I have been doing some research with the aim of writing an essay on Apostolic Succession in an OC/IC context. I’ve been doing some reading in the 19th century background – on the theory that it set the tone for indie discussion and “use” of Apostolic Succession that we still (unconsciously) use today. I came across a “pamphlet” (a book really) by the Roman Catholic Bishop Ryan Vincent of New York published in the 1880s arguing, as you might expect, that the Anglican claim to Apostolic Succession is invalid. Ryan’s book is also interesting because in it he also responds to a pamphlet by an unnamed Old Catholic bishop (I’m wondering if this might not be Abp. Villatte?).

The following passage caught my attention: “In the whole history of the Christian Church, there is nothing more evident than this, that when a bishop or priest, or bishops and priests, revolt against ecclesiastical authority, or contumaciously err against faith, they were silenced, suspended, deprived of their faculties, deposed from their sees. The Church, which had commissioned them and given them authority, jurisdiction, a right to teach, and assigned them a mission in which to exercise their ministry, simply revoked their commission, recalled her grant of power, and annulled all license to act for her, in her name, or by her authority. Thus she acted towards the validly ordained and rightly consecrated heretical Donatist, Eutychian and Arian bishops; and who among our orthodox Anglicans or Episcopalians will recognise such excommunicated, deposed and deprived heretical bishops as successors of the Apostles? She holds the same principles today; schismatical and heretical bishops such as the bishops of the Greek Church, the Jansenist bishops of Holland, and even Reinkens, the itinerant Old Catholic bishop of Germany, even if validly ordained, have no share in the Apostolical commission . . .”[1]

There are a number of things we could play with here but what grabbed my attention is the idea that “The Church” – and in the opinion of Bp. Ryan the “only” authentic church, that is Roman Catholicism – is inerrant. The idea that “The Church” is inerrant is not new, and it is still (at least officially) held by a number of Christian bodies. It creates a nice, relatively neat, “lock” on the ultimate source of authoritative teaching and praxis. So – an errant priest or bishop can be declared heretical, or schismatic, have his faculties revoked, and thus be held to no longer participate in Apostolic Succession. Nice in theory – but as we all know it never really worked on the ground.

If we accept the idea that it is through discernment that the community recognises that the Holy Spirit is working through an individual – and therefore selects that person for a particular ordained service – then is it also possible to acknowledge that through a similar process of discernment that same community can recognise when or if an individual has lost the “confidence” of the Holy Spirit?

What if the priest(s) or bishop(s) challenging the teaching or praxis of “The Church” truly represent Gospel teaching – and that “The Church” is wrong?

Finally how does this idea of the inerrant church play out in OC/IC circles? In the early 90s there was a lot of discussion, even controversy across the Indie community about fleeing the “traditional”, “authoritarian” models of church. In some instances any attempt at establishing some order and consistency resulted in community breakdown, or at the least a great deal of upset. It would seem that we have effectively broken the link between Apostolic Succession and the authority of the ekklesia. How does this then affect our understanding of Apostolic Succession? How does it impact our interaction with the ekklesia; what is its function and value?

If as OC/IC believers we believe that somehow the idea of “the church” is an inerrant body then we’ve got an enormous mess on our hands that needs to be cleaned up. Alternatively, if we don’t believe that the church is inerrant – it does raise some questions about the reason for and value of Apostolic Succssion in our tradition because it means we need to have a very adult conversation about the nature of authority within the Indie movement – something that to date, in my own experience, very rarely happens.

I continue to be puzzled by the large number of “monastic” groups within the Independent Catholic movement. I wonder if clinging on to this inherited model of “community” is stunting our development – holding us fast to out-dated 19th century models of what it means to “be church”? In short do these watered down expressions of monasticism actually add anything to the indie experience?

The cynic in me says that “monastic orders” in the indie community are simply another example of how some in the movement remain convinced that they are somehow second class Christians. Unconsciously, tenaciously holding on to the idea that in order to be “really” catholic they must also have a “monastic order” in the community. The dress up (habit), the additional “titles” (abbot, brother, sister, etc.), the thick texture of added rituals, add a comforting level of hierarchy and structure to a tiny worshipping community, enhancing the “idea” of catholic-ness. I recognise that this cynical assessment is probably too simplistic, but there is, it seems to me, a grain of reality in it. Does the addition of a “monastic order” into the mix of contemporary indie experience actually further our understanding of what it means to be an Old or Independent Catholic believer?

