AND THEN THERE WERE TWO: THE SPLIT IS HERE, SO WHAT?

 Those naughty people in the Church of England have gone and done it: Through their very English process they have appointed a woman to be the Archbishop of Canterbury. 

This has so upset the GAFCON churches that at their meeting this week the primates of that group pronounced themselves the Global Anglican Communion, the “real” Anglican Communion, the pure and undefiled carriers of “the faith once delivered of the saints.” 

And in just to make sure we all understand their purity, they propose that it is not they who have left the Anglican Communion, but rather all of us in Churches that have allowed new understandings of who can lead, who can be included, and who can participate in which sacraments. 

Here is a tasty bit of their declaration: 

“Our Gafcon Primates ..resolved to reorder the Anglican Communion as follows:

1. We declare that the Anglican Communion will be reordered, with only one foundation of communion, namely the Holy Bible, “translated, read, preached, taught and obeyed in its plain and canonical sense, respectful of the church’s historic and consensual reading” (Jerusalem Declaration, Article II), which reflects Article VI of the 39 Articles of Religion.

2. We reject the so-called Instruments of Communion,namely the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lambeth Conference, the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC), and the Primates Meeting, which have failed to uphold the doctrine and discipline of the Anglican Communion.

3. We cannot continue to have communion with those who advocate the revisionist agenda, which has abandoned the inerrant word of God as the final authority and overturned Resolution I.10, of the 1998 Lambeth Conference. 

4. Therefore, Gafcon has re-ordered the Anglican Communion by restoring its original structure as a fellowship of autonomous provinces bound together by the Formularies of the Reformation, as reflected at the first Lambeth Conference in 1867, and we are now the Global Anglican Communion.

5. Provinces of the Global Anglican Communion shall not participate in meetings called by the Archbishop of Canterbury…

6. Provinces, which have yet to do so, are encouraged to amend their constitution to remove any reference to being in communion with the See of Canterbury and the Church of England.

7. To be a member of the Global Anglican Communion, a province or a diocese must assent to the Jerusalem Declaration of 2008, the contemporary standard for Anglican identity.

8. We shall form a Council of Primates of all member provinces to elect a Chairman, as primus inter pares (‘first amongst equals’), to preside over the Council as it continues “to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3).

As I declared in my statement two weeks ago,“the reset of our beloved Communion is now uniquely in the hands of Gafcon, and we are ready to take the lead.”

Today, Gafcon is leading the Global Anglican Communion.

As has been the case from the very beginning, we have not left the Anglican Communion; we are the Anglican Communion.

At our upcoming G26 Bishops Conference in Abuja, Nigeria from 3 to 6 March 2026, we will confer and celebrate the Global Anglican Communion.”

There is so much excess and garbage in this declaration that it staggers the mind. It is the product of bad ecclesiastical and theological thinking. 

Rather than pick the statement apart, I will say that it is both bad theologically and a statement of reality on the ground.

The break is real.

The question is, “So what?” 

The Anglican Communion has been a voluntary gathering of national or regional churches committed to a way of being Christina community, rooted in the experience of the Church in England. At its core, the Anglican Communion is not a “thing,” but rather a network of people and churches sharing in ministry from a particular perspective.  It is not, and never has been, a world wide church. It is about finding ways for churches to be in relation, rather than ways for churches to enforce rules (a form of transactional activity.) 

The Anglican Comunion has broken in two. That changes but does not necessarily break relational connections among churches or links between congregations or dioceses.  It clearly breaks historic ties, and a wide variety of transactional exchanges, but it does not require, nor on a localized level, demand, total disengagement. Edicts from on high don’t have the last word on relations among Christian congregations.  

The Anglican Communion was a way for us to have bragging rights based on numbers. “The third largest world wide communion of churches” But other than that where’s the real gain or loss in all this?

The tragedy of all this rests in the first of the GAFCON statements, 

“ the Anglican Communion will be reordered, with only one foundation of communion, namely the Holy Bible, “translated, read, preached, taught and obeyed in its plain and canonical sense, respectful of the church’s historic and consensual reading” (Jerusalem Declaration, Article II), which reflects Article VI of the 39 Articles of Religion.

