Breaking Silence

I began writing this on Friday, January 15, 2010 -- the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. at 9:30 in the evening here in New York. Just over three days earlier, an earthquake devastated the city of Port-Au-Prince, the capital of Haiti, as well as many other parts of the country.

Earlier that week, I finished reading Gilead, a novel by Marilynne Robinson. The narrator, John Ames, is a minister in Iowa, whose grandfather fought for abolition in Kansas. Towards the end of the book I spotted this: "doctrine is not belief, it is only one way of talking about belief." I almost wrote a post beginning with that quote.

I've been trying to get something posted for a few weeks now. Early this month, the journal Anglican and Episcopal History arrived. I was attracted to and immediately read three articles. The first two, "Anglican history in the 21st Century: Remembering All the Baptized," by Jane Shaw and "Anglican History in the 21st Century: Remembering All the Baptized: How Then Shall We Teach?" by Daniel Joslyn-Siemiatoski were presented at the annual meeting of the Historical Society of the Episcopal Church which took place in Anaheim in July, in conjunction with General Convention. My principal takeaway from the first article is a reminder that it was the "British conservative evangelicals" who were opposed to the early Lambeth Conferences producing any binding resolutions and now "it is the conservative and evangelical bishops, not only in England but all around the globe, who are pushing for Lambeth decisions to be binding."

The second article brought to my attention the early Christian community in China, evangelized in the seventh century by the Church of the East. There are Chinese writings called Jesus Sutras which date from the seventh and eighth centuries. I am interested in this partly because of my renewed interest in learning Chinese and partly for its own sake. The Jesus Sutras reportedly use language drawn from Taoism -- this interests me and I want to find out more about it, to see if it offers any insights that might be helpful in meditative spiritual practice.

Around the beginning of November, Liz and I began going to morning prayer at the Lampman Chapel in nearby Union Theological Seminary. This service was started by our rector at St. Mary's, Earl Kooperkamp, and takes place Monday through Friday at 8:30 a.m. I call it morning prayer without the capital letters because we do not use the prayer book rite -- instead we use a form from Iona. There's a lot of silence in it, and I am beginning to get used to that. We read two lessons from the Daily Office lectionary, but no psalm, no canticles and no gospel. My interest in the Jesus Sutras is partly so I can use them to briefly meditate on in this morning prayer time.

The third article that grabbed my attention the current issue of Anglican and Episcopal History is "The Challenge of Definition: Conflict and Concord in Anglicanism," by C. K. Robertson, Canon to the Presiding Bishop. It's an important article, but here I will focus on a what is almost a side issue. Canon Robertson refers to the concept of "a spiral of unmanaged conflict" discussed by Susan Carpenter and William Kennedy in their 1988 book Managing Public Disputes. "Their premise," he writes, "is that any given divisive issue left unresolved will reappear again and again in slightly different guises, so that the passage of time, far from bringing healing, instead creates an ever-increasing intensity of opposition." I had never heard of the spiral of unmanaged conflict and was particularly struck by the idea, not for its applicability to the conflict in the Anglican Communion over sexuality but for its applicability to conflicts in the housing cooperative where I live and am a board member.

Note: This is first of a series of posts that I began in the past. I have rounded off the last paragraph that I wrote earlier and leaving it at that

Spam

This blog gets a small amount of spam in the comments -- as do most Blogger blogs, I suspect.

This morning I got the following email from Blogger:

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Finite Time":

Hello everyone! Who knows where to upload the film Avatar?I even bought the film Avatar for a SMS to a Russian URL, the link was, but download fails, the system will boot quite strange cocoa something.Men, advise where to normal as quickly download film avatar?

I have substituted "a Russian URL for the link, which was of course the whole purpose of the spam, but otherwise the comment as shown above is verbatim.

It's a found poem:

Hello everyone!
Who knows where to upload the film Avatar?
I even bought the film Avatar for a SMS to
a Russian URL, the link was,
but download fails,
the system will boot quite strange cocoa something.
Men, advise where to normal as quickly download film avatar?

"The system will boot quite strange cocoa something."

Last Wednesday my computer sytem booted quite strange -- or rather it wouldn't boot at all. And I hadn't even sent an SMS to a Russian URL. (I had to use Goodsearch to learn that SMS is a common term for texting -- in fact it stands for Short Message Service -- a name that describes an essential part of the underlying technology for texting.)

Pizza and Higher Power

On Wednesday evening, January 20, several members of St. Mary's gathered with the current interns who are living at St. Mary's. There were about a dozen of us from St. Mary's, predominantly from the choir. This post is a continuation of what I wrote about this gathering in my previous post.

Each of us spoke to the questions "What do you do to connect with your Higher Power?" and "What do you do to express your creativity?" My immediate reaction when I saw the words "Higher Power" was a negative one. After all, this is a church, not an AA meeting. As it turned out, however, it was ok. The first two who spoke were Charles and Rhonda -- both members of the St. Mary's choir and both people who live or have lived on the margins, sometimes in the grips of addiction and sometimes homeless. Both spoke of prayer and praise as important to them.

