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The Cattle Have Already Checked Out: My Response to Joe Colletti’s “On the Theology of Communion and Separation”
The North American Anglican has not included me (wisely, some would say) in the official responders’ list to the above referenced post. But I would like to do so, and since I have this forum (and have commented on many of their posts in the past) I will do so on this one.
I only want to address one issue: the one of parallel jurisdictions. Colletti thinks he has an strong case, but there is one serious problem: the Roman Catholic Church. No one in the Anglican-Episcopal world AFAIK thinks that there is any problem with either their apostolic succession or the validity of their sacraments. As I had a little fun with in a novel I wrote a few years back:
“Is there any question about the validity of the sacraments of the Roman church?” Julian asked.
“There’s never a question there—it’s ours that seem to always be in doubt,” Desmond answered. The Bishop glared sourly at Desmond.
“No, dear Julian, there isn’t,” the Bishop admitted. “Why is that germane to this discussion?”
“Because she was raised as a Roman Catholic—she was both baptised and confirmed there, and I believe in the same church that you were in just now to witness Bishop des Cieux’ consecration.”
Turning to the issue of parallel jurisdictions, in my own experience when I decided to “swim the Tiber” fifty-four years ago I transferred from the Diocese of South Florida to the Archdiocese of Miami. The latter was underscored by the fact that the parish I did this at was housed in the chapel of the main seminary for same Archdiocese! The Episcopal Church itself has been running a system (too large, I think) of parallel dioceses since its inception, as the Roman Catholic Church in these United States dates back to Colonial times.
When the Reformation took place the Anglican and Lutheran countries simply kept the Roman Catholic Church out of these countries. The Reformed did similar things in places like Scotland, the Netherlands (sort of) and Geneva. When things started getting “mixed up” on both sides of the Atlantic we had parallel jurisdictions. Once you start such a trend, it’s hard to stop.
The problem with the Roman church is that it has lost its way on preserving the sacred deposit of faith, which was its “one job” in this world. The churches of the Reformation–direct and indirect–have attempted to fix this problem. In recent times many of them have lost their way too, this was the impetus of the ACNA. The ACNA has its issues and what’s going on is an appalling failure of leadership and comity within that leadership, in addition to having left WO unresolved in its establishment.
The fact that there are geographically overlapping jurisdictions between TEC and ACNA are really not the problem, any more than those of the RCC and PECUSA (and TEC and ACNA and…) On this issue, as we say in the hills, to bring this up is like closing the barn door after the cows have all left (or more elegantly as I put it in the title.) Whether the reconquista effort will succeed is not known, although church history is not encouraging in that regard. The concept of the ACNA was sound in its inception and it’s a serious pity that the church has gotten off track the way it has.
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Not Our “Betters”: Some Thoughts on Jeffrey Epstein
Jeffrey Epstein, the crimes he committed and the people he involved are topics that simply will not go away in our news cycle, and that’s saying something in a news cycle with a notoriously short memory. It transcends the political spectrum (no mean feat either) and sticks in the craw of a significant portion of our population. Why is does this seems obvious, but if we look under the surface it isn’t as obvious as we think.
As a Palm Beacher, it doesn’t surprise me that his whole system of sexual exploitation started in my own home town. The first surprise comes in that the beginning of Epstein’s end came with the Town of Palm Beach Police and its police chief, Michael Reiter. While Palm Beach County and the State of Florida, where the triumph of “good government” over the “Pork Chop Gang” used to be the stuff of political legend, tried to dodge the issue, Reiter pressed on and got the FBI involved, which was the beginning of the end for Epstein. My only hope is that, when they arrested him, they used the same line the Palm Beach Police used on my brother when they caught him for speeding in our baby blue Pinto: “We’ve been looking for you for some time.”
Let’s get back to serious matters: there are many scandals that fill both air time and internet bandwidth. Why is this one so special? I think that the whole Epstein business is a dagger in the heart of the way people look at life in these United States and for that matter in our estranged neighbour to the north, Canada, and people have reacted viscerally to the assault on their cherished beliefs.
