Transferring Prescriptions

Yesterday’s Pittsburgh Post-Gazette ran a front-page story that the Pennsylvania State Board of Pharmacy may consider instituting a rule like one in effect in neighboring Ohio. Under most circumstances in that state, a person cannot transfer a prescription between pharmacies more often than once a year. Such a regulation clearly limits consumer choice through restraint of trade.

So what arguments have been advanced to justify such a restraint? The main argument is set forth in this paragraph:

“We’ve had so many prescriptions being transferred, and every time a transfer occurs, there is an increased chance of error because they’re all done verbally,” said Ernest E. Boyd, executive director of the Ohio Pharmacists Association. Errors can occur in phone calls between pharmacists, with possible points of confusion including many drugs having sound-alike names or dosages being misunderstood.

The article also suggests that transfers can also result in prescriptions being active in multiple pharmacies, allowing the patient to purchase more drugs than he or she is entitled to.

It sounds to me as though pharmacists simply don’t want to be bothered with transfers or with competition.

Ohio is actually solving the wrong problem. In this age of computers and the Internet, one might think that the medical community could devise a way to communicate prescription information reliably and securely without having to dictate information over the telephone. If the prescription transfer process is broken, even transferring a prescription once in a year is hazardous.

Interestingly, one doesn’t hear about banks asking the government to limit money transfers because effecting them over the telephone is error-prone. Banks transfer billions of dollars every day, and—trust me on this one—banks are pretty good at doing it right. Maybe pharmacy schools need to add more computer courses to the curriculum.

What to Do with Republicans?

It is infuriating that the Republican Party is wasting the time of the House of Representatives by its cynical and futile attempts to repeal or eviscerate “Obamacare.” That the GOP is increasingly dominated by sanctimonious demagogues and ignorant ideologues inspired me to create the logo below:

Hope Fulfilled?

In my post “Hope for 2011,” I observed that the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette editorialized that it would be good if WDUQ-FM, which Duquesne University had put on the auction block, would be sold to an organization that would maintain the present news/jazz/NPR format.

Today, it appears that that hope has been fulfilled. In a brief announcement following the 2:01 PM NPR news, listeners were informed that the station has been sold for $6 million—substantially less than the university was aiming for—to Essential Public Media, a joint venture of WYEP-FM, a Pittsburgh adult alternative public radio station, and Public Media Co. (PMC).

The Post-Gazette explains that

PMC is a nonprofit organization launched by Public Radio Capital, a Boulder, Colo.-based organization that helps communities preserve public radio stations in their markets.

It appears that news, jazz, and NPR programming will remain in the WDUQ lineup. A press conference is scheduled for later today.

Icon

It’s snowing again, and I feel stranded inside. At times like this, I really appreciate encountering something humorous or amazing. An example is the little video below that I ran into this morning. Enjoy!

 

Who Moved My CofE Web Site?

Today I was updating the No Anglican Covenant Web site, mostly to add new documents from the Church of England. As I was doing so, I began getting “Internal server error” messages when trying to reach pages I had been able to view a few minutes earlier. (See image below. Click on images in this post for a larger image.)

A bit later, the Church of England Web site returned (sort of), but none of my links worked. I tried to search for the documents to which I was trying to link and, on every search, the following notice was returned:

So, what is going on here? Consider the matter of the Church of England Web site’s URL. The Web site in the past could be found at http://england.anglican.org/, http://cofe.anglican.org/, or http://churchofengland.org/. It appears that the primary domain (or subdomain) being used before today was cofe.anglican.org. As of now, trying to access that subdomain displays the “Internal server error” message. The primary domain now seems to be churchofengland.org; england.anglican.org is being redirected to churchofengland.org.

Well, the Church of England has launched a newly designed Web site. I didn’t know this was coming, but, apparently, others did. Clearly, the launch, which was done Friday night, is a disaster. One has to ask if the designer, Zebedee Creations, bothered to test the new site before going live. The Church of England should not pay for their new site until it actually works.

Is more going on, however? The Anglican Domain (i.e., anglican.org) is at least partially controlled by Americans. (Click here for more information.) Does the Church of England not want to be at all associated with Episcopalians?

Update, 1/7/2011, 6:16 PM: The subdomain cofe.anglican.org is now being redirected to churchofengland.org.

Update, 1/7/2011, 6:31 PM: Thinking Anglicans has also published an item on the new Web site. That post quotes Director of Communications for the Church of England, Peter Crumpler, as saying, “All the existing links should transfer across [to the new site] auto­matic­ally.” Yeah, right!

Update, 1/7/2011, 7:13 PM: The search function on the Church of England Web site is no longer giving error messages for every search. On the other hand, I have not found any of the documents to which I created links earlier this afternoon.

Why the Archbishop of Canterbury Hates Us

Many Episcopalians simply cannot understand why Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, who, we were told, would be a liberal archbishop, has turned out to be such a disappointment. The explanation, I think, can be found in an interview with Williams in The Big Issue in Scotland.

Much of the interview concerns economic issues, about which Williams does indeed seem to be a liberal. Then there is this:

Has the intensity of the quarrel [over gay bishops] become difficult to deal with? “Well, no more difficult than usual. It’s an ongoing set of problems. It’s to do with a Church that tries to span some very different cultures, and which is often rather unwilling to learn across cultures… It’s easier, sometimes, to go to our corners.”

