Last Straws
First, there are some individuals who need to leave The Episcopal Church. For some, their ecclesiology and beliefs about the nature of the church -- that the physical structures and organization of TEC are indeed a visible expression of a church [rather than a visible facade of a man-made organization] -- demand their decision to depart. Others have children to protect and, though they are willing to accept that a "General Convention" or a "Presiding Bishop" is not "a church," they nevertheless reside in a diocesan structure not led by people who believe or proclaim the gospel and a parish structure not led by people who believe or proclaim the gospel. As such they have no safe or healthy place to go. Finally, there are some who are called to go elsewhere to engage in another part of the culture wars sweeping through our society in organizations other than the Episcopal Church.
As a point of clarification, there are also individuals who do not need to leave The Episcopal Church. They are not called elsewhere, they don't have an ecclesiology or family structure that enjoins departure, and they live in reasonably "safe" structures. They may be repulsed and angry by what they see at the national level. They may believe that life should involve few battles. They may simply be unwilling to fight what battles come their way. And they may simply wish to retire to happier climes and enjoy the most sheltered life they can construct. Obviously, as I suspect most of us know, they will not generally succeed at fleeing battles -- if there's anything we know about life it's that battles pursue us with a vengeance throughout our life. Scott Peck and other writers would simply call those battles "suffering." Such people will spend their lives in flight -- and they have their reward in the fleeing and in the dubious character that such constant flight develops.
But the first thing that leaders need to think through carefully -- hopefully in conversation with the people inclined to leave TEC -- are the issues I mention above. I do not think that anything other than exploratory conversations should take place with those who honestly need to leave TEC. It is what it is. One's foundational beliefs and values cannot be "unmade" at the blink of an eye, and it is respectful to people to recognize that sometimes they must leave.
Truth Telling and Shiny Red Toys
Second, as people of integrity, we cannot sugarcoat or spin the actions of General Convention, however much we'd like to keep our allies [or -- ahem -- our pledgers and faithful volunteers] with us. One of our bloggers is constructing a list of the Top 20 or so resolutions that our latest General Convention passed. Very very few good ones -- or even remotely Christian ones -- were even submitted much less passed. Some deputies will return to their parishes eager to "talk about all the good things that our convention did" while ignoring the vast and overwhelmingly clear general themes developed by the convention; specifically, as I pointed out in my three-part overview of the resolutions, the themes that were developed were "We are the Code Pink Church" [or if you like, MoveOn dot org], "Where Has All The Money Gone, Long Time Passing," "What Do We Do About All Those Pesky Internets," "We Are The Jerry Springer Church Only With Much Better Taste In Liquor and Clothes, Not To Mention Better Hair," "Things Are Getting Out Of Hand Here, Let's Tighten Up On The Peasants," and "Holy Revisionists, Holy Revisionists."
Any person who attended GC and sat on the floor of the House of Deputies cannot fail to have noticed those general cluster categories of resolutions, and denying that or spinning that into some message of "oh, the media focused on sexuality but we did all sorts of great things" is simply a lie. The fact that we decided to restrict our use of bottled water cannot even be remotely spun into anything that a church ought to be spending its time opining on [and I include environmentalist Christians on this], other than, again, a Code Pink organization that deems itself a church body.
Other than lying or feverish spinning, another option that I believe leaders should not take is that of "we're going to simply ignore the fact that General Conventions or a national structure exists -- lets focus on 'mission and ministry' in our local church body -- I've started a new soup kitchen, and I've volunteered our entire congregation for a Habitat house!" If your rector or bishop arrives back from General Convention with a feverish energy oddly focused on Shiny Red Toys of Energetic Social Volunteerism, you need to recognize what he is trying to accomplish. There's nothing wrong with focusing on local contexts -- and I'll explain what I mean in another section of this article. But returning with the notion of "let's put this long nightmare behind us and accentuate the positive" is not only wrong and lacking in integrity, it is also pointless and will get you into deep trouble with the informed traditionalists in your parish.
