Derek,

Your reflections on not checking ID and the difference between accidental and occasional communion of the unbaptized and a policy reminds me that I've always viewed communion without baptism like premarital sex. It happens, it's not the end of the world, and there might even be some grace in it in some cases, but it's not (and in my view cannot ever be) the Christian norm.

When entering into a relationship as serious as this, there ought to be vows and public accountability, and a sense of reverence and awe.

At its best, the Church's critique of promiscuity does not stem from a loathing of the body or mistrust of sexuality, it's that sexuality and the body are holy and the world does not take them nearly seriously enough.

I mention this analogy, which many proponents of open communion will not find at all persuasive, because I think that wrestling with communion of the baptized is bound up, at least in people's minds, with the other major revision in our sacramental practice that is going on, which concerns the theology of marriage and its relationship to all forms of human sexuality.

I think that it's at the root of some of our anxieties and passions about this.

I'm not really asking for a debate on my rather conservative but pro-inclusion take on revisions to the marriage rite. I'm just saying that a more helpful conversation might be to lay both sets of cards on the table and see how revisions in one set of sacramental practices inform proposed revisions in another and vice versa.

Surely, there are others who see the connection, regardless of what particular take they have on open communion and/or the theology of marriage.

I agree with you, Bill, and have used that same metaphor in an earlier piece. And, yes, we definitely need to keep an eye on the parallels between marriage and the Eucharist as we move forward.

Derek, I think this is an excellent piece, outlining how we keep our "balance" between healthy theological boundaries and inclusion which is itself a theological imperative. As we proceed living in this manner, but continuing the conversation about communion of the unbaptized, we should also be in prayer and discernment as to whether the Holy Spirit is nudging us toward a change of practice. If so, the proper path is that the discernment should be checked out with the wider community by changes to Canons and Prayer Book at General Convention. As it is currently, any priest practicing Communion of the unbaptized could be brought up on charges. (Not that I am recommending that!)

"My sense is that many of the people who are for Communion Without Baptism, especially those who are not career theologians and who haven’t thought about it long and hard,"
I do not think you have any data to back up this claim - many parish priests are very good theologians and do not break rubrics casually or without regard for consequences.
That sort of arguing from your "sense" dismisses any who disagree with you and makes it hard to have a conversation. It is certainly not respectful to all as you request in your note at the end of your essay.

Thank you, Bishop. The third section includes a bit about discernment and the guiding of the Holy Spirit.

You're right, Ann, I don't have data to back it up. As a result, I have to go by what I see and hear. I know quite a lot of parish priests too--some of them are good theologians and some aren't. More of them tinker with the rubrics (in a variety of ways) than don't.

I'm not trying to dismiss anyone who disagrees with me. I haven't dismissed you despite the fact that we disagree on quite a number of things.

If you have some data that will dispel my sense, I'd be glad to look it over. In the meantime, I have to go with what I've got.

A good piece, Derek. A very small incident made me realize I couldn't support Communion Without/Before Baptism. A priest I know once wrote out a sort of "instructed Eucharist" - which included the advice to respond "Amen" after the words at the administration of Communion.

Now, "Amen" literally means: "So be it." But people who haven't been baptized may not have been given any sort of information - not even the smallest clue - as to what they were assenting to! That's a dereliction of duty, IMO - an actually rather unfriendly and inhospitable thing.

I personally would never want to participate in the important and central rituals of another religion, while being asked to assent to whatever's being said by the clergyperson. No, thanks. Thus I'd never encourage or expect anybody else to do so, either.

Add that to your Bonhoeffer example - an important one, I think - and you have a real problem. It's our responsibility to inform people as to what's going on, and let them decide whether or not they do give their assent.

Re: Derek at 12:20PM

That's the problem with religion -- it's all a matter of opinion. All this "prayer and discernment as to whether the Holy Spirit is nudging us" and we're still guessing.

The Scriptures, the teaching of the church, and my own reasoned experience--cannot allow me to say that Baptism is simply a sign of community acceptance. I am compelled to say that there is more at work. --Olsen, in part 1

It seems a mistake to think all those who believe in maintaining the age-old, traditional discipline of baptism before communion are doing so simply to be "exclusionary" or "elitist." Derek Olsen is laying out some very sound reasons about why that sequence ought to be maintained in light of the interconnectedness of theology, liturgy and spirituality. Yet I find nothing in what he has written that suggests a Pharisaic attitude toward others, divvying up the general population into "worthy" and "unworthy."

The question can be framed in a different way: why would someone be so bent on consuming the eucharist, but be so averse to receiving baptism first? After all, both are encounters with Christ: both baptism (Galatians 3:27) and the eucharist (1 Corinthians 10:16-17). Why would someone insist on one encounter with Christ, but avoid another encounter with him, when he manifests himself in both? The conversation might be better put:

"I'd like to receive communion."
"Have you been baptized?"
"No."
"Would you like to be baptized?"

The answer might be:

"Yes!"
"I don't know. Can you explain it to me some more?"
"No."

A "no" answer would prompt the question: "Well, the same Christ that's present in the eucharist is present in baptism too. Both are means of joining yourself to him: baptism for starters, the eucharist for refreshment as you follow him. Let's talk about why you would like Christ one way, but not the other, so we can find out what you're looking for, and make sure that neither baptism nor the eucharist lose their meaning, what they're intended for."

Someone on this thread used three important words: "Reverence and awe." Both are so short in supply in today's casual, chummy and lowest-common-denominator world, which just might be one reason why often don't appreciate God's creation and each other the way we ought. But to "reverence and awe," all I can say is "YES!" We must never lose sight that sacraments aren't just anthropological, human, communal, family, tribal rituals of recognition, welcome or support. (As Bonhoeffer points out, when they're misrepresented and misused that way, the consequences on lively faith and discipleship are simply disastrous; neither survives, much less thrives.) No, sacraments are incarnational encounters with Christ, acts of God working through humanity and community, in the here and now, touching us, enlivening us, transforming us if we follow him and allow it. There's quite a divergence between those two paradigms.

"That's the problem with religion -- it's all a matter of opinion."

Hmmm. I believe that religion is a way to apprehend a certain key aspect of reality. What we're often at odds over is how to wrap limited minds around this reality and communicate the truths that we know, believe, and perceive through the constraints of human language and expression.

It's only "a matter of opinion" if there's no greater reality to which it points.