In this brief quotation from the “spiritual head” of the Anglican Communion lies the answer to why the archbishop seems intent upon destroying the Anglican Communion as we have known and supported it. This man thinks the Anglican Communion is a church, and he is working to preserve the coherence and integrity of a church, a task that would simply be unnecessary for a communion, where such lockstep unity is not a requirement.

Rowan Williams is, of course, well educated, and he cannot be ignorant of the history of the Anglican Communion or of the great resistance in the past to centralizing decision-making within it. The problem, as I see it, is that Williams is very catholic in his outlook and, in his heart of hearts, would like to see Anglicans unite with Roman Catholics. Such a union can hardly be effected when Anglicans cannot seem to unite even with one another.

Whether the Archbishop of Canterbury’s dream of ecclesiastical union has created the delusion that the Anglican Communion is a church or whether he has chosen to embrace a lie in the furtherance of his ecclesiastical goals I cannot say. Neither explanation is very flattering.

Hope for 2011

The editorial in today’s Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, “Hope for 2011,” is subtitled “News and headlines we’d like to see in the new year.” (“Hopes for 2011” might have been a better title.) In the printed version of the Post-Gazette, the editorial is a long column of headlines seemingly torn from actual newspapers and pasted as if in a scrapbook. Unfortunately, only the text made it to the Post-Gazette Web site.

Most of the hopeful headlines relate specifically to Pittsburgh, such as the unlikely “PIRATES ENTER ALL-STAR BREAK AT .500.” Some of the national headlines seem at least possible (“UNEMPLOYMENT RATE CONTINUES PLUNGE”), whereas others seem far-fetched (“OBAMA ANNOUNCES VISIT TO CUBA”).

My favorite headline is the very first one, “New WDUQ owner keeps NPR, jazz lineup,” and I was pleased to see the hopeful headline and particularly pleased to see it featured so prominently.

WDUQ-FM is the primary NPR station in Pittsburgh. The 60-year-old station is owned by Duquesne University, which is razing its long-time home to build a dormitory and which has put the station itself on the auction block. The university clearly intends to rid itself of a “non-productive” asset and gain as much money as it can in the process. No doubt, the license to broadcast is worth more to a commercial enterprise than to a nonprofit one, but WDUQ listeners are hoping (and, no doubt, praying) that the station can be purchased by some civic-minded collection of individuals and foundations that will maintain the existing jazz and NPR format.

If I were the WDUQ station manager, I might tweak the schedule a bit, adding more public affairs programming and cutting down on the jazz, but the current format represents a good compromise in the Pittsburgh market. WDUQ once featured classical music, but that was redundant in the same town as the all-classical WQED-FM. WDUQ has more public affairs offerings on its HD channels, though one has to wonder who is listening to them. Pittsburgh has produced more than its share of jazz musicians, so it seems appropriate for at least one local radio station to feature that genre.

WDUQ is very nearly the only radio station I listen to these days, mostly for the NPR (and PRI, etc.) programming, but also for the excellent local news and features. (The recent series of short reports, “Living With,” featuring first-person descriptions of coping with mental health disorders, was both fascinating and educational.) The staff is professional, dedicated, and knowledgeable.

That is not to say that I never listen to the music programming on my favorite station, though I must admit that my taste for and knowledge of jazz are a bit thin. I do deliberately tune in to one music show, “Rhythm Sweet and Hot.” RS&H is a rare show that features popular music of the ’20s, ’30s, and ’40s. It is co-hosted by my friend and fellow church choir member Mike Plaskett, whose knowledge of the period covered by the show is encyclopedic.

Not only Pittsburgh listeners will be hoping for the salvation of WDUQ in something like its present form. A few years ago, the station established translators in Johnstown, New Baltimore, Somerset, and Ligonier, nearby towns in southwestern Pennsylvania. Pledges regularly can be expected from these areas, as well as from listeners in West Virginia and friends who listen over the Internet. (When I’m out of town, I often find that the easiest way to listen to my favorite NPR programs is to listen to WDUQ’s live air stream over the Internet.)

My thanks to the Post-Gazette for reminding Pittsburghers of the need to save an important local cultural asset. If any of the hoped-for headlines actually appear in the newspaper in 2011, I hope that “New WDUQ owner keeps NPR, jazz lineup” will be one of them.

Capitalizing “Catholic”

In the form of the Prayers of the People (Form III) that we used in church Sunday, I noticed that the word “catholic” was capitalized. I thought this odd, as I had been taught that, for example, when we use “catholic” in the Nicene Creed, we are referring to the whole body of Christ, whereas “Catholic” tends to refer to the Roman Catholic Church.

This observation led me to track down every instance of the word “catholic” in the 1979 prayer book. There are 37, as it turns out, and, in 24 cases, the word is un-capitalized. In 6 cases where it is capitalized, the occurrences are in the Historical Documents section. (In one case, the Roman Catholic Church is actually what is being referred to.)

I would argue that the 7 instances of “Catholic” in the main section of the prayer book are simply wrong.

