Prayer Book Revision Happened, and the Result Was Not Pretty

It was apparent within the first few days of General Convention that revision of some sort was going to be pushed through. And though the bishops balked to a degree, we not only got revision, but we got revision now. First, the permission to use Enriching Our Worship was not only extended, and not only given no end date, but regulation by the ordinary of the diocese was removed. Any rector may now use it and their discretion, without having to consult with their bishop.

On top of that, we were given a revised Rite II, reworded to reduce usage of "Father", "Lord", "kingdom", and of course supressing any use of the male personal pronoun for God. Again, this thing has no expiration date and no regulation by the bishop. And it has the exactly the same issue that both Matthew Olver and I remarked upon in EOW: the avoidance of "Father" makes for a rather lopsided trinity.

It's all the more obvious here given that one has the 1979 rite as a standard against which to measure the changes. The biggest is that the eucharistic prayer proper is no longer addressed to the Father, but to "God" as a whole. This breaks the preface "of the Father" because they changed not a word of that, but since it is said in the context of speaking to the Father in the first place, it is no longer of the Father at all. Now, I do not know why eucharistic prayers are address to the Father, but older examples all are. Thus we have a potentially substantial change sprung on us, with little discussion. Indeed, the hasty nature of this was evident as two changes had to be backpedaled, and Prayer C was taken out of consideration entirely. Never minding my problems with the whole project: I would have objected to the substitution of "reign" for "kingdom", if only because Elizabeth II reigns over the United Kingdom. To me the substitution is too alienating from scripture, a problem which also besets the many suppressions of the word "Lord", which after all means specifically the Name of God.

But then, it seems that I don't get to object, the convenient grounds being that I am male and old enough to be dismissed if I'm not with the program. On one level one cannot object to an all-female committee on Sexual Harassment and Exploitation, but their report has some major problems, not the least of which is that their resolution pushing "expansive" language essentially puts it in opposition to theological consideration. I don't believe their problems are something that can be fixed that way anyway, but they persist in a narrative of theological history that has some serious faults, not to say untruths. For example, they say that "In the 1928 BCP and Hymnal 1940, the generic use of masculine nouns and pronouns to encompass all human beings established a concept of maleness as normative and femaleness as the exception or “other.” Decisions at the 1970 and 1973 General Conventions made clear that such generic use was not actually inclusive: the masculine-gender nouns in the canons were interpreted to exclude women from ordination to the priesthood." I doubt that anyone on the committee was actually there in those years to relate the discussion that ensued on the floor, but it is a very safe bet that nobody relied on the legalism of the wording of the canons, and that they went straight to the traditional arguments from Paul and from the symbolism of representing the person of Christ. And the further reality was that in '74 there were enough men on their side to defy the canons. While one may argue how much the use of the male as the default 3rd person singular pronoun creates a bias, this attempt at mind-reading is flatly unconvincing to me.

Beyond that, the pushback against trying to erase the maleness of Jesus has been strong enough to protect "Son"; moreover, attempts to push "Mother" have largely failed, again perhaps because the theological problems are too severe for a younger generation to swallow. Thus it is conspicuous that we see here, in the end, a rejection of the divine parental in general. And that's a really huge problem, because it is there, after all, that we find the locus of sin. At any rate, as Benjamin Guyer points out, the aim of a purified liturgy is unachievable. The tension between the language of scripture and the language of feminist activism tends to be resolved by abandoning not only the scriptural text, but by substituting the old Enlightenment illusion of a liberalized humanity redeemed through right thinking. And it doesn't matter, it seems to me, how much that thinking turns out to be wrong; it doesn't matter how likely it is that the theories of the present will fail the test of time. The point, after all, of scripture is that we cannot achieve such redemption, not in that way.

But meanwhile, we have a serious problem here: revision has already happened, and even if the 1979 book is not rejected or replaced, it is pretty likely right-thinking rectors and deans will largely suppress its use.

Contractive Language

So, it appears that my church is about to have "expansive language" thrust upon it. This, for those of you who are behind the liturgical times, is the successor to "inclusive language", and as it is appearing in the current General Convention motions, it means specially trying to get away from the male language about God that is part and parcel of scripture. Anyone who has read much of this blog can probably guess that I am not a big supporter of this. But to be clear on that, let me list a few issues:

