AskThePriest.org

Will my child have faith?

A reader writes in:

"My question is do you have any advice for how to raise kids in a spiritual sense when both parents have very different beliefs?

I was raised in the Pentecostal tradition. My husband was raised loosely Catholic, but when I met him he was more agnostic. Now he has said he is almost sure he is an atheist. This problem didn't come up until my father wanted to take my son (5 yrs old) to church with him. My husband has flat out refused saying he doesn't want his kids indoctrinated at such a young age.

Now there is a tug of war between my parents who try to teach him bible stories and my husband who tells my son that Jesus doesn't exist, and it's all in your head."

That's a really difficult position to be in as a parent. It used to be that an "Interfaith" marriage meant one between a Roman Catholic and a Protestant. But these days, it is likely to be between a Christian and a non-Christian theist or even, as in your case, an atheist. How do you handle a conflict between parts of your family as you describe? It's going to be different for each family, but here are some pointers:

1. The Child's welfare comes first. Children are sometimes used as pawns in family conflict, and faith conflicts are often covers for deeper things. Make sure the conflict is really about what they say it is. If it's something else that's actually causing the conflict, none of the rest of this is going to have any impact. Also, make sure that if one party is talking about the others faith or lack therof in front of your son, it's not in a derogatory way. A child will benefit from watching adults resolve conflict, but only if it's carried out in an adult fashion.
2. Determine what it is you want for your son. What do you want out of religion for him? Do you want him being raised within a faith community, or do you want him to just learn the stories? What level are you comfortable with? What do you think he wants?
3. Determine how to achieve that. If you want the support of a faith community, what would work? Catholicism and Pentecostalism are probably both out. Can you find a faith community that will encourage critical thinking? Use the Internet to look around.
4. Plan on how you are going to approach each party. Try to put yourself in each party's shoes and see what is important to them. What's negotiable and non-negotiable? Writing down talking points is a good idea.
5. Approach them in love, not in anger. Try to be reasonable and find something that works. This can be achieved, assuming that there's not an underlying problem as in point one.

In your specific situation, here are a few things that might help:

1. For your husband, emphasize the value of a Biblical education. Completely apart from the spiritual content, the Bible is one of the most important literary influences of western culture. English literature is full of references to both Old and New Testaments. Not understanding the stories puts one at a distinct disadvantage in appreciating literature, art and music. Also, determine whether the problem is faith itself, or uncritical faith. There are several denominations that see no conflict between critical thinking and faith. I'm partial to mine, but there are many others as well.
2. For your parents, make sure they understand that you are the parent of your son. You have to negotiate this situation and not them, so make it clear that whatever compromise you arrive at needs to be respected. Your son is WAY below the age of accountability, so even from their perspective, salvation should not be an issue at this point. I suspect it has more to do with them wanting to share what is important in their life with him.

My prayers are with you. This is one of the stickiest wickets of parenting.

 

David+

 

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Paul, The Bible and Submission (Not 50 Shades of Grey)

An old friend of mine, noticing the press the Episcopal Church has been receiving over the approval of Provisional Same-Sex Blessings asked me a question about how I would go about preaching Ephesians 5:22, one of Paul’s famous passages about the place of women.

Eph. 5:22 For example, wives should submit to their husbands as if to the Lord. (CEB)

How you interpret this passage has a lot to do with how you read scripture. The “Common-sense” approach is the default American method of scriptural interpretation. As Mark Knoll writes in The Civil War as a Theological Crisis:

By 1860 a substantial majority of articulate Americans had come to hold a number of corollary beliefs about the Bible-specifically, that besides its religious uses, it also promoted republican political theory, that it was accessible to every sentient person, that it defined the glories of liberty, that it opposed the tyranny of inherited religious authority, that it forecast the providential destiny of the United States, and that it was best interpreted by the common sense of ordinary people. [loc 308, 1]knoll

That last sentence is the part that can be especially problematic in the context we are exploring. While scripture usually has a “plain sense,” it’s a plain sense in the culture of the time in which it is written. "Common Sense" readings of scripture are an attempt to box the Bible into the cultural framework we are comfortable with.  For instance, in the context of the theological arguments around the Civil War, “Common Sense” readings of scripture heavily supported the institution of slavery. The entrenched nature of the “peculiar institution” as well as a near universal belief in white superiority (even among abolitionists) made the anti-slavery argument difficult. To quote Knoll again:

(the) nuanced biblical attacks on American slavery faced rough going precisely because they were nuanced. This position could not simply be read out of any one biblical text; it could not be lifted directly from the page. Rather, it needed patient reflection on the entirety of the Scriptures; it required expert knowledge of the historical circumstances of ancient Near Eastern and Roman slave systems as well as of the actually existing conditions in the slave states; and it demanded that sophisticated interpretative practice replace a commonsensically literal approach to the sacred text. … In the culture of the United States, as that culture had been constructed by three generations of evangelical Bible believers, the nuanced biblical argument was doomed. [loc 647, 1]knoll

Writers on this subject routinely point out that the Christian anti-slavery argument never got a lot of traction until after armed conflict broke out and people needed to make sense of the vast slaughter. The abolitionist argument made sense if you considered the sweep of the Bible towards mutuality and respect, but it could not overcome the entrenched “common sense” interpretation that supported the status quo, as such interpretations invariably do. Yet yesterday’s common sense is today’s folly. You would be hard pressed to find a modern biblical literalist who would support the idea that American slaveholding was a Biblically just institution. This is because a “common sense” interpretation has more to do with us and our context than the Scripture and its Sitz im Leben (That’s Biblical geek speak for the original cultural/historical setting of the passage).

