One-Nothing

While preparing dinner tonight, I was listening to the broadcast of the Pirates-Giants game on the radio. For much of the game, the score was 1-0, described as “one-nothing” by the play-by-play announcer.

The score led me to a thought I had not had before, namely, that the use of “nothing” in this context is odd. “Nothing” is usually an answer to the question “how much?” rather than “how many?” But runs in a baseball game come in discrete units. Were we to ask how many runs the Pirates had scored, “nothing” would be an odd answer.

In place of “nothing,” there are more logical alternatives: “zero,” “nil,” “oh,” “zip,” or “love.” Of course, the convention of using “nothing” is well-established. I wonder how this came to be.

St. Paul’s to Be Movie Location

I received a surprising e-mail message yesterday from my church, St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Mt. Lebanon, Pa. The subject line read “Exciting News.” The rector wrote

I am writing to share exciting news. The Vestry has agreed to allow 20th Century Fox to film scenes of a major motion picture at St. Paul’s in September and early October. The movie, to be released in 2015, is called The Fault in Our Stars, and is based on a novel by the same title. The book is by noted young adult fiction author John Green, and has been on the New York Times best seller list for 36 weeks since being published in January, 2012, as are two of his other books. The story, primarily involving two teenagers who meet at a cancer support group for teens held in a church, is wholesome and should present St. Paul's in a favorable light.

Filming is scheduled to take place here on Monday, September 9 in the parking lot, and again at the end of the month and early October at the back of the parish hall, second floor hallway, a bathroom, and the main worship space. There will be equipment in the parking lot (to be removed for Sunday September 29), and the back of the hall will not be available to us for several days. While we will be compensated by Fox for the use of our facility, we believe the main benefit to St. Paul’s will be the buzz generated when it becomes known that this very popular novel for teens and adults is being filmed here, and later when we are seen in what could be a very successful movie.

Please let me or any member of the Vestry know if you have any questions or concerns.

Blessings,
Lou+  

Apparently, the location manager came to St. Paul’s with a proposal to use the church. I have no idea how he found the church. The Fault in Our Stars has been popular, though it had escaped my notice. If it escaped yours as well, the Wikipedia article can fill you in. A little information about the movie can be found here and here.

Keuka Spring Vineyards 2012 Riesling Wins Governor’s Cup

I got a call from my son, Geoffrey August Deimel, around noon yesterday. He wanted to tell me that he had just learned that one of his wines, Keuka Spring Vineyards 2012 Riesling had won the Governor’s Cup, an award for the best wine made in New York in 2012. Moreover, the award was to be presented in the evening in Watkins Glen by Governor Cuomo himself.

Governor Andrew M. Cuomo presents Governor’s Cup to Keuka Spring Vineyards owners Len and Judy
Wiltberger. Keuka Spring winemaker August Deimel is at the right. in this August 13, 2013, photo.

The Keuka Spring Riesling was also declared Best White Wine, Best Medium Dry Riesling, and Best Overall Riesling. Keuka Spring wines were also given awards for Best Gewürztraminer and Best Limited Production Wine (for Keuka Spring Vineyards Dry Rosé).

Details of the competition and the tour of the governor to the Finger Lakes can be found here, here, and here. The winery’s Web site is here, and its Facebook page is here. If you’re visiting the Finger Lakes, be sure to stop by the Keuka Spring Vineyards tasting room on Keuka Lake near Penn Yan, New York.

A View of the Sexuality Dialogue

I received an e-mail message the other day from  Jason Togyer, a parishioner at St. Stephen’s McKeesport. Jason had participated in one of the sexuality dialogues over the weekend and was eager to share this thoughts about the experience. We later had a long telephone conversation, and Jason subsequently sent me the reflection below, which largely repeats what he said over the telephone.

I think it fair to say that both Jason and I feel that our diocese has been inwardly focused for far too long. It is time to join the Episcopal Church mainstream and to begin focusing on the world beyond the parish doors.

I cannot say if Jason’s take on participating in the diocese’s sexuality dialogue is typical, but it may be. It is certainly similar to my own reaction to the experience.
I recently had the honor of participating in one of the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh’s “dialogues on human sexuality.”

I went with some trepidation; I shouldn’t have worried. The discussion was free, friendly, and frank—with the only exception being that the tight format of these dialogues, at times, threatened to prevent a real exchange of ideas. More on that in a moment.

All participants in the dialogues are asked to agree to a confidentiality agreement about what was said by other people, and I think it’s important to uphold it. So I won’t quote any specifics, and I’ll try not to put words into anyone else’s mouth.

I can speak only for myself, and I came away with a feeling that all of us in the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh—conservative, liberal, somewhere in between—have a sincere interest in holding the diocese together and seeing it grow again.

I also came away with a feeling that—at least among the people in our session—we all want the diocese to come to some resolution, both on the issue of same-sex blessings and ordaining priests with same-sex partners, and then we want to move on!

I sensed that we are all tired of directing our energies inward, against one another, and that we would all like to turn to more positive work, out in the community. (I count myself among the progressives. I feel the Episcopal Church has a great message of inclusiveness—so why are we apologizing for that? It’s time for us to stop acting so defensive about wanting all people—straight, gay, bi, transgender—to come together to worship. But I digress.)

About the format: The sessions are highly structured—to keep any one person from dominating a session, to allow everyone a chance to speak, and to keep things moving. Depending on the question, respondents are allowed two or three minutes to answer. I felt like I was on a game show, and a few times, it seemed like a participant ran out of time while just getting to the most important point.

Even among those who are opposed to recognition of same-sex marriages, I sensed a reluctant acceptance that society at large has accepted same-sex partnerships as a fact of life, and that trying to oppose the growing consensus on this issue is—in the words of William F. Buckley, Jr.—like standing athwart history, yelling, “Stop!”

I also detected a weariness among the participants about re-hashing the issue again. I sensed that all of us are aching for some leadership.

Given the recent turmoil in the Diocese of Pittsburgh, there is an understandable fear about even discussing the issue of same-sex relationships—it’s treated like an “elephant in the room” that everyone is desperately is trying to ignore.

Rather than an elephant, I would say the Diocese of Pittsburgh’s recent turmoil is more like an old wound that’s been hidden by a bandage. Now we’re all afraid to remove the bandage and peek underneath.

We might look under the bandage and find that this wound is still festering and has become worse than ever. On the other hand, we might peel it off and find the wound has healed.

Either way, we’re never going to know until we look, and my gut feeling—after participating in this session—is that, while the wounds have left scars, the scars have healed.

Slash and Backslash

I was reading a style guide and encountered a section about the slash (/). This reminded me of a pet peeve, which I will mention here in the hope that it may change the behavior of some readers.

The slash (solidus, virgule, etc.) has been around for a long time. The backslash (reverse solidus, reversed virgule, etc.) is of more recent vintage, a product of the computer age. “Backslash” became a commonly used word as a result of its use in MS-DOS.

Unfortunately, people got so used to saying “backslash” when talking about their computers, they began saying “forward slash” when referring to a slash. This is redundant.

The Wikipedia entry for “virgule” calls “forward slash”a retronym. (Interested readers might want to look at the Wikipedia entry, as well as the Wikipedia entry for “backslash.”) It is a retronym, of course, but it is an unnecessary one. “Film camera” is a useful term to distinguish a particular device from a digital camera. It is only needed because we have come to call any device that takes pictures a camera. “Slash,” on the other hand, has not become a generic term for either a solidus or a reverse solidus.

The only reason to use “forward slash,” I assert, is in certain situations where there are references to each character in close proximity. For example, this sentence might be reasonable: ALGOL allows the symbol for logical-or to be represented by a backslash followed by a forward slash. Even this sentence looks a bit odd, since, by analogy, we might expect to see “forwardslash.”

