Shrill cries for centralization

There are increasingly shrill cries for a centralized authority over the Churches of the Anglican Communion.  Some are now claiming that there is such crisis in the Communion that the only possible resolution is in granting the Lambeth Conference and the Primates’ Meeting a ‘Conciliar authority,’ although no one can say who it is that would or could, under Anglican polity, grant such authority.  These arguments are claimed to be rooted in the principle of ‘What affects all, should be decided by all.’  These arguments are based on two premises, one of which is false and one of which is faulty. 

The assumption that the Anglican Communion is in crisis is false.  Only those who have a craven lust for power view the state of affairs in the Communion as dangerously critical.  In reality, there is no crisis.  On the other hand, views such as these do indeed threaten to create one.  If people begin to accept the premise that the Anglican Communion (read: 'the Anglican Church') is in crisis, then people may in fact choose to accede the authority that God has entrusted to them as faithful protestants.  In that case, the Communion would indeed enter a crisis, a critical destruction of the virtues of autonomy and autocephaly that the Communion has represented since its emergence in the late 1800's. 

2 Advent B - 7 December 2008

2 Advent B - 7 December 2008
Isaiah 40:1-11; 2Peter 3:8-15a, 18; Mark 1:1-8
James V. Stockton

The hard times are over. I know it’s difficult to believe. The daily news cycle reminds us that the jobless rate in our nation is the highest it’s been in over thirty years. The stock markets nationally and globally continue to cost millions of people millions of dollars. Major industries, major state governments, scores of large city governments, and hundred of banks and financial institutions are forming a line to the Capital Building in Washington D.C. to plead for government bail out money.

Some people will suggest that we all relax because the economy is correcting itself in ways that have been foreseeable and are unavoidable due to the effects or the failures of certain government policies. Others will suggest that this is exactly the time to bring the panic and some accountability to those who indulged regulations and loopholes for quick profit and gain with little regard for the longer-range consequences to the people of this nation and this world as a whole. Some will say that both are true. Few, though, if any, are saying that the time of hardship is coming to a close. I would like the Church to take the lead in declaring that the Good News that the hard times are ending, that amazing and wonderful things lie ahead for us all.

Rector's Study December 2010

There are some good things about the possibility that Christianity and faith in God are now less the cultural norms than they once were, as recently as fifty years ago. It means that Christianity is increasingly a counter-culture. It means that faiths in God, and in God’s goodness in Christ Jesus, are counter-cultural. Christians don’t find today the cultural supports and validations that perhaps Christians did in an early time. It means that Christian faith and practice are no longer the cultural assumptions that they once might have been, so Christians today must increasingly be Christians because they mean to be.

One of the truly counter-cultural aspects of Christian faith is the anticipation that Christians have around the coming of Christ. Yes, the secularized culture of apathy toward questions about God will, of course, has similar disinterest in Christ Jesus and his coming into the world. Still further, though, still more counter-cultural, is the presence of anticipation at all.

Failure of 'Covenant' progress

As is evident from the Episcopal/Anglican media, the fantastic juxtaposition of the Archbishop of Canterbury's efforts to force the proposed 'Anglican Covenant" through the Church of England's synod with the GAFCON statement of rejection of same is rattling the comfort cages of a lot of people who have invested themselves in the thing's passage.  This is, I suggest, a good and healthy rattling.  Some continue to assume that the autonomous and autocephalous Churches should take their disagreements to the Archbishop of Canterbury.  Where, one wonders, does this bizarre ecclesiology originate?  The Episcopal Church has never, ever, been a subject of the Church of England.  To the contrary, its existence is predicated on its rejection of Canterbury's claim to have authority over it.

Propoganda for the "Covenant"

Regarding the proposal for an 'Anglican Covenant, I recently witnessed a presentation by the Rev. Robert Pritchard of Virginia Theological Seminary. The presentation rightly noted that there was no such thing as the Anglican Communion, or even hints thereof, until the early to mid-twentieth century, since the Churches deriving from the Church of England were almost all colonial appendages of the Church of the Empire (C of E). Mr. Pritchard's presentation, though, was skewed toward presenting the history of the Episcopal Church as though our history has basically always assumed a world-wide 'Anglican Church.' In fact, Mr. Pritchard used the term frequently in his presentation, even though there is no such thing as 'the Anglican Church.'

