BishopBlogging

Haiti’s Episcopal Cathedral, totaled

Tue, 2 Feb 2010 09:25:49 +0100

Please distribute widely:

Cathédrale de la Sainte Trinité, before the earthquake (note world-famous frescoes representing Jesus as a black man)

The Cathédrale, today...

There is a movement afoot to help rebuild it. More here as the project becomes clearer, and only after taking our cue from the Bishop of Haiti and his people.

It is important to note that Port-au-Prince’s other Cathedral, dating from 1914, was destroyed as well, losing its towers and roof, and is unusable.

before

after

Crowdsourcing the Church…

Mon, 1 Feb 2010 09:42:03 +0100

One of the disparate information sources that feed my fevered brain, as the Gentle Reader who reads my musings regularly knows, is Wired Magazine. Along with my subscription to Scientific American, which I’ve read since I was 10, Wired continually captures my imagination by its attention to technological developments, explained in language that is just geeky enough that I can feel part of the in-crowd without having to expend the mental energy and time to really master the topic. (You see, bishops have to be generalists, no matter what our personality types, or we cannot be effective.)

The February 2010 issue has a centerpiece article that is well worth reading across a wide audience. It concerns “open-source manufacturing”, a “small-batch” approach to producing goods that marries local cheap, computer-aided design and manufacturing with design, manufacturing and marketing done within global Internet-generated communities. Since my experience with the industrial collapse in western Pennsylvania in the 1980s, when I was a new priest assigned to a parish devastated by that collapse, I have been convinced that adding value to raw materials—manufacturing and agriculture—must be the bedrock of any economy, with services coming in later. As Great Britain has very painfully learned of late, basing a national economy on services means that climbing out of a bust in market cycles is a whole lot harder. China for instance has no such illusions.

So read Chris Anderson’s article and get inspired to start a new business, and save American (or French, or British, &c.) manufacturing. But let’s take this concept to the life of the Church. Can you crowdsource the Body of Christ?

In one respect, the power of the Internet to bring people together, even when they don’t want to, has always been a property of the sacraments, in particular, Baptism. By virtue of one’s baptism (a term which includes your ongoing conversion, the sacrament of Confirmation, participation in the Eucharist of a local congregation, prayer, and the exercise of your unique ministry), we are all connected to the World Wide Body, whose Head is Jesus Christ. It may not look that way, a lot of the time, but then a liver doesn’t look like a heart doesn’t look like a quadruceps muscle. But these all must function together or else the Body suffers and eventually dies.

But our “organs” are in constant conflict. And we have an all-too-human tendency to think that there was a Golden Age when this wasn’t so. (See this week’s Anglicans Online letter.) All this proves that the Head and the Spirit of God continue to keep the old thing going, and only they can.

But can we reaasonably construct virtual churches with online communities? People are trying to develop online “parishes”. These certainly have their uses, as they do create communities, albeit loose, virtual ones. And the leader of the coalition known as the Anglican Church of North America, Robert Duncan, has been saying for years that the Internet now allows for viable non-geographical jurisdictions. Like the one I am in charge of, but existing virtually because of doctrinal affinity.

It would seem that the development of manufacturing technologies described in the Wired article would tend to support Bishop Duncan’s argument. Old-line factories with time-and-motion studies of repetitive human actions on assembly lines producing standardized commodities are now being replaced by customized products created by crowdsourcing and sold over vast distances through the Web. Now we can do theology, pastoral care, and other interactive communication activities over the Web. I use my Facebook page, this blog, and others, as well as various email lists, just in this way. And I’m old… Just imagine what the kids will do.

But Bob’s idea still relies on local bricks-and-mortar churches. There is also SecondLife, as I pointed out in a previous entry. You can “attend” a pretty church completely on the Web.

The problem is that escaping to the Internet is a technical solution to a challenge that requires adaptive leadership. The Internet church promises schisms right down to the level of individual Christians. Nothing is so exclusionary as the power of the “delete” button. If the ACNA exists on the Web, I can ignore it and they can ignore me. But “the eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you’ nor the head say to the feet, ‘I don’t need you!’” (I Cor. 12:21).

In other words, there is a necessary tension among the limbs and organs of your body in order for it to function, and you with it. There is a necessary dialectic ongoing in the Christian Church essential to its life, as well. But the tried-and-failed answer to discord, schism, has never worked to resolve that dialectic and never will. Even by escaping to a virtual reality.

This is because the Scriptures and the sacraments can never be virtual, and our participation in the eucharistic community must always be in the material world. I obviously love the vast resources that my computers and the Internet offer me. It has become my “outboard brain.” But there is a huge temptation to backslide into Christianity’s old nemesis, gnosticism, that there is an “immortal spark” or “ghost in the machine” of our bodies that transcends death. Virtual reality, a massive construct mediated by networked hardware and software, tempts us to give it a kind of spiritual reality. Our “im-mediated” reality, or consciousness, is a construct of our senses and cerebral cortex. It requires a body, and we are our bodies. Outside the resurrection, there is no immortal part of me. As King James’ men rendered the Psalmist’s words, when someone dies, “His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish” (Ps. 146.4). Turn the power off and the soul/virtual reality is gone.

The Christian faith is incompatible with gnosticism and gnostic versions of it because Jesus of Nazareth is a real human being, a real person. He is alive today, not as a disembodied spirit or some mythic messianic archetype indwelling humanity’s collective unconscious, but as a flesh-and-blood reality, albeit the “stuff” of the New Creation that his resurrection began, and which is the future. Therefore the sacraments, which are “outward and visible signs” using water, oil, bread, wine, gestures (e.g., “the joining of hands” in Matrimony), and oral recitation of texts, especially from the Scriptures, can never be virtual. Each Christian must belong to a real community located in time and space, not merely represented electronically (even in 3-D). Unicus christianus nullus christianus—a lone Christian is no Christian at all, as the ancients said. I don’t think they would change their minds if they could behold someone staring at a glowing screen and tapping on keys, calling this activity the fullness of the Christian life. Nullus Christianus...

Just as there is no getting away from the local church, so too there is no getting away from the larger church. Non-geographical jurisdictions are no solution to destructive tensions within the Body—it’s like saying the one Body can have several brains overlapping.

Not that bishops and standing committees are more “brain-like” than the local congregation, but you get my meaning. In any event, the Head of the Church sure ain’t me or even the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Ecumenical Patriarch or the Pope—thank God! It is Jesus Christ, who is alive and who reigns over all virtual, spiritual and material realities with the Father and the Spirit, one God in Holy Trinity, forever and ever.

See you in church on Sunday, and here (by the way, exactly where is “here”?) occasionally.

Haiti:«Nous sommes aux abois»/We’re finished...

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 09:00:08 +0100

« Nous sommes aux abois,» wrote Bishop Zaché Duracin of the Diocese of Haiti, « mais fermes dans la foi. » « Être aux abois » means literally to be run down like the fox in a foxhunt, surrounding by barking dogs and unable to run any further. “At the end of our rope” or “we’re finished” might be a good translation.

