A Prayer for Communion with Christ

Because of the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic, most Episcopal parishes have been unable to hold public worship, though many are live-streaming celebrations, bidding those at home to commune in spirit. Some have commended a prayer by Alphonsus Liguori. I would like to note, however, that the Episcopal Church has a resource for this situation, in the 1988 edition of A Prayer Book for the Armed Forces, edited by Howard Galley.* I believe this prayer is superior to the prayer by Liguori, and better congruent with the traditions of the Episcopal Church.

In union, O Lord, with your faithful people at every altar of your Church, where the Holy Eucharist is now being celebrated, I desire to offer to you praise and thanksgiving. I remember your death, Lord Christ; I proclaim your resurrection; I await your coming in glory. And since I cannot receive you today in the Sacrament of your Body and Blood, I beseech you to come spiritually into my heart. Cleanse and strengthen me with your grace, Lord Jesus, and let me never be separated from you. May I live in you, and you in me, in this life and in the life to come. Amen.

Note: the 1951 edition of the Armed Forces Prayer Book had this form:

In union, O Lord with the faithful at every altar of Thy Church, where the Holy Eucharist is now being celebrated, I desire to offer Thee praise and thanksgiving. I present to Thee my soul and body with the earnest wish that may always be united to Thee. And since I can not now receive Thee sacramentally, I beseech Thee to come spiritually into my heart. I unite myself to Thee, and embrace Thee with all the affections of my soul. Let nothing ever separate Thee from me. May I live and die in Thy love. Amen.

—with thanks for all who serve and all who hunger, Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
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* I worked in the publication office of the international HQ-PECUSA (“815”) at the time, and assisted in the production; hence my familiarity with it.

On being alone

When Wesley taught that there is no such thing as a solitary Christian he was emphasizing his belief in a particular kind of realized ecclesiology — that the church is the church when it is gathered as a “Society.” Far be it from me to deny the social aspect of the church, of the Body of Christ composed of many members, and of the need Christians have for each other.

My concern is that in this time of enforced solitude for most if not all Christians — a solitude only lessened but never entirely erased by virtual fellowship — that those in isolation may put too much stock in the necessity of sociality, and neglect or forget the truth that the church is not only itself when gathered, but equally so when it is sent — even if that sending is to isolation rather than to mission. Many a saint (and many a sinner) have found in the depths of isolation the truth that lies on the other side of Wesley’s maxim: that there is no such thing as a solitary Christian because no Christian is ever entirely alone: she is part of the Body, like an outreached hand extended yet still attached to the arm, the shoulder, and the heart. Donne had it right when he pictured each of us as a promontory, not an island.

But there is more: there is no such thing as a solitary Christian because even in isolation, there is always One to keep her company; One who has been with her from the beginning; One who will never by separated from her by even so much as a hairs-breadth; One who is close enough that she can feel him breathing.

— Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

The Broken Body

The Holy Eucharist is about the assembled people of God, but it is not only about the assembly. For while it is true, as the Didache put it, that the grain once scattered on the hillside is in the Bread of Communion made one, it is also the case that that Bread is then broken and distributed — just as the assembly is dismissed at the end of the gathering, with a missionary purpose. We at present dwell in our sequestered isolation, viewing the celebration through the virtual "squints" of our laptops and tablets, unable to receive due to illness we may not actually have, but in fellowship with all those sick monastics and anchorites who saw the Eucharist only at a remove, through a narrow gap in the stone, or from the balcony — our fellowship, our communion, is no less real. This is the Body truly broken, to testify that it is in our dispersal, in our brokenness, that we find our true vocation as "given for the life of the world." Ite, missa est!

— Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Denature of Communion

My chum from New Zealand, Bosco Peters, has posted a very helpful essay on the nature of the Anglican Communion, focusing on the extent to which communion is an applicable term, given what it usually means — mutual recognition of ministers, and their ability to function within each other’s churches (mutatis mutandis).

The problem did not begin with the recent collapses and severances of recognition (and function) at primatial gatherings; nor in the disagreements in the wake of Gene Robinson’s election and consecration. Nor did the breaches start with the “impaired communion” (a term which has always reminded me of “partial virginity”) declared (or described) by Archbishop Runcie after Barbara Harris’ consecration (and concerning every woman bishop since, given the fact that a woman bishop can still not function as even a presbyter in some parts of the “communion.”)

For one could go back all the way to the 26th year of George III (1786), and the Act of Parliament that first permitted the ABC and ABYork (with others) to ordain and consecrate the Americans White and Provoost without the royal warrant, and absent the oaths normally required. Among other things, the Act stated:

...be it hereby declared, that no person or persons consecrated to the office of a bishop in the manner aforesaid, nor any person or persons deriving their consecration from or under any bishop so consecrated, nor any person or persons admitted to the order of deacon or priest by any bishop or bishops so consecrated, or by the successor or successors of any bishop or bishops so consecrated, shall be thereby enabled to exercise his or their respective office or offices within his Majesty's dominions.

So from the outset the Anglican “Communion” has been one in a (partially) shared spirit, a variable historical deposit, but lacking the uniform application of the standard mark of “communion” as it is used in ordinary ecumenical relations.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

What is an Anglican?

It strikes me that there are two meanings of Anglican, as it is commonly used. It can be understood as a tradition with certain characteristics derived from a historical reality (I assayed an essay on what I think the central characteristics are a decade ago in The Anglican Triad), or more formally as the fellowship of churches in communion with the See of Canterbury, members of the Anglican Consultative Council -- there is a list of membership one can look up. By analogy, one could say that some of the "independent" catholic churches are "catholic" but not officially so from the perspective of Rome, which does recognize a number of non-Latin churches as directly relating to it, but not these "independent" bodies. In the looser sense of heritage, one could say that the Methodists are part of the Anglican tradition, and but for some accidents of history, might still be so formally, and yet may!

The problem with ACNA, as I see it, is that they violate one of the key principles that are a part of that Anglican (and indeed catholic) heritage that I laid out in the essay linked above -- the geographical and canonical notion that there should only be one Anglican jurisdiction in any one place. But neither is ACNA an official member of the Communion (in spite of their recognition by some member churches who say they are in communion with them; but the same can be said of, say the ELCA: with whom TEC is in communion, but that communion with them renders them neither Anglican nor members of the Anglican Communion. The same is true of Porvoo churches in relation to England.)

