I am an Anglican, and Episcopalian, and a companion of Jesus.

I am an Anglican, an Episcopalian and a companion of Jesus (AEcJ).  All three.  At the same time.

I continue as an AEcJ in spite of various rants, mostly from the puritan / fundamentalist side of the aisle, but also a bit from the progressive / modernist gang as well.

It is, as far as I am concerned, a miracle that I have any time at all for the rants, or for that matter with most of what passes for righteousness in the organized church.

It is a miracle too that God gives the gift of the joys and that I can receive them.  Blessed be the Source that frees me from preoccupation with the ranters and the panters after right belief, right thinking, right being.

I am AEcJ because of rather simple joys, some exemplified by small events of this past week. I am an AEcJ by means of Grace. That's the way it is supposed to be.

Some simple joys experienced:

(i) Being an Episcopalian, whose church

"is far from intending to depart from the Church of England in any essential point of doctrine, discipline, or worship; or further than local circumstances require,"

I was delighted to attend Sung Evensong this last Sunday at St. Peter's, Lewes, the little town on the bay by the big waters. It was both beautiful and simple, and spiritually very reviving.

It reminded me of walking down country lanes to Ripon Cathedral for Evensong in better days with friends who now are distant sometimes adversaries.  Perhaps in the future we will walk again on some village lane to Evensong.

But for the time being the continuation of what is true, and pure and lovely about prayer and song in an English Church is still available, still incarnate, on this shore, in small churches that live out what is fine about Anglican worship. And it is done by Episcopalian Anglicans, of which I am one.

(ii) I am just now in the middle of reading a rather impressive book by Lawrence Duggan, titled, Armsbearing and the Clergy in the History and Canon Law of Western Christianity. It is no one's idea of a mild book.  

It is robustly scholarly, filled with the assumption that the reader will spend the time looking up the odd word or two PER PAGE that is unusual and new. But it is fine, filled with a love of those people whose faith was mixed so completely with the foibles of being merely human as to make them interesting, even in the context of canon law and a seemingly arcane topic. 

The relevance of Duggan's research is for me its connection to the moral stance of the larger mass of Christian believers, the baptized, rather than that of the clergy. Armsbearing is a faith issue for the whole church. 

And it has made me think again about a project I took part in at the Church Center in the mid 1980's to revise the materials given to those considering conscientious objection to bearing arms. Our concerns were not about clergy bearing arms, but about Christians doing so. The issues raised in Duggan's book bear on this larger issue of faithfulness as Christians, and I wish we had had it then.  

The delight in this book, and the delight in receiving it as a gift from the author, again made me realize how much I am an Anglican and Episcopalian and a companion of Jesus, and how those facts are bound deeply to the long struggle of the "Western Church" to stay true to its rootedness in Jesus.  I am glad that as an AEcJ I belong to a community of believers that have a long history of trying to be true to the faith, not once delivered, but every day delivered, to the Saints.

(iii)  I've taken up another book, one which I only this week found, although it came out in 2006. It concerns the struggles to find a way to communicate beyond the limits of the various "positions" taken by Anglicans and Episcopalians on various issues. 

Common Prayer on Common Ground: A Vision of Anglican Orthodoxy written by Alan Jones, is a wonderful reminder that being an Anglican and an Episcopalian and a companion of Jesus can be an amalgam that serves the faith well.  

I have considerable problems with Dean Jones' decision to couch his argument in camps labeled "conservative" and "liberal."  There is a certain straw dog factor in his set up. But under the surface Dean Jones returns again and again to the notion that Anglican Orthodoxy is not about gnawing particular bones of orthodox doctrine, but about having doctrine in service to conversation, in service to a larger engagement that converts all who join to something greater that doctrine, to perhaps the Truth that is deeper than truths we hold. I think he is right on.

(iv) In preparation for a Holy Walk with Lakota friends and young people from St. Peter's on Lakota land, I am reading "The Pipe and Christ," written by  William Stolzman.  It was recommended by Margaret and Joel Watson, and for good reason.

Anglicans, Episcopalians and Companions of Christ, all need to be clear that conversation, particularly with peoples informed by experience and the land in ways different from our own, must not  be a one way street. Perhaps the most persuasive conversations about Christian belief is dependent on first appreciating the world as others see it.  

Chapter eight of The Pipe and Christ, "Lakota Spirits and Christian Theology" is a fine example of speaking of Christian truths in a way that is open to Lakota spiritual experience.  

