I'm uncomfortable with sweeping generalizations like this but I think Hauerwas has his finger on a trend which I would articulate as being much more theologically and functionally pragmatic in our ecclesiology. Which, I think, raises important questions about the role and function of bishops. Indeed, I think it raises important questions about the role of ordination across the board.

We've seen a renaissance, of sorts, of the historic diaconate. It's no accident that the canons of our church stipulate that deacons are non-stipendiary. A few years ago there was a hue and cry about a "clergy shortage". Now, full time cures for priests are drying up faster than new ones open up after early retirement. I'm wondering how long it will take before we begin to question the role and function of the bishop - especially when it is essentially a sign and symbol of unity.

The role of bishop as "chief pastor" has been seriously compromised by our litigious culture. Many couldn't be CFOs or CEOs if they tried - and many dioceses don't want them to be. Being an "ambassador for Christ" and engaging the world as well as the local community on critical issues of our faith is, for me, a very important role, but I wonder how this "congregational trend" will support that role.

Hauerwas says, "The role of the bishop is very important to make sure that Eucharistic assemblies are not isolated from one another." My question is: How long before the economic crisis we're in begins to give rise to pragmatic questions about how bishops are compensated for this role?

Thanks for a thought provoking post.

Elizabeth,

Thanks for getting the conversation rolling with a thought provoking comment.

You quote Hauerwas, "When you just said, "The Episcopal church is the embodiment of much that Wesley cared about,"". Since Wesley was a member of the Church of England, are we seeing something come full circle? I hope this bodes well for our dialogue with the UMC.

Well, you've certainly provoked my thoughts. http://telling-secrets.blogspot.com/2010/09/do-we-really-need-bishops.html

Hauerwas struck some resonance with me as he often does. My father and his father were Methodist clergy. Both sides of my family have been active Methodists, until my Dad's generation, when he left the Methodist ministry and became an Episcopal priest. I followed suit and retired from parish ministry in TEC ten years ago.

The reason my father and others I have known, left the Methodist ministry always seemed to be the same. They came to realize that the Wesley brothers sacramental theology was more evident in Anglicanism than in contemporary [1950's] Methodism.

When my father left the Methodist ministry and was ordained in TEC there was still a provision for such a switch canonically [since removed], without having to renounce nor resign from his previous orders. It was important to him.

As for the symbol of unity in the episcopate, that was one of the painful issues for him because his Methodist bishop was the well respected G. Bromley Oxnam. Unfortunately a zealous District Superintendent lost 12 clergy at the annual conference that year, when he announced that they were all being rotated. Most became Episcopalians. Elizabeth Kaeton's comments are well taken. I am old enough to have witnessed a transition from epsicopal elections in which the candidates were generally humble and not seeking to win a dog and pony show, to the all too frequent campaigns for election by those perceiving that a bishopric is the epitome of success on the corporate ladder - and frequently diocesan canons or executives waiting for the moment.

Both my father and grandfather were zealous ecumenists, as am I. I think that was a charism received from Methodism as Hauerwas seems to suggest. For me as a former cathedral musician, the deep piety of Charles' Wesley's hymnody has been and is a mainstay.

My prayer is that both Anglicanism and Methodism will recover the theology of the Wesley brothers. It is a shared heritage which has been ignored by both traditions for far too long.

Bob McCloskey

It is popular among institutionalists that "the diocese is the basic unit of the church." There is some, perhaps dated, truth there. The larger truth is that the local congregation is the basic unit of mission and mission is what the Church of Jesus is about. To the degree that a diocese supports that mission it has value. See this guy's chapter in a recently published book. He is a priest-professor in St Paul -- www.luthersem.edu/dzscheile/DZscheile_cv.pdf

[Editor's note: Thanks for the comment. Please leave your full name next time.]

I wish Hauerwas were an Episcopal Bishop. I'd drop everything this very second, move to his diocese and work for without pay or insurance just to be able to get on with trying to live as a Christian today-- even, or should I say especially, in the Church. The Episcopal Church is (because it lives) congregationalist today. Par[t]ishes are no longer "parts" of One Church with Her One Bishop spread over a Diocese, with her/his clergy collegially working together with their Bishop but individual congregations each with "their" own "pastor-' (we always said the Bishop was the Pastor, but we've sold out on that too)-now-chaplain serving as chapels of ease (in the KJV meaning of the word) to individual congregants who "come to church." Don't like the sermons, move down the street; don't like the Liturgy, go to St. With-its; don't like gays, leave for St. Straights. Enough religion. Let's get on with trying to be catholic (Hauerwas' word!) Christians, today. Be-ing or at least trying to be or live as a Catholic Christian in today's Church, is like Francis of Assisi having to get permission from the Pope to try to live the Gospel in his own day. In the American Churches we would have to vote on it and it would never pass, we are individual democratic christians first and foremost: with a God-given Right (The Constitution says so)Right to MY own Personal faith and opinion to believe and live anything I call "christian" as christian and read MY bible any way I choose to interpretate it!