“We’re at the end of our rope, but firm in our faith.” He begins and ends his letter with this sentence. This sounds like the man the Rev. Lauren Stanley, his representative outside Haiti, called “a lion” in a phone call to me. (Visit her site for a clearinghouse of Haiti information.) Indeed! I don’t know what I would do, if I barely escaped death and had my home and everything in my diocese destroyed. Probably find some place to lie down and lament my fate. Not Bishop Zaché, who with Canon Ogé Beauvoir and others of his staff, responded by setting up a camp for the displaced on a soccer field next to the completely destroyed diocesan center (cathedral, schools, convent) which now serves thousands of people. A Lion, is Bishop Zaché, whose roar of defiance for a whole people is “We’re at the end of our rope but firm in our faith!”

At the very beginning of news coverage of the disaster, commentators were noting with wonderment the groups of Haitians sleeping outside, having lost everything, but who were singing hymns of praises to God. They could not believe it. How could these people praise God now, they asked? Good question, which can only be answered by people of faith. What a difference between these Christians and those nabobs saying that this earthquake was a divine punishment!

It is now time for all Christians and other people of good will to declare our solidarity with the Haitian people, including those of The Episcopal Church’s largest diocese of Haiti, and insist to all who want to help—nations, NGOs, churches and ordinary people—that the Haitian people must be in charge of their future.

Not only have they been the victims of several natural disasters recently. Haiti has also suffered immensely, first at the hands of the French, and then the Americans. As a citizen of both countries, I am ashamed of the human disasters wreaked upon the Haitian people by my nations in the past. We must not allow that past to repeat itself.

As far as the reconstruction of the Diocese of Haiti goes, what Bishop Duracin and his leaders say, goes. Others may want to discuss options with them, of course, but the final decisions must rest with them. The same goes for the people of Haiti. President Préval and his government must have the final say. Haitians must own Haiti’s future, even as they did not own their past.

Firm in their faith, which we share, guided by the Holy Spirit, by supporting the Haitian people in rebuilding the way they want, we can help repent of some of the crimes of the past. Before we rush to bring what we think they need, we must listen to them and respect their desires.

The future of Haiti can only be bright if it really belongs to the Haitians.

A pastoral letter on freedom of religion

Mon, 11 Jan 2010 11:36:02 +0100

[Gentle Readers of this blog may find this of interest. French translation available below...]

A Pastoral Letter to the people and clergy of the Convocation of Episcopal Churches in Europe

The Rt. Rev. Pierre W. Whalon
Bishop in charge

Paris, January 8, 2010
Being the Feast of Harriet Bedell

Dear People of God,
During our October convention in Geneva, I could not help noticing the posters plastered everywhere that depicted a frowning woman in a chador in the foreground and minarets in the shape of missiles in the background. “Vote ‘Yes’ to banning minarets” said the poster. And as you know, a majority of Swiss voters agreed to do so.
Being “strangers in a strange land” is not unknown to many of us. Among the more than four thousand members who make up our nineteen parishes and missions are many expatriates, and not just anglophones. There are of course many people who belong to one of our congregations in their own nation.
As I reflected upon the Swiss vote to ban the construction of minarets, it occurred to me that we cannot consider ourselves to be apart from the situation in Europe, whether we are here for a short time or have always lived here. We ourselves benefit from religious freedom here, and we should expect it in our homelands.
It was not always so. For instance, St. Paul’s-Within-the-Walls, Rome, could only be built after the new Republic of Italy in 1870 lifted laws banning non-Roman Catholic churches within that city. Our churches in France benefited significantly from the law of 1905 disestablishing the Catholic Church in this country. The freedom to practice one’s religion is something most Westerners take for granted, forgetting at our peril how hard-fought the battles were to secure it.
For most of human history, every people had one religion, and everyone without question belonged to it. They were indistinguishable, in fact. In the ancient world, conquering a people meant destroying their gods who had failed to protect them, which explains the routine annihilation of enemies described by all ancient historians, including the first books of the Bible. This also explains the massacres and wars that followed schisms in the Church, including the Protestant Reformation. Until very recently, no one anywhere ever considered that a people could have more than one religion. Furthermore, those who deviated from the practice of the religion were considered dangers to the wellbeing and indeed, the salvation of the community.
The seventeenth century saw the terrible religious wars on this continent that decimated the population to the point that finally, salvation began to be viewed as an individual, not communal, affair. With the birth of modern democracies began finally the freedom to worship as one chooses, although this right was not perfected until our own era.
How easily we forget! And to forget history is to repeat it. In our situation especially in the Convocation, and also for the Diocese of Gibraltar in Europe, the right to practice one’s own religion remains very precious.
So, as your Bishop I say to you that we must employ all possible means to argue for maintaining this right. It is just as wrong to ban minaret-building in the twenty-first century as it was to ban church-building in the nineteenth.
Some of us who are not citizens of the countries we find ourselves in will say that this is not our affair. But it is our business, and not only because of our right to be Episcopalians in Europe. Back home, wherever home is, this right needs to be defended. Until freedom of worship is guaranteed worldwide, the tragic and bloody history of interreligious and inter-confessional warfare will continue to be repeated.
On hearing this, some may reply that the Swiss vote, like other measures taken in France or the Netherlands, is not about religious freedom but rather national identity. However, our national identities across Europe and the Americas are first of all democratic. “France is a nation, not a race,” we French learn in our schools. This applies to all democratic nations: the system of government is our first identity. Americans being almost all immigrants are the best example of this, for to be an American means to hold allegiance to the country’s Constitution. Europeans can learn a lesson from this, as we seek to integrate more and more immigrants into this continent. Those who immigrate to our countries must be allowed to practice their religion as freely as all other citizens. We all must work to maintain these democratic rights.
At the same time, those who wish to immigrate to Europe should also uphold the system of government that guarantees freedom of religion. While one may not agree with the interpretation of the French secular principle (la laïcité) that bans the wearing of “ostentatious religious symbols” in public schools, it does apply to all people. I cannot wear my purple shirt, collar and cross in an American public school, for that matter, and I cannot be invited to address the student body. One may not agree, but it is applied across the board. Can we change the laws? Of course, by participating in the democratic process. But not by flouting it.
Another example is the burka, the dress that covers a woman from her head down, including her face. It is quite clear that this dress is only a cultural tradition—the Qur’an does not require it. In fact, the Bible and the Qur’an have the same standard, namely, that women should dress “modestly,” which of course is defined differently in different cultures.
A woman should be free to wear what she wants at home—a burka, a bathrobe or her “birthday suit” if she so chooses. (And yes, she has the right to choose in our countries—no one may force her to wear a burka.) The law should not forbid her to wear it on the street as well. However, the laws and customs of her new nation apply to her as well. One does not go outside in a bathrobe or naked in Western countries—no se fa, as the Italians say. Among us, covering one’s face is something only criminals do in the commission of a crime. In France, even nuns have to remove their habit for their identity card picture—in fact, no uniform, including a clergy collar or military dress, may be worn. So you should not expect to be well-received if you insist on wearing a burka in public.
Here is the dynamic equilibrium that each of us should strive to maintain: the need to maintain the rights of constitutional democracy and the need all citizens have to respect the law. This means that each of us should be engaged in the politics of our countries. Our congregations as well should help us learn to maintain the equilibrium between rights and responsibilities in our constitutional democracies, for our right to worship freely is essential.
From earliest times, we Christians have been held responsible for the good order of our communities (Romans 13:7). As Jesus said, we are to be “salt and light” to those around us. In the twenty-first century, this means participation in our democracies both upholding people’s rights in making and enforcing the law, and living ourselves responsibly under the law.
Let each of us be diligent in our duty.
[Gentle Reader, as I am also a French citizen, here is the letter in French.]