There are two ways to read Ephesians that do this passage a grave injustice. Both of them involve this “common-sense” reading that ignores literary and historical context. One is the “literalist” interpretation that insists that this passage requires a wife to be subordinate to her husband in all things. Feminist theology has rightly criticized this reading as being a tool of repression. A more basic criticism might be that using it in such a way completely ignores the rest of the chapter (see below), as well as assuming that Paul is writing in a universal sense without examining his Sitz im Leben.

A second way to do injustice to this text by a “Common-Sense” reading is to try to judge what Paul is saying by our vantage point, which has been shaped by postmodernism, marxism and feminism. To be condescending to ancient writers because they didn’t have the same default point of view that we as postmodern Americans have is just as destructive as a literalist position and would result in the loss of much of the world’s collected wisdom were it universally applied.

To do justice to Paul, we need to ask the questions of context:

1. What is the literary context of this verse? What happens in the letter around it?
2. What is the cultural and historical context? What is he saying to HIS culture?

Only after answering these questions can we begin to ask interpretive questions for ourselves. If Paul was saying this to his culture, what might he say if he was writing within ours? Scriptural interpretation in this full sense is not of direct application. Let’s think of this in pseudo-algebraic terms. X would be the application of Galatians for us today. A is the cultural setting of Paul’s time. B is the scripture. C is our cultural setting. A literalist might say that there is no algebra. Scripture is universal and timeless and all you need is a direct correspondence:

B = X

Those of us who believe scripture is the Word of God, but are literary works that bear the imprints of culture and personality would say it is more complex. It’s more like solving the proportion:

A/B = C/X

So if we avoid the so-called “common sense” position (although that’s really a misnomer. It’s not common-sensical to think that Paul’s culture and ours are similar.) and use this approach that is more sensitive to context, what can we say about this passage?

Where does Paul get his position that wives should submit? The Epistles are older than the Gospels, but anything that wound up in the Gospels would be circulating as stories and proverbs of Jesus at the time of Paul. It’s hard to find anything attributed to Jesus that would support such an assertion. In fact, Jesus seems to be surrounded by “uppity” women, such as the Syro-Phonecian woman, Mary Magdalene and Mary of Bethany who don’t seem to know their “proper place” and routinely scandalize the disciples. Did Paul invent all this?

As he would say, “By no means!” There is a long tradition in Greco-Roman and Hellenized Jewish writing (such as Philo and Josephus) of “Household Codes.” These codes lay out how a male head of household should manage his affairs. The Roman head of household (Pater Familias) was an absolute ruler within his domain. The Household Codes instruct a young Pater Familias on how to conduct his household in order to preserve honor and avoid shame in a culture in which such things were paramount for survival. The failure of a householder to abide by these codes could mean ruin and ostracization from the culture for him and his entire family.

When Paul states that wives are to submit, he’s not stating anything new. He’s stating anything that any writer of Household codes in his culture, Roman or Jewish, would agree with. Most members of a household in Ephesus hearing the letter read aloud, be they male or female, would have been nodding at this point. But look at what comes later. This is where Paul goes way off track from a standard household code.

Eph. 5:25 As for husbands, love your wives just like Christ loved the church and gave himself for her. (CEB)

Non-Christian Household codes of the time do not speak of the duties of the Pater Familias to his “subordinates” at all. Paul goes on for six more verses exhorting husbands to show the same respect to their wives as Christ does for the church. Think about that. Paul goes to great pains in his letters to show how much Christ sacrificed for his church. It is an absolute, self-sacrificing love, completely incompatible with the self-centered idea of the householder as absolute monarch.

I think Paul is using the household code as a subversive rhetorical device. He uses some throwaway lines, such as 5:22, to lull the hearers into a receptive state, then hits them with something demanding and new (the rest of the chapter) where women are given the same value as the church. Paul is by no means an egalitarian in our terms, but it’s unfair to criticize him by those terms. To discard Ephesians because Paul does not articulate perfect egalitarianism would be like discarding the Emancipation Proclamation because Lincoln still retained ideas of white superiority. We are all products of our culture, and I have no doubt that some in the future will judge US with harshness.

