One of the most moving testimonies I’ve seen.

And, yes, his “praying mother” (to use a good Pentecostal term) was in fact an Anglican.

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It seems that the prospect of women in ministry–and especially women as diocesan bishops–is always linked to a discussion of the nature of authority in churches.  That was certainly the case in my own 2007 piece on the subject, Authority and Evangelical Churches, and now the CoE’s “Ugley Vicar” takes on the issue in his own post Anglicanism, Authority and Ordination.  Although our two church environments are different (they are both episcopal in nature, however) many of the underlying issues are the same.

One point I’d like to make from the outset is this: if it is unacceptable for a woman to have any kind of authority over a man at an episcopal level, i.e., a female bishop over a male priest/minister, than it’s unacceptable for a woman vicar/pastor to have the same kind of authority over a male layman.  The reverse is likewise true.  Once you allow women in what many of us would refer to as “credentialled” ministry, then you’ve blown your argument about the authority issue at a higher level.  That’s the situation that both the CoE and my own church find themselves in right at the moment.

But John Richardson (the Ugley Vicar) introduces something into the debate which, frankly, I wish I had explicitly done sooner: the concept of more than one kind of authority.  Taking his cue from John Goldingay’s book Authority in Ministry, he comes up with the following:

In it, he identified two kinds of authority. Authority A is the institutional kind possessed by the centurion, who said to one man “‘Go’ and he goes, to another ‘Come’ and he comes.” Authority B, he said, is the kind possessed by Jesus who, “spoke with authority because he was in touch with God and with truth” (8).

Richardson then spends a great deal of time applying this to the CoE.  To be honest, much of the discussion is specific to his church, a state church where “Authority A” is tied up in its legal status.  One thing he brings out that is relevant to my earlier treatment of the subject is the nature of the Act of Supremacy: he states the following:

That’s significant because, if one accepts the “engineers” premise, it absolves Anglicanism (or at least the C0E) of the great besetting problem with most of Evangelical Christianity, the one that is at the centre of my whole thesis in Authority and Evangelical Churches:

What I’d like to spend the rest of this piece doing is to generalise his concept of “Authority A” and “Authority B” and perhaps use this to shed some light for the rest of us who are involved with this issue.

If one looks at things objectively, any organisation–secular or religious–requires Authority A to function.  That just goes with the territory.  There’s nothing unique to the church about this.  This applies whether the church has state sanction (as is the case in the UK and many European countries) or not (the US.)  It also applies if the church is incorporated or an unincorporated religious association (and we see both in all parts of the world.)  And I’m also inclined to think that this kind of authority isn’t what is referred to in the New Testament when the subject comes up.  In fact, some writers (the Jesuit John McKenzie comes to mind) contend that one of the main points of the New Testament is that the church get past this kind of authority altogether.

Authority B is another matter altogether.  Although it certainly has New Testament sanction, how it’s implemented varies depending upon the ecclesiastical environment.

At one end of the spectrum is Roman Catholicism, whose implementation of this is tied up in the concept of magisterium, the inherent ability of the Church to authoritatively speak on matters of faith and morals.  That in turn is tied up with its ecclesiology, and I’ve discussed that issue many times on this blog, starting many years ago with We May Not Be a Church After All.  I’ve always felt that the Roman Catholic Church can never admit the sacerdotal ministry of women because of this and many other issues, unless they modify their underlying idea of themselves.  In this environment, Authorities A and B are effectively a unity.

At the other end are the “independent” Evangelical churches (the Baptists in this part of the world are foremost in this) who have, whether they care to admit it or not, evicted Authority B from their churches altogether.  They have done this through the aforementioned process of rebellion to be sure, but they have also done so because their concept of church is a complete rejection of the church possessing either the magisterium or the status of a formal intermediary between man and God.  As a consequence of this they have no grounds to exclude women from credentialled ministry unless they can demonstrate that Authority A is what the New Testament refers to.  Today, however, what we’re seeing in many Evangelical churches is a de facto entry of Authority B into the church, something which I think is objectionable and defeats the whole purpose of such churches.

