Bishops' Blog

Ten Modern Christians 3: Mary Shelley

Let me begin with a confession- Mary Shelley wasn’t much of a Christian. But she expressed a deeply Christian idea, one that was against the grain of the culture on the day. And she is a kind of secular prophet yet more urgently now than even in her time. What do I mean?

Mary was a young writer, a literary bohemian, in the early 19th century. Her husband Percy Bysse Shelley, and their friend Lord Byron, are now called ‘romantic poets.’ By this is meant not simply the erotic, but, more widely, a rebellion against the norms of society, as well as the inhumane conditions of early industrial society, which seemed isolating and desiccating. Again it is not hard to find examples closer to home, for example in the era of the hippy. They wanted to rediscover the organically connected, the primitive, the poetic. There is nothing especially Christian about all this, though it has influenced some great modern Christian writers (think Narnia and hobbits!)

But I have something more obvious in mind here, namely that Mary Shelley wrote ‘Frankenstein.’ She and her friends went on a weekend to a cottage in the country, and challenged each other to write original ghost stories before they left …. And ‘voila’ she came up with her famous novel.

You know the plot line- the hubristic scientist Victor Frankenstein wants to play God, i.e. by creating life. He assembles the parts from cadavers and adds a jolt of electricity, and his ‘Boris Karloff’ child springs to life. But as in the story in Genesis 3, the bold, over-reaching decision works death, not life. The creature wants a mate, wants his ‘father’s’ admiration, and in the end wants to track and punish the scientist. His beast won’t stay in the figurative ‘Jurassic’ pen.

Where we’re headed is clear- Mary Shelley composed the blueprint for our post-modern technological predicament. We have no issue that does not comprise the worry about our machines coming to control us. And Mary Shelley? Though not claiming to be a Christian, she applied the doctrine of original sin, the flaw deep in our lust for control, and our blindness to the reality of our being controlled. How much should we worry about AI? It’s a hard question to answer, since it won’t share with us some of the things it’s working on! ‘Frankenstein’ is for us post-moderns what scholars call an ‘origin myth,’ secular though it be.

Worship on the Lord's Day: Canon 9 Revisited

What does it mean that something is ‘normative’? It could mean that the alternative is therefore problematic. But it could also mean something less dire, namely that the ‘normative’ thing makes more sense, and so casts light on the more atypical. Take for example adult baptism. Liturgical theologians have called it the ‘normative practice,’ since makes the most immediate sense of the service, not least when we ask questions of the baptizand! But we most certainly recognize infant baptism, and bring reasons and practices to bear to defend it, e.g. original sin and confirmation.

One premise of the 1979 BCP is that the Holy Eucharist is the normative service for any congregation on the Lord’s Day. This involved a shift in expectation from earlier practice; as a child I remember Communion once a month at Christ Church Cathedral, Springfield, Mass. This highlighted Morning Prayer, one of the strengths of the prayer book tradition. In east Africa, the typical service in a village church was Morning Prayer, led by a catechist trained in a Bible school in the bush. Now this was because there were far too many churches relative to the number of priest. And it also had to do with the evangelical roots of those Churches.     But this should not be taken to mean they had a lower Eucharistic piety As is sometimes true of receptionists, receiving the sacrament was a ‘big deal,’ accompanied as it was by spiritual preparation. I think this has been largely lost in our churches. (The celebrant would sign cards called ‘Safari yangu na Bwana,’ ‘my walk with the Lord,’ to commemorate the event!). Non-‘normative’ did not mean less important.

This brings me to two realities in our Church, one in the recent past and one in the immanent future. Especially in the last two decades of the last century there was a special path to local priestly ordination called Canon 9.’ (I was involved with such training as a priest in Navajoland under Bishop Wes Frensdorff in the later 1980’s). Its forerunner was the Teach Each a Ministry’ movement in Alaska in the 1960’s under ‘flying Bishop Gordon.’ The idea was to identify the acknowledged spiritual leader to be a primarily sacramental priest, originally for ‘ethnic’ congregations (though it in time spread more widely). These priests were generally non-stipendiary (and often indigenous, an awkward fact in terms of equity). There was initially an expectation that seminary-trained clergy would also be in the picture, aiding and training their Canon 9 colleagues. At the same time there was a worry about creating two tiers of priests, as well as a question about what to do when these clergy moved.

So how did the plan fare? It was successful at sacramental coverage in more remote areas. But the higher hopes for renewal and evangelism were unrealized. Furthermore the importance of fuller, ongoing theological training for leaders remained unaddressed. (But we should not overlook with the Canon got right, the ministry of the whole people of God, per Ephesians 4).

Why dredge this history up now? The answer is that we will increasingly have a vast number of smaller congregations that can neither find a priest, nor pay him or her. That same question has expanded exponentially. It may be the great, on-the- ground issue of the next decade. There may be various answers, but they will all include affordable, high quality online education combined with the rediscovery of Morning Prayer and the calling of the catechist. (We have been working on revival of the ‘minor orders’ of catechist and evangelist, major in importance, for some time here in the Diocese of Dallas). We will need to scale up such efforts. We will also need to see that less frequent communion need not mean its spiritual denigration.

Peace,

+GRS