to thine own true self, be

Brave new universe...

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 08:48:51 +0200

The smoke ring above is called “Hoag’s Object.” Click it to be taken to Wired Magazine’s wonderful page of pictures from space. It is actually a galaxy!

As I am currently on sabbatical (ten weeks only [sniff!]), I have obviously been ranging far afield in my reading, although veteran Gentle Readers know I love to post such pictures from time to time. I continue my adventure in the Bible Challenge, however.

What I have been doing is trying to learn how to use Logic Pro to compose music (like Photoshop for music), as well as attempt to revive my ancient technique to be able to play Charles Tournemire’s Deux Fresques Symphoniques Sacrées one more time. These are the unjustly-neglected French genius’ last works, published posthumously, and he pushes his language to an extreme, music that seems to flow like a dream — like life itself, “a dream that is a little more coherent than most.” (Pascal) Listen to a performance of the second Fresque here.

I think the point of a sabbatical is either to learn how to do something completely new, like learning how to fly an airplane, to reviving old competences. I have three degrees in music, but it became clear I was not called to a life as a church musician or composer. That change brought upon serious grieving for a while.

But that was in the 80s. Earlier, in the 70s, I had to give up on physics. And for the same reason as music later on — it didn’t fill the hole in my soul. I have never lost interest in either, however... Check out this article for instance.

But I strongly believe that the Holy Spirit will use every experience in our lives for the purposes of God’s mission in the world, nay, in the Universe. I wonder what life will be like when I resume my work as Bishop. (Truth be told, it doesn’t leave me alone, but I am not going into the office, nor traveling like a outside saleman for corporate jets, for now.)

So, Gentle Reader, let me commend to you some reflection on your life, and that you then offer to God all of it, including the sin, as fodder for your role in God’s mission. Trust me, it will all get used, and it will be immeasurably enhanced as well, as time goes on and God shapes you into the creature you are meant to be: “O brave new Creation, that has such creatures in it” — like you.

Falling, rising...

Mon, 1 Apr 2013 12:48:13 +0200

Easter Vigil 2013
Cathedral Church of the Holy Trinity
March 30, 2013
The Rt. Rev. Pierre W. Whalon

Why did Jesus have to die?

I have opened two other meditations this week with that question. So one more time, with feeling: Why did Jesus have to die?

Another way at this question is to ask, why did Jesus have to rise again? For a long time I have advocated the idea that even if all we knew was that God in Jesus Christ had come to share our human life and to die among us, it would be enough. I guess I get this idea because of all the existentialist philosophy I studied years ago. In any event, no one seems to agree with me. Gotta have the Resurrection…

So all right, if the Resurrection isn’t the icing on the cake, then it is the heart of the matter. We say that we believe that Jesus is born of the Holy Spirit of God and Mary the Virgin. That line in the Creed seems hard for people today to swallow, but it isn’t a biology lesson, it is the proclamation that Jesus was sent into our world by God for a mission. And that mission is to live and die as one of us, but then, to rise from the dead and destroy death’s power over us. If Jesus did not rise from the dead, would it matter who his mother was? Would we really care that in him, we see God? At best, having only the death of God in Christ would be a mere consolation. Well, yes, we do need more than that.

Paul says to the Romans in the later reading tonight, “… we have been buried with him by baptism into his death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.” In a few minutes, we will baptize Oliver. He will join us in dying with Christ, being buried with Christ, and being raised from the dead with Christ.

So this is why Jesus had to rise again, because we need the Resurrection. So what is that?

All the accounts in the Scriptures of the appearances of the Risen Jesus are fragmentary. He appeared first to women, the Gospels agree, and they tell us that when the women reported to the men disciples what they had experienced, the men didn’t believe them. Just women overcome with grief, you know, they’re hysterical… And then, we are told, Jesus meets the disciples in various occasions. In all of these, others recognize him only when he wants. He passes through locked doors, but has no trouble eating fish. And he basically tells them to wait for the Holy Spirit — then they’ll start to get it.

But obviously, the original witnesses were as clueless as we are as to what actually happened. They knew that he had really died, as we all do, but then had returned not only alive again but transformed. He was Jesus, and he was also More.

Paul tells the Corinthians that when he was a new disciple, say around five years after the Resurrection, he was taught that Jesus died according to the Scriptures and was raised according to the Scriptures. Now these are the Hebrew Scriptures, what we call the Old Testament and the Apocrypha. In other words, the Scriptures that Jesus read. This interpretation of those Scriptures was quite novel then, as any of our Jewish friends will tell us. The first disciples saw in the prophets’ promises that God would create a new heaven and a new earth a basis for understanding what happened to Jesus of Nazareth. A new creation is who the Risen Jesus is. And in another letter to the Corinthians, Paul says that if anyone is in Christ, that one is a “new creation.”

So what happened in the darkness of the tomb was that God created a new Jesus from the old. Yes, he was cold, stiff and dead, as we all will be one day. When we die, there is no immortal part that flits off into the ether. That is a Greek idea. What we are saying when we proclaim, “On the third day, he rose again,” is that God made a new creation come forth from the old. Jesus Christ is the first instance of this New Creation, this new heaven and new earth. And what happens to us when we die is that God’s Spirit does the same. We become a New Creation too. God reverses death, as it were, first resurrecting our selves, our soul or consciousness if you will, and then continues to knit us into a New Human ready to live in the New Creation.

So death no longer has a grip on us. The ones who have preceded us in death are themselves alive. Oliver here will never be destroyed by death. And all the other ills that attend us in this life, the things we have done and left undone, those things others have done to us or left undone for us, all of those also have lost their absolute power to diminish and destroy us.

Jesus had to die in order to rise again, so that we would have an unshakeable hold on the new life. As I said before, the first disciples did not understand what they had experienced. They knew that the dead did not come back. Certainly the old Jesus did not come back either. He was the same and yet now they could see that he is so much More. And that is why they did not understand, could not understand. The Old Creation does not understand the New, cannot grasp it. All we can see is a connection, a kind of extrapolation.

Which leads us to a conclusion, and that is, what Jesus was before his death has a clear relationship to what he became in the Resurrection. Looking backwards we see that he is God with us, Emmanuel, teaching and healing and casting out evil and raising the dead. We can see that there is a connection between the darkness of the Garden Tomb and the darkness of the Virgin’s womb.

And this also applies to us. Jesus’ birth was no accident. Neither was yours. Jesus’ life wasn’t just a meandering trail, going nowhere special, and neither is yours. Death had no power over him other than that which he gave it — on our behalf. We no longer have to give to death ultimate power over us. And we can see that just as God sent Christ from his birth to claiming his ministry to doing the work only he could do, so too God has sent you and me from our births on, to claiming our unique individual ministries within the Body of Christ on Earth, and doing that work only each of you can do.

We have been baptized into Jesus’ death, so we are already beginning to share in his Resurrection. Live into it, my friends! It is yours because it is his, because you are his, and Christ is yours, by the power of God’s Spirit.

Right now we have the opportunity to do the work God has given us to do. Jesus Christ told us to go and baptize.

So — let us go and baptize Oliver. Right now. So that he can join us all in that for which Jesus had to die and rise again, the life that never ends.