However, holding up Paul’s writings as scripture does not mean we have to come to it uncritically. Paul’s instructions to wives in Ephesians does not support domineering, abusive gender relationships any more than Peter’s parallel instructions to slaves (1Peter 2:18) supports modern human trafficking. Paul’s culture and assumptions were very different than ours, and our reading of his writings need to reflect that reality. While not a modern egalitarian, Paul’s views of both slavery and the place of women was much more progressive than those of contemporary writers. He was a careful but passionate rebel, and he upset the establishment enough that he was eventually executed for it.

It is for this reason that even though some continue to use Ephesians to repress, I think that if we read it with eyes open to context, we can find an example of someone transforming his world bit by bit for Christ. God’s plan does not happen in one lifetime, or even in a hundred. This is not a failing of God, but a result of human intransigence. As Jesus said to his disciples, “I have much more to say to you, but you can’t handle it now. However, when the Spirit of Truth comes, he will guide you in all truth. He won’t speak on his own, but will say whatever he hears and will proclaim to you what is to come.” (John 16:12–13 CEB)

Those of us who claim to follow Jesus in the church continue to seek the guidance of the Spirit together as we read our scriptures. God can indeed be found in the Bible. There are those that claim that this should be an easy endeavor, and that the Bible reads like some sort of instruction manual. But many of us believe that the Bible is a complicated work that requires study, work, thought, prayers and discussion in community to begin to understand.

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Other blogs on this topic:

Rachael Held Evans has an excellent post on this.

A great sermon by Frank Logue.

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Related Posts on AskThePriest:

The Heresy of Literalism

The Bible and Chronological Accuracy

Taking the Bible Seriously, not Literally

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1. knoll

   Noll, Mark A., 2006, The Civil War As a Theological Crisis. The University of North Carolina Press.

Personal Lord and Savior

A reader writes in:

"I am a lifelong Episcopalian and spend a lot of time with a diverse group of people from different branches of Christianity. As the lone Episcopalian in this setting, I am hoping you can answer a question causing confusion for me. My question is this: They (non-Episcopalians) are insistent that everyone must accept Jesus as their own "personal Lord and Savior". I was always taught that He is our Savior but that He belongs to everyone and is not our "personal" God. Which is correct, according to the church as Episcopalians? Thank you."

The language “accept Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior” is indicative of certain traditions within Christianity in America. Evangelicals and revivalists often speak of conversion using these terms. By “personal” they mean you as an individual as opposed to you as a member of a group. By “accept” they mean to emphasize you choosing, you deciding (or not) to be a disciple of Jesus and verbally and publicly acknowledge Jesus as your “Lord” (the master of your life) and “Savior” (the one who rescued you from sin and death). Once you have made such a public profession of your faith, then you are a candidate for baptism (called “believer’s baptism”).

Most Episcopalians don’t use the jargon of evangelicalism (but there are a few who do). Tell your evangelical friends that you are a follower of Jesus and you are putting yourself in God’s hands, trusting in Jesus, and receiving God’s mercy, love, and grace. They are apt to be skeptical. Generally, unless your spiritual journey mimic’s that of an evangelical and you are skilled in the use of the jargon of evangelicalism--they will be skeptical of your relationship to Christianity. Don’t let it bother you. Neither the thief on the cross nor Paul on the road to Damascus had read the “Four Spiritual Laws” (an evangelical pamphlet) nor prayed its “sinner’s prayer.” Yet, it is correct to say that both were saved. Tell them you are depending on Jesus to save you. Speaking their language may calm their fears for your soul. 

To answer your question more directly: the emphasis on the individual has more to do with American individualism than it does biblical faith and Episcopalians try not to fall into that way of thinking, emphasizing instead the community of faith, the people of God, and the Church. Likewise, the emphasis on the decision of the individual and the importance of making a choice, sounds to our ears like a “salvation by works.” That is to say, that you are only saved because you did something. We tend to want to place the emphasis on what God does regardless of our lack of appropriate response (we call it “grace”). Finally, at some points this way of talking and thinking can move from religious to magical. If you don’t say just the right words (the “sinner’s prayer”) and have an emotional experience, and then follow it with baptism by full immersion, then you are not a real Christian. Thoughtful evangelicals would never say such a thing. But, people who are naturally superstitious and engage in magical thinking and who are evangelicals are apt to speak that sort of nonsense.

Charles+

Christians before Christ?

A reader writes in with a question:

I guess I’m just curious what happened to people in death before Christianity became heard of. I feel that people, no matter what era of living, should be able to reach heaven. I don’t understand how any religion can be started on any random date with people before it not knowing about the religion. To me, this discredits any idea of a definitive afterlife.

A very good question - and one that Christian theologians have been mulling over since the beginning. The first thing to do is to clarify a few things. There was a time when “Christianity” did not exist, defined as the human social construct based on the person, story and words of Jesus of Nazareth. But according to orthodox Christian theology, there has never been a time at which Christ has not been present. (I’m intentionally not using the word “exist” because that sets up a whole other set of metaphorical issues.) Christ being defined as the second part of the holy and undivided Trinty has been present eternally. Christ became incarnate somewhere around 0 CE in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, and remains incarnate in his ressurection body. For more about the time in-between the crucifixion and the ressurection, see AskThePriest.org: Jesus’ Harrowing Experience.

