It's not either/or. We all must come to the Cross.

The Cross by Kim Bu, Korea

Fr. Jake discusses excerpts of +Cantuar's Advent letter to the primates. At the end of the post he writes:

Dr. Williams has chosen to support those who would exclude others from the Church based on the questionable translation of seven verses from scripture. The concrete act which exemplifies his decision to support that position is his insistence on continuing to exclude Bp. Robinson from Lambeth. He seems to not recognize that by barring Bp. Robinson, he has silenced the most qualified representative of those being persecuted in the Church today. In so doing, it is Dr. Williams who has expressed a "refusal of the cross - and so of the resurrection." [emphasis mine]

I think Jake is right that Rowan is going with the majority position among primates. (Who knows what the majority position among the faithful is? Many of the primates, operating on an autocratic model, don't poll the baptized.) Jake also notes that the ABC still does not fully appreciate the seriousness with which our polity and ethos take the role of the laity and the House of Deputies.

Most of the Anglican Communion operates on a hierarchical model in which the traditional role of bishops to guard the unity of the faith does not include a role for the laity to have a say in what the faith they believe is. TEC is, we must acknowledge it, anomalous in that our doctrine (expressed in what we pray and sing in public) is determined not by the House of Bishops but by General Convention, both houses acting in tandem. The Anglican Church in Canada operates similarly. There may be other provinces with strong lay roles as well.

I suspect the aristocratic, colonial history of the British Empire has so colored the Anglican ethos that the unruly democracy we so cherish here in the U.S. is too much for the dear old chaps. (Was that a sufficient example of reverse patronization?)

I suggest we lay aside exclusive focus on sexuality or Biblical interpretation and go to the core: how are we faithful to the Gospel? By focusing on the (admittedly vague) concept of the Gospel we acknowledge that we must and do view the Scriptures through various lenses. Our history, language, worldview, experience, and community all affect how we hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches. We have criteria by which we evaluate and prioritize various parts of the Bible and we need to be aware of them and acknowledge them.

If Jesus is the Word incarnate then he must be our primary lens. The Bible is "the Word of God" only in the derivative sense that it preserves and presents for us the intentions of God known through the history that leads to and flows from the Incarnation, it tells us about the true Word that enlightens every person coming into the world. The Bible is NOT the fourth person of the Trinity (which underscores the mathematical and conceptual absurdity of elevating it beyond its role). I grew up amidst what I can only consider bibliolatry and, my friends, it is a distortion of faith and not its guarantee.

One thing I love about my roots was seeing the Bible through John 3:16 (about which I have posted at length). God loved the world and gave the Son so we might have life. There we have a core message of God and the world, a relationship of love, self-offering for the sake of life, seen in the Son, this Word incarnate. This is what we are to proclaim and to incarnate in our own lives.

How do we do that in our several contexts? How do we honor the vast differences in those contexts? What does Good News look like in those very different situations, locations, cultures, challenges? How does the Good News adapt and clothe itself while still remaining the Good News of Jesus? Niebuhr taught us about the tensions between Christ and culture. Good News is gibberish if it is not expressed within and through the culture in which we live. Note that the Word became incarnate in a very specific time, place, and culture. One may conclude that that specific time, place, and culture are normative OR one may conclude that time, place, and culture are necessary to incarnation and incarnation must always be situated in each time, place, and culture.

The Gospel should and does always critique, challenge, judge, and transform culture. This is why we cannot merely "ride with the tide and go with the flow" of the moment's trends. Where there is no judgment, no challenge, no questioning there is no Gospel. But I do not hear so-called liberals (including myself) calling for us to merely accept the world's values and do and believe what our culture or passing trend may do or believe.

The Gospel must thus be incarnate in specific circumstances, inculturated, but not captive to culture. Each culture must hear the challenge of the Cross and the call to turn around, be transformed, and follow Christ into a new possibility of life, truth, freedom, justice, mercy and all the other qualities of the reign of God--into the realm of divine love. We are made for being taken into the divine life and union with the Holy Trinity and with one another and with all creation. Nothing less. And that means radical transformation.

For those who see the Gospel calling us to full inclusion, to a vision that embraces not just queers but non-Christians (oh my, now he's gone too far), following Jesus means breaking with old traditions and taboos. To those who embrace the taboos it is rank apostasy. To us it is Gospel and the presence and Spirit of Christ at work transforming us and our world.

I see a table to which all are invited.

Some don't really want me at that table. Or if I'm there I'd better STFU. And take off my collar.

