Stand Firm Interviews: Douglas LeBlanc

Douglas LeBlanc is one of the leading journalists covering the Episcopal Church. He is a former associate editor of Christianity Today magazine, and along with Terry Mattingly runs the blog Get Religion. Among the many publications in which his work has appeared are Episcopal Life and The Wall Street Journal.

Mr. LeBlanc will be in Jackson covering the training seminar at St. Andrew's Cathedral by the group Via Media. I spoke with him via instant messenger on Wednesday, May 19, 2004.

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Greg Griffith: Rumor has it you've got some Cajun blood in your veins. Where were you born and raised?

Doug LeBlanc: I was born in Baton Rouge, and Dad was indeed a Cajun who spoke with a thick Cajun accent. He also tended to speak very softly, so he was difficult to understand sometimes. I grew up in the very Anglo-Catholic parish of St. Luke's, from which Clarence Pope was elected as the second bishop of the Diocese of Fort Worth.

When I was about 13, my parents and I all came to a more charismatic and evangelical understanding of our faith, and Dad moved our family to St. Augustine, which at the time was a hotbed of charismatic renewal in Baton Rouge. I lived in Baton Rouge until I was 29.

GG: Where's your home base now?

DL: I now live in Chesterfield, Virginia, which is a suburb of Richmond. We moved here last September for my wife, Monica, to take a job with a chemical and pharmaceutical company. Monica has all the math and science brains between us. I am an arts and humanities type who barely survived Algebra II in high school.

GG: So were you raised Episcopalian? Catholic?

DL: Episcopalian, which I count as one of the great ironies of my life. Dad was Roman Catholic, Mom was nominal Southern Baptist, but they agreed they wanted to be active church members for the sake of their two boys. (My brother, Randy, is five years my senior.) They tried Catholic parishes for a time, but Mom did not like attending a church in which she couldn't understand what was said from the altar. On those entirely pragmatic grounds, they became Episcopalians.

GG: Tell us about your education and early work experience.

DL: By the time I was a junior in high school, I realized I wanted to pursue a career in journalism. A friend and I saw The Front Page together, and I loved the idea of writing something significant under a fairly high-pressure deadline. My friend ended up working for The Associated Press fresh out of college, and he's still there. I took a job with the Baton Rouge Morning Advocate while I was still a freshman at Louisiana State University. By the mid-1980s I became religion editor of the Morning Advocate, and I found it was my favorite form of reporting.

In 1989 I left Baton Rouge to work for Compassion International in Colorado Springs, which opened an entirely new world for me. By the summer of 1991, I worked with Episcopalians United at General Convention in Phoenix. And I kept working with EU until 1999.

GG: Journalism tends to be populated mostly by liberals. Is that true of the Christian sector of journalism as well?

DL: It's considerably less true among members of the Evangelical Press Association, which represents the world I've moved in since joining Compassion. EPA does have liberal member publications, such as Sojourners and The Other Side, but the publications with the largest circulation tend to reflect mainstream evangelical theology and a center-right politics.

GG: Have you spent much time in Mississippi?

DL: Yes, though mostly as a tourist or visitor. I have vague memories of nearly drowning once at a swimming pool in Biloxi when I was about 6. I attended a Faith Alive at St. Columb's in the mid-1970s, and another Faith Alive later that decade. Dad and I attended a Francis Schaeffer conference in Jackson in the early 1980s that was structured around "Whatever Happened to the Human Race?" - a documentary series Schaeffer did with C. Everett Koop. Most important, though, my wife is a native of Coffeeville, which is about midway between Jackson and Memphis. She's an alumna of Ole Miss, which means we couldn't have even dated if we were both football lunatics.

GG: That Ole Miss - LSU feud runs deep...

DL: I have chilling memories of LSU fans yelling "Go to HELL Ole Miss, go to HELL," and sounding like they really meant it. I used to be among them, until I realized that the winner of a football game had absolutely no effect on the balance of cosmic justice. Being married to Monica has meant returning to Mississippi once a year, on average, and we've usually made pilgrimages to Square Books in Oxford during those trips.

