Anglicana

prophesy and interpretation

Bishop Duncan received this prophesy:

The Year of the Gate ---
Pass through, pass through the gates! Prepare the way for the people. Build up, build up the highway! Remove the stones. Raise a banner for the nations.
-- Isaiah 62:10

In Hebrew, the number eight is rendered by the letter CHET, which is depicted in the form of a GATE. The number eight is related to new starts and new life in the Scriptures – the most notable being the resurrection of Jesus which occurred on the eighth day… Eight is the number of the gate… And I sensed the Holy Spirit saying simply this:

2008 is the year of the open gate. Prepare to pass through the gate. There are new beginnings ahead for those who have been waiting patiently for their moment to come. Obstacles are being removed. The Father is breaking his children out of a sense of captivit y to past restrictions. The anointing for new beginnings is on many in this year. The time of frustration and exile is coming to an end. This is the Lord’s time for his people to rise up and follow him through the gates of opportunity. New star ts are looming. Many are on the point of experiencing the new life that convergence brings. And the true church – even though it will know many trials - is on the point of experiencing new life, a new season of vitality and creativit y, a brand new Reformation. A highway is being built, stones are being removed, and a banner is being raised for the nations. So get ready… and do not be afraid. Do not be anxious. 2008 is the year of the gate… And there is a BREAKER ANOINTING on those who are pushing up to the threshold of their opportunity: One who breaks open the way will go upbefore them; they will break through the gate and go out.Their king will pass through before them, the LORD at their head.
-- Micah 2:13

... about which Scott Allen posted to the listserv for bishops, deputies, and members of interim bodies of General Convention:

I thought Jesus was raised on the first day of the week, not the 8th (and the 3rd day after his death)....

To which I say:

Jesus was indeed raised from the dead on the third day, not the eighth, and therefore the correct interpretation of the prophesy obviously is that 2003, not 2008, is the year in which God anointed people to break barriers, remove obstacles, and open opportunities in the church for "those who have been waiting patiently for their moment to come." That seems to fit.

Either that or it means that Green Day -- green being the color of new life, and Green Day being a band with three members -- will win best record at the next Grammy awards, becoming the first punk band to do so and therefore opening the way for others and revitalizing the U.S. punk scene.

Oh, wait a second ... my band has three members too, and our first gig together was in March, the third month of the year! Clearly the prophesy is telling us that we are to play outside the gates of Harvard -- or maybe that we should approach Bill Gates for patronage. I hope it's the latter, as we really ought to get a P.A. system, a couple of monitors, and a vocal reverb unit before our friends get tired of us borrowing theirs for U2charists. Ooh, and I've had my eye on this instrument made by Reverend Guitars that's got three P90 pickups! Talk about a convergence of signs ...

Anyone have a phone number for Bill Gates? I hope he buys the guitar from me in orange, though of course I'd be happy to get the black, if that's the color God wants me to have. Funding from Bill Gates is going to open up so many opportunities ... clearly the moment for my band has arrived! Thanks be to God!

dropping the conference, leaving the GAFfes.

Archbishops Peter Jensen of Sydney and Peter Akinola of Nigeria have now met (separately) with Bishop Suheil Dawani of Jerusalem about GAFCON, the gathering proposed over this past Christmas for self-proclaimed "orthodox" bishops, clergy, and laity in Jerusalem. The organizers hadn't thought to meet with the Bishop of Jerusalem or with Mouneer Hanna Aris, the Primate of the Province of Jerusalem and the Middle East, before sending out a press release saying that the were holding a conference in his diocese, and as it turns out, neither one of these bishops of the chosen site for GAFCON are even remotely pleased about its being held there any more than they are about not having been consulted before the site was announced.

But now Jensen and Akinola have met with Dawani -- separately, despite the meetings being only three days apart -- and Thinking Anglicans has posted the minutes of those meetings, which make for very interesting reading.

