Would John Calvin Stay in the Episcopal Church?

By John Jefferson Davis
Professor of Systematic Theology and Christian Ethics

Readers of this article in the Episcopal Church may rightly ask, “Why should we care about what John Calvin would think about the current problems in the Episcopal Church and the worldwide Anglican communion? He lived in the sixteenth century, and we live in the twenty-first; and he was a Presbyterian anyway, not an Anglican.” The reason why the question posed in the title is of interest to Episcopalians asking themselves, in the midst of the current battles over human sexuality and biblical authority, “Should we go, or should we stay?”, is that John Calvin, the founder of the Presbyterian tradition, and Cranmer and the English Reformers, founders of the historic Anglican tradition, both shared a common view of the church: they were “catholic” and not “separatist” in their ecclesiology. They saw themselves as attempting to bring into being a reformed catholic church – not to start a new “denomination.”

The answer to the question posed in the title above, is, in short, “Yes, Calvin would encourage evangelicals in the Episcopal Church (and in other mainline denominations such as the PCUSA) to stay in, to maintain an evangelical witness, and to work for renewal.” The reasons in support of this conclusion can be seen by examining Calvin’s discussion of the unity of the visible church in the Institutes of the Christian Religion, Bk. IV, ch.1.9-21, “Means of Grace: Holy Catholic Church.”

Calvin cites the example of the Old Testament prophets, who at times found themselves to be a lonely minority in the midst of a theologically and morally corrupted Israel. “Isaiah does not hesitate to liken Jerusalem to Sodom and Gomorrah [Is.1:10]. Religion was in part despised, in part besmirched. In morals one frequently notes theft, robbery, treachery, slaughter, and like evil deeds. Still the prophets did not because of this establish new churches for themselves, or erect new altars on which to perform separate sacrifices.”[1]

The Genevan Reformer also cites the example of Christ and the apostles, who worshipped in the Jerusalem temple, despite the imperfections of the religious leaders of the day: “Even then the desperate impiety of the Pharisees and the dissolute life which commonly prevailed could not prevent them from practicing the same rites along with the people, and from assembling in one temple with the rest for public exercises of religion. How did this happen,” asks Calvin, “except that those who participated in these same rites with a clean conscience knew that they were not at all contaminated by association with the wicked?”[2]

Jesus cleansed the Temple of money changers (Matt.21:12-17), but did not tell his disciples to abandon its worship or liturgy. Jesus commends the poor widow who makes her financial contribution to the Temple treasury (Lk.21:1-4); Jesus does not consider her expression of faith in God to be contaminated by the personal imperfections of the religious leaders who controlled the Temple. Jesus instructed Peter to find a coin in the fish’s mouth to pay the annual tax required of every Jewish male over the age of twenty, used for the upkeep of the Temple (Matt.17:24-27; Ex.30:13). Jesus expected his disciples to pay taxes to Caesar (Matt.22:21), knowing full well that the personal lives and policies of the Roman emporers were not fully in keeping with the standards of God’s law; nevertheless, the disciples would not be “defiled” by paying the tax.

Jesus was not a “separatist” in relation to the Jewish church of his day. Someone might say, “Jesus had no choice: there were no other ‘denominations’ from which to choose at the time.” This in fact is not quite the case; the community of the Dead Sea scrolls at Qumran considered themselves to be the “true Israel” in a “new Covenant” with God. They alone interpreted the Holy Scriptures correctly; they were the ‘final remnant”. They considered the Temple leadership to be apostate and hopelessly corrupt.[3] Jesus did not go out into the Judean desert to join the Qumran sectarians, but stayed among the people to bring spiritual renewal by preaching repentance and faith in God. Jesus did not “come out” and separate himself, but became known as the friend of “publicans and sinners”.[4]

Strikingly, the apostles and the early Jerusalem church continued to go up to the Jewish temple to pray (Acts 3:1) – to a temple controlled by the party of the Sadducees, who denied the resurrection and the reality of angels and spirits (Acts 23:8). Evidently Peter and John and Paul did not understand the admonition to “come out from them and be separate” (2 Cor.6:17) to require that they separate themselves from the Jewish “national cathedral,” so to speak.[5] The temple, despite its corrupt leadership – Sadducees and priests who had conspired to crucify Jesus – was still a divinely ordained institution, dedicated to the worship of Yahweh, not Baal; the temple liturgy, based on the scriptures of the Old Testament, was still a liturgy that the early Christians could pray without compromising their Christian convictions. The early Jewish Christians continued to attend the Jewish synagogues well into the second century, until changes in the synagogue liturgy – prayers anathematizing the Christians – made it impossible to attend.[6]

In commenting on the apostle Paul’s relationship to the troubled Corinthian church, Calvin notes that among the Corinthians “… no slight number had gone astray; in fact, almost the whole body was infected. There was not one kind of sin only, but very many; and they were no light errors but frightful misdeeds; there was corruption not only of morals but of doctrine. What does the holy apostle . . .do about this? Does he seek to separate himself from such? Does he cast them out of Christ’s kingdom? . . . He not only does nothing of the sort; he even recognizes and proclaims them to be the church of Christ and the communion of saints [1Cor.1:2]! … The church abides among them because the ministry of Word and sacraments remains unrepudiated there.”[7]