By God's grace I have come to the table and I don't plan on backing off. Nor do I plan to be part of chasing others away. I have had enough of Bad News in my life and I don't want to be part of propagating more of it.

I would love to see a happier outcome and I do believe in divine surprises and that time and chance happen to us all, but I anticipate TEC will pursue the Gospel where God is taking us in this place, others will be mad as hell, and we will not be part of the Anglican Communion some time in the not-too-distant future.

I can live with that.

What I cannot live with is abandoning Good News.

UPDATE: Sheila, in the comments thread at Jake's place, writes:

One of the may things I find troubling about the Advent letter is that the ABC is willing to pick apart the New Orleans conference and refer to positions taken afterwards and even poll members of the Anglican Communion about how they felt towards it and take their answers seriously, while at the same time he holds up Lambeth 1998 and Resolution 1.10 with no comment whatsoever on the deeply manipulative and flawed process which produced it nor on the regrets and resolutions subsequent to it.

And he does the same with The Windsor Report, ignoring the deep reservations many Provinces have about some of its parts.

His highly selective and prejudicial viewing of these processes and documents makes me distrust any resolutions or Covenant which may come from Lambeth 2008.

Charlotte, also in the comments thread, has this fine contribution:

I think I understand ++Rowan's First Epistle to the Central Floridians after this letter, and I'm going to try to articulate my thoughts:

1) The model of Communion in ++Rowan's mind includes a large dollop of what is known in British political theory as "the collective responsibility of the Cabinet." That principle holds that once the Cabinet has come to a decision on a matter, all members must agree to support and endorse it, even if they had been previously opposed. If a Cabinet Member feels s/he cannot support the decision publicly, s/he resigns from the Government.

++Rowan could understand our Church leadership disliking Lambeth 1.10 intensely, yet agreeing to implement it because it was a collective decision on the part of the Communion. (Even if corruptly arrived at, it is still on record as the collective decision of the Communion.) Likewise he thinks we should sign on for the process outlined in the Windsor Report, including the Covenant process. He can't understand why we might refuse to accede to something like Lambeth 1.10 yet refuse to "resign," as it were.

2) Any diocese that signals its willingness to continue to participate in the process ought to be able to continue to participate, in ++Rowan's view.

It is a very different model of authority from that shared by many of us in the United States, and I mean on both sides of the issue -- and it is also, I think, a very specific cultural model as well. Is it really Christian, or is it simply British-Establishment?

UPDATE II: Julian Long, in his response, writes:

It seems to me that the heart of the letter is its evocation of what the Archbishop asserts to be a common understanding of scriptural tradition against which The Episcopal Church has made “a decisive move that plainly implies a new understanding of Scripture that has not been received and agreed by the wider Church.” To this framing the Archbishop adds:
Where such a situation arises, it becomes important to clarify that the Communion as a whole is not committed to receiving the new interpretation and that there must be ways in which others can appropriately distance themselves from decisions and policies which they have not agreed.

In his final paragraph Julian says:

I wish I could think of something positive and uplifting to say here at the end, but I can’t. I think the ABC’s offering of this discourse as an Advent message is more than unfortunate. It makes me sick at heart, and it utterly contradicts and erases the inclusiveness of the ABC’s Christmas message I so loved yesterday. I feel tricked and betrayed.

I think this captures much of my feeling. I wish I could think of something positive and uplifting to say but all I can say is we all know, roughly, where this is going.

At Grandmère Mimi's I commented:

My take on the whole shared view of Scripture bit is that the last two centuries of biblical scholarship and conversation around the same must go on "pause" until everybody catches up. Just another version of you can't do Gospel justice until everyone agrees. It is the tyranny of consensus, something I have seen immobilize vestries.

There is also the issue of postmodern revocation of privileging sacred texts. I think those outside church confines can understand us saying we believe God is revealed in our Scriptures and that we have encountered God in and through Jesus, but to say OUR book is the one divinely given vessel of truth and all others are human, false, etc. just doesn't fly. It is one thing to say I have encountered Truth and quite another to say someone else has NOT. The churches, by and large, are still saying they have an exclusive and I find that a very paltry view of God.

There is a true division in the world on how the Bible is understood and interpreted. The more conservative fail to see how anyone can take it seriously while either not taking it literally or at least giving it privileged status. I had thought our oath of conformity, acknowledging it as the Word of God containing all things necessary for salvation would be quite sufficient. Evidently not. How we came up with the very different idea that all things it contains are necessary for salvation is beyond me.

--the BB