It occurs to me that the weak point in this is not the theology, but the notion of hospitality. I think this way: Baptism is initiation; the Eucharist is for the initiated. That's about as ancient as theology goes, so by bringing hospitality into the mix one is implying not only that this consideration is enough to overrule the ancient statement, but that invitation to partake is the only form of hospitality that is adequate. I think this puts me close to BSnyder's observation, because I can see two issues with that thought. First, I think it's questionable that the uninitiated, as rule, think that way. I suspect it far more likely that most people accept the notion that there are different degrees of participation appropriate to the initiated, the inquirer, and the outsider. Second, the denigration of less-than-full participation is a problem for a lot of people. To take an example: my (Episcopalian) wife was once invited to a pagan betrothal ceremony in which the only real option was full participation in the rite, which disturbed her to the point that she went to the rector for confession.

This is what leads me to the thought that it is the hospitality end that people really haven't thought about "long and hard". I came to the Episcopal Church as a very low Presbyterian high school student dropped into a chapel experience with nothing more "hospitable" than the obligation to be there on Sundays and Wednesdays. The real hospitality I got came in sacred studies, but chapel itself was a foreign experience; even the knowledge that I "could" take communion (meaning that they would not deny it to me, not that my own church would permit me to partake) did little or nothing towards making me feel at home. I can only imagine how much more baffled the unchurched among us felt about it.

We need to think about hospitality and the liturgy in broader terms, and especially thinking beyond the Sunday Eucharistic liturgy. Almost without exception it seems to me that the impulse to change the liturgy and the way it is presented is driven by a lack of nerve: we are afraid of offending someone, so we water the liturgy down, so that in the end it has little power because it lacks conviction. Instead of BCP revision, I think we need to say, "Yes, Prayer A is abrupt and Prayer C is hokey and Rite I is old-fashioned, but they are our liturgies and we can sell them to the world if we can pray them with conviction." And I think we need to concentrate, therefore, on bringing the unchurched in not by lowering our standards for participation, but by working getting them to understand what we're doing. I can imagine, for instance, a special booklet in each pew that explains what is going on in the liturgy and which is directed at helping a newcomer get through it without feeling stupid. I can imagine doing a Sunday or Saturday service aimed specifically at nonmembers. What I cannot see is the implication that sharing communion is the most important kind of hospitality we can offer, when my sense is that it is in many respects among the least important.

Re Derek at 2:54PM

It's still your opinion about the "greater reality," since others may perceive it differently. "Know, perceive, and believe" are matters of personal intuition. Humankind is driven by language to tell stories and to connect dots. These constructions can be compelling, and useful, but the Truth of them depends on evidence. Or make that the Factuality of them. We use "Truth" too often to mean interior conviction.

Good points C. - what does hospitality look like liturgically? I can see people helping those who look lost rather than a booklet. Making a human connection.

There is no truth -that is, provable facts - to any thing we believe - that does not make me believe it less, nor to I disobey that which I have vowed to do as a priest. If I want the liturgy changed - I do it through the systems of the church or take the consequences of disobedience.
I do believe but still I know it is all made up to some degree. Stories we tell each other. But it has changed my life and makes me see the holy in the everyday.

Derek, You cite no advocates for full inclusion. This is like having a Christian write about what Judaism is or a straight person write about LGBTs without allowing the subjects to speak for themselves.

Your generalization about Americans having an atrophied sense of etiquette is based on any evidence. In any case, is the eucharist supposed to be about etiquette, when you you yourself refuse to accept my positiion that it is about a radical welcome of the person?

As for Bonhoeffer being a worthy example, I have my doubts, given his supersessionist view of Judaism. From the Holocaust Museum in Washington, I have found these two sentences: "The history of the suffering of this people, loved and punished by God, stands under the sign of the final homecoming of the people of Israel to its God." "And this homecoming happens in the conversion of Israel to Christ."

http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/online/bonhoeffer/?content=3

2 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “The Church and the Jewish Question,” in No Rusty Swords: Letters, Lectures and Notes 1928-1936 (New York: Harper and Row, 1965), 226.

Maybe the Quakers had the right idea to abolish the sacraments so they could fight over more important stuff.

I agree with Ann that religions make things up as they go along. They are stories that have helped people. But when they are taken as fact, they can do damage, as when people think that their tradition is the only one.

Gary Paul Gilbert

Ann, three years ago I wrote, "Nothing could be more inviting than to slide into the pew, be faced with this daunting book, and have the person next to you come over to help you get through it." That's another approach. I think the whole issue needs a lot more thought and experimentation. The issues I see with CWOB in that light are that (a) it looks and smells like compromising our principles, which I suspect isn't actually attractive to outsiders as a rule, and (b) as hospitality goes it's pretty weak. We can go a lot further in other ways before resorting to this.

It is pretty clear that there is a fairly sharp divide here, even among we "center left" types here at the cafe. It is a fascinating little microcosm, I would guess, of the wider church.
One way of thinking about this "divide" comes from the growth, in the last 1-2 centuries, of interest in the "historical" Jesus and focus on the religion "of Jesus" as opposed to the more traditional religion "about Jesus." Some of this has been otherwise characterized as the "pre-Easter" versus the "post-Easter" Jesus. For those of us who are paying more attention to the religion "of Jesus" than "about Jesus," we see a distinct distaste for being overly preoccupied with rules. Jesus was at his most blistering with those who tried to come up with lots of rules on how to do religion. We find a certain spirit of "openness" in the gospel stories that we find lacking in the historical church and its ongoing doctrinal controversies over the sacraments. This does not necessarily mean that we espouse "cheap grace." Jesus could be pretty demanding towards those who wished to follow him: "sell all you have and give it to the poor, then come follow me." Or "let the dead bury their own dead, come follow." Never, however, did we see him making ritual demands of individuals other than perhaps that prayer be "sincere" and not "heaped up" words and that acts of prayer/piety be "in secret" so as not to be misused for getting public admiration.
Of all the meals that Jesus presided over, none is explicitly offered with any preconditions. Even Judas was welcome at the table. I might advance the "argument" that "closing" the table does not elevate but diminishes the value of the table for those who come to it new and needy.

Having said all of this, I wonder if this is really a conversation that leads to a better state? Some of the "genius" of Anglicanism is just to keep doing the liturgy and let people make their own "fine tuning" adjustments as to its implementation: whether in the plainest surroundings around "Goddes board" or with Laudian leanings regarding the ornaments rubric. Both may claim to be authentically Anglican. We have this treasure "as a mystery." Rather than talking ourselves into a theological knot, let the "mystery" be our guide and let the eucharistic celebration partake of the mysterium fidei. I think that we need to work to recapture a bit of the sense that our liturgy has more in common with ancient "mystery rites" than it does with theological debates. We go to the mystery to "have an experience" not necessarily to learn a lesson. Let those whose convictions would make them want to fence the table behind the altar rail and put the priest ad orientum be appropriate for them. Let those who would have the table open to all do the same. "Those who observe the day, observe it in honor of the Lord. Those also who eat, eat in honor of the Lord since they give thanks to God..." might be a useful text for meditation here.

