A Change in Tempo?

I have had a first look at the Jerusalem communiqué of GAFCON. I will be rereading it in days ahead but here are some initial reactions. GAFCON establishes itself as a confessing movement within the church based on an ecumenical definition of Christian orthodoxy and the historic Anglican formularies. GAFCON does not formally break with the Archbishop of Canterbury and describes itself as a movement for reformation and renewal. The statement asserts that Anglicanism is to be defined doctrinally. Canterbury is accorded respect but declared not to have the power to say who and who is not Anglican. This is an explicit rejection of the notion that to be an Anglican church all that is required is an invitation to the Lambeth conference. Rather Anglicanism is to be defined in terms of the common confession of creedal orthodoxy and adherence to the doctrinal heritage of the classical Anglican formularies. The language describing the significance of the 1662 BCP, the ordinal and the 39 articles is confessional and authoritative but is carefully worded to allow for some very modest interpretation and local adaptation of worship.

Those dioceses in North and South America that in word or deed have ceased to confess the uniqueness of Christ or promoted extra-biblical sexual morality are declared apostate and called to repentance. The existing instruments of communion are identified as an inadequate “colonial structure” and condemned for not promoting discipline within the communion. The primates who organized GAFCON are asked to create a council of primates and to enlarge this council with other confessing members and to recognize confessing Anglican jurisdictions whether they are in communion with Canterbury or not. The establishment of a new province for confessing Anglicans in North America based on the common cause partnership and to be recognized by the GAFCON movement is encouraged.

I do not read this as the break up of the Anglican Communion. I expect that many of the attendees at GAFCON will be attending Lambeth but I do see this conference and its statement as an important breakthrough in the impasse of the communion crisis. In the game of chess I believe there is a term called tempo. It has to do with which player is the one to which the other must respond. One player has the upper hand and then there is an exchange and the player who was setting the tempo is now the one who must respond. Until this meeting in Jerusalem the tempo was in the hands of the North American churches. They acted and the rest of the communion was in the position of responding to their actions. The existing instruments of communion including the Archbishop of Canterbury have in part by inaction and in part by intention, continually moved the tempo back to TEC and The Anglican Church of Canada. The emergence of GAFCON as a confessing group within the Anglican Communion which is willing to take bold action, though at this point action short of a formal break with Canterbury, changes the tempo. It is now the rest of the communion including its existing instruments of communion which must respond. It is the consensus of the emerging confessing majority in the communion which is now setting the agenda. If the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Lambeth conference do not respond to this initiative in a meaningful way they are likely to become irrelevant to the future of global Anglicanism. Irrelevancy for Canterbury, Lambeth and the Anglican Consultative Council seem a greater risk at the moment than the risk of a formal break or repudiation of these instruments by members of GAFCON.

Bowen Theory does say that the quality of thinking in an emotional system is related to the level of chronic anxiety in the system. The theory does not really maintain that content doesn’t matter. It simply says that in highly polarized situations anxiety rather than thinking is running the show. You need to be relatively calm to really think.  The goal of this conceptuality is to help people have the thinking function be a little more independent of emotionality. Bowen Theory is very counter-cultural in that it doesn’t teach that healing comes from emotional catharsis as in Greek Drama or Psychoanalysis but from getting a little perspective and thinking independently of one’s own and of other’s emotionality. Family Systems Theory is not soteriology though there are points of contact. It has its own integrity in its own domain and is an important dialog partner with Pastoral Theology but is of course no substitute for theology. Below is  is piece I wrote some time back on how Family Systems Theory is misread by leaders in TEC among others. 

Family Systems Theory and the Crisis in the Episcopal Church

By

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

Associate Professor of Pastoral Theology

Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry

In a recent video interview on Standfirminfaith.com the bishop elect of Virginia, Shannon Johnston. The bishop elect makes extensive reference to his approach to leadership which is heavily influenced by the Family Systems Theory of the late Rabbi Edwin Friedman. I teach Friedman’s book in the course on Pastoral Leadership at Trinity and have been a student of Family Systems Theory since 1978 when I became aware of the work of Dr. Murray Bowen. My 1989 Ph.D. thesis, Christian Nurture Revisited has a chapter on Family Systems Theory.  

Ed Friedman was one of Dr. Bowen’s students and pioneered the application of Bowen Family Systems Theory to congregational life. Friedman’s book, From Generation to Generation: Family Process in Church and Synagogue, has become easily the single most influential text about leadership in religious systems and is taught in seminaries that represent a range of denominational and theological commitments. Dr. Friedman was a regular at the “baby bishop school” and I believe the concepts are still taught there. The bishop-elect of Virginia is convinced that a model of leadership informed by Family Systems Theory can help ameliorate the destructive conflict in the Episcopal Church. I believe he is correct but I also believe that a superficial understanding and application of the theory has added immeasurably to the current conflict.

One of the basic insights of this approach to leadership is that leaders tend to behave in similar ways in their families of origin, in their present family and in the leadership position they occupy in the church system to which they belong. Problems and creativity move across these three systems like ripples on the surface of a pond. Likewise anxiety is contagious between all three systems. Chronically anxious systems are those systems that have poorly defined leaders. There is a kind of Catch 22 effect at work because chronically anxious systems instinctively sabotage the self-definition of their leaders.

