Not Weighing Our Merits

Xmas Only 344 Days Away

2012-01-22T04:55:00.000-08:00

Although it seems increasingly likely that I will never be able to take advantage of its precepts, no request for an engagement of lay preaching having been received by me, D. Martyn Lloyd Jones’ book Preachers and Preaching has been for me a greater blessing than any of his publications except Spiritual Depression, and is one of the great Christian books of the Twentieth Century. By seeing what a preacher should be trying to accomplish in the pulpit, the layman learns how to hear and understand that which is being done.

I have sometimes wondered how one would give this book to a minister as a gift without giving offence. Would it not be like giving him a book entitled How to Start Giving Good Sermons, And The Sooner The Better?

Well, now there is a way. Zondervan has just published a 40th anniversary edition of Preaching & Preachers by Martyn Lloyd-Jones. This classic book on containing the original text along with reflections by six well known American preachers, John Piper being the one most familiar to me. It is available at a price very reasonable for a Christian book these days, $13.79, from Westminster Books, which advises us by way of a bright red banner that it is “Now Shipping to Canada”. Sample pages from the book may be found
here. You can explain to your pastor that you're sure that his copy of the book must be worn and dog-eared and that you thought he might appreciate having this anniversary edition, little though he himself might need it.

I. Packer said of Lloyd Jones that he had "never heard such preaching”; it came to him "with the force of electric shock, bringing to at least one of his listeners more of a sense of God than any other man."

(h/t Desiring God)

An aside: ignore what Lloyd-Jones has to say about Stanley Baldwin in the sample pages linked to. Lloyd-Jones was a Welshman and never lost his disdain for English politics and political figures, despite his long ministry in London. Baldwin was in fact the first English politician to master the medium of radio, giving popular fireside chats well before Franklin Roosevelt gave his more famous ones.

Abhorring a Vacuum

2012-01-15T16:00:00.000-08:00

The U. S. National Conference of Catholic Bishops has sponsored a
letter promoting traditional marriage and warning of the growing threat to religious freedom created by the state’s insistence that same-sex marriage be treated as equivalent to traditional marriage for all purposes. The letter itself is sensible in downplaying the possibility that ministers will be forced to perform same-sex marriages. That is not a realistic possibility. The real threat is interference through so-called “civil rights” laws with churches’ secular activities of all kinds:

Religious marriage counselors would be denied their professional accreditation for refusing to provide counseling in support of same-sex "married" relationships. Religious employers who provide special health benefits to married employees would be required by law to extend those benefits to same-sex "spouses. "Religious employers would also face lawsuits for taking any adverse employment action—no matter how modest—against an employee for the public act of obtaining a civil "marriage" with a member of the same sex. This is not idle speculation, as these sorts of situations have already come to pass.

It’s good to see churches being able to come together across denominational lines for joint actions such as this. The UCCB press release says:

Signatories include leaders from Anglican, Baptist, Catholic, Evangelical, Jewish, Lutheran, Mormon, and Pentecostal communities in the United States. Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan, archbishop of New York and president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, was one of the four signing Catholic bishops.

Anglican? What are the Anglicans doing signing this? Everyone knows that the Episcopal Church doesn’t support anything that isn’t endorsed by the New York Times editorial board, the Socialist Party of America, or preferably both. At the moment they still officially believe in traditional marriage, but that’s with a nudge and a wink.

Looks like the Catholics didn’t bother with TEC. The “Anglican” signature on the letter is that of the Most Rev. Robert Duncan, Archbishop of the Anglican Church of North America.

This should not be taken as tantamount to “recognition”by the Roman Catholic Church or anything like that, but is a promising development nonetheless. Because there’s a vacancy in the Orthodox Christian team. There’s only 8 players in place on the diamond, only 10 defenders on the gridiron, only 4 cagers on the parquet floor; nobody is occupying the position of “Anglicanism”. There’s no official voice emanating from TEC speaking for orthodox Christianity as it has been understood, well, forever. So long as ACNA can stay united it can be sucked up by that vacuum -- which is good, because that can make it, for orthodox Christians, the true voice of Anglicanism in North America.

On The Phrase "Protestant Reformed Church"

2011-08-21T05:37:00.000-07:00

Lord Hugh Cecil was one of the leading laymen of the Church of England in his time, ative in all matters legal whether in Parliament or Synod. A bill was introduced in Parliament, one not important in itself, which repeatedly refered to the Church of England as the "Protestant Reformed Church". Lord Halifax like his famous layman father was an Anglo-Catholic and of course did not like such a wording, and proposed to Lord Hugh that the phrase be changed to "the Church of England by law established". Lord Hugh answered that he could "agree that is a jejune description of your religious society to announce that you disagree with someone else, and were once worse than you are now."

Armistice in Ottawa

2011-02-14T13:14:00.000-08:00

The first Canadian settlement between ACoC and ANiC has been approved, as the two Ottawa ANiC parishes have ratified the agreed settlement with the diocese. ANiC's press release is here; the diocese's news release is here

The settlement conforms to the template that I have been saying for some time would work in a diocese in which more than one parish has left. One ANiC parish keeps its building; the other one leaves it. The one that keeps its building pays the diocese "a substantial sum of money". Meanwhile ANiC states that "By agreement, precise details of the division of assets between the parishes and diocese are to remain confidential." What that means, we may infer, is that the diocese will pay out some money to St. Alban's, which will provide a nice start to their building fund. The diocese's insistence on a confidentiality agreement conforms with what has been suggested to me by a lawyer friend with reason to know how a rational diocese might approach a situation like this. A diocese would not want it to be known that it is paying out money to a departing parish, so it would insist on a confidentiality agreement, so that the settlement may be described in a way that obscures the fact of such a payment. That is why a multi-parish settlement can be easier than a single-parish ones; the financial implications can be blurred so that ACoC is not seen to be doing anything that might amount to a significant concession to ANiC.

A fillip I didn't think of is that the departing congregations have been required to change their names. This might seem to be rather unnecessarily ruthless of the diocese, but it allows the diocese to maintain its formal position. The parish of St. George's has not left the diocese; rather it has been disestablished, and its building sold to a worshipping group with a different name. St Alban's parish has not left; rather its clergy have left, apparently starting some sectarian congregation with a different name, worshipping in a different building. Anglican worship carries on in the same building, with all present St. Alban's members invited to continue worshipping there. (Where they will find a congregation for the "continuing" ACoC St. Alban's is another question, but one to worry about another day.) By returning Anglican Social Services to the building, the diocese maintains the pretext that it wants it because it has use of it.

It's important that things are set up so that both sides may maintain their formal position about the dispute, to validate their narrative. Most of us normal people, upon finalizing such a settlement, would thank God and move on. But there are always some ditchers, particularly in a group of people with strong beliefs like ANiC, who are insistent on carrying on the fighting and demonstrating to all that they won the settlement. Thus Kate Sanderson, at the always-irresponsible Anglican Essentials blog, insists that the by settling the diocese acknowledged that St. Alban's had the right to their building, which it does not, as if anyone with any sense cares now. (She also risks breaking the confidentiality agreement by claiming that the percentage asset division in the settlement: 40/60 ANiC/ACoC if you want to know. So much for an agreement about confidentiality with ANiC!)

Even without knowing the amounts of the monies being exchanged, it may safely be judged that both sides are better off than if they had been engaged in a lawsuit since the time the congregations left. +Chapman deserves credit for acting as a faithful steward of that which was entrusted to him, avoiding the needless squandering of hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees.

Could others follow the example of this settlement? The problem is finding a rational ACoC diocese. In New Westminster it's rather late, and neither side would seem likely to surrender possession of St. John's Shaughnessy voluntarily in any case, while a sensible settlement would involve selling it and splitting the proceeds. In Niagara the sensible thing would be to sell Good Shepherd (which would be a prudent move anyway) and divide the spoils, and then split ownership of the other two properties . But +Niagara does not seem to view the situation rationally anyway; the lawsuit is already well under way so hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees have already been squandered; and the provocative presence of Charlie Masters+ in the diocese inhibits any settlement -- particularly one in which he retains his building.