I spoke after several others had spoken. The first thing I said was that my experience was more like the interns than like several of the choir members who had spoken -- I have never experienced real hardship. I didn't say it, but I am the beneficiary of both white privilege and male privilege.

During my sophomore, junior and senior years in college, while I was pondering the implications of being gay, I was also seeking a satisfying relationship to church. We had Sunday evening chapel at Hamilton in those days -- i don't remember anything about the order of service except that we said the General Thanksgiving, which at the time I did not know came from the Book of Common Prayer. When I was at home, I went with my mother to the Community Baptist Church in Port Dickinson (a suburb of Binghamton, New York,) which was the church she grew up in and in which my grandparents were leaders. In the summer, if I was at my grandparents' cottage at Heart Lake, I went to the Heart Lake Methodist Church. Each of these places had a different flavor, but none truly grabbed me. I knew I was a Christian, or at least I thought I did, but I wasn't sure what brand of Christian I was. In the fall of 1955, when I was 19, my grandparents brought me to New York to see a production of Ruddigore by the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company. Before we went home, we went to Riverside Church and I heard Dr. Robert James McCracken preach. I don't remember what he said, but I remember that it left me with more questions than answers.

I started graduate school at Columbia University in September, 1958. I was 22 years old. At about 3:15 in the morning of November 5, I met Rex Slauson in a gay dancing bar called the "415" at 415 Amsterdam Avenue. Rex and I immediately clicked, and we were together for the next fourteen years and a little over, until Rex died of a heart attack on February 13, 1973. Rex took me first to an Evensong at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, and then to St. Mary's. I immediately found that I liked the Prayer Book liturgy and I have been at St. Mary's ever since.
For a few years, probably five or six, Rex and I read Morning and Evening Prayer daily, week in and week out. So my spiritual practce consisted of fixed forms of prayer, either at Sunday worship, the Daily Office at home, or grace before meals. I should also mention hymns. I sang in the choir at St. Mary's for many years. I used to know the names and tune names of many of the hymns in the 1940 Hymnal by number. I can't associate the numbers with hymns in the 1982 Hymnal. The words and music of many of the traditional hymns are an important part of my spiritual life.

Liz and I have from time to time had a practice of reading psalms, scripture, and prayers as well as singing hymns in the morning and sometimes we have done compline in the evening. In recent years we have done this more at Heart Lake where the pace of life is a little more relaxed than it is here at home in New York.

About three months ago, shortly after we came back from Heart Lake for the season, we began going to the Morning Prayer service sponsored by St. Mary's weekday mornings at 8:30 in the Lampman Chapel at Union Theological Seminary. This is not a Prayer Book service, rather it uses an order of service from the Iona Community that uses daily themes from iona and short Celtic prayers. We use the Old and New Testament readings for the day from the 1979 Prayer Book Daily Office Lectionary. The service has a lot of silence, which I am beginning to find useful, especially since from where I sit I can gaze at a large Eastern Cross with a chi-rho in the center; or I can turn my head and look at a Christos Pantokrator ikon. I do miss the psalms, the canticles, the fixed prayers, and the gospel readings.

I answered the question about how I express my creativity by mentioning this blog.

The preceding is a revision and expansion of what I said Wednesday evening. What follows are some relsated additional thoughts.

I am currently reading Mary Gordon's Reading Jesus. I find it a maddening book in many ways, but I keep reading. I keep reading because I am looking for something -- I'm looking for an answer to an important question -- not the answer, but an answer. To put it in Anglican terms, the question is: How can we use reason to reframe our understanding of scripture and tradtion and still remain in continuity with the communion of saints through the ages? I doubt Mary Gordon would come up with those words, but I suspect that is the question she is also exploring.

Sigh! and Hi!

For weeks I have been trying to write a post for this blog. I have lots of drafts, but none of them have seen the light of day. But yesterday evening I mentioned the blog and someone said she would like to see it and I gave her the url.

Blog is short for weblog. The web part is the world wide web, that is, the internet. The log part originally was sort of like a journal, or the way some folks use Facebook or Twitter. So I'll use this post as a sort of journal tonight.

Yesterday morning my computer died. It's still under warranty and today I took it to the shop -- that's easy to do since I live in New York. They said they have a five business day turnaround, which is fine (though inconvenient) because I can use Liz's laptop as a replacement.

Yesterday evening at St. Mary's we had a pizza gathering with the interns. Click on the link to learn more -- to understand what I am saying all you need to know is that there are five interns living in an apartment at St. Mary's, it's an AmeriCorps program and the interns work in social service agencies. Most of the St. Mary's people there are in the choir, since the pizza gathering came right after choir rehearsal.

There were somewhere between 16 and 20 of us there and over the course of about an hour and a half each of us spoke to the questions "What do you do to connect with your Higher Power?" and "What do you do to express your creativity?"

I'll give you my (revised and extended) remarks tomorrow.

