Rev’d Dr. Leander Harding

I was one of the priests administering ashes today in chapel at the school. I also gave out the bread at communion. I will be doing the same in a local parish tonight. There are things that I do in the priesthood that routinely break my heart. Person after person comes and quietly submits to having ashes imposed on their forehead and takes away with them these words, “Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return.” It seems to me that each person comes wrapped in their own death, in the mortality we all bear and we choose at least in this moment not to flee and wrapped also in the dying that is unique to their particular life. It is part of pastoral ministry even in a school that you inevitably know something of the particular dying each person brings. Each one brings perhaps a long struggle with a chronic illness, a losing battle with persistent depression, a sick child, the recent loss of a parent, the shame of constant defeat in the battle with a besetting sin. I don’t know the whole story but enough of each one that my heart is pierced through with the beauty of their faithful burden-bearing and their hope that Christ will touch, forgive and heal. I have much the same perception and the same feeling each time I administer the bread and wine at Holy Communion.

I have become more and more suspicious of the concept of the nominal Christian. Our parish churches are supposed to be full of nominal Christians who are just going through the motions, of half-believers who are relying on their good works and who have not really surrendered to Christ and accepted the Gospel. In any parish church there are a few real apostates, and a few real scoffers and perhaps a few who genuinely hate God. Their numbers are routinely exaggerated. Most of the people who come to the church Sunday by Sunday know they are dying and are placing their hope in Christ. It may be an inarticulate hope, it may be a confused hope. Often there are huge brambles of misunderstanding that must be cleared away before the whole power of the good news can come in upon them. Often there is real darkness into which the light of Christ has not yet come and which cries out for a light-bearer. Yet, they come. When Jesus saw such as these gathered in their multitudes on the hill side, the sight provoked in him not contempt for the nominal but compassion, “for they were like sheep without a shepherd.”

I give thanks to God for those who come to have ashes put on their foreheads today even if they don’t really know why they come, even if they cannot give an account of the hope that is in them. I give thanks to God who in Christ draws all people to himself and for his drawing power in the liturgy of the church and I pray for the grace to communicate the living Christ to hearts and minds as I put the living bread in outstretched hands.

Thoughts on the Primates Statement from Alexandria and The Archbishop of Canterbury’s Address to Synod

By The Rev. Dr. Leander S. Harding

I have been reading the communiqué of the Primates from their meeting in Alexandria and other documents that relate to this meeting including the Windsor Continuation Group and the documents published by Archbishop Akinola. Below are some reactions in no particular order.

1. The Anglican Communion is in a state of grave crisis and is broken in a way that is very resistant to reconciliation. The church is broken de facto both within provinces and between provinces. There is a sense of the bizarre and of unreality about discussions that view schism as something that approaches but has not yet come. (The next General Convention of The Episcopal Church may clarify this reality in a stunning way.) The church at all levels is torn and the question now is what degree of reconciliation is possible and what will the de jure structures of a reconciled communion look like. It is a positive development that there is a growing recognition that the current instruments of communion are not adequate to maintain the faith, order and unity of a world-wide church. The emphasis on autonomy by the local provinces across the theological spectrum is hard to square with mutual submission in the Body of Christ especially when issues arise that scandalize large portions of the faithful.
   

    

2. The Anglican Covenant process is still a key ingredient in the rebuilding and renewal of a world-wide Anglican Communion. It is by its nature and ought to be a slow, methodical process that is as Bishop Wright has suggested more like fireproofing a building than fighting the fire. The Covenant will take some years to come to a final form and be widely accepted. Along with this work is the necessary work of strengthening the instruments of communion. All this begs the question of what shall be done in the meantime to fight the fire and limit the damage so that there may be something upon which to rebuild.
   

    

3. All of the suggestions for pastoral care of the alienated orthodox in North America have been too little and too late. The main defect of these proposals is that they are developed without consulting the very people they are supposed to help and are promulgated without a clear signal that those to whom they are supposed to offer relief, see their needs adequately met.
   

