Rev’d Dr. Leander Harding

The St. Andrew’s Draft of the Proposed Anglican Covenant

Instrument of Oppression and Exclusion or Instrument of Inclusion and Justice?

By

The Rev. Leander S. Harding, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Pastoral Theology

Trinity School for Ministry

Actions of The Episcopal Church and the Diocese of New Westminster in Canada have precipitated a crisis in the Anglican Communion. These actions have brought to the surface a deep divide in the communion which has been a long time developing. A number of provinces and dioceses have concluded that they have impaired or broken communion with the Anglican churches in North America. In the face of demands that The Episcopal Church and New Westminster be in some fashion officially sanctioned and excommunicated, the Anglican Communion through its instruments of unity established the Windsor Committee which proposed as the way forward the development of an Anglican Covenant which would identify core beliefs and the practices of ecclesial decision-making necessary to maintain a world wide communion of churches. Thus in answer to the demand to exclude from communion those churches making revolutionary innovations in a unilateral fashion, the Windsor Report proposed that the Anglican Communion engage in a process of mutual consultation leading to a consensus on the minimums of faith and practice necessary to maintain communion, and then let member churches decide for themselves whether they could abide by such common commitments.

The first thing to be said about the covenant strategy is that it is an inclusive strategy which places on local churches the responsibility to decide whether they shall or shall not be a constitutive part of the communion of a world-wide church. All the member churches have been invited to contribute to the drafting of the covenant. It is clear that the existing instruments of unity and the existing articulations of Anglican faith and practice such as the Lambeth quadrilateral are not able by themselves to hold together the communion. Without some new feature the communion is certain to break apart along racial and cultural fault lines. It is part of the Gospel that God is making a new people out of many peoples, and a church that breaks apart along a North-South fracture line would be a counter sign to the Gospel in our time. Without a new articulation of the consensus of faith and a new agreement about the means to settle serious theological disputes we will not have the tools to hold the communion together but neither will we have the tools to hold together the various provinces. The skills and spiritual disciplines that will come from striving to maintain the worldwide communion are exactly the skills and spiritual disciplines needed to hold together our own dioceses and parishes. Sacrificing global communion on the altar of local communion is certain to lead to the intensification of the local momentum toward schism.

The main debate now in The Episcopal Church is not over the content of the covenant but whether the very idea of covenant is legitimate or not. Any possible covenant is seen by many in leadership in The Episcopal Church as an immoral example of over-reaching and over-definition and as an attempt to constrain consciences in an unacceptable way. I see an emerging negative consensus in The Episcopal Church with regard to the very idea of a covenant. This emerging negative consensus about the concept of a covenant is, I believe, based on an unexamined and to a degree unconscious commitment to a paradigm of knowledge that is part of the mental furniture of the West. This paradigm has been described and critiqued by the philosopher, Michael Polanyi in Personal Knowledge. The missionary theologian, Lesslie Newbigin, has applied this critique to the crisis of theological confidence in the churches of the developed world in a series of books, including The Gospel in a Pluralist Society and Proper Confidence.  

There has arisen in the West what Polanyi calls a false scientism that divides knowledge into two categories. There is the relatively small category of facts and in this area certainty is possible. There is a larger realm of beliefs and values and in this realm by the nature of the case certainty is never possible. There may be commitments that “work” for people. In this sense there is my truth and your truth but to treat a belief as though it were certain is seen in this paradigm as a category mistake and an inherently immoral and oppressive act.

 The proposed Anglican Covenant is felt by many of the leaders of The Episcopal Church to represent an improper and even backward understanding of the nature of truth. The logic as I see it goes something like this, “Everyone knows that the proposed covenant requires the submission of individual consciences to a consensus about the truth of Christian beliefs and everyone knows that there is no public truth in the arena of beliefs and faith to which all consciences should submit. Hence the very idea of a covenant is an attempt to coerce uniformity where it should not be attempted.”

