Obit du jour: Dr. Ruth Etchells

Let us take a moment to celebrate the life of the remarkable Dr. Ruth Etchells, former Principal of St. John's College with Cranmer Hall, Durham. Take it away, Telegraph:

A kind, humane person, she was endowed with considerable pastoral skill and as capable of setting a shy student at ease as she was in dealing with a bishop. A special gift for friendship widely extended her influence.

These gifts were no less valuable when she became Principal of St John’s. Women had still to be admitted to the college, and the male ordinands were unaccustomed to having a woman as their head; she soon won their confidence. Another five years would pass before women could be ordained to the priesthood, but admission to the diaconate became possible in 1987 and candidates for this office were admitted for training. She spoke powerfully in the 1992 General Synod debate when the admission of women to the priesthood was authorised.

The obit in the Guardian calls her "the best female bishop we never had."

It would be nice if the Church of England could take its head out of its collective ass--oh, excuse me, "arse"--so it could actually have some of these women bishops instead of eulogizing them once they're dead.

Although I have to think she was probably better off never needing to wear the purple.

Still, the principal of a college has got to have a high degree of tolerance for bureaucratic indifference and administrative tedium. And it would have been wonderful if she'd had the friggin' option!

Deep breath.

In calmer news, I love that she called ordinands "my lambs."

I'll have to check out some of her books. She wrote several books of prayers along with her scholarship. This is the only prayer of hers I could find in a Google search:

Father of all…, make the roof of my house wide enough for all opinions, oil the door of my house so it opens easily to friend and stranger, and set such a table in my house that my whole family may speak kindly and freely around it.

Amen.

Sunday Funnies, April 15

You might think I have a tax themed edition, but no! I am very excited to present this week's episode of Judge John Hodgman which features Rachel and Leeman, who were students at Canterbury when I was the chaplain at Kenyon College. And, as you will hear, Rachel is an Anglican priest--actually being ordained today. Blessings, Rachel!
The Sound of Young America

All-star obituaries

I meant to write this yesterday but got caught up in the drama of building a mini-greenhouse that I got for Christmas.  There has been much cursing, my friends, and I am sad to report that after two days I still have more to go (hampered by a key piece being somewhat chewed, Harper). I shall report when it is complete.

At any rate, some obits from this week that rate your attention:

Let's start with espionage, shall we?  Loved the obituary for Russian agent Gevork Vartanyan who helped foil a plot to assassinate President Roosevelt during WWII. The story is a bit long to include here, but if you want to know more about the skulduggery behind the Tehran Conference of 1943, I suggest you give this obit a read.

Can you imagine doing work that would save at least 800,000 lives--and counting?  Mary Ellen Avery discovered that premature babies' lungs lack a foamy coating that enables people to breathe.  From that one insight, the survival rate of premies changed. "When Dr. Avery started her work, as many as 15,000 babies a year died from [respiratory distress] syndrome. By 2002, fewer than 1,000 did." Amazing! (Along with being "the first woman to be appointed physician in chief at Children’s Hospital; the first woman to head a clinical department at Harvard Medical School; the first woman to be chosen president of the Society for Pediatric Research; and the first pediatrician to lead the American Association for the Advancement of Science.")

Major Kipper-Ridge saved about 200 lives, which may seem minimal by comparison, but then he was not quite 15.  And a dog.  Which certainly rates an obit in the Telegraph. He held the record for number of mines detected in Somalia, but he also worked in Lebanon and Kenya.  Pretty impressive for a black lab from Wigan.

Finally, I loved the obituary for Lady Rosalind Runcie, widow of the former Archbishop of Canterbury, and a wonderful character in her own right, it sounds like.

Her sense of humour was always irreverent. In the 1970s, when Runcie was Bishop of St Albans and the homosexual Labour MP Tom Driberg was employed by Private Eye as a compiler of obscene crosswords, it was noted that on one occasion the prize was won by a Mrs Rosalind Runcie of St Albans.

I wish I could have known her.

Various & Sundry, Friday the 13th edition

And it's your lucky day because I have lots of good stuff to share--so much stuff, that I'm going to do a separate Obituary All Stars post, probably tomorrow.

It was not a lucky day for this poor guy, Patron X, whose cell phone went off during the last movement of the Mahler 9th the other day.  Oh, I feel his pain! Apparently, he had no idea it was his phone because it was a new phone to him and he'd turned it off and there was an alarm set and he didn't know the alarm would go off when the phone was in silent mode--oh, the misery in his apology is just palpable.

“You can imagine how devastating it is to know you had a hand in that,” said the man, who described himself as a business executive between 60 and 70 who runs two companies. “It’s horrible, horrible.” The man said he had not slept in two days.

