Friday, July 19, 2013

Via Media Lost

At the Canterbury Club at my university we learned the song "I am an Anglican." sung to the tune of "God bless America."  It went this way.  I am an Anglican, I am PE.  Not high church, nor low church, but protestant and catholic and free.  Not a Presby, or a Methodist, or a Baptist white with foam.  I am an Anglican, just one step from Rome.  I am an Anglican, Via Media, boom boom.

Perhaps theologically wanting, the song nevertheless forged my spiritual identity with the idea that Anglicanism was the middle way between Rome and Protestantism.  Episcopalians were the perfect bled of the two, and we embraced all sorts and conditions of theologies and rituals into one Liturgy blended into one magnificent church.

The Via Media of Anglicanism began with the reign of Queen Elizabeth I.  The Act of Uniformity of 1558 allowed both the subjective and objective belief in the Real Presence at Holy Communion, thus blending the Reformation and Roman Catholic theologies of the Eucharistic Presence.  The original words are still found in our Prayer Book, Rite I, though they are rarely used.  In the bread words at Holy Communion, the Catholic position is present this way.  The Body of our Lord Jesus Christ which was given for thee, preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life.  The Reformed tradition lay in the subsequent phrase.  Take and eat this in remembrance that Christ died for thee, and feed on him in thy heart by faith, with thanksgiving.  In the early days of my ministry this had morphed into a creative tension between high and low church rituals in parish churches.  We all believed in the Real Presence of Christ in the Sacrament.

The key idea here is that in spite of our differences in theology and liturgy, we were held together by this Via Media glue.  The Prayer Book was the guiding force that directed our theology, and the Constitution and Canons of The Episcopal Church guided the discipline and order of the church.  Diverse elements within the church were pulled together under the wide umbrella of the Via Media, and even though we disagreed, we were loyal.

In the late nineteen sixties it all began to come apart.  As my friend and fellow blogger Bill McVey says, "we drew a line in the sand" between the conservatives and the liberals, mainly over new liturgical materials and civil rights issues.  This does not mean that it was wrong to be either liberal or conservative, it is that in most instances the two decided they could not live together in the same church.  The first "line in the sand" was drawn over the civil rights movement, closely followed by liturgy and woman's ordination.  Now the split centers around sexual orientation.  Many have left the church.  The Via Media drifted away.

I suppose that it could be said that throughout my active ministry I would have been classified as a "liberal," whatever that truly means.  While I am a fiscal conservative and was mostly a good steward of the financial resources of the parish, I admittedly was a theological and social progressive.  However, I now lament the reality that the church put itself in the position where both liberals and conservatives drew such a hard line in the sand where neither side could give.  Hence the split and therefore the functional demise of the Via Media.  I grieve that loss and am sad about the fact that loyalty to the church faded away into the fundamentalist sunset.

11 comments:

  1. Right on, Bob. The Episcopal Church, depending on location regionally, is the captive of arrogant, largely ignorant, liberals or conservatives.I call them Authoritarian liberals, the majority of the leadership probably, and Authoritarian conservatives. The emphasis is on Authoritarian, a term meant to show their actual narcissistic power and control leadership orientation.

    When I was in Philadelphia, I belonged by invitation to the Phillips Brooks Society, a great old gathering initiated by Brooks when he was Rector of Trinity Rittenhouse Sq, to have high, low and broad clergy present a paper, converse over sherry and enjoy a well prepared dinner together. It had included over the years many fine gentlemen and then before she left the area, Gerry Wolf. It was a sign and symbol of Via Media, now of a past gentler time for which I have gratitude to God for the experience of the essential Anglican spirit.

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  2. Good post Bob and thanks for the history and the lyrics. A wise woman once said to her middle child: You are in the middle. What is the best part of a sandwich? Remember. Some of us still hang out in the middle of the extremes. Via Media will prevail As we write, teach and work for dialogue. In the meantime we need Christ against culture.

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  3. I do not have the breadth of experience of Bob or Ron, but in my more limited experience I have seen few instances where liberals were authoritarian. In fact, I saw liberals working hard to confirm the value of conservative colleagues in the life of the diocese. The conservatives I know who left the Episcopal Church in response to the election in NH were not driven out but left because they decided that they couldn't in conscience stay in a church which had a partnered gay bishop. We have lost some degree of theological diversity in the Episcopal Church, but not, in my opinion, because liberals have been arrogant.