As I settled down to life in lower Appalachia, there’s one nearly universal attitude amongst the people I ran with which took me aback: the attitude that the “rich” (and that definition is very elastic) were more virtuous than those below them. I was prepared for the resentment driven attitude that my mother’s people exhibited, but while I wasn’t looking there had been a vibe shift in the culture. Experience taught me differently, but more about that shortly.
Years later I got into lockhorns with my “Canadian sheeple,” who exhibited a similarly deferential attitude which I characterised at the time (and still do today) as sycophantic. He described himself as a “country boy” from deepest Ontario. Country boys are something I’m familiar with, but they’re generally different in their politics from Ontario to Ocoee. In their attitudes towards those up the food chain, however, I found common ground. In the end he developed TDS and our communication broke down, even though my attitude towards the “hero of Mar-a-Lago” is more utilitarian than anything else.
The reason why I feel the way I do is really simple: my years in Palm Beach (and those further down the coast) tell me that the wealthy and their spawn are not more virtuous than those whom they lord over. Many of these people are deeply sybaritic and insouciant in their outlook on life; their main goal is to get laid, high or drunk, and preferably all three. Now I’m certainly aware that the wealthy were capable of partying hard in the old times, but this ethic was neither the religion nor the driver of public policy that it has been for the last half century.
Although certain groups had their own dysfunctions to spread around, most of the rot in our society started at the top. This includes divorce; the first time the reality of this hit home is when I read through all of the name changes in the school directory. The drug culture, the hallmark of the 1960’s into which I was thrown, needed money, which was easily obtained at the top and only with effort (usually illegal) at the bottom. Running to therapists instead of other guides was the sport of people who could afford the hourly fees. And the environmental movement was shaped by people who instinctively saw it being used to impoverish potential competitors coming up from below (yes, this is the key reason why nuclear power was trashed in the 1970’s and 1980’s.)
For an elite to stay on top the way ours has, it requires the kinds of attitudes down the ladder that Canadian and American alike have exhibited for many years. In the Anglosphere it starts early, as I note in my piece on the Anglican confirmation catechism And Who Are Our Betters? A Sticking Point From the 1928 Book of Common Prayer. We are taught always to look up to these people, although finding out the truth is always a “looking behind the curtain” experience. These people really aren’t our “betters” after all.
As should be evident by now, Epstein found fertile ground for his island orgies and underage satiation. Revealing that puts a lot of the virtue signalling that has come from the top in a whole new light. What about #metoo? What about protecting our young people? Where were the people who could do something about it when it happens either on Epstein’s island or anywhere else? Or, to look at it another way, why do these people throw people down the line into jail for these offenses and then go scot free on their own account? (That’s been going on for a long time, too, it’s just harder to hide these days.)
Now, of course, people are angry that their ideas have been smashed. These days the hue and cry is for people to be “held accountable.” Personally I find vindication in our court system–civil or criminal–of limited satisfaction, probably as I’ve been through too much litigation and legal process. We don’t need our elites to be held accountable: we need new elites, since we seem to find an elite indispensable. We need an elite which has a lot stronger sense of civic duty and connection with the existing populace. We need an elite which will put the productive strength of the country ahead of personal pleasure and enrichment. We need an elite which has a modicum of basic integrity rather than one whose integrity ends at virtue signalling on social media.
Will we get any of this? I’m not optimistic, but if we don’t the only thing we have to look forward to is When the People’s Liberation Army Marches Down Pennsylvania Avenue.
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Why Pentecostals Should Believe in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist
The whole subject of the Eucharist is one which has occupied this site for a long time. Probably my most read–and infamous–post on the subject was my 2015 piece Bill Clinton’s Eucharistic Theology: It Depends on What ‘Is’ Is, where I tried to use the legal woes of our last Scots-Irish president to make a point about what the New Testament really says about the nature of the Lord’s Supper. I also did a series at my own church on the subject.
What I am going to set for there is specifically aimed at Pentecostals and those who share their idea if not their context, specifically the Charismatics. But first we need to play a parlor game which comes up frequently in Pentecostal academia: what does it mean to be Pentecostal?
Some put the emphasis on the operation of the spiritual gifts. You see this more frequently in Charismatic circles, but it’s a fair question. The problem with putting it first is that it puts the cart before the horse. It ignores the basic questions: why are there spiritual gifts in the first place? Why should God put these in the church? Why isn’t the Word enough, as the cessationists have told us?