It must be agony, but I hope he'll be able to laugh about it some day.

I'm not laughing about the post on bullying that Dirty Sexy Ministry posted earlier this week. Boy, do they nail the experience of bullying in the church.

Bullying is, in short, repeated actions that cause harm to others through verbal manipulation, intimidation, gossip, psychological assualt, and even physical assault.  Most bullying behavior is extremely covert and subtle.  Studies of people who engage in bullying behavior show that they use verbal and/or physical intimidation, that they demean others to promote themselves, and use guilt as a way of manipulation and control, and they are obsessed with authority (their own and others).

That is way too familiar to me, and to so many others. And the question of how to address it...well, I wish I had an answer.

I'll be setting up the DVR today to record the rebroadcast of a show on Food Network called The Big Waste.  In it, Bobby Flay, Michael Symon, Anne Burrell, and Alex Guarnaschelli need to make a 4-course meal for 100 people using food that is designated to be thrown away. A big tip o' the hat to anibundel for bringing this show to my attention.  She writes that "I had to pick my jaw up off the ground at least twice. Every segment."

MadPriest had a post on a topic near to my heart: the strange demand for tithing.  I need to write about this myself one of these days, but in the meantime, I recommend his post on how tithing oppresses the poor as worthy of your attention.

Finally, also from MadPriest, this video is only worthy of your attention if you are a total Anglican Communion geek.  If you are, you'll think it's very funny.  If not, you'll probably just say, "huh?"  So this one is going out to the geeks. Enjoy, compatriots!

Mitregate

'Tis true, my friends! The Presiding Bishop confirmed that she was asked not to wear her mitre at Southwark Cathedral last Sunday. In addition, "In the week before her visit, the presiding bishop said, Lambeth [palace, aka the Archbishop of Canterbury's office] pressured her office to provide evidence of her ordination to each order of ministry." Because you can't be too sure about these women bishops.

This whole debacle is on twitter as #mitregate where Diana Butler Bass wrote, "Has anyone in the CoE [Church of England] ever read American history? That was just abt the worst thing ABC RW cd have done in light of TEC origins." She talks about it further on her blog.

The problem, of course, isn't the headgear; it's the power trip. Do I give a rat's ass who wears a mitre? Not normally. But this has totally pushed my buttons. DBB is right. This does not sit well with me. Who knew I was such a rebellious colonist?

Personally, I would love it if all bishops carried their mitres this Sunday in support and in protest. Or maybe they could wear some of this militant millinery instead.

A little purple, in both men's and women's styles:

Or maybe a seasonal green, with a World Cup theme to boot. (So to speak.)

If you want to stick with the readings for the day, maybe this one could be the whirlwind.



Or, if you want something more practical, this one doubles as an aspergillum. Or aspergilla perhaps.

How the world will look at us if the Anglican Communion falls apart over headgear, I do not care to imagine. I'm going to take a deep breath now and remember that this is exceedingly unimportant in the Grand Scheme of Things.

hat tip (as it were) to Tom and Lorenzo who pulled these photos from Royal Ascot 2010.

How petty!

The headline at The Episcopal Cafe this morning:

Rowan to Katharine: don't wear your mitre in England

The Guardian reports:

Katharine Jefferts Schori, the presiding bishop of the US church and the first woman ever to lead an Anglican province, preached at Southwark Cathedral last weekend despite muted hisses of disapproval by conservative evangelicals. But close observers would have seen there was something missing: no mitre on her head. Who could be responsible? Step forward, Rowan Williams, Archbish of Canterbury, birthday boy (60 yesterday), who couldn't stop her preaching but said she could not wear the symbol of her office, or carry a bishop's crosier. Something to do with women bishops not yet being allowed in the C of E. A bit petty, some say, as Jefferts Schori is indeed a bishop and head of her national church – but in any event, she carried the mitre. And the subject for her sermon: God welcomes everyone, regardless of dress or condition.

UPDATE, I should add if true, petty, indeed. Also stupid. Let us count the ways:

1) Not wearing the hat doesn't mean you're not a bishop If the Archbishop really thinks that somehow not wearing a mitre reduces the authority of a bishop, well, that's just sad. Personally, if I were a bishop, I'd welcome the excuse not to wear the thing which, frankly, makes anyone look quite silly.

2) Way to win over the womenfolk! Because this move says to me that the ABC is nothing but a mouther of platitudes about inclusion.

3) More publicity for the PB's visit Had the ABC merely done nothing, the PB would have preached and carried on. As it is, the PB preached, and the message of her sermon is repeated yet again today.