Everyone knows? Everyone who lives uncritically within the paradigm that Polanyi calls scientism or objectivism. But this is not the only paradigm of knowledge going and it is among other things, including its inability to actually account for the demonstrable nature of scientific knowing, inadequate to the sort of knowing which is the knowledge of faith. This paradigm is inadequate to what Leslie Newbigin calls the proper confidence of faith.  It is not so that belief is an inferior sort of knowledge but rather belief is the necessary prerequisite of knowing anything at all. Scientists are able to discover and know because of preceding beliefs. Their famous methodological doubt is based on deeper commitments and beliefs. Science does not provide certainty but proper confidence, and in a similar way faith produces its own proper confidence. Both Polanyi and Newbigin think that Augustine got it just right, “I believe in order that I may understand.” It is necessary for Christians to articulate their common beliefs just so they can engage together in a common search for a more comprehensive truth and so they can adjudicate true and false implications of the faith.

Radical pluralism is an inevitable consequence of the theory of knowledge that makes belief into an inferior sort of knowledge. If there is no way to establish a proper confidence about particular beliefs, then any attempt to establish authoritative beliefs will be thought an exercise in tyranny. This conviction is often expressed in what has now become the canonic parable of the blind men and the elephant. A group of blind men so the story goes are exploring an elephant by touch. One feels the tail and says the elephant is like a rope and one feels the leg and says the elephant is like a tree and one feels the ear and says the elephant is like a large leaf. Each has a piece of the truth. No one of them has it all. To apply the parable to our current controversy, many in The Episcopal Church see the establishment of a covenant as an attempt by one of the blind men to make his perspective the one authoritative perspective and thus a power play and an immoral case of over-reaching. Lesslie Newbigin points out that there is a problem with this parable. The parable is told from the point of view of the King and his courtiers who take in the whole scene. The parable is told from the point of view of a supposedly neutral observer who is able to see the partial and limited nature of all other perspectives from the vantage point of the one perspective which is not subject to any critique. The parable is told from the imperial point of view of the theory of knowledge that Polanyi critiques as scientism. The teller of the parable adopts the pose of tolerance but this is surface camouflage behind which the King asserts the right to relativize and marginalize all other claims to truth but his own. Of this Newbigin says, “In a pluralist society such as ours. . .any claim to announce the truth about God and his purpose for the world, is liable to be dismissed as ignorant, arrogant, dogmatic. We have no reason to be frightened of this accusation. It itself rests on assumptions which are open to radical criticisms, but which are not criticized because they are part of the reigning plausibility structure.” (Gospel in a Pluralist Society, page 10.)

The established churches of the West are deeply permeated by the philosophy of pluralism and the epistemology which generates it. The established churches of the West are profoundly influenced by an understanding of tolerance which is really tyranny in disguise, a tyranny which is inherently hostile to the confident expression of apostolic faith. If the very concept of an Anglican Covenant is rejected in the name of Western pseudo-tolerance, it will be an exercise not of inclusion but of exclusion and what will be excluded will be the very possibility of building a consensus and proper confidence about the essentials of Christian faith and practice necessary to maintain the life and order of a world-wide church.

Without the renewal of consensus in faith and practice that a covenant represents, the imperial pluralism that really governs much of the common life of the churches in the West will continue without challenge. The result will be Orwellian. There will be continuing talk about the provisional quality of all truth claims and the need for tolerance and respect for conscience while unilateral innovations which ride roughshod over the consciences of others continue apace. I predict that the pace will in fact accelerate. If theological argument cannot by definition come to a consensus about the minimally authoritative truths of Christian faith and practice, and it cannot under the aegis of the sort of imperial pluralism I have described, what is to restrain the one who perceives that personal conscience demands unilateral action?

 The adoption of an Anglican Covenant allows us a chance to renew our commitment to the basics of the apostolic faith and to develop a suitably Christian and Anglican process for engaging and settling debates about the common boundaries of faith and practice. Within the parameters set by a common covenant real tolerance of differing opinions is possible with the confidence that they can be adjudicated justly according to mutually agreed principles. In the West the alternative is a church life based on a pseudo-tolerance behind which lurks the intolerance of an imperial pluralism which will inevitably encourage those who happen to be in power toward the unilateral imposition of their enthusiasms over what they see as the blind commitments of others. It is life under the reign of imperial pluralism that is unjust and exclusionary. The logic of church life under this sort of pluralism is the logic of finesse and fait accompli and power politics. The adoption of an appropriate Anglican Covenant has the chance of creating a more just and inclusive community and a global church which is not merely the extension of a Western cultural hegemony.