Somewhere in this mix are the Pentecostal and Charismatic churches and groups, whose idea is to restore the spontaneous, Spirit-led appointment to leadership that we saw in the New Testament.  This is the mirror image of the usual Evangelical model: it has a clear concept of Authority B but in a sense evicts Authority A from the church.  This has in turn led to the woes the movement has experienced: lack of accountability, self-validating leadership and ephemeral organisations.  The Classical Pentecostal churches were the first attempt to fix these problems, and have done so in varying ways and with varying degrees of success.  Most of these lessons had to be learned the hard way once again during the Charismatic Renewal of the 1960’s and 1970’s, with even more variation in the results.  Women have always done relatively well here because of the Spirit-led nature of leadership, underscored by the explicit conferring of the gift of prophecy on women in Joel and Acts (something that Lord Carey likes to note.)  But back-pedalling has taken place here too, as we all know.

With Anglicanism, we have a muddle.

Richardson points out that, in the formation of the Church of England, the whole concept of the sovereign being a part of the doctrinal formation of the church was taken out of the equation.  English sovereigns had good precedent for doing so, as Roman Emperors made the fourth and fifth centuries an exciting time picking winners and losers in the Christological controversies.  But they, wanting a Protestant church (especially Edward VI and Elizabeth I) passed this up.  The 39 Articles notwithstanding, the Church of England also passed up the explicit assumption of magisterium, preferring to see itself as a restoration of New Testament and Patristic Christianity that had gotten lost in Roman Catholicism.  And I’ve always been inclined to think that Anglicanism is one of the better attempts to get back to this, all things considered.

But having done all of these “Protestant” things, the Church of England still retains the decidedly “Catholic” structure of bishops as successors to the Apostles.  And that’s where the tricky part comes in.  It’s true that the CoE’s ministers and bishops have legal authority and a structure, the “Authority A.”  But as bishops women would have (in theory at least; as Richardson alludes to, it doesn’t always work out) whatever spiritual authority comes from the “Catholic” side of the episcopacy, and, as he points out, for those who see this as an impossible combination, no provision has been made.

Given Anglicanism’s equivocal nature (and I mean that in the scholastic, not pejorative sense,) I think that there are three possibilities for resolution.

The first would be to actually adopt a consistent, univocal theory of the authority of the church, i.e., either Roman Catholic, Evangelical or even Charismatic.  Given that this hasn’t been properly resolved on either side of the Atlantic, this is unlikely, and given some Evangelicals aversion to women as ministers (let alone bishops) it may not resolve anything.

The second is that of parallel jurisdictions.  This flies in the face of the concept of the “holy Catholic and apostolic church,” but the blunt truth is that, considering these churches as a whole, we already have parallel jurisdictions.  As Richardson reminds us, the Articles state that “The Bishop of Rome hath no jurisdiction in this Realm of England,” but subsequent to that he established a presence in the UK and has certainly made a nuisance of himself lately.  (Personally, I think the term “flying bishops” used in this context is a promotional scheme for the airlines, but I digress…)

The third would be for the church, as have many churches, simply decide to ordain women as bishops and let the chips fall where they may.  And that’s what I think is going to happen.

I’ve been a supporter of women at all levels in ministry, and remain so.  But that support is based on an ecclesiastical environment where churches have either a) denied, b) forfeited or c) adopted a Charismatic concept of “Authority B.”   Taking this step needs to be done with a clear idea of authority in the church, and very few have thought this issue through.  Richardson is to be commended for having explored the issue the way he has.

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Back in March 2007 I noted the following:

The best practical argument for disestablishment, however, is that it would give more freedom to the church to set its own agenda.

We’ve already noted that there has been talk about Parliament forcing the CofE to admit women bishops.  In the gay-crazy mood the UK is in these days, we’re honestly surprised that the government allowed Rowan Williams to humour the Global South the way he did in Dar-es-Salaam.  The main reason why they haven’t is that the CofE isn’t a very significant part of Britain’s landscape any more except for its empty church buildings.  And there’s always the National Trust for those in a crunch.

But we know that, with the homosexuals, there’s not an insignificant enough opponent they won’t try to crush sooner or later.

