A Prophetic Letter

This letter was one that I had originally written to our Bishop prior to the General Convention of the Episcopal Church. I thought it would be worth sharing with you, as the issues and their outcome are still current.

March 7, 2000

Dear Bishop:

Not that you don't already have enough to read, but I thought I would pose a question based on the past history of the English Church. The question is: What common ground do we have with those ordained in our church who do not subscribe to the basic expectation of our ordination vows?

The background is my own historical experience in an Episcopal seminary during the late 1960's. At that time we were told that even if we did not believe in the Virgin Birth, or the Resurrection, we still had the right to confess the Creeds along with the people because we were part of "the people."

In 1771 agitation rose in favor of a project trying to abolish the subscription of clergy to the Articles. This was a direct result of the spread of Unitarianism in England. A petition was signed by 250 clergymen and submitted to Parliament. Edmund Burke gave the following comment:

"These gentlemen complain of hardships: let us examine a little what that hardship is. They want to be preferred clergymen of the Church of England as by law established; but their consciences will not suffer them to conform to the doctrines and practices of that Church. That is, they want to be teachers in a Church to which they do not belong; and it is an odd sort of hardship. They want to receive the emoluments for teaching one set of doctrines, whilst they are teaching another."¹

Sir Roger Newdegate was equally emphatic:

"The hon. Gentleman tells you that the petitioners are respectable. But how? Not surely for their number. It is for their characters that they derive their weight? I desire no better proof of the absurdity of that supposition than this petition. For what is its object? The repeal of the tests of orthodoxy which they have not only professed, but sworn they believed." ²

Some conversations at a clergy retreat echoed this concern. At what point does orthodoxy in matters of faith outweigh the concern for unity with those who no longer confess orthodoxy?

Over the past ten years of listening to our laity, both those who have transferred from Episcopal Churches all over the country, and the greater number of our members who have never been churched before, all are incredulous that some who are priests and deacons may not actually be in agreement with the parameters of the Creeds or the demands of biblical morality. Current news makes it impossible to ignore that reality. As the news regarding the most recent "congregationalist"³ recommendation regarding the ordination of homosexuals or the blessings of their relationships begins to be read in Episcopal Life and other news sources, the concern will come again to the fore.

The moral and doctrinal abdication of the national church is becoming a hindrance to mission work. How long can we point at Anglicans in the two-thirds world and say with a straight face that the majority of the Anglican Communion is orthodox in doctrine and morals when it is blatantly obvious that The Lambeth decisions and the two-thirds world Anglicans are being demeaned and disregarded by Church leaders in our own county, and perhaps by our General Convention itself as it continues to march towards the emancipation of a life style that is explicitly spoken against in Scripture?

If the cost of unity is a faith reduced the lowest common denominator will that unity be worth it? The fundamentalism (or more accurately the totalism)⁴ of the liberal elements of our Church have already made it clear that conservatives are not acceptable specifically in regard to a variance of viewpoints over women's ordination. That I agree with women's ordination doesn't change the perception. With that move at the last General Convention I believe that the old aura of tolerance and mutual forbearance was effectively laid to rest. What I would expect is that the same situation will eventually come to bear in regard to those who will not agree with the blessing of same sex unions or the ordination of homosexuals. Having been educated in an Episcopal Seminary during the period that laid the foundation for today's movements I think we would be naïve to expect anything else. We will either stand for what we believe or face an inevitable "moral" jihad cloaked in swirling vestments. In either case we will not end up with unity. We will end up with orderly separation, or submission, or expulsion.

Faithfully,

The Rev. Dr. Rob Smith+ Obl. OSB

¹Alfred Plummer, The Church of England in the Eighteenth Century, (London: Methuen, 1910), p. 168

²Plummer, p. 168

³Added footnote: Congregationalist refers to the notion that each diocese should determine individually what they choose to do and that there is not necessary accountability to the larger Church.

⁴Added footnote: A totalism is a self-enclosed system that admits no viewpoints but its own.