4) He managed to please absolutely no one The PB still preached which would displease evangelicals, who hate her liberalism, and traditionalists, who don't believe she should have any authority at all. But he still managed to annoy liberals by the way she was treated. And the lack of hospitality would embarrass almost anyone.

5) Good job making yourself look like a jerk! Didn't he ever read that part about heaping coals of fire on someone's head? The PB managed to miss the coals and the ridiculous mitre too.

The Archbishop confuses me greatly. I really have no idea why he does these things.

The Presiding Bishop's sermon ended this way:

Those who know the deep acceptance and love that come with healing and forgiveness can lose the defensive veneer that wants to shut out other sinners. They discover that covering their hair or hiding their tears or hoarding their rich perfume isn't the way that the beloved act, even if it makes others nervous. Eventually it may even cure the anxious of their own fear by drawing them toward a seat at that heavenly banquet. There's room for us all at this table, there are tears of welcome and a kiss for the wanderer, and the sweet smell of home.

I wish the Archbishop had been there to hear it.

[image by Adrian Worsfold at Pluralist Speaks]

Barnabas, in light of the Anglican Communion kerfuffle

I wrote a pretty decent reflection on St. Barnabas a year ago. I'm sorry to report--well, I'm not sorry to report, it's just true, that I seem to see all of these feasts nowadays through the lens of the current conflict in the Anglican Communion.

When I commented on the Internet Monk blog the other day, Chaplain Mike asked,

If the church ultimately cannot come to agreement on what the Bible says regarding homosexuality, and if it cannot come to agreement on what is and isn’t appropriate pastoral and ecclesiastical policy regarding inclusion of homosexuals in leadership, what then?

Wouldn’t it be better just to admit there is an impasse and then decide how to handle it, rather than get off on all these issues that distract from making some hard choices?

To which I absolutely agree, and is one of the reasons I like Barnabas--and why I'm grateful for the Book of Acts. Here's the story:

Barnabas was hugely instrumental in mentoring Paul in his early days as a Christian. The two of them (plus, as you will see, some supporting players) went on their first missionary journey, had amazing adventures, and came back to Antioch to report on what happened. Then,

After some days Paul said to Barnabas, ‘Come, let us return and visit the believers in every city where we proclaimed the word of the Lord and see how they are doing.’ Barnabas wanted to take with them John called Mark. But Paul decided not to take with them one who had deserted them in Pamphylia and had not accompanied them in the work. The disagreement became so sharp that they parted company; Barnabas took Mark with him and sailed away to Cyprus. But Paul chose Silas and set out, the believers commending him to the grace of the Lord.

[Acts 15:36-40]

Did you see that? They disagreed--sharply; they separated. There's no editorial comment about who's right and who's wrong. You know what else? No one wrote a report to study the situation.

I love this icon of Barnabas (on the left) and Paul, both holding up the church.

I think it helps (or helped at the time) that though we think of Paul as pre-eminent, really Barnabas was a church leader first. I'm not sure if they were viewed equally by the church, but I certainly suspect each had authority.

I know, I know, this was a staffing issue, not a doctrinal one. But aren't we saying that we're talking about who is qualified to lead the church? Isn't this, at heart, a staffing issue? The American church seems to be saying, "These people are qualified," and others are saying, "No, they are not." Isn't that what it boils down to?

Oh, I'm getting myself all tangled up now. The point is, sharp disagreements come. People separate. It doesn't mean that either side is evil. "Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other," as Lincoln said. Conflict is not necessarily a sign of sin. "Gracious restraint"--giving in to one another's strongly held opinions--is not necessarily a virtue. That's one of the lessons I have learned from Barnabas. Blessed be he.

On the current Anglican Communion kerfuffle

Those of you who could not care less about the machinations and intrigues of the Anglican Communion will want to skip this. Even for those of you who care, there are probably better things to do with your life than catch up on the latest poo-flinging. But for those of you who want to know and haven't heard, here's the latest in the saga:

So. Mary Glasspool, a priest partnered with another woman, was elected a bishop in Los Angeles and consecrated about a month ago. Much wailing and gnashing of teeth, plus a stern warning after the election from He Who Has Fantastic Eyebrows, the Archbishop of Canterbury. The consecration happened anyway. Sky remains intact.

He Who Has Fantastic Eyebrows writes another stern letter at Pentecost saying that those provinces who have strayed from three moratoria asked of the church (not consecrating (openly) gay bishops, not poaching parishes from other countries, not blessing same-sex unions) "should not be participants in the ecumenical dialogues in which the Communion is formally engaged."

In response, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, aka the "nice American banker lady" [h/t Simple Massing Priest], wrote a response "which amounted to a very Anglican 'get stuffed.'" Much cheering from the American side.