Calvin, like Thomas Cranmer, John Jewel,[8] and the other English reformers, had a high regard for patristic authority,[9] and, like the fathers, had a “catholic” and not “separatist” or “sectarian” view of the church. Their “catholic” ecclesiology is drawn largely from Augustine and Cyprian. Calvin cites Augustine’s admonition that zeal for the purity of the church should be tempered with charity and mercy: “The godly manner and measure of church discipline ought at all times to be concerned with ‘the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace’ [Eph.4:3] … Holy scripture bids us correct our brother’s vices with more moderate care, while preserving sincerity of love and unity of peace.” The godly, says Augustine, are to “… correct what they can; bear patiently and lovingly to bewail and mourn what they cannot; until God either amends or corrects or in the harvest uproots the tares and winnows the chaff” [Matt.13:40; 3:12; Lk.3:17].[10] For Augustine, the visible church was a “mixed bag”; only at the end would the Lord of the harvest be able to unerringly separate the wheat from the chaff.

He also cites Cyprian, the North African church father who had a very high view of the unity of the church: “Even though there seem to be tares or unclean vessels in the church, there is no reason why we ourselves should withdraw from the church; rather, we must toil to become wheat; we must strive as much as we can to be vessels of gold and silver.”[11] Having cited Cyprian, Calvin adds further: “First, he who voluntarily deserts the outward communion of the church (where the word of God is preached and the sacracments are administered) is without excuse. Secondly, neither the vices of the few nor the vices of the many in any way prevent us from duly professing our faith there in ceremonies ordained by God. For a godly conscience is not wounded by the unworthiness of another, whether pastor or layman; nor are the sacraments less pure and salutary for a holy and upright man because they are handled by unclean persons.”[12]

Cyprian’s views on the visible unity of the church were worked out against the backdrop of the third century Novationist schism,[13] and Augustine’s in the context of the Donatist schism of the fourth century.[14] The followers of the North African bishop Donatus considered themselves the “one true church,” in distinction from the compromising catholics; they refused to accept as valid the sacramental ministry of bishops who had been ordained by traditores – catholic bishops, who during the Decian persecution had yielded to the pressure of the Roman authorities and handed over copies of the holy scriptures. In the context of this controversy Augustine articulated the crucial “catholic” view of the church, in which the validity of the sacrament does not depend on the personal holiness of the minister, but on the words of Christ, who is in fact the true minister of the sacrament.

This Cyprianic-Augustinian view of the church is the historic Anglican view, enshrined in article 26 of the 39 Articles, “Of the Unworthiness of Ministers, which Hindereth not the Effect of the Sacraments”:

Although in the visible church the evil be ever mixed with the good,[15] and sometimes the evil have

chief authority in the Ministration of the Word and Sacraments, yet forasmuch as they do not the

same in their own name, but in Christ’s, and do minister by his commission and authority, we

may use their Ministry, both in hearing the Word of God, and in receiving the Sacraments. Neither

is the effect of Christ’s ordinance taken away by their wickedness, nor the grace of God’s gifts

diminished from such as by faith, and rightly do receive the Sacraments ministered unto them;

which be effectual, because of Christ’s institution and promise, although they be ministered by

evil men.

Nevertheless, it appertaineth to the discipline of the Church, that inquiry be made of evil ministers,

and that they be accused by those that have knowledge of their offences; and finally, being found

guilty, by just judgment be deposed.

In his response to the Donatists Augustine also observed that one split from the church usually leads to another: the followers of Donatus began feuding among themselves, separating into further factions: the Urbanists, the Claudianists, the Rogatists, and the Maximianists. The Donatist schism was to persist for over a hundred years, troubling the peace of the church. This pattern has been repeated in church history: those who “come out” of the parent body then conclude that the new church is not pure enough, and come out of the new church to form a church purer still.

In the sixteenth century Anabaptists,[16] Baptists, and various independent sects separated from the Church of England and from the Lutheran and Reformed churches on the continent because they judged that the magisterial reformers had not gone far enough in purifiying the church. In modern American church history, J. Gresham Machen and his followers left the mainline Presbyterian Church in the midst of the Modernist-Fundamentalist controversy, to found in 1936 the Presbyterian Church of America (later renamed the Orthodox Presbyterian Church). Machen and his follower Carl McIntire then had disagreements over biblical interpretation and abstinence from alcohol, and McIntire decided in 1937 to found his own denomination, the Bible Presbyterian Church.[17]

Recent Anglicanism[18] in America has also seen its share of church splits. In 1977 the “Anglican Catholic Church” was formed in response to the Episcopal Church’s revisions to the Book of Common Prayer and the ordination of women to the priesthood.[19] In 1991 about one-third of the churches in the Anglican Catholic Church left to join the “Anglican Church in America”.[20] In 1988 the small Anglican denomination of the “Holy Catholic Church Anglican Rite” was formed, but it now appears that the unity of this small body is threatened by disagreements over questions of Marian devotion, “the place and importance of the Mother of God.”[21]