Thank you to the Bishop and people of Dallas for the great privilege of participating in the election leading to the selection of the next bishop suffragan. My wife and I were treated with great courtesy and grace. It is always wonderful to get to meet other Christians and to have a chance to talk about the deep things of the faith, the ministry and our common life in Christ.

Congratulations to Canon Lambert. My prayers are with the Diocese of Dallas for a speedy confirmation of this election and for joy in the service of our Lord.

For The Life Of The World, by Alexander Schmemann. This is a set of lectures that the late dean of St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Seminary in Crestwood, New York gave to a Student Christian Movement gathering in the 1960’s. It is real Russian writing, full of passion and profound theological and spiritual wisdom in lucid prose studded with sparkling aphorisms.

I Heard The Owl Call My Name, Margaret Craven. A short simple novel about a young Anglican priest working with Native Americans in British Columbia.

The Brother’s Karamazov, by Fydor Dostovesky. A classic of Christian literature. I am especially moved by Fr. Zosima’s remarks to his brothers in the monastery as he lies dying.

The Resurrection of Christ: An Essay in Biblical Theology, Michael Ramsey. This book on the resurrection was life changing for me. Ramsey brings forward a long line of English exegesis on the resurrection which has found its latest advocate in N.T. Wright.

The Gospel and The Catholic Church, Michael Ramsey, This is out of print but is well worth getting when you can find it. It is a defense of catholic church order on the basis of its evangelical significance.

Romans In A Week, N.T. Wright. This is a CD of lectures that Wright gave at Regent and is available through their bookstore. The ideas presented here can be found elsewhere such as the Abingdon commentary on Romans. This is a very accessible way to get the information. Probably the biggest influence on my presentation of the Gospel in the last ten years.

The Gospel In A Pluralistic Age, Leslie Newbigin. Anything by this author is good. This is the classic statement by the late great missionary bishop.

Christianity Rediscovered, Vincent J. Donovan. A classic text and dramatic story about initial evangelization.

The Religious Potential Of The Child, by Sofia Cavalletti, A moving book by a pioneer in the religious education of children.

For Your Own Good: Hidden cruelty in child-rearing and the roots of violence, Alice Miller.  Not a book on theology but a very sobering and serious critique of some religiously inspired methods of child-rearing.

Against The Protestant Gnostics, Phillip J. Lee. A sometimes overstated but very searching important critique of Gnostic tendencies in North American Protestantism.

W. Edwards Deming is the management thinker behind the quality revolution in Japanese industry after World War II. Many business thinkers attribute the success of companies like Honda and Toyota to the Japanese willingness to adopt the principles of this prophet without honor in his own country. I have been interested in his work for years and recently won a scholarship to a Deming Seminar. Part of the homework was to summarize Deming’s main message. Below is my attempt.

Dr. Deming’s work is as much a moral philosophy of management as it is a science of management. There is a vision of human dignity that is foundational to his work. Deming understands that the inherent dignity of human nature is honored when it is possible for people to make a contribution of intrinsic value to the common good. What Deming calls “pride in workmanship” satisfies a deep human need to be really and effectually of service to their fellow human beings and to make a positive difference in the lives of others. Deming recognizes that this intrinsic orientation toward mutuality and cooperation is a far more fundamental and dependable source of motivation toward achievement and excellence than is any scheme of carrot and stick extrinsic motivation. The job of leadership and management is to make it possible for people to participate “with pride of workmanship” in an enterprise that produces products and services that are inherently valuable and provide a positive contribution to the common good.

This requires a clear aim and the identification, development and optimization of systems of service and production that can be improved continuously and forever. Most failures in the development of quality products and services are due to problems with the system of production. Understanding and managing the system is a key management task.  The cooperative participation of workers, managers, customers and suppliers in the process of continuous improvement fulfills the inherent need for human dignity and promotes the conditions in which civil society and culture can flourish. These fundamental principles are as applicable to the government and the not-for-profit world as they are to traditional business enterprises.

Continued reliance on competition and extrinsic motivation robs people of pride in workmanship, destroys systems and leads to products and services of unsatisfactory quality. This leads to a declining quality of life that undermines civil society and culture.

