Over in Pueblo, Colorado, Dr Ephraim Radner Rector of Church of the Ascension has written another article, titled The March Statement by the House of Bishops: Confusing the Flock which criticises the statement issued by the meeting of the House of Bishops which he himself had earlier addressed.
Many, including those opposing its content, have praised the recent House of Bishops Statement for its “clarity”. In what follows, I want to dispute that evaluation. The Statement is unclear in numerous important respects, except one, viz. its animus against the Anglican Communion’s Primates’ Meeting. The reasons for that animus, however, are hardly spelled out, are often contradictory, and are lodged within a tissue of assertions that are without stated rationale. This is not clarity at all. And in the context of the current agonized and conflicted debate within TEC and the Communion, the Statement amounts to an act of pastoral and theological irresponsibility of the highest order….
Warning: there are over 8000 words in the article.
8000 words of clarity then ?
Good grief, this guy is defensive, offensive and full of himself at he rattles on-and-on against the Episcopal Church and her HoB…one would think he wasn’t a member in good standing of the (strangely unfunded) Anglican Communion Institute and the Covenant Design Group!
Mind-spew, and that’s being charitable. His point under number 2: “Any attempt to argue that this is not the case involves a profound incoherence: either the matter of “full inclusion” (including to the episcopacy and same-sex unions and blessings) is a matter “indifferent”, and hence is open to compromise for the sake of the Communion; or the matter is one of essential doctrine and discipline, and therefore the bishops should simply confess openly their inability to tolerate and accept alternative views (including within the Communion).” completely IGNORES the concept of ***”locally-adapted***, built into The Quad. Matters of full-inclusion ARE essential,… Read more »
Only 8,000 words? That’s practically a haiku for Radner.
This is a very long article.
I think that might be some kind of understatement….
Anyhoo; I really doubt anyone has the perserverence to read it all.
Concision is a beautiful thing.
In the text there is quite a lot of slight of hand by way of exaggerating the TEC HoB position so as to make it easier to squash.
Occasionally you do come across an interesting point, but you need to put in a lot of work to get there…..
‘Only 8,000 words? That’s practically a haiku for Radner.’
mind weighing your words
spirit rises like feather
on breeze
; – )
Radner’s criticism of the use of anti-colonial and postcolonial discourse misses the mark. Of course the Episcopal Church was founded by a bourgeois revolution among slave holders and those who dispossessed Native American peoples. The remnants of this Episcopal Church are to be found in the old boy network, whether liberal or conservative, and they are by and large institutionalists. What Radner does not understand or chooses to ignore is the extent to which the self-understanding of the progressive wing of the Episcopal Church is forged from the movements for human liberation among poor people, people of color, women, and… Read more »
Haiku for Radner
Masters of grammar
Correct all colonials
Who dare to name God
1 Corinthians 14:19 “…in the church I would rather speak five intelligible words to instruct others than ten thousand words in a tongue.”
My suggested five words?
“God does not like bullying”
Some of us know about the students who write on and on thinking that this is in itself impressive. On top of this, it is almost arrogant in places – the bishops ignoring their own history, he says. Well they were baffled by him. All these bishops did was face up to the concrete realities of their own Church, and that was that.
Lambeth Conference Resolutions from 1867 Resolution 6 ‘That, in the judgement of the bishops now assembled, the whole Anglican Communion is deeply injured by the present condition of the Church in Natal; and that a committee be now appointed at this general meeting to report on the best mode by which the Church may be delivered from the continuance of this scandal, and the true faith maintained. That such report be forwarded to His Grace the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, with the request that he will be pleased to transmit the same to all the bishops of the Anglican Communion,… Read more »
As I read Dr. R., his themes are two, plus a corollary implicit. One. Top down apostolic authority trumps all other sources of authority. Trumps bottoms up church authority through the locally adapted daily lives of all baptized believers. Trumps the sideways relationship authorities of how we actually live nowadays, across overlapping but often quite different circles of belonging, participation, and well, living. Two. Top down apostolic authority is most genuinely true and trustworthy when it is policing. It may be true and trustworthy in other instances – Radner for now in this essay seems to leave the question more… Read more »
‘Top down apostolic authority trumps all other sources of authority.”
Unless, of course, such authority is said to reside with the See of Peter, in which case top down Apostolic authority is anathema and “following the traditions of men”, and what our liberty seeking ancestors in faith broke away from in the Reformation. Four legs good, two legs better!