Luminous Darkness

Since today is the Feast of St. Andrew, I attended the noon Eucharist in the cathedral downtown here in Pittsburgh. I am not sure who the priest was that took the service, but his sermon was a fascinating dismissal of the entire decision-making process that has been in place throughout the history of the Church. He began by saying that in our American culture today we feel that we can only accept something once we have discussed it at great length and then voted on it. For him, the impact of this is that we do not fully accept any idea or proposition, but rather constantly ask for more proof and more evidence.

He then went on to say that this is also the way that the ‘modern’ Church makes decisions about doctrine, that is, by voting on them, and that this is wrong and goes against true Christian practice and belief. He held up St. Andrew as someone who simply followed what Jesus told him to do, and said that we should do the same. Of course, he didn’t mention what we should do when faced with a problem that Jesus didn’t discuss.

He pointed to the Episcopal Church’s General Convention, which, he helpfully reminded us, is the largest legislative body in the United States with its ‘900 members’ (i.e. those in the House of Lay and Clerical Deputies — I guess that the House of Bishops and its 300 members is not really relevant somehow), as a body which makes doctrinal decisions by voting on them.

In all of this, he failed to mention that our form of ecclesiastical decision-making in the Episcopal Church was set up in the 18th century after the American Revolutionary War on purpose, to differentiate us from the state-run Church of England. To this day, the Queen of England appoints bishops and Parliament must sign off on any major doctrinal or liturgical changes, such as any revisions to the Book of Common Prayer. The Episcopal Church believes that this democratic process is the best way we have come up with to discern the teaching of the Holy Spirit in contemporary society. Through discussion, debate, and an eventual vote, we are able to try and see what new things God is telling us.

I would certainly not say that the system is perfect. At my first General Convention, I was partly amazed but also partly horrified at some of the ridiculous debates that wasted time, energy, and money. In addition, my experience at the World Council of Churches led me to an understanding that perhaps there is some value to the idea of consensus decision-making rather than straight up-or-down voting.

Now, the other piece of the Church’s history that this sermon failed to discuss are all of the councils that have been held throughout the centuries. In particular, the early Ecumenical Councils, recognized by all mainline Christian bodies as doctrinally unique and centrally important, were, in fact, voting assemblies of bishops from throughout early church. Texts such as the Nicene Creed (which, strangely, we did not say during the Eucharist — perhaps there was no room to fit it in after the lengthly sermon) were created out of these debates and discussions which, in fact, were fairly politically motivated. For example, the Roman emperor Constantine called the Council of Nicea in 314 C.E. in order to calm down the fighting factions in the Church of his day, but the main benefit that he was hoping for was political stability throughout the empire.

This idea of democratically-based doctrinal decision-making is not new at all, but, in many ways, forms the basis for the entire Christian theological tradition and points to the idea of continuing revelation — that God is still speaking to us today.

Today I read Kurt Vonnegut’s newest book, A Man Without A Country, and was amazed yet again at his command of the English language, sense of humor, and intuitive understanding of humanity. The book is short enough to be read in one sitting so I will not describe it extensively, other than to post this quote from the opening pages:

There is no reason good can’t triumph over evil, if only angels will get organized along the lines of the mafia.

Go to your local library and read it!

What are the values that we are allowed to profess in American society today? According to this Op-Ed piece by Tom Krattenmaker in USA Today, the answer might be different than we tend to think. He says:

I am a values voter. Given my progressive political and religious beliefs, some might find this a dubious claim — especially members of the Christian right, who with their rhetoric about “values voters” suggest that only those who share their positions on abortion and same-sex couples possess something deserving of the term “values.”

He goes on to describe a number of values that come straight out of Christian gospel principles including social justice, peace-making, poverty relief, environmental preservation, and tolerance. These are values that I, for one, certainly hold deeply and they do come in large part from my Christian faith and belief in following the way of Jesus. The public perception of Christianity has been hurt in our country by idea that only a fundamentalist has the right to use the language of ‘values’ in public discourse, but nothing could be further from the truth. Towards the end of his article, Krattenmaker concludes:

As progressives wield language that once belonged solely to conservatives, may we do so fairly, in a way that acknowledges that the other side of the debate also has values. In so doing, we’ll model other core values of ours: inclusiveness and respect for differing viewpoints.