• It is alienating from scripture. There are, to be sure, passages where God is talked about in feminine terms, but too many crucial passages use conspicuously male words— and I specifically abjured the use of the word "imagery" there, as I will make clear in the next point.
• It is inconsistent with its own principles. I am dubious that current dogma on "gender" and "sex" is going to survive in the long run, but at any rate the rule that a person gets to determine how that are to be talked about is, I would argue, being violated in this program. Of course, you can always go ahead and deny the inspiration of scripture (by calling people who do take it seriously "inerrantists") enough to ignore the language it uses, but if Jesus is using "Father" and "he", it's going to take some serious exegesis to worm out of taking this as a divine preference.
• It is paternalistic. they know better than you do. Really.
• It is churchy. We're setting up yet another way that church people don't talk like normal people, but use instead their own special language.
• It is wedded to theories of human psychology and sociology which are also unlikely to hold up. The strong version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is pretty much dead at this point, and while linguistic relativism is to some degree inarguable, the notion that we can reframe thinking about sexual/gender roles simply through word choice is extremely dubious. After all, it has failed to help with race; what has happened instead is that use of the "right" words has tended to function as an in-group marker more than anything else, and hasn't made inroads in getting rid of the most deliberately offensive words. In the case of my church, we act as if we have a moral/religious authority which everyone is expected to heed, when it is plainly obvious that we lost whatever power and prestige we had years ago. Heck, for the first time in our country's history there is no Episcopalian on the Supreme Court, if you want an objective marker of our decline.

A resolution has been presented to permit an expansive language version of Rite II to be used immediately. From a procedural point of view, this is essentially an end run around the whole revision process: the rite proposed is not something that people have had a chance to review, and GC is (almost by design) not the place where such review can reasonably take place. It has at least one obvious liturgical novelty which has nothing to do with god-language: eliminating the filioque from the creed is simply not something we should be doing without explicit discussion of the matter in its own right, but it just slides right in alongside all the other changes.

And some of those specific changes also need discussion on their own. Eucharistic prayers we have invariably addressed to the Father, but these prayers equally invariably address them simply to "God", implying address to the godhead as a whole. What is the meaning of this? Why was it done the other way before? there is a lot that needs to be said about this, pro and almost certainly con, but it hasn't happened. Likewise, the suppression of the word "Lord" has to deal with the issue that it is generally used as a placeholder for the Divine Name. Is that erasure justifiable?

A quick scan through this rite shows that it at least lacks some of the more egregious faults of Enriching Our Worship; for example, it fails to repeat the "pro omnis" error in the institution narrative. But the changes leave us with a trinity which is out of balance. We can talk about the Spirit as much as we want, without any changes other than avoiding "he"; we are forced by the nature of Jesus to use "son" perhaps more than some would like; but "Father" appears only where it absolutely must. The language is thus not expanded; it is contracted. The changes are marked not by what we can now also say, but almost entirely by what we now cannot say.

It's strongly reminiscent of the problems with the readings in the same-sex union proposed rite, namely, that a lot of the marriage readings were plainly unwelcome in that context. That problem is being solved in the proposed changes to the marriage rite by suppressing the more blatantly marriage-is-a-man-and-woman-thing readings, but nothing is to be added that's specifically relevant to same-sex marriages. I think the situation isn't as difficult for expansive language, but still, what we see when nothing is added, is that something is definitely lost.

And for all those women with domineering if not outright abusive fathers, there is some percentage of both sexes who had to deal with mothers who exhibited the same "faults". There is a subtext, particularly apparent when words about kingship and the like are dealt with, that the stumbling block isn't the maleness of God so much as it is the power and authority of God, and therefore the problem becomes not fatherliness, but the divine parent of whatever gender. And in a religion where the origin of human alienation from God is found in human disobedience, this is a hugely problematic stance to take. And thus it is hugely ironic that the whole thing is so paternalistic on the one hand at the same time it is rebelling against church tradition.

And in a religion where the central act of worship is anamnesis, the willful attempt at amnesia here is problematic. How do we know what to forget?

Assuming that this diminished Rite II doesn't make it, and assuming we are saddled with the revision Process, we need to take time on this. As it stands, we don't have much of a path towards a language that isn't actually a diminishing of the language we have through tradition while avoiding expanding out into heresies we already ought to know to avoid.

Athanasius on Enriching Our Worship

Given the suspicion that the program of BCP revision is intended by many to establish Enriching Our Worship as the pattern for future common prayer, it behooves the prudent liturgist to examine its rites with an eye towards the orthodoxy of its language. Fortunately Matthew S.C. Olver has done the heavy lifting for us in a series of three articles on the Covenant website. Part 1 provides an introduction and lays groundwork for the study; Part 2 examines the differences between the EOW and BCP rites in the large, and Part 3 focuses on the eucharistic prayers.