 Chronically anxious systems tend to descend into more and more entrenched patterns of dysfunction “from generation to generation.” A “self-defined” and “well differentiated leader” can start a dynamic in the system in the direction of less anxiety, more creativity and better overall functioning.  Friedman was part therapist and part comedian and he was fond of saying that problem solving in a chronically anxious system was like a “brainstem storming session.” In a chronically anxious system, people are stuck in flight, fright or freeze mode and are reactive rather than responsive. There may be a lot of rationalization going on but very little actual thinking, and the dysfunctional leaders in the dysfunctional systems tend to be reactive rather than thoughtfully responsive. Leadership tends to operate on the desire to appease the “togetherness forces” and typically “gives up self” in order to avoid conflict. “Peace-mongering” was one of Friedman’s epithets for dysfunctional leadership.

Friedman’s prescription for effective leadership which leads to healthy, functional and creative emotional systems was to coach leaders to take leadership stands based on well thought out and integrated values and principles while staying in touch with the system. In order to do this one has to develop “more of a self” and become able to be a “non-anxious presence” in the systems in which one is a leader. The absolute high road to being an effective leader for Friedman is working on defining a self in your family of origin. This involves the hard, years long, work of understanding the relationship patterns in your family of origin and re-working relationships with parents, siblings, grandparents and even generations that are only present in the family by legend or reputation. Defining yourself in your family of origin involves defining a self while staying in touch. Friedman echoes Murray Bowen when he says repeatedly that it is easy to define a self and easy to stay in touch with the other members of an emotional system, and it is the hardest thing in the world to define a self while staying in touch. Adult children who have alternated between avoiding visiting their parents and disastrous home visits in which they quickly revert to being truculent adolescents know the kind of challenge involved. 

Friedman warns again and again, as did his mentor Murray Bowen, against using Family Systems Theory as a technique or an ideology. At the heart of the vision of creative leadership of both Bowen and Friedman is an invitation to do hard personal work in the family of origin. Friedman worried about a “too serious” hearing of Family Systems Theory in which people would study the theory and then think they had a set of tools that could be impersonally applied to manage the emotional functioning in a system. The challenge of Family System Theory is to be a change agent by changing yourself and how you respond to conflict. To hear Family Systems Theory as a technique for “handling” conflict or “handling” others is to hear it in the “too serious” way that Friedman warned of and to increase rather than decrease the chronic anxiety and emotional dysfunction in the system. This is I think exactly what has happened in many church circles and especially in the national leadership of the Episcopal Church.  

There is one image in Friedman’s book which has been chronically misread and which is the centerpiece of the “too serious” and counterproductive application of this theory to leadership in the church. Friedman was trying to explain the dynamic in systems when someone takes a stand based on principle and conviction. For instance, an enabling wife of an acting-out alcoholic is coached by Friedman to cease trying to change her husband’s drinking patterns but rather to focus on her own input into the system. Instead of hiding the bottle she is coached to “define self” and say what she is willing and not willing to do based on well thought out principles and values. Under Friedman’s coaching she says, “honey, your drinking is none of my business, it is your life and if you want to proceed on this life-threatening course of behavior that is your business. I am just worried about what will become of me and the kids if you have a wreck or ruin your health with your drinking. If you will double your life insurance I promise never to mention your drinking again.” Friedman coaches the wife that she can expect not only the husband but all the other members of that emotional system from her parents to his boss to work together to get her to resume her “over-functioning” and “over-anxious” responses. She must persist and be steadfast if any change is to come.

 Here comes the significant metaphor that has been so misheard and is so significantly responsible for the making the present crisis in our church much worse. Friedman uses the metaphor of General Chuck Yeager and the sound barrier. When the sound barrier was being approached the aircraft would experience more and more turbulence as the plane closed in on the critical speed. Pilots would drive their aircraft to what they thought was the limit and then, afraid that the airplane would shake apart, back off without breaking the barrier. Yeager believed a physicist friend that it would be smooth on the other side of the barrier and put on speed just when most pilots were backing off and became the first to break the sound barrier.

I believe that a large number of leaders in the Episcopal Church have heard Family Systems Theory in a “too serious” way. They have heard well that all leaders can expect resistance and sabotage, the turbulence of the Yeager metaphor, and will prevail by pouring on the speed on pushing ahead when they meet resistance. They have heard that they should not be distracted by the “content” of criticism but should pay attention to the emotional process and should above all be self-defined and persist. They think that smooth sailing is just around the corner. They have not heard the challenge that leadership involves staying emotionally connected to the members of the system, especially those with whom they are most emotionally uncomfortable. They have not heard the warning that this leadership theory is primarily about controlling one’s own emotionality and not a recipe for handling or manipulating others. The result is a generation of leaders on all sides of the current polarization who think that leadership consists of taking a bold stand and persisting in a damn the torpedoes full steam ahead mode. When resistance arises and the ship threatens to shake apart they are convinced that smooth skies are just ahead and they pour on the speed. They will not be able to perceive that they have not done the personal and relational homework necessary to really make a positive contribution until the wings come off as they now are.