This continual presence of the second part of the Trinity is where room for speculation lies about what happened to people who died before the incarnation. Many of the early church fathers and later writers did so. Justin Martyr from the 100s writes,

Apology, Chapter XLVI. — The Word in the World Before Christ.

But lest some should, without reason, and for the perversion of what we teach, maintain that we say that Christ was born one hundred and fifty years ago under Cyrenius, and subsequently, in the time of Pontius Pilate, taught what we say He taught; and should cry out against us as though all men who were born before Him were irresponsible-let us anticipate and solve the difficulty. We have been taught that Christ is the first-born of God, and we have declared above that He is the Word of whom every race of men were partakers; and those who lived reasonably are Christians, even though they have been thought atheists; as, among the Greeks, Socrates and Heraclitus, and men like them; and among the barbarians, Abraham, and Ananias, and Azarias, and Misael, and Elias, and many others whose actions and names we now decline to recount, because we know it would be tedious. So that even they who lived before Christ, and lived without reason, were wicked and hostile to Christ, and slew those who lived reasonably. But who, through the power of the Word, according to the will of God the Father and Lord of all, He was born of a virgin as a man, and was named Jesus, and was crucified, and died, and rose again, and ascended into heaven, an intelligent man will be able to comprehend from what has been already so largely said. And we, since the proof of this subject is less needful now, will pass for the present to the proof of those things which are urgent.

Augustine of Hippo also writes on this theme in the 3rd Century:

That which is known as the Christian religion existed among the ancients, and never did not exist; from the beginning of the human race until the time when Christ came in the flesh, at which time the true religion, which already existed began to be called Christianity. (Retractt. I, xiii, cited by Dr. Alvin Boyd Kuhn in his Shadow of The Third Century, Elizabeth N.J.: Academy Press, 1949, p.3.)

There are many more musings on this theme among theologians throughout the ages. So might it be possible that there were people in the world who “Knew Christ” as the eternal Word without knowing the human incarnation of the Word in Jesus? Opinons vary in different parts of Christianity. Most of Christianity, including Roman Catholicism, parts of Eastern Orthodoxy and much of Protestantism maintain that salvation is a possibility outside the church (See John 10:16).

The most important thing to note about this conversation is its secondary nature. As Justin says, the “proof is less needful now.” Christianity is a “positive” religion, meaning we speak of what we know, and testify to what is seen. The Gospels don’t speak on this issue, so while it is certainly part of the theological discussion, it is not central. We maintain that salvation (and what that means is another discussion) can be found through the church, but that God alone is in ultimate charge.

David+

Tolkien and Lewis - Myth vs. Lies

A reader wrote in with a question about the ubiquity of stories similar to the Christian one in other myths.  For instance, the dying and reborn god Balder, or the miraculous birth of Horus.  This is a fairly common strain of questioning.  My response is to usually talk about the conversations between CS Lewis, JRR Tolkien and Hugo Dyson that dealt with this very subject.  Here are a couple of YouTube videos that deal with those conversations.

The first is a really good portrayal of Lewis' vantage point:

 

This one illustrates Tolkien's view.  This particular conversation never happened, but all of the words portrayed as delivered by Tolkien are drawn from his writings.  Lewis is portrayed a little simplistically as the young man being lectured by the professorial Tolkien, but that's not suprising considering this is an EWTN production about Tolkien's Roman Catholicism.

 

Other posts related to this conversation:

The Feast of CS Lewis

How to read a story

Yes, Virginia...

A reader writes in:

I have always loved the Christmas story, it holds a kind of magic as good and better than anything J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis could create, because it could be true!  I have recently read that it is unlikely Jesus was born in Bethlehem there wasn't a census around that time and if there was, there would be no reason for Mary and Joseph to travel anywhere.  Does this mean that Christmas is just a story?  The nativity has always been central to my Christmas celebrations.

I hope you can help me feel less like something precious has been taken from me.

Dear Reader,

It can be daunting as people trained in rationalism for us to see truth in non-historical forms.  The solution to your dilemma is through the authors you mention in your question.  Here I will re-post an article from 2005, The Feast of CS Lewis.

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Today is the feast day of CS Lewis.  It was added at the last General Convention (one of the many things that no one seemed to notice.)  After preaching the mid-day service, my December newsletter article seemed to write itself....