The challenging Bible Challenge, II

Wed, 6 Mar 2013 10:35:53 +0100

Onward in the Bible! We are now in Exodus... and Matthew... and deep into the Psalms.

I must say, re-reading all of Genesis has been hair-raising. As I said the last time, I have had to overcome decades of preaching reflexes to allow the text just to speak to me.

And what is hair-raising is how, well, contemporary so many of the Genesis stories are. Incest, rape, murder, multiple marriages, dissing God and humanity... all well represented. Plus ça change, eh?

It occurs to me that this reading program of Scripture in its simplicity is a challenge indeed. The work of the Church is always to be in conversation with Scripture, and with one another, in a community dialogue. Or a dialectic. Or arguments, too. Only silence is unacceptable.

If Jesus Christ has no hands or feet or mouth but ours — if we are the Body of Christ — it is only in constant confrontation with the Bible that we can live into what we have been called and transformed to be. As so many Elders have remarked before, the Holy Spirit, a wild and indomitable Spirit, will always be working through the Scriptures and through us to accomplish our part of God’s mission in the Creation.

Exodus — “there arose in Egypt a pharoah who knew not Joseph...” The plot thickens!

The challenging Bible Challenge

Mon, 18 Feb 2013 11:30:14 +0100

Last year, I challenged my jurisdiction to try The Bible Challenge, a course for reading the Scriptures in one year. A number of people did so, including myself, and now we have some new folks trying their hand at it, as well as a few who want to do it all over again.

As for me, with a ridiculous travel schedule especially last year, I found it difficult to stick to the daily readings, dipping back in when I caught my breath. I have started again this year, thinking ahead to my sabbatical in May, to complete in full the Bible Challenge.

The brainchild of a talented priest in the Diocese of Pennsylvania, the Rev. Marek Zabriskie, the challenge is simple. Read 3 chapters of the Old Testament, one Psalm, and one chapter of the New Testament, all in course, every day except Sundays for a year. There is no ideology other than the notion that reading the Scriptures is good for you. The Center for Biblical Studies offers several ancillary resources, and indeed, I had the honor to be asked to contribute a little myself.

The other discovery I made last year was that I now find it very difficult to “just” read the Bible. I have been preaching the lectionary for thirty years now, and I have become accustomed to preparing sermons on the lections for Sunday, as well as following the Daily Office. The result is that I had lost to a certain degree the integrity of the text as a whole. You can read Genesis in one fell swoop — I did, many times, before ordination. But if you haven’t done it for a long time, and you are a professional preacher, you get tripped up. At least I did, noticing things I had never seen before or had forgotten, being led off into comparisons of texts (dig out the Synopsis), looking up the Hebrew or Greek, and essentially being very distracted.

But in a good way. Now that the shock of recognition has worn off, I think I can proceed to read all the Bible in a year.

And then, just like for the Chicago Cubs, there ‘s always next year...

Can we trust this story??

Wed, 26 Dec 2012 14:19:58 +0100

Christmas Eve 2012
John 1: 1-14
Cathedral of the Holy Trinity, Paris, France
The Rt. Rev. Pierre Whalon

Those of us who grew up Roman Catholic before Vatican II’s sweeping liturgical changes may remember that this evening’s passage from John’s Gospel — “In principio erat Verbum” — “in the beginning was the Word” — was always read at the end of each Mass. At the words, “Et Verbum caro factum est” — “and the Word was made flesh” — we were supposed to genuflect along with the priest.

We altar boys were always happiest when we served with the priest who could read it the fastest…

This practice highlighted the importance of this particular text. Whereas Matthew and Luke spin out tales of Jesus’ birth, John isn’t interested. He wants to go back all the way to the beginning, like the first verse of the whole Bible — “in the beginning, God…” So while Matthew and Luke are locating the appearance of Jesus in the traditions of Israel, each in his own way, one writing for Jewish Christians, the other for the Gentile Christians that most of us here tonight are, John is addressing the whole of the human race.

Three very different takes. The basic outline agrees, of course; Mary, Joseph, Bethlehem, and Jesus, of whom John says obliquely, “not born of the will of a human father.”

Can we trust these texts? Can we trust this story as our liturgy tells it? It’s not just that some of us trip over the virginal conception, it’s the whole shebang that’s in question these days. It can be no fun being a Christian these days. For me personally, I keep finding some new declaration by some “religious authority” that is deeply embarrassing. Here in France, it’s the reaction to the Socialist government’s clumsy attempts to keep election promises about “marriage for everyone” and “death with dignity.” In America it’s idiotic comments like “If only we hadn’t taken prayer out of school, God would not have allowed those children in Connecticut to die.” In our own church, we have the Church of England stopped from ordaining women bishops by six votes. Six lay delegates, I might add. And in the Episcopal Church, we have the Diocese of South Carolina going off by itself because it is “sovereign.” The last time South Carolinians used the word “sovereign” was when they started the Civil War…

If all this dismays me, a Christian Bishop, I can only imagine how others might feel. Polls in the United States are finding significant drops in the number of people identifying themselves with Christianity. To my mind, the Religious Right has made Christianity just plain silly. Not to say that the Left hadn’t already made Christianity innocuous…

The very idea of religion itself is also more problematic. Christians in the biblical lands are being driven out or killed. Elsewhere too. Not by atheists like in the 20th century, but by a new version of Islam. It isn’t the Islam that gave us glorious art and soaring architecture, that taught us our numbers, developed algebra, and rescued Aristotle from oblivion. This newfangled Islam purports to go back to the purity of the religion of the seventh century. It tells you what to do, and not to think. Don’t think at all.

No wonder so many people now say they are “spiritual but not religious…”

Now the reason I am rehearsing all these gloomy developments on Christmas Eve is to return to the question in all its urgency: Can we trust this story that we are telling tonight? Because it’s really not about cute angels and sweet babies, and men in vaguely Oriental costumes riding camels. It’s about life and death. Jesus was born into the real world, the world we live in. How many babies are coming into this world this night, poor, ill-nourished, to parents without hope, people like the hired shepherds in the fields? How many people will die this night, not of old age but by violence? Massacres of the innocent happen all the time, as we’ve been reminded again recently.

How many of us here tonight find Christmas reviving old grief? Are we worried about finances? Do we worry about what life our children will have, when we are no longer here?

Once you get past all the sugar coating, the Christmas story is about taking all that seriously, but also that we do not have to stay frozen in fear, weighed down by grief, tormented by doubt. We do not have to conclude that life is, on the whole, absurd. The story of Jesus’ birth is about God’s intention. He wasn’t just the product of random procreation. He was very ordinary, and yet utterly unique. He lived a lonely life, misunderstood, despised even in his town, and he died an even lonelier death.

But that’s not the end of his story, but the beginning. And what Christmas is saying to you and me is that this is not how your story goes, either. You did not start life as an accident in your parents’ bedroom (though they might have thought so at the time). You are unique, too, even if — especially if — you are poor. And if life is hard tonight, if you feel discouraged or sad or fearful, that was also how Jesus experienced life among us. And yes, we die too.

And yet… And yet, there is always more, much more. The promise of Christmas is Easter. Or in John’s words tonight, “the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” The darkness of this world continues to try to snuff out the light, in your life and mine, and yet the light continues to shine.