So, here is my rule: The "/" character is a slash; the "\" character is a backslash.

Why Hasn’t Abortion Become More Acceptable?

NPR ran a story this morning about how, particularly in the South, opposition to abortion has increased over the years. The story suggested that most people are ambivalent about abortion and can be influenced by various legislative proposals to restrict the practice if they seem consistent with, for example, the religious views of those people.

The report made me ask myself why acceptance of homosexuality has increased, whereas, at least in some areas, acceptance of abortion has decreased.

It is widely believed that the acceptability of homosexuality has been fueled by the increasing willingness of homosexuals to come out of the closet. It was easy to demonize a group of people that was largely invisible. That became much harder when people knew people who acknowledged their homosexual orientation. When you know friends, co-workers, or children who are homosexual and who otherwise seem to be good people, it becomes difficult to condemn them and others of their ilk.

Now, consider the class of women who have had abortions. How many women do you know who you know have had abortions? I don’t know any, although some high-profile women from time to time have admitted to having had an abortion. I suspect that women would have an easier time naming abortion clients, but I suspect that even women do not speak about their abortions any more than necessary.

There are no Abortion Pride parades. There are no I Had an Abortion T-shirts. I suspect that we will not be able to put the abortion fights behind us until women who have had abortions come out of the closet.

An Anglican Milestone

The latest electronic newsletter from the Anglican Diocese of Pittsburgh contains this notice:

The 148th Diocesan Convention
The 148th Diocesan Convention will be held on November 1-2 at St. Stephen’s Church in Sewickley, PA. The pre-convention hearings will be held on Thursday, October 3rd at 7 pm in the sanctuary of St. Stephen’s in Sewickley, and on Sunday, October 6th at 3:30 pm at Christ’s Church in Greensburg.

As a rule, I don’t pay a lot of attention to the diocese carved out of the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh by Bob Duncan and his minions and justified by the extralegal votes at the 2007 and 2008 diocesan conventions. It is, however, laughable—not to say irritating—that the Pittsburgh schismatics claim to be approaching their 148th annual convention.

Anglican Diocese of Pittsburgh logo

Following the October 2008 vote to leave The Episcopal Church, both the winners and losers claimed to be the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh. Even those of us who weren’t confused by this had a hard time writing clear accounts of developments that kept the players straight. Sometime early in 2009, the Web site of Duncan’s diocese exchanged “The Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh” for “The Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh (Anglican)” as its banner. In October, after Judge Joseph James had ruled that diocesan property rightfully belonged to the diocese in The Episcopal Church, the Duncan diocese announced that it would appeal the decision but would also change its name to “The Anglican Diocese of Pittsburgh.”

It has never been adjudicated in Pennsylvania (or anywhere else, to date) whether a diocese can remove itself from The Episcopal Church. Diocesan property was awarded to the Episcopal Church-affiliated group on the basis of the stipulation agreed to by then Bishop Duncan that grew out of the Calvary lawsuit. That stipulation, signed in October 2005, read, in part:

Property, whether real or personal (hereinafter “Property”), held or administered by the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh of the Episcopal Church of the United States of America (hereinafter “Diocese”) for the beneficial use of the parishes and institutions of the Diocese, shall continue to be so held or administered by the Diocese regardless of whether some or even a majority of the parishes in the Diocese might decide not to remain in the Episcopal Church of the United States of America. For purposes of this paragraph, Property as to which title is legitimately held in the name of a parish of the Diocese shall not be deemed Property held or administered by the Diocese.

Consideration of the stipulation, no doubt, was responsible for the initial decision to retain the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh name. It was never clear, however, how Duncan and company could claim to have left the Episcopal Church while still being “the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh of the Episcopal Church of the United States of America,” particularly after the Presiding Bishop immediately recognized the loyal Episcopalians as representing the Pittsburgh diocese. It certainly wasn’t clear to Judge James.

Duncan claimed that the removal of the diocese from The Episcopal Church was proper and that the Episcopal group recognized by the Presiding Bishop was a new diocese. Not only did Katharine Jefferts Schori not treat the Episcopalians as having formed a new diocese; neither did the General Convention. The situation was even clearer. By the time of the October 2008 convention, Duncan had been deposed, so the Standing Committee was the ecclesiastical authority. The Rev. Jim Simons was a member of the Standing Committee, and he stayed with The Episcopal Church. Thus, there was conspicuous continuity in diocesan leadership among the Episcopalians.

In a sense, however, such considerations are moot. The first annual convention held by Duncan’s group was held under the name of The Anglican Diocese of Pittsburgh. Its 2009 convention was, by any reasonable measure, its first annual convention.

All of which is to say that Archbishop Robert Duncan and his Anglican Diocese of Pittsburgh of the Anglican Church in North American are to be congratulated on their upcoming 5th annual convention. This is surely an important milestone in the short history of the diocese and the unaffiliated Anglican Church in North America.

Terms of Use

I logged on to Netflix yesterday to check on the available of a movie and saw this below the usual Netflix menu bar:

Because the above screen shot may be difficult to read, here is the text:

Important Reminder

Your use of the Netflix service is subject to our Terms of Use. Please take a moment to review the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy and confirm the following:
I have read and agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.

This is followed by the I agree button. The “take a moment” plea is a bit disingenuous, as I will explain below.

Presumably, I had already agreed to Netflix’s terms when I first signed up for the service and also agreed to accept any new terms Netflix decided later to impose. I noticed, for example, that the current Terms of Service includes this:

Changes to Terms of Use

Netflix reserves the right, from time to time, with or without notice to you, to change these Terms of Use, including the Privacy Policy and EULA, in our sole and absolute discretion. The most current version of these Terms of Use can be reviewed by visiting our website and clicking on “Terms of Use” located at the bottom of the pages of the Netflix website. The most current version of the Terms of Use will supersede all previous versions. We will endeavor to post prior version(s) on our website when the Terms of Use are updated. You can see changes from previous versions of the Terms of Use that we have posted by visiting our website and clicking here.

There’s good news and bad news here. The bad news is that you have no real control over the Terms of Use. The good news is that the link above provides access to previous versions of the customer agreement, and those versions include change bars, which, if correctly placed, allow readers to see the changes made from one version to another. Of course, it would be more helpful were changes from one version to another called out more conspicuously, rather than buried in PDF files three levels deep.

The real problem with the Netflix Terms of Service (and most such notices) is that it is outrageously long. The link to the Terms of Service in the aforementioned Important Reminder takes you to a statement almost 9,500 words long. Embedded in this notice are other links: one to the End User License Agreement (more than 2,400 words), one to Social Terms (nearly 1,300 words), and one to DVD Terms and Conditions (approximately 2,800 words). Other links lead to information (rather than regulations), such as a hardware compatibility table. Some links seem to go to the wrong page, and several lead to a 404 (page not found) page. Some of the pages linked to from the Terms of Service contain other links. Somewhere, I found a link to Open Source Notices (another 1,000 words), but, eventually, I gave up in disgust on my project of finding everything I was supposed to agree to.

Statements like Netflix’s Terms of Service have clearly gotten out of hand. At least Netflix only provides an I agree button, rather than one, like so many agreements, that indicates that you have actually read the agreement.

An executive summary of the Netflix Terms of Service would be a great help. Or, perhaps, Netflix should employ a simpler statement, something like the following:

In return for your money, we will provide a service (or not). Everything we do is on our terms, and we will punish you in any way we choose for anything we decide we don’t like. You cannot sue us, and any disagreement will be adjudicated through binding arbitration, where, we can assure you, you will lose. Have a nice day.