The Legion of Decency -- The Ascent

2011-01-27T06:00:00.000-08:00

A question that consumes me: how much influence did Christian values, in either a genuine or secularized form, have over mass media in, say, the period between 1910-1960, and when, why, where and how did they lose it?
One estimable organization that I knew very little about is the Legion of Decency , the Roman Catholic organization that policed Hollywood through its classification system, its ultimate weapon being the "C" rating, C standing for "Condemned".
Like most everyone else brought up in this culture, I grew up sneering at the film industry's voluntary self-policing through the Hays code. It does seem rather harsh in retrospect that until 1961, a female navel had never been seen in a major-studio American picture (the groundbreaker being Christine Kauffman in Town Without Pity.) But the briefest glance at the culture today reveals that something has gone horribly wrong; perhaps we should have a little more respect for the work of those who acted as salt, delaying the putrefaction of the culture by some decades.
I've been reading James M, Skinner's The Cross and the Cinema (London: Praeger, 1993) on the L of D. I never realized how much influence the Legion had on film content. In the early 1930s Catholics began to come to the judgment that Joe Breen's administration of the Production Code was insufficient to protect American morals. Example: in 1934 Cardinal Dougherty of Philadelphia told Catholics to stay away from all theatres in the city entirely "not merely as a counsel but a positive command, binding all in conscience under pain of sin." (35) Box office receipts fell by 40%. Catholics began to think of forming a national policing organization with the full weight of the hierarchy behind it. By adopting a uniform stance across the country, the Church could wield more influence on the studios. Then an organization could go beyond merely classifying and condemning to encouraging studios to make changes to films to avoid full condemnation, thereby achieving actual improvement in the moral quality of films. (In addition, overuse of outright condemnation raised the possibility of Catholics ceasing to follow the Legion's lead, a deadly danger always kept in mind).
The early Legion was not interested in the quality of entertainment, but in morality pure and simple. Seduction and adultery were never be depicted favourably, and ideally not depicted at all. Divorce was never to be depicted as the best solution. The Legion was also on the lookout for more dubious targets such as wise-cracking career girls refusing to display feminine decorum.
I will pass over discussing the Legion's effectiveness by deeming it very effective. When a bishop directed all his parish priests to declare from the pulpit that anyone viewing a film committed a mortal sin, or threatened that any theatre showing a condemned film would be boycotted for one year after its exhibition, results followed.
The question of interest is -- why did the Legion fail in its task so dramatically in the 1960s?? Did Catholics stop following its dictates? Did post-Vatican II liberalism subvert the Church's purpose and will? Did the force of the sexual revolution simply overwhelm the Legion -- it would be hard, after all, to persuade the faithful to avoid 90% of the films Hollywood makes?
As we will see, the Legion was undermined in the 50s by authoritative pronouncements by two very powerful bodies. One, unsurprisingly, was the United States Supreme Court. The other, very surprisingly, was none other than Pope Pius XII.

Calvin and Baillie Circus

2010-07-23T08:00:00.000-07:00

It appears that the Anglicans and Roman Catholics have nothing on the Presbyterians when it comes to liturgical ridiculity, paganism...and most important of all, liturgical puppets. And this isn't from some backwater church or a gathering of the church's Green gay-friendly feminist faction. This is from the opening ceremony of their General Assembly:
Perhaps YouTube commenter Throbert McGee said it all on this one:
"Pretty cool video, except it cuts off before the gory climax where they pour live bees on Nicholas Cage's face and then set him on fire... "
Lots of highlights in this one...the swirling "liturgical dance" straight out of the seventies, the giant Idol God with the mutant arms, the guy with a red T-shirt symbolizing nothing in particular tiredly waving his pennant, the skunks (Presbyterianism's answer to incense?), the embarrased looking adults leaders looking like delegates at some 4th-rate international conference, the dazed and imbecilic expressions on the faces of the kids....
Even beyond the offensive paganism of the display, I am impressed by its pure stupidity: can there be even one person with a triple-digit IQ, even one person of any aesthetic sense, who can find this, taken seriously, as anything but an abomination. Modern Liberal protestantism, despite its egotistical claims to be so much smarter than those snake-handling fundamentalists, is a stupid religion, pure and symbol, and does not appeal to intelligent people, as you can determine for yourself by reading anything written by its leaders.

Burke on Preachers and Politics

2010-07-03T04:17:00.000-07:00

Preachers who talk about politics know less about the subject that they do about the subjects in which they were trained. Their uninformed opinionating on the subject can only make you wonder why you should trust what they say about God when they are willing to discourse from the same pulpit about matters about which they know little.

Edmund Burke puts it in 18th-century style:

...politics and the pulpit are terms that have little agreement....The cause of civil liberty and civil government gains as little as that of religion by this confusion of duties. Those who quit their proper character to assume what does not belong to them are, for the greater part, ignorant both of the character they leave and of the character they assume. Wholly unacquainted with the world in which they are so fond of meddling, and inexperienced in all its affairs on which they pronounce with so much confidence, they have nothing of politics but the passions they excite.

(Reflections on the Revolution in France, Library of Liberal Arts edition, at 13)

A Lenten Prayer: The Litany of Humility

2010-02-22T18:25:00.000-08:00

Litany of Humility

O Jesus! meek and humble of heart, Hear me.
From the desire of being esteemed, Deliver me, Jesus.
From the desire of being loved, Deliver me, Jesus.
From the desire of being extolled, Deliver me, Jesus.
From the desire of being honored, Deliver me, Jesus.
From the desire of being praised, Deliver me, Jesus.
From the desire of being preferred to others, Deliver me, Jesus.
From the desire of being consulted, Deliver me, Jesus.
From the desire of being approved, Deliver me, Jesus.
From the fear of being humiliated, Deliver me, Jesus.
From the fear of being despised, Deliver me, Jesus.
From the fear of suffering rebukes, Deliver me, Jesus.
From the fear of being calumniated, Deliver me, Jesus.
From the fear of being forgotten, Deliver me, Jesus.
From the fear of being ridiculed, Deliver me, Jesus.
From the fear of being wronged, Deliver me, Jesus.
From the fear of being suspected, Deliver me, Jesus.

That others may be loved more than I, Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.
That others may be esteemed more than I, Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.
That, in the opinion of the world, others may increase and I may decrease, Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.
That others may be chosen and I set aside, Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.
That others may be praised and I unnoticed, Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.
That others may be preferred to me in everything, Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.

That others may become holier than I, provided that I may become as holy as I should, Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.

-- Rafael Cardinal Merry Del Val

The Strange Death of the Original-Principles Trust (Pt 2)

2010-01-06T08:09:00.000-08:00

Kelleher J.’s approach is to treat the application of the neutral principles of law, which is step one of the process, as both beginning and end of it. The cases he cites in support of his approach are all irrelevant to the case at hand. Two cases are cited in support of the proposition that questions of church doctrine are inappropriate subjects for judicial determination. Kelleher J. notes in particular that one of these cases referred approvingly to the U. S. Supreme Court’s groundbreaking 1979 decision in Jones v. Wolf (8). However it is not necessary to look to cases relying on American constitutional law in support of the doctrine that Anglo-Canadian courts ordinarily refrain from determining issues of church doctrine. That also is a centuries-old common-law doctrine, and the inquiry into fundamental original doctrines is a carefully carved out exception to it, as Professor Ogilvie explains in her text. Kelleher J. further cites Protection of the Holy Virgin Russian Orthodox Church (9), where the Quebec Court of Appeal declined a request for a declaration that to be a member of the parish, a person must observe the teachings of the church. There was no trust argument in that case so the refusal of the court to get involved in matters of doctrine has no relevance here. The portion of the trial court decision cited an Ontario Court of Appeal decision in Balkou v. Gouleff (11). In that case the court was asked to determine whether church doctrine forbade membership in Communist organizations. Again, this is not a church property case and has no bearing on the fundamental-principle doctrine.

