Category Archives: Anglican

Unsolicited Advice to the Bishop-Elect of Northern Michigan

Dude—when you’re under fire for the suspect nature of your views, you don’t come out with a statement like this.

Try something more like this:

As an Anglican, I understand the Incarntion to be an especially important way that the Triune God has shared himself with humanity. As the Creeds and the Ecumenical Councils of the Church teach, Jesus, who was born of the Virgin Mary, was both God and Man in a way that tends to defy our hollow explanations. By taking on real flesh and real humanity, Jesus honored—glorified even—our humble existence and as Anglicans we treasure this act as part of the great mystery of redemption.

I’m also informed by Eastern traditions and greatly respect Athanasius’s foundational On the Incarnation. I’ve also thought a bit about how Gregory of Nazianzus thought about it…

I’m sure you can take it from there.

Bottom line—gave us what we want to hear up front. Then get subtle. Starting out subtle makes folk think you’ve got something to hide.

State of the Liturgical Renewal

In some correspondence we’ve been having  Donald Schell  recently raised the question of the state  of the liturgical renewal in the Episcopal Church. He wondered if it were distingrating.

I replied that I’m not sure which verb is most appropriate: has it dissipated, stagnated, bifurcated, fragmented, polarized—or something else entirely…

I think it’s an important question but first we must take stock of several indeces before the question can accurately be answered.

  • How do we measure the state of liturgy or liturgical renewal overall? One of the major indeces that people “check” is web/forum/blog chatter. And I don’t know how reliable this is. For every anecdote about an exploding parish with liberal or charismatic or anglo-catholic liturgy, I can point to conter-balancing anecdotes. Meanwhile the majority of parishes keep doing what they’re doing (don’t they?). But what exactly is that? What does MOTR look like regionally and nationally—and how much effect are the ultra-progressive or totally traditional “shrine” churches having on what MOTR looks like?
  • Where are clergy receiving their liturgical formation? Is it residual formation from home parishes? Is it from what they learned in seminary? Is it adjusting to whatever their parish they land in is used to?
  • What exactly are clergy learning in seminary? Not just what books are they reading, but what are their chapel experiences designed to do—root them in a particular tradition or show them the range of “what’s out there”?
  • What exactly do we mean be “liturgical renewal”? Do we mean the teaching and discipling process that ought to accompany teaching the liturgy, or do we mean the tide of thought referred to as “the Liturgical Renewal Movement” spearheaded by Aidan Kavanaugh, Don Saliers, Gordon Lathrop, Gail Ramshaw, et al.?
  • What else is going on in the American religious landscape? Let’s not be too inwardly focused here. A large part of what we refer to as the “Liturgical Renewal Movement” (essentially the reforms of Vatican II that filtered into the mainline protestant churches)  was fundamentally ecumenical. What happened in the ’79 prayerbook was deeply related to what happened at V-II. Now when we look around, a—if not “the”—major movement in Roman circles is nothing less than the “Reform of the Reform”.  You can’t tell me this isn’t having an effect…
  • One generation is starting to lose its ascendancy; another is on the rise. Major sticking points and differences between these generations include their approach and attitude towards authority and their approach and attitude towards the past. However, anything as broad as an appeal to generations is tarring with a broad brush—what size brush is the right size?

What’s your sense? Furthermore, how do we move beyond “senses” and figure out where people are? Or, alternatively, is the church best served by the presentation of a new synthesis?

The ’09 “BCP”: The New American Missal?

As has been noted hither and yon, Lancelot Andrewes Press is coming out with a new book called The Book of Common Prayer. While it is not an officially authorized book of any jurisdiction, it’s safe to say that its intended audience is Western Rite Antiochene Orthodox and American Anglo-Catholics of whatever hierarchical loyalty.

Note, for instance, that it includes the Litany with the 1544 invocations of the BVM and other saints as well as the Proposed ’28’s prayers for the Dead.

Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament begins on p. 63; the Asperges on 485…

There’s only one serious question that I have about it—what Canon does it use? While the documentation mentions some additions, it doesn’t say to what they have been added. The 1662 Canon has some nototrious issues from a catholic perspective. I mean, there’s a reason why most Anglo-Catholic churches in England now use the Novus Ordo as opposed to the prayer book and in earlier days inserted the Roman Canon around the authorized one.