Am I just an worrywart?

Mon, 4 Jan 2010 16:59:51 +0100

Maybe I am just a worrywart... but...

Reading a piece by Kate Zernike in the New York Times on colleges in America dropping philosophy and classics majors and trying to tailor curricula to what students (and their parents) think they need to get a job, I was oddly reminded of a very different article by Chris Anderson, editor of Wired magazine. (Gentle Readers of this blog know that this is one of my favorite sources of news.) He argued that the huge and rapidly-growing quantity of data collected and mined meant that science was no longer going to be about devising a hypothesis or model to test by experiment. Instead, it would work by discovering correlations among sets of data.

He concludes:

“The new availability of huge amounts of data, along with the statistical tools to crunch these numbers, offers a whole new way of understanding the world. Correlation supersedes causation, and science can advance even without coherent models, unified theories, or really any mechanistic explanation at all.
There's no reason to cling to our old ways. It's time to ask: What can science learn from Google?”
The correlation between the two articles, if I may put it that way, is an apparent dumbing-down, critical thinking skills as a whole on the one hand, and thinking about science on the other. The stupid part of colleges adjusting curricula to their students’ perceptions of what they need for a job is that those perceptions are wrong. The employers’ business associations say they want people with a variety of abilities, starting off with critical thinking. Since the study of philosophy entails among other things the study of logic, students will turn out to be illogical, or at best commonsensical. Common sense is of course crucial to survival, but it is not critical analysis.

If they in turn only learn science from Google, they will even stupider. Statistical analysis is a crucial advance of mathematics (originally developed by bureaucrats, of course), but oftentimes, statistics can only confirm that given data have no correlation: there is nothing to understand in them beyond this insight. Classical science begins with observations that raise questions, to which a tentative answer might arise. This hypothesis is then subject to various tests in order to verify or disprove it. The phenomenon may be describable via an equation, which then has predictive power. This becomes public knowledge, which leads others to question and verify.

One example will suffice. Long ago, when I was a physics major, I studied pendula, like all physics majors (I also studied Latin*…) Consider the history of something so simple as a weight swinging suspended from a point above. Galileo apparently noticed a chandelier swinging, and thought that it seemed to be regular regardless of the angle of its trajectory with respect to the building. He was able to show to an extent that his hunch was correct. This led Christaan Huygens to elaborate a basic formula for predicting the time of a pendulum swing based on the length from the weight to the point of suspension. Based on his classical approach, Huygens then created the pendulum clock, a great improvement on previous timepieces and still manufactured. Eventually the value of pendula for measuring gravity, the Earth’s rotation, chaos theory, and many other phenomena was demonstrated.

If Galileo had had petabytes of data to slosh through with data mining software, what would he have learned about that swinging cathedral in the church? He made an observation, which led him to ask “Huh? What if…”

Now I am not denying the value of data mining and the discovery of correlations among seemingly-disparate data sets. Far from it—how would I write this blog without Google and other search engines to find and use those correlations? Such correlations should however raise questions in people’s minds. Those will lead to possible answers, experiments, quantification, technology, and a whole new set of observations, questions, answers, in various communities of inquiry.

The best thing my parents ever did for me, besides love me, was to procure for me the finest education that they could, given their funds and what they had to work with (me). An education should lead (ducare) out of (ex) ignorance (Latin again). To do that requires exposing learners to wide varieties of educational experiences, which then form critical thinking skills, including logic, esthetics and ethics, as well as statistical analysis, and the ability to communicate, all of which underlie the human enterprise. That means business, science, religion, politics, art, technology, medicine, &c., &c. No wonder smart business people want to employ well-rounded young people rather than parrots of prevailing orthodoxies. College administrators and trustees, take note! Educators must not pander to the whims of their students (and well-meaning parents panicking in a recession).

The warning of the Pauline author, here rendered by King James’ men, still rings true, and not just for Christians:

For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears;
And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables. (2 Tim. 4:3-4)
And incidentally, the same is true for theological education. Too many itching ears getting scratched, too many fables passed off as truth—not enough minds being formed!

Or am I being…just a worrywart?

* pendula is the New Latin plural of the adjective pendulum (“hanging”). Yeah, I looked it up on Google…but only to make sure I was remembering correctly…

Nothing is real, nothing to get hung about?

Mon, 28 Dec 2009 17:41:42 +0100

Ruth Gledhill, the London Times religion columnist and an Anglican, has sharp eyes and came across the above video of a London church in its Second Life incarnation, whcih she posted in her column today.

Actually, “incarnation” is completely the wrong word. Second Life, like all “synth” or virtual worlds, is discarnate. Like this blog, and the above video, it belongs to a creation of software hosted on servers. Those in turn are created and maintained by human beings, whose livelihood depends on better and more “real-life” experiences in these alternative worlds, whether in games, Second Life and its imitators, or the rest of the Internet. Our personal computers and smartphones are the way we interface with those worlds. The ultimate will be when one can control entirely what happens to one’s alter ego (or “avatar”) in a synth world through a whole-body connection.

I’ve recently seen two movies which deal with such eventualities. The first, a rather minor effort entitled Surrogates, has Bruce Willis as a middle-aged cop trying to track down the killer of real humans who choose to live life by controlling a surrogate body through a whole-body interface. Their entire public lives are lived out through the surrogates, who are brainless androids that look like their owners, only much better. The interesting part of the film, for me, at least, is when Willis’ character must confront that public world of remote-controlled robots (Willis actually turns in a decent performance).

Pushing the fantasy one step further—and the film-making light-years beyond— is James Cameron’s Avatar. A soldier confined to a wheelchair is recruited to operate the cloned body of a member of an alien race. Through his interface he becomes the alien, and is sent as a spy to learn their ways and hopefully convince them to leave their home so that humans can stripmine under it for the ultimate energy source. The world of the aliens is a gloriously-imagined tropical paradise, filled with “all things bright and beautiful”—director Cameron made them all.

The story is a decent yarn, with some good performances from Sam Worthington and Sigourney Weaver, among many others. But the real star is the alien world itself. Named Pandora by humans, its biology has created a planetary neural net that has become sentient, to an extent.

