The Episcopalians vs. the Anglicans

The voices on the telephone sound angry and anxious and they keep calling Charles Nalls at the Canon Law Institute and telling him sad stories that he has heard many times before.

They have been faithful. They have filled their pew for decades. They receive Holy Communion on kneelers covered with their own needlepoint and the prayer books are dedicated to their loved ones. They have washed altar cloths and signed checks. Now they're asking hard questions because they aren't sure what their church teaches, anymore.

They have decisions to make and the clock is ticking.

"They just feel shattered," said Nalls, whose non-profit institute handles legal disputes in many ecclesiastical settings, including the Episcopal Church. "I tell them, 'For God's sake, revise your wills! Do it, literally for God's sake and your own sake.' ... There are millions and millions of dollars worth of buildings and endowments and trusts that are at stake and people need to do whatever they can to stay out of the court battles that are dead ahead."

In recent weeks, Nalls has heard from three dozen parishes that are considering severing ties to the Episcopal Church, in part due to last summer's landslide House of Bishops vote acknowledging that many believers live in "life-long committed relationships," outside of Holy Matrimony. The bishops pledged to provide "pastoral care" for these Episcopalians, but stopped just short of authorizing rites to bless sexual unions outside of marriage.

Most of these parishes, said Nalls, seek ties with two bishops who were consecrated last January – by a global coalition of Anglican prelates – as missionaries in America during a time of doctrinal and pastoral crisis. Bishop Chuck Murphy III of Pawleys Island, S.C., serves under the Anglican archbishop of Rwanda and Bishop John Rodgers of Ambridge, Pa., fills the same role for the Anglican Province of Southeast Asia. Together, they have formed the "Anglican Mission in America" and hope to oversee up to 80 parishes by next summer.

Meanwhile, other parishes want to align with "continuing" Anglican bodies that left the Episcopal Church during earlier battles over a modernized prayer book and the ordination of women. Others are investigating Eastern Orthodoxy, on one side of the ecclesiastical spectrum, or opting to become "independent Episcopal churches," on the other side.

The response of most Episcopal leaders at the national and diocesan level has, understandably, been chilly silence or fiery condemnation. The bottom line: See you in court. The national and local hierarchies will continue to insist that they own the buildings and endowments of congregations that choose to depart. The majority of the people in those pews will continue to disagree.

The colonial and contemporary legal issues are stunningly complex and recent actions by the overseas primates could inspire new questions and legal scenarios. Would the opinions of the Archbishop of Canterbury, for example, have any standing in an American court? What would happen if a global gathering of primates voted to censure or even amputate the Episcopal Church from the body of worldwide Anglicanism?

Already, there are two competing ecclesiastical bodies on America soil that are recognized as valid by segments of the Anglican Communion – the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Mission in America. What will happen when a procession of archbishops and bishops from Africa, Asia and other parts of the world testify in court that parishes exiting the Episcopal Church are merely seeking to follow the tradition and doctrine of the global Anglican hierarchy?

Who wins in a battle between the Episcopalians and the Anglicans?

Once, Communion existed at four levels – parish, diocese, national and global. Now, the American hierarchy is convinced that Episcopal traditions, doctrines and laws are best defined by diocesan and national authorities. Meanwhile, the rebel parishes in America believe that courts should validate the views of Anglicans voiced in local parishes and at international conferences.

Nalls concluded: "Are there really two traditions, one for the Episcopal Church and one for the rest of the Anglican Communion? That's a scary question and I am sure there are a lot of Episcopal bishops who don't want to have to answer that question, right now."

The man who didn't disappear

NEW YORK – The formal interview was over, so Richard Nixon propped his feet on his desk while the journalist lingered in the former vice president's Manhattan office.

"He just wanted to shoot the breeze a bit," recalled John McCandlish Phillips, who was the New York Times reporter on the other side of the notebook that day. This was during the mid-1960s, when political consultants were creating the "New Nixon" who would reach the White House.

Nixon talked about TV, the press and much more. But the reporter's spirit was troubled.

"He started talking about the art of not being himself. ... He meant the art of being sincere on camera, in front of an audience, without really being sincere," said Phillips, letting out a long sigh. "I held my tongue, but I should have said to him, 'You think that no one sees that, sir, but there are some who see through it, immediately.' "

In interviews, Phillip remained polite and, for the most part, silent. But he saw everything and sensed even more, during a brilliant two-decade Times career. His gentle questions and empathetic use of silence inspired people to confess the details of their lives.

