Anglican Way Institute Continues to Thrive

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Anglican, Anglican Way Institute, Anglicanism, AWI, Barton Gingerich, Christology, Church of the Holy Communion, councils, creed, Dallas, ecclesiology, Gerald Bray, Ray Sutton, theology

The Council of Nicea (Photo Credit: Facebook)

by Barton Gingerich (@bjgingerich)

Last week, young classical Anglicans gathered at the Church of the Holy Communion in Dallas to learn about “Creeds, Councils and Christ.” Aimed at Christians under thirty and clergy, the Anglican Way Institute highlights deep theological teaching and extensive liturgical worship. This year’s featured speaker was the Rev. Dr. Gerald Bray, Church of England minister and professor at the evangelical Beeson Divinity School.

The mastermind behind AWI remains one of its founding visionaries, the Rt. Rev. Ray Sutton, bishop coadjutor in the Diocese of Mid-America of the Reformed Episcopal Church (REC). When asked about the conference’s purpose, Bishop Sutton explained, “The Anglican Way Institute really started with a desire to perpetuate this way of being a Christian that we call Anglican. And it began in a time where there was much reorganization of Anglicanism going on. It seemed that there was a need to try to articulate what this Anglican Way is – to provide teaching.” “[T]here was a concern to see beyond generations, to catch hold of this way for which all the churches with liturgies and ancient traditions in the West have been frontally assaulted for decades and told to give up their traditions to reach people through culture,” he furthered, “And they’ve given up their traditions, and they haven’t really reached more people because they gave up their traditions.”

Bishop Sutton opened the conference with his own lecture, observing that “[e]ven when some Christians claim ‘No creed by Christ, no book but the Bible,’…but even those churches have doctrinal statements, Sunday School material, hymns, songs–all statements of faith.” He highlighted Lancelot Andrewes’ five-fold approach to Anglican spiritual authority: one Bible, two Testaments, three creeds, four councils, and the first five centuries of the Church. Classical Anglicans have long focused on these sources in their faith and practice as a means of protecting both catholicity and orthodoxy. Sutton noted that the councils and creeds speak to a broad range of issues, but especially the nature of Christ, the Trinity, and the Church.

Professor Bray organized his four plenary messages according to the Nicene statement “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church.” He tailored his concerns to a personal level, hoping to avoid an abstract discourse of theology. In his first address, he declared, “We have a message that cannot be diluted, compounded, exchanged, or optional.” Jesus, the Incarnate God, came down from heaven to provide the only way of salvation to mankind. This exclusive message proved almost as unpopular back then at the Church’s early days as it does today: Rome tended to favor unity over truth. The Jewish people before Christ tended to be left alone since they kept to themselves; the early Church, on the other hand, went out into the world to “bring the message of an exclusive Deity to the world.”

In his explanation of holiness, Bray worried that, after the socially-engaged Holiness Movement, “holiness becomes something that must be visible—just like the Pharisees.” The British theologian called for a revived understanding of holiness as a distinctness and separateness of God’s people. “Often, holiness is a whole lot of little, non-heroic things, but they’re the difference between life and death.”

Bray also discussed catholicity, reminding that, if I Corinthians 8 is trustworthy, personal feelings and preferences can cause many of the controversies within the Church. “You can go up into the pulpit and preach Buddhism, and only one or two people will notice…People will notice other things.” Thus, it is important to learn what matters and what does not in order to preserve true catholicity—“catering to everybody leads to chaos.” Bray recommended the Book of Common Prayer as a helpful tool to achieve this kind of informed unity.

In addition, he commented on how apostolicity looks like on a practical level. “[The second epistle to St. Timothy] is about handing on the apostolic message…This tradition is a way we’re connect to the apostles.” Bray highlighted the fact that it was a miracle that different groups did not go their separate ways in the early Church. Even in the midst of illegality, persecution, and geographical separation, the Christian forefathers attested to one apostolic deposit and message: “We are of Jesus.”

In typical Anglican fashion, Bray saw a split between the Church and orthodox belief as a false dichotomy. He coyly surmised, “In the Prayer Book tradition, we have both faith and order. Together, they are like a jug of milk. Order is like the jug—if it has no milk, then it’s simply empty and you can only use it for decoration, really. However, faith is like milk. If it’s spilled all over the floor, you can lap it up if you wish, but you never know what you’ll pick up with it.”

