random thoughts on implications of schism

[srigdon]

1. Were there 2 parallel Anglican churches in North America, there would naturally be a lot more Anglicans. The Bible Belt, especially the South, contains great potential for a conservative Anglican church. Plenty of Southern Baptists would want a church with our liturgy, if only they had conservatism to boot.

2. If the 2 churches adopted the current Book of Common Prayer, it would make it incredibly difficult to change the Book ever again. The simple reason being: there would be a greater threat than ever before of alternatives. Changing the Book in either denomination would create controversy - and fear, because the unhappy people would have a place to go. The common Book would always be a big tool for each church to evangelize the other - as in, hey, look, you'd feel comfortable if you came over to us!

Anyway, I regard #2 as a huge advantage of schism, because I'm afraid of what the radical feminists would do if they got their hands on the current book.

3. The two churches would feed on each other ruthlessly. For all that people try to do in indoctrinating their kids to agree with them - be it to be conservative, or to be liberal (and I've seen it both ways) - kids have a way of figuring things out on their own and making their own (rebellious) decisions. Quite frankly, it would be great.

4. ECUSA having grown so small, the liturgy has ceased to be any sort of cultural phenomenon. I suppose we would find ourselves in one denomination or another, but that wouldn't mean we wouldn't find make friends in the other - just because people would grow up in one and switch to the other.

The more I think about it, I'm starting to warm to schism.

[Canadian Phil]

srigdon;

Just a couple of comments. I'm going to go point by point, then add a comment or two myself.

You comment first:

1. Were there 2 parallel Anglican churches in North America, there would naturally be a lot more Anglicans. The Bible Belt, especially the South, contains great potential for a conservative Anglican church. Plenty of Southern Baptists would want a church with our liturgy, if only they had conservatism to boot.


I think this is a bit optimistic. There is no reason to believe that most baptists are so hungry for our form of liturgy. Some might be, but many would dismiss it as being either unscriptural or too ritualized. Baptists have a very different theology of worshp etc, and I don't know that we would see a flood of people coming in .

Second, you state

If the 2 churches adopted the current Book of Common Prayer, it would make it incredibly difficult to change the Book ever again. The simple reason being: there would be a greater threat than ever before of alternatives. Changing the Book in either denomination would create controversy - and fear, because the unhappy people would have a place to go. The common Book would always be a big tool for each church to evangelize the other - as in, hey, look, you'd feel comfortable if you came over to us!

There's a few big ifs here. If the two churches adopt the current BCP strikes me as being considerable. There is a lot of pressure among separatist Anglican groups to retain the 1928 prayers book, so I wouldn't count on this. Besides, there is no reason why liberals would feel compelled to stay with the current BCP eitehr. They may well decide to amend it to fall in line with more of their theological assumptions. I really do think that neither side will care what the other thought as far as revisions go because why would they? Do Baptists worry about what Catholics would say when they alter their worship style? Besides, there would be more than enough animosity between the two sides to make them not care about what the other Anglican groups do. Or, if they do, they'll make it a point of polemic.

Third, you state
. The two churches would feed on each other ruthlessly. For all that people try to do in indoctrinating their kids to agree with them - be it to be conservative, or to be liberal (and I've seen it both ways) - kids have a way of figuring things out on their own and making their own (rebellious) decisions. Quite frankly, it would be great.

4. ECUSA having grown so small, the liturgy has ceased to be any sort of cultural phenomenon. I suppose we would find ourselves in one denomination or another, but that wouldn't mean we wouldn't find make friends in the other - just because people would grow up in one and switch to the other.

The thing is that this is the current situation. I'm not sure how schism does more than merely reinforcing this tendency. Sure, it is good to have diversity of liturgical and even theological styles, but when it leads us to think badly of another Christian, as schism all too often does, the diveristy becomes division.

I think, though, the most interesting thing about your discussion on the advantages of schism is what you leave out. The largest problem in Christianity today is that, because we are so divided, it is very hard to speak in a unified voice to the non-Christian. As a result, non-Christians get lost in the array of denominations and assumes that, since we can't agree with each other, we can't possibly have a true grasp on God. After all, arent' there hundreds of images of God in Christianity, each subtly different from each other, but each commanding similar loyalty and a tendency to dismiss the truth of the Gospel. The tragedy of schism and church division in general is that we undercut the message of the Gospel by fragmenting it. Schism in TEC would only make this situation worse.

I really can't see anything good about any schism. In fact, it is the dislike of schism whcih has held me in the Anglican Communion so long. Schism may still prove unavoidable, but it is, in my opinion, never a good thing.