The future vitality and adaptability of our civilization and society depend upon leaders of business, government and the not-for-profit world learning a new approach to leadership and management based upon this vision of human dignity and cooperation.

Recently my wife asked our twenty-something daughter in law what young people want in church. The very articulate response is below

Hi, Mom

I thought a lot about your question re:  young people and the church.  It’s a really big question, so I can only paint a picture with really broad strokes.

Young people generally come to church looking for the same things as everyone else.  They want to know, in one form or another, who they are, where they came from, why they’re here, and what will happen to them when they die.  They want the answer to the longing for God that He has planted in their hearts.  They want community, comfort, and to be freed from guilt over their sins.  They want to be apart of something bigger than themselves, something that matters.

The biggest differences between what young adults and older adults want in church, I think, exist because the mainline churches by and large think that young people either 1. shouldn’t be interested in church or 2. are incapable of understanding the Gospel. I don’t know how many stories I’ve heard of people between 25 and 35 being told to go out and live a little and come back to the church when they’re older.   It’s pretty much become an unspoken rule that most parishes won’t send anyone under 40 to seminary.  Those churches that do want to involve young people tend to be patronizing or obsessed with making the church be as close to “youth culture” as possible.  Of course, the Church isn’t in the business of creating culture.  It’s in the business of preaching the Gospel, and when it tries to create an alternate Christian culture (with its own music, fashion, and movies) it tends to do it badly.

These two tendencies lead to young people needing extra things that they probably wouldn’t need if they were just treated like adults:  They need to be taken seriously and allowed to get involved, and they need to be given the doctrine and dogma of the church without “relevant” filler material.

This, of course, mostly applies to “churched” young people.  There are many people in their 20s, who have never walked into a church and know nothing about the Gospel but stereotypes, steeples, and what they see on South Park.  In my experience, young people like that want three things from the Church:  1.  They want a Bible that just has the Bible in it–no pictures or cute little text boxes cluttering up the text.  2. They want to know what the Church teaches, what Christians believe, and what would be expected of them if they were to convert.  3.  They want the space to think about the decision for as long as they need without having to make a committment and someone who will answer their questions honestly without sugar-coating the truth, judging them for having doubts, or being condescending.

Of course, this is all general.  “Young people” are as diverse a demographic as any other, and it is difficult to say anything meaningful without having to turn around and say the opposite.  I think that many of these problems would be solved by parishes having things for all adults to get involved in and preaching the Gospel on Sundays–things parishes should be doing, anyway.

Hope that helps!

-Kristy

This essay continues a series on Christianity and Postmodernism.[1] In this essay, I confront traditional Roman Catholic teaching on philosophy with that of a Postmodern philosopher, Richard Rorty. The two main resources are Pope John Paul II’s Encyclical Fides et Ratio and Richard Rorty’s essay, “Solidarity or Objectivity.” Adapting the title of James Huntington’s modern political classic, these two documents are a “clash of civilizations.” This essay’s basic premise is that understanding this clash better is valuable for contemporary Christians.

Christianity and Postmodernism: Richard Rorty and John Paul II’s Fides et Ratio

Response to the Report of the Joint Standing Committee of the Anglican Primates

On

The Reply of the American House of Bishops

The JSC has determined that the American HOB has responded adequately to requests from the Anglican Primates for clarification of their response to the Windsor Report both in terms of the approval of additional bishops in committed same-sex relationships and the approval of same-sex blessings.

The JSC concludes that a majority of bishops have committed themselves to withhold consents to election of candidates for bishop in same sex relationships. This is I believe actually the case. The meeting in New Orleans did express a consensus that consents would be withheld at least until after the next General Convention. I suspect that if there is a Lambeth Conference in the offing the HOB will in all likelihood refrain from giving the necessary consents until after Lambeth.

The JSC has accepted the declaration of the HOB that TEC has not authorized public rites for same-sex blessing though reserving the right for private pastoral response. The JSC makes clear that “we believe that the celebration of a public liturgy which includes a blessing on a same-sex union is not within the breadth of the private personal response envisaged by the Primates in their Pastoral Letter of 2003, and that the undertaking made by the bishops in New Orleans is understood to mean that the use of any such rites or liturgies will not in future have the bishop’s authority, ‘until a broader consensus emerges in the Communion, or until General Convention takes further action.’”