But you can readily get a picture of where this is heading by opening up a PDF of EOW 1 (daily office, litany, and the eucharist) and searching for the word "father". The word appears as follows:

• Once in the preface (a reference to the church fathers)
• Nine times in the canticles, of which three are in the Te Deum alone
• Twice in the Apostles Creed
• Six times in the Nicene Creed
• Three times in a section explaining the omission of the filioque
• None whatsoever in any of the eucharistic prayers

The tallies for "Lord" would appear to be better until one realizes that maybe a third of them are in the Benedicite, and that most of the rest are either in other canticles or in the exchanges which open the eucharistic prayers (plus one in the Sanctus). But it's the composite of this, the way it comes together in a theology, which makes the difference. Fr. Olver is not sanguine about this:

The reason that the Episcopal Church must find a different way to address the feminist concerns I outlined in my first post is that, despite the claim of SCLM’s principle that “the truth of the Gospel which proclaims Jesus as the Son of God the Father and as Lord is essential,” the EOW1 rite as a whole, speaks a fundamentally contrary word. EOW1 speaks a de facto different Trinitarian theology. Let me be clear: I do not wish to imply in any way that the SCLM is trying to introduce a new Trinitarian theology. Rather, I want to suggest that the Trinitarian implications of their revisions take a back seat to the stated goal of removing gendered language for God. My reading is that they have not considered carefully enough the wide-reaching implications of these revisions in Trinitarian theology, Christology, soteriology, and beyond.

Personally, I do not think the situation is that innocent, and I think that allowing Arian interpretations and other heterodoxies is part of the intent, albeit perhaps indirectly. Recall that the driving word behind all of this, and really behind nearly any ECUSA controversy, is "inclusion". Inclusion has been construed extremely broadly, so that it has been seem to encompass not only avoidance of racism, not only resolution of disputes over sexuality, not only conflict over the role of women, but has moved into the whole issue of whether the church even has any boundaries. And throughout church history, the two markers which drew such boundaries were sacrament and doctrine, and they were always coupled.

But now we are seeing numerous attempts to blur the line between being a Christian and not really being a Christian: communing the unbaptized, claiming saints who aren't Christians, priests who claim to be both Christian and Muslim, a bishop-elect with an infatuation with Buddhism, and numerous experimental rites which incorporate neo-pagan elements, tamper with scripture, and excise the creed. Thus the door is opened to Arian (or even Unitarian) tenets because the people in particular to be included encompass those who cannot deal with the doctrines of the virgin birth and the resurrection, or who for that matter don't want to be Christians at all.

In order to make this church safe for that sort of indifferentism, it must, in the end, be made inhospitable to any insistence of orthodoxy. The Council of Nicaea must not only be made optional, but in the end must be proscribed, for the canons of Nicaea are the very realization of the judgement that it does matter what we say about Jesus, and that when we worship his resurrected humanity, we recognize also his divinity, and with Thomas say, "my Lord and my God." Thus, the intent will surely be, in the end, not to place the rites of EOW alongside those of the true prayer book, but to displace them. And, in orthodox faith, I cannot have that. Rite I and Rite II are the starting point of revision, not these error-ridden substitutes.

This Fragile Book, Our Island Tome

Prayer C no doubt sounded like a fabulous idea back in 1974. Four years after the first Earth Day, the environmentalism-themed Expo '74 was underway in Spokane; that same summer saw the "irregular" ordinations in Philadelphia. The time was surely ripe for a last-minute addition to the new prayer book. And thus Howard Galley, officially "Assistant to the Coordinator for Prayer Book Revision" but in practice working editor of the new book, wrote the liturgy one summer evening in his office at 815.

Much of it is good; as a proper for Trinity Sunday its basic structure of recounting the history of salvation from "in the beginning" to our present day is sound. It has its infelicities as well: the responsorial form sounded like a good idea back then but has not worn well, and the final paragraphs, with their (oft altered by feminists) invocation of the patriarchs, do not live up to those grand opening words. But chiefly are we bound to remember it for the passage which inevitably earned it the sobriquet of "the Star Wars prayer":

At your command all things came to be,
galaxies, suns, the planets in their courses,
and this fragile Earth, our island home.

Forty-odd years later, and those words still draw a snicker from many a liturgist; in their earnestness they call forth recollections of bell-bottom pants and huge lapels, not to mention guitar masses and "hip" clerics celebrating in blue jeans. And for me at least they also recall the overheated activism of the turn-of-the-decade. Us pre-teens of the time (I went off to high school the fall of that year) got to see how it all actually panned out: not in glorious revolution against the Establishment, but in gas lines, shoddy polyester clothes, the AIDS crisis, student loans and finally, Ronald Reagan. But in 1974 it was still barely possible to maintain a "tin soldiers and Nixon coming" hysteria— barely, given the course of the Watergate investigation, which by that point had yielded its first indictments.

As for the fragility of the earth: consciousness was certainly raised, and we enjoy the benefits of that, so that the bald eagle, reduced to less than a thousand, has recovered in great numbers. But at the same time the sense that the world was in imminent danger of being snuffed out in a chemical cloud has faded. The world has turned out to be a sturdier place than that, for all the injury done to it. And thus we passed from the threat of chemical apocalypse to the 1980s obsession with thermonuclear doom, which has in turn moved on to the current threat of global warming.