There are two audiences, however, that should receive special attention, as a leader.
The first audience is that of the moderate to moderate conservative Episcopalians who until now have been content to serve on the altar guild and volunteer in Stephen's Ministries and lead in Cursillo, not raising their head from their tasks . . . but who have suddenly noticed that Something Very Bizarre Has Been Taking Place At The Big Meeting We Have. Maybe they caught a CNN broadcast. Maybe they read the Transgender Civil Rights resolution. Maybe one of their active traditional friends emailed them a link and they clicked on it and . . . . "horrors! what on earth???!!!???" occurred for them. All around TEC, that's been happening by the way, and will happen. I saw it in living color at the convention and we'll be posting word of it from other regions as well.
May I say, Fellow Remaining Adventurers, that this represents a huge opportunity that only comes around every three years. I assure you that it *will* come around every three years, like clockwork -- but the time period you have to communicate and prepare and educate and inform and yes, activate, such moderates is a short one. By "activation" I mean people who become more informed, more active, more strategic, more theologicall astute, and more involved and engaged in important decisions about vestries, delegates, communication, networking, and engaging in other structures of the church. Some moderates won't be ready to talk or listen, but a certain percentage will be ready to communicate with you and hear from you. Hopefully you are prepared to communicate with calm, objective, fact-based reporting, and not hysterical "the sky is falling" communication. Frankly, just the facts are quite enough. You don't even need to interpret them. A simple collection of links without commentary is just right, for starters.
Along those same lines, you have hopefully built up a large and handy email list of fellow Episcopalians in your parish, diocese, and elsewhere, various fellowship groups, blogs, and other ways of communicating and spreading information. [If you have not done this in the past six long years, it's hard to know what to say, frankly. But you need to go back to Square One and somehow acquire the book Little Stone Bridges and How We Fight For Them.]
The second audience that bears some attention are the conservatives who were awakened and began working long ago -- whether fifteen years ago, or five years ago. This is the group that is, interestingly, the more likely to experience the Last Straw Effect. They may have been fully aware of what would happen at General Convention. But there's something about seeing the lunacy demonstrated in living color that gets to some, and they will often react in fully aware knowledge and outrage. Such outrage is perfectly understandable -- but leaving TEC is often not within either their value system or theology. They're just angry, and they feel as if they have to do something, and given that they can't think of much to do, they leave, after hopefully writing a hot letter.
This is where the whole meme of "focusing on mission and ministry, guess what guys I've got us all signed up for a Habitat house" is not such a good idea. I've used this analogy before but it bears repeating. It's as if a group of people are in a large and crowded movie theater lobby and a fire breaks out, barring the obvious exits. A person steps forward -- a guy in a collar -- to "lead the flock." Some people have heard of a way to make a room in the theater a "safe house" and they inform the collared one of this fact. The flames grow hotter, the smoke grows thicker, but rather than leading the fellow movie-goers in a direction of travel towards a strategic safe location within the movie theater, the Collared Wonder begins to intone about "our larger purpose" and "looking on the bright side" and "not being so negative" and "the flames are not so very bad" and "the importance of using no-fat butter on popcorn for our health's sake."
For the movie goers who are still oblivious and gazing into their half-eaten popcorn bags, this may not be so bad. But for the people who are quite aware of the flames and the smoke and the urgency of salvaging ones' lives, far from inspiring calm and peace, such an attitude in one's leader inspires near panic. It's clear -- to the informed, aware movie goers -- that they are in a terrible situation, and the leaders is either 1) lying about the situation and is thus malevolent or 2) incredibly ignorant of the situation and thus incompetent -- the leader is a loon. Neither option is a good one for the "followers" and such "leadership" inspires more terror and even some "hysterical behavior" [as many such leaders claim.] Ultimately it "inspires" erstwhile followers to leave their leader and move on by themselves or in an ad hoc group.
