In a Godward direction

Lord deliver us from those who claim to speak for a group solely on the basis of their membership in the group. Unless one is appointed or elected to do so, it is better to speak for oneself; perhaps even then.
Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
whose thoughts are his own, though he is happy to share them

Gregorian Friar, Priest, Prophet, Activist, Missiologist, Educationalist and Friend

Brother Michael Elliott BSG died peacefully in Auckland Hospital in the early hours of Wednesday 8th February 2012 after a short period in hospital, three weeks before his 74th birthday.  He had recently celebrated the 50thanniversary of his ordination to the diaconate and the 49th anniversary of his ordination to the priesthood.

Michael lived an extremely full life, ministering and working around the world.  He leaves behind him a global network of friends and students and the lasting legacy of his contribution to the development of reflective practice and situation analysis pedagogy in applied theological education.

He instilled in all who met him his deep commitment for social justice, political and theological integration, the power of the Gospel to transform the situations of the poor and marginalised and the renewal of the Anglican Catholic tradition.

In his many ministry postings he lived out the prophetic tradition in his radical writing, teaching built on the foundation of his conviction that those with whom he ministered did not need to be filled up as if they were empty vessels, but needed a tool kit to critically examine their experience.

Michael was born and raised in New Zealand.  After schooling he was formed for ordination at the College of Saint John the Evangelist and was awarded his BA from the University of Auckland and his LTh from the college.  He served in the parishes of New Lynn and Thames in the Diocese of Auckland as an Assistant Priest.

In 1965 he travelled to Massachusetts where he studied for and received the degree of Master of Divinity from the Episcopal Divinity School and served in the parish of St John Beverly Farms.  His time in America began a close friendship with the Gardiner family which continued throughout his life, who he referred to as his ‘American family’.

Michael travelled to London and served as the Warden for the Pembroke House College Mission in Walworth (1966-69) where he worked closely with Bishop John Robinson during the days of the radical Woolwich theological movement, before being invited by Archbishop George Appleton to direct a team at the St Luke’s Centre in Haifa, Israel.

In 1973 he returned to the United Kingdom to work for the British Council of Churches in the Community and Race Relations Unit and then returned to serve in his homeland of New Zealand as the Executive Officer of the Ecumenical Secretariat on Development, a ten year appointment that provided the opportunity for him to work across the country raising issues of social justice and development.

In 1987 he was appointed the Sir John Cass Chaplain to London Guildhall University, living in the famous Barbican Towers, and in due course became the Director of Inner City Aid, a charity established by His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales.

Michael’s move to Oxford to take up an appointment as the Tutor for Applied and Community Theology at Westminster College commenced a close working relationship in a range of educational partnerships with Dr Bernard C. Farr and later David John Battrick BSG which continued until his death and included curriculum development in institutions in the United Kingdom, India, the Americas, Europe and East Africa firstly through Westminster College, then through the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies and more recently through the Oxford Educational Trust.

During this time he developed a programme which enabled many New Zealand clergy to study for an MTh in Applied Theology through the University of Oxford.

Alongside these appointments Michael served as an honorary priest in the Parish of St Mary Magdalen, Oxford, a Trustee of the Peanuts Trust, and as the Director of the Institute for Social Research and Education, and then later as one of the founding directors of the Freire Institute, which grew out of many years of collaboration with his close friend Father Ron Mitchinson.

In 2002 Michael was appointed as the Director of Ministry and a Residentiary Canon in the Diocese of Swansea and Brecon in Wales which he recounted as his happiest period in ministry.

When others of his age would have been enjoying retirement Michael continued to teach as a Part-time lecturer in the Centre for Contemporary and Pastoral Theology at the University of Lampeter in Wales until 2009, where he also supervised Masters and Doctoral dissertations.
During this period he also became the lead-programme writer for the newly founded Newcastle School of Theology for Ministry in New South Wales, Australia and lectured regularly within the School on situation analysis for mission and ministry.

He made his profession of vows within the Brotherhood of St Gregory in July 2008, becoming a very active member of this community of mission friars in the Anglican Communion.

Amongst his many books and articles, his most widely acclaimed is ‘Freedom, Justice and Christian Counter-culture’ published in 1990 by SCM Press in London in which he set out his manifesto for Christian anarchism.

