By Rick Harris, O.P.
Stand Firm Alabama
Many who support recent innovations in the Episcopal Church do so on the ground that our church should strive to be more inclusive. But what precisely, does it mean to be an inclusive church? A recent devotional reading from Forward Day by Day advanced the reappraising vision:
Many prefer the path of conforming their lives to the Christ of faith and to the catholic doctrine and practices of the church. Some choose other ways, their spiritual journey marked by a different perspective, some even pushing the edges of accepted faith and practice. The church needs both witnesses--needs all--the staunch defenders and the prophetic voices that may, at times, make us uncomfortable.
The church faces heartache and schism only when sides emerge, when people refuse to respect and honor those with a differing understanding of the truth of the Gospel. Are you open to listening to someone with a different point of view? Can we agree at times to disagree, yet still love one another, and remain faithful to our Lord?
Forward Day by Day, January 25, 2006.
The answer to the final question is, of course we CAN. We CAN agree to disagree. We CAN still love one another. We CAN still remain faithful to our Lord Jesus Christ. But that, unfortunately, is not the question presented to the Episcopal Church today. The question we are asked is this: while we are agreeing to disagree, how shall we behave toward one another and remain faithful to the Lord in the midst of our argument?
Or to frame the same question in more topical terms: when there are large numbers of church members on both sides of a divisive question, and both sides concede that the views of the other result from faithfully held Christian belief, under what circumstances ought one side claim the right to answer the question on behalf of the church as a whole? How a Church answers that question speaks to all of us about how it defines inclusivity. Recently, the ECUSA Executive Council clearly told us that in its inclusivity our church does not make any room for a pro-life point of view. With respect to the emotionally-charged issue of abortion, the Episcopal Church categorically rejects any viewpoint other than unfettered support for abortion on demand. At its January 9-12 meeting in des Moines, Iowa, the Executive Committee formally made the Episcopal Church a member of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, a group that works against abortion restrictions and opposes the confirmation of Judge Samuel Alito.
According to The Living Church The Episcopal Church Center joined the organization "on behalf" of the Episcopal Church in 1986, despite a 1978 vote by the Executive Council to decline such membership because the organization’s position is inconsistent with positions taken by earlier General Conventions. Not satisfied with the ambiguity this situation created, the Executive Committee saw a clear need to take sides.
George Vanderstar, a member of the Executive Council, claimed that the church’s position on abortion is, "Unequivocal opposition to any federal or state legislation that would interfere with a woman's right to make a decision on terminating a pregnancy." The ECUSA web page for Women’s Ministries ("Working for gender justice in the Church & the World") characterizes our membership this way: "While our members are religiously and theologically diverse, they are unified in the commitment to preserve reproductive choice as a basic part of religious liberty."
Thus, if you are an Episcopalian, you now belong to a church that officially opposes any legislation to limit or restrict the availability of abortions, an organization that believes the right to an abortion is equivalent to the right to worship God. The same organization that calls itself "inclusive" because it proudly has individuals involved in sexual relationships outside of marriage among its clergy and Episcopate has formally renounced the views of those whose religious beliefs and consciences require them to oppose the unrestricted availability of abortions. The message of the Executive Committee, indeed, the message of the Episcopal Church, to its pro-life members is simple: we dismiss your beliefs as being utterly without theological merit. We give you no credit for the faith behind your beliefs. Our big tent has no room for your point of view. You and your money are welcome here, but if you give an unrestricted pledge to your parish, some part of your treasure will be used to advance our point of view. We are going to represent to the world that our part of the Body of Christ believes that women should be free to have an abortion whenever they choose. "Inclusive" means that we speak for you.
Having followed the activities of the Episcopal Church for the past few years, I suppose this kind of arrogance from our top leadership should not have taken me by surprise. After all, some of our leaders have called consecrating a gay bishop a "prophetic" action. Some have characterized as "poaching" the willingness of Southern Cone Anglican provinces to provide oversight to departing members of American parishes, as if those dissatisfied parishioners were game animals living on a hunting preserve owned by their ECUSA bishops. But to have taken such an action six months before the upcoming general convention, to have flatly defined the position of the church in a way that is clearly offensive to so many of its members, to have jettisoned any attempt to accommodate those with other views - well, it just takes my breath away.
For many years, there have been pro-life and pro-choice organizations in the Episcopal church. They existed together, if not in harmony, then at least without the need to see one another’s existence as a need to leave, or necessarily to reform, the church as a whole. They were able to respect one another’s faith. They agreed to disagree. But this was apparently unsatisfactory to the Executive Committee, which determined that the church must take sides and declare that one side is wrong and the other is right. This is the action of an Executive Committee that is hell-bent on imposing its will on the church with no possibility whatever of compromise.
Ironically, at the same time the news was breaking in the Anglican blogosphere about this Executive Committee action, Jan Nunley, a national spokesperson for the Episcopal Church, got into a heated blog discussion with Stand Firm’s Greg Griffith about the unarguable fact that ECUSA’s membership is declining. After first insisting that ECUSA is not shrinking, she then offered an explanation for the phenomenom: "[T]he sectors we attract historically--white, affluent--don't have big families. Result? *Numbers go down.*"
Note the implications. How do we grow a church? By evangelizing and bringing people to Jesus Christ? Well, not exactly. Actually we can only grow if our existing members have children. Apparently, the expected usual path to the Episcopal Church is to inherit one’s membership. Our church is meant to be for rich upper class Caucasians who practice birth control, not those indigent minorities with lots of kids. So the fact we are shrinking, even the fact that we are shrinking at a faster rate than any other mainline Protestant denomination, is no cause for alarm.
So here, unveiled, is the grand liberal strategy to double ECUSA’s membership by the year 2020. We tell our gospel-believing, evangelical-minded members that we have adopted a new theology, encompassing ideas that are vastly superior to ancient notions of sin and repentance. Those notions (gasp!) make our members feel guilty and unworthy and reduce their self-esteem and keep them from self-actualizing. We eschew any need to actually make new disciples for Jesus Christ by such worn-out and tired methods as proclaiming a Gospel of salvation to unbelievers. We add new Episcopalians mostly when our female members become pregnant, but only when they exercise their God-given right to choose whether to have their babies. (Heaven forfend that we should tell them it is wrong to kill their unborn children, even if those children might be future Episcopalians!) At the same time, we will vigorously court that vast untapped reservoir of homosexual Christians who are just aching to find a church home but don’t feel welcome elsewhere, even though, with the exception of a few adopters and a few more in vitro fertilizers, those recruits are biologically certain not to bring new children into our church.
The leaders of ECUSA have definitively proclaimed the meaning of inclusivity, and it is an "inclusivity" that brooks no opposition and tolerates no dissent. The term, "inclusive," includes you and me only to the extent that the Church as a whole speaks with a single, revisionist voice. I wish I could say I have a brilliant strategy to turn this situation around, but I cannot. Certainly those of you who are concerned about having been unwillingly drafted into the pro-choice movement should write to your rectors and bishops, run for the vestry, talk to the people on your vestry, and talk to your diocesan convention delegates. If you are giving an unrestricted pledge to your parish, and your parish is using part of your money to support the diocese and the national church, consider whether this is good stewardship of the funds God has given you.
We do however have one powerful tool at our disposal. We can pray. We can pray for mercy for our church leaders and for all of us. We can pray for repentance. We can pray for God’s intervention. We can pray for a miracle.
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Comments:
Great article Rick.
ECUSA heirarchy to the orthodox: We do what we want, you agree to disagree.