See the full list of occurrences of the word “catholic” and my observations about them in “‘Catholic’ and the Book of Common Prayer” on my Web site.

On Pressing the Apostle Paul

I was recently sent a pamphlet written by former Florida appellate judge Robert P. Smith titled “On Pressing the Apostle Paul: Attesting the Pastoral and Prophetic Vision of the Episcopal Church.” According to its author, this curiously named essay, written in 2006, “picks up the response [to the Anglican Communion] where our eminent scholars [who wrote To Set Our Hope on Christ] left it, free of the caution they seemed to exhibit in their answering for the whole Episcopal Church. Smith argues that (1) the Apostle Paul had a cultural prejudice against same-sex relations that was not really based on religion and that (2) modern biblical translations have exaggerated Paul’s anti-gay position.

“On Pressing the Apostle Paul” offers some very interesting arguments, but they are unlikely to move the quasi-fundamentalist “biblical Anglicans,” and they are unnecessary to convince liberals that Paul was either mistaken or has been misinterpreted. But there are, no doubt, many moderate Anglicans who find it difficult to resist the assertion that the Bible condemns homosexual activity, even in the absence of rigorous support of such an assertion. For these people, the Smith essay can be an eye-opener.

Smith contends that Paul’s disapproval of homosexual activity is not justified by an appeal to Jewish law or to “natural” law. Instead, Paul simply assumes that women are inferior to men and that sex properly involves the penetration of a socially inferior person by a socially superior one. A man who assumes a “feminine” role, whether in his general behavior or in a sex act, fails in his duty to uphold the proper masculine domination of women.

Modern translators of the Bible, Smith argues, have downplayed Paul’s misogyny, but, in the process, have misrepresented Paul’s attitude toward homosexuality.

It is pointless to try to restate Smith’s reasoning here. One needs the details provided in the essay to fully appreciate his argument. Suffice it to say that an unbiased reader is likely to come away from “On Pressing the Apostle Paul” with an increased appreciation for the pitfalls of translation and possibly a bit of skepticism regarding the phrase “the Word of the Lord” declared after a scripture reading. Increased skepticism about the notion of “homosexual practice as incompatible with Scripture” is another likely outcome of an unbiased reading of “On Pressing the Apostle Paul.”

Robert Smith’s essay in a PDF file intended to be printed as a 24-page stapled booklet can be found here. A PDF file with pages in sequential order can be found here. The author can be reached at the e-mail address given in the essay.

It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas, 2010

I wrote the poem below in 2002 and added it to my Web site, along with a description of its origin. I posted it on my blog last year and have decided to make this an annual tradition. WARNING: This is not the most romantic of Christmas poems.

It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas
by Lionel Deimel

The jingle bells are back,

Ringing jingle-jangle ding-dong-ding

On the street corners and at the mall,

Where the giant Damoclean snowflakes

Hang menacingly from the store ceilings

Over the heads of the make-up consultants,

Displaying their perfect faces, Santa Claus hats,

And belligerent helpfulness.

The colored outdoor lights are back,

Contending with high-pressure, sodium streetlamps

To banish night and veil the pallid twinkle of the stars,

Letting the phosphor-white icicles,

Dripping electrically from the eaves,

Highlight the unnatural landscape

Of rotund, glow-from-within snowmen

And teams of gene-damaged reindeer.

The entertainments are back—

The last-minute, Oscar-hopeful blockbusters

Playing beside cheap trifles luring the momentarily vulnerable;

Pick-up-choir, stumbling-through-the-notes Messiahs

Competing with earnest Amahls and Peanuts Specials;

The cute-but-clumsy, tiny ballerinas tripping through Nutcrackers

Sorely in need of crowd control;

And the latest made-for-TV, hanky-wrenching, feel-good melodrama.

The emotions are back,

With love-thy-neighbor, brotherhood-of-man yearnings

Schizophrenically vying with loathing for the driver ahead,

As we pursue our private quests

For perfect love-showing, obligation-meeting, or indifference-disguising gifts,

Our anticipating the giving-terror, receiving-embarrassment,

The disappointing joy, and the exhilarating letdown assuring us at last

That Christmas is upon us.

“Vibrant” Communion

“Ten Reasons Why the Proposed Anglican Covenant Is a Bad Idea” was posted on Thinking Anglicans two days ago, and, although many of the comments it elicited were positive, there was some distress over the No Anglican Covenant Coalition’s characterization of the Anglican Communion as “a vibrant, cooperative, fellowship of churches” in Reason 1. (There was little dissent from what was claimed to be the effect of Covenant adoption.)

I wrote about the new document in my last post. For reference, Reason 1 of “Ten Reasons” is the following:

The proposed Anglican Covenant would transform a vibrant, cooperative, fellowship of churches into a contentious, centralized aggregation of churches designed to reduce diversity and initiative. The Covenant would institutionalize the “Instruments of Unity” as never before and would give extraordinary power to the newly enhanced Standing Committee.

It is true that, in 2010, the Anglican Communion looks like a dysfunctional ecclesiastical family. Nonetheless, there are many good things going on within it, including quite vibrant, cooperative partnerships between dioceses, including arrangements between dioceses in The Episcopal Church and dioceses in Global South churches that, on the whole, seems quite hostile to the American church.