On the one-church-in-a-location issue, I think that, for a time, the "state" was a good balance point for Anglicanism, reflecting as well the settlement in Europe of cuius regio eius religio -- but that this worked best in an established church, which was the case at the time. The lack of establishment across most of the Anglican Communion today, and the increase in means of communication, have made the "national" ideal much more difficult to maintain, as people have less sense of a legal restriction (though it is still an active canonical principle) and the concept of a network is replacing that of either a pyramid or a hub-and-spoke. That doesn't mean I don't still think the nation or region to be an ideal in Anglicanism, but it may be one whose time has passed.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

The Wrong Model

How is one to address the issue of unity in the Anglican Communion, much less the church, without reference to Jesus Christ? Christ himself prayed, in the High Priestly Prayer in John 17, that those who would believe in him would be one "just as" he and the Father are one. This is an intrinsic part of the priestly office which Christ embodies perfectly: the bringing together of the community of the faithful.

But what is the nature of the "oneness" of God, the unity of the Father and Son? The unity of God is that of ontological relationship, not based on an agreement or covenant document. It is eternal and everlasting, and has no relational consequences or means of disengagement, because it is the relationships that constitute the essence of Who God Is.

How does this apply to church unity? The churches of the Anglican Communion have, up until now, enjoyed the connectedness implicit in our ontological relationship, along lines of descent from England, Scotland, and to a very large part, The Episcopal Church. This is what it means when we say, in the Preamble of our Constitution, that The Episcopal Church is a "constituent member" of the Communion -- that is, we are an essential part of what constitutes that Communion, and built it up over the years.

The Proposed  Anglican Covenant that is on the table, on the contrary, offers a bare-bones outline of some high points of Anglican theological and missiological thinking, while omitting other important points. It provides a vague conflict-management system that has consultation as its primary tool, and implicit threats of minimized relationships or participation as its primary means of discipline. To suggest that this bears any resemblance whatever to the High Priestly Prayer of Jesus seems a rather large stretch.

We need a model for the church based on Christ's prayer, and the mode of the Divine Who Is a Trinity in Unity.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

The Wedding Banquet

Saint James Fordham • All Saints Sunday 2011
a sermon by Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
The angel said to me, Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.

There is an old tradition that on the night before a marriage, the future bride and groom are separately wined and dined by their friends at bachelor or bachelorette parties — with perhaps more emphasis on the wining than the dining! Well, All Saints Day is the day on which the church celebrates the marriage supper of the Lamb. And since the marriage supper is yet to begin — we’ve received the invitation but it isn’t dated; we’ve just been told to be ready and alert — in one sense the church’s whole vigil here on earth is like a long bachelor or bachelorette party as we anticipate the great day to come. We who have yet to cross over to the life of the world to come, we in what is called the Church Militant (as opposed to the Church Triumphant), we who feebly struggle while they in glory shine, we, Christ’s body still at work, remember and give thanks for those who rest from their labors.

+ + +

Now one of the things about the parties surrounding weddings, is that the guests usually bring gifts for the new bride and groom. But what can we possibly bring as a gift for someone who has everything already! For the wedding we are talking about is the wedding of Christ and the Church, the wedding supper of the Lamb! And if anyone ever deserved the title The Man Who Has Everything, it is Jesus Christ, the one who draws the whole world to himself.

The answer is that Jesus wants one other gift, one thing we possess but which we can hold back if we will, or choose to let go of and give to him. And that is ourselves. We can choose to keep to ourselves, or we can choose to give ourselves to the one who gave us everything; we can give our selves, our souls and bodies, as a reasonable and holy sacrifice.

The Saints in glory, both the big famous saints with churches named after them, whose likenesses are enshrined in stained glass and icons, (or on the wall outside the parish office!), and the less well-known saints with likenesses preserved on our own little remembrance board there under the altar, the saints are those who gave themselves to God. And their example can help us to be as generous with ourselves as they were with themselves. The wonderful thing about the communion of saints — and I mean all of the saints, living and dead, including us here as much as the saints in glory — the wonderful thing about the communion of saints is that we help each other become gifts to God. We bear each other up when we are tempted to slide back and away from our best efforts to serve our Lord.

Ultimately all of us come to the wedding banquet carrying some of our brothers and sisters and being carried by others of them. No one gets in empty-handed! We are called and invited to the wedding, and we are to come bearing love for one another, which ofttimes means literally bearing each other up. The only wedding invitation we will have to show at the door to heaven is each other. No one gets in unaccompanied.

Remember the stern question that God asked the first murderer, and his cavalier response: Where is your brother? and Am I my brother’s keeper? Think of the sadness that pierced the heart of God when he heard those words in answer to the question, and left unsaid the response, “Of course you are." We are responsible to and for each other, connected through the bond of our common humanity. That bond is stronger than mere nationality or culture, and is fundamental and basic to our very being as human beings.

The weight of each other, as we bear each other and each other’s burden — as indeed Christ bears us — is the gentle and easy yoke of Christ. All of us are brothers and sisters in him, because it is through him that we become children of God.

What form that family will take, what we will become when we arrive, remains to be seen — it is not yet revealed. All of the blessedness that Jesus describes in the beatitudes is sometimes only perceived in that retrospective glance. In the present, most of those things are not pleasant while they are being endured! The road of sainthood is hard, no doubt about it. Being persecuted for righteousness sake is no bed of roses. It is only once we have arrived at the goal of the heavenly call — only when we look back to see our lives laid out in testimony, that we will see what a journey we have taken.

And more importantly, who has been with us and bearing us up along the way. What unknown hands lift burdens from our backs? What unknown saints walk at our sides and help us over obstacles of which we may not even be aware? Only when we’ve reached the goal will we be able to look back and see.

And what we will see will be worthy of the vision of Saint John the Divine. All the church through time and space, all the prophets and apostles and martyrs, all the saints in their festal company, and all the holy people of God will be displayed as a huge inverted wedge of souls and saints carrying and being carried by one another, an inverted pyramid that focuses its sharp, heavy point on a man nailed to a cross outside the walls of Jerusalem — who bears it all, with arms outstretched.