I’m looking forward to the release of the movie of C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe early next month.  The first time I read the Narnia series, I was around 12 or 13.  I had finished The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings was a bit daunting for a new reader of Fantasy.  At the time, I believed that God existed, but I was doubtful that he had any role in the universe beyond creation.  I was technically a Deist in the tradition of Thomas Jefferson, although I didn’t know it at the time.  The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and The Last Battle had a great effect on me.  I understood the allegory, but I didn’t recognize it as Christian.  I remember thinking to myself, “I love how Lewis portrays God – I only wish Christianity believed that.”  My experience with the Christianity of Fundamentalism had led me to believe that the God Christians worshipped was a God primarily of judgment and anger.  In Aslan, I met a figure of God that while great and terrible, was primarily tender and loving.  Lewis’ writings planted a seed in me – a seed that began to be tended and watered by liturgy, word and sacrament when my family moved to the Episcopal Church. The Stories of Narnia, while not scripture, contained the Gospel message in such a way that I could hear them.  When I finally came into contact with scripture on my own terms, I saw that all the Narnia stories (and the Middle-Earth stories as well) pointed towards this ultimate story.  Fantasy literature had been my entry into the Christian life.

In our culture, we are bereft of story.  The enlightenment, while providing us with many benefits that I would never speak ill of, has left us with a lesser view of the power of fiction.  We now say that something is “Only a story,” inferring that since it does not bear up a strict factual truthfulness, that it must have less value.  Some have even applied this to scripture, asserting that if the Bible is not historically or factually true on all counts, that it cannot be the Word of God.  I find this hard to understand, since the first place I heard the Word spoken was in the pages of a fantasy novel by an Anglican author.  If you had placed a Bible in my hands at that time, all I would have been able to hear would be the echoes of the “fire and brimstone” sermons I had heard and rejected. CS Lewis held my hand with the image of Aslan until I was able to look at the Bible in the light of the Gospel message as he re-told it. In my experience, story is much more powerful than fact and quite often bears more truth. 

We are heading towards the Christmas season – the ultimate “Fairy Tale” in terms of our Christian year.  We know that the date of December 25th was set arbitrarily by a Pope in the 300s to coincide with the Roman pagan feast of Sol Invictus.  Biblical Scholars believe that the birth was probably in the spring, not the winter, and the Early Church Fathers back that up.  But think of what we would lose if we would change the date:  Visions of a pregnant Mary and her husband walking through the cold snow to get to Bethlehem, of shepherds huddling together with their flocks against the bitter wind, of magi plodding their camels through the wintry roads of Judea following a star in the clear night sky.  We would lose “Silent Night” and “In the Bleak Midwinter.”    We’d even have to get rid of “The Christmas Song” whether you prefer Sinatra, Crosby or Cole.

The setting of Christmas in midwinter, when we are so aware of how fragile life is, when cold kills and famine threatens, tells us something about the Incarnation.  It speaks of the frightening vulnerability of the Child Jesus and the wonder that God would love us so much to bring himself to a manger.  Even though it may be factually incorrect, the story is so much more powerful when set in the Winter that it is “truer” than one set in the Spring.  Yes, the wintry setting of the Birth of Jesus IS a “Fairy Tale.”  In fact, the Gospels can be seen as a whole to be a fairy tale or a tale that embraces the essence of fairy tales.  But, as Tolkien wrote, “This story has entered History … The Birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe (joyous unexpected event) of Man’s history. … There is no story ever told that men would rather find was true, and none which so many skeptical men have accepted as true on its own merits. … This story is supreme; and it is true.  Art has been verified.  God is the Lord, of angels, and of men – and of elves.  Legend and History have been fused. “(Tree and Leaf, 1964) 

Christmas is not something to be picked apart and analyzed.  It is something to be experienced.  It is a story to be heard to and to be made a part of us.  Make time this Christmas to encounter the truth of story, and expect to be changed by it.

David+

See also:

How to Read a Story

What is Orthodoxy?

A reader writes in:

What is "Orthodoxy?"  I don't mean the Eastern version of Christianity - I know what that is. :) What I'm getting at is, what is considered the core, true Christian doctrine in the Episcopal Church?
You see, I am thinking of joining. I was brought up a Lutheran (LCMS), but ultimately found the faith too cold and distant for me. Then I got involved in the New Age movement, which I found didn't hold any water and also led to some disturbing experiences. After one particularly bad experience, I found I needed Jesus back, really bad, but not the Jesus I was raised with.

Now I am torn between ideas of what the Episcopal Church really teaches. From those who adhere to a more conservative Christianity, the church is infected with the same hippy-trippy, everybody's going to heaven, vague and noncommittal "faith" that can be found in, say, Unitarian churches - even that Jesus isn't really considered all that important, according to them. Others say it's just another traditional Protestant denomination.

Personally, I lean Anglo-Catholic, but I feel that a lot of the issues that are raised - homosexuality, female priests, even vestments - must be irrelevant in the light of actually accepting Christ as your savior. But does the church teach of this central role of Christ anymore? Is Jesus still the only way to the Father? Personally, I feel that not being God, I cannot with certainty state the eternal fate of others; yet, there is no denying the role of Christ as redeemer. I leave it up to God, and perhaps hope that there is grace for those who are good yet unbelieving. I am still compelled to live and share my faith, though. Of that I feel I can be certain.