The reporter wrote it all down and returned to his desk, his Bible and his typewriter. He rarely spoke in the newsroom either, which was unusual in a world of rattling keys, howling voices, police radios and titanic egos. Phillips did his talking in ink.

"He was the Ted Williams of the young reporters. He was a natural," the legendary reporter Gay Talese once said, describing a staff that included the likes of David Halberstam, Richard Reeves and J. Anthony Lukas. "There was only one guy I thought I was not the equal of, and that was McCandlish Phillips."

Phillips arrived in 1952 and landed a copy-boy job a day after, he said, God ordered him off the train he was riding home to Boston. A year later, he looked around the Times newsroom and realized he was the only conservative Christian there. So he stayed. He walked away in 1973, at the peak of his writing powers, to become a Pentecostal preacher with a small urban flock.

A lengthy New Yorker profile of Phillips called him "The Man Who Disappeared." But the man didn't disappear. The reporter did.

The 72-year-old Phillips has disappeared in the same way that a seed disappears in the soil. Friends on New York sidewalks know that "Pastor John" has invested his life in new believers, including more than a few journalists.

"Phillips is not interested in winning a Pulitzer Prize," Talese told the New Yorker. "He is not interested in demeaning people. ...He wants to redeem people. Talk about marching to a different drummer. Phillips is not even in the same jungle."

If Phillips walked into the Times newsroom, few, if any, journalists would know his name. The same is true of New York's giant churches. The skinny six-foot-six reporter is now an even thinner preacher, a decade after a knock-down battle with pneumonia. You can hear that when he laughs, with a squeeze-box wheeze that is both joyful and painful.

Phillips has lived in two radically different worlds. Few journalists appreciate what goes on in churches, he said, and few church people understand what goes on in newsrooms. He believes that this warps the news.

Reporters collect symbolic stories, like parables. Phillips recalled that, back in 1959, he told his editors that something big was happening in Brooklyn, where a Pennsylvania preacher named David Wilkerson was working with addicts and gang members. The editors weren't interested. For years, Phillips pushed this story, while Wilkerson built a ministry that eventually expanded around the world. After a decade, Phillips got to write that story.

"The New York Times could not see ... the importance or the validity of this approach to any issue as serious as addiction. Editors said, 'You can't put a few religious ideas up against something as real as addiction and expect any results,' " said Phillips.

"Well, the results were there. ... This was just a story about a young preacher who had found an approach to drugs and gangs that was proving demonstrably effective in changing lives. It was worth attention. It was news. We miss too many stories like that and that's a shame."

Ted Turner, meet John Paul II

Pope John Paul II, this is Ted Turner.

Ted Turner, will you please introduce yourself to Pope John Paul II?

What? Yes, surely he has heard your joke about the Polish mine detector. But the pope needs to hear more about your Aug. 29 sermon at the United Nations. That was the one in which you warned that faiths that claim exclusive truths about heaven and hell are preaching hate and intolerance and that their doctrines could cause a global nuclear holocaust.

Turner and John Paul would have a lot to talk about right now if they met. They are addressing some of the same questions, but offering radically different answers. The Vatican released a major document focusing on truth and salvation just one week after Turner spoke at the Millennium World Peace Summit of Religious and Spiritual Leaders, which was the brainchild of the CNN founder and billionaire U.N. benefactor.

From Turner's point of view, "Dominus Jesus (Lord Jesus)" is heresy.

It proclaims: "The Church, guided by charity and respect for freedom, must be primarily committed to proclaiming to all people the truth definitively revealed by the Lord, and to announcing the necessity of conversion to Jesus Christ and of adherence to the Church through Baptism and the other sacraments, in order to participate fully in communion with God, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit."

So it's wrong, argues the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, to say that all religions are true, even if their teachings contradict one another. It's wrong to say that Christianity offers one path to salvation, among many. "Dominus Jesus" argues: "One can and must say that Jesus Christ has a significance and a value for the human race ... which are unique and singular, proper to him alone, exclusive, universal and absolute."

Press coverage of this document has focused on the Vatican's renewed claims that Roman Catholicism is the true and fullest expression of Christianity. But, as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger told the Italian press, it was primarily a response to pluralists – inside and outside the church – who view Christian claims of exclusive truth as "a bit of fundamentalism which is an attack on the modern spirit and a menace to toleration and liberty."

Turner would certainly number himself among those critics. In his speech to 1,000-plus clergy at the U.N., he attacked precisely this kind of truth claim. Once upon a time, stressed Turner, he was a Bible Belt boy who wanted to be a missionary. But then he decided that his tiny sect was wrong.

