[N.B.: The rejection of diocesan boundary crossing by bishops from other provincial Churches of the Anglican Communion, as has gone on for several years now in the United States, Canada and Brazil, continues to be an important (essential?) commitment on the part of some conservatives who remain within The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada, as in the latest offering from the principal theologians of the Anglican Communion Institute. I don't comment on this piece, "Patient Endurance - On Living Faithfully in a Time of Troubles", for reason of not yet having read it closely enough to offer either cogent criticism or praise. However, I am persistently bothered by the appeal to this rejection, one of the injunctions of the 2004 Windsor Report, because it represents an oversimplication of life in the early Church during the time of the Arian controversy (which, remember, was not settled by the Council of Nicaea but continued to rage at least until the Council of Constantinople, near the end of the fourth century). My objection to the Windsor injunction, and its continued endorsement by some conservatives, is grounded mostly in a protest against this oversimplication of history and against an appeal to the canons of the Council of Nicaea that is theologically incoherent in the current context for a number of reasons, not least of which is the fact that the bishops gathered at Nicaea understood themselves, and those bishops in communion with them, to be The Church, while Anglicans do not so understand themselves. Episcopalians and Anglicans who appeal to the canons of Nicaea against diocesan boundary crossings skate on very thin ice indeed, when many Anglican dioceses have been set up where there previously had been bishops in historic succession, whether Catholic or Orthodox or Old Catholic (not to mention Oriental Orthodox or Assyrian Christian), in some cases for many centuries before Anglican incursions into these established apostolic sees. Examples of these incursions in North America alone include all Episcopal and Anglican dioceses in Quebec, Florida, Louisiana, Maryland, Texas and the rest of the Southwest, California, Alaska, and Mexico. And yet Nicaea is not invoked against them. The only right basis for an appeal against diocesan boundary crossings by bishops in other provincial Churches of the Anglican Communion is an appeal to "the bonds of affection" - and the strain put on them by the actions of The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada renders such an appeal difficult in the extreme.

The following is the original form of William Tighe’s essay “Abusing the Fathers: the Windsor Report’s Misleading Appeal to Nicea”, published in edited form in Touchstone, and republished here in its entirety, after publication in March 2005 on the original Confessing Reader weblog with Dr Tighe’s kind permission. While I am myself among those conservative “evangelical (and catholic, in my case)” Christians who appreciate Dr Wright’s scholarship, I believe that Dr Tighe does us a service in providing this critical analysis of the appeal to the canons of the Council of Nicea with reference to the current crisis in Anglicanism. Dr Tighe's critique is no less apposite now than it was nearly four years ago.]

N. T. (”Tom”) Wright, Bishop of Durham in the Church of England, has for some years deservedly enjoyed a reputation of a first-rate Scripture scholar who has been able to counteract and debunk “revisionist” — read, if you will “heretical” or “anti-Christian” — views of the life, death and resurrection of the Lord and the authority of the Bible, such as those emanating from the “Jesus Seminar” or from the retired Episcopalian Bishop of Newark, New Jersey, John Shelby Spong. He appeals particularly to those “conservative evangelical” Christians who wish to uphold a generally “high” view of the authority and inspiration of the Scriptures, as regards doctrine and morals, but who wish to leave room for some “developments” that more conservative and tradition-minded Christians find suspect, such as the ordination of women, of which Bishop Wright is a strong supporter.

A year ago, the uproar after the election and subsequent consecration of the notorious Vicki Gene Robinson — the Episcopal priest who divorced his wife and subsequently openly entered a homosexual relationship which continues to this day — as Bishop of New Hampshire, the Archbishop of Canterbury appointed a committee of Anglicans (five archbishops, five bishops, two female clergymen and five lay church officials) to look into the matter — it was a development which clearly contradicted the 1998 Lambeth Conference’s resolution declaring such relationships to be incompatible with the Christian faith — and to make recommendations as to how the Anglican Communion could deal with it in such a way as to maintain the highest possible degree of communion. The Chairman of this “Lambeth Commission” was Robert Eames, Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of the Church of Ireland, a man who, as chairman of a similar committee in the late 1980s about the issue of women bishops, helped to devise a way in which the Anglican Communion could avoid — as it has so far — a split over that divisive issue. Possibly the hope was that he would be able to work the same magic on this new, and even more divisive issue. When the Lambeth Commission produced its “Windsor Report” on October 18, 2004, the results fell well below the expectations of those who expected, or hoped, that it might recommend the expulsion, or at least the suspension, of the Episcopal Church (and the Anglican Church of Canada, whose diocese of New Westminster began officially to bless homosexual “partnerships” in May of that year) from the Anglican Communion, or at least some measure of firm discipline.

The report came to three conclusions: it called for a “moratorium” on the elevation to the episcopacy of all non-celibate homosexuals, a similar moratorium on the authorization of rites for the public blessing of same-sex “partnerships” and an end to the intervention of traditionalist Anglican bishops (usually from Africa or Asia) who have intervened in the dioceses of other Anglican bishops to support traditional Anglicans who have been under attack for their orthodox stance on this issue, or on that of the ordination of women: these bishops, as well as those responsible for fostering and promoting the blessing of such homosexual unions or involved in the consecration of Bishop Robinson, were called upon to express regret for their actions, which were deemed to be incompatible with the tangible and intangible bonds which held the Anglican Communion together. But no “enforcement clauses” appeared in the report, although there was the suggestion that those bishops who refused to express regret for their actions might abstain from participation in any function or forum in which the Anglican Communion as a whole was represented, and just the hint that if the first two condemned practices were to continue and the requisite “regrets” were not forthcoming, something further might have to be done about it.