Oh, and then there is the Netflix Privacy Policy to read.

Bishop Nazir-Ali Gets It All Wrong

I generally find retired Bishop of Rochester Michael Nazir-Ali quite irritating. The same can be said about David Virtue’s Web site VirtueOnline (“The Voice for Global Orthodox Anglicanism”). A story about Nazir-Ali on VirtueOnline, therefore, was sure to be a perfect storm of militant traditionalist drivel. And that is exactly what “Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali sees hope for the Anglican Communion: GAFCON II is the saving grace of a conflicted communion” turns out to be. It is the product of an interview of the bishop by VirtueOnline contributor (and Nazir-Ali fan) Mary Ann Mueller.

Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali
Photo by Steve Nimmons

I have neither the time nor the inclination to offer a general review of the VirtueOnline piece. Suffice it to say that Nazir-Ali “is convinced that GAFCON is the way forward in Anglicanism.” For some, perhaps, but my guess is that the Communion as a whole—and certainly The Episcopal Church— is not going there.

What prompted me to comment on the VirtueOnline feature at all (and to stop reading well before the end) was this passage:

“I think it is absolutely scandalous,” he said with measured words, "that people like +Mark Lawrence—who is one of the finest bishops that I have even known and who upholds Catholic truth and Christian teaching and the Gospel in everything that he does—should be deposed for doing so, and not for any other reason.

“I mean, this is a topsy-turvy world that we are looking at,” he continued, “where people are being deposed for being Biblical, for being creedal, for being Catholic by others who, if you read what they write or say, clearly seem to be heretical in their exegesis of the Bible, their doctrine of the Church, and in what they believe about the Person and work of Jesus Christ and so on.”

The Church of England bishop said that he and others had no problem whatsoever in recognizing and continuing to support Bishop Lawrence, Bishop Jack Iker, and Archbishop Robert Duncan and their clergy who have been dismissed by The Episcopal Church for their traditional and orthodox Anglican faith.

As a visiting bishop in the colonial-based Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina, Bishop Nazir-Ali is helping keep Bishop Lawrence and the Diocese connected to the wider Anglican world now that the South Carolina bishop has been defrocked and his diocese has seceded from The Episcopal Church in their struggle to maintain Anglican orthodoxy.

“I have also helped the Diocese, in a small way, in its relationships with the rest of the Anglican Communion by giving them some kind of theological grounding in how to think of themselves for the future,” Bishop Nazir-Ali explained.

He clarified that it is inherent upon traditional Biblically-grounded Anglican Provinces, which have remained faithful to the Anglican formularies and have maintained Catholic faith and order, to make sure that the Catholic faith is not wiped from the Anglican map in North America and Britain. That is why he and others have reached out to like-minded traditional and orthodox Anglicans in the United States. As his adopted land becomes more sectarian, he is also concerned that Britain will follow in the same spiritually decaying footsteps as North America.

So, Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali believes that Mark Lawrence was deposed for upholding “Catholic truth and Christian teaching and the Gospel in everything that he does” and “for being Biblical, for being creedal, [and] for being Catholic.”

This, of course, is total nonsense. The only “beliefs” for which Lawrence was deposed were his belief that his ordination vows to “guard the faith, unity, and discipline of the Church” and to “well and faithfully perform the duties of [his] office in accordance with the Constitution and Canons of this Church” were optional, and that absconding with property dedicated to use by The Episcopal Church was not really theft. (See, for example, the ENS story “Presiding bishop accepts Mark Lawrence’s renunciation.” One may quibble over the means by which Lawrence was deposed—the church may have bent the rules to be as gentle as possible with the bishop—but most objective observers would agree that he abandoned the church and left with real and personal property that did not belong to him.)

Nazir-Ali also believes that that interfering in the internal affairs of another Anglican church is just fine, and he is happy to support the schismatic actions of Lawrence, Iker, Duncan, and others of their ilk. He proudly acknowledges his support for Lawrence and his free-floating diocese. One wonders of Nazir-Ali considered whether encouraging Lawrence to advocate for this theological point of view within The Episcopal Church might have been a better way of assuring that “the Catholic faith is not wiped from the Anglican map of North America.”

Is this the behavior we expect of a bishop of a sister church of the Communion? Alas, increasingly, it is. The GAFCON movement of which Nazir-Ali is so fond is all about enforcing “orthodoxy” and “Biblical Anglicanism”—an oxymoron, I suggest—among Communion churches.

I don’t think it a stretch to suggest that most Episcopalians are alarmed at such a future for the Anglican Communion. The movement of which Nazir-Ali is a part is not going away, however. In the very long term—centuries perhaps—all may be well. In the near term, it is likely that GAFCON will either split the Communion into two rival groups, or The Episcopal Church will have to withdraw from or, at the very least, step back from participation in a dysfunction and destructive Anglican Communion.

The Rolling Stone Uproar

I am appalled by the reaction to the cover photo of Boston bomber suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev published by Rolling Stone. The objection seems to be that the cover photo makes Tsarnaev look handsome. (I’m not personally impressed, but some seem to find the photo sexy and, therefore, objectionable.) Rolling Stone is hardly glorifying Tsarnaev, however. The photo is labeled “THE BOMBER,” with a subtitle “How a Popular, Promising Student Was Failed by His Family, Fell Into Radical Islam and Became a Monster”—not the stuff of hagiography!

On the radio today, I heard people saying that Rolling Stone should have printed pictures of the damage done by the Boston bombing, not pictures of a perpetrator. Apparently, these folks believe there is only one way to cover this story—their way, of course—and covering it any other way is shameful, unpatriotic, making the bombers heroes, etc. These people need to read and contemplate the implications of the First Amendment.

Rolling Stone introduces the cover story on its Web site with this perfectly reasonable introduction:

Our hearts go out to the victims of the Boston Marathon bombing, and our thoughts are always with them and their families. The cover story we are publishing this week falls within the traditions of journalism and Rolling Stone’s long-standing commitment to serious and thoughtful coverage of the most important political and cultural issues of our day. The fact that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is young, and in the same age group as many of our readers, makes it all the more important for us to examine the complexities of this issue and gain a more complete understanding of how a tragedy like this happens. –THE EDITORS

Of course, those who are indignant over the Rolling Stone cover are unlikely to have read the story, much less the editorial justification for it. (In a perfect world—even in a somewhat less defective world—such an explanation would be totally unnecessary.) The editors are right in thinking that their story is all the more important because Dzhokhar Tsarnaev looks so normal. That he doesn’t look like a mad bomber begs for an explanation of what went so horribly wrong in his short life.

I cannot be too upset at the hand-wringing by those always on the lookout for the next imagined journalistic faux pas about which to be outraged. What I am very upset about is the number big retailers who, in a paroxysm of self-righteousness (or monumental cowardice), have announced that they will not sell the August 1 issue of Rolling Stone. Among those retailers are 7-Eleven, CVS Pharmacy, Walgreens, Kmart, Rite Aid Pharmacy, and a local supermarket chain, Giant Eagle (details here). I don’t actually plan to boycott any of these merchants, but I would like them to know that I don’t like their censoring what magazines I have access to. Others should do the same.

Revised Pittsburgh Proposals

I indicated in a previous post, “Who Can Be President of the Pittsburgh Standing Committee?” that I would be submitting proposals to amend Article IX, Standing Committee, and Canon XXXII, Of Amendments, to the Committee on Constitution and Canons. I did that Friday.