Others revert to a cultural answer, waxing in a maudlin way (consciously or otherwise) about the moves of the Spirit in the past in their own cultural context and how this implicitly defines what being Pentecostal means. Any serious examination of Acts 2 should show that the whole point of the day of Pentecost was to see, as Joel prophesied, the Spirit poured out on all flesh. Since all flesh is a diverse group in many ways, it makes sense that the manifestation of the Spirit will vary in like fashion. My last post The Word of God’s Songs of Praise Volume 1 Are Now on YouTube is a good example of that; it was not only different from what Catholics were used to, it was both alike and different from what most Pentecostal churches were doing at the time, and the latter were definitely aware of that. I think it is fair to say that any definition of Pentecost which casts it in a narrow cultural context violates the whole point of the movement.
I think that it is fair to say that at the heart of modern Pentecost is the belief that God, who moved supernaturally in time in the Acts of the Apostles, moves in the same way today. That goes beyond just the spiritual gifts we see discussed in other parts of the New Testament; in includes healing and other miracles as well. That solves another problem cessationist types have been wrestling with: how do we convince people of the truth of the Word in the face of critical Biblical scholarship? The answer is simple: if people see God moving in the same way now he did in the Scriptures, it’s a lot simpler.
And that brings us to the issue of the Eucharist.
The wedding at Cana was Our Lord’s first miracle in his earthly ministry; the Eucharist, save for the Resurrection, was his last. Why Pentecostals would affirm water turned into wine and deny the transformation in the Lord’s Supper is a head scratcher, although there’s been much lame hermeneutic to justify that paradox. In any case the words Our Lord used to institute his Supper are fairly straightforward:
While they were eating, Jesus took some bread, and, after saying the blessing, broke it and, as he gave it to his disciples, said: “Take it and eat it; this is my body.” Then he took a cup, and, after saying the thanksgiving, gave it to them, with the words: “Drink from it, all of you; For this is my Covenant blood, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. (Matthew 26:26-28)
Paul thought enough of this to repeat it:
For I myself received from the Lord the account which I have in turn given to you-how the Lord Jesus, on the very night of his betrayal, took some bread, And, after saying the thanksgiving, broke it and said “This is my own body given on your behalf. Do this in memory of me.” And in the same way with the cup, after supper, saying “This cup is the new Covenant made by my blood. Do this, whenever you drink it, in memory of me.” For whenever you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death-till he comes. Therefore, whoever eats the bread, or drinks the Lord’s cup, in an irreverent spirit, will have to answer for an offence against the Lord’s body and blood. (1 Corinthians 11:23-27)
Most of our ministers, whether they believe in Bill Clinton’s Eucharistic Theology or not (and most do,) “stick with the script,” although a few do not. How did we come to abandon taking this at face value? The first is that there is no physical change in the elements after the consecration, opening us up to the battle cry of “It’s just bread!”
The second–and one that the Reformers of all stripes dealt with in various ways–is that Roman Catholicism overplayed its hand on the subject of the Eucharist. (It still does.) We were regaled with Eucharistic processions, adorations and the occasional miracle. Roman Catholics assured us that, the closer and more often we were to the Body of Christ, the closer we were to the Lord himself.
In the seeds of both of these objections the destruction of Bill Clinton’s Eucharistic Theology can be found.
- The Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist–no matter how you formulate it–is incarnational. Today we take for granted that Jesus Christ came to earth to be a human being “in the flesh” with all that goes with that. And we say that he came to be “in a body.” (The definition of that is not univocal.) What we really needs to realise that that he came at all into this material world was breaking the general order of things , that combining uncreated God with created man is not something to be taken for granted. Rising from the dead was part of that, and the ancients knew that all too well: that’s why the Athenians bucked Paul when he brought up that issue (Acts 17:32.)
- Getting close to the Body and Blood of Our Lord is no guarantee that you have internalised Our Lord into your life. The Pharisees, scribes and other worthies were close enough to Our Lord to spit on him and yet were unchanged by his physical presence other than to be angered by him. Paul brings up the issue of unworthy reception, the poster child for which was Judas Iscariot. It is legitimate to criticise Roman Catholicism’s obsession with this, but the answer is simple: it’s not an either/or proposition but a both/and one.