Apparently Archbishop Akinola didn't take kindly to the objections of his host: "[Akinola] stressed that liberty was important for Africa and that he could not allow anyone to tell his community what to do and to say." At no point, according to the minutes, did he acknowledge his host's concerns; he apologized only "for sending his letter to Bishop Suheil at a very inconvenient time (at Christmas) and at such short notice, but he said that he could not see how this conference could become a 'political problem'." Nor did Akinola ask his host what he might respond to or ameliorate the concerns of Jerusalem's Primate, bishop, and people.

Instead, he tried another tack. "Archbishop Akinola then said, that this was a pilgrimage and wondered what the difference was to other pilgrimages. The Rev’d Canon Hosam responded by saying that this was not only a pilgrimage, since the Archbishop himself was talking about a conference with an agenda. Archbishop Akinola replied that he would be happy to change the terminology and refrain from calling it a conference, in which case he would call it a pilgrimage."

Hosam has a point. Clearly the event was intended from the start as a conference -- hence the name 'GAFCON," the Global Anglican Future Conference. The front page of the GAFCON website refers to it as a "conference" fifteen times, including in every header, while the word "pilgrimage" appears a grand total of three times. At least the organizers finally added the picture of one person of color (Archbishop Akinola); the first incarnation of the website, the domain of which was registered in Englishman Canon Chris Sugden's name, had pictures only of white men (Sugden, Jensen, and Bishop Bob Duncan of Pittsburgh).

In any case, none of the Jerusalem Christians present were going to buy the line that GAFCON isn't really a convention -- at least not as it's currently being organized. And so, although he hadn't been asked his opinion on what might help, Bishop Suheil rather generously offered a suggestion: that Akinola's agenda be spilt in two, with the conference taking place in Cyprus so what happened in Jerusalem could be a pilgrimage only.

That's what closed the meeting, with no response from Akinola, who had earlier "repeated that his interests were not political, and that his major concern was about how to grow and how to be strengthened and exchange experiences." I'm not surprised that he did not immediately accept Suheil's suggestion, or even promise to think about it. I'd say it was clear from the start that GAFCON was not only a conference, but a conference with political intent. My hunch is that organizers "immediately felt that [Jerusalem] was the right venue," as Jensen put it, because of the resonance they hoped edicts from that gathering would have as a kind of reconvening of the "apostolic council" in Jerusalem described in Acts 15.

Acts, however, describes "the whole group of those who believed" as being "of one heart and soul" (Acts 4:32), and it's clear that, not having consulted with the Jerusalem Christians before announcing a conference there, that GAFCON is not building that kind of community.

So who knows -- organizers may drop the "CON" from the name to further description of the event as not being a conference. It might be an even more appropriate name if they do -- the organization seems to have been nearly all gaffe thus far.

theologians, homosexuals, and other animals

The Anglican Communion Institute, Inc. (which is an incorporated nonprofit, but uses the .com suffix normally used by for-profit companies) -- which I gather is not to be identified with The Anglican Communion Institute (which uses the .org suffix reserved for nonprofits, but which never incorporated separately from The Anglican Institute, which all involved except Don Armstrong, its executive director) -- has published an interesting piece. (And yes, all of this shuffling about of names and titles for the same group of people, give or take Don Armstrong, makes my head swim too.)

This is an article called "Why Theology Should Precede Change." It's interesting enough that The Anglican Communion Institute, Inc., which in none of its incarnations styled itself any kind of medical research clearinghouse -- would publish a piece that is essentially a review of selected medical and psychological literature. The word "God," for example, appears nowhere in the piece. The word "Christ" appears only as part the name of the Disciples of Christ denomination and as part of the title of To Set Our Hope on Christ, of which the author strongly disapproves. The word "Christian" appears only in this sentence: "Christian theology and systems theory both recognize that secrets are divisive, cause distorted perceptions, and increase pathologic processes totally unrelated to the secret" -- and that's a statement that readers of the Gospel According to Mark, for starters might find simplistic if not misleading with respect to attitudes toward secrets in Christian theology, although not with respect to family systems theory.