The oddest citation in support of this approach comes in paragraph 252, where Kelleher J. cites a statement by Burton J.A. in Itter v. Howe (1896)(12) in support of the proposition that “[t]he notion of civil courts deferring to ecclesiastical authority on questions of doctrine has deep provenance in Canada.” As a refutation of the fundamental-principles doctrine, this reference is negated more than adequately by Kelleher J. himself in paragraphs 268 and 269, where he discusses the case and demonstrates that the fundamental-principle rule was applied in it. The dissidents lost in Itter v. Howe, but the principle itself was recognized --as it always has been until Bentley v. New Westminster was released.

The other argument Kelleher J. uses is that trust doctrine does not apply in the case of a hierarchical church such as the Anglican Church, which was an elaborate and complicated set of rules, procedures, and authorities. This appears to be an acceptance of the defendants’ novel argument, also derivative of American categorizations, that the trust doctrine applies only in congregational churches, and not hierarchical ones. I have not been able to find any case law cited by either Kelleher J. or the defendants in support of this proposition; I believe none exists. The doctrine has always applied to hierarchical and non-hierarchical churches; to churches with elaborately constructed internal mechanisms and those with no written statements of doctrine at all. The analysis has been applied to eastern Orthodox churches which are more hierarchical than the Anglican Church. It has been applied to the Methodist Episcopal Church in the 1830s, a hierarchical church within the legal meaning of the term and one with a more detailed and precise set of rules and internal procedures than Anglicans have. There is no basis for this argument in either precedent or logic; the ill that the fundamental-principles doctrine attempts to remedy is the same whether the abandonment has occurred by an arbitrary decision in a single congregation with no written doctrinal statement or a thoroughly debated decision in a denomination with 500 pages of constitution and canons.

What would impel Kelleher J. to reject the existing doctrine so brazenly? I want to discuss this because orthodox Christians succumb all too easily to the temptation, and I use the word literally, to attribute all adverse judicial decisions to the implacable hostility of the secular world and its rejection of the truth in Christ. It must be acknowledged that in any case where judicial bias, open or covert, influences a decision, the probability is great that the relevant bias will be against orthodox Christianity. However in Bentley the possibility that the adverse decision was actuated by bias can be completely dismissed. A companion issue in the case involved the disposition of the Chun bequest, a $2.2 million building fund claimed by both a dissenting and a successor ACoC congregation. Without discussing the trust issues there, it may be said that the choice of beneficiary was something close to an act of pure equitable discretion. The departing ACNA congregation was awarded control of the Chun bequest. It is impossible that a judge motivated by hostility to orthodox doctrine would have made that decision.

The reason that the place of the fundamental-principles doctrine could be seen in advance of this litigation to be somewhat precarious is that it has an archaic air to it. Aspects of it seem to belong to a bygone age, to a time when any educated English gentleman, of whatever religious belief, who might find himself on the bench could be expected to know the basic doctrines of not only the Church of England but the major sectarian groups (and even of “Papists”, as they were described in one of the major early House of Lords precedents). Like the law lords in the case marking the high water mark of the doctrine, Free Church of Scotland v. Overtoun (13) (see Wikipedia entry), a judge could be expected to engage in learned discussion on the degree of significance of an alteration of the doctrine of double predestination by the adoption of the statement that “God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” In a post-Christian age, we cannot expect judges to bring with them that kind of expertise. Nor are Christian churches the only religious institutions to which the doctrine applies. In the English case of Varsani v Jesani , a Hindu sect’s founder was believed to be the incarnation of the Supreme Being, and a division arose over the extent to which his successor also enjoyed divine status. Carnwith J. was faced with the task of determining which faction (if either) had deviated from the sect’s original fundamental principles, in a sect with no written doctrinal statement that could be adverted to. Understandably, he balked, and found a solution in a statutory scheme that allowed division of properties between the factions. There is no equivalent statutory provision in Canada, so a judge here would have to make that challenging factual determination.

The necessary entanglement of the state in church affairs of the fundamental-doctrines rule leads activist judges to look for some way to extinguish it. The strength of this sentiment may be seem from the reaction to the decision by Don Hutchinson, general legal counsel for the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada (EFC). It is churches like EFC members who derive the most benefit from a doctrine protecting established orthodoxy. Despite this, Hutchinson said “he found it appropriate that Justice Kelleher "respected the religious freedom of the Anglican communion" by allowing internal Anglican processes to resolve internal Anglican disputes. "We don't want the courts or government making final decisions on the beliefs, practice and polity of a church."

So far so good as to the chances of a successful appeal by the ANiC churches, who at the time of writing are in a discernment process to determine whether they should appeal. (A notice of appeal has been filed to meet the deadline.) However, as we shall subsequently see, the situation gets much stickier when we look at ANiC's ability to show that the ACoC has indeed violated the original principles doctrine as the coirts have applied it.

NOTES

(8) (1979), 443 U.S. 595, 1979 U.S. LEXIS 16
(9) (1st ed., at 209).
(10) [2001] O.J. No. 438 (S.C.); varied 2002 CanLII 3570 (ON C.A.), 30 B.L.R. (3d) 315, 167 O.A.C. 138
(11) (1989) 68 O.R. (2d) 574.
(12) (1896), 23 O.A.R. 256, [1896] O.J. No. 31 (QL) (C.A.)
(13) [1904] AC 515 (H.L.)

The Strange Death of the Original-Principles Trust (Pt 1)

2010-01-06T07:47:00.000-08:00

In the last decade, congregations in the Anglican diocese of New Westminster have had to respond to the heterodox doctrinal positions taken by the diocese and its Bishop Michael Ingham. One option was to separate from the Anglican Church of Canada ("ACoC") and affiliate with an orthodox Anglican province overseas. They might then wonder what property rights their congregations would retain. There was a rule of law on the subject on which they might have thought they could rely. It has been in place in the United Kingdom and Canada for over 150 years. Its validity had never been called into question. It had been taken for granted as a valid rule of law in the most recent cases on the subject: in Scotland in 2005 (1), in England in 1998 (2), in the Supreme Court of Canada in 1970 (3), and in British Columbia itself in 1981 (4). It has been summarized by Professor Ogilvie, in her text on church law, as follows:

It is a well-settled principle of law that the property of a religious institution must be held and applied to the original purposes for which that institution was founded, that is, for the original "trust". Such property cannot be redirected to other purposes by a mere majority of members, and where a majority decides upon a diversion, the property remains in trust for the dissenting minority (even one person) who adheres to the original trust for which the property was given. (5)

There are a number of qualifications that need to be applied to this statement of law, most importantly that it is only the upholding of those doctrines that can be classified as fundamental that form the original trust, but that the rule of law existed has never been in dispute.

In Bentley v. New Westminster, (available free at http://www.canlii.org/en/bc/bcsc/doc/2009/2009bcsc1608/2009bcsc1608.html) (6) Mr Justice Stephen Kelleher, deciding ownership of the property of 4 orthodox Anglican congregations who had left the diocese, came to the surprising conclusion that this rule of law no longer existed. Or at least that he was able to decide a question of ownership where departure from fundamental doctrines was alleged while ignoring the rule, which amounts to the same thing. We have some detailed eyewitness accounts of the trial and can reconstruct how the justice was led to this novel conclusion, and they testify to the value of audacity in litigation strategy; the defendant diocese simply denied that any such doctrine existed.

Reading Kelleher J.’s legal analysis (beginning at para. 247), we can see that he has gotten off track, very early in his analysis, when he summarizes the defendant diocese’s position:

the defendants contend that the issues in dispute can be resolved by reference to statutes and canon law, and that it is unnecessary to turn to trust principles....What the defendants advance is akin to the "neutral principles of law" approach that American courts routinely apply in resolving church property disputes....

Kelleher J. goes on to explain this so-called neutral principles of law approach, citing a recent California case:

The court should consider sources such as the deeds to the property in dispute, the local church’s articles of incorporation, the general church’s constitution, canons, and rules, and relevant statutes, including statutes specifically concerning religious property, such as [charitable corporations legislation].