- Ultimately the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist is supernatural in nature. As I said before, it was Our Lord’s last miracle in his earthly ministry. It is a sad business that people who proclaim that divine healing is part of the atonement (Isaiah 53:5) would turn around and deny what really should be taking place when we celebrate the Lord’s Supper.
It is time for Pentecostals and all those who believe that our God acts supernaturally now as he did when Jesus Christ was on earth and in the years immediately after his Resurrection to claim that he does the same when we gather to celebrate what Bossuet used to call “the sacred pledge of the Eucharist.” It is more than narrow literalism: it is the reclamation of our birthright.
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The Word of God’s Songs of Praise Volume 1 Are Now on YouTube
You can see them here:
The songs:
A1 Allelu!
A2 Alleluia, Sons Of God Arise
A3 The Angel Of The Lord
A4 Away They Went With Weeping
A5 Balm In Gilead
A6 Bless The Lord, O My Soul
A7 The Breath Of God
A8 Canticle Of The Gift
B1 Canticle Of The Three Young Men
B2 Come, Follow Me
B3 Come, Go With Me To That Land
B4 Come Holy Ghost
B5 The Dancing Heart
B6 Father, I Adore You
B7 The Foot Washing SongThe songs:
A1 Glory To God, Glory
A2 Hallelujah, I Want To Sing All About It
A3 Hallelujah, Jesus Is Lord
A4 He Is Lord
A5 Here Comes Jesus
A6 His Banner Over Me Is Love
A7 I Have Decided To Follow Jesus
A8 I Want To Walk As A Child Of The Light
B1 I Will Arise
B2 I Will Sing Of The Mercies Of The Lord
B3 In My Father’s House
B4 Israel, Rely On Yahweh
B5 It’s A Brand New Day
B6 Jesus In The Morning
B7 The King Of Glory
B8 Let All That Is Within Me
B9 The Love RoundThe songs:
A1 O Come, Let Us Adore Him
A2 Praise My God With The Tambourine
A3 Psalm 145
A4 Rejoice Always
A5 Rejoice In The Lord Always
A6 Romans Eight
A7 Sing To God A Brand New Canticle
A8 Song Of Good News
B1 Song Of Moses
B2 The Spirit Is A-Movin’
B3 There Is None Like Him
B4 There’s A River Of Life
B5 They That Wait Upon The Lord
B6 This Is The Day
B7 When The Spirit Moves YouA couple of years ago I had a long discussion with an historian of praise and worship music. He stated that the Word of God (and presumably the People of Praise as well) was an important part of the development of the entire praise and worship movement, which came into full flower the following decade. But some explanation of how these albums came into being is necessary.
The Word of God had a songbook entitled Songs of Praise. Many of those songs appeared in the community’s albums which appear on this channel. The purpose of this and the other two that went with it was to record performances (I know they’d object to that characterisation, but this is an album, after all) so that prayer groups and communities alike could hear how they sounded. The purpose of this album was to disseminate the recordings of the songs that didn’t appear in their regular album sequence. So how does it come off? Let’s start by noting that this wasn’t their “A list” of songs. Both the songs and the way they were performed vary in quality.
On the other hand, many of these songs were in the core of the Charismatic Renewal and are precious, especially since the “Top 40” model praise and worship music has adopted tends to push the older songs aside. Many of these came from Pentecostal churches, which will come as a surprise to many of my Pentecostal visitors. This opened the WoG to criticism for “Protestant” influences, but also shows that conventional hymnody was being undermined in Evangelical and Evangelical-adjacent churches, something that has become very evident since. Note that quite a few of these songs appear elsewhere on the channel on non-Word of God albums if you want to hear them by their original artists or other performers.
My deep thanks to Dennis for this music.
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The Frigidaire–and the Church Named After It–Aren’t What They Used to Be
The failure of of the ice maker in our refrigerator–which we thought premature–has led us to videos like this, where we found out we were blessed:
One of the brands mentioned as “not what they used to be” was Frigidaire. Fundie and fundie-adjacent types will recall the days when preachers–sweating, bawling and thumping the pulpit with their Bibles–would disparage the “Church of the Frigidaire” as cold, lifeless and unable to bring people to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ.