The book is by a Roman Catholic, but the spirit of the book is, I think, shared by the Anglican and Episcopalian tendency to a generous orthodoxy, one in which the way forward is always in community and conversation. 

(v) And from there I think on being Anglican and Episcopalian and a companion of Jesus and the experience of little things in the blog world:  

I am delighted to be listening (deeply I hope) to a bishop, Dan Martins, who sits far from me, as pertains to the surface of the current unplesantlnesses, and learning from his growth into that office how close we really are. 

It has been a delight to see the development of Peoples Prayers as a home grown theologically interesting source of reflective engagement. 

I find Margaret's  "Leave it lay where Jesus flang it" perhaps the most consistently deep source of reflection on the life of a country priest that I read these days. 

Each of these continues the ongoing effort to be Anglican, Episcopalian and a companion of Jesus, in remarkable ways. And of course there are so many more.

What is most encouraging about these writers (and the many others out there) is that they all believe it is possible to be the amalgamated union of these strands - a church grounded in the English faith experience, a church American in its actual experience, and a church whose members care more about being a companion of Jesus than they do any of the above.

So I leave Evensong refreshed, find connection with ancient struggles to be in the world but not of it, remembering that the doctrines may not have been as important as the Holy Spirit present in the words formed in song, and that my companions of every stripe are singing as they can in this strange land where we are not finally at home.

The Joy, I suppose, about being an Anglican and an Episcopalian and a companion of Jesus, is the joy of knowing that in the long run (perhaps the very long run) all our efforts will be some sort of reasonable faith offering.

A Practicum on being Anglican, Episcopalian and a companion of Christ in a time of controversy:

There is very little of the Archbishop of Kenya's recent letter on marriage to commend it as Anglican, Episcopal or Companionable to Jesus, at least it seems this way to me. Read it HERE. 

His opinions about marriage,  homosexual unions, the changes in English and Kenyan laws, polygamy and so forth are his opinions. Good conversation can result from such opinions being clearly stated. Fine. But I believe his underlying stance towards Holy Scripture and its meaning is astoundingly mistaken.

And, yet my sense that the Archbishop is wrongheaded is unsatisfying. Division doesn't seem to be enough.  I think  Margaret is right,

"Division is the worst statement church can make. Each of us running to our own corner. Because that is merely living in to the Lie.

The Great Lie that we can be happier, more fulfilled and live as the Body of Christ without each other.

What do we need to do for that sea-change --that culture shift in the church?

I am not entirely sure. Frankly, I don't have the time to think what the church might look like and how it might function in order to engage in the necessary reformations of our time (I just do too many funerals to do so... really.) But I am confident that all the energy to reform the way the church functions is merely a distraction until and unless we put the gospel --and Christ crucified and Christ resurrected right in the middle of it all."

And so, in a good Anglican, Episcopalian and Companion of Jesus sort of way, I have to ask, when and how can the Archbishop of Kenya and some of the rest of us connect by way of Christ crucified and resurrected "right in the middle of it all"?  Until that happens his rant, and mine, just sit there, smoldering.

And then there is the effort to reform the structures of the Church by way of a re-imagining process. TREC (the Taskforce on Re-imagining the Episcopal Church) is hard at work. 

The question is, is it a distraction? Is Margaret right? I think so. And not simply because the distraction draws us to the peculiarities of conflict in this particular time in Anglican Episcopal land, but because it distracts us from death and resurrection.

No resurrection, no re-imagining.  But no death of the old (the bones of dearly hoarded doctrines), no resurrection.

So we find ourselves back to doing the ground work in which we really have to engage others.  

In a simple church where people sing and pray and bleed out their lives and hearts, we hear just now some ancient ones. We engage for a moment the aspirations of so many whose positions on issues of the day are very unlike our own. And yet the ancient words are a comfort.

We engage a whole host of fellow travelers, the people of the history of the church.  Many of them were cranky sinners, but then again, so are we. In their struggles we see our own.  

Hopefully we engage people we grievously wronged and try to find a way to walk and talk together on their land. Perhaps there is conversation that will contribute to our healing and theirs.

We blog forward into unknown places with companions of Jesus whose wisdom makes us wiser.






Maybe the place to begin the practice of being Anglican, Episcopalian and a Companion of Jesus is to pray and sing and listen to stories of death and resurrection. There is always time to converse and be converted, but let those conversations grow from the deep soil of holy living.

And I am Anglican, Episcopalian and a Companion of Jesus.

Mostly.