So, are Episcopalians really Christians, or somewhat Jesus-leaning New Agers? My experience with my old ways taught me the real, awful outcome of believing oneself to be God, or all there really is. Who is Jesus, and God, in your Church? What is the Bible, and what is our purpose in life?

That’s a tall order, and I’ll link to some other articles on the role of the Bible in the Episcopal Church at the end of the post.  But the central question is one of “orthodoxy.” Are Episcopalians “orthodox” Christians or not?  It depends on your definition of “orthodoxy,” of which there are many.  For Eastern Orthodox Christians, it means a Christian who is part of the Orthodox Church.  For Roman Catholics, it means a Christian who accepts the all the Dogmas of that church.  For Fundamentalist Evangelicals, it means a Christian who accepts (among other things) the literal inerrancy of the Bible.  When the term is used in the Anglican tradition, it is often being used by conservative Anglo-Catholic or Evangelical separatists to define themselves over and against  the existing church.  That definition usually has to do with positions over human sexuality couched in scriptural language.

The word “orthodoxy” is made up of two greek roots, “ortho” meaning “right” and “doxos” meaning “Praise.”  Orthodoxy is literally using the right praise of God.  However, most people interpret it to mean something doctrinal.  Some start with the so-called “Vincentian Canon,” which was formulated by St. Vincent of Lerins in 434, “that which has been believed everywhere, always and by all.”  My experience is that those who quote it think that whatever they believe fits that category.  However, it is very hard to get down to something that basic.  The Trinity?  Not for many early Christians before the first church councils.  The two natures of Christ?  Not for the Oriental Orthodox Churches.  None of the fundamental doctrines of Christianity can be said to be held “everywhere, always and by all” except perhaps the Biblical exclamation, “Jesus is Lord!” and the reality of the Resurrection in some form.

Since “orthodoxy” is a hard target to hit, perhaps it would be better to ask “What do Episcopalians believe?” and then decide whether that accords with your understanding of the Christian faith.  The normative beliefs of Episcopalians are to be found in the Book of Common Prayer.  The Catechism on page 845 is a starting point.  One Anglican writer notes that the “Anglican Dogmas” are the Trinity and the two natures in one person of Christ.  Now, do ALL Episcopalians believe in the Trinity, the two natures of Christ, and the bodily Resurrection?  Nope.  But that’s no more an indication of the central teaching of the church than nuns fomenting for women’s ordination reflect the central teaching of the Papacy.  

The Anglican tradition has been one of a “Middle Way” between Catholicism and Protestantism, where membership has to do with participation in worship rather than affirmation of any catechism or confession.  This goes all the way back to the Elizabethan Compromise.  As a result, our doctrine IS a little vague, and intentionally so.  We are more a family of churches than a singular incarnation of Christianity.  There is room in the Anglican tradition for manifestations of various flavors of Christianity.  We have extreme gin-and-lace Victorian Anglo-Catholics, Bible-thumping Evangelicals, Crypto-Unitarians, liturgical Pentecostals and more variations on those themes than you can imagine.  Yes, there is a “hippy-trippy” element to parts of the Episcopal Church, but that part has always been there.  The first Unitarians in America at the time of the Revolution were Anglicans who removed Trinitarian references from their BCPs and we have always retained that edge.

No matter what certain individual members may beleive, as a denomination we affirm Jesus as our Lord, even while engaging in interfaith dialogue.  I highly commend the Statement on Inter-religious Relations and Interfaith Dialogue which was passed at our 2008 General Convention for an excellent exploration of how we uphold our truth claims about Jesus while talking to others.

Whether the Episcopal Church is a good fit really has to do with HOW you view your Christian faith.  If you are the kind of person who wants a strict set of doctrines to believe, and to think that everyone else in the church has that same exact set, the Episcopal Church is not and has never been that place.  Much of the turmoil in the last few years has been due to people finally realizing that.  However, if you are “playful” with your faith, and think you might have something to learn from someone who believes differently, we might be the place for you.  Our rock is Jesus as the second person of the most Holy Trinity.  The rest, while sometimes important, is commentary.

David+

Further Reading on AskThePriest related to this post:

Anglican Dogma

Taking the Bible Seriously, Not Literally

Generous Orthodoxy

What do Episcopalians Believe?

And one from my personal blog:

Who are these Revisionists?

