'A life on every face

Ekklesia, The Church Mouse, Michael Wenham and Cranmer's Curate are among many people blogging away at the moment around the subject of the Pete Broadbent Facebook debacle and the Bishop of London's subsequent [overre-]action in withdrawing Bishop Pete from public office.

I have emitted many deep sighs about this sorry affair over the last few days, and probably need to write this post just to get stuff out of my system (but I shall be careful not to rant (too much)).

I like Bishop Pete. We met at NEAC, and  we were Facebook friends until I recently culled him along with a number of other "famous" people clogging up my wall  (mostly because he goes on about Spurs all the time).

He has been good for the church and good for Spring Harvest for many years. He is an Open Evangelical like me, and so there have been very few things he has ever said in public that I have disagreed with. Until now.

If you read the church press or read Anglican blogs or news feeds you will be fully aware of the kind of mudslinging that goes on between conservatives and, well, everybody else really, around the topics of Women Bishops, homosexuality, Flying Bishops, and so on and so on. On the Internet in particular feathers can fly. Very rarely does anyone get disciplined for (say) slagging off the Bishop of Chelmsford or Rowan Williams on the Ugley Vicar or slagging off Reform on Fulcrum. People lick their wounds and retreat out of range until things flare up again, or they (like me) get sick of the circular arguments and stop posting.

But Bishop Pete's Facebook discussion has elicited a big can of worms being opened. The comments, which weren't even as public as some stuff one reads,( e.g. the comments on the Guardian's Comment is free every time Christianity gets a word in edgeways, which can make your blood boil) have been splashed around the world, and the chap has been withdrawn from public office - I guess that means he's just doing a desk job.

One one level I'm thinking "you wally, Pete" - I don't think he should have posted what he did. But on another level, I'm bearing in mind cases such as that of the Priest who blessed a homosexual couple - and who received (from the Bishop of London no less) a letter slapping him on the wrist and telling him not to do it again. And that was for doing something that we have all been specifically told no to do; like, not ever. To my mind that applies, under church discipline, even if you disagree with it. Why wasn't he asked to "withdraw from public office"? After all, the daily mail (and yes those lower case letters are deliberate) hardly approved!

OK, breathe now .....

The wider issue I suppose is, do we take seriously what we have to do and say to be a minister in the CofE? All those ordained have to swear an oath of allegiance to their Bishop and to the Queen. Bishop Pete must have done that  - most recently at his consecration as a Bishop. Clearly he didn't mean it, as he is a declared Republican, but what is also clear is that being a Republican is not a bar to ministry in the Anglican church. Do the oaths mean anything then? Or are they just anotherr anachronism clogging up Ministry.

Don't get me wrong, I disagree with Bishop Pete about the Wedding and about the Royal family per se. I am just increasingly frustrated that both liberal and conservative words and actions go unpunished while leaving the church rather bruised and battered, and thus (actually, albeit indirectly) the Monarch under attack.

I can't see a way back for Bishop Pete under the current bishop of London. He was supposed to also be looking after the Stepney episcopal area during the vacancy there so that can't be much fun for them either.

I was going to call this post "Just remember there are two side to every story" from Billy Bragg's "It says here" but in the end went for an intriguingly relevant line from Talk Talk's "Such a shame"

Come on Come on let's stick/work together

In a rare moment of leisure the other day I watched The Matrix Reloaded which is a strange but highly enjoyable mixture of kick-ass action and philosophy/theology.

A cracking line jumped out at me when I watched the scene of the council of war, where the sceptical (i.e. does not believe the prophecy about Neo (Keanu Reeves, on the left here) being "The One", a kind of Christ figure sent to save humanity) captain Jason Lock argues with the governing council about their strategy; he says he cannot comprehend why they are taking the course of action they have chosen (i.e. to put their faith in Neo), and the council replies in the mighty words

"Comprehension is not a requisite for cooperation"

That is, you don't have to fully agree with, understand or be in control of a situation (think "the darkness comprehendeth it not" - means a lot more than "doesn't understand") in order to work together with others to fix it.

There are any number of ways this phrase could be applied to life today; the credit crunch, cross-party ecological strategy, ecumenism, even kicking racism out of football - I don't get Manchester United or Millwall but I support their efforts to get rid of racist chanting etc.

But of course I'm posting it because of the post-NEAC5 skirmishing between Anglican Mainstream and Fulcrum, and indeed between GAFCON and everybody else.

And, even though I'm a declared Fulcrumite, this has got to be a mutual thing. A way forward can only be found by looking at common ground, and setting aside differences, no matter how painful.

