It has been said that the difficulties The Episcopal Church, and more broadly throughout the Anglican Communion, concerning human sexuality and what Holy Writ says thus and so is best summarized not in terms of morality but in terms of how we interpret Scripture. I believe that to be true although I would add a social justice component to it. However, the latter could be considered to be part and parcel of biblical interpretation. Biblical literalism -- I prefer that term to biblical fundamentalism -- is a relatively new phenomenon in Anglicanism, inasfar as I have been able to put the pieces together.
Thus it might be said that those who hold that biblical literalism is the only acceptable form of interpretation could be called "modernists". Certainly in the Roman Catholic Church those who would hold to the literal interpretation of Scripture could even be called "cafeteria Catholics," a term that is much thrown around these days. But that is an entirely different subject. That would make those who hold believe in the time-tested Anglican approach to Scripture the "traditionalists" or "conservatives". I would proudly wear such a label, if necessary of one who is in that portion of Anglicanism in which Scripture is interpreted again and anew by bringing to bear new scholarship, new translations, newly found parchments, new understandings of how we translate Scripture, new understandings of the historic context in which Scripture was written, and so forth. God's Word remains the same. It is God's creatures who have grown.
Further, in the instance of the subject line, "Roanoke parish breaks with U.S. Episcopal Church," I am reminded that this inaccurate. The basic building block of The Episcopal Church -- indeed any province of the Anglican Communion, the Roman Catholic Church, and the Orthodox Traditions -- is NOT the parish, rather it is the DIOCESE. Parishes are not admitted or begun all by themselves out of thin air; they are admitted to or begun by a DIOCESE. A group of dioceses form The Episcopal Church, a province. Indeed, because of the size of ECUSA, dioceses are grouped into internal provinces. In other provinces of the Anglican Communion such internal provinces have metropolitical archbishops with greater power than the presidents of the ECUSA internal provinces. Again and again in ECUSA's Constitution and Canons it is clear and consistent that it is at the diocesan level that participation in the greater church is made possible: the General Convention (the gathering of the greater church) whose membership is made of deputies elected by the individual dioceses (the local churches) sitting in the House of Deputies and the bishop of the diocese sitting in the House of Bishops. I should inject here that a pet peeve of mine is the misunderstanding that the General Convention is a _convention_ such as a group of computer software sellers might get together. The General Convention is the House of Deputies and the House of Bishops and it _gathers_ at least triennially. But I digress. In the Roman Catholic Church it is clear in the documents of the Church, especially those of the Second Vatican Council, that the local church is the DIOCESE. Through the ordinary bishop's union with the Bishop of Rome, that diocese is part of the Roman Catholic Church. Thus in the case of the Roanoke parish I believe that it is important to understand that it is not possible for a parish to "break with the U.S. Episcopal Church." It is possible for a parish to leave a diocese. I believe that one detrimental development in the ecclesial fabric of ECUSA has been the tendency of viewing individual parishes as autonomous bodies that send representatives once a year to a gathering to vote on things. This is not, my brothers and sisters, how The Episcopal Church's or the Anglican Communion's ecclesiology. It never has been. I am not sure that ECUSA will survive a move towards a congregational system.
I believe that this is much more than just interpretation of a bunch of words. If we were to understand ourselves -- as has historically been the organization since the primitive church of the first centuries -- not as members of a small group of individuals gathering to "go to church" and get our fire insurance validated on Sundays but as a regional unit of the local church, i.e., diocese, many problems could be alleviated. For example, the cry, "We're so small we can't do anything, may be true only in that the local unit can't change the world. However, the local church, i.e., the diocese can have a strong effect on at very least regions the United States if not nationally. There are other matters of mission and ministry, doctrine and discipline, administration and finance that might be easier to deal with if we could get beyond seeing ourselves as just part of a scanty, dwindling group of folk in a congregation going it alone.
Quite frequently these days I find myself quoting one of my spiritual mentors: "Teach, teach, teach, teach, teach." My experience of The Episcopal Church throughout the US -- the Dioceses of South Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming, Arizona, Western Kansas, Kansas, Oklahoma, Rio Grande, Northwest Texas, West Missouri, Los Angeles, and Minnesota -- is that there is a great deal of Anglican- illiteracy. Most of the people that I have met and participated in bible studies, theological conversations, and so forth would be hard pressed to explain how The Episcopal Church is organized, what it means to be "in communion" with the See of Canterbury, how we differ from a congregational church, what the ministry of the bishop is, why General Convention is not a convention but rather more technically a synod. It might be said that we have done rather paltry job of teaching people about how we in this tradition of the Faith go about mission and ministry and all the other things that go into being an organized group who follow Jesus. I think the seeds of our present discontent were sown many years ago, they have now come to maturity, and the choice is to discover whether the new plant is weed or hybrid and whether the garden will survive.
JM
JAMES EDWARD MACKAY + Fargo North Dakota
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