 When I teach Family Systems theory in my classes I warn against what I call the “Yeager heresy.” I caution the students that being rigid, inflexible and unwilling to accommodate reasonable criticism is not the same as taking a principled stand. Giving in always to maintain peace is reactive and anxious, and so is never making any accommodation. The full speed ahead damn the torpedoes rhetoric in the Episcopal Church is a symptom of an anxious and reactive leadership. Good leaders say, “This is what I think and believe, and this is what I am willing to do and not do” in such a way as to leave others the room to do the same thing. Good leaders have to have the strength of their convictions, which is something different from the desire to leave the opposition behind in the wake of their sonic boom. Family Systems Theory can make a contribution to understanding leadership in a conflicted church but not as merely more information or a superficial technique for managing the opposition but as a challenge for leaders to work on their own emotional and spiritual maturity and to respond thoughtfully rather than react emotionally to conflict.

In my assessment the current clearest example of leadership in the Anglican Communion which exhibits the principles of Friedman’s vision is the statement of the Windsor Report which says in so many words to the Episcopal Church, “You have acted in ways which put in question your continued membership in the communion. The communion is now going to work together to make clear what it means to belong to the communion and then you can decide whether you want to belong or not.” Now we are finding out whether the leaders of the dominant party in the Episcopal Church will react or respond to this challenge and whether the leaders of the minority party will react or respond to that action. The emotional and spiritual maturity of a lot of people in the church is on very public view.  

I am a fan of raiding other disciplines for thoughts on leadership in the church. There are all sorts of at first sight unlikely places to garner human wisdom which can be applied to church life. I regularly watch the National Geographic television show “The Dog Whisperer.” There is much wisdom there about being a calm, confident and consistent pack leader and about the chaos that comes from projecting the wrong kind of energy into the pack. It is quite food for thought for pastors that out of control dogs become calm in a good pack and that good dogs go crazy in a chaotic pack that is poorly led.

Another show I watch regularly is “Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares.” Gordon Ramsey the famous chef and main character of this reality show is vulgar in the extreme and hardly a sentence goes by that does not contain numerous bleeps. The censors allow the word “ballocks” which is used at least once a paragraph. The show which is on BBC America takes Ramsey to different restaurants which are about to go under and gives him a week to turn them around. The survival rate for restaurants is something like one in five. Often he actually helps them. Ramsey has a bullying style which is part of the appeal of the show I suppose and really more morally problematic than the incessant cursing. There is something to learn here. Most of the restaurants are being killed by the same group of problems: arrogant, self-indulgent but weak leaders who are out of touch with their market, an over-elaborate menu which is really beyond the skill set of the chefs, lack of teamwork and poor communication both in the kitchen and between the kitchen, the management and the wait staff, lack of a coherent and realistic vision and a lack of commitment and passion. One of the things that makes the shows galvanizing is that the audience can see almost immediately how out of touch with reality the chefs and owners are and yet like drowning men going down for the third time they fight off the advice of the man who is their last and best chance. It gives Ramsey a lot opportunity to say bleep and ballocks.

By chance I picked up a book called Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales which is a close look at what might be called the psychology of drowning. The subtitle is “Who lives, Who Dies and Why?” The author has spent a life time analyzing and writing about stories of extreme survival of the “58 days alone in a Raft on the Atlantic” sort. He has combined his knowledge of how people act in extreme conditions with the emerging understanding of how the brain works and the role that emotion plays in reasoning and decision-making. It is a fascinating read, and parish clergy and other church leaders will see obvious parallels to decision making and survival in parish ministry, especially during moments of crisis.

One of the chapters is entitled “Bending the Map.” This is a term that has been coined by those who study the behavior of lost people. We find our way by making mental maps. If the lights go out in your bedroom you can probably find your way around reasonably well because you have developed a mental map of the room. We are constantly making such maps and constantly revising them. Psychologists believe that the map-making function is located in the hippocampus. The hippocampus is affected by stress and stress makes it harder to revise your mental maps. One part of the brain tells you where you are but another part, the amygdala, controls the seeking of a goal. This is the part of the brain which governs the emotions and provides us with automatic behaviors which circumvent the thinking function.

When stress makes it hard to update the mental map, people are likely to be lost before they realize it. When it begins to dawn that the surroundings and the map are not matching up one reaction very often kicks in especially if fatigue and stress are a factor. The lost person tries to make their map work even though it is obvious after the fact that grave and possibly disastrous mistakes are being made. It is the same phenomenon that afflicts the restaurant owners in Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares. They have a map that should work but is not working and yet they cling to it. To the detached observer it seems inexplicably irrational. But the emotions are driving and the amygdala is producing powerful motivations to take action, and the organism is clinging to the only plan it knows. The way out is for the higher critical function to kick in but that requires over-riding nearly irresistible emotions that have developed over eons and have for the most part have helped us survive. Tragically when you are well and truly lost some of your instincts are your worst enemy.

