Reclaiming the E-Word and Seizing the Episcopal Moment

I agree with Becky and Wave about the "e-word". Just because some people view all things evangelical as negative doesn't mean we should shy away from using the word in its original meaning. (It irritates me when churches decided to abandon a word because it gets a negative connotation based on an incorrect definition - like when some Protestant churches change "catholic" to "Christian" in the creed.) And it's true that evangelism encompasses so much more than going door to door trying to proselytize.

The Episcopal Church I attend has long called itself an evangelical church and doesn't shy away from using the word. Of course, it's a pretty orthodox church so it's not scared of being rejected by people who don't associate the word evangelical with positive things.

I am a Catholic who feels tremendous pride in the Episcopal Church's witness with regard to gay people in their denomination. You are courageous people, and I believe you are on the right side of both history and Christianity. God bless you all.

Michael

It's great to hear that the Episcopal Church, or at least parts of it, are prepared to Evangelize. Something that has been lost with regard to the whole "gay" thing though is a more basic question. Evangelize, but evangelize what? What is the message? To what extent is scripture authoritative? THAT is the real beef people have with today's TEC.

Good deeds are excellent; however, a simple "go do good" message is not really the Gospel. There is a time to speak, and a time to act. I know Episcopalians have historically been caricatured as being mushy on doctrinal issues, but there is a point where mushiness becomes nothingness. Hopefully there can be (or has been) already a clear statement about what they consider to be fundamentals of doctrine that they are trying to evangelize.

Those are decent questions and I was asking myself similar ones when I read the document above by Revs. Ward and Schell. There is much discussion about reforming TEC church structures and how leaders are selected. They talk about the need for innovation, "changing how we do church" and raising up "emergent" leaders. I suppose that is all good - Jesus' teachings need to be made relevant for people - but the problems TEC has faces aren't just structural. I've been to several Episcopal churches over the years and they seemed more like senior citizen social clubs than places where a community of Christians meet to worship their Lord and Savior. Where's the life-changing passion? Thankfully I found an Anglican church that has all the history, liturgy and reverence for worship that TEC has but also the passion for spreading the gospel.

There's also the problem that if you move too far away from the top-down structure that this will contribute to the mushiness of the doctrine. I'm hopeful TEC can go through a period of reform and renewal. And hopefully it's more than just repackaging and using hip phrases and words.

"It's great to hear that the Episcopal Church, or at least parts of it, are prepared to Evangelize. Something that has been lost with regard to the whole "gay" thing though is a more basic question. Evangelize, but evangelize what? What is the message? To what extent is scripture authoritative? THAT is the real beef people have with today's TEC."

Scripture is authoritative. It's that people interpret Scripture in different ways. People (Human beings, not God) have used Scripture to try and show us that slavery is OK, that Blacks are accursed as "the children of Ham" and so therefore it's OK to enslave them, that women are inferior and should remain subordinate to men. And also to try and characterize the expression of love that Gays show between each other as "an abomination," "unnatural," etc.

The Episcopal Church has come out clear with how we interpret our Christian faith. For many years, we wavered around, trying to please all (for "unity's" sake) and ended up with pleasing no one. This year, we have stopped trying to please everyone and instead have come out on the side of justice for those human beings held to be outcasts by other human beings.

If others condemn us for holding up the ideal of justice, then that is their choice. As Jesus has told us, we will bless those who curse us.

I think Ngchen was trying to look beyond the specific issue of homosexual clergy and get at larger, broader questions about what the Episcopal Church believes. It's clear that TEC didn't have a problem with former Bishop Spong's beliefs, which were considered heretical by most Christians and strongly condemned by many Episcopalians. But there seemed to be a dispute within TEC whether or not he could serve as a Bishop. I think it's this broader mushiness, and not the specific gay clergy issue, that causes a lot of the problems.

You are correct in that the Episcopal Church has suffered from "mushiness" for a while. They got quite "mushy" back when women were first ordained. Now the ordination of women is part of Canon Law. Though there are still one or two dioceses that refuse to recognize or take communion from women priests -- though I think these dioceses are joining in with the new "'American Anglican" church that specifically bars women bishops (though it allows women priests, at least for now).

The Epsicopal church suffered from some of this "mushiness" over the Gay issue when, on one hand, it acknowledged one of the official Anglican Communion statements about homosexuality, but on the other hand, looked in the other direction when Gay priests were ordained. Two years ago, the Episcopal church agreed to a "moritorium" on ordaining Gay bishops or conducting blessing ceremonies (not marriages) on same-gender couples. And they maintained their general "mushiness" when Bishop Robinson was treated like an Untouchable at the lastest Lambeth Conference, when alone among Anglican bishops, he was not allowed into the conference.

