The Pub Welcomes Brother Quotidian
Greetings from St. Athanasius Anglican Church in Waxahachie, Texas. Don't worry. Texans more than 100 miles away can't pronounce it either. Waxahachie, I mean. And, the locals can’t pronounce Athanasius. For the phonetically curious, they sound like this: WALKS-uh-HATCH-ee and ATH-uh-NAY-shus.By Drewdog's gracious invitation, I will contribute here from time to time. Before I do and to set what I say in some context, I thought I’d offer a self-introduction.
I’m pretty much an ecclesiastical mongrel. I came to faith in a Southern Baptist church revival as a boy. I really woke up spiritually in college after returning from Nam (I'm also a jarhead).
I took a Th.M. from Dallas Seminary majoring in Hebrew. Afterwards I pastored Bible-church ministries for the next decade. My last pastorate in that run was the International Chapel of Vienna, in Vienna, Austria. Now that was hardship duty for sure.
I departed vocational pastoral ministry to care for aged parents, and took the opportunity to test the spiritual waters in a communion that was sacramental in its spirituality and liturgical in its worship. Our local ECUSA parish was the first place that fit the bill (as it was acceptably orthodox as well; it might not have been so somewhere else, of course). And, after 15 years in that parish, our family departed when the House of Bishops consented to consecrating an active homosexual as Bishop of New Hampshire.
By this time, I was a confirmed Prayer Book Christian, and the options locally were nil. So, I started knocking on doors, seeking some continuing jurisdiction that would take me on as a candidate for holy orders and for planting a new parish here in town. The United Anglican Church was the first to say "yes". I was ordained to the diaconate in November 2004, and to the Anglican priesthood in September of 2005.
The photo shows me prostrate during my ordination to the priesthood. The man in gold is my bishop. The fellow across the way is the UAC archdeacon, the fellow in the white surplice is an old friend who served as chaplain to the Bishop during the service. He doesn’t have something growing out of his head. That’s the Bishop’s staff leaning on the far wall of the sanctuary. The red band around my middle is my deacon’s stole. During two portions of the service, while prayers are made for me by the Bishop and the congregation, I lay on the floor in that position, about 10 minutes one time, about 15 minutes a second time. Yes, it was uncomfortable – my shoulder hurt more than anything! – but, at the same time, I was so grateful our chapel is carpeted. It might have been linoleum. Or marble.
In the interests of full disclosure, “Brother Quotidian” is the name under which my Blogger account was created. If you want to know more, drop me a line.
Looking forward to batting ideas around,
Brother Quotidian
posted by Fr. Bill | 1:30 PM
5 Comments:
Welcome to the pub, BQ! I for one am looking forward interacting with your ideas.
And I think you'll fit in quite well here. We all seem to have at least one thing in common: we are all mongrels!
Cheers
Thanks for the welcome.
Aaron, I possibly need to clarify one feature of my “trek.” On one hand, it would be accurate to say that I am at a considerable distance (of some sort) from my fundy-evangelical beginnings. But, it would be a mistake to think I had left those beginning entirely behind.
There's an interesting discussion over at Mere Comments begun by my friend Steve Hutchens, who ordinarily praises fundamentalists for certain of their features which he finds praiseworthy. Indeed, in the blog he repeats the praise he has often in the past offered. In the comments there is an interesting discussion, some offered by self-identified fundamentalists, the most credible being David Doran, president of President of Detroit Baptist Theological Seminary. On the other hand, in a recently launched, flashy website by fundamentalists for fundamentalists, one finds some pretty sharp dissent from Hutchens' analysis of a variety of fundamentalists who are quite common, and who seem to inhabit the flashy fundy website in large numbers.
The point: “fundamentalist” can have a lot of different nuances beyond what it means in the popular press. Moreover, those who claim to be fundamentalists are often very much at odds with each other concerning the meaning of the term.
Take me, for example. In the comments to Hutchens' article I describe a sense of the term which applies to me, and has always applied to me, and still applies to me. On the other hand, a good many of my cyber-friends and acquaintances who self-identify as fundamentalists do not agree that I am one myself, because I am too far off the reservation as far as they're concerned. Originally, fundamentalists included among their ranks Anglican priests, as I noted earlier. Today, almost no one will allow that such a thing is credible, including the founder of the fundy website referenced above.
