The Witness: A Puritanical Power Play?

A Puritanical Power Play?
By P. Simon Mein
Thursday, April 21, 2005

The evangelical wing of the Episcopal Church, U.S.A. (ECUSA) has become much more audible in the last decade, and this is consonant with the wider and significantly more powerful trend in U.S. Protestant evangelicalism in general. ECUSA's situation is different from the general movement in many ways, in great measure resulting from the fact that the Reformation in England was very different from that on the Continent. From the death of Henry VIII to the accession of James I, more radical reformers (largely Calvinist) tried to steer the English Church away from the kind of via media envisaged by Elizabeth I. Even the distinctly moderate Church of England position about the nature of the Holy Communion was regarded as extreme (and popish) by the radical reformers. The appearance of the "Black Rubric" (the consecrated elements are symbols only) in the 1549 Prayer Book is an indication of a time when the Calvinists were in the ascendant; its removal by the equivalent of an executive order of Elizabeth shows her determination to hold the centre.

Americans Episcopalians might well take note of what happened when the Puritans got power. The English civil war of 1641-49 ended with the establishment of a republic, with Oliver Cromwell as the Lord Protector. Since there was no distinction between church and state, a strict puritan religious standard was imposed by parliament on every citizen. Private life became no longer private; all the details of daily (and nightly) living were scrutinized by the presbyters. In 1657, the celebration of Christmas Day was forbidden by law because it fell on a Friday fast day. (How would the "mall culture" of today's U.S.A. cope with that?) After a decade, there was a widespread desire to have the monarchy back, in spite of all its well-known faults and dangers.

Although the evangelicals of the Episcopal Church are clearly different from the "Christian Right," they share some fundamental(ist) ideas: insistence on the inerrancy of scripture, an emphasis on moral purity (closely akin to Calvin's horror of crossing boundaries and the pollution that would inevitably ensue: "From the language of disorder released by the collapse of boundaries, Calvin slipped easily into a language of impurity and pollution" -- William J. Bouwsma, John Calvin: A Sixteenth-Century Portrait, p. 36), and a tendency to refer problems to the question, "What would Jesus have done/said?" The answers often seem unambiguous, final and remarkably consonant with the theological stance of the enquirer.

From the death of Henry VIII to the accession of James I, more radical reformers (largely Calvinist) tried to steer the English Church away from the kind of via media envisaged by Elizabeth I. Even the distinctly moderate Church of England position about the nature of the Holy Communion was regarded as extreme (and popish) by the radical reformers.

The strategy of what Jesus would think about contemporary problems seems to ignore the fact that most western Christians today firmly believe in a central religious dogma that was quite unknown to Jesus, and hold a Platonic notion of the soul that is clearly incompatible with the doctrine of the resurrection.

The concept of an immortal soul encapsulated, so to speak, in a material, lumpish body is hardly found in the Old Testament (some references in late Wisdom literature) and Hebrew thought is strongly antithetical to dualism, "Shall we receive the good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad?" asks Job (2:10). The word "soul" (nephesh) might more properly be rendered (though inelegant options) "the whole living person": a material body suffused by the ruach, the Spirit, of God: a psycho-somatic unity. The synoptic gospels and the proto-Pauline letters are much closer to the Hebrew position than the Greek. Although it is clear that Hellenistic influences were being felt within Judaism of the first century C.E., the New Testament nowhere suggests that an immortal soul or spark of life goes on at death; even less that this could be seen in Neoplatonist terms as an escape from prison; at death, they said, the soul escapes the shackles of the flesh. The centre of the apostolic preaching is not that "part" of Jesus didn't die, but that he died, died absolutely, and that God raised him from the dead, giving him an entirely new kind of existence, and that that is what God will do for others. All this suggests that the "what Jesus would have done/said" test is applied remarkably selectively.

