Loading ...Is Thew Forrester being punished for his honesty?
flockwoodOver at Episcopal Cafe, Pluralist Speaks creator Adrian Worsfold offers an interesting defense of Northern Michigan bishop-elect Kevin G. Thew Forrester.
Worsfold’s argument will be instantly recognizable to anyone who closely followed the election of New Hampshire Gene Robinson in 2003.
Thew Forrester isn’t the first Episcopal bishop-elect to reject historic Christian doctrines. There always have been Episcopal bishop-elects (and bishops!) who question traditional teachings about sin, salvation and the divinity of Jesus Christ — they just haven’t been open about their beliefs as they waded through the consent process.
The problem, therefore, isn’t Thew Forrester’s beliefs. It’s Thew Forrester’s honesty about his beliefs, Worsfold argues. Those voting ‘no’ are twisting virtues (honesty and living authentically) into vices, he suggests.
Worsfold also doesn’t have much use for churchmen who say one thing, but mean another: “Some people who hide their true views, or express them within the complexities of theological talk (sounds like one thing but means another) will say they make a necessary compromise, because of a commitment to the wider ideals of their Church… The problem is that this encourages duplicity within the very profession where duplicity ought to be absent,” Worsfold writes.
The defeat of Thew Forrester has been portrayed, by some, as the work of a vast Episcopal right-wing conspiracy. But it can’t be a vast Episcopal right-wing Episcopal conspiracy because there’s no longer a vast Episcopal right wing. Most of the most conservative Episcopal leaders have already jumped ship. As Episcopal Church executive council member Mark Harris suggests: “They have already left the building.”
The hottest debate, now, is between those — left, right and center — who believe Book of Common Prayer liturgy and theology is binding and those who don’t.
June 11th, 2009 at 1:05 pm
I don’t think that anyone in the Episcopal Church much cares about what Bro. Genpo believes or thinks. We are not a church bound up by theology, whatever the conservatives may think. We are an inclusive church which has adopted the Book of Common Prayer (that would be the 1979 version, Dr. Newark) as its touchstone. Dr. Genpo’s sin was in changing the liturgy, not in what he believed.
If you were to look into the hearts and minds of most Episcopalians, I think you’d see that most aren’t exactly orthodox by the standards of other denominations.
June 11th, 2009 at 2:06 pm
Thank you for the mention, and my proper title, Mr. Powers!
I agree with you!
The Episcopal Church is pragmatic–centered on a Prayer Book–rather than doctrinal (RC) or experiential (SBC). You have a good, solid point.
That said–the Book of Common Prayer contains doctrine. Not only the thirty-nine articles, but the liturgies themselves, and other items in small print in the back.
There is no doctrinal difference between 1928 and 1979, and I haven’t claimed there is. I am specifically concerned, on the human level, that so much change, so quickly, was unnecessarily traumatic, even cruel.
Yes, there is a different focus at times; the new book is less into “provoking most justly Thy wrath” etc. But a difference in focus is not the same as the rejection of core doctrine.
I’d say that licensing the old book would comfort and “re-connect-ify” countless believers, and make them our friends again. TEC throws its own people overboard far too quickly. If only the old-prayer-book-lovers could get half the ubuntu lavished on Genpo, even in his defeat.
I still say we’re mollycoddling a narcissist from the belly of the Boom.
But, I agree with you!
June 11th, 2009 at 4:55 pm
Well, I appreciate the honesty of your post, Dr. Newark, and must confess to not quite knowing what the fuss is about, given that the old liturgies (“And with thy spirit” and all that) are still in the new book, along with the modern language services. And, not to belabor the point, we’ve had the new book for 30 years. How many of us are left who still remember the 1928 prayer book as a live document? I do, but certainly my son, having been born after 1979, doesn’t.
Don’t get me wrong: I love the old liturgy and love it when our parish uses it (which they do from time to time). I have my great grandmother’s 1928 prayer book, which came out of the first shipment of such books to Kentucky, I’m told, in about 1930 or ’31 (it took awhile for them to be printed). So, I understand the emotions involved, but how long are we going to have to hear about the 1928 book? Until everyone born before 1979 dies?
June 11th, 2009 at 5:04 pm
There are so few Episcopal jokes out there, perhaps because we’re not very funny people, that I feel compelled to tell the one this thread reminds me of: How many Episcopalians does it take to change a light bulb? Two: One to change the bulb, and the other to say how much better the old bulb was.
June 12th, 2009 at 8:34 am
And a third one, to yell that light bulbs are patriarchal and exclusionary, and to insist on holding services in the dark in order to be radically inclusive of the alternatively photonic, and to pro-actively dismantle structures of lightocentrism. And to give everybody without a light bulb one million dollars so they’ll feel better.
Of course the real Episcopal light bulb answer is this: two. One to call the electrician and one to mix the martinis.
Episcopalians: where three or four are gathered, there will be a fifth.
How many liberals does it take to change a light bulb? THAT’S NOT FUNNY!
June 12th, 2009 at 8:41 am
And regarding the old prayer book.
For four centuries, the prayer book went thru regular, incremental, evolutionary changes.
In 1979, it disappeared and was replaced with something that doesn’t speak to our history. Rite I is not the same as 1928, not at all. It’s better than nothing, but only just.
The “Romans” are learning they made the same mistake, and the Tridentine Rite is roaring back to the mainstream. The “Novus Ordo” (their Rite II) is just not satisfactory, and young, smart money is on the old rite.
I think many of our problems stem from the unacknowledged cognitive dissonance of this drastic, unwelcome, and unsettling change. Your son is the poorer for not knowing the old ways. I hope he’ll grow up to know the Anglican way of worship, not just Novus Ordo Lite.
June 12th, 2009 at 11:06 am
Thank you, Newark Survivor, for speaking the truth about the BCP and TEC.
June 12th, 2009 at 1:09 pm
Cause God knows, Dr. Survivor, YOUR way is the only way of Anglican worship . . .
June 13th, 2009 at 6:08 am
I know there is a lot of attachment to the 28 BCP, but my understanding is that its’ authors really did play loose and fast with some liturgical and theological things. Not that 79 is perfect, but it did go back to the source and wasn’t so much of a revision of a revision. How the introduction was handled I can’t really comment on but clearly mistakes were made.
PS: The same thing is true, supposedly of the Joy of Cooking. I’m pretty attached to my flea market copy from the 1980′s, but the new version is supposedly much truer to its’ origins
June 13th, 2009 at 10:29 am
Madge, ditto the original New York Times Cookbook by Craig Claiborne; the modern version just ain’t the same.
June 17th, 2009 at 6:29 am
Folks, if Forrester is being punished for changes in the liturgy, many bishops in the Episcopal Church who have proactvely encouraged liturgical change after the 1979 Prayer Book are going to be exposed for their hypocrisy. Liturgical change and adaptation is one of the historic traits of the Anglican tradition.
June 17th, 2009 at 10:28 am
Very true, Juan, but those changes have been with the approval of the church hierarchy, not flights of fancy. I agree that changes in the liturgy might be appropriate, but having one parish priest (remember, he’s still not a bishop) make the changes alone isn’t how we do it as Episcopalians.