Bishops' Blog

Is Christianity Mere?

As the successful recent curriculum at Camp All Saints, based on ‘the Lion the Witch, and the Wardrobe’ will attest, the ideas of C.S. Lewis, the Oxford don turned apologist, continue to have power and appeal.  I want to think together about another of his influential ideas, that of ‘mere Christianity,’ found in the book by that name. It was actually a set of radio broadcasts to wartime England which aimed to make the faith comprehensible to moderns in that traumatized moment. In particular, Lewis aimed to defend the fundaments of the faith, the core that different traditions share, ‘mere’ Christianity without the doctrinal accretions of denominations. (It should be added that this is, ironically, a congenial idea for Anglicans, who often suppose that they in particular have ridden lightest on special doctrines). This idea of ‘mere Christianity’ has often distinguished between, on the one hand, credal matters, and on the other ‘adiaphora,’ a Greek word meaning ‘things indifferent.’ (In reply to such, the famous Anglican turned Roman Catholic theologian John Henry Newman noted that even the smallest nick on your body, should it sever your carotid artery, could kill you!). Still, we would all agree, for example,  that the details of liturgical practice readily falls in the ‘adiaphora’ bucket.

There is indeed much to commend this idea of ‘mereness.’ At every baptism or confirmation we begin with the words of Ephesians 4, that we are have ‘one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all.’  Insofar as the modern Church has sought to rediscover the centrality of baptism, it has heard anew this clarion ecumenical call. Likewise Cranmer at the outset of Prayer Book worship sought to balance the doctrinal heart (found in the 39 Articles) with the need to adapt our praying over time (as he states in the first introduction to the BCP). in evangelizing we hope the hearers will by grace become Christians, though they happen along the way to become Episcopalians (or at least we should keep things in this order)

A century and a half ago, a bit more flesh was put on the mereness bones with the Lambeth Quadrilateral, a contribution to the nascent ecumenical movement which said that any Church would need to recognize the Scriptures, the Creeds as they classic interpretive guides, the  sacraments established by our Lord,  Eucharist and Baptism, and ‘the historical episcopate, locally adapted.’ You can readily see how the plot thickens with the fourth entry, since Anglicans themselves from the sixteenth century have debated why the episcopate was essential, and how ‘adapted’ it can be. (More recent ecumenical agreements have seen it has a goal to be sought amidst reunion). 

But I want to direct our attention elsewhere, to the most seemingly unproblematic of the Big Four, the authority of Scripture, by which we come to know or have use for, the other three. Nothing could be more ‘mere’ than that, no matter the tradition!  But wait a minute- if the Scriptures are authoritative, we need to read them to adjudicate all other questions, doctrinal, ethical, or practical. And once we do this, disagreements over interpretation will emerge. Scriptural authority isn’t simply something we assent to, but something under which we make decisions and judgments, and there’s the rub.

My point in this blog is not to deconstruct the idea of ‘mere Christianity’- on the contrary. But rather I want to offer some aids from the history of doctrine which can help to make it coherent.  The first is what the Reformers called ‘perspicuity.’ By this they meant that the Bible is clearest about the things most central. That Jesus died for our sins, that we are saved by grace and not works, that the kingdom will come in His time- these are evidently so to any fair-minded and attentive reader. Perspicuity is very much consistent with the idea of ‘mereness.’ Secondly the Bible is ‘interpres sui,’ ‘its own interpreter.’ This means that how we understand one part requires that we bring that notion into contact with everything else it says. It is in intricate web or chain of insights, and you cannot extract (or ignore) one or two passages.  (Entailed in this point is what the 39 Articles call ‘repugnance,’ which means that one passage cannot be interpreted in contradiction to the plain sense of another). We need to read the Scriptures together, and also with past generations of believers.  Here we see that we require one another, as well as patience and humility, not least to grasp something as seemingly simple as ‘mereness.’