Though that weight pushed him down to the very depths when he descended to the dead, yet the power of God working in him raised him up again, and the power of God working through him can and will push that whole great pyramid of charity right on up and out of time and space and into eternity. And the first shall be last: the first fruits of the resurrection, Jesus the Bridegroom, is behind us urging us on, bearing us forward, ushering us into the banqueting hall.

+ + +

God is full of surprises. We thought we were coming to the wedding banquet as servants, then found we were no longer servants, but friends. Then we were surprised to find that the bridegroom would act as usher. But a far greater surprise awaits us. We had just settled into the notion that we were to be guests at the banquet, friends of the bridegroom. But it turns out that we are much more even than wedding guests. All this blessed company — ironically blessed in poverty, meekness, thirst for righteousness, hunger for mercy and peace, and even under persecution — all this company of blessedness will gather at the banquet, as more than guests: we are the Bride herself.

We, in company with all those who have gone before, the apostles, prophets, and martyrs, all the holy people of God, the blessed company of all faithful people, the saints militant and triumphant are the Bride!

This is the mystery we celebrate today. We and all our beloved ones, together with the unnumbered saints who have gone before us, participate in God’s great saving act in Jesus Christ our Lord. We as the Church in the communion of saints are eternally united to him by his gracious gift of himself once offered for us all — for what God has joined together shall never be put asunder. And so, to our Lord and God — and loving Spouse — let us with grateful hearts ascribe all might, majesty, power and dominion, henceforth and forevermore.+

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The Covenant Crisis

As I have noted previously, I find myself poised somewhere between the two extremes of the Anglican Covenant debate. At one end are those who appear to think that not only is no agreement needed, but that the very idea of pan-Anglican governance is inimical to our identity as Anglicans. At the other extreme are those who appear to think that the AngCov is not merely the best way forward but the only way forward to settle the disputes that have raged through the Communion over the last two decades or so.

I find myself much more inclined towards the former than to the latter. In fact, I find the latter position not only to be facially absurd — if the member provinces of the Communion cannot agree on the Covenant itself, it cannot very well be the basis or means for subsequent agreement — but contradictory to the historical evidence, and arguably misguided as a way forward even were there signs of widespread willingness to move in such a direction.

The latter view is well typified by this comment from the Rev’d Dr. Alyson Barnett-Cowan, Director for Unity, Faith and Order in the Anglican Communion Office.

It’s become quite clear that if we’re to be a global church, we need something that expresses how we live together as a family.

One of the good things about this thesis is that it recognizes — by expressing it as a goal — that the Anglican Communion is not “a global church.” So what is it? It is “a fellowship of autonomous churches.” This fact raises two questions: 1) what is autonomy? And 2) is autonomy circumstantial or essential to Anglicanism?

The meaning of autonomy

Autonomy means self-governance. In the Anglican usage it is really more like its political equivalent “sovereignty.” When a church is autonomous it means that there is no “superior synod” to which it is answerable. (Mark McCall has argued just the opposite, on the basis of political double-speak that refers to “autonomous regions” within some larger governing structure — but it is double-speak I am attempting to clear away, and there is no need for the church to ape the duplicity of the state! “Conditional autonomy” belongs in the category with “partial virginity” and, as Groucho observed, “military intelligence.”)

One of the catchphrases of the AngCov debate has been the Windsor Report’s, “Communion is the limit of autonomy.” I reflected on this at length almost three years ago, and my views have not changed since. My point is that if autonomy is limited then it isn’t autonomy. Even if it is merely voluntary self-censorship, it is precisely submission to a heteronomous influence.

My sense is that all of this is the heritage of the liberal knee-jerk reaction to past colonialism adopted at the Toronto Congress in 1963 under the mealy-mouthed term mutual responsibility and interdependence. “Mutual responsibility” I can certainly buy — no church is an island, as John Donne might observe were he around to participate in our current discussions. But “interdependence?” While “responsibility” carries with it some idea of gifts, “interdependence” is far too needy a term. This is not to say, with anti-Pauline brusqueness, “I have no need of you.” Rather it is to acknowledge the reality that while the various churches can learn from each other and work together with each other, the idea that we “depend” on each other is both a historical and logical fallacy.

Circumstance or essence?

Which brings me to the second question. The Church of England’s assertion of autonomy from the Church of Rome is not a mere historical accident. The sense of national autonomy was passed down to all of the daughter churches arising from the English colonial and imperial adventures, and the further granddaughters borne by those churches. As I noted in my previous post on this subject, so keen were the English to keep the American church separate from them, that they forbade (by Act of Parliament) the newly consecrated American bishops White and Provoost, and anyone they would consecrate or ordain, from ever functioning within his Majesty’s dominions. (Obviously this Act of Parliament was either repealed or ignored at some point.) This sense of autonomy was so powerful that it led to the formation of a separate Protestant Episcopal Church of the Confederate States of America at the time of the Civil War — a new entity created with some sense of regret at the necessity in the South and utterly ignored in the Union and the General Convention.

I have written before about the practical advantage of autonomy — it allows for provincial testing of contextual developments in discipline and worship and for their gradual reception or rejection by other provinces. (Such developments have happened at a slower pace in the past, and much of the tension in the Communion in our time is no doubt due to the rapid increase in the pace of communication and almost instant reactivity.) Autonomy is the safeguard both of local privilege of development and local insulation from foreign developments judged unacceptable. As I have noted time and again, no other province is forced or even expected to adopt what they regard as innovations in any other province, and autonomy is the bulwark against such pressures, if they are perceived to exist. The true statement is: Autonomy is the limit of communion interference.

Globalism as a confusion with Communion

The Anglican Communion is not a “global church” and I don’t want it to become one, for the very reason that such globalism will stifle the greatest gift Anglicanism offers to world Christendom (and if we have nothing to offer why do we exist?) — autonomy in diversity in a fellowship of churches who are not bound by each other’s local decisions.

This is a different model to the Roman, the church which “subsists” in the college of bishops in union with the heir of Peter. It is more like than unlike the Orthodox model of autocephalous churches pledged to a common inheritance of liturgy and canon law, each Orthodox entity holding itself to be the local expression of the fullness of the whole church.

Anglicans have historically understood the national or provincial church in much the same way, though without the common canon law aspect. It might be helpful to apply to the church the same term the Anglican Founders applied to Scripture: sufficiency. Each national or provincial church is sufficient unto itself for its own maintenance. It does not require or depend upon any input from any other sister church, although it welcomes and celebrates its communion with the other members of the Anglican family. Unlike an individual diocese, which cannot create a successor to its own bishop without the input of the larger church body of which the diocese forms a part, the national church or province is sufficient and competent to its own maintenance.

