Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20040115054614/http://www.anglicancommunioninstitute.org:80/foa-turner.htm
The End of a Church
And The Triumph of Denominationalism
Or How To Think About What Is Happening In The Episcopal Church
Philip Turner
I
On August 5, 2003 the House of Bishops of The Episcopal Church USA (ECUSA), following an initial action by the House of Deputies of ECUSA’s General Convention, gave its consent (by a ratio of roughly 60/40) to the election of the Rev. Gene Robinson to become the next Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire. Gene Robinson is an outspoken gay man who has lived openly with his partner for over a decade. He is also the divorced father of two children. At a later point in the same convention, delegates gave permission for the blessing of gay unions in Dioceses that may choose to grant clergy license to perform these services.
Shortly before these events occurred, a friend, anticipating the firestorm they would precipitate, suggested I write an article that would help people think about how the likely actions of ECUSA might best be understood. As the existence of these columns makes plain, I decided to take him up on his suggestion. However, before any attempt is made at interpretation or prognostication, it is well to note that there are few if any dispassionate observers of these developments. No one looks upon them with the calm of a “view from nowhere.” My own view is that of a person who was born into a family of Episcopalians whose allegiance to that church stretches as far back as anyone can remember. It is the view of a person who was formed as a Christian within the bosom of the Episcopal Church, who served for ten years as a missionary of that Church in East Africa, and who has taught several generations of its clergy.
From the point at which this history has placed me, it seems most clarifying to say that, by its action, ECUSA has confirmed a decision taken unconsciously sometime ago to find its primary identity as a liberal but liturgical option within the spectrum of Protestant denominations that make up America’s religious kaleidoscope. In making this decision, ECUSA has at one and the same time (perhaps again unconsciously) made marginal for its self-understanding the significance of its membership in a worldwide communion of churches that jointly claim to be a part of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. In fact, it has placed its membership in the Anglican Communion under threat, and, rather recklessly, brought that communion itself to the verge of a split between the churches of the global South and those of the North. This is my point of view and the best way to make it understandable (and defensible) is first off to recount, even if all too briefly, certain key aspects of ECUSA’s more recent history.
II
The U.S. Constitution guarantees a right to the “free exercise” but prohibits the “establishment” of any religion. The right to free exercise and the prohibition of establishment provide, in the American context, legal and social space for the birth and growth of a plethora religious belief and practice. In America, “churches” became “denominations”—named organizations, each of which occupies a particular niche in a religious market place. Thus, when Episcopalians found establishment beyond reach, they presented themselves within the American religious market as a “bridge church,” incorporating the best elements of both Protestantism and Catholicism. This self-presentation proved both pretentious and fatuous, and in time lost its hold on imagination. In its place came another, namely, that the Episcopal Church provides an enlightened alternative to the moral and theological rigidities of both Roman Catholicism and Evangelical Protestantism. Emboldened by this new self-image, Episcopal clergy embraced new learning and new experience. They preached an enlightened religion attuned to the latest movements of liberal culture.
The power of this new self-image over the mind of the Episcopal Church showed its strength clearly as far back as 1966 when the late Bishop James Pike was accused of heresy for stating in Look Magazine, “The Church’s classical way of stating what is represented by the doctrine of the Trinity is…not essential to the Christian faith.” For reasons that will become apparent, the Presiding Bishop of ECUSA, despite pressures to the contrary, wished to avoid a heresy trial; and so managed to have the matter referred to an ad hoc committee rather than to a panel of judges. The committee concluded that a heresy trial would be widely viewed as a “throw back” to a previous century in which both church and state sought to penalize “unacceptable opinion.” As such, a trial would give ECUSA an “oppressive image.” The committee did say, however, that they rejected “the tone and manner” of the Bishop’s statements, and that they wished to dissociate themselves from many of the Bishop’s comments. His utterances were, they said, “irresponsible” for one holding Episcopal office. The Bishops then censured Bishop Pike; but, despite the fact that he did not renounce his heresy, did nothing to inhibit him in the exercise of his Episcopal office. It would appear that the Bishop’s fault was a certain degree of irresponsibility and a lack of tact rather than false doctrine. A charge of heresy in the minds of the church’s leadership would represent a throw back to a former and repressive age and so compromise ECUSA’s position within the spectrum of American Christianity.
This view was certainly held by a group of Bishops who opposed Bishop Pike’s censure. They wrote a minority report in which they gave voice with stark clarity to the new self-image of the Episcopal Church. “We believe it is more important to be a sympathetic and self-conscious part of God’s action in the secular world than it is to defend the positions of the past, which is a past that is altered by each new discovery of truth.” So the doctrine of the Trinity became a position of the past that is altered by each new discovery of truth. In the minority report, Bishop Pike was not viewed negatively as a heretic, but positively as “a casualty (martyr?) of the Christian mission in our day.”