Well now we have this:

Tory leader David Cameron has launched an astonishing attack on the Church of England over its attitudes to homosexuality. In an interview with the gay magazine Attitude, Cameron tells award-winning journalist Johann Hari that ‘our Lord Jesus’ would back equality and gay rights if he were around today. He says he doesn’t want to get into a row with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams. ‘But I think the Church has to do some of the things that the Conservative Party has been through – sorting this issue out and recognising that full equality is a bottom line full essential.’ He also introduces a new phrase to the English language, one that might be current in High Tory circles but not one I’ve heard before, in reference to Muslim women: ‘Blowing the hijab off them.’

I don’t think that the Tories’ gay supporters are going to sit by and allow Cameron to avoid getting “into a row” with Rowan Williams.

The CoE’s position as an established church has always made it vulnerable to state interference and control of the kind that Cameron is implicitly threatening.  That’s why North American Anglicans’ endless desire to find validation by the CoE (along with getting into an Anglican Covenant, with the CoE as the natural centre) is misguided and will end in disaster.

One Anglican friend noted to me that she thought they should move the Communion to Africa.  In spite of the Ugandans’ rough times lately, that still looks like a good idea.  But I advocated that, too, in times past, and not just for Anglicans either:

The Archbishops of Canterbury and York participated in a much publicised “guilt march” across the UK about the evil of slavery.

But there’s an easier and more substantial way to even the score: just let the Africans and their allies, including the descendants of slaves in the West Indies, take the lead in the Communion.

We find, however, that, Western church leaders–liberal and conservative alike–are reluctant to bow to the obvious and allow the centre of power of Christianity to shift where its people are.  The liberals are especially adverse to this process, as they are further from the Africans’ idea than their conservative counterparts.

The desperation of conservative parishes in TEC, however, has them affiliating with provinces such as Uganda and Nigeria, along with others.  They have gone past guilt.  It is time that the rest of us follow suit.

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And in this case I’m not referring to the attorneys:

Sharks gathered off Reef Road Thursday morning, but were not moving into public swimming areas.

Mark Hassell, town lifeguard supervisor, reported Thursday that no sharks were seen congregating at Midtown Beach or Phipps Ocean Park. Both public beaches remained open.

Midtown Beach was closed for about 30 minutes last week when a group of sharks moved through the area.

Rick Wentley, owner of PB Boys Club and an avid surfer, said he checked conditions Thursday morning with the thought of going out.

Although he usually surfs in the North End, he said he was going to move farther south along the Palm Beach shoreline — just in case — to avoid sharks. But it turned out the waves just weren’t there.

Sharks typically migrate north in March and April.

Gary Goss, professor of biology at Palm Beach Atlantic University and a local shark expert, said the grouping of sharks is most likely a prelude to the upcoming seasonal migration.

The schooling behavior is typical for fish and the sharks that go after them for food, he said.

“They’re getting ready to go north.”

The seasonal migration pattern is a well-honoured practice amongst the human residents:  south to winter in Palm Beach (with the social season to go with it,) then north for the summer.  So why not the sharks?

My family was somewhat exceptional in being year-round residents.

And now for something completely different: saw this piece about Republican “activist” and philanthropist Helen Cluett:

When is it time to get out of politics? A) When you’re about to turn 90. B) When you realize that all of the candidates you’ve backed have lost. C) Never.

Helen Cluett will tell you the answer for her was B, but if you dig a little deeper you’ll see that the real answer is C.

Cluett turns 90 in May, and she says she’s “worked my fingers to the bone” for the Republican Party, and that it’s time to step aside to let a younger crowd take over the battle.

And you may in fact not see Cluett working the phone banks in 2012 or even this fall when the fate of Congress again is put before the American electorate.

But she’ll be deeply involved — if only to argue a point or two with visitors, family and friends. That’s the nature of one of Palm Beach’s most noted activists, both in politics and in charitable causes.

The Cluetts were the “sellers of shirts” whose weight on the vestry of my home church Bethesda-by-the-Sea was crucial in the 1968 booting of my mother’s ladies guild’s rummage sale from the church proper. That in turn led to the start of the Church Mouse resale shop, now something of a Palm Beach institution.  Obviously Helen wasn’t directly involved in that, as in that time there were no women on the Vestry (her husband Bill was another story.)  But for me, active in both Republican politics and the church, it’s hard not to feel an affinity with someone who has been diligent in the G.O.P. and lists Jesus Christ as a “most admired person” in the Shiny Sheet.  Besides, the whole Church Mouse saga is a classic “lemons to lemonade” story.