Silence

Anyone who has been trying to read Morningsider in the past several months knows that I have been posting rarely and not particularly commenting on events of any kind. For example, my most recent post, on November 15th, was about Chinese characters in a photograph on the front page of the New York Times. Before that,

• On November 12, completely unnoticed by the blog world, I broke the story of the response of the Association for the Rights of Catholics in the Church to the Apostolic Constitution.


• On November 10 I commented on the pejorative use of the term "unequivocal love" by an ex-Episcopalian in Fort Worth.


• On September 28, I reported cryptically on the meeting of the North American Academy of Ecumenists and referred to a conversation with Alyson Barnett-Cowan.


• On September 11, I posted a very personal account of a week and included this paragraph:

  As for me, I'm in the process of discernment about how I want to spend my time -- when I have time. I may turn back to genealogy for a while -- or I may go back to The Dunciad. I'm pretty sure I'm not going to try to blog assiduously about things Episcopal (or Anglican) or political. But who knows?

  As an update, I'll report that a free class in Chinese here at Morningside Gardens has captured my attention.


• On September 7th I posted about a Labor Day gathering, some old chairs, and an old canoe.


• On August 29 I posted about the Anglican roots of the Faith and Order movement and on the Inter Anglican Standing Commission on Unity Faith and Order.


• On August 28, I posted about an article by Adrian Worsfold at the Daily Episcopalian in which he said things that I thought, and still think, show an appalling ignorance of the relationship of Anglicanism, Christian Unity, and Faith and Order.

Here, in reverse order, are a few things I have not posted about:

• Elections of bishops
• A court ruling against the use of eminent domain in my neighborhood
• Defeat of marriage equality in the New York state Senate
• Sending more troops to Afghanistan
• Uganda

The list could be longer, but that will do for now.

Help wanted

On the front page of this morning's New York Times, above the fold, is a photograph with the caption "A Beijing store is selling notebooks with an image of President Obama, who arrives in China for a three-day visit on Sunday." Most prominent in the photograph is a handwritten sign in Chinese -- and since I am once again studying Chinese (in a very relaxed way) I was curious as to what the sign said. Here is an image of the sign:

There are three characters on the top line and a single character in parentheses below. I should have recognized two of the characters, but the only one I recognized was the one at the bottom in parentheses: 女 (nǚ) which means female or woman.

To find what the other three are I went to YellowBridge and drew the characters into the handwriting recognizer. I learned that the three characters were 招店員 (zhāo diàn yuán) and mean, roughly, "seeking a shop assistant", so the sign means "female shop assistant wanted." I was surprised that the character 員 was the "traditional" form and not the modern "simplified" form, which is 员. The other three characters are the same in both traditional and simplified.

Another (Roman Catholic) Response to the Apostolic Constitution

In April, I mentioned attending a gala for the 80th birthday of Leonard Swidler, who is editor of the Journal of Ecumenical Studies. Leonard is also Co-Founder and President of the Association for the Rights of Catholics in the Church (ARCC). Yesterday Leonard sent out, on behalf of ARCC, an open letter to Anglicans.Episcopalians thinking about coming over to Rome. The full text of the letter is here.

Completely without irony, the letter lists a number of things that might make someone think twice before making the move. Here is the text except for the footnoteswhich can be found at the link cited above.

We, the Association for the Rights of Catholics in the Church (ARCC), wish to extend a warm welcome to our brothers and sisters of the Anglican/Episcopal communion who are clergy and spouses, as well as laity, discerning the call to become members of the Roman Catholic Church under the recently announced Apostolic Constitution.

As committed and enthusiastic Catholics working for the renewal of the Church in the spirit of the Second Council of the Vatican (Vatican II), we recognize the primacy of an informed conscience in making your discernment and decision, To that end, we wish to offer the following observations, that you may be informed of the realities in the Roman Catholic Church of which you may choose to become a part.

You bring an experience of collegiality and subsidiarity at the parish and diocesan levels which, provided you are allowed to retain its practice, will bring a strong complement, even as it stands in polar opposition, to the top-down authority structure of the Roman Catholic Church, where collegiality and subsidiarity function only haphazardly, and almost exclusively at the international level.

You will find yourself members of a Church rich in the liturgy that flowed from the authentic conciliar tradition of Vatican II.

You will find yourself in a Church where at least 39% of marriages now take place across denominational lines, and where truly interchurch couples (who continue to worship together as much as possible in both their Christian traditions) offer an imperfect but real preview of the anticipated unity for which Christ prayed.

If you are a priest, you will find yourself a member of a Church where your Anglican/Episcopal priesthood, exercised with fidelity over the years, is considered “absolutely null and utterly void.” You will be required to question the validity of your earlier ordination and then seek re-ordination within the Roman Catholic Church.

If you are a priest, you will find yourself in a Church where, if your wife dies, you will be called to be celibate, and forgo for the rest of your life the joy and solace of a loving spousal relationship.

You will find yourself members of a Church where at least 60% of its members are in favor of married clergy and the ordination of women, and 45% are welcoming of gay and lesbian unions.