What I submitted was informed by an e-mail discussion among current and former members of the Standing Committee plus a couple of other people (me, for instance). There was nearly universal agreement among people with Standing Committee experience that (1) it should be possible for a layperson to be president of the Standing Committee, and (2) there should be no restrictions on who can become an officer of the Standing Committee. Although I initially wanted to limit the ability of a Standing Committee member to hold the same office more than once during his or her four-year term, there are no such restrictions on other bodies (Diocesan Council, for example), so it seemed unfair to burden the Standing Committee in this way.

Unsurprisingly, the group had less to say about Canon XXXII, which deals with amending the Pittsburgh canons, but the response to my proposal has generally been positive.

My proposal to amend Article IX to allow for a lay president of the Standing Committee can be read here.

My proposal to amend Canon XXXII to clarify how canons are amended can be read here. It is unclear what will be needed to effect the proposed change, as the present Canon XXXII specifies (badly) the procedure for amending the canons. Will the procedure that we have been following be used, or will the diocese suddenly try to take Canon XXXII literally?

Jesus (or Luke) Got It Wrong

Today’s Gospel reading from the Revised Common Lectionary for Proper 10, Year C,  is Luke 10:25–37. It is the familiar story of the good Samaritan:

Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” He said to him, “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” He answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” And he said to him, “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.”

But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, ‘Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.’ Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.” [From the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA, and used by permission]

This passage was discussed in my weekly Bible study yesterday, and, during the discussion, I discovered a problem I had never noticed before.

The lawyer tells Jesus that the law requires that you should love your neighbor as you love yourself. He then asks Jesus who is his neighbor, to which Jesus responds with his famous parable, which, in fact, does not really answer the question. Luke’s story seems garbled, though it isn’t clear whether Jesus or Luke was confused.

To see why this is true, let N be the relation “is the neighbor of” and let T be the relation “loves as oneself and treats accordingly.” (If this notation is unfamiliar, see the note at the end of this essay.) Let L be the property “acts according to the law.” Let a and b represent people. We must have that

aNb ∧ Lb → bTa

Because of what the law requires toward a neighbor, we can also say, by definition in this context, that
 

aNb ∧ bTa → Lb

Let p be the priest, l be the Levite, s be the Samaritan, and r be the robbery victim. The story offers these facts:

1.  ¬ pTr
2.  ¬ lTr
3.  sTr

From this information, we can conclude

1. ¬ rNp ∨ ¬ Lp
2. ¬ rNl ∨ ¬ Ll

That is, either the robbery victim is not a neighbor of the priest or the priest is not acting in accordance with the law (or both). A similar statement can be made about the Levite. About the Samaritan, we can say very little. It is possible that that the robbery victim is not a neighbor of the Samaritan, but the Samaritan exhibits loving the robbery victim as himself anyway. It is also possible that the victim is a neighbor of the Samaritan, in which case, because of his actions, it can be concluded that he is acting accordance with the law, i.e., Ls, even though, as a non-Jew, the Samaritan would not be under obligation to so act.

At the end of his story, Jesus asks, “Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” The question is curious, at least in terms of what the lawyer wanted to know. Jesus does not ask for whom the robbery victim is a neighbor. That is, he does not ask for all persons x such that rNx. Although this is probably the most interesting question for both the lawyer and us, the parable offers no definitive answer to this question. Jesus actually asks for all persons x such that xTr, that is, who loved the robbery victim as himself. To this question, the answer is only x = the Samaritan.

As told by Luke, what the parable of the good Samaritan tells us is what loving one’s neighbor as oneself looks like. Modern readers tend to view the moral of the story as being that everyone is our neighbor, but the story does not support that conclusion, although it is not inconsistent with it.

Why did Jesus not offer a parable that answered the question that was asked? I have no idea. Perhaps he thought that showing what loving your neighbor looks like was more important. Perhaps the story has just not come down to us as it happened. 

By the way, Wikipedia lists other interpretations that have been made of the parable, which shows what can happen when theologians have time on their hands.

________________________

Notation

aRb means that variable a is related to variable b by the relation R. R is simply a set of ordered pairs of related variables. In the above example, aNb means that a is a neighbor of b. Pa means that variable a has some property P. P is simply a set of values. La, above, means that a acts according to the law.

The logical operators used above are and (∧), implies or if then (→), not (¬), and or (∨).

Who Can Be President of the Pittsburgh Standing Committee?

The Nature of the Problem

In a discussion of diocesan affairs a couple of months ago, someone brought up the fact that, in the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh, the president of the Standing Committee is always a member of the clergy, even though the Standing Committee is composed of four laypeople and four clergy. This is of some concern, as clergy have had what many consider undue influence in the diocese in the past and, arguably, in the present.

The presidency of the Standing Committee is of symbolic importance even if, in most circumstances, it does not confer great power on the office holder. The president does have influence, however, and is privy to information that is either unavailable to others or not readily so.

There is, I think, no compelling reason for the Standing Committee president to be a priest or deacon. Many dioceses agree. A check of the governing documents of other dioceses revealed some diversity in how the president of the Standing Committee is chosen. Of 45 dioceses I checked, 32 allow either a clergy of lay committee member to be president. In 4 cases, the order of the president is either unspecified or, if it is, I couldn’t find where it is. In 9 dioceses, the president must be of the clergy order. None of the dioceses required that the president must always be a layperson.

In the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh, the composition of the Standing Committee is specified by Article IX of the diocesan constitution:

Article IX
Standing Committee

Section 1. The Convention shall at the Convention of 1952 elect a Standing Committee, to consist of four members of the Clergy and four Lay persons as follows:

One member of the Clergy and one Lay person shall be elected for a period of four years; one member of the Clergy and one Lay person shall be elected for a period of three years; one member of the Clergy and one Lay person shall be elected for a period of two years; one member of the Clergy and one Lay person shall be elected for a period of one year. At each Annual Convention thereafter one member of the Clergy and one Lay person shall be elected for a period of four years. No member of the Standing Committee shall be eligible to succeed himself or herself until the next Convention following the expiration of term of office.

The Standing Committee, when there is no Bishop, Bishop-Coadjutor, or Suffragan Bishop, or no one of them is capable of acting, shall be the Ecclesiastical Authority of the Diocese.

Section 2. The Clerical members of the Standing Committee must be of those entitled to Seats in the Convention of the Diocese.

Section 3. The Lay members of the Committee must be communicants in some Parish of the Diocese in union with the Convention.

Section 4. The Committee, at their first meeting, shall choose a President from among the Clerical members, and a Secretary, either Clerical or Lay. The Secretary shall keep a record of the proceedings of the Committee, and all books and papers in their hands relative to the Church shall be subject to the examination of the Bishop and of the Convention.

Section 5. The Standing Committee shall fill all vacancies that may occur during the recess of the Convention, in their own body, or in any Committee appointed to sit during the recess of the Convention, and also in such offices as are held by annual election.

Section 6. The Standing Committee shall also be the council of advice to the Bishop.

Section 7. The Standing Committee shall have such additional rights and duties and powers as may be conferred by the Canons of the General Convention or of this Diocese duly enacted.

Although it is out-of-date in certain respects, the document “Policies and Procedures of the Standing Committee of the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh,” dated January 1997, specifies how the selection of officers for the Standing Committee is made in practice:

It has been the tradition that the member of the clergy with seniority on the committee (beginning his/her fourth year) is elected President and the Lay member with committee seniority is elected Secretary. This election takes place at the January meeting.

Several observations need to be made here:

1. It is assumed that the Standing Committee president must be clergy.
2. In the normal course of events, every clergy member of the Standing Committee will serve as president for a year; every lay member of the Standing Committee will serve as secretary for a year.
3. Because of the “tradition” of our Standing Committee, the annual election of officers is no election at all, assuming that one’s notion of election necessarily involves a democratic choice by the electorate.