Why this rehearsal of the history when there is a plethora of actual resolutions before our General Convention? I will have a good deal more to say about the specifics of the Convention’s decisions beginning next week. Such a gathering reminds us of the calling of lay people as well as clerics to take their place in the councils of the Church. It requires us to deliberate over issues of concern in our Church and our society.  It calls us to pray together as one Church in all our diversity. These are all worthwhile.

But on such an occasion I want to call to mind more generally the rock on which we stand. For one thing, some of the resolutions of Convention will be outliers indeed, and ‘mereness’ lets us take them with a grain of salt, which in the Bible is a symbol for wisdom! At this point we also need to add our third guideline, reception.  The central teachings of the Church were tested for centuries, and across continents.  The faithful of one culture responded to what their colleagues from another had heard, as they tested and questioned it. The faith of Nicaea was only settled after generations, though that faith itself was already embedded in the New Testament. In other words, a new doctrine is actually the new way to hear an aspect of the same Gospel. And this takes the whole Church and a long time.  In the meantime we need to preserve space for the maintenance of the ‘rule of faith,’ the inherited standard.  General Convention 2024 is not Nicaea- even Nicaea was not Nicaea, if by that we mean a single body at one point in time and space empowered to change doctrine! Deliberation about teaching therefore requires patience and space for the tradition, both of which are challenging for us post-moderns. Such patience is aided by an appreciation of ‘mereness,’ which means, finally, keeping the main things as the main things, as well as remembering we are part of a ‘great multitude’ (Revelation 7:9).  For all these reasons, and mostly because our names are written, no thanks to us, in the book of life, we do not lose heart!

Peace,

+GRS

Independence Day Blog

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Greetings in Christ. I am writing you this report about General Convention 2024.  As with all conventions, some of its best moments were the koinonia of seeing old friends and colleagues on the street or the hotel lobby- the blog posts about meeting with Anthony Poggo, General Secretary of the Anglican Communion, and dinner with our old friends from Navajoland (who became a ‘missionary diocese’) are vivid examples of this ‘convention in the corridor.’  But what of the official part of the meeting?  GC81 had some surprisingly encouraging theological aspects, which I want to share with you. The House of Bishops had a spirit of friendship and collegiality throughout, even when we disagreed. As with the Congress imagined by the framers, it is surely the ‘cooling dish’ to the House of Deputies! And of course we elected a new Presiding Bishop (quite surprisingly on the first ballot!). To be sure, Michael Curry (a good friend to the Communion Partners, btw) is one tough act to follow!  He so admirably and distinctively lifted high the cause of racial reconciliation in Christ, and this could be seen at various points in the Convention’s proceedings. It will be an on-going legacy for him. At the same time I think Sean Rowe, the new Presiding Bishop, is the right person for a new season of tightening belts and reckoning with hard demographic realities.  He seems to be to be faithful, fair-minded, and pragmatic.  We pray that he may flourish in a challenging calling.

Quite frankly, the Communion Partners sought for years to avoid the insertion of the new, gender-neutral marriage rite in the Book of Common Prayer. GC81, in a first reading (of two), voted to do just that, achieving what progressives have sought, namely ‘marriage equality.’ I was one of a few bishops who, quixotically, voted ‘no.’ But more needs to be said, for the larger context of legislation matters. This decision was part of a larger web of actions, one of whose purposes was to make a more stable kind of room for traditional Episcopalians.  At this point I want to extend some well-deserved kudos, first to leaders in our own diocese who founded, and led, the Communion-Across-Difference idea, and then taskforce: Fr. Matthew Olver, Fr. Jordan Hylden, and Christopher Wells. A word of appreciation is also in order to progressive friends who have shown leadership, most recently Bishop Dee-Dee Duncan Probe of Central New York.  The taskforce has sought mutuality, charity, and creativity, so that there might be a lasting place for a more traditional minority within the Episcopal Church, to offer its particular witness on behalf of the Church as a whole.  The wider Church still needs us, particularly in the areas of Scriptural emphasis, theology, evangelism, and connection to the global Church.

Let me describe specific outcomes at GC81 in response to three questions.

What was accomplished?