You will find yourself likewise in a Church which defines homosexuality as an objective disorder, yet where some 20-30% of the clergy (bishops, priests and deacons) have that orientation.

You will find yourself in a Church with a rich variety of theologies and practices, some of which you will be in agreement with, while others will be difficult for you to accept, yet all of which are held under the banner of the Roman Catholic Church.

Should you accept all these things, and in conscience believe that the offer of priestly ordination within the Roman Catholic Church is from God, then we will warmly welcome you, for you will have accepted the Church as it is, rather than the sentimental or imagined Church of integrity which some would have you believe.

Sincerely,
Leonard Swidler.

"Equivocal Love"

I haven't blogged for well over a month -- no reason, except a host of other things have been occupying my time.

Here's a quote from The Wall Street Journal, via The Lead at Episcopal Cafe, in an article about the Diocese of Fort Worth:

Mr. Chaffe (part of the breakaway group) said he is no longer distracted by church politics or upset by issues such as the blessing of gay unions. He need not put up with what he sees as a flawed message of "unequivocal love" for all; instead, he can focus on bringing those he believes to be sinners toward repentance. His church, he says, is again his -- and that uplifts him.

The opposite of "unequivocal love" is "equivocal love," which doesn't sound very attractive to me.

NAAE

Liz and I have just returned from the annual gathering of the North American Academy of Ecumenists, held this year at the Washington Theological Union in Washington, DC. The thene was The Ethical Horizon from and Ecumenical Perspective. As readers of this blog and those I link to and follow are already aware, the ethical question that dominates today relates to human sexuality.

There were five major papers presented at the conference. They will be published, perhaps by next fall, in the Journal of Ecumenical Studies. One, by Dr. Timothy Sedgewick of Virginia Theological Seminary, dealy directly with human sexuality. The others ranged from a survey of those ecumenical discussions which had touched on matters of ethics to relflections on the Roman Catholic - Mennonite dialogue which in 2004 produced a report entitled Called to be Peacemakers.

As is often the case at conferences, informal conversations were as interesting and informative as the formal presentations. I was especially interested in conversations I had with Alyson Barnett-Cowan and Christopher Agnew.

Down Days

This past Tuesday I drove home from our cottage to our partment in New York, in the full expectation or going to the dental school for another Wednesday appointment and then returning Wednesday afternoon and watching Obama's address to congress with Liz. The plan was that while I was at the dentist, my car would be at the garage.

The plan fell apart in several ways. First, shortly after I got home there was a call from the dentist that the work hadn't come back from the lab, so I didn't go to the dentist ater all. Then the work on the car took all day instead of half a day so I didn't drive back until very early Thursday morning.

I did watch Obama' speech, alone. It was a great speech. But it didn't excite me. My friend Christina sent Liz a link to an interview with Dennis Kucinich about the speech and I passed the link on to Grandmère Mimi who posted the video.

As for me, I'm in the process of discernment about how I want to spend my time -- when I have time. I may turn back to genealogy for a while -- or I may go back to The Dunciad. I'm pretty sure I'm not going to try to blog assiduously about things Episcopal (or Anglican) or political. But who knows?

To review this week:
Sunday -- we had a family gathering here at the lake
Monday -- we were here but I don't remember doing anything in particular
Tuesday -- in the afternoon I drove to New York
Wednesday -- I mostly read all day while the car was being worked on
Thursday -- I drove back early in the morning, then lazed out for most of the day
Friday -- I've mostly puttered all day
Saturday -- tomorrow, we drive to New York. Sunday will be our first day back at St. Mary's in many weeks. We'll return here on Thursday.

Our time in the country is winding down. My commitments at Morningside Gardens are heating up.

Finally, I have begun reading The Church-Idea by William Reed Huntington, first published in 1870. I'll report on it as I get into it.

Chairs and a Canoe

On Labor Day Sunday, September 6, we had what is becoming an annual family gathering at Heart Lake. The picture above shows my cousin Jenny, my nice Michelle and her husband Dan, Liz (my wife,) my Uncle Chuck and my cousin David. Chuck and David are sitting in spring steel lawn chairs that have been on that lawn for more than fifty years.
Here's a picture of the chairs by themselves.It's easy to see that they are in need of paint. Here they are from the back.None of us have ever seen anything like these spring steel chairs anywhere else. Here they asre from the side. In the background are two metal chairs with solid seats and backs, which are more common -- in fact you can find contemporary versions made of much thinner gauge steel. By the way, the reason the grass is so thin or eve nmissing is that the lawn was dug up several times last fall and this summer in the course of installing a new sewer system.

On the same day Uncle Allen took Caitlin and Aidan out in the canoe.
Thanks to my niece Tina for the pictures with people in them.

Christian Unity & Faith and Order

The Office of Ecumenical and Interfaith Relations of the Episcopal Church has issued a Handbook for Ecumenism, most recently revised in 2007. It states, on page 8, that "the story of the Episcopal Church in the ecumenical movement has yet to be written," and goes on to say that the story may be said to begin in the 19th century with the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral.