Abortion and Forgiveness

A reader writes in:

“Hi there. I’ve got something to ask that I think I already know the answer to, but it’s something I want to say anyway. about 10 years ago, I was in a relationship with a girl who fell pregnant. We hadn’t been together long, were both young, and totally unprepared financially or mentally, and so it came as a massive shock. She told me she didn’t want to keep it, and I said I’d support her decision, so she had an abortion, which I understand to be a major sin. At the time, I had no interest in religion, but over the years I’ve become more and more interested in Christianity, to a point I’ve started asking questions about life and wondering about our meaning. I consider myself a good person, who’s kind, caring and moral, and anyone who knows me would say the same, only I know deep inside that because I allowed this to happen, that my soul is likely to go to hell. Again, I never used to believe in hell, but I’m beginning to think it’s an apt place for me due to what I did. I know it wasn’t my own decision, but the fact I agreed to it makes me just as responsible as my ex. Our relationship fell apart weeks later, she got involved with another guy and I was dumped, and I convinced myself that if we’d had the child, it would either have had to be adopted, or I would have had to look after it on my own and maybe even resent it, which would have been again, terrible to even do to an innocent, but the fact remains that almost 10 years after this event, not even my family know of it, and it’s beginning to eat away at my insides because I’m not convinced no matter how ashamed I am, and no matter how deep I regret it, that I’m going to be punished for it. Is there anything I can do to try to earn God’s forgiveness in this matter, or should I just accept my fate, live a good life, and then take my punishment? It feels kinda good to be able to try to confess this to someone religious, and I can only hope you don’t judge me too harshly in your reply. If I am to suffer God’s wrath, believe me, I’ll accept it, but I really hope there’s something I can do to try to earn redemption.”

I’m going to divide this into two responses, the moral theology response and the pastoral response.  In the moral theology response, I will address the issue of Abortion and the Episcopal church’s stance.  In the pastoral response, I will discuss forgiveness.

Moral Theology

Abortion is a complex question morally, as it has two sets of  goods in conflict.  One set is the woman involved.  In some cases, her life and/or health may be threatened.  Beyond that, there is always the question of her right to self-determination.  The other set are the rights  of the fetus - obviously a question of life.  Many people with pro-life opinions consider this an easy dilemma, as a fetus is a human being with a soul from conception.  Pro-choice people also sometimes consider this decided, as the rights of a woman to self-determination is the core principle.

But neither of these positions are as obvious as some make them out to be.  Who determines that a fetus is a human being from conception, rather than at some other point of development?  Jewish tradition from early times seems to be that a fetus is not a human being from a legal standpoint and there are varying ideas as to when “ensoulment” happens.  Christians have had varying ideas about when a fetus changes from being a part of the mother to a distinct human being.  And even if the fetus IS a human being, in the case of risk to the mother, is it moral to endanger a viable human life (the mother) in order to preserve the possibility of new human life?  Likewise the principle of self-determination is not so obvious.  If the fetus IS a fully human life, does not the right to life trump self-determination, at least as a matter of reproductive choice?  

Beyond the issues of individual morality, there are issues of how to deal with this as a society.   If we do wish to prohibit abortion, are there exceptions?  Does the answer change the further along a pregnancy gets?  Can we really force a woman, against her will, to carry a child to term?  Will legal prohibition actually stop abortion, or will it simply mean that the rich will have access by going to where they can get them while the poor return to the dangerous providers they had before Roe vs. Wade?

None of these are easy questions to answer.  And despite some opinions, there is no unified consensus as to how to answer these questions in either Judaism or Christianity.  Therefore, the Episcopal Church has a nuanced opinion, as reflected in the resolutions of our General Convention.  A good summation of them can be found in an article at Pew:

While the Episcopal Church recognizes a woman's right to terminate her pregnancy, the church condones abortion only in cases of rape or incest, cases in which a mother's physical or mental health is at risk or cases involving fetal abnormalities. The church forbids "abortion as a means of birth control, family planning, sex selection or any reason of mere convenience."

We tend to be pretty down to earth with moral issues.  While we recognize the moral problems with purely elective abortion, we also recognize that a woman’s body is her own and that legal prohibition is unlikely to resolve the underlying issues.  While legislating against abortion might make us feel better, there are good questions as to whether it would actually stop abortion, or simply make it more risky for the poor.  Decisions such as these are ones that should be made in consultation with a local pastor, who understands the people involved and the specifics of the case.

Pastoral Response

I’m not going to get into whether what you did was a sin, because it does not matter, you experience it as sin, that is, something that separates you from God.  Blame is not the point, the question is, is this keeping you from a full relationship with God?  The answer from you seems to be, “Yes.”

There is nothing you can do to earn redemption, because redemption is not earned, it is a gift freely given from God.  It was given to you before you were born through the life, death and resurrection of Christ.  There is no sin that cannot be forgiven (Except perhaps “Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.”  See Blasphemy Challenge.)  If you confess your sin, you are forgiven.  Most of the time, WE are the barrier to forgiveness, being convinced we are too unworthy to be forgiven.  But God is quick to forgive.  If your shame and guilt has become a stumbling block to your restoration to relationship with God, I would suggest finding a minister and making a confession to him or her.  Sometimes, another person is able to convince us better than we can ourselves. (See To Confess or Not To Confess)

Confess your sin, your shame, your guilt, and lay it at the foot of the cross.  God loves you, and God forgives you.