Once again, Yay! Dr. Shy.

Gary, one person's "radical" is another's drearily familiar. Possibly in 1960 it was radical even to have communion open to other Christians, but by thirty years ago it was commonplace; inviting the uninitiated in today's religious climate reads to me like another new age spiritual-but-not-religious puree-of-faith. Also, we are not fully including anyone simply by giving them communion; the uninitiated, even the visitor from another parish, remains a guest and not a member.

I have been an outsider to Anglicanism, so I object to your presuming to speak for me. I cannot even say what the teen-aged Wingate would have said about a church which had no standards for participation, but I suspect a lot of people would find it off-putting. Indeed, there is nothing we cannot do which isn't distasteful to someone. The question about hospitality in the case is therefore whether it is for others, or for ourselves to feel good about being hospitable. I'm not getting a good sense of what it means to be a Christian participant here; the words lend themselves to a platitudinous self-affirmation, but given the rather definite, objectified sense of the Church to which Scripture speaks at length, your words, Gary, don't give me any confidence that anyone is actually in it.

The Lead has just posted a link to a column by Amy Silverman, managing editor of Phoenix New Times, that resonates strongly with this discussion:

. . . the real fights we are having in these unsettled times are fights about inclusion and exclusion. Who should have citizenship? Health insurance? An organ transplant? A gun? Why should the guy across the street get his mortgage payments lowered when I've been working hard all these years and doing the right thing? Who is in and who is out?

Let's live our understandings now, and not claim too much for our rationalizations.

Derek, good article. Once again I find myself in agreement with what you've written. I don't have much to add beyond a few scattered thoughts:

1. As I stated in my comment in Part 1, if the issue of offering CWOB is one of hospitality and inclusion, there seems to me to be a discordance when offering an open table during the liturgy without working with the congregation in order to offer substantial acts of hospitality before, during, and after the liturgy. My experience as a worshipper is that there is often a severe disconnect between the open table invitation and what passes as hospitality in many of our churches. Changing the insular culture of a parish is difficult, so offering CWOB can become an act of hospitality we clergy can offer freely and safely since we usually are the liturgical decision-makers. I realize that a lot of people will disagree with me about this, but one invitation does not automatically create a welcoming environment.

2. I disagree with Dr. Shy about the relative "openness" of the Last Supper, which from what we can tell from the Gospel narratives had a guest list that was limited to the disciples. True, Judas was present, but the narrative seems pretty clear that prophecy was being fulfilled by his presence and actions, so it wouldn't make sense for him to not be present. If the gospel narrative is to be believed, then the presence of disciples at table with Jesus actually contradicts the argument in favor of CWOB.

3. Finally, I want to give a cheer for the catechumenate. Having spent time as a campus chaplain and young adult minister, I was often struck by how forcefully the students in my spiritual care longed for learning, discipline, and careful shepherding, something that they clearly felt was lacking in the ultra-rational world where they spend most of their waking hours. For them, true hospitality was about their priest (me) taking the time to teach them about what it means to be faithful and how to be literate in the faith that they had chosen. It didn't mean total openness - it meant bringing them closer to the mystery of God in the sacraments.

Of course, none of this may seem true to anyone taking the opposite view. I offer no data or fact, just my experience as a laywoman and now as a priest who's worshiped in many places with many different folks.

"Of all the meals that Jesus presided over, none is explicitly offered with any preconditions. Even Judas was welcome at the table."

And yet at that meal, the only one where Jesus said "This is my body" and "This is my blood," you might note that only 12 of his followers were present -- though many others were following and sympathizing with him at the time, and some of the meals he attended included thousands. Was Jesus being "exclusionist" on that night, by not inviting all his followers and sympathizers at table with him? Or was there some other reason that participation was limited, something special about that meal compared to others he shared?

What has come down to us, at least from the second century, are stories. We don't know what actually happened. We can draw morals from the stories, let them shape our thoughts and actions, but we can't use their details to prove any point. (And we have several accounts of Jesus's final hours, which don't agree; we've smooshed them all together into a coherent account (as we've mixed shepherds and magi), but the stories themselves come to us as fragments.

And yet at that meal, the only one where Jesus said "This is my body" and "This is my blood," you might note that only 12 of his followers were present -- though many others were following and sympathizing with him at the time, and some of the meals he attended included thousands. Was Jesus being "exclusionist" on that night, by not inviting all his followers and sympathizers at table with him? Or was there some other reason that participation was limited, something special about that meal compared to others he shared?

Years ago, I remember those who argued that weekly Eucharist would somehow render the experience as "less special" that by too frequent repetition it would become commonplace. On the contrary, I think that it became often more meaningful when it was not something that happened once a quarter or once a month.

We can speculate about "What would Jesus do" about this until eternity arrives. People have literally killed and died for their "right" understandings of the sacraments. I would prefer to "keep things vague" and allow many possible interpretations. I also think that, if it really and truly distresses my brothers and sisters with strong scruples about the need to keep the table for the initiated, then by all means, keep it so. I would not wish to be an occasion for them to suffer undue distress or a trial of faith.

My comments were presented only to suggest to the "orthodox" (by all means take the term and possess it if you like) believers that there are persons of good conscience who think otherwise. I think we would be better off to simply agree that there is not agreement, make no particular policies and let good pastoral sense and local use decide the matter. Heaven knows that we have a lot to disagree about. Perhaps we should just agree that we cannot agree and leave it at that.

Thanks for all the reflection and criticism, however! It keeps me from being entirely too dull and stupid for words.

C Wingate, Yes, the meanings of words depend on their uses and contexts, as Wittgenstein taught in his later philosophy. I don't even like the word "radical" because it suggests an origin, as in getting back to one's roots. It implies a metaphor of organicity, which I reject. The tradition is not a plant. "Unconditional" would be a better word. "Unconditional" stresses, as Jacques Derrida says, that authentic hospitality would be without condition, if there is such a thing as authenticity. It is not sure there is ever unconditional hospitality as such. This is an iresolvable paradox that there must be conditions and yet at some point there also should be an abandonment of conditions, a leap of faith, to lift a phrase from Kierkegaard. But everyday reality is always a dreary approximation, as in nobody is a Christian because they are all approximations. Again Kierkegaard!