In 1870, an Episcopal priest, William Reed Huntington, published The Church Idea -- An Essay Towards Unity in which he proposed what later became the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral. Most of the 1886 resolution adopted by the House of Bishops in Chicago is printed on pages 876-877 of the 1979 Prayer Book. In paragraph 4 the bishops declare

That this Church does not seek to absorb other Communions, but rather, co-operating with them on the basis of a common Faith and Order, to discountenance schism, to heal the wounds of the Body of Christ, and to promote the charity which is the chief of Christian graces and the visible manifestation of Christ to the world.

At General Convention in 1910, Charles Brent, Missionary Bishop of the Phillipines, suggested a world conference on faith and order and a motion by the rector of Trinity Church in New York City, William T. Manning, was became the first formal proposal for a World Conference on Faith and Order. The first conference was held in Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1927, and Bishop Brent was elected its President.

The first North American Conference on Faith and Order was held at Oberlin, Ohio in 1957. In October, 2005, the National Council of Churches Commission on Faith and Order issued a Faith and Order Commission Handbook which contains a brief history of Faith and Order written by Sr. Lorelei F. Fuchs, SA. She writes:

To date Faith and Order is the most comprehensive theological forum gathering together representatives of Christian churches to work towards the visible unity of the one church of Jesus Christ. It embraces more Christians and churches than the World Council of Churches. Serving this movement at the global level is the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches. Similar structures exist on other levels – national, regional and local. This world commission describes its meaning and purpose in its by-laws:

to proclaim the oneness of the Church of Jesus Christ, to call the churches to the goal of visible unity in one faith and one eucharistic fellowship, expressed in worship and in common life in Christ, in order that the world may believe

Oneness of the church of Jesus Christ... visible unity in faith and eucharistic fellowship... worship... common life... so that the world may believe... These concerns are the heart of this unity movement, which identifies two spheres that frame their consideration.

“Faith” is the first of two spheres that expresses the goal of Christian unity in the Faith and Order movement. Behind the “faith” sphere is the desire for visible unity in the essentials of Christian faith, life and witness that inspired the churches to come together in a conciliar structure at the turn of the twentieth century. Regarding “faith,” the purpose of the Faith and Order movement is to unearth the common ground that is at the root which binds Christian creed and confession.

“Order” is the second sphere that expresses the goal of Christian unity in the Faith and Order movement. At the centre of the “order” sphere is the ecclesial praxis of the Christian way of life. Concerning “order,” Faith and Order’s purpose is to discern the ways to mutual recognition and reconciliation of Christian spiritual and sacramental life, Christian mission and ministry.

Together, “faith” and “order” unite in a “movement” enabling the churches to enter into the theological dialogue and reflection necessary to discern and transcend the differences that are church dividing and to recognize and articulate the bonds that are uniting. The dimension of “faith,” then, focuses on doctrinal matters of faith, sacraments, mission and ministry. The dimension of “order” focuses on the form or polity or discipline of these matters. That Faith and Order is a “movement” means that it is not a static entity but a journey towards unity with a direction that is
charted and followed by diverse routes. Rather than a mapped-out blueprint, the movement’s goal of the visible unity of the church is understood as gift and call – a gift from God revealed in the response to a call to fellowship, communion, koinonia. Various structures support this movement.

Sustaining the world movement of faith and order is the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches. This commission consists of a secretariat, programmes of studies and world conferences. These latter, the world conferences, are the peaks of ongoing theological work and prayer that is carried out in the valleys and plains of everyday life lived as an ecumenical Christian. Parallel structures exist on national, regional and local levels.

This coming October, the Faith and Order Plenary Commission of the World Council of Churcvhes will meet in Crete. Among the items on the agenda are:

• Sources of authority

By looking at how churches use sources of authority, the commission will take a new approach to the old debate around "Scripture versus Tradition", moving it from a theoretical discussion towards a sharing of experiences.

• Moral discernment

Through the examination of case studies – some of them on controversial issues like proselytism, homosexuality and stem-cell research – the commission will critically look at how churches arrive at their positions on moral issues. The goal is to begin the process of developing an ecumenically recognized set of steps for the churches' moral discernment.

These seem to me to be important questions -- and like many of the issues that Fiath and Order has taken up in the past, they are not easy.

The current WCC director of Faith and Order is Canadian Anglican theologian Canon Dr John Gibaut.

Let me reiterate that I think that someone at the Anglican Communion Office or the Anglican Consultative Council blundered when they put together the title "Unity, Faith and Order." My wife Liz points out that the names of the two previos commissions -- the Standing Commission on Ecumenical Relations and the Theological and Doctrinal Commission -- were clear and communicated what the commissions were about. The name of the Commission for Unity, Faith and Order is unclear, unless you realize that "Unity" and "Faith and Order" are technical terms that have ecumenical reference. The name is also unfortunate in that it lends itself to a risible acronym, which has been used by Adrian Worsfold not just once or twice on his own blog, but also at the Daily Episcopalian. Sad to say, Grandmère Mimi picked it up here and here.