But the same time, America's social structures were simply falling apart. Family structures among whites were torn up, and in the black community they all but collapsed, so that it is now the rule that blacks are born out of wedlock. It's pretty clear, as this Brookings report summary argues, that the abrupt endorsement of abortion by the Supreme Court played a very large role in that: men could and did dump responsibility for a child back on the woman, who after all could then be expected to exercise her newfound control over her body and evict the unwanted (by the father) child. And yet, here is where this church is on the subject: the official position as put forth by General Convention explicitly condemns abortion "as a means of birth control, family planning, sex selection, or any reason of mere convenience," but if you can find anyone actually teaching this I have to think that it's going to be in a pretty conservative parish. I don't recall ever hearing an Episcopal sermon touching on abortion, and I have to think that only the most foolhardy male preachers would dare. Marriage doesn't present quite the same peril as a topic, if only because Episcopalians tend to be in the social classes in which marriage still prevalent.

Environmentalism, on the other hand, is reasonably safe. Sure, the rector may lose some of the few remaining Republicans who are paying attention, but a seminary professor after all need not be exposed to even that consequence. And besides, much of the blame for environmental crises can be laid upon those Republicans, or better still on Corporate Interests. Our retirement funds may rely upon the moneys those corporations take in, but what of that? We can always push for a ineffectual solution like carbon credit trading which monetizes the transfer of responsibility.

Likewise, given the events of the past few years it is going to be a tremendous temptation to make our liturgy somehow less racist, whatever that means. And that last phrase is particularly important because a lot of people without an investment in the matter are going to look at the 1979 book and say, "what exactly is racist about it?" As far as sex is concerned we do not have to speculate, because the erasures of the masculine characteristic of Enriching Our Worship and the other recent products of SCLM trace right back to the 1973 publication of Mary Daly's seminal work (if you will pardon the pun), Beyond God the Father. This was an important work, no doubt about it, but it was very much a product of its time and place, where Daly could say "When God is male, the male is God" (p. 19 of the original edition) and not be ridiculed for the gaping logical hole in the claim. She eventually was effectively apostate; meanwhile back in PECUSA we had the sorry spectacle of the Office of Women's Ministry, years later, promulgating a bizarre liturgy which I described thusly: "It almost sounds like a seminary assignment: 'Write a liturgy contravening at least the first commandment. Use ritual acts denounced by at least two OT prophets.'" The weird neopagan cast of these alterations seems to have faded (or at least is kept in the closet) but the continuing attempt to minimize "Father" and "Lord" and to wipe away every male pronoun still comes across, for those of us who were academic onlookers at the time, as the product of a decades-old anachronism.

What we don't need in 2015 is to bring the liturgy of 1976 up to the academic fads of 1979. I will not dare to speak for the young man or woman of 2015, but in 1979 I was not in the market for a "contemporary" or "relevant" service, and I did not have to worry about being subjected to "inclusion" only because the obsession with homosexuality had yet to build up to a fever pitch. When I stood with all the old ladies at the 11:00 service I called up the image of people across places and ages turning to the altar to profess the ancient doctrines. Perhaps there are young people today who are pleased to join in the same antique declaration. But I cannot imagine that many of them want to recover the fashionable faith of the 1970s.

Prayer Book Revision: Why Bother?

Few in the pews are aware that General Convention has activated the prayer book and hymnal revision machinery, which means that we could be stuck with a new proposed book six years from now. Really, everybody who knows it's coming(Matt Marino for one) knows what this is about: completing the triumph of modernist and radfem revisionism. Oh, I assume the new book is likely to leave enough in it so that the moderates and traditionalists can talk themselves into believing that they can still have an orthodox liturgy (my bet would be that they keep Rite I almost unaltered), but the long term intent is clearly to deny parishioners the use of orthodox, "sexist" language. Oh, the program is described in the usual progressive coded language, but anyone who has been following this isn't deceived. All one has to do is look at Enriching Our Worship and the more recent proposed supplements.

As for the hymnal, the survey data is out there that revision is largely unwanted, and especially so by the young. The hymnal definitely has its problems, largely brought on in the last revision: too much musicology, not enough material suited to the typical congregation. But again, nobody seriously thinks that this is what will be addressed. The purpose again will be social engineering, with a dollop of pandering to the young with "contemporary" style— where "contemporary" will continue to mean "in the style of Catholic guitar music of the 1970s that was written by people who are now retirement age."

But then, why wait? If you live in a big coastal diocese, it may already be hard to find a parish where the letter of the prayer book is followed. Your chances of getting stuck with EoW are pretty high, and a high profile city parish (especially one that advertizes its inclusiveness) may largely be done with "Father" altogether.

And this Sunday, for the second time in a month, the supply priest mucked with the words of the institution narrative, editing Jesus' word as recorded by Matthew and Mark. I have no idea where the Catholic translators of the Novus Ordo got the idea to translate pro multis as "for all" but you know, it wasn't from the Greek. This is one of the places I have to draw the line: if liturgy quotes scripture, it has to quote scripture, not "fix" it because it supposedly offends someone. So for the first time, in my own parish, I stayed behind at communion. choosing instead to catch up on some praying, on my knees (a posture little loved by progressives, in my experience).