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It’s the only word that really “captures the moment” about this event:

Washington Episcopal Bishop John B. Chane announced Saturday he will retire in the fall of 2011, saying it was “time to elect a younger person to lead what I consider to be the best and one of the most influential dioceses in the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion.”

Speaking to about 325 attendees at the annual diocesan convention at the Washington National Cathedral, Bishop Chane, 65, admitted he was stepping down during a time of flagging growth and stagnant giving in the 42,000-member diocese.

I wonder why the growth flags…

John Chane main claim to the “Inconsistency is the Hobgoblin of Little Minds Award” is this:

The Anglican/Episcopal world has been regaled with the strange relationship between Episcopal Bishop of Washington (DC) John Chane and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. While promoting the complete acceptance of homosexuality in the life of the Episcopal Church, Chane has cultivated his friendship with a man whose regime hangs homosexuals from truck cranes.

If John Chane’s friends succeed, the only residue of the Diocese of Washington will be in Rock Creek Cemetery.

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From the 1928 BCP, it’s the Parable of the Labourers in the Vineyard:

For the Kingdom of Heaven is like an employer who went out in the early morning to hire labourers for his vineyards. He agreed with the labourers to pay them two shillings a day, and sent them into his vineyard. On going out again, about nine o’clock, he saw some others standing in the market-place, doing nothing. ‘You also may go into my vineyard,’ he said, ‘and I will pay you what is fair.’ So the men went.

Going out again about mid-day and about three o’clock, he did as before. When he went out about five, he found some other men standing there, and said to them ‘Why have you been standing here all day long, doing nothing?’

‘Because no one has hired us,’ they answered.

‘You also may go into my vineyard,’ he said.

In the evening the owner of the vineyard said to his steward ‘Call the labourers, and pay them their wages, beginning with the last, and ending with the first. Now when those who had been hired about five o’clock went up, they received two shillings each. So, when the first went up, they thought that they would receive more, but they also received two shillings each; On which they began to grumble at their employer.

‘These last,’ they said, ‘have done only one hour’s work, and yet you have put them on the same footing with us, who have borne the brunt of the day’s work, and the heat.’

‘My friend,’ was his reply to one of them, ‘I am not treating you unfairly. Did not you agree with me for two shillings? Take what belongs to you, and go. I choose to give to this last man the same as to you. Have not I the right to do as I choose with what is mine? Are you envious because I am liberal?’ So those who are last will be first, and the first last.” (Matthew 20:1-16, Positive Infinity New Testament.)

If there’s one thing that bothers me about Evangelical Christianity these days, it’s that people expect–and are promised–a big pay-off for what they do (and especially what they give) to the Lord.  There’s really nothing new about this–it’s an issue that comes up more than once in the Gospels and elsewhere–but these days it’s pursued with a singular lack of subtlety.

We know that our reward is eternity with God.  That is ultimately the “two shillings” (I love the old British currency in this translation) of the parable.  What else is better?

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I see that The Times’ Ruth Gledhill is on the trail of this issue:

The charity is in the process of doing research into why men don’t come to church, and their questionnaire makes, for this woman anway, pretty reading. Read on for some of the reasons they suggest why real men might not like going to church.

Being involved with a denominational men’s ministry, I think I know a few things about this.  Most of what she brings up in the article were dealt with in (and the questionnaire may be inspired by) David Murrow’s book Why Men Hate Going to Church, which I reviewed here.  But I do have some additional thoughts on this subject.