But don't just look at what words do and don't appear in the article to assess its genre; I think if you read the whole thing, you'll find it's fair to classify it as a review of selected medical and psychological literature with a narrative frame about the author's correspondence with the Presiding Bishop and President of the House of Deputies. I think if you read the article, you'll find it's a fair summary to say that the article asserts that theology should precede change with respect to policies and theologies regarding human sexuality because more recent scientific study comes to different conclusions regarding causality for same-sex relationships. The author does not argue against the biblical exegesis or theology of To Set Our Hope on Christ; her criticism of the document is about which scientific studies it cites. Her criticism of the choice of people to serve on the committee is not that there weren't enough or good enough theologians; it's that the committee did not include any career scientists who could speak authoritatively to scientific studies of human sexuality. Theology gets a cursory name-drop in the article's title and in the plea of the penultimate sentence to "State the theology of the change first"; but the article's thesis is at core a scientific one: that the most recent and best scientific literature suggests that sexual orientation is influenced at least as much by social and environmental factors as by genetic ones. How accepting that thesis would lead us to conclude that it's improper for Christians to bless same-sex relationships or ordain clergy in same-sex partnerships is never made clear in the article, aside from its assertion (unproven and unargued) that the authors of To Set Our Hope on Christ and the bishops and deputies to General Convention voted on resolutions regarding human sexuality on the basis of outdated science rather than any kind of theology.

Of course, there are a lot of scientists who would argue with the article's suggestion that more recent and better medical research on human sexuality better supports the view (presumably that of the author) that a man's or woman's orientation toward the same sex is socially conditioned and "pathologic adaptation." I'm not going to do so, or at least not here and now. I'm not a neuropsychologist, a geneticist, a psychiatrist, or any other kind of scientist who could speak with authority about the science of human sexuality. My postgrad coursework is in biblical studies, church history, and theology. While I occasionally veer into authoritative tones when talking about rock music or Joss Whedon's superiority as a writer of episodic television, I generally try to be clear about where my training gives me academic or institutional authority and where it doesn't -- and I'm closest to being an expert on St. Paul and Luke, not on human genetics, neuropsychiatry, psychology, or any other such science.

The author of this ACI, Inc. piece -- Dr. Jacqueline Jenkins Keenan, as the byline reads -- has an academic background very different from mine. Let's see -- she's a "Dr." writing on human sexuality, and her article seems to suggest that she would have been a better choice for the committee selected to write To Set Our Hope on Christ than were the theologians and pastors who served.

Is she an M.D.? No.

Does she have a Ph.D. in psychology? Is she a research scientist in neuroscience or some other field that includes studies of human sexuality? No.

Is she a Ph.D. at all? No.

Dr. Jacqueline Jenkins Keenan is a veterinarian.

"She has been reading and studying human and animal medical literature for 27 years," her byline says to justify her speaking as an expert in medical science about human sexuality. I've been reading novels for more than 27 years, but that doesn't make me Dostoevsky; I'm a biblical scholar working to finish her dissertation, and that's a very different sort of scholarly animal, I'd say. At this point I'd have to say that Dr. Keenan has as much academic credibility with respect to human sexuality as does "Dr. Laura," the kinesiologist-turned-radio-self-help-guru, who does at least have a Ph.D. in something related to humans.

At least Dr. Keenan's studies in her MTS program "focusing on family systems" has something to do with humans rather than horses, though family systems theory isn't exactly a theological discipline. Perhaps that's why she seems unaware of the myriad volumes of Christian theology and ethics of human sexuality produced over the last forty years or more, and doesn't refer to any published theological document other than To Set Our Hope on Christ -- not to any of the official reports or studies from 1967 on listed in To Set Our Hope on Christ's Appendix, not to any of the works listed in its endnotes, and not to any of the works that would spring up in a simple search of the Virginia Theological Seminary's library catalog. And perhaps she will have read more theology she finds worthy of comment by the time she finishes her MTS degree.