There is some hope that, if revision be held up long enough, sufficient old-time modernists and radfems and other relics of my college years will have aged out of control of the process to where a new generation can belie those fogies' claims about "What Youth Want". But I don't see it. At my age, as a layman, I'm now reduced to having little recourse other than to look for priests who can say the words right, and abandoning parishes when they are staffed with priests who won't say the words right. I cannot count on bishops keeping their clerics in line. Indeed, it seems that the bishops are worse than the priests; one need only look at thirty years of bad House of Bishops votes. The whole thing replies upon the average parishioner not understanding what is at stake, until they eventually discover that the church that they remember is gone, replaced with the celebration of the community in which all difficulties of religion are diluted to homeopathy.

What is a layman to do? Well, I am almost in despair. After all, I am lay, and a man: more damning, I am the father of children, and White and (mostly) Anglo-Saxon, and middle-aged. I thus have no actual privilege of race or gender or sexuality or age to use as political leverage. Yet I write, and pray.

As the book yet says: "Pray for the church."

No Longer Any Excuse

Now that the Supreme Court of the United States has ruled, there is no longer a reason for the church to consider same sex blessings. Marriage equality dictates immorality equality; we aren't going to start blessing heterosexual fornication, after all.

And thus there is no reason to consider the proposed same sex blessing rites further, what with all their failures to stick to orthodox language. It only remains to draw up appropriate changes to references to the participants, and to come up with some decent scriptural texts (which was a problem the last time, but hey...). The dean of the cathedral in Buffalo should be ignored when he equates language of the BCP rite to the waving of the confederate battle flag; his rhetorical excess is far more offensive than mere biblical language, and if he thinks otherwise he should consider moving to the Unitarians.

Someone is bound to say that we have to have blessings to accommodate our foreign dioceses. I doubt that. As far as Europe is concerned, our marriages there generally have no legal standing anyway; down south I have to wonder how much demand there would be for such a rite. In any case, in a coherent theology of marriage, there is no longer a reason to allow them to happen in the USA, and there was never a reason to continue the Enriching Our Worship-style theological and liturgical faults to be perpetuated.

Even the Bishops Aren't Safe

I'm always interested in Bishop Martins's blogs, and especially his blogging of church meetings. So the last few days he has been writing about the bishops' convocation at Kanuga, and for Sunday he had the following to say about the eucharist:

Now, I don't want to sound whiny, but I can't not mention the level to which I was upset by the liturgy itself--ostensibly Rite II from the Prayer Book, but with the text generously emended to exclude masculine pronouns for God, which is the ideological hobgoblin of today's liturgical elite. I can usually take this somewhat in stride on such occasions--ideologues gonna be ideologues--but I had my own little meltdown when we sang Thomas Ken's Psalm paraphrase, the concluding verse of which is the ubiquitous 'Doxology,' and the text of that verse was altered to exclude "him" in the first three lines, and render the Holy Trinity as "Creator, Christ, and Holy Spirit" in the last one. I can tolerate a little ideology, but heresy is a tougher pill to swallow, and any evocation of the Trinity that eschews "Father" and "Son" is most likely just that--heresy.

I personally am the parish delegate to our diocesan convention, and I can tell you now that if convention features a liturgy which pulls this kind of thing, or if they use Enriching Our Worship, I won't partake. I am tolerant of the clunky avoidance of pronouns in reference to the Godhead, but erasing the Father is not something I'm going to put up with.

And again I say, in this sort of large gathering, this kind of act is exclusionary. What's more galling is that it is probably meant to be so: if those of us with a commitment to orthodoxy are put off, I suspect that's held to be all for the better.

Symbolo Fidei

Derek Olsen has pointed to a post by Bosco Peters arguing against the use of the Creed in liturgy. Olsen objects, and so do I. My principle reason is essentially along the lines of one of the responses:

Third, I used to be in a parish that omitted the recitation of the Nicene Creed contrary to the American rubrics. One motivation might have been the publicly expressed doubts of some of the clergy and staff in what was proclaimed there. At some point, they also started to celebrate the Eucharist with prayers of their own creation that better expressed their faith in Christ. These prayers certainly had new energy, but they were a way of working out clerical doubts, not a way of better edifying the gathered community.

I notice, for instance, that Fr. Peters's "liturgical affirmation" edits away one of the points which most commonly gives rise to reservations: the doctrine of the Virgin Birth. Presumably other parishes would dispense with God the Father or with anything suggesting the physical actuality of Jesus' resurrection. The situation is worse than just "there are an awful lot of Christians [...] who do not grasp the basics of the Faith;" there are a lot of clerics who lack that grasp, or who have turned away from the catholic doctrines.