Michael returned to New Zealand in 2009 to be closer to his sister and to continue his work with the Newcastle School of Theology for Ministry.

He commenced treatment for cancer in 2010 but continued to teach, write and travel until a few months before his death, including a final trip to attend the Annual Convocation of the Brotherhood of St Gregory in New York and a visit to friends and former colleagues in the United Kingdom in the Northern Summer of 2011.

He is survived by his sister Rosemary, her husband John, and their children and grandchildren who cared lovingly for him throughout his illness.

Soli Deo Gloria: To God Alone the Glory.

from Brother David John Battrick BSG, writing from Australia

Last night's Bill Moyers interview with Jonathan Haidt was a superb example of rational analysis of issues. A primary theme of getting people to talk across their differences without polarizing demonizations reminded me very strongly of the goal of the Continuing Indaba and Mutual Listening Process.

Have a look.

Jonathan Haidt Explains Our Contentious Culture from BillMoyers.com on Vimeo.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Few gay men in 1960s Britain ever would have imagined that within 50 years Parliament might be debating same-sex marriage. They were initially happy no longer to be sent to jail!
Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
responding to an assertion that the move from civil partnerships to marriage is a sign of disingenuous political tactics, when it is simply how things move against entrenched opposition: step by step, just as in the movement from slavery to manumission, to emancipation, to segregation, to equality. Don't blame the oppressed for their "tactics" when the need for any tactic is the result of the oppressor's intransigence.

I'm awaiting further confirmation of this but the Diocese of Derby (UK) Twitter feed shows that the vote on the Anglican Covenant was decidedly negative:
Bishops: for 0; against 1 (bishop Humphrey not present)
Clergy: for 1, against 21, abstention 2
Laity. for 2, against 24, absention 1I'm terrible at maths, but that seems an overwhelming No. Derby has been an Indaba partner with New York and Mumbai (India) and according to the Twitter feed comments on the debate the Indaba experience contributed to the negative vote. This is natural, because Indaba represents the ideals the Covenant lauds but paradoxically disables in its notorious Section 4.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Bishop Nick Holtam of Salisbury has raised the stakes in the same-sex marriage debate in England by coming out with a moderately supportive position, contrary to that of the Archbishop of York. The story in the Times is still behind a firewall, but I hope it will be visible soon. In it, the Bishop is quoted as saying, basically, that apart from procreation — which he notes is not required of heterosexual marriages even if it is the norm — there is nothing meaningful to distinguish a same-sex couple from a mixed-sex couple other than their sex, and that this is not enough on which to create a boundary to recognizing same-sex marriages. The Bishop testifies to his own change in point of view due to his experience of loving same-sex couples.

Some will ask (as they have already asked), "If it isn't about procreation, then why should we have marriage at all!?" — though it is interesting that they didn't raise that question in the face of infertile couples. And of course, the answer is, If what life is about is only the generation of more life, then life itself must have a value extrinsic to its generation. Life is more than a merely self-fulfilling prophecy or circular argument. It has value even if it does not lead to procreation. And that value is, for human beings, love, which is the divine image in humanity, a meta-biological reality. As I've said before, love and fidelity are virtues, biology isn't.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

A full transcript of the Archbishop of York's interview with the Daily Telegraph is now available. Although it casts some of his more offensive comments in a kindlier context, those comments themselves remain problematical as examples of circular and/or definitional reasoning: i.e., marriage is between a man and a woman because that's what marriage is; and, the state shouldn't get involved in such things because it isn't the state's business to be involved in such things. That failure to recognize the important role of the state in the history of the institution of marriage was the main focus of my earlier critique.

I do appreciate his desire to support same-sex couples who are raising children. Pity is he doesn't see how helpful civil marriage would be in making that task easier, by simplifying much of the legal tangle people face. And church marriage might do even more to support both the individuals and the institution.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
h/t Thinking Anglicans

The Episcopal Church's premier number-crunchers have reported to the Executive Council on their view of the state of things. These reports almost always leave me wanting to ask a much more basic question: Can anyone provide a figure for overall church membership and attendance across all churches? What is the actual Churched Population and ChurchGoing Population in the US, over a period of years? If we knew that we might be able to see what the TEC "share" of those larger populations is, and if that share has changed markedly. The raw stats, though they attest to decline, seem to me to be singularly uninformative in addressing the cause of decline, and if the decline is due to a wider movement in the public rather than to something we in TEC are doing or failing to do.