Now that I've said all that, it's only fair to point out a few facts.

On The Anglican Communion Official Website is this page:

Ecumenical Affairs - Commissions IASCUFO

IASCUFO - Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Unity Faith and Order

IASCUFO’s mandate was approved by the Joint Standing Committee in November 2008.

The Standing Commission shall have responsibility:

• to promote the deepening of Communion between the Churches of the Anglican Communion, and between those Churches and the other churches and traditions of the Christian oikumene
• to advise the Provinces and the Instruments of Communion on all questions of ecumenical engagement, proposals for national, regional or international ecumenical agreement or schemes of co-operation and unity, as well as on questions touching Anglican Faith and Order
• to review developments in the areas of faith, order or unity in the Anglican Communion and among ecumenical partners, and to give advice to the Churches of the Anglican Communion or to the Instruments of Communion upon them, with the intention to promote common understanding, consistency, and convergence both in Anglican Communion affairs, and in ecumenical engagement
• to assist any Province with the assessment of new proposals in the areas of Unity, Faith and Order as requested.

The first meeting of IASCUFO will be in Canterbury in December 2009.

Note that the Commission's mandate was approved the Joint Standing Committee in November 2008.

The Windsor Continuation Group Report to the Archbishop of Canterbury, dated 17 December 2008, refers to the IASCUFO. I have been unable to find any reference to the IASCUFO before May, 2009, although there is discussion of the report the Windsor Continuation Group starting about February.

Two resolutions of the May 2009 meeting of the Anglican Conultative Council (ACC-14) refer to IASCUFO. In section g of Resolution 14.09, the ACC

asks the Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Unity, Faith and Order to undertake a study of the role and responsibilities in the Communion of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lambeth Conference, the Anglican Consultative Council and the Primates’ Meeting; the ecclesiological rationale of each, and the relationships between them, in line with the Windsor Continuation Group Report, and to report back to ACC-15;

and Resolution 14.10 reads

The Anglican Consultative Council, in the light of the Resolution 14.08 of ACC-14 on the WCG Report, asks that the report of the study undertaken by IASCUFO includes a study of the existing papers developed within our Communion and of current best practices in governance for multi-layered complex organizations, and makes recommendations to ACC-15 on ways in which the effectiveness of the Instruments of Communion may be enhanced.

The reference to 14.08 is a mistake -- they meant section g of 14.09 quoted above.

There's plenty there to brood on, but I don't think it's necessarily ominous. The questions they are asked to study are profound ones. I'm going to leave it there for now.

NOTE TO READERS, IF I HAVE ANY: I'll have very limited time on the internet from now until next Thursday, September 3.

Adrian Squeaks

At Daily Episcopalian Adrian Worsfold has written a piece called "Anglican no longer." That title is intended to signify that he, Adrian, is no longer an Anglican or a Christian, which is fair enough. Adrian is a clever guy, and on his blog, Pluralist Speaks, has written several clever commentaries on things Anglican, especially taking on Archbishop Rowan Williams and Bishop Tom Wright. He has also had cogent things to say about the proposed covenant and about the apparent drive for uniformity within the Anglican Communion. But in the end, he does not know enough and so he sometimes talks (or squeaks) through his hat.

I refer especially to this statement: The latest development is still worthy of comment: having an office for Unity, Faith and Order - a UFO very alien to Anglicanism. In fact, the office for Unity, Faith and Order is not, as Adrian thinks, part of a "drive towards unity of process" in the Anglican Communion. In the first place, it is not new -- it is the result of the consolidation of two long standing Inter-Anglican Commissions. In the second place, Unity and Faith and Order are both terms that refer to aspects of the ecumenical movement -- aspects indeed that have deep Anglican roots. Two minutes or less on Google, or my favorite, Goodsearch, would have brought these facts to light.

To be sure, the average Anglican layperson, and even clergy, are not very well informed about the ecumenical movement and thus might be forgiven for missing the significance of the rather unfortunately named position, Director of Unity, Faith and Order. It is also true that the August 14 post by the Anglican Communion News Services Appointment of new Director for Unity, Faith and Order is not terribly informative. For example, it does not refer to the July 1 post Inter-Anglican Standing Committee for Unity, Faith and Order - IASCUFO in which two important points are made -- first, that the new commission replaces two earlier commissions, The Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Ecumenical Relations and the Inter-Anglican Theological and Doctrinal Commission, and second, that the Secretary for the Commission will be the Director for Unity, Faith and Order, Anglican Communion Office.

It was at the third meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council in Trinidad in 1976 that the idea was conceived of a representative commission to consider theological and doctrinal questions which concern the Anglican Communion as a whole. The proposal was endorsed by the 1978 Lambeth Conference, and the Inter-Anglican Theological and Doctrinal Commission was subsequently established. -- For the Sake of the Kingdom - 1986

Following Lambeth 1988, the second Inter-Anglican Theological and Doctrinal Commission was formed and in 1997 produced the Virginia Report. Following Lambeth 1998, the third Inter-Anglican Theological and Doctrinal Commission was formed and in 2008 issued the report "Communion, Conflict and Hope."