I agree that simply giving bread and wine to anyone who comes to church is not interesting. I would say openness should be about an invitation to people to join a ministry to the larger community. And the invitees need not ever become Christians or Anglicans. That is unimportant.

Whether one be inside or outside of Anglicanism or Christianity or even religion sounds to me like a question for bureaucrats.

I am also am not sure the 1960s can be relegated to the past. The trauma of the dissolution of many institutions and discourses during the 60s has yet to be dealt with.

I don't wish to ventriloquize you, as I have enough trouble ventriloquizing or speaking for myself.

Maybe we should not know what we are giving or if we are giving in hospitality, as in Matthew "But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth."

And maybe the host is receiving from the guest and the guest giving to the host. It is rarely certain. Couples feed off each other.

Gary Paul Gilbert

What has come down to us, at least from the second century, are stories. We don't know what actually happened. We can draw morals from the stories, let them shape our thoughts and actions, but we can't use their details to prove any point. (And we have several accounts of Jesus's final hours, which don't agree; we've smooshed them all together into a coherent account (as we've mixed shepherds and magi), but the stories themselves come to us as fragments.

That may be true, in which case it would be very difficult to make the case that Jesus presided over an "open table" at the Last Supper any more than we can argue the opposite.

In the end, I have no desire to be a Communion Cop. If someone presents themselves for communion, I give them communion. If I know that they have yet to be baptized, I give them communion and then offer them the opportunity to go deeper in faith, a journey that I hope and pray will lead to baptism.

My bottom line is that I'm just not willing to let go of what seems to me to be sound theological reasons for "font before table" based on the arguments I've read and heard so far. I appreciate the irenic tone of this discussion as well as Derek's thoughtful writing. Thanks to all.

Anglicanism and the catholic tradition maintain that the Sacraments do something. They manifest God in unique ways – so much so that Our Lord commanded their use. Our faith became a religion both about and of Jesus when he said “This is my Body” to his closest followers.

Our notions of hospitality have unfortunately been affected by a belief that fast and easy means welcoming. My sense now, working with young adults in a parish situated on a college campus and administering a young adult discernment program, is that a previous generation’s notions of “hospitality” are gradually being reappraised. The young people I am interacting with genuinely desire a challenging faith, a rich tradition, and even boundaries.

An open altar rail is not the same as a welcoming church. A welcoming church is one that maintains a sense of intentional reverence and beauty, preaches the Gospel, serves those in need, teaches the creeds, absolves sins, and brings new believers to the font and the altar. When these things are done with integrity then we have created a Church whose hospitality grows into something rather more like a binding and lasting friendship.

Rather than being an unwelcoming gesture – requiring Baptism before Communion is the ultimate act of welcome. It offers the chance for a deep relationship to form and for the experience of Communion to take on rich meaning and depth. It also proclaims that we truly believe something life-changing is going to happen in the Sacraments and we believe that time, care, prayer, and reflection about this are all vital.

Asking someone to be in this kind of relationship is hardly unwelcoming – in fact it transcends secular notions of welcome or unwelcome and enters the realm of holy transformation and self-giving. It requires vulnerability, sacrifice, and self-giving as we pledge to walk, pray, and live with the newly baptized in a new life together in Christ.

I think Derek makes the point rather clearly that both scripture and tradition point toward the reasonable conclusion that Baptism before Communion should remain the norm.

There are several theological and spiritual assents being made by those coming to the altar – some of these are that:

Christ has risen and will come again; Matter is wholly transformed as we and the elements undergo a transformation in the Eucharist by grace to holy purpose; We are receiving Christ – the Son of God – in these elements “For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself.” (I Cor. 11:29); We are entering a place of both joy and judgment as we are being formed by receiving Christ to become more like him; We are entering a time and place beyond time and place into the presence of Christ with his disciples, Christ on the cross, Christ in glory in heaven, and Christ who will come again.

We come to Communion open to the presence of God and tasting of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. At any given time any of these theological and spiritual convictions (and many more aspects of the Eucharist) may be present in our hearts and minds. However, it is always a Christo-centric event. It is an event into which we enter and are called by virtue of our being baptized into the Christian mystery.

For us to call all comers to the altar is a disservice to the fullness of the Eucharistic experience, a too-easy escape from fulsome catechesis, and a disregard for the primacy of baptism as the entry into the fullness of Christian living. It is also profoundly disrespectful of the right of the unbaptized to begin to understand just what it is they are entering into when they receive Communion.

The arguments for Communion without Baptism too often abandon the belief that the Sacraments have an inherent grace and manifest God’s presence. Communion without Baptism makes sense if you believe that the Eucharist is only a memorial gathering. In this sacramental schema, Baptism is the recognition of the community’s acceptance of the person’s desire and the Eucharist is not a unique source of grace but a tool of hospitality or a reminder of our duties as a caring people as we welcome you to a meal.

The arguments for an open table rest almost wholly on our action or inaction -- our welcome or discourtesy -- and seem to abandon the notion that something of immense and indeed salvific importance is occurring in these mysteries.

If one believes that Christ is made present both at the altar and through the font then Communion without Baptism makes little sense – indeed it becomes a form of well-intentioned trickery as guests, visitors, and tourists are brought into a paschal mystery which they have not been offered support to live into and to which they have not been pledged to by loving sponsors, raised up in, and catechized to.

Robert, Do you really think religion makes sense?

Anglican eucharistic theology is more complex than you imply, the Prayer Book combining metaphors for the sacrament which theology textbooks teach are mutually exclusive. Your disparagement of memorialism sounds very unecumenical, but as William Temple said, Anglicanism has within it at three sects. In any case, words such as "presence" and "substance" are notoriously ambiguous.

I recommend The Mystery of the Eucharist in the Anglican Tradition by H. R. McAdoo and Kenneth Stevenson.

I have this book on my mind for many reasons, including that Bishop Stevenson died this month.

Gary Paul Gilbert

There are two elements in this conversation that give me pause:

The first is the desire at times for linearity in process: in this case, baptism should proceed communion for things to "make sense." Is it not sufficient to remark that baptism and communion are inexorably intertwined and that tradition holds that baptism normally precedes communion? It is the tendency of the Western Church to turn traditional norms into hard and fast rules.

The second is that assent to some set of propositions is a condition of eligibility to receive. I find this somewhat problematic in that it suggests we truly must understand how God's grace operates in order to receive it. Surely this falters to some degree as baptized toddlers receive, and we have no rules about adults becoming ineligible due to disability, disease, or mental incapacity.

