THE ENGLISH CHURCH HUMORIST David Walker has a cartoon in the first person beginning with the title I HAVE, followed by four figure drawings with captions reading “I have evangelized with the Evangelicals,” “I have crossed myself with the Anglo-Catholics,” “I have worshipped with Charismatics,” “I have questioned with the Liberals.” The cartoon finishes with a British cultural humor, “I think now I will stop and have some tea.” Walker in short form encapsulates the worship experiences out there in the church today, and then brings it home, humorously reminding us to not take ourselves so seriously and give it a break occasionally. Good counsel, and well delivered. For more of the same, visit Walker at http://www.cartoonchurch.com.

We’ve lost our focus in worship lately and gotten things a bit backwards: many in the church today are coming (if coming at all) not for worship that transforms lives and empowers social action, but for worship that confirms selves and approves social action already taken. True worship transforms us, making us living self-icons of God, drawing us ever closer to God, keeping us on task and forward moving. Many instead want worship that transforms God into their own image. They go church shopping not for a sense of the holy God, but for a sense of the wholly Me.

I am reminded in this of a parishioner years ago, in the throes of evangelical renewal proudly declaring, "When I pray to God I imagine I'm a little girl crawling up into Daddy's lap and just talk to Him!" Well, I have a daughter, and as a child when she sat with me, I was putty in her hands. A God relation that is subject to our whims and desires would not be in God's image, but in our own image. Help us to grow in your image, O God, and yours alone.

The church over time has explored many forms of worship. Some of these experiences out of our living laboratory of love have been developed into Christian liturgy because the things done and discovered in the experience lend themselves to a higher order of faith. This is not to say all forms of worship have been accepted into the life of the church. Early on, the Old Testament people of Joshua, while taking command of the Promised Land, realized for example that Dionysian temple worship simply wasn’t going to work for the people of the God of Abraham. Instead of orgies, we now have coffee hour. Don’t ask me to explain, it just works better for us this way. My point is, this very Episcopalian behavior has an origin that is deeply layered in the historical decision-making of the church, how we order our spiritual life over time.

21^st century Christians take all these things, chosen or preferred, abhorred or rejected, as part of the faith discovery process. Live and learn, as they say. Live, learn . . . and lead others into all righteousness. Mind you, I did not say into all self-righteousness. No one order of faith discovery is absolute. Just as no one person can know all things, do all things, meet all needs, redress all wrongs, express all feelings. This would be divine, or said in different words, this would be the reign of God on earth, a now-not-yet reality made present but not complete in the person of Jesus Christ in the First Coming. We are not God, but we are God's people and this matters.

We are human, and with being human there is the need to pick and choose albeit imperfectly among all things humanly possible. In this picking and choosing we have our own special needs when it comes to worship for just as there are several different kinds of intelligence and not only one having to do with analytical and complex reasoning skills as once thought (thought that is by the very people who possess such intelligence), so too there are different kinds of worship to suit our several personality types, hence the Evangelicals, the Anglo-Catholics, the Charismatics, the Liberals, et al. Walker gets this in his cartoon.

Much of what transpires in the way of controversy today seems to be premised in these prior conditions of human need. What makes church life problematic is not so much the presence of evil and suffering in the world today. This we can deal with, for God is with us. What makes church so difficult is when any one order of worshippers asserts the need to be right and therefore everyone else must be wrong. St. Paul has a lot to say about the contentious spirit, none of it good. Given the history of cooperation among Christians, or lack thereof, Paul was spot on in belling this beast. There are too many contending voices in the church today wanting to be right, to have their way and their way alone, kids really making a very unpleasant experience for the rest of us and needing a time out.

All I ask of any worship experience is that it somehow takes me out of myself and reminds me of who I am and whose I am ultimately, assures me that I am not alone in this great adventure, brings grace and consolation to my own life experience and those for whom I have compassion or care, and hooks me up with others to do the things that I alone cannot do yet when done bring meaning and purpose to my life. In a word, I want a worship experience that brings me closer to God, in an effective ritual that I can come back to, again and again. I want this because I need this and God commands it. The rest is my business to do out there.

But first I think I will stop and have some tea which itself of course is a uniquely English form of worship in ritual behavior that would do all those things as well, though at a lesser and less intense altar. Come to think of it, we may need more tea rooms as much as we need more worship, whatever the flavor of our preference may be . . . this and a bit more self-reflective humor in our time.

THE EXECUTIVE EDITOR OF THE LIVING CHURCH, in a recent Editor’s Column “What I didn’t Miss” (February 25 issue) asks a question of the church. He refers to our Diocese of Central New York and St. Andrew’s, Syracuse which the diocese in partnership with the national church is suing for recovery of property. “Is this really worth the cost of litigation?” Kalvelage asks. The implied answer is no, suggesting even by the Column’s caption “Hostile Takeover” that the diocese is “taking over” somebody else’s property, the seeming possessions of St. Andrew’s.

Regular readers of The Living Church know the editorial staff there has made common cause with the Anglican Communion Network and the American Anglican Council. Though you also may be a sympathizer of their cause, let this blog entry be a warning. Do not for a moment think that the forbearance and good will of the Episcopal Church leadership will suffer much longer the assaults of the Network against our governance and discipline. A corrective course of action is already building. Anything less would leave us all complicit in the Network strategies for alienation and control of the church, primary of which is to first align with an ecclesiastical entity outside the governance of the Episcopal Church and then monetize church property as their own, effectively circumventing General Convention, the Constitution and Canons of the Episcopal Church and every precedent of order and discipline in the church.