Workshop sessions proved erudite yet useful. Eschewing both detached ivory-towered academics and dumbing down, AWI assigns active clergy to teach conference participants. Workshops tended to focus on particular ecumenical councils, the harm of heresy, and Anglican spirituality (which springs from patristic and monastic sources). Participants also enjoyed much time in congregational prayer and sacramental worship. Especially noteworthy was AWI’s music, thanks especially to the formidable talents of organist Christopher Hoyt and choir director Andrew Dittman.

Combining theological depth with vibrant worship, the Anglican Way Institute represents an important foundation for church renewal in the coming years.

Staunching Baptist Decline

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Baptist, Barton Gingerich, Calvinism, Church, decline, discipleship, ecclesiology, Ed Stetzer, evangelical, evangelism, Jonathan Merritt, Mainline Protestant, membership, Religion News Service, SBC, Southern Baptist, Southern Baptist Convention

(Photo Credit: Baptist Press/Adam Covington)

by Barton Gingerich (@bjgingerich)

Over at Religion News Service, Jonathan Merritt has taken up keyboard and monitor to advise the Southern Baptist Convention on how to avoid a disastrous membership slump. His article is well worth a read. The SBC’s statistics guru, Ed Stetzer, announced that America’s largest Christian denomination is starting to see numbers reminiscent of the old Mainlines before their decline. It is interesting to see the largest Baptist fellowship struggle against dropping baptisms and rising abandonment. This seems unusual (at least for those within the denomination) since the SBC bucked the mainline trend by 1) recovering its seminaries (and thus its denominational leadership) for orthodoxy in the 70s and 80s, 2) holding to an exclusivist (thus inherently evangelical/missionary) view of soteriology, and 3) sacrificial church planting, with great success in reaching the burgeoning Latino community. So what is the problem now?

Merritt offers three suggestions. First, harsh in-fighting over nonessentials needs to end. Misplaced priorities regarding entertainment, political candidates, the Sinner’s Prayer, and—most recently—Calvinism have driven people out of the pews. The latter’s popularity has been fingered for the SBC’s membership plateau; however, as Stetzer’s research shows, the presence of full “5 point” Reformed Baptists makes up only about 16%  of the denomination (an increase from former studies, but a minority nevertheless). Plus, accusing Calvinists for neglecting evangelism is a fairly steep claim considering their impressive missionary track record. Merritt suggests people are leaving the SBC over noisy, stressful quibbles. He concludes, “If the Southern Baptist Convention wants to regain the credibility, interest, and relevance it has lost, the denomination must learn to put first things first. Namely, sharing the gospel through missions and showing the gospel through acts of service, compassion, and justice.”

Second, Merritt calls for an end to political partisanship. He cites several petitions the Convention issued that are clearly regrettable in hindsight. While there is a troubling nationalism to be found in cultural Southern Baptism, some may find the young writer harsh when he worries that “the denomination continues to operate like a Republican lapdog….” Perhaps this springs from the angst of being raised in the Baptist subculture. Speaking from my own experience of being raised in a Mainline church, I would have preferred most of Merritt’s embarrassments to being alienated, harangued, and scandalized for my (and my family’s) support for free markets, just war, self-defense, life, and marriage. While I was mercifully preserved from much ham-handed purity culture, I was never warned about the tremendous danger and wickedness of sexual sin from pastors and Sunday school teachers (a crueler dereliction of duty, I would argue). When looking at the intellectual resources commonly available to most Christians during the Sexual Revolution and following, it is quite surprisingly that Moral Majoritarians made it through as well as they did. Though their approach earned some stinging experiences, they should not be thrown under the bus altogether. At my own alma mater, I knew and befriended many who were burned-out culture warriors. The “take back the nation” controversies are harmful, but so too would be a complete acquiescence to nefarious social currents we see today. Many failed to keep the balance, and I expect will fail again. Nevertheless, I speak as a mellow historian/cradle mainliner, so maybe we should swing on a generational pendulum when it comes to such political issues. After all, Merritt himself has added not only life and marriage, but also immigration and environmentalism to his political dossier.

Third, the SBC needs to listen to people, especially the 18-39 age bracket. Bitter hard-heartedness has alienated the young. I defer to Merritt’s experience and judgment on that front; I was not raised nor am I currently a member of an SBC congregation. I would only warn against the American worship of youth. In the United Methodist Church, declining Westerners fawn over inexperienced young pastors and laymen (more so than the spirit of I Timothy would suggest), while Africans from vibrant conferences show deference to their wizened elders. Truth is the truth, no matter one’s age, but I must confess that I still see gray hair as a mark of honor and authority.