Claiming "all is well" is thus the very last thing that a leader should do. Calm objective truth-telling is a good thing.
Purpose, Direction, and Team Building
But there's a third practice beyond acknowledging that some need to leave, some stay, and beyond telling the truth about our church to both interested, Finally Engaged Moderates, and the Concerned Informed Conservatives. And that is to understand and work with the reasons Why Conservatives Stay.
In my experience, conservatives stay in TEC [as long as other issues of theology, ecclesiology, family, and safe place are settled -- and those are big preconditions] if they have a vision of what to pursue and seek within The Episcopal Church, and a fellowship with which to engage while seeking that vision.
In addition, my experience is that many groups, parishes, rectors, or lay leaders simply don't have a vision of what to pursue in a clearly embattled organization, nor do they understand that people need a group of like-minded people with which to fellowship and work and play.
Often what clergy especially will fall back on is "let's share the gospel with others" -- a perfectly noble and worthy task for any Christian. But that begs the question for conservative Episcopalians which is, in a corrupt organization such as TEC, why not simply share the gospel elsewhere -- like over there, in that nice PCA or Roman Catholic church?
As so many have essentially said to me, "I'm just fine with waiting and watching -- but if that's all I'm going to do, I prefer to wait and watch in a more functional, faithful, and healthy church -- so call me when it's all over." Unless there's a goal or vision that has something to do with reform, or renewal, or strengthening small pockets of TEC, it will be incredibly challenging to hold on to Concerned Informed Conservatives. And remember, Finally Engaged Moderates often develop into Concerned Informed Conservatives -- and leaders are back in the soup again at that point with the process of holding on to them if they are not fully engaged in a larger vision of what to do within the Episcopal Church.
The truth is that conservatives who are "hysterical" when their "leaders" inform them that "all is well" often turn out to be stolid, disciplined lay leaders when their clergy 1) include them in the strategies and visions for the future, 2) ask them for help and give them specific actions they can do within their gifts and skill-sets, and 3) engage them in a fellowship or team of people working toward the same goals and vision.
Informed Conservatives, then, are often leaders. And Interested Moderates are often leaders-in-waiting. Those are two powerful groups that can be incredibly useful if appropriately developed -- but also unfortunately squandered if ignored or condescended and lied to.
The recognition that two audiences in your parish or diocese need engagement with a large vision of reform, renewal, or strengthening within a smaller context within TEC brings us to a final practice, and that is that of figuring out "what on earth do we do now?"
Tudor Roses
There's no doubt that often clergy and lay leaders fall back on "share the gospel" and "wash the feet of the needy" because their minds are simply blank when it comes to figuring out how to deal with or cast a vision within an incredibly corrupt larger organization. Yet the more corrupt a larger organization is, the less the original purpose of that larger organization communicates or inspires the range of committed members. If you have joined a tennis club and all a large cluster of "leaders" are doing is engaging in skeet shooting -- and using the structures of the tennis club to promote skeet shooting -- then the original members of the club can't help but wonder "why don't we go found a real tennis club that's interested in tennis." Further research may reveal to those original members that the skeet shooters have corned the market on "tennis clubs" or bought up all the real estate, and many will simply cease playing tennis entirely, or take up a new sport in another club. Leaders who say "let's just focus on the tennis" -- even as other leaders are blasting away with their guns on the tennis court next to them -- are perfectly valid in saying "we're in a tennis club and by jingo we're going to play tennis." But something has to be done to protect the tennis players who wish to play tennis in the tennis club -- and that means engaging in something other than merely playing tennis. Passing out ear plugs and goggles with little blinker flaps on them will not do either -- sooner or later, clutches of your tennis players take the ear plugs out and remove the goggles and begin protesting.
Of course . . . this is the task that confronts any leader in any organization, whether, for instance, in the halls of the Federal government, a political party that is off the rails [I can think of one], a lobbying organization that has sold out its constituency [I can think of several], academia, business, or [to name a sporting organization that is on the rocks] the WTA.