Theirs is a strategy worthy of Andrew Fastow and Enron in the 1990s, blinding in its brains and wiliness, and as morally bankrupt. If the members of the Network, especially the dissenting clergy and bishops were truly righteous in their religious disdain for the Episcopal Church, they would renounce their vows taken in a church they no longer acknowledge as valid and create their own authority. What they want though is their dissent and the privileges and property that they accrued from membership in the institution they would now reject.

We must proceed boldly and decisively in response to these self-proclaimed enemies of the church. Now is no longer the time for dialog, as if listening to the passionate assurances of the chief officers of Enron at its collapse would change in the least the consequences of their ongoing criminal behavior. We can no longer put off facing down these adversaries simply because they are erstwhile members. The truth is they are no longer fellow Episcopalians. Though they remain our brothers and sisters in Christ, they have declared themselves implacable enemies, and as Oprah would advise "when somebody tells you who they really are, believe them."

Get this point firmly in mind. The reality of their intent upon taking control of the Episcopal Church must not be glossed over in our care and compassion for the Network as former members of our fellowship. They have broken faith. There is no more room for discussion. Yet this is precisely what Kalvelage would ask of us in his question, “Is this really worth the cost of litigation?” Kalvelage would argue that we naively accommodate Network and Primatial demands hitherto totally without precedent, appease Network aggressions against our governance to our own everlasting detriment, all as the Network steals us blind.

This is what the Network is doing while it can. While the rest of the church suffers “rolling black outs,” and struggles in the heat of the noonday sun to discern God’s will for all of God's people especially including the poor and suffering, the oppressed and degraded, Network leaders and sympathizers stand aside in self-righteous celebration as the cause of our distress. Like the evil-possessed Enron cult of traders, they are trading on the fears and anxieties of the people to their own profit, even creating the crises of confidence, all the while thanking God for their windfall of ill-gotten blessings. A curse on them all! They are not even using their own capital resources, but would take ours to use against the church. It is time to bell the beast.

Let all take heart by a recent resolution of the House of Bishops delivered out of their deliberations in Texas in response to the Dar es Salaam Communique by the Primates of the Anglican Communion. Our House of Bishops has finally pronounced their voice in the Episcopal Church and joined us in our commitment to respect the dignity of every human being, especially all who have been baptized into the life and death of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is as if the House of Bishops, having listened, has finally heard what is being said (and more importantly, done and planned) by the Network and responded, "Enough! Do as you must. So will we and here it is that we stand. Good luck, and if it is your will, good bye!"

Said at greater length and in the bishops' own words -

"It is incumbent upon us as disciples to do our best to follow Jesus in the increasing experience of the leading of the Holy Spirit. We fully understand that others in the Communion believe the same, but we do not believe that Jesus leads us to break our relationships. We proclaim the Gospel of what God has done and is doing in Christ, of the dignity of every human being, and of justice, compassion, and peace. We proclaim the Gospel that in Christ there is no Jew or Greek, no male or female, no slave or free. We proclaim the Gospel that in Christ all God's children, including women, are full and equal participants in the life of Christ's Church. We proclaim the Gospel that in Christ all God's children, including gay and lesbian persons, are full and equal participants in the life of Christ's Church. We proclaim the Gospel that stands against any violence, including violence done to women and children as well as those who are persecuted because of their differences, often in the name of God. The Dar es Salaam Communiqué is distressingly silent on this subject. And, contrary to the way the Anglican Communion Network and the American Anglican Council have represented us, we proclaim a Gospel that welcomes diversity of thought and encourages free and open theological debate as a way of seeking God's truth. If that means that others reject us and communion with us, as some have already done, we must with great regret and sorrow accept their decision." About time. Amen.

This breaking of relations to which the bishops refer at the end of the preceding long passage, is what has happened in St. Andrew’s, Syracuse and the cause of our current litigation against this parish. The Living Church would have us allow this breaking of faith to proceed apace without opposition. From Milwaukee, WI they would mind our local business, telling us basically to "Let them take all your products, goods, services and value with them, it doesn't really matter anyway, it's just property." This of course is a nonsensical argument at best, and suspiciously duplicitous at worst. If it were only property, then why did the leadership of St. Andrew's, Syracuse sneak into a deed office and try to change the title of the property into their own name? Clearly it has value to them. They want it even if they don't want to honor and respect the custodial obligations by which they occupy this property.

In a word, the diocese is not attempting to “take over the church’s property.” The property already belongs to the Diocese. In our governance the diocese is owner of both the “franchise” and property of the church. Parishes are custodial agents, not only custodial agents mind you but, yes, in regard to the disposition of property only custodial agents.

The Diocese of CNY and the national church has every right and duty to maintain the church’s inheritance and to protect collective assets from all adversarial assaults including thievery, for distribution into subsequent generations of Episcopalians as a resource for future faith initiatives. St. Andrew’s, Syracuse initiated the “hostile takeover” by entering a deed office to surreptitiously change the church’s title information. They will be held accountable for their action not because they must be punished but because the church must be protected, especially from the sins of pride, deceit and avarice, especially from its erstwhile members. We owe this litigation to our children, painful as it is.

Hopefully this litigation will serve toward building a solid ground of legal precedent. Though we should never want to go to court, indeed scripture finds great offense in doing so, when compelled, we must and will do so. To do otherwise, to let the current leadership of St. Andrew’s, Syracuse change the brand name of a member parish and take all the property assets, in a word to steal the products, goods, services and value of the Episcopal Church into their own image, would be an unconscionable failure of fiduciary responsibility with disastrous repercussions throughout the church.

Let the Anglican Communion Network and American Anglican Council, and any one else of similar mind, now take fair warning. The Episcopal Church is forbearing, open, inclusive, full of good will, yet not to be treated as a doormat in our own home.