So you have a human role-playing an alien through a whole-body interface in a world run by an organic neural net. I won’t give away any more plot elements. I highly recommend that you see it, but only in its 3-D version, which is spectacular.

Like Second Life, both these movies play on the borderline between virtual and real. In Surrogates, the androids return home to re-charge, so the distinction is clear. In Second Life, whose members have actually gone to real court to settle disputes over commercial transactions made in the other “life”, that distinction exists in the minds of the members. If at all, for some people…

In Avatar, the distinction virutally disappears, as the protagonist must eventually decide who he really is. Virtual world and real world dissolve.

It reminded me of the pilot for TOS, or the original Star Trek series, in which Captain Kirk finds the first skipper of the starship Enterprise apparently held captive by an alien race. In fact, the benevolent aliens have rescued the hideously damaged former Captain Pike and have installed him in a virtual world, where he is whole again and can be happy and find companionship, which to him seems completely real. Satisfied that no one could do better, Kirk goes off on that famous “five-year mission”.

All these show that 21st-century people are as prone to indulge in fantasy as any of our ancestors. At first the interface was a storyteller and maybe a campfire. Then we graduated to black marks on white paper, and the novel was born. Then came the Lumière brothers’ invention, followed by the television, and then the personal computer. Now we have VR, and avatars.

On one level, all these developments seem harmless, other than that they can be tremendously addictive, and lead to confusion between the two realms.

But upon further reflection, let us recall Heidegger’s dictum that technology that we think we control ends up finally controlling us. I, Robot and the Terminator movie series, among many others, explore this theme to its logical conclusion that intelligent machines will eventually find us a nuisance. But it is worth noting that we are already there: we cannot live without computers. Heck, I can’t even do without my iPhone…

On another level, the old argument between the Platonists and the Aristotelians reappears. Bernard Lonergan has a concept which, as usual, is very helpful. He distinguishes between the im-mediate world that our senses create and the world “mediated by meaning” that our consciousness creates. For the Platonists, this mediated world is at the heart of reality: the eternal Forms resident in the Great Mind or Logos, which our intellect “rediscovers” by “remembering” what our eternal souls “forgot” when they were reincarnated in human flesh.

Aristotelians recognize that the immediate world created and maintained by our five senses is the stuff from which the world mediated by meaning is in effect “synthesized.” The Real is therefore what is known by the rational mind, which apprehends Being.

The division and ensuing confusion between virtual and real revive this old quarrel between idealism and realism. Who am I, and how do I know? Furthermore, entering a virtual world requires an act of will, if only the desire to play-act, to escape for a while. But as our technology advances—and it will only get better—that act of will becomes a tremendous temptation of the classical kind. By this I mean the primordial temptation, which is to reject God and crown Me the divinity of my life.

Is nothing real, and, as Lennon and McCartney sang years old, “nothing to get hung about”? What is real? And who am I, therefore? Does what I think and do matter? Where is God in all this?

Let me close by invoking two very different theologians, Bishop Tom Wright and Metropolitan John Zizioulas. Bishop Wright pointedly and convincingly argues in Surprised By Hope that the revelation of God in Christ has as its goal the re-creation of heaven and earth, and our resurrection in that reality in the future made present. Christians do not have any biblical doctrine of the immortality of the soul.

Zizioulas, in Being As Communion and more recently, Communion And Otherness, argues persuasively that reality is the fruit of relation—communion. This gives some support to the experience many of us have had in our online relationships, that some real communion, and community, are possible in the virtual world.

Much more importantly, it says something essential about God, who is Trinity and whose being—Love—is constituted by the relations among the Three. Those relations are grounded on the will of a free person, Zizioulas argues, the Uncreated One. In begetting the Second Person of the Trinity, the One “becomes” the Father. In “breathing” the Spirit, there are Three, who are One. God’s desire, made real through the Incarnation of Christ, is that we too become free persons. Now in our fallenness, we are absolutely subject to our nature, which is born to die. The person each of us is, is in the image of God, meant to be immortal, truly free.

From our tragic situation, we are always tempted to flee into some delusion or another, that none of this matters, nothing to get hung about. Or else to chase a false Real in some idolatry or another. But we are also capable, through Christ, of communion with God, and therefore communion with each other, both in the immediate world and the realm mediated by meaning. We always live in both, and we die to both, as well. And we shall rise to real life again in another, eternal realm.

Where we find communion, there is the Real. The film Avatar, in its own way, narrates this. But matter, not just meaning, also matters. Profoundly. We are not avatars. We are bodies.

The Commonwealth vs. Human Rights?

Mon, 21 Dec 2009 15:55:16 +0100

It is the anniversary of my ordination to the priesthood today. 24 years have passed since. It was because of this day that I became a fan of St. Thomas, the “doubting” apostle. From him I learned—and have passed on—that doubt is a necessary component to faith. Asking questions is a sign that we are obeying the Lord’s command to love God with all of our mind, as well as heart and strength.

But what is on my doubting mind is the odd relationship, if there be one, between the British Commonwealth of Nations and the silence of certain British worthies on human rights abuses and other matters.

Take Rwanda, its newest member since November 30. No sooner had it joined that the Rwandan parliament began considering a law criminalizing homosexuality, following in the footsteps of its Commonwealth neighbor, Uganda. (Burundi, Rwanda’s neighbor but not a Commonwealth member, already passed a similar measure in April.) Like the Ugandan bill, the Rwandan measure would outlaw not only sexual acts, but also “promotion” of homosexuality. Across Africa, in particular among the Commonwealth nations but not limited to them, similar laws are being passed or actively contemplated.

Why this issue? It seems that it is a side effect of throwing off colonialism. Homosexuality, it is argued, is a western import seeking to weaken genuine African values of family and ubuntu. In this light, gays and lesbians and their counterparts in the United Kingdom and the States are predators, seeking to indoctrinate healthy boys and girls into their chosen perversion. This is of course ridiculous—who would want to be homosexual? But it clearly is serving a purpose in the power politics of the continent.

Fanning the flames are some Americans, anxious to enlist allies in their fight against gay rights in their country—especially in the churches. A new report by a Zambian priest, the Rev. Kapya Kaoma, writing for Political Research Associates, alleges significant financial connections—read corruption—between wealthy U.S. lobbies and African church leaders and politicians.

Overall, this particular push to outlaw homosexuality is a standard “boogeyman” tactic designed to unite people around a threat from an exterior enemy. The Iran régime blames foreign interference for the massive resistance to the June re-election of Ahmadinejad. Russia’s government cites various foreign threats in support of extreme nationalism. The Bush administration orchestrated in 2003 a vociferous smear campaign against France for its refusal to join in the Iraq war (remember “freedom fries”?). In each case, this tactic is used to silence critics and rally support for the government. In each case, it seeks to deflect attention from the weakness that needs to be hidden from public scrutiny.