Bishop Wright was a member of the Lambeth Commission, and in various places since the issuance of the report has defended its actions (and lack of firmer actions). He has, in particular, defended the Windsor Report’s implicit censure of the intervention of orthodox Anglican bishops in the dioceses of “revisionist” ones. In a report which he had published in the 23 October 2004 issue of the liberalish English Roman Catholic weekly journal The Tablet he justified this censure — which the African Anglican primates, who met in the last days of October, criticized strongly for “the moral equivalence drawn between those who have initiated the crisis and those of us in the Global South who have responded to cries for help from beleaguered friends” — on the basis that such interventions were “in contravention not only of Anglican custom but on the Nicene decrees on the subject.” As Bishop Wright’s grasp of the Church Fathers’ theory and practice seems a bit weak in these areas, it may be useful to pursue the subject a bit further. First, however, I have to note a regrettable feature of the Windsor Report — its lack of documented notes and references to back up its claims and assertions. This compares badly with such documents as those produced by the various ecumenical dialogues in which the Catholic Church has been involved, such as the “Joint Declaration on Justification” of 1999, in which the Catholic Church and the Lutheran World Federation claimed to have reached a consensus on that issue, one of the most critical matters separating Catholics and Protestants (especially Lutherans) in the Sixteenth Century. That is a document for which one or more Biblical or (in some cases) Patristic references are provided for every assertion of a doctrinal nature which it contains. The Windsor Report, for example, simply cites “the ancient norm of the Church” for the unity of all Christians in one place, without any references, for its rationale against the intervention of outside bishops, and although there is an allusion to a canon of the Council of Nicaea tucked away in another section of the Report, it is far from obvious, as I shall show later, that it has any bearing on the current crisis in the Anglican Communion.

The Council of Nicaea, which met from May to August of 325 AD and is most famous for its formulation of the original version of the Nicene Creed — the version in universal use today is a modification approved by, if not created at, the Council of Constantinople in 381 — also produced twenty canons, or “rules,” to settle problems, or fix abuses, in the Church. Several of them concern the relations of bishops with one another, or of clergy with their bishops. None of them seem to have any real applicability to the situation of the Anglican Communion, or the Episcopal church, today — and it is clear that these canons as such have no legal force in any contemporary Anglican church — but when I read them over I thought that if any one of them underlies Bishop Wright’s oblique reference it must be Canon 16, which runs as follows:

Priests and deacons or, in general, any member of the clergy, who have the audacity, not considering the fear of God and not knowing the Church’s rule, to abandon their churches, must not under any circumstances be received in another church but by all means must be forced to return to their proper communities, and if they refuse, they are to be properly excommunicated. In addition, if anyone dares to take someone who is under the authority of another bishop and to ordain him in his own church without the consent of the bishop in whose clergy he was enrolled, let the ordination be regarded as null.

This canon obviously deals with “clergy flight” and “clergy poaching:” it assumes a community of orthodox belief between the churches and bishops concerned, and says nothing at all about interventions in churches whose bishops have, in the view of other bishops hitherto in communion with one another, abandoned orthodoxy of belief and practice and have begun to oppress those of their flock who continue to uphold it, even if that “oppression” consists only in contradicting that orthodoxy and furthering those who teach and act against it. But while I was puzzling this over I received information form the Canon Theologian of the ECUSA Diocese of South Carolina, the Rev’d Dr. Kendall Harmon, that it was Canon 8 of Nicaea that had been cited in the Windsor Report. So I went back to the Windsor Report. There was nothing to help me in the Endnotes or in Section D of the report, the section which contains its conclusions. Finally, and after much searching, I found an allusion, rather than a reference, in Section A of the report, in a subsection entitled “Illness: The Surface Symptoms.” Paragraph 29 of that section describes — and while describing deplores “as now part of the problem we face” — the breaking of communion with ECUSA by other Anglican provinces and dioceses, attempts by dissenting parishes and groups to “distance themselves” from the dioceses, bishops and provinces within which they are “geographically located” and the interventions of Anglican archbishops from elsewhere in dioceses of ECUSA and the Anglican church of Canada. About this last “problem” it comments: “This goes not only against traditional and oft-repeated Anglican practice” — and here there is an allusion to the 1988 and 1998 Lambeth Conferences — “but also against some of the longest-standing regulations of the early undivided church (Canon 8 of Nicaea).”

So what does Canon 8 of Nicaea say? It is, unfortunately, one of the longer of that council’s canons, and runs as follows:

Concerning those who have called themselves ‘the pure ones,’ if ever they want to come into the catholic and apostolic church corporately, it seems right and proper to the holy and great council that they (i.e., their clergy), after having received the imposition of hands, should then remain in the clergy. But first it is important that they promise in writing to accept and to follow the rulings of the Catholic Church, that is, that they will have communion with those who have been married a second time and with those who renounced the faith during persecution for whom a period (i.e., of penance) has been established and a date (i.e., of reconciliation) set. It is, therefore, necessary that they follow in full the rulings of the Catholic and Apostolic Church. Consequently, when in the cities and villages there are only clergy ordained by these ‘pure ones,’ let them keep their status as clergy; on the other hand, where there is a bishop or a priest of the Catholic Church, if certain of these ‘pure ones’ want to be admitted to the clergy, it is evident that the bishop of the Church should keep the dignity of bishop. As for the person who carries the name of bishop among the so-called ‘pure ones,” he is to have the rank of priest unless the bishop consents to let him have the honor of his title. But if he is not so disposed, let the bishop give him a place as a chorepiscopus (i.e., a bishop or perhaps a priest who exercised some supervision over Christian communities in the rural areas, while being himself subordinate to the bishop of a nearby city) or as a priest so that he can appear as being integrated into the clergy. Without this provision, there would be two bishops in the city.