 Objections can be made to the system (and tradition) currently in place:

1.  Although it is probably wise to elect a president and secretary who have one or more years of experience on the Standing Committee, it would be surprising to the point of miraculous were the most senior clergy member always the best choice for president and the senior lay member always the best choice for secretary.
2. It likewise would be miraculous if the senior members of the Standing Committee always wanted to hold the offices to which tradition now assigns them.
3. In particular, some people, of whatever order, do not perform well in executive positions, and many people perform badly as secretary. It would be wiser to choose officers on the basis of inclination, availability, and competence.

Addressing the Problem

Since the tradition operates under the assumption that the president of the Standing Committee must be a member of the clergy, we must first ask if that assumption is indeed valid. I argued to our chancellor that it is not. At issue is Section 4 of Article IX and the phrase “at their first meeting.” I suggested that this means (or logically could be construed as meaning) “at the first meeting of the Standing Committee following the convention of 1952.” In this interpretation, the committee for 1953 necessarily had a clergy person for its president, but subsequent committees were no so constrained. Alas, I was unable to convince Chancellor Andy Roman that my interpretation was a credible one. He said that the phrase “at their first meeting” referred to the first meeting of each new committee, where the Standing Committee is new every time its constituent members change. The distinction is important, as it determines whether a canonical or constitutional change is required to allow for a layperson to be Standing Committee president. A canonical change can be effected by a single annual convention—but see below—whereas a constitutional change requires action by two successive annual conventions.

I have not seen the 1953 and prior convention journals, which might clarify what was intended by Section 4, but I have to concede that the original intention likely was to forever require a clerical Standing Committee president. In any case, it would be virtually impossible to enact a canon that allowed for a lay Standing Committee president under the theory that the constitution did not require a clergy president in the face of a contrary view on the part of the chancellor.

Resigning myself to not being able to change the requirement of a clerical presidency in 2013, I proposed that Section 4 be replaced with the following, with subsequent sections renumbered as necessary:

Section 4. The Committee, at its first meeting of each calendar year, shall elect a President and a Secretary from among its members, without regard to whether those elected are members of the Clergy or Lay persons. Persons so elected shall serve until the next such election.

Section 5. No member of the Standing Committee shall be eligible for election as President or Secretary who has held that office during the member’s current term on the Standing Committee.

Section 6. The Secretary shall keep a record of the proceedings of the Committee, and all books and papers kept by the Secretary relative to the Church shall be subject to the examination of the Bishop and of the Convention.

This change would have removed all constraints on who could be elected officers of the Standing Committee, but would allow committee members to hold either office for only one year during the member’s four-year term.

Apparently, the Committee on Constitution and Canons was disinclined to act on my proposal. Well, I thought, I could offer my amendment as a resolution to the 2013 convention. It was then that I discovered Canon XXXII:

Canon XXXII
Of Amendments

The Canons may be amended in the following manner only: Amendments must be proposed in writing to the Annual Convention and be referred to, and reported upon by, the Committee on Constitution and Canons.

At this point, I panicked. I thought that the Committee on Constitution and Canons was a gatekeeper for all changes to our governing documents. In particular, if the diocese wanted to make changes to rules governing the Committee on Constitution and Canons, it would seem that that committee could, if it disliked the changes, simply bury them. I brought Canon XXXII to the attention of the committee. Both the chancellor and the bishop objected to making changes to Canon XXXII.

The alert reader will have recognized that I was actually confused. Initially, I thought that allowing the Standing Committee president to be a layperson could be effected through canon, for which Canon XXXII is a relevant constraint. Because the chancellor would not buy my argument that Article IX, Section 4 only applied the the Standing Committee elected at the 1952 convention, the change I sought could only be made through a change to the constitution, for which Canon XXXII is irrelevant. I will have more to say about Canon XXXII below.

Changes to the constitution are governed by Article XV:

Article XV
Alteration of the Constitution

This Constitution, or any part thereof, may be altered in the following manner only: The proposed alteration or amendment shall be submitted in writing to the Annual Convention, and if approved by a majority of each Order, shall lie over to the next Annual Convention, and if again approved, by a majority of each Order, the Constitution shall then stand altered or amended as proposed.

Article XV is quite clear; a constitutional change requires approval by majority vote by both clergy and lay deputies at two successive annual conventions. The provision does not restrict how the “proposed alteration or amendment” is brought to the convention, merely that it has to be submitted in writing. In particular, there is no requirement that the Committee on Constitution and Canons be involved in the process, although the opinion of the committee or that of the chancellor would surely affect a proposal’s prospects.

Presumably, a proposed constitutional amendment could be submitted like any other convention resolution, though I don’t recall any recent constitutional change that did not come from the Committee on Constitution and Canons or it predecessor. The current form for submission of convention resolutions requires two sponsors, described as “any parish or individuals.” (If submitted by a parish, sponsorship by another parish is probably unnecessary, but this understanding is not made explicit on the form.) The form does not even constrain who can be a sponsor. Although resolutions are passed through Diocesan Council, the longstanding understanding is that that body does not concern itself with resolution content, but is only charged with assuring that resolutions are in the proper form.

Tweaking the Solution

A discussion among board members of Progressive Episcopalians of Pittsburgh of an appropriate amendment to the constitution to allow for a lay president led to a disagreement. Some people argued that merely saying that there were no constraints on who could be elected president and secretary would result in the “tradition” being respected, and therefore a continuation of the long succession of clerical presidents. The fix someone suggested to address this problem was an amendment that would require the most senior clergy and lay member to be officers, with the senior lay member being president every other year. It was argued that this provision would guarantee that laypeople would become Standing Committee president, whereas my original proposal did not. I had several objections to this scheme:

1. The proposal makes the de facto restriction of officers to senior members of the Standing Committee a de jure requirement.
2. My objection that senior members may not be best qualified for office or might be disinclined or otherwise constrained from holding office is not addressed by the proposal.
3. One’s ability to become president is dependent on the year of one’s election. Elected one year, you may become president; elected the next year, you may only become secretary. This seems unfair.

I considered these objections fatal, although I could appreciate the argument that modifying current procedures as little as possible would increase the likelihood that an amendment to the constitution could be passed. It was difficult to find a compromise position. I eventually suggested that a coin toss determine whether a clergy or lay person would be president in a given year. This would assure that a layperson would sometimes be elected president, though without specifying definitively when that would happen. (It should happen approximately half the time, of course.) My compromise proposal therefore becomes that Section 4 should be replaced with the following, with subsequent sections renumbered as necessary:

Section 4. The Committee, at its first meeting of each calendar year, shall toss a coin to determine whether the President is to be elected from among the Clergy or Lay members of the Committee. A President shall then be elected from those members of the selected Order, and a Secretary shall be elected from those members of the other Order. Persons so elected shall serve until the next such election.

Section 5. No member of the Standing Committee shall be eligible for election as President or Secretary who has held that office during the member’s current term on the Standing Committee.

Section 6. The Secretary shall keep a record of the proceedings of the Committee, and all books and papers kept by the Secretary relative to the Church shall be subject to the examination of the Bishop and of the Convention.

I hope to put this proposal (or one very much like it) before the 2013 annual convention.

Amending the Canons

Because it appears that a constitutional change will be necessary to to allow for a lay president of the Standing Committee, Canon XXXII, On Amendments, is irrelevant to solving the original problem. Having had my attention drawn to Canon XXXII, however, I could not avoid the realization that it is seriously defective. Moreover, the defense of the canon my the chancellor and bishop is distressing.