As the new Anglican Church in North America emerges and organizes itself, time will tell if the various subgroups within the new denomination can maintain unity with one another without the “common enemy” of theological liberalism in the Episcopal Church, or whether historic tensions over the ordination of women, and cleavages between evangelicals and Anglo-Catholics will once again rear their ugly heads. Will there be historic replays of earlier nineteenth and twentieth century battles between evangelicals and Anglo-Catholics in the new denomination over baptismal regeneration, the place of the 39 Articles, the reservation and adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, the invocation of angels and the saints, Marian devotion, reunion with Rome, and so forth?[22] Will the new denomination have clear answers to such questions as, “By what principle or principles do we decide what Roman Catholic doctrines and practices are acceptable in this denomination? What Roman Catholic beliefs and practices, if any, are excluded?” The ACNA provisional constitution art.I.7 states that “We receive the Thirty-Nine Articles … as expressing fundamental principles [not, “doctrines”] of authentic Anglican belief” – but what exactly are these “fundamental principles,” and where are they specified? Without clear answers to such questions, the Protestant/Anglo-Catholic/Roman Catholic elements that influence the ACNA’s basic identity remain ambiguous, and a potential source of future intramural conflict.

Some Concluding Thoughts:

So when all is said and done, what final thoughts might John Calvin have for conservative Episcopalians who are asking themselves, “Should we leave, or should we stay?” I could imagine Calvin saying something like this: “The bottom line is, stay with the parent body until they eject you or the parent body abandons the Nicene faith. Be careful in throwing around the term ‘apostate’; distinguish carefully between the beliefs and practices of an individual member of the church; an individual priest; a particular parish; a particular bishop or group of bishops, and the denomination as a whole; distinguish between confessional repudiation of doctrine and ecclesiastical failure of discipline. The Augustinian, “catholic” and historic Anglican view of the church would be that the church as a whole, considered as a denomination, remains a viable church of Christ as long as the “Word is preached and the sacraments duly administered,” which in your Episcopal context means, ‘As long as the creeds have not been repudiated, and the Prayer Book expresses in the liturgy the historic orthodox faith.’ You would have to leave if the creeds are repudiated or essentials of the faith removed from the Prayer Book; or: you are either forbidden to preach the gospel in your parish, or commanded by the bishop to perform practices (e.g., blessing of same-sex unions or same-sex weddings) that you believe violate scripture and your conscience; until that point, stay and preach the gospel, maintain your orthodox witness, and work for renewal.”

Calvin’s ecclesiological advice might sound unrealistic and hopelessly idealistic, especially in our modern American context of individual freedom, “consumer choice” and a “free market” in religion; it is certainly easier to simply leave an unsatisfactory church and shop around for or start another.

Others may say, quite understandably, “We have tried to work for renewal for years – or decades – and it just hasn’t worked.” Fair enough. But on the other hand, did Jesus ever promise his disciples an easy time of being his disciples? Before he prayed his “High Priestly Prayer” for Christian unity (Jn.17:20-23), he had warned his followers that being identified with him would lead to conflict and opposition (Jn.16:1-4). God calls some to remain as faithful “Jeremiahs” in their “Jerusalems” during hard and troubled times.

At the end of the day, some conservative Episcopalians will choose to stay, and others will choose to leave – both for reasons, which seem to them, to be compelling and sound. Even with such an outcome, the spirit of Christ’s prayer for unity could in some measure be answered not in terms of institutional or denominational unity, but at the level of attitude and mutual perception. Could both groups in charity recognize one another as fellow Christians? Could both groups perceive each other as acting out of conscience and good faith? Could the “leavers” refrain from seeing the “stayers” as “compromisers”, and the “stayers” refrain from seeing the “leavers” as “schismatics”? So much will depend on attitude and mutual perceptions. Could both groups in a parish[23] caught in the current conflict continue to cooperate with one another in local and global mission, and even have occasions of intercommunion? One might hope so; and upon such a less-than-ideal outcome, one suspects that John Calvin, and more importantly – Jesus Christ – could look with some measure of approbation.

---

[1] Institutes, IV.1.18. Citations for the translation of Ford Lewis Battles (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960).

[2] Institutes, IV.1.19.

[3] G. Vermes, The Dead Sea Scrolls in English (New York: Penguin Books, 1987), pp. 37, 38: “The Religious Ideas of the Community”.

[4] The sectarian and separatist impulse in Christianity tends to focus on “truth” at the expense of unity and love; theological liberals tend to focus on love and unity, but at the expense of historic truth. Scripture indicates (e.g. Jn.17: Jesus’ ‘High Priestly Prayer’) that all three values – truth, love, unity - are essential for a healthy and vibrant church.

[5] In the context of pastoral issues in Corinth, the plausible context of this statement to “come out and be separate” is the apostles’ earlier admonition (1Cor.10:14-22) for the Corinthian believers to “flee from idolatry” – to avoid active participation in the sacrifices of pagan temples dedicated to Apollo, Asclepius, Demeter, Aphrodite, and the other gods and goddesses of the Greek pantheon. They were not morally contaminated by indirect contact with idolatrous practices, e.g., meat sacrificed to idols (1Cor.8:1-13); but they would be contaminated by direct participation in the temple rituals of the pagan gods (1Cor.10:14-22).