The reader’s first reaction will be to wonder what a principle of law developed by American courts in order to bring American church property law into compliance with the First Amendment to the American constitution by avoiding excessive entanglement of church and state has to do with the application of the well-established church property law of British Columbia. Kelleher J. "acknowledges that the neutral principles of law approach is a consequence of the First Amendment’s separation of church and state" in para. 249. But upon further consideration, this first reaction, that we are faced here with a pure doctrinal innovation based upon an arbitrary transplanting of American law, is misplaced. The neutral principles of law approach is not a new American approach. Properly understood, it is not an alternative to the Anglo-Canadian fundamental-purposes trust approach. The approaches are complementary, and have heretofore coexisted. Anglo-Canadian law, although having no need of the name, has always applied the "neutral principles of law" approach to answer the first question in any property dispute: who owns the property? And further, where necessary, do the holders of legal title hold the property on trust, express or implied, for some other entity within the denomination? And then, once these questions have been decided, once the "neutral principles of law" approach has been exhausted, where there has been a division within a church, there remains the question of whether one side of the division has abandoned the fundamental doctrines upon which the church has been based. For, to quote Prof. Ogilvie again,

"...regardless of denomination or polity, where a congregation or denomination decides to change its fundamental doctrinal standards from those for which the property was given, the property is to be held on trust for those members who adhere to the original standard." (7)

11 Canadian cases are cited for this proposition, and more could be found, without even counting cases from Great Britain where the doctrine was formed and evolved.

First the neutral principles of property law are applied, then, if it is alleged that the title holders at law have abandoned the original fundamental principles for the furtherance of which the property is held, the special original-principles trust test is applied. That’s the law of Canada.

NOTES

(1) Free Church Of Scotland v. General Assembly Of The Free Church Of Scotland [2005] ScotCS CSOH_46

(2) Varsani v Jesani [1998] EWCA Civ 630 (3 April 1998); http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/1998/630.html

(3) Hofer v. Hofer, [1970] S.C.R. 958, 1970 CanLII 161 (S.C.C.), 73 W.W.R. (N.S.) 644

(4) Chong v. Lee, 1981 CanLII 732 (BC S.C.), 29 B.C.L.R. 13

(5) M. H. Ogilvie, Religious Institutions and the Law in Canada (Toronto: Irwin Law, 2nd ed., 2003, at 293-94

(6) 2009 BCSC 1608 (CanLII), http://www.canlii.org/en/bc/bcsc/doc/2009/2009bcsc1608/2009bcsc1608.html

(7) Ogilvie, (1st ed., 1996,) at 211.

TO BE CONTINUED

Enter, and Sign In Please

2009-12-30T13:56:00.000-08:00

My fan tributes to What's My Line are elsewhere but an appreciation for brilliance however employed requires me to honour this pitch-perfect account of September 11, 1955, the day God appeared on What's My Line. If you don't remember the show you had better move on now. Credit: Matt Neumann

BYW there is at least one answer by God that is clearly wrong. What is it?

THE TIME GOD APPEARED ON "WHAT'S MY LINE?"

(The following is a transcription of "What's My Line?"* as it was originally broadcast on September 11, 1955, at 10 PM, by CBS.)

JOHN DALY: Panel, put on your masks... good. Now, will our Mystery Guest enter, and sign in please.

(GOD enters, signs "God" on the blackboard, and takes his seat next to JOHN DALY. There is extended applause.)

DALY: All right, let's begin with Bennett Cerf.
BENNETT CERF: Well, from the applause, you're obviously well known.

DALY: I think you could say that without fear of contradiction, Bennett.

CERF: Would someone of my generation recognize you without having to consult the various popular music periodicals?

GOD: (high, squeaky voice) Yes.

CERF: Was that a yes?

DALY: It was. Continue.

CERF: Are you someone we would recognize from films, or television?

GOD: No.

DALY: That's one down, and five dollars... Dorothy Kilgallen.

DOROTHY KILGALLEN: Mystery Guest, have you ever been the subject of a front page story in a national magazine?

GOD: Yes.

KILGALLEN: Would you say that you are a... controversial figure?

GOD: Yes.

KILGALLEN: Do you travel extensively? Are you known throughout the world?

GOD: Yes.

KILGALLEN: I can't tell if you're a man or a woman. Are you... a woman?

GOD: No.

DALY: That's two down. Robert Q. Lewis, you're next.

ROBERT Q. LEWIS: Hmm... Mystery Guest, you wouldn't happen to be a millionaire Latin playboy who was recently seen in the company of atomic bombshell Jayne Mansfield, would you?

GOD: No.

DALY: That's three down, seven to go... Arlene Francis.

ARLENE FRANCIS: Mystery Guest, I get the feeling that you're someone who possesses power as much as fame. Would that be correct?

GOD: Yes.

FRANCIS: Have you ever, or are you currently for that matter, in a position of power?

(GOD whispers in DALY's ear.)

DALY: Could you define what you mean by "power," Arlene?

FRANCIS: Well, political power, for example.

GOD: No.

DALY: That's four down. Bennett?

CERF: We know you're not a Latin millionaire playboy, but we haven't ruled out whether or not you're —well, I'll ask... Are you rich?

(GOD whispers in DALY's ear.)

DALY: Once again, I must ask you to define your terms.

CERF: Are you... a millionaire?

GOD: No.

DALY: Five down, five to go... Dorothy Kilgallen —you look puzzled.

KILGALLEN: I am. He's obviously a well-known personality, he's powerful, but he's not rich, at least not in dollars-and-cents terms... he's not an actor —aha! —Mystery Guest, are you someone who operates "behind-the-scenes?"

GOD: Yes.

KILGALLEN: Are you one of our great directors, or producers?

GOD: Yes.

DALY: Excuse me, Dorothy —did you mean film directors or producers?

DOROTHY: Yes.

DALY: Then I think the correct answer —and I'll speak for our Mystery GuestÂ—would be a "no" —six down, four to go. Robert Q. Lewis?

LEWIS: Are you unusually strong, and fast?

GOD: Yes.

LEWIS: Would you consider yourself a great athlete?

GOD: Yes.

LEWIS: Do you have abilities far beyond mere mortal men?

GOD: Yes.

LEWIS: Are you... Willie Mays?

GOD: No.

DALY: I thought you were going to say Superman.

LEWIS: Willie Mays is Superman.

DALY: Seven down, three to go, and Arlene Francis, it's your turn.

FRANCIS: Well, he's not Willie Mays, but we haven't ruled out athlete, or professional athlete... could we have a conference?

DALY: Certainly.

(FRANCIS, LEWIS, KILGALLEN, and CERF huddle and whisper to each other.)

FRANCIS: Are you considered... tough?

GOD: Yes.

FRANCIS: Have you ever been referred to as "the Rock"?

GOD: No.

DALY: Eight down. Bennett Cerf.

CERF: Well, he's not Rocky Marciano or Rocky Graziano. That only leaves a few billion people. Mystery Guest, are you a religious person?

GOD: Yes.

CERF: Are you a religious person who is in a prominent position within the church?
GOD: Yes.

CERF: Do you have millions of followers?

GOD: Yes.

CERF: Are you... Bishop Fulton Sheen?

GOD: No.

DALY: That's nine down, one to go, and it's up to Dorothy Kilgallen.

KILGALLEN: Now I'm really confused. He's big, strong, in a position of considerable influence in the church, well-known, but controversial... powerful...

DALY: I'll throw over the last card if you don't have a question, Dorothy, we're running out of time.

KILGALLEN: Oh, all right, I'll take a wild stab... are you —God?

(There is loud applause.)

DALY: You got it! You can take your masks off now, panel.

FRANCIS: I almost guessed it, but —

KILGALLEN: We should have had it sooner.

LEWIS: And you say you're not seeing Jayne Mansfield?

CERF: Well, as someone who has millions, God, it's not all that it's cracked up to be.

DALY: God, anything you'd like to say? We've got a few seconds.

GOD: Just that I'm donating my winnings to the Boys Club of New York, and the Police Athletic League, they do such good work, and the Fresh Air Fund, which sends needy kids to camp each summer.

