The current fragmentation of America’s Episcopal Church (ECUSA) is so very odd because of, if no other reason, its mere tardiness. Most major American Protestant denominations waged this kind of cultural war decades ago (and in some cases wage them still), but Episcopalians have largely been successful in staving off schism for many years—until now. Why?
Part of the reason might revolve around ECUSA’s diffusion of power, its unique church polity. While nominally ‘episcopal’—that is, having a centralized polity under the direction of priests, bishops, and archbishops—ECUSA is unique in its combination of differing church polities under one roof, a product perhaps of the Americanization of the old Anglican Church. The practical result is that most power in the ECUSA is concentrated at the diocesan level, which of course allows for a great deal of regional diversity within ECUSA. For example, the parishioners of the Diocese of South Carolina and the Diocese of Connecticut might have very little in common with one another, both culturally and theologically, and in many cases, the only sustained contact between dioceses occurs at the administrative level between church elites.
This regional diversity is not unlike a great many Protestant faiths in America, particularly those with a congregational polity, and by itself does not explain ECUSA’s ability to forestall schism, but one must remember that this more or less democratic system of church polity rests upon an episcopal superstructure, and the combination of the two has had the effect of creating a safety valve, allowing the Church’s discontented members to vent without feeling compelled to leave. The Episcopal Church, as well as its Anglican forebear, has a famous tendency toward concord and moderation—other denominations often prefer to call it a lack of vision and mission—and this characteristic of course has helped throughout the years to placate those disaffected with the evolution of the Church, but the unique blending of church polities is probably more directly responsible for the Church’s lack of schism in recent years. After all, there are layers upon layers of appeal and process giving savvy church politicians the ability to work around a difficult bishop and to carve out niches more in keeping with their particular interpretation of Christian doctrine.
All of this has given way in recent years to a renewed struggle between conservatives and progressives, very much like what other denominations encountered a generation ago. The lightning-rod issues for this struggle have been the acceptance of same-sex marriages and the ordination of openly gay clergy, stances which Church conservatives feel to be a bridge too far. The conflict reached a higher pitch of intensity with the June 2003 election of V. Gene Robinson, who is openly gay and non-celibate, as Bishop of New Hampshire. This act created a firestorm of dissent and signaled to many conservatives that the era of accommodation had reached a close.
This sense was further heightened this past summer when the House of Bishops elected as Presiding Bishop one Katharine Jefforts Schori, a noted progressive who has made no secret of her fidelity to liberal theological and cultural positions. Given the recent conflict over Robinson, many conservatives were hoping for a more conciliatory bishop and regarded Schori’s election as the ultimate rebuke. The recent move by several parishes across the country to transfer their allegiance to an African bishop is the result of conservatives reaching the end of their patience and tolerance.
Of course, at this point in the game no one is even sure whether such a transfer of church power is allowable. It is a well-respected tradition within ECUSA that dioceses and parishes mind their own business, creating, in effect, something of a no-compete clause—I won’t mind your sheep if you won’t mind mine. Clearly, the conflict between progressives and conservatives will sorely test this point, for the recent move by seven parishes in Virginia to leave the ECUSA will surely not be the last example of parishes leaving the Church.
The matter of leaving is not a clear one for several reasons, the issue of diocesan authority being just one. Who, for instance, will get the property and assets of the departing churches? Will they be able to retain their places of worship? These issues lead us into murky legal waters, and not being a lawyer, I will not sally forth with an analysis that, in all honesty, would be worthless.
But I would like to examine something far more appropriate to my expertise, and that is the use of argument and rhetoric by the respective sides in the conflict. Especially for a conflict such as this, there is an oddity in that both sides seek to lay claim to being the inheritors of, for lack of a better term, ‘historical Christianity.’ Typically, claiming a special relationship to tradition is the exclusive preserve of conservatives; after all, conservatives are usually trying to ‘conserve’ something. But in this case, both sides see themselves as the traditionalists attempting to thwart the advances of interlopers.
For example, in a 2003 article on conservatives’ call for realignment within ECUSA, USA Today’s Cathy Lynn Grossman reported the following:
“We are not leaving — they left us!” said the Rev. David Anderson, president of the American Anglican Council. He said conservatives “are the rightful heirs” of the church’s true doctrine, history and culture.
In a written statement, the council said it wants Episcopal leadership severely disciplined and urged to reverse their “unbiblical and schismatic actions.”
Virtue Online, which bills itself as the ‘Voice for Global Orthodox Anglicanism,’ by way of quotation, recently put it this way:
The historic Christian faith: At the risk of oversimplification and of the charge of arrogance, I want to argue that the evangelical faith is nothing other than the historic Christian faith. The evangelical Christian is not a deviationist, but a loyalist who seeks by the grace of God to be faithful to the revelation which God has given of himself in Christ and in Scripture. The evangelical faith is not a peculiar or esoteric version of the Christian faith—it *is* the Christian faith. It is not a recent innovation. The evangelical faith is original, biblical, apostolic Christianity.
Over and against this rhetoric, compare the views of Lionel Deimel, an Episcopal leader connected with the Progressive Episcopalians of Pittsburgh, who writes in his blog:
Many Episcopalians are perplexed by [Archbishop of Canterbury] Rowan Williams’ consistent favoring of the so-called “orthodox” elements of the Anglican Communion over the more traditionally Anglican ones, including the majority faction of The Episcopal Church. Why has a scholar and theologian seemingly forgotten the History of Anglicanism and betrayed what we all thought were his own liberal views?
