William Witt: Why Not Leave?

The renewed orthodoxy may well consist of Anglicans, Lutherans, Presbyterians and Methodists, and free church Evangelicals—who meet in storefronts, or who share each others buildings. When we have nothing but Christ, we may well see Christ in each others faces again. And, then, at the far side of all of this, perhaps the remnant Reformation Churches and Rome and the Orthodox will see Christ’s face in one another again.

As Lutheran in the LCMS I agree with this statement.  I have much more in common with orthodox Catholics, Orthodox, Anglicans, Presbyterians, Methodists, etc. than I do with the liberals in the ELCA or any other denomination.  At least when you have having a discussion with other orthodox Christians you have a common basis of discussion and a common terminology.  We don’t all agree on the interpretation of some Bible verses, but we all agree that the Bible is authoritative.

I can’t leave a comment at Bill’s site, but if I could, I’d say that I agree wih every word he says. Well done, Bill!

Greg,

Thanks.  I’ve been getting huge visits the last few days, and I’d been wondering why no comments.  I discovered this morning that the code seems to be broken, and I’ll try to fix that sometime in the next few days. 

Bill

bill - that’s very well written!  as one who’s leaving TEC, I’d like to give feedback from my “context”.

The only portion that I disagreed with is your reasoning on “seeing Christ’s face” in other churches, mutually.  When KJS denied Christ’s primacy in salvation, that did it for me.  With this person as PB, I can’t call TEC Christian.  Toss in Spong denying the resurrection, and all the other stuff, AND the 90% of the GC that voted this person in, TEC is in rotten shape.

The sinking ship analogy - I used that very same analogy back at Thanksgiving - except to say that it’s high time for the Orthodox to get to the boats while the getting is good.  This battle is LOST.  I think a verdict from above has been passed, and it’s not good.  I think TEC will be made to suffer for it’s almost half century of waywardness.

But that’s of course just me.

While I agree that judgement is involved, I am not sure that this divine correction is because of the “ecumenical failures” which Dr. Witt mentions.  To be sure, these are issues, but I think what is being “judged” at this time is the longstanding tolerance, in mainstream Protestantism, of a tepid, nominal Christianity which, when it came to issues of substance involving human sinfulness and other needs, preferred a “don’t ask don’t tell” policy to grappling with the very serious, but largely “personal”, matters affecting the lives of many, many people.  Take a now largely noncontroversial example:  alcoholism.  The Church failed in dealing with that to that point that God had to raise up an entirely new structure, growing out of the Church, that of Alcoholics Anonymous, in order that,  as Methodist Evangelist Tommy Tyson puts it, God’s “alcoholic kids” might be healed.

One can see a similar process having taken place within Roman Catholicism over the last 40-50 years as well.  Eastern Orthodoxy, heads up!

Just as that faith and that Church didn’t disappear during the Cromwellian interregnum, it hasn’t and won’t vanish today. It might not be as large and the pews may no longer contain the socially prominent, but the ancient liturgy is still being faithfully celebrated - if not in the Episcopal . . . well, whatever it has become since it failed to remain an ecclessia. You just have to look a little harder for it and put up with some fairly minor inconveniences such as a lack of great architecture and fantastic organs. But those were fairly late developments anyway and never necessary for the validity of the sacraments.

Bill Witt is one of the most astute and incisive thinkers anywhere on the Anglican scene.  Par of the course, he has given us a splendid essay.  I will respond to two points.

He writes “Leave, for what?”  To my sorrow and humiliation, he does not even mention the Continuing Churches as an option.  We are not anywhere on his radar screen. This is certainly our fault to a large degree.  We have shot ourselves in the foot so many times (consistently by following leaders who proved themselves untrustworthy).  But we are are from dead or defeated.  Fact is, we are actually growing.  Even if the common stereotype of the CC is the crazy priest in a fiddle-back chasuble in the American Legion hut with two old maids and a cat, there is a text which reads, “the stone which the builders rejected is become the head of the corner.”

