It seems, to borrow the headline from the Danbury (CT) News-Times, that Brookfield church sign sends signal. No, not wireless. Signifies, you understand. Sends a rhetorical signal. As you might expect a sign to do. But Your Humble Blogger brings this up because some Gentle Readers may be particularly interested in the specifics of the matter.
It seems that the sign in front of St. Paul’s has been replaced, and where the old sign proclaimed that the church was Episcopal, the new sign declares that it is Anglican. Why? Well, for those who have not been following this issue, there is, hmm, how to say it, significantly impaired communion within the Anglican Church worldwide and the US Episcopal Church, which is in effect the American church within that organization. The US Episcopal Church, which does acknowledge the Primacy of the Archbishop of Canterbury, a very nice madman named Rowan who is, I’m afraid, between the rock and the proverbial, has allowed its New Hampshire members to elect a gay man to serve them and lead them as their bishop. Oh, there are a lot of people who don’t like that. No, indeed.
So when the people of St. Paul’s, Brookfield, decided to style themselves Anglican rather than Episcopalian, what is signified is that they align themselves with the worldwide, rather than US church. More specifically, they don’t want gay bishops. Not that they are being asked to accept a gay bishop for the Connecticut diocese, but they don’t want the apostolic succession to include gay bishops, and they don’t want their church to affirm the election of gay bishops.
No, there’s more to it than homosexuality. The issue of His Grace, Bishop Gene, is in some sense a wedge; every Episcopal church must now face issues of Primacy, of communion worldwide and nationwide, and of obedience and hierarchy. In short, each congregation must either take sides or at least face the question of taking sides. Each must prepare to take sides. This is actually quite serious; even in the US, there are a lot of people, particularly a lot of Anglicans, who take worldwide communion seriously, and will find themselves prioritizing communion with, say, their parents and their childhood congregation above (or below) their own theological and political interpretations. It’s a bitch to choose.
However, that’s for them to decide, and although I, for one, am v-v-very interested to see what’s going to happen next, it scarcely calls for action on my part. The problem for me is that in conversation I regularly refer to persons in the US Episcopal church as Anglicans. Mostly, of course, because I am a pathetic Anglophile, but also because (to me, the pathetic Anglophile) the distinguishing characteristic of the church is the Primacy of the Archbishop of Canturbury, and the worldwide communion and apostolic succession that derive in large part from that primacy.
So. I think the correct thing for me to do is to stop using Anglican to refer to US Episcopals, and to use Episcopalian instead. On the other hand, I’m reluctant, rhetorically, to allow the conservatives to define terms here. Defining terms, claiming terms really, is one of the most powerful rhetorical tricks there is, and I don’t think the pro-New Hampshire side should necessarily cede the ground here. On the other other hand, I’m just a soul whose intentions are good, and I don’t want to be misunderstood. I certainly don’t want to imply by my speech that I support the conservative side, which I do not. I believe, based on this article and on the fact that it was absolutely clear to me the moment I heard about the changed sign what was being, er, signified by it, that a person might reasonably infer from my preference for Anglican over Episcopal a theological stance that is not my true one (to the extent that I have a theological horse in this proverbial). Feh. What do you think, Gentle Readers?
chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek,
-Vardibidian.
I think a bumper sticker saying “Not a Welcoming Community” would be wholly appropriate on the Brookfield church sign.
Along similarly unhelpful lines, I think that we’ll look back fifty years from now and marvel at how anyone could ever have been so stupid and bigoted — much as we look back today on socially conservative attitudes towards race fifty years ago.
Here’s my unhelpful comment:
I got an entirely inappropriate chuckle out of the pastor saying “We have a very close relationship with a bishop in Tanzania.”
…More seriously, I don’t get the impression that it’s only conservatives who are defining the terms here. I think all my American Episcopalian friends have always called themselves Episcopalians (but, y’know, maybe one of them will chime in and correct me, ’cause I haven’t been paying close attention). If I heard an American refer to themselves as Anglican before this, I think I would’ve wondered whether they were making some distinction between themselves and the American Episcopalian churches.