So where is the Commonwealth in all this? Silent, as far as anyone can tell. It does have in theory the power to address individual member states when they fail to measure up to the core values outlined in its foundational document, the Singapore Declaration. But instead of opposing the demonizing of gays and lesbians in its African members, which is clearly contrary to those values, it even admits a new member, Rwanda, that is certainly no example of democracy, peacemaking, or respect for human rights.

The Joint Standing Committee of the Anglican Consultative Council and the Primates, re-branded since May as the Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion, issued a statement asking for continued “gracious restraint” in upholding the three moratoria on same-sex blessings, consecration of partnered gay bishops, and cross-boundary interventions.

While a lot has been said to The Episcopal Church about maintaining the first two, virtually nothing has been said to support the third moratorium. The interference by foreign bishops—almost all from Anglican churches in Commonwealth countries—has been highly destructive. Millions of dollars spent on lawsuits is the least costly part of the price we have paid for the roaming of these jurisdictional adventurers. A lot of people’s faith has been weakened. The highest price is being paid in the damage done to the mission of the church to reconcile all people to God and each other in Christ, the credibility of that mission and the church’s loss of focus on it. And I mean on all sides.

There is a deafening silence from Lambeth Palace concerning the moratorium on these interventions, the same kind of silence concerning the spread of terror legislation in African Commonwealth countries. I have heard for some time a rumor that the Archbishop of Canterbury is under intense pressure from the British government to keep the Commonwealth together. While these rumors in themselves may not have real foundation, there may be a connection: where there’s smoke, etc. I know that Rowan Williams is genuinely appalled by the proposed legislation, and that his staff is saying that there are intensive efforts going on behind the scenes to lobby support against the bill in Uganda. I hope that the Commonwealth’s Secretary-General, Kamalesh Sharma, is just as appalled, and is also working behind the scenes to stop or repeal these outrageous laws.

I also wonder just what intensive behind-the-scenes efforts are being made to maintain the third moratorium. Inquiring minds, as they say, want to know.

The Kaoma report quoted above does give credence to this approach. Whether one subscribes to his progressive agenda or not, it is clear that the kinds of political organizing that would work in western nations and church bodies will only backfire in the African context. What is needful is continuing in spite of everything to seek relationships with African laypeople, parishes, dioceses, and bishops. These must begin with listening, to show respect for the other, and so that we in turn can be listened to.

Scare tactics and scapegoating always fail in the long run. What we Episcopalians are being invited to do is to walk alone—actually, to stomp off. That is the trap laid for us. We must resist the temptation, firm in our faith. A new day will dawn, in Africa, and in the Anglican Communion.

Keep the faith—a faith leavened by doubt, not in the Holy Trinity, of course, but in the all-too-human frailty and fallibility that are our common lot.

Scared of ghosts? Heresy is a lot scarier.

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 11:59:52 +0100

In yesterday’s New York Times, Charles Blow commented on a recent Pew Forum study that shows the extent to which Americans, especially Christian Americans, fashion their own often-wacky spiritualities. He writes that it is

…further evidence that Americans continue to cobble together Mr. Potato Head-like spiritual identities from a hodgepodge of beliefs — bending dogmas to suit them instead of bending themselves to fit a dogma. And this appears to be leading to more spirituality, not less. Cue the harps, and the sitars, and the tablas, and the whale music.
All whale music aside, this reminded me of a book that appeared fifteen years ago entitled The Cruelty of Heresy. Written by FitzSimmons Allison, sometime Bishop of South Carolina, the basic argument is that living out heresy is cruel to those who believe it, for it deprives them of the real life in Christ.
Bishop Allison discusses heresy with respect to the ecumenical councils and the creeds that come from them. But the question of whether there is any content to the notion of heresy is deeper still. Can you believe whatever you want without consequences? To put a sharper point on it, is it just as good in God’s eyes to be a Jehovah’s Witness, a Mormon, or an atheist, as it is to be an orthodox Christian?
One of the side effects of freedom of religion has been growth in the belief that “all truth is relative,” also known as “my truth is mine, yours is yours, and both are valid even if they contradict each other.” As Allen Brent points out in his eponymous book on Ignatius of Antioch, this means we are back in the Middle Ages, when people had no sense of history or its handmaiden, literary criticism (p.6). Relativism is literally the death of intelligence. For Christians to obey Jesus’ commandment to “love God with all your mind” (Mk. 12:30; cf. Dt. 6:5) we have to ask questions and find answers—which is how the human mind works.
Moreover, none of us thinks in isolation—we are social animals, after all. We participate in what Bernard Lonergan calls “the world mediated by meaning.” This world is communal. You, Gentle Reader, are reading these words because you can read English, which is a skill no one acquires on a desert island. It is a tiny part of this “world” that we inhabit through our minds. The whole phenomenon of the Internet, with blogs, web sites, Google searches, multi-player games, on-line shopping, etc., is but an extension (the “outboard brain”) through technology of this world.
Faith, however, is not something you get argued into. From our families we learn whether faith is important or not. This is why the idea of not practicing your religion with the kids so your children can “choose” their own faith when they are adults is either really dumb, or just lazy. The value we put on faith is evident only from how we practice it.
Some people come to faith as adults in a relatively spectacular fashion. Most however do not. All of us, however, do it with others in community.
Theology begins as “faith seeking understanding.” The main purpose of thinking about the faith we each experience in a unique fashion but which we share communally is to convince yourself that you are not crazy, gullible or stupid. Eventually the community of faith develops some common understandings of which, in order to be a member, one has to be convinced. So there is a continual dialectic between the individual and the faith community about the meaning of the faith.
This is true of all religions, including atheism.
Christianity has developed the notion of heresy, from the Greek meaning choosing for oneself. A heretic is someone who chooses to believe something about the faith that contradicts the received view of the Church. The best ecumenical declaration I have seen in decades is the Anglican-Orthodox 2006 document known as “The Cyprus Statement” and entitled The Church of the Triune God. It should be required reading across the Church, and not just among Episcopalians.
In one remarkable section, it addresses heresy in the Church. Heresy is a denial of the Church’s “existential reality.”
The Church’s existential reality can only be expressed in the terms in which it has been articulated from its inauguration: the creative love of God, God’s truth, grace and self-revealing action in the history to which the Church belongs, redemption in the crucified and risen Christ, the forgiveness of sin, new life in the Holy Spirit, and the hope of an everlasting inheritance. Because these are the Church’s distinctive and fundamental beliefs, any teaching which denies the objective truth they express empties them of their existential meaning. [VIII.8; page 61; download the whole text here]
So the phenomenon that Mr. Blow decries (which is very real in Europe as well as America) results not so much from genuine heresy as it does poor teaching of the Christian faith. People get all kinds of silly ideas—or seriously wrong ideas that have been tried before and found wanting, if not to say hurtful. And they do so when the Faith is badly taught. Add a little relativism and some charlatans looking to get rich, it’s no wonder people seem to believe that faith is a supermarket where all selections are good to mix ‘n’ match, or a fast-food restaurant where you “can have it your way.”
But Bishop Allison is right: heresy really hurts the soul. It takes away the fabulous banquet that God has spread for our souls, minds, and bodies, and substitutes cold gruel. That “existential reality” described above is all of a piece. You cannot substitute something else in place of what you don’t like.
What we need is a renewed emphasis on the teaching of the Faith, starting with the bishops but focused on lifting up and validating Sunday Schools, adult education, and practical theological training for lay and clergy alike. The Episcopal Church also must do a much better job of raising up and using scholars than we currently do. But given the situation, all the churches have to do a much better job.
Let’s be clear about a few things. Christians do not believe in reincarnation. We do not believe in an immortal soul that exists outside our body, either. We do not believe Jesus was an extra-terrestrial or an angel. Or “just” a man, for that matter. Wearing a crystal around your neck will change nothing. The statement “God helps those who help themselves” is not found in the Bible. Astrology does not predict the future. Casting spells only makes you look silly. You cannot make God love you by being good.
And—nota bene, Mr. Blow—there is no doctrine of the “rapture” at the end of the world that will take the right-believing Christians bodily up to heaven so that we (they?) do not have to endure the terrible Last Days. Christians do not believe that.
There is however the resurrection of the dead. There is the resurrection of the body. There will be a new heaven and a new earth. And Jesus Christ will be established as Lord of all. Christians believe these things.
We also believe in loving mercy and doing justice and walking humbly with our God (Micah 6:8). Whcih means, among many other things, not putting other people down who believe differently than we do. We are not to judge for God how God sees others—worry about yourself, especially when tempted to judge others. While we have calendars commemorating exemplary people we believe are in Paradise, we have no equivalent list of people we are sure are in Hell. And we are to love truth, which is why Christian theology laid the groundwork for the modern scientific method, and why we are not to fear its results.
For the same reason, which comes out of loving God with the mind, we know that we do not completely understand our faith—in fact, we cannot. This is an odd kind of knowledge, which requires us to be modest about our intellectual accomplishments and humble in our truth claims. For all of our faith, as well as our lives and all creation, has its origin and its goal in the heart of the Holy Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
I could go on and on. But let’s not, for now.