1. The difficulty of the “vicar wearing a dress” is hilarious if you understand the historical background behind it.  In spite of the “Bible teaches that men wear pants” mentality, in both Old and New Testament times everybody wore robes, or a “dress” if you please.  (The Chinese even reversed dresses and trousers until we came along and messed them up.)  Trousers were introduced into the Roman world by the barbarian tribes which invaded it; the vestments of Anglican and Catholic alike are descendants of the robes worn by Late Roman imperial officials.  But that leads to the next problem…
2. Too much of the “re-masculinisation” of the church in the U.S. is made to depend upon the imposition of the rough, rural Scots-Irish culture as the “real man” culture.  That will not fly in this century.  There are other ways to express masculinity, but in the U.S. at least the structure of Evangelical churches mitigates against real alternatives, for the moment.
3. It’s not really addressed in the articles linked to, but since I’m on the subject I’d like to address another issue: the idea that women ministers will feminise the church.  I hate to say the obvious, but in Evangelical churches we have an overwhelmingly male ministry and still have a feminised church.  As counterintuitive as Evangelical churches can be, perhaps the ascendancy of female ministers is a great opportunity for really meaningful men’s ministry!

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On the first day of this decade, one Muslim extremist broke into the apartment of Danish political cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, whose “Muhammad-in-a-bomb” cartoon’s publication in Jyllands-Posten ignited another round of rage in the Islamic world. Westergaard joins Salman Rushdie, Geert Wilders and others who are forced to live underground because they have drawn the ire of at least part of the Muslim world.

As Bruce Bawer in City Journal notes, across the Skagerrak in Norway, long-time women’s rights activist Hege Storhaug has suffered a home invasion of her own. Three years to the day before Westergaard retreated to his panic room, one or more people burst into her apartment, beat her unconscious and left her in a pool of her own blood.

Muslims on the prowl again? Probably not. In this case, Hege’s main opponents were a combination of leftists in both the Norwegian media and the political activist community who were incensed by her 2006 book But the Greatest of All Is Freedom: On the Consequences of Immigration. In response to this they launched a campaign to demonise her as a racist and Islamophobe and, following the play-book they ascribe to their opponents, hate speech led to violence.

Islamophobe? Why should the left care if anyone hates Islam or not? They certainly don’t care if people hate Christians. But Islam, if it succeeds, will be the end of much of what leftists hold to be “beautiful and good.” That includes but is not limited to their sexual agenda. Homosexuals and those who engage in sexual activity outside of marriage—especially women—will find themselves subject to capital punishment if sharia is implemented, a frequent goal of Muslim groups.

And yet we in the West have been treated to this strange pas-de-deux between leftists and Muslims which has complicated our efforts to deal with those followers of the Prophet who use terrorism to achieve their aims. Leftists have pursued this agenda consistently, especially in the last decade. London Mayor Ken Livingstone thought nothing of displacing the Kingsway International Christian Centre while making way for the largest mosque in Europe near the 2012 Olympic venue. The Anglican/Episcopal world has been regaled with the strange relationship between Episcopal Bishop of Washington (DC) John Chane and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. While promoting the complete acceptance of homosexuality in the life of the Episcopal Church, Chane has cultivated his friendship with a man whose regime hangs homosexuals from truck cranes. Sometimes things leave the realm of reality completely. New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art recently moved to eliminate images of Muhammad from its Islamic Art Gallery (these were done many years ago, before the absolute ban on these images went in to effect.) They are even changing the name of the Gallery to that of art from “Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia and Later South Asia.” Their solicitousness for Muslim sensibilities is so divorced from reality that Islamic arts’ export Kishwar Rizvi characterised the name change as “a shame” and misleading.

Examples such as these abound. But how to explain them? Politics makes for strange bedfellows, but this one stretches credulity. From the Islamic viewpoint, the relationship is fantastic; it has given Islam credibility in the West it would not otherwise have. But how can the “multicultural” left justify it? Let us look at four aspects: a) the shared assumption between the left and Islam, b) “millet” or “identity” politics, c) the left’s myopic view of Islam and d) hedging their bets in the event of an adverse result.

The Shared Assumption of the Left and Islam

With all of the significant differences between Western liberalism and Islam, one important similarity stands out: the goal of both is implementation and enforcement of their respective agendas by the state. In that respect the two sides are alike and can, if not agree, understand each other.