How does one figure out what to do in so huge a place with so large and complex a cluster of problems, and then how does one engage potential volunteers in those solutions?
Here I need to flesh out another metaphor that I've used before. The Mediaeval wars between England and France [known as The 100 Years War] and the war between two dynasties in England [known as the War of the Roses] are probably the two representative conflicts in the West that most of us studied for Mediaeval history. We all probably have some vague recollection of those conflicts, but what I want to highlight is just how chaotic those times were not merely for the warring barons and kings, but also for [ahem] the serfs and knights like us. One of the larger themes of those wars was the breakdown of "a center that holds" -- that is, of kings' authority. Trampling over the land, back and forth over a period of scores of years there travelled rival barons and various other landed aristocrats along with their armies. Various men lower down on the food chain -- sometimes in desperation for order and peace and food, and sometimes in return for land and titles -- would offer their services to the nearest or best or most powerful or most-likely-to-succeed-during-that-year nobleman and engage in the various battles. Fortunes fluctuated with the winds and tides; sides and loyalties changed by the month. Depending on to whom one was in service, one wore a red dragon or a white boar or a black bull or a falcon and fetter lock or a sunburst.
But the fact remained that in England and France there was "no controlling legal authority" -- or rather many controlling legal authorities, all of whom claimed the same lands and loyalties.
I can't help but be reminded of the Anglican Communion and of course, The Episcopal Church of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. In the Anglican Communion, there are no controlling legal authorities -- no centers that hold or that can claim any sort of authority. In TEC, there are two parties that are certainly attempting to claim to be the "controlling legal authority" -- on the one hand, the General Convention, and on the other, the Presiding Bishop. Both "come together" when it's useful to their claims against their enemies, but often they are in hidden conflict with one another. [Don't doubt that the skirmish over the budget for the staff of Bonnie Anderson, President of the House of Deputies, by the way, was not an interesting byproduct of that conflict, among others that I could name.] There are also excellent theological, legal, and historic claims -- fleshed out by the Anglican Communion Institute -- that the dioceses are the controlling legal authorities -- the center that holds -- in The Episcopal Church -- and that it is only from the dioceses that the General Convention springs. Without dioceses, there is no General Convention, though dioceses may certainly exist in the absence of a General Convention.
At any rate, in TEC there are three competing claims for "the center that holds."
What then is the task of the benighted serf or poor knight in these circumstances of chaos, fear, confusion, anarchy, and high taxation by the various ruling authorities?
One very practical effect of the absence of "centrifugal force" at the highest levels is that necessarily one's focus on action must take place "farther out from the center" or lower down in the hierarchy. So in the case of a parish trapped within a tyrant nobleman's realm, one must struggle to strengthen and renew from within that smaller place, while all the while casting one's eyes about for a larger and more powerful center that holds. In the case of a diocese, one must look to one's own borders, while also casting an eye above the level of General Convention to the level of the Anglican Communion. That is a mediaeval metaphor, then, to describe Bishop Lawrence's letter to his diocese prior to the General Convention.
Practically speaking, wherever one falls in the land of the War of the Roses, one must do all in one's power to protect one's castle however small and inferior it may be: oil the portcullis, broaden the moat, lay in food stores, tend the crops carefully, seek out some solid knights, care for the health and the wellness of the peasants [that would be me], and raise the walls, not to mention gathering together a lot of oil for boiling and spears and swords and armor.
For there is no question about it. No matter what castle in which you reside, the armies of the warring factions will come trampling through your land, with all the tools of warfare at their disposal brought to bear on you and the realm in which you live.
