In other news, I will most likely be making an announcement about my studies–but it will be of little or no moment to the Anglican Communion.
Keep us all in your prayers.
Anybody heard about the deployment of Anglo-ninjas who will creep into our houses and churches and steal all of our Books of Common Prayer?
Me neither…
No matter what happens this week in Tanzania our liturgies and ways of being formed around the prayer-book will not change.
In case you’re wondering why +Minns, Sugden+, and Anderson+ (big players in CANA, Anglican Mainstream, and the American Anglican Council) are camped out in a hotel room next to the conference center in Tanzania, the good people at Stand Firm are assuring us that it is because they are team players just there to support their guys. In fact, some commentators said that they’d be horribly offended if these folks weren’t there because it means they’d be leaving their comrades in the lurch.
Absolutely.
One hopes that these stalwarts will find it in their hearts to forgive the weakness of others like +Wright, +Iker, +Nazir-Ali for not coming to support their buddies at a meeting to which they had not been invited…
And in other news on this frigid February day—my desktop thermometer now indicates an outside air temp of 68 degrees…
I’m teaching my preaching class about reading the Bible for preaching tonight. I find myself in a quandary. I’m a professional biblical scholar. I’ve done the coursework; I’ve read the dead German guys; I know the classic source/form/redaction kritiks; I know the postmodern/poststructuralist/postcolonialist theories. And as a result—I go back to the Patristics and their methods of basic and advanced grammatical exegesis.
And that’s what I want to teach my students—on one hand.
On the other hand—I’m on the far side of the modern critical morass. I’ve been there/done that/used the t-shirt to clean my kitchen. I know where the dead-ends and wrong turns are for meaningful parish use. But they don’t and they’re not.
It’s one thing to poo-poo form-criticism when you know its flaws and pitfalls from the inside. It’s another entirely when you have no idea what it is to begin with…
That’s my struggle: there are real reasons to recognize the issues and purposes and benefits of the modern and postmodern projects in order to move past them. But how is that suppose to happen in under an hour?
*Sigh*
At any rate, if I can instill some good habits and disciplines for reading the text carefully and preaching clearly I’ll call it a success.
The epiScope’s whole Left/Center/Right thing and some discussion at Canterbury Trail and general things around this corner of the web have me thinking again.
M and I were having a conversation about this the other night and I finally vocalized some things that have been rolling around in my head for a while. Some people are against labels. I’m not, particularly, since I think there a helpful way of categorizing the world as long as you recognize and remember their limitations. For the purposes of political debate and influence in discussions about things that matter, they have a particular function—they concentrate opinion and signal a distinct outlook.
I’m looking again for a label that has a bit of precision to it.
What do you call something…:
I’m conflicted… I’d like to call it “Episcopal” but I don’t find these elements affirmed and upheld by all sorts of Episcopalians. The way that M and I practice it, it looks like, lives like, and shades into Anglo-Catholicism. But the difference I detect is a privileging of the monastic and contemplative ways and a Stoic philosophical base rather than the Scholasticism and Aristolelianism that so often grounds the former. This comes to a head, of course, in what I see as the Scholastic focus on mechanism, the how of the divine mysteries, which leads to a calcification of what I believe to be accidentals into essentials—i.e., God is incapable of conveying sacramental grace through beings who lack penises…
My first thought, and the one that M favored, was “Benedictine Anglicanism” but that has some problems since I, we, are not nor are we seeking to be Benedictine monks as the name might imply (becoming an oblate is a different story, of course)—nor are we all Anglican. LutherPunk fits these criteria and I dare say Andy, Lee, and others may as well who are not themselves Anglicans.
A much less specific term might be “Regular Christian” in the sense of a regula or rule but it neither captures it all and is also a bit too subtle, I think.
I like a term that Young Fogey has used on occasion, “Mass and Office catholic,” as I think that captures much of it—but I don’t know much about the origin of the term. I think it implies a way of life that these liturgies form but it certainly doesn’t require it.
I don’t know; I’m open to suggestions…
Thinking Anglicans is reporting not only increased pressure on the ABC to kick ++Schori out of the Primates Meeting but also a previously unscheduled meeting of the Nigerian House of Bishops for Feb 6-8. Looks like ++Abuja has decided to call the cards…
In light of that—and more importantly—the nice Quick Reference sheet on the Office is back up here. Too, they’ve given me permission to plagiarize the format for a more traditional Rite I version as well. I’ll let y’all know when that’s ready…
Church politics comes and goes. The prayers of the saints—now that’s eternal.
For a while now Jim Naughton has been doing yeoman’s duty as voice of the liberal wing as a kind of counter to T19 and Stand Firm. But he’s based out of one diocese and has a bunch of other things on his plate.
As he reports—things have changed. As of yesterday there is an Official Mouthpiece of TEC at EpiScope.
I find it a bit disconcerting. It seems to have a personality—but no identity. If you’re going to be personal, use “I”, and refer to in-jokes, tell us who you are. At least come up with an official pseudonym. There’s also no response mechanism. What’s up with that? (I, of course, am counting on their use of Google Alerts on their own name so this serves as my response. Hi there!)
Furthermore, it seems to feed in to the current polarization problem with its list of Anglican blogs “to the left” and “to the right”.
We’ll see how it develops…
A Blessed Feast of the Purification of the BVM to you all…
It’s an In-Between Day.
Morning Set List
Kyoto Song (Cure)
Garden of Arcane Delights (Delerium)
Strange Day (Cure)
Battle of Evermore (Zeppelin)
Watching Me Fall (Cure)
World in My Eyes (Cure cover of Depeche Mode)
Lithium (Evanescence)
Etc…
Here’s something red—because M told me this morning it’s women’s heart health awareness day (or something like that). Everybody—check your hearts…
I’m digging the poetry carnival bls is hosting. I’ve got a couple rolling around and this should prod me to finish them. One uses a fairly rigid and complicated French form. I think it has a limited range of expression but can be quite cool if done right for expressions that fall within that set. We’ll see…
I had a great question in class last night (which is going well). We were discussing Chrysostom’s wonderful Easter sermon when one of the students, an intelligent well-read Baptist (over half my class is Baptist!!), raised his hand and asked, “Where exactly is it in Scripture that it talks about Jesus’ descent to the dead?”
It’s a great question and I was caught fairly unprepared so I took them to 1 Peter 3 to the discussion of Christ preaching to the “spirits in prison” which the Fathers took to mean hell particularly given the Enochian resonances of that whole 1 Peter chunk. Then I made reference to the Isaiah passage that connects Sheol and the gates of iron but I couldn’t remember where it was… I did take them next to Ps 107 to the section on the prisoners in gloom and deep darkness shattering the gates/bars and how this was read in line with the others. I thought about discussing the bit at the end of Job about the fishhook but decided to skip it. (I totally forgot about the typological reading of Samson carrying off the gates of Gaza which I just now remembered…) I know there are some more that anchor it better and mentioned a little bit about how the Gospel of Nicodemus sets it up.
All this is to say, this morning I saw a review of an Introduction to the NT for Catholics. One of the critiques is that the author glosses some of the disputed issues with a fairly perfunctory “this is what we believe” and goes on from there. It got me wondering, is there a text that looks at some of the locations where protestants and catholics disagree on Scripture or on doctrines that come out of Scriptures that lays out both sides evenly and equally? I’m sure there are some apologetic tracts on both sides denouncing the other—but what about one that seeks it with more of an open-minded approach? It seems to me that a catholic-leaning Anglican would be the perfect one to write such a book having a concern for the tradition and the integrity of the catholic teaching but also a certain freedom in the deployment of modern critical tools…
Some topics might be: the descent of Christ into hell; the perpetual virginity of the BVM; some general stuff on the BVM; purgatory. What else?
Well…sort of…
Raspberry Rabbit put up a post in reference to Lutherans asking the question why there’s been no talk of schism there. I answered by saying that there was talk—lots of it—right around the time of CCM. My own understanding is that the only reason that the Word Alone group didn’t leave the ELCA is because of a lack of funding.
I was, at the time, in a former ALC seminary and I know the majority of the folks there would have been happy to not be tied to CCM and the apostolic succession. I also remember wandering the halls of LutherSem on a visit and seeing the tracts and pamphlets posted around the place. The energy was there—but it didn’t happen. Do the current Lutherans out there know better than I—was it just a money issue or was there more to it? And—is there talk/speculation/documentation around that would back this suspicion up?
The “World-Wide Web” is, in fact, world wide. When you post stuff, other people may well read it. There are some implications to this.
1. You may well be a seminarian and have taken an intro course in liturgy or New Testament. That’s great. But, in your haste to show off your new-found knowledge remember that there are people who have taken a hell of a lot more courses and read a hell of a lot more sources in the original languages than you.
2. I’ve done a lot of work in my field. I have a BA, an MDiv, an STM, and am a few pesky chapters away from my PhD all focused in my area. This means that I’ve read so much that I have a really good idea of how much about my field I don’t know!! True depth of learning breeds humility.
3. Don’t assume anything simply because you’re going to be clergy. There are laity who have forgotten more about liturgy—and a host of other topics—than you will ever know. And not all of them have “Dr.” in front of their names, either.
4. If you make major factual errors, be prepared to be called on it and furthermore be willing to accept correction. See above on humility… If you don’t feel that way, that’s fine—either don’t post things publicly or prepared to be dismissed.