For the creed is the central symbol of our catholicity; it represents what binds into the faithful across the ages who were and are and will be linked into common worship within the Christian faith. It is the answer to the question, "why do we come here?" The anaphora answers a different question: "what worship did Jesus command?" It tells what to do, of a Sunday, but it is the Creed that explains why we bother to do what Jesus commands. Therefore one is not redundant to the other; I think it is also of some importance that the anaphora is prayed on our behalf, but the Creed is recited by all. It is a spiritual comfort to me, and a powerful affirmation of faithful unity, to think that all over the world, worshippers turn to the altar and repeat the basic principles of the faith, what we all believe.

I am glad to hear that Fr. Peters preaches on the creed; so do I, and so have most priests I have had as rectors; and all priests should do likewise. But I do not see this teaching as a substitute for saying it; it is necessary insurance that those who say it understand what they say. (An earlier version of this could be read as implying that Fr. Peters's own beliefs might be unorthodox. I regret this implication and have tried to remove it.)

Enheresying Our Worship

So I was trapped into participating in what I can only assume was a rite more or less from Enriching Our Worship. I mean, I haven't seen a physical copy of the current round of revision, but, for the sake of argument, I'm going to assume that this has some vaguely canonical source, rather than being something that someone just made up. And it seems largely consonant with the faults of the proposed same-sex blessing rites. But taking that as a given, let us count the deviations and heresies.

And we can start with the first sentence, because while there is nothing obviously heretical about saying "Blessed be the one, holy, and living God," it isn't what the BCP prescribes for ordinary time, or any other season. Why not? Well, the next change shows that quite plainly. For whatever reason we got a mashup of two different rites, one of which was baptism without a baptism. Therefore we started with the series of versicles and responses which opens the 1979 baptismal rite, but with a change: the response to "One Lord, one faith, one baptism" was not "one God and Father of all," but was instead "One God, Creator of all". OK, the opening sentence is not necessarily an issue, but this change is, because the passage is a direct quotation of scripture. This V&R exchange is taken from Ephesians 4:5-6, and every version I can find quickly translates it exactly, word for word, as it appears in the 1979 BCP. And if you can puzzle out Greek at all, you can see that "εις θεος και πατηρ παντων" can hardly be translated any other way. What's the problem? Well, the F-word, obviously: "Father".

We also seem to have some degree of trouble saying "Lord", if not to the same degree: the lectors were made to say "Hear what the Spirit is saying to the Church" rather than "The Word of the Lord". I would disagree that scripture is intended to speak only to the church, but I also note that the new version is, rhetorically, less punchy. The 1979 book, at its strongest, either simply updates the older language, or speaks boldly and concisely. We seem incapable of that any longer, and every new rite is plagued with a puffy, precious style.

And it gets a lot worse. We were subjected to a litany which I didn't recognize, and which began as follows:

Holy God, in whom all things in heaven and earth have their being,
Have mercy on us.

Jesus the Christ, through whom the world is reconciled to the Father,
Have mercy on us.

Holy Spirit, source of both unity and diversity,
Have mercy on us.

Athanasius would have had a fit; Nicholas would have been moved to pugilism. Can we not begin with a straightforward and orthodox trinitarian formula?

We then moved on to "Eucharistic Prayer 2 from Enriching Our Worship 1". I'm so used to the mucking with the Sursum Corda that I hardly notice anymore what they've substituted for "him" in the third response, and since we sang the Sanctus, it was impossible to make the alteration prescribed, so at least that went off according to the BCP. At any rate, since "the one who comes in the name of the Lord" is Jesus, the aversion to "he" is hard to justify.

But then it is all hard to justify, except perhaps the attempt to fix Prayer C, which this prayer does not do convincingly. However, I have not come to talk about the (lacking) poetry of the text, but to complain about its errors. And here, in the institution narrative, we hit another. Now, I see no reason to deviate at all from the 1979 text on this, but I can see a certain wiggle room given that this is a scriptural composite. But there's no justification for misquoting Jesus! These people have inflicted upon us the old "pro omnis" error of the now-rejected RC novus ordo translation, saying:

This is my Blood of the new Covenant, which is poured out for you and for all for the forgiveness of sins.

OK, folks, the second clause of this is taken from Matthew and Mark, and they both say "poured out for many". Universalism may be very nice, very cozy, but it isn't what Jesus is recorded as having said.

And that's the running theme here. It isn't just that we have what seems to me to be an unnecessary and badly written addition to an already fat prayer book, but that they specifically are making changes that the church fathers would loudly and justly condemn. Our liturgists can't stick to the Nicene formulas; they edit scripture to suit their theological taste. And furthermore, the setting of this was, in my opinion, extremely questionable. This was a unified, special occasion service for the entire parish at once. We already have a guitars-vs.-organ problem in doing one of these to begin with, but to use such an occasion as an opportunity to push theological novelties on the congregation is unfair. I took communion with qualms, only because I couldn't see how not to make a scene; at least one other person told me they abstained. If you want unity, you use what is common, not what is novel; you use the BCP text, Rite II straight up, and with no emendations to fit your personal theological quirks.