They were hollering about the Main Line churches.
Well, they evidently made their point:
If the percentage of Americans who identify as evangelical or Catholic is holding steady, where are the “nones” coming from? The data seems to provide a clear answer: The growth of the “nones” has come almost entirely at the expense of mainline Protestantism. In the mid-1970s, 31 percent of Americans were mainline Protestant, and in the 1950s, perhaps as many as 50 percent were. But today, only 9 percent of Americans identify as mainline Protestant, and that figure is likely to drop even further in the next few years, as older mainline Protestant church members pass away. With only 2 percent of Americans age 18-40 identifying with a mainline Protestant denomination, the future of mainline Protestantism looks bleak.
I suppose that the church I grew up with–and I’m sure the one I spent 2.5 years in during my early years in the family business–would classify as “churches of the Frigidaire.” Like the appliance whose moniker they were stuck with, they did their job: they kept the contents at a constant temperature, did so without a lot of maintenance and for a long period of time, and of course the ice maker was necessary for the wet bar which most of the membership watered at (especially the Whiskeypalians, where with every four there was always a fifth.)
Evidently the churches of the Frigidaire have suffered the same fate as the appliances, except that there isn’t a lot of choice to keep the food cold while dropping out of church doesn’t have the same immediate impact as losing a refrigerator/freezer full of food. There are two basic reasons for this, and I’ve documented them before:
- They abandoned what core beliefs they had to start with: When Church Becomes Pointless
- They were no longer the “way up” in society: My Thoughts on “Christianity’s Decline in the Northeast” (which partially explains why, if there’s a liberal Main Line church that’s doing okay, it’s in the South)
So the Evangelicals should be dancing a jig, right? They’re not, and not only because they’re against dancing (or were) but because, while the occupants of the Main Line churches were quiet in their constant temperature environment, they were subject to “pre-evangelisation” and “pre-discipleship,” which saved Evangelical churches a lot of time and effort when they finally came forward. Now these churches are faced with presenting the Gospel and actually making disciples from people who, instead of having sat all their lives in the cold, have come out of a vacuum. This has especially hit hard for churches like the Southern Baptists who, buttressed by their idea of unconditional election, have been playing a numbers game, which has worked until recent years.
There’s no doubt that the “civic religion” of the Main Line of past times was good for the country in general if it wasn’t the best for the salvation of individuals. But Evangelical Christianity it by itself not well suited to run a country. Face it: if that were the case, Mike Huckabee would have been in the White House and not in Jerusalem, working for Donald Trump.
Note on Roman Catholicism: they’ve not really held steady in the sense that “they’re holding on to their base” as much as they’ve swapped parishioners, from Gringos to largely Hispanics, which explains their take on immigration better than anything else.
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The ACNA’s Demographic is the Key to Understanding Why It Is a Target
The Baptist News, of all places, makes this observation:
Beneath the salacious headlines from the Anglican Church in North America lies a high-stakes battle about military chaplaincy.Although one of the nation’s smaller Christian denominations, the ACNA endorses a disproportionately massive share of United States military chaplains. And that has been a profit center for the Jurisdiction of the Armed Forces and Chaplaincy, led by a bishop who now has fled the denomination to start his own.
The ACNA, for all of the publicity it’s gotten lately, isn’t that large of a denomination, although it’s growth has been respectable (a concept which plays its part in this saga) in its relatively short life. But why all of the attention on this relatively small group of people, up to an including a Washington Post correspondent making a career out of its misfortunes? The answer is twofold: its own demographics and the place of the military in American society.
One mistake Evangelicals and evangelical adjacent types repeatedly make is that it’s all about sheer numbers, that if we somehow get saved and mobilised a large enough number of people we can make our “Pickett’s Charge” big enough to overwhelm the forces of darkness and take our country back for God. The last half century should demonstrate the falsity of this concept. Anyone with an elite background knows that, it’s not getting to the large number of people that gains you control over a social system, it’s getting to the right people. Once you do that the rest will follow. This is especially true in a society where respectability is such an obsession as it is with ours.