Capitalism—a love story about—Aung San Suu Kyi?

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 08:44:06 +0100

Perhaps, Gentle Reader, you have seen Michael Moore’s newest film, Capitalism: a Love Story. Whether you like Mr. Moore’s films or not, you should take a look at Chrysler’s new ad.

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi of course the prime minister-elect of Burma (Myanmar) and Nobel Peace Prize winner, held prisoner for years by a vicious military junta. Is she selling cars? Or is Chrysler just trying to look good? The Fiat influence?

Maybe all of the above. But I’ll take the ad over some bikinied lovely draped over the hood of a muscle car telling me that I “can’t be a man ‘cause I don’t drive/The same automobile as she” (apologies to Mick Jagger).

Personally, I also saw not only the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, Communism in Russia, apartheid in South Africa (where’s Tutu?), but also a strong implicit criticism of the Wall in Israel/Palestine.

What do you see? What do you think?

Oiga-boiga?

Wed, 9 Dec 2009 11:52:34 +0100

Having had my press release qualified as «virulent» by the French Catholic daily, La Croix, I had to laugh when I came across this Daily Show video.

Shot before the release of Anglicanorum coeptibus, it nevertheless seems to get the gist of my observations.

Everything that I have heard since its release is that the plan’s impact will be a lot smaller than say, the London Times predicted. The Archbishop of Westminster, Vincent Nichols, was very clear that former Anglicans could apply only if they were motivated by devotion to the doctrines concerning the supremacy of the papacy. Unhappiness with women bishops, inclusion of gays, etc., does not qualify. This is as it should be: if you are a Roman Catholic, you subscribe to that supremacy. If you don’t, you are not a Roman Catholic.

Well, I don’t. But I sure would like to get a miter like Pius IX’s, above. Wow!

Miter-envy... yeah, sure, that’s what this is all about.... Oiga-boiga!

Apocalypse Now, Redux

Sun, 29 Nov 2009 23:58:32 +0100

“Imagine aliens from another planet asking why humans have the texts announcing the Apocalypse which they do not believe in but that they are doing everything to bring about.”

I Advent 2009
Luke 21: 20-36
preached in Holy Trinity Church, Geneva

First of all, let me wish you a Happy New Year! We begin another year of telling the story of Jesus and his people, among whom we are. For us Christians, the New Year is celebrated not with resolutions, but with a reminder of the end of time. The end of the world.

The Last Sunday of the Church Year and the First Sundays of the new year have similar readings from the prophecies of the Old and New Testaments that announce a future massive tribulation, which would destroy humanity were it not for the intervention of God. This momentous event we associate with the return of Christ to bring the present times to an end and to create a new heaven and a new earth.

Unfortunately, we in the Anglican churches have tended either to leave these prophecies to fundamentalists who insist with sinister glee that the End Is Near, and that it is God’s will to destroy this godless world, or to allow progressive types to pooh-pooh these writings. The “Left Behind” series of books have sold some 40 million copies based on the unbiblical notion of “the rapture”—the idea that the faithful will be physically removed from the Earth, like Enoch and Elijah, before all hell breaks loose. And all too many people waste time and money trying to decipher the Revelation of John and other texts so as to predict the future. Jesus told us, after all, that we are not to know.

The progressives explain away this literature as something produced in a time of doubt in ancient Israel and the church, brought about by persecution and martyrdom, but whose dire prophecies can be safely ignored. The Gospel, for these people, is about perfecting the world here and now, only.

Both are wrong. And all the rest of us are silent. So we are all wrong.

René Girard is a French anthropologist who made a career mostly at Stanford University in the United States. He is best known for his studies of the scapegoat mechanism in human societies, which he relates to the trial and crucifixion of Jesus.

Now 85 years old, he has moved on to the Apocalypse. In his 2007 book, Achever Clausewitz, Girard points out the literature we call “apocalyptic” is actually predicting something humans will do, not God. We will progressively make life on Earth impossible, due to our violence to one another and the Earth itself. Karl von Clausewitz in his unfinished treatise On War had hypothesized that war since Napoleon could theoretically “rise to extremes” in which the enemies annihilate all humanity, but he believed, writing in the 1830s, that this was so impractical as to be impossible. Technology, says Girard, now makes it not only possible but very probable, if not inevitable.

In a recent interview, Girard imagines aliens from another planet asking why humans have the texts announcing the Apocalypse which they do not believe in but that they are doing everything to bring about.

So where is the Church in all this? Girard, who became a convinced Christian as a result of his research, doesn’t say. He does point out the interesting fact that the Church’s Scriptures predict an end of the world that the preaching of the Gospel does not prevent. Here is something to think about: Christianity, says Girard, is the only religion that predicts its own failure.

Hmmm… Now I do not believe that the Gospel is a failure. Christ has died for our sins, destroying death’s power over us. Christ is risen, drawing all of us into the life of God where there is no more death, and Christ will come again, to perfect his Lordship over all creation. This is what all Christians believe and it is what we proclaim.