For the rest of us, is not the grace of Eucharistic theology reasonably outlined by our Eucharistic prayer offered in the context of worship? And is not the invitation, "The gifts of God for the people of God" sufficient to invite consciencious searching before approaching the altar?

Again, these are wonderings that give me pause, while I agree that good stewardship and hospitality demand a willingness to articulate norms.

Yes, Richard - great wonderings

For the rest of us, is not the grace of Eucharistic theology reasonably outlined by our Eucharistic prayer offered in the context of worship? And is not the invitation, "The gifts of God for the people of God" sufficient to invite consciencious searching before approaching the altar?

But how are people to know if they are "the people of God"? What, exactly, does this mean?

At the moment, we simply sit people in the pews and leave them on their own to think about this - and to figure out whether they're included in this invitation or not. How are they to know?

What kind of pronouncement, exactly, is that, anyway? I don't think people who have little familiarity with the church are going to have any idea at all. I wouldn't have.

(The question about "assent," BTW, is easily answered. Children have had assent given for them at Baptism by their sponsors (just like parents decide many things for their children), and the disabled had once given it themselves.

The point, for me, is that it's unfair and, I believe, in fact unethical, to ask adults - who can give assent on their own - to participate in the central religious rite of our religion without even the smallest amount of explanation. And then - far worse! - to ask them to respond "I agree" to what the clergyperson says to them.)

As one of the pioneers of the practice of explicitly offering communion to all present (with almost thirty years' experience of seeing people make their own choice of whether to receive), I'm interested to see this conversation focusing on inclusion and hospitality, neither issues we had in mind in '81 more or less when we started making the controversial invitation. Our impetus was the broad consensus among Gospel scholars that Jesus turned the liberal religious leaders of his day to conspiring with Rome for his death because of their deep offense of his enacting the prophetic sign of keeping a messianic kingdom feast with unprepared sinners and known troublemakers (zealots).

But how are people to know if they are "the people of God"? What, exactly, does this mean?

BSnyder, do you know exactly what this means?

The tradition itself is in tension over what we mean by "the people of God."

To say this is not to say in a cavalier way, "Y'all come," (I don't, by the way, and am much more in line with Derek's outline than you seem to assume) but is rather an attempt to acknowledge necessary humility in the face of mystery.

As one of the pioneers of the practice of explicitly offering communion to all present (with almost thirty years' experience of seeing people make their own choice of whether to receive), I'm interested to see this conversation focusing on inclusion and hospitality, neither issues we had in mind in '81 more or less when we started making the controversial invitation. Our impetus was the broad consensus among Gospel scholars that Jesus turned the liberal religious leaders of his day to conspiring with Rome for his death because of their deep offense of his enacting the prophetic sign of keeping a messianic kingdom feast with unprepared sinners and known troublemakers (zealots).

A little more:
Derek, I wholly agree with you that theology, sacramental theology, and liturgics need to be in dialogue. To my surprise (because we've often disagreed in this forum), I'm hearing some of the most creative, fresh thinking about how we synthesize those from Gary and Murdoch Matthew. And I really appreciate Ann, Jeffrey, and Richard's consistent responses that seems determined to learn from experience and witness to a growing or unfolding theology.

I've also raised the question of Gospel scholarship and what consensus post-bultmann critics have begun to discover. No, we can't claim any certainties about the historical Jesus, but to make questions of what we know of him
and strong pointers to what 'do this' might have meant irrelevant to our practice risks making the 'Christ of faith' an excuse for whatever we think we already know or have settled.

Donald,

I agree. As has been pointed out to me in a conversation on this today, we are wrestling (rightly) with a eucharistic theology conceived in a pre-Christendom context where catechumens weren't allowed in eucharistic liturgy, steeped in
a Christendom context where everyone was assumed to be baptized, and now trying to function in a post-Christendom context where our eucharists are public!

BSnyder, do you know exactly what this means?

No, I don't - which is why I asked the question and why I don't think it's inviting at all, for anybody.

I'm not sure why it's seen as a plus; as I read someplace once, it simply introduces confusion. And if we don't know what it means, why would we say it? And why would we expect it to produce clarity for anybody else?

(Fortunately, it's only an option....)

BSnyder,

The further I'm getting in parish ministry, the more I'm learning to value not explaining everything, but allowing those new to the faith to encounter mystery and then ask questions.

Parents of a recent catechumen who was three wrestled with precisely this question, and then asked me what the norm was (could she receive before being baptized?) It mattered less that I told them the church's teaching than allowing the question to arise naturally out of encounter with the parents' tradition settling in a new community, and confronted by their daughter's innocent, outstretched, unbaptized hands.

Being pastoral is not being a sell-out.

And I think we can overburden newcomers with upfront instruction.

Richard Helmer nails the problem. We have

a eucharistic theology conceived in a pre-Christendom context where catechumens weren't allowed in eucharistic liturgy, steeped in
a Christendom context where everyone was assumed to be baptized, and now trying to function in a post-Christendom context where our eucharists are public!

Donald Schell's point about Jesus keeping a messianic kingdom feast with unprepared sinners and known troublemakers is pretty compelling. It was, after all, the people Jesus opposed who wanted everyone to live by rules (their rules).

I can only think of our own experience of marriage. Gary and I have been together 28 years (next month!) and have been accepted as a couple wherever we've gone. But five years ago we went to Montreal, had our bans published, and got married. The paper made little difference to us at home, but we have a different status now in the community. Gary's family has always been accepting, but now I'm an in-law, not just the guy Gary lives with. Our friends at St. Mark's parish gave us a party (with cake!); one gave us a cookbook. We now have a different status in the community. So -- people can participate in the church community, even join the family meals, but there's a rite that makes it official. Being official is nice.

Gary, I must balk absolutely at the use of the word "authentic" here. Of the senses I can bring to bear here, one is out of place and the other requires mind-reading.

Better, then, to work with "unconditional", which again brings two meanings consonant with the context. And I think in each sense there are problems. In the first "conditions", of course, are those which the host would set, and here we are in the thick of the vagueness that is hospitality as a concept. But it's the second-- that people come to us with and in various conditions of their own-- that unlocks the issue for me. The argument behind the argument, after all, is that it is actually hospitable to call everyone to communion. And that is a claim that Paul rejects in giving his advice on coming to communion prepared and with the right attitude. By analogy one could ask whether it is hospitable to set a glass of whiskey in front of someone resisting alcoholism.

