former Baptist and now Anglican in response to a piece by Al Mohler.

For My Friend Stefano

Who Knew?

"I see Katherine Jefferts Schori, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, has said that we climate deniers are 'sinful'. Who knew the Episcopal Church still had sins?" - Mark Steyn

From J.I. Packer

It is important to know who our friends are. Anglo-Catholics generally believe in Trinity, Scripture, atonement, resurrection, judgement, prayer, etc. A ‘higher’ view of sacraments and priesthood seems secondary in the light of those primary correspondences. I can be friends with Anglo-Catholics. Modern Anglo-Catholicism has a different agenda from in the past. I can, with qualifications, be friends with Anglo-Catholics. I have good will towards Forward in Faith. Liberals are different, denying many of the aforementioned. We have let Liberals get away with too much with regard to leadership in the past.

Quoted here.