The real reality must have context: context is reality. What I really long for is a Hans Rosling TED-style analysis. Anyone out there skilled in that area; it would be a lot more helpful than tables without relationship to a bigger picture.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

The following is my address to the 2002 Convention of the Diocese of New York in support of adding King Charles to the Calendar. Portions of it seem oddly timely, so I dig it out in honor of the day. By the way, the motion passed overwhelmingly, but did not make it through the next General Convention.

It feels odd for me, as a lifelong democrat, to be urging support for including King Charles I on the Church Calendar. I have no interest in the divine right of kings.

But it would be unfair for me to criticize Charles for supporting the monarchy. He was, after all, a monarch, one who took his office seriously, believing God had given him a divine responsibility to serve his subjects.

What is important to me, as a member of an Anglican Religious Community, is that Charles supported the first such community, and protected Nicholas Ferrar of Little Gidding against Purtian attacks. When Charles visited that community and saw their first English Harmony of the Gospels he was so moved by it, that he commissioned a harmony of the Books of Kings and Chronicles, so that he might better study the biblical record of the kings who ruled God’s people.

As kings go, Charles was well-meaning, but unsuccessful. And it would be a mistake to think that those who brought him down were democrats with the people’s needs at heart. On the contrary, Charles’ defense of poor farmers alienated the squires who sought to enclose and strip the land. His insistence on raising the wages of textile workers offended the cloth merchants. Military failures turned the army against him so that they twice staged coups to purge Parliament of his supporters. And Archbishop Laud’s untempered enforcement of the Prayer Book gained the ire of the religious extremists who wanted neither bishops, nor religious communities, nor Prayer Book, nor no not Christmas nor Easter neither! These weren’t Enlightenment Protestants, but religious fanatics who wanted nothing but a theocratic police state in which no one would be free from the dictatorship of the pure and the elect. If you want to know what Charles was up against, you need look no further than the Salem Witch Trials.

Charles is relevant to us today, when power brokers call for “small government,” not out of interest for the poor, but so they can profit through deregulation; when military strongmen join religious extremists to threaten the good of society, and the peace of the world.

Not that Charles was perfect. He was as flawed as any saint on the Calendar, the BVM excepted, of course. But in the day of decision, he stood for something — not only as a lay leader defending the episcopate, or as a pious Christian defending the Prayer Book, but in witness to a whole religious way of life, a way we call Anglicanism.

I urge you to vote to encourage the Episcopal Church to join our sister churches in the Anglican Communion who already commemorate Charles, not for his monarchy but for his fidelity and courage unto death in defense of the Anglican vision of the Christian faith and life.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Another thought struck me this morning concerning Peter Doll's essay in support of the proposed Anglican Covenant. Yesterday I read Lionel Deimel's exhaustive response to Doll's paper, and I commend him for his endurance and effort, though he reminds me that the danger in such thorough fisking is that one is drawn into the largely fantastic tar-pit, and the simple wrongness of the thesis is lost in the multitudinous wreaths of assertion piled on high. It is helpful that Lionel calls him on a few factual errors, but these tend to be lost in the shuffle of vague assertional legerdemain.

For the simple fact is that Doll's paper rests on faulty premises leading towards a predetermined conclusion. It makes basic confusions of concepts: speaking of unity when he means uniformity, or of "communion" when he means "institutionalism." He appears not to recall that Anglicanism has historically rejected conciliarism as the means to settling disagreements, preferring a balanced comprehensiveness-in-autonomy that has been a characteristic mark of Anglicanism since the Articles of Religion and the Elizabethan Settlement..

In the long run, for all the high-falutin' language, the Anglican Covenant holds conformity to peer pressure as both the highest value and sole indicator of "communion." It is, thus, suited for an adolescent body, but not for self-differentiated adults. Perhaps the reality is that much of the Anglican Communion is not prepared to live in the adult Christian world where difference of opinion — even on important matters — does not and cannot sever the robust reality of communion in Christ. Perhaps much of the Anglican Commuion is frozen in the realm of middle-school "conformity to the in-group or exile" model of fellowship. But I know which of these models is the actual strength of Anglican Christianity, and the one of which I hope to remain a part.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

UPDATE: an additional thought.
To use an analogy, Doll is like someone for whom the essence of matrimony lies in the wife's vow to obey her husband; all the rest is beside the point in that view. Needless to say, this is an inadequate understanding of a responsible adult relationship: one of the reasons that particular vow has dropped from the liturgy! (Even in England — though it is still there as an option in the "Series One" liturgy — so this is not another surmised American thang.)