There is a more pragmatic issue to be considered. Indie communities are tiny – most local communities have 20 members or less, and their synod may only have between 5 and 15 congregations – not including an equal number of “free radicals” that is clergy without any real function other than to “be” clergy. The small-ness of our individual communities is, I think one of our greatest strengths, one that we as a whole have not yet taken full advantage of. It is also one of our greatest challenges. It means that whereas other Christian communities that have an average of 75 members, and hundreds of congregations, thus giving them a “critical mass” that gives various elements of community life their own momentum. Our communities are faced with always, and in every activity, needing every shoulder pressed against the stone pushing, and pushing hard to get it to move. In short – we don’t have the time, the resources, and dare I say it the energy to carry the unnecessary burden of an additional layer of organisation in the community – when all of our prayer, energy, talent, and effort ought to be invested in simply being a very active sacramental community – a whole community with no sub-divisions.

What is the purpose of a “monastic order” in the context of an Independent Catholic community? From what I’ve seen the idea is noble – to foster and support those who share an interest in a particular spiritual discipline. In essence it is about shaping, cultivating an identity grounded in that spiritual discipline and its associated theology. This raises two very relevant points.

Firstly, already widespread within the indie community there is a lacuna in many people’s understanding of what it means to “be” an OC/IC believer – we have a harmful identity crisis that few people want to talk about, and fewer still are willing to stand up to the challenge of doing something about. The intermix of a “monastic order” and struggling to “be church” in an authentic indie context only leads to confusion, and I think seriously hinders the cultivation of any real authentic indie voices expressing first and foremost what it means to be a practicing OC/IC believer. How can one cultivate an identity as an indie-monastic without first being fully grounded in what it means to be a fully committed indie believer? Is it right – in our tiny communities – that a clique invests in developing that specialist identity, with a vision and mission separate from, and indeed taking resources from the wider worshipping community?

Secondly we cannot escape the simple fact that none of these “monastic orders” is really an authentic expression of monasticism. Monasticism is about asceticism. And while it is certainly true that everyone ought to undertake some degree of asceticism – to be a monastic to be an “ascetic” is to undertake a particular spiritual discipline that simply cannot be achieved in the context of an Independent Catholic community – not at this time at any rate.

What do I mean using the term “asceticism”? The spirit of asceticism is a single-minded focus on transcendence to the exclusion of everything else. Ascetics don’t have sex – not because they hate the body (they do not) but because sexual activity enmeshes the aspiring ascetic in responsibilities and expectations that are incompatible with a single-minded focus on transcendence. Ascetics fast – frequently – not because they hate food, not because they despise the material enjoyment of food – but because the philosophy behind asceticism teaches that the physical body must be refined, honed, for the purpose of transcendence. Too much food, and particular types of food inhibit that process making the mind and body sluggish, distracted. Because of the single-minded focus of the ascetic he or she lives either in near isolation, or in an intentional community. Thus there is more to being a monk than an attraction to a particular spirituality or theology. There is more to being a monastic than can be accommodated in an OC/IC context – thus the well intentioned “monastic orders” within the wider indie community are but a pale shadow of what monasticism truly represents.

Rather than invent new half-expressions of the monastic life, why not invest fully in an active praxis and spiritual discipline of the local community? Is there any reason why a local congregation could not be grounded in the general vision of a particular saint or teacher in the historic sacramental tradition? I cannot imagine any such reason. Is there a constructive reason why there need to be any “monastic orders” within the indie community? I can find none.

We ought to invest in “being” OC/IC believers first – let whatever expressions of the spirit of asceticism that might come at a later time develop naturally – within a fully committed indie context, rather than as an anaemic copy from another tradition expressing their theology and praxis and not our own. I think we ought to have enough awareness of the needs of our current situation, respect for the monastic spirit, and respect for other existing monastic traditions to walk away from establishing, and perpetuating pseudo-monasticism in the OC/IC community.

This morning’s troll through news of interest draw two un-related stories to my curiousity.