However, it is the part before Jesus returns that the Revelation of John and the other writings are principally concerned with. These scriptures are a warning: do not believe that humanity can perfect itself. Only God can save us from ourselves, which is of course the message of the Gospel: in Jesus Christ God has done and is doing and will do just that. But the Crucifixion itself is a message to all of us that this ghastly corpse upon its wooden gibbet, beaten and pierced to a bloody pulp, is the end of violence. It is the end result of our violence against one another and the whole of creation. As long as we are unconverted, refusing to give up violence, this is what awaits the whole human race, and we will have done it to ourselves just as much as the Romans and the leaders of Israel did to Jesus the Son of God.

So Advent is not a time to be singing about baby Jesus. Advent is about getting ready. It is not only to get ready to welcome Jesus into our hearts and celebrate Christmas. It is much more importantly to remind ourselves of what the future holds, especially if we continue to avoid hearing and accepting the Gospel that Jesus was born to bring to us and to live for us.

For at the heart of the Apocalypse lies our hope. The story goes that at a theological college devoted to unraveling the prophesies of Revelation, a seminarian came upon the school janitor, who was reading that final book of the Bible. “How can you possibly understand what it says?” asked the student. “I have spent years studying it in order to understand its secrets.” “It’s simple”, replied the janitor. “Anyone can understand it.” “What? But you’re barely literate enough to read the words.” “I said it’s simple. The Bible says, ‘Jesus wins!’”

That is in fact our hope. Not that we should for a moment give in to despair, and cease to try to do the works in this world that validate the Gospel. Or worse yet, to try to build churchy fortresses in which we can be safe while everyone else perishes, getting what they have coming to them. No. Our hope in on Jesus Christ, who is and who was and who Is To Come. The whole purpose of repeating the Church Year is to remind us yet again: Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ definitely absolutely for sure will come again. And in the end Jesus and his people, among whom we are, and whoever else is among them, will win.

So, as does the Bible itself, we can end with these words: “Amen! Come, Lord Jesus.”

The Pope, Rowan Williams, and Henry VIII

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 14:39:46 +0100

On the document Anglicanorum coetibus, the Archbishop of Canterbury’s recent speech in Rome, and errors of the media
[This is my press release on recent events, aimed at the European media. The original text of this press release is in French]

The Vatican, through its Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, has just released the norms for the integration of Anglicans in Roman Catholic dioceses, with their own Anglican-style rite and non-geographic jurisdictions. Cardinal Levada, former Archbishop of San Francisco and now head of the Congregation, announced this initiative on October 20, 2009.
In light of the lack of consultation with their own bishops, including the new Archbishop of Westminster, the unexplained delay between the announcement and the publication of this “Apostolic Constitution” (currently available only in English and Italian), as well as the insult offered to the spiritual leader of us Anglicans, the Archbishop of Canterbury, there are certainly reasons to worry about the Roman Catholic Church. On the eve of my consecration as Bishop in Rome, which took place on November 18, 2001 at our parish of St. Paul’s-Within-the –Walls, I had the signal honor to be invited to the Holy See by Pope John Paul II, who wished to offer me a formal welcome to Europe. This unprecedented act of hospitality touched me deeply, as well as the Pontiff’s brief speech, who affirmed that the commitment of his Church to the path of ecumenism is irrevocable, and has the unswerving goal of the reunion of all Christians.
However, this new Constitution does not seem congruent with that declaration of eight years ago, which was absolutely in line with the great decrees of Vatican II, Lumen gentium and Unitatis redintegratio. This new document quotes them, but seems to have forgotten their spirit. Instead of the measured, humble cadences of those great documents, a triumphalistic accent colors Anglicanorum coetibus.
According to cardinal Walter Kasper, head of ecumenism for the Roman Church, the target is in particular is groups of dissidents who separately founded small churches beginning in the 60s, which have come together under the banner of “The Traditional Anglican Communion”. They are made up of people who for different reasons left the Anglican Communion: the revision of the Book of Common Prayer, the admission of women to Holy Orders in some churches of the Communion; and the inclusion of gay and lesbian people. Outside this little assembly of churches, there will certainly be some individuals who, for reasons of conscience, will accept this new offer by the Vatican.
That these Christians of Anglican heritage should no longer stay on the fringe of Anglicanism, but may join another part of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church, can only be a good thing. May God bless them and keep them!
In any case, there has always been comings-and-goings between Roman Catholics and Anglicans, as between these two communions and the Orthodox Churches. Of course, all three come from the same Church, divided—alas! —in the eleventh century. Though certain key ideas of the Reformation influenced the 38 national churches (called “provinces”) of the Anglican Communion, all three communions came from and continue to keep the catholicity inherited from the first centuries.
Strongly conscious of the evil effects of the various schisms, especially on the credibility of the Gospel that we all are responsible to proclaim, the Anglican Communion took the initiative of launching the ecumenical movement at the dawn of the last century. We had thought that in these last decades some real progress was being made. But the resurrection of the language of assimilation in the latest document can only disappoint all who seek the reconciliation of all Christians, whatever their particular denomination. The Vatican can rest assured that we Anglicans will not create “Roman-rite jurisdictions” for unhappy Roman Catholics!
I strongly applaud the serene manner of His Grace Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury in responding to the maladroitness of the announcement and language of this new Constitution. Instead of breaking with partners whose conduct is so peremptory, or expressing a perfectly justifiable anger, Archbishop Williams decided to keep a long-planned appointment with Benedict XVI. As a sign of his apology for disrespect, the Pope offered the Archbishop a golden bishop’s pectoral cross.
In a remarkable speech on November 19 at the Gregorian University, the heart of Roman Catholic teaching, the Archbishop called our sister church back to order. In light of the progress of the past four decades and the permanent change of the theological modes of expression of the churches which have now come to hold in common the meanings of salvation, the identity and mission of the Church, how can a “second-order question” like the ordination of women harm the unity achieved on these “first-order questions”? “And the challenge to recent Roman Catholic thinking on this would have to be: in what way does the prohibition against ordaining women so 'enhance the life of communion', reinforcing the essential character of filial and communal holiness as set out in Scripture and tradition and ecumenical agreement, that its breach would compromise the purposes of the Church as so defined?”
All Christians should hope that these developments not signal a step back from that commitment which John Paul II had so firmly declared in 2001. In light of other recent clumsy initiatives, if the Vatican continues to insist anew on dusty decrees of a bygone era, it shall isolate the Roman Church from other Christians. In the context of globalization, which the Archbishop of Canterbury called to mind, this would a tragedy for us all.
This event has been copiously covered by the media, which have made many basic errors. One could think that after over forty years of common discussions, decisions and actions between the Anglican Communion and the Roman Catholic Church, that no one would allow themselves to repeat that false propaganda that claims that Henry VIII of England created a church for himself so that he could obtain a divorce.
That king founded nothing and certainly never asked anyone for a divorce. Those whom continue to repeat this lie do so to harm the Church of England, which began through the efforts of missionaries in the second century after Christ. The Reformation had no influence on the monarch who had been granted the title of “Defender of the Faith” for his unwavering support of the papacy—a title that still appears on all British currency just above the portrait of the Monarch. The then-Pope Clement VII would certainly have granted him the annulment (not divorce) of his marriage with Catherine of Aragon that he felt he needed, a favor which other loyal kings had received before, had his war against Henry’s wife’s nephew, Charles V, not failed. The defeated pope was Charles’ prisoner when Henry’s men arrived with their sovereign’s letters.
After the brief reign of his son Edward, during which the Book of Common Prayer came to be, Mary Tudor, the daughter of Henry and Catherine, renewed close relations between the Church of England and the papacy only six years after her father’s death. It fell to Elizabeth I to put the Church of England on the path of what we call since the nineteenth century “Anglicanism”. Pope Pius V, being unable to remove her, instigated a war against Elizabeth led by her cousin Mary Queen of Scots. That war lost, he excommunicated the English Queen in 1570, which had the effect of requiring those still loyal to the papacy to actively seek to dethrone her. Cast off in this brutal and cynical manner, the Church of England and her daughter churches have since then striven to hold to a “comprehensiveness,” which is to say, a dynamic equilibrium between our catholic heritage and the perennial need of all churches for reform.
If the Tudor monarchs are poor examples of holiness, the popes of that era were scarcely more edifying. So, enough propaganda!