I believe the foundation is Jesus Christ, not the Holy Bible. I believe the foundation is the habitual devotion to “the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.” 

The GAFCON vision of the foundation is so flawed that those who live into it will be hobbled by it. So, they will go their own way, claim it is Anglican, and they will be wrong. 

And the rest of us will continue in trying to find ways to continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers, and to share with one another the experiences of trying to do so. And we will continue to believe that we are more than a national denomination. We are members of a worldwide fellowship of believers who share in as wide a way possible, the heritage and experience of worship and faith as developed in the church in England.

The split is done.  Let’s get on with the life of prayer and service that has become the witness of the Anglican Communion in the world.

Good luck to the GAC, pronounced “Gack.”  They will need it.

  

Big Brother wants women to be baby making patriots.

 Big Brother is watching you. And in his wonderful generosity, The President of the USA, our BB,  has styled himself the “fertilization president.” And now we know why.  Big Brother is watching and has noticed that we are not producing enough new units for the giant consuming machine that is the US population. Not enough workers who are also passive, content, white and citizens.  So in his wisdom, with encouragement from his greedy crowd of immensely wealthy cronies, he has decided that what we need is more babies - healthy, white, baby spenders who will be young workers, and life time consumers.  BB thinks what is needed is home grown population increase, so that, among other things, jobs done by immigrant workers will be done by home grown low pay workers.

The solution is to incentivize having babies. 

The solution has nothing to do with women, their lives, their potential, their interests. It has to do with the drive to produce new consumer workers, cannon fodder in the economic warfare that BB sees on the world stage.  And, while at it, its a fine way to reduce the engagement of women in life beyond womb / child / home care.  

So BB is watching, and understands that this is a sales pitch… let’s give mothers awards for having children, make them feel like heroines for the country, real patriots.  Money and badges. Who could ask for anything more?   

But you and I know that under that facade of paternalistic desire to be the fertilization president BB is really set on getting the competitive edge on control of the worlds wealth, and that means not only more children, but more who are of advanced intellect, physical strength, or physical type, and more who are just muscles. 

BB, the President of the United States, has no interest in the rights of the woman to choose or not to become pregnant, no interest in choices to avoid or prevent pregnancy, and shows no support for a woman’s right to choose not to have children. 

The idea is to make child bearing a patriotic duty by positive rewards for getting and staying pregnant, and if necessary to make the choice not to have children subversive.  

What the hell is the President of the United States of America doing?

He has become Big Brother, pushing, pulling, bullying women to do his will, claiming that his will is the will of the people, the will of the state, the will that dominates. 

BB is out to fertalize the fields of American women to the end that fodder is produced for a consumer / worker economic machine. That machine swallows up infants and spits out users, users who get used so that wealth is generated for the really really really rich and their minions. 

Big Brother is about thought control, about making us love being a tool of the machine, about the return to the subjugation of women by renting their wombs, or corporate rape, under the guise, “if you can’t mess with their heads, just mess with them.”

Reportedly there are thoughts about medals for women who bear many children.  Facists of the Right and of the Left have tried this. Good ol’ Putin has tried this. I’m sure the Talaban would love this. 

If in the USA we get to this point, lets be clear: It will be to declaring  that the only good woman of child bearing years is a pregnant woman. The only good woman is one committted to motherhood as her primary, and maybe only, vocation, calling, job, duty.  Women who chose not to conform will be clearly subversive. 

My guess is there will be a massive subversive outbreak if this bullshit rises to the surface.

And those of us who give a damn about it all, who see this as authoritarian madness and genuinely evil,  with have to become subversive as well. 

As to Big Brother and his fertilizing work, I don’t think he has the equipment for the job. But he thinks he does. May he be laughted to shame, his medals thrown back in his face, and may his money be rejected as a bribe gone wrong.

Here are some handy dandy medals dangled by other authoritarian leaders over the years.  Ugly, yes?

IS THERE ANY HOPE?

IS THERE ANY HOPE?

The short answer is “Yes.” But hope is hidden from the world, because in really hard times, times of war, despair and chaos, people who hope seek refuge, a place to hunker down, to wait out the storm, and work to protect their hope from those who would destroy it. 