Consumerism - the wrong approach

Probably the single most destructive influence in the Church of modernity and of the West is that of consumerism. Today, membership in the Church on all levels, from that of the individual in the parish or mission, to that of the Province in the Anglican Communion, resembles more an entitlement than a privilege and responsibility. The member in the parish, the parish in the diocese, the diocese in the Province, the Province in the Communion, all are using techniques of the enlightened consumer in holding the larger organization hostage to the particular wishes of the customer. It's the approach by which the client threatens to take his or her business elsewhere if the company or franchise fails to accede to his or her wishes.

Rector's Study November 2010

Rector’s Study ~

I recently read the suggestion that one thing that all people have in common with one another is the universal capacity for God. I like this idea. Bernard of Clairvaux , 12^th century monastic and theologian, wrote frequently of humanity’s capacity for love and of how any increase in this capacity is purely a gift from God. Bernard nearly equates love with God. Bernard is credited with introducing the idea of humanity’s capacity for love, and so is credited also with introducing the concept of humanity’s capacity for God.

His theory was that awe in wonder, pain in need, and joy in abundance or victory were all potential avenues by which people can meet and know God. The sudden need for God in a distressing situation, or the meeting of God in speechless awe can move a person to transcend himself or herself. In this moment, the person finds the inner capacity for God and for loving God is increased. It is in these moments, in these events, hat people are able to love others, and even to love themselves either in ways that are new to them or in ways that they have forgotten.

Who pays and who prays

The Diocese of Texas has long chosen not to pay its full asking to the 'National Church. It is well-known here in the Diocese of Texas, that the main, if not the sole, reason for this is that the diocese has long accommodated and nursed an animosity toward the 'National Church' and about 15 years ago adopted a 'local option' that invited congregations to designate that their diocesan missionary asking would be directed toward specific agencies, thus away from the 'National Church.'

Despite claims to the contrary, there has been little if any discussion among leader lay and clergy about specific misgivings about the way the 'National Church' spends it resources.  It simply has been here in the DoT an official response to the so-called 'liberalism' of the 'National Church,' and nothing else.

Rector's Study October 2010

From the Rector's Study ~

Relationship is what it’s all about. The Book of the Acts of the Apostles describes the zealous and explosive birth of the Church; the Book of the Revelation describes the early Church’s fear of demise in the face of tremendous challenge. I’ve been reading through and studying both of these rather concurrently, and I come to the conclusion that opportunity for relationship with fellow followers of Christ is what gives birth to the Church and is also the source of energy that sustains it. Relationship with God in Jesus and in the body of Christ, the Church, is what Christianity all about.

One of my favorite reflections on God’s creation is the suggestion that before creates anything – stars, seas, sun, moon, plants, animals, people – God first creates a void which is not filled with God’s presence. God deliberately makes room for that which is not God, even before that which is not God is brought into existence. God chooses not to crowd out the possibility of anything else. Instead, God opts to create a space that creation and creatures can fill. It is a grace that people seldom ponder, the grace that God chooses to bring into being something other than God’s self.

The Weaker Brother - NOT

I agree with those who claim that the Church has much to consider, but the . We do indeed have much more to consider than LGBT persons. We have the gospel itself to think about, pray about, and live it out. Exclusion today of fellow Christians because they raise 'the ick' factor in some is as offensive to the gospel as it was in the days when the early Church struggled with equalizing Hellenized Jews or, later, equalizing Gentile members of the fellowship. But despite those who continue call it into play, the 'weaker brother' argument simply is not analogous to any of this. This is why the Church, in its wisdom and providence, did not delay inclusion of fellow children of God until to do so somehow became acceptable to those who raised objection. Those claiming the status of the weaker brother are over-using and mis-using the analogy.

Rector's Study September 2010

From the Rector’s Study ~

I think everyone will agree that our responsibility and desire is to be the people of God in the way we can best do so. For our community here at ECR, our collective vocation is the do this as best we can as this particular community in this particular place and time. Just yesterday I met with our bishop, the Rt. Rev. Andy Doyle, to discuss in detail our desire and intention to do so. He agrees that all of this involves our campus makeover project; and that it involves far more, as well.

I’m pleased to find that the bishop is highly supportive of our intentions, and very impressed with the commitment that we are bringing to its accomplishment. And again, this involves far more than the installation of additional parking lots and driveways, and the erection of a new Family Life Center, as important as these are. We need to be ever vigilant and ever honest about where our expression of God’s Love for all needs to be improved so that we can be ourselves at our best.