To bring the metaphor back down to earth into the real world, average lay people need to be inoculated with sound teaching against the call of the culture, potential lay leaders need to be trained to think through strategic actions and engagement at all levels of the church, canons and bylaws need to be reviewed and strengthened, good clergy need to be discovered and lured, vestries and standing committees need to be built up, moderates need to be informed, revisionists need to be loved, parachurch organizations for evangelism, teaching, and networking need to be formed, and so much more. There are as many strategies and visions for renewal, reform, or strengthening of an Episcopal entity as there are local contexts -- the variety of options is broad and deep.
Let's take, as a specific example, a formerly moderate parish, with a revisionist vestry, and a revisionist rector, in a revisionist diocese. No options for leaving exist [trust me on this] and so the people vigorously engage on 1) reforming the vestry, 2) convincing the rector to take early retirement, 3) forming a good search committee, 4) seeking out clergy willing to come, and 5) getting their final selection past the beady eye of the now-incensed bishop [oh yeh . . . they cut their pledge to the diocese, too].
After those things are accomplished -- and they were -- many forests and fields are yet left to explore and chart. How might they share what they have learned with other known conservative to moderate parishes? How might they seek out lay contacts in other parishes? How might they pursue some specific diocesan structures for influence, say . . . the Commission on Ministry? How might they develop something with which to offer education and training for hungry and thirsty parishioners in other parishes around the diocese -- what is, in effect, a parachurch discipleship ministry that calculatedly and practically influences the laity while circumventing the diocesan structures?
The possibilities are endless.
And they all spring from the very normal and healthy human desire for congruence, integrity, cohesiveness, consistency, and order. Obviously, we have none of those things within TEC or the Anglican Communion as a whole. Much like the War of the Roses, we have the Lancaster white rose and the York red rose -- [and sadly, numerous other colors of roses too] -- with numerous sub-nobility and their armies, battling it out across the fields of the Anglican Communion and in particular The Episcopal Church, while the peasants and knights seek what protection they can find with traditional bishops, clergy, and lay leaders -- whether strategic or not, fit for purpose or not.
There is one very nice and interesting side note for traditional Anglicans. And that is that I have no doubt that those who seek to revise the Gospel to suit their own needs and idols will not win the war. Their theology is simply unable to bear the weight of their dysfunctions and disorders, and the end result of that is always either what physicians describe as "failure to thrive" or dramatic implosion. They may win particular organizations and transform them into political action puppets -- but their energy comes from the original living host and in the end they cannot create, only hollow out and destroy. At that point, they must move on to other hosts, other puppets.
My own dream is like that of so many others -- theological integrity and consistency, scriptural faithfulness and authority, and ecclesial order and clarity. As I've said for most of my adult life, I believe that the Anglican expression of the gospel is the most beautiful and compelling and articulate presentation to sinners in need of a Savior on earth, hands down. The fact that we are being roiled by on the one hand, people who neither believe nor promote the Gospel and on the other hand by a complete absence of authority doesn't particularly make that an easy sell, however.
In a triumph of iconographic advertising, Henry VII chose the Tudor Rose as his symbol -- a combination of the white and the red roses of the houses in the conflict. One was bordered by the other. Perhaps someday we Anglicans will have the same white rose of authority bordering the precious red rose of the gospel in one flower.
But until then, it's plundering bishops, armies of lawyers, and mentally ill kings galore in Anglitania . . . and each of us looking for the best horse and sword we can find and a few trusty allies and companions along the way. Some of us will even manage to find a nice castle and a good baron. Many of us won't, and some of us will be reduced to wandering through the lands as minstrels and court fools. So be it. We live in an exciting sliver of church history, and none of us have any idea how this particular War will turn out, whether it is in the triumph of the Gospel within this organization, or the dissolution of the Houses entirely.
If you're working within a group of Episcopalians seeking to fashion some order and vision in a local context, drop me a line using our Private Message system. I'll be glad to chat online and trade ideas and strategies.
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Comments:
Way to go, Sarah! I feel for you and yours on how your bishop voted. Hang in the and remember…“We are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord!”