Finally, the Anglican Communion is, as the good Canon observes, a family. Families do not, in fact, require a written document to govern their behavior with one another. A few basic ground-rules defending autonomy, rather than generating a specious interdependency, would not be bad. Lionel Deimel put together such a list a while back. Such rules, some of which go back to Nicaea, include respect for provincial boundaries, fidelity to the Creeds, Sacraments, and the sufficiency of Scripture for salvation. If we are to have a Covenant, let it be one that preserves what is best in what we have, rather than mooning after something we have never had, and likely don’t need.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

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Post 800: From yesterday's sermon

What are the grapes or grain
that you could leave untouched
for others to be nourished by?
Perhaps it is the wheat and grapes you leave behind
that go to make
the bread and wine that will become
the Body and the Blood of God.

What extra miles have you trod down,
or coats or cloaks provided —
and has your cheek once felt
the sting of an unearned slap,
and yet you’ve not returned it
with a blow or protest?

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Pressure to Bear

With the upcoming Primates' Meeting looming, and in their latest effort to rewrite the past and influence the future, the busy scribes at the ACI have come up with this gem of a question: "Why does the PB insist on being present, e.g. at the Primates’ Meeting when she knows that this presence will derail the Meeting’s functionality?"

If it is the function of the Primates' Meeting to represent the breadth of the Communion as it actually is -- and I think it hard to argue that is not a major function of that body -- then it is the urged absence of the PB or the threatened absence of primates from elsewhere that disrupts the functionality of the meeting. Concerning the latter, none other than Bishop Fearon has urged the dissenting primates to think twice.

From the beginning, the reductionist view of the Communion supported by the ACI and portions of the Global South (if I dare reduce the verbosity of the scribes to "communion requires agreement") has dominated their side of the discussion. The church properly shows itself to be the body of Christ not only when it agrees, but when it loves and lives in hope in spite of disagreement. Consensus by elimination of those who disagree has a venerable history in the Christian past, but it is not a way to emulate. Comprehension requires more, and not to become too Hegelian, it is out of the process of addressing dissenting opinions that better understandings of the full truth will often emerge.

Schism is easy, faith and love are hard.


Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Rowan's Job Description

Archbishop Williams' interview with the Times, portions of which have been cited hither and yon, portray the torture of attempting to abide by his Job description. He feels it is his task to hold the reins in keeping the carriage of the Anglican Communion from going up on the sidewalk or over the cliff, but without any apparent notion he might also take a decision as to how to steer by a particular course, even if it means taking an unlikely detour through unfamiliar byways. (The horses may well be wilder than even he imagines, and this may be an impossibility, but he appears to think it not in his scope even to try. Meanwhile, a few of the passengers have already jumped from the carriage, in a few cases with someone else's luggage). In another image, he says he does not want to put a thumb on the scale, casting himself as an honest butcher.

And so he is in the position of restraining his own perhaps deeply held theological beliefs in order to maintain a kind of status quo in keeping with the long-held views of others on the topic of sexuality. He attempts to tease out fine distinctions -- and they are distinctions, and they are fine -- between orientation and activity, between the fact of who one is as opposed to the choices one might make. He articulates the traditional POV with regard to the matters at hand, as if that tradition were in fact as uniform as some would like to portray it, and with no clue as to how his own thoughts on the subject might lead to developments in that very tradition. (Fans of Cardinal Newman, take note!)

In the Daily Office last week I was reminded of the tale of Esther, who came to a position in which she could influence for the good, not by keeping silent, but by stepping bravely forward to take advantage of the opportunity presented to her. Her uncle Mordecai warned her that her failure to do so would redound to her loss.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Witness to the Witnesses

James and I are home from the celebration of the life and ministry of the Martyrs of Memphis. The observance began with an evening concert of early music celebrating the Blessed Virgin Mary, at St. Mary’s Cathedral, performed by a quartet Voce dell’Anima: voice, organ, viola da gamba and cornetto. Beautiful singing and playing!

St. Mary’s School and the adjoining Church of the Holy Communion observed the Martyrs and we toured the facility — a very impressive institution and going great guns. We’ve enjoyed a catfish fry up lunch at the Women’s Exchange.

James and I’ve managed to squeeze in a trip to Graceland (a shrine of an entirely different sort!)

After evensong and dinner at St. John’s Church (which is adorned with spectacular murals from the early 50s) I did a presentation on icons and iconography and lead a group in a workshop on creating our own icons with crayons — conté and Crayola!

The following day I preached in the Sisters' Chapel commemorating Constance & Companions, after which we went to Elmwood Cemetery, and enjoyed a box lunch and a fascinating talk by Patricia McFarland — highlighting some of the less well known figures in the story of the 1878 yellow fever outbreak. She also gave me a copy of Charles Turner’s The Celebrant — a novel on the life of Louis Schuyler — which I look forward to reading.

We then walked in a light rain to pray at their grave(s) — the sisters are buried head to head in a pinwheel formation, and Frs Parsons and Schuyler share a grave in another area of the cemetery. We also attended Evensong at the Rev. Bindy Snyder's parish, All Saints.

On Sunday morning I had the honor of celebrating the Eucharist at the Cathedral, and enjoyed the vibrant music program — the place was alive with the spirit. It was also a great privilege to celebrate with the "Memphis Chalice" — the chalice used by the sisters during their time in Memphis, now carefully and lovingly preserved as a memento of their service. Prior to the celebration Sister Mary Grace CSM and I did an adult forum on religious life — an effective tag-team, if I say so myself!

I’m very happy we were able to gather the four sisters with James and myself to pose with the Martyrs of Memphis icon on the Cathedral’s north wall. James and I stood in for Charles and Louis, and the sisters (left to right: Miriam, Elizabeth Grace, Mary Martha, and Mary Grace) represented their predecessors in the Community of Saint Mary.

On the last day we managed to visit the National Civil Rights Museum (at the site of the Lorraine Hotel where Dr. King was assassinated) and enjoyed a lovely dinner with the sisters and brothers of the Memphis Emmaus Chapter of Rivendell, another Christian Community bearing witness to God’s love and the Spirit’s movement.

