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

 

GAFCON HAS BEEN LED ASTRAY

 GAFCON HAS BEEN LED ASTRAY

GAFCON IV, a conference of “1,302 delegates from 52 countries, including 315 bishops, 456 other clergy and 531 laity” adopted a “Commitment” statement supported byu the GSFA (the Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches). This “Committment” proposes to renounce the role of the Archbishop of Canterbury as “an instrument of unity,”  and to “reset” the Anglican Communion. 

The writers: The drafting committee for the Kilgali Statement consists of ten people, six of whom are from the west/ north (Australian, UK, Irish or US)  and white. Three are African (Nigeria and Uganda) and one from South America.  One was a woman. For an organization touting itself to be speaking the majority of the world’s anglicans, this seems an odd way to show it.  We are assured by the press release about the Kilgali Statement (https://anglican.ink/2023/04/21/kigali-gafcon-closing-press-statement/ ) that everyone at the conference was asked for feedback. 

I doubt it. It smacks of the same leadership and agendas of the discontented west and north that has driven much of the effort to halt the move to inclusion of women and gay people in the sacramental ministries of the church. GAFCON has been hustled once again by discontent in the west and north.

The Statement:

Here is what the “Kigali Commitment” says:

“We were delighted to be joined in Kigali by leaders of the Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches (GSFA) and to host a combined Gafcon-GSFA Primates meeting. Together, these Primates represent the overwhelming majority (estimated at 85%) of Anglicans worldwide.

The leadership of both groups affirmed and celebrated their complementary roles in the Anglican Communion. Gafcon is a movement focused on evangelism and mission, church planting and providing support and a home for faithful Anglicans who are pressured by or alienated from revisionist dioceses and provinces. GSFA, on the other hand, is focused on establishing doctrinally based structures within the Communion. 

We rejoice in the united commitment of both groups on three fundamentals: the lordship of Jesus Christ; the authority and clarity of the Word of God; and the priority of the church’s mission to the world. We acknowledge their agreement that ‘communion’ between churches and Christians must be based on doctrine (Jerusalem Declaration #13; GSFA Covenant 2.1.6). Anglican identity is defined by this and not by recognition from the See of Canterbury.

Both GSFA and Gafcon Primates share the view that, due to the departures from orthodoxy articulated above, they can no longer recognise the Archbishop of Canterbury as an Instrument of Communion, the ‘first among equals’ of the Primates. The Church of England has chosen to impair her relationship with the orthodox provinces in the Communion. 

We welcome the GSFA’s Ash Wednesday Statement of 20 February 2023, calling for a resetting and reordering of the Communion. We applaud the invitation of the GSFA Primates to collaborate with Gafcon and other orthodox Anglican groupings to work out the shape and nature of our common life together and how we are to maintain the priority of proclaiming the gospel and making disciples of all nations.

Resetting the Communion is an urgent matter.  It needs an adequate and robust foundation that addresses the legal and constitutional complexities in various Provinces. The goal is that orthodox Anglicans worldwide will have a clear identity, a global ‘spiritual home’ of which they can be proud, and a strong leadership structure that gives them stability and direction as Global Anglicans. We therefore commit to pray that God will guide this process of resetting, and that Gafcon and GSFA will keep in step with the Spirit.”

THE FACT OF THE MATTER: 

So there it is. Gafcon and GSFA are no longer in communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury and therefore the Church of England.

The intemperate, angry and devious letter from the GAFCON/ GSFA meeting seems to seal the deal. A  number of churches formerly in the Anglican Communion are not playing nicely any more. They have formally stated that “they can no longer recognise the Archbishop of Canterbury as an Instrument of Communion, the ‘first among equals’ of the Primates.”  

Given that several of these churches have also refused to attend the Lambeth Conference and meetings of the Primates, and a number of these churches are not recognized as churches in the communion anyway, and are therefore not part of the Anglican Consultative Council, it would appear that these churches are backing away from any of the instruments of communion.

There is no possibility for them, if they have so distanced themselves from the “instruments of Communion” to change the structures of the Anglican Communion from within.  The “resetting” that they propose is not a resetting at all. That would be an interior matter for the councils of the Communion. 

Rather, it is an attempt to take the brand “Anglican”, divorce it from anything English, and reapply it to something other than the Anglican Communion.  The GAFCON/ GSFA proposal is really an attempt to dismantle or disregard the Anglican Communion as a communion of churches and replace it with a new thing: A World Wide Anglican Church.