I thought for sure that the same sort of "mushiness" would continue i.e. more "study commissions" while Gays would still be officially not allowed. But with our new Presiding Bishop, the "mushiness" has gone, replaced by clear statements asserting justice and inclusion.

Now it's the Anglican Communion and the Archibishop of Canturbury (Rowan Williams) who are now going into a certain amount of "mushiness." Williams and his colleagues might do what they have never done before and recognize two different churches within the same country. Though they just might end up throwing us (Episcopalians) out of the Anglican Communion -- and our bishops were well aware of this possibility and yet they stood up for justice nevertheless.

Here are just a few quotes attributed to Episcopalian leaders. You be the judge.(Info comes from Equipping the Saints, an Educational Resource of the American Anglican Council. There are plenty more than these)

In response to Jesus saying I am the way, the truth and the life...

*" Christians understand that Jesus is the route to God...that is not to say that Muslims, or Sikhs, or Jains, come to God in a radically different way. They come to God through....human experience of the divine....Hindus and people of other faith traditioins approach God through...their own cultural contexts; they relate to God, they experience God in human relationships, as well as ones that transcend human relationships" (goes on to affirm that other religions have parallel realities in other cultures and languages)
-Presiding Bishop Katherine Jefforts Schori, interview on NPR's Here and Now in 2006

Salvation

"I would choose to loathe rather than to worship a deity who required the sacrifice of his son.

-The Rt.Rev John Spong, retired bishop of Newark.

Heaven and Hell (in response to a Time magazine interview in 2006)
Is belief in Jesus the only way to Heaven?
"We who practice the Christian tradition understand him as our vehicle to the divine. But for us to assume that God could not act in other ways is, I think, to put God in an awfully small box."
Bishop Jefforts Schori

Who is Jesus?

"I see the pre-Easter Jesus as a Jewish mystic who knew God, and who, as a result, became a healer, wisdom teacher and prophet of the kingdom
of God...but I do not think he proclaimed or taught an extraordinary status for himself....Rather, I see the grand statements about Jesus -- that he is the son of God, the Light of the World and so forth the testimony of the early Christian movement. These are neither objectively true statements about Jesus...to speak of him as the son of God does not mean that he was conceived by God and had no biological human father. Rather, this is the post-Easter conviction of his followers"

Dr. Marcus Borg, Co-Director of Center for Spiritual Development at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral Portland, and formal President of the Anglican Assn. of Biblical Scholars, Washington Post, Dec. 30, 2006

I tried to write some quotes attributed to Episcopal leaders but was booted out because the time had expired. Suffice to say that these leaders, including Bishop Katharine Jefforts Schori, Marcus Borg and others, expressed such views as: Jesus is not the only way to God; Jesus is not the son of God; Jesus is not the Light of the World; the Resurrection doesn't need to be an historic event; and a whole slough of other post-modern thinking.

Because of time limitations, I will refer you to Equipping the Saints, published by the American Anglican Council in Nov, 2008. I suspect you could get a copy through www.americananglican.org. (the quotes left me in a daze, then shaking my head. It's a real eye opener.

Wave - I think you're thinking about this too narrowly. "Mushiness", at least when I use the term and how I interpreted it when Ngchen used it, has little to do with the hot button topics of gays and female ordination. There are much deeper theological controversies within TEC. It has more to do with what ando brings up in the quotes above and Schori's recent statements about what she thinks is heresy. One could argue that it's a good thing to have a big tent when it comes to doctrine, but many others will ask "so what exactly is it that Episcopalians believe about Christ and salvation?".

As a long-retired minister of the United Church of Canada, I am proud of how our congregations have accepted gay and lesbian people into our worshiping community - some more easily than others, I admit, but few congregations would show any reluctance to openness in their worshiping assembly. Over 20 years ago we agreed to ordain openly gay and lesbian persons to our ministry. Some congregations struggled, but most agreed with the decision of our General Council.

We have been a service and justice denomination since we began in 1925 and we enjoy the respect of many Canadian churches who don't feel they can take similar stands themselves. Some of the issues which really "hang up" others no longer concern us, and we can go about the ministry to the poor, the sick, the suffering, the troubled. We humbly seek God's blessing on our worship and our daily actions.

WaveTossed,

Thank you for your candor. No, I'm not joking; in fact, I was actually reluctant to mention my friend's situation because I was worried that people would think I was being snide. So let's make it clear, I think we can all agree that incestuous relationships are wrong. Period.

I'll even go one step further. When my friend first shared his feelings with me, I have to admit, I was adamantly opposed. But here's my problem: he doesn't view his relationship as incestuous and, I'm afraid to say, he makes a compelling case. He has no blood ties to her and no legal ties either. She was eighteen years old and a college freshman when he married her mother and in her thirties by the time they divorced. They really only shared the same house when she was home from college over the summers, and he never had any genuine power over her (although she has argued to me on more than one occasion that even if he did, their relationship is actually a way of subverting that dominance/power paradigm).