Many people who are lost could probably recover by retracing their steps. Very few do. They are driven on by the conviction that what they are seeking is just around the corner. Gonzales says, “It’s simple. All you have to do is fail to update your mental map and then persist in following it even when the landscape (or your compass) tries to tell you it’s wrong. According to the survival expert, Edward Cornell, “Whenever you start looking at your map and saying something like, ‘Well, that lake could have dried up,’ or ‘That boulder could have moved,’ a red light should go off. You’re trying to make reality conform to your expectations rather than seeing what’s there. In the sport of orienteering, they call it ‘bending the map.’” (page 164) At first the map bending is plausible, then the awful, “we are not in Kansas anymore” feeling sets in and then panic. There is a name for this panic, woods shock. When the person can no longer make any correlation between where they are and their mental map it starts a cascading deterioration of their rational function. “In severe cases, the actions of even the most experienced outdoorsmen can seem inexplicable. Hikers have abandoned full backpacks; hunters have left their guns behind.” (165)

Something similar happens to pilots trying to land on a carrier. When they come in too low and slow there are a series of warnings that go off. Alarms sound in the cockpit. Big red lights show up on the carrier deck and the Landing Signal Officer starts screaming in the headphones, “pull up, pull up! It is not uncommon for pilots despite all these signals to run into the back of the carrier and cut the plane in half. The pilots say that once you get your attention fixed on a spot on the deck instead of constantly scanning the whole scene, tunnel vision sets in and the desire to get on the ground becomes overwhelming.

Researchers in the psychology of the lost recognize five stages. First, despite increasing evidence the person denies that they are lost and they press on with mounting urgency trying to make their mental map match what they see. In the second stage, panic sets in and clear thought becomes almost impossible. Activity becomes “frantic, unproductive, even dangerous.” In third stage exhaustion sets in and the person forms a strategy for finding a place that matches their map. The problem as Gonzales points out is that there is no such place. You are lost. “In the final stage, as you run out of options and energy, you must become resigned to your plight. Like it or not, you must make a new mental map of where you are. You must become Robinson Crusoe or you will die. To survive, you must find yourself. Then it won’t matter where you are.” (167)

The applications are obvious. You can get lost in the woods and you can get lost in life. Institutions and corporations can also get lost. Gonzales uses the recent history of the Xerox Corporation as an example. In 1969 Xerox passed $1 billion in sales. In 1971, literally high on this success, Xerox leadership decided to take on IBM despite “the clear evidence that it would probably kill them to do so. They were like snowmobilers, flushed with emotion, who went up that hill, despite the clear evidence it would probably kill them. They were bending the map too.” (167) Xerox has been a long time getting back and may still not be totally out of the woods.

I have survived severe parish conflict. When I look back on it I can recognize all the stages of the lost person. I had successfully led the way in the redevelopment of two previous parishes. My third parish looked like a larger version of the same. I thought I knew where I was and what needed doing. As everything that had always worked before began not to work I went into high energy scramble mode, with the conviction that the same strategies applied with more effort would bring success and that the familiar landmarks were just around the corner. As the panic deepened my thinking function deteriorated even more and I spent long hours frozen at my desk fruitlessly ruminating on my situation. The only thing I did right was to keep praying (survival experts advise people to pray whether they believe in God or not because the positive results are so well documented) and not give up which many lost people do. I remember consciously giving up my mental map. I wouldn’t have called it that then but that is what I did. That was the day I started to pay attention to where I really was and what would work there and that was the day I started to come out of the woods. Many people are astounded and sometimes a little disgusted at the stupid things that clergy and parish leaders do in high conflict situations. I understand it completely. They are bending the map and trying to get home. A lot don’t make it. They can’t get through the panic, throw out the old map and start over. By the grace of God I did. The parish and I had a major turn around and I had many years of positive ministry there. Like a lot of survivors I know well it could have been different and I have a great sympathy for those who have lost the way.

When I look at the conflict in The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion I can see the hallmarks of an institution whose leaders are lost. For that portion of the church that has been laboring for decades for the acceptance of same-sex relationships on a par with heterosexual marriage, the election of the bishop of New Hampshire in 2003 and the election of the first woman presiding bishop in 2006 has to be a rush. It must feel like being at the helm of Xerox in 1971. In the lifetime of these leaders they have seen the church weather the storm over a new prayer book and the ordination of women. Many of these leaders can also remember the deep emotional satisfaction of being part of the civil rights and anti-war movements. In all these experiences, perseverance in the face of opposition eventually led to a success and the great emotional satisfaction of feeling on the side of history. It is an understandable mistake to apply this map to the present crisis in TEC and the Anglican Communion. The concept of bending the map helps us understand why TEC plowed ahead in spite of clear warnings that it would break the Anglican Communion apart and damage the domestic church in unprecedented ways. Even now there is strong denial from the national leaders of TEC that the communion will come apart or that the consequences in terms of loss of membership and funds will be anything but survivable as they were for both the 1979 prayer book and the ordination of women. The church now seems to me in the panicky scrambling stage full of fruitless and desperate efforts to make an outdated map conform to reality. The stress and panic makes it impossible to take in the changing reality and update the map. Thoughtfulness deteriorates and actions become inexplicably counter-productive and contrary to survival.

If Anglicanism is to survive this crisis it will be because leaders both domestically and on the communion stage are able to over-ride their instincts and emotions and to give up outdated mental maps and start paying attention to where we truly are and to soberly consider what will possibly actually work in this terra incognita and who will do one more thing that survivors do; take bold action on the basis of a calm, realistic and updated read of their true situation.

The conference was sponsored by the Tutu Center at General which has a mandate for conferences that address reconciliation and peace. The conference conveners were Titus Pressler, the subdean at General and the venerable J. Robert Wright, canon theologian for the diocese of New York, who teaches Patristics among other things and has had a high profile in ecumenical theology for many years. Canon Wright broke his ankle on Easter day and was not present, though his paper was read.