First is an item in yesterday’s (Tues. 12 Oct) Guardian about the apparent competition between denomonational representatives at the site of the Chilean mining disaster. Each claiming that God was listening to them, and that it is through their (individual) intervention that God is acting to save the miners. “Competition” between denomonations is a very curious thing indeed – one that I think it is safe to say is a relativey “modern”, even “consumer driven” idea. Not only is it unsavoury – it also raises some very intriguing questions about how we see our participation in a given faith tradition, how our communities do outreach, and in our OC/IC context – how these (and other related questions) affect the long-term stability and continuity of the community in question. The Guardian report, for example, observed that attendance, or religiousity, was markedly up since the advent of the mining disaster. Clearly the clerics involved at “Camp Hope” are taking advantage of the disaster to acquire more followers. But is this really the purpose of ordained ministry? Is it the role of church leaders to step in on these occasions with the aim of acquiring more devotees (there’s that nasty consumerism again)? I think not – there is something very twisted about this grab for followers, it seems disingenuous, and therefore, counter-intuitive to Gospel teaching.

The other item that popped up on the radar comes from Andrew Brown’s post in today’s CIF Belief section. Where he reports on a recent speech given by Vaclav Havel at a conference on, of all things, architecture in which he states:

“…not only a globally spreading short-sightedness, but also the swollen self-consciousness of this civilisation, whose basic attributes include the supercilious idea that we know everything and what we don’t yet know we’ll soon find out, because we know how to go about it. We are convinced that this supposed omniscience of ours which proclaims the staggering progress of science and technology and rational knowledge in general, permits us to serve anything that is demonstrably useful, or that is simply a source of measurable profit, anything that induces growth and more growth and still more growth, including the growth of agglomerations.

But with the cult of measurable profit, proven progress and visible usefulness there disappears respect for mystery and along with it humble reverence for everything we shall never measure and know, not to mention the vexed question of the infinite and eternal, which were until recently the most important horizons of our actions.

We have totally forgotten what all previous civilisations knew: that nothing is self-evident.”

Brown puts this in the context of Havel denouncing contemporary European society as the “first atheist civilisation”. It is true that the Czech republic and the UK are probably the two most atheist countries in Europe. And while I found Havel’s statement about the loss of a sense of wonder and mystery intriguing I wonder if it is really true that we are now living in the “first” atheist society? There is still quite a bit of belief out there, it just does not fit into the “neat” (or the mythology of “neat) packages of denomonations, and institutions like it did 50 or 100 years ago.

Belief – it seems to me – is less and less associated with community, and more and more associated with the individual. The organisations and institutional structures we call “the church” have lost their authority, both (I think) through their own malpractice, and through their inability to keep pace with the changes in contemporary living.

I just finished re-reading my copy of Terry Pratchett’s Small Gods. It is a humrous look at belief, religion, and what happens when it all goes horribly wrong. The story focuses on the Great God Om, and his companion the eighth prophet Brutha. Om is not so great anymore for a very simple reason, everyone thinks that they believe in him, but in reality they don’t. The story is about how Om gets his umph back – and becomes great again. But, its not that simple.

The story is humorous – its Pratchett’s style. But what I found rather ingeneous is how it looks under the rocks of “religion” – fundamentalism, power, money, manipulation, as well as straight forward real honest belief – forcing you to reflect on these things, perhaps from a slightly different (and admittedly irreverent) angle.

Small Gods is not a new book – its been around for a while – but it is one of those books that could very well benefit OC/IC folk because we’ve all seen incarnations of the Deacon Vorbis (a.k.a. “Lord Vorbis”), we’ve all seen individuals in our communities who, because of the nature of belief, how it can, and does “shift” people no longer believe in the God and his teaching, rather in the “structure” of faith, and its mechanisms. But we’ve also seen reflections of Brutha, the simple monk who just wants to tend his garden, but whose calling, and his gift of directness, and openess, takes him down a different path.

Now here’s an interesting question, and it struck me while doing the morning trawl, one thing led to another led to another and before I knew it I found myself in the website of a convent scanning their FAQ page. What struck me about it was their answer:

“This is one of the hardest of all questions to answer because the person asking it usually has her own ideas about what “traditional” means. . . .”

This really opens a door into talking about what it means to be “traditional” because you have to start by asking the background question – what do YOU mean by “traditional”? In my experience in the indie community it generally falls into two categories (which sometimes but not always overlap).

Category A is ritual. I say ritual and not liturgy because ritual encompasses more than “just” liturgy. Frequently people define “traditional” or traditionalist, or traditionalism by the forms of ritual used in the life of the community. “Traditional” communities often seek to use “old” rituals, and to execute them with a level of precision that would make a drill seargent weep for joy. “Traditional” communities often like “the old language” – and use it liberally throughout their ritual year.