In the meantime, the most interesting point to me about "Why Theology Should Precede Change" is where it was published: on the website of The Anglican Communion Institute, Inc. despite its not saying anything in particular about Anglicanism or Communion, and among the work of "collegial theologians" despite its decidedly medical focus and near-total lack of theological language. It is an article about scientific studies of human sexual orientation written by a veterinarian, and it is difficult to see how it could in any way further or even address the concerns suggested by the name, "The Anglican Communion Institute, Inc." unless the ACI wishes to ground our koinonia with one another not on our shared Baptism, nor on our shared theological heritage or historical ties via Canterbury, nor on our shared call to engage God's mission, but rather on a shared scientific consensus regarding the development of sexual orientation and a shared conviction that heterosexuality is, medically speaking, an earlier or healthier state than any other sexual orientation. That would be a curious communion indeed.

+Bruno responds to NY Times flight of fancy

Bishop Bruno of the Diocese of Los Angeles has responded to the New York Times article I blogged about a few days ago, and I think it's an excellent and pastoral response. Read it on epiScope. Though it's not clear at this point whose imagination or imaginations generated the report, it's now absolutely clear that the story of a recently retired porn star being on track for ordination in The Episcopal Church is entirely fictional.

The lesson for bloggers? If you read an article, whether in the New York Times or the National Enquirer, claiming that the Lakers have just hired me as their starting center and that I'm aspiring to the NBA Hall of Fame, you might want to check it out before writing an article decrying the depths to which professional basketball has sunk if the Lakers are hiring 5'7" female theologians to play pro ball.

NY Times branches into fiction

I groaned as soon as I saw it on my RSS reader: "Man of the Flesh to Man of the Cloth." The New York Times has this story about Ronald Boyer, who as late as January of this year was making pornographic movies, and now is at the Church of the Epiphany, which writer Sharon Waxman claims "is guiding his transformation from pornography star to preacher." While Waxman says that "the process to priesthood will take several years," she reports that Boyer "is undergoing training to become a deacon," and that he met "with his priest and with the second-ranking official of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, Bishop Suffragan Chester L. Talton, to gain approval to establish a ministry among sex workers." "To become a priest," Waxman writes, "he must study in a seminary for approximately two years and his candidacy must be approved by the diocesan bishop."

The Diocese of Los Angeles was my home for over twenty-five years. I know what the discernment process for ordination is like there, and I know +Chet Talton. I also know that it generally takes people with no prior graduate theological education at least three years to finish an M.Div., the degree required under most circumstances for ordination. And so I didn't believe Waxman's story for a minute. It didn't take long before a friend confirmed that Boyer is not in the ordination process in the Diocese of Los Angeles or anywhere else. The Times story is fiction.

And now the always-sharp Jan Nunley has talked with Boyer's rector, Hank Mitchel -- "which is more than reporter Waxman managed to do," she writes. "No one is training [Boyer] for ministry at any level," Mitchel said, and as for the supposed meeting Boyer had with Mitchel and Bishop Talton: "No way!" Mitchel said. Talton "never met with Ron. Couldn't pick him out of a crowd ... he was confirmed with about 150 others by Bishop Talton in May." And Boyer "has a long, long way to travel and a lot of spiritual growing to do before we can even think about thinking about a leadership role," his rector said.

Read the whole story at epiScope. Boyer may be interested in becoming a priest someday. I don't know whether he had any chance last week of becoming one, but as of now, I'd have to say that he's got less chance of becoming a priest than the Times' Sharon Waxman has of being a responsible reporter.

UPDATE 15 July 3:43 p.m. -- looks like StandFirm and TitusOneNine have both fallen for the story. I've got to wonder whether the whole thing was a hoax Mr. Boyer launched to generate publicity for his "Internet ministry." His rector had explained the discernment process for ordination, after all, and while Sharon Waxman should be held accountable for her failure to fact-check in any case, I don't know why she would have invented these particular facts ex nihilo. Bloggers, I understand that fact-checking may not seem like a worthy activity for "Roistering Episcopal Adventurers," but it's important if you want people to take you seriously as a reliable source for information.

UPDATE 15 July 11:09 p.m. -- The TitusOneNine "elves" have posted an excerpt from Jan Nunley's post on epiScope and a comment indicating that they "took the story at face value because it was in the NY Times, and "most of us would assume that the Times did some fact checking."

buy bricks from a virtual office!