In practice, a canonical change is usually proposed by the Committee on Constitution and Canons. (Consideration of a change may have been suggested by someone not on the committee.) The proposal is presented to and voted on by a single annual convention and is passed by a simple majority vote. This procedure is not clearly what is specified by Canon XXXII. A straightforward reading of that canon has the canonical change “proposed in writing to the Annual Convention” and then “referred to, and reported upon by, the Committee on Constitution and Canons.” The canon raises several questions:

1. When is the referral made to the committee?
2. When does the committee report?
3. Is there ever a vote? (The canon does not mention voting.)
4. If there is a vote, when does it take place?
5. If there is a vote, what constitutes a vote of approval?

In other words, Canon XXXII is a total mess. The most literal reading of the canon suggests that the proper procedure might be:

1. Submit the proposed change to the convention.
2. The convention refers the proposal to the Committee on Constitution and Canons.
3. The Committee on Constitution and Canons reports on the proposal at the next annual convention.
4. One might infer that that convention then votes on the proposal, but the canon does not actually say that.

Even if one assumes that the referral and reporting can take place at the same annual convention at which the canonical change is introduced, the nature of the committee’s report is not clarified, and, again, nothing is said about voting. In any case, what Canon XXXII seems to say is not what the diocese has been doing.

Clearly, Canon XXXII needs to be changed. Personally, I believe that the Committee on Constitution and Canons should not be able to block a proposed change. A revised canon, therefore, might be the following:

Canon XXXII
Of Amendments

Section 1. To amend these Canons, a proposal must be submitted in writing to the Annual Convention. The proposal is accepted if approved by a majority vote.

Section 2. A proposed amendment may be brought to the Annual Convention by the Committee on Constitution and Canons, either at the initiative of said Committee or after consideration by the Committee of a suggested change recommended by one or more persons resident in the Diocese.

Section 3. A proposed amendment may be offered in writing to the Annual Convention in the same manner and under the same conditions that apply to other resolutions to be considered by the Convention. Immediately after the proposal is introduced for debate by the Convention and has been explained by its sponsor or sponsors, but before general discussion thereof, both the Chancellor and a representative of the Committee on Constitution and Canons may, if desired, address the Convention as to the appropriateness of the proposal.

This suggested revision of Canon XXXII removes any ambiguity as to how long it takes to effect a canonical change, specifies how a change is approved, and removes the Committee on Constitution and Canons as a gatekeeper, while allowing it or the chancellor to weigh in on the proposed change. Canon XXXII should be changed at the 2013 annual convention. We will have to ignore the fact that, in doing so, we may be violating the present canon. But we have been doing that for years!

Update, 7/11/2013. I asked our diocesan archivist, Joan Gundersen to check out the history behind Article IX. She responded, as follows (I have made minor edits for clarity):

I went looking in the archives for the information about the Standing Committee article in the constitution. From 1865 on, the article has consistently required that the president of Standing Committee be one of the clergy members. The secretary was to be elected from either the clergy or the laity.

What was changed in 1950-51 was the requirement that the whole Standing Committee be elected each year but with no term limits. The discussion focused on the idea of rotation in office. Thus, they lengthened the terms of office to 4 years from 1 year, but required a rotation off the committee after a maximum of 4 years.

The tradition that the president be the clergy person with the most seniority on the Standing Committee is purely tradition (as is the choice of secretary). The tradition began sometime after the change in the constitution. Throughout the 1940s, the president of the Standing Committee was held multiple times by the same person, and a priest served as secretary, but seniority on the committee doesn’t seem to have been a factor. I’d have to spend a whole lot more time on this to determine whether they were using some form of seniority (ordination, canonical residence, or committee service) to select the person the Standing Committee elected as president.

So, the diocese seems always to have had clerical presidents of the Standing Committee. The change in the ’50s was intended primarily to assure turnover on the Standing Committee and to prevent anyone from holding on to the presidency from year to year. I think most of us would agree that those objectives are desirable ones.

I am, of course, grateful for Joan’s research. I must say that it is a great help to have an archivist on the diocesan staff

Update, 7/12/2013. I will be submitting proposals to the Committee on Constitution and Canons to change the rules for the election of Standing Committee officers. The committee meets next Tuesday (July 16). Thinking further about the matter and as a result of conversations in other venues, my suggestions to the committee will be somewhat different from those presented above. I expect to say more about Article IX later.

Independence Day Stuff

Having lost Google Reader, I find myself today trying to make sense of Feedly and configuring it in a helpful way, hoping that doing so will save me time in the future. The process has had me identifying blogs that seem to have died and reading today’s postings on blogs I do not read with regularity. This has me thinking about Independence Day more that I usually do on the Fourth of July.

As usual, however, my day began with NPR’s Morning Edition. I was looking forward to the annual reading of the Declaration of Independence by NPR hosts, correspondents, and commentators. Morning Edition decided to do something different this year, broadcasting the usual reading but with visitors to the National Mall. I liked it better the old way, but you can find today’s version here.

Morning Edition also did an interesting story on the origin of “The Star Spangled Banner.” That reminded me of my own song that I wrote as a possible National Anthem, “Out of Many, One.” I decided not to write a blog post about it, but I did write a quick post on Facebook. (Ironically, I’m writing about “Out of Many, One” in a blog post now.)

A bit later in the day, I ran into an interesting essay from The Guardian. Daniel Hannan wrote “Why Britons should celebrate the American Declaration of Independence,” which contains some surprising revelations.

What caused me to write here today at all, however, is a post by Kendall Harmon on TitusOneNine titled “The Full Text of America’s National Anthem.” Harmon renders the familiar first stanza of “The Star-Spangled Banner” thusly:

O! say can you see by the dawn’s early light
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming.
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight,
O’er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming.
And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

Curiously, I have read Francis Scott Key’s poem in many places, and seldom do I find two versions that agree with one another. Even the title is controversial. Key’s original title was “Defence of Fort McHenry.” When the poem was paired with the tune “To Anacreon in Heaven,” it was renamed—by whom I don’t know—“The Star-Spangled Banner” or, as it is often rendered, “The Star Spangled Banner.” The former is clearly the grammatically correct title, but it is not the most commonly used one. (Both versions can be found in the Wikipedia article about the poem. Go figure!)

Harmon’s post, however, does not even give a name to the National Anthem. Instead, what distressed me was the punctuation of the first stanza. Key’s sentence structure is complex, convoluted even, but it does make sense. (I commented on this complexity in my introductory to the Language Notes section of my Web site.) The version shown on TitusOneNine clearly makes no sense. The third and fourth lines, which are shown as a complete sentence, are nothing of the sort. Try saying “Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight, o’er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming” to someone, and see what kind of looks you get. The first sentence must end with a question mark after line four.

Wikipedia helpfully reproduces Key’s original manuscript and the first printed version of his poem. Even these don’t quite agree, though they’re close. This seems to be the first stanza as originally intended, though one may quibble about the indentation, which is unclear in the manuscript and which, in the end, is more or less irrelevant:

O say can you see by the dawn’s early light
    What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming,
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight
    O’er the ramparts we watch’d, were so gallantly streaming?
          And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
          Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there;
O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

No modern printing uses “watch’d,” but everything else seems right here. That first sentence might to recast to be, if not more natural, at least more comprehensible, as: “O say, can you, by the dawn’s early light, see what we hailed so proudly at the twilight’s last gleaming, whose broad stripes and bright stars [that] we watch’d o’er the ramparts through the perilous fight were so gallantly streaming?” Yes, that’s a tough sentence.

Finally, I am probably not alone in feeling that our National Anthem is often sung badly (or inappropriately) at public events. I’ve commented on that before, so I’ll not do so again. See my post “Getting the National Anthem Right.”