I don’t think the Coalition meant to suggest that all is well in the Anglican Communion now. The characterization was meant to apply to the Communion in past and, one would hope, future times, perhaps when the Communion is smaller. (Reason 10 suggests that unhappy churches should be allowed to depart in peace.) Perhaps the Communion should have been described as “a formerly vibrant, cooperative, fellowship of churches” or “a potentially vibrant, cooperative, fellowship of churches.”

Reasons to Oppose the Covenant

There is a lot of material on the Web arguing that the Anglican Covenant is un-Anglican, dangerous, divisive, poorly drawn, or just plain stupid. Curiously, there seems to be much less commentary favoring adoption of the Covenant. I do not have a definitive explanation for this state of affairs, but I suspect that Covenant supporters are counting on sheep-like, go-with-the-flow Anglican politeness to carry the Covenant forward. Of course, the fact that the pact is popular neither with the Anglican right nor the Anglican left may have something to do with the lack of enthusiastic testimonials.

In any case, the quantity of anti-Covenant material can be overwhelming, making it hard, at times, to see the forest for the trees. The No Anglican Covenant Coalition has attempted to focus attention on particularly strong arguments against adopting the Covenant by issuing a one-page handout titled “Ten Reasons Why the Proposed Anglican Covenant Is a Bad Idea.”

As a Coalition member, I contributed to the new list, though I didn’t promote what is perhaps my most important reason for opposing the Covenant, namely those who have championed it. (If Bob Duncan is for it, how could it possibly be a good thing?)

Here are some of my favorites—abbreviated here—from the new list, selected as much for their phrasing as for their content:

• The centralization of authority envisioned by the proposed Covenant is cumbersome, costly, and undemocratic. (Reason 3)
  
  
• The proposed Covenant is dangerously vague. (Reason 5)
  
  
• The proposed "Covenant" seems more like a treaty, contract, or instrument of surrender than it does a covenant. (Reason 9)

You can read the entire list on the Comprehensive Unity blog here.

Get your No Anglican Covenant merchandise at the Farrago Gift Shop.

Musings on Communion Agreements

My recent post “Two Anglican Thought Experiments” got me thinking about the nature of communion and of agreements concerning communion between churches. My musings, of course, arise in the context of a proposed Anglican Covenant that would, according to the Windsor Report (§118), “make explicit and forceful the loyalty and bonds of affection which govern the relationships between the churches of the Communion.”

Curiously, the Anglican Communion has been a fellowship of churches in communion with one another in the absence of explicit agreements defining the nature of their relationships to one another. This situation has led to confused expectations about such routine matters as how clergy can be transferred or the status of deposed clergy. (See my essay of nearly four years ago “The Covenant We Do Need.”) The situation also seems to make it easy for one church of the Anglican Communion unilaterally to declare itself out of communion with another Anglican church, since it is bound in communion only by tradition. The proposed Anglican Covenant hardly improves this state of affairs, although it does potentially regularize the anathematization of churches.

What is “full communion” between churches, anyway? There seems to be no definitive definition of “full communion,” but, generally, it is an understanding between churches that (1) allows for the full participation of members of each church in the ceremonies of the other and (2) provides, to a greater or lesser degree, for the interchangeability of clergy. An agreement establishing such a relationship might also provide for mechanisms to monitor or maintain it. Full communion presumably is predicated on substantial agreement on doctrine and, perhaps, ecclesiology.

We have been told repeatedly, of course, that the Anglican Covenant is “the only way forward,” but that analysis arises out of either a perverse lack of imagination or, as is more likely, a surreptitious desire to transform our Anglican Communion into an Anglican Church, and a reactionary one at that. In any case, I thought it might be instructive to examine other agreements establishing communion between churches.

In particular, I chose to look at the decade-old agreement establishing full communion between The Episcopal Church and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. The agreement, “Called to Common Mission,” can be found, along with explanatory text, in “Commentary on ‘Called to Common Mission’.”

The Episcopal–Lutheran Agreement

“Called to Common Mission” contains this description of full communion (§2), which is elaborated upon in later sections of the agreement:

We therefore understand full communion to be a relation between distinct churches in which each recognizes the other as a catholic and apostolic church holding the essentials of the Christian faith. Within this new relation, churches become interdependent while remaining autonomous. Full communion includes the establishment locally and nationally of recognized organs of regular consultation and communication, including episcopal collegiality, to express and strengthen the fellowship and enable common witness, life, and service. Diversity is preserved, but this diversity is not static. Neither church seeks to remake the other in its own image, but each is open to the gifts of the other as it seeks to be faithful to Christ and his mission. They are together committed to a visible unity in the church’s mission to proclaim the Word and administer the Sacraments.

Certain elements here, such as the juxtaposition of “interdependent” and “autonomous,” will be familiar to those acquainted with the Anglican Covenant. What is definitely in a different spirit than is evident in the Anglican Covenant, however, is this: “Diversity is preserved, but this diversity is not static. Neither church seeks to remake the other in its own image, but each is open to the gifts of the other as it seeks to be faithful to Christ and his mission.” Uniformity is not the goal here.