Secondly, Bill says “I am not willing to make this decision as an individual.”  This I can respect to a degree, as we all have our individual situations to cope with.  But I’m so glad Athanasius (“contra mundum”) and Martin Luther (“ich kann nicht anders”) didnt feel that way.  If they had, we would all be semi-Arians buying indulgences.

“the Church of Cranmer’s liturgy, and Hooker’s theology, and Donne’s preaching, and Herbert’s poetry, and Traherne’s meditations, and Shakespeare’s plays, and Butler’s keen intellect, and Jane Austin’s novels, and Wilberforce’s and Gore’s social vision, and Westcott’s and Hort’s and Hoskyn’s biblical scholarship, and Arthur Michael Ramsey . . . . and Evelyn Underhilll . . . and . . .C.S. Lewis, Dorothy Sayers, Austin Farrer . . . This Church would be gone forever. But wasn’t it a glorious thing while it lasted!”

It isn’t gone, and it’s worth continuing, Bill!  Courage, my brother!

(Can’t comment on W. Witt’s site.)

About the renewed orthodoxy of many traditions, does anyone know if or to what extent the Anglican Covenant being considered agrees with the Augsburg Confession (and any other confessional documents in Lutheranism)?

Fr. Wells at al,

I’ve noticed that some of the readers here and on TitusOneNine have interpreted my essay as an apologia for staying in TEC.  But that’s not what I said.  It’s an apology for Anglicanism as a viable way of being Christian.  I do worry that untangling the mess might be a little difficult, but I see hope in the way that the Network is talking to the REC, and in Duncan’s reassurances that CANA is still in the boat.

As for Luther, or my own personal heroes, the Dominicans.  Neither Luther nor Dominic acted alone in the sense that either just walked off and joined another church.  Luther and the Dominicans were both part of Reform movements.  Luther had Melanchthon, and a huge section of the German church.  Dominic had an order and the support of the bishop of Rome.  That’s what I’m talking about.

And sorry about the comments.  I’ll be poring over code until it gets fixed.  Mess with blog software at your own risk!

It would be nice if the Anglican Communion looks at other confessional documents when writing their convenant to look for areas of agreement.  I know the Anglican Communion will not accept the Lutheran position that a church structure based on bishops is not necessary (adiaphora), but I’m sure there are plenty of other areas where we will agree.

P.S. Note in Lutheran circles “AC” usually stands for the Augsburg Confession - same initials as Anglican Communion.  Coincidence or ...

What a beautiful and cogent piece.
Anglicanism taught me disciplines of prayer and sanctification of time.  Anglicanism gave me the calendar and lectionaries as a means of opening the whole Bible and the whole message of Christ (and this is to Anglicanism’s credit when compared with the Free Church Evangelicals, IF Anglicans hear Scripture with its proper authority). 
I agree with Dr. Witt that it is a mistake to reject Anglicanism out of hand.  Like all things short of the kingdom, it can die, but it should be mourned rather than cursed should that happen.

Okay,  I seem to have fixed the comments problem on my blog.  Some homemade javascript was fighting with some native blog javascript.

So please feel free to visit, and tear me to shreds.

I left the LCMS for the Episcopal church in 1992.  I joined primarily because of the liturgy and the particularly English/American expression of reformed (Roman) Catholicism, and the particularly stiff expression of Lutheranism in West Texas.  I had been told that Lutherans are held together by a common doctrine, and Episcopalians/Anglicans by a common liturgy.  I thought the Articles of Faith to be a good English expression of the Augsburg Confession, close enough for me to be comfortable.  What I did not know was that the Episcopal Church had relegated the 39 Articles to “Historical Documents” (Adiaphora?) and really had and has nothing approaching the doctrinal strength I thought it had.  Imagine my disappointment 10 years later, reading about Jane Dixon and Samuel Edwards+ of Accoceek, and then joining AAC, to learn the church I joined was not the church I thought it was.  However, having said that, I believe brother William is taking the right approach.  I was ready to bolt when my parish called a reappraising rector, but reconsidered that God might be calling me to stay and provide strength and support to other like-minded in my parish.  Over the course of the last two years, I have been approached by several who have expressed their appreciation for my candor and my gentlemanly attitude.  The parish even elected me as diocesan convention delegate.  Not bad for a reappraiser in a fairly liberal parish.  To cut to the chase, I am staying - for now.  When a new vessel docks, I am prepared to transfer to her.  I continue to pray and witness by my conduct and words my adherence to the “faith once delivered”.  “Hier stand ich, ich kann nicht anders.  Gott mir helfen”