What I think we’re seeing is a continuation of that great American tradition, institutional disloyalty (chronicled so well in Ross Douthat’s book Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics). When Merritt announces, “A new day is dawning in American religious life in which Christians of many stripes seem to be running fast and hard from denominations, particularly those whose behavior mirrors the descriptions listed above,” he is in error—not over the phenomenon, but over the timing. The exodus from “namebrand” Christianity—or rather, ecclesiastical structures—has been a common trend over the past forty years or more. Contemporary Americans, the atomized individualists we are, prefer our own self-defined spirituality. Nondenominational congregations and parachurch organizations fit our idea of discipleship more than “stifling” bodies that worry about orthodoxy and catholicity. Infighting and theological issues heating up during a synod? Better leave before getting too stressed out and while one can save face.

Some evacuate the SBC because of its bad PR. Popular culture—especially the entertainment and news industry—vilifies the SBC. The label is toxic–Southern Baptists have been turned into bogeymen. Some people may abandon the denomination because of its unacceptability in an increasingly liberal society. I think that Merritt would agree that Baptists and other evangelicals should not cater to this kind of preoccupation. It would create a church ready to flake out on unpopular cultural issues.

But this does point to a broader issue that the SBC needs to tackle—what kind of culture is it creating for its members and what sort of disciples are its congregations forming? To put it roughly, what should Southern Baptists “look” like—how should they act and what should they believe? How is the faith passed on to the next generation? Salvation experiences ring hollow if those involved abandon Christ’s Body; retention and growth are just as important as initial birth. How is the Church preserved? By what vehicle(s) is the person, message, and work of Jesus Christ conveyed to others? Are our individualistic, anti-family, anti-communion, anti-hierarchical sensibilities a liability in such a project? I’ll warrant that Jonathan Merritt and the SBC aren’t the only ones who need to be asking these questions.

From the Brain of Bart: Questioning Parachurch-ism

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Barton Gingerich, D. G. Hart, Deconstructing Evangelicalism, ecclesiology, ecumenism, evangelical, evangelicalism, fundamentalism

A Gentleman’s Debate by Benjamin Eugene Fichel (Photo Credit: Fine Art America)

I’ve started reading Deconstructing Evangelicalism for my commute. I enjoy perusing D. G. Hart‘s works not necessarily because I am a Two Kingdoms thinker but because he asks really good questions. Take, for example, this observation: evangelicalism lacks a common “church polity, creed, and worship.” Thus, it is “without a self-conscious notion about ministry, a common theology, and a coherent understanding of worship.” By the latter, Hart means the shape of service or liturgy–what may be called ordered worship. Though evangelicalism tends to avoid reliance on forms, it does not have any substantial, enforceable rules for worship practice. The issue of creed and church polity go hand-in-hand: “In effect, the evangelical movement of the late twentieth century replaced the church with the parachurch…”

As Hart proves through the historical record, before the 1940s, both fundamentalists and revisionists claimed the Evangelical title–it functioned almost the same way as “Protestantism.” Bear in mind that Hart is speaking here of what may be called neo-evangelicalism, which sought to extricate itself from any belligerent fundamentalist roots while retaining vibrant piety and eschewing liberal skepticism. The founding of this movement is marked in the 1940s and 1950s by the founding of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), Christianity Today, and Billy Graham’s rise to revivalistic ministry.  Those mechanisms necessary for authoritative creed (and in some Protestant traditions, confessions) simply aren’t there–instead, we are given coalition-building, big personalities, and a nebulous means of expulsion for those somehow dubbed heretics.

Question: What else is left for unity? What really does matter if not the nature of the Church, her beliefs, and her way of forming souls through worship? Are we really that surprised that the post-1940s Evangelical movement is unraveling and spiraling out of control in a matter of three generations or so? [Examples: NAE’s leftward trajectory, the hyper-politicization of Graham’s legacy for the GOP, the Driscoll/RHE divide, the various emergence/radical movements].