[6] For background on the so-called “Benediction against the Heretics” (Birkath ha-Minim), see James Louis Martin, History and Theology in the Fourth Gospel (Philadelphia: Westminster John Knox, 2003), pp.56ff.

[7] Institutes, IV.1.14.

[8] In his celebrated Apology for the Church of England (1562) Bishop John Jewel distinguished the Church of England both from the Roman Catholic Church and from sectarians such as the Anabaptists; the C of E was continuous with the primitive catholic church of Christ, the apostles, and the holy fathers: Works of John Jewel, v.3 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1848), pp.67, 77.

[9] On the high regard for patristic authority by the Anglican divines, see Arthur Middleton, Fathers and Anglicans: the Limits of Orthodoxy (Herefordshire, U.K.: Gracewing, 2001).

[10] Augustine, Against the Letter of Parmenianus III.i.1; III.ii.15; cited by Calvin in Institutes, IV.1.16.

[11] Cyprian, Letters liv.3, cited by Calvin, Institutes, IV.1.19.

[12] Institutes, IV.1.19.

[13] See article on “Novationism,” Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (London: Oxford University Press, 1958), p.968.

[14] See article on “Donatists”, Catholic Encyclopedia, accessible online at http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05121.htm.

[15] Cf. the similar statement in the Westminster Confession of Faith (1647), chpt.25.5, “Of the Church”: “The purest churches under heaven are subject both to mixture and error.” Similarly, the Augsburg Confession (1530), chpt.8, “The Church,” states: “Again, although the Christian church, properly speaking, is nothing else than the assembly of all believers and saints, yet because in this life many false Christians, hypocrites, and even open sinners remain among the godly, the sacraments are efficacious even if the priests who administer them are wicked men, for as Christ himself indicated, ‘The Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat’ (Matt.23:2). Accordingly, the Donatists and all who hold contrary views are condemned.”

[16] On the sectarian impulse in the Anabaptist tradition, with its search for the “pure New Testament church,” see Franklin H. Littell, The Origins of Sectarian Protestantism: a Study of the Anabaptist View of the Church (New York: Macmillan, 1964). The English Reformers rejected this sectarian view of the church: see art.26 of the 39 Articles above. Ironically, new Anglican groups in the United States are closer in some aspects of their ecclesiology to the Anabaptist-separatist tradition than to historic Anglicanism.

[17] For historical background on these Presbyterian controversies and church splits, see: Lefferts A. Loetscher, The Broadening Church: a Study of Theological Issues in the Presbyterian Church since 1869 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1954); Bradley J. Longfield, The Presbyterian Controversy: Fundamentalists, Modernists, and Moderates (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991). For a separatist perspective on these controversies, see Gary G. Cohen, “The Bible Presbyterian Position on Ecclesiastical Separation,” WRS Journal 11/2 (August 2004) 5-12, accessed online at http://www.bpc.org/resources/reading/articles/history/separation1.html. In the context of current controversies in the Presbyterian Church USA over sexual ethics and biblical authority, Richard J. Mouw, president of Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, CA urged evangelicals to stay in the denomination: “I worry much about what would happen to Presbyterian evangelicals if we were to leave the PCUSA. When we evangelical types don’t have more liberal people to argue with, we tend to start arguing with each other … the cause of Reformed orthodoxy was diminished when … conservatives … left the mainline denomination. They quickly began to argue among themselves, and it was not long before new splits occurred in their ranks. The result was that conservative Calvinism itself became a fractured movement.”: “Why Conservatives Need Liberals,” Christian Century, January 13, 2004, pp. 22-25; accessible online at http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=2933.

[18] In nineteenth century America, evangelicals in the Episcopal Church separated from the parent body to form the Reformed Episcopal Church. Robert Prichard, A History of the Episcopal Church (Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse Publishing, 1999), p.148: “Frustrated by their church’s inability to root out Oxford theology, a small number of evangelicals led by Bishop George David Cummins of Kentucky and priest Charles E. Cheney formed a separate Reformed Episcopal Church (1873).” The denomination remained a rather small splinter group, currently numbering some 141 congregations with an aggregate membership of 13,600. The Reformed Episcopal Church is expected to affiliate with the North American province of the emerging Anglican Church in North America.

[19] On the “Anglican Catholic Church,” see online article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglican_Catholic_Church; the denomination remains a relatively small group of 135 churches with a membership of some 10,000.

[20] For information on this small Anglican denomination, see their website at http://acahomeorg0.web701.discountasp.net/. The denomination is said to have some 100 congregations and approximately 5,200 members.

[21] See the denomination’s website and discussion of the Marian issues, “The Challenge to the Holy Catholic Church Anglican Rite,” at http://holycatholicanglican.org/resources/challenge.php.

[22] For various accounts of these Evangelical/Anglo-Catholic tensions, see: Mark Chapman, Anglicanism: a Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 57-93; George E. DeMille, The Catholic Movement in the American Episcopal Church (Philadelphia: Church Historical Society, 1950), esp. chpt.3, “The Impact of the Tracts”; chpt.4, “The Beginnings of Ritualism”; chpt.5, “The Fifties – the Storm Subsides”; chpt.6, “The Second Ritualistic War”; John Shelton Reed, Glorious Battle: The Cultural Politics of Victorian Anglo-Catholicism (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1996; see esp. chpt.3, “Ritualism Rampant”; W.S.F. Pickering, Anglo-Catholicism: a Study in Religious Ambiguity (London: Routledge, 1989); Francis Penhale, The Anglican Church Today: Catholics in Crisis (London: Mowbray, 1986). On the marginalized place of the 39 Articles in the life of the Church of England today, see J.I. Packer and R.T. Beckwith, The Thirty-Nine Articles: Their Place and Use Today (Oxford: Latimer House, 1984).