Yeah I am grumpy! Yeah and judgmental! Yes, I know there are some incredibly wonderful Parishe in the land. The part of the Body that I am really needs the rest of a Body to be able to get on with doing my particular function; What the world calls a chicken today-- a carcass pre-cut and into two wings, two legs, two thighs, two breasts, a neck, heart, gizzard and liver in one neat clean package is not a chicken even if "Government Inspected"; a Chicken lives and moves and has a be-ing in a chicken yard. Remove one part and the whole chicken suffers.

Recent Jon Stewart ran a story on Chelsea Clinton's wedding comparing all of the Jewish traditions of the groom with Methodist wedding traditions.

He concluded,

http://www.examiner.com/methodist-in-national/jon-stewart-calls-methodism-university-of-phoenix-of-religions

When my wife and I were teaching Religious Studies in the South, we used to joke that "everyone's Baptist; even Catholics are Baptist." By that we meant Baptist understandings of religious experience and conversion permeates religion in the South (it's even beginning to influence non-Western Religions.

But there's another side of that. I think Hauerwas is correct only if he has a very narrow notion of "we." The Baptists contributed a great deal to the large push toward individualism in American religion. In fact, we aren't all Congregationalists, now. Those few of us who belong to churches might be, but most of us (even in the South where weekly church attendance is below 50%) find connection with the divine outside of organized religion and do it by ourselves or with ad hoc groups.

Jonathan Grieser

I agree that Christians are becoming more congregationalist, and the challenge, for bishops and for congregations is to get the balance right, so that congregations relate one to the other and do not stray into a type of isolationism.

I prefer a church with a central authority figure, with the caveat that the bishop must always keep in mind the first call to serve the clergy and people under her/his care, with the exercise of authority following upon the service.

The call to unity in common prayer is one of the qualities of Anglicanism that I most appreciate, but that quality seems to be under threat in the present day from demands for unity in doctrine.

June Butler

Mark me down as another "ecclesial whore." I was raised in an Episcopalian clergy family, went to a Lutheran college, and now live at a Methodist seminary. And then you have my partner, who converted to Christianity as an adult, and in the process tried out pretty much every variety of church available in our hometown. At this point, we've been wandering so long that I don't know if we'll ever have a strict denominational allegiance again.

Which I don't believe is a bad thing! My faith certainly seems richer for the combination of denominations. I couldn't give up the beautiful rhythms of the Prayer Book's language, or the commitment to the via media. But by now, I also couldn't go without Luther's law-gospel dialectic and his description of the human person as "saint & sinner simultaneously," which have become deep parts of my faith. So I'll keep celebrating this time of "congregationalism", and pray that we continue to realize our denominations have more in common than we might think.

Margaret, it's OK to be an Anglo-Lutheran! I'm one!

I articularly like his short statement at the end to the effect that church unity does not consist of institutional agreement. The "Covenant" misses that entirely.

Juan Oliver

Elizabeth -

Thank you for getting this party started. You are right that the revival of the diaconate as a distinct order is a part of the process, but mostly as a counterbalance, I think.

Correcting one point of fact though: the Canons do not specify that deacons are to be nonstipendiary. It's rare for us to be compensated for our work, and there are a lot of people, including (I think) a lot of bishops, who are under the impression that we are de jure or of necessity nonstipendiary -- but not so.

The canons prohibit us (and transitionals) from being "In charge of a congregation or other community of faith," (Canon 7, section 4c - and that is a relatively recent development), but nowhere I have seen are we required not to be paid for our work. We rarely are, but that's a matter of habit, or local canon, not churchwide mandate.

Dear Dcn Scott Elliott,

Thank you for clarifying what was for me (and, I suspect, others) a common misconception. Your note sent me scrambling to the Canons, where - lo and behold! - what I thought had been there all along was not.

With no such prohibitions as to compensation for deacons, perhaps the church is freer to dream about its future.

Torey Lightcap