The Reformers would have been appalled. For that matter I suspect many in the various Provinces who have leaders who have joined in this “Commitment” will also be appalled. 

The Polite Response:

There has been a response from Lambeth Palace. It states in part, ““We note that The Kigali Commitment issued by GAFCON IV today makes many of the same points that have previously been made about the structures of the Anglican Communion. As the Archbishop of Canterbury has previously said, those structures are always able to change with the times – and have done so in the past. The Archbishop said at the recent Anglican Consultative Council meeting in Ghana (ACC-18) that no changes to the formal structures of the Anglican Communion can be made unless they are agreed upon by the Instruments of Communion.

“At the ACC-18 meeting – which was attended by primates, bishops, clergy and laity from 39 of the 42 Anglican provinces – there was widespread support for working together patiently and constructively to review the Instruments of Communion, so that our differences and disagreements can be held together in unity and fellowship. Archbishop Justin Welby has welcomed this decision – just as he also welcomed last year’s decision by the Church of England’s General Synod to give the Anglican Communion a greater voice on the body that nominates future Archbishops of Canterbury.

“The Archbishop continues to be in regular contact with his fellow Primates and looks forward to discussing this and many other matters with them over the coming period. Meanwhile the Archbishop continues to pray especially for Anglicans who face poverty, conflict, famine, discrimination and persecution around the world, and Anglican churches who live and minister in these contexts. Continuing to walk together as Anglicans is not just the best way to share Christ’s love with a world in great need: it is also how the world will know that Jesus Christ is sent from the Father who calls us to love one another, even as we disagree.”

The Lambeth response suggests there is nothing new here. But there is. It is just not polite to say so. 

A NOT SO POLITE RESPONSE: 

I’ve been wondering why there has not been any sort of statement of regret, befuddlement, acknowledgement or even outrage about this letter from any of the usual authorities in the Anglican Communion. A statement from Lambeth Palace” is pretty tame. It doesn’t come out under the Archbishop of Canterbury’s signature.  And I see no whisper of any response from any other church leaders. GAFCON may have spoken, but it doesn’t seem to kick up much dust.

I think GAFCON / GSFA need to be at least told, politely, that various powers understand quite well what they are up to. They are trying to capture the flag… to take “Anglican” and make it about some world wide church thing, and not a communion of churches.  What they will have if they do this is yet another church pretending to be THE TRUE CHURCH. It will be, as all such churches, defective at the core. 

I am not at all worried that the Anglican Communion is or is not alive or dead.  I wrote long ago that my sense is that the Anglican Communion will not endure. In “The Challenge of Change” I wrote,

“There will be no enduring Anglican Communion, not if we can help it. But that is not the point. Being Anglican is simply the way some Christians have tried to work out the implications of baptism in specific times and locations. What we have been will be of value to those who come after, and they will count us as among their ancestors. In doing so we have been greatly blessed by God. Often we have been under judgment by God, and yet most often led by God to what it is we are called to next. The vocation of the Anglican Communion is to be a force for greater koinonia, for overcoming the fragmentation of life in a vision of the whole people of God, in a time when fragmentation is what seems to be the rule of the day. It remains only for us to take heart in our “looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross” (Heb. 12: 1b–2a).” ( The Challenge of Change: The Anglican Communion in the Post-Modern Era by Mark Harris)

The Anglican Communion will not endure. But I believe it still has work to do and that there is no reason in the world to have it taken over, “reset” by those who have no sense at all of what it means to have “The Historic Episcopate, locally adapted in the methods of its administration to the varying needs of the nations and peoples called of God into the unity of His Church.”  (That being part of the Lambeth Quadrilateral.)  

The notion that the Anglican Communion should be reset on the basis of a “doctrine” pushed through Lambeth 1998 by western/ northern malcontents playing on and using the energy of anti-colonialist feelings (often justified) in the Global South, is absurd.   

It is yet another example of the need to be clear about division.  Any member church of the Anglican Communion is free to leave the table of this communion at any point, and we should wish those who leave well. But they cannot take the table, or the silver, with them. 

And, not to put too fine a point on it: those who are post colonialist (and I hope many are) must find it odd to be battling for the future use of the word “Anglican.”  Why, if there is a desire to have a Global Church, would any post colonial church based on English occupation want to be called “Anglican”?  

This whole thing reeks of western/ northern needs by the discontented who left the Episcopal Church, The Anglican Church of Canada, the Church of England, the Anglican Church of Australia,  etc., to “capture the flag.”  My hope is that the Global South Primates will see this, and see that they are being misled by the West into an ecclesiastical mess of pottage.