This is great - I love the saints-- sorry you don't have Amazing Christina though. She could be painted at the highest point over the altar LOL.

Donald,

What seems important here is NOT that sometimes innovation goes astray or ends up with poor results. Rather, that an unwillingness to make room for genuine, rule-breaking innovation makes it impossible for us to equip people to be responsible innovators. The more we insist on the inviolability of canons, the more we abandon our leaders to being incapable of responsible creativity. I think our focus on the rules is exactly what has led to so much poor innovation throughout the Church. Good innovation, as you've suggested, requires good support and mentoring.

Thanks for the great articles.

OK. But don't be surprised when laypeople stop having much respect for clergy who claim "valid missionary reasons" for doing anything they feel like doing.

Also don't be surprised when laypeople start doing whatever we feel like doing. If you guys don't recognize any authority, why on earth should we?

I find much admirable here, so will focus only on three points of disagreement I have:

1. Honestly, I am somewhat shocked to see Elizabeth I included among these "dancing saints," alongside martyrs and those such as Bartolome de las Casas who advocated to save lives. Certainly, her political genius gave us the Elizabethan Settlement which helped shape Anglicanism. Nonetheless, let's be blunt: Her own hands dripped with the blood of both (a) those martyred for beliefs falling *outside* the officially approved range encompassed by the Elizabethan Settlement and (b) her political enemies. This is what a "saint" does?! Seeing martyrs such as Oscar Romero -- both a political martyr and a martyr for his faith -- in the company of the bloodstained Virgin Queen makes one wonder about the vetting process used.

2. Bishop Swing's statement -- “Unless you have a valid missionary reason, you must obey the rubrics and canons. If you have a valid missionary reason, you must disobey the rules.” -- opens the barn door wide to de facto congregationalism and clericalism, for it appears to approve *any* innovation which a single cleric or congregation can convince themselves they have valid "missionary reason" to support.

Throw out references to the Trinity? Great, it'll be good for mission to the unchurched and the UUs. Institute "open ordination" to the priesthood and episcopate, open to the whole congregation, no questions asked? (Some "Independent Catholic" groups in fact do this now.) Great! "All of the sacraments for all of the baptized (and some even for the non-baptized!)," right? Ought to serve a good missionary purpose... (Mind you, I'm a gay, progressive, Zen-practicing Affirming Anglican Catholicism type, so I support broad inclusivity, but I find the slogan "All of the sacraments for all of the baptized" problematic in that it oversimplifies the fact that some sacramental acts do, by their very nature, do have additional prerequisites other than merely being baptized.)

In other words, just as some clergy seem prone to thinking that whatever creative BCP rewrite they want to do must be theologically compatible with the Church's teachings just because they wear a collar, this "missionary purpose" exception is big enough to drive a truck through. So much for good Catholic order; anything can be rationalized with such an exception.

3. Re Eucharist for the unbaptized: Yes, Wesley spoke of the Eucharist as a "converting sacrament." However, in historical context, almost all of the people Wesley might have had in mind were already baptized, whether in the CoE, CoS, non-conforming churches, etc. Such a "conversion" would then most plausibly refer to a baptized person turning her heart toward God and receiving His grace, *not* to an unbaptized person being moved to seek baptism. In Wesley's England, the only unbaptized would have been Jews, Quakers, the pre-age-of-consent children of Baptists, and perhaps the occasional Deist or Unitarian. The overall religious context within which Wesley functioned was quite different from that of the modern multifaith USA or UK; don't assume his comment isn't predicated upon an assumption of already haing been baptized, unless one can point out specific passages from Wesley in which he views the Eucharist as converting folks known to have been unbaptized. More likely, Wesley would have been reluctant to embrace Eucharist-for-the-unbaptized as a standard accepted practice, let alone one to be proclaimed from the altar; even his "emergency" resort to the Alexandrian precedent for presbyteral ordination of presbyters (and *bishops*, which was the bigger departure from canons and doctrine) never became established practice in the Methodist churches of the USA for which he had ordained these "superintendants"/bishops. It is understood that an emergency is an emergency, but afterward, the Catholic norm was fully restored for American Methodists. (As for UK Methodists, Wesley arguably never saw it desirable to split off from the CoE, so there would be no sacramental lack as in America, the emergency which he argued justified his departure from Catholic order.)