With Islam, the situation is fairly simple. Islam is an idea where religion and politics not only go together, they are a unity. The ultimate goal is the establishment worldwide of the dar-al-Islam, under sharia, lead by the Caliph, who is at once a religious and secular leader. The major change in recent times is that Muslims are becoming more proactive in the achievement of this goal, as opposed to the fatalism of the past. Both the nation states that are especially active in forwarding the agenda (Iran and Saudi Arabia) and the non-governmental organisations formed along the way (al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, etc.) are transitional in the achievement of the objective. The major complication is that there is more than one Muslim idea out there as to who amongst these “transitionals” ends up actually leading the caliphate (the Sunni-Shi’a divide is the most prominent of these divisions.)

The left, by and large, is a statist movement. Their goals are ultimately achieved through supra-national organisations, the EU currently being the most successful. (The UN is somewhat more complicated because of the presence of Third World countries in the General Assembly, which have the bad taste sometimes to express their own views rather than those of their liberal patrons.) Nation states and NGO’s are their transitional organisations, especially the former, who have the power to tax. They furnish employment for their advocates and dispense patronage for their client groups. Their ability to promulgate laws is, for them, the preferred method of defining morality. If it’s legal, for the left, it’s moral, and illegal is immoral. The complicating factor, as with Islam, is how to deal with the “lower level” divisions when things finally coalesce.

Thus we have two sides whose style of mind, with distortions, are mirror images of each other. Neither of them have any use for Christianity, who proclaims a kingdom beyond this world, a purpose for life beyond politics and power, and whose logic and MO frequently baffle both.

“Millet” or “Identity” Politics

Students of Ottoman history are familiar with the millet system. Certain religious groups, especially Christian ones, were allowed to practice their religion if they lived in an isolated society, a “millet.” Their community leaders were accountable for their actions and held authority in the group. Christianity went on for centuries in the Middle East in this way, only to be chased away in recent times by Islamic extremists practising religious cleansing.

So why did the Ottomans, the successful leaders of Islam for more than four centuries, allow these people in their midst? Because they were useful to them! They were a reliable counterweight to Islamic groups, many of which were always conspiring against Ottoman rule. As long as they served the purpose of the Ottoman state, they were allowed to remain.

To a large extent leftists, although they preach equality, are in reality practising millet (or in a more contemporary expression identity) politics. One only needs to look at the Democratic Party in the US to see this in action. They are in reality a coalition: blacks, Hispanics, “women,” LGBT people, etc.. If one’s opponents make strategic mistakes (such as the Republicans’ stand on illegal immigration) then keeping such a coalition together is all the simpler. Each community has its leadership which demands and receives patronage for themselves and their group. Those who would breach this convention and look elsewhere for inspiration (like Clarence Thomas) are punished. The left sees Muslims as another identity group to be added to their arsenal, ready to receive the same kind of patronage as the others. Additionally the left sees Islam as a counterweight to Christianity, its usual opponent for the last three centuries.

The Myopia of the Left

It should be obvious from the above that the left’s primary challenge is to keep all of the groups that support them in their camp, as opposed to either leaving the fold or overpowering the rest. So far they have been reasonably successful in this endeavour. Based on past performance, the left proceeds with the idea that they can both use the Muslim community as a part of their power base while at the same time containing their higher ambitions, as they have done with other groups.

That expectation is buttressed by the idea that Islam, in their view, cannot win against an “enlightened,” secular West. Such as view has more than a tinge of racism attached to it, since most Muslims do not have European ethnic backgrounds. It’s a supremely ethnocentric view, but also overlooks a simple fact: if a weapon of mass destruction is properly built and operational, it doesn’t matter whether the man or woman who pushes the button or sets the timer believes in Western civilisation or not. Recent history, especially in Europe, also suggests that, when Muslims act in concert, they are capable of blunting the rule of law and imposing their idea on at least the proportion of the population adjacent to them.

Hedging Their Bets

It’s probable that at least some on the left have considered the possibility of the failure of their political scheme. And that leads to another aspect of the leftist-Muslim entente: the idea that the left, realising their own weakness, is going along with Islam’s demands in the hope that, if Islam predominates, they can become a protected millet within the scheme of things. This turn of events is most likely to first come to pass in Europe.