Rector's Study August 2010

At the basis of humanity’s engagement with religion is humanity’s experience of God. It may seem an absurdly simple observation. It describes the plain fact that an aesthetic experience of God is determinative of a people’s or a person’s relationship with God. Yet, it is, I suggest a powerful insight. It indicates that for all the attempts at rational proofs for God’s existence, an endeavor stimulated by the intellectual and philosophical developments that characterize the period in western history known as the Enlightenment, are not determinatively persuasive on their own.

Western culture, of which our own is a part, overtly claims to assign definitive authority to rational thought and intellectual reason; however, in practice the collective culture can be found rather superstitiously idolizing the systems and the persons upon whom it projects its cultural valuations of reason and rational thought. In a sense, professors, physicians, and attorneys are the modern era’s shaman, wizards, and priests. Envy does not lie at the root of this observation; rather inspiration does.

Rector's Study July 2010

With Fr. Jim away for vacation, this edition of the Radiant Cross provides a good opportunity to help our members and friends know a little more about our rector. Here is an updated biography of Fr. Jim.

Fr. Jim and his wife Lee Elena are recently celebrating their twenty-second year together. They met in St. Louis, Missouri where Jim was born and raised, and near Lee Elena’s hometown of Monticello, Illinois. Lee Elena is a Nurse Practitioner working at a clinic in Elgin. Their three children are Valerie, soon to be 20, Emily, 18, and Melanie, 15. Fr. Jim attended a Lutheran elementary school and credits his early education in this Christian environment as formative of his faith in God. It was there that he began to sense a vocation from God to Holy Orders.

Before attending college, Jim worked variously as a self-defense instructor (earning a black belt in Chinese Kenpo), as a carpenter building custom homes, then as a laborer and/or department supervisor at a variety of manufacturing companies. Responding to a re-emerging sense of call, Fr. Jim returned to church life in his mid-twenties. Having drifted from the Lutheran Church of his childhood, he looked up “Church” in the white pages of the phone book. There he found a local Church of Christ congregation listed and began attending worship services. It was at this congregation that he was blessed to meet Lee Elena Mathis, his wife-to-be.

Marriage and the BCP

As the Church's discussion around marriage and same-sex unions now becomes determinative, it bears remembering that it is our Constitution and Canons, not the Book of Common Prayer, the determine the Church's theology of Holy Matrimony. The Prayer gives this theology expression, yes; but it does not determine it. Further, while it may be true, perhaps, that weddings have been celebrated religiously for thousands of years, yet even the most conservative estimate holds that Holy Matrimony is identified by any authoritative Christian voice as a sacrament no sooner than the sixth century, not defined papally as such until Innocent IV in the the early 1200's, and not is declared as such conciliarly until the Council of Florence in 1438. While some weddings may certainly would have been celebrated religiously before this time, many if not most were not. Certainly many if not most weddings throughout human history were not celebrated according to the Christian religion. So, the religious practice surrounding weddings either in history or today can hardly be leaned upon too heavily as determinative of the Church's current theological reflection and practice.

Rector's Study June 2010

From the Rector's Study ~

As a season in the cycle of the Church’s annual life, Pentecost reminds Christians that we are living in a distinct era. Different from the age in which people lived in hope and anticipation of a promised, but not yet arrived, Messiah; different from the short period of time when Jesus lived among the people of Galilee and Judean; ours is the era of post-resurrection and post ascension. To understand this era as well as possible in body, mind, and spirit is to give this era fuller meaning for us. To understand this era as fully as possible helps us to appreciate more fully both the blessing and the responsibility of living in it.

Some refer to Pentecost as the birth of the Church. On Pentecost Sunday, someone wished me ‘Happy Birthday’ as a reminder of this fact. The Spirit is God become present to humanity more intimately than any could ask or imagine. The coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost certainly makes this ‘the age of the Holy Spirit.’ “The Spirit of Jesus indwells Christian consciousness. It animates the community of faith and leads to a deeper appreciation of the life and message of Jesus. That is clear.” So observes author and theologian Anthony H. Kelly in his book The Resurrection Effect: Transforming Christian Life and Thought. And while this is a fine concept, I find that I still have reservations that we Christians tend to move rather more quickly than we ought past Jesus’ resurrection. Author Kelly has his own reservations, noting that “the event of the resurrection as something happening to him [i.e. to Jesus] can be bypassed, a more or less mythic expression of the origin of a new spiritual awareness.”