Peace,
Phil

[anglicansablaze]

Most of those who want to retain the 1928 Prayer Book are found among the churches of the Continuum - largely the Anglo-Catholic traditionalists. Their concern is more with preserving a particular church ethos than it is with reaching those who are disconnected from Christ and the church. More missional Anglicans see the need for a modern language liturgy. However, they are not particular entranced with the 1979 Book of Common Prayer. If a second Anglican providence was established in the United States, I doubt that it would adopt the 1979 Book of Common Prayer but would adopt its own prayer book. I would think that it would want to distance itself from the theology of the 1979 Prayer Book. I imagine that it would have a more liberal policy toward the use of the 1928 Prayer Book than the ECUSA but also like the Anglican Mission in America would be open to the use of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer and free-flowing forms of worship, provided they adhered to the biblical teaching of the 1662 Prayer Book. The Reformed Episcopal Church has adopted a new prayer book, based upon the 1662 Prayer Book. Some of its judicatories permit the use of contemporary language services from the Anglican Church of Australia's An Australian Prayer Book (1978). The Anglican Mission in America has been using services from the Anglican Church of Kenya's Our Modern Services and other global South Anglican sources.

[anglicansablaze]

Were there 2 parallel Anglican churches in North America, there would naturally be a lot more Anglicans. The Bible Belt, especially the South, contains great potential for a conservative Anglican church. Plenty of Southern Baptists would want a church with our liturgy, if only they had conservatism to boot.

The United States is a mission field that is increasingly becoming gospel resistant. The withdrawal of conservative Anglicans from the Episcopal Church into a second province would weaken the Episcopal Church especially if those who depart are more missional than those who remain. Yet an exodus of conservatives from the Episcopal Church to a new province will include conservatives who are not missional as well as those who are. How missional the new province will be will depend upon its leadership and the number of missional congregations that migrate to the new province. If the second province proves as lacking in its commitment to evangelism and outreach as the Episcopal Church, a number of the global South provinces may withdraw their support of the new province. One of the global South criticisms of the Episcopal Church is its failure to spread the message of the gospel and to make new disciples from the spiritually-disconnected in the United States, the world's largest English-speaking mission field.

I live in the Bible Belt, in the South. Those conservative Anglican churches that are reaching the spiritually-disconnected in the ministry focus groups that they have targeted are doing so because they speak the language of those they are seeking to reach. Not all conservative Anglican churches are doing well. For some their church culture is a significant barrier for the dechurched and the unchurched in their locality. In an area where the religious background of the dechurched is Protestant and Low Church, their church culture is too Catholic and High Church. One Anglo-Catholic traditionalist church comes to mind regular advertises its use of the 1928 Book of Common Prayer. It is located in a region in which Episcopalians form less than one per cent of the population and Anglo-Catholic traditionalists form an even tinier per centage of the region's population. It is like a fisherman casting his line for a very elusive and rare fish while ignoring the other fish with which the stream abounds. The language of the 1928 Prayer Book is not the language that the people of the region speak everyday or even close to it. The church's Anglo-Catholic High Church ethos is alien to the larger number of the region's dechurched whose church experience most likely has been Baptist, Church of Christ, or Methodist. Only two per cent of the region's population identify themselves as Catholic, i.e, Roman Catholic.

Missional Anglicans like myself are not interested in proselytizing Southern Baptists. The Great Commission says "go, make disciples of all peoples." It does not say go, make Anglicans of Southern Baptists, United Methodists, etc. Anglicans who are faithful to the Great Commission are interested in reach the dechurched - those who are not active in a church but may have attended a Christian church at some point in their life - and the unchurched - those who have no previous experience of the Christian faith. There is an increasing number of unchurched people in the United States. A second province that focused upon proselytizing members of other denominations, including the Episcopalians, would not be the kind of network of mission-shaped churches that global South Anglicans who themselves take seriously the Great Commission would like to see replace the Episcopal Church as the representative of Anglicanism in the United States.

[anglicansablaze]

The two churches would feed on each other ruthlessly. For all that people try to do in indoctrinating their kids to agree with them - be it to be conservative, or to be liberal (and I've seen it both ways) - kids have a way of figuring things out on their own and making their own (rebellious) decisions. Quite frankly, it would be great.

