VTS Forum Event Next Week

I don’t write much here about my job as coordinator of the VTS Forum Hour, but we’ve got a big event next week that I’m trying to promote as widely as possible. Plus I’m genuinely excited and wanted to share the news! Tell your friends!



Special Guest Next Week

The Rev. Stephanie SpellersNext week, 4/4-4/6, the Rev. Stephanie Spellers will visit VTS to meet students and be part of several special events. Many of you know of Rev. Steph and her work. She serves as priest and lead organizer for The Crossing community, a fresh expression of church within the life of St. Paul’s Cathedral in Boston, and as the Consulting Editor for Emergent Resources for Church Publishing in New York. She is co-chair of the Standing Commission on Mission and Evangelism and travels the country consulting and supporting Episcopal congregations as we embrace the challenges and opportunities of life in 21st-century America.

Rev. Steph’s visit is an opportunity for VTS to get another take on the world of emergence Christianity and some of the ways it expresses itself in an Anglican context. In particular, let me draw your attention to the Tuesday night conversation. We have scheduled this event at 5 p.m. in the Welcome Center to accommodate as many students as possible, knowing that some will have to leave for classes and other commitments. Please come for as much of this evening as you can. If you plan to be around for dinner at 6:15, a dinner that will be worth your while, RSVP to this email and let me know that you’re coming.

Please join me in welcoming Rev. Steph when you see her here on campus next week, and do join us for these events with her as you are able.

Many thanks to the following students who have helped plan these events: Mike Angell, Tim Baer, Kirsten Baer, David Erickson, Bert Hall, Gregg Morris, Audrey O’Brien, and Brenda Sol.

In Christ,
Kyle

Summary of Events

Tuesday at 1: Anglicanism Remixed — Embracing Our Traditions and The Other

How do we balance a commitment to transformation and radical welcome with love for Anglican traditions? Can you keep the baby but refresh the bathwater? Rev. Stephanie Spellers leads this interactive forum exploring multicultural, emergent visions of Anglicanism.

Date: Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Time: 1-1:50 p.m.
Location: Gibbs Room
Contact: Kyle Oliver, koliver@vts.edu

Tuesday at 5: Dreaming with Both Feet on the Ground

A session for students considering ministry as innovators, church planters, and church redevelopers (or anyone who wants to introduce radical welcome and fresh expressions in a conventional congregation). Please join us for an introductory session at 5 p.m. and/or an informal, no-cost dinner around 6:15. Please RSVP for dinner to koliver@vts.edu.

Date: Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Time: 5-7:30 p.m.
Location: Welcome Center
Contact: Kyle Oliver, koliver@vts.edu

Wednesday at 12: Seminary Eucharist

Rev. Steph will preside as we use the Eucharistic liturgy from Evangelical Lutheran Worship, the ELCA worship book. Bishop Richard Graham, bishop of the Metropolitan Washington DC Synod ELCA, will be our Lutheran preacher for this service in observance of our Lutheran-Episcopal full communion agreement.

Date: Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Time: 12-1 p.m.
Location: Prayer Hall
Contact: Mitzi Budde, mjbudde@vts.edu

Another Take on “The Real Problem” in Anglicanism Today

I recently read with some exhaustion a Living Church account (though not this one) of the Mere Anglicanism conference held in Charleston, SC, back in January. The theme of the conference was “Biblical Anglicanism for a Global Future: Recovering the Power of the Word of God.” I have to say, especially in the added light of following this week’s hubbub around Rob Bell’s new book, I’m getting awfully tired of having my faith be portrayed as “unbiblical” by people who, in good faith, read the bible differently from how I read it (which manner is, I believe, also in good faith).

One particular case in point is the following comment about the Rev. Charles Raven’s session “The Wages of Synthesis or Lasting Treasure? Recovering the Power of the Word of Truth.” (In fairness to Raven, let me preface all this by acknowledging that I’m relying on Daniel Muth’s account of his position, so I’m happy to stand corrected if I’m misrepresenting him.)

Raven described Archbishop Rowan Williams as a brilliant committed Christian beset with an ultimately unworkable combination of hermeneutical pessimism (Scripture is unclear) and ecclesiastical optimism (if we talk long enough we will find common ground). Despite the archbishop’s best efforts, treating Christian orthodoxy as process rather than proposition does not keep all parties at the table, Raven said.

It seems to me that the accusation of “hermeneutical pessimism” gets to the very heart of what is tearing us all apart right now. I believe Williams is a hermeneutical realist; he acknowledges that faithful people encounter the biblical text and reach different conclusions about what it means. You can call that an attack on “the Power of the Word of Truth” if you like, but . . . well again, we ultimately arrive at me saying something like “but we’re going to have to agree to disagree on that point.” I believe we are called to a more hopeful and realistic doctrine of the Truth of Scripture, one that is neither relativistic nor threatened by the existence of a diversity of interpretation. We don’t have to be soft on truth to be firmly convinced that no party sees it in its entirety but, rather, “in a mirror, dimly” (1 Corinthians 13:12).

And so it goes. The demand that orthodoxy be purely about proposition is common enough, but the history of Christianity shows–in my reading of it, though some of my classmates understandably disagree–that we’ve never gotten very far at living out our catholicity when we demand of all our fellow communicants rigid adherence to a universally agreed upon dogmatic program. Indeed, you could do a lot worse than to interpret the term “Mere Anglicanism” in exactly that spirit: our tradition chose to acknowledge the difficulty of demanding uniformity of doctrine, so we dedicated ourselves to sharing common worship. (Then again, I got into one of the two shouting matches I’ve been in during seminary defending that position.)