“The pure ones” was the name given — perhaps self-given — to a schismatic group known as the Novatianists. They originated in the aftermath of the great persecution — the first empire-wide persecution — launched against the Church by the Roman Emperor Decius in 249-251. Before that persecution, a Christian who apostatized, or renounced Christianity, under pressure and then wished to return to the Church could only be readmitted to the Eucharist when on his deathbed. In the aftermath of the persecution, which saw apostasies on a large-scale, the Bishop of Rome, Cornelius, decided to relax this practice by allowing apostates to be readmitted after some years of public penitence (which involved, among other things, standing in a particular place during the Church’s liturgy and leaving before communion). Most bishops elsewhere adopted this practice as well, but in Rome Pope Cornelius was opposed by the priest Novatian, whose followers elected him as bishop in opposition to Cornelius, and in the ensuing years the schism spread throughout the Roman Empire. The Novatianists were moral rigorists, best known for their absolute prohibition of second marriages to their adherents and their refusal to readmit the “lapsed” — those who had renounced the faith — to communion. In every other respect, though, their beliefs were thoroughly orthodox. A Novantianist bishop turned up at the Council of Nicaea, where he was as vehement in his opposition to the views of the heretic Arius (whose views the council had been called to consider, and which it condemned) as any of the other bishops there, and it was only when he went on to insist on the exclusion of the lapsed from communion that his Novanianist allegiance came to light, and he was ejected from the council. Of all the various heretical or schismatic Christian sects — “heretical” or “schismatic” in the judgement of the “Catholic and Apostolic Church” whose bishops assembled at Nicaea — the Novatianists were the ones who were viewed with the most indulgence, as this canon indicates. It was common at the time to regard as “heretical” all Christian sects who pertinaciously and as a matter of principle separated themselves form the “Catholic and Apostolic Church,” while the term “schismatic” was applied to those separations, local in nature, and without any doctrinal basis, which resulted from such causes as disputed episcopal elections, and so while on a strict view the Novatianists would have been viewed as heretics separated from the “Catholic and Apostolic Church,” in practice the Council of Nicaea (as Canon 8 shows) was willing to treat groups of them who wished to rejoin the Church as though they were simply schismatics. But, in fact, few Novatianists took advantage of this offer: their church, or “denomination,” continued to exist (as a rigorous and “pure” alternative to the established Catholic and Orthodox Church) in parts of the Eastern Roman Empire for some three or four centuries afterwards.

It is hard to see that this canon has anything to do with the troubles of contemporary Anglicanism that evoked the Windsor Report. It does uphold the “principle” of the unity of the local church, but the situation that it addresses is that of the reunion of a schismatic group with the Church, not the question of the appropriate reaction of bishops to the defection of one of their brethren from their common orthodoxy. However, such situations did arise in the Fourth Century, in the long aftermath of the Council of Nicaea and later still.

The main purpose of the Council of Nicaea was to judge the views of the Alexandrian priest and theologian Arius, who held that Jesus Christ, the Savior, the “first-born of all creation” was a creature — a divine being created by God before the angels, the cosmos and mankind, but a creature nevertheless. Nicaea condemned Arius’ views, and its creed the full co-divinity and co-eternity of “the everlasting Son of the Father” (the question of the nature and status of the Holy Ghost arose subsequently, and was not settled until the Council of Constantinople in 381). However, since the controversy continued unabated after Nicaea, and since the Emperor Constantine’s purpose in calling it together was at least as much to promote ecclesiastical harmony as to define dogmatic truth, the fact it failed signally to produce ecclesiastical harmony induced the emperor within a few short years to attempt to promote various attempts at theological compromise that would have the effect of reconciling Arius and his followers with those who upheld the decisions of the council. (The fact that many of the most influential bishops around the emperor were sympathetic to some degree with Arius’ theological outlook gave added impetus to these efforts at compromise.) Among the most vigorous and uncompromising upholders of Nicaea and its creed was the young archbishop of Alexandria, Athanasius (ca. 296-373), who as a priest has accompanied his predecessor as archbishop, Alexander, to Nicaea, and had succeeded him as bishop three years later. Athanasius’ vigorous opposition to any compromise on the matter earned him the hostility of the bishops who had most influence with the emperor, who himself in the last decade of his life (he died in 337) increasingly regarded Athanasius as a disturber of the peace, and finally exiled him to what is today the German Rhineland; and after Constantine’s death, as his Arianizing son Constantius became master, first of the East and then (in 350) of the whole Roman Empire, Athanasius experienced repeated recalls and renewed exiles, as imperial policy shifted from conciliation to coercion of the adherents of Nicaea. As time went on, the whole church, especially in the Greek-speaking eastern regions of the empire, became divided over the question, with bishop opposing bishop. Athanasius, in particular, was willing, as the conflict intensified, to intervene unilaterally in dioceses whose bishops were Arians or compromisers, but he was not alone.

The Fourth-Century ecclesiastical historian Socrates (ca. 380-440) records that Athanasius, after his vindication by the Council of Sardica in 343, and the ending of his exile (he would experience more exiles over the next quarter century), undertook to ordain men in dioceses whose bishops were tainted with Arianism to serve the orthodox upholders of Nicaea, and that without seeking or obtaining the permission of those bishops. We do not know for sure whether Athanasius, then or later, ordained bishops for these orthodox communities faced with hostile heterodox bishops, or only priests and deacons. We do know that another contemporary “Nicene” bishop, Eusebius of Samosata, travelled around much of the eastern portions of the Roman Empire disguised as a soldier, and where he found Arian or Arianizing bishops he ordained deacons, priests and even bishops to care for the orthodox and oppose the “official” bishops and their supporters. Details of the activities of Athanasius, Eusebius and any other like-minded contemporary bishops, such as Lucifer of Cagliari, who wandered throughout the Mediterranean world in support of those who upheld Nicaea, or Epiphanius of Salamis (in Cyprus), a native of Palestine who conducted ordinations in Palestine in defiance of compromising bishops, are few, but in the Fifth Century, after the Council of Chalcedon in 451, both proponents and opponents of the council among the bishops in the eastern parts of the empire were willing to intervene, or intrude, regularly in dioceses whose bishops were on the “other side,” especially when the imperial authorities supported first once side, then another, or attempted to broker compromise settlements, during a period of 85 years after that council. All of this allows us to say that any attempt to construct a theory of the inviolability of diocesan boundaries — a theory which would serve to underpin the statements of more than one or two ECUSA bishops in recent years (such as Peter Lee of Virginia or Neil Alexander of Atlanta) that “heresy is preferable to schism” and that the faithful should feel obliged to put up with an unending stream of doctrinal absurdities and moral enormities — cannot find any support in the theory and practice of the Early Church.