We need to note the re-emergence of a powerful evangelical movement in the early 19th century, fuelled by an inability or, perhaps, a refusal to take note of the new knowledge of the natural sciences, especially, at first, of geology. At the same time, immense strides were made in an historical approach to ancient documents from which the biblical corpus was, naturally, not exempt. [The same rejection of historical research -- the anti-modernist oath of 1907 -- and deep suspicion of empirical science -- Galileo's works were still on the index -- was at work in the Roman Catholic Church]. As the 19th century progressed, it became harder and harder to maintain an iron-clad view of biblical inerrancy without resorting to ridiculous stratagems (God put the fossils in strata to test our faith), by denial or by building up an ideology that was strong enough to resist empirical evidence and the force of reason. It is hardly reasonable to insist that the world was created in 4004 B.C.E. in the face of such massive geological evidence or to hold that the "autographs" of the New Testament are "absolutely infallible" (A.A. Hodge, Outlines of Theology, 1879) when not a single one exists and the approximately 5,000 manuscripts contain dozens of doctrinally significant variants and thousands of smaller inconsequential ones. These positions can be held in the face of compelling evidence only by someone in the grip of a very powerful ideology, which, one suspects, has a considerable component of the need to exercise control over others. That, sadly, seems to be the case of the tiny minority in the Episcopal Church.

In 1657, the celebration of Christmas Day was forbidden by law because it fell on a Friday fast day. (How would the "mall culture" of today's U.S.A. cope with that?) After a decade, there was a widespread desire to have the monarchy back, in spite of all its well-known faults and dangers.

It may well be that ECUSA is not the only branch of the Anglican Communion that faces what is, in effect, a continuation of the Puritan battle to take over and abolish the centralist position of the Anglican tradition, but because of the actions of its General Convention, it has become a kind of lightning rod for the anger of the evangelical wing. In August 2003, Dr. Jane Shaw, dean of divinity of New College, Oxford, preached a powerful sermon on this theme. She saw that what is at issue is not primarily a matter of sexual ethics at either a theological or a pastoral level, but a power play She ended by saying "They did it once, we must not let them do it again."

The actions of the Episcopal Church at General Convention and at diocesan levels have been entirely within the canons of this autonomous branch of the Anglican Communion (an ill-defined entity at the best of times), but the power group is, by its own admission -- see the Chapman letter, below -- ready to behave illegally to take over and supplant the majority. This is an entirely typical Puritan ploy. Episcopalians might well take note of what has happened in the Southern Baptist Conference. A power coup there has hijacked that influential and long-established branch of the church, replacing moderation with extreme positions, flexibility with rigidity and inclusiveness with exclusion. A large percentage of theologians teaching in the seminaries before the power takeover have been forced out, and now women are no longer suitable candidates for ordination.

If the group led by Bishop Robert Duncan of Pittsburgh -- supported by the extreme conservatives in Africa and the Province of the Southern Cone, and (sad to say) not firmly reprimanded by the Archbishop of Canterbury for schismatic and disruptive behavior -- are allowed to continue their power play, I have no doubt that similar results will follow in a revamped via dextra. In all the uproar, there has been a total silence about women's ordination. The Windsor Report (paras. 12-21) suggests that the way in which the Anglican Communion came to the ordaining of women is an exemplary paradigm of how the Communion reaches decisions without threatening unity. This view was strongly and quite rightly challenged by the Rt. Rev. Ann Tottenham, one of the area bishops of the Diocese of Toronto. Among parishes attracted to the separatists are those who from the start have not accepted women priests and have disliked, and often not used, the 1979 Book of Common Prayer, and a handful of bishops has been allowed to not ordain women candidates. So we could expect a reversal of policy in this matter if the power play succeeds. We might also expect to see our seminaries undermined and pressured to conform to the pattern of, say, the Trinity Episcopal Seminary for Ministry.

