Endgame?

I note this week that in the aftermath of the Dar es Salaam communique (besides that i can spell Dar es Salaam), and the House of Bishops response, folks are envisioning how TEC might look once the struggle is over. Perhaps in our own war we're creeping past Churchill's, "it's not the end, it's not the beginning of the end, but it's the end of the beginning."

In that regard this week, there was a guest editorial on the Blog of Daniel website by a conservative priest from San Joaquin in response to an invitation to envision how the Church might look in the future. The priest refers to the 'horsepills,' each side must swallow:

Horsepill 1: the conservative perspective, "while we cannot condone the blessing of committed relationships other than heterosexual marriage, because anything else falls short of God's design, neither will we harass, condemn, or judge you. We will let you live in peace, and be available to you with informal pastoral support. And we will remain in an Episcopal Church in which many (most) believe that God is calling us to something more overt, as a faithful minority, even as we disagree about God's call."

Horsepill 2: the liberal perspective, "just because you don't support the goal of 'full inclusion,' doesn't mean you're homophobic, and those of you who can't accept women as priests and bishops are not misogynists. We understand the need for some degree of 'insulation' from what church leaders are saying and doing, even while we don't agree with your perception. We believe conservative dioceses should be able to elect bishops that reflect their values, and have those elections consented to. And while we don't share many of the views of our Anglican brothers and sisters in the developing world, our unity with them is so precious to us that we are willing to lay aside some of what we consider to be true."

Where do I start? First, there's that familiar sense that conservatives know without a doubt 'God's design,' while God isn't mentioned at all from the liberal perspective, and if I'm already exasperated at this point, what chance does this have?

Is it sufficient that conservatives will let liberals live in peace? No, but gee, thanks. Is it possible that conservatives can act as a faithful minority? The entire period from 2003 until now shows their leaders aren't willing. The reason the Bishop of South Carolina was not consented to was not that he was conservative, but that he wasn't perceived to be loyal to the institution to which he was elected. A loyal conservative would no doubt have been confirmed, not one, who throughout, and especially at the last minute, with his election slipping away, issues a transparently tactical pledge worthy of a political convention that no one took seriously.

I've been reading the Austrian economist F.A. Hayek this week. If you know of him, you might be surprised. When Maggie Thatcher was running for office, she came in upon a meeting of her campaign team who were struggling to create a platform. She's famously reported to have slammed down Hayek's "The Road to Serfdom," saying, 'this is our platform!" No liberal, he. Yet while he's revered as a free market god by modern British and American conservative mandarins, he so rejects that title, he was moved to publish an article called "Why I Am Not a Conservative."

The goal of Hayek was to distinguish between folks who claim the mantle of conservatism but still desire a large role for governement versus those who stand for a more unfettered liberty. I've been pursuing this distinction for a long time because as strange as it feels to even write it, I believe as I've aged, as a direct result of working at homeless shelters, I've come more and more to accept that true liberty means living an independent-minded life of responsibility and consequences at a local level as possible.

What's wierd is that Republicans, while perceived as being the party of small government, are always calling for more government, from what books should be on library shelves, to enormous subsidies and sole source contracts for huge corporations, to eliminating privacy as a right to the point where all personal decisions, even who lives or dies, aren't made within the family but are dictated by a litany of national legislation and constitutional amendments.

The reason it's unlikely Hayek would think the horsepill approach workable is found where he writes, "I do not mean to write the conservative lacks moral conviction. The typical conservative is indeed usually a man of very strong moral convictions. What I mean is that he has no political principles which enable him to work with people whose moral values differ from his own for a political order in which both can obey their convictions. It is the recognition of such principles that permit the coexistence of different sets of values that makes it possible to build a peaceful society with a minimum of force. The conservative is less concerned with the problem of how the powers of government should be limited than with that of who wields them; he regards himself as entitled to force the value he holds on other people."

Indeed. If as our San Joaquin priest writes, conservatives were ever willing to live as a faithful minority in disagreement, since they were twice on the losing end of a two thirds and a three fourths majority vote at two consecutive general conventions, rather than believing they're entitled to force the values they hold on other people, we would not be in this mess in the first place.

In Hayek's worldview, though, the recent neo-Anglican surge amongst us would be akin to socialism in its level of desire to enforce its singular discernment of morality. He writes, "conservatism by its very nature cannot offer an alternative to the direction in which we are moving. It may succeed by its resistance to current tendencies to slowing down undesirable developments, but, since it does not indicate another direction, it cannot prevent their continuance."

This is what I've instinctively known throughout the struggle; that when all one does is play defense, then, by nature, one acts stubbornly defensive, and increasingly harsh, and therfore remains in a place where it's difficult to move forward in any way; in fact, your constituency demands no compromise as a condition for continued membership and funding. Hayek confirms, "the belief in integral freedom is based on an essentially forward-looking attitude and not on any nostalgic longing for the past or a romantic admiration for what has been."

The rub (there's always a rub, as you know by now, faithful reader) whether liberal, libertarian or conservative, is that it's not enough to exist based upon a pledge by a semi-faithful minority not to harass the vast majority, today, since they'll always appear something new to further oppose, tomorrow. In the post-HOB response to Dar es Salaam, the majority is coming together, first, by rejecting a non-Anglican Papal-like authority exercised by remote non-TEC Bishops, as alien to the nature of the Church in America from its founding, indeed, as the reason for its founding; and two, as a Church not content with standing still in the face of harassment, but as a body actively pursuing the furtherance of justice and inclusion, in a tent large enough hold local parishes where that is less self-evident, and parishes where that identity is central and active. The American Episcopal Church, while exclusively Christian, but with a governance containing a bi-cameral constitutional structure, is the ideal institution through which this forward-looking approach can operate within a pluralistic polity.

With each parish free to act in a manner natural to its dna, there exists no conceivable place for an extemist organization with an Archbishop, allied to other like-minded primates, that claims a Scriptual authority and mandate to not only extinguish all other ideas than ones known by the elect to be inspired by God and Holy Writ, but that also serves, overtly and complicitly, to threaten even the very lives of those who are vulnerable to the violence inspired by their thoughts, words and deeds.

I take a dozen pills a day so that I might continue to exist. The horsepill prescribed by the San Joaquin priest is one to many to swallow with insufficient effect.