The Remembrance Of Them Is Grievous Unto Us

The Huffington Post (which has the best and most coverage of spirituality and religion of any mainstream publication) on the 350th anniversary of the Book of Common Prayer, which was yesterday. They used to say a properly educated newspaperman knew Greek mythology, Shakespeare, and the King James Bible. My newspaperwoman mother would add the prayer book, which she said taught her the glorious cadences of the English language (making May 2 the birthday of her composition professor). This bit of the General Confession is from the 1928 edition, which she gave me when I was confirmed on April 30, 1967 at the Cathedral Church of St. Paul in Detroit.

The Cross Of Anglican Unity

George Pitcher, who spent ten months as Rowan Williams' media strategist, sums up:

Rowan subsumes his own opinions, prejudices and preferences, even substantially his personality, in the service of his archiepiscopacy. It's what characterizes the decade of his incumbency of the See of Canterbury. The cross he bears is Anglican unity at whatever cost to himself. It's why he has disappointed both liberals (where his heart lies) and conservatives (whom his heart encompasses), why his friendship with the ambitious gay campaigner Canon Jeffrey John turned to dust and why he has tried to push through an Anglican Communion Covenant, a code of conduct for the faithful that his own Church has all but rejected for being essentially un-Anglican.

Being Excluded Because Of Who You Are

Writing at Huffington Post, my LA clergy bud the Rev. Susan Russell on the legacy of Rowan Williams:

[T]he truth is that the sacrifice that will hold the Anglican Communion together is not the sacrifice of the gay and lesbian baptized but the sacrifice of a false unity based in dishonesty. It is nothing less than rank hypocrisy that the Archbishop of Canterbury was willing to lay at the feet of Canadian and American Anglicans the blame for divisions in the Communion when the only difference between what's happening in our churches and in his is that we're telling the truth about it.

Because the truth is there is an ontological difference between feeling excluded because you're disagreed with and being excluded because of who you are. Brother and sister Anglicans walking away from the table because they've been disagreed with is a painful thing. The church walking away from the gay and lesbian baptized is a sinful thing.

Striving For Harmony Between Peoples

Andrew Sullivan seconds this tribute by a British politician to Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, who announced his resignation today:

In the last three years I have grown to appreciate more and more the fine qualities of Archbishop Rowan - his kindness, his sharp intellect, his dedication to striving for harmony between peoples, especially within the Christian family, his courage and his friendship.

He's shown here during a 2009 visit to the Episcopal Church of the Messiah in Santa Ana, California.

Egypt's Top Anglican: "All We Need Is Democracy"

The Most Rev. Mouneer Hanna Anis, Egypt's Episcopal bishop and presiding bishop of the Anglican Communion province encompassing the Dioceses of Jerusalem and the Middle East, is taking a middle-way line on the crisis in Egypt that isn't reflected in much reporting I've seen. He evidently wrote his pastoral letter before today's bloody clashes between Hosni Mubarak's friends and foes:

President Mubarak made it very clear that he will not seek re-election after he finishes his term in November 2011. He appointed Mr. Ibrahim Soliman as a Vice President. He has a good reputation among Egyptians. This appointment ruled out the possibility of appointing the President's son as a successor. President Mubarak also appointed a new Prime Minister, Mr. Shafik who was the Minister of Civil Aviation (Egypt Air, etc.). He is a very good man and has done a lot of improvement in his previous Ministry. President Mubarak also called for a review for the Constitution to allow democracy; he also assured the people that those who were responsible for the violence, destructions, looting, escape of prisoners, etc. will be brought to judgment.

Our concern was that extremist groups would take advantage of the demonstrations to push for violence. We thank God that this did not happen. It seems that the majority of the youth who are demonstrating are aware of this possibility. Many of them started to see this possible risk. The youth who were interviewed by the television yesterday mentioned that all [that] they need is democracy. Many groups this morning are demonstrating in support of President Mubarak, the new government, and peaceful transfer of authority at the end of the President's term.