DALY: Anyone have a question for God before we sign off?

LEWIS: Yeah, just this: you wouldn't happen to have Jayne Mansfield's phone number, would you?

DALY: Oh, Robert... that's our show for tonight, ladies and gentlemen, until next time, this is John Daly, saying —good night.

Godly Order: ACNA and Liturgy

2009-10-26T06:23:00.000-07:00

The following is an edited version of an article published in Praiseworthy News, the newsletter of the Church of the Good Shepherd, St, Catharines, V. 4, #3, May 2009)

The upcoming provincial assembly meeting in Texas in June at which the ACNA constitution and canons will be ratified is a reminder that we are now inevitably entering a period of liturgical reform. We are no longer tied to the Book of Alternative Services. The Green Book had to be composed so as to be consistent with liberal theology. The result was a production symptomizing the ills that would lead to the disintegration of the Anglican Church of Canada. Those of you who attended the parish conference with Bishop Malcolm Harding may remember that he quoted and spoke often of the English writer and evangelist Michael Green. Green taught at Regent College in Canada for five years and led evangelical campaigns here. Speaking here, he distinguished two groups in the church those: who prefer old wine in old skins (Book of Common Prayer adherents) and those who prefer new wine in new wineskins (contemporary language services with modern music etc. especially to reach the unchurched). Green said:

The old wine skins have an integrity. And so does the new wine. But if you try to mix the two, as the Book of Alternative Services does, the danger of splitting both is considerable. The B.A.S. does not really speak to those outside the church. I hope it was designed for them but, frankly, I think we have to confess that it is largely a failure in that respect. It doesn't speak to the outsider.... The language is infelicitous and it lacks depth...
Actually, if you look at the whole family of revisions within the Anglican communion, I'm afraid we've been saddled with about the worst of those revisions... [W]e should contend for a competent, sensitive and spiritually profound revision of the alternative services when the time comes up towards the end of the century.

The end of the century has come and gone, but the time for revision still lies ahead. I can't imagine ANiC churches still using the BAS ten years from now.

The ACNA draft Constitution and Canons contain a fundamental declaration, described as essential for membership, relating to service books:

6. We receive The Book of Common Prayer as set forth by the Church of England in 1662, together with the Ordinal attached to the same, as a standard for Anglican doctrine and discipline, and, with the Books which preceded it, as the standard for the Anglican tradition of worship.

Some people reading this declarayion may be alarmed at first glance that they are going to be forced to give up their current liturgies for the 1662 BCP, a book which they have never heard of, written in three-century-old language. That won't happen. The recognition of the 1662 book stems from the high regard held for it by the African primates, who established it as the standard of GAFCON worship. The 1662 book is regarded as more faithful to evangelical standards than some of its successors, particularly the American 1928 BCP. However there are only a handful of North American parishes who use the 1662 rite just as is. The whole of ACNA is not going to be forced to adopt the 1662 BCP any time soon.

Numerous jurisdictions have adopted modern language versions of the 1662 book, and it would certainly be consistent with the principles of ACNA to use experimentally a 1662-style modern language service. I compiled a list of modernized 1662 services in the Anglican communion and looked forward to reviewing them. Alas, all of them were disappointing. They do not really seem modern. They seem to modernize language that should have been kept, while leaving in place that language that needs to be modernized. A sample of these versions, the communion rite of the Anglican Missions in America, may be found here.

The ACNA Constitution inclusion of "the Books which preceded it" as the standard for Anglican doctrine and discipline includes both the books of 1549 and 1552, which stand near the ends of the Anglican spectrum of churchmanship, meaning that any orthodox liturgy ever used in the Anglican communion can been deemed consistent with ACNA liturgical standards.

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Dumping the BAS would mean that we enter a time of liturgical experimentation. For those who were Anglican worshippers seventies, the idea of liturgical experimentation may bring back unpleasant memories. Never knowing when opening the church door what manner of sloppily photocopied trial liturgy one was going to be handed when o And we worshippers resist changes in liturgy, whatever dissatisfaction they harbour with the liturgy they have. Such resistance should not be disdained as mere obstinate opposition to change. Familiarity is one of the main reasons for having a liturgy. As C. S. Lewis says in Letters to Malcolm

I think our business as laymen is to take what we are given and make the best of it. And I think we should find this a great deal easier if what we were given was always and everywhere the same....
To judge from their practice, very few Anglican clergymen take this view. It looks as if they believed people can lured to go to church by incessant brightenings, lengthenings, abridgements, simplifications amd complications of the service.... Novelty may fix our attention not even on the service but on the celebrant. You know what I mean. Try as one may to exclude it, the question, "What on earth is he up to now?" will intrude....
Every service is a structure of acts and words through which we receive a sacrament, or repent, or supplicate, or adore. And it enables us to do these things best -- if you like it "works" best--when through long familiarity, we don't have to think about it. As long as you notice, and have to count, the steps, you are not yet dancing but only learning to dance....The perfect church service would be one we were almost unaware of; our attention would have been on God.

(There is of course a contrary argument, for spontaneity and ecstatic expression on worship, which in a church with a heavy charismatic influence must be recognized as well. I believe it is possible to have a liturgical service which combines the best of both approaches. That is an argument for being very thoughtful about what we are doing, because it implies that there must also be a manner of service that combines the worst of both approaches, and if we approach the problem lazily we are likely to get it.)

ACNA has a Prayer Book Committee which is working away behind the scenes even as we speak. I doubt that there will ever be an ACNA prayer book in the sense of a book containing the entire set of permissible services in ACNA. To respect the diversity of uses throughout North America, it would have to be a Heinz prayer book with 57 varieties of eucharistic rite. There is more likely to be a book which collects revised and reformed versions of various rites which are liked by significant parts of ACNA.

Worshippers at the early service need only decide whether they are satisfied with the doctored version of the BCP rite found in the Green Book, wish to return to the original, or consider any of the other traditional BCPs from around the world.

More experimental action is more likely to occur at the contemporary language service. In looking for a new liturgy that is worthy of trial, we seek something that 1) expresses orthodox, and in particular evangelical theology; 2) is written in modern language; 3) is written to the best standard of liturgical language, combining precision with beauty, elevated and dignified, the product of the offering of all our talents including those of the mind. Condition 3 is the hard one. Writing liturgically in modern language is difficult. It is a challenge to use a tone and style that evokes a sense of the numinous in the language of the marketplace. We can only rely on the observation of C. S. Lewis that the best liturgical language results not from artificial attempts to be lofty in tone and extravagant in metaphor, but from "the prose of men who are intent upon their matter and write only to be understood."

In doing this research I have found that many ANiC churches are not only using non-BAS liturgies, but are using rites that are originally drawn from other sources and then edited and changed by the parish (i.e., the rector) itself as it sees fit. I compiled a list of 6 suggested sources of evangelical modern language liturgy, from Australia, England, South Africa and the United States. Unfortunately there are none I could personally recommend. Those of them that attempt to use "lofty" liturgical language fail at it. God placed no Cranmers on the committees who compiled those books

Another liturgy to be considered is the currently very popular Kenyan Rite, mentioned favourably by Bishop Malcolm when he was here. (It may be seen on the Internet:here) Worshippers who are not liturgically inclined often them dull and cold. The Kenyan Rite is not dull or cold. The rite satisfies many worshippers who have picky standards of liturgical form, while expressing in vivid language sheer joy in worshipping God. The rite has been used by a number of ANiC parishes. If we decide to enter unto experimentation, the Kenyan rite should be one of the rites used

Antidisestablishmentarianism

2009-10-20T23:47:00.000-07:00

As part of the reaction to the Pope's announcement of his sheep-stealing plans yesterday, Andrew Stuttaford harrumphs over at the Corner:

The Church of England is...the state church (and so it should remain), one of the essential elements, however neglected, however frequently absurd, of what England is.

And yet Stuttaford is an unbeliever, a contributor at Secular Right, the blog for purported conservatives who are militant secularists.