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  4. Thank you, Dan. I have great respect for you and what is much shared liberalism between us. And you have lived your life and ministry in Via Media. I am going to write more on my argument about liberal authoritarianism later; however, I saw great gobs of it when I worked at 815 under Browning and none under my time with "conservative" PB Allin. Further I heard true liberal rhetoric being undermined by many subtle and not so subtle maneuvers on very specific occasions including some serious racism masked by condescension and pity. Here is another legal authoritarian incident by General Convention: the decision to legally invade dioceses who did not ordain women in order "to check on their well being as Episcopalians" licensed authoritarian conservatives to disregard diocesan boundaries on their own "conscience" issues. Or much earlier and maybe the first full act of liberal authoritarianism again regular liberals: how we ordained the first women in Philadelphia in 1974, a complete invasion of a diocesan bishop's territory, all liberal authoritarian behavior masked as civil rights and conscience acts. Bishop Lyman Ogilby of PA was devastated by his own friends and never once said a harsh word about what his jurisdictional violation did to him emotionally and as diocesan authority. Authoritarian liberals have damaged many of their own in the name of their self righteous approach to important issues that could best have been handled more honestly and gently.

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  5. I find that ordinary Episcopalians would more likely side with Daniel - What happens at 815 is, whether you all like it or not, totally irrelevant to the rest of the church, and whatever you saw there didn't filter down...AND most of what has happened to ECUSA has much more to do with what is happening in our wider society than it does with what bishops and other administrators think or do not think, do or fail to do...The whole USA is divided right now, so of course the church also is, We do not affect the culture nearly as much as we might like to imagine; IN nearly all cases, it affects us. And in reality, it IS the hard line conservatives (although that is not really what they are) that walk out of political and ecclesiastical conversations and congregations, shrill, harsh, extremely "righteous." The rest have given up trying to talk over the irrational and generalized anger. In any case, denominational loyalty is dying everywhere, not just in SCUSA, and everybody has already moved into the via media position anyway - embracing large chunks of Catholic spirituality and even worship, as Catholics are embracing Biblical studies and changing the way they talk and think about theology...Of course there re reactionary movements in both - harder-line protestats and harder-line catholics, but they are not the majority of ordinary folks, who don't have any turf to defend, and who just happen to want to follow Jesus...regardless of labels. And that I see everywhere. The "emerging church" has become the reality for today within every denomination even if they don't know that phrase; what will become of denominations in 50 years is not yet visible. We live with where we are - and it happens to be a God place as much as it was in any other time...

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  6. Actually at the most local level clergy and/or vestries that behave with authoritarian power tactics do great damage. The issue is never finally an honestly held liberal or conservative opinion but rather leadership styles. It has been the job of many of us to clean up after authoritarians have done their damage and forgotten the grace of via media that has made us all spiritually healthy. Re. the national and international levels until recently the Episcopal Church and Church of England have been called upon to go into situations to mediate in wars and tribal disputes. The reason people do not know about them is the reason they were successful. I know of incidents in Africa, the Middle East and Myanmar where lay and clergy leaders have changed the course of history by practicing via media as Elizabeth I lead the way for hundreds of years. The Church does and has had historically great influence in secular culture. More on this later. . .

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  7. Oh, for a little local history, check out what Episcopalian lead the way to start Kansas University and the Episcopal Theological School at about the same time to in part fight against slavery on the one hand and radical liberal transcendental theology on the other. Hint, it is name of a university town. . .

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  8. And lest we forget, if 815 and General Convention is irrelevant in some sense, which it perhaps is, we are naively paying for it through every contributors' gift to the their very local congregation. . . a pretty expensive way to foster something that is apparently not very important. .

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  9. For some reason the following metaphor comes to mind: as a dog ascends from the lakes edge shivering and shaking tossing water right and left to dry his coat, so the church immersing and enfleshing herself in the way of the Cross ascends casting to the left and right the barnicales of fundamentalism that hides in the deposits of dogma and doctrine to escape the realities of divine-human engagement. The Via Media remains for the dog will continue to swim the lake to retrieve its Master's ball, and on its return to the shore will shake once more, again and again!

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  10. Now, having stated all the above, there is no doubt a great sadness in the departure of those who have left us for Rome as well as those who flirt with Geneva. And we ought not forget those who have simply given up on the church because of her meanness in the liberal and conservative positions. Without our knowing it, we have entered the cultural wars, and more seriously we have lost our sense of humor.

    There was a time in the early 20th century, when Low Churchmen and High Churchmen enjoyed making fun of each other and doing little tricks to upset the other party. There is a wonderful story about Bishop Dallas of New Hampshire, whenever he made his Visitation to an Anglo Catholic parish, he would hide the Tabernacle Key. And then there were the debates about how long the fringe on the stole was meant to be. The length expressed your churchmanship! The parties may have been frustrated with one another, but there was also a strange honoring of the other's position and tradition. We have lost the ability to play, we have a difficult time accepting the "other" even if he or she calls themselves "Anglican." This lack of humor and light-heartedness is killing the church. Everyone has become intrenched in their own mind. Thus we have lost our ability to communicate with one another ~ continuing to distance ourselves from that part of ourselves we must reject! So with great sadness, yes indeed, the Via Media has been gravely wounded.

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  11. I served as priest in four dioceses and I saw firsthand the authoritarian nature of liberals from stacking committees to leaving conservatives entirely off committees and other appointments. There is also the giving and taking away of the conscience clause on women's ordination, the hard line that many bishops took against 1928 PB parishes, and the list goes on.

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