So, if you say you are leaving (or attempting to depart from) childish things which you identify with (almost) fundamentalist roots, I will have to withhold my judgment on whether what you're doing is something I'd applaud or not. It all depends on what in fundamentalist you think is childish, and why.
In many quarters, fundamentalism means “Baptist” and requires a kind of aggressively pursued separatism from any and all things not fundamentalist. In that sense, I am not a fundamentalist, and perhaps have never been one. On the other hand, in the original sense of fundamentalist, not only have I always been one, Pope Benedict XVI is also a fundamentalist! It's become a difficult term to nail down with much precision.
BQ
"And I will check out your friends website in the process."
I think the website you must mean is Mere Comments, which like this blog (!) is written by several people, all of them editors of some variety of the journal Touchstone.
And, here, I will provide an enthusiastic plug for Touchstone and those who labor under that banner. To my way of thinking, they are the ONLY people who are doing something ecumenical within Christendom, and doing it in a way that avoids the terminal flaw of all other ecuminical efforts, viz. the premise that ecumenism must proceed by shedding one's own core beliefs to accomodate others' beliefs which contradict them. The Touchstone folks take seriously Lewis' notion of "mere Christianity," and their common cause amounts to promoting "mere Christianity" and opposing all that is hostile to it. Touchstone's principal players are Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant (one senior editor is Dr. Russell Moore, protege of Albert Mohler, and professor of theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louiseville).
Touchstone has done more than anything else to give me a reliable perspective on "mere Christianity," which is a coherent idea in the abstract but sometimes difficult to describe or to experience concretely. The "genius" of Touchstone is that it firmly insists that its Roman Catholic confreres should be good Roman Catholics, its Orthodox should be good Orthodox, its Anglicans, or Lutherans, or Baptists should all be proponents of their particular version of Christianity with integrity and competency.
I heartily recommend that any of you trying to get a fresh perspective on mere Christianity read all the papers from a conference Touchstone sponsored a few years ago, with the theme "Christian Unity and the Divisions We Must Sustain." The link above takes you to a page of links from the July/Aug 2003 issue of Touchstone in which the papers were published. Links to the papers are those on the right-hand part of the page, beginning with Neuhaus' paper.
Of special importance for fundamentalists and those whose faith was formed within it are the papers by Neuhaus, Hutchens -- in particular the one by Hutchens! -- Timothy George, Albert Mohler, and David Mills.
Aaron, the last paper is a masterpiece treating the Christian faith and philosophy, by Fr. Patrick Henry Reardon, an Orthodox priest who is one of the most graciously spiritual men I have ever met. He has the very rare quality of sympathetically understanding those in other branches of the faith with whom he disagrees.
Anyway, I commend you all to those papers, as they are the very best examples I know of godly men who, though separated by the exigencies of history into diverse Christian camps, undertake the very difficult work of understanding one another, maintaining their own historical allegiances, and working together in amazing ways that make common cause without blurring the lines that only the Lord can erase when he returns.
BQ
BQ, you'll be happy to know (but probably not surprised) that Rob, Aaron (I believe), and I all have subscriptions to Touchstone (along with First Things, St. Anne's Pub, and Mars Hill Audio Journal), and thus we concur with your high opinion of it.
And one of my favorite presbyies is a contributing editor too: Peter J. Leithart.
Just thought you'd be encouraged to know.
Cheers
Most Excellent! This is very encouraging to hear.
If you have never read those papers, however, I still encourage that with mucho gusto. I was at that conference in Chicago, and it was there my friendship with a couple of the editors commenced. It was one of the most profitable times I've ever spent at a conference in my life.
Fr. Reardon was in Dallas at the beginning Lent to lead a weekend retreat on prayer, and I took over half my parish (not all that difficult, as we're pretty small!). But, it was a primo opportunity to expose them to some godliness and sagacity in a vineyard somewhat removed from our own. They were impressed in the ways it was meet and right to be impressed.
And, I got my hands on a collection of Orthodox devotional prayers, from which I added a section to the daily office I sing each morning. It was a pleasant surprise for us to find many of the Orthodox prayers tracking closely with what Cranmer put together for the first Book of Common Prayer.
BQ
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