All in all a very rich experience.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

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Dueling Epistles

Much is being made of the publication of two letters from two primates of the Anglican Communion: the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church. Both of them are well worth reading and say important things from their different perspectives: the Archbishop properly speaking in the role and to the end for which he feels responsible: to preserve the unity of the Anglican Communion; the Presiding Bishop properly speaking for the historic and continuing independence of the Episcopal Church concerning its internal affairs, while remaining Anglican in the same way it has from the beginning. To vastly oversimplify, Rowan appears in the role of loving parent of unruly children instructed that they will have to stay in their rooms without TV until they can get along with the rest of the family. He is very even-handed in laying down what he clearly thinks is the law. Katherine’s response is a reminder and reassertion that this role-play is in itself an assumption of a power not granted in an entity not yet constructed.

So, in its own way, this epistolary exchange incarnates the larger debate on the nature of the Anglican Communion itself, and whether it should continue as a fellowship of autonomous churches or morph into a more tightly governed structure, such as that proposed by the draft Anglican Covenant.

Some commentators are engaging in a bit of revisionist history when they seek to portray in the foundation of the Episcopal Church a desire to serve as a branch or outpost of the Church of England, which indeed the colonial churches had been, answerable to the Bishop of London, prior to the War of Independence. There may well indeed have been a few individuals who thought that way at that time. However, the bulk of the evidence shows that the emerging Episcopal Church of the late 18th century wanted nothing from England but bishops — that is, they wanted bishops (to remain Episcopal) but knew the church would not be English — and indeed if they were unable to obtain the episcopate from England they were happy to go to other quarters. Indeed, it is ironic that the principled Tory Seabury ended up going to Scotland, while the Patriot White held out for England, pressing other Patriots such as Jay and Adams in that cause. But however bishops were obtained, the documentary evidence shows that it was bishops that were wanted and not any kind of continued governance from England — a cordial relationship, yes; but governance, no.

On the contrary, great pains were taken in the new land to militate against any such divided loyalty. As the preface to the 1785 Constitution of the Episcopal Church stated as its first “Whereas” — “in the course of Divine Providence, the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America is become independent of all foreign authority, civil and ecclesiastical...” This language was echoed in the Preface to the first American Book of Common Prayer in 1789.

Nor were the English particularly interested in ecclesiastical entanglement with this new independent church in America, playing what is best described as an affectionately avuncular role. In witness of this, the Act of Parliament permitting Canterbury the ordination of American bishops contains this important proviso:

Provided also, and be it hereby declared, that no person or persons consecrated to the office of a bishop in the manner aforesaid, nor any person or persons deriving their consecration from or under any bishop so consecrated, nor any person or persons admitted to the order of deacon or priest by any bishop or bishops so consecrated, or by the successor or successors of any bishop or bishops so consecrated, shall be thereby enabled to exercise his or their respective office or offices within his Majesty's dominions.

Hardly a “continuation” of the Church of England, and rather a blow even to the notion of communion itself — usually understood as involving recognition and interchangeability of ministers — or to the ahistorical notion that a “bishop is a bishop for the whole church.” In fact, this proviso echos the language of the ancient canons that required bishops to confine themselves to their own sees and not meddle about extramurally.

But back to the dueling epistles: some, such as Diana Butler Bass, see this as a turning point — something’s got to give, and the Communion will never be the same. She may well be right, and I think that is unfortunate. I wish Rowan had exercised the wisdom of a truly loving parent, when from his perspective the children started acting up, to let them be, rather than to formalize their quarrels — and his Pentecost letter continues on that road of mildly vexed and punitive paternalism. It may have effect: It is so much easier to have consensus when those who disagree are removed from the conversation; but then, as with Caroline’s “ball without dancing” — it will not be near so much a conversation. Or a Communion.

Tobias Stanislas Haller

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Tempus Fidget

We appear to be in a fidgety time of impatience regarding the Anglican Communion and its afterthought Covenant. The wealth of comments at Thinking Anglicans (to which I admit to having contributed) is one indication. To read some of the comments one would think the eschaton was round the next bend.

It is good to remember, however, that actual signing-on to the Covenant, in The Episcopal Church in any case, is some time away. There is ample opportunity both to reflect on the document and consider other provinces' reactions to it e're we in TEC adopt, seek to amend, or reject it.

For many, this ambiguous state will seem intolerable. The irascible antagonists will cry for immediate expulsion of TEC, or affirm their belief that TEC cannot sign; the anxious communionists will appeal for diocesan, parochial or even individual subscription; and somewhere in the middle the rest of us will try to read the actual document with care and set aside our knowledge of motives and aims, and address the Ecclesiopolitik of what it means to express a desire to remain in communion with some who don't want to be in communion with us.

It is a difficult state to be in. As Schrödinger's Cat was heard to mew from within her thought-experimental box: "This is not a super position to be in!"

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Unity at what cost?

Those who built the tower of Babel did so as a means to promote their unity and prevent their dispersal. The problem was that God was not at the heart of their plan, but a handmade "door to heaven." Those who sought a comprehensive unity ended with mutual incomprehension.

Meanwhile, in the Great White North it seems a Girardian game of "Scape the Goat" is under way. This is a familiar scene in tea-shop and schoolyard, where a cozy feeling of fellowship and commonality (and I dare say, communion) is engendered between two parties by tut-tutting about an absent third party. Sometimes a similar dialogue takes place between a self-acknowledged sinner and her God, "I thank you, God, that I am not as bad as _______." None of these is a very pretty sight. When, after all, does community become conspiracy?

I am growing weary of the manners and morals of the schoolyard.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

A Sobering Blast from the Past

I had the very great pleasure of knowing Bishop Walter D. Dennis, Suffragan of New York, in his capacity as Visitor to the Brotherhood of Saint Gregory. He also had a keen eye for trends in the church, and often wrote about his prognostications. In the process of browsing through my library I came across the following from twenty years ago, which I think should rank him among the prophets. Archbishop Runcie, quoted herein, also has some apposite words for us, in light of the strained efforts towards an Anglican Covenant. Bishop Dennis writes:

If it turns out that unity with the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches is a high priority for the new Archbishop of Canterbury [George Carey], then ECUSA, as part of the Anglican Communion, may feel obliged to sell out on some of the commitments it has already made, namely, on the ordination of women, on the issue of abortion, on the issue of theological dissent and liberation theologies, and on gay rights. Clearly, many would revolt, feeling that the price of unity is too high if it requires Episcopalians to forfeit these commitments.