The Inter-Anglican Commission on Ecumenical Affairs is relatively recent. It was established following Lambeth 1998. Before that was something called the Ecumenical Advisory Group of the Anglican Communion which issued the Agros Report to the Anglican Consultative Council at ACC-1o in 1996 and then to the Lambeth Conference.

It is true that both of these commissions have dealt with issues which touch on coherence within Anglicanism, but these are old issues and there is really nothing new here.

In part II, I shall discuss the Anglican and Episcopal roots of the terms Faith and Order and Unity.

Note: I inadvertently posted an incomplete version of this on Thursday, August 27.

Cottage and Canoe

A week ago, I took our friend Howard out in our canoe. It's a 17 foot Morris canoe which my cousin Doug restored about 10 years ago. Here we are bringing the canoe close to the spot where Howard could disembark. I then took the canoe over to the spot where we could take it out of the water.And here's a view of our cottage from the lake.

So Many Thoughts

As this last full week of August begins, I find my head swirling with ideas. Ideas, that is, that I want to write about. At the same time, I find that I have a number of tasks that seem to take priority over writing. I don't seem to be able to produce a coherent composition -- so I'll just jot down a few ideas and hope to be able to expand on them later.

Since I heard a broadcast last summer on Alternative Radio of a talk by George Lakoff, I have been interested in embodied mind theory, and especially in the explanation it provides for why rational argument rarely changes people's minds, why so many ordinary people are persuaded to vote and act against what is clearly in their own interest, and why otherwise decent people can so easily demonize others. This has application to the LGBTQ struggle, to immigrants, to anti-Muslim rhetoric and actions, to the health care reform struggle, and to a host of other issues. I want to write more about this.

Because my wife Liz is active in the ecumenical movement, I have been exposed to both current thinking and the history of the ecumencial movement, the desire for Christian Unity, the Faith and Order movement, and contemporary inter-religious dialogue. I want to write more about this, especially about the Episcopal roots of the ecumenical movement and the influence of William Reed Huntington and Charles Henry Brent.

Although I can't call myself a Marxist (I don't know enough to be able to tell whether I am a Marxist or not,) I do call myself a socialist. I am convinced that capitalism as it exists today, along with what I will call financialism, are incompatible with the Gospel as I understand it.

I would like very much to try to explicate what I mean by "the Gospel as I understand it." This will take a good deal of work.

Those are some of the things I am thinking about. Now for a few of the things I am doing.

Liz and I have been here at Heart Lake full time since July 25 -- that is, Liz has. I hve gone back to New York for one or two nights every week. Sometimes it's for a meeting, sometimes for a dentist's appointment, sometimes for both. The meetings are connected to my service on the Board of Directors of our coop, Morningside Heights Housing Corporation. The dentist's appointment are for prosthodntics at Columbia Dental School which can only take place on Wednesdays (because of the schedule of the attending dentist who is overseeing the work.) Two weeks ago I was in the chair for eight hours and last week for five hours. The drive to New York is three hours each way.

Meanwhile, here at the cottage, we are proceeding with some work to improve things both outdoors and indoors. When we rebuilt the cottage after the 1988 fire, we acquired an attic space. The number of things we have put in that attic is astounding. I have begun the task of cleaning it out -- it's a big job.

To be updated.

Stouter than I used to be

I have mentioned before that I am a G & S fan and have been for more than 60 years.

I think (nay, I know) that I have also mentioned that that I am a fan of BBC Radio 3 on the internet and in the summer a fan especially of the Proms.

Well, on August 12, the day I am posting this, I have an appointment with my dentist so on Tuesday August 11 I had to drove back to New York. And while I was driving the BBC was broadcasting, live from the Royal Albert Hall, Prom 35 - Gilbert and Sullivan's Patience -- conducted by Sir Charles Mackerras. (Chatles Mackerras is eleven years older than I, and I bought a record of his Pineapple Poll, a ballet based of G & S tunes, before I was 20, so I have known about him almost all my life and certainly all my adult life.

So consider my dismay when this broadcast (and internetcast) took place while I was driving. If I had been driving on the wrong side of the road in England, (I should tell you sometime o about the first time i did that) I could have listened to the broadcast live -- but in Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, and again New York, it just wasn't possible.

But wait, on the BBC iPlayer I can "listen again" for seven days. So I didn't miss it after all. As I write this, I am listening to Felicity Palmer, as Lady Jane, sing "Silvered is the raven hair," accompanying herself on the cello. I recommend it. You can hear it here.

The image of Lady Jane is from the Gilbert and Sullivan Archive.