Throughout this struggle, all sides sought to present ECUSA as an enlightened denominational option on the American religious scene. In this struggle can also be seen the birth of the notion that Episcopal office is to be used as a “prophetic” lever to pry people loose from the incrusted positions of the past. This notion of Episcopal office appeared in even more pronounced form during the battle over the ordination of women that took place during the decade of the 1970’s.
Before recounting this tale, I feel compelled to make it clear that I am a staunch, even fierce, supporter of the ordination of women. However, the way in which the practice was introduced into ECUSA has (sadly) served both to weaken its structures of order and authority; and to further strengthen its self-identity as an “enlightened” denominational alternative.
In 1974, after the General Convention had twice refused to approve the ordination of women to the Priesthood, three retired Bishops ordained 11 women Deacons as Priests. The reason given by the Bishops was that their act was an “obedient” and “prophetic” protest against oppression and an act of solidarity with those who are oppressed—in this case women. Once more there was an attempt to bring the offending Bishops to trial, but once again the attempt was foiled. The matter was referred at various times and in various ways both to the House of Bishops and to a special committee. The Bishops decried the action and went on at a later date to censure the Bishops involved. The special committee found that the offending Bishops were in fact guilty of canonical offenses, and that their acts involved “teaching publicly a doctrine contrary to that held by the church.” Further, the committee posed in clear terms a fundamental question, namely, “whether this church’s understanding of the nature of the church and the authority of the episcopate permits individual bishops, appealing solely to their consciences, to usurp the proper functions and other duly constituted authorities in this church.” Another advisory committee put the point even more pointedly by saying that “a bishop is not free to appropriate the sacramental structure of the church to his own views.”
Despite these admonitions, warnings and actions, however, in October of 1975 Bishop George Barrett, another Bishop without Diocese, ordained four more women Deacons to the Priesthood. The women involved stated as the reason for their action that to wait for the General Convention to give approval to women’s ordination was to affirm in principle the concept that discrimination against women to the Priesthood may be practiced in the church until the majority changes its mind and votes. Once more a leading cultural trend, this time women’s rights, showed itself as the dominant force within a defining moment of ECUSA’s common life. Once more, a majority of ECUSA Bishops decried what had been done, but acceded to its legitimacy by failing to take effective disciplinary action.
Looking back over the history that stretched from the “Pike affair” to the struggle over the ordination of women, one can see by the end of the process certain things firmly in place—ECUSA’s espousal of enlightened culture and progressive cultural trends, the use of Episcopal office to further “prophetic causes,” and the inability of the governing structures and authorities of ECUSA to restrain independent action on the part of its Bishops. All these factors revealed themselves plainly when, in 1977, just two years after Bishop Barrett’s blatant defiance of his fellow Bishops, Bishop Paul Moore of the Episcopal Diocese of New York ordained a professed and practicing Lesbian to the Priesthood. In response, the House of Bishops did no more than express “disapproval” of Bishops Moore’s action. The next General Convention, which met in 1979, passed a resolution that said among other things that the delegates believed “it is not appropriate for this Church to ordain a practicing homosexual or any person who is engaged in heterosexual relations outside marriage.”
On the surface, it appeared as if the General Convention had legislated against the practice initiated by Bishop Moore; but surface appearances can be deceiving. The resolution that labeled these practices “inappropriate” began with the phrase “We recommend.” Twenty dissenting Bishops immediately signed a letter saying that they took the action of General Convention to be “recommendary and not prescriptive.” These twenty Bishops also announced that in the name of “apostolic leadership” and “prophetic witness” they would not implement the resolution in their Diocese.
It is unlikely that the General Convention resolution was intended to do no more than recommend against a practice, but over time political forces within ECUSA have in fact managed to establish the resolution as “recommendary” rather than “prescriptive.”
In 1989, 1990, and 1991 the Episcopal Dioceses of Newark and Washington D.C. ordained open and practicing homosexuals to the Priesthood. The justification for these ordinations was “new experience” and “new learning” that serves to “contextualize” the negative Biblical witness. The ordination of sexually active homosexual persons then became a “justice issue” that must be furthered by a “prophetic” Episcopate. In the face of these claims, it is perhaps not surprising that charges of heresy later brought against one of the Bishops of Newark (Walter Reighter) were turned down on the grounds that the Bishop’s action was not contrary to the “core doctrine” of the Episcopal Church.