Theology and evolution/ the bee’s knees

Thu, 5 Nov 2009 08:47:13 +0100

Good ol’ Bernard Lonergan. Though Lonergan studies for a time seemed to be consigned to a rather small group of slightly strange people wandering around yelling “Insight!” at the top of their lungs, we can now safely say that Bernie’s ideas are breaking out into the mainstream.

Take complexity theory. Lonergan postulated back in the 1940s that myriad “schemes of recurrence” drove evolution in the entire universe, at all levels, whether the solar system’s formation or human cognition. Take a look here to see what physicists armed with computers did with the concept.

And then there are biologists examining the problems of the theory of evolution. Yes, Virginia, there is a problem with the theory, but it’s not creationism. The issue is a lack of explanatory power because of theoreticians’ focus on one element (genes, individuals, etc.) of the dynamic schemes of recurrence, which are nested, in Lonergan’s terminology. Today we would describe this as complexity theory.

So for instance, take honeybee colonies. Biologists refer to them increasingly as superorganisms, self-organizing complex organisms whose functioning at various levels is determined by its surrounding ecosystem as well as the internal dynamics of what it means to be a single bee in myriad relationships with other bees, some of whom are different. Evolution alone doesn’t explain it.

Neither does some intelligent-design theory. The word “design” is wrong—too much like engineering. The free act of God the Holy Trinity—deity defined by its relations—in creating is far more interesting than the Divine Engineer image. The more we can dimly grasp through science—and the reality, not the theory, of evolution is as yet only dimly grasped—the more we need to marvel at what creation actually means. And adjust our theologies upward. Creation is the bee’s knees.

I am reading John Zizioulas’ Communion and Otherness, the recent “sequel” to his 1985 Being and Communion, one of the most influential theological works in the past one hundred years. His grasp of relationality as revealed in the being of God the Holy Trinity and reflected in creation closely predicts the new directions that the sciences have been taking. This, Gentle Reader, is what real theologians do. They don’t start create themeparks for creationism (and they pay their taxes too). They think. Hard. And like Bernard Lonergan, their thought guides not only believers but all those who seek to know their world, to explore its intelligibility and the limits of human understanding.

J.V. Langmead Casserley is a virtually-forgotten Episcopal theologian of the last century, neglected, I think, at our peril. One point he made that we in the Church need to remember is that, aside from the task of evangelization, we will also have to teach our society how to think clearly again. Fortunately, the Spirit continues to raise up thinkers to lead the way. Now all we need to do is follow…

[NB: click the bee to see where the image comes from]

Happy Hooker Day!

Tue, 3 Nov 2009 10:34:54 +0100

This is for Richard Hooker, whose feast it is today.

The greatest Anglican theologian, whom I quote and paraphrase regularly—in fact, reading excerpts of his Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity convinced me thirty years ago that I should become an Episcopalian.

Read about him at

http://satucket.com/lectionary/RHooker.htm

and at

http://www.luminarium.org/renlit/hookbib.htm

and still more at

http://justus.anglican.org/resources/bio/64.html

Here is a link to the complete Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, online at Project Canterbury (thanks for the reminder, Sibyl!).

Then please join me in the Collect for Richard Hooker, which seems strangely relevant to our own day, especially the need for “sound reasoning and great charity”— both in extremely short supply—for maintaining a “comprehension for the sake of truth”:

O God of truth and peace, who raised up your servant Richard Hooker in a day of bitter controversy to defend with sound reasoning and great charity the catholic and reformed religion: Grant that we may maintain that middle way, not as a compromise for the sake of peace, but as a comprehension for the sake of truth; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

What would Bishop Hannington say?

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 08:54:27 +0100

Thousands of Ugandan Christians have died as witnesses (martyrs, in Greek) to the Good News of Jesus Christ, Lord of all and Savior of humanity. Today we remember dozens of Anglican martyrs, beginning with a missionary Bishop, James Hannington.

He and his companions was murdered by King Mwanga, who feared the expansion of Christianity. They were joined in their witness by about one hundred African Christians, among whom were several young pages who had refused to submit to Mwanga’s sexual advances.

These martyrs have been held up as part of the reason Ugandans hate homosexuality. Mwanga himself was bisexual, having 16 wives, as well as a pedophile.

Today, that country is considering a law that would make homosexuality a serious crime, even in some cases a capital crime. What would the Martyrs of Uganda say? It is unimaginable that they who paid the ultimate price for their faith would demand that gay people be executed. Quite the contrary!

The Anglican Church of Uganda should strenuously oppose this bill, in conformity with the clear, repeated teachings of the Lambeth Conferences (1978, 1988, 1998—see also the 1998 report—hard to find, scroll down— and 2008, see section H) that homosexuals are beloved of God and should be allowed to be members of the Church. At least one Ugandan bishop has spoken out against the proposed imposition of the death penalty so far.

While some will retort that the 1998 Lambeth Conference resolution I.10 declares homosexual practice to be incompatible with Holy Scripture, they would do well to read the whole passage:

“We commit ourselves to listen to the experience of homosexual persons and we wish to assure them that they are loved by God and that all baptised, believing and faithful persons, regardless of sexual orientation, are full members of the Body of Christ;

“while rejecting homosexual practice as incompatible with Scripture, calls on all our people to minister pastorally and sensitively to all irrespective of sexual orientation and to condemn irrational fear of homosexuals…”

Nothing in here or other Lambeth Conferences can justify support for the criminalisation of homosexuality.

As for Mwanga, he died in exile in the Seychelles apparently in 1903 (sources differ slightly), after having converted to Christianity and baptized...an Anglican.