Unlike three years ago, I have refrained from any sort of commentary on the actions of the Episcopal Church's General Convention this year. Part of it is just the simple fact that I was in Oklahoma last week and am crazy busy with starting a new job and teaching a summer logic course. I don't have time to keep up with much--not even my friends' blogs. Furthermore, I am ever farther removed from ECUSA as time goes on and as I continue to immerse myself in the life of my local Orthodox parish. Nothing I would have to say regarding GenCon would hold much water nor would it make any iota of difference.
That said, the Episcopal Church was something I once came to out of hope and expectation. I had come to love her prayerbook liturgies, the shape of the daily office, and the triadological spiritual disciplines of Eucharist, daily office and personal devotions. One of my treasured memories is of the quiet Saturday morning Eucharists at the Episcopal Church in Decatur I got to enjoy before going to work at the call center.
But things began changing for me in 2000, and ultimately I simply walked quietly away from ECUSA in January 2002 never to return. I'd found Orthodoxy, and headed eastward some six months later.
Nonetheless, I still have concern for my Anglican friends from the seminary and from the parishes I once worshipped with. I know many in ECUSA are rejoicing at the election of the first woman Anglican primate, at the clear refusal to give in to the Windsor Report requirements of a moratoria on ordaining and consecrating noncelibate gay and lesbian priests and bishops and on blessing same sex unions. There are probably many who have a sense of satisfaction that the deputies approved a resolution affirming the purported anti-semitic nature of parts of the New Testament and of some liturgies. But I am deeply saddened. Not by these things per se--though clearly I find them egregious departures from the apostolic faith and practice of the Church--but rather by ECUSA's seeming blindness to any other life except their own. And this pernicious myopia will do two things: make real and apparent the schism that already exists in the Episcopal Church itself, and further divide her from her Anglican communion partners. She will simply continue to go down the lonely road of self-assumed prophetic (ir)relevance.
I am somewhat surprised by the clarity of this GenCon. I had assumed a much more murky and ambiguous fudge. But I am not at all surprised by the direction.
Still I am saddened. Saddened for my friends for whom this schism will mean much pain and sacrifice, even the loss of relationships. Saddened at the inexplicable vanity of a denomination that stubbornly refuses to consider any other's well being than their own. And, too, saddened at the final death of the illusion I'd had of the Anglican communion several years ago. She never was what I'd thought she'd been. And I have found what I had gone to her looking for. But the loss of illusions, especially ones that have a lot of previous emotional investment, is never easy.
That said, the loss of illusions is just a fact of maturity. Others will lose far more. May God have mercy on them.
Posted by Clifton at June 22, 2006 05:18 AM | TrackBackA quote from the Durant's classic text, "The Lessons of History"* follows, and is at least partially relevant here.
Intellect is a vital force of history, but it can also be a dissolvent and destructive power. Out of every hundred new ideas, ninety-nine or more will probably be inferior to the traditional responses which they propose to replace. No one man or woman, however brilliant or well informed, can come in one lifetime to such fullness of understanding as to safely judge and dismiss the customs or institutions of his or her society, for these are the wisdom of generations after centuries of experiment in the laboratory of history.
Therefore, the conservative who resists change is as valuable as the radical who proposes it-perhaps as much more valuable as roots are more vital than grafts. It is good that new ideas should be heard, for the sake of the few that can be used; but it is also good that new ideas should be compelled to go through the mill of objection and opposition. This is the trial heat that innovations must survive before being allowed to enter the human race. It is good that the old should resist the young, and that the young should prod the old. Out of this tension, as out of the strife of the sexes and the classes, comes a creative tensile strength, a stimulated development, a secret and basic unity and movement of the whole.
*Durant, W. and A. Durant. 1968. The Lessons of History,Simon and Schuster, New York, N.Y. 117p. (citation (pp.35-36) edited for continuity and inclusivity without altering content).