The format of the conference had a major address each day by one of the keynote speakers, Archbishop Drexel Gomez, head of the covenant design group, Canon Jenny Te Paa from New Zealand and a member of the Windsor Committee, and Canon Gregory Cameron, Deputy Secretary General of the Anglican Communion. After the major address there were each day several panels made up of faculty from each of the Anglican seminaries in North America. All were represented save Nashotah House. Each faculty person gave a ten minute presentation. At the end of the panel of four presentations, four students gave two or three minute reactions to the papers and the faculty responded and the floor was open for questions. You can read my presentation below.

All in all the atmosphere was civil and courteous. Archbishop Gomez was subjected to some discourtesy which he handled with great charity and a sharp intellect. The whole conference can be listened to at The General Theological Seminary website.

General is a very beautiful seminary and it was a treat to worship in the chapel there. The office is sung every evening with great care though I found the feminist canticles that were inserted from time to time a little trying. “Our mother Jesus”  and so forth. The seminary has a massive challenge to keep the premises up and there is much work going on. Still like a lot of places in mainline Christendom in North America there is a poignant sense of faded glory.

Trinity and Wycliffe represented the reasserter point of view and the rest the reappraiser. As I predicted the issue was not what was in the covenant but the very idea of covenant. The majority of the faculty presentations were hostile to the very idea of covenant. A notable exception was Dean Kevern of Bexley. Throughout the conference I was reminded of Mouneer Anis’ comments on his meeting with the Joint Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion that there was little evidence that these leaders were really registering the state of crisis in the communion. There was a common confidence in the presenters, the confidence I suppose of the winners in a dispute. There was denial that the communion would come apart and that the life of the churches represented was in any serious way threatened. It was clear that for most of the people present the justice issues which they perceived in the Gay agenda were of more moment than any desire to maintain communion with the Anglican world. There was even a conviction that the breaking of communion was not really possible, that no one could tell them that they were not members of the communion. It was in a word, unreal.

I thought my presentation about what I called imperial pluralism and intolerance masquerading as tolerance would create some discussion. It didn’t. In passing I mentioned that I thought there was a corollary to pseudo-tolerance which was pseudo-democracy. I said that despite much rhetoric about representation and our democratic polity, the leadership style of TEC was one of finesse and fait accompli. I was challenged strongly on this by several members of the executive committee who pointed out all the studies and reports of the House of Bishops and General Convention. One member of the Executive Committee quoted a report that I have never seen which she claimed showed that a majority of the members of the church were in favor of 2003 et al. Earlier in the program Dr. Daniel Joslyn-Siemiatkoski had given a presentation in which he made a distinction between history from above and history from below. I responded to my questioners that it was true that there had been many official studies and reports at the institutional level, at the history from above level, but that was not the same as the sacrificial work needed to create a true mind of the church. This we have not engaged either at the parish, diocesan, provincial or communion level. The history from above is out of touch with the history from below. I sensed an incredulousness at my answer. This exchange and others gave me a sense of leadership really disconnected from the mass of people in the church, of a head out of touch with its body. I think that compliance and resignation are widely taken as affirmation and support. The cost of this mistake is only beginning to emerge.

One of the more startling themes that ran through several of the presentations was an antipathy to the office of bishop. Joe Britton of Yale, for example, diagnosed that part of the crisis is that too much is being made of bishops. It was all alright until we elected a Gay bishop. Clearly we put too much emphasis in Anglicanism on the office of bishop. The office needs to be downgraded and seen as merely facilitative to the ministry of the baptized. He proposed a long moratorium on the election of bishops while the whole office is reconsidered. Jenny Te Paa described the Primates of the Anglican Communion in terms of “dominant male power” without any reference to their teaching office. The bishop as a guardian of apostolic teaching and of the communion of the church was certainly not in view. There is a certain logical consistency here. If as I have suggested any authoritative articulation of the faith is suspect on the basis of the radical pluralism that is now the reigning ideology in TEC, then the office whose purpose is to articulate the tradition must needs be deconstructed. I predict that there will be several members of the House of Bishops who will take up this cause without any sense of irony and who will seek to out do each other in their low estimation of the significance of the office they hold. In a way the House of Bishops has already done this by demurring to give assurances to Canterbury which were entirely within their power to give both canonically and morally.

As I surveyed the faded glory of the General Seminary and the disconnect from the reality on the ground of many of the members of the conference, many of them important leaders in TEC and the Anglican Church of Canada, the thought came to me that it would be impossible to contain the Holy Spirit in such a church. The Spirit was bound to break out and foster new forms of Anglicanism and mission. However we might regret the break-up of the church, the chaotic multiplying of new jurisdictions and bishops, the dangers and temptations that these moves were bound to bring in their wake, there was simply no way that it could be contained and stopped. Jesus was asked to silence his disciples and he answered that if they were quieted the very stones would cry out. The reliance on canons and legal strategies and appeals to family loyalty to try to keep the church together suddenly seemed to me very poignant, like trying to make water flow uphill. 