As I've said before, I'm not utterly opposed to revision. It would be really nice to fix up Prayer C, and it would nice to make the ordinal less, well, wimpy. What I oppose is the theological revisionism. Scripture is what it is, and there is no license for altering it. The Nicene formulas are, well, were, the one unifying principle of Protestants, Catholics, and the Orthodox; they are not up for unilateral modification. I'm not inclined to ever take communion under these rites again, and if they start showing up regularly at my parish, I guess I'll have to work out some permanent means of avoidance.

Blessing for Study Only I

Our friends at the SCLM have put out some same sex blessing materials, including a sample/proposed rite. I'm not really interested in discussing the supporting material here, if for no other reasons than (a) it's too big a chunk to bite off at once, and (b) I'm not up to moderating a comments-based discussion of whatever I may have to say. The sample rite, however, cries out for analysis. This I intend to carry out in three parts: the first, which you read here, will talk about the structure of the rite, while the second will discuss the scripture selections and the third the detailed wording of some passages.

I begin with some overall observations. It is possible to perform this rite without saying anything in common with the marriage rite, save the Lord's Prayer. Every single other passage either differs from its marital parallel, or provides for an alternative which the 1979 rites do not countenance. The latter is largely accounted for by the continuance of the anti-dominical heresies found in almost every new liturgy promulgated in the past decade or so: in every case where the word "Lord" would ordinarily be used, an alternative is provided which omits it, the only exception being in the litany. The converse of this is that nearly every element of the marriage rite is included, with one telling exception which I will discuss at the end.

While most elements of the marital rite are included, the order of those elements is quite different. Comparison of the 1662, 1928, and 1979 rites discloses a common structure which anyone who has watched a movie marriage scene will recognize. The core rite begins with a greeting which connects the rite of marriage with the union between Christ and the church. Then follows a charge to disclose impediments, the making of promises, the presentation of the bride (optional in 1979), the vows and the exchange of rings. The final part of the rite consists of a prayer in the form of a blessing, the proclamation of the wedding, and the blessing proper; this section varies somewhat in order. The 1928 version contains these elements alone; the 1662 and 1979 rites append a statement of the purposes of marriage to the greeting, and 1662 has a series of readings following the core rite as a kind of scriptural homily. All of these rites provide for following the rite with communion, though as is common with older books the exact way this is to be done is not spelled out.

The 1979 version incorporates two innovations. The first is the inclusion of a series of prayers between the proclamation and the blessing, preceding the old blessing prayer. This is constructed in the style of older books but in fact lacks any precedent. The other innovation is a restoration of the lessons dropped in the 1928 version. The 1979 addition is in the absolutely stereotyped form common to all modern ECUSA sacramental rites: it begins with a collect and is followed by a series of readings, separated by psalms and anthems, and ending with a homily (made optional). Also per 1979 practice the lectionary provides for an OT lesson, an epistle, and a gospel reading, the latter presented as if for a eucharistic rite. This is all inserted after the promises and presentation, so that the core rite resumes with the vows; again as is standard for 1979, the rite ends with the peace, which is the suture line for joining this to the communion rite. This overall pattern is also found to a degree in the ordinal rites: the entrance rites for the latter also incorporate the section of promises and such before the collect.

The SSB rite, however, is constructed on the basis of the baptismal rite, not the marital rite; the elements of the latter are rearranged to match the corresponding element of baptism. Therefore the SSB rite begins with the conventional seasonal opening sentences, followed by a versicle and response section and the greeting. It then proceeds directly to the collect, skipping all the charge and promise section which in the marital rites precedes the collect. The next section follows the ECUSA lesson/psalm/gospel/sermon stereotyped plan, and then the rite proper resumes. Again, the order of the elements reflects that of baptism, beginning with the (optional) presentation, followed by the promises. The prayers are in the form of a litany, and they precede the vows; the Lord's Prayer is dropped in after the litany. The rings follow the vows immediately, per convention, and then the proclamation; then the rite continues with the blessing prayer and blessing proper, and as with everything ECUSAn, ends at the peace. This mirrors the baptismal order, in which the litany precedes the sacramental act.

And indeed, the references to the baptismal rite are constant in the theological discussion preceding the sample rite. I do not want to step up to discussing how well-founded this connection is; the fact remains that this is really the matrimonial rite recast in the shape of the baptismal rite. But that brings us to the two omissions from the 1979 marriage rite. Recall that the it begins with the greeting, a statement of the purposes of marriage, a charge to take marriage seriously and to reveal impediments, and the promises and presentation. Well, the SSB rite skips directly from the greeting to the collect, with the promises and presentation, as I said earlier, moved to follow the sermon and swapped in order. The other elements are simply dropped: there is no statement of purpose for the relationship blessed by this rite, and the charge is also entirely eliminated. I have no idea why the latter is missing, and the omission is odd considering that the vows contain the "forsaking all others" pledge on which the charge is predicated. the omission of the purpose statement is more telling. Perhaps one can construct an analogy of baptism with marriage, which is the consequence of their argument; but the fact remains that one can construct from scripture a rationale for marriage that makes no reference to baptism. Marriage indeed precedes and perhaps can be said to prefigure every other rite save the offering of sacrifice. This leaves the SSB rite in something of a paradox: it's constructed out of the parts of marriage, but in the way that it specifically appeals to anything else except marriage for a justification, the fact that it doesn't have the explicit warrant afforded to marriage is emphasized.