On the Odds of Roman Catholic “Womenpriests”

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Barton Gingerich, ecclesiology, female ordination, Institute on Religion and Democracy, IRD Blog, Judith Levitt, New York Times, ordination, Roman Catholic, Roman Catholic Church, sacrament, theology, women

(Photo Credit: Bridget Mary’s Blog)

The Sunday opinion pages of The New York Times certainly didn’t disappoint last weekend. Former IRD intern Julia Polese brought to my attention Judith Levitt’s trumpeting for Roman Catholic women’s ordination. The author paints a foreboding picture of a power-mad Vatican. After all, the RCC leadership threatened immediate excommunication to dissident bishops who ordain female clergy. Nevertheless, bishops have tried to pass on the sacerdotal office to women, albeit in anonymity and secrecy. Thus springs the “Roman Catholic Womenpriests.” Levitt reports that a determined minority have pursued this ecclesiastical cause since the post-Vatican II 1970s. She is no longer a practicing Catholic herself but seemed to relish how “deeply it affected me emotionally…[t]he first time I saw a female Roman Catholic priest on the church altar, dressed in traditional robes, performing the Eucharist and all of the rituals that I grew up with.” Likewise, she rejoiced at the since-exploded “discovery of a scrap of papyrus making reference to Jesus’ wife, and to a female disciple.”

Unfortunately for Levitt and her feminist friends, several theological factors stand in the way of women’s ordination in liturgical, sacramental Christian traditions. By this latter phrase, I mean those communions that practice ancient worship forms and affirm such sacramental ideas as the Real Presence of Christ’s Body and Blood in Holy Communion (think Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, high church Anglican, old school Lutheran).

The first hurdle is by far the most universal and can be found in even low-church Protestant circles: Scriptural hermeneutics. Passages such as 1 Timothy 2:12 present clear prohibitions against women exercising authority over men in a congregational setting. A great many Protestant bodies have concluded that this command results from cultural sensibilities rather than permanent principles. More traditional bodies find this interpretational method to be unsustainable and quite the problematic exegesis. They contend that by nature priests can only be men just as by nature marriage is between only a man and a woman. These latter exegetes believe that the context bolsters the prohibition and that this (incredibly unpopular) notion points to a particularly Scriptural metaphysic and theology of sex and gender.

The second obstacle is tradition, which has been the darling for the Vatican’s PR department. That no woman had ever been ordained by a legitimate Christian body for nearly 1800 years is no minor precedent. Similarly, the Christian priesthood is seen as a fulfillment and continuance of the Old Testament priesthood, which was also all-male. Even today, the term “priestess” carries with it the overtones of heathenry and idolatry. Protestant bodies began allowing for women pastors when pressured by the various feminist movements and Enlightenment principles; the Methodists, for example, became early proponents of lady ministers in the mid 1700s. However, all the apostles were male, and the Roman Catholics (and others) see the bishopric as an apostolic office. If Christ set this example while overturning so many other human expectations, the Church should be wary of pursuing such ecclesiastical novelties.

The third point is the most sacramental. In the Eucharist, the priest fulfills a sacerdotal duty, standing in a visible intermediary position of Christ to His Church as well as representing the Church to Christ. Just as Christ is a man, so the presbyter must be a man. The priest is the avenue through which God works. The priest is the waiter while Christ is, quite literally, the host. More Zwinglian Protestants don’t have this holdup, since the pastoral office is mainly concerned with teaching, leading vision, and counsel—all of which women can do just as well as men.

In sacramental traditions, a metaphysical impossibility stands in the way. Only a man can bear the host, but not all men are called to such a vocation. Coupled with such a high view of the Lord’s Supper is a great regard (in various degrees) for Mary. She bore the host as well, but in a completely different way. Suddenly, 1 Timothy 2:15 (taken in context with the rest of the chapter) loses its apparent chauvinism when one considers that Christian mothers seem to participate in this mystery. Again, it can only be performed by a woman, but not all women are called to it. Pretty cool, eh?

Not according to the Roman Catholic Womenpriests, who struggle against this mass of incredible theological inertia. Their willingness to ignore their own Church’s teaching belies a paltry understanding of Roman Catholic dogma, a negligible commitment to a theology of the body, and a loose grasp of historical awareness. If one truly adheres to a Real Presence view, he cannot ignore the emphasis on the supernatural breaking into the physical realm. Emotional satisfaction, good intentions, a mature levelheadedness, and vocational desire cannot deconstruct the brute physical reality. Such efforts would be, in a word, Gnostic. The fans of female ordination in the RCC are already radically revisionist as it is. Moreover, the secrecy of their ordaining bishops truly harms their credibility. If these womenpriests desire a religious home that will allow them to carry out their liturgy in peace, dozens of other Christian bodies stand at the ready to welcome them. If you’re really into women’s ordination, maybe the Magisterium isn’t for you.