The Anglican Heritage Foundation (AHF) -- not to be confused with:

• the Anglican Heritage Society, which does -- well, I'm not sure what it does, as there's no trace of it outside of databases of nonprofits, and it's located in a mobile home in Lubbock, Texas -- and
• the Anglican Foundation, Inc., which at the end of 2005 had net assets of a little over $16,000, takes four volunteers a grand total four hours per week to run, and seems just to be a corporate funnel of funds to Blessed Trinity Anglican Church of Alpine, California

... on July 9 made their biggest announcement to date. Actually, it's their only announcement to date, and their only activity I could find other than registering a domain name on March 9. The big announcement -- carried on the website of the American Anglican Council's Washington, DC chapter (appropriate enough, since the board of the AHF is identical to that of that AAC chapter) -- is of "the establishment of a Legal Defense Fund to assist Trinity Church, Bristol Connecticut [sic]" in their court battle with the Episcopal Church," and their call "upon Anglicans throughout the Communion to contribute ... through AHF's fundraising program, where the donation for an inscribed memorial brick paver will fund the Legal Defense Fund."

I'm sure that Trinity Church is thrilled that such a powerful foundation is coming to their rescue. And that's not all that the Anglican Heritage Foundation is going to do by a long shot: their website announces on its front page (and in boldface AND italics, so you know it's important) "a Nationwide Grant Program" that is "Building a Pathway to the Anglican Church, Brick by Brick" (they love Superfluous Capital Letters even more than A.A. Milne does, it seems). "This innovative grant program," they say, "will create a financial resource for Anglican missions, churches, clergy, and other non-profit organizations to assist them in their ministries when it is needed to build the Anglican Church."

I'm not sure that raising funds by selling "reservations" for bricks with the donor's name on them qualifies as "innovative"; we've all seen pathways and walls and such with such bricks, and the web site for the brick vendor, Gift Bricks® of Wisconsin, has lots of pictures showing examples from other organizations.

But there is one truly innovative thing about this campaign:

It's asking people to reserve real bricks from an organization with only a virtual location.

The Anglican Heritage Foundation is located at 611 Pennsylvania Ave. SE #1400 in Washington, DC -- and that's a box in a UPS Store. Must be a pretty big box to hold all of those bricks. Personally, I think that given their location, they would have been smarter to go with inscribing donor's names on grains of rice. Vivanne Robinson, who writes names on bits of rice in Venice Beach, California, "is available to write Your Name on a Grain of Rice for Birthday Parties, Bar/Bat Mitzvahs, Company events, Fairs, or other special occasions," so I'm sure she'd be willing to contract with the Anglican Heritage Foundation, she clearly likes Capital Letters as much as they do, and they might be able to fit more than one donor-funded grain-of-rice "brick" in their UPS Store box. I wonder whether Vivianne could do a tiny golden compass rose on the rice, though. No matter; I'm sure that an organization able to come up with such an innovative program could figure out what other rice-grain-sized bonus could be given to premium donors. Maybe it would work to give them these ear rings to carry around their "donor brick" with 'First Edition Anglican Heritage Foundation Medallion'" with them.

But even without my brilliant plan to call grains of rice "bricks," the AHF has managed to launch their Nationwide Grant Program, meant particularly to benefit Anglican congregations in the U.S. dating from the colonial period, listed here on their website. I should let my old friend Ken Phelps, rector of historic All Saints Sunderland (founded in 1692) know about it. Ken is liberal enough to make me look very conservative indeed, but I'm sure the AHF will be glad to give them a grant and install one of their bricks at his parish.