Not a Prophet

I am not a prophet. I am sure that most of you already knew that, but I just wanted to get that straight from the start.

Harold Camping is not a prophet either. For those of you who may have forgotten him, or who have never heard of him, he was the radio preacher who predicted that the world would end on May 21st. He had also predicted the end would come in 1988, and in 1994, and now he has moved the date to October 21st. After three failures I think it is safe to say that he is not a prophet.

Hananiah, in our first lesson, was a false prophet. Some people claim that Harold Camping's stroke which he suffered about three weeks ago is akin to Hananiah's fate, but since I am not a prophet, I cannot offer an opinion on that. Jeremiah, in this long passage of which I have subjected you to as little as I thought would make sense, has put on himself a yoke at the command of the LORD, as a symbol of Nebuchadnezzar's subjugation of Judah, a yoke which will eventually be broken, but not yet. We do not know why Hananiah takes it upon himself to say otherwise, but his words, his acts do not prevail against the true word which comes of God.

Prophecy is repeating the word of God; false prophecy is daring to speak in the name of God, but putting your own words in His mouth. There is an appalling lot of the latter going about. Either that, or we've gotten extremely fortunate: when I was writing this I typed “prophetic voice” and “episcopal” into Google, and it told me it had found fifty-four thousand results. And just for fairness' sake, I put in “catholic” instead of “episcopal” and got two hundred and eight thousand. The new version of the church calendar that has gone into trial use seems to identify political activists as “prophetic voices”, or in the case of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Amelia Bloomer, Sojourner Truth, and Harriet Tubman, unabashedly designates them as “liberators and prophets”. Personally, I am skeptical. However worthy the cause, I am not convinced that all who uphold it do so as messengers of God.. Our allies are not all Balaam, driven by the LORD to speak His word and to lay blessings upon Israel.

No, I do not think we have entered a new age of prophecy; I think we have entered a new age of hubris. God seems to have an awful lot to say about politics, and especially about the economy and about taxes and regulation and public policy. It cannot all be true, and I am inclined to believe that little of it is true. “Render unto Caesar what is due Caesar,” Jesus said, referring to a denarius with Caesar's profile upon it, and yet he did not say whether that very denarius truly belonged to Caesar. If Jesus could be so cryptic, how plain-spoken are those who claim to follow him.

And last week you heard an anthem to the trinity; but what only we in the choir saw was that there was a second set of words, words which did not pray to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit. They could not bring themselves to say “Father”, so they addressed their first prayer to the “Creator”, setting themselves against the ancient judgement that creation was the act not only of the Father, but was accomplished through the Son and the Spirit as well, Just as redemption comes from and through all three persons of the Godhead. But this refusal to say the words of scripture is also a kind of false prophecy, speaking our words rather than His.

Now, I do not number myself among those conservative Protestants who hold that there is no new prophecy. But I myself am not a prophet, nor even a dresser of sycamore trees (as Amos said of himself). I am a man, baptized, who sings in the choir and who has been allowed to speak a sermon. God does not dictate these words to me in the night. Perhaps they are spoken in accordance to His will, or perhaps not; that is why I pray as I do before I preach. I believe that I have been called to speak to you; I have believed so for some decades; but the words are mine. And I am given to assume that this is true of most preachers, and of political activists, and of all the rest who speak in the name of the Godhead or in the name of the truth which is His being.

And yet Jesus in today's gospel also speaks of prophets. He speaks of the grace which those who repeat his message pass on to those who heed them. Jesus says these words to the disciples, in preparation for sending them out to preach among the Jews; earlier in this chapter he gives them instructions, and then teaching and advice for their journey. In this passage we must remember that the prophets and righteous ones being welcomed are the disciples themselves. He reassures them, and he reassures us: the disciples, and those who speak the Word in this age, but also those who hear them, and in hearing them hear God. When we speak the Word, we speak for the Word, and those who hear that Word hear the Word Himself, Jesus the Christ. And those who uplift those who speak that word are blessed, because they welcome the Christ as they welcome his ministers. And therefore we must hold ourselves open to hearing that word, and open to those who bring it to us. Though we must turn a deaf ear upon that which is false, we must not shut ourselves off entirely.

So keep a glass of cold water at hand for Christ's ministers-- or better still, welcome them by keeping your pledge up-to-date for the summer!