In the light of this history, Bishop Wright’s invocation of “Nicene decrees” and the Windsor Report’s allusion to “the ancient norm” and “some of the longest-standing regulations” begins to look distinctly thin, and when on a closer look it seems all to boil down to Canon 8 of Nicaea, it vanishes altogether, and all that is left is “Anglican custom” (Wright) or “traditional and oft-repeated Anglican practice.” But then one has to ask whether, if this is all that remains, it amounts to anything at all. Those who have followed the actual practices of Anglican churches, in the United States, Canada and Australia especially, over the past three decades, will see how readily proponents of one innovation after another have been willing to norms, decrees, regulations, canons, customs — you name it — in order to gain their ends: the illegal and uncanonical “ordinations” of priestesses in ECUSA in 1974 and 1975 and in Australia in 1991, and the subsequent cave-in of both Anglican churches on that issue; the casting of a blind eye towards clergy and ordinands in irregular marital or sexual situations; and, just recently in ECUSA, the production (as “resources”) of syncretistic rites introducing elements of “goddess worship” or outright paganism as acceptable, if unofficial, options. Speaking personally, for me the clearest and most instructive (as well as the saddest) lesson of this episode is how sincere and pious Christians, like Bishop Wright, who endorse one patently unbiblical innovation (or “development”), such as the ordination of women, but wish to oppose another (partnered homosexual bishops and clergy, and the blessing of such “partnerships” by their church), both deprive themselves of any compellingly persuasive basis for rallying a forceful “Athanasian” opposition to retake their churches from the heterodox innovators who dominate it and (in consequence) render their own situations hopeless, as able neither to fight nor to flee.

Dr William Tighe is Associate Professor of History at Muhlenberg College, specializing in the history of the Renaissance and the Reformation.

A friend struggling along with us in the current travails of the Anglican Communion and The Episcopal Church wrote me this morning to ask what I made of two recently-posted essays concerning the Communion Partners Plan. He wrote as a sort of afterward to a conversation we had earlier this week about the plan, during which we agreed that, while it makes little ecclesiological sense, the plan might provide some way for theologically conservative/orthodox Episcopalians to remain within their revisionist dioceses (like the Diocese of North Carolina), at least insofar as their rectors signed on as “Communion Partner rectors” who aligned themselves in some way with orthodox, or conservative, bishops in The Episcopal Church. To be sure, there is a good deal to be said for mutual support.

My initial thoughts on the essays, both posted on the website of the Anglican Communion Insitute, Inc., follow. Bear in mind that these are only the initial thoughts of a first read-through on a Friday afternoon. They are not meant to be considered as developed critique or argument.

1) In his essay, “Reflections on the Communion Partners Plan“, the Revd Mr Russell Levenson writes,

“We remain to say that the orthodox voice IS an authentic piece of the Anglican/Episcopal tapestry.”

“An authentic piece”? I find that strange phrasing – shouldn’t we work to make the orthodox voice THE warp and woof of the Anglican/Episcopal tapestry? (To continue Levenson’s mixed metaphor of voice and fabric.) I think that is precisely what the Global South, San Joaquin, Fort Worth, Pittsburgh, et al are wanting to do. And aren’t they right? Why should orthodox Anglicanism want to be part of a tapestry with pluralistic universalism, moral relativism and all the rest of the revisionist agenda? Shouldn’t orthodox Anglicans attempt to recover their true patrimony as heirs of the faith and practice of the undivided Church in England before the Great Schism? As the Revd Canon Arthur Middleton argued in his book, Fathers and Anglicans: The Limits of Orthodoxy, isn’t the true patrimony of the Anglican Churches to profess the faith – and to bear and to live all that profession entails – of the undivided Church, neither adding to nor subtracting from that faith?

This is not an argument for compelling anyone to leave, but rather an argument that, while individuals may dissent from that catholic faith and practice (as individuals so dissent in the Roman Catholic Church and, to a far lesser degree, in the Orthodox Churches), the warp and woof of the Anglican tapestry is catholic orthodoxy – and only catholic orthodoxy, generously understood in keeping with the patristic mind and the insights of later Christians theologians and their communities.

I admit that I still find arguments for remaining within The Episcopal Church at least intellectually compelling (if psychologically uncomfortable), perhaps not least because I also have no “plan B” and find myself strangely unwilling to leave a parish that is largely institutionalist, with revisionist and reasserter members who are quite cordial, all held together by a conservative rector who (unfortunately?) has no desire to rock the boat. However, there are significant silences in most arguments for staying. For example, none of the major figures advocating staying ever seems to want to address directly the issue that orthodox Anglicans who remain in The Episcopal Church will in the fullness of time find themselves without orthodox bishops (witness the struggle to get consents to Lawrence’s election in SC) and perhaps even without orthodox rectors (both because fewer clergy will be allowed in TEC from orthodox/conservative seminaries and because hostile revisionist bishops won’t consent to the election of conservative/orthodox rectors who might rock the revisionist boat). We could all go the way of Radner’s favored Jansenists, who admonished the Reformed Christians in France that it would have been better to have remained in the Church without faithful pastors than to have participated in schism.