Is it not appropriate and necessary that the main defenders of the Establishment should increasingly be atheists and scoffers?

Upstaging the Devil

2009-08-10T10:22:00.000-07:00

I suspect that many charismatics in ANiC do not know that J. I. Packer was a serious critic of the charismatic movement back in the day while still residing in England. Roger Steer notes no less than 10 things that Packer criticized it for: elitism, sectarianism, emotionalism, anti-intellectualism, illuminism, ‘charismania', ‘super-supernaturalism' (constantly expecting miracles at every turn), eudaemonism, demon obsession and conformism. (Church on Fire at 298-99.)

Packer changed his mind after coming to Canada, and has discussed this in a number of his books. Here's the most charming and compelling quote explaining his reassessment of the charismatic movement (from Rediscovering Holiness at 62):

What should one say of the worldwide charismatic movement of the past thirty years?...I believe that God has generated it in order to counter and correct the death-dealing fashions of thought, which, starting with theologians and spreading everywhere, for the past century have done damage by demurring at the truth of the Trinity, diminishing the deity of Jesus Christ, and for practical purposes discounting the Holy Spirit altogether.
To deal with these theoretical errors, and the spiritual deadness to which they have given rise, God has raised up this movement of uninhibited and flamboyant Holy Spirit life...Those who maintain the errors mentioned are thus comprehensively outflanked, not to say upstaged. How wise is the strategy of God!

Interchangeable Units I Hath Made Thee

2009-06-15T08:48:00.000-07:00

Orthodox folks have been warning that same-sex blessings are not a stand-alone product. They are part of a package deal, of a set of theological assumptions that come as tied products as they say in antitrust law.

General Synod 2007 passed 3 resolutions which invited 2 different church bodies to lay out the theological rationale both for and against same-sex blessings and marriage.

The Primate's Theological Commission was asked to:

to consult with dioceses and parishes and to report in advance of General Synod 2010 on
the theological question whether the blessing of same-sex unions is a faithful, Spirit-led development of Christian doctrine; and
Scripture’s witness to the integrity of every human person and the question of the sanctity of human relationships.

Since GS 2007 I had imagined this report-in-preparation as a ticking time bomb. Its publication would reveal the full theological assumptions behind the worldviews that would clash at GS 2010, inevitably expressed through a majority and minority report incorporating the theology of Anglican liberalism and orthodoxy respectively. The PTC's response, the Galilee Report turned out to be a damp squib which I will discuss some other time.

Hedging their bets, the supporters of same-sex marriage posed another question as well. They asked the Council of General Synod, the GS's bureaucracy in between our triennial conventions, to consider a revision of the marriage canon "including theological rationale to allow marriage of all legally qualified persons". (Where the article before the word "theological" went I do not know; my guess is that the movers couldn't decide whether they wanted to say "a theological rationale", "the theological rationale", or "any theological rationale"). The CoGS passed the buck down to the Faith, Worship and Ministry committee, which in due time produced the Rothesay Report. I haven't discussed the Rothesay Report yet, because it heavily cites some of the papers produced by the members of the PTC which until sometime in the last week, hadn't been published.

Now they have been.

The Rothesay Report is refreshingly clear about what the acceptance of same-sex marriage involves:

A theological rationale for same-sex marriage needs to re-envision two concepts which have generally been associated with marriage, but which do not translate in a straightforward way to same-sex couples. One is gender complementarity - the significance (in Christian theology at least) of the human reality of being ‘male and female’.

Got that? Same-sex marriage will not be, as SSBs are now often presented, a mere pastoral measure, designed to grant some Christian encouragement to two persons who have taken what they see as the best means to deal with a disordered condition. It will imply and require a "reenvisioning" of the very idea that God created men and women to complement each other in intimate relationships even aside from the fact that their bodies seem well engineered for the purpose of reproduction.

So, why? Well because "In a culture where male and female may take on any and all social roles gender complementarity no longer has any meaning apart from the purely physical distinction." Because Danica Patrick can drive race cars and Sonia Sotomayor will be a SCOTUS judge we must conclude that men and women were not created for each other.

The report in this area heavily relies on Paul Jennings' PTC paper "Same-Sex Blessings: A Systematic-Theological Rationale." Jennings takes the same line, reinterpreting Ephesians 5 to produce a "vision of marriage as a community liberated from patriarchal structures
leav[ing] room for differently patterned heterosexual as well as same-sex relationships." (para 21).

The tenor of the Rothesay report like many such documents can be appreciated by observing the strategic placement of radical and post-modern terms throughout the text. We are told (para 19) that the "biblical version of the redeemed community abolishes such social constructions (emphasis added) citing Gal. 3:18, which has nothing to do with the issue as far as I can tell. Patriarchy, hierarchy, liberationism, social construction. Do the people in ACoC realize they signed up for a major in Women's Studies?

If any of the handful of orthodox folks in the AcoC choose to defend the idea of gender complementarity, they might start by reading this essay by "evangelical feminist" Mary Stewart van Leeuwen, one woman who would have done well to keep her maiden name.

Michael Ingham "In Conflict" with the Truth

2009-05-22T02:58:00.000-07:00

The Diocese of New Westminster filed and proudly published for the world on its website last week its Introduction to the case in Bentley v. Diocese of New Westminster, in which oral arguments start next week. One of the arguments which the diocese and named co-defendant +Michael Ingham make is that +Ingham's approval of same-sex blessings is fully authorized under the rules of the Anglican Church of Canada, or as they put it in paragraph 11 of their introduction, "entirely consistent with the Church structures." Now watch their hands closely. They say that "The General Synod resolved in 2007 that "the blessing of same-sex unions is consistent with the core doctrine of the Anglican Church of Canada." "

They wish.

Now there's two -- let's just call them "inaccuracies" for the moment -- in this statement, which purports to be a direct quote from a GS resolution. The substantively less important one irks me the most, because it represents either reprehensible sloppiness in stating important, easily ascertainable facts in crucial, showcase make-your-first-impression pleadings in a case in which millions of dollars and the futures of two major religions are on the table, or a sneaking in of a deliberate misstatement to try to mislead the Court into coming to a false conclusion of fact.

The corresponding wording in the resolution -- A186 -- that was actually passed is "the blessing of same-sex unions is not in conflict with the core doctrine... of the Anglican Church of Canada." (More about this ellipsis later).

Consistent with. Not in conflict with. What's the diff?

Well go to dictionary.com and you'll see a number of definitions for "consistent" but the main ones all start with some form of the concept of "agreement". "Having agreement with", "Being agreeable to". Suppose you ask your buddy, "So how's your wife with that idea of yours of going out for dinner and drinks once a month with your old girlfriend, just as 'old friends?" Do you draw different conclusions about what's going on if he says "No prob. She agrees with it" than if he pauses and says "We're not in conflict about it"?

You see +Ingham wants to create the impression that the ACoC has said it's all hunky-dory with SSBs, that they're agreeable to the Church's system of doctrine in all its fullness. But it hasn't debased itself that far yet. One of the things it has said is that SSBs aren't in conflict with "core doctrine" because they have nothing to do with 'core doctrine', which concerns an entirely separate set of matters. The GS 2007 resolutions start by accepting some of the main premises of the 2005 St. Michael's Report, by the Primate's Theological Commission, one of which is that "core doctrine" is a relatively small area of doctrine containing the crucial good news of the nature of God and the salvivic good news in Jesus Christ. Same-sex blessings aren't in conflict with core doctrine; neither would be officially authorizing rites blessing pornography festivals or all-weekend bar crawls. That doesn't mean either rite would be consistent with Anglican doctrine in its entirety -- or legal on the Anglican church. Such rites would be illegal just as +Ingham's SSBs are illegal, their authorization being beyond his authority.

This misquotation is the smaller part in consequence of the two falsehoods in New Westminster's statement, but it bothers me more because it's either a cheap and sneaky act of attempted deception or an example of gross lawyerly laziness and sloppiness. And if it's the latter, ANiC if it loses will end up paying two-thirds of the cost of the time billed for this little piece of incompetence.