    

4. There is something like an allergy in many places in the Anglican Communion to the function of adjudication. I like very much the way in which the Covenant is designed to give member churches a chance to define themselves in or out but surely something is being adjudicated by that process. The Windsor Continuation Group engages in tortuous language to avoid any hint of judicial action and speaks instead of “consequences” and “thinning of communion.” Adjudication and mediation are often seen as stark alternatives with mediation being the Christian approach and adjudication being somehow a failure. It is not sufficiently appreciated that often mediation can only proceed within the context of an adjudication. It is often when disputants realize that a definitive judgment is about to be given that they mediate their dispute on the court house steps. No less an irenic figure than the great ecumenist and missionary theologian Lesslie Newbigin said that the church must have the ability to identify and expel false teachers or else it is no church. I do not see how unity can be maintained at any level of the church without an appreciation of the necessity of adjudication and the willingness to enforce the stated discipline of the church. The enforcing of such broad boundaries creates the crucible in which meaningful mediation can take place. The allergy to adjudication particulary to the adjudication of doctrine is one of the things which is making the dispute more hostile and intense and driving people to seek relief in the courts because there is no will to give a godly judgment in the church.
   

    

5. The Archbishop of Canterbury’s address to General Synod describes the experience of the Bible Study at the Primates meeting in exactly opposite terms of those used by Archbishops Venables and Orombi. Rowan Williams says that there was a common experience that the other side is still recognizable as Christians attempting to listen to the Lord. Venables and Orombi in their interview on Anglican TV were encouraged that the real differences between Christianity and that “which is not Christianity,” were being brought out into the open so that it could be recognized by all that the Gospel itself was in dispute and so the dispute could move to that level.
   

    

6. There is a calmer atmosphere that has settled on the disputes as both sides recognize that essentially irreversible actions have been taken with the embrace of the new teaching on sexuality on one side and the creation of new ecclesial realities on the other. It is significant that both Windsor Continuation and the Primates and the ABC in his address to synod speak of realities which “will not go away.” Both the Primates and WCG cautiously leave the door open for future endorsement of a new province in North America. I think it is right that the ACNA should work through the existing process for the admission of a new province.
   

    

7. The suggestion for professionally assisted mediation between the ACNA and other orthodox entities such as The Communion Partners churches and dioceses is poignant but necessary. The ministry of reconciliation is the church’s ministry and especially the ministry of its bishops. There is a failure to be grieved here. By all means bring in experts. One hopes they will be recognizably Christian in their approach. That said it is important that those who stand for orthodoxy Anglicanism in North America find a way toward as much solidarity as possible and I think all parties should enter into these negotiations in good faith. I do believe that missionary movements should exercise restraint in the planting of new congregations in orthodox dioceses still in communion with TEC. There needs to be a greater effort to avoid destructive competition in the missionary endeavors of orthodox North American Anglicans. It is however not proselytizing when a group of people in disgust and revulsion at what they regard as the betrayal of the faith by their leaders rise up and leave their parish or diocese and petition an orthodox body for pastoral care and episcope. There is an irony here when much is made of the role of the laity in Anglican polity and the reality of the laity voting with their feet is dismissed and marginalized. There continues to appear to be a lack of understanding of the grass roots nature of what is happening in North America among many of the leaders of the communion.
   

    

8. The WCG resurfaces the idea of a kind of ecclesiological escrow where dissident orthodox groups could find pastoral care and oversight and a measure of recognition in the communion while the covenant process is working itself out. This was rejected by many orthodox when it was initially proposed because it seemed to assume that dioceses such as Fort Worth and Pittsburgh would ultimately be returned to the provinces from which they came and this scheme was seen by the orthodox as patronizing and demeaning. The proposal deserves another look. A provisional structure with the ultimate aim of reconciliation and reintegration is a good idea and could be made credible if the future toward which it looked was not a return to the status quo but the future of a renewed world-wide communion organized around a biblical and apostolic covenant which sets clear boundaries for member churches. Clearly there are some dioceses in TEC as it stands that will not want to belong to such a communion and others that will, and some provisional structure which helps keep as much of the church together as possible until that day should be given a serious hearing. I nominate George Carey or Michael Nazir Ali to administer such an interim judicatory.
   

    

9. There is insufficient face to face, one to one, ministry taking place in the midst of this crisis and a corresponding over-reliance on committees and meetings. Policy statements are important, the creating of workable structures is important but there needs to be more personal ministry by Archbishop of Canterbury and members of his team that takes place alongside these efforts. I am sure there is some going on behind the scenes but not in my view enough.
   