At this point the statement becomes really an exercise in subterfuge. The JSC accepts the undertaking made by the HOB in terms that the HOB never set and which are contradicted by numerous facts on the ground and the explicit statements of many bishops. By saying that such blessings when they take place are “without the bishop’s authority” the JSC is replaying on the communion wide stage the comical picture of LA bishop Bruno denying that the same-sex blessing described in the New York Times announcement page was going forward with his knowledge or authority. This is an attempt to finesse an issue that even the secular press will find duplicitous. It is inconceivable the HOB would discipline any of its members for allowing public same-sex blessings. A real undertaking not to authorize would mean to discipline those who take unauthorized action. This seems an attempt to generate a legal fiction for the purpose of giving TEC a pass by virtue of living into a legal fiction that it did not in its deliberations agree to. Meanwhile the spirit of Windsor cooperation which is what is really needed has been simply repudiated. The JSC is trying to give the HOB a way of playing the character Sargent Schultz from the sitcom Hogan’s Heroes. Schultz the German guard turned a blind eye to the shenanigans of the prisoners and when asked by his superiors about transgressions said famously, “I know nothing, I know nothing.” By its finesse and fine parsing of language the JSC is helpfully feeding the HOB this line. They are saying in effect, “we are going to say we take it in this way, you don’t protest and you will be able to say, ‘we know nothing.’”

The JSC also takes up the issues of alternate Primatial Oversight. It encourages the Presiding Bishop to consult further with dissenting groups but “we believe the Presiding Bishop has opened a way forward. There is within this proposal (the plan announced at NOL) the potential for the development of a scheme which, with good will on the part of all parties could meet their needs.” So they ask the Archbishop of Canterbury to use his office to bring together the leaders of TEC and the dissenting dioceses for further negotiation but put their prestige behind what the PB has put on the table. They suggest that possibly the Panel of Reference might be resurrected.

They encourage the ABC to use his office to discourage law suits on all sides. This is the single positive contribution in the report.

The JSC scold those primates who have offered emergency pastoral care to American parishes for not abiding by the Windsor Report and call for a determined effort to bring interventions to an end. They ask the ABC to convene talks between the intervening bishops and the TEC bishops of the diocese in which the interventions occur.

The JSC commends the listening process called for by Lambeth.

The JSC suggests that the there is an emerging consensus in the communion “which says that while it is inappropriate to proceed to public Rites of Blessing of same-sex unions and to the consecration of bishops who are living in sexual relationships outside of Christian marriage, we need to take seriously our ministry to gay and lesbian people inside the Church and the ending of discrimination, persecution and violence against them. Here The Episcopal Church and the Instruments of Communion speak with one voice.”

The essence of the JSC report is to try to sell on a Communion wide basis the American HOB fiction that because no new liturgies have been authorized and no new elections consented to the American Church is Windsor compliant.

There is a willful distortion of reality in this report that raises the most serious questions about whether the Primates can themselves be an instrument of unity and exercise meaningful authority in the communion. This report will not help the communion stay together. It is in every way a clever and artful (in the sinister sense of that word) document designed to deceive and cry peace where there is no peace. It can only seem odious to plain speaking people looking for plain talk about the really somber prospect of the break up of The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion. The ABC and the Primates have been badly let down by this report. I look with anticipation for a minority report from Bishop Mouneer Anis.

Welcome to my new blog site. Thanks to the computer genius of my son we are moving my blog to this new site. The whole project should be more stable here. We are re-posting entries from the original blog which will take some time. Our goal is to move over the most important posts from the last three years. Check back often.

If you find yourself in danger of obsessing over the contre temps in the church be sure to check out the soul music of Dry Branch Fire Squad.

Their webpage is here Scroll down to the album called “Memories That Bless And Burn” This is the best traditional acapella bluegrass Gospel singing I have ever heard. The songs with instrumentals are good also. They live up to their name.

LSH+

The whole thing is here. [Editor's note: this link broken. We apologize for the inconvenience.]

The Primates have endorsed the Windsor Report including the call for stregthening the instruments of unity and the establsihment of an Anglican Covenant which they advise will be take a process of its own. They have pretty clearly opted for N.T. Wright’s fireproofing of the house. This is a very hopeful sign.

(more…)