The light that shines in this story is not a fantasy. There is far too much darkness in it for that. No, this story is part of a greater whole that concerns not only Jesus of Nazareth but you and me. Because Jesus is Emmanuel, God with us, and he will be with us not matter what the future holds, until we share what happened to him at Easter.

In the beginning, God created all that is. In the beginning, the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And the Word became human — literally, the Word of God pitched a tent among us. And this Jesus, this God with us, is God for us, God for you.

The promise is that no matter what burdens you tonight, it shall not crush you. There is a future for you and those you love, a good future, an unimaginably good future. No matter whom you’ve lost, you will find them again. There is reason to hope, to dream, to live.

And if you haven’t guessed it yet, I am wildly optimistic about the future of Christianity. As for the Church, well, as my predecessor Bishop Jeffrey Rowthorn likes to say, we will always be running after the Holy Spirit.

In the beginning, was the Word. The beginning, for Jesus, was Christmas. The beginning for you and me is still just beginning. To paraphrase C. S. Lewis’ ending of his book The Last Battle, “all your life in this world and all your adventures have only been the cover and the title page: now at last you are beginning Chapter One of the Great Story, which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.”

And so we can truly say —

“Merry Christmas.”

A real martyr

Mon, 15 Oct 2012 12:05:59 +0200

Some people call suicide bombers “martyrs.”

The word is Greek, and means “witness.” Christians use the term for people who are killed or severely wounded because of their faith. There have been millions of martyrs. more so now than ever before...

But as major Muslim leaders point out, suicide bombing is forbidden in Islam. While there are many reasons for individuals to choose to become suicide bombers — or to be enticed into becoming one — religion is not one of them. They may be many things: murderers, themselves victims, mentally retarded, hopeless people in search of recognition or monetary compensation for their familes, etc. But martyrs, no, even with promises of Paradise.

Here is a real Muslim martyr, whose story has made headlines around the world. She is pictured above (click image for copyright). Her name is Malala Yousafzai. She is 14 years old, and was shot in the head by Taliban assasins because she writes a blog about wanting to get an education and grow up to contribute to her country, Pakistan. Read about her here.

Martyrs do not seek to be made into a public example by execution or murderous attack. They are so because their very life contradicts the powers that be. These retaliate, thinking that murder will solve everything. But it doesn’t work that way, as the Taliban are learning. When you make someone a martyr, you set yourself against God.

Let us pray that Malala can make a full recovery, and that her martyrdom will result in changes in her country and around the world. And let us pray for the protection of her family.

Anglicans speak — en français!

Fri, 28 Sep 2012 09:26:37 +0200

Finally... Francophone Network resolutions in English.
The Francophone Network of the Anglican Communion
Seventh Triennial Meeting
Douala, Cameroon
September 11, 2012,

Resolution Number 1

(NB: the text itself was unanimously approved; 12 approved the resolution itself; the 7 members abstaining did so because they needed to confirm the text with their respective primates. This resolution is embargoed pending those approvals.)

Resolution Number 2

The Francophone Network of the Anglican Communion recommends to all institutions of the Anglican Communion that they support the Anglican Women’s Network, “Mary Summer House”, and other partner organizations of that Network, in their intensive efforts to struggle against sexual violence against women in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a struggle led by the Anglican Province of Congo (PEAC) through its ministries directed at women; that is, the Mothers Union, and the Union of Women for Peace and Social Progress.

Such support could extend to the following areas:

1. Spiritual support and commitment to prayer: daily prayer as well as commitment to organizing offices or days of prayer.
2. Activism at the international level for protection of women’s rights, so that justice may be done and punishment meted out to the perpetrators of violence, especially rape.
3. Material and financial support for efficient treatment of victims and for their reintegration in their respective families.

Resolution Number 3

The Francophone Network of the Anglican Communion, meeting from 6 to 11 September in Douala, Cameroon, states that we have finally held a meeting where the great majority of francophone Anglicans live, in the French-speaking nations of Africa.

We wish to express our thanks to Bishop Dibo Thomas Babyington Elango and his team for the organization and warm welcome that we have received from the Diocese, as well as from the parishes that we visited at their Sunday services.

We express our joy to see this flourishing Church and we commit to helping with the mission of evangelisation throughout the country, under the leadership of Bishop Dibo Elango. We give thanks to God for his blessing and protection during our meetings and deliberations.

Resolution Number 4

The Francophone Network of the Anglican Communion chooses the text of La Bible en français courant for a project of the Network for the francophone provinces of the Anglican Communion.

Resolution Number 5

The Executive Committee of the Network is encouraged to develop an editorial format and to raise funds for the publication and distribution of an Anglican Bible edition based on La Bible Expliquée.

Resolution Number 6

The Network commends the appended text (adapted) by the Reverend Canon Gregory Howe as a guide for translators of liturgies to take into serious consideration for their work of development and approval of liturgies and prayer books. (See Appendix 1)

Resolution Number 7

The Francophone Network of the Anglican Communion applauds the decision of The Episcopal Church (based in the United States) to make a fresh translation of the 1979 Book of Common Prayer as soon as possible, and to include in it a lectionary.

Resolution Number 8

An liturgical team of the Francophone Network of the Anglican Communion shall be named and set to work within one year’s time, and thereafter shall share the fruits of their labours with the provincial and diocesan liturgical committees which might help them in editing their own Books of Common Prayer.

Resolution Number 9

Bishop James Wong, the Venerable Pierre Voyer and Bishop Dibo Elango are named to the Theological Formation Committee (as established by resolution of the Network at its 2008 Aylesford meeting). This committee shall gather and share with the Network the best formal and ad hoc approaches for the formation of priests and laity existent throughout the member provinces of the Network. The committee shall moreover put into action the directives of the Aylesford resolution.

Resolution Number 10

The Network encourages its three seminaries (Université Anglicane du Congo, Bunia; Séminaire de l'Église Épiscopale d'Haïti; Diocesan seminary at McGill University) to form together a network over the Internet, so as to share information on their programs of formation.

Resolution Number 11

That the Francophone Network of the Anglican Communion, adopt this report by His Grace Archbishop Henri Isingoma on prayer for the Democratic Republic of Congo, and commits its members to daily prayer for our sisters and brothers of the Democratic Republic of Congo. (Complete text in Appendix 2)

Resolution Number 12

The Anglican Province of Congo (PEAC) expresses to the members of the Network its desire to be accompanied by the Anglican Communion and especially the Francophone Network of the Anglican Communion, in the implantation of the Anglican Church in the Republic of Congo (Brazzaville), so that it would not be solely the work of the PEAC, but a matter for the whole together, as this is a challenge that requires evangelizing an entire new country.

Appendix 1
Principles for Evaluating New Liturgical Materials (adapted)

Materials proposed for new Books of Common Prayer must above all be consistent with the Anglican theology and ecclesiology of the great tradition of Books of Common Prayer across the Anglican Communion.
Nearly as important is that the proposed liturgical materials embody a classical Anglican liturgical ethos and style. Recognizing the varying notions of what makes public prayer recognizably Anglican, we note these qualities:

*It resonates with Scripture and proclaims the Gospel.
*It is rooted in Anglican theological tradition.
*It has high literary value; it is beautiful according to accepted and respected standards of the translated language.
*It is formal, not casual, conversational, or colloquial.
*It is dense enough to “carry the freight” of the sacred purpose for which it is intended.
*It is metaphoric without being obtuse.
*It is performative, that is, it effects what it says.