Well, we shall see. And yes, I do indeed plan on picking one up as time and funds allow.

Liturgy News from the Blue Book

The Blue Book (to be sporting a red cover this year) was released today. For those not invested in the gobbelty-gook of Episcopal Church inner workings, this is the “Big Book ‘o Resolutions To Be Voted on at General Convention That Come Through Official Channels”

Needless to say, I took a quick stroll through the Liturgy & Music section…

Two major items struck my attention, one on daily prayer, the other on the proposed revision of Lesser Feasts and Fasts.

The first item I post here in full given its importance to many of the readers here:

ENRICHING OUR WORSHIP – DAILY PRAYER MEETINGS
April 2007, Oviedo, FL; January 9-11, 2008, Berkeley, CA; May 12- 15, 2008, Seattle, WA
SCLM members: Ernesto Medina, Devon Anderson, Clay Morris
Consultants: Mark Bozutti-Jones, Rebecca Clark, Paul Joo, Lizette Larson-Miller, Julia McCray-Goldsmith,
Elizabeth Muñoz, Cristina Smith, Carol Wade, Julia Wakelee-Lynch, Louis Weil.

The SCLM was directed by the 75th General Convention in Resolution A069 to develop liturgical material for inclusion in the Enriching Our Worship series. The Commission was also directed to develop these materials
innovatively drawing on and reflecting our church’s liturgical, cultural, racial, generational, gender and ethnic
diversity. Recognizing that our current daily offices are based on a monastic model of prayer, the SCLM decided
to focus its work on the daily offices in order to develop cathedral-style ways of prayer.
The nine liturgists who gathered at the first meeting in Florida in April 2007 prayed, listened, sang and discerned
together over a period of five days. Out of this came the basic shape of the project heading forward from that
point, as well as a clear sense that the project would require more time than initially anticipated. It was clear the
scope of the project would be much larger than we had first thought.
The basic outline reclaims the practice of praying the hours. Daily Prayer allows for prayer at eight specific times
of the day:

  • Daylight
  • Start of Day
  • Mid Morning
  • Noon
  • Mid Afternoon
  • Evening
  • End of Day
  • Late Night

In addition to prayers being written for these specific times of the day, sets of prayers are being written for the
liturgical seasons of the church year. They are identified as follows:

  • Advent
  • Christmas
  • Epiphany
  • Lent
  • Eastertide
  • Ordinary Time (Two tracks are being developed for Ordinary Time: “Rest” and “Grow”)

The Rev. Julia Wakelee-Lynch was asked to serve as first round editor/consultant for the project, and a second
meeting with three additional consultants was held at the Church Divinity School of the Pacific in Berkeley, CA,
in January 2008. At that gathering, a rough draft for the season of Lent was developed, which was then tested out
in a wide variety of settings in parishes, small groups and by individuals. The response was very positive.
In May 2008, six consultants gathered in Seattle, WA, to assess feedback from the initial draft and begin work on
a broader draft which would provide sets of prayers for each season of the church year, adaptable for corporate,
small group and personal use. This draft is still in progress, as well as a scholarly introduction, which will provide
a broader context for the work, and an end section with notes and appendix of prayer resources.
Our plan is as follows:

  1. Complete the whole set of prayers in 2009 and send to a liturgical proof editor;
  2. Present to the first full meeting of the SCLM in the new triennium;
  3. When the collection is acceptable, send the prayers out for informal trial use in the remainder of the triennium; and
  4. Report in full to the 77th General Convention.

RESOLUTION A089 DAILY PRAYER
Resolved, the House of _____ concurring, That the 76th General Convention direct the Standing Commission on
Liturgy and Music to complete the work on Daily Prayer and report back to the 77th General Convention; and be
it further
Resolved, That the 76th General Convention direct the Joint Standing Committee on Program, Budget and Finance
to consider a budget allocation of $15,000 for implementation of this Resolution.