If this sounds somewhat overstated, a consideration of the letter from the Rev. Geoff Chapman, first made public on January 14, 2004 by The Washington Post, should remove that idea. Mr. Chapman writes on behalf of the American Anglican Council and their Bishops' Committee on Adequate Episcopal Oversight (AEO), though since the letter was made public the Bishops' Committee has, not surprisingly, strenuously denied that it represents their position. It is a very long letter in which he outlines the strategy to take over ECUSA, retaining the finances and becoming the "official" branch of the Anglican Communion (which grew out of the Church of England as the British Empire expanded) in the U.S.A:

This is an entirely typical Puritan ploy. Episcopalians might well take note of what has happened in the Southern Baptist Conference. A power coup there has hijacked that influential and long-established branch of the church, replacing moderation with extreme positions, flexibility with rigidity and inclusiveness with exclusion.

Our ultimate goal is a realignment of Anglicanism on North American soil committed to biblical faith and values, and driven by Gospel mission. We believe in the end this should be a "replacement" jurisdiction with confessional standards, maintaining the historic faith of our Communion, closely aligned with the majority of world Anglicanism, emerging from the disastrous actions of General Convention (2003).

Later on, Chapman writes:

Stage 2 will launch at some yet to be determined moment, probably in 2004. During this phase, we will seek, under the guidance of the Primates, negotiated settlements in matters of property, jurisdiction, pastoral succession and communion, If adequate settlements are not within reach, a faithful disobedience of canon law on a widespread basis may be necessary".

It may not be surprising that a group which refuses to recognize the legality of the actions of the General Convention was secretly planning to disobey the canons, and rejoiced in a note of support from the late pope about 18 months ago.

[Richard] Hooker worked out the need to balance scripture with reason and with tradition. Habgood points out that without this balance it is all too easy to seize on a particular method of scriptural interpretation, and, in the case of the Puritans, this led to "perfectionist public policies with results that are all too apparent. . ."

As I was just finishing this essay, I came across the following passage in the Times Literary Supplement (TLS), and I cannot resist quoting it. It is in a review of a book by Nathaniel Lachenmeyer about superstition in general and the number thirteen in particular: "In vain may hidebound historians bleat of the Church's early reverence for thirteen. Those determined to hold to a superstition" (might one read ideology?) "will hardly be swayed from their conviction by anything so insubstantial as the factual record" (Michael Kerrigan, TLS, March 4, 2005, p. 32).

The current situation in the Anglican Communion is tragic; it threatens the hard-won and remarkable polity that developed following the Elizabethan Settlement, a polity established by much blood, sweat and tears. The greatest of the intellectual founders of the classic Anglican tradition was Richard Hooker. John Habgood (late Archbishop of York) pointed out recently in a review article that "he has to be read against the background of an aggressive Puritanism." It was in this context that Hooker worked out the need to balance scripture with reason and with tradition. Habgood points out that without this balance it is all too easy to seize on a particular method of scriptural interpretation, and, in the case of the Puritans, this led to "perfectionist public policies with results that are all too apparent, even today, in parts of the United States" (T.L.S., March 25, 2005, p. 6).

As I have tried to show, the results are also evident within in the Anglican Communion. The core issue remains what it was for the authors of Essays and Reviews in 1860: how do we read the Bible in the light of continuously advancing historical knowledge and in the light of the
amazing scientific insights to the wonderful created universe in which we
find ourselves? If we are to avoid the serious potential dangers that lie ahead we shall need patience, humility and flexibility. Could we even accept that it might be better to be a heretic than a schismatic?

The Rev. Canon P. Simon Mein is a retired priest and educator living in Lewes, Del. He was ordained in England in 1955 and taught biblical studies, doctrine and church history at Kelham Theological College, and as its warden he forged a close working relationship with Nottingham University. Simon's more than two decades of ministry in the U.S. includes service as the examining chaplain for the bishop of Delaware, and he has been a prolific writer of reviews and articles in numerous publications. He may be reached by email at nsmein@earthlink.net.