Thank you, Bill.  Over my lifetime, I have watched the continued splintering of American denominations, so many now one can’t name them.  This diminishes our witness.  I agree that we are under divine judgment, and I find your analysis fascinating.

Willliam:

Very well written essay.  I’d try to block quote this but I can’t do it as well as you:  Finally, there is another reason. And that is that I am not willing to make this decision as an individual. Many years ago, I left one denomination as an individual, and joined another. I do not regret that choice, but since making it, I am committed to those who have become my companions. I have discovered true companions along the Christian journey in the Episcopal Church, and I do not intend to desert them. You dance with the one that brought you.

This was the position we were in when the Convention of 2003 put everything up in the air for us.  Many of us wanted to leave - but we didn’t want to leave one another.  So, most of us chose to try to work with the situation and pray that it would get better… it was a struggle, but it was a struggle as much to remain community and not disinegrate as much as to strive to do what was best for our church locally and nationally.  It was a long hard three years.  However, God did answer prayer and we remained community.  When we finally had to leave in 2006, we left together - evangelical,liturgical,charismatic, and fundamentalist - and I see that as a miracle of God.  Every Sunday, when I walk into our new ‘church’ in the gym and see these faces of the Community of Believers of which I am overwhelmed by the grace of God.

All of which to say - I know what you mean.

William Witt:
I don’t understand.
There is no need to leave Anglicanism - only leave the corupted Episcopal Church.
Staying in ECUSA or TEC is no longer helping.  Look at those courageous enough to take a stand by leaving.  Look at the statistics.  When faithful orthodox believers stay, it looks like only a small percentage object to the direction of ECUSA, because so many are staying.
You have seen the majority vote in 2003 and the majority vote in 2006.  The revisionists have control of the Episcopal Church, but not of the Anglican Church.  CANA and AMiA and maybe even the REC need you now.
It does no good to get into life boats of a shinking ship, if you are just going to sit in the life boat and go down with the ship, without letting the life boat down and rowing away to another ship while the old ship sinks.

Staying with friends?  Brother will be divided against brother in obeying the Word.

“Come out of her lest ye partake in her sins.”

William Witt: I also really apprectiated this piece. As I wrote in a response to one of David Roseberry+ writings, I am a fairly new convert to Anglicanism from free-church evangelicalism. It took a good 5 years for me to complete the journey. I did so for all the reasons you state. In the beginning of my journey, I had no idea that others felt like I did, or had journeyed on before me. That sounds naive, but I have spent my whole life in independent Bible churches where people had left behind liturgical churches. No one I knew left our churches for them!! Then a friedn handed my “Ancient-Future Faith” by Robert Webber and I felt as if my own thoughts, that I had not yet been able to articulate, were written out for me.
When I finally accepted that I had to move on, that I wanted to move on, I considered a number of options including ECUSA, the REC, the TAC, and finally AMiA. I chose AMiA for a number of reasons, some of which Fr. Roseberry articulated so well in his piece: its a mission.
Also, I tried to previously state, this seems to be a crazy time to enter into Anglicanism. But for all the reasons in your piece, I desire to be Anglican and see this church continue to be an orthodox, faithful, vibrant expression of the Body of Christ until He returns. I do not feel led to Roman Catholicism, Orthodoxy, or back to free-church congregationalism. I want to be part of the church of Cramner, Hooker, Whitfield, Ryle, Stott, Packer, etc. (not to mention CS Lewis who is as close to a saint as free-church evangelicals get!).
I am not alone. There are numbers of others like me who are still being called to the Canterbury Trail. The AMiA chuch I am now a part of is not a former ECUSA (or Anglican) church at all. The church came out of a independent, charismatic church. This place has allowed me to enter into Anglicanism in just such a time as we are now experiencing. I do not know the future, but I believe God is at work in His church.

