During the first couple of decades of this century, until I retired four years ago, I took my “share in the councils of the church” (see the Book of Common Prayer ordination vows) by engaging robustly with the ever-evolving theological and ecclesiastical conflict among Anglican Christians. In a taxonomy that might be described by an x axis between conservative and progressive, and a y axis between bridge-building and bridge-burning, I have tended to inhabit the quadrant of bridge-building conservative.
That is, while adhering to a traditional understanding of marriage and sexuality (thus differentiating myself from both bridge-burning and bridge-building progressives), I have remained in the Episcopal Church and endeavored to be in a constructive relationship with progressives (thus differentiating myself from bridge-burning conservatives).
For much of the time during the final two decades of my active ministry, my involvement with controverted issues ran at a baseline of “rolling boil.” I entered the fray first through listservs, then blogs, then the social media platforms—Facebook and Twitter—as they emerged. I was in the thick of six consecutive General Conventions—three as a deputy and three as a bishop.
I was part of the Anglican Communion Network as it responded to the trauma of the 2003 convention, and then watched many of my friends and colleagues depart to form the Anglican Church in North America. For five years, I chaired the board of one of the historic seminaries of the Episcopal Church as it learned to serve both its Episcopal and ACNA constituencies. I was part of the Communion Partners movement in its early days, and have been gratified to watch it grow in vitality. I was one of the founding contributors of this very online journal 18 years ago. For a dozen years now, I have served a parish in the Diocese of Mississippi as its bishop under the terms of Delegated Episcopal Pastoral Oversight, with the cooperative and gracious consent of three consecutive bishops of that diocese.
This has all been intense and exhausting, and I am grateful now to have a much more constricted universe of responsibility. I mostly hang out with three parish communities near my home, two of which join me in bridge-building conservative territory and one of which inhabits the adjacent bridge-building progressive quadrant, but where I have bonds of joyful affection and friendship that I can only describe as “sweet.” (I also have fairly frequent cordial contact with bridge-burning conservative friends in the ACNA.) Such a scaled-down “operational tempo” and smaller field of view enables me to be more reflective and nuanced about how we navigate occupying the same institution even in the midst of substantial theological differences.
The underlying neuralgia has not gone away. On the issues of sexuality and marriage, progressive forces can claim resounding institutional victory, to be sure. The 2027 General Convention will undoubtedly endow “marriage equality” with the constitutional authority of the Book of Common Prayer. Yet I can say with confidence that the “loyal opposition” remains winsomely and irenically undeterred and energized. Rank upon rank of young, traditionally minded lay and clergy leaders are maturing into positions of influence, with thriving parishes behind them.
Yet it is not only sexuality and marriage concerns that remain very much in play, unsettled. The lightning-rod issue of the prior generation—namely, women serving as priests and bishops—is, like the Terminator, not fully dead in the Episcopal Church. For me to state this directly may come as a shock to some, because, both in canon law and in administrative practice, it has seemed like a fully settled issue. Think of this position as a very small square within the bridge-building conservative quadrant.
Clergy, and especially aspiring clergy, have learned that this is an ecclesio-political third rail. One dare not risk being seen as even close to touching it. So they don’t; they remain under the radar. But my anecdotal experience—I would say, fairly informed anecdotal experience—is that such Episcopalians are out there. Not in great numbers, to be sure, but they are part of the mix. And their theological convictions are more complex and thought through than the rank invidious misogyny that is so easily assumed of them.
I understand that many (most?) in the Episcopal Church’s progressive (super)majority find these realities vexatious. I don’t simply suppose this level of frustration; I’ve experienced it firsthand. Many in leadership feel like they have exercised great patience. They have refrained from fully exercising the authority they hold. They have tried to give those in the conservative minority space and time in which to live and move and have their being. Some have a significant reservoir of patience remaining (more so, arguably, on marriage than the ordination question).
Others, perhaps, find their patience in short supply. In both cases, however, I suspect that there is an underlying assumption that the game is destined, by the forces of justice, to play out in only one way: some who hold to traditional views will literally die out, and the rest will realize the error of their ways and relent. The controversies will become chapters in future histories of the Episcopal Church. Such restraint and graciousness as those in the majority may show is configured to that eventual end. Any deviance from full support of “marriage equality,” to say nothing of women in sacerdotal and episcopal orders, is an anomaly that may be tolerated in the near term but must be presumed to disappear in the long term.
I would like to invite my progressive friends in the church we both serve—and I call them friends advisedly, because that is both how I think and how I feel toward them—to consider another option. Here I’m going to borrow a metaphor from the tech world. Especially as an application is being developed and beta-tested, among the myriad lines of code that underlie the user interface, it is nearly always the case that there are errors that affect how the software performs.
These errors are deemed “bugs.” They may have a scarcely noticeable effect on the software, or they may be catastrophic. In any case, it is the job of software engineers to find such bugs and squash them by rewriting the relevant lines of code. App characteristics that are intended by the engineers to be there are referred to as “features.” Bugs interfere with the performance of the features, which is why engineers make it a practice to hunt them down relentlessly.
This is the attitude many in the progressive majority in the Episcopal Church have toward those in the conservative minority. Conservative views are “bugs,” and we need to find skilled engineers who can rewrite the code to root them out. Justice demands no less. Sometimes, though, the situation is ambiguous. Bugs can be maddeningly difficult to catch, and perhaps not worth the effort, in comparison to their effects on the program. In other cases, there is a serendipitous discovery that the supposed bug is benign, or even beneficial. In that case, it is renamed as a feature, and life goes on.
Might it be that the presence of theological conservatives in the Episcopal Church could be considered a feature and not a bug? Any who are grieved by the canonical, catechetical, and liturgical redefinition of marriage that has taken place, to say nothing of those who hold reservations about women as priests or bishops, and who believe themselves called to remain in the Episcopal Church (an important qualifier), have already made an effective peace with the reality that the ground gained by progressives will not be surrendered during the lifetime of anyone now in adult leadership—and beyond such a time frame it is fruitless even to conjecture. I expect to die a bishop in a church that holds a teaching on marriage that is heterodox, at best, and possibly heretical. This is not my ideal world, and I wish it were not so, but I have moved beyond any encompassing anxiety and am able to be happy in my church life.
Perhaps those who inhabit the progressive majority in TEC (though yet a side channel in worldwide Anglicanism) could consider adopting a similarly chill outlook. You’ve won. Yes, not everyone rejoices with you, but this does not need to be a pebble in your shoe, a burr under your saddle. It’s not something that needs to be overcome either with forceful effort in the short term or determined (but temporary) patience in the long term.
Skilled coders will not be able to debug the program. Our Lord’s parable about weeds among the wheat assures us that we live in a mixed economy. We may be at odds over which opinions and positions can be correlated with which elements of the parable, but we all have the opportunity to recognize that we are in this together—wheat and weeds, features and bugs—in the same field. It will all be sorted out in due course by the ultimate User.
The Rt. Rev. Daniel Martins is retired Bishop of the Diocese of Springfield in the Episcopal Church.