These rites also must resonate as natural speech in contemporary ears in the translated language. A religious or sacred tone must be achieved without the use of arcane or antiquated words or patterns of speech.

The Francophone Network of the Anglican Communion commends the following principles adopted by the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music (Episcopal Church USA) for translating liturgical texts:
1. The translator does not translate literally, but translates ideas and concepts idiomatically.
2. It is imperative that the translator be familiar with idioms and their meanings in source and translated languages.
3. The translator needs to be familiar with nuances of the source and translated languages and cultures.
4. The translator must take into account multi-ethnic distinctions that influence dialects and idioms, and utilize language that has the widest currency.
5. The translator must take into account style & affect as well as cadence, rhythm and meter.
6. The translator needs to be fluent in the poetics of both languages.

The commission recommends the following process, which it is using for newly developed liturgical texts:
1. A single translator prepares a first draft of the translation.
2. The translation is sent to members of a review committee fluent in both languages and representing different cultural groups and countries that use the language.
3. The principal translator hosts web/teleconferences with the review committee to finalize the translation.

Culturally appropriate rites can be added to the classic Prayer Book texts. For example, in a hispanophone Book of Common Prayer, a Quinceañera liturgy or propers for Our Lady of Guadalupe could be appended.

The Francophone Network wishes to thank the Reverend Canon Gregory M. Howe, Custodian of the Standard Book of Common Prayer (Episcopal Church), for bringing this text to our attention.

Appendix 2
Prayer for the Democratic Republic of Congo
A report for the Francophone Network of the Anglican Communion

Preamble:

The present situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo is very complex, giving rise to much confusion, and evoking not only great sadness but also showing the tremendous humiliation of the Congolese people, as if they were still living in another century. Repeated internal wars and the permanent presence of armed groups and foreign rebellions in Congolese territory are witness to the fact that the country is not organized militarily, and as a consequence, it is the most vulnerable nation in the region, incapable of protecting its natural wealth, imposing the authority of the State, or bringing social justice to the whole of the land. Some political analysts see it as a vast insecure region with many internal organizational problems that in turn cause security issues for its neighbours. The immoral exploitation of its abundant natural resources attracts the world’s covetousness, which it is incapable of repelling. Some trustworthy reports show that the number of organized-crime networks is presently very high in the DRC, profiting from the country’s disorganization to obtain natural resources at artificially low prices, with the complicity of certain political leaders. Corruption and the absence of the law and of a collective identity are the result of the weakness of governance and the incapacity of the government to apply democratic laws that guarantee the security of the majority of the people, who not only live in squalor but also are hard hit by the deadly consequences of this political and social instability. Ceaseless wars have made atrocity a part of daily life for the Congolese population, especially women and children.

Getting weapons is presently a way to get both political and economic power. Old and new warlords fight over who has power. Power calls forth money and money buys status. The minority in power is extremely rich while the vast majority of the people are extremely poor. There is no longer a middle class, as government officials and the military are poorly paid and unemployment is very high.

What is surprising is that this situation repeats itself over and over in the sight of the international community, which is the guarantor of the world economic order and is well-represented by the diplomatic corps, international NGOs, and the largest and most expensive United Nations force ever, present in the country for over ten years, and possessing firepower far superior to that of the so-called National Army.

For some, the DRC is the victim of its own history, as its people has never enjoyed the freedom to plan politically for the nation, and consequently has never taken in hand its own development. Since independence, the DRC has in effect never organized itself as a democratic state. Outside of occasional diktats from outside, the country has always suffered from a lack of the national collective identity foreseen in the vision of Patrice Lumumba, which the great powers quickly snuffed out six months after independence with his assassination. After the colonial dictatorship of Leopold II followed that of Marshal Mobutu, which lasted thirty-two years before giving way, since May 17, 1997, to the current wars characterized by strong interference from other countries of East Africa.

It is generally admitted that, more than fifty years after independence, the DRC is difficult to administer by a centrally-organized lawful state, and incapable of ensuring a prosperous life to the vast majority of its inhabitants. As a result, the intended partitions of the country that so divided the pioneers of independence in 1960 (Patrice Lumulba, Joseph Kasavubu, Kalondji, Moïse Tshombe, Mulele, Antoine Gizenga...) have taken on new life, such that they tend to be endorsed by those who are victims of the humiliating consequences of the wars and the bad governance of the nation. Discouraged by the indifference of their compatriots in the western part of the country, the people of the east of the DRC, who have been continuously pounded by wars, seem to be placing their hopes more and more in the political partition of the nation. This is an expression of their disgust at being ruled by faraway political and administrative institutions in Kinshasa. For a long time, they have felt themselves badly exploited financially, abandoned to their fate, and relying on the economies and transport and social infrastructures of neighbouring countries.

What we have described above gives a certain satisfaction to the rebel groups, to neighbouring countries, and those in the world who see no profit in a united Congo. Rwanda, for instance, has put in place military support for the partisans of splitting up the second-largest country in Africa. The whole world knows that Rwanda is not the only one who wants to see the dismemberment of the DRC become reality; behind her are certain great powers. Rumours are growing little by little; many Congolese believe them. The Roman Catholic Church has shown this by organizing marches of its faithful with signs denouncing the “balkanisation” of the DR Congo. Others do not believe it, without tangible proof. However, the ways in which the new wars have unfolded give rise to the suspicion that the antagonists have some sort of secret arrangement. God only knows! Civilians have not only the barrels of cannons aimed at them but also gang rape, pillage and forced exile!

For without applying the partition hypothesis, the pretence of having ended Mobutu’s regime does not hold up. In fact, up to now, he is the only Congolese politician who succeeded in blending together the Congolese peoples despite tribal, ethnic, and regional divisions to make up on purpose one Zairian nation. As long as the DRC is unable to apply federalism within its present borders, the ghost of Mobutu will continue to haunt it, with all his dictatorial and political methods to maintain national unity.

As an introduction to prayer, it is good to consider questions such as these:

- A united Congo, with borders traced by the 1885 Berlin Conference in answer to the wishes of the Belgian king Leopold II, is this really the will of God?

- Why has this united Congo always seemed to be favourable terrain for the power of evil to manifest itself?

- Is a dismembered Congo the best way to develop the peoples who live in the present confines of the DRC? How much time might that take? Will this process not lengthen their suffering?

- How can the Congolese people be brought to recognize God’s blessings on the land, and for all to benefit from these, without succumbing to ultra-capitalist egotism?

- Why is the international community so impotent or so indifferent to the dangers that beset human beings in the DRC?