A Ugandan Stonewall?

My colleague the Rev. Canon Albert Ogle on what happened when the lay reader sent by the Anglican Church of Uganda to preside at David Kato's funeral launched into an anti-gay diatribe. Kato is the gay rights activist who was beaten to death after a newspaper essentially put a hit out on him. Ogle got this first-hand report from the Rt. Rev. Christopher Senyonjo of Uganda, a retired bishop who has been inhibited (fired, basically) by the Ugandan Anglican church for his work on behalf of gays and lesbians:

The Lay Reader began to make inappropriate remarks condemning homosexuality quite graphically and stating the Church of Uganda’s position that homosexuality was a sin and against the Bible.

The crowd began to cheer him on and the bishop described the event as turning into an anti-gay rally. The bishop was never called upon to speak. He felt for the LGBT community having to suffer yet another public humiliation.

This kind of rabble rousing and hatred has been the daily diet for LGBT people in Uganda, causing a media frenzy from pulpits and scandalous tabloid like Uganda’s Rolling Stone that likely caused this senseless murder. Even in such a brutal death, the Church was at it again.

The anger and frustration of the LGBT community and its straight allies finally erupted when a young lesbian who worked with David...called Kasha seized the mic and the Lay Reader’s diatribe against LGBT people was finally replaced by the voices of those whom David fought and died for.

This moment will be remembered as a kind of “Stonewall” when the community said to the oppressors – Enough! Stop the lies!

Another report is here.

Pakistan's Persecution Of Christians

The Rev. Jane Shaw, Pakistan's first and only female Anglican priest, tells the Anglican Communion News Service that the country's religious persecution is keeping Christian pastors away:

She said that while there have been incidents of Christians being attacked and killed, the majority of persecution was more insidious. "It’s largely low-level harassment," she said, "not being short-listed for jobs because you’re a Christian, or, if you do get the job, your colleagues making you so miserable that you have to leave. Also, in some cases Christian businessmen have been told that they’ll only get the most lucrative contracts if they convert to Islam."

Other harassment includes Christian children being teased or bullied at school, Christian workers being assigned excessive work­loads, Christians being evicted from accommodation without notice, and influential community members occupying Christians' land with impunity.

+Will.I.Ams Really Conflicted

Opportunistically and entrepreneurially, the Pope is reaching into the heart of the English Reformation -- a kind of ecclesiastical Tet Offensive -- to steal shepherds and sheep who can't abide a woman in a miter. By joining an outfit called the English Ordinariate, laity, priests, and bishops will be allowed to continue to preserve elements of Anglican worship. The body-of-Christ count so far, according to the London Telegraph:

About 30 groups from across the country are believed to have registered an interest in joining the Ordinariate. This would mean an estimated 500-600 Anglicans, including about 50 priests, will be in the first wave of converts to join the Ordinariate when it is established in the first half of next year.

Just so you can fully appreciate the irony of the positions being taken by the Archbishop of Canterbury (shown here during a visit to the Church of the Messiah in Santa Ana in the summer of 2009), he's gently harrumphing as Benedict XVI moves on his right flank and yet simultaneously supporting efforts to relegate U.S. Episcopalians to the second table of the Anglican Communion because of their insistence on the sacramental equality of gays and lesbians. So it's yes on women but no on homosexuals? Poor Archbishop Rowan: It's never been tougher to be stuck in the middle.

Carry On Talking

Simon Sarmiento on the proposed Anglican convenant:

Yes, there are problems in the Anglican Communion. No, the covenant is not the solution. The only way forward is to establish the principle that these are issues on which it is OK for Anglicans to disagree with each other. And carry on talking.