After the Reighter trial, the way was open for Bishops to ordain sexually active homosexual persons if they so chose. It was clear that no disciplinary consequences would follow. It was at this point that the policy of a Bishop or Diocese to ordain or not ordain, to bless or not to bless, came to be known within Episcopal circles as the “local option.” It was asserted, quite rightly, that “local option” is the de facto practice of ECUSA. The election of Gene Robinson to succeed to the present Bishop of New Hampshire was thus only the most radical assertion of a policy that had been firmly in place in respect to ordinations and blessings since the time of the Reighter trial. Not only was it now permissible within ECUSA for clergy and Bishops to be openly gay, not only was it permissible to bless gay unions, it was also the case that these novelties were hailed by their supporters as evidence that God is “doing a new thing.” The cultural recognition and integration of Gay and Lesbian people into the American mainstream was read as an act of God. The Episcopal Church, so the claim goes, is taking a lead in calling attention to the finger of God in history and giving prophetic support to divine providence.
III
It is possible that people from outside ECUSA who oppose these measures will at this point simply throw up their hands and say, “Well what else would you expect from the Episcopalians. They’ve always been a little long on style and a little short on substance.” A reaction of this sort might provide some self-satisfaction, but would miss the significance for the rest of the churches in American of what has happened in the Episcopal Church. The Robinson election in fact serves to highlight the primary challenge all the churches in America face; be they Catholic, Orthodox, “mainstream” Protestant, Evangelical, or Charismatic. I speak of the subversion of Christian belief and practice by the logic of autonomous individualism, and their transformation into simulacra. For one should make no mistake! What has happened in ECUSA is not the particular problem of a once (overly) proud denomination. Rather, it provides an exemplary case of the sort of subversion and transformation that, in one way or another, threatens all American’s denominations.
To display this point with some clarity, I will freely borrow from the account Alasdair MacIntyre has given of the tradition of liberalism in Whose Justice? Which Rationality? The present economic and political cultures of America plainly stem from this tradition, and it is this tradition that currently is bringing all its force to bear (in a hostile way) on more traditional forms of Christian belief and practice. MacIntyre notes that the tradition of liberalism cannot allow for a single notion of good to possess “the public square.” Liberal society must remain neutral in respect to the good. What one can express in public are not notions of good but preferences. Of course, some way must be found to order preferences both in respect to individual life and to social policy. No rational way can be found to achieve this goal, however, because there is no common notion of good to which appeal can be made when it comes to sorting out conflicting claims. Thus, the way in which one establishes preference in the public arena, if it cannot be done by force, is by bargaining. Everything, both in respect to private and public life becomes a “trade off.” Social life becomes a sort of free trade zone for preferences. All one needs to be able to play the game is the ability to bargain.
There are two things in particular to be noted about this form of social economy. The first is that theories of justice abound. They must for the following reason. To have one’s preferences excluded is to have one’s rights denied. Then the question arises of how one person’s right to his or her preference is to be balanced against a contrary right claimed by someone else. At this point, some theory of justice must be invoked, but in a liberal social economy of preferences, no one theory can establish itself. Theories of justice simply multiply exponentially and interminably. Given this social reality, one can see easily why supporters of Gay rights hold ordination and the blessing of Gay unions to be matters of justice. One can see also why supporters of Gene Robinson hold that his election was above all “a justice issue.”
The dominance in America of a liberal social economy also provides another reason for regarding the Robinson election and the permission given for Gay blessings to be more than an Episcopalian anomaly. Within a liberal social economy there comes to be a view of moral agency that gives special significance to sexual preference and sexual satisfaction. The denizens of a social order based upon competing preferences think of themselves not as inhabitants of a pre-established moral order but as individualswho are utterly unique, as selves that have particular personal histories and needs, and as persons who have rights that allow them to express their individuality and pursue their personal well-being within the social world they inhabit. For moral agents who think of themselves as individuals, selves, and persons, sexuality becomes, along with money, both a marker of identity and a primary way of expressing the preferences that define identity.