Subjects for prayer:

Let us pray: for the purification of the land of Congo and the conversion of the Congolese people, that they may commit to walk in the way of holiness and free themselves from the cult of personality inherited from traditional religions, from the spirit of dependence derived from colonialism, and the spirit of powerlessness to determine their lives for themselves;

Let us pray: for all victims of the terrorism of the war in the eastern part of the country, and especially for those who have died, who have been forcibly displaced, and for refugees, for orphaned and abandoned children, for women who have been raped, for the victims of contagious epidemic illnesses, for the unemployed, and those robbed of their goods;

Let us pray: for those who govern, that they become conscious of their responsibilities toward those they govern; for the capacity and the application of democratic laws that can bring security; for the right exploitation of natural resources and for justice in the land;

Let us pray: for the churches and their leaders to work together in Christian unity, so as to call out courageously with a prophetic word from God, common and constructive, and to avoid taking part in the policy of humiliation; for right discernment of the political situation of the country; and that the churches avoid the confusion that divides them between outraged fanaticism and excessive opposition to the different sides of political parties. Let us pray that the churches with their Christian partners around the world may ask God for a divine vocation for good governance, for peace and justice in the land, and for social development.

Let us pray: for divine protection for human-rights activists and the establishment of a lasting peace as the starting-point of social development; for the awakening of an awareness of a national identity and the love of country by its people and leaders.

Let us pray: that the international community will work for real and complete independence of the DRC, establishing constructive bilateral cooperative agreements with the country that have the dignity of an equal with the rest of the nations of the world.

Let us pray that the Lord will shorten the sufferings of his people and his creation, in answer to our daily lamentations! (Habakkuk 1)

*********

The Francophone Network of the Anglican Communion, meeting in Douala, Cameroon, on September 11, 2012, adopted this report by His Grace Archbishop Henri Isingoma on prayer for the Democratic Republic of Congo, and commits its members to daily prayer for our sisters and brothers of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

(trans. +PWW)

We need to talk…interreligiously!!

Mon, 17 Sep 2012 11:01:45 +0200

Fires both real and emotional are raging across the world after the release of trailers of a “film” defaming the Prophet Mohammed, peace be to him. One antidote is to talk to each other, Christians and Muslims, in structured dialogues at the local, national and international levels, so that when outrages are provoked by extremists of either faith, faithful people can move swiftly to pour oil on troubled waters.
It has been my privilege to participate in several such dialogues, and to sit on bodies charged by the Church to help people understand how and why to enter into such dialogues. This are the Network for Interfaith Concerns of the Anglican Communion (presently) and the Standing Commission on Ecumenical and Interreligious Relations (from 2003 to 2009). Both bodies have produced official Anglican/Episcopal teachings on the how and why of interreligious dialogue. They are meant for a wide audience, and aim to offer pratical and useful applications.
As someone who participated in the creation of these teaching documents, I was asked to write an essay summarizing both of them for the Christian-Muslim Summit in 2010. I am updating and re-issuing it in hopes it will be of some small help in getting more dialogues going.

Current Anglican theology of interreligious dialogue

The Rt. Rev. Pierre W. Whalon

Two major documents outline current Anglican theology of interreligious dialogue, Generous Love, published in 2008 by the Anglican Communion’s Network for Interfaith Concerns (NIFCON), and A Statement on Interreligious Dialogue, issued as an official teaching of The Episcopal Church in 2009. The 2012 General Convention resolution A035 directed fresh attention to the Statement, as it was felt that insufficient attention had been paid to it.
This essay seeks to summarize the essence of each document.
The Statement references Generous Love and applies only to The Episcopal Church, which is based in the United States although it also has dioceses and churches in fourteen other countries. (Our largest diocese, incidentally, is Haiti.) The document intends to encourage and guide the faithful of the church to engage in local dialogues with people of other religions and spiritualities. Generous Love is a succinct, systematic exposition of a theology for interreligious dialogue that grows out of Christian faith itself. Both documents seek to be accessible to potential dialogue partners, in order to inform them of Anglicans’ intentions in making invitations and engagements in conversation.

Generous Love

In a foreword to Generous Love, Rowan Williams, the current Archbishop of Canterbury, sums up its argument thus: “we must regard dialogue as an imperative from Our Lord, yet must also witness consistently to the unique gift we have been given in Christ.” Generous Love begins by making the claim that no human religion, including Christianity, can encompass the fullness of the mystery that is God. Here is the underlying premise that informs both documents.
This develops a point found in the Roman Catholic document of the Second Vatican Council, Nostra Ætate, that church’s declaration on interreligious relations. The Council exhorts the faithful to regard

with sincere reverence those ways of conduct and of life, those precepts and teachings [of other religions] which, though differing in many aspects from the ones [the Catholic Church] holds and sets forth, nonetheless often reflect a ray of that Truth which enlightens all…” (paragraph 2).

It should be noted that this represented a significant change from the way non-Christians were viewed in earlier times, that is, people who were utterly in error and requiring conversion to Christianity in order to avoid divine condemnation. In other times Christians had proclaimed, “there is no salvation outside the Church” (extra ecclesiam nulla salus*).
A certain modesty concerning its claims has always been a hallmark of Anglicanism, and Generous Love sets forth the grounds of that restraint in this epistemological statement about knowledge of God: no one can know God fully in this life. But a declaration of what Anglicans believe immediately follows: “…through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth the One God has made known his triune reality as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.” Rather than the church’s mission being to convert all people to Christianity, the church shares in God’s mission in the creation to renew and restore all things through spreading the divine life and love. Thus “we seek to mirror God’s generous love.”**
One hallmark of authentic interreligious dialogue is being clear about one’s own identity as a person or people of faith, and Generous Love provides this: Jesus Christ is “the one who shows us God’s face,” and so Anglicans want to give witness to his way to the Father, his truth, and his life offered to all. Finally, in this opening section, Generous Love asserts that the Holy Spirit is sovereignly free and active throughout the world, and when the fruits of the Spirit are present in others, we must celebrate that reality by engaging “joyfully” in that work.
In the next section, Generous Love acknowledges the contemporary context of religious plurality and the challenge of that fact in a world that is ever shrinking due to the power and ubiquity of modern communications. The experience of Anglicans after the Reformation of Christian plurality informs us now in a Trinitarian interpretation: the universe in all its manifest diversity has one source and one goal in God; Jesus of Nazareth ministered in particular situations, not ahistorical ideation; and the Holy Spirit establishes the ground of human social life in community. This gives us confidence that religious plurality can exist in a society that balances both liberty and order, yielding neither to a privatization of religious awareness nor an exterior authoritarianism.
In succeeding sections, Generous Love deploys the intertwined Anglican theological resources of “Scripture, Tradition and Reason” in a rather novel way. Interreligious contexts lead us to compare and contrast the Biblical writings, which Anglicans rely on as the primary Tradition, with the scriptures and teachings of other religions. In particular, we no longer view Judaism merely as “a living fossil,” but rather as the matrix from which Christianity came to be. Beyond repairing this relationship of the two faiths, so long estranged with dreadful consequences in times past, Generous Love points to the richness to be found by comparing the experience of listening to the Holy Scriptures alongside the Qur’an, the Vedas, Buddhist sutras, and the traditions of still other religions, as a singular motivator for engagement with people of other traditions than our own.
The Word of God in Scripture is for Anglicans interpreted by communal Reason informed by Tradition, which develops the mind of the church as we live our faith in particular cultural contexts. This leads to “marked pluriformity of Anglican theological approaches to inter faith issues. In every context, though, the Anglican experience has been shaped by a constant reference to prayer and worship, by a concern for the welfare of the whole of society, and by the centrality accorded to pastoral practice.” The Anglican Communion exists in particular churches active in 165 countries in the world. While some are very hospitable, others are not. We stand in solidarity with Christians suffering because of their faith. Nevertheless, Anglican Christians, wherever we are, must practice that “generosity which transcends retaliation” taught to us by Jesus Christ, who commanded that we love our enemies.
The freedom of the Spirit of God to act outside the Church as well as within it gives Anglicans confidence that interreligious dialogue can and should lead to common action for the welfare of individual communities, nations and the world. It is also necessary to struggle against other, powerful spirits, for there

is abroad in all communities a spirit of defamation of ‘the other’, of the hardening of differences into divisions, of the suppression of variety, of the disempowerment of the vulnerable. There is abuse of religion for self-advancement, for the promotion of sectional interests, for the justification of comfortable lifestyles and of the exploitation of others.