There has been considerable debate about the idea of defining the term ‘Book of Common Prayer’  in two ways, first as the collection (nowadays in the cloud) of  liturgies that have received two sequential approvals by GC. (GC81 did also affirm that they needed to go through a trial period), and, second, as the actual book you have before you in the pew.  The convention ‘memorialized’ the latter, commonly called ‘the 1979 BCP’, and defined ‘memorialize’ to mean authorized for all services in every diocese.  A parish can continue to use it, and insofar as it is in the bundle of all approved ‘cloud’ documents, it has equal status. Secondly, GC81 voted in a first reading to approve the new marriage rite alongside the received one, i.e. there will be, in 2027, two rites of equal status and authority in the book.  This is at once complex and irenic.  Thirdly, parts of the resolution from GC2018, called ‘B012,’ were actually embedded in the canons themselves. These moves, taken together, assure that our Church will continue to enjoy ‘communion-across-difference.’  We traditionals for our part are grateful for this outcome, and understand ourselves to be in shared communion with brothers and sisters with whom we disagree on this issue (though we agree on many others!).

It should be added that GC81 made several other decisions in the same spirit. It passed a resolution to ensure that deployment and ordination were accessible to all, including progressives in more traditional dioceses and traditional clergy in more progressive dioceses. (For what it’s worth, we in EDOD already have a canonical residence policy which is equal for all, an arrangement with the Diocese of Texas for aspirants from B012 parishes, and a standing offer to any searching parish to have a full search if they wish).  

Does this mean that there are now two teachings? 

Well, there will be in 2027 BCP two rites. To be sure, at GC81 the bishops approved, but the House of Deputies voted down a resolution affirming specifically that either teaching would never constitute a Title IV violation (though it seems clear from the debate that the delegates were not clear on what the resolution did and didn’t mean). GC81 also emended the BCP catechism so as, in 2027, to express the new teaching.  But on this point too, more needs to be said. The adage lex orandi lex credendi (‘the law of praying is the law of believing’) goes back to the Patristic era. In recent generations it has been deployed to affirm that what we believe can trustworthily be deduced from how we pray. In the two rites in the 2027 BCP will be found, by this logic, two teachings. Furthermore, the 1979 Book, memorialized, maintains the older catechism. We will have not only two rites but two catechisms, and in both two teachings. (I believe that this can best be understood in terms of the process of reception over a longer time-frame, about which you can see my blog ‘Is Christianity ‘Mere’?’, later in this newsletter).  At a common-sense level, one might respond, ‘of course we have had two teachings for awhile now!’ One might take the voting down of the relevant resolution to reflect the fact that the new teaching prevails among more Episcopalians in our time. The key thing is that, given the full range of authorized rites, a more traditional ordinand can take the oath of conformity without his or her fingers crossed!

Does this outcome have a wider significance?

The tensions over marriage have not been limited to our Church, to be sure! It has roiled the Anglican Communion as a whole, not least in this period since the Lambeth Conference 2022, and it has put the present Church of England into a crisis quite familiar to us. But this idea of a differentiated communion which makes room is being studied and advanced in the leadership of the Communion at the present. In some modest way we can offer an example. The space afforded us will allow us to be full members of our own Church even as we continue to be friends and partners in mission in the Global South of our Communion as well. 

This is of course not all that GC81 did (leaving aside its’ being a bit of a COVID super-spreader event!). We dealt with a dizzying number of resolutions. The mergers of Episcopal dioceses were a harbinger of things to come. The long debate on Israel and Gaza showed the earnest passion of delegates, albeit in different directions (though the question whether anyone outside the Church is listening to us on such a topic is a fair one).  We tried to improve Title IV, the disciplinary canon, though it mostly requires the prudence and wisdom of those required to implement it. 

The final word should be one of praise for our own patient and hard-working delegation, so ably led by Jolayne LaCour:  they did us proud.  May Almighty God preserve, and make use of, our modest Church, in this complicated time, and in ways we cannot ask or imagine,

Peace,

+GRS