Thanks for all the positive responses.  I’m glad that my own thoughts have been helpful to so many.

At the same time, both here and on TitusOneNine, a number have misinterpreted me to be saying something I didn’t say—that I was trying to make a case for staying within TEC rather than staying within Anglicanism.  I had said rather that TEC was no longer Anglican, so I don’t see how anyone could have so misinterpreted me.  I was not at all addressing the question of whether a given person should stay with the Network, join CANA or the AMIA or the REC or the Continuing Churches.

It seems however that there is a kind of person whose identity is threatened unless they can convince everyone else to make the identical position they’ve made.  I was largely addressing the converts to Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy who haunt TitusOneNine and here in hopes of snatching the occasional convert, but I’d say the same thing to those who badmouth the Network or insist that the only option is to join “X” breakaway group now.  I’ll cite a lesser known Mediterranean saint on this issue, St. Aristotole.  Aristotle noted correctly that while there can be certainties on issues of speculative judgment (what is the case) there can only be probable certainty on questions of practical judgment (what is the best thing for me to do in this particular situation).  There is no right or wrong answer when it comes to questions of whether or not one should take X particular action in the current crisis.  We have to weigh the facts at hand, and do the best we can in our particular situation by the lights we have.  What might be right for person X to do in the Diocese of Y might not at all be the right thing for Person W in Diocese Z.

I posted this in the comments section on my blog, and it will be my final word on this issue:

On the question of leaving TEC/ECUSA:

People at TitusOneNine and StandFirm (and now here) seem to be reading my essay as an apology to stay with TEC. But that’s not what I said. I’m trying to explain why I have made the decision to remain Anglican, but I didn’t really address the question of whether that meant remaining within TEC.

I did say toward the end that I believe a “separation must and will take place” and I envision a time when those of us in revisionist dioceses may find ourselves meeting in storefronts, or sharing buildings with Baptists. So I really don’t think staying Anglican is going to mean staying in TEC. To the contrary, assuming the Primates really do act—and I’m predicting a major bombshell at Tanzania—staying in the Anglican Communion will mean not staying in TEC.

However, I would prefer that we not end up with a hodgepodge of Anglican expressions dotting North America. For example, in my own diocese of CT there are already: the CT Six (who were told in no uncertain terms by Bishop Smith to leave at the most recent diocesan convention), my own former priest (unjustly deposed) in the diocese of Recife, an AMIA bishop in the diocese of Rwanda, several continuing churches of more than one affilliation, and perhaps two dozen orthodox parishes still in some sort of relationship with the TEC diocese.

My hope is that all these people could be under one tent (and it may be a literal tent for some) with one bishop, recognized by the Communion as the official presence of Anglicanism in the state of CT.

Of course, someone at TitusOnenine assured me that that is a pipedream. We’ll see.

William,
While I don’t think that your post was necessarily directed towards me. If it was then I failed to articulate my thoughts. What I was trying to share was my journey to Anglicanism in my post. My journey ultimately led me to AMiA. I was certainly NOT trying to state that AMiA is THE way for everyone. I have found it a place for me as an orthodox, evangelical Christian to enter into Anglicanism. For that I am thankful and look forward to what God will do in the coming years.
I concur with your final statements: “My hope is that all these people could be under one tent (and it may be a literal tent for some) with one bishop, recognized by the Communion as the official presence of Anglicanism in the state of CT.” This is my hope and prayer as well.
God bless,
Shane Copeland