The obligation of all Christians to practice gracious hospitality is central to the work of interreligious dialogue. Generous Love concludes by reiterating its opening affirmation: The Christian experience of God as Holy Trinity of Persons indwelling perfectly each other is such that we can affirm that God is love. Thus Anglican Christians must collaborate with this

sending and being sent by the Father of the Son and the Spirit which is eternal, yet which also reaches out into our time and space to draw us into God’s life. In our meeting with people of different faiths, we are called to mirror, however imperfectly, this dynamic of sending and abiding.

A Statement on Interreligious Dialogue

The official Statement of The Episcopal Church does not break new theological ground after Generous Love, which it references. However, as it is meant to help the dioceses develop local dialogues, the Statement is significantly longer as it develops the basic points of Generous Love touched upon above.
The document opens with a strong, succinct mandate for Christians to engage in interreligious dialogue:

We affirm the foundational Gospel proclamation that "Jesus is Lord" (I Corinthians12: 3), and therefore accept the Summary of God's Law: "love the Lord your God with all your hearts, with all your souls, and with all your minds, and to love your neighbor as yourself" (Mark 12:29-31; BCP, Catechism, page 851). For this reason we reach out in love and genuine openness to know and to understand those of other religions.

Dialogue is then commended in terms of mutual respect, common ground, hospitality, and greater understanding, rejecting any proselytizing. In the current context, “the neighbor often seems to be the Other rather than the one whom Christ calls us to receive as a gift and to love as we would be loved ourselves.” (paragraph 11). Informed dialogue seeks to overcome that.
Episcopalians follow the Anglican way of interpreting the Scriptures, the Word of God, through a process of communal Reason informed by the church’s tradition. It is within this way that we base our confidence in being able to engage in authentic transformative dialogue. The Statement goes on to give a comprehensive summary in the fifth section of Christian belief, in the conviction that people of other faiths will tend not to want to meet with people who are unable or unwilling to be clear about their own beliefs.
This summary makes several points: salvation is by divine grace alone and begins now, not just in a hereafter; that grace is mediated through Jesus Christ who is the full revelation of God; the Incarnation, Episcopalians believe, has already begun the transformation of all creation; Christ’s death on the cross and resurrection from the dead reconciles us to God and gives us eternal life; by baptism we become part of his Body and sent forth as “ambassadors of reconciliation.” This section ends in highlighting that

Professing salvation in Christ is not a matter of competing with other religious traditions with the imperative of converting one another. Each tradition brings its own understanding of the goal of human life to the interreligious conversation. (paragraph 27)

The final section commends several ways of being and acting toward people of other religious traditions. The church is to be: a witness to Christ who also listens as well as tells; to imitate pilgrims in humility and eagerness to learn; servants attentive to our partners’ needs; prophetic in proclaiming God’s intention for the whole creation; credible ambassadors of our own traditions as Episcopalians; excellent hosts who are hospitable and respect the customs of others; and finally, sacrament. This latter is an affirmation that the Church itself is the “outward and visible sign” of God’s gracious invitation to reconcile all people to God and each other.
The Statement’s peroration is a summary of three “gifts” The Episcopal Church has to offer potential dialogue partners:
(1.) “Our comprehensive way of thinking by which we balance Scripture, reason, and tradition in relationship building;
(2.) “Our belief system that centers on the incarnation of God in Christ, and on the Crucified One who leads us to self-emptying, forgiveness, and reconciliation; and
(3.) “Our practice of focusing mission in terms of service, companionship, and partnership between people as demonstrative of God's embrace of human life.”
Like Generous Love, the Statement on Interreligious Dialogue ends as it began, invoking the love of God, with a quotation by the late American prophet Dr. Martin Luther King:

Love is the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. This Hindu-Muslim-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about human reality is beautifully summed up in the first Epistle of St John: “Let us love one another; for love is of God; and everyone that loves is born of God and knows God. The one who loves not does not know God, for God is love. If we love one another God dwells in us, and God's love is perfected in us.”

Notes

* Cyprian of Carthage is best known for this teaching. His exact words are Salus extra ecclesiam non est, found in his Epistula 4.4 and Epistula 73:21,2. Yet as far back as Pope Pius IX, we can find these words: “We all know that those who are afflicted with invincible ignorance with regard to our holy religion, if they carefully keep the precepts of the natural law that have been written by God in the hearts of all men, if they are prepared to obey God, and if they lead a virtuous and dutiful life, can attain eternal life by the power of divine light and grace. For God . . . will not permit, in accordance with his infinite goodness and mercy, anyone who is not guilty of a voluntary fault to suffer eternal punishment.” Quanto conficiamur moerore, paragraph 7 (1863)

** Italics added. This declaration develops from the Lambeth Conference 1988 Report entitled “Christ and People of Other Faiths,” which argues the point at length.

*** These categories come from Companions in Transformation (p.4f) an important official teaching document outlining the global mission of The Episcopal Church, approved by the General Convention 2003. Companions also deserves fresh new attention, as it remains completely relevant to today’s situation.

The greatest Episcopalian? (encore)

Wed, 12 Sep 2012 14:56:37 +0200

Humanitarian disaster — please read

Tue, 4 Sep 2012 07:52:03 +0200

I received the following today from Bishop Sylvestre Bahati, Bishop of Bukavu, in eastern Congo.

I have known Bishop Bahati for many years, and can attest to his trustworthiness.

His full letter (warning: includes graphic photos) can be downloaded here, and he includes bank details for refugee relief.

Write to your nation’s leader. American citizens can write here. The war in Congo, supported by Rwanda’s government, has claimed well over five million lives. It is often called “World War III”.

You can also contribute through Episcopal Relief and Development, if you prefer, or else the Anglican Alliance.