It may well be that this is the more faithful path, though I have my doubts.

2) In “Communion Partners: A Means of Fellowship within the Anglican Communion“, the Revd Professor Christopher Seitz writes,

“Those anxious to signal their firm commitment to catholic Communion Anglicanism, and an alliance of differentiation and identification within The Episcopal Church, can avail themselves of this Plan.”

And I have to ask, “To what end?” In the first place, I’m not sure this actually is anything other than a psychological differentiation and self-identification within The Episcopal Church – in other words, will this plan really support catholic order and orthodox faith, or is it simply a dreamy fantasy of differentiation. Now that might be enough for a short time, but there has to be real substance to the differentiation for it to be sustainable. What ad hoc forms of resistance to the prevailing culture of TEC will this encourage or engender?

In the second place, what is the point of continued Communion alignment in differentiation from The Episcopal Church if TEC is never disciplined, if the communion-denying, independent and mutuality-denying actions of TEC are de facto accepted as part of “the Anglican tapestry”? I admit that if this were a holding position, something to keep us going until a communion-defining document (a covenant) were produced or a way of living discernment (robust conciliarism) were to develop that would bring the Communion together in a generously orthodox Anglicanism, while causing those who cannot profess and live such an orthodoxy to recuse or remove themselves from Communion membership, then that would be something. But the way that (the Most Revd Dr) Rowan Williams has acted, the way that Lambeth has been designed, the continued intransigence of TEC (with apparent impunity) and the various actions and pronouncements of other global northern Anglican Churches (and those global southern Anglican Churches dependent on the North, like Brazil) are leading me ineluctably to the rather pessimistic conclusion that The Episcopal Church will never be disciplined. What does remaining in communion with +Cantuar mean for conservative/orthodox Episcopalians when their revisionist bishops share precisely the same communion with the occupant of the See of Canterbury?

What sort of differentiation is that?

(Amended 6/07/08.)

This letter really has me thinking.

Do not miss reading Al Zadig’s summary of the meeting in Mount Pleasant of the clergy of our neighboring (and faithful) diocese to the south and Dr Jefferts Schori, the Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church. It is a concise and illustrative summary of a meeting that demonstrates the great divide between the catholic evangelical faith and that faith being promulgated by the General Convention Church and its leaders.

An excellent, thoughtful and incisive response to Bishop Bruno’s “apology” for Christian missions to the Hindus and the syncretic “Mass” in which the apology was read.

The Los Angeles Times reported today on a service that took place yesterday at St John’s Cathedral (Episcopal) in which “two beliefs” were “celebrated”.

Hindu nun Pravrajika Saradeshaprana, dressed in a saffron robe, blew into a conch shell three times, calling to worship Hindu and Episcopal religious leaders who joined Saturday to celebrate an Indian Rite Mass at St. John’s Cathedral near downtown.

The rare joint service included chants from the Temple Bhajan Band of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness and a moving rendition of “Bless the Lord, O My Soul” sung by the St. John’s choir.

“This was a once-in-a-lifetime experience in worship service,” said Bob Bland, a member of St. Patrick’s Episcopal Church of Thousand Oaks, who was among the 260 attendees. “There was something so holy — so much symbolism and so many opportunities for meditation.”

During the service, the Rt. Rev. J. Jon Bruno, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, issued a statement of apology to the Hindu religious community for centuries-old acts of religious discrimination by Christians, including attempts to convert them.

“I believe that the world cannot afford for us to repeat the errors of our past, in which we sought to dominate rather than to serve,” Bruno said in a statement read by the Rt. Rev. Chester Talton. “In this spirit, and in order to take another step in building trust between our two great religious traditions, I offer a sincere apology to the Hindu religious community.”

Read it all.

I am not shocked by this news – such syncretic services have occurred more than once in Episcopal churches, usually cathedrals – but I am dismayed and made heartsick everytime I read about one. It is deeply saddening that “those who have once been enlightened, and have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come” (Hebrews 6:4b-5) should mistake the true light of the Word made flesh, Who “enlightens everyone” (John 1:9), for some “religious” principle.

The reporter has it precisely wrong, you see. This service didn’t celebrate “two beliefs”. It celebrated one belief, a belief in something known as “Divine Presence”, of which (Whom?) Jesus is merely one embodiment, if perhaps the “preeminent” embodiment “for Christians”. God has been reduced to a universal religious principle, and Jesus is merely an exemplar – not the embodiment of God himself, but only an embodiment of “divine presence”, not unlike any number of figures who “embody the divine light, who teach the divine truth”. Thus Jesus, and the revelation of God in him, whom the Apostle Paul called the “ikon of the invisible God”, is ripped from the scandalous particularity of his historical context and simultaneously from universal significance and is made simply one of a succession of swamis and prophets of the Divine Presence. This is nothing other than gnosticism, a theological alchemy of distilling Christian faith to some fantastical quintessence, leaving behind the impurities of the universal claim that Jesus makes on every person as the only Savior and Lord.

Bishop Bruno’s “apology” for Christian attempts to convert Hindus to Christianity is an arrogant dismissal of nearly two millenia of Christian witness in India, including the missionary witness of many Anglicans (like Bishop Reginald Heber) and of Churches with whom The Episcopal Church claims to be in communion; viz., the Church of North India and the Church of South India, who still carry on the missionary work of witness among Hindus, Sikhs, Muslims and others in their country. The late Bishop Lesslie Newbigin, a noted missiologist and a former Presbyterian missionary and later bishop of the united Church of South India, spent the years of his episcopate in South India both in the pastoral care of his diocese and in missionary proclamation, often in remote villages, of the Gospel of Jesus Christ to those who had never heard it.