The Reformed Episcopal Church has been around since the 1870s, the Continuum since the 1970s, and the Anglican Mission in America since 2000. None of these Anglican entitities has shown an inclination to feed ruthlessly on the Episcopal Church nor has the Episcopal Church displayed a similar inclination toward them. Each group of churches has sought to promote its particular theological distinctives. Some Continuum churches have sought to proselytize disaffected Episcopalians but the AMiA has largely focused upon planting new churches and reaching the dechurched and unchurched. The global South leaders who sponsor and support the AMiA have stressed to the AMiA leadership that they must put the Great Commission first if they wish to continue to enjoy their sponsorship and support. The AMiA is not to just become a safe haven for conservative Episcopalians disaffected with the Episcopal Church. It indeed to be what its name says - an Anglican mission in America. The AMiA welcomes disaffected clergy and congregations from the Episcopal Church if they turn to the AMiA but it does not seek to actively recruit them. It welcomes them with the proviso that they must be willing to join the AMiA in its mission of evangelizing the spiritually-disconnected and making disciples of them. The AMiA is also aware that a significant number of disaffected Episcopalians do not make good missionaries, evangelists, and church planters. They do not have being missional in their DNA.

As far as young Episcopalians go, those who are leaving their respective churches are doing one of two things: (1) They are abandoning Christianity altogether. (2) Those who are coming to faith in the Episcopal Church are joining more evangelical churches. If this trend continues, I do not see youth migrating back and forth between the Episcopal Church and the new Anglican province. Outside the Episcopal Church, a significant number of young people in evangelical churches are leaving those churches. However, they are not migrating to more liberal churches. They are dropping out of church altogether. What they will do as they grow older, remains to be seen. Those who study trends in church attendance and church membership have concluded that we cannot draw conclusions about the younger generations based upon the behavior of the older generations. We live in a changing world and young people are not imitating their parents (or grandparents).

From the perspective of a missional Anglican like myself a second Anglican province in the United States that concentrated upon proselytizing members of the Episcopal Church instead of reaching out to the dechurched and the unchurched in the general population would also be as much a failure as the Episcopal Church.

[anglicansablaze]

ECUSA having grown so small, the liturgy has ceased to be any sort of cultural phenomenon. I suppose we would find ourselves in one denomination or another, but that wouldn't mean we wouldn't find make friends in the other - just because people would grow up in one and switch to the other.

I am not quite sure what you mean by your statement - "The liturgy has ceased to be any sort of cultural phenomenon." As far as ongoing relations between the members of the Episcopal Church and a second Anglican province, I think at the local level there would not be as much animosity as you appear to envision. In western Kentucky where I presently am living, Episcopalians have friends in the local Continuum church and members of the Continuum church have friends in the local Episcopal church. In southeastern Lousiana where I used to live, a local Continuum bishop on occasion presided at home Eucharists for a new Episcopal church startup. He was a charismatic as well as an Anglo-Catholic traditionalist. The group that formed the nucleus of the new congregation, while not Anglo-Catholic traditionalists like himself, were charismatics. I suspect that Episcopalians and Anglicans will find common ground in ministry at the local level that they do not find at other levels. Indeed the establishment of a second Anglican province might provide just the right amount of "distance" between liberals and conservatives to enable them to work together on local projects free from the tensions of the controversies that presently divide the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion.

I think, though, the most interesting thing about your discussion on the advantages of schism is what you leave out. The largest problem in Christianity today is that, because we are so divided, it is very hard to speak in a unified voice to the non-Christian. As a result, non-Christians get lost in the array of denominations and assumes that, since we can't agree with each other, we can't possibly have a true grasp on God. After all, arent' there hundreds of images of God in Christianity, each subtly different from each other, but each commanding similar loyalty and a tendency to dismiss the truth of the Gospel. The tragedy of schism and church division in general is that we undercut the message of the Gospel by fragmenting it. Schism in TEC would only make this situation worse.

Fragmentation is not a condition unique to Christianity. Other world religions are also fragmented as we increasingly see from the conflicts among Suni and Shiite Muslims in Iraq and the conflicts between Waabist Sunis and other Suni groups as well as Shiite Muslims in the present and the past. In terms of major obstacles to the dechurched and the unchurched, the inability of Christians to speak with a unified voice is not the main barrier. Rather it is the lack of consistancy between what Christians profess and what they practice. Post-modernism strongly influences our secular culture here in the United States and post-modernism questions whether any world religion or group within a world religion has a monopoly upon the truth. Non-Christians are likely to assume that Christians do not have an exclusive grasp on God because of the influence of post-modernism. What seems to concern seekers the most in our post-modern world is that the local church embodies what it teaches and these teachings reflect the teachings and example of Jesus. They are not so much concerned that all Christians share exactly the same beliefs as some Christians are. They have come to accustomed diversity, with a wide range of groups each making its own truth claims that often may conflict with each other. What concerns the contemporary seeker is that the members of the local church practice their faith, live it out in their daily lives. They put great weight in what they experience and much less in what they are taught.