Pierre Whalon

PROVINCE DE L’ÉGLISE ANGLICANE DU CONGO
DIOCÈSE DE BUKAVU

Monday, September 03, 2012

The Rt Revd Pierre Whalon
23 Avenue George V , Paris , 75008 , France

Your Excellency Bishop

SECURITY CRISIS IN BUKAVU DIOCESE I am voicing my deep concerns over the deteriorating humanitarian and security situation in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) due to a recent Army mutiny and the continued presence of armed rebel groups in the region. DRC's eastern provinces of Bukavu and South Kivu have been witnessing intensified fighting in recent weeks between government troops and the M23, composed of renegade soldiers who mutinied in July under the leadership of Gen. Bosco Ntaganda. The ongoing conflict has displaced more than 500,000 people, including many who have fled to neighboring Rwanda and Rwanda. The International Criminal Court (ICC) has already issued a warrant for Ntaganda's arrest on charges of recruiting child soldiers to his militia. However, Ntaganda, who is also known as "Terminator," has rejected the ICC charges. The diocese of Bukavu serves to South Kivu Province and a great part of North Kivu Province. In both regions, the security situation is becoming worse because of fighting everywhere, massacre of innocents and massive displacement of people. Three groups of tensions are reported:

1) Rutshuru and Masisi in North Kivu :

The days that came after the recent elections of November 2011 in Democratic Republic of Congo, the guns restarted to resound in this part of the country. The fighting are opposing the loyal army to rebels known as M23 (Mouvement du 23 Mars) of the General Bosco NTAGANDA, dissident of Congolese army and chased for crime by the penal court of the Hague. This has the following consequences:

- Displacement of people: More than 500 000 people are already in displacement or refuge in Goma and around, in Rwanda and in Uganda. We need urgently support to assist these victims because situation on place is still anxious because the needs in food and materials of the victims are daily increasing.

- The occupation of Virunga park by the rebels of M23: the base of this movement is found there and one can fear a negative impact of this to the environment.
2) Kalehe in South Kivu : In this current month, the community of Bunyakiri area (80km Northern Bukavu town) has been victim of attacks from FDLR Interahamwe. From surrounding mountains, these militias came into villages at the night and killed 30 people at Birame on August, 2012. The night of 14th August, 2012, more than 41 people have been killed by pangs at Kamananga, many women raped, about 50 houses burned, and all the properties looted …

On August 17th, 2012, 11 people were killed at Chambucha, the women raped and many injured and about 55 houses burned.

On August 24th, 2012, at Chaminunu, 6 people have been killed by Interamwe who attacked the village at night. Those who are injured and raped are many. The properties have been looted and the houses have been destroyed by fire.
A large number of the victims are in displacement in Bulambika Centre and Bukavu town. Many of them are vulnerable people such women, children and old people. They are now living in the families of the Christians who hosted them but their situation is anxious because there is nobody to improve their basic needs.

3) There are many massacres accomplished by the FDLR /Interahamwe (Forces démocratiques pour la libération du Rwanda) in villages of South Kivu and North Kivu Provinces . These are militias chased from Rwanda after committing the genocide in 1994. The balance-sheet published by some local organizations shows thousands of people killed; many others have been injured, many women raped and infrastructures destroyed … These rebels have looted the properties. Those who flew away to look for safe areas live in poverty and miss hygienic supplies. This situation has caused the creation of RAIA MUTOMBOKI who are local defense forces.

4: Fizi in South Kivu : Even if there seems to be a precarious calm, in this part of D.R. congo, there is a frightening and instability situation because it is a base of tensions for a long time. Often, the forces of Government army living there oppose against the militias known as Mayi Mayi YAKUTUMBA. Also, the interethnic conflicts between Banyamulenge and Babembe communities have become a frequently situation.

I am writing you requesting your financial support to our current situations. We have re-allocate these vulnerable victims at St. Francis Mvula Parish so that they may we may provide relief. Our situation needs your intervention to help. We need more than $20,000 to reach their needs. I am begging you to donate whatever you have any amount is acceptable.

The major currently needs are foods, accommodation and other basic humanitarians. We need your prayers too for peace as have suffered a lot in our life.

Would you kindly wire your support directly to our St. Francis Mvula parish where victims are placed for help. Please consider our request as we are in desperate needs.

Évêque diocésain :
Mgr BAHATI BALI-BUSANE Sylvestre.
MUHUMBA, Av. Pangi N°2
Bukavu, Congo (RDC)
St. FRANCIS MVULA
C/O B.P. 138 Cyangugu, Rwanda
Tel: (+243) 804313647
E-mail: dioceseofbukavu@gmail.com
bahati_balii@yahoo.fr

Back to the stars...

Wed, 8 Aug 2012 22:39:27 +0200

Once again, more stars...

What a nice way to spend a vacation. As if I could get a real one this year...

But enjoy! And there’s Curiosity, too!

Have a good rest of summer...

The Longest Day...

Thu, 21 Jun 2012 09:27:53 +0200

Finally, after some tinkering and getting a new host server, TTOTS,B has moved from the soon-to-be defunct MobileMe to bishopblogging.org. It no longer is just a pointer — it’s my domain name!

A dear friend, who designs glorious websites, once told me that website design is like drawing on water. A lovely image... whereas the journalist Jim Bittermann of CNN, after taping an interview with me, said, “Now it’s forever, on the Internet.”

Forever drawing on water? I can change previous entries, add new ones of course. But “forever” depends on the Net itself. Having to change ISPs or never see your blog again on the WWW undercuts infinity. On the other hand, somewhere, apparently, there is a copy of every email I have ever sent. As long as there is an Internet…

Which brings me to one of my favorite rants. We take technology for granted, but it has both emancipated us and enslaved us. Anyone who remembers “party lines” — not ideology but shared telephone line — knows how far we have come with smartphones. At the same time, without my smartphone I am disarmed. I recently lost my iPad2, and was amazed at how inadequate I felt. But I haven’t changed… have I? It’s worth re-reading Martin Heidegger’s essay “The Question Concerning Technology” (Die Frage nach der Technik). Heidegger’s point is that past a certain point, our technology controls us.

That is worth remembering when we criticize our ancestors for all their real and retrojected evils. They had different tech. What would we have done, for example, if our communal survival depended on having lots of children, as theirs did? Does anyone really think our ways of marrying, straight and gay, would cut it under that kind of pressure? Would women have the chances they have today without electrical power? For that matter, would most men?

No matter what happens to humanity, the Earth will revolve around the sun for billions more years — and today will always be the Longest Day.

Our technology blinds us if we let it. Ironic to write that forever on water…

Manage decline??

Thu, 5 Apr 2012 19:34:49 +0200

When I first began as Bishop in charge of the Convocation of Episcopal Churches in Europe, Archbishop George Carey invited me to attend the annual College for Bishops of the Church of England. This has proven to be very enriching to my ministry here, in a variety of ways.

At my first meeting, I asked other new bishops what their “baby-bishop” course had taught them. “Our job is to manage decline,” replied one, morosely.

“Manage decline?” I thought. That literally turned my stomach. I could never settle for that… (Neither, as it turned out, would they.)

All the Episcopal Church’s overseas dioceses are growing, so I have had other challenges. But numerical decline is certainly happening in the United States. Recently, at a meeting of some of our bishops, one said, “We have all read the Hadaway Report, but we avoid talking about it. Soon all the Greatest Generation will be gone, the Boomers will be on fixed incomes, we lost Gen X, and the Millennials don’t know anything about church. It’s time to wake up and smell the coffee.”

The smell is not just about Episcopalians, but all Christian churches in America, with the possible exception of the Assemblies of God. The number of reported atheists has doubled in the past ten years. In a potboiler article for Newsweek, Andrew Sullivan enjoined readers to “forget about church, just follow Jesus” as a way to deal with this decline.