The other lie in the quotation of the GS resolution is one of omission. The actual resolution referred to "core doctrine in the sense of being credal". (BTW no one seems quite sure whether it should be "credal" or "creedal".) That is, core doctrine defined even more narrowly than I have described above, as the affirmations of the great creeds of the early church. As the St. Michael's Report said, "The determination of this question will not hinder or impair our common affirmation of the historic creeds." Which is all quite true, bit hardly any kind of addition to our ecclesiastical knowledge. No, Athanasius and the others didn't find it necessary to put anything in their creeds about homosexuals not being able to marry. Which has nothing to do with whether SSBs are allowable under Anglican doctrine as a whole. The St. Michael's Report said no, obviously not. They're inconsistent with the Church's teaching about sexuality. General Synod 2007 defeated a motion to permit dioceses to perform SSBs. For some reason New Westminster's introduction to the case doesn't tell you these things.

And it's kind of funny that +Michael Ingham (treating the filings of his counsel as his own statements) doesn't seem to know the wording of this resolution. It's not like he wasn't there at the time it was debated. The last two amendments fooling around with the wording of the motion before the final vote -- +Michael Ingham moved one and seconded the other.

Don't get me wrong. The question of whether +Ingham acted legally, illegally, irregularly, prematurely, deconstructionally or postmodernly ain't gonna make a difference in this case. The truth is that the Anglican Church of Canada is so chaotically organized, conceptually incoherent, and inhabited by a spirit of lawlessness that there is nobody who can give an authoritative ruling whether diocesan authorized SSBs are legal or not -- and no means of stopping or disciplining any bishop who simply defied such a ruling if it were given. The ACoC is an ecclesial jungle governed by the law thereof.

But remember when +Cowan of British Columbia sneakily used the quiet of an agreed truce and mediation period to have the locks changed and an alarm system installed and had to be ordered by a judge the next day to hand over the keys and codes and stop tampering with other people's property? Sometimes it's the little things, not the gross and sensational abuses and power grabs, that tell you what kind of people you're dealing with.

Stephen Neill Emends the Sermon on the Mount

2009-04-26T16:40:00.000-07:00

Appreciating the Sermon on the Mount is challenging enough as it is, but there is one part of the sermon that always puzzled and disconcerted me. It's Matthew 5:21-22.There was an understandable teaching in there, but something about it seemed somehow twisted.

Jesus says this:

Ye have heard that it was said of them of old time, Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment: But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire.

Now this saying always left me squeamish; it was not in the same vein as Jesus's other 'You-have-heard-but-I say-to-you-teachings. The other sayings of similar form first set out teachings of the Pharisees, always teachings that are some combination of the true Law and their own human traditions.. These pharisaical statements concern outward behaviour. Jesus tells them something else. The Pharisees are concerned only with the sinfulness of the outward behaviour; Jesus tells them that God is concerned also with the inward attitudes that motivate that behaviour. Not just adultery is sinful, but also the lust that begets it. God looks at not just the letter of the spirit. His standards for our inward conduct are in one sense even tougher than the jot-and-tittle rules that the Pharisees enforce -- Jesus's rejoinder to His critics who say he is a loose teacher, a subverter of the Law. But Christian conduct is not a matter of dutiful grudging adherence to a set of burdensome rules, but of God-pleasing conduct resulting from regeneration and spiritual growth as we become more and more like Jesus.
Bishop Stephen Neill put it better than I can in his book The Interpretation of the New Testament 1861-1961:

This is not at all the kind of thing that we should expect Jesus to say; this legal logic-chopping is not in the least in the style either of his utterance or his thoughts

Bishop Neill thought he had the solution. He was one of the great orthodox Anglican figures of the 20th century. He maintained a clear attitude of reverence for Scripture with a comprehensive knowledge of modern Biblical criticism. Now the doctrine of inspiration says only that the Biblical books as written by their authors in their original manuscripts were inspired by God. There is no guarantee that these manuscripts have been copied correctly and transmitted to us without error. The huge number of textual variants discovered over the centuries make such a guarantee impossible, indeed confirm there was no such guarantee. Most modern textual emendation results from new discoveries, a correction of a word owing to recognition of some ancient error in copying or to some discovery of a more likely meaning of some word whose meaning in New Testament Greek has always been unclear. In Matthew 5, Neill suggests, there was a slightly different type of error. The ancient copyists transposed the order of the phrases. The words after "judgment" should be moved up, ahead of "But I say unto you". Now the Sanhedrin and Hellfire teachings so much in the style of the Pharisees are in the right place. To the typical Pharisaical condemnation of outward behaviour, the warning that anyone guilty of murder, or insulting or abusing a brother is condemned, "[t]he answer of Jesus then stands in its brief and lapidary splendour -- 'everyone who is angry with his brother shall be liable to the judgment of God".
I should very much like to circulate this interpretation among every orthodox to be found and see how many of them reject it on the grounds that the rearrangement of verses constitutes a sinful tampering of Scripture. Those who do so would be like the Pharisees, burdening the people with a teaching that is an unwholesome mixture of the Law and human teaching and tradition, one often maintained bot for its truthfulness but for its use in condemning others and showing them to be less serious and devout than they are.. Sometimes we must be reminded that we need to do more than just boast of the doctrine of the reliability of Scripture in order to contrast ourselves with the lowly liberals. We need to know what it actually holds, that we might be free to pursue a better understanding of Scripture, and thereby grow in our knowledge of God.

C. S. Lewis's "Malcolm on Prayer" -- Letter 1 on Liturgy

2009-04-15T08:32:00.000-07:00

As much of a C.S. Lewis fan as I am, it's odd that I haven't until now got around to reading "Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer". Somehow I acquired some funny ideas about it decades ago. It wasn't published until after Lewis's death, and I acquired the impression that it was one of those books literary executors will put out after someone dies by slapping together any few pages of fragmentary documents they can slap together out of the deceased's file of Bad Ideas And Abandoned Projects To Be Forgotten. I also got the impression that there was a real Malcolm and thought that the letters might be filled with discussions of this Malcolm's difficulties with the trams not running according to schedule and how hard it is to get a proper cuppa tea nowadays. Skimming Google reviews, it seems one otherwise serious reader somehow did get the idea that these were real letters addressed to Malcolm Muggeridge.

The letters are mostly about private prayer; but in the first letter Lewis chooses to discuss the "almost nothing to say" he has about liturgy. In 6 short pages he touches on every major theme and controversy which the Anglican Church worldwide has, unbeknownst to Lewis, struggled with over the last 45 years.

As ANiC and ACNA begin the process of deciding what they are to do about their diverse liturgies, this is an appropriate time to look at what Lewis has to say about the subject. Lewis had much to say for uniformity in liturgy:

I think our business as laymen is to take what we are given and make the best of it. And I think we should find this a great deal easier if what we were given was always and everywhere the same.
To judge from their practice, very few Anglican clergymen take this view. It looks as if they believed people can lured to go to church by incessant brightenings, lengthenings, abridgements, simplifications amd complications of the service.

Lewis was spared in his own lifetime the years of liturgical experimentation that led to the creation of the various books of alternative services. Any week one might come to church and find in the pews some grubbily photocopied version of a new experimental rite that the liturgicists were "trying out". Those days are over now. The main danger in this area comes from those who believe that language simplifications, scrubbing of theology, and forced artificial informality are, along with tambourines, rock bands, strobe lights and liturgical dance, the way to attract young people to church. The continual failure of such methods to do any such thing never deters such folks. The main sufferers from this disease are parents unwilling to face the facts that their teenagers are not anxious to go to church because they are not Christians. And in any case, as Lewis says, people do not go to church to be entertained. Lewis identifies another of the defects of continuing liturgical novelty:

Novelty may fix our attention not even on the service but on the celebrant. You know what I mean. Try as one may to exclude it, the question, "What on earth is he up to now?" will intrude.