It's a bit more for Neale than just a legal issue. But I can imagine the churning right now: Gay bishops/women clergy or Open Communion or Rethinking Baptismal Vows (etc) is NOT the same thing as simply using "smells and bells".

That's what we say *now* and we laugh at the idea of English bishops hunting down "ritualists".

To the low-church Bishops who fired their clergy for such things and to the theologians who flamed, fumed and ranted, such things were idolatry and a clear violation of proper scriptural order and worship. Images? Vestments? "Mass"? Pure and simple hell-inspired heresy leading us all to union with the Beast, the Anti-Christ (the Pope of Rome). Not just in England, either - here in Buffalo Charles Henry Brent was fried for daring to put candles on his altar. And the "Reformed Episcopal Church" broke communion with ECUSA because of such words as "Altar" showing up in the new BCP of the time.

All of this was exactly on par with where we are now except we don't care about incense any more and so we can laugh, forgetting how evil it was back in the day. To keep it in scale, remember the iconoclasm of the English reformation, and the blood that was shed on both sides of that battle. We should be thankful we're not fighting like *that* yet.

In the future our great grandchildren may look back and laugh at us and our fixation on sex and gender in the same way - even as they fume over whatever is happening to them.

I hate to mention it, but the Episcopal Church is coasting - for now - on its endowments and its ownership of downtown Manhattan. But attendence and membership numbers continue to drop - so exactly where will these great-grandchildren of ours be going to church, does anybody think? And tell me again why we should be following these "innovative leaders," given that their project is pretty much obviously a failure? I forget.

And let's be honest, for a change: there aren't any consequences for all the "daring" rule-breaking and "innovation." The comparisons with Queen Elizabeth and the Reformers are really getting a little tired at this point. Nobody cares about any of this. There aren't any heresy-hunters out there anymore; nobody's getting burned at the stake or imprisoned for their "rebellion." (Well, except gay people in Nigeria, of course - but we're too busy with gay bishops to notice or bother with that.) The world looks at the Episcopal Church and all its "daring innovations" and yawns a big collective yawn.

Which is really too bad, since we have the most exciting story in the world to tell. Perhaps if we stopped fixating on our own "creativity" all the time, we could actually do something about that....

Ditto to Leslie´s comment above. As I see it, we have three basic choices:

1. Freeze-dry a proven model of worship, (proven with whom, when, by whom?) develped by expert liturgists --lay and ordained, and then thaw it in exact replicas in all and every congregation--the GTS model. IMHO this worked reasonably well until about 1985.

2. Throw standards to the winds and encourage "experimentation," so we can have as many trials as possible, since excellence requires many failures --as long as we have the courage to throw failures in the trash. This is the life blood of worship that is truly "of the people."
--when they are catcechized and have drunk deeply of the wells of liturgical tradition without falling and drowning.

3. Combine 1 and 2 in a dynamic program of creative invention and evaluation by local peers, and across the church. Associated Parishes for Liturgy and Mission is embarked precisely on this third option, providing a site (Facebook as well as APLM´s own website) where attempts to enflesh worship in new ways can be shared, thought about, critiqued constructively, tried by others and further assessed. Without this enfleshment of worship the story cannot be heard, I don´t think.

BSnyder,

I've been thinking about what you wrote:

"OK. But don't be surprised when laypeople stop having much respect for clergy who claim "valid missionary reasons" for doing anything they feel like doing.

Also don't be surprised when laypeople start doing whatever we feel like doing. If you guys don't recognize any authority, why on earth should we?"