This is not to say that we cannot cooperate with Hindus in those works of mercy and charity that we are able to share with them. But interreligious dialogue and cooperation is never served by denying who, and Whose, we are. Nor is it served by claiming that the one Lord, Jesus Christ, is only one of many “embodiments of the Divine Presence”.

By now most readers are well aware of the inhibition of the Rt Revd John-David Schofield, Bishop of the Diocese of San Joaquin, by Dr Katherine Jefferts Schori, Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church, and a committee of the three senior bishops of The Episcopal Church; and of the finding of this review committee that the Rt Revd Robert Duncan, Bishop of the Diocese of Pittsburgh, has “abandoned the communion” of The Episcopal Church, though an initial attempt at inhibiting him has failed. One contrasts this with the failure to bring any such charges in their day against infamously heretical bishops in The Episcopal Church; viz., James Pike and John Spong.

A few days ago, I reread several of the essays in a collection edited by Carl Braaten and Robert Jenson and published in 1996, The Catholicity of the Reformation. In an essay entitled, “The Problem of Authority in the Church”, Dr Braaten writes these words peculiarly apposite to the situation:

In every age the church is called “to contend for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3). The function of the creeds and confessions is to provide standards by which the church can judge and condemn false teachings contrary to the gospel. The church has always found it necessary to draw a dividing line between what is acceptable teaching and what is unacceptable. However, heresy has become virtually outmoded in the modern church for two reasons. First, the rise of democracy meant that the church lost the coercive power of the state to punish heretics as criminals; and second, the Enlightenment brought the age of tolerance in which the rules that set limits to heresy were overthrown. Orthodoxy was put on the defensive. Heresy became a matter of religious freedom and human rights. The threat of heresy to personal salvation that prevailed in the ancient church was annulled. The issue of heresy shifted from soteriology to ecclesiology. The category of heresy could still be invoked when an extreme case threated the unity of community. Dissent was permitted so long as it did not break the unity of the church. Not heresy but schism became the more serious concern. The prevent heresy from leading to schism, the churches today, maintaining their organizational unity at almost any costs, have taken to promoting inclusivity and diversity at the expense of revealed truth and biblical morality, pushing back the limits to heresy, to the point where people are “tossed to and fro and blown by every wind of doctrine” (Eph. 4:14).

The problem with conservative “dissidents” in The Episcopal Church is, of course, that they threaten organizational unity, which denominational leadership will attempt to preserve at almost any financial, theological and moral cost.

A snippet of history from the 19th century Diocese of North Carolina. I was unable to post this earlier in December, owing to having no access to my old Classical Anglican Net weblog.

Born October 12, 1807 in Perquimons County, North Carolina, William West Skiles distinguished himself in his early adult life for his honesty, industry and strong sense of duty. At the age of thirty-seven he joined the small community of theological students and their rector at the missionary station established the previous year at the behest of the Rt Revd Levi Silliman Ives, Bishop of North Carolina, in the remote valley in the Blue Ridge Mountains of western North Carolina known as Valle Crucis, so named by Bishop Ives because of the St Andrew’s cross-like junction of three streams in the valley, whose joined waters flowed downstream into the Watauga River. Skiles’ sound practical judgment, good character, and skill and experience as an overseer of lumber mills soon placed him in a supervisory role of the day to day workings of the mission station at Valle Crucis. Over the years he served as head farmer, storekeeper, postmaster and general treasurer, and years later he directed the construction of a new chapel for the community. Because of his age and experience, he was consulted on practical points by the younger men and theological students of the mission station, one of whom in later years described Skiles to a biographer as “our Nestor”.

Shortly after his arrival at Valle Crucis he expressed a desire to serve the Lord more fully by being ordained to the sacred ministry, and for the next two years he divided his time between his work on the mission station and his studies. On August 1, 1847, Skiles was ordained by Bishop Ives to the diaconate under a canon of 1844, which allowed for the ordination of men to the diaconate without having received a classical (rather than a “plain English”) education. Retaining stewardship of the temporal affairs of the mission station at Valle Crucis, Skiles also entered upon his duties as a deacon, occasionally reading the daily office in the chapel and carrying out mission work at the outlying stations in the Watauga Valley, reading prayers, catechizing and occasionally preaching. He undertook some medical training through reading books and receiving instruction from one of the students at the station who himself had previous medical training. With the departure of this fellow missionary after his ordination, Skiles was frequently called upon to provide medical care to the people of the surrounding valley and mountains.

In 1847 the work of the missionary station became more focused. The store and the boys’ school were closed, leaving the theological school and the missions work  at Valle Crucis and at the outlying missions stations. At his visitation to Valle Crucis that year, Bishop Ives established the Order of the Holy Cross, the first Anglican monastic order since the Reformation. The Revd Mr Glennie French, head of the missionary work at Valle Crucis, was appointed Superior, and many of the divinity students there, along with Skiles, assumed the obligations of the Order. Despite trials and privations, the missionary work at Valle Crucis proceeded with encouraging results, a number of baptisms and confirmations being recorded every year. The Revd Mr William Prout, for a long time the only priest in the area, reported,

“”Much improvement has been effected in the religious condition of the people in this section within the year. The Church is felt to be permanently fixed here, and is consequently exerting a steady influence on the population. The hopes of the members, and friends of this Mission, are beginning to be realized, and we are cheered, while we wish only to work in quietness, and faith. We derive new confidence of final success in our work by widening continually the entire adaptation of the arrangements of the Church, to the wants, and capacities of a plain, uneducated people.”

