We are well in the home stretch, and from the House of Deputies, I will be leaving to head right out to the airport for the journey home.
I have been blessed to be able to be a deputy from the great diocese of Alaska, and have been honored and enriched by the opportunity to serve here with my fellow deputies: Becky Snow, Stacy Thorpe, Mary Margaret Davis, Clarence Bolden, Bessie Titus, David Blanchett, and Dave Elsensohn.
Each of them has engaged the process of discernment here in a prayerful way. All our deputies are faithful in work and worship, and attentive in listening to others with whom they disagree.
I have now been to five General Conventions, and this is by far the Convention that been most successful in bringing people from various perspectives and experiences together. The spirit of cooperation, generosity, and compromise led us to decisions that are the clear will of the majority, but deeply respectful of those of our family who conscientiously hold different views.
The House of Deputies and Bishops worked hard to make space for ALL at the table, where each could have the respect and freedom to honestly be who they are, while simultaneously recognizing that everyone else is to be invited and respected there as well. This is no “soft” or “mushy middle,” but a deeply prayerful and holy comprehensiveness. It is, I believe, thoroughly Anglican, in the richest mainstream of our historic Anglican theology.
Our Episcopal Church has largely embraced the principle that we will not all understand things in the same way, and that Christians of differing views can, and will hold one another closely in the love of Christ. We have allowed for local communities and dioceses to live out the implications of the Gospel in ways that fit their context and mission strategy, informed by their careful reading of Scripture, and guided by their own prayerful discernment of the Holy Spirit.
There will, of course, be those outside the mainstream of The Episcopal Church who cannot abide by any compromise or comprehension that permits legitimacy for those viewpoints they disagree with, and we hold them in our love and prayers as well, as they seek a different path to be faithful to the Lord as they understand his will and Word.
Some will be disappointed and hurt that we the church did not, in their opinion, go “far enough” in addressing the concerns they hold most dear. Others will see the actions and deliberations of General Convention as driving them further away from their historic connections. There is no doubt that the actions of this General Convention will be mischaracterized by some, but not all, of those with their own agendas, who in most cases were not present here among us. There will be reports characterized by anxiety and alarm, predicting terrible things to come. We have heard these expressions for many years now, and we will need to live with them, and love them, for they too are part of the body of Christ.
We do not need, however, to be reactive or fearful about the way in which Christ has called us to walk.
My blessings to all of you, the people of the diocese of Alaska, for your prayers over these past two weeks. I invite your ongoing conversation and dialogue about all the topics we’ve been working with these past weeks. At Convention in October, we your deputies will all try to be available for as much conversation about these matters as you all wish…
Grace and peace,
Michael Burke, chair of the Alaska deputation
(re-edited 7/18/09) mb
July 17, 2009 at 3:35 pm |
Michael:
We appreciate your enthusiasm, your hard work and your reports while at the GC.
However, this comment stood out.
“There will, of course, be those at the extremes who cannot abide by any compromise or comprehension that permits legitimacy for those viewpoints they disagree with …and we hold them in our love and prayers as well, as they seek a different path to be faithful to the Lord as they understand his will and Word.”
It seems that those who continue to hold the faith ‘once for all delivered to the saints’ are now relegated to the status of ‘extreme.’ Further, while I do not deny the “legitimacy” of other view points, such points of view can be very wrong, both theologically and pastorally – which I judge to be the case.
The PB’s opening address concerning the ‘heresy’ of individual salvation was uninformed and frankly embarrassing, and this wasn’t lost on even some sympathetic observers.
I can only speak for myself, however, I find myself more alienated from TEC than ever before.
Jim Basinger
July 18, 2009 at 10:26 pm |
Good point, Jim, especially about my use of the word “extreme.”
I stand corrected, my friend, and have made the appropriate re-edits to my post.
Thanks for following along on our postings.
I didn’t catch the PB’s opening address, or at least I don’t remember anything about the “heresy” of individual salvation. I’ll have to go back and see if I can find that. If you have it handy, please post it in the comments.
Thanks.
I’m available if you want a cup of coffee or conversation. Just give me a ring; it would be good to see you.
- Michael
July 19, 2009 at 10:05 am |
From Katherine Jefferts-Schori – opening address
“The crisis of this moment has several parts, and like Episcopalians, particularly ones in Mississippi, they’re all related. The overarching connection in all of these crises has to do with the great Western heresy – that we can be saved as individuals, that any of use alone can be in right relationship with God. It’s caricatured in some quarters by insisting that salvation depends on reciting a specific verbal formula about Jesus. That individualist focus is a form of idolatry, for it puts me and my words in the place that only God can occupy, at the center of existence, as the ground of all being. That heresy is one reason for the theme of this Convention.”
You can find it here:
http://www.americananglican.org/presiding-bishop-s-opening-address/#
July 23, 2009 at 12:47 pm |
Jim,
The thought here comes out out a larger discussion about Desmond Tutu’s use of the African concept of Ubuntu to discuss Christian trinitarian theology. Bishop Michael Battle has developed this to some degree in his book “Ubuntu,” which all deputies were sent and asked to read prior to General Convention. Much of our discussion centered around a Christian reading of Tutu’s theology of Ubuntu.
If the inner life of the Holy Trinity, as held throughout Christian history, is one of mutuality, relationship, and indwelling, then the “Western” concept of the individual, so well espoused by Rene Descartes, is indeed an “incomplete truth,” (a common definition of “heresy” in Christian theology.) It is incomplete to the extent that it conceptualizes the self as arising out of either nothing or out of self, when others would argue that the self is an emergent whole arising out of our relationship with God and one another.
Crassly put in shorthand, this view argues that there is no such thing as a Lone Ranger Christian, with just “me and Jesus;” but that the very nature of Christian identity is found in being a part of the Body of Christ, and that we are only in “right relationship” with God as we are also striving to be in right relationship with others. In that sense, salvation is never purely about me alone, it is always about me in relationship with Christ and therefore in relationship with my sisters and brothers. And that my sins agianst God are often also manifested as sins against others.
What perhaps is lacking in some formulations of the “sinners prayer,” especially the condensed versions popularly found in handout tracts, is some acknowledgement that our relationship with God is inseperable from our relationship with others in the Body of Christ.
Anyway, that is my recollection and reading of where our Presiding Bishop was coming from and going to, in her address.
I don’t hear her to be denying a personal salvation, but hear her questioning the Descartian “Western” concept of self as being the centerpoint for all we are and all we value. That, she argues, is the rightful place of God and God alone. Anything less is the false and idolatrous exaltation of the self.
Much of our conversation around Ubuntu was in recognizing that other cultures, including many banta language cultures of Africa, cannot conceieve of the idea of self except as self-in-relation. I think we see this, in various deghrees, in many indigenous cultures as well, some of whom even extend the concept of self-in-relation to include the dead, the land, and the animals. This moves us into territory outside of much of the Western philosophical tradition. I think the point +Katherine was making was that a truer Christian understanding of “personal” salvation would more African and less Western, to infer her meaning in the larger context of the discussion we have been having at General Convention.
Interesting times, these are, these are…
Blessings,
Michael Burke