The ACNA’s elevated demographic–which it has in common with the Episcopal Church, including the racial makeup–has its own perils, but its presence in the upper reaches of our society (and a not inconsiderable presence in the DC area) makes it a threat to our elite. People like Joel Osteen and Kenneth Copeland may be deeply offensive to the pseudosophisticates that dominate our chattering class, but they’re a sideshow. The ACNA is a perceived threat, thus the space in the Washington Post. The fact that it has a desultory leadership structure (and the leaders to go with it) only makes it more vulnerable.
The situation with the military itself is a little different. Ever since the days of Barack Obama elite opinion has worried about the conservative nature of military people and the possibility of them eventually doing a coup. (I was trashed for expressing this opinion in my piece Every King is Proclaimed by Soldiers, but somebody needs to live in reality.) The push for DEI in both the military and the intelligence/police apparatus is an attempt to end this threat. Although conservative denominations such as mine maintain endorsing agencies for military chaplaincy, and are more likely to see their sons and daughters join the military, again the ACNA is a greater perceived threat, especially due to the relatively large group of chaplains that the JAFC has endorsed and are serving.
The ACNA has made its share of mistakes. The problem facing the ACNA is that its structure and the people who populate it may not be well positioned to fix them in a timely and decisive matter. From that standpoint what we are seeing is a power struggle emerge, and experience indicates that such in churches are ugly and non-beneficial to the mission that Our Lord put us on the earth to do. But there’s a reason why the ACNA is a special target, and that needs to be understood by everyone–and soon.
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Derek Jones and Those Wandering ACNA Bishops
As we careen from one year of artificial intelligence combined with (and to some extent born out of) real stupidity, it’s time to stop and take a look at the Anglican Church in North America, that rickety chandelier of an organisation mired with serious problems with its bishops, and three in particular. The matter of Stewart Ruch has been disposed of in a manner that makes few happy (although in the circumstances surrounding it virtually guaranteed that result.) That leaves us with Derek Jones and Steve Wood, and to avoid making this article a sprawing mess I’ll focus on Jones, as I did in my earlier post on the subject.
In working my way around the old blogosphere on the subject, I’ve encountered a source I’ve run into before: Robin Jordan. We’ve had our sword crossings on a wide variety of subjects. With recent events he has brought to our attention some interesting posts of his from 2010 on the subject of Derek Jones in his posts Episcopi Vagantes in the Anglican Church in North America and The Sound of Silence. Another post of interest is More unanswered questions in Derek Jones’ reception as an ACNA bishop, where he crosses swords with George Conger (with whom I share a home parish) and Bill Atwood. In the course of this he makes some interesting points and conveys some valuable information:
- He goes into the whole origin of the episcopi vagantes and their impact on the ACNA. I had never heard of such until my first Catholic parish priest mentioned them to me in passing. As Jordan points out, “What the CEEC bishops are describing as Church of England recognition may be a reference to what happened early in the last century when a group of Anglo-Catholic priests in the Church of England concerned about the validity of their Anglican orders sought re-ordination at the hands of an episcopi vagantes bishop whom they believed to have valid independent Catholic orders.” There are of course other bishops who have filled that role, and Jones was consecrated by one of them.
- Jordan notes the lack of transparency surrounding Jones’ admission into the ACNA as a feature of the organisation, not a bug. That has come back to light in the recent conflicts.
- Jordan makes the following statement: “Bishop Jones’ reception raises some very important questions about the future direction of the ACNA? Does Bishop Jones’ reception signal that the ACNA is no longer pursuing Anglican Communion recognition? Is the ACNA with Jones’ reception hoping to bring Convergence congregations and clergy into the ACNA fold and increasing its size through their absorption? Is the ACNA moving away from Anglicanism to become a Convergence church? What are the implications for confessional Anglicans and confessional Anglicanism in the ACNA? How will such a movement affect Anglo-Catholics in the ACNA and their commitment to Catholic order, doctrine and practice? Will the reception of a bishop from a church that ordains women further strain relations with Anglo-Catholics in the ACNA and move the ACNA closer to the consecration of a women bishop?” All of these are still very relevant with the ACNA, and are prescient points–if not entirely unique to Jordan.