Fr. Schell, you are not a troublemaker, but I am. Or perhaps you are a tolerated and empowered troublemaker, but I am powerless and only somewhat tolerated. I have looked at your church's website, and on its evidence I think it would find the liturgy there inhospitable and excluding. That seems in my experience to be acceptable because one person is an anecdote and easily dismissed, or perhaps because those aspects of me that react negatively to what you have to offer can be identified as faults. In the end it seems to me that you are exploiting me, through my church membership, by denying that you really have to be hospitable to me by doing the the liturgy in the BCP and meaning by it what the catechism explains and what most Episcopalians hold. Offering communion to the unbeliever is unwise (and as I have explained, actually inhospitable), but perhaps of itself, that is all; I have not refused to participate simply because the celebrant offered this bad advice. The fiction, however, that clerics are not intrinsically people of power, the authorities of their day: that I cannot stomach.

Richard Helmer, I don't think it's overburdening anybody to give them a bit of explanation about the sorts of things we believe so that they can make an informed decision about whether or not to participate in one of our religious rituals. The story of the child about to be baptized, and her innocent, outstretched hands, is not such a case, since she and her family ARE receiving an explanation. (And if you need to give her a bit of wafer before her baptism I'm sure nobody, including myself, would object - just as nobody is suggesting there be altar police.)

Of course, I don't trust the religious establishment very much, generally speaking - particularly not when they are saying, essentially, "Trust me to know what's good for you." I really just don't.

BSnyder,

I get the distinct sense you and I are tending to talk past each other. It is certainly not my intention nor the role of my office to tell people what's good for them. It is, however, my responsibility to create space in which relationships both with God and community can germinate and flourish. In that, as I was saying, an overabundance of explanation up front can sometimes prove counterproductive. Put another way, people seem much more inclined to hear what we are about when they ask the questions, rather than our assuming what they need to hear.

If I misunderstand your point, I do beg your pardon.

Donald, Thank you for your kind words, and thank you for your pioneering work in welcoming the stranger at St. Gregory's in San Francisco!

Thank you for also for your brilliant intervention, which situates the discussion about open eucharists within the context of Christianity after Rudolf Bultmann. (Perhaps Bultmann has yet to be understood by the churches and is waiting in the future.) I agree with you that to turn one's back on the question of the historical Jesus simply because of a lack of certainty would be to admit that Christ is whatever the church authorities say, thus dissolving any link with the person of flesh and blood.

I have gone to the website of Saint Gregory's and am impressed with the sense of openness as well as the sense of mindfulness.

In my previous disagreements with you I misread you or maybe was resisting something. Reading is often a form of resistance, as some literary theorists like to say.

In any case, Murdoch and I thank you for your generous reading of our texts.

Gary Paul Gilbert

C., What on the website of St. Gregory's, San Francisco, California, makes you say you would feel excluded if you visited their parish? I looked at the website and found a lot about lay empowerment and welcoming of the stranger as well as liturgical dancing and innovative music. How can you evaluate a parish you have not visited? How can you say the parish does not respect the rubrics of The Book of Common Prayer?

The Bishop of California and the congregation of Saint Gregory's are perfectly able to manage their own affairs. Enculturation is an important value in ministry. A church in San Francisco should not be like a church in a more conservative community. California is noted for a more experimental approach in many disciplines, from cooking to philosophy. A church in a big city can afford to specialize and indeed must specialize if it is to survive.

I would answer your question about unconditional hospitality but I don't think I get your question. Even the safest hospitality must include some risk. It is like the risk of writing a text and having it misread.

Your allusion to 1 Corinthians 11 on the abuse of eucharistic hospitality won't work because that is a troubled chapter, starting with the injunction that a woman who prophesies must cover her head, be veiled, while the man who prays must not cover his head. He must be unveiled because he is supposed to be superior to the woman. Man is supposed to reflect God, while woman reflects God. Woman must have long hair and man short. Woman's long hair is like a veil, covering up who knows what? Sexual difference? The little boy's fantasy that woman is inferior because her genital organs are different, a psychoanalytic reading would diagnose. I am paraphrasing Jacques Derrida's reading 1 Corinthians in the collection Acts of Religion. Both woman and Judaism are devalorized and situated on the side of the veil. The Jewish male is forbidden by Paul to pray with a tallith or prayer shawl. Nature (custom?) supposedly teaches that man is to be unveiled and woman veiled.

Enough said about the very different, overtly misogynistic culture in which Paul wrote. The abuse of hospitality to which you allude in the rest of this chapter is simply that people do not share but rather humiliate those who have nothing. I do not see the relevance to the question of open communion.

How does Saint Gregory's humiliate those who have nothing, those who lack?

Gary Paul Gilbert

Sorry for the typo.

I meant to say, "Man is supposed to reflect God, while woman reflects man."

Not "Man is supposed to reflect God, while woman reflects God."

Woman, for Paul, is supposed to be a double reflection of God, whereas man is supposed to reflect God directly, as if a direct reflection were better.

Gary Paul Gilbert

I'm sorry I haven't been able to get back to the party sooner--but it looks like y'all have been having lots of fun anyway!

A few brief points:
The distinction between the religion "about Jesus" and "of Jesus", while a favorite of the 17th century Deists, has some real methodological issues. It may work in terms of conceptual categories but doesn't fly so well looking at the historical development of thought. The major problem historically is that the "about Jesus" material is fully in place in the earliest Christian texts that we have.

On the use of the historical Jesus. Donald, you should know better than to use the phrases "broad consensus" and "historical Jesus" in the same sentence! There is a fairly limited scope about which NT scholars agree about the historical Jesus (driven by quite a number of reasons which I look forward to getting into with you at a later date).

Bultmann is, of course, of immense importance for the academic study of Scripture. The history of modern biblical scholarship can be easily dived into the pre- and post- Bultmann eras. What is just as important to note, however, is that for all his importance in the academic guild, he has had significantly less impact in the churches. Some may chalk it up to anti-intellectualism or some such, I would suggest that he has less to say to us about discipleship and the patterning of Christian lives.

Jeffrey said all the meals Jesus presided over were open. Apart from the feeding of the five and four thousand, I’m trying to think of any meals Jesus presided over except the Last Supper--which was decidedly and explicitly closed--and the meal he prepared for his disciples alone after his resurrection on the shore of the lake, also closed. If the feeding of the five and four thousand is the same meal, that means two out of three were closed. Just to be pedantic, that would also mean most of the meals Jesus presided over were closed.