Over the next few years concern arose in the Diocese of North Carolina regarding Bishop Ives, whether he had embraced “Romish” doctrines regarding the invocation of saints, transubstantiation, auricular confession and absolution. In 1851, after investigation by a committee of inquiry requested by the bishop and appointed by diocesan convention, Bishop Ives reassured his diocese in a signed statement that he had renounced belief in any doctrine not consistent with the teachings of the Protestant Episcopal Church, doctrines (like the invocation of saints and auricular confession) into whose adoption he stated to have been “insensibly led”. With regard to the Order of the Holy Cross, he declared that “No such order is now in existence.”

(In September, 1852, Bishop Ives requested a six-months’ leave of absence and an advance on his salary to enable him to travel with his wife “for the benefit of [his] impaired health”. Bishop Ives sailed for Europe with his wife in October, and on December 22 he addressed a letter to the diocesan convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church in North Carolina, resigning his office of bishop and declaring his intention to make his submission to the Bishop of Rome.)

In Watauga County, the attendance at the mission stations continued to be encouraging, though Skiles was left alone at Valle Crucis. He continued to devote himself to the welfare of his scattered flock, despite many difficulties, including the sale of the heavily-encumbered property of the mission to the grandson of a clergyman, who worked the former mission ground as a farm, and who was kind to the Skiles, allowing the deacon the use of the former office and library as his home, feeding the deacon from his own table, and providing for a horse and several cows. Henry, Skiles’ horse, was his faithful companion on errands of duty and charity, day and night, over many rugged paths. The cows Skiles reserved for the benefit of poor families, loaning them out to those who need the milk and, so as not to tax the supplies of the families, sending along meal with the cows as feed. Skiles continued faithfully in his missionary and pastoral duties, reading divine service, preaching, catechizing, and preparing candidates for baptism and confirmation. He kept both day schools and Sunday schools for the benefit of the children of the region and served many households in Watauga County not only as pastor, but also as physician and occasionally as nurse. He also served a largely illiterate populace as scrivener and legal adviser, and few days passed when he was not brought a family letter, a business letter or a legal paper to read. His opinion in farming and stock matters was sought often. He frequently acted as an arbitrator in disputes between neighbors, his opinion being generally accepted as wise and just, and it was always a pleasure to him when he could act as a peacemaker.

The Rt Revd Dr Thomas Atkinson, Bishop of North Carolina after the resignation of Bishop Ives, took special interest in Skiles and his work. The bishop generally invited the deacon to accompany him on a circuit of visitations, sometimes going as far afield as Asheville. Over the course of a year, Skiles held services in as many as sixteen places, many of them widely distant from one another, such that he would have had to travel more than 1000 miles during the year. On any call for pastoral care, Skiles would saddle Henry and ride over the mountains, sometimes as far as twenty miles, often in stormy weather, to pray with a sick person or to nurse them in illness.

By 1858, the Sunday attendance at the Lower Watauga station had become too great for any single room in the settlement, and plans were made for the construction of a house for the church on a high bank above the Watauga River, some six miles from Valle Crucis and about one mile from Skiles’ home at the house of a parishioner, one Mr Evans. Skiles drew up plans for a simple, church-like building with the help of prepared architectural plans and the advice of more experienced friends. The people of the Lower Watauga gave what they were able (most families in the region were poor), and many of the men donated lumber and labor for the church’s construction, but the gathering of funds and materials was no easy task. Skiles himself gave more than one-third of the $700 cost of the church. As soon as the church was fairly enclosed in the summer of 1860, services were held there. On August 22, 1862, Dr Atkinson consecrated the Church of St John the Baptist. Skiles never saw the church again after the consecratory liturgy.

Accompanied by Dr Atkinson, Skiles left the Lower Watauga to take up residence at the home of Colonel Palmer, who was leaving home to take up command of a regiment in the Confederate Army and wished that his wife and nieces should have “a respectable man” in the house to look to in case of a danger of violence from roving marauders. After a prolonged and painful illness, during which he was nursed by Mrs Palmer, Skiles died on December 8, 1862. Wintry weather made it impossible to send to a nearby town for a coffin, and he was buried in a rough box of boards constructed on the spot by a neighbor. Mrs Palmer herself dressed Skiles in his surplice, unwilling that any hireling should do him this last service. He was buried in the garden near the house.

On December 16, a friend, the Revd Mr Wetmore, had Skiles’ body disinterred, and the remains were removed to the Church of St John the Baptist, where a service was held on December 18, some forty people in attendance, and his body was reinterred in the churchyard there.

In 1882, the Church of St John the Baptist was removed in pieces and reconstructed on a spot higher up the Watauga, for the convenience of the parish. Skiles’ remains were translated to the new churchyard and were decently and reverently committed to their final resting place.

In his episcopal address to the diocesan convention of 1863, Dr Atkinson said,

“[The Revd Mr Skiles] was one whom all loved and honoured for his humility, his self-denial, his diligence, his affectionate temper towards his fellow-men, his unwearied zeal in the service of his Master. He was permitted to live until he saw the Church [of St John the Baptist] consecrated, and some of the living fruits of his self-denying labours gathered in. From that day he never saw it again…He was a true Missionary, humble, patient, laborious, and affectionate, not despising the day of small things, and still less despising any human soul, however rude, sin-stained, and ignorant that soul might be. Long will the dwellers in the valleys and forests of that wild mountain region miss their faithful Pastor, who was at the same time their Physician, their counseller, and their familiar friend.”

Prepared from William West Skiles: A Sketch of Missionary Life at Valle Crucis in Western North Carolina, 1842-1862, edited by Susan Fenimore Cooper (1890), published online by Project Canterbury

Collect

O God, whose blessed Son became poor that we through his poverty might be rich: Deliver us from an inordinate love of this world, that we, inspired by the devotion of your servant William West Skiles, may serve you with singleness of heart, and attain to the riches of the age to come; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

The Rt Revd Joseph Blount Cheshire came to Valle Crucis in 1895 to reestablish the Episcopal ministry, directing the construction of several buildings still in use. Shortly thereafter, the Rt Revd Junius Horner, the new Bishop of the Missionary District of Asheville, begun a renaissance of Valle Crucis, and the present Church of the Holy Cross was built in 1925. The Church of St John the Baptist, a splendid example of the 19th century “Carpenter Gothic” style, stands three miles distant from Holy Cross and is still used by the parish for special services.