Category B is doctrine. “Traditional” communities in category B emphsise a set of doctrines that they hold to be the “traditional” teaching of “The Church”. Often this body of dictates is a set collection frozen in time, reflecting the real or imagined golden age of “The Church”.

The difficulty with these two (often overlapping) sets is that they are wholly unsuited to the OC/IC ethos. Which brings us back to the question: What is traditional (in our context)?

This essay by Theo Hobson was in my morning trawl (thank you nod to Maggie Dawn – who has been picking the really interesting stuff of late). Hobson visits a Anglican . . . non-worship, worship service in West London and shares the experience.

Throughout his description of the art instalations, the impromptu feel, the artsy free form nature of it all, while talking about how some people are not comfortable with “organised” religion – that is the structured liturgical forms, and familiar settings of churches – I could not help but reflect on how it all began.

Take a eucharistic prayer for example – now it is the norm that (in western liturgical churches) the priest reads one from a fixed set of options. The choice may vary depending on the season, local custom, or personal preference but the words are the same every time – the prayer has become homogenised. Believe it or not this was not always so. Indeed this one prayer (as an example) was for at least three hundred years a free form on the spot prayer by the bishop (the normal celebrant for the period).

There is something – safe, possibly even comfortable, about the “norm” a standard format, a memorable set of words, an expected environment. However, there is something to be said for the edgy, the awkward, the un-expected because our experience of, and growth in our faith, and our OC/IC identity is punctuated with the unexpected, the awkward, those moments that interrupt the flow and make us pay attention.

Finally – it is, as I have often observed here – too often the case that we indie folk spend too much effort and energy trying to look like “the norm” – rather than being true to our quirky, edgy, experimental selves.

This little “sapling” of a conversation deserves more than its getting.

Looking at not only my own initial response on Twitter, as well as the response of others (see previous post) I’m realising that these two words are very “loaded”. Huw, rightly observes that the underlying question remains unanswered – what is our working definition of “spiritual”? What is our working definition of “religious”?

But here’s the caveat to those questions – can we define them without reference to the ongoing liberal vs. conservative war within and among faith communities? If we do succeed what affect does this have on the self description “spiritual but not religious”? Honestly, I’m not sure I have a definition – at least not yet – that is not consciously, or unconsciously rooted in the existing loaded nature of “spiritual” and “religious”.

Can I throw a spanner in the works here and ask – is there a difference between “religious” and “being faithful”? I ask this because it is how I often describe myself. It seems to me that to describe one self as being faithful is to actively divorce one self from the liberal vs. conservative, us vs. them, divisions.

Last week my friend and fellow Indie-Easterner Huw posed this question on Twitter: “Define ‘Spiritual but not religious’.” My initial response encompassed two ideas that I’ve encountered over the years from a significant number of people who describe themselves as being “spiritual but not religious”. First is the idea that the “institution” of religion impedes communion with God. Second that “dogma” or “doctrine” also impedes communion with God. Both of these themes have some very interesting problems. For example, people who describe themeselves as “spiritual but not religious” and go on to discuss their dissatisfaction at what they percieve to be the overly dogmatic nature of religous communities – frequently go on to make very clear statements of belief (doctrine) themselves. Opening the jar of questions about what do we know, and what do we percieve about the collection of teaching involved in a particular religious identity or praxis.

Huw uncovered an article from First Things “Spirituality Without Spirits” while a bit of a rant – makes an interesting point about the quality of being “non-dogmatic” in relation to also being “spiritual but not religious”:

“I don’t think Ms. Gaga or anyone else who talks like this has really thought it through. That God who forgives everyone and excludes no one doesn’t object to debauches in Berlin sex clubs. A point in his favor, from one point of view. But then he doesn’t object to murderers and torturers and corrupt bankers either. A point in his favor from no one’s point of view.”

Miller (the author) makes a fine point when he later says: “The word “spiritual” has no useful meaning if it does not refer to a relation to a real spirit. . . ” This is very true of course because that spirit necessarily has an identity, one which demands a particular relational mode, and that in turn shapes and informs the individual relating to it – just as all of our relationships shape and inform us as individuals.

In this morning’s news trawl I happened across another article this time in the Telegraph reporting that Mark Hucknull, the Chancellor of Lincoