Hello Newman

I note this week the phrases 'exerise restraint,' and 'not to authorize public rites,' in the House of Bishops post-New Orleans statement.

I'm loathe to agree with Akinola on anything yet his description of this language as 'not a whole-hearted embrace,' and 'merely a temporary adjustment,' is spot on. Just as it was a simple matter to drive holes through Mark Lawrence's language on whether he'd stay loyal to TEC if elected Bishop of South Carolina, this old bureaucrat could cruise a Buick through the gaps on the HoB highway. Akinola and his henchmen may be wicked; they're not stupid.

Appeasement is a rascally charge for those who quite rightly and nobly advocate negotiations and are otherwise partial to peaceful means under the vast majority of circumstances. It can certainly be employed to justify pre-emptive reckless behavior. Here, though, it plays to form: "In international relations, the Lesson of Munich asserts that adversaries will interpret restraint as indicating a lack of capability or politcal will or both; appeasement discredits the defenders' willingness to fight, and encourages the agressor to escalate his demands.'

The HoB statement, decidedly rejected by Akinolista's everywhere, also didn't play well with those it was its round-about intention to defend. Reactions of some here-to-fore faithful gay and lesbian Episcopalians, as reported on the Inch at a Time website, include resignation of ordination, departures to the UCC, and conversions to Judaism. I've always told Connie that after a last stand at an Episcopal Dunkirk, it's the Unitarians that beckon an escape to a theological England. When I was but a lad growing up in pre-Disney Orlando, it was exposure to that idealistic sect which formulated the progressive religious and political ethics I uncompromisingly carry fifty years later.

Friends, like Mark, temper caution, and I'm not ready to depart the beloved parish to which we've returned as it rebuilds after the majority voted to join the Akinola-Minns-Duncan axis of evil. So it's time to step back from the emotional precipice - my way, as always, is to seek solace in the timeless stepstones that calm and deliver. As revealed last week, the study of John Henry Newman's, 'The Development of Christian Doctrine,' lays out a path which demonstrates time is on our side if we but have the patience to wait, even though our patience is wearing thin.

First, though, a provisio: Newman would likewise have been disdainful not only of the HoB statement but the process. He wrote, "Sometimes discordant ideas are for a time connected and concealed by a common profession or name. Such is the case of coalitions in politics and comprehensions in religion, of which commonly no good is to be expected. Such is an ordinary function of committees and boards, and the sole aim of conciliations and concessions, to make contraries look the same, and to secure an outward agreement where there is no other unity."

The aforementioned Mark once gravely warned against an acceptance of a vestry nomination to serve. How right he was: after enduring an unending series of 9 to 1 votes on whether to move the parish from a low-income immigrant-friendly neighborhood to an affluent suburb so we could 'more effectively minister to the wealthy who were more like us,' I resigned in disgust one and a half years into a three year term. Did you know that despite being described as magnificantly healthy, Robert E. Lee mysteriously took ill and mysteriously died immediately after a two-hour vestry meeting? (This comes as no suprise to any current/past vestry member...)

Anyhow, John Henry projects ideas as corporeal - they grow or die, following an organic eleven-step process:

1) after birth, they are initially expressed inadequately;

2) agitation ensues a -

3) period of confusion;

4) new lights emerge;

5) judgments emerge/aspects accumulate;

6) a teaching arises -

7) that's contrasted against existing teachings -

8) the new is interrogated, criticized, defended;

9) opinions are collectd, sifted, selected, rejected;

10) the idea interjects itself into our lives, changing public opinion, strengthening or undermining the established order;

11) to become a theology - "a being in substance - what the idea meant from the first, with the corrections of many minds, and the illustrations of many experiences."

Who can deny that the idea of the societal justice of full inclusion has reached step 10 and is gaining fast on step 11 - the Akinolistic last remaining redoubt of reactionary opinion? This final barricade won't fall through appeasement; it must be stormed.

Newman is one of those iconic figures, like Bonhoeffer, like Lewis, who are revered and claimed by progressive and reactionary partisans. Perhaps that's the sign of true greatness. When John Henry writes, "In a higher world it is otherwise, but here below, to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often," it naturally appeals to those who aspire towards justice; yet, there are those who read Newman and would emphasize a life that appears on the surface to resist all change in practice, and that would characterize most change as corruption rather than right development.

During a recent parish hall meeting this month, voices were raised as to whether stronger local action is desirable in terms of action to regain the church property illegally seized by those who voted to leave TEC. Although I agree with those that said no action should be unoppposed that conveys itself to public opinion and the courts that the squatters possess property rights, I agree also that our primary job as foot soliders is to dedicate our energies to rebuilding the parish which in itself stands as a rebuke to all those who discount our existence.

Ideas, like evolution, don't evolve in a straight line. From a single point of introduction, branches emerge and grow in all directions depending on the circumstances that create them. Newman writes, "Christianity is dogmatical, devotional, practical, all at once; it is esoteric and exoteric; it is indulgent and strict; it is light and dark; it is love and it is fear." All of that has been, and is, on display in this struggle.

Newman also wrote, "Growth is the only evidence of life." The conflaglatory schism we are struggling through is growth. It is the evidence of an active Church life. When do we boldly stride beyond appeasement to justice? How many of us will be left? How long, how long?