Why the Revd Deacon Skiles has never been added to the calendar of Lesser Feasts and Fasts, I cannot say. It is an omission that needs redress. I propose commemorating Skiles on August 1, the date of his ordination to the diaconate, or on December 18, the date of his translation to the churchyard of the Church of St John the Baptist, since December 8 is kept by some Anglicans as the feast day of the Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Yesterday the professorial weblogger of the Rather Not Blog weblog posted an entry entitled, “The Last Refuge“, concerning the Bishop of Episcopal Diocese of Arkansas’ misunderstanding of what Donatism was and is (this is a perennial misunderstanding among many reappraisers and “centrists” in western Anglican circles, particularly in The Episcopal Church).  Dr Kendall Harmon took note of IRNS’ unpacking of the Bishop’s category confusion by linking to the post at Titusonenine, leading to the usual spate of comments.

Dr William Tighe, professor of history at Muhlenberg College with particular expertise in early Church history (and the history of the English Reformation), wrote a reply to certain comments that continue to demonstrate a misunderstanding of precisely what Donatism was (and that tar some modern conservative Anglicans with that particular schismatic or heretical brush on the basis of misunderstanding).  Unfortunately, Dr Tighe has recently been banned from commenting at the Stand Firm weblog, a ban that seems to have extended at least temporarily (because of shared software?) to Titusonenine.  I have taken the liberty of posting Dr Tighe’s comment here, which he writes is particularly in response to comments #2, 10, and 23 to the Titusonenine entry.

This is a distorted account of the Donatist origins.  There was a major dispute over electing a Bishop of Carthage (the Primate of North Africa) after the death of Bishop Mensurius in 310, one of the candidates, Majorinus, espousing the position that became known as the “Donatist” one (which was so termed after the name of this man’s successor as bishop, Donatus, bishop 315-355), but which was a view that had a great deal of support, almost certainly majority support, among North African Christians (although Bishop Mensurius held to the opposed view, that espoused by the Roman Church and dominant elsewhere), while the other faction elected Mensurius’ archdeacon, Cecilian (bishop 311-345).  Rome, it appears, recognized Cecilian from the beginning, on the basis that his views were orthodox (by Roman standards) and Majorinus’ were not.  In 314 the Emperor Constantine assembled a synod of bishops in Arles to rule on the  election: he wanted them to decide which candidate had been duly elected, but they supported Cecilian on the grounds that he was the “Catholic” bishop, whereas Majorinus was not, ignoring the question of canonical correctness in favor of the more important one of doctrinal orthodoxy.  Constantine intervened several more times, using a combination of threats (against the Donatists) and blandishments (offers to rehear the case), which served only to harden the division and encourage the Donatists in their resistance, until, after his move to the East in 320, he appears to have lost interest in the matter.

The Donatists were clearly the numerical majority in North Africa  down to the 390s, when the combined effects of their own divisions, government repression and a number of theological debates which the Catholics (among whom St. Augustine figured prominently) appear to have won diminished their numbers considerably.  Some historians suggest that some of the Donatists were won over to the Arianism of the Vandals who ruled North Africa from 440 to 535, but while North African Arianism disappeared with the Byzantine conquest of the Vandal Kingdom in the 530s, Donatism appears to have continued, more of a nuisance to the Catholics than a threat, into the late Sixth/early Seventh century.  It appears, however, that the Byzantines never attempted to recover those interior regions of North Africa that had been under Roman rule prior to the Vandal conquest, and which the Vandals had abandoned to the native Berber tribes; and so (except in the area roughly corresponding to contemporary Tunisia) what the Byzantines ruled down to the final Moslem Arab conquest in 697 (when they took and destroyed Carthage; the isolated Byzantine garrison at Septem, contemporary Ceuta, across the Straits of Gibraltar from Spain, held out for a few more years before surrendering) were isolated coastal enclaves which the Arabs were able to pick off one by one.

Seen in this light, the “history lesson” has different implications for contemprary Anglican quarrels than those which Dale Rye appears to favor.  It is ECUSA that is in the “strategic position” of the Donatists, and the “reasserters” that are in the position of the Catholics.  But it stretches credulity beyond the breaking point to cast Anglican Canterbury of the 21st Century in the position of Rome of the 4th.  In the first place, Canterbury can hardly claim to have been as faithful to its own tradition of faith and practice, its paradosis, as Rome was to its (I need not give examples, lest they get me banned here, as they did recently elsewhere).  [N.B.  Dr Tighe's commenting privileges at Confessing Reader are not in jeopardy!]  Secondly, the authority of Canterbury in the Anglican Communion is purely a conventional one, arising only since the 1860s, whereas the basis on which Rome claimed to be the ultimate “touchstone” of ecclesiastical communion (whether rightly or wrongly is beyond the scope of this response), as much in the 4th Century as in the 21st, and was accepted as such, at least in the West, rested on a different basis — and one that, perhaps, gave it a confidence in its exercise that it would be hard to ascribe to Canterbury.  But, finally, there is no evidence that Canterbury is either able or willing to exercise any authority (whether real or simply asserted on the basis of the intrinsic authority of a Catholic Bishop and Primate  — as opposed to a Lutheran or Methodist “CEO bishop”) in these critical times and matters.  If Canterbury is unwilling to “name it and claim it” as regards a kind of semi- or pseudo- “primatial authority,” then obviously the result will be the second verb of the phrase “use it or lose it.”