GG: Within days of the 74th General Convention, you wrote an article for ChristianityToday.com in which you asked that liberal Episcopalians do five thing for their orthodox brothers and sisters:

1. Give us time to deal with the upheaval.
2. Let people go with your blessings.
3. Show us your inclusivity.
4. Give the motives-bashing a rest.
5. Acknowledge our clashing worldviews.

How do you think they've delivered on each of those points?

DL: I received a few very gracious responses from liberals. Some were friends of one depth or another, others were srangers who appreciated the spirit of the peace. On that count, at least, I would say some people have tried diligently to give us time, to show true inclusivity (rather than the kind that announces itself with trumpet blasts), and acknowledging clashing worldviews.

On the other hand, I've been deeply saddened by how frequently the theological left is tossing "Fundamentalist" around as an epithet. I've pretty much given up hope on most bishops, other than conservatives, showing anything resembling grace to people who feel the need to leave.

On our clashing worldviews, I did have a brief but public exchange with the Claiming the Blessing Collaborative, which I felt highlighted our differences somewhat constructively. The collaborative had published an open letter to the church. I responded with a column in Episcopal Life, and the collaborative responded with an open response on the website called A Globe of Witnesses.

That exchange, I think, helped highlight that the theological left sees the Nicene Creed and the Thirty-Nine Articles in a different light than most conservatives. I always sensed that in my gut, but it was enlightening to see people spell out those differences in print - or at least on the Web.

GG: Rev. Kendall Harmon has stated that because the intent of Gene Robinson's ordination was improper (knowingly consecrating a bishop for only part of the church, not the whole church), he considers the See of New Hampshire vacant. What's your opinion of his conclusion?

DL: In practical terms, Christians who remain part of the Episcopal Church have to recognize that ECUSA doesn't consider the See of New Hampshire vacant. Some of my friends in Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox communions would take it further, saying that so long as we remain in ECUSA, we are in spiritual communion with Bishop Robinson.

I think it's clear from recent news reports that for Episcopalians in New Hampshire whose hearts were grieved by Bishop Robinson's election and consecration, the See of New Hampshire is, in effect, vacant.

I'm not sure, though, how much hay conservatives should attempt to make from the idea that the See is vacant, unless they're proposing the appointment or election of an alternative bishop who would not be recognized by ECUSA.

GG: What about the reasoning Dr. Harmon uses to get to that conclusion?

DL: I salute Kendall's point that ECUSA showed an inadequate concern for the broader church - first among orthodox Episcopalians within ECUSA, but doubly so among orthodox Anglicans throughout the world.

In all fairness to Gene Robinson, though, you could make the same argument about the many, many dioceses that have elected bishops who favor blessing gay couples or who pointedly reject the Nicene Creed.

GG: Global South recently demanded that the Lambeth Commission order ECUSA to rescind and repent of its actions of last year's General Convention, and seemed to indicate that they will leave the Anglican Communion if ECUSA is not strongly disciplined. CAPA (the Council of Anglican Provinces in Africa) also announced that they have stopped taking financial contributions from ECUSA. Two questions: What is your sense that ECUSA will consent to such discipline? And if it doesn't, what is your sense of whether the Global South will make good on its threat to leave the Communion?

DL: I don't expect ECUSA either to rescind the votes of General Convention or to otherwise repent, and mostly for this reason: The people who voted that way do not believe they have anything repent about. They truly believe that General Convention's votes were prophetic, or the beginning of a vaguely defined "new thing" that God is doing in the church.

CAPA's announcement that it will stop taking financial support from ECUSA is incredibly bold. I wouldn't want to make any broad predictions about what each of the orthodox primates will do, but I would say it's foolish to underestimate Archbishop Peter Akinola's resolve or creativity.

GG: Let's talk about that "new thing" for a moment. Is it your sense that any of the liberals who support this "new thing" have ever considered that in fact it may not be the will of God, but the result of decades of cultural desensitization that has left them blase' about sexual deviancy?

DL: I do not have a sense that most of my friends on the theological left spend much time entertaining the idea that they could be wrong, although they spend considerable time criticizing the notion of theological certainty. On the point of cultural pressures, I think most of them see resistance to gay liberation as the spirit of the age.