What seems especially unfair about Raven’s claim (or, again, Muth’s gloss of it) is the language about keeping “all parties at the table.” It sounds like we can agree, at least provisionally, that doing so is an admirable goal. But why is it intractable under the Williams formula (hermeneutical pessimism + ecclesiastical optimism)? Because the hermeneutical optimists want us pessimists to either (1) see the light and change our tune, (2) leave the table because of our dogmatic unworthiness, or (3) allow them to take the table with them somewhere else. Keep in mind that subscribers to the Williams formula are not–by and large, though we have some things to repent of, I believe–asking anyone to leave the table. What is communion, our position leads us to ask, but continuing to sit at the table and talk about the things we disagree about? So take note: in this program, no one’s being forced out (this is absolutely essential to the integrity and cost of the position, and I think my “side” has blown it in a couple of instances), though some do choose to leave.

On the other hand, what of the converse position? What would happen if the dominant formula were hermeneutical optimism (Scripture is clear) and ecclesiastical pessimism (no amount of talking will lead us to identify common ground)? That table seems to have people leaving in droves: First, most of us hermeneutical pessimists will be forced to leave for our unwillingness to sign on the dotted line (except for those few whose individual interpretations happen to fall in line and who are willing to push away from the table their brothers and sisters for whom that is not the case). Second (and of course this one is subject to my biases as a hermeneutical pessimist), there will be the inevitable trickling out of those hermeneutical optimists who find, not that their optimism was misplaced (Scripture is clear!), but that their fellow optimists just happen (out of ignorance? unfaithfulness? outright rebellion against God?) to be wrong about some point or the other. In this alternative, even if “the Power of the [unambiguous] Word of Truth” heads off the secondary trickle that has never heretofore been headed off, an awful lot of people get forced out.

So we have two alternatives, both resulting in the original table seating many fewer guests. How do we choose among them? Well, hermeneutical pessimist that I am, I return to 1 Corinthians 13:12 and then keep on reading:

For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

Final reflections:

(1) I’m sorry about all the polemical Us vs. Them here, I really am. This article has just been eating away at me all week, and I needed to get my objections out there in the open. Obviously, the terms Raven/Muth set out here are fundamentally inadequate to capturing the complexities of the situation. But there’s a kernel of truth here that teaches us quite a bit about what all the fuss is about.

(2) Obviously, the combination of hermeneutical optimism AND ecclesiastical optimism is an attractive third option and may best account for why the Anglican Communion has made it this far with its current level of intactness. And I certainly want us to go forward with an approach that is deeply grounded in faithfulness to scripture and that trusts in the Spirit’s power to guide the Church into all truth. But aren’t we asking too much of the Bible if we expect it to somehow be the unambiguous arbiter of all our doctrinal disagreements? And isn’t that what Raven, in comparing hermeneutical optimism favorably to Williams’ ecclesiastical approach, ultimately does?

I don’t think you have to be a radical historical-critical biblical skeptic to believe the Bible contains some pretty significant ambiguities on issues that matter to our modern life together. This is why I prefer the term “hermeneutical realist” and why I believe that love–God’s love for us, our love for God, our love for each other, and Christ’s longing for us all to be one–is the only force strong enough to keep us all at the table.

(3) Incidentally, does anyone know why these Living Church issues keep ending up in the VTS mailboxes? Did the seminary score, like, a complimentary subscription for all its students? What about at the other seminaries? I’m not speaking ill of my hometown’s ecclesiastical periodical (indeed, I’m grateful, even on a day where I’ve frittered away my entire afternoon on a blog post about a single paragraph on page 26 of the February issue), but it’s slightly creepy to be getting a magazine without knowing why.

Glad Someone Else Mentioned This

Earlier today, Anglican Centrist asked a question that I’ve been wondering about myself and will paraphrase here: where’s the media tumult over the recent decision by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America‘s Churchwide Assembly “to open the ministry of the church to gay and lesbian pastors and other professional workers living in committed relationships”?

Don’t get me wrong. I’m from the heart of Lutheran country and have a great love and respect for the ELCA; I’m happy that so far they at least seem to have been partly spared the kind of oversimplified, conflict-emphasizing mass media attention the Episcopal Church was subject to last month. Of course, that doesn’t mean things are going to be any easier within their Church, so I hope you’ll join me in keeping the ELCA (and the Episcopal Church) in your thoughts and/or prayers during what’s sure to be a difficult time for both.

Getting back to the question, though, here’s my thinking:

(1) I get the impression this decision has a smaller international impact than ours does. I’m not a demographer of religion, but I believe the Anglican Communion is larger and (perhaps more relevantly) more culturally heterogeneous than the Lutheran World Federation. There may be ecclesial reasons as well. Am I on the right track, anyone who actually knows something about this? I’m woefully ignorant of global Lutheranism.

(2) I wonder if perhaps since the Episcopal coverage hits so much closer to home for me, I’m only perceiving the Lutheran coverage to be more muted. Note that, like me, Anglican Centrist seems to have started out this general line of thinking when noticing the lack of coverage in the New York Times (I don’t read the print version but do get a daily headlines email from which this story has been persistently absent). But The Times may not be a very good proxy given the Episcopal Church’s ties to New York. Do any trained media-types have suggestions for a more systematic comparison? I’m guessing it would be necessary to give it some time; of course there’s currently more coverage out there of something that happened in mid-July than of something that happened Friday.

What am I leaving out? This is obviously a complex and difficult question to answer well.