Unfortunately such attempts to curry favour (or use others for one’s own advantage) can backfire, and do so tragically. One of the best examples of this comes from post-Roman Britain. Having cast off imperial rule, the native rulers found themselves saddled with the task of defending their part of the island on their own. They, convinced by Vortingern, brought in the Saxons to help defend against barbarian attacks from the Continent. This was good Roman practice; however, this time, the results went an entirely different direction, as the Saxons turned on their Briton masters and began their own conquest of England.

Experience teaches that Islam, once the controlling factor in a country, will move to impose sharia on the population and do so without exception. Although the Ottomans were probably the most able rulers the Islamic world has ever known, their system of encapsulating and using non-Islamic groups to their own advantage is going out of fashion, replaced by the religious cleansing we see all too often in the Middle East today.

So What’s a Christian To Do?

This strange, symbiotic relationship between the left and Islam leaves Christianity in a quandary. How best to deal with it? What is our future in the face of two such powerful and antipathetic groups? There are three possibilities.

The first is to go on fighting what is, in effect, a two-front war against these groups on a legal and political basis. In my opinion, such a conflict, waged in a purely political and legal environment, is not winnable. Christianity in the West will continue to find itself caught in the middle, and ultimately share the fate of old Poland, partitioned and eliminated.

The second is to attempt an alliance with one or more elements on one side or the other. Islam, with its shared aversion for Western mores, is a logical partner. But there is too much bad history between Islam and Christianity for this to be viable on a consistent basis, and in any event such a pairing suffers from the same problems that the Islamic-leftist relationship does, especially when it comes to answering the question, “Who wins?”

Looking in the other direction has possibilities as well. Although the multiculturalist leadership will brook no opposition to their idea, some of the followers are having second thoughts. For example, Dutch homosexuals, swept from the streets of Amsterdam by Muslim thugs, are largely voting towards the right. The Creteil Bebel soccer league business underscores the antipathy between Islam and the LGBT community. Ken Livingstone lost his last re-election bid as Mayor of London. For this to work, however, will require a more libertarian view of the role of the state on both sides, and particularly in the US that doesn’t look forthcoming.

The third possibility is this: Christians should be…Christians. Americans are notorious for projecting their “God and country” ideal back into the New Testament and its teachings on our relationship with government. But the truth is that the church came into a world driven by patronage from top to bottom, cruel in dealing with opponents (the Jews and Britons took the worst of Roman power during the first century) and without a really good way for most people to redress their grievances or impact state policy. Nevertheless, the church grew until it achieved what Michael Walsh referred to as “the triumph of the meek” largely by caring for those around it and pointing them to a kingdom that really was the way their Saviour described it:

“My kingly power,” replied Jesus, “is not due to this world. If it had been so, my servants would be doing their utmost to prevent my being given up to the Jews; but my kingly power is not from the world.” (John 18:36)

Is ours any different?

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In the midst of all of the conservative dancing in the streets about Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts, the tragedy unfolding in Haïti continues to require both prayer and assistance.  It isn’t without controversy either; we’re still batting about Pat Robertson’s remarks about a pact with the Devil and its consequences.

There’s no doubt that’s what he was referring to, which took place in 1791.  So let’s take a look at it, from here:

Traditionally in Haiti the following prayer has been attributed to Boukman (one of the leaders of the revolt) at the vodou ceremony:

“The god who created the earth; who created the sun that gives us light. The god who holds up the ocean; who makes the thunder roar. Our God who has ears to hear. You who are hidden in the clouds; who watch us from where you are. You see all that the white has made us suffer. The white man’s god asks him to commit crimes. But the god within us wants to do good. Our god, who is so good, so just, He orders us to revenge our wrongs. It’s He who will direct our arms and bring us the victory. It’s He who will assist us. We all should throw away the image of the white men’s god who is so pitiless. Listen to the voice for liberty that speaks in all our hearts.”

There are two things that should be noted about this:

1. It’s a voodoo ceremony.
2. Boukman makes a clear distinction between the god he worships and the one the white people do.  Since the white people he’d be facing were the French, and they were (up to that point, at least) overwhelmingly Catholic, that distinction makes the identity of the two deities in question fairly clear.