Trouble in the Anglican World: A Pittsburgh Perspective

Progressive Episcopalians of Pittsburgh (PEP) was less than a year old when I was part of a program PEP sponsored at St. Stephen’s, Wilkinsburg, in February 2004. PEP was concerned about the direction Bishop Robert Duncan was taking the Diocese of Pittsburgh, and we were trying to alert others to the danger we were seeing. I gave a talk titled “Trouble in the Anglican World: A Pittsburgh Perspective.” What I had to say had evolved from an essay I had begun writing two months earlier. It would be more that four years before the diocesan convention would vote to leave The Episcopal Church, but PEP had a pretty good idea where things were going. My full talk can be read here. Below are a few excerpts.

By now, most Episcopalians know that their church, and, in fact, the whole Anglican Communion, is in something of an uproar. What many in the Diocese of Pittsburgh do no realize is that their diocese is at the center of the turmoil. This fact will continue to be for us a source of discomfort and stress, but it puts us in a unique position to observe events and even to have some influence over them.

_____

The view from Pittsburgh has, for a long time, not been characteristic of the Episcopal Church as a whole. The conservative culture of this diocese is typical of about a dozen dioceses. The rest—nearly 100 of them—are diverse and, on the whole, moderately liberal. They are going about business as usual. The people in those dioceses who follow the news of the church are watching with interest, but not always with great concern, the “crazy” bishops in Pittsburgh, Forth Worth, Quincy, Jan Joaquin, South Carolina, and a few other dioceses. They should be more concerned.

_____

In October, Canon David Anderson, AAC President stated quite clearly that the AAC, which, at first, looked to create a second Anglican province in the U.S., had decided that it must instead replace the Episcopal Church, lest his church be in communion with the wrong-headed Episcopalians who had voted with the majority at General Convention. In December, a letter from the Rev. Geoff Chapman, Rector of St. Stephen’s, Sewickley, and an operative for the new Network, was leaked to The Washington Post. In that letter, intended for churches inquiring about joining the Network, Chapman made it quite clear that the purpose of the Network was to be the ultimate replacement for the Episcopal Church, whose canons would, at some time in the future, need to be violated with impunity. He also made it clear that the Network expected not only to usurp the status of the Episcopal Church as the Anglican province in the U.S., but also to be the ultimate owner of its property as well. Although Bishop Duncan has tried to distance the Network from the Chapman letter, the fact that Chapman has long been an insider among the conservative dissidents belies the bishop’s denials.

_____

If you love the liturgy of our church, but you long for the moral clarity and biblical literalism of the Southern Baptist Convention, Bishops Duncan, Iker, Ackerman, Salmon, and the rest, are your heroes. According to our bishop, you are already a member of the Network of Anglican Communion Dioceses and Parishes. Write approving letters to Bishop Duncan, sit back, and wait for him to complete his coup d’état against the Episcopal Church. If, on the other hand, you value not only the liturgy, but the notion of Anglicanism as the middle way, the via media, which looks not only to Scripture, but also to tradition and reason for guidance, then you want to oppose the Network of Anglican Communion Dioceses and Parishes, along with its prescriptive theological statement.

The Wisdom of Robert Duncan

Two days ago, I wrote about the arrogance of Roman Catholic bishops in their commentary on this week’s Supreme Court decisions involving same-sex marriage. (See “Catholic Bishops Offer Their Wisdom.”) Under the circumstances, I can hardly ignore the June 26 statement made by Archbishop Robert Duncan of the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA). (Curiously, the statement was posted as a PDF file and does not seem to be anywhere on the ACNA Web site.)

For convenience, I will reproduce the brief “Archbishop’s Statement on the Supreme Court Decision on the Definition of Marriage” here:

An extremely divided court reflects an extremely divided nation. Equal rights under the law is a bedrock commitment of the United States of America and can often be accomplished by creative legislation. Nevertheless, the definition of marriage long pre-dates the United States and is a given of the created order. The motto of the United States is “One Nation under God.” The Christian Church has followed a Lord who meets people where they are, and who loves them regardless of their challenges. The Church has countered the culture throughout most of its history. We find ourselves, both sadly and increasingly, in this position in a nation once seen as a “light upon a hill,” and a “hope of all the earth.”

I want to comment on this statement line-by-line.

An extremely divided court reflects an extremely divided nation.

The nation is indeed divided on the matter of same-sex marriage, but it is rapidly becoming less so. The trend is toward greater acceptance of same-sex marriage. The Supreme Court is divided, with the majority on the court generally representing minority opinion in the country at large. The 5–4 opinion in United States v. Windsor is about par for the course these days.

Equal rights under the law is a bedrock commitment of the United States of America and can often be accomplished by creative legislation.

This odd statement is a transition to a justification for unequal rights. Presumably, the archbishop thought DOMA creative and proper, not discriminatory and therefore unconstitutional.

 Nevertheless, the definition of marriage long pre-dates the United States and is a given of the created order.

As did the Roman Catholic bishops, Duncan appeals to the view that marriage has been defined by God and cannot legitimately be altered by humans. He alludes to this argument without actually making it because he is writing for his committed followers, not for the world at large.

The motto of the United States is “One Nation under God.”

This is another allusion, rather than an argument. Moreover, it is a non sequitur disconnected from what came before and what follows. Duncan refers to the belief that the United States of America was founded as a “Christian nation.” Not only is this not true, but it is not even plausible. The founders wanted nothing to do with a king, and they surely were unsympathetic to an established church that was an extension of the crown. The motto of the United States, by the way, is “In God we trust,” which was adopted in 1956, at the height of the Cold War. A better motto in every way is “E pluribus unum,” which is found on the Great Seal of the United States but which was never officially declared our national motto. (See “A Matter of Mottos.”)

The Christian Church has followed a Lord who meets people where they are, and who loves them regardless of their challenges.

This is a kind of love-the-sinner-hate-the-sin statement that, in any case, seems to be moving far afield from comment on the decision of the Supreme Court. The first part of the sentence is fair enough, but the notion of  “a Lord … who loves [people] regardless of their challenges” is very odd. Jesus did make a point of loving people dealing with illness, possession (mental illness?), or even death. One might call such problems challenges, but that is unconventional usage. Duncan seems reluctant to suggest that gay people are sinful and therefore refers to them as “challenged.” Mostly, of course, they are challenged by the malice of Christian bigots.

The Church has countered the culture throughout most of its history

Lacking any real criticism of the Supreme Court—did any clear-thinking American believe DOMA was constitutional?—Duncan asserts the Church’s virtue. The Church’s mission is not to “counter” culture, however, but to represent justice and mercy as best it understands it. Culture is not always wrong, and the Church is not always right. Duncan’s sentence here is not transparently true, and I suspect that many historians would consider it false.

We find ourselves, both sadly and increasingly, in this position in a nation once seen as a “light upon a hill,” and a “hope of all the earth.”

I’m not sure exactly what Duncan means by “countering” the culture—I thought that was what the sixties hippies did—but I suppose he means holding a different view from the generally accepted one and making that view known. As long as ACNA’s doctrine is considered to be unchanging truth, it is indeed likely to be progressively more out-of-step with modern society, with the most enlightened aspects of it, in any case. The suggestion that the nation was “once  seen as a ‘light upon a hill,’ and a ‘hope of all the earth’” suggests that Duncan, at one time, didn’t feel quite so much need for countering. The “light upon a hill” alludes to John Winthrop’s famous sermon and has become a common assertion of American exceptionalism. “Hope of all the earth”, however, is very curious. Duncan uses it to refer to the United States, but I have always seen it applied to Jesus. Perhaps this causes no cognitive dissidence if one buys into the America-founded-as-a-Christian-country myth.