I am going to read your essay carefully later since I can’t now.  I do feel to be in a “seltsam” place, I think may be the German word…..strange but strange partly by being wondrous.  Many now may live and breathe an impossible hope (perhaps like there being one future expression of Anglicanism in NA).  At least some forms of orthodox Christianity across several traditions, ones that have died or are dying, are in repose and are being prepared for some kind of realignment, one that may carry several traditions with it.  It is a scary and mighty event to sense and the palpable feeling of waiting for a return, a resurrecting and recreation underway with a new body that is also the former body, present yet untouchable, ungraspable at first.  This waking dream of the rising body seems intensely real and intensely disorienting, yet whenever I wonder if it has simply all been too much, finally, there is nothing left of any importance except God.  If God haunts your best kept and most determined escapes, what can you do but wait, watch, pray and listen?  Do I mourn the wound of Anglicanism? Its particular prayers, songs, liturgies and ways to God? Yes.  But whither the church, once we place ourselves in the wound of Anglicanism in God’s future?

SharonCopland,

I was not at all responding to your comments.  I’ve been heartened both by those in have told me of their journeys to CANA or AMIA and those who have told of their current struggles in TEC.

I was responding rather to the oddball comments here and on TitusOneNine to the effect of “What???  Are you nuts!!!??  TEC is a heretical institution!!! Why are you telling us to stay in TEC!!!  You don’t have to be an Episcopalian to be Anglican!!! Get out!  Leave TEC!!”

To such, I can only reply: Read what I wrote. Again.

And Merry Christmas to everyone, even the contrarians.

Bill,
First my apology for misreading your essay.  Like several others, I read the essay in terms of its title “Why Not Leave?”  And like several others, I read the title and everything under it in terms of my own personal issues and life experience.  (This reminds me of a graduate school experience in which I received an A Minus of a paper which I felt deserved something higher.  The professor’s note said the paper was quite well done, but the title didnt fit the contents.)
Since your essay is “Why Not Leave Anglicanism” instead of “Why Not Leave TEC,” I am perfectly sympathetic with your line of argument.  I too am fatigued by several ex-Anglican trolls who suffer from the Lot’s wife syndrome and keep writing home to tell us, ad taedium et ad nauseam, that Anglicanism has always been a failed experiment.

I will, however, stand behind my second point, in which I addressed your reluctance to make this decision alone.  I would submit that in the final analysis, all significant spiritual decisions are made very much alone.  As Carroll Simcox said years ago in St Louis, “somebody has to step in the Red Sea first.”
You write “Neither Luther nor Dominic acted alone in the sense that either just walked off and joined another church. ”  Well, I cannot think of anyone who “just walked off and joined [much less started] another church.”  All the CC I know left with after years of soul-searching about our place in PECUSA.  Some of us were literally invited to get the hell out.  That’s exactly what happened to me and my wife, when we protested the antics of a highly revisionist Vestry back in 1979.  We and many others knew that the Church had left us, so we had to build a new home from the ground up.

btw, I share your enthusiasm for Dominic.  Have you heard the Dominican joke that the Dominicans and the Jesuits were assigned each a heresy to combat.  The Dominicans got the Albigensians, the Jesuits got the Protestants.  Funny thing, there are still a lot of Protestants around, but the Albigensians have disappeared.

Fr. Wells,

Thank you.  Again, I wasn’t addressing you, and it would take a lot for me to be irritated enough with you to respond as I did above.  As for the issue you raise, we all have our temptations, and mine is, if anything, toward the quixotic and the individualist.  I endorse hopeless causes, like trying to get Evangelicals to appreciate Thomas Aquinas, or Anglo-Catholics to appreciate Karl Barth.  Ten years ago, I simply walked out the door of a church whose search committee had secretly called a lesbian rector, when everyone just assumed I’d be on board because I was well-educated and easy going, and I’ve aligned myself with folks of whom my Episcopalian friends at that time asked: “Surely you’re not joining up with them?”