I stayed over for a few days and did a fundraising gathering for Trinity. We had about forty people at the Harvard Club. Some were in TEC parishes and some were in parishes that were planted by refugees from TEC. Two of our best recent grads talked about their work in liberal East Coast dioceses and of the fruitfulness of their ministry and their good relations with more liberal colleagues. There were rectors there from several established New York parishes that were working hard with the support of faithful laity to teach the apostolic faith and they were attracting new people to their parishes and thriving despite the hostile environment around them. The thought came to me that just as you could not keep the Holy Spirit in TEC neither could you keep it out. God was not going to abandon these churches and he was going to continue to call faithful people into them in the same way as the Spirit raised up prophets in Israel when Israel was unfaithful. It is very clear to me that Trinity needs to serve both these constituencies and that we need to have great charity with each other about the decision to stay or leave TEC, either of which may be driven by the Spirit or by our own frailty or by a combination of both to be bent to God’s plans in His good providence.

I have read this very quickly. I am astonished that it is so long and convoluted given the significance of the document. On a first read it gives me renewed hope about the ministry of Rowan Williams. Perhaps he is willing to use such office as he has left for the sake of the unity of the communion.

The Positives: he asserts the primacy of scripture and the significance of recognizable ministry and sacraments. He opposes unilateralism in changing scriptural interpretation. He recognizes the authority of the majority reading on sexual ethics both historically and globally. He recognizes that the dispute in the communion is not about homosexuality per se but about the authority of scripture, the nature of ministry, including the episcopacy and that the actions of TEC are communion breaking. He creates a rallying point for the communion at large around the covenant process by insisting that acceptance of a Lambeth invitation means acceptance of Windsor and pledges to personally interrogate bishops who have equivocated about their sincerity. He offers a rallying point which may revive the Camp Allen bishops as a group and thus create a larger remnant in TEC. He offers a personal intervention with TEC and the breaking away dioceses to secure Alternate Primatial Oversight more in keeping with Tanzania.

Negative points: The letter is overlong and written with such finesse that it is lacking in the clarity and brevity that is needed. There will be much reading of tea leaves associated with this letter. The letter seems insufficiently in touch with the pace of change on the ground in the United States and the bleeding away of the Anglican faithful which gives rise to the ministry of the Nigeria etc. The letter takes back much of what it says positively and much of what is entailed in the theology of the scripture and the church which it sets out when he says that he in essence cannot accept that the current disputes represent irreconcilable theologies.

Initial Conclusions: I wish the letter were more clear and more bold but it is the strongest statement from the ABC to date. In my Just War Theory inspired view of the crisis in the Anglican Communion this latest intervention by the established authority ought to be given every chance to work. There is a beginning here that could lead to a larger Windsor compliant remnant in TEC and to ultimate unity between those orthodox who have been pursuing inside and outside strategies. It pushes the covenant process forward and I believe that needs to happen as quickly as possible with as large a gathering of the communion and continuing Anglican bodies involved as possible.

I predict that this very modest drawing of a line and limit will produce further statements of intransigence from many bishops and dioceses in TEC and it will become more clear just how unilateralist and revisionist many dioceses of TEC are. It just may be that the ABC has taken an action that however modest it appears now has placed him irrevocably on the side of a unified Anglican Communion and against unilateral revisionism in faith and morals. I hope that those on the reasserter side will give this initiative some time to work. It could be the beginning of a basis for the widest possible orthodox Anglican consensus and the beginning of bringing into one fleet the current array of life boats.

Dear Friends in Christ,

I read with interest Andrew Goddard’s latest analysis of the impending realignment of Anglicanism. In the midst of the very heated exchanges on this side of the pond I appreciate the measured tones of this analysis. From my view on this side of the Atlantic there are significant realities that are not registered in this analysis. I write as a parish priest of 25 years standing in The Episcopal Church and formerly the president of the Standing Committee of the Diocese of Connecticut. I am now on the faculty of Trinity School for Ministry in Ambridge Pennsylvania where I teach Pastoral Theology. Trinity is thought by many to be the center of a great right wing conspiracy and to  be awash in funds from the family foundations of ultra conservatives. In any other place in the Anglican Communion and in any other decade the school would be seen as entirely in the mainstream of Anglicanism though particularly oriented toward evangelism and mission. I am still on the look out for the millions from the foundations but have not seen them yet.

Andrew Goddard describes four positions on homosexuality and the church. In his scheme there are two extremes. The extremes are unwilling to enter into any dialogue or reconsideration. There then are those willing to have the church enter into a period of dialogue and these are divided between those inclined to defend the traditional morality and those inclined to reinterpret it. In this country actual dialogue on this issue is nearly impossible. The actions of the General Convention and of numerous diocesan conventions since both the General Conventions of 2003 and 2006 make it clear that a majority of the leaders of a majority of the American dioceses are committed to pressing for “full inclusion” which they regard as a mandate of the Holy Spirit. There are eleven accredited seminaries of The Episcopal Church. Trinity is traditionally Evangelical, Nashotah House is traditionally Anglo-Catholic. Other than at these two schools it is very doubtful that a centrist in Goddard’s terms could get an appointment at one of our seminaries. In the majority of our dioceses it would be difficult to the point of impossibility for a candidate who was not perceived as a strong advocate for full inclusion to be elected bishop. There are very few centrists in Goddard’s terms in this country. As he notes dialogue in this country has not meant reasoned debate on theological and scientific grounds but the organizing of gatherings for the sharing of experience by people who self identify as Gay. Those who report healing from same-sex attraction, including members of the clergy are routinely excluded from these gatherings when they take place.