But even if this is not so, the Last Supper wasn’t a simple meal. What we celebrate and memorialize is not the meal, but what happened AFTER supper. “After supper, he took the cup…”. Similarly, what happens at the altar is not a simple meal. Coffee hour should be open to all. That’s the simple meal.

I don’t agree with Jeffery’s position that we should just let people tinker with the Sacraments. Either they are meaningful and holy or they are meaningless. I think people can tinker with vestments and altar hangings and the position of priests all they want. It is not in the same ballpark as messing with the meaning of the Eucharist.

Tradition—what was handed down—is still very meaningful in Anglicanism. Where do we get this idea that anything goes? That was the whole purpose of the Tractarians, whose influence has formed modern Anglicanism. It was to bring those wandering anything-goes country parsons back to the fundamentals.

I’m thinking we need some tracts for OUR times.

Most unitiated I’ve seen don’t believe they have a right to communion. They accept that this particular practice of the church is open to members. When they become regular enough to know what it means, then the priest should explain how they become a part of this. The only people I’ve seen object to being excluded—and rightly so—are children, who have been coming to church all their lives, have been baptized, but their parents or their priests won’t communicate them. They are righteously indignant, and totally within their rights too! Everyone else understands this is something for members.

How many opportunities for ministry are we missing! When we just leave people to fumble around without instruction, that is not welcoming; that is dereliction of duty and a “radical” failure of hospitality.

Yes, Richard - I do think we're talking past one another. Sorry about that; I don't understand your points very well, and I don't think you're understanding mine. Sometimes that happens, and I guess the idea is to "agree to disagree" in those instances. I'm sorry if I offended you, too.

Generally (not addressing this to you, Richard): I notice that Robert's concerns above were countered with a defense of the breadth of Anglicanism - with the argument that "Anglicanism has within it at three sects."

But it seems to me that Robert's "sect" will be made untenable if a wholesale change is made to the Eucharistic policy in TEC. He will be unable, at that point, to teach or act upon what he believes to be true. A change will force him to act in ways with which his beliefs do not agree. Is that not the case?

And at that point, perhaps the original contention - that "Anglicanism has within it at three sects" - will no longer be the reality, at which point the argument contradicts itself completely.

I'm also wondering about the question asked above: "Do you think religion makes sense?" Well, of course we think religion makes sense, or we wouldn't be involved in it! In fact, I wonder why anybody would be arguing over this issue if they didn't think religion made sense....

Dear BSnyder and CWingate- I hope you will sign your full name in future posts.

As to religion making sense - of course it does not "make sense" - it is a mystery -- in some strange way it helps me make sense of my life -- but there is no logic in the Bible or in the tradition - the stories and even the liturgies do not have logic or facts with which to "make sense"

Gary, your exegesis-by-proximity doesn't move me. That's not the way that bad thinking works.

But be that as it may, I'm not willing to be subjected to an examination as to my objections given that the whole point of your argument is not subjecting anyone else to that kind of questioning. Hospitality, after all, is not about your feelings as host, but about mine as guest.

Back when I was more actively looking into St. G's website, there was a lot more information on precisely what they were doing than there was when I looked more recently. Even so it is quite safe to say that a lot of Episcopalians would look at the website and conclude that they did not want to go there for a service. When I travel, I do go to church, and I do look at websites (if only to find service times and places), and I do find websites that hint that I will find a more or less unorthodox service (or guitars-- I cannot abide a guitar service, sorry), and I don't go to those. If you are really being unconditional, then it is not up to you to criticize this.

Mine you I'm not criticizing the notion of some experimentation in liturgy, or necessarily even some of what St. G's is doing. But the expectation seems to be that either I am supposed to find it welcoming, or that it doesn't matter that I don't find it welcoming because my reasons can be debated and presumably be found faulty. But in that context it is possible to argue against CWOB as being hospitable. Either way unconditional hospitality appears to be impossible once consideration of actual reaction of the guests is taken into account. To put it more succinctly: you cannot please everyone, and the decisions as to whom you are going to please are what create your character.

I share Derek's raised eyebrow at the notion of consensus on the historical Jesus.

Charles

Dear BSnyder and CWingate- I hope you will sign your full name in future posts. As to religion making sense - of course it does not "make sense" - it is a mystery -- in some strange way it helps me make sense of my life -- but there is no logic in the Bible or in the tradition - the stories and even the liturgies do not have logic or facts with which to "make sense"

The requirement here, as I read it, is to use our "real names," not our "full names." As it happens, I use only my initial when I sign letters, emails, and anything else. (And, of course, others post using initials only, and I've never seen anybody take them to task. Of course, if this isn't the policy, I welcome the correction from those in authority.)

And of course religion makes sense! It wouldn't have been a central part of human life on earth since the dawn of time if it didn't. (Well, I agree that not ALL religion makes sense, I must admit. I'm not involved in, say, Young Earth Creationism, precisely because it doesn't make sense to me. I can determine the difference between it and Anglicanism, though; if not, I'd just put them in the same category and toss them both out together.)

Dear C. Thanks for clarifying that C is your name -- I only requested for myself not for the Café -

Charles, You have not shown a harm in the liturgical practices at St. Gregory's other than that it might not be to everybody's taste. According to that criterion, certain Anglo-Catholic parishes in Manhattan would also be criticized as eccentric. Parishes which have clergy who happen to be women or are openly gay or same-sex partnered would also offend certain sensibilities.

And you are saying the evidence you found on their website has since disappeared.

Gary Paul Gilbert

I do think that as Bill notes controversy about CWOB and Matrimony being made available to same-sex couples are interrelated.

Some of this is very contextual, and it might be important to do case studies of parishes rather than make broad sweeps.
For example, my parish practices CWOB and is largely lgbt. Marriage is not available to the majority of us. Many of the folks there have experienced a particular interconnection of less than gracious Christianity at the Altar-Table and most came already baptized, but some didn't. Some began with communion and moved to baptism.

The context gives a different shape to the concerns. Concerns, I might add that Richard has spotted as I have also said previously: We cannot easily translate the conditions of preChristendom, Christendom, and postChristendom. The catechumenate of preChristendom may not work in the same way in a relatively persecutionless postChristendom society. Nonetheless, having the norm of Baptism to Communion need not imply inhospitality, but again it does depend on the particular context in which a parish ministers and recovery of commitment both for Baptism-Communion and Matrimony. In the former two, God's to us and in the latter of us to one another in God. Where I see same-sex couples committed they become a contradictory sign to a Church that says commitment-commitment on Baptism-Eucharist but your love for one another is meaningless response to God in Christ. It creates cognitive dissonance and it should for the entire Church, not just for us.