    

10. Ecumenical observers and consultants should be routinely invited to participate in the councils of Anglicans as they attempt to work through this crisis. Part of fireproofing the house for the future will be more robust ecumenical relationships.
    

Homily for the Morning Office, January 17, 2009

Mere Anglicanism, Charleston SC

By the Chaplain, The Rev. Dr. Leander S. Harding

The Old Testament lesson this morning is from the beginning of Chapter 43 of Isaiah. Chapter 42 has been a chapter of God’s judgment upon the idols and upon Israel for following the idols. The purpose of judgment in the Bible is never simply condemnation. The purpose of judgment is that the people might turn and be saved. Eugene Peterson, the great spiritual writer and interpreter of the Bible, paraphrases the end of Chapter 42 thus; “Their whole world collapsed but they still did not get it, their life is in ruins but they didn’t take it to heart.”

So we come to the reading this morning, “But now thus says the Lord. . .Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name and you are mine.” There then comes a description of how God is gathering His people who have been divided and scattered. Peterson puts it, “Don’t be afraid. I will round up all your scattered children.”

God then sets up a tribunal. This is my paraphrase, “Bring the doubters and idolaters, the people who doubt that God lives and that He intervenes in the lives of His people. Let them assemble and let them explain both the judgment and the redemption, both the exile and the return. Let them give their witness. But you Israel whose world has collapsed because you have abandoned me and yet whom I have not abandoned, whom I rescue and whom I redeem, you are my witnesses. I am the Lord and beside me is no savior.”

The church is always in the process of retracing the history and experience of Israel. Certainly Peterson’s paraphrase of Isaiah seems an apt description of much of the church life in the old Christendom and apt to our corner of the Anglican world. “Their whole world collapsed and they didn’t take it to heart.” The story of a great deal of the church is the story of fracturing, division and scattering. Taken case by case, congregation by congregation, diocese by diocese, these divisions involve difficult and even agonizing decisions of witness and conscience. But from another perspective it is Israel divided and persecuted and exiled on account of her faithlessness. What is this except God’s doing? What is this except the hand of His judgment upon us?

What I said yesterday, I repeat again this morning. Hidden within the word of God’s judgment is a word of grace, mercy and salvation. The Lord casts down and He raises up that we might know and trust Him and witness that He alone saves.

The Church is broken and scattered. Even where there is unity in a congregation or a diocese it is a unity that is poignantly in the face of great loss. Yet we hear this morning that God gathers again those who have been scattered. He counts them as of great price and He seeks them out to bring them home. As we are knowing the breakup of the church, we are also seeing a new gathering of the church appear. God is bringing together His people in new ways. Something is happening of which this conference with its representation from all the pieces of divided Anglicanism in North America is perhaps a witness. Something is happening which moves in advance of institutional structures of the church and in advance of denominational frontiers, something fueled by the longing of a chastened people to turn back and to turn home.

God chastens His church and He restores it and the chastening no less than the restoration is the work of His love and part of the process whereby He makes us His witnesses and brings us to the point where we can confess that He alone is Holy, He alone is the Lord and that there is salvation in no other. So let this be. Amen.

Homily for the Morning Office at Mere Anglicanism

Charleston, South Carolina, January 16, 2009

By the Chaplain, The Rev. Dr. Leander S. Harding

Text: Isaiah 42: 10-17. “They shall be turned back, they shall be greatly ashamed, that trust in graven images, that say to the molten images, Ye are our gods.”

    The Bible records the history of the people of Israel as a contest between the one true and living God and the idols, the false gods, for the love and worship of God’s people. Will they remember Him who is the God their fathers, of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, who delivered them with a mighty and outstretched hand and who is long-suffering and abounding in love, steadfast in mercy? Will they render him worship and obedience? Or will they be unfaithful to God and go whoring after the idols, in particular the fertility gods of the land? Inevitably they do forget the Lord their God and go after the idols. Then the drama is will they return or will they be destroyed.

    Their drama is our drama. The drama of the Old Israel is the drama of the new Israel as well. God is ever calling His people away from their idols and calling them home. If for no other reason than this the church must be simper reformandi, always reforming.

    In the light of the teaching of the Bible I define the idols in this way; the idols are gods we make with our own hands to serve our own purposes. It is characteristic of idols that they promise much and deliver little, that they require more and more and return less and less, that they always in the end demand human blood and starting with the blood of children.