In following sections, the churches declare that they “recognize in each other the essentials of the one catholic and apostolic faith,” as set forth in such documents as “the unaltered Augsburg Confession, the Small Catechism, and The Book of Common Prayer of 1979.” Specific common beliefs previously agreed upon are then cited, though not at length. Significantly, in §22, we find the clarifying assertion that “the two churches declare that each believes the other to hold all the essentials of the Christian faith, although this does not require from either church acceptance of all doctrinal formulations of the other.” The framers of the Anglican Covenant, on the other hand, demand a greater uniformity of “full communion,” or perhaps some Communion churches have an expansive notion of the “essentials of the Christian faith.” (Historically, homophobia has not been an “essential” of the Christian faith.)

Having established agreement on essential doctrine, the Episcopal–Lutheran agreement turns to mission. It begins in §6 with:

The ministry of the whole people of God forms the context for what is said here about all forms of ministry. We together affirm that all members of Christ's church are commissioned for ministry through baptism. All are called to represent Christ and his church; to bear witness to him wherever they may be; to carry on Christ’s work of reconciliation in the world; and to participate in the life, worship, and governance of the church. … Because both our churches affirm this ministry which has already been treated in our previous dialogues, it is not here extensively addressed.

The passage essentially establishes that each church has the same relationship to its members, which removes any bar to those members moving between the two churches.

Much of the rest of “Called to Common Mission” deals with ordained ministry, about which the two churches have held different views. Most notably, although both churches have bishops, those of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America have not maintained apostolic succession, are chosen for a fixed term, and have not been the exclusive agents of ordination. The basic agreement concerning ordained ministry is outlined in the commentary on §8:

We agree to the common, though not necessarily identical, pattern of one ordained ministry shared between the two churches. The Episcopal Church continues the general, historic pattern of three forms of such ministry—bishops, priests, and deacons. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America continues the pattern of one form of ordained ministry. Each church’s ordained ministries remain governed by their respective church body. As we live into the common practices of ordained ministries of the two churches, though not identical, [they] will allow the sharing of ordained ministers.

In what follows, both churches give a little. Dealing with deacons is put off for another day. (The Lutherans have non-ordained deacons and are not required by the agreement to ordain them.) The Lutherans “acknowledge immediately the full authenticity” of Episcopal deacons, priests, and bishops. Episcopalians do the same for Lutheran pastors. A shared episcopate requires a gradual process by which new Lutheran bishops experience the laying on of hands by bishops in apostolic succession and the ordination of pastors with the laying on of hands by bishops becomes normative. The Episcopal Church, changed its canons to allow temporarily (i.e., until the exception becomes unnecessary) Lutheran pastors not ordained by bishops in apostolic succession to serve in The Episcopal Church.

These arrangements lead to this extraordinary statement (§14):

For both churches, the relationship of full communion begins when both churches adopt this Concordat. For the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the characteristics of the goal of full communion—defined in its 1991 policy statement, “Ecumenism: The Vision of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America”—will be realized at this time. For The Episcopal Church, full communion, although begun at the same time, will not be fully realized until both churches determine that in the context of a common life and mission there is a shared ministry of bishops in the historic episcopate.

The agreement goes on to declare that ministers of each church may serve on a temporary basis in the other, consistent with that church’s traditions and may transfer from one church to another on a permanent basis by making the appropriate declarations to the receiving church. In other words, re-ordination is never necessary when a minister moves between churches.

The agreement establishes a joint commission (§23), accountable to the two churches, for consultation, support, etc. The commission is given no enforcement function.

Rather optimistically, “Called to Common Mission” offers this thought (§24):

In thus moving to establish, in geographically overlapping episcopates in collegial consultation, one ordained ministry open to women as well as to men, to married persons as well as to single persons, both churches agree that the historic catholic episcopate can be locally adapted and reformed in the service of the gospel. In this spirit they offer this Concordat and growth toward full communion for serious consideration among the churches of the Reformation as well as among the Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches.

Finally, the document declares (§25) that it does not affect existing relationships between the parties and other churches, and it does not create new communion relationships with churches in communion with the principals. (This is non-obvious. See “Some Mathematical Reflections on Communion.”) Both churches agree to consult on communion agreements with other churches, to work together on such agreements where possible, and to “not impede the development of relationships and agreements with other churches and traditions with whom they have been in dialogue” (§26).

Observations

The influence of the Chicago–Lambeth Quadrilateral is apparent in “Called to Common Mission.” In particular, the requirement for an “Historic Episcopate, locally adapted” has prevented The Episcopal Church from acknowledging immediately a full communion relationship with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. The asymmetry of the relationship came as a bit of a surprise; I have always assumed that if Church A is in full communion with Church B, then Church B must be in full communion with Church A. Of course, in this case, the full-communion relationship is seemingly not symmetric because the two churches define “full communion” differently. By the Lutheran definition, I suppose, our two churches are in full communion with one another.