It is a lifestyle choice, built around a set of behaviors and practices. As such it is a self-constructed "identity."

There is no evidence that it is genetic or biological in origin, and it appears to be almost entirely due to nurture rather than nature. The fact that it may run in families is a result of context, not biology.

Because their behavior is not inherited and does not arise spontaneously, they have to recruit to maintain their existence, and are particularly focused on the young, the elderly, and the economically vulnerable.

It causes dissension and division in families, undermines the good order of society, and has been the cause of societal collapse. Nearly every past fallen civilization was riddled with this practice.

It has often been criminalized or otherwise discouraged or controlled by many governments.

In spite of efforts to suppress it, it often flourishes in a shadowy, underground world on the edges of society. They communicate with each other with symbols and code language, forms of dress, or mannerisms. They gather regularly in groups to share in its practice.
 Some are bold enough to flaunt the behavior in public.
 In spite of it being a self-generated identity based on entirely optional personal behaviors, they insist it be granted special protection as a "right" and even portray it as a "natural" right.
 Many of them are active in the media and entertainment industry, and exercise disproportionate influence on the culture.
 They form a particularly powerful "special interest group" and lobby extensively in support of their "agenda." Once they achieve a degree of power they usually become intolerant of all who disagree with them.

In case you haven't guessed by now, it is religion.Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG in a satirical vein

Archbishop of York John Sentamu is wagging a primatial finger at Prime Minister David Cameron from the relatively safe and supportive context of Jamaica, know for its robust defense of all that is good and holy.

In his statement, the Archbishop reveals himself to be almost completely innocent of familiarity with sacred and secular history, and the rudiments of political science. Most importantly, he seems not to be aware that marriage is not a Christian invention, nor are Christians the only ones with a right to determine who may or may not marry, or how, or for how long — though, to be fair, the Church of England itself has shown remarkable adaptability in changing its own rules to accommodate folks down through the years.

Ultimately, the notion that the state is dictating to the society represents an ironic example of failing to recognize ones own visage in the glass. Sentamu wants the Church of England to be able to dictate to the civil society on a subject which only partially concerns it. The idea that the State will insist that any church perform same-sex marriages is absurd, particularly when every effort has been made to clarify just the opposite.

Scare tactics, red herrings and straw men: The Church of England welcomes you!

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Update: A full transcript of the Archbishop's interview is now available. Although it casts some of his more offensive comments in a kindlier context, those comments themselves remain problematical as examples of circular and/or definitional reasoning: i.e., marriage is between a man and a woman because that's what marriage is; and, the state shouldn't get involved in such things because it isn't the state's business.

Jonathan Clatworthy has penned a rebuttal to Peter Doll's essay in support of the Anglican Covenant. Doll's paper relies a great deal on a supposed American ethos that is clearly recognizable as an eccleiastical cousin of the “Ugly American.” Doll draws heavily on the early days of the foundation of the Episcopal Church and its revised Prayerbook, as if the rationalism of the Enlightenment was an American invention that passed the English by! He also engages in the sort of circular reasoning in favor of the Covenant to which we all have become accustomed: we should do this because we must do this because it is best we do this. He entirely begs the question that a "closer union" is in fact a good thing, and seems not to know that the root of the word federation is foedus, foederis — the Latin for Covenant — while calling for more submission to the group-mind of the Communion.

For me the greatest irony in Doll’s essay is the amount of projection it reveals: the urge for empire and control and subordination that he says America wants for the Communion is actually what the Covenant proposers want for themselves: in short they do not want a fellowship of autonomous churches, but a Federation in the legal sense, bound by a Covenant pledging submission by each to all.

Doll even quotes the misused maxim, "What touches all" — missing the point (as has been missed since Windsor) that it was designed to protect the rights of the minority, not insist upon their submission to the majority. As with so much else, Doll has it precisely backwards.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

UPDATE: See also, More on Doll's Paper

Why do Defense of Marriage people insist on a zero-sum game? There is enough marriage to go around, as the supply is increased by every couple who wish to make use of it.
Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG