SWORDS INTO PLOWSHARES PART II

Illuminations and Elucidations on: The Hellins Lecture

II.“The more things change the more they stay the same.”

The title of this segment is taken from a song that is sung by Peter, Paul and Mary. The name of the tune is 75 Septembers. It could just as easily have been "been there done that."

The Reverend Gregory Cameron, in his Hellins Lecture, (July 15, 2008) talks about the beginnings of the adoption of the Compass Rose and how it has come to symbolize the Anglican Communion. Some now say that the Compass Rose is spinning out of control at this very moment.

“Today, most commentators have come to the conclusion that the needle of the Compass Rose, shaken from its former stability, is spinning out of control, restless and unsure of where it will find its rest. As the front page of the London Times was recently able to proclaim confidently:

‘Anglican Church in meltdown over gays and women.’”

We need to dwell on this point since this point is one of the key reasons why Mr. John David Schofield, former bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin attempted to move, lock stock and diocese to the Southern Cone. This move pits Evangelical against every other group within the Episcopal Church. Even now, our parish in the Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin is being raided by a former Episcopal priest for parishioners to attend his NEW and up and coming Southern Cone mission by telling parishioners that we are blessing same sex unions and/or performing same sex marriage ceremonies. None of this is true, yet this issue seems to rip at the very fabric of our ability to come together and pass the peace and share the Eucharistic feast.

In the Episcopal Church of the United States of America during the mid-1800’s there were several significant issues that the Episcopal Church was threatened by. The one we will dwell on for today is the Oxford Movement. The Oxford Movement threatened to split the Episcopal Church into Anglo-Catholic and Evangelical lines. It began in 1843 (at least in earnest) . The movement’s primary author was none other than John Henry Newman. According to Reverend Manross in A History of the American Episcopal Church, “Newman was evidently moving towards the theory of development in religious belief which was to become the theme of one of his best-known works, and this led him into a gradual increasing emphasis upon the tradition of the Catholic Church until he finally reached the conclusion that the Bible could properly be interpreted only in light of this tradition.” This was tract ninety and this was the tract that sent the Evangelical group in the Church “over the edge.” Newman stated that the Catholic position developed over the last 89 tracts was sanctioned by the 39 Articles of Faith. When the Oxford Movement spread to America the General Theological Seminary became the hot bed of this movement. (Should we say duh?).

But one of the new ideas of all this “who shot John business” in the 1850s was the creation and use of a canon that allows for the suspension and ultimately the deposition of a bishop. While that is interesting it is not the real point. Perhaps the most pertinent point of interest that came out of all this was the Muhlenberg Memorial of 1853. A middle of the road bishop drafted a statement that evolved a system called “Evangelical Catholicism”. There were supporters and detractors of this position and in the end time took it toll. Yes, Newman left, yes there were some deposed bishops, yes the term Liberal came into use to describe the Oxford Movement, but while nothing was definitively settled many of the good things of the movement were adopted and the Episcopal Church in the United States grew stronger and better and moved on to the next controversy.

Back to the words of Greg Cameron, “We must remember that the Anglican Church itself is something of an accidental creation. … We can have little doubt that Archbishop Cranmer, if he had ever contemplated the future of the Church whose reform he undertook, would undoubtedly have been shocked, if not totally incredulous, of the reality of its inheritance.”

“Oh what will you give me?
Say the sad bells of Rhymney.
Is there hope for the future?
Cry the brown bells of Merthyr.”

Bells of Rhymney
Pete Seeger

SWORDS INTO PLOWSHARES

Illuminations and Elucidations on: The Hellins Lecture

Update Note: The Windsor Continuation Group has just published a preliminary report. I was tempted to do away with this series but I think not. There are two very good reasons. First, the Windsor Continuation Group report ignores the long and illustrious albeit rancorous history of the Anglican Communion and the Episcopal Church. The second reason is even better, "if we do what we have always done we will get what we always got." I thought Bishops understood this, I guess not. Let's pray that this series takes us someplace else.

I. Introduction
On Tuesday July 15, 2008 Gregory Cameron delivered The Hellins Lecture. It was semi-subtitled: Here there and everywhere: where does the Compass Rose point? Gregory Cameron is the Deputy Secretary General of the Anglican Communion. Now, in all fairness, I really do not know Gregory Cameron nor do I understand, at least not fully, what the Deputy Secretary of the Anglican Communion is or does. But knowing who he is is not nearly as important as understanding what he has said.

I am a mere lay person in the Diocese of San Joaquin in the Episcopal Church of the United States of America. I am member of the Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin and I have been so since 1994. In my past I have served as a member of vestries in Virginia and in California. I have served on several search committees both successful ones and not so successful ones. I have known, in my past, Father Doug Edwards, now a Bishop (I think consecrated Suffragan Bishop of the Diocese of Sunyani) by one of the African groups working in the United States and Father John Guernsey also consecrated a bishop by one of the African groups working in the United States. As if that was not enough I ended up in the diocese that was the first to decide to attempt to leave the Episcopal Church and become a diocese in the Southern Cone. My experience on a vestry in one parish in this diocese brought me reasonably close to now deposed bishop John David Mercer Schofield. ON more than one occasion I have had perfectly pleasant and quite lengthy conversations with Mr. Schofield. I have also been privy to the machinations that went into the slow unwinding of the Episcopal Diocese. Many of us watched while Mr. Schofield slowly built a constituency of clergy he could trust. He slowly devolved all conversation in the diocese into discussions of leaving the diocese, yet, when asked point blank, “Bishop, are you leaving the diocese?”, he frequently would publish a pastoral letter stating emphatically he was not. At one point, his letter stated that the Episcopal Church was leaving him but that was only for a short while and then he never said that again. Then, when all the clergy were in place and the vestries and diocesan delegates were also handpicked and a proper home was found John David Schofield left the Episcopal Church for the Southern Cone.

Anyway, while I do not feel like an educated competent lay person I do feel like an experienced competent lay person. The primary difference being that I did my limited study after I have experienced most of this trauma and at least from that small space believe I can comment and critique The Hellins Lecture as well as move this discussion in a positive direction..

What I have done is read this work, and I believe it is a truly significant work, and then gone back and read a work by the Reverend William Wilson Manross entitled A History of the American Episcopal Church. My first edition copy was copyrighted in 1935 and is believed by most to be the most complete and significant work on the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, at least till now. You are of course free to disagree. Please share your thoughts on this, as well as anything else as we go along. I will generate several posts from this lecture in hopes that somewhere along the lines we will discover that our roots are firmly planted inside a very large, all inclusive tent that fits Americans and Australians and Africans and Asians and all of us. And the best reason I can offer is as follows.

Towards the end of the lecture the Reverend Cameron states:

“Here is the true pole to which the Compass Rose of the Communion points – not to any North or South or East or West, but to the reality in each heart of the living experience of Christ; a Christ who calls us to be transformed, who calls us to holiness, but who calls us to be profoundly committed to one another, precisely because he is committed to us.”

This is both the alpha and the omega. We will begin here and we will end here because as Greg ( I hope he doesn’t mind too much) puts it “…the Compass Rose points to here (my heart), and there (to your heart) and everywhere (to all Anglicans) calling us back to the centre – to the cross wherein God’s love is revealed to the world.”

Released: The Windsor Continuation Group report

Sashay on over to the Anglican Communion News Service site and read the Windsor Continuation Group - Preliminary Observations to the Lambeth Conference (Parts 1, 2 and 3). Then pray that our Bishops don't let us down.

The most interesting part, IMHO, is a bullet point on the "moratoria" on ordaining LGBT priests/bishops and border crossings: There have been different interpretations of the sense in which 'moratorium' was used in the Windsor Report. Our understanding is that moratorium refers to both future actions and is also retrospective: that is that it requires the cessation of activity. This necessarily applies to practices that may have already been authorised as well as proposed for authorisation in the future."

Ahem. Having been wrong on the meaning of a word on occasion, I checked the definition of moratorium - yes, boys and girls, it really is "an authorized period of delay or waiting." Retrospective cessation of activity? Methinks a few folks were dipping into the communion wine.

In the arms of the angel

You’re in the arms of the angel
May you find some comfort there
You’re in the arms of the angel
May you find some comfort here...



May your Sunday be filled with blessings.

Recipe collection redux

If anyone else has an idea for naming the Jake-ites recipe collection, post 'er on up on this thread or the original one below. Don't miss your chance for fame, fortune and a free chicken cookbook - the opportunity ends Friday night. Meanwhile, I will be revising the secret panel of experts to judge your entries; I have "disinvited" Bishop Deng Bul, as he is no longer considered a neutral judge.

Have a blessed day, and take a break with Disney's Kitchen Kabaret and the Kitchen Krackpots...


(Having trouble watching the video? Want a bigger video screen? Here's the link to YouTube).

Blessings on Fr. Terry Martin!

Who is this unmasked man?

Please head on over to read the good news about Fr. Terry Martin...spreading the Good News.
Father T. Listens to the World: Seeking God Around the Globe. And it's actually his day job, too - Fr. Terry is the new Program Officer for Evangelism at the Episcopal Church Center.

There are postings by almost everyone on the blog roll, so go visit the usual suspects - and details at James' blog.

Contest: name the recipe collection & blog!

Yes, the recipes from Fr. Jake's will live on...

We're going to set up a blog to collect the recipes everyone saved from the days of stopping the trolls and breaking virtual bread. So start looking in those files, think of vignettes and otherwise get ready to start the coffee hour. My fellow zookeeper, Fred, offered to help get everything into a PDF file when we are finished with the first collection.

Now - the contest...and there is a *prize for the winner! The blog and the collection will need a name, so give me ideas. We'll do a little voting thingy on the top three names unless there is a clear favorite. (I do have a possible name, but it's more fun if I'm not a dictator on all this).

Let's go...ready, start, POST those names!

*The winner will receive their very own copy of The Chicken Cookbook from the 47th National Chicken Cooking Contest. Yes, it's a tiny, cheap little thing without pictures; but 1) it's a pretty good little book, and 2) I have an extra copy.