Hat tip to Susan Russell

Anglicanism's Genius

Adam McCoy, a monk in the Order of the Holy Cross (Episcopal), takes a measured view of the Pope's recent move on the Anglican church:

I have prayed for the visible unity of the Church all my adult life, but on terms which recognize the dignity and validity of the Reformation, of the Anglican Church's heroic and self-sacrificial encounters with the modern world and with forms of thought and culture previously uncontemplated, from the mid 1500's through the centuries, in each succeeding age and on into the future. I think that is part of our genius. It comes wrapped in Anglican chant and Percy Dearmer and coffee hours and sherry and vestries and too many bishops and Trollope and Barbara Pym and Auden and Perry and Vaughan Williams and prayer book wars and are-you-high-or-low-or-broad and a thousand other little cultural artifacts we know and love. But to bring the catholic faith face to face with today's real challenges is our genius, it is the Gift of the Spirit to us, and to betray it would be to betray what has given us life.

All Sinners

One of Andrew Sullivan's correspondents writes that conservative Anglo-Catholicism (a focal point of theological thinking that tends to favor excluding gay people in open relationships from ordination and the episcopacy) is actually dominated by closeted gay priests. Who's to know if that's actually true? Sullivan says his friend has reason to know. In any event, Sullivan concludes that he longs for:

One day, when all this fearful nonsense is blown away and the church can return to the Gospels and the sacraments, and gay people can be treated as, you know, the sinners that everyone else is as well.

The Diet Pope And The Openly Female

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Stephen Colbert on Pope Benedict's bid to convert conservative Anglicans to Rome. "Nothing brings Christians together," Colbert says puckishly, "like excluding gays and women."

Hat tip to Valerie Taylor

Politics And Religion

In the New York Times letters section, a range of reaction to the Pope's bid for conservative Anglicans.

Incense-Filled Rooms

Benedict XVI has the body of Christ thinking about tactics and power politics once again. In this "Economist" article about the Pope's move to attract married, conservative Anglican priests to join in a new category of Roman Catholic priesthood, "liberal Anglicanism" means reformed, liturgically-minded Christians in England who can't for the life of them figure out where the Bible says that God and Jesus Christ don't want women to say mass, pronounce God's absolution, and serve as bishops:

Hitherto, an uneasy alliance of low-church evangelicals and Anglo-Catholics has struggled to resist liberal Anglicanism. “This will change the balance in the Church of England in favour of the liberals,” says Jonathan Bartley of Ekklesia, a think-tank. “The evangelicals won’t go to Rome and they may now be abandoned by their Anglo-Catholic allies.” Some think (or fear) that as many as one in seven Church of England priests could convert.

Hat tip to Mike Cheever

Quick In His Red Slippers

Andrew Sullivan on the Pope's bid for Anglicans:

[I]t seems an almost baldly political move, made at a pace more reminiscent of modern politics and public relations than the traditional ecclesiastical creaking of the wheels. That is troubling to me. Churches are supposed to be about eternal truths and freedom of conscience, not what amounts to an unfriendly take-over bid for a franchise.

And it does not seem to have occurred because of some deep resolution of the theological disputes between Anglicans and Catholics, but merely by a shared abhorrence of women priests and openly gay ones. If you want to switch churches, prejudice seems a pretty poor reason for doing so.

Betwixon And Between

During the General Convention of the Episcopal Church in Anaheim in July, Bishop J. Jon and Mary Bruno (shown at left) chose the Nixon Library's East Room for their gala dinner in honor of Anglican Communion primates from around the world. In briefly welcoming them and the Brunos' other guests, I took the opportunity to enunciate the Episconixonian Creed. I just caught up with dinner coverage provided by my colleague and fellow Michigander, Pulitzer Prize winner the Rev. Pat McCaughan. Thanks, Pat!:

The Rev. Canon John Taylor, vicar of St. John Chrysostom Church in Rancho Santa Margarita and former director of the Nixon library, said the facility, which opened in 1990, was a wonderful setting for the gathering because like Anglicans, Nixon, the 37th U.S. President, was "a centrist. He was betwixt and between … what Nixon called enlightened realism or pragmatic idealism" is possibly a way forward for the church as well, with our polarized politics."