The plot thickens. A letter is sent forth from the Secretary General of the Anglican Communion "to those Episcopalians serving on the communion's ecumenical dialogues informing them that their memberships have been discontinued." ASTONISHMENT! Something actually happened!

But what's this? It only happened to the U.S. church, not to, oh, England where they celebrate the Friends of Dorothy sotto voce. And the Province of the Southern Cone North (a.k.a. the Anglican Diocese of San Joaquin, not to be confused with the Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin)...well, that's just a partnership between supportive friends, not a border crossing at all, is it? Just write us a little note assuring us of the fact.

So. Got all that? Everyone who flouts the moratoria will be rebuked as long as the initials of their province are U.S.A. OUTRAGE!

There's a couple of things:

First of all, I hope we'll get over our outrage. The way it's coming across is, "If we get punished, they should get punished, too." Well, yes, it's not fair. But I hope we'll stop looking back about this and talking about what the Archbishop should do and instead think more deeply about what The Episcopal Church should do.

Second, the punishment we're talking about is penny-ante stuff. ++Williams can't de-consecrate anybody; he can't force the Presiding Bishop to resign; he can't require The Episcopal Church to stop electing whoever it wants as bishops; he can't stop people from different countries from talking with one another; he can't even stop ecumenical dialogue. HE KICKED SOME PEOPLE OFF A COMMITTEE! That's all the power he had. Lesson learned here: if he had more power, he'd use it, but he doesn't.

And thirdly, the punishment he meted out hurts him more than it hurts us. What has he shown himself to be but a tin-pot tyrant without any fangs at all. And he's shown that not only to us, but to the wider church as well. What has he said in kicking people off of an ecumenical committee is that, "when push comes to shove, when we disagree with you, we'll tell you to be quiet." I'm sure that's just peachy for the dialogues he hopes to have.

OK, I've gone on too long about things that aren't important. Please resume your life. Unless, of course, you are a hopeless church geek, in which case you might want to read the next post.

Larger Issues: Anglican Communion geekery

For serious Anglican Communion blog/politics geeks only.

Over on Internet Monk, Chaplain Mike graciously asked, "I wonder if we have some Anglican or Episcopal readers out there who would like to comment [on the current situation in the Anglican Communion]. Give the rest of us some insight about this situation. Many of us who are evangelicals or from more conservative denominations have watched this from afar and have been shaking our heads for some time. It would be easy to cast stones from a distance, but I’m interested in some inside perspective."

Here's the comment I left. Did I miss anything major? Do you agree/disagree?

***

Most of the Episcopal blogs I’ve been reading today don’t think of this in terms of the issue of homosexuality, and I think it might be helpful for you to know some of the other ways in which this is being seen. Here are a few pieces that I think are in play:

1. The structure of the American church The Episcopal Church has a very different structure from many (if not all) of the churches in the Anglican Communion. Although The Episcopal Church is still hierarchical, it’s also got a number of democratic systems in place that don’t match that of the Church of England. Lay people and priests have a lot bigger vote here than many places, and that’s something I think that causes confusion outside the U.S. I believe that ++Williams (and others) have been frustrated that the House of Bishops can’t just set policy by fiat, but the Episcopal Church also a House of Deputies, made up of lay and clergy delegates. It is through both houses that church policy is set at General Convention every three years.

Furthermore, It is lay and clergy members of a diocese who elect their bishop, and a majority of bishops and Standing Committees (diocese Board of Directors) who give their approval. That is very different from other places where bishops are appointed from the top rather than the bottom. When the Archbishop writes to the American church to stop doing something, it involves getting a lot more people on board than simply announcing from the top that something is to be.

2. The authority of women One of the often-unspoken tensions in the Anglican Communion is that of the authority of women. From my vantage point, the real catalyst for the departure of what we refer to as the “break-away dioceses” was not so much the election of Gene Robinson but the election of our current Presiding Bishop, Katharine Jefferts Schori. I think it is no coincidence that the three dioceses I’m thinking of are also the three that still refused to ordain women 25+ years after the first ordinations in 1976.

I got to meet the Presiding Bishop when she spoke to a group of clergy women a couple of years ago. She told us that when she received Anglican Communion email, all other primates are addressed by their clerical titles; she is addressed as “Dr.” A commenter above referred to her as Mrs. Schori. The Church of England only started ordaining women as priests in the 1990’s and still does not have any women bishops. It is a peculiar thing that the representative of our national church must do so among people who do not believe she has any legitimate ecclesiastical authority.