The proudest moment in my life was when (as the appointed representative of St. John’s, Bristol), I stood face to face with Drew Smith in a packed church, and told him we wanted our keys back, and he was in violation of canon law. To no avail, of course.

Alas, whatever decision I make in this mess will have way too much of the individual in it.  That’s how I’m made.  But, as a form of spiritual discipline, if nothing else, I’m trying to be patient, and waiting for the communon to work things out.  I have come to know (albeit from a distance) and greatly admire some of the key figures in this struggle—Kendall Harmon, Ephraim Radner, Christopher Seitz, Fitz Allison, Paul Zahl, Ellis Brust (now AMIA) and count some (like Leander Harding) as personal friends.  They don’t all agree with each other, and I certainly don’t agree with them on everything.  But I am willing to trust myself to their direction.

William Witt wrote, in part, “But sometimes the question is not ‘Why don’t you leave the Episcopal Church?,’ but ‘Why don’t you leave Anglicanism?’”

Generally, I agree, though based on a number of the comments, the key phrase, above, may have gotten lost in the forest of trees.  And, though I have not left Anglicanism (unless one choses to considers the REC and other Common Cause/FACA/CANA jurisdictions outside the definition), I do understand why some people faithfully make the decision do church within other traditions now.

Quite frankly, the Anglican Communion is a mess that has, as of yet, been unable cut off the ECUSA cancer.  For that reason, I look forward to the February fireworks hoping and praying for smoething that ordinary people might recognize as a faithful response for ECUSA’s extraordinary provocations.  In the meantime, for some the stink of attending a “good” ECUSA congregation in a “good” ECUSA diocese has a way of sinking in way past skin deep till one is afraid that they stink too, and fear that the smell may never come off, or out.

Some people have children who only get one childhood in which to pick up a normal Christian education in a solidly Christian environment.  Some people are approaching the end of their lives and just need a good church in which to die and be burried from.  And some people just need to be out of the fight and receive the ordinary ministry of a faithful congregation and pastor.  To all of those faithful persons I lend my full moral and spiritual support.  God knows I have encouraged some of those people in those situations to make those kinds of decisions, reassuring them that theirs is a faithful response to their particular circumstances and the current state of the church in our neck of the woods.

Faithfully,

Here in Newark Diocese, there are very few options for anyone desirous of remaining within the Anglican tradition.  There is one Nigerian Anglican church, one FinF parish and a couple of moderately conservative parishes that continue to pay tribute to the Diocese.  I have found my way to a Christian & Missionarly Alliance Church where I think I may be able to worship and minister.  Should a Network plant become an option or should some viable evangelical expression of Anglicanism surface in this neck of the woods, I might see my way to going back but as things stand now, there aren’t any viable options for me.

Here in Newark Diocese, there are very few options for anyone desirous of remaining within the Anglican tradition.

Indeed. I spent almost half of the last year in Arizona because of a family emergency.  Kendall Harmon put me in touch with a Network priest in Phoenix who told me that his was the only Network parish in the diocese.  Phoenix was four hours away, so I ended up worshiping with the Lutherans. Even back here in CT, the possibilities are very iffy, and getting slimmer by the day.

American Anglicans in exile, whether in Newark or Arizona, can rely on no little hope about their tradition, wherever they are driven.  If Anglican ignominy and sufferings produce an authentic Communion-wide covenant, it could position Anglicanism to provide an explicitly ecumenically-designed gift to many other traditions, particularly mainline protestant ones, although not excluding Roman Catholic and Orthodox ones.  The battle-scarred faith of American Anglicans and many others can benefit many other traditions besides their own, traditions facing many of the same issues as Anglicanism;  and an ascent to an ecumenically advancing covenant, from the descent of apostasy and anarchy, could gather more than one tradition into a covenant or at least bring them much closer to one another than they now are.  (But while we wait, is Padre Pio a patron saint for the role of Anglicanism in the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church?)