Taylor noted that Nixon was between two poles in American politics. "He was not welcomed by the far right of the Republican Party" because of his opening to China, improving relations with the Soviet Union and establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency, as well as relatively enlightened views on civil rights in the 1950s and forward, Taylor said.

Nor was he welcome "on the left in American politics because of the Vietnam War and his especially aggressive anti-communism early in his career."

Apartheid At Home

The worldwide Anglican Communion sent delegates to the 53rd meeting of UN's Commission on the Status of Women this month in Washington. Today's statement by our delegates reads in part:

The clear statement made at a plenary session by the United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki Moon that 3 million girls are still undergoing female genital mutilation each year requires urgent further action by all concerned. Multiple presentations highlighted the association of this, other acts of violence against women and girls, and the spread of HIV. The lack of sexual and reproductive rights and education puts women and girls at increased risk of HIV and in some areas of the world married women are at highest risk. Innovative prevention measures are desperately needed. The vulnerability of women and girls in areas of armed conflict and the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war is an area of deep alarm. The delegates also recognize the challenges faced by migrant and indigenous women and girls; work is required throughout the world to support and empower them.

It is evident that gender stereotyping is a major hindrance in moving ahead and now needs to be addressed by clear action throughout the world. Work must be done with men and boys as well as women and girls to address harmful societal norms and practices. We ask churches across the Anglican Communion to examine how they can champion the equality of men and boys, and women and girls particularly with regard to caregiving.

At Our Altars, Men And Women Do The Dishes

Katharine Jefferts Schori, presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, surmises that, at least in non-western cultures, assumptions about males' authority over females contribute to concerns about homosexuality:

The most intriguing conversation I had [when Anglican primates met recently] in Alexandria [in Egypt] was with a primate who asked how same-sex couples partition "roles." He literally asked if one was identified as the wife and one as the husband, and then wanted to know which one promised to obey the other in the marriage ceremony. Several of us explained that marriage in the West is most often understood as a partnership of equals, and has been for some time.

Those of you with a few more years on you may remember that the marriage service in the 1928 (and earlier versions) of the Book of Common Prayer did indeed have language about the wife obeying her husband. It's pertinent here to note that the 1662 English Book of Common Prayer is still the norm in many provinces of the Anglican Communion, and it uses the same kind of language about obeying in the marriage service.

As I traveled from the airport to the hotel where we met, I noticed that almost every woman on the street past childhood was veiled, with at least her hair covered with a scarf, and in a not-small number of cases, covered head to toe in a long, flowing garment. I even observed a couple of women whose coverings were so thorough that I couldn't even see a slit for their eyes -- the fabric must have been thin enough for them to see through, but not for others to see in. The hotel had only a handful of female employees, mostly professional women who worked behind the desk. Only a couple of them wore no scarf.

The striking thing was that the meeting room where the primates' deliberations took place, the hotel's largest and principal conference room, was bedecked with several large paintings of half-naked women. It was a space that, in normal circumstances, apparently was used only by men. I found it striking that public expectations of women are modest dress and covering, yet there is evidently a rather different attitude toward men's entertainment.

These complex and conflicting gender expectations have something significant to do with attitudes there and in other parts of the world toward male homosexuality. The greatest difficulty in many cultures, including parts of North American society, is the perception that one of the partners in such a union must be acting like a woman -- and that is most definitely not a socially desirable status!

Plus The AC Broke On The Bus To The Pyramids

At their meeting in Egypt, cordiality among Anglican primates begins to dissipate as the archbishop of Sudan calls on New Hampshire's openly gay bishop, Gene Robinson, and all the clergy who participated in his consecration, to resign.

Church And State, Together Forever

NPR reports on whether President Obama's rules for faith-based initiatives will vary from W.'s, as candidate Obama once hinted that they would.

Churches are exempt from many civil rights laws. If I went to my local Chabad center and demanded a wedding ceremony, and it demurred on the basis of my not being Jewish, my discrimination lawsuit would be cast into outer darkness. If an Episcopal bishop suggests to a male rector of a church that he call a female associate rector so that the people of God are continually reminded that the genders are equal before God, a spurned male's legal complaint would be a Hail Mary at best.