In the next decade, there will be much talk about authority—jurisdiction—collegiality, and ecclesiology. In using such terms, we had better be certain that in our discussions there is common definition of each term. The Anglican Church says that the four marks of Anglican authority are: The Archbishop of Canterbury, The Lambeth Conference, The Archbishops and Primates of the Anglican Communion, and the Anglican Consultative Council. As I understand it, such authority from any and all of these are consultative, but there will be heavy discussion about whether or not this consultation is for advice or for approval or, at the very least, for consensus. Also, many people will be discussing whether the Archbishop of Canterbury and Primates as well as the Anglican Consultative Council are on the same footing with the other two, and if so, how did this authority come to be? Did autonomous churches participating in all this give approval for those two additional bodies from their National Synods and/or Conventions? Speaking of his own authority and that of Lambeth, Archbishop Robert Runcie made the following statement in his opening address at Lambeth 1988:

One of the characteristics of Anglicanism is our Reformation inheritance of national or provincial autonomy. The Anglican tradition is thus opposed to centralism and encourages the thriving of variety. This is a great good. There is an important principle to be borne witness to here: that nothing should be done at a higher level than is absolutely necessary. So Anglicans have become accustomed to speak of a dispersed authority. And we are traditionally suspicious of the Lambeth Conference becoming anything other than a Conference. We may indeed wish to discuss the development of more solid structures of unity and coherence. But I for one would want their provisional character made absolutely clear; like tents in the desert, they should be capable of being easily dismantled when it is time for the Pilgrim People to move on. We have no intention of developing an alternative Papacy. We would rather continue to deal with the structures of the existing Petrine Ministry, and hopefully help in its continuing development and reform as a ministry of unity for all Christians. [The Lambeth Conference, 1988, The Truth Shall Make You Free (London: Church House Publishers, 1988).]

“A Personal Prospectus On The Episcopal Church In The 1990s,” Walter D. Dennis, in The St Luke’s Journal of Theology, December 1990, Volume XXXIV Number 1, pages 11-12

brought to you by Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

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Incarnation (?)

The official final version of the Anglican Communion Covenant (as it is now presumptively, not to say presumptuously, called) is now available for adoption or otherwise "entering into."

I've promised some further musings on the Covenant in days leading up to now, and as the final text is abroad I suppose I must put some effort into it. Fighting the ennui of the dim days leading up to the darkest of the year, and word of an impending blizzard, I will observe, in light of the upcoming feast of the Incarnation, that the main problem I have with the Covenant is that it incarnates the very problems it ostensibly is designed to solve. It is self-fulfilling prophecy, putting into turgid church-speak the stunningly obvious fact that those who want to get along with each other will get along without a Covenant, and those who don't want to get along with each other will fail to do so even if there is a Covenant in place.

Thus this whole Covenant business is really a form of adoptionism, rather than a real new incarnation or birth — christening our crises and diagnosing our dilemma without offering any real direction for maturing growth in community or treatment for what ails us — which at this point appears to be a form of auto-immune disease.

Section Four, even after reworking, strikes me as still much too much in the world of the ecclesiastical busybodies and perfectionists, the fixer-uppers of other people's failings, even with its suggested form of DIY discipline, consisting mostly of voluntarily dropping out of participation in aspects of the life of the Communion. That hardly seems churchly, except in the worst sense of Benign Neglect which the English Episcopate brought to a high art in the 19th century. At its worst it suggests too much the other classical English solution of Partition (though voluntary in this case) and so once again paradoxically points us away from each other rather than toward each other or to Godward — the root problem of placing the focus for Communion with each other not in Christ but in our own handcrafted Instruments, on none of which is the varnish even dry.

This is not to say we have no need of institutional structures, but this proposal, for all its lipservice, seems to replace autonomy-in-communion with a kind of heteronomy-in-diffusion, with nothing to keep people together in Christ except their own weak and fallible wills and mild threats of being sent to Coventry. What is really needed, I'll say again as I've said before, is the kind of oikonomy-in-commonality enjoyed by the Benedictines — each household committed to follow a common rule, without any necessary superstructure or power from above apart from that of God's own Holy Spirit. Let the Gospel be our Rule, Baptism our commonality, and our cooperation focused on the needs of the world, not on the maintenance of our structures.

In the long run voluntary discipline doesn't work when it is completely voluntary, does it? Those who are not able or not willing to discipline themselves will not frame themselves to someone else's idea of right and wrong, especially when there are strong differences of opinion at work as to just what is right and wrong. (Appeals to the mind of the Communion beg the question entirely, as the Communion lacks any authoritative instrument to determine what that mind is. Right now it is twitching like a brainless frog. It isn't just that the center cannot hold, but that there is no center. By taking our eyes off of God and Christ in each other we have begun to drift.) And external discipline is useless if its only punitive form (excision) is seen as a reward or at least as no big whoop; and we've seen more than enough of the "you can't fire me; I quit" mentality at work in the Communion (on several sides of our several divides) over the last few years to keep us for a while.

So, in short, I don't see the Covenant "solving" anything but merely putting the seal on the ultimate collapse of the Anglican experiment — or at least this phase of that experiment. This proposal neither preserves the old nor offers something truly new; it merely fixes us in our present state of tension (or "restraint") until time's ever-flowing stream does its work and the slow movement of consensus drags Anglicanism (some of it kicking and screaming) forward a few feet into the reality of a post-Christendom world. By the time it gets there, however, the world will have moved on, and I suspect few will be interested in anything we have to say.

And so... that being said...
Should the member churches adopt it? As I hope I've made clear, at this point I don't see it as accomplishing much of anything, but not damaging too much either. It all just seems so dilatory and passive. I would much rather a missional covenant based on a commitment to work together (come what may, for better or worse in terms of what we like or don't about each other) on common human issues. I suppose I'd rather see a loose federation that accomplishes something rather than a tightly linked communion that does little but obsess over its internal issues.