[23] For an example of such a “Two Parish Vision” (Christ Church Episcopal of Hamilton-Wenham, MA), see the link at http://www.christchurchhw.org/postingdetail.php?sub=Master%20Calendar&id=659.

Finding the Sweet Spot

By David Horn
Director, The Ockenga Institute

I woke up this morning to the news in the Boston Globe that has all of New England concerned. David Ortiz has lost his swing. More to the point, the Red Sox slugger who bats at the “sweet spot” in the batting order, has lost his ability to hit the ball consistently on the “sweet spot” of the bat. It’s that fertile part of hickory geography--between the handle and the very tip of the bat, where the round ball perfectly connects with the roundness of the barrel of the bat--that batters are forever seeking after. If this geography is compromised by a fraction of an inch, a would-be triple is dinked off into the left field grandstands or a hoped-for homer falls lifelessly into the glove of the right fielder.

This past weekend, I had the opportunity to lead a retreat with a group of people in our church who are no longer in the sweet spot of our church. They playfully call themselves the Half Century Club. The geography these individuals represent sits on the out side of the bat, as it were: Lot’s of gray hair, lots of no hair, lots of sags and aches, lots of pills to remedy failing systems, lots of individuals on the other side of their dreams. What a great group they were, as they attentively discussed the Prologue of the Book of Job with me. You could see the message of that book written deeply in many of their eyes. Like Job, certainly several of them had seen many a curve ball in their own lives. Long gone are the days when they have felt comfortable at the plate, when they have felt fully productive in ways they once have been. Most of them have been pushed further down the batting order.

Churches have “sweet spots” as well. If the church literature is to be believed, the sweet spot in our churches is: Married…late 20’s to late 40’s…with children and teenagers… middle and upper middle class. These are the people we like to fill our pews because they make great volunteers for our programs. In fact, they have the children to fill these programs. And, they also are in prime positions to provide the resources to fund these programs. If we were going to start a church plant, these would certainly be the persons we would want to show up the first day we open our doors.

Churches, in fact, are measured by how they hit this demographic sweet spot. I always cringe a little when I hear people describe their churches as dying communities filled with “old people.” New England is filled with these kind of churches. On the one hand, I understand that “healthy” churches are deemed to be places that consistently seek to accommodate new people into the lives of their communities. They are vital places where new ideas are heard and accepted, institutions that are not stuck in the past. For this reason, “healthy” churches tend to be multi-generational that include persons of all ages.

But, I am not convinced that this is often what is meant by these comments. After all, who would start a church with the demographic found in the Half Century Club? Too often, functionality is the measure of community in our churches. That is, persons are too often measured by their ability to contribute. Like the Red Sox, the value a player has in our churches is measured by their ability to consistently hit the sweet spot.

But isn’t this what James is speaking against when he admonishes his brothers and sisters not to show favoritism in their churches? He speaks in economic terms—“Suppose a man comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and fine clothes, and a poor man in shabby clothes also comes in (James 2.2).”—but he could just as well be speaking of my elderly friends. The point is, community should not be measured in terms of the transient form of functional value found from those in our midst. After all, when all is said and done, when Jesus speaks of the Kingdom of God earlier in the New Testament, who are those who inherit the earth?: The poor in spirit, and those who mourn, and the meek…and you know the rest of the Beatitudes.

Perhaps the reason why I am particularly sensitive to this issue is because there is a reason why I was asked to speak at this Half Century Club retreat. I am one of them. How did this happen? In my head, I am still thirty-five years old, still hitting in the sweet spot of the order. All of a sudden, I find myself on the backside of my own productivity, certainly my hopes and dreams. So, I ask my own church what I ask more broadly, “What is my role in the church now that I no longer can hit for average and with power?” (I just hope Ortiz gets his swing back…but I digress!)

Women, History and the Debate about Leadership

By Maria Boccia, PhD
Professor of Pastoral Counseling and Psychology and
Director of Graduate Programs in Counseling at the Charlotte campus

Those who oppose women in leadership in the church continue to assert that egalitarians are capitulating to the culture, bowing to pressures to conform, starting with the women=s movement in the 1960s. According to complementarians, there was no support for women in church leadership until some Christians got led astray by that movement. If we learn anything from a study of women=s history, we learn that this is absolutely false. However, too often, Evangelical Christians are naive about the importance of history and tend to know little church history in particular. When it comes to women in history this is doubly true, because our larger society also tends to ignore women in history. For example, last month, March, was Women=s History Month. Did you notice? February was Black History Month, and there were all kinds of activities, special programs on television, conferences and lectures in celebration of the contributions of African Americans to our history and culture. Women=s history month seemed to go by with almost no notice. Women=s contributions throughout history do not get much play. Sometimes, this is through benign neglect. Other times through active, willful suppression. I got to thinking about this because in March, Women=s History Month, I was in Massachusetts attending the inauguration of our seminary=s new president. As I thought about my first visit to Boston, I got to thinking about Paul Revere. We all know about Paul Revere. Every schoolchild learns about him: Aone if by land, two if by Sea.@ He rode from Charlestown to Lexington, some 15 miles, to warn Samuhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifel Adams and John Hancock that the British were coming to arrest them. His house is a historic landmark and museum dedicated to his story (see http://www.paulreverehouse.org/bio/) and everyone learns his story. But, have you ever heard of Sybil Ludington?