David+

For further reading see: Acts of General Convention regarding Abortion

The Church Militant, Expectant and Triumphant

A reader writes in asking questions about what is often referred to the divisions of the church into the "Church Militant, Church Expectant, and Church Triumphant."

First, I should point out that these defintions are from medieval Roman Catholic theology, so while they might work for Anglicans in some ways, they don't fit us exactly. In this scheme, those in the church on earth are referred to as the "Church Militant." (Although since the idea of holy war has fallen out of disfavor in Christianity, we might want to rethink whether that is an appropriate term.) Those who have died but are in an intermediate state, which Roman Catholics term Purgatory, are the "Church Expectant." Those who are in paradise wtih God already (which would be the saints in Roman Catholic terms) are the "Church Triumphant." This division of the church is usually used in teaching to point out that our community as Christians is larger than just those of us on earth today.

Of course, as Anglicans we run into problems immediately with this division because we don't traditionally hold to the doctrine of purgatory. (For a longer discussion of this, see "To Purge or not to Purge") In addition, Anglicans are not unified in their ideas about what happens to the soul after death or even if such a thing as an independent, eternal soul exists. One of the best explorations of this subject is the book For all the saints? by N.T. Wright, the Bishop of Durham. After examining the tradition and the Bilblical witness, he concludes:

"I have tried to articulate what I take to be the solid, substantial and central New Testament hope, based on the death and resurrection of Jesus and the gift of his Spirit: that all God's people in Christ are assured of being with Christ himself, in a glorious restful existence, until the day when everything is renewed, when heaven and earth at last become one, and we are given new bodies to live and love and celebrate and rule in God's new creation." - For all the Saints? p. 71

In the end, that is probably all we can say with surety from scripture, although we are always free to conjecture.

David+

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For all theSaints

It is also available as a Google eBook here.

There's Something About Mary

A reader asks a question about what the role of the Virgin Mary is in Anglican theology.  The answer, of course, is "Yes."  Anglicans take a wide variety of opinions on the role of Mary.  Some largely ignore her, while others have devotion that rivals Medieval catholicism.  Let's look at the closest thing we have to an official document on the matter, "Mary: Grace and Hope in Christ," which is an agreed statement issued in 2005 by the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission.  

"Among all the saints, Mary takes her place as Theotókos (God Bearer - this goes back to the First Council of Ephesus in 431) - ed.): alive in Christ, she abides with the one she bore, still ‘highly favoured’ in the communion of grace and hope, the exemplar of redeemed humanity,an icon of the Church. Consequently she is believed to exercise a distinctive ministry of assisting others through her active prayer. Many Christians reading the Cana account continue to hear Mary instruct them, “Do whatever he tells you”, and are confident that she draws the attention of her son to their needs: “they have no wine”(John 2:1-12). Many experience a sense of empathy and solidarity with Mary, especially at key points when the account of her life echoes theirs, for example the acceptance of vocation, the scandal of her pregnancy, the improvised surroundings of her labour, giving birth, and fleeing as a refugee. Portrayals of Mary standing at the foot of the cross, and the traditional portrayal of her receiving the crucified body of Jesus (the Pietà), evoke the particular suffering ofa mother at the death of her child. Anglicans and Roman Catholics alike are drawn to the mother of Christ, as a figure of tenderness and compassion." (p. 71)

There are many Anglican Evangelicals that would take issue with the statement that she "exercises a distinctive ministry of assisting others through her active prayer."  They would most likely insist that she, as well as all of the other faithful departed, rests in peace until the second coming.

On the other hand, there are many Anglican Anglo-Catholics who would be happy to affirm the two Marian dogmas promulgated by the Roman Catholic church.  The first is the Assumption, being that Mary was assumed bodily into heaven (see Mary, Mary!).  The second is the Immaculate Conception, which has nothing to do with the virgin birth of Jesus, but has to do with the idea that Mary herself was born without original sin (See Humility, Shame and Guilt).  

Historic Anglicanism generally claims that all things that are not explicitly contained in Scripture are up for debate and careful decision in the councils of the church.  To quote Article VI of the Articles of Religion:

"Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby,is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the Faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation."

Therefore, since the role of Mary is not explicitly spelled out in scripture, no position either pro or con on the Marian doctrines should be made "Dogmatic" (required belief.)  Neither should Marian prayer be required or prohibited, although we certainly believe that we have direct access to Christ.

Therefore, in most Anglican worship, devotion to Mary tends to be private instead of public.  Generally, the various Books of Common Prayer do not have Marian devotions in them, although variant versions such as the Manual of Anglo-Catholic Devotion do.  In a few parishes and in many of our monasteries Marian prayers and musical settings of the Angelus, Regina Coeli, and Salve Regina are a regular part of worship.

So the answer really is "Yes."  When talking about devotion to Mary in Anglicanism, one must use the classic dictum, "All may, none must, some should."

FrDavid+