"I studied Christianity and I studied the world's great religions," he said. "I was always thinking. What disturbed me is that my religious Christian sect was very intolerant. Not intolerant of religious freedom for other people, but we thought that we were the only ones going to heaven. ... It just confused the devil out of me because I said heaven is going to be a mighty empty place, with nobody else there."

Turner eventually reached the very conclusion rejected by "Dominus Jesus." He decided, "Instead of all of these different gods, I thought maybe that there's one God who manifests himself and reveals himself in different ways to different people. What about that?"

For Turner, it's the true believers who are convinced they worship the one true Savior, who has revealed to them the one true path to heaven, who have been the primary source of evil and bloodshed throughout history. It's dangerous, he said, for powerful people to hold such beliefs in a world containing "nuclear weapons and poison gas and land mines."

So here is Turner's final word for the pope and others who cling to traditions built on claims of absolute, transcendent truths. The modern world cannot afford to tolerate their ancient doctrines.

"There is only one God who manifests himself in different ways," said Turner. "It's time to get rid of hatred. It's time to get rid of prejudice. It's time to have love and respect and tolerance for each other. Care about each other. Work together to survive. I can't believe that God wants us to blow ourselves to kingdom come."

Prayers in Catholic schools?

It was a Catholic campus, so the history professor was free to voice a prayer before every test on behalf of his nervous students.

"Father," he always said, "we pray for your assistance this morning for each student in keeping with his level of preparation. Amen."

So meditate on that, undergraduates, while you grip your No. 2 pencils. The students knew their professor's goal was to communicate a sobering message to each of them, as opposed to reaching an Academic Authority on high. It was not a prayer intended to provide comfort or to inspire thanksgiving.

This was one of many stories that philosopher Gregory Beabout heard when he asked colleagues if he should start his Saint Louis University classes with prayer. This is the kind of question that lingers in the minds of some religious-school teachers at the start of each new school year.

Some professors told Beabout that pre-class prayers were shallow and theatrical and might even violate warnings by Jesus against hypocritical public prayers. Many said classroom prayers would violate the rights of non-religious students, even though the classes were not in a public school. More than a few worried that friends who taught at secular schools would laugh, or be condescending, if they heard that prayers were common in Catholic classrooms.

One professor challenged Beabout to produce some good reasons that teachers and students should pray together. This approach left the philosopher puzzled.

"Are we to set up a chart with the reasons 'pro' on one side and the reasons 'con' on the other side, and do a utilitarian cost-benefit analysis to determine if prayer in the classroom at a Catholic university is appropriate?", asked Beabout, in a journal article on this topic. "Is the burden of proof on the side of prayer?"

In the end, he decided to open his classes with the Lord's Prayer. He feared, at first, that a student might complain to the campus newspaper or the administration. Beabout said he wasn't worried about what would happen in classes such as "Catholic Social Thought" and "Christian Existentialism," since they tended to attract religious students. But he also taught a survey course entitled "Historical Introduction to Philosophy," which was a required course for nearly all undergraduates.

But most students simply bowed their heads and prayed, with no great fanfare. Several Protestants said they welcomed the chance to say the Lord's Prayer, although one said he didn't want to have "to pray to Mary or something." A devout Jew said he wasn't offended, because he knew that Christians who chose to attend a Yeshiva would hear Hebrew prayers. Muslim students said they did not feel uncomfortable, since they did not have to join in the prayers. They were perfectly capable of watching members of another faith pray.

The only objections that reached Beabout came from people whom he described as "liberalized or secularized" Christians. A few were offended, even if they merely heard about the prayers second-hand. Meanwhile, many more academics greeted his decision with "raised eyebrows" and wry smiles, as opposed to open opposition.

"I think many people are simply embarrassed to talk about this," he said, looking back over five years of praying in the classroom. "What seems to bother them is the very idea that something that is supposedly private, such as prayer, might in some way be related to something that is public, such as education. ... Yet this attempt to divide the public and the private is simply foreign to the Catholic tradition. We are supposed to be building institutions in which we can face these kinds of issues – together."

Whatever misgivings he had vanished after one memorable class. Beabout arrived late and rushed into his lecture. A student raised her hand and said, "We forgot to pray." Before Beabout could make the sign of the cross and start to pray, she added: "My godmother just found out she has a brain tumor. ... Can we pray for her?"

What was the philosopher supposed to say?

The student is now at Harvard Law School and she still stays in touch. The godmother's tumor was benign.