I think the 'please yourself' and 'pamper yourself' and 'I'm worth it' messages we get culturally (from advertising) may have made it even harder to hear that longing, desire, heartfelt vision CAN be a way we meet God. 'Whatever we feel like' is a name for whim, a fancy, an idle pleasure. But God does use desire to move us to love and art and committed acts of compassion and works of mercy. How do we know whether the thing that's asking so persistently for our full commitment is that Godly desire? How do we know it's not vanity or ego or short-sighted pleasure? We don't ever know for certain. There is certainly a tension between faithfully doing what God calls us to by making us want it with all our heart and doing what we please.

The first place I noticed that dilemma expressed in our church was in Bianco da Siena's hymn "Come down O Love Divine" - - -

Come down, O love divine, seek thou this soul of mine,
and visit it with thine own ardor glowing;
O Comforter, draw near, within my heart appear,
and kindle it, Thy holy flame bestowing.

O let it freely burn, til earthly passions turn
to dust and ashes in its heat consuming;
And let thy glorious light shine ever on my sight,
and clothe me round, the while my path illuming.

Let holy charity mine outward vesture be,
and lowliness become mine inner clothing;
True lowliness of heart, which takes the humbler part,
and o’er its own shortcomings weeps with loathing.

And so the yearning strong, with which the soul will long,
shall far outpass the power of human telling;
For none can guess its grace, till they become the place
where-in the Holy Spirit finds a dwelling.

Another important place I encountered it was in "The Soul Takes Flight," Richard Norris's splendid article on Gregory of Nyssa's commentary on the Song of Songs - there Norris writes -

"[Gregory argues that]...Moses and the other ancients who loved God 'never came to a point of rest in their desire.' 'Everything that came to them from God by way of enjoyment of what they sought they turned into fuel and matter for a more intense desire.' In the human being, eros is as unquenchable as the Good is infinite: it is never satisfied, but is always reaching out, like Oliver Twist, for more.
And here lies the solution to Gregory's paradox: if perfection is unattainable, that is because human mutability-the human capacity for growth and change for the better as well as for the worse-is as unlimited as is the incomprehensible being of God. Human virtue and knowledge will always, under all circumstances, fall short of God, but in love, in desire, humanity has that about it which answers to, corresponds with, the divine Infinity. What makes human beings monsters of greed, and ambition when it is directed to finite goods-namely, their insatiable lust for more of the good they seek-is, when focused on the true, the infinite Good, the very engine of sanctity. And perhaps-though Gregory never says so-it is in this way that human nature images and mirrors God: by its lustful willingness to "forget what lies behind and. . press on to the upward call" which is God. Only by its infinite mutability does humanity image the infinite good. Augustine of Hippo sets close to the start of his Confessions the wellknown words, Inquietum est cor nostrum donec requiescat in te"Our heart is restless until it rest in thee." Gregory would have agreed-had he not died about the time Augustine wrote those words-on condition that "rest in thee" be understood to mean the unending leap of faith in which love finds, and loses, and then finds again, its divine Lover."

Culturally we either put too much weight on desire (advertising and consumerism) or dismiss it from consideration (politics and morals). In the process we banish the beauty of holiness and glory with which God clothes the lilies of the field. No, my wanting to do something doesn't make it right, but a patient listening to a prompt from within or without that touches on love for others (God's people gathered and the stranger who may com ein the door) will add urgency to testing something that feels like it at least might be prompted by the Spirit.

And why would anyone trust leaders (lay or ordained) who break the rules sometimes? Because they know the leaders, trust them, love them, know they are loved by them, and sense (one prayers senses with suitable skepticism and discernment) that the love that's engendering this trust is of God. It's not a path of certainty, but neither is the path of meticulously keeping the rules. And it does seem to me that in his own context (Jewish religious law handed down by God) Jesus argues compellingly for breaking the rules sometimes, just as he argues sometimes for keeping the rules with care.