 Among my scholarly interests is the theological significance of studies in human development. I can find very few people including previous bishops under whom I have served or more liberal colleagues in the clergy who are faintly interested in really wrestling with the scientific and psychological picture.  I have published an open letter to the bishops that participated in the consecration of Gene Robinson asking among other things for examples of the scientific literature they found convincing in coming to their decision to risk the unity of the church over this innovation. There has been no answer. I have likewise had an open challenge on my blog for the citation of an article in a peer reviewed scientific journal which argued that same-sex attraction could be understood in terms of simple biological determinism. There has been no answer, though many attacks for posing the issue. Many who are proponents of the same-sex agenda regard the asking of such questions as an example of hostile homophobia. It may be possible to describe a sort of centrist geography where the issue of same-sex attraction could be discussed by faithful members of the church with different convictions. In this country I do not see more than a handful of people in this category. The actual facts on the ground are a massive majority in the bishops and clergy (the laity are clearly more conservative but not empowered despite posturing about a democratic church) who are enthusiastically pushing for what they consider the Gospel ministry of full inclusion and a small minority who are fighting a rear guard action against the new regime.

The overwhelming reality which must be taken into consideration in order to understand the American scene is that the dispute is not primarily about the proper theological response to same-sex attraction. It is about the nature of the catholic faith. It is very hard to explain this to those who are not living in this country. TEC has not changed its formularies. The Creeds are still recited in the liturgies Sunday after Sunday. The form is there but in a very massive way the Spirit is not. I think there is a real difference here between the English and American scene. You have in England with your tradition of scholar bishops (which we once had and lost) and with the gravitas of the great Anglican theological faculties at Oxford, Cambridge, Kings and Durham, to mention a few, a kind of theological ballast that the American church does not have. Our boat has tilted to the winds of the age to such a degree that its decks are awash. You have too much ballast for this to easily happen though the example ought to be a cautionary tale.

The fight here is no longer primarily about same-sex attraction. The Gay agenda is a done deal and irreversible in the American Church. The fight here is about whether there is any authority, scriptural, traditional, ecclesial, even scientific that trumps the new idol of experience. It is widely thought here that the scriptures are intriguing cultural artifacts of the religious experience of time bound cultures but certainly nothing more than clues to how contemporary people might work out and recreate their own religion. Increasingly it has become clear that the majority who do indeed embrace a new spirit based and experienced based religion are not able to tolerate traditionalists in their midst. Religion is seen by the majority as primarily about “radical hospitality” and “inclusion” and “liberation.” Traditionalists are seen as contemporary equivalents of slave holders and betrayers of the central tenets of the new religion. I find it very hard to make a case on the basis of the revisionist theology as I understand it for the inclusion of traditionalists. Slave holders can be tolerated for strategic reasons but not for moral or theological reasons. We perhaps can be allowed as long as we do not try to extend our influence.

In this country people on both sides of the dispute are really fed up. The revisionists are really fed up with the inability of traditionalists to get with the program and the traditionalists are really fed up with the real persecution and marginalization that has become their lot. There have never been more than perhaps a dozen out of more than a hundred bishops who would allow students to attend Trinity. In the diocese of Pittsburgh it has become clear that the best hope of keeping the flock together is to move toward realignment. Otherwise parishes will continue to bleed members weekly and clergy are caught between watching their parishes fade away or leading them in breaking with TEC.  

It is certainly possible to describe an ecclesial landscape in which there is a large middle ground between extremes. In reality that middle ground does not exist in this country. In my view there can be a real place of discussion and engagement in the church over disputed issues if there is a theological consensus that is based on the catholic creeds and the authority of scripture. Establishing such a common ground is I take it the vision of the Windsor Report and the Anglican Covenant. Such a vision has been rejected both explicitly and implicitly by the majority leadership in this country.

The hope for the communion now is that there be a realignment of the Anglican Communion around the covenant that the Windsor Report envisions. In America there will be only a few scattered dioceses and the continuing Anglican bodies of the Common Cause Partnership that will be willing and able to sign on. The covenant process must go forward quickly if the American scene is to be saved from utter chaos.

In Christ,

Leander S. Harding, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Pastoral Theology

Trinity School for Ministry

Ambridge PA

The Episcopal Church House of Bishops Meeting in New Orleans

The Convocation of Anglican Primates in Africa have responded to the report of the Joint Standing Committee of the Anglican Consultative Council and the Anglican Primates or the JSC. The pertinent paragraphs are below.

4. While meeting in Mauritius we received a copy of the report of the Joint Standing Committee (JSC) of the Primates and the Anglican Consultative Council. On first reading we find it to be unsatisfactory. The assurances made are without credibility and its preparation is severely compromised by numerous conflicts of interest. The report itself appears to be a determined effort to find a way for the full inclusion of The Episcopal Church with no attempt at discipline or change from their prior position.

My comment: This is a clear signal these leaders from the Global South who now represent the majority view in the communion will no longer accept artfully contrived language as a solution to the chaos in the Anglican World. They are wanting a demonstration of a good will in meaningful actions.

5. We are convinced that what is at stake in this crisis is the very nature of Anglicanism – to understand it simply in terms of the need for greater inclusivity in the face of changing sexual ethics is a grave mistake. It is not just about sexuality but also about the nature of Christ, the truth of the Gospel and the authority of the Bible. We see a trend that seems to ignore the careful balance of reformed catholicity and missionary endeavor that is our true heritage and replace it with a religion of cultural conformity that offers no transforming power and no eternal hope.

