Morgan: Time for Classical Anglicans to Act

From Page 2, of the St. Luke’s Sentinel, September 2007, by The Rev. Victor Morgan, Rector of St. Luke's Episcopal (EMC).

Time for classical Anglicans to act

It is high time for classical Anglicans in the West – particularly in the United States – to stop whining and start acting. Waiting for a pure church to emerge or for the Primates of the Anglican Communion to come and fix things has lead some Churchmen into inertia.

The Church on this shore does indeed need renewal, but where do we begin? Well, we must begin right where we are and with ourselves. Allow me to offer three preliminary suggestions:

(1) Quit apologizing and get busy. Okay, there are a number ‘odd ducks’ and gross embarrassments out there. I am thinking in particular of certain bishops and other church leaders who regularly make outlandish statements to the media. For example, one bishop announced several years ago he no longer believed in a theistic being. Well, I am sure his ‘revelation’ had about as much effect on the sovereign Lord of the universe as a child striking the Empire State Building with a plastic sledgehammer.

Also included in this group would be TEC / ECUSA’s Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori and others of her ilk who can’t say anything on any subject without using a mouthful of jargon -- “full inclusion”, “radical hospitality” and “Mother Jesus” being just three examples. Such prattle along with the vaporous and trivialized theologies that underlie it is enough to make Bishop Pike [the radical Bishop of California in the 1960s] blush!

With that being said, their statements and muddled theologies is not the Faith of the Church. No, the Faith of the Church is rooted in Holy Scripture, summarized in the ancient Creeds, and turned into praise and prayer in the Book of Common Prayer. This being the case: we have no reason for being ashamed, or apologetic, or silent.

Rather than apologizing, we need to say confidently to those outside the Church:

“Let me tell you about my Church. We are a people who unashamedly confess Jesus as Lord. We are a people who gladly acknowledge God’s authority over our lives as mediated through the Holy Scriptures. We are a people whose roots go deep in the past but whose mission is in the present and whose focus is on the future. We are a people who delight in worshiping God in what the Psalmist calls ‘the beauty of holiness’ . . . because we believe He is worthy of such worship. And finally, we are proud to be part of a great worldwide family – actually the largest non-Roman group of believers in the world -- that is, for the most part, robustly Biblical and orthodox. Do please join us on our journey of faith!”

(2), Recover and reemphasis the ministry of Biblical preaching. I say “recover and reemphasis” because, beginning in the 1960s -- and perhaps before) -- the sermon began to be marginalized. In some places, the full-fledged sermon consisting of exposition and application of the Scripture disappeared. Indeed, several years ago I had a visitor to St. Luke’s say -- perhaps partially tongue in cheek -- that he had never heard a Biblically based sermon in an Episcopal Church before visiting St. Luke’s!

Donald Coggan, late Archbishop of Canterbury, saw this trend developing over a quarter of a century ago and wrote:

“In recent years there has been, in practically all sections of the Church, a new emphasis on the parish Eucharist as the main service of Sunday worship. ‘The Lord’s service on the Lord’s Day for the Lord’s people.’ So we seem to have been recovering the pattern of the first days of Christian worship. How joyful such services can be – with music, with the participation of young and old, male and female, in the leading of it, at any hour of morning or evening as fits the area or the occasion. This is surely right. By this we are being enriched. In this I for one rejoice. At the same time I find myself asking questions. In the general euphoria which is the result of our recovery of eucharistic worship, what has become of the ministry of the Word?

“We live in days when, generally speaking, it seems wise to limit the length of a service to an hour and little more. Supposing that there are many communicants and few adminstrants, several hymns

and two or three lections, what is left for the preaching of the Word? All too often, the answer is, Very little – seven minutes, perhaps, or ten.

“The clergyman finds himself with a brief few minutes. ‘What can you do with that?’ whispers one of Screwtape’s emissaries to him. ‘Just a thought or two from the Gospel of the day. Never mind about the Epistles. Forget about the Old Testament. Give no thoughts to the whole counsel of God. Something off the cuff will do.’ It certainly will; but do what?

“If the tempter’s voice is listened to, if in too many churches for too long a time such advice is followed, what will happen? The results are easy to see. We shall rear a generation of Christians accustomed to the Eucharist but foreigners to many of the great truths of the Christian faith. They have never had the opportunity of listening Sunday by Sunday, to a steady, intelligent, interesting exposition of the things most surely believed among us. They have been fed with snippets, little its and bits, nice thoughts for the day, but nothing, or practically nothing, from which bones and spiritual tissue can be built. Having never tasted strong meat, they go out into the questioning world ill equipped to answer questions. Their mouths, like the mouth of the River St. Lawrence in winter, are frozen. They dare not speak, lest they make fools of themselves. They cannot witness – at least with their lips. They are spiritual Peter Pans.”

Who could argue that in many ways Coggan’s words were prophetic? Today, there is a lot of Biblical and theological illiteracy not just in society at large but in the Church as well. Perhaps this is one reason why the Episcopal Church in the United States has had such a hard go at it, often failing to make the distinction between the movings of the Holy Spirit and the movings of the spirit of the age.

But it does not have to be this way. At the present there is a lot of exciting work being done in the field of Biblical scholarship by credible scholars -- N.T. Wright being just one example. With such a wealth of scholarship at our disposal, there is no reason why this wealth should not enter the Church via the pulpit and be one agent by which God renews His Church.

3. Rediscover the imperative of the Great Commission.

Another name for the “imperative of the Great Commission” is evangelism. William Temple’s now-famous definition of evangelism can scarcely be improved upon:

“To evangelize is so to present Christ Jesus in the power of the Holy Spirit, that men shall come to put their trust in God through Him, to accept Him as their Saviour, and serve Him as their King in the fellowship of His Church.”

Sadly, in the West – again particularly in the United States – we Anglicans have not done as good a job evangelizing as we might have. In some quarters, there has been the attitude that the right sort of people will find us, and we will let them into our club if they measure up. But that is not the Biblical idea, is it? The Biblical idea is that we need “to seek for Christ’s sheep that are dispersed abroad”, to borrow a phrase found in the ordination service of the Prayer Book.

One reason American Anglicans have not done such a good job of evanglizing is because we have been put off by some of the antics and cheap tactics used by certain other groups. Strong-arming people into the kingdom is not our way.

Well, fine and good, no one is asking you to use such foreign and non-Biblical tactics. One of the best ways of evangelizing is to live in such a way that your life prompts questions from those outside the Christian fold. Words spoken at such moments are often the most persuasive. Of course, there are as many ways of announcing Jesus as there are Christians. Seek to find your own voice and methods, but do tell one more.