I have thought it odd that, for example, that the Church of the Province of Uganda could consider itself in impaired communion (i.e., not in full communion) with The Episcopal Church at the same time The Episcopal Church has not declared itself out of communion with the Ugandan church. One might argue that this is possible because the two churches are using two different definitions of full communion. (Uganda apparently defines “the essentials of the Christian faith” differently.) Actually, I suspect that, even by this measure, The Episcopal Church is not in full communion by its definition with the Church of the Province of Uganda, as I suspect that the interchangeability of clergy is substantially impaired in the current circumstances. Of course, Episcopalians are too polite to make a fuss over this.

Remarkably, although the Anglican Covenant is supposedly all about maximizing the degree of communion within the Anglican Communion, it fails to define “full communion.” Moreover, although the Covenant has a good deal to say about required doctrine, it is less forthcoming regarding other obligations, unlike “Called to Common Mission.” Does a church have to contribute funds to maintain the Anglican Communion? Must its primate attend meetings? Can a church issue a blanket prohibition of clergy from one particular Anglican Communion church from preaching or celebrating in its own churches? Of course, Section 4 of the Covenant would allow any church to “raise a question” about such practices, but the Covenant’s silence makes the entire disciplinary process of Section 4 a complete crap shoot. No one can say in advance what is allowed and what is not. The Covenant creates a Communion government of (almost exclusively) men, not of law (canon, or whatever). This is a major reason to reject it out of hand.

“Called to Common Mission” stands in stark contrast to the Anglican Covenant in that it provides no disciplinary mechanisms at all. It is an agreement developed in a climate of love, trust, and hope; not one of loathing, suspicion, and despair.

Another difference in the two documents is one remarked upon above. There is no attempt made in the Episcopal–Lutheran agreement to bind both churches to identical doctrines. Documents specific to each church, as well as documents developed in common, are recognized as acceptable, even though they may not all say exactly the same thing. “Called to Common Mission” is much more generous with respect to doctrine than is the Anglican Covenant.

This raises an interesting point. The 1979 Book of Common Prayer is explicitly acknowledged in “Called to Common Mission,” but the Covenant references no prayer book subsequent to 1662. That book was written more than a century before The Episcopal Church came into existence, was compiled with no American influence, and was never used by The Episcopal Church. The Covenant seeks unity on the basis of our churches’ historical roots and seems ignorant of the fact that churches have moved away from those roots, possibly growing in quite different directions. This fact should have led to a generous acceptance in the Covenant, but we see instead quite the opposite: a rejection of differences and an insistence on a reactionary view of what the Anglican churches must be.

Reading “Called to Common Mission” raises the question in my mind as to what churches Episcopalians would be most comfortable in. Whereas I would feel pretty much at home in a Lutheran church, I suspect that I would feel like an alien intruder attending a church in Uganda, Nigeria, or Rwanda. If so, why should The Episcopal Church be so concerned about its communion with such churches? One can suggest reasons, of course, but not reasons to compromise our own understanding of the gospel to placate the episcopal autocrats of such churches.

We should, I think, dump the whole idea of an Anglican Communion in which each church is like every other church. Instead of bothering with the hopelessly flawed Anglican Covenant, we should draw up an agreement describing how our churches will pursue common mission and what our expectations are of them (including obligations of financial support). Meanwhile, we should pursue bilateral communion agreements with those churches of the present Communion with which agreements analogous to “Called to Common Mission” are possible.

Perhaps after the Anglican Covenant project fails, the Communion will take up that idea.

Get your No Anglican Covenant merchandise at the Farrago Gift Shop.

A Brief Meditation on ACNA

In checking out developments in the Anglican world tonight, I visited the ACNA Web site, which, at the bottom of the front page, has the notice “©2010 The Anglican Church in North America. All rights reserved.” The copyright notice and the somewhat pretentious domain name anglicanchurch.net got me thinking about the legitimacy of the name of this new church. Its proper name, I decided, should be the following:

An “Anglican” Church in North America

It is not Anglican, in the sense of being part of the Anglican Communion, and it surely is not the Anglican church in North America, since North American hosts, most notably, but not exclusively, The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada.

Two Anglican Thought Experiments

Today, I offer two tenuously related thought experiments having to do with Anglicanism.

Experiment 1. Anglicanism has made much of apostolic succession, which is a major part of its claim to catholicity. (I should point out, however, that other Christian denominations claim to be part of the “one holy catholic and apostolic Church” in the absence of not only apostolic successions but also of bishops.)

The notion of apostolic succession has a certain romantic attraction, but how important is it really? Suppose some plague wiped out all Anglican bishops, or even all bishops of whatever stripe. (Perhaps some new virus suddenly made purple dye toxic. Anyway, this is a thought experiment, remember?) Would Christianity have been wiped out due to the lack of bishops and the apparent inability to create new ones? Of course not! Not only are bishops not necessary for transmitting the faith, but bishops have often been responsible for heretical movements. Moreover, I refuse to believe that apostolic succession is some sort of magic provided by God. (I’m sure that some will dispute this.) If we feel the need for bishops, we can simply consecrate some more, even in the absence of other bishops to lay on hands. Surely the very first bishop, whoever that was, was not consecrated by three other bishops!

Experiment 2. Imagine a world just like the world today, but lacking an Anglican Communion—a world with 38 churches related historically to the Church of England but with no formal institutional ties. The question is would we feel the need to invent an Anglican Communion, and, if we did, what would it look like?