The premarital sex argument works well as a heterosexual to whom marriage is available, and on the whole I find it useful by analogy in regard to intimacy, but I am not heterosexual nor married and by the standards of the Church no matter how committed, public my vows, etc., I live in a state of liminality. It is a state that I also live with in relation to CWOB because the inhospitality of the Church to my relationship cannot be wholly separated from how the Church has often treated my sort and condition at Communion. And I don't see resolution anytime soon. And yet, liminality is a great place to live as regular reminder of utter dependence of God. Such dependence allows for

So again, contextuality in theology is important. And the language of sexual intimacy applied to Baptism fragments for me as a gay man no matter how I would like to pretend I'm *in the club* or how often I can relate to it by analogy. Given that, I remain in the open-question space on CWOB as well, while commending the heart of the tradition on both the norm in relation to the flow from one to the other of Sacraments and to commitment and vow for the sacramental rite.

Thank you, Christopher, For me, too, the experience of being gay, has made me question the tradition. I take it personally. Being civilly married, while in a denomination which still, at the most, might offer blessings of couples leaves me ambivalent.

Gary Paul Gilbert

Gary, if we are to stick to your position we need to suppress the various A-C parishes and while we're at it anything else that could be construed as inhospitable to someone by someone. Of course, that's a hopeless cause, because as we all know there isn't anything that someone won't find offensive.

Under your program, I don't need to show a harm; I merely need to show that something is off-putting. At least, that is one way to interpret hospitality. This is precisely why I keep harping on the problems in defining the word: it appears to be important to avoid pinning down what the word means because to do so is to eliminate the possibility of a lack of conditions.

Yes, Gary. The difference at least as I can tell in the posts you've made here over the years is that I do not see this liminality as a space to reject tradition but as a space for tradition to learn, refine, and grow through critique, engagement, and conversation. It is a great gift if uncomfortable. Hence, the closing sentence, "commending the heart of the tradition on both the norm in relation to the flow from one to the other of Sacraments and to commitment and vow for the sacramental rite."

Charles and Christopher, I question the either/or (going against my friend Kierkegaard). I don't think it matters on which side of the border one finds oneself or is found. What is more important is the question, which should remain a question.

I wish it were simple to reject a tradition but it inhabits one and influences even the most secular discourses. Perhaps secular discourses are even more religious than religious ones because they take more seriously the withdrawal of certainty which is faith. The tradition, if there is indeed such a monolithic notion, has not yet arrived, if ever. One may give birth to something new but it will have come out of the elements of the tradition.

Charles, You misread the unconditional because you make it sound as if I said that hospitality must always be purely unconditional. I say it must contain an element of the unconditional and thus offense of some kind is irreducible. It is not sure there can be pure hospitality. The act of hospitality may remain unreadable.

I affirm messiness and the right of congregations to reach out to people the tradition has marginalized.

Gary Paul Gilbert

The tradition, if there is indeed such a monolithic notion, has not yet arrived, if ever.

Clearly we have different understandings of what "tradition" means. As far as I am concerned, there are vast amounts of historical data points that we access from the writings, practices, and arguments of the past. Yes, these must be read and synthesized into meaningful patterns by each generation--and new generations may find new patterns as our ability to read and analyze them change--but I simply don't understand how a tradition "arrives" (with the corresponding implication that it hasn't arrived yet!).

Gary, the church does not marginalize anyone by insisting on baptism-- indeed, even the most stringent forms of closed communion are not marginalizing. All one has to do, after all, is to be baptized. Once again we've washed up against your use of a bunch of superlatives and universals which it doesn't seem to me that you can really mean.

The discussion is increasingly revolving around your own eccentric (at least by any kind of historical perspective) tradition. If I may be blunt about it, there is a degree to which I can tolerate sharing a church with you. However, I am excluded from a church whose liturgy encodes your tradition. If you would like to lay all the blame for that exclusion on me, well, that's the traditionalist point here, isn't it? On the one hand we have a church which yet manages to hold on to some specific tenets, but which we are being told really needs to put aside any insistence upon them in the interests of hospitality. This seems to me to be a particularly lame manifestation of hypocrisy; I have to suspect that the only kind of cleric who could take this kind of divergence seriously is one who doesn't take his faith seriously. But particularly in your words I sense that there is in fact specific if vaguely expressed contrary theology expressed, and that there are a lot of people whom you either do not care if you exclude or would like to see marginalized (which is to say, kept away from influence). The ongoing problem I see in this whole discussion is that the kind of differences that exist between these people and those who you wish to welcome play out in more or less in the same mental and social territory as the difference between the baptized and the unbaptized. And not only that, but that as an impediment resistance to being baptized is very much the lesser barrier.

Derek, Sorry my reference to Martin Heidegger was opaque but you seem to have got the gist. Heidegger said the tradition has not arrived yet, meaning it has yet to be dealt with. Rather than teaching that Platonism was some doctrine from the past which could be explicated from outside he showed how Western philosophy still swims in Platonism even at the very moment it would seek to break with Plato. Freud had a similar idea that what gets repressed returns, in the classic "return of the repressed." The messiness caused by the change of the position of baptism and communion in the 1979 Prayer Book will come back to haunt us.

My point is that just because something has not been done yet does not mean it is not part of the tradition.

Gary Paul Gilbert

Christopher, If the liminal is really in-between then it is hard to tell the difference between inside and outside. The liminal is not easy to inhabit because it is necessarily ambiguous.

Maybe the liminal will help to reform the church or maybe it will go the other way and bring the house of theology down.

The liminal sounds like both a condition of possibility and impossibility.

Gary Paul Gilbert

Charles, Hospitality has rules but the arrival of the other may exceed them. The hosts cannot know the future and it is possible the guests will become the hosts of the hosts.

Philosopher Jacques Derrida, addressing a group of French psychoanalysts, "Psychoanalysis Searches the States of Its Soul: The Impossible Beyond of a Sovereign Cruelty," said, "It is a hospitality of visitation and not of invitation, when what arrives from the other exceeds the rules of hospitality and remains unpredictable for the hosts (Without Alibi, Stanford: Stanford University Press, page 254.) The invitation would be knowable in that it is addressed to particular persons. But the visitation is ghostly and surprises the hosts, recalling the the logic of an annunciation, where the word invades the ear.

As Richard has said, the issue is way beyond a simple yes or no to communion before baptism.

It raises fundamental issues of what it means to be a community of any kind and in particular a church.

Gary Paul Gilbert