Update: "Comprehension is not a requisite for cooperation" might be a one sentence summary of the book of Job.

As saints of old still line the way ...

Well, people are posting away furiously here there and everywhere about Saturday's NEAC5 consultation. Even Pluralist has had a couple of goes. But the Ugley vicar reduces his comments to a preamble to a wedding sermon that I dare not read for my blood pressure's sake.

As for me, well it was my first proper evangelical "assembly" (unless you count being in the student body at Wycliffe Hall), and my first impression was that there were too many grey haired gentlemen and not enough women or people under 45. The chair of the session, Canon Michael Walters, who otherwise did a very good job, betrayed the truth of my impression when, in inviting comments from the floor he could only invite men by name. The old boy network lives on!

The morning was fairly innocuous, and I was lifted by the opportunity to see face to face people I recognise 'cos they have their photo on Fulcrum, but have never met properly. It was also one of those occasions when one scans the room for familiar faces - there were a fair few, but not as many proportionally as I would find at New Wine. I guess that says something about my constituency.

Talks were OK - I like Paul Perkin and he genuinely seemed to be preaching a message of unity, but I wasn't really sure whether in wanting us to redefine inclusiveness he was talking about our attitude to ECUSA or the C of E evangelical movement. I suppose different people starting from different places may have found what they wanted to hear in his carefully (and no doubt prayerfully) chosen words. The Bishop of Birkenhead talked a lot of sense; I wish they'd given him longer as he was the only person who said anything in depth about Lambeth. Bishop Michael is a nice guy - he's the only Bishop whose house I've been to and heard New Wine worship on the stereo. I think he lost his place a bit at the lectern, and didn't really say much I hadn't already heard expressed elsewhere.

As for the afternoon, well Christina Baxter had me in tears in her plea to God (and CEEC) for more women on the platform. Pete Broadbent had some constructive things to say too, but Mike Ovey was talking way too fast for me to keep up, and I'm afraid Chris Sugden's slick powerpoint just put me to sleep.

I remember the NUS in the 80's, and it was like that a bit when it came to the motion - whether or not we would express our support for the Jerusalem Declaration - lots of people asked for the motion to be withdrawn, or for a procedural motion that it be "not put". The main force of the argument was that this was meant to be a consultation but we hadn't been consulted, and it was all a bit too sudden for some. I felt we needed to have spent more time talking about the thing before we voted on it, and as we saw there was not going to be the opportunity to amend the motion, well it had to go. The vote itself was very tense, and hard to judge - although I saw Colin Buchanan tidying up his papers so I knew we'd won the day - as if anyone can judge a vote from the floor, he can.

But it wasn't a pretty end. Richard Turnbull, about whom many column inches have been written over the last few years, refused to withdraw the motion, and seemed oblivious to the fact that he had been defeated as he closed proceedings. I suspect his claim that the CEEC will just vote on it anyway may mean he is in trouble with them too.

He gathered himself enough to have a pop at Graham Kings in his summing up, and much as I am sympathetic to Graham's analytical picture of evangelicalism (h/t Rachel) I now conclude that there are only two kinds of evangelical - those who agree with Richard Turnbull and those who do not!


For the record, I couldn't have voted to express support for the Jerusalem Declaration, so in a slightly cowardly way I guess I'm glad we didn't vote. It's not that I don't want to affirm the orthodox in the States and Canada - I signed the petition that Jim Packer is an authentic Anglican. It's just that I don't agree with paragraph 13 about rejecting the authority of churches and leaders who have denied the orthodox faith.

There are two reasons for my discomfort with that paragraph. First, who decides who "those churches and leaders" are? What if I end up being one one day? Sounds like something from the Cultural Revolution. We don't actually remove someone's authority just because we reject it - they still have it, and opinion counts for nothing in disabling it.

Second, and in a way related to that, Article 26 of the 39 Articles, from which GAFCON I guess got the force of para 13, speaks of "the discipline of the church" and "by just judgement" in relation to how the heterodox should be dealt with. Neither CEEC nor NEAC nor GAFCON are executive bodies of the Anglican Communion; they do not have the power or authority to hand down discipline of the type article 26 and para 13 imply (to my reading). This properly belongs in the Cof E to the processes of the clergy discipline measure, and I guess the buck stops with Rowan Williams when it comes to the wider communion. If he is reluctant to wade in (which I guess he mostly is), it is for the same reason that The Bishop of London didn't discipline Martin Dudley for blessing a civil partnership in his church - we are all just far too nice to each other! At least Richard Turnbull doesn't suffer from that!

