Rev’d Dr. Leander Harding

And when we see–as we do a multiplicity of bodies, each claiming to be a fellowship based upon the common sharing the Holy Spirit, yet denying any binding obligations towards on antoerh, and apparently without any sense of shame about such a situation, and sometimes even proud of it, must we not say bluntly: ‘Brethren, you decieve yourselves. This fissiparation, this proliferation of mutually irresponsible sects, is not a work of the Spirit but of flesh. In your emphasis upon the primacy of the Spirit, and upon the fact that the Church is intended to be a Spirit-filled fellowship in which the Spirit’s gifts are known and enjoyed and used for the edification of the Church and for witness to the world, you are right. But you are wrong in severing the Spirit fro the body, in forgetting that as there is one Spirit so there is one body, and that the first and most excellent fruit of the Spirit is the charity which beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, and is glad to suffer for His body’s sake, which is the Church.

Lesslie Newbigin in The Household of God

Grace and the Governor of South Carolina
By Leander S. Harding

A while back I wrote a little piece on my blog about how important Bluegrass and Gospel songs were to me. One of my friends read the piece. My friend summers in a community with a famous Christian retreat center and can hear the hymns every day, which my friend deeply enjoys except for Amazing Grace which is not a favorite because of the line, “saved a wretch like me.” My friend says this line ” is kind of a downer.” It is a common reaction and especially among many of us who have been manipulated as children by parents and religious leaders who know how to give guilt, the gift that keeps on giving. Particularly in the mainline churches there has been for several decades a move away from phrases such as “a wretch like me,” or the words from the old Book of Common Prayer, “we are miserable sinners and there is no health in us.”

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Carl Braaten is one of the most distinquished theologians working in English. With Robert Jenson he founded the Center for Evangelical and Catholic Theology and the indispensible journal Pro Ecclessia . Here he writes an open letter to the presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America about the theology developed to support innovations in sexual ethics in that church.  In a brief span Braaten captures the theological crisis in Mainline American Christianity.

A Sermon preached by the Rev. Leander S. Harding, Ph.D. June 7, 2009

In the name of God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen.

You see that I have a visual aid this morning. This is the famous Rublev icon of the Holy Trinity. You can go to Google Images and type in Rublev Icon and also search for more in-depth information than I can give this morning. We’re talking about the Holy Trinity this morning. The color is white, which is the color of feasts in the church year. We’ve had some big feasts, the Feast of Easter which is the celebration of the Resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Feast of Pentecost last Sunday, which is the feast of the Holy Spirit. The disciples were gathered and the Holy Spirit descended upon them, like flames of fire upon their heads. Jesus said, “It is good for you that I go so that the Spirit, the Comforter, the Paraclete, the Companion will come and lead you into all truth.”

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Reflections On The Emerging Church
After The Trinity Ancient Wisdom-Anglican Futures Conference
By The Rev. Leander S. Harding, Ph.D.

We just had a really stimulating conference here at Trinity School for Ministry in Ambridge PA on the relationship between what is called The Emerging Church and the Great Tradition and what role Anglicanism plays now and could play in the future with this new movement in the church. The Emergent Church is a term that characterizes a wide spectrum of Christians and churches often composed of young adults that are seeking an “ancient-future” way of being the church. These young Christians often come out of Evangelical and Pentecostal circles, though there are refugees from the Mainline Churches as well, and they are looking for something more significant than the trendy consumerist relevance that has characterized many of the approaches to reaching a secularized society in the Twentieth Century. It is a very disparate movement and includes examples that resonate deeply with the orthodoxy of the ages and other examples that seem, as one of the conference presenters George Sumner said, the latest installment in the long book of Gnosticism. (In fact a book I would recommend for self described emergent types is Against the Protestant Gnostics by Phillip J. Lee.)

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This is something that I wrote shortly after I came to Trinity. I am posting it because I keep the Feast of Pentecost as the anniversary of my ordination and this piece tells the story of that day.

Ontology vs Function

In the Church, Ministry and Sacraments class at Trinity we spent one three hour session on the theology of ordination. The hoary question of whether ordination is a functional reality or an ontological reality was hotly debated by the students with surprisingly strong feelings on both sides. Strong Evangelicals hear the language of ontological change as a claim to a superior and super-holy status with magical powers. It sounds superstitious and magical and the worst sort of works righteousness to them. The more Catholic minded hear the functional language as a denial of any real change made in the individual by the power of the sacrament and as an understanding of the ordained ministry that has no way of comprehending the mystical dimension of holy order. Functional language sounds secular and earthbound in Catholic ears.

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The Priesthood and SacrificeSermon Preached at the Ordination of John Mason Lock
At All Soul’s Episcopal Church, Oklahoma City
May 9, 2009

In the name of God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen

I’m Fr. Leander Harding, and I’m very grateful to be here today. I was one of John’s teachers at Trinity School for Ministry in Ambridge. I am very grateful to the bishop, and to Father Bright, and to John for inviting me to be a part of this wonderful day today, this day that comes after a long period of preparation. I want to talk this morning about an aspect of the priesthood; I want to talk about how it is that the priest offers sacrifice.

This is a controversy that is in the church. Should we even have priests in the church? Should we call them priests? This is something that is disputed in the church. There has been a tremendous ambivalence about the priesthood the whole time that I’ve been ordained. It’s understandable that there should be somewhat of an ambivalence and a hostility towards the priesthood outside of the church, but the whole time that I’ve been ordained, there’s been a kind of crisis of identity and ambivalence about the priesthood within the church. And sometimes that masquerades as a concern for Reformation theology, and sometimes it masquerades as a concern for egalitarianism: we don’t want to have something that isn’t democratic enough. I think mostly it’s just a camouflage for an allergy to the supernatural.

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The grinding down of the family is not merely the result of opting for a contractarian model but of inviting the state to take control of marriage in the name of individual freedom. Freedom, of course, is just what is being lost, as the neo-liberal state evolves its tyrannical power by hollowing out a place for itself inside the husk of human-rights discourse. The advent of same-sex marriage makes bastards of us all, and as a nation of bastards we are all wards of the state.

How so? The change in definition uncouples marriage from procreation. From now on, then, no one will be born a bastard and everyone will be born a bastard. From now on, the connection between biological parenthood and legal parenthood will be supported by no institution. The claims of blood will not have the same standing at law that they once did. Natural relationships will not be primary at law; legal constructs will take their place. . . Everyone, for legal purposes, will be first of all a ward of the state, and the state will become our primary community, as Rousseau intended it to.

Douglas Farrow in Nation of Bastards: Essays on the end of marriage