Sybil Ludington was the oldest daughter of Colonel Ludington. On April 26, 1777, he received word that about 2000 British troops, under the command of General Tryon, were attacking Danbury Connecticut. Sybil volunteered to warn people of the attack and alert the militia who were scattered across the countryside in farms and villages to come to Danbury's defense. She rode some 40 miles through the area of New York adjoining Danbury Connecticut in the middle of the night during a rainstorm that turned roads muddy, calling out Ludington's troops. As a result, American troops were able to turn back the advancing British and drive them back to their boats. I only know about her because I lived in Mahopac New York, through which she rode and in which is a historical marker about her ride. In the adjacent town of Carmel NY is a statue of her (see photo). Women in history, like Sybil, are often ignored even when what they accomplished is quite impressive. Other times, however, women are left out, not through benign neglect but through active exclusion and repression.

On my first visit to Rome (Italy), I visited the Church of St Praxida (thanks to Dr. Cathy Kroeger, who directed me to this fascinating church). In this church is a chapel dedicated to St. Zeno. In the chapel, there is a very interesting mosaic, probably dating to the 5th century AD. Four women are depicted (see photo). Three of them are saints (as indicated by the round halos). One was still living at the time the mosaic was made (as indicated by the square halo filled with blue). The inscription around the still-living woman reads Episcopa Theodo. The o on the end of Theodo makes the word a masculine name. However, the first part of the inscription Episcopa is the feminine form of the word for Bishop. This is unusual, to say the least: Gender of adjectives, titles and names always match. Outside the chapel there is a column inscribed with names of patrons of the church. Among them is Episcopa Theodora. Apparently, the original mosaic was altered to make Theodora masculine. But the bishop was a lady! In this case, the evidence of at least one woman bishop was removed from history through active suppression, not benign neglect.

Today, the discussion of women in leadership in Evangelical churches can be not only loud but also harsh and disrespectful. Those who affirm women=s gifts and calling are accused of following the world and the modern women=s movement. This has been disproven by so many so frequently that it is hard not to be wonder about the motives of those who continue to assert this. The voice of Episcopa Theodora suggests this discussion goes back into the early history of the church. In fact, one might argue that the church, following Jesus= example of affirming women (for example, commissioning a woman as the first evangelist), initially welcomed women into leadership and only later excluded them. One evidence of this is the series of restrictions placed on women=s ministries through canons of the Church Councils (see Fore Mothers: Women of the Bible by Janice Nunnally Cox):


Council of Orange (A.D.441), Canon 26: "Let no one proceed to the ordination of Deaconesses anymore."
Council of Epaon (A.D.517), Canon 21: "We abrogate completely in the entire Kingdom the consecration of widows who are named Deaconesses."
Council of Orleans (A.D.533): "No longer shall the blessing of women deaconesses be given, because of the weakness of their sex."

Joan Morris documents the history of suppression of women=s ministries and leadership in her book The Lady Was a Bishop: The Hidden History of Women with Clerical Ordination and the Jurisdiction of Bishops. One aspect of this story I find particularly significant is that, for centuries, women were heads of abbeys with both male and female dormitories, and held authority which extended to the local parishes and their priests. All of these individuals, male and female, vowed obedience to these abbesses. The popes vigorously supported and defended these women=s right to rule, so to speak. This only ended when the power of the popes waned and the power of secular states rose, from which the local bishops derived their power. The bishops could then depose these women with impunity, which they did. In the history of Protestant denominations, one can find this pattern repeated over and over: when a new movement starts with a fresh breath of the Spirit, women=s gifts and calling to leadership are recognized. Then, as the movement institutionalizes, perspectives on power and authority creep in from the world, and women are excluded.

I am distressed when the history of women and their contributions to the kingdom are neglected. We need to study and be aware of how God has raised up these and many other women to leadership positions, and how the church supported and endorsed them. Too much of the history of women in the church is one of progressive exclusion. Despite what people supporting such organizations as Counsel on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood assert, the contemporary movement to affirm women in ministry and leadership did not begin in the 1960s. It began in the 30s when Jesus told Mary Magdalene to go . . . to my brothers and tell them, >I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God. (John 20: 17).

"The church in many ways is a sort of potter's field, where the gifts of women, as so many strangers, are buried. How long, O Lord, how long before man shall roll away the stone that we may see a resurrection."