But as this Covenant will allow for getting back to work once we get it out of the way, signed and filed, perhaps the best thing to do is simply sign on and then be on about our business, as long as it is God's business. It appears, if anybody gets upset with anything anyone does that is "incompatible with the Covenant," the worst that could happen is some unnamed "relational consequence" — but whatever that is could hardly be worse than the current mess of unilateral communion-breaking and interference in the internal affairs of other provinces.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

The Heterosectual Communion

The soi-disant Anglican Communion Institute has a knack for inverting the old Latin tag, "the mountains labored and bore a mouse." In this case the gang of three, augmented by an attorney and a bishop, have given birth to a mountain of verbiage which in the long run, fundamentally flawed as it is, amounts to less than a mole-hill.

The attorney in question, Mr. McCall, of whose eccentric writings I have commented elsewhere, is apparently retired from the field of international law, in which, one hopes, he had some skill in practice. Unfortunately, as the old saying goes, when your only tool is a hammer everything looks like a nail, and so this paper applies the international law definition of the word autonomy to the very different ecclesiastical context, in which it has an almost antithetical meaning, and the more basic one, "self-governing." The notion of comparing the autonomy of a member church of the Anglican Communion (there being no superior synod as of yet) to an autonomous indigenous people living within the borders of another superior state — well, that is not the closest parallel I think most Anglicans would light upon. But as I say, Mr. McCall has trod that path before, with that peculiar leapfrog of governance from diocese to communion without recognition of the provincial authority that is, in fact, at the head of the governing hierarchy.

The more serious problem with this paper is its failure to understand the essential premise under which the Anglican Communion is actually working — pace Bishop Wright's and Ephraim Radner's insistence otherwise. That they both have worked at the behest of the Archbishop of Canterbury does not necessarily indicate that they have fully grasped the intent of his program — which is unity in difference, not division because of it. It should be clear to anyone but the most heart-set on purity of doctrine that the Archbishop desperately wants to keep the Communion together, not preside over its division.

The purpose for drafting a Covenant is not to ensure that all who agree to it will think and act alike and so because of that uniformity of thinking and doing stay together . (If that were the purpose, it is doomed from the start.)

The purpose of the Covenant is to ensure that we will stay together precisely when we have differences — that we won't start flying apart the next time some contentious issue comes along, as no doubt it will. The Covenant is designed to deal with future disagreements, not to settle the differences of the past or present. (Some suggest that this cause is equally doomed from the start.)

But the bright light at the tunnel's end is not, I think, a train heading our way. I sense a greater willingness in the Communion to hang together, to accept some of the differences of the recent past and present as not "communion-breaking" and certainly not as rendering participation by the majority of the member churches — including TEC — impossible. This is why the folks at ACI expend such futile energy in painting a very different picture — a picture of an Anglican Communion no longer inclusive of TEC, or anyone else who thinks otherwise than they do on an assortment of topics.

Fortunately, the language of the Covenant is not about settling the controversies, but about living with them. It is about the manner of life to be followed by the Communion as a whole, its chosen lifestyle, if you will: shall it be one that embraces difference of opinion under a loving and overarching charity; or shall it give in to the old fissiparousness that has plagued Western Christendom from long before the Reformation?

In short, How best can the Many be One.

Paul the Apostle provided one answer: unity in Christ in which the various organs of the body retain their different gifts and functions, and yet are part of one body, under one Head, who is Christ, and in whom unity emerges not from uniformity, but through fellowship, a vibrant fellowship that relishes its own heterogeneity and delights in its manifold gifts.

The ACI provides the other sort of answer, the uniformity that seeks to place some other thing in God's place -- unity itself idolized into a Golden Calf, to which difference is sacrificed, beaten to a homogenized pulp.

Little ones, keep away from idols.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Failing Solomon's Test

The Hebrew scripture reading at Morning Prayer today was the account of Solomon's test of the two women who both claimed to be mothers of the sole surviving child in their household. When Solomon gave the order that the child be cut in two, the true mother, moved by pity, was willing to let the other woman have the living child. This revealed her identity and Solomon's wisdom.

When it comes to dividing the Anglican Communion I think we are dealing with a similar situation — though a less lethal one: that is, even if divided, some sort of Anglican Communion, or a split-level Anglican Communion, or perhaps two distinct Anglican Communions (each claiming the title) will continue to exist; hampered in mission, diminished in scope, but still able to say, with Monty Python's medieval peasant, "I'm not dead yet."

Where I see greater resonance with this impressive episode in Solomon's reign is the similarity of certain voices from the edges to the voice of the not-mother of the child, "Let it be divided!"

To be blunt, the far right represented by GAFCON has already moved on the division and is unlikely to recant short of a change in leadership and a change of heart. They do not wish to be part of an entity that fails to live up to their standards, and are confident that they represent the vital body while those they oppose are a tumor or a gangrenous limb, to be removed not simply as a matter of convenience but in order to preserve the life of the body.

But to be fair, there are also voices on the far left of the progressive end of the spectrum who have been equally vehement in their rejection of continued unity if it is going to mean any hesitation in or denial of adopting what they see as righteous, good, and just. "Let the schismatics go!" is the watchword; or even more extremely, "We don't need no stinking Communion..." (or words to that effect.)

Somewhere in the midst of all of this are those who see a virtue in unity even if it is an imperfect unity; who see virtue in staying together even if it means a lack of clear consensus; who see a value in compromise even if it means everyone not being entirely satisfied.
And this is where I once again return to my appeal for patience, a laissez-faire attitude, and honoring the provincial autonomy of the member churches of the Communion. For there are many provinces in the Communion who are willing to live with anomalies taking place in other provinces — not all are insistent that all must do as they do in all things.

We are not, after all, a world-church — which is simply a statement of fact, not an effort to short-circuit what might emerge as a world-church after a considerable period of time.The proposed Covenant — more proposed than a covenant at this point! — may find ways, one hopes particularly Anglican ways, of fostering our unity without undercutting our traditional liberty in matters of rites and ceremonies and, more importantly, the relationships and ministries for which those rites and ceremonies are designed, and which they institute and support.

The majority of provinces in the Communion appear willing to engage in this process of exploration, listening, and reflection: respectful of others' actions without the need to approve those actions. This seems to me to be on adult and mature manner of working.

And I do not think it takes a Solomon to see the wisdom of such an approach.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Musings after Repose

Well, I’m back from Convocation, none the worse for the restful time, but facing all of the usual residua to which that meeting gives rise: photos, videos, minutes, reports, updates, usw.