I think many conservatives define ourselves as countercultural in resisting the pressures of cultural elites - academics, the mass media, entertainers, mainline church leaders and the like. Many liberals, in contrast, define themselves as countercultural in resisting the pressures of Red State America. I think they picture vast hordes of bigots, sexists, homophobes and very rich Republicans in search of people they can oppress.

GG: 81% of the pedophilia cases the Roman Catholic Church has been dealing with recently were homosexual in nature. They occurred despite an official prohibition of ordaining practicing homosexuals. Now, it may be that the rise in the number of homosexual clergy in the Roman church and the subsequent pedophile crisis were purely coincidental, but it raises a very serious question: By removing this prohibition in its own denomination, do you think the Episcopal Church is placing the denomination's children at increased risk of sexual molestation?

DL: Generally I do not entertain those fears. Even the most radical advocates of gay ordination have made no attempt, to my knowledge, to make a case for pedophilia. Indeed, many advocates of gay liberation can be rather fierce opponents of any sexual misconduct by clergy. I don't understand that paradox, but I'm thankful for it.

I grow fairly uncomfortable with opposing gay ordination or gay blessings because of worst-case scenario arguments. I prefer to argue about the basic theology of marriage.

GG: Presumably homosexual clergy in the Roman Catholic church weren't making a case for pedophilia either, but the results were nonetheless horrific. Wouldn't you agree there can be little argument that, at least in this test of their suitability for the priesthood, they failed?

DL: I think you're dealing with more than homosexual clergy per se in the clergy sex scandals. You're also dealing with clergy who are able to live in such a tormented way that they not only justify violating their vows of celibacy, but somehow even justify exploiting innocent young people in their lives. That's a level of pathology that I do not consider unique to homosexual culture.

GG: What do you mean by "able to live in such a tormented way"?

DL: Tormented in the sense that you're separating your life into various compartments: This is my life as a priest, this is my life as someone who has sexual desires, this is my life as a person with homosexual desires. I think some priests convince themselves that gay sex somehow is not real sex, so it does not violate a vow of celibacy. It makes about as much sense as believing that engaging in oral sex has no effect on whether you're a virgin, or whether you're honoring your wedding vows.

GG: To Martians arriving on earth today, the crisis over sexuality would appear to be the only thing happening in the Episcopal Church. What else - good or bad - is going on out there that deserves our attention?

DL: For several decades now, evangelicals have been engaged in world mission in ways that I consider visionary. The South American Missionary Society and Anglican Frontier Missions are doing the sort of Kingdom work that used to be done throughout the broad church.

The Rev. Alison Barfoot was, until this month, co-rector of Christ Episcopal Church in Overland Park, Kansas, which my wife and I attended when we lived in greater Kansas City for a few years. Alison recently stepped away from that post to move herself to Uganda and function as an assistant to Archbishop Henry Orombi, with whom she has worked for many years on missionary ventures. Alison will help Archbishop Orombi to train Ugandans as missionaries to the West. I find that such a lovely missionary gesture that it almost brings tears to my eyes.

Further, Archbishop Akinola's leadership in helping African Anglicans become self-sufficient is one of the most exciting things going on in Anglicanism. We're still very much living with the horrible legacy of colonialism. It takes a visionary to help break those forms of bondage, and Archbishop Akinola at least is putting that vision forward.

GG: In a recent email, you paid this site a nice compliment. Could you tell me why it gets your thumbs-up?

DL: You're an important cog in the Anglican blogosphere. When you're being linked by Christopher Johnson's Midwest Conservative Journal or by Kendall Harmon's TitusOneNine, it's because you're providing information or commentary that people will not see elsewhere.

You represent a grassroots, diocesan-level response to General Convention. In the first few months after General Convention, it looked as though the left would dominate grassroots, diocesan-level responses. (Consider the plethora of Via Media groups in conservative dioceses.) I find it greatly encouraging to see conservative groups now arising in moderate-to-left dioceses.

Websites like yours vastly increase the chances of an informed laity and clergy, which in turn increases the odds of intelligent activism.

Posted by Greg Griffith at May 19, 2004 05:11 PM (GMT -6:00)