I struggled with this for a long time, but despite my initial opposition, I had no principled answer to give them, other than my own squeamishness about the word "step-daughter" (by way of full disclosure, I was raised evangelical and some of those things go pretty deep, regardless of how far I sometimes feel I've moved beyond them).

After much soul-searching, I am certain that I don't have the right to stand in their way as they seek to live out their love with one another as consenting adults, even if it might make me a little uncomfortable. Moreover, I'm coming to the realization that justice actually compels me to fight on their behalf. That's why I'm so appreciative of Brian and Becky, whose work has caused me to look in my own heart toward those sociologies of exclusion within my own self that have caused me to judge those around me when I should be offering support.

Thanks for your reply. I feel your own squeamishness. I have the same sorts of squeamishness. I think I would just "let this one go" and let them go on their way.

I would like to comment on the discussion regarding the Episcopal church, characterized as libertarian, exclusive, tolerant. In current theological discussions it seems that tolerance is often regarded as being code for anything goes, and someone characterized as spiritually tolerant is of loose moral and Christian character. As the argument goes, a tolerant Christian is at best confused, at worst, creating their own theology to appease or fit in with the "world", putting political correctness above sound theological truths.
What I don't see much lately, regrettably, is reference to the Gospel narrative itself. It seems that Christ was unwavering in his proclamation of the Kingdom of God to replace the world view where the organized religious hiearchy trumped sprituality with legalistic standards, excluding those that did not measure up to those standards. Christ gave his life to change that oppresive world view. It is sad how little seems to have changed sometimes in 2000 years. Here we are still rangling over legalistic interperetations of His message to determine who is in, and who is out. I would like anyone to show me in the Gospels one word said to have come out of the Lord's mouth promoting standards for those that would come to God. As I read the scriptures he repeatedly taught that the only requirement to be a part of the Kingdom of God was faith. He taught that the two greatest commandments represented all the law and prophets- neither of which had anything to do with who one was or what religion they were. Everything about His life had to do with embracing those considered outcasts by the religious rank and file of his time. Isn't it time that we focused on Christ's message: to serve, to love unconditionally both God and man, to spread the good news, to have faith in the goodness of God and the living food and water of eternal life in the Kingdom that can not be seen, to turn no one away-not even the children. He told us to repent, the Kingdom of God is at hand. He did not tell us to judge, to divide, to separate the wheat from the chaff, to pretend to know what only the Lord, or the Father knows. Not even the Son knows the time of coming, only the Father- and yet we think we can decide who is in and who is out under the guise of scriptural literacy! My hope is that the day will come when Christians stop quibbling about which religion is right and which is wrong, what group is a worse sinner that another, who should be allowed a full membership in the Church and who should not.

I would like to comment on the discussion regarding the Episcopal church, characterized as libertarian, exclusive, tolerant. In current theological discussions it seems that tolerance is often regarded as being code for anything goes, and someone characterized as spiritually tolerant is of loose moral and Christian character. As the argument goes, a tolerant Christian is at best confused, at worst, creating their own theology to appease or fit in with the "world", putting political correctness above sound theological truths.
What I don't see much lately, regrettably, is reference to the Gospel narrative itself. It seems that Christ was unwavering in his proclamation of the Kingdom of God to replace the world view where the organized religious hiearchy trumped sprituality with legalistic standards, excluding those that did not measure up to those standards. Christ gave his life to change that oppresive world view. It is sad how little seems to have changed sometimes in 2000 years. Here we are still rangling over legalistic interperetations of His message to determine who is in, and who is out. I would like anyone to show me in the Gospels one word said to have come out of the Lord's mouth promoting standards for those that would come to God. As I read the scriptures he repeatedly taught that the only requirement to be a part of the Kingdom of God was faith. He taught that the two greatest commandments represented all the law and prophets- neither of which had anything to do with who one was or what religion they were. Everything about His life had to do with embracing those considered outcasts by the religious rank and file of his time. Isn't it time that we focused on Christ's message: to serve, to love unconditionally both God and man, to spread the good news, to have faith in the goodness of God and the living food and water of eternal life in the Kingdom that can not be seen, to turn no one away-not even the children. He told us to repent, the Kingdom of God is at hand. He did not tell us to judge, to divide, to separate the wheat from the chaff, to pretend to know what only the Lord, or the Father knows. Not even the Son knows the time of coming, only the Father- and yet we think we can decide who is in and who is out under the guise of scriptural literacy! My hope is that the day will come when Christians stop quibbling about which religion is right and which is wrong, what group is a worse sinner that another, who should be allowed a full membership in the Church and who should not.