For me then the Jerusalem Declaration (sorry Jody, JD will always be Jack Daniels for me) is a case of nice missiology and morality, shame about the ecclesiology.
I asked two people last week who'd been to NEAC4 whether they wanted my spare ticket; they both said their experience at Blackpol had put them off ever attending again. I can't say I'm thrilled with the idea, but it may be necessary, if the bullying is going to be truly stopped.

To end on a positive note I have as a result of Saturday resolved to get more invovled in the diocesan evangelical association. Dunno where I'll find the time but there you go.

Sometimes it's hard she said ...

This is my response to something that appeared on the Ugley Vicar blog recently. Post title relates to opening greeting ...

Dear John,



My invitation to join CDEA arrived today. If Stand Firm were the committee I don't think they'd let me in!
Nevertheless your thoughts on OE's have set me thinking again, as I prepare to go to All Souls for the NEAC day, about how we define ourselves within Anglicanism and within Evangelicalism.
I fully agree with you about Greenbelt, although we need to acknowledge that if the leaders shifted in theology in the mid 80's then the crowds are taking (or took) a little longer to shift. People were still experiencing conventional evangelical conversions there up to at least '85.
Stuff like Soul Survivor of course provided an alternative for charismatics from the early 90’s, which may have led to a drain of evangelicals going to GB.

But actually, only a very shallow approach to Evangelical identity would be based on "which festival do you go to?" so the whole New Wine/Spring Harvest/Word Alive thing just doesn't cut it for me because the people on the ground are not all making their choice on theological grounds - sometimes it's just when they are free!

Thinking about the atonement, a moment in my training comes to mind when Alister McGrath, lecturing on reformation theology, said that PSA was not a Biblical doctrine. The cat was definitely among the pigeons at college then.

I feel that conservatives frequently attract criticism for insisting that PSA is THE ONLY model that gives us a way to understand the cross, and that other approaches such as Christus Victor or moral example or “Cur Deus Homo” are in some way secondary or not worth including at all. In this I also feel there is not a little arrogance, as the thing about the atonement surely is that it is the most amazing gift that humanity has ever received from God, but our minds are not capable of fully comprehending its mechanics, so theologians down the ages, from Augustine to Anselm to Luther to NTW have written countless pages to help us grasp the enormity of its significance, and we still don’t fully get it.

To the person on the street or in the pew (especially those newly arrived in the pews), surely the most important thing is that there is an atonement – that we can be at one with God because of the passion, death and resurrection of Christ. How it works is (for me as an OE anyway) secondary in importance to the (wonderful) fact that it does work. THIS IS THE GOOD NEWS.

Perhaps I can draw a comparison with the creation/evolution debate. Theologians across the spectrum refer to “theories of the atonement”, in the same way that Darwin formulated a “theory of evolution”. However, when one of these theories is taught as fact, you are bound to get conflict, in the same way that the presentation of Darwinism as fully factual and not just a theory creates conflicts with advocates of other approaches, whether Christian Creationists or advocates of intelligent design.

It is my impression, and I’m sure I’m not alone in this, that CE theology treats PSA in the same way as Dawkins treats Darwinism – the only way to do it. So if that is either rejected or put alongside other theories to help understand the cross, then that is not (Conservative) evangelicalism.

However, OE’s in my experience tend to be eclectic in their theology, looking at different schools or traditions to enrich understanding of doctrine and tradition. That eclecticism for me means that it is OK to interact with any of the mainstream atonement theories.

We should not try to define ourselves either, I feel, on the issue of women’s ordination, because it is impossible to draw a neat line through evangelicalism on this basis. You just can’t consistently predict who will be in favour and who will not. Many of us (who are in favour) made decisions early on and only latterly came to see the Biblical argument; others changed their minds post-Toronto, and still others accept women in orders but not in authority (Richard Turnbull, it would appear, is in that place).

Surely the way forward is to concentrate on what we do agree on; to emphasize the importance of mission to the unchurched, as being primary. The renewal of the church can only be done by co-operating with the Spirit within the church. This is why the institution is important to OE’s; not necessarily that we accept its behaviour unconditionally - you are perhaps accurate in your assertion that OE’s question everything – but (a bit like a wayward teenager) that we love it and want to see it come to its full potential as the vehicle for God’s work in this country and the world.
This has been a long post, so just to finish, when it comes to your comments about OE’s and Rome, yes there are a lot of differences, especially when it comes to gender roles, but there are more than enough things that we can be together on to make me assert that I am only a Protestant because that is the designation of my church. I protest more about the C of E than I do about Rome! Belligerance is a bit of a scary word!

Hope the CRB thing resolves itself for your wife
Cheers

Tim