My comment: This statement refuses to accept the position of the TEC and others in the West that the substance of the church’s faith and order is not compromised in the current disputes which are narrowly about pastoral accommodation to evolving views of the nature of same-sex attraction. The ball is in the court of the innovators to prove that this is not so and protestations that no formularies are being changed are inadequate.

6. In our considered opinion, however, there is a possible way forward. The Anglican Communion Covenant is the one way for us to uphold our common heritage of faith while at the same time holding each one of us accountable to those teachings that have defined our life together and also guide us into the future. We therefore propose the following actions:

My comment: This is a reaffirmation of the Windsor Report and a restrained response to the chaos which the actions of TEC has created. The way forward is not by means of some part of the church “throwing out” some other part but by means of a church wide reassertion of that which is essential to its apostolic witness and the opportunity for local churches to define themselves in or out of the Anglican Communion. This is the only way forward I can see and the only one which has been endorsed by the instruments of unity. There is real restraint here by CAPA for they go the extra mile and give all who will including the TEC the chance to determine to join the covenant and opt into the Anglican Communion. TEC would of course have to give assurances and conform its behavior in ways which are inconceivable. It seems clear that there is an anti covenant consensus in TEC.

a. Call a special session of the Primates Meeting. We believe that meeting together is essential if we are prayerfully to allow the Holy Spirit to work through our interactions and bring us to a common mind. We would need to:
i. Review the actual response made by The Episcopal Church – both their words and their actions.
ii. Finalize the Covenant proposal and set a timetable for ratification by individual provinces.

My comment: The cost of these endless meetings is to be regretted but this does seem a practical and necessary proposal for moving the covenant process forward.

b. Postpone current plans for the Lambeth Conference. We recognize that such an action will be costly, however, we believe that the alternative – a divided conference with several provinces unable to participate and hundreds of bishops absent would be much more costly to our life and witness. It would bring an end to the Communion, as we know it. Postponement will accomplish the following:
i. Allow the current tensions to subside and leave room for the hard work of reconciliation that must be done.
ii. Ensure that those invited to the Lambeth Conference have already endorsed the Covenant and so can come together as witness to our common faith.

My comment: This is meet and right. The ABC has been committed to a vision of getting as many people around the table as possible at the next Lambeth in the hopes of some new understanding emerging. That is a vain hope. If Lambeth is held as the ABC currently envisions it will be primarily a Western affair and be the visible expression of a broken and diminished communion. It will be a very bitter pill to swallow for the ABC but he should now accede to this suggestion by CAPA. A Lambeth that is called on the basis of acceptance of an Anglican Covenant will be able to draw American bishops including perhaps some still in The Episcopal Church. Such a conference could be indeed an instrument of unity. A conference called on any other basis will be a pointless exercise in disunity and will draw far fewer bishops from across the Anglican world than a conference drawn on the basis of Windsor compliance and Covenant endorsement. It is now clear that only a Lambeth drawn on the basis of a common covenant can be a truly inclusive and world wide Anglican conference.

7. We make these proposals in good faith believing that they provide an opportunity for us to reunite the Communion consistent with our common heritage and give us a way forward. We also stand ready to work with the various instruments of the Communion to ensure their success.

My comment: This is a cautious and gracious statement indicating continuing respect for the office of the ABC and the hope that he will yet use his office for the greater good of the whole communion and a signal of willingness to follow the leadership of the ABC in bringing to reality an Anglican Covenant and the mending of the tear in the fabric of the communion. It is also a signal that there is still patience with the Anglican Consultative Council in spite of its consistently disappointing behavior in the crisis. I can easily imagine more radical reactions from the frustrated bishops of the Global South. There is a real spirit of walking the extra mile here.

8. We are very much aware of the plight of faithful Anglicans in North America during these difficult times. We assure them of our prayers, support and full recognition until the underlying concerns are fully resolved.

My comment:

This is reassurance that CAPA bishops will continue to provide pastoral oversight for American congregations and dioceses but there is a signal that this is an interim arrangement and a signal that the ad hoc and emergency arrangements need to be regularized in a common North American jurisdiction and which looks forward to an end to these ad hoc arrangements by different African bishops.

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.

Especially disappointing is the refusal to consult with the dissenting bishops to arrive at a scheme for alternative oversight that would be acceptable to them. Rather than offering another take or leave it plan an invitation to the dissenting dioceses to put forward a plan of their own would have communicated some Christian charity. The majority in the HOB seems to perfect the art of being poor winners.

The resolution does empower the presiding bishop to consult with the primates on a plan but there is no good faith gesture in the report that gives ground for hope of a real negotiation. I am very sorry that Bishop Howe’s plan was not given greater consideration.

The HOB has clarified that it commits itself not to give consents to another election like Gene Robinson. It continues to claim that encouraging local option for same sex blessings shouldn’t be communion breaking as long as “public rites” are not authorized. This seems to me to be a claim that we should be able to violate our own rules as long as we do it quietly. I can’t imagine the primates buying it.

In sum the document brings the communion closer to schism. If Rowan Williams does not now disassociate himself from the American church leadership and its intransigence he will become irrelevant as a force for keeping the communion together and the break between the Global South and the rest of the communion will be accelerated.