Hmmm. Problem is, you can’t follow Jesus alone. Christianity is a communal phenomenon, and so we can’t just “forget about” church. Nor can we make the biblical Jesus more palatable to our minds, as Sullivan recounts Thomas Jefferson doing for his age. Who needs yet another guru? And locking ourselves up in mental towers double-moated ’round with declarations, confessions, and other unquestionable assertions of The Truth violates the Summary of the Law: we are to love God with all our mind, which basically means asking questions and trying to find answers (which only lead eventually to more questions).

All these have been tried over and over, and they all fail. Nor will it do to manage decline until we do a genteel shuffle off this mortal coil. Imagine standing before the great judgment seat of Christ, and boasting, “I managed decline better than anyone else, and all for you, Lord.”

No. We need to wake up and smell the coffee, all right, but that doesn’t mean brewing new strategies to attract and hold members. Sullivan talks about St. Francis of Assisi. It reminded me, the bishop, of Innocent III trying to figure him out, and the dream he had of Francis holding up a church building. I am a great admirer of Francis and his impact on the church of his day down to our times. And I am also an admirer of Thérèse of Lisieux, and her Little Way, a call for ordinary people to follow Jesus in their lives by allowing themselves to be loved, and in return, to love.* One of the better things John Paul II did was to declare her a Doctor of the Church…

Two people, holding up the simplicity, as well as the enormous difficulty, of following Jesus. And so many more, vastly more than fit in any calendar of saints. Really, if we started to focus on the hard, sweet task of loving our imperfect selves, and other imperfect people, as God in Jesus loves us, we would be worrying about serious matters. For the Gospel is about life and death... and new life.

Worry about numerical decline after we have accomplished the following:

1.) a church that is truly transforming the world doesn’t worry about size and numbers. It is wholly concerned with the proper work of the Church, which is transformative worship of God through Christ in the Spirit, and helping those who have been thus transformed to accomplish their ministries in the world.

2.) a church that is helping all its members realize each one’s gifts for God’s mission will have a new standard for judging success: percentage of people actively engaged in accomplishing each one’s unique role in the economy of God’s salvation.

3.) a church of people unselfconsciously loving God and neighbor will continue to have institutional issues: that’s what bishops are for, among other things. I remember once a conversation with a Maronite Christian woman who was telling me about a hermit saint of Lebanon, a truly holy man, “unlike you”, she said. “Huh?” I said, my usual articulate self. She explained that as a bishop, I had to deal with the world and therefore could not be holy. Hmmm...

There is a wonderful set of modern windows in St. Pierre de Montmartre, Paris’ oldest church. They depict moments of Peter’s life, My favorite (see above) is of him trying to walk on the water, seen from below, from under the water. (It came to me one day that this is the vocation of a bishop, to see things from below, for that is the perspective of a servant.)

Finally, for a long time the percentage of American Christians was quite stable, meaning that claims of “church growth” were actually no more than shifts in the overall population from one outfit to another. The general decline in number of Christians means that illusion is gone, thank God. This should engender a lot of soulsearching. Liberals might leap too quickly to point fingers at evangelicals; conservatives may continue to claim that schism can be justified in the name of purity. The self-righteous will probably keep on being infatuated with their selves. But all fingers merely point back to ourselves. It is “Christ in us, the hope of glory”, or it is nowhere else. If we do not as church grasp that and then give it away, we deserve to wither and die.

Those who are just happy to know that they are beloved of God, and that this love needs to be returned to God through other people, will not worry unduly about the issues du jour, nor declining numbers. They will focus on giving God due worship for unmerited love and eternal life, and they will judge themselves, not others, for not being loving enough in return. Such people transform the creation. It is what we are to become.

I pray a prayer fairly often, as I am confronted with some hard challenge of bishop’s work: “Lord, this church thing was your idea, not mine: you fix it!” Effective, if unpoetic. God will take care of the church, one way or another. And the Holy Trinity will continue to pour out upon us unfathomable mercy, unmerited love, and surprising, powerful gifts of healing and transformation. We have therefore pressing business at hand. Here is one poet’s way to describe that:

O to grace how great a debtor Daily I'm constrained to be! Let Thy goodness, like a fetter, Bind my wandering heart to Thee: Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, Prone to leave the God I love; Here's my heart, O take and seal it; Seal it for Thy courts above.

* I recently learned about Episcopal Carmelites. See here.

Booting the English...

Fri, 6 Jan 2012 12:16:33 +0100

Joan of Arc —Jeanne d’Arc — remains a fascinating and mysterious figure. Born 600 years ago today, she has become a polyvalent symbol in French politics, regularly invoked by all the parties across the spectrum, Communists to Extreme Right. Today President Nicolas Sarkozy is visiting her birthplace of Domrémy, in Lorraine. Of course, he is also officially launching his presidential campaign...

You can find original materials from her trials here. The more interesting account is the transcript of her first trial. Her own words, transcribed by her enemies, are remarkable. She is clear in her thoughts and precise in her choice of words. In fact, her discourses are claimed by some to be the beginning of modern French.

I am not interested in her legend, her épopée, as the French say. Too many rascals have used it for their benefit over the centuries. What is historically attested in manuscripts of the time, however, is very strange indeed. Who were her “voices”? How did she have seeming moments of clairvoyance, which she attributed to those voices? How did she instantly learn warcraft, when all she had studied was sewing?

Why would God apparently intervene in the course of history of one nation over another?

There is something Christ-like in her story. Jeanne d’Arc’s recapitulation of his Passion: the trial of an innocent at the hands of the religious authorities of the time, the forgiveness of enemies, the brutal execution, all by an illiterate teenage girl of all people, remains very challenging. Beyond the paranormal is the very typical murder of a scapegoat. Like Christ, the intended effect of discrediting her failed.

The English were “booted” out of France. The nation came together. Perhaps God does use people in various nations for the welfare of their country. Ancient Israel itself is the primary example, after all.

There are three great French women saints, each with an extraordinary story: Bernadette Soubirous, Thérèse of Lisieux, and Jeanne. Of the three, Jeanne d’Arc is the strangest. Like Thérèse, her words have enduring power. Like Bernadette, she was a visionary. But her story is so particular, so rooted in a very precise context, that she seems to challenge us far more than the others.

Bon anniveraire, Jeanne. Prie pous nous, s’il te plaît...

Start 2012 right — change something!

Mon, 2 Jan 2012 13:50:41 +0100

Karen Tse is a member of Emmanuel Church, Geneva,Switzerland, part of the Convocation of Episcopal Churches in Europe, of which I am Bishop in charge.

She is one of many, many people in our congregations who make a difference in the world.

And our congregations make a difference too. The Cathedral Church of the Holy Trinity, Paris, France, made Christmas a bit brighter for 2,835 children, for example. Though it is the largest congregation of the four Anglican jurisdictions in Europe, that is over 2 boxes per member! Then there is the program of Christ-the-King, Frankfurt, Germany, which helps U.S. deportees to Germany make a life in that country. And of course, St. Paul’s-Within-the Walls, Rome, has the only daytime refugee center in the entire Eternal City.

In fact, every one of our congregations has people who have discovered God’s unique call to them and accepted it, to participate in the Holy Spirit’s transformation of creation. And each community is doing something unique as well to touch people who are not their members, in the power of the same Spirit.

I am so proud to be their bishop... and humbled as well.

A blessed and holy New Year to you, Gentle Reader, and all whom you love.