Take, too, Schori’s own words on the matter of tradition and historicity. In November 2005, seven months before assuming the role of presiding bishop, she addressed the Church Divinity School of the Pacific, saying
The Anglican tradition in this country was born in a revolution against monarchy and its aftermath. We have been from our foundation a profoundly democratic church, insisting that priests and the laity hold council and govern in partnership with late-coming bishops. We have a colonial heritage that developed and maintained a church run by lay men and funded by lay women, often with a profound distrust of bishops with too much authority.
We are also heirs to a tradition that in the late 19th century affirmed that there were (and are) four things that hold us together as Christians. The Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral insisted that Jesus’ prayer “that we all may be one” is our earnest desire for all the churches of Christ. We acknowledge that all who have been baptized in the name of the Trinity are members of that larger church. That statement further acknowledged that human custom in terms of worship and discipline is mutable, and that we do not seek either absorption or schism in approaching the differences among us, and that unity among Christians is only possible by returning to the principles of the early church. Those essential principles of unity consist of: the scriptures of Old and New Testaments; the historic creeds; Baptism and Eucharist; and the historic episcopate, locally adapted.
Clearly, there are competing notions of what, exactly, ‘tradition’ constitutes, and as is usually the case, the truth rests somewhere in the middle. First, to complicate the conservative side of the story, Anglican tradition, such as it is, is more heterodox than conservatives would care to admit. I am no more than a dabbler in Anglican theology and history, but even my Dixie cup’s-worth of knowledge is able to discern historical examples of Anglican teachings that are both widely divergent as well as cotemporaneous. Take, for example, the struggles of the 17th century Church of England, which pitted Puritans and High Churchmen against one another. Is the ‘tradition’ of Anglicanism the anti-rationalist pietism of the Puritans, or the scarcely-veiled Platonism of divines such as one-time Archbishop of Canterbury John Tillotson? This is but one example, but clearly, this tension between Puritan and Latitudinarian—by various names and under various doctrines—has been an enduring feature of Anglicanism for several centuries. Indeed, one could interpret this latest conflict as part of a larger historical struggle, one in which the rationalist elements have typically had the upper hand, at least, since the Restoration of the English monarchy in 1660.
Still, the claims of today’s progressives to an historical Christianity are a bit overstated. Even amid the bitterest struggles between 17th century theologians, neither side in the argument put forward a theology very similar to the one being taught in some Episcopal seminaries today, such that, when progressive Episcopalians speak of theological tradition, they do so in a most watered-down, almost figurative way, for the belief system that lies at the heart of progressive Episcopal theology has more in common with, say, Unitarianism, than anything nominally ‘Anglican.’ This point was most forcefully and articulately voiced in a recent Washington Post op-ed by The Reverend John Yates and Os Guinness, members of the breakaway Falls Church in Virginia, who wrote:
The core issue for us is theological: the intellectual integrity of faith in the modern world. It is thus a matter of faithfulness to the lordship of Jesus, whom we worship and follow. The American Episcopal Church no longer believes the historic, orthodox Christian faith common to all believers. Some leaders expressly deny the central articles of the faith—saying that traditional theism is “dead,” the incarnation is “nonsense,” the resurrection of Jesus is a fiction, the understanding of the cross is “a barbarous idea,” the Bible is “pure propaganda” and so on. Others simply say the creed as poetry or with their fingers crossed.
It would be easy to parody the “Alice in Wonderland” surrealism of Episcopal leaders openly denying what their faith once believed, celebrating what Christians have gone to the stake to resist—and still staying on as leaders. But this is a serious matter.
In writing the following, Mr. Guinness and The Rev. Yates effectively summarized their position vis-à-vis the progressives:
There is so little that is distinctively Christian left in the theology of some Episcopal leaders, such as the former bishop of Newark, that a skeptic can say, as Oscar Wilde said to a cleric of his time, “I not only follow you, I precede you.”
Progressives would say that this theological evolution is part and parcel of Anglican ‘tradition’; conservatives would argue otherwise, hence the shared claim. Insofar as Anglicanism, at least since the late 17th century, has always strived toward tolerance, moderation, and rationalism, progressives indeed partake of that tradition; however, as to the substance of that tradition, rather than the mere styling of it, conservatives are not being merely petulant in observing how far their progressive foes have strayed from the historical faith that has, across time and geography, united Christians of most stripes.
Establishing a stronger claim to tradition probably has little relevance to the legal battles that are sure to follow, but in terms of public relations, they are very important. One imagines that there are many Episcopalians who care for neither side in the argument, who see both progressive and conservative as arrogantly schismatic, but as the uncompromising actions and rhetoric of both sides would indicate, each Episcopalian will be forced to choose up sides if they haven’t done so already. Ironically, the winner of the legal battles to come could find themselves to be merely the leaders of empty parishes, or as The Economist observed in its Christmas issue:
Conservative congregations are convinced they have history on their side. The balance of numbers in the global Christian community is shifting towards the conservative developing world. In America conservative churches are growing while the mainstream churches are stagnating.
But the schism could bring a tortuous legal conflict over tens of millions of dollars-worth of church property. It could also bring some deliciously comic scenes. The erstwhile multiculturalists of the Episcopal establishment could find themselves preaching to a dwindling band of ageing white liberals. And the lily-white conservative powerbrokers of George Washington’s old church could find themselves bowing the knee to the Episcopal authorities of far-off Kigali or Abuja.
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