- He also stated the following back in 2010: “In the meantime, Bishop Jones’ supporters have sought to discredit those who call attention to the question of the validity and regularity of his consecration and to impugn their character. Jones’ fellow CEEC bishops, when a query was directed to them about his consecration, declined to give a straightforward answer. They claimed that Jones’ consecration had the recognition of the Church of England as well as the ACNA and referred the inquirer to Jones himself. However, they did not provide any details in regards to who in the Church of England had recognized Jones’ consecration and under what circumstances. Nor did they volunteer where documentation of this recognition of the consecration is to be found.” Jones’ supporters have always done so with gusto, and that is certainly the case today.
I would urge my readers to take a look at Jordan’s material on the subect. That said, I have a few observations to make as follows:
- Jordan’s question “Does Bishop Jones’ reception signal that the ACNA is no longer pursuing Anglican Communion recognition?” has largely been answered elsewhere. The new Archbishop of Canterbury (if she can get past her safeguarding woes) has done what years of stating the obvious to ACNA dreamers has not: the whole idea of the ACNA being a part of the “old” Church of England-centred Anglican Communion is dead. What will come out of the upcoming Abuja meeting will be interesting and impactful, but getting past those dreams is a step forward, and it’s unfortunate that it happened when the ACNA is mired in its internal problems.
- Jordan’s leitmotif is that North American Anglicanism needs to get back to a more Reformed, Protestant way, and much of what he says here–and elsewhere–is directed towards that aim. Irrespective of the merits of that, I don’t see that happening. Looking at recent history, if the Reformed Episcopal Church can be moved in an Anglo-Catholic direction, how can anyone else reverse course? Catholicism has appeal for two reasons. The first is that it, like the Patriarch Nikon’s reforms vs. the Old Believers, makes people feel that they’re “keeping up with the Jonses’” (pun unintended) when in fact they’d be better off being the Jonses! And someone needs to point out that the Catholicism generally practiced in parishes (outside perhaps the Trads) today has little to do with the Anglo-Catholicism we see in Anglican/Episcopal circles. The second is that it is authoritarian in structure and administration, and the very Gothardian Boomers in the ACNA feel a strong thrill up their leg when they think about that. (This also speaks to the accountability issue.)
- I do not believe that the ACNA’s chaplaincy should have been a separate diocese but a department of the central church. Most of the present fiasco would have been avoided if it had been constituted as a department to start with.
- The ACNA has too many dioceses and bishops; with its “rickety chandelier” structure and authoritarian mindset amongst much of its leadership, problems are inevitable. Instead of worrying about his ordination, a more significant question regarding Derek Jones–or anyone else the ACNA has brought into its episcopal or clerical rank–is whether they are team players. We saw this play out with AMiA Bishop Chuck Murphy. The Africans expect it and the Roman Catholics expect it but lessons unlearned are lessons repeated.
I’ve communicated with people on both sides of the Jones matter. I can’t help but think that, given the entry of the U.S. court system into the fracas–and we all know what happens with that–there will be no real winners when everything is said and done. Hopefully the ACNA, something which many of us looked at with optimism at its start, will weather the rough seas and end up safe in the harbour.
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Pentecostalism in Puerto Rico: A Movement Birthed by Refugees in 1916 Now Includes 25 Percent of Island Residents–Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center
It’s not just the Assemblies of God either; the Church of God has also been enriched by its Puerto Rican people, who on the island organise themselves as the “Mission Board.” Many have come to the continental U.S., where they have been a part of my local church and my classes at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, both geotechnical and my Fluid Mechanics Laboratory class. We are the better for them.
One of the best stories about these people came from a friend who, before she and her husband moved to Tennessee, taught high school in central Florida. Florida public schools can be tough; one day the leader of the Puerto Rican gang at school came to her, a nice Christian woman, and said, without any prompting, “You’re Puerto Rican. We’ll protect you.” And they did! As anyone on the mission field will tell you, you never know whom God will send into your life to help you!
One thing I reminded every Soil Mechanics class of every semester was that Puerto Ricans are Americans and of the process that got them here, which you can see in my post The Raising of the Maine, Cellular Cofferdams, Why Puerto Rico is Part of the U.S., and Why Puerto Ricans are Americans. With some of the disgusting rhetoric floating around these days, it’s something that bears repeating.
Sailing the Last Voyage with Newton and Pascal
Positive Infinity 