Hmmm. This could be interesting. I think I’m going to “receive” this for “reflection” for a bit…

As far as Lesser Feasts and Fasts goes, it seems that we’re going for more of a Roman-Kalendar-Just-Before-V-II feel where every single day has got somebody orther—or several somebodies!

I confess to still being really unclear on what inclusion in LFF means due to a fundamental fuzziness (deliberate I believe) around the Episcopal Church’s understand of the place, nature, and theology of sanctity. If, as Lutherans believe,” the memory of saints may be set before us, that we may follow their faith and good works, according to our calling” (CA 21.1) then let’s pile ’em on because we can use as many good examples as we can get.

If, however, as catholic theology teaches the saints are the Church Triumphant who, through grace, stand in the presence of God almighty now and intercede on behalf of us sinners then a special kind of discernment is called for.

Or to put it in a way more familiar to our medieval ancestors in the faith, are these individuals who have so imitated Christ that God uses them as vessels of eschatological power to extend divine grace and holiness into our daily world?

In any case…

I’m of two minds on the current state of the kalendar—on one hand I’m thrilled to see that John Cassian made it in. I’m taken aback, however, at the rubrical difficulties caused by the placement of his feast: Feb 29. What—he gets sanctoral honors once every four years? What’s that about!

St George is back (March 23)!

Again, (see above) I’m unclear on the observance of March 24th: Genocide Remembrance. I think we who have survived the 20th century have to be more aware of the sheer numbers of people who died in the previous century through genocide starting with the oft-forgotten Armenian genocide and on to on-going genocides in Africa. But is this the right way to do it? I’m quite torn on this one…

(I’ve also been concerned for a while about our martyr to non-martyr ratio. I feel that they need to be fairly on par . If we’re not remembering that death is sometimes a consequence of true faith, then we’re missing part of the scandal and the danger incumbent on all who embrace the cross. And our martyr ratio is falling fast…)

John Calvin (May 28th).

John XXIII (June 4) ?

Bach, Handel, and Purcell (July 28th). Yay!!

Catherine Winkworth to be observed (or at least commemorated) alongside J. M. Neale (Aug 7). Yay!

Cuthbert and Aidan have been combined—they no longer “warrant” separate days…

Gruntvig & Muhlenburg? Great Lutherans but… Asbury & Whitefield??

Byrd, Merbecke, and Tallis–and St Cecilia’s been restored!!

Some new commons were added including an additional set for the BVM:

The Blessed Virgin Mary

I
Collect: Almighty God, by thy saving grace thou didst call the blessed Virgin Mary to be the mother of thine only Son: inspire us by the same grace to follow her example of courage and faithful witness to our Savior Jesus Christ; who with thee and the Holy Spirit livest and reignest, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

II
Collect: Almighty God, of your saving grace you called the blessed Virgin Mary to be the mother of your only Son: inspire us by the same grace to follow her example of courage and faithful witness to our Savior Jesus Christ; who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Lessons
Psalm 34:1-8
Isaiah 43:9-13, 19a
1 Corinthians 1:26-31
Luke 1:42-55

I
Preface: Because even as our sister Mary didst consent to become God-bearer for thy people, thou hast called us to bear thy word of hope, healing and resurrection to a world in need of thy mercy and grace.

II
Preface: Because even as our sister Mary consented to become God-bearer for your people, you call us to bear your word of hope, healing and resurrection to a world in need of your mercy and grace.

No new Marian observances, though…

So—there’s a lot here; you heard it here first…

Canticles. Again.

I keep going back and forth on the whole canticle issue. Deirdre has a nice article at the Cafe that looks at the Song of Judith and reminds us that when singing the canticles, it’s important to learn the stories from whence they come. That is, the canticle means a lot more when you consider its proper context and how it portrays God acting through Judith.

I note (indirectly) in the comments that the Song of Judith is one of the new canticles given us by EOW. I’ve discussed these in the past—especially with Christopher—concerning whether more canticles is a better choice. Following Deirdre’s logic, more is better because we get exposed to more songs that have literary contexts that folks may then be interested to go and learn. More Bible is always good.

My fear is that more canticles mean that we we don’t learn any of them well. In order for more canticles to be better they have to be sung/read regularly and in a discernable order.