    We must as faithful witnesses of Jesus Christ seek ways to communicate the good news of the Gospel in a language understood of the people. We must seek to connect in a winsome way with our times and our culture. It is always tempting therefore to succumb to the sin of Aaron and give the people the god they crave, the particular form of the golden calf demanded at the moment, a god who approves what they approve and cherishes what they cherish. Thereby we collude with them in their self-destruction and are at the front of the lemming like line marching to oblivion.

    Theology which makes as an explicit principle that god must be re-imagined for each new generation makes of idolatry a positive principle. But having orthodoxy as a theological principle is only protection against the crudest forms of the temptation to idolatry. There are idolatries enough to go around.

    Here this morning the prophet speaks God judgment on His people in their idol worship. “They shall be greatly ashamed.” Our idols will be shown to be the vain work of our own hands that lead us and our children to ruin and as always in the Bible because it is the Word of God and thus always a Word of love there is hidden in this word of judgment a word of grace, hope and salvation. “They shall be turned back.”

    Let us pray. Lord give us the grace to see how and where we are trading your revelation for an idol of our own making. Lift the scales from our eyes that we might see clearly the destruction of self and the corruption of others that idol making entails. Let us be ashamed. Turn us back that we might be saved. Bring us home at last. Amen.

A Lesson in Christian Spirituality is a guest essay by The Rev. Dr. David Scott formerly professor of systematic theology and ethics at VTS. David is an old friend and one of the founders of Scholarly Engagement With Anglican Doctrine which has morphed into Mere Anglicanism.

See Ben Stein’s Movie Expelled

I didn’t see this movie when it was in the theaters but I ordered it from Netflix. I only know Ben Stein as a TV personality. I knew he was witty, thoughtful and funny but I didn’t expect such a powerful and provocative presentation of the debate around Intelligent Design. By all means see this movie if you haven’t seen it. It would make an excellent discussion piece for a youth group or an adult education event in a parish. Stein does a wonderful job of bringing out the prejudice of scientism masquerading as science. The most poignant and disturbing aspect of this brilliantly edited piece is the way in which Stein brings out the subtext of anti-Semitism lurking beneath the surface of the atheism of Richard Dawkins. There is an especially chilling scene in which Richard Dawkins is reading from his book, The God Delusion, and describing his take on the God of the Old Testament. This scene of vitriol, and it is the crudest vitriol, being read out by the urbane but contemptuous Dawkins literally in the face of a Jewish man who just a few moments ago in the film had been exploring with German scholars the connection between social Darwinism and the racial theories of the Nazis provides the most eloquent and damning commentary without a word of protest being said by Stein in the interview. One of the most appealing aspects of this documentary is the way in which it trusts the intelligence of the audience. It is a must see.

My book on the theology and psychology of childhood has just been published by YTC press in England.

Reverence for the Heart of the Child

and here in the us

US source

Below is the back cover blurb and a longer description of the work.

Reverence for the Heart of the Child

By

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

Are children little angels or little devils, or are they like their parents a little of each? Must they go through a definite moment of conversion or can they grow up always knowing themselves to be Christian? How do theological ideas about human nature, sin and salvation affect how parents see and treat children? Starting with Horace Bushnell’s classic and controversial 19^th century study, Christian Nurture, Leander Harding brings the discussion up to date with the help of insights from contemporary psychoanalytic thought and Family Systems Theory. Included are practical suggestions for parents and parishes.

In the middle of the nineteenth century Christianity in New England was polarized between Unitarians and Calvinists. At the heart of the controversy was an argument over the nature of childhood. Unitarians objected vigorously to the doctrine of Original Sin and saw children as innocents who needed only to have their inherent goodness brought out. Calvinists under the influence of a very severe reading of the doctrine of utter depravity saw the pre-converted child as inherently wicked and thought that the only thing they could do for their children prior to a revival type experience of conversion was to convince them of their wickedness and their need for a new heart. In the midst of this controversy a Congregationalist minister, Horace Bushnell published in 1849, Christian Nurture. This book based on sermons given in his parish church in Hartford, Connecticut became quickly a classic in the field of Christian Education and the theology of childhood.