Catching Up

A lot has happened since I last posted. In no particular order:
General Convention has ended
The BBC Proms have begun
Liz and I went to the wedding of her (our) grandniece Sara and saw a great many family members including Jane, Scott and Amanda
So far this week and last week I have been to three meetings here at Morningside Gardens
To accomplish this, I have driven at least 660 miles with another 180 to go to get back to our summer base at Heart Lake (in truth, Liz drove some of it)
With all this I have been trying to keep up with the intertubes

Right now (Thursday morning) Liz is in Philadelphia and will come back Friday morning - then we drive back to Heart Lake.

I have another meeting this evening while Liz is in Philadelphia and I have to come back from Heart Lake next Tuesday for a board meeting.

All this is by way of prologue -- right now I want to write about some of the significant actions taken at General Convention. First, a couple of resolutions whose designations have become well known -- D025 and C056. I wrote last March that our tiny church of St. Mary's, in Manhattanville (now sometimes called West Harlem) voted at our Annual Meeting to call for the rescinding of 2006's B033 and also for approval of the blessing of same-sex unions. D025 effectively, but not formally, rescinds B033 and C056 is a small but significant step in the direction of approval of blessing of same sex unions.

As an autobiographical aside, when I was in a same sex relationship, my partner Rex Slauson was against "gay marriage," at least in the church, because he felt it was a slavish imitation of a straight institution. It must be said that Rex was not able to be faithful, so maybe that's why he held that opinion. Since Rex died in February 1973 (after a heart attack in a bathhouse) I've had a lot of time to develop my own views. At the end of 1974, about 21 months after Rex's death, I realized I was in love with Liz. We were married in February 1975 and for at least 15 years I fooled myself into thinking I was bisexual. Then Liz and I went to a Conference of the Evangelical and Ecumenical Women's Caucus EEWC in Virginia and at a presentation about the wives of "ex-gays" I realized that I was still simply gay and not bisexual. As always, I am reticent about what that means in our marriage, except to say that I have never "fooled around," but I am not reticent about my advocacy for full inclusiveness in the church.

Two members of our parish work at 815 -- both are in same sex partnships. As it happens neither was there at this year's Annual Meeting, and the other LGBT people aren't as tuned in to issues in the wider church as I am. So I was the one who made the motion about B033 at our annual meeting, and I was the one who realized I had forgotten to mention the blessing of same-sex unions.

Thoughts on B033

While General Convention has been going on in Anaheim, I have been following several blogs and other sources on the internet to see what has been going on. As I mentioned a few months ago, my parish, St. Mary's, Manhattanville, at its annual meeting took a stand for the repeal of B033. Now B033, a resolution passed at the 2006 convention, provides, that is asks for, an effective moratorium on the election of of an openly gay or lesbian bishop in thr Episcopal Church. It is an amazingly hot issue for LGBT persons, considering that most of us don't aspire to be a bishop. But with B033 in place, all LGBT Episcopalians are damaged in two ways -- first, we are being told that the Episcopal Church welcomes us -- but only up to a point and no further. Second, we are being told that we cannot -- for a season -- see a person like us in the the role of bishop.

I live on the edge of Harlem, very close to 125th Street. On election night, 2008, when Barack Obama won the election for President, people poured into the street to celebrate -- especially African American people. Never mind that Obama has been a disappointment in several important ways -- to have an African American as President is very important to people of color -- and as we were reminded again today, to Africans as well as to people in the United States.

Just as people of color all over the world rejoice to see Barack Obama as President of the United States, so too many LBGTQ people who are not Episcopalians rejoice to see Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire.

NOTE: I have revised this post because my remarks on bishops were not really related to my remarks on B033. July 13, 7:50 AM

Friends

The Friends of Jake, of OCICBW, and Wounded Bird are at this moment assembling in Anaheim, and probably heading towards the doors of the Integrity Eucharist. I wish I were there. 'Nuff said.

July 5th - Last week's Pride March and beyond

Sunday July 5th Liz and I got up early at Heart Lake and drove home (2-1/2 hours taking I80 on a Sunday morning) in order to attend St. Mary's, Manhattanville, one last time before starting our ten (or more) week hiatus.

As I wrote last week, at the Pride March I carried one end of the Diocese of New York Banner and Lisa carried the other end. There were lots of pictures taken, but I haven't yet seen one that includes me. Here, though, is a picture of Lisa and her sister with +Gene Robinson.
Lisa has this picture on her phone and was able to send it to me when we spoke after church. I'll keep looking to see if there are any posted pictures of the full banner -- if there are, I am sure to be in them.

The reason for the ten week hiatus from St Mary's is that Liz and I are about to move to Heart Lake for the remainder of the summer. When we are there, we attend the Heart Lake United Methodist Church, where Liz plays the piano to the delight of the congregation, including Judy, who is a great musician but doesn't really play the piano. So once we get there, it's hard to not be there on a Sunday.

We're leaving for Heart Lake on Thursday, and so far my calendar shows that I have to be in New York for meetings every week for the next month. Usually I drive down alone the day of the meeting and head back the next morning.

Thus begins the summer.