It is precisely this notion of moral agency and personal identity that makes the Robinson election so understandable. Here is a unique individual, who is a self with a particular history and a person with a right to express his preferences and put his talents to work in the social world he inhabits. To deny him that right on the basis of sexual preference is, at one and the same time, to deny his personal identity. This notion of moral agency also makes understandable why the issues of abortion and euthanasia take their place alongside self-chosen sexual expression as centers of moral controversy both within the churches and without. At the basis of each of these arguments lies the characterization of moral agents as individuals, selves, and persons who have the right to pursue the preferences that provide them with personal identity. In the culture wars that rage over abortion, euthanasia, and sexuality defenders of more traditional Christian teaching and practice often miss the fact that they must confront American culture on a deeper level than any of these specific issues. If they are to be effective, they must take on the very way in which Americans think of themselves as moral agents. The “socio-logic” that stands behind ECUSA’s recent action beckons thinking to an even deeper level than the sad history of this church’s search for a distinctive place on the spectrum of America’s denominations. It calls Christian thought to confront a perception of moral and social life that runs counter to the very foundations of Christian thought and practice. It raises the question of whether we inhabit a moral universe with an order we are called upon to understand and to which we are required to conform, or whether the moral universe we inhabit is properly the creation of preference pursuing individuals, selves, and persons who create a social world suited to their self-defined goals through an elaborate process of moral bargaining.
IV
The Robinson election in fact manifests the social forces that at present erode the ability of America’s denominations to act like churches: that is to say, to form people in a pattern of belief and a way of life which may run against preference but nonetheless accords with what Christians have, through the ages, held to be the truth about God and his intentions for human life.
It is important to recognize these social forces, but it is important as well not to conclude that the recent actions of ECUSA can be adequately explained by the play of these forces alone. Christians through the ages have faced social forces that threaten to compromise the truth they have been given to live and proclaim, but they have not always succumbed to them. To think well about what is happening in ECUSA one must ask why the sirens of modernity have sung so sweetly in ECUSA’s ears.
My belief is that a religious rather than historical or sociological answer must, in the end, be given to this question. The English theologian P. T. Forsythe once wrote, “If within us we have nothing above us we soon succumb to what is around us.” The history recounted above suggests that the internal life of ECUSA may well lack a transcendent point of reference—one that can serve as a counter balance to the social forces that play upon it. A certain vacuity at the center is suggested also by an analysis of the theology that currently dominates ECUSA’s pulpits. The standard sermon in outline runs something like this: “God is love, God’s love is inclusive, God acts in justice to see that everyone is included, we therefore ought to be co-actors and co-creators with God to make the world over in the way he wishes.”
Here is the theological projection of a society built upon preference—one in which the inclusion of preference within common life is the be all and end all of the social system. ECUSA’s God has become the image of this society. Gone is the notion of divine judgment (save upon those who may wish to exclude someone), gone is the notion of radical conversion, gone is the notion of a way of life that requires dying to self and rising to newness of life in conformity with God’ will. In place of the complex God revealed in Christ Jesus, a God of both judgment and mercy, a God whose law is meant to govern human life, we now have a god who is love and inclusion without remainder. The projected God of the liberal tradition is, in the end, no more than an affirmer of preferences. This view of God is, furthermore, acted upon by an increasing number of ECUSA’s clergy who now regularly invite non-baptized people to share in the Holy Eucharist. It’s just a matter of hospitality—of welcoming difference. An inclusive God, it would seem, requires an inclusive sacramental system.
Jews have always held, I believe, that idolatry is the greatest of all sins. In the end, the actions of ECUSA must be traced to idolatry, to the creation of a god made in our own image, rather than to the play of social forces. It is this observation that brings me to the final remark I wish to make about how to think about what is happening in the Episcopal Church. As I write, the chief Bishops of the various Provinces of the Anglican Communion are preparing to go to England in October to meet with the Archbishop of Canterbury. The purpose of this meeting is to discuss what the response of the Anglican Communion ought to be to ECUSA’s action. A majority of the Bishops of the global South are of the opinion that some form of discipline must be imposed upon ECUSA if the Anglican Communion is to maintain its claim to apostolicity and catholicity. Contrary to the assertions of many liberal Episcopal clergy and Bishops, the concern of the Bishops from the global South does not stem form the fact that they have not as yet lived through the Enlightenment. It stems rather from a perception that some form of idolatry has infected ECUSA, and that this infection has led to forms of gross disobedience that compromise not only Anglican but Christian identity.
Time will tell whether ECUSA’s Presiding Bishop will manage to convince these Bishops from the global South that an international “local option” is the enlightened way for the Anglican Communion as a whole. The attempt will certainly be made. It is entirely likely, however, that the Bishops of the global South will say to ECUSA that membership in the Anglican Communion requires conformity to the faith and practice of a world-wide fellowship of churches—even if that conformity runs against the grain of the culture in which Christians happen to find themselves. ECUSA will than have to decide if it wants to remain in its denominational niche or if it wants to affirm its identity as a church that is part of a worldwide communion of churches.