The answer, I think, is maybe, but I doubt that any resulting communion would look like the present one. To begin with, I do not think the Archbishop of Canterbury would be so central. England could get away with asserting a special place for the archbishop in an age of empire, but I suspect the former colonies would be less deferential these days. (In fact, the Archbishop of Canterbury’s having any real power is a relatively recent—and arguably illegitimate—phenomenon.) There is perhaps some utility in Anglicans gathering to get to know one another, swap ideas, and discuss possible mechanisms of coöperation. In this more democratic age in which both travel and communication are more easily accomplished than formerly, I don’t think a convention of bishops—and certainly not one lasting as long as the current Lambeth Conference—would be the first sort of meeting people would think of.

Actually, I suspect that our churches would see themselves first as Christian churches in the world, rather than as members of an Anglican fraternity. We make much of our ties between diverse dioceses across the world and our ability to channel aid through other Anglican churches in time of need. An Anglican Communion is not needed for this—we have no need even now for an intermediary in London—and the lack of a communion might encourage closer ties with other churches, which might not be such a bad thing.

In any case, we surely would not begin a new communion with some covenant that surrendered our independence.

What do you think?

Dark Day for the Republic

Never have I been as disappointed in President Obama as I am tonight after the announcement of the capitulation to the Republicans over extending the Bush tax cuts. Eliminating those tax cuts should have been the President’s agenda on day one. Instead, the administration postponed the fight to the eleventh hour and after the disastrous November elections. How can Republicans rule the country when the Democrats control the White House and both houses of Congress?

Perhaps the Democrats should be replaced by a truly liberal party. The immediate future of the United States is, I fear, dark indeed.

Evaluation of the General Synod Events

It has now been a week since the Church of England General Synod voted to move the Anglican Covenant along the path to adoption. Whereas the Church of England has not yet signed on to the Covenant, it has certainly passed up an opportunity to deliver a fatal blow to the adoption process. Pity!

The No Anglican Covenant Coalition, which had worked hard to prevent the Synod from doing what it did, has issued a reflection on what happened. It has the somewhat unwieldy title “Observations on the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Presidential Address and the Anglican Covenant Debate in the Church of England General Synod, November 2010,” but it contains some pithy remarks about the events of last week.

My favorite part of “Observations” is this:

It is particularly ironic that Dr. Williams painted a picture of a frightening Anglican dystopia should the Covenant fail, as he and other supporters of the Covenant have been quick to accuse Covenant sceptics of “scaremongering.” It is also surprising, both in this speech and in the subsequent debate, that concerns were raised about the decline of the role of the Church of England, as well as references to its being “the mother church” that needs to set an example, whereas Covenant sceptics have been accused of being “Little Englanders.”

The Archbishop claimed to view the lobbying for and against the Covenant as unseemly, yet he engaged in the same practice, and, I must say, was masterful at it. You have to admire his chutzpa in conjuring up visions of the loss of empire, an image that still has a strong hold on the English psyche. In particular, of course, Rowan spoke of “a real danger, the piece-by-piece dissolution of the Communion and the emergence of new structures in which relation to the Church of England and the See of Canterbury are likely not to figure significantly.” Personally, I find that prospect refreshing, particularly the part about a reduced influence of the See of Canterbury.

“Observations” also contains this insight from Dr. Miranda Threlfall-Holmes, who participated in the Synod debate:

We are told that the Covenant sets out the framework for family relationships. But what sort of family lives by a covenant, with “relational consequences” for breaches of the rules?

“Observations” has this strong finish:

The idea of an Anglican Covenant was always a means to placate those in the Anglican Communion who were upset by the “controversial” actions of The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada. The Oxford Statement [from the GAFCON Primates’ Council, available here] makes it clear, however, that that faction of the Communion will never be satisfied with unity without uniformity. Its insistence on the Jerusalem Declaration is proof that not even the first three sections of the Anglican Covenant are acceptable. It is obvious that the Fellowship of Confessing Anglican created by the GAFCON movement is intended as a separate, “pure” Anglican Communion that will include churches, such as the Anglican Church in North America, that are not part of the present Communion.

In these circumstances, the churches that subscribe to a more traditional view of Anglicanism than the Anglican vision asserted by GAFCON should abandon the Covenant, which can only divide them, and re-establish the Anglican Communion as a tolerant fellowship of autonomous national and regional churches.

You can read the entire document from the No Anglican Covenant Coalition here.

The Way Forward?

The Church of England moved closer to adopting the Anglican Covenant this past week as its General Synod voted overwhelmingly to send the Covenant to the dioceses in ignorance of the fact that the GAFCON Primates’ Council had just issued a statement embarrassing the Archbishop of Canterbury and dismissing the Covenant. Paragraph 5 of the so-called Oxford Statement declares

For the sake of Christ and of His Gospel we can no longer maintain the illusion of normalcy and so we join with other Primates from the Global South in declaring that we will not be present at the next Primates’ meeting to be held in Ireland. And while we acknowledge that the efforts to heal our brokenness through the introduction of an Anglican Covenant were well intentioned we have come to the conclusion the current text is fatally flawed and so support for this initiative is no longer appropriate.