By the same token, as the NPR piece discloses, Southern Baptist groups receiving federal grants were permitted under Bush administration rules to discriminate in hiring on the basis of sexual orientation, since they believe that homosexual activity of any kind is a sin. Other organizations receiving federal funds, such as schools, colleges, and non-religious nonprofits, are required to comply with federal law. Though Obama said during the campaign that he'd change the faith-based policy to match, there are signs that he might not. World Vision, the conservative evangelical charity, says that if it's forced to act against its conscience in hiring, it won't take any more faith-based grants.

During the debate over Prop. 8 in California last fall, proponents said that if voters didn't pass it and gay marriage was affirmed, anti-discrimination laws would be used to force pastors to marry same-sex couples. Citing the same religious exemption now being invoked by the Southern Baptists, our own Episcopal bishop in Los Angeles, Jon Bruno, reassured his priests that none would be forced, either by him or the government, to conduct any marriage to which a priest objected.

Anti-Prop. 8 forces called the warnings about lawsuits a lie. To me, they sounded like far-fetched but not-inconceivable conjecture. While anyone can sue anyone for anything, Bishop Bruno was absolutely right that pastors may still reserve the right to marry whom they choose for whatever reason. But think about this: What if a pastor refused to marry a couple because they were African-American? Technically, it sounds as though they'd have no legal recourse. They might not even want one, since they probably wouldn't want to force a racist to marry them. Besides, if word got out, as it surely would, there wouldn't be much of a church left.

But what if the couple did sue? I'm not a lawyer, and so I don't know what would happen or has happened to any such claims over the years. In the case of the black couple, it might be hard for a judge to avoid trying to find some basis for affirming a federal civil rights claim. While most parishes don't get federal money, one toehold for a plaintiff might be the federal tax advantages enjoyed by Protestant pastors.

I'm not arguing that it was good Prop. 8 failed so that pastors would be safe from hyper-hypothetical lawsuits. I'm sure that for a number of years, perhaps even for a generation or two, churches that consider all homosexual behavior to be a sin would be able to avoid marrying gay and lesbian people. For me, the more important question has to do with the intersection and interaction of church and state.

The case can certainly be made that the church sometimes falls prey to the temptation to spend more time talking about politics than individual righteousness. Others in the church see the sinful secular world as a continual affront. By their lights, efforts to decriminalize homosexuality and eventually the broad social acceptance of gay and lesbian people were worldly fashions, like MTV and pre-marital sex, that the church is honor-bound to resist. These pastors urge their people to be in but not of the world, temporary occupants of a broken landscape who are girding their souls for heavenly glory.

As we consider alternatives to this world view, discrimination against African-American again provides a useful case study, since for several generations after 1865 the very idea of racial equality was viewed by millions as a fad and an abomination. Pastors trotted out biblical texts to prove it. Today, we recoil in disgust from such perversions of God's word. The obvious question is whether in 50 years, we will do the same as we remember those who insisted that gay and lesbian people (and, in many realms of the church, women) should be declined equal sacramental status.

Whatever happens, the church should think more about the interaction of decision-making in its own councils and society at large, especially when the society, like ours, is large, vibrant, and free. Though it took a lot of prodding, often from the church, the body politic has done well when it comes to women and ethnic minorities, though other realms of the church lag behind. Was the Spirit of God at work in the work and words of non-churchgoing Abraham Lincoln and other who fought to liberate the slaves? Does it guide those who fight to protect women against injustice around the world? Might it even be at work as people of conscience debate about the definition of civil as opposed to sacramental marriage?

The outcome of Prop. 8 shows that voters remain ambivalent about gay marriage. When the church gets too far ahead of societal consensus, it risks being fractionalized and even marginalized, as the crisis in the Anglican Communion demonstrates. But when one nation under God does finally make up its mind, faith communities will always have some explaining to do if they don't follow suit.