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Changing Church Culture(s)

The Church loves to laud itself as family-friendly, but the Church is not as a whole a child-friendly place in many ways (I still remember to this day one of the leaders at my former parish walking by the room where our youth were building a haunted house, and him muttering under his breath for all to hear: “Fucking kids, mess up everything.”). And probably no more so than in dealing with female priests and pregnancy. More than one young married woman I know whose calling was to serve Christ’s Church as a priest has heard the dreaded “Not a good fit” meaning “We don’t want to deal with the possibility of a pregnant priest and that this might cost us.” But of course, Church people play “Minnesota Nice”, put on a smile on their faces and say something dishonest rather than be truthful and name their misgivings and prejudices (which get in the way, for all of you on call committees and vestries, of discerning God’s Holy Spirit). In fact, naming them might be the fiest step to clearing the air so that real discernment might take place. No where else are people so often able of getting away with bad behavior and call it God as often as they are in the houses of God. Read the rest here.

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Viriditas: Greening Power

And in pondering these beautiful gifts promising life and sustenance and God's care, I couldn't help but let go of writing up a post on guests and hosts and hospitality and our Lord's mandatum so apropos to The Rule, or my fears of stumbling blocks where others fear only scandal. I can only live in such a way, pray in such a way, work in such a way that amidst the din and clatter, those who might otherwise be turned off and turned away might be touched to taste, see, and hear, even in the faults of the Church, God's saving embrace in Christ. It won't matter so very much having found Christ if seeing our own hardness and division, they worship as Him instead as UCC, or MCC, or Lutheran, or Roman Catholic, or Orthodox, or Baptist.

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A Late Carnival Act: "Lord, though we change, thou art the same"

Recently, a student commented to me about the number of things Christian that secular society has taken away from and taken over for Christians, and that we have to take what’s ours back. Specifically, he was referring to Christmas and debates about Christmas carols in Advent. He pointed out that the secular world was taking over our tunes and we needed to take them back by asserting our difference by lifting up Advent. That even non-Christians, shudders, were going around caroling during the season of Advent. As if the Word cannot still make Himself known in the caroling of atheists. As if the word of “O Little Town of Bethlehem” or “Silent Night” cannot change the unsuspecting heart without the voice of the Christian.

I responded, “It isn’t so much that secular society has taken them away or even taken them over, but that in the West Christendom is receding and leaving all manner of our inheritance deposited throughout the secular landscape. Christian influence upon the saecula is immense in the Western world in nearly every aspect of life, from the social care networks of the so-called socialistic nations of Scandinavia and Germany, to the campaigns for values left, right, and now center, in the United States. Some of this may look secular, but it’s the result of a long history of Christ and cultures interacting.

But I will tell you a secret.

The handwringing and worry about the death of the Church is overrated and overstated.

The Church because we are not our own, but those who recognize God's self-gift, is already beginning to take new and unexpected shapes, shapes that themselves have antecedents in our historical memory banks. That is the beauty of being rooted in tradition even as we must grapple with tradition to apply the Gospel to our time, place, lives, and cultures, that the tradition places into reserve those things no longer skillful until the time that they are needed again.”

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My Dæmon

I really enjoyed Pullman's Dark Materials series. For those not familiar with the series, the story takes place in a world where everyone has a dæmon, an animal that is an external representation of your personality or soul. Children have dæmons that change shape until puberty, when they become fixed. So, a warrior might have a tiger daemon, a librarian might have a mouse, a henchman might have a dog...

Everyone in the book has a dæmon of the opposite gender except for the gay characters who have same-gender dæmons. This wasn't an option on the Website, so I chose myself female when asked for my gender, so my dæmon would be male to properly reflect this interesting difference in the book:




Thanks to B for pointing the way.

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Hermeneutics and Stuff

Continuing to Think About Archbishop Williams' Words

Fr. AKMA has given a thoughtful critcism to my criticism and a further reply to David Weinberger. His point is well-taken with regard to Archbishop Williams' use of "out of nothing", and I'll revisit this weekend. I think he also has hit on what I think grounded my flippant thoughts and continues to raise my concern in conception of the convocation (community) called by the Word in the Spirit in the proclamation of the Scriptures.

I have some thoughts in continuing the conversation, but likely, it'll have to wait until the weekend. I also have some further thoughts on the continuing criticism of modernity and secularity, by church leaders, not without some valid points, but I'm troubled that the criticism continues to be outward rather than inward to the church as well. To my mind, this is not separable from the matter of Scripture interpretation in Archbishop Williams' lecture. Fr. Bill Carroll alluded to this in his own criticism of Archbishop Williams' lecture, which I think raises my fundamental underlying concerns and may highlight differing ecclesiological and hermeneutical thinking between Fr. AKMA and Fr. Carroll, two scholars I respect.

Read the rest here.

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Mr. Davis Mac-Iyalla...Coming to America

Thanks to the hard work of Josh Thomas of The Daily Office fame, Mr. Davis Mac-Iyalla will be visiting The Episcopal Church this summer and speaking about, among other things, the "on the ground" realities in Nigeria as a gay person. He will speak at various parishes and diocesan locales, and is as I understand it, will address our Executive Council. Read more about it here.

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