I’m also a complete stick in the mud and refuse to budge on the Benedictus (Song of Zechariah) as the invariable second canticle of morning prayer which means that there’s really only one free spot in the rotation—the canticle after the first MP reading.

Ack! Fewer, more, what’s a liturgy geek committed to Scripture to do! Perhaps the Benedictine option is the best—weave more canticles in amongst the Psalter…

Annunciation MP

Since I’ve been using Rite II for the Daily Office during Lent and wanted to kick things up a notch today, I used a catholic-minded Rite II resource—A Monastic Breviary from the Order of the Holy Cross. (Thanks again, Brian M!)

One of the things that sets this book apart from other non-Roman breviaries is that it uses fixed psalms on first class feasts and provides 5 antiphons for first class feasts and an antiphon for second class. So MP today had Pss 24, 29, 72, 93, 100 with proper antiphons. It also provides a hymn (which I recognized as one of the traditional Marian breviary hymns but I’ve been too busy/lazy to look up its Latin title) and a gospel antiphon—this one drawn directly from Scripture.

It’s a nice balance, contemporary and catholic.

Part 2 of Long-Winded Response

Part 2 of my long-winded response is up at the Cafe. This is my constructive piece where I lay out how I see a discussion of Christian celibacy helping those of us who don’t remain celibate.

I’m well aware that those who believe in the infallibility of the Scriptures or the Church won’t be convinced and that’s fine with me and need not be rehashed. However, I see this as an approach that honors the Christian tradition and overall moral vision, and attempts to speak to our situation. (As opposed to views that recommend tossing out Christian tradtion altogether…)

Long-Winded Response on Celibacy at Cafe

My latest piece is up on the Cafe today and a follow-up piece will appear tomorrow. It’s in response to Fr. George Clifford’s response to my earlier comments on celibacy.

I engage his points on celibacy, but I’d like to flesh out my initial issue a bit more. That is, he contends—bringing in Elaine Pagels—that since there was a diverse group of religious beliefs all invoking Jesus that there was no “normative” or “real Christianity” to which we can look back and, as a consequence, we all have to find our own spiritual way.

I’ve heard this line or things like it far too often in the Episcopal Church (and other mainline Protestant denominations) to let it go.

You’ll note that the piece over there is long, especially by Cafe standards. Well, what follows is the section that I cut to get it slimmed down enough to be that long…

—————————————–

Fr. Clifford begins with curious section focused on Elaine Pagels. I have not read the book to which he refers (Adam, Eve, and the Serpent) but the logic which he cites is quite familiar to me concerning the multiplicity of early Christianities.

Stepping back, whenever readers note points of conflict or discontinuity within a literary corpus (like the scope of early Christian literature), they have some options about how they will read these materials. Do we 1) read them in such a way to highlight an underlying continuity among them or 2) read them in such a way to highlight the discontinuities? Let it be known that points of conflict and discontinuity appear in the writings of the New Testament and in early Christian literature; this point is not under dispute. So how shall we read them?

Historically, the reading communities that make up the Church have chosen to read the writings of the canon in continuity with one another. We acknowledge differences between, say, Paul and the letter of James, but choose to read them as complimentary trusting that together they reveal the inseparable nature of authentic Christian faith and its flowering in works of Christian love. Strands of academic scholarship upon early Christian literature—sometimes in conscious opposition to the Church’s strategy—have chosen to highlight the discontinuity between the theologies and writings, most famously in the important work of F. C. Baur (d. 1860), founder of the Tübingen school and one of the fathers of modern biblical criticism. A focus on discontinuity has been a central characteristic of biblical scholarship since Baur and, as the discipline was interested in the reconstruction of the history of early Christianity, often went so far as to posit different communities embodying the various discontinuities found in the text. Thus, they posited distinct and different groups of Jewish Christians, Johannine Christians, Pauline Christians, Petrine Christians, Gnostics of various stripes, etc., all existing in discontinuity with one another. In certain academic circles, this positing of communities has grown into a mania where imaginary communities are constructed at the drop of a hat based on hypothetical documents—Burton Mack’s The Lost Gospel being a representative example.