Just as conservative malcontents in The Episcopal Church sought support for the wider Anglican Communion, the Primates’ Council has now reached beyond the Communion in an attempt to press its case within the Communion. Here is Paragraph 6:

We also acknowledge with appreciation the address to the Nicean Society meeting in Lambeth Palace on September 9th of His Eminence, Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, Chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Department for External Church Relations. We welcome his call to all churches of the Anglican Communion to step back from the abyss of heresy and reclaim the revealed truth that is at the heart of our historic understanding of Christian faith and moral order. We share with him the conviction that failure to do so will endanger our common witness and many important ecumenical dialogues but we would also point out that there are many within the Anglican Communion who have not ‘bowed the knee’ to secular liberalism and who are determined to stay true to the ‘faith once delivered to the saints’ whatever the cost.

I won’t attempt a complete analysis of the Oxford Statement here, but there are a few additional aspects that require comment. The Council declares the Covenant “fatally flawed,” yet it does not identify the nature of its flaws. From what has been said elsewhere, it is a reasonable inference that Section 4 of the Covenant is, as I have described it elsewhere, insufficiently draconian. In particular, it does not put discipline of member churches exclusively in the hands of the primates.

Rather more interestingly, the Statement makes it clear that the Jerusalem Declaration should specify the doctrine that must be enforced by the Communion as normative. (The Declaration is mention twice in the introduction to the Statement and twice in the Statement itself.) This would appear to indicate that the Primates’ Council (and much of the Global South and the Anglican Church of North America) not only rejects Section 4 of the Covenant, but also is unwilling to accept Sections 1–3.

The timing of the release of the Oxford Statement is interesting, given that the meeting whose sense it purports to reflect actually took place in early October. Bishop Martyn Minns’ insistence, in a BBC Radio 4 interview on the Sunday Programme this morning, that the release of the statement minutes before the General Synod vote was simply a coincidence strains credulity. The Primates’ Council, I suggest, was looking for maximum exposure for its announcement. It achieved that. The lead in most stories was not that the Covenant received an endorsement from the General Synod or that the liberal campaign to prevent such an outcome was a failure, but that Global South primates had rejected what has been described consistently as the only way forward for the Communion. Whether exposing the Archbishop of Canterbury as a gullible fool was an objective or merely epiphenomenal is unclear.

The Oxford Statement contains many hints that the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans is intended eventually to become an alternate communion, whether actually separate from the present Anglican Communion or a virtual and distinct communion within it. If indeed the current Anglican Covenant is the “final text” to be considered, then the covenant process and the Windsor process of which it is a part is dead. The attempt by some in the Communion to placate the implacable has failed.

It is time to admit that the Anglican Covenant was never “the only way forward” and now is not a way forward at all! That many of the most radically disaffected primates have promised to absent themselves from the January Primates’ Meeting in Ireland, an unexpected opportunity has presented itself. The primates of the more liberal Western churches, presumably excluding the Church of England, should insist on issuing a communiqué at the end of their meeting declaring the drive for an Anglican Covenant at an end. The primates should also repudiate any authority over churches other than their own, a statement that should be applied to all primates, explicitly including the Archbishop of Canterbury.

The way forward, of course, is for each Anglican church to preach and respond to the Gospel of Jesus Christ as it understands it and to keep its ecclesiastical nose out of other church’s business. The trust necessary to implement this program may be in short supply, given the bad behavior the Communion has experienced in recent years. If we want any Communion at all, however, we need to give such a program a try. If we fail, it will not be a tragedy, even though Rowan Williams may lament any new order “in which relation to the Church of England and the See of Canterbury are likely not to figure significantly.”

Happy Thanksgiving 2010

Blogs haven’t developed many traditions, but I am perhaps starting one here today. Last year on Thanksgiving Day, I offered my poem “Thanksgiving” on my blog. I am doing so again this year. I wrote the poem in 2002 for a family gathering. More information about it can be found on Lionel Deimel’s Farrago here.

Thanksgiving
by Lionel Deimel

So many holidays for this and that—
But most are just a time for recreation,
Not opportunities for celebration
Or contemplation of their origins.

Who gives a thought to Martin Luther King?
He’s on our minds his day like any other,
When seldom do we think who is our brother
Or bother reaching out to those in need.

We see a baseball game on 4 July—
We sing our anthem, watch the color guard;
But Revolutionary thoughts are hard
To mix with scorecard, chili dog, and beer.

The labor on our minds on Labor Day
Is but our own that we don’t have to do.
We must instead to summer bid adieu
With picnics for a special few, or bed.

Ah, Christmas is a special time of dread—
That deadline of the frantic shopping season
Through which we march for half-forgotten reason
That escapes us fully when the day has come.

Thanksgiving, though, is different from the rest—
We gather in our family and friends;
We stuff the turkey and each person who attends,
And, in the end, how can we not be thankful?

A New Collect

I wrote a new collect today. You can read about the inspiration for it here. The collect:

Architect of the universe, who endowed us with a thirst for understanding, give us a passion to discover the mysteries of creation and your will for our lives, along with a humble spirit whenever we think we have succeeded, that we may become better stewards of your creation, better neighbors of its inhabitants, and better disciples of your Son, our savior Jesus Christ, who reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.