Meanwhile, over at the Old HoBD Corral, I’ve been having a discussion on the Prevailing Issue, and why it (discussion) is so difficult. I’ve observed that many among the “Reasserter” side of things seem content to reassert what they believe to be the True Answer to the problem; and rarely seem willing to discuss the issue in anything approaching a rational argument, moving from agreed upon premises to conclusions in logical steps. As the name implies, they usually articulate a reassertion of the premise/conclusion in circular form. And that is a logical fallacy. (It may be true, but it is illogical).

If this leaves us at an impasse, it is because the reasserters are unwilling to “do the theology,” as they often accuse the progressive / reappraiser side of doing. In fact, what I’m suggesting is we all need to do some reappraising together. When folks simply forbid reappraisal, we end up with a situation such as that in the Roman Catholic Church, which in regard to the ordination of women has confessed that the theological rationale of previous years was insufficient, and recognized that the more recent theological arguments were tending towards dodgy ground; and so finally ruled, “End of discussion.”)

In our situation, I think it is more helpful to engage the issue, as indeed I have gone to pains to do in Reasonable and Holy: to look at the various tele* or goods of marriage, as variously defined in the tradition, to see if a same-sex couple is capable of achieving those ends or enjoying those goods. It is, it appears to me after my study, possible to answer that question in the affirmative.

It is also helpful to look at the larger question, “What is the telos of the human being?” — about which there is considerable consensus in the Christian tradition, from both sides of the Catholic/Protestant divide: to know, love, serve and glorify God and to enjoy him for ever. And we have been taught that we achieve or thwart that end in connection to how we treat other human beings, likewise made in the image of God. This is why the theology of the imago Dei, and the recent distortions in that theology (in an unwise attempt to frame a theological defense of traditional marriage) are so important.

Now, this is not to place all of the blame on one side. Much of the argument on both sides has consisted in people talking past each other, mouthing their conclusions and waving their catch-phrases as if they were self-evident truths. This is why I try to engage people in going back to the first principles upon which we actually agree and then working forward in stepwise fashion, to see where we might end up. This necessitates a willingness to adopt up front the Anglican doctrine of humility: that we have no doubt erred, and may well err again.

For some on both sides, as well, the topic is ended, the book closed, there is no further reason for discussion. In the face of that reality, there can be any amount of dust shaken from plenty of heels, a parting of the ways — or a willingness to agree to disagree. Many in the Anglican Communion seem willing to adopt that kind of “watchful waiting” approach; it seems to be the hope of the Archbishop of Canterbury (more on this later) and the sense of “moratoria” (instead of “prohibitions”). Still, even in holding out this possibility for change Canterbury and the communion moderates are offending both those who want to see the church adopt an amended view on The Subject, and those who see such an adoption, or even its entertainment, as departure from the faith once given.

One of my interlocutors at HoBD suggested I was unwilling to adopt “first principles” myself, but I suggested that what he was offering as premises looked like conclusions to me. I rejoined that to find common ground we must get behind those conclusions to find something more basic. He offered one such principle, upon which I can agree as a basis for discussion, a classical concept well in keeping with the style of first principles: “The scriptures are ‘God’s word written’ and therefore normative for matters of salvation and Christian life.”

Although this statement itself requires a good bit of unpacking (and I look to Richard Hooker for the classical version of that task) it is something I can and do fully accept and affirm. In similar language it forms part of the Lambeth unpacking of Chicago’s Quadrilateral.

Where he and I part company is not on this fundamental premise, but on the conclusions we draw from it. So examining the arguments by which we reach these conclusions, the logical steps and inferences (and the related and sometimes unstated premises upon which they rely), would be a helpful form of engagement. Of primary importance is getting those other unstated premises out on the table. Sometimes these unstated premises are seen to be self-evident, but my experience is that they form another part of the obstacle to clear thinking.

One of the things we clearly disagree about is not whether the Scripture is a “normative” (I prefer the old language of “sufficient”) guide to salvation and moral living, but whether Scripture actually addresses The Issue upon which we disagree: is same-sex marriage possible, and if so, is it moral?

These are not easy questions, and any argument from Scripture or Reason or Tradition is going to be complex, as there is no explicit prohibition (or approbation) of same-sex marriage in Scripture; Reason alone is unlikely to provide a clear answer acceptable to those who think Scripture is clear; and Tradition, while generally tending one way, is also mixed. This is why a glib conclusion, either way, while tempting, will not settle the argument.

I am content to continue the discussion. As a starter, I want to comment briefly on one of the unspoken corollary premises of the reasserter position: that Genesis offers us a “one size fits all” divine pattern for all human sexual relations.

I address this assertion at some length in R&H, as well as the discontinuities of this premise with significant aspects of the tradition, but I want to raise an additional question here, concerning taking Genesis as a template at all, that is, questioning the very premise. Why is Genesis seen as a template for all sexual relations but not for any or all other human activities? Why, for example, do we allow other forms of industry than agriculture? (Given that was Cain’s metier and industry was the invention of the offspring of Lamech’s polygamous unions.) Why do we allow women to use anaesthesia in childbirth? (Roundly opposed on biblical grounds in the Victorian era, until Victoria herself made use of it.) Why aren’t we all vegetarians? (Yes, I know God changed the rules in Genesis 9, but if we were so keen on living in accord with God’s original intent, vegetarianism is the most biblical answer.) More importantly, Why, if the subjection of women to their husbands is a result of the fall, has it taken the church so long to recognize women as restored to their antelapsarian state as equal collaborators?

These seem to be to be questions worthy of reflection in opposition to the view that the patterns laid out in Genesis are necessarily the only options available to the children of Adam and Eve, the children of God and siblings of Christ.

However, if there is no willingness to engage these questions, if we are simply at a standoff — none of us able to convince the other of the truth of our position, or even to discuss the matter with some degree of mutual care and willingness to perhaps change our minds — then our challenge is to see if we are able to live together in harmonious disagreement, and wait for time itself slowly to winnow truth. I am certainly willing to do so, as I think there are far more important matters facing us, about which we do have significant agreement, and our efforts and resources would be well spent in their pursuit. Such as the mission of the church to restore people to unity with each other and God in Christ.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

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* A helpful correction from Bill Carroll