Since Boukman invoked the god of voodoo, that brings up the issue of the curse.  Boukman Dutty did ask for the aid of the god of voodoo, and that god (I think there’s more than one) has been followed ever since in Haïti.

I’m one of these people who think that curses are made to be broken.  I believe the Jesus Christ is powerful enough to break any curse.  But we have to ask.  And sticking with the voodoo potentates isn’t the way to break any curse.  To make progress, voodoo needs to meet its Waterloo, and that hasn’t happened in the two centuries since Bois Caïman.

Waterloo brings up the next two points about Boukman’s prayer:

1. He and his Haïtian contemporaries were probably unaware of this, but back in France the very white French were in the process of abandoning the “white man’s God” in the course of the French Revolution, which was sliding into the Reign of Terror and the enthronement of the “goddess of Reason” at Nôtre-Dame.  So the contrast he draws wasn’t as meaningful then as he thought it was.
2. It certainly isn’t true now.  The emergence of the Global South and the shifting of the centre of Christianity to the Third World has effectively reversed any racial significance as to whose God he is.  (He is beyond race, in reality.)

No one knows that last point better than Episcopal Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori.  In a sense, she’s fighting Boukman Dutty’s war in reverse against the Africans who have brought their jurisdictions (and facilitated the formation of the ACNA) to these shores.

Perhaps she and her eminence-grise, David Booth Beers, will find themselves praying their own version of the Bois Caïman prayer:

“The god(s) who evolved the earth; who evolved the sun that gives us light. The god(s) who holds up the judicial system; who makes the lawsuits roar. Our God who has ears to hear. You who are hidden; who watch us from where you are. You see all that the black has made us suffer. The black man’s god asks him to commit intolerant crimes. But the god within us wants to do good. Our god, who is so good, so just, he/she orders us to revenge our wrongs. It’s he/she who will direct our attorneys and bring us the victory in court. It’s he/she who will assist us. We all should throw away the image of the black men’s god who is so pitiless. Listen to the voice for litigation that speaks in all our hearts.”

What kind of result will they get?  Just ask the Haïtians.  Few places on earth have won the battle and lost the war quite like Haïti has.

HT to StandFirm for some of the source material.

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I’ve made this point before, but the Anglican Curmudgeon does it very eloquently here:

I have been thinking about a comment made here some time ago, in connection with a post about the polity of the Church. “Polity” comes from the same Greek root as does “politics”: the root is polis, meaning the unique form in which Greek democracy expressed itself — the “city-state”, or the body of citizens living in a common environment (city) and organized as a self-governing state.

In the polis of ancient Greece, the people came together to make decisions and to elect representative officials in a periodic assembly. All citizens could come to that assembly, and in Athens in the fifth century before Christ, there were assemblies of as many as 43,000. And do you know what the Greek term for that assembly was? It was called an ekklesia — the same Greek word used by the early Church to describe its local assemblies of communicants in a given city, and from which comes our word “ecclesiastical”, meaning “of or having to do with a church.”

It was the function of the ekklesia, among other things, to decide whether to declare war, and to elect strategoi in charge of the armed forces of the polis — or what today we would call generals. During times of peace, the strategoi became politicians — Pericles was one oustanding example. Such leaders were elected to annual terms; the elections were usually held in the spring, at a regular ekklesia called for that purpose.

The concept of an elected leader or representative thus has a very long history, dating back for more than 2,500 years. A person so elected has always been regarded as receiving the trust of the people who do the electing. Or, said in legal terms, there is a fiduciary relationship between the person elected and those who elect that person. The representative has a duty, as a fiduciary (the word comes from the Latin fides, meaning “faith, or trust”), to act in the best interests of the electors.

As soon as a representative relationship is established, fiduciary duties arise, and are inescapable. The law is especially protective of the people for whom a fiduciary acts — they are called beneficiaries, or people by whom the fiduciary must do well in order to perform his or her responsibilities to them.

And so we come to the point of this little excursus into ancient Greek history: one cannot have an ekklesia without there being fiduciaries and beneficiaries. The former are elected or appointed to act in the best interest of the latter in doing the job for which they were elected.

I’m still waiting for the Gothard people to come up with a reasonable answer for this…

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