And Michael’s comment indirectly reminds me that I gather the phrase “a welcoming community” is turning into code for “GLBT friendly” (or at least “diversity friendly”); I imagine there are plenty of Anglicans who consider their communities welcoming and are unhappy about that. The first Google result for [“welcoming community”] appears to be a Christian real estate site having to do with welcoming families to a community; I don’t see anything about their stance (if any) on GLBT issues.
…I don’t mean to be flip about this; I think the issue of whether or not to call someone what they want to be called (and what that means for other, different, people who don’t want to be excluded from that term) is a very important and difficult one. The politics of labeling is not easy territory to navigate. (If I stopped to unmix every metaphor, I’d never get anything written.)
In general, I tend to call people whatever they prefer to be called (including Moral Majority, Planned Parenthood, pro-life, pro-choice, NAACP, Traditional Values Coalition, League of Women Voters, etc), despite the usually-objectionable-to-me rhetorical stances that that entails. (I’m not comfortable with a literal and exclusive interpretation of any of the labels I mentioned in that last parenthetical.)
I’m not sure I can justify this approach, but I haven’t come up with one I’m more comfortable with. I’m certainly not willing to go with the rhetorical choices of just one side and call the other side by derogatory nicknames. Nor does it make sense to me to come up with my own names for everyone–first, I doubt I could come up with much more neutral terminology, and second, it would undoubtedly lead to my being widely misunderstood–if you refuse to use the same words as the rest of society, it’s hard to convince them to interpret your words the way you meant them. (Hard enough to do that even if you do use the same words!)
So … no answers here, but I admire the question. To paraphrase Ashleigh Brilliant.
you could annoy the heck out of the conservatives and start calling them lutherans.
This is actually something that’s come up for me a couple of times, generally on pretty minor things — the high school aversion to the French language (which i quickly realised had to be quashed around the run-up to the Iraq war), the decision not to use capitalization in writing at almost any level of formality (which, thanks to the popularization of Instant Messenger, started to signal carelessness and lack of editing). Basically, something you’re doing by-and-large for fun — not entirely without rationale, but in large measure because it’s something you associate with yourself — takes on a meaning with which you don’t want to associate yourself. Right?
So, the question you have to answer is: What is it worth to me to keep doing this? The cost, of course, comes in terms of needing to take additional time to explain yourself, and giving people the wrong impression of where you stand.
I’m not really an Anglophile, and it was only within the past few years that i learned that the Episcopalians and Anglicans were actually secretly the same people — i had Episcopalian friends growing up, but didn’t keep close enough tabs for it to occur to me to wonder why i didn’t have any Anglican friends. So, with the caveat that i am probably underestimating the value to you of getting to use your terminology… i’d say drop it. Be a little annoyed that you have to, but it strikes me as a lot of difficulty per unit benefit.
The canonical example of that is Jeans Day, right? Where some group says “wear jeans today if you support Thing Foo”, in a context where many or most people wear jeans every day anyway.
Surely the canonical example of this is the (one holy) Catholic (and apostolic) church, yes?
Thanks,
-V.
A digression re: “welcoming community”
Does this maybe vary from denomination to denomination? I know that UCC congregations that have specifically declared themselves to be GLBT-friendly are “Open and Affirming”.
If I Google for
“welcoming community” church|congregation
(41,100 results)
the first page of results is under half about congregations that are GLBT-friendly. All but one of those are UU; the other is Metropolitan.
“open and affirming” church|congregation
(60,500 results)
results are more obviously about GLBT issues (but it’s also more clearly a buzzword (buzz phrase?); welcoming community sounds more generic and likely to be used spontaneously in a variety of situations to me), and all but one on the first page are UCC; the other is Disciples of Christ (which, given conversations with Stephen and his mother, does not surprise me; I think I recall that the Disciples considered becoming part of the UCC and decided not to).
I wonder what other code phrases are out there. Or maybe I don’t.
</boring digression>
I don’t know if it’s still the case, but the last time I checked all the Episcopal churches had the same wooden plaque hanging by the road with the church crest (red cross on white, blue corner with white stars) and the phrase “The Episcopal Church welcomes you.” It’s a testament to the power of code words that this might not imply the same substance as “a welcoming community.”
My parents’ Episcopal church that has had plenty of discussion about this whole Anglican Communion Option. I should try to drag my mom over here and see if she can shed further light.