Bushnell criticized both Unitarians for their “ostrich nurture” referring to the myth of the ostrich sticking its head in the sand and hoping for the best. Bushnell criticized the Calvinists for an approach to child-rearing which damaged both “the personality and piety of your children.” He proposed that children should grow up never knowing themselves to have been otherwise than a Christian as a result of the Christian nurture of their parents and local church. Bushnell saw children neither as little angels or as little demons but as human beings made good in the image of God, fallen and struggling with good and evil in the same way as their parents and with the same capacity to know and respond to the love of God as their parents.

Reverence for the Heart of the Child, by Leander S. Harding is a fundamental rereading of Bushnell’s classic book. It is his thesis that though this book is often quoted it has been the victim of significant misreading. Harding proposes a fresh reading of this classic in the theology of childhood through a careful analysis of the theology of the day and through bringing Bushnell’s original argument into dialogue with contemporary psychology including Family Systems Theory. What emerges is a reading of Bushnell that is not easily categorized as liberal or conservative and which regains the provocative and prophetic voice of the original. Reverence for the Heart of the Child takes the lessons learned from Bushnell and uses them to critique contemporary Christian approaches to childrearing and Christian Education and ends with practical suggestions for parents and pastors.

The Rev. Leander S. Harding, Ph.D. is an Episcopal priest and Associate Professor of Pastoral Theology at Trinity School for Ministry in Ambridge, Pennsylvania. He has twenty five years of parish experience and is a trainer in the Godly Play movement. Many of his writings can be found at his blog, leanderharding.com/blog.

Response to the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Second Lambeth Presidential Address

By

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

Rowan Williams has just made a very courageous second presidential address to the Lambeth conference. He has tried to put in his own words what traditionalists hope to be heard saying and what those standing for the innovations hope to be heard saying. This sort of thing is very basic pastoral work and many pastors will immediately recognize a larger version of their own role of being a mediator and peace maker in family and parish life. His paraphrasing of the traditionalist and revisionist positions is very articulate. He tries to put both at their best and challenges both sides to an act of imagination and charity that could allow the communion to go forward. He defines his own position in favor of a covenant with strengthened instruments of communion. There is much to admire in this statement and especially so as it comes from a man under immense pressure. I hope that it will have a major impact and influence on the final outcome of the conference.

I have my disappointments with the statement as well. One cannot do everything in a short statement but the terms of debate about homosexuality as presented in popular culture are taken on without comment or critique. The statement assumes that there is a debate between traditionalists and revisionists about how to respond to “gay” and “lesbian” Christians. Rowan Williams is accepting that homosexuality is a descriptor of human identity in the same way as gender or race is. This is a disputed question both scientifically and theologically, and the constant assumption that the theological dispute is a dispute about how to deal appropriately with the same facts confuses things. There is also a dispute about what the facts are.

There is another subtle subtext to this message. The Archbishop has implicitly described the dispute as a North vs South dispute. The imaginary conversation sounds like a conversation between TEC and the African churches. There is an implication that Africans and others in the global South are in a pre-critical cultural context and that those in the global North are dealing with the complexity of a post-critical situation with a more enlightened and nuanced understanding of homosexuality. This is inaccurate and an oversimplification. Among other things it misses the massive disagreement and division in North America and fails to register the sophistication of the scientific and theological objections to the homosexual agenda in the church that cuts across the global North-South divide. The Archbishop’s statement sadly implies that all who resist the homosexual agenda in the church have not engaged seriously the cultural and scientific issues.

A final disappointment is the Archbishop’s failure to grasp the degree to which in North America and among North Americans the dispute is far deeper than over the proper response to homosexuality. The uniqueness and divinity of Christ are very much at play in our setting. The Archbishop is right that it is easy to judge too sweepingly and too harshly but his statement does not really register the worry that many traditionalists have in North America about fidelity to basic Christian doctrine on the part of the leaders of their churches. It is not the case that traditionalists are making judgments on the basis of the homosexual question alone. Statements by key leaders in the Episcopal Church contradict the most basic teachings of the faith including the divinity and resurrection of Jesus Christ. What is even more worrying is the use of the traditional language of faith with a very different intention and meaning by many of our leaders. I think traditionalists in North America would like this concern to be truly heard by the Archbishop and the Lambeth meeting and not implicitly dismissed as prejudiced or over-reaction.