British Publication Says the Election of Barbara Harris Must Be Seen in the Light of Episcopal Church's Unique History and American Culture
Episcopal News Service. December 19, 1989 [89266]
"The trouble with America, from a British point of view, is that we think we understand it," begins the Churchman Preface, "an independent survey of the affairs of the Anglican Communion in general and the Church of England in particular." In an essay entitled, "Barbara Harris and the Siege of Forth Worth," the preface continues by asserting that "America is as un-British as you can get" and its "uniqueness lies in being a fermenting mix of many cultures, sets of values and attitudes, unified only by a commitment to change, and a dynamic metaphysic of expectation and aspiration."
The preface, published to coincide with the issuance of a new edition of Crockford's Clerical Directory, went on to point out that the frontier spirit "is still a very strong element in the American psyche, the urge to push beyond known boundaries." This attitude "accounts for the protean and experimental nature of America culture," which tends toward fads but is also "immensely inventive and creative."
The Episcopal Church in this country, which "reflected the apparent solidity of the WASP hegemony," was shaken out of its complacency in the 1960s by the civil-rights movement, antiwar protests, student revolt, urban riots and "the political turbulence that disfigured the nation for a decade," according to the preface. At the same time, the church revised its Prayer Book and made a commitment to the ordination of women.
In discussing the "relative decline of the American Episcopal Church," the essay said that it must be seen in the context "of a historic shift away from the old colonial aristocracy that governed America from the days of the Revolution...until fairly recently," nothing less than "rearranging the religious and political groups that run the country."
Arguing that the Americans should be left "to their own devices," the essay deplored the involvement of British bishops "in the internal struggles of the American Church by associating themselves with the Forth Worth Movement" and involving themselves in what is essentially a "family quarrel."
While the election of Barbara Harris as a bishop in the Diocese of Massachusetts "was no doubt tactless" and should have been "delayed a bit," the essay admitted that "the movements of history are never as neat and tidy as bureaucrats would like them to be." All the discussion of what happens to those who declare they are no longer in communion "has added an element of farce to the arcane topic of intercommunion between the provinces of the Anglican Church" and lends itself to a type of legalism. "The church must order its ministry properly, but to get engaged in an intricate caste system which fastidiously grades the levels of sacramental potency of ordained ministers in the church is to have departed from the mind of Christ into a system that administers the grace of the Gospel by a method of sacramental hydraulics and spiritual engineering."
The essay concluded with some observations on "signs of restlessness" in the Church of Ireland, which recently cleared the way for the ordination of women, and the Scottish Episcopal Church, which allows bishops to offer visiting women priests "eucharistic hospitality." Although it doubted that the Church of England would follow a similar action, it speculated that what may now seem remote, on the other side of the Atlantic, "will become much more significant on the shores of the Irish Sea."