Bishops' Blog

Blessed Bayne

Inauguration 2017 is a good time to think about American exceptionalism, the idea that we are a nation with a unique privilege and calling in the world. It would seem that our new President has a complex relation to this idea, since he does want to emphasize our own national interests, but to do so in a less internationalist way.

In the same vein we could think about Episcopal exceptionalism as well. It is our Achilles’ heel. Either we ignore the world, or want to convince it of our rightness, or, in the case of our Church, imagine that we have the world within our boundaries. One way this cashes itself out is in our relation to the Anglican Communion, which too easily fades outside our purview. I recently heard a prominent bishop compare this to the way our news includes so little of the globe, in comparison, say, to the BBC.

In this regard a moment of historical retrospect is valuable. The day that we commemorate the Rev. Stephen Bayne in the Sanctoral is actually today, January 18^th. He was the first chief executive of the recently conceived Anglican Communion Office from 1960-1964, at the invitation of the Archbishop of Canterbury. In his time the worldwise Anglican Congress of 1963 took place, whose watchword was ‘mutual responsibility and interdependence in the Body of Christ.’ This was a visionary statement, one consistent with our creedal affirmation of a Church, which is catholic and apostolic. National churches belong to each other, need each other, are each other’s peers. No colonial hangover here, nor post-colonial resentment. The Church needs to be the Church, just as the members must be the body in Paul.

And remarkable globally catholic vision from a pioneering Episcopalian! May he be an inspiration, and a quiet source of critique on this his commemorative day. Would that we might reclaim his vision and spirit in our time. 

+GRS

Talking About "Silence"

This blog entry amounts to a piece of advice: go see this movie. It is a presentation of the novel by Endo, which tells the tale of the persecution of the Jesuit mission to the Japanese in the 17^th century. By this time the Christians were hidden, as were the priests who arrived. When found, they were tortured unless they agreed to step on icons of Christ or Mary called the fumie. (Similar demands were made in the Roman persecution of the early Christians in the later 3^rd century). Such apostasy was amounted to a betrayal of Christ.

The first and most obvious reaction is to relativize and minimize so much that we worry about in our daily lives and in the lives of our congregations.   The martyrs remind us what is really at issue in our life, though we be blessed by a time and place to witness in which we are not submitted to such enormities.

Secondly the ‘Silence’ offers a subtle portrayal of the Dynasty’s inquisitor. He offers arguments in favor of a cultural relativism which one might well hear in the context of academic theology in our time: why not leave the Japanese to their own distinctively Japanese expressions of religion? And aren’t those who claim to be Christians really worshipping something enmeshed in their own assumptions and hence unrelated to what we would consider God to be? Meanwhile the inquisitor shows himself to be a refined sadist, and so undercuts his own arguments by his conduct.

Thirdly, both the novel and the movie ask some unusual questions about the nature of Japanese faith in particular. The apostasized Jesuit Herrera says that Japan is a `swamp,’ into which all things are assimilated. Doesn’t this correspond in a uniquely Japanese way to the condescension of Jesus himself? So wouldn’t contextual Christianity here be a faith of the abject and the ‘surrendered’?   Is this making the best of where they were, or is this the voice of the tempter again? The question is posed by the movie as a whole.

Finally we may note how far the great director Martin Scorcese has come since ‘The Last Temptation of Christ.’ However we answer these questions, he has offered a beautiful and serious Catholic movie, which I commend to you.

Peace,

+GRS