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July 10, 2006

Weeks following the Episcopal Church's (ECUSA) General Convention, the Most Reverend George Carey, former Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Rt. Rev. Bishop Duncan, Bishop of Pittsburgh and moderator of the Anglican Communion Network, have announced that they will give an address in suburban D.C. to discuss the future of the Anglican Communion. No one envies the task before these men, especially in light of Jefferts Schori's election as the next Presiding Bishop. Schori, hailing from the smallest diocese in America, has stated that she will continue to allow ECUSA's "local option" of blessing homosexual couples, and finds no problem with admitting practicing homosexuals to holy orders.

Yet for the Rt. Rev. Iker, Bishop of Ft. Worth, Schori's election and upcoming consecration represent another dilemma, this one flying in under the radar of even more orthodox mainline Protestants -- the female presbyterate. Iker and a number of other bishops who have remained in the ECUSA do not agree with the ordination of women, and Schori's election forestalls a "local option" of simply not allowing women within his diocese.

Iker's position is a difficult one. Only two sizeable Protestant churches in the US -- the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (LC-MS) (2.6 million communicants) and the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) (16.2 million communicants) -- do not ordain women. A number of other Protestant church bodies, such as the Evangelical-Free Church in America, discourage the practice, but have no official prohibition. Add to this the innumerable non-denoms that constitute a sizeable portion of Evangelicals in America, and the picture is completely fuzzy. Iker appeals to Scripture and the witness of the Holy Spirit throughout the church's history to support his position. The LC-MS does the same, reading St. Paul's words to the Corinthians as no less authoritative than Romans 9.

But without a sense of ecclesiology, I think that Iker's position is tenuous. One may trump sola scriptura, and, quite rightly, come away with an understanding that the Lord, speaking through the Apostle, did not intend the female presbyterate. To attenuate Paul's prohibition with patriarchal social norms of the time would render his understanding of justification in Romans 9 -- the sine qua non of Luther's theology of the cross -- as little more than Paul's unnatural obsession with legalism as a Shamite Pharisee. Iker's position is tenuous, but it is well-grounded. He and others are honest enough to state that one cannot profess that Scripture is the sole means of establishing normative forms of theology and worship and then sweep those portions of Scripture under the rug that offend our modern sensibilities.

Perhaps not under the rug, but attenuated with some exegetical insight. Yet without some foundation, such a practice inevitably resorts to an epistemology of the self, which is the root of the ECUSA's present quandary. Perhaps Newman was right; it is necessary to understand that the pastoral role is inextricably connected to a historical, finite ministry that Christ instituted until His return. And such a conception of the pastoral office must give some account of its surroundings, history, and the councils which defined it. One might even say "T"radition?

Posted by Seth Zirkle at July 10, 2006 06:29 PM

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Posted by: lawyerchik1 at July 10, 2006 07:16 PM | permalink

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