An Untraditional Response
to Revisionism and "Hooker's Stool"

written for

The Thomas Bilney Memorial Barbecue

August 19, 1999*



We've all heard the references to Richard Hooker's supposed "three-legged stool" of Anglicanism: Scripture, Reason, and Tradition. And we've all heard the claim by our orthodox brethren that the Revisionists have placed "reason" above the rest (and that they have adopted the fourth leg of "experience" from the Methodists). Many of us have also read that Hooker didn't envision a three legged stool, as much as he saw a three columned churchmanship that placed "scripture" at the cornerstone, followed by tradition and reason.



My dear wife (wise beyond her years and my ways), pointed out to me the other day that it is not "reason" that the revisionists hold above all else (or "experience"), but it is "the tradition" that they value most, and it is the tradition that they will fight to the death for. By this she meant (and I agree), that in order to preserve the traditions of Anglicanism (most especially Anglo-Catholic Ritualism), accommodations must be made with the culture. If the culture can't reconcile itself with Holy Scripture, then Holy Scripture must be reconciled with the culture by tailoring it to the current climate.



Common sense "reason" tells us that homosexual sex and abortion are unreasonable and counter-productive activities. Even a Darwinist must admit that for the survival and strengthening of the species, these practices can only be seen as having a negative impact. If it is reasonable for a species to do all that it can to continue and to thrive, then promoting the killing of children and the practice of deviant sex works in the opposite direction. (The choir says, "Amen!")



Whether in the form of Natural Law or of higher mental activity, reason is God's gift to us. Scripture is also a gift from God, inspired by His Holy Spirit for our instruction. Tradition, however, comes from man, and can be a vain thing. Now by tradition, I don't mean the traditions of our fathers handed down to us faithfully... the passing of the baton from one generation to the next. No, I mean everything from certain snippets of Elizabethan language, neo-gothic architectural styles, and tab collars vs. band collars, to cassocks, copes, mitres, crosiers, prayer books, hymnals, liturgies, "orders of ministry", apostolic succession (which has often become more apostate than apostolic), and almost anything else that you'd find in an Episcopal church on Sunday morning, but not in the world on the other six days of the week.



In other words, everything that the Reformers railed against has come back to haunt us (and I of a pronounced Evangelical/Anglo-Catholicism!) and to separate us from God's Will and His plan for us.



Spong, Browning, and Griswold would never dream of doing away with the priesthood and the episcopacy, and instead are willing to fight for their survival in the face of a culture that threatens to sweep it away in a flood of psychology-as-religion, dubious self-help strategies, and old-timey "new age" religions. It is "the tradition" that they are upholding... "our" unique tradition of feeling over faith...enlightenment over revelation. They point to the common "god" of humanism, with which they feel we can't compete with unless we adapt to that pluriform god. And so, in the name of pluralism and diversity, we bow down and worship it in our culture's multiform marketplace. Pluriformity is simply a return to paganism; a paganism where we make sacrifice to "our" household god to protect us from "their" household god, both of whom dwell in the same pantheon.



Indeed, they correctly see the tradition threatened, and seek to incorporate the "entitlement" of the individual and his or her rights into the tradition to save the tradition; a reverse osmosis of the Church's early strategy to win the world for Christ. They love the tradition, adore the tradition, and rely upon the tradition for their self-understanding and place in the cosmos. They uphold and defend the tradition in accordance with their ordination vows, while fulfilling their renewed baptismal vow to seek and serve the christness in others (and in other's religions)... to "christen" the world, but no longer to Christianize it.



This is why Spong can write of "Why Christianity must change or die", and why Griswold can speak of "my truth meeting your truth" at a common understanding of "the divinity within us". Indeed, that is why we move closer to the publishing of a "Book of Common Truths" to replace the Common Prayer book (some say we arrived there in 1979). In these "common truths", we can ecumenically worship as we choose the mother/father/brother/sister/earth/animal/spirit god, each focusing on the part of the god we identify with, while seeking and serving the christ within each of us. Perhaps we will even add a new creed that begins, "We hold these common truths to be self-evident...". The Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist has become "the real presence" of our self importance in the liturgy.



But the outward and visible "tradition" remains, with acolytes and crucifers leading a solemn procession of clerics dressed in fake medieval costumes down the aisles of imitation Norman and Gothic buildings, leading a liturgy that has about as much to do with the Last Supper as the local Masonic Lodge has to do with the Freemasons of the first millennial roll-over. Cranmer, Latimer, Ridley, and Bilney probably wouldn't be shocked that their flames that ignited England have become cherished embers cupped in the hands of proud worshippers. These same worshippers have the sign of the cross placed upon their foreheads in the martyr's ashes, after the embers have gone cold, not as a sign of repentance, but as a sign of pride in "good" liturgy (the same pride that puts an Episcopal shield on a car, but balks at an ichthus).



This helps to explain the unseemly spectacle of bishops (or is it Grand Pooh-bahs?) threatening to throw a congregation that upholds Holy Scripture out on the street while fighting to keep the church property in the diocese. Upholding and protecting the tradition means keeping all your marbles in the bag. After all, tradition is almost universally identified with historic buildings. Anyway, surely one would have to have lost his marbles to worship a Living God, virgin born, raised from the dead, who knew you by name.



John Spong rightly raises the question as to who is doing the better job of stewardship: the shrinking diocese who's losses are less than the white-flight induced desertion of the urban northeast (i.e.; the Diocese of Newark), or the growing diocese that falls short of the overall growth in their region (i.e.; the Diocese of Dallas).



We are caught up in preserving the outward form by abandoning the inward content, just as a ship in high seas might dump its cargo to keep from capsizing. But in our case, where the cargo is far more precious than the ship, we are being called to sacrifice the ship for the sake of the cargo? Isn't that precisely what happened off Malta two thousand years ago? Recall that the Roman guards wanted to kill Paul and throw him overboard, too.



Obviously, one can be both a heretic and a good churchman at the same time, if good churchmanship is defined as keeping it together in the face of the cultural onslaught. Increasingly though, what is not so clear is whether or not one can be a faithful follower of Christ Jesus and an Episcopalian in good standing at the same time.



P.Michael Summer

simul justus et peccator



* Modified appropriately for the Feast Days of Thomas Bray on February 15 and of Martin Luther on February 18, 2000.

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