On reflection, the Duncan statement may not be on the ACNA Web site because it does not even rise to ACNA’s standard of coherence. Certainly, the archbishop succeeds in making the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops look good by comparison.

More on the (Partial) Demise of DOMA

There was much celebration Wednesday, when the Supreme Court struck down the federal government’s denial of marital benefits to validly married same-sex couples. Unfortunately, Section 2 of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) was not directly at issue before the court and still stands. That section absolves states from recognizing same-sex marriages performed in other states, a provision that might be construed as conflicting with the Full Faith and Credit Clause (Article IV, Section 1) of the Constitution. Section 2 can lead to a host of strange anomalies, as I suggested in an earlier post.

Almost certainly, at some future time, being able to marry the person of one’s choice, irrespective of sex, will be recognized as a constitutional right. Although the Supreme Court could have used the DOMA case to make that determination in 2013, the case was not the ideal vehicle to support such a finding, and this particular court is probably not philosophically inclined to make it anyway, however compelling the logic. It is difficult to see a substantial distinction between laws against same-sex marriage and laws against interracial marriage. Alas, same-sex couples must continue to wait for their Loving v. Virginia (the case in which the Supreme Court struck down all anti-miscegenation statutes in a unanimous 1967 decision).

Conservatives are fond of asserting that marriage is an important pillar of society. If that is true, it is important to strengthen marriage by eliminating the uncertainties introduced by Section 2 of DOMA and by encouraging more marriages by establishing a constitutional right to marry whom ever one likes. Those same conservatives, of course, do not recognize same-sex unions as real marriage and would therefore reject my assertion. The reality, however, is that homosexual and heterosexual marriages function in society in virtually identical ways. If one is beneficial to society, then so is the other.

Conservative opposition to same-sex marriage is, in almost all cases, based either on naked prejudice or on a religious view that sees marriage as necessarily between a man and a woman. As sexual minorities become more conspicuous in society and are known personally by more and more heterosexuals, prejudice, as a factor in opposing marriage equality, is diminishing and will continue to do so. It will be difficult to convince conservative Christians who believe that marriage, as we know it, was established by God in its only acceptable form in the Garden of Eden. (But where did all those people in the Bible come from if there was no incest in those early days?)

Progressives should argue that marriage is a social and legal construct that, for some people, has religious implications. It is not a religious state that Christians impose on society, including non-Christians and Christians who hold a different view of marriage. The fundamentalist Christian view of marriage becomes less compelling as a reason to oppose same-sex marriage when the distinction between civil and religious marriage is understood. (It is unfortunate that the two ever became entangled. Within The Episcopal Church there has been serious discussion of having clergy get out of the business of creating a civil marriage and having them confine their duties to blessing people who have already been married in the eyes of the state.) This strategy may not work on Christians who assert, improbably, that the United States of America was founded as a “Christian nation.”

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On a vaguely related topic, NPR asked the question “Is There Bias in Media’s Coverage of Gay Marriage Fight?” The story suggested that there might be, as there seem to be more stories about proponents of gay marriage than about opponents. A factor not mentioned by NPR is the fact that homosexual proponents of same-sex marriage have their lives and fortunes at stake in the fight. Opponents merely seek to limit the freedom of others and, despite their protestations, will suffer no substantive loss if their position loses. This distinction would surely justify greater coverage of those celebrating the Supreme Court opinions Wednesday than those dismayed by them.

A real and destructive media bias—one perhaps more a product of ignorance than prejudice—is the use of conservative Christians and Christian organizations to represent the religious view of same-sex marriage. In fact, there is no single religious view of same-sex marriage. From media coverage, I have no idea what Jews or Muslims or Sikhs think of the matter. I know that there is a liberal Christian view, but, from most media coverage, it would be hard even to discover that there are such people as liberal Christians.

Catholic Bishops Offer Their Wisdom

Not surprisingly, U.S. Catholic bishops were unhappy with today’s Supreme Court decision regarding the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). In fact, the press release from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops makes it clear why public policy should take no notice of their opinions. The bishops’ statement says, in part,

The federal government ought to respect the truth that marriage is the union of one man and one woman, even where states fail to do so. The preservation of liberty and justice requires that all laws, federal and state, respect the truth, including the truth about marriage.

The word truth occurs seven times in the bishops’ five-paragraph statement. The Roman Catholic bishops believe that they are in possession of the truth, and it is the duty of everyone in the United States to defer to their wisdom. Not all Christians see the “truth” the bishops see, however, and why should Muslims or Hindus or atheists, much less Episcopalians or Lutherans or Jews defer to the views of Roman Catholic bishops anyway, whose first-hand experience with marriage is, shall we say, limited?

The Roman Catholic Church is free to define marriage however it chooses. If it views a couple married in an Episcopal church or by a justice of the peace as not validly married, the church is free to do so. Frankly, my dear bishops, most couples don’t give a damn. What they care about is the recognition of their union by society at large and the privileges conferred on married couples by the state and federal government. For all the religiosity that conservative Christians wrap around marriage, being married or not has little to do with the day-by-day relationship of a person to his or her church, unless, of course, you want to be a Roman Catholic priest.

The bishops go on to emphasize that children need a mother and a father. There is perhaps a case to be made here, but the bishops do not offer a logical argument, merely their own arrogant assertion of the way things are. The implication is that raising children is the essential object of marriage. For many couples, perhaps even for most couples, this is not true—companionship, sex, and the financial advantages of marriage are more compelling reasons for getting married than is having children. This seems especially true now, when so many couples do not see getting married as even necessary for having and rearing children. (I don’t endorse this view, but the point is that what is obvious to the bishops is not equally apparent to everyone else.) In any case, the belief that two moms or two dads are bad for children is not an argument against same-sex marriage, though it might be one against adoption by same-sex couples.

As usual, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops looks silly, self-important, and out-of-touch. Is anyone really paying any attention?

On Today’s Supreme Court Decisions

Today was a good, if not perfect, day for marriage equality. On the basis of equal protection, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) provision preventing the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages performed in states that allow them. In the California Proposition 8 case, the court ruled that the advocates of Proposition 8 who sought a reversal of the lower court finding that Proposition 8 was unconstitutional did not have standing to bring an appeal. (The state of California refused to defend the proposition.)

The immediate effect of these opinions is that legally married same-sex couples will enjoy the same federal benefits as mixed-sex couples. Also, same-sex marriage will be legal in California. Neither decision establishes a constitutional right to marry the person of one’s choice. Same-sex marriage is still impermissible in more states than not. Nevertheless, these decisions surely advance the cause of marriage equality.

What was not at issue in the DOMA case is the provision that states do not have to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states.  This is surely a peculiar and anomalous situation that must not be allowed to stand. What happens, for example, if a lesbian couple married in, say, Massachusetts, while on vacation driving through Pennsylvania, get into an automobile accident and one spouse needs to make medical decisions for the other but does not have an explicit medical power of attorney? Or what if the same couple moves to Pennsylvania and eventually wants to divorce? Pennsylvania does not even consider them married, but Massachusetts and the federal government do. Who can or will grant a divorce?

Hockenberry Leaves Diocese

For whatever reason, news from the diocese has been in short supply of late. The most recent news item on the Diocese of Pittsburgh Web site was posted prior to May 19. It announced a May 19 event, but was itself undated. The last issue of “Grace Happens” was sent out on May 31.

I am not in possession of a lot of secret diocesan news, but I do know one thing that we might have expected to be announced by now. Carl Hockenberry, the CPA who has been the diocesan treasurer and director of administration has resigned, apparently to work on his own. As far as I know, this was a personal decision that has nothing to do with the diocese. In light of rumors that the 2014 budget will be a different one, Carl’s departure may not be the best of news.