One difficulty with these multiple reconstructions is their basis in history. Aside from parsing discontinuities in texts, our only sources of data on actual historical communities are the writings of the “early Church Fathers”, preeminently Irenaeus and Eusebius. I put “early Church Fathers” in scare quotes because those who argue for a multiplicity of nascent Christianities will argue that the terms “Christian” and “Fathers” are loaded categories: they assume a coherent body called “the Church” and they assume that certain authors are “Fathers”—privileged authorities. And indeed, responsible readers must note that these early writers were writing for the explicit purpose of defining who was “in” and who was “out”, who taught a “legitimate” version of the faith and who did not. Yes, these very writers are witness to the fact that many different groups considered themselves to stand in relation to the teachings of Jesus and the writings of the New Testament.

Now—here’s the key point. Irenaeus writing around the year 180 or so about the various movements and their relation to the beliefs of his community passed along three basic marks that distinguished what his community and those aligned with them believed: a canon of Scripture, a creed or “rule of faith” that insisted upon particular interpretive principles when reading the canon, and apostolic succession—that the teachers of the community had been taught by teachers who had been taught, ultimately, by the disciples themselves. (In his own case, Irenaeus had been taught by Polycarp who was taught by the Apostle John.)

By this time, then—AD 180—there was a common teaching subscribe to by communities across the Mediterranean who distinguished themselves over and against other religious communities by the canon, creed, and apostolic succession. And now the kicker…turn to page 876-879 of your Book of Common Prayer and you’ll find the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral and a resolution from the Lambeth Conference of 1888 stating that the marks of the church are the canon, the creeds, and the apostolic succession (Historic Episcopate) with the explicit addition of the Sacraments of Baptism and Eucharist.

Yes, there were a variety of early religious communities who claimed a connection to Christ and his teachings. But as 21st century Anglicans we affirm that we stand in historic relation with one of them—the one with whom we share a canon, creeds, and teachers

Islands through the Net

I’ve been pondering recently the technological aspects of culture change and how they relate to Christian community and life.

I’m, frankly, confused by the notion of “emergent” or “emerging.” I get that it’s a new way of doing things and ordering of common life, a way of presenting the riches of our spiritual tradition without the “baggage” of our institutions. I do wonder, however, how much of this “baggage” is connected into truths of incarnation that may in fact be necessary evils that warn us against an idea, any plan, any approach to spirituality that attempts an end-around that avoids the messiness and sin that accompanies embodied reality.

Is there really more to the “emergent” thing than creating a more informal environment and being more loosely tied to denominational structures?

Furthermore—on a related but different note—to what degree are internet connections capable of being “communities of formation”?

As I consider the pull that keeps moving me toward a more monastic way of living I wonder and weigh the benefits of various options. I was impressed by the offering at the Daily Episcopalian today and note that they are by the co-founder of the Community of Solitude, a group I’ve never heard of before. On one hand, they seem like something I’m looking for as I have an interest and a love for the spirituality and practices that guide them. And yet…

I’ve never quite been able to wrap my mind around St. Oswald, sometime bishop of Worcester and the third of the reforming bishops of the Benedictine Revival. If I recall correctly he did spend some time in a monastic community on the Continent but when he was in England at points I recall reading that he was a monk by himself.

How can that be?

I know what a hermit is, what an anchorite is, but this notion of being a monk by yourself seems different somehow…

Can a scattered community be, through harnessing of the internet, cohesive enough to provide a community of formation? I’m not sure.  Part of it may require an unpacking of this phrase I’ve created… for in my mind the heart of a community of formation is observing the examples of the practices of others. Cassian—and St Antony as presented by Cassian—put quite a bit of emphasis on the observation and imitation of others. Can this part of the formation process occur without incarnate, communal, intentional living? I don’t know…

Or is the oblate path the stronger method—associates in the world tied to a smaller group of professed religious who provide incarnate examples by whom the oblates can be refershed on a regular basis? Certainly this is the more classical model, and the one embraced by many Benedictines, the Julians, and the Order of the Holy Cross.

What do you think—what are the requirements for communities of formation in our brave new digital world?