A fragmented Christianity may not be the most desirable situation. However, I believe that God can and does use a fragmented Christianity to reach the spiritually-disconnected. God works through our weakness and accomplish his purposes despite us. We cannot rule out the possibility that he may permit fragmentation to achieve his goals. One day what is now divided will be united - of that we can be certain. What God seeks out to accomplish, he does. It may not be united in the way that we envision such unity. Our vision may not be God's. But it will be united - of that we can be assurred.

Peace

Robin

[srigdon]

I don't really have much to add to what I wrote. I do want to emphasize that it was written with the attitude that Phil's POV is the conventional wisdom (and I don't mean that in a pejorative way.) I'm just anticipating that a schism could work in ways that people haven't thought of before.

That said, I firmly don't want it to happen.

Anglicansablaze wrote

Missional Anglicans like myself are not interested in proselytizing Southern Baptists.

Have to say that I totally disagree. To me, the mission field is anybody I think is wrong about at least something. Anglicans historically have presented a point of view different from other denominations, and I don't see why promoting that POV isn't part of our calling too. There are plenty of Bible literalists who, once they get exposed to some modern Biblical scholarship, find out that the fundies lied to them. These are good potential converts for us. As a matter of fact, they may as important to correct as anybody.

Phil wrote

There is no reason to believe that most baptists are so hungry for our form of liturgy.

I think Phil is assuming that Baptists are Baptists because of their beliefs. Most religious people affiliate with a church because of family tradition. So, I don't think there is any reason to believe that Southern Baptists are any more or less inclined to our way of doing things. I'm guessing they're on average pretty much like everybody else. Most southerners are Baptists, but not because there's something intrinsically different about them. That's just the culture down there.

[NELib]

I've been pondering the question of whether creating a separate province is necessarily schism. I find it a difficult question.

Also, relating to some of the priorr comments, I note this from Bishop Duncan's speech at Nashotah yesterday (worth reading in its entirety, by the way):

"We have reached the moment where a mediation to achieve disengagement is the only way forward. I believe that the other Episcopal Church – the one not represented in this convocation – has finally also come to that conclusion, as well. I believe that a mediated settlement will be in place by this time next year, or that the principals will be well on their way to such a settlement. How can we set one another free to proclaim the gospel (the Truth) as we, so differently, understand it? How can we bless one another as cousins, rather than oppress one another as brothers?"

[anglicansablaze]

To me, the mission field is anybody I think is wrong about at least something. Anglicans historically have presented a point of view different from other denominations, and I don't see why promoting that POV isn't part of our calling too. There are plenty of Bible literalists who, once they get exposed to some modern Biblical scholarship, find out that the fundies lied to them. These are good potential converts for us. As a matter of fact, they may as important to correct as anybody.

Jesus did not commission his Church to go and convert all people groups to a particular view of the Bible. He commissioned them to go and make disciples of all people groups. Focusing on people who are already followers of Jesus, who have accepted him as their Lord and Savior and are seeking to live out their faith, but with whose view of the Bible we do not agree is not in my mind being faithful to that commission.

You are also assuming that "modern Bible scholarship" is correct and that those you label as fundamentalists deliberately deceived those you refer to as Bible literalists. Most pastors who preach and teach the essentials of the historic Christian faith believe what they preach and teach. Some may have doubts but having doubts is not the same as deliberately deceiving others. Mainstream Bible scholarship is much more conservative than many Episcopalians realize. What passes as "modern Bible scholarship" in the Episcopal Church is often on the radical fringe of Bible scholarship. It does not enjoy the support of the larger body of Bible scholars. Jesus certainly did not commission his Church to go and convert all people groups to the views of a handful of radical Bible scholars.

To focus our outreach efforts on those who are already Christians helps to perpetuate what has been called the "circulation of the saints" with Christians hopping from one church to the next as they seek to meet their own needs rather than ministering to the needs of others. They seek to be served instead of being servants. In this regard they fail at being true followers of Jesus.

Millions of people around the world are passing into eternity everyday without a relationship with Jesus. They are passing into a godless eternity, seperated from God for ever. They are living purposeless lives because Jesus is not the center of their lives and without him life can have no true purpose. Instead of focusing on those who do have a relationship with Jesus, who have entrusted themselves to him for their salvation and placed their lives under his lordship here in this world, we should be focusing on those who do not yet know him.