3. The United States as a superpower One conjecture floating around the Episcopal blogosphere is that even though other Anglican churches break the moratoria the Archbishop speaks of, the U.S. is singled out because it’s the U.S. Certainly the Episcopal Church has an impact far outweighing its numbers; it provides the bulk of the money for most of the international Anglican Communion events (Lambeth Conference, etc.). Kudos to the Archbishop for being willing to lose that financial support. The thing that has many people scratching their heads, however, is why not treat all of the national churches equally. My conjecture is that, as much as we in the U.S. like to think of ourselves as one national church among many, we’re really the elephant in the room.

4. The post-colonial mindset Conversely, from where I sit, the Archbishop seems tremendously reluctant to say boo to any Anglican church in parts of the world that used to be English colonies or have that kind of painful past. Although I can understand that as well, in the U.S. church there was considerable consternation that we received a warning memo within 24 hours after a partnered woman was elected bishop, but ++Williams (to our knowledge) never gave a direct response to the Ugandan church when that country was considering the death penalty for homosexuals (as indeed it still is).

5. Honest differences of opinions seem to be punished while quiet hypocrisy is ignored I’ll end with this one. I think it’s pretty clear even from the comments above that there are a range of opinions about homosexuality. That’s just the presenting issue, here. One thing that sticks in the craw of a lot of Episcopalians is that the Archbishop is lecturing the U.S. church about homosexuality while it is commonly known that there are many gay Anglican clergy in England, many priests performing same sex blessings in England, and a gay bishop or two in England. I think many in the U.S. church are saying, “At least we’re being honest about who we are and what we believe and not trying to play both sides.”

A friend and seminary classmate of mine put this in her blog this morning:

“all this that we have been through and that we are still in the throes of… this was not an argument about LGBTQ in the church –LGBTQ were just the convenient whipping post that would bear the brunt of this argument —and about which much fear and energy could be culminated. This was an argument about the twin sources of yeast: power & authority and how these two things are wielded and who gets to wield them…”

I think that pretty much sums it up.

Quote of the Day

"It boils down to cooties...but on a cosmic, salvation-affecting level."

from The Lead's article about the Global South Primates meeting's pronouncement. For hard-core Anglican Communion news junkies only. Really, just go about your lives, people. This is nothing. The quote's pretty funny, though.

We interrupt this blog for an update from the ongoing saga of the Anglican Communion

Sorry...sorry...just can't keep my mouth shut on this one even though I realize 99.9 % of people everywhere don't give a rat's ass about it.

So. The Church of England is having its General Synod (somewhat like General Convention, only annual -- am I getting that right?), and a member proposed a resolution that would recognize the Anglican Church of North America, a group led by the former bishop of Pittsburgh who decamped from the Episcopal Church, as part of the Anglican Communion, in fellowship with the Church of England. This got amended somewhat so that the final resolution, which passed handily, reads:

That this Synod, aware of the distress cause by recent divisions within the Anglican churches of the United States of America and Canada,

(a) recognise and affirm the desire of those who have formed the Anglican Church in North America to remain within the Anglican family;

(b) acknowledge that this aspiration, in respect both of relations with the Church of England and membership of the Anglican Communion, raises issues which the relevant authorities of each need to explore further; and

(c) invite the Archbishops to report further to the Synod in 2011.

[Anyone who's followed this more closely than I please feel free to correct any factual errors here.]

That all seems reasonable enough, but what I don't think the C of E understands is that these are not reasonable people. Allow me to give an example from my own experience.

There was a parishioner, let's call her Madame Flowers. At first glance, she seemed a welcome addition to the parish, well-groomed and active. Active in everything, actually. To the point where it seemed a bit weird.

To make a long story very short, Madame Flowers trespassed into all sorts of areas, would not take no for an answer to anything, accepted no boundaries or limits, and, when on one occasion was escorted by me to the office door to end a conversation, accused me of assault. In short, she was a terribly disruptive presence and the parish, I think, did a reasonable (though not perfect) job of protecting its members from substantial damage. Madame Flowers was in no way evil, in my opinion, but her behavior made it almost impossible for her to remain in the community unless she was willing to make substantial changes, which she was not.

(Let us for the moment gloss over the part where her mother was found mummified in her home while she claimed she had seen her alive just the week before.)

The thing about ACNA that I don't think the C of E understands is that I think most of us are not as concerned about their belief as about their behavior. When I heard that synod had passed this resolution, I tweeted, "Good luck, C of E. You're gonna need it." These folks, for whatever reason, think nothing of trespassing boundaries all over the place and then accusing the people who say no of assault.

Truly, I feel for you. You have no idea what you, in your desire to be reasonable, have gotten yourself into. Blessings. [Insert sign of cross here.]