I believe hope lies in acts of nonviolent non-cooperation with the machinery of death, now a multifaceted electronically interconnected giant. The wall protecting the machinery and network of death is the mammon of this age.

The Wall of Mammon.

When we find ourselves in times of trouble we seek shelter. And in doing so our hopes find shelter too, lest they get dashed against the wall constructed by the mad combination of chaos, entropy and scarcity. 

That wall  has a name we only whisper, because it is the name of a great godlike energy, That wall has a name, that name is Mammon. Mammon is the fortress of those who believe that power and wealth can provide hope for some few from the effects of the hard times.

It is the followers of Mammon who believe that they will survive the hard times by their wealth and power. It is the followers of Mammon who build the great walls to protect themselves from the ravages of war, despair and chaos. 

The Hidden hope: The fall of Mammon.

For the rest of us who cannot take refuge in wealth and power, or who will not, the wall of Mammon is a testament to the reality of death, despair and chaos. But in acknowledging Mammon’s power we also claim the vision of its fall.  For we believe, no, we know, that Mammon will fail. The walls will come tumbling down.  That is our hope.  

We hold that hope close to our hearts, against the day when we can proclaim it publically. But for now, we hid that hope, we see a place of refuge and protection for that hope. And for those of us who are  religious, we say we hide our hope in God. We sing, “let us hide ourselves in Thee.”  Others may put it in the dominion of the inevitable bending of history.  But one way or another we know that the walls will fall, mammon will fail, and war, despair and chaos, on which that wall depends, will cease.  Hope hidden in God or in the  triumph of Justice is hope as a promissory note. And remember, we have it on good authority that we cannot serve God and Mammon. We must choose to hope that Mammon fails, falls, or is crushed by itse own weight.

Acting in Anticipation

For hope to be real, now, requires us to act now in spite of Mammon, in ways that anticipate the future when our hopes are realized.  We must be open to living the hopes yet to come. This will take the form of nonviolent noncooperation with the forces of Mammon, and in the dismantling, brick by brick, of the wall it has constructed.

Nonviolent noncooperation.

So, in this New Year I hope with anticipation:

In our own country, I believe there is promise in creative visionaries who have not supported the building of the walls of the fortress of Mammon, who do not believe that the threats of death, despair and chaos hold power forever.  We do not believe in the wall that Mammon builds.

Out of the crumbling of the power of the walls of Mammon in America there will arise new vision in which hope is freed from money and power. The front edge of that vision will be found in non cooperation with the instruments of control by the military industrial and political use of weapons of both mass and localized destruction, the demand for simple human rights for all people, all together, the dismantling of the consumer economy, the reordering of economic life away from the production of arms to the construction of social benefits. 

In 2025 in America, non-cooperation with the monied and the influencers who dance to the tunes of Mammon will be the first steps to tearing down the walls of Mammon brick by brick. The vision for this work will come, not from the places of power, but from the small cells of resistance that arise when someone will no longer sit in the back of the bus, stand by while medical care is denied them, have their health or safety limited by decree,  or acquiesce when they are discriminated against.

Who will speak for us in our non-cooperation? We will need to be watchful and open to hearing.

Regarding Haiti, a people and country I love: The chaos in the center city is supported by the powerful, civic, economic, social and political, of which the gangs are a part. But out in the country, away and hidden from view, there are the people of Haiti, resilient and free. They will one day soon come down from the Mountains and the deep valleys and overturn the powers in the city. They and the artists and writers who tell their stories, it is they who will bring a new rebirth of liberty,  Until then death, despair and chaos will rule.   Who will speak for the majority of Haitian people, not living in crowded cities, but in the countryside?  It is there that the voices of nonviolent noncooperation will arise. We will need to be watchful and open to hearing.

Regarding the Wars: The sad reality is that everyone except the dead and dying support the wars in Ukraine, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and Israel. The powers that are present in each of these wars are making huge profits from war. The poor and conscripted die, the rich get rich. Those bombed out in the cities, left destitute in the countryside, dying without dignity and medical aid - they are the place where new vision will be found.  It is the mothers of the disappeared, killed, and wounded who will become the voices for peace. Peace will begin with nonviolent noncooperation.  We will need to be watchful and open to hearing.

