Returning from Executive Council is something like emerging from Plato’s cave. The Council’s jaundiced view of Christian truth and, not to mention, reality itself serves, depressingly, an explanatory role. To slake any curiosity regarding the darkened, waning state of the Episcopal Church in these latter days, I suggest four days with Executive Council.
On a relational level, the people at Council were unfailingly friendly and I have great respect for their willingness to serve the church and to sacrifice for what they understand to be the gospel.
The problem is that the gospel, as apparently understood and certainly articulated by the primary legislative body of the Episcopal Church between General Conventions, is reduced almost exclusively to the Good News of the Episcopal Church as revealed in the Millennium Development Goals.
You have, I am certain, heard that criticism before, perhaps ad nauseum. So have I. Before attending Executive Council, I was certain that the most powerful leaders in the Episcopal Church underemphasized the soteriologiocal aspects of the Person and Work of Christ, in favor of his material acts of mercy; healing, feeding the poor, etc.
A truly robust, and fully orthodox faith, embraces both.
But I had assumed some level of rhetorical exaggeration marked the, “social worker with a collar” characterizations.
I was quite wrong.
The Executive Council is driven by two primary foci. 1. facilitating the international embrace of the Millennium Development Goals (this is called “mission” and those who engage in this project internationally, “missionaries”) and 2. ensuring that non-celibate homosexual people are given access to every office and benefit in both Church and state, internationally and nationally.
The evangelistic urgency to fulfill the Great Commission that characterizes the New Testament and drives every true Church was utterly and depressingly absent.
At one point during a session of the International Concerns committee a missionary working in El Salvador was asked to describe her mission. “My mission is to spread the good news of the work of the Episcopal Church and the Church in El Salvador to the world” (paraphrase)
There were deep and serious discussions about how to move individual parishes to fully commit their time, energy and resources to the MDGs. St. Michael’s and All Angels, the mid-sized Portland parish stands as a model of the sort of congregational effort envisioned.
As I noted in my article, Worshiping with the Executive Council, St. Michael’s and All Angels presented the Presiding Bishop with an amazingly generous check for $27,000.00 to support the MGDs. And according to their Sunday school teacher, the children of the parish, who assembled before the congregation directly after the presentation of the check, spent the months preceding the Presiding Bishop’s visit learning the eight MDGs by heart. They presented the Presiding Bishop with an eight-bead necklace (matching the ones they each wore), one bead for each MDG and pledged themselves to do their utmost to see them met.
This deep commitment evoked rapturous joy and many tears on Executive Council. Here was a parish truly living out the gospel, wholly embracing the primary mission of the Church.
St Michaels and All Angels is most certainly an amazing group of people. Theirs was one of the most touching displays of devotion and commitment I have ever seen. And not only that, they were uniformly friendly and welcoming to all their many guests.
Imagine what that congregation could do if led and inspired to pour just one half of their energy into proclaiming the gospel of salvation to lost souls? Imagine how many dying people God might bring to new life through their ministry? What if the children, on top of learning to give their time and possessions to the poor and memorizing the eight Millennium Development Goals, also learned to read, mark, and inwardly digest the Word of God.
The problem is not that the MDGs are in any way bad or that committing to their fulfillment is a waste of time and energy. It is not.
It’s just that there has to be more.
The Church must offer more than a full stomach and a hug on the way to the grave.
If only the Executive Council understood this. If only the Presiding Bishop, the House of Bishops and the House of Deputies embraced the Great Commission along with the MDGs. Imagine what the Lord could do.
What a waste liberal Protestantism turns out to be.
I am far too exhausted this morning after a long journey home from Oregon to provide any deep analysis (beyond my impressions above) of the meeting as a whole. But I close with three general observations, to which I hope to return at a later date, regarding the meeting as a whole.
1. Members of the Executive Council, without batting an eye, regularly employ words of acclamation and praise most Christians reserve for Jesus Christ and the good news of eternal salvation to the Millenium Development Goals.
2. The Executive Council is presently made up almost exclusively of ideological liberals and institutionalist liberals. There are, by my count, exactly two members who are recognizably orthodox (I would be happy to be corrected). The outcome of the discussion/debate between the ideologues and the institutionalists will determine the Episcopal Church’s answer to the primates. The orthodox are essentially out of the game. Look for that answer, one way or another at the next Executive Council meeting in June.
3. Both ideological and institutionalist liberals are wholly dedicated to promoting same sex blessings and non-celibate homosexual ministers and both are wholly committed to spreading the gospel of inclusion as far as possible. They differ, however, on how best to accomplish this end. The institutionalist liberals, whose views are well articulated by the Presiding Bishop, believe the best vehicle for promoting the “full inclusion” of non-celibate homosexual ministers and same-sex blessings is the World Wide Anglican Communion. They are willing to submit to a temporary “fast” or tactical retreat because they believe that eventually the battle for the Communion can and will be won by persuasion and political maneuver.
The ideological liberals, whose views were summarized by Bishop Michael Ingham, believe that any temporary “fast” or tactical retreat would represent an unconscionable betrayal of GLBT people. They believe that the best way forward is to “stand up” to the primates and either force the Global South to retreat or be willing to go it alone. Interestingly, Bonnie Anderson, the President of the House of Deputies seems to belong to this camp.
So the fight in Executive Council is not whether to embrace same sex blessings and non-celibate homosexual behavior, but how best to promote it.
End.
24 Comments •
Hello, Executive Council!
May Jesus come along, in case you have a question or even a doubt??
You might even prayerfully consider making him the leader of your group; it would certainly take a great deal off you and, who knows, it might make a difference. In fact, I’d bet on it.