Phoebe Palmer
The Promise of the Father, 1869

Reflections on Commencements Past and Future

By Roy Ciampa, PhD
Associate Professor of New Testament

Commencement day is approaching again! Gordon-Conwell is about to graduate another distinguished group of seminary students and the faculty is grateful to God, as always, for the fine brothers and sisters in Christ he has brought to us. They (like you, graduates who have gone before them) have worked very hard to gain the best possible foundation of knowledge and skills and to exercise and refine their gifts in order to most effectively serve the advancement of God’s kingdom purposes. The upcoming commencement exercises lead me to reflect on so many former students and the vast variety of ways in which they are faithfully serving Christ around the world.

Some alumni have the opportunity to come back and visit the seminary from time to time and it is always such a pleasure to see them and hear about what God is doing in their lives and through their ministries. Others of you serve far from any GCTS campus and may never see a former professor face-to-face again. Be assured that even if you are out of sight you are not out of mind. We think of you and pray for you, especially at this time of year as we recall graduation ceremonies of prior years and the way each student left their mark on our classes and on the wider seminary community.

Faculty are constantly praying for alumni, whether by name and with specific requests as they are aware of the particular needs and challenges of former students or in general prayers as they think about and pray for those God has brought through the seminary over the years and the faithful and sacrificial ways you minister wherever it is you have been called to serve. Paul’s affirmation to the Thessalonians applies to the GCTS faculty and their thoughts concerning you: “We always thank God for all of you and continually mention you in our prayers. We remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ” (1Thessalonians 1:2-3; TNIV). If you get the chance, be sure to let one or more of those faculty members who left a mark on you know how you are doing. It will undoubtedly refresh and focus their prayers for you and encourage them all the more as they look forward to serving the next generation of students. Your faithful service of the Lord encourages us as we look forward to celebrating future commencements and having to say goodbye to other students who have also left their mark on us.

Penguin Prayer

By Dr. Jeff Arthurs, PhD
Professor of Preaching & Communication and Dean of the Chapel

Have you seen the film called March of the Penguins? It is a marvelous documentary about the breeding cycle of the penguins of Antarctica. Every year they march 60 or 100 miles into the interior of that continental ice box to mate. You may have noticed that penguins are not built for marching; they waddle and squirm for all those miles. After mating, the male returns to the sea to feed, while the female produces an egg. Then the male returns to care for the egg while the female makes a dash for the coast. Daddy penguin has to hold the egg on his feet, an inch above the deadly frozen ground, and shield it with a flap of belly skin covered with warm feathers. The poor father eats nothing for months, moves no more than a few inches a day because he’s got an egg on his feet, and stands exposed to the worst weather on our planet. Then the egg hatches and the father has to care for the mindless, rambunctious, fragile chick. The weather can kill baby penguin in hours. Finally, momma comes back with a crop full of fish, and the happy family march-waddles to the sea.

So . . . if penguin fathers can be this patient and selfless, can’t I? Here’s a sonnet I wrote, a prayer, asking God to give me the patience of a penguin:

Prayer for Patience in Fathering

Lord of all, if penguins can, can’t I?—
The plodding march, the hunger, pain, and trials.
They shuffle, stand, and shield their juveniles
With only instinct, hope, and feathers dry.
If they can nurture chicks in wind and trackless
Ice with predators, besides the wild
And mindless straying of the hatchlings beguiled
By shape and sound, can’t I? Do I have less
Instinct? Less hope? And surely human brain
Can compensate for flightless feathers. Yet,
I lack the penguin’s patience, just to let
Him molt, mature, and muddle in his vein.
Help me to wait, the penguin emulate;
He knows his role, his place, Your time, time’s state.

This Is the Day the Lord Has Made: Reflections on Palm Saturday Children’s Program at Christ Church

Dr. John Jefferson Davis, PhD
Professor of Systematic Theology and Christian Ethics

“This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.” That’s the familiar text from the psalm that I often use as a sentence-prayer and focus for meditation when I am driving in the car, waiting in line, or early in the morning just after waking up. Before this morning, I had customarily used the prayer as a way of thanking God for the new day even if, as is typically the case in New England in early spring, the “day” is a dreary, overcast, cold, and rainy one – This is the day the Lord has chosen to make; might as well rejoice and be glad in it – anyway.

But this Saturday morning a new layer of meaning emerged: about 7:20 am, as I went to the kitchen to make my morning cup of coffee, looking forward to quiet hour or so of undisturbed time reading my Bible and prayer and meditation, I heard the bump-bump-bump sound of my grandchildren’s footsteps coming down the stairways from the upstairs bedroom – looking for grandpa. (They were here for a three-week visit from their home in Sonoma Valley, California.) It suddenly dawned on me that this was the day and the type of morning the Lord had planned for me; I was to have an opportunity to have “morning devotions” and “practicing the presence of God” not through reading biblical texts, but by spending time with my grandchildren Hadley and Lincoln.

My wife Robin asked me, “How would you like to take the kids this morning over to the church for the Palm Saturday children’s program that runs from 9 to 1 – games, crafts, Bible stories, and lunch?” My initial reaction was honestly a bit mixed, as I saw God rearranging my typical expectation of morning “quiet time” devotions. I said, “Sure,” and soon we had arrived at the church for a very busy and more meaningful morning than I could have planned for myself.