I am convinced that mammon will serve itself no matter the cost in death, despair and chaos. Meeting these elements of mammon’s power with more death, despair and chaos only feeds the powerful. The only way out, forward, the only road to hope, lies the hidden hope for some new way of being.

Will we have the eyes to see, the ears to hear, and the hands to serve the emerging signs of hope in the year to come?  I live in hope.

Yes, there is Hope.

A Challenge to the Church: How to be Church in a post-democratic America.

This is a challenge to the leadership of The Episcopal Church, concerning how to be Church when the assumptions about the State prove inadequate or untrue.

The preface to the Episcopal Church Book of Common Prayer states, “…when in the course of Divine Providence, these American States became independent with respect to civil government, their ecclesiastical independence was necessarily included; and the different religious denominations of Christians in these States were left at full and equal liberty to model and organize their respective Churches, and forms of worship, and discipline, in such manner as they might judge most convenient for their future prosperity; consistently with the constitution and laws of their country.”  

The Episcopal Church ordered its liturgy and its structures on the assumption that the “constitution and laws” of a representative democracy were established as an enduring order. 

While the Church has been often willing, and indeed obliged by the Gospel, to be critical of the ways that the constitution and laws were observed in practice, the Church has prayed and worked for the success of the general welfare of the United States of America and the institutions that are at the heart of the Republic. Ours is an “establishment” if not an established religion. We pray for the Nation and for the leadership of its government. 

We are now in a time of considerable flux, where it is not at all clear that this experiment in representative democracy will continue to thrive.  A combination of forces that lean towards oligarchy, corporate control, information management, and personality politics have all combined to place strains on any semblance of representative democracy.  Some would argue that political power has already become completely reset, and that only the semblance of democratic processes remains, giving the appearance of a government of, by and for the people. 

It is time for the Episcopal Church to turn its attention to how it ought to understand itself in relation to the State when the State becomes something other than a government of constitution and laws in which representative democracy can flourish.

What is our ministry in relation to the state, for example, if the form of the State is no longer representative, but autocratic, oligarchical, and based in power not delegated by the people, but held by other means?  

There is considerable weight given in our polity to praying for those in authority, no matter how that authority is obtained or exercised. Caesar needs as much prayer for the exercise of good judgment and justice as does the President. The Dictator may be repulsive to our political sensibilities, but we might well pray that he exercises his power with mercy and justice. 

But there is also weight given to resistance. A number of our colonial era parishes have a Parish owned Book of Common Prayer with the prayer for the monarch scratched through with a prayer for all in authority.  That correction may be only to acknowledge that authority may change in its form. But sometimes the correction was in the hope that such authority would indeed change. 

I believe that the American experiment with representative democracy is unraveling.  If that is true, or even if it is only a strong possibility that such unraveling might take place, we as Episcopalians would do well to begin to think through how to be Church when the State, by way of its institutions, becomes less responsive and responsible to the general citizenry.

The Episcopal Church, through its General Convention and the Office of the Presiding Bishop, ought consider and hopefully inaugurate a series of conversations at every level of the Church’s life, to consider the Church’s relation to the government of the United States of America should that government turn further away from the hope of representative democracy. Issues to be considered by such conversations might well include:

•  At what point does the church determine that the State is now antithetical to its own vision and that therefore the church ought to be resistant to authority as it is present in the political system?

• How are we to pray for those in authority, which such authority is anti-democratic, that is impervious to the just demands of the people?

• How does the Church, in its own life, witness to the possibility of a common life formed and informed by compassion rather than power? 

• How do we prepare our people for life beyond the edges of representative democracy, where the quest for justice and respect for human dignity might require a level of resistance or resilience not part of our current way of being church? At what point do our baptismal promises diverge from our national allegences? 

• How do we prepare ourselves to be a church no longer establishment oriented?

I call on those who can do so to make resolution to the General Convention for the establishment of a General Convention Standing Committee on the Church and State, to assist the church at all levels to consider its mission in a post democratic society.  

Mark Harris, 2023