More Letters from Lambeth

More Letters!

These letters from Lambeth are ticking time-bombs that threaten the life of the Communion. Yet, despite appearances to the contrary, it is not too late to rescue ourselves. We will, however, need to do the hard work ourselves. No 'Holy Father' is going to do this for us. And, as protestants and Anglicans, we would have it no other way.

The so-titled 'Secretary General of the Anglican Communion' has now announced his own letters, and the bizarre paradigm that Rowan Williams is attempting to create amongst the Churches of the Anglican Communion comes into greater focus. Canon Kearon's remarks are uncharacteristically brief, so one wonders if he himself is a bit dubious of the ABC's new affection for autocracy. However, inasmuch as Kearon bears the sweeping title of Secretary General of the Anglican Communion, and despite the fact that he serves merely as a bureaucrat in the hierarchy of the Church of England, he is compliant. Whether he will remain happily complicit is another question. Is it a divine paradox, one wonders, that this Archbishop who has been terribly preoccupied with fears of the dissolution of the Anglican Communion is now himself the greatest threat to his own Office?

The Archbishop's Summons to Silence

The Archbishop's Pentecost summons to silence -

One expects that it is abundantly clear now for even the most generously optimistic that the Archbishop of Canterbury has gone well beyond the jurisdiction of his Office in his pursuit of ecclesiastical authority. Rowan Williams' Pentecost Letter represents his first unilateral attempts to reduce punitively the participation of those Churches who have dared to ignore the recommendations of the 'Windsor Report' and have instead chosen to follow the governing Constitution and Canons of their respective Churches. This shows his continued disdain for and impatience with the fact that the Churches of the Anglican Communion are autonomous and autocephalous. He demonstrates very clearly here his desire and intention to punish those Churches who dare to honor the limitations of the jurisdiction of the Archbishop of Canterbury to the boundaries of the English Church.

Rector's Study May 2010

From the Rector’s Study ~

“Absence makes the heart grow fonder” as the familiar saying goes. One misses a friend or loved one all the more when that person is not present. Sometimes, we don’t even realize how much the other person means to us until we experience his or her absence. This is important for you and me to recognize and is especially important for the community of Christians, for this community of ECR. When you are here, it may seem on rare occasion that the rest of us are taking for granted that fact that you are present. However, you need to know that when you are not here, you are missed, missed very much. And there’s something also that you yourself are missing in being away, in not being here at ECR.

I am here every Sunday. True, someone may say, I get paid to be here. But it’s also true that when I’m away on vacation, I miss being here and my heart grows fonder for you and all this community. It’s also true that when a parishioner is missing from worship and fellowship, especially on Sunday mornings, his or absence makes a difference in the lives of many people. It’s not just my presence as rector that makes ECR the community that it is. In fact, my presence cannot determine this community. Yours can. Yours does. And so does the presence or absence of every other person of this community. So, I’m inviting and urging all of us at ECR to make a decided commitment to being here on Sunday’s regularly even more than usual; to be here ‘religiously!’

The Matrix of Immigration

I will suggest that in the conversation around  immigration, we recognize that it is a complex matrix of interests and concerns.  Just a for instance: we'll do well to avoid a simplistic scriptural approach.  While Jesus directs his followers to love neighbor as oneself, he also directs them to be shrewd as snakes while remaining innocent as doves.  Human traffickers ruthlessly prey upon victims on both sides of the border.  To pretend that all who cross borders illegally are innocents is a  dangerous denial of the truth of the matter.  This denial costs human lives  of a variety of national origin. 

Absence of unanimity is a blessed thing

There is no unanimity among the autonomous and autocephalous Churches of the Anglican Communion. As each of these Churches is by definition a Protestant denomination, not a church, but denomination, there should be no expectation of unanimity. The very recent expectation of same is an anomaly to the history of the development of what has become the Anglican Communion. Only since people have begun to speak of the Anglican Communion as though it were 'the Anglican Church' have people been steered into thinking of these Churches as though they all comprised a Roman Catholic Church writ small; i.e. a single world-wide Church with a single authoritative head in the Archbishop of Canterbury. Reminder to all: the ABC is not our Pope.