The crucial question about liturgy is: why have one? This is relevant to ANiC because of its heavy charismatic influence and the charismatic emphasis on spontaneity and ecstatic expression. The charge of such against liturgy is that worshippers merely sleepwalk through a service, mouthing familiar terms in an exercise of empty formality. In Letter 1 Lewis puts the other side:

"Every service is a structure of acts and words through which we receive a sacrament, or repent, or supplicate, or adore. And it enables us to do these things best -- if you like it "works" best--when through long familiarity, we don't have to think about it. As long as you notice, and have to count, the steps, you are not yet dancing but only learning to dance....The perfect church service would be one we were almost unaware of; our attention would have been on God.

A typically brilliant summing up of a position -- but are there not many things our attention is focused on during a service besides being simply and directly on God?

Vote Early, Vote Often, Vote Anglican

2009-03-30T07:48:00.000-07:00

The Diocese of Niagara has completed its 134th Synod. The best indication of what it all means is probably the Bishop's Charges to the Synod, since the synods are organized so that those attending don't really decide anything. The Bishop is articulating a new Vision for the diocese. Every new bishop implicitly says that the tenure of the previous bishop was been one of status quo and stagnation, although the predecessor takes no offence knowing it's all part of the game. As far as I can figure out, he has decided to turn the diocese into a political party run by treacly and trendy management principles, except they aren't trendy any more because as always these people are years behind what's current in these things.

In his first charge the Bishop retroactively endorsed Barack Obama:

...in the US Presidential election, we witnessed another new door opening and the breaking down of barriers that has sent ripples of hope and promise not only across the United States but around the entire world.

+Bird begins to lay out his platform. His organization will be competing with the NDP and Green parties:

It is a challenge to us all to reclaim our prophetic voice in a troubled and broken world and to lead the fight against poverty, violence and injustice that continues to pervade our communities and our society. As part of this aspect of our work together there is a strong challenge to embrace the United Nations Millennium Development Goals of 2001...

He expands on this idea in his second Charge, delivered the next day;

We are beginning to dream and imagine a church in such a way that when people throughout Southern Ontario think of the work of Poverty Reduction, or Environmental Sustainability ....they think of the Anglican Church and the Diocese of Niagara.

He missed the boat on the environment stuff. The Green Party has grabbed that niche for itself, and unlike the Anglican Church of Canada, it has been growing. I would think a bishop's vision should be that when people thought of Godly living, of people whose lives showed the sign of the attempt to be like Jesus, of humility, honesty, and self-sacrifice they thought of the Anglican Church of Canada, but those days are long past. It should be noted that "Poverty Reduction" is a term of art. It has nothing to do with giving alms to the poor, or giving time to food banks, homeless shelters and the like. It stands for a distinct and Leftist form of political agitation:

Poverty Reduction(or poverty alleviation) is any process which seeks to reduce the level of poverty in a community, or amongst a group of people or countries. Poverty reduction programs may be aimed at economic or non-economic poverty. Some of the popular methods used are education , economic development , and income redistribution . Poverty reduction efforts may also be aimed at removing social and legal barriers to income growth among the poor.

The Prophetic Social Justice Component of the vision was discussed in the presentation on Excellence in Ministry. It's interesting that the consultants used in this process are from the Church of the Redeemer in Toronto. That is the church where open homosexual James Ferry was deposed some years ago, now a centre for pro-homosexual agitation. (I'm now a little cautious about telling people that I used to attend that Church lest they get the wrong idea.) Among the goals of this process is to "Educate Laity and Clergy with respect to justice issues." Those whose politics are different than the bishop's need to be indoctrinated. And about worship? "Inspire Christian social activism through worship."
It is not just that all this is at best irrelevant to Christianity. It is such thin gruel to anyone who knows the Gospel. Even if I shared the leftist vision I would have no desire to be involved with this organization, knowing as I do that if this program is examined for results next year, it will be found to have accomplished exactly nothing. Ir is a vehicle of left agitation for those who don't want to suffer the burden and pain of working in and constantly losing elections. Even though the scales have fallen off my eyes, even though I realize that the diocese has been inhabited by this spirit at least since the time of +John Bothwell and probably before, my first reaction is always to recoil in shock when I read things like the proceedings of the 134th synod of the Diocese of Niagara. In some sense I'll never quite assimilate, at an emotional level, what has happened to the Anglican Church of Canada.

Green Shift

2009-03-26T06:30:00.000-07:00

Anglican Bishop of Niagara Michael Bird, who some claim is a successor to the Apostles, has issued a pastoral letter, Caring For Creation, as part of the buildup to the diocesan synod this weekend. (They really ought to title of these things in Latin. At least something about them would be impressive.) It illustrates both the theological vacuity and utter futility in action of the modern Anglican Church:

This is the time of the year when we are perhaps most mindful of the wonder and beauty of God’s creation. Caring for creation is at the heart of who we are as a people of faith.

Now there are a lot of things one could claim to be "at the heart of who we are as a people of faith" and get away with it. Furthering the Glory of God; the blessed life and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ; transforming ourselves through the Holy Spirit into people who live like Jesus, etc. But "caring for creation": isn't one of them. +Bird shows himself immediately to be the kind of person who writes things without seriously thinking about them, and throws out phrases like "at the heart of our faith" when he means that something is very important. If caring for creation were at the heart of the faith, we should start devoting our time, energy and money to the Sierra Club or the Green Party, which at least is growing, unlike the ACoC.

Throughout the ages, however, our concern for creation has drifted to the sidelines of our Christian witness.

No citations from the Fathers of the Church there to demonstrate how "our concern for creation" was once at the centre of our witness. He needn't waste his time trying to find any.

. Yet many, like theologian Christopher Lind who spoke at our Synod in 2007, have not forgotten this
important mark of how we live out God’s mission and are calling us to reclaim and renew our role as custodians of creation.

Here are some extracts from Mr Lind's presentation to the 2007 Synod :

Earth has a collective identity and a collective voice, capable of rejoicing in delight and groaning in sorrow. In order to hear the voice of Earth, we have to listen for it. Maybe the voice of Earth is a little bit like ‘body language’ – a communication without words; or maybe it is like the language of whales and other animals. They do communicate. We just have to learn their language!
Earth and its components not only suffer from injustices at the hands of humans, but actively resist them in the struggle for justice.

We're getting beyond trendy environmentalism here, into something really creepy. Back to +Bird:

In Niagara, caring for creation has become an important part of how we will pursue excellence in ministry
through prophetic social justice-making.

It is so painful to hear leftist jargon. bandied about in the place of the language of Christianity. OK here's the heart of the faith, an arena for prophetic social justice-making. Just what does the bishop direct his flock to do:

The first is Earth Hour on Saturday, March 28 at 8:30 p.m. It’s an hour in time where we, as a people of faith, symbolically turn off those things in our lives - televisions, computers and lights – which contribute to
the production of green house gases by the electricity they use from non-renewable sources of energy...I echo this call and urge all Anglicans in Niagara to observe Earth Hour. For more information, visit KAIROS’ website(www.kairoscanada.org) and learn this relates to their Re-Energize campaign.
Last year, I wrote to you in response to a motion from Youth Synod asking me to declare one Sunday per year (near Earth Day) for Anglicans in Niagara to walk, cycle or carpool to church. This year Earth Sunday falls on April 19. I hope all parishes will go one step further this year and observe Earth Sunday in some way
through their Sunday liturgies. As part of my Earth Sunday plans, I’ll be reducing my carbon footprint by using my hybrid car as little as possible and by walking to my host parish that Sunday. I urge all of you throughout our great diocese to also reduce your carbon footprint on Earth Sunday as way of demonstrating your commitment to care for creation.

That's it. That's the taking up of the Cross that this religion requires. One hour of turning things off and taking a nap, and stick a reference to the environment into the Prayers of the People. These are people who hold a form of godliness but deny the power thereof.

In the last federal campaign the Liberals ran on their Green Shift, an environmental program headlined by a carbon tax. With disastrous results. The attempt to make this new social gospel the means of the vivification of the ACoC will have the same fate. But give Stephane Dion this: he was willing to stand up for what he believes, and pay the cost of his discipleship.