I'd better move fast, though, if I want to help Ken with a successful grant application. Lay Episcopalians for the Anglican Communion (LEAC) -- that organization providing (according to their website) "Bold Assistance Action Supporting the Orthodox" and that last October announced a conference (since cancelled) promising "THE MOST EXPERIENCED, DIVERSE ANTI-REVISIONIST TEACHERS EVER ASSEMBLED" to found "Team 2 Million, which will undertake a five-year expansion drive" -- is pleading for funds, since they "have no foundation or deep-pockets [sic] to help," and since David Bickel, President of the AHF, is also one of the founders of LEAC, I bet that LEAC will any second discover this well-oiled machine of a foundation bestowing grants nationwide.

And it looks like it wouldn't take long for LEAC to snap up the AHF's remaining funds. AHF Chairman Bradley Hutt says in a comment on VirtueOnline, "the money ... is currently in our pockets," and their pockets don't seem to be bulging particularly at the moment; Hutt says, "if we can get 10,000 of the faithful to donate $100 we will have $1,000,000."

So, anyone want to found the Anglican Communion Ministry Foundation (ACMF)? I've got some leftover curry and a couple of cans of Diet Coke in my fridge that we could give away in a Galaxy-Wide Grants Program, and if a billion of the world's Christians gave me a dollar, I'd have a billion dollars. It's in the bag!

kudos to +Benjamin Nzimbi

George Conger at Religious Intelligence (hat tip: Stand Firm) writes of Archbishop Benjamin Nzimbi's recent call for all politicians running for office in Kenya to be tested for HIV to set an example for the nation and destigmatize AIDS and HIV infection. And the archbishop is not asking of others something he has not done himself: he and the lay and clergy leaders of the cathedral congregation of All Saints in Nairobi were tested and announced that publicly. U.S. Senator Barak Obama visited Kenya (where his father was born) last year and he and his wife were tested for HIV there, saying, "Knowing your status is the first step in controlling the spread of disease. Let everyone be tested." +Nzimbi applauded Obama's action, arguing (in Conger's words) that "ignorance of the disease helped foster its spread," and that Kenyans must not "shun or judge those diagnosed with [AIDS]."

I'm glad to have occasion to applaud Archbishop Nzimbi for his courage and leadership on this point. May it prove to be something that our provinces can rally around together in mission!

swag with a mission

I was musing today about a variety of things -- the Anglican Communion, ecumenism, interfaith possibilities -- and found myself thinking once more that the most promising route forward is often working together around a shared sense of mission. And I thought to myself, "I wish I could get a t-shirt with the Anglican Communion's Five Marks of Mission":

• To proclaim the Good News of God's reign
• To teach, baptize, and nurture new believers
• To respond to human need by loving service
• To seek to transform unjust structures of society
• To strive to safeguard the integrity of creation and sustain and renew the life of the earth

And so I designed one. There are a variety of men's and women's t-shirts, sweatshirts, and tote bags with this site's icon of the Trinity with Blues Brothers-style hats and sunglasses and "We're on a mission from God" on the front:

... and with the Five Marks of Mission on the back:

If you'd like clothing or a tote bag with this design, pop by the new SarahLaughed.net Café Press store. I have a number of other "I wish I had a t-shirt with this" ideas and don't want too bewildering an array of choices at the store, so I plan to rotate periodically which design is available. If you like this one, please do pounce on it! For each purchase, $2.00 goes to support SarahLaughed.net.

Armstrong declares AI/ACI mission "no longer valid"

The Rocky Mountain News reports that Don Armstrong, who until last week was executive director of the Anglican Communion Institute (previously known as the Anglican Institute), has this to say about the organization:

"... essentially ACI's work is done. Their mission is no longer valid as the Episcopal Church enters its last days, and their house of cards comes tumbling down."

ABC to visit U.S.

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams announced earlier today that he will meet with "the U.S. church." This brief article -- thus far the only information on the announcement -- doesn't make clear whether that means that he'll meet with lay leaders, deacons, and/or priests; I think, given his patterns of behavior and speech in recent years, it's a given that he will meet with bishops.

Tip o' th' hat to epiScope for the link.

UPDATE 1:31 p.m. -- There's now this brief press release posted on Episcopal Life Online. Not much more information, aside from a brief quote and a note that the ABC will coming with members of the Standing Committee of the Primates and the Anglican Consultative Council.