Gifts Differing:

We went into the beautiful Christ Church chapel with its lovely stained-glass windows and English country church architecture, and the 35 or so kids – aged 2 to about 7, I suppose – sat more or less quietly on the floor while Betsy Retallack charmed them with songs and choruses on her guitar and bongo drum, after which Andrea Kelly held their attention for an amazing ten minutes with a flannel-graph story about the events of Holy Week. As I saw this I said to myself, “I could never do this – I am so glad that God has gifted these women so clearly for the children’s ministry they are doing.” Jesus had said, “Let the little children come to me, and forbid them not” – but how often do we (male) “ministers” not give serious attention and thought to such ministries aimed at the very young. “How important it is,” I mused, “to give the kids a positive impression of church and the faith when ‘the brick is still soft.’”

Low Tech, High Tech:

By the way, don’t let the reference to “flannel graph” put you off – this “low tech” approach to Bible teaching was more effective than any Powerpoint or video presentation I could imagine. The simple but artistically well-done figures appealed to the children’s imagination in a way that the more “literal” character of other media could not. In the media-saturated and over-stimulated environment in which our children are growing up, sometimes “less is more” and “low tech” can be better than “high tech.” It was a good reminder to be more attentive to the types of technology that we use in the church.

Fly on the Wall:

The program continued in the church hall: craft tables with Palm Sunday “icons” painted on wood; crosses weaved from palm branches; decorated candles for Holy Week; Bible stories from Holy Week acted out – real foot-washing by the kids, for example – snacks, games, and finally lunch. I enjoyed being a “fly on the wall” and grandparent and helper, rather than “seminary professor”. “Jack,” said Jennifer, who was doing the story, could you get me a pan of warm water for the foot washing? This one is a bit too cold for the kids.” “Sure,” I said, and Jack ran off to the kitchen to fetch a pan of water.

So my alternative “morning devotions” continued, but in a different and really more meaningful way that morning. Even as Jennifer retold the familiar story of Jesus’s cry of dereliction from the cross – “My God, my God – Why have you forsaken me” – and said, “For the first time in his life Jesus felt separated from his Father” – that profound statement struck me with new force. “Morning devotions” had “happened” again.

It occurred to me as the morning went on that every seminarian and pastor should take the time to be a “fly on the wall” in his or her own church, observing as a helper or parent every aspect of the life of the church, from the crib nursery to youth group to children’s ministries – from “A to Z”, so to speak. It just might turn out to be more valuable spiritually and professionally in the long run than that morning cup of coffee and “quiet time” that you had planned.

“This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice in it.”

Palm Saturday, April 4, 2009

Thetis and the Dishes

By Sean McDonough, PhD
Associate Professor of New Testament

Oft of an evening, as I am cleaning up after dinner, my mind turns to Thetis. She was, you may recall, the mother of Achilles who famously dipped her baby into the river Styx in the hopes of rendering him invulnerable to any weapon. She was mostly successful; but, alas, she forgot to re-dip the boy to account for the still dry heel by which she had dunked him. Achilles went on to become the most formidable warrior of the ancient world, but today we remember him more for his heel than his heroism. He was ultimately done in by the ladies’ man Paris, who hid in a bush and shot a poisoned arrow at Achilles’… Achilles Heel.
Which brings us back to the dishes. Whenever I am holding a particularly impure item – say a cutting board with raw chicken or pork on it -- I always remind myself of Thetis: I may scrub my fingers to the bone on 99 percent of the surface area, but if I don’t attend to the bit currently under my thumb, the whole enterprise will be for naught. Our family will be just as vulnerable as poor Achilles: you slice some salami, and salmonella may well come along for the ride. Indeed, at times I wonder whether the whole Thetis-Achilles story first arose in the daydreaming of some mythically-inclined dishwater working away on a Grecian urn.
Now the point of all this is…that there is no point (at least not yet). Thetis and Achilles don’t really have anything to do with my doing the dishes. Now, dishwashing can be a pretty tedious business, so I don’t think anyone will call me to account for mentally riffing on themes in Greek mythology (which would include, now that I think of it, rosy-fingered Dawn – though our Dawn is blue). But neither am I about to walk into a classroom and try to argue that my plate scraping and bowl rinsing holds the key to a central motif in ancient literature.
The real problem – and the real point here – is that we often read the Bible with more or less the same hermeneutical strategy I employ with Thetis and the dishes. The contours of a story, the rhythms of a psalm, the historical exigencies of an epistle – all are quickly tossed aside in the pursuit of “what this means to me”. Scripture reading can degenerate into a spiritual Rorschach test: what matters is not the apparently random blots of ink on the page in front of me, but rather how those blots speak to my all important personal story.
Now, I am hardly against a deeply personal application of the biblical text – provided it an application of the biblical text. When Jesus says we should love our neighbor, I need to go and love my neighbor. Even an ancient story of a bitter prophet complaining that God hasn’t wiped out his enemies according to plan (post-whale Jonah) is meant to inform my understanding of how God regards the world and how I should do so in turn. But we need to respect the people to whom God first made the revelation.
One final image: God in providing us with the Scriptural witness has, as it were, sent us off to explore the rich biology of a vernal pool. But we become so enraptured by our own image reflecting off the surface of the pond that we completely forget about probing the depths beneath.
Wake up, Narcissus.