Amen to that.

I recently read the book The Conservative Soul: How We Lost It – How To Get It Back by Andrew Sullivan. I had picked it up on the advice of a review in the New York Times Book Review, and found is fascinating. In the book, Sullivan outlines the case for the difference he perceives between traditional conservatism, to which he adheres, and the fundamentalism that has of late taken over the Republican Party in the United States.

The book describes the risks inherent in creating the first fundamentally religious political party in America. Sullivan discusses the many ways that Bush and his compatriots have moved far away from traditional conservative government: they have increased the government’s size and reach to new heights, have boosted government spending and the national debt to record levels, have condoned torture, have ignored laws passed by Congress, and have been indicted for bribery. In his view, traditional conservatives (after the model of Ronald Regan or Margaret Thatcher) support the idea of limited government, balanced budgets, individual liberty, and the rule of law.

A significant part of the book deals with his own religious beliefs as a Roman Catholic who is at odds with the current climate of fundamentalism prevalent in the Vatican. He says that doubt is at the heart of Christianity (and conservatism), and that this leads to a healthy skepticism. On the other hand, fundamentalism teaches that there is only black and white Truth – a gray area is unacceptable, based on natural law. This exists in any kind of fundamentalist state, Christian or Muslim. Sullivan argues in opposition:

…our religion, our moral life, is simply what we do. It is how we are. it cannot be reduced to a doctrine or a book, although it may find intermittent or even continual inspiration from both. A Christian, in other words, is not a Christian simply because he agrees to conform his life to some set of external principles or dogmas; or because at one particular moment in his life, he experienced a rupture and changed himself entirely. He is a Christian primarily because he acts like one. He loves and forgives; he listens and prays; he contemplates and befriends; his faith and his life fuse into an unself-conscious unity that both affirms a tradition of moral life and yet also makes it his own.

Conservatives allow people to live their lives with true freedom of choice, and it is not government’s job to impose a particular moral framework. The intention of the founding fathers was for the constitution to keep the government weak and also separate from religious morals and values. This separation is not acceptable to a fundamentalist because he:

…is always positing an external moral ideal that he must necessarily fail to attain – because he is human. it is outside himself and his job is to internalize it. Fundamentalism as a way of life is therefore as series of ruptures and reforms. It is a cycle of attempts to conform to an external, eternal ideal, and to repeat the process of sin, redemption and sin again indefinitely … For the fundamentalist, a human being’s internal compass, what he has absorbed simply by being who he is, is always suspect – because the self is sinful and must always be subject to correction from the outside. And so the fundamentalist learns to distrust himself, to wrest himself from certain habits, to conform what might have been his personality into a persona that is a vessel for something far greater than himself. Rather than learning from others, he may regards others a moral dangers, who themselves need constant monitoring and correction. And so he does what he can to lose himself in God, or rather in an idea of God, buried in an ancient text, or upheld by an infallible pope, imposed by other humans, and monitored by them.

That is not to say that morals and values have no place in society, but that they should be taught privately. Government’s primary job is to guarantee personal security so that that all citizens can equally enjoy life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Conservatives focus on means rather than ends, unlike a fundamentalist, and the key is the progress that we are making along a path that always has many different choices, and we need to have the freedom to choose from among them.

Of course, there are some of his arguments that I would take issue with. One of them is outlined here:

“There are many who often invoke the rhetorical bromides of “freedom” but, when pressed, acknowledge that no such thing really exists. The fundamentalist believes that humans have freedom – but only to choose the good; and he believes that a government dedicated to upholding that good, whether deduced from God or his own version of “nature,” has every right, and, in fact, a duty to ensure that as many citizens as possible achieve that good. And so laws are designed to encourage virtue and discourage vice. Freedom is limited and conditional. A socialist will argue that freedom is an illusion to those people who begin with a material disadvantage, and that the state must act to remedy such a disadvantage before freedom can truly exist. The poor are not free, he argues. Those who are at the bottom of the heap of human inequality deserve substantive aid to equalize the system. And so he wants a system of redistributive justice to ensure “real” freedom.

A conservative, in contrast, will be skeptical of both arguments. he’ll want to know from the fundamentalist who exactly came up with this “good.” He’ll ask why he should adhere to a view of virtue which is deduced from a religion he doesn’t share or from a “nature” he doesn’t recognize as his own. He’ll ask the socialist, in turn, why he is being forced to give up his own money and property for the sake [of] an ideal of substantive equality that sounds like a surreal fantasy to him … So what is freedom for a conservative? It rests, as Hobbes intuited, on being secure in one’s own physical existence, and in accepting the fact that others exist who are just as human as we are, and, in political life, deserve equal treatment under the law.

I would take much more of the socialist approach that he seems to regard as a fantasy land. Interestingly, my socialism comes directly from my own Christian faith, and a belief that a better world for all human beings is possible. In fact, I see it as a gospel imperative. Despite differences such as this, I do feel that he is someone that I could have a productive conversation with. This is certainly not a feeling I get from Republican fundamentalists, but also others in both parties serving in politics today.

This has nothing to do with politics which is why I have waited so long after the election to post it. Instead, I want to mention the issue of results and how quickly we seem to want them in here in the United States. As is well known, we live in a culture based in many ways on instant gratification. We are unwilling to wait for anything, and certainly not something as import as the results of an election. In the last two presidential elections this caused some problems, with news networks making calls in very close races that were then overturned multiple times, and eventually ended up in prolonged recounts.

Our age of electronic communication makes us feel that we deserve to have all the information we can handle (and more than we can handle in some cases) instantly as soon as it is available. I do not think that this is necessary when it comes to our elections. If the price we pay for mistakes in counting votes is months of uncertainly, then I think that we perhaps should be willing to wait a few days, and give the process time to work itself out correctly.

On Sunday I had the opportunity to worship at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. I was there in part to reconnect with an old friend of our family whose son was a close friend of mine in elementary school. She is currently priest-in-charge at the parish, and although I had not seen her in fifteen years, we had a very nice visit and shared our stories. The service was what I would call ‘relaxed Anglo-Catholic’ worship, by which I mean that many catholic elements were present, but not in a particularly focused or directive way. The worship space was fairly modern, but done in a clean, simple way that made one feel very welcome in the sanctuary.

On the other hand, one place where I did not feel particularly welcome was in the coffee hour after the service. I walked around, looking somewhat ‘new’, for about fifteen minutes before anyone said anything to me. Now, I should make a brief confession here. During the service, newcomers and visitors were invited to take a ‘newcomers’ bag. I chose not to do that, and so did not mark myself out obviously as someone who should be officially ‘talked to’. With that said, though, I was surprised that nobody in coffee hour seemed to notice me in the least. Now, I am fairly self-sufficient, and not particularly bothered about introducing myself to people, but I decided in this case to see what would happen if I just sort of hung around looking lost. Eventually, a very nice man did come up to me and ask if I wanted a newcomers bag, and when I explained that I was just visiting for the day, we had a pleasant, although brief, conversation.*

This issue being welcoming is something that I wish to write about for a bit. I think that we are called to welcome each other in Christ, for example in Paul’s letter to the Romans, chapter fifteen, verse seven:

Welcome one another, therefore, just as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.

This can be our ideal, but what does it mean in practice? Simply put, our churches should be welcoming to all, especially to strangers.

Now, I am certainly aware that, for many people, even for those with the best best intentions at heart, it can be very difficult to actually make that initial move. For example, you might be worried about not knowing if the person you want to talk to is actually ‘new’ or is in fact someone who has been at the parish for some time that you have simply don’t know! Or, perhaps you are afraid that by saying something, you might get dragged into a long and involved conversation with someone who needs to tell their story. Perhaps you simply aren’t very extroverted and can’t bring yourself to talk to a complete stranger. All of these reasons are perfectly valid in my opinion, and there is nothing wrong with feeling that way.

Despite them, though, we still have that biblical instruction to welcome one another. How can we make this process easier so that people don’t get left behind and never come back to visit again? One suggestion that I made at St. Mark’s was based on the fact that they had several tables in the middle of their parish hall at coffee hour. There were a few people at each whilst I was wandering around the room, and I suggested that one easy way to get around the difficulty in being welcoming was to simply invite someone to sit down at your table. There is no implication in that statement that they are a ‘new’ person or an ‘old’ person, and in either case, you have opened the door for them to introduce themselves.

This just one suggestion, and I’m not going to go on at length about others, but being welcoming in our churches is ever more important at the current time. We face a secular culture that perceives Christians as an exclusivist group of people who have no interest or desire in encountering anyone other than ourselves. In order to work towards changing that perception, I believe that we must take the first step of being more welcoming to the people who actually walk in our doors. It is not easy for anyone, but it is part of our calling in Christ.

* I should add that when I pointed out this lack of welcome to some of the clergy and vestry members at St. Mark’s, they were very welcoming of my comments, and really gave some serious thought to ways to improve this part of their parish life.

I had the opportunity today to add to my list of visited UNESCO World Heritage Sites by visiting Everglades National Park. It is only about an hour south of where I am staying in Miami, and I decided to spend the day there. I have to say that it is a truly amazing place. It contains a number of different ecosystems that are unique, including the largest mahogany tree in the United States, the only place in the world where one can see crocodiles and alligators coexisting, and the 730 square mile ‘River of Grass’ that looks similar to a grassy plain but is in fact a six-inch deep river that flows South towards the Gulf of Mexico. With hundreds of species of flora and fauna to see in an area of more than 2,300 square miles (6,100 square kilometers), my trip was truly spectacular, and with only one day in which to do it, I just scratched the surface. I would highly recommend the Everglades for anyone visiting South Florida.

I have been in Miami, Florida this week with my job, conducting a planning study for a school here. Tonight, I attended a Requiem Mass for the Feast of All Souls’ at St. Thomas Episcopal Parish in Coral Gables, a neighborhood in Miami. It was a particularly interesting service, not because the music, Fauré’s Requiem, was splendidly sung (it was), or because the liturgy was beautifully Anglo-Catholic (it was), but because the congregation consisted of ten people. In his sermon, the rector mentioned that people had been asking him why they do this service every year (I got the impression that tonight’s attendance is not unusual), and his answer was refreshing and hopeful. He said:

This church tonight is not empty. It is packed; there is not an empty seat. Tonight’s service is about worship, and we are joined here in our worship by that great cloud of witnesses who have gone ahead of us into the Kingdom of God. This church tonight is packed — standing room only.*

I think that he is absolutely right, and certainly I experienced plenty of empty churches during the time that I was in England. In fact, I remember several occasions during Evensong at my college in Cambridge where I was the only member of the congregation! (I do have to say that it did rather feel like I had my own private chapel and chapel choir singing Evensong just for me, which was kind of nice.)

I learned a very important lesson during those services which is that the worship of God goes on everywhere and at all times. Whenever we worship, even if it is reading the daily office alone in the privacy of our own room, we are partaking of, and joining in with, the worship of the saints that goes on without end in heaven. In the words of one of the hymns that we sang this evening:

They stand, those halls of Zion,
Conjubilant with song,
And bright with many an angel
And all the martyr throng.
And they who, with their Leader,
Have conquered in the fight,
Forever and forever
Are clad in robes of white.**

The church is indeed never empty. Even when it looks full with those whom we can see, it is packed even more fully with our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ who worship at the foot of the throne of God and of the Lamb.

* My apologies to Father Tobin for paraphrasing his excellent sermon.

** From ‘Jerusalem the Golden’. I have taken the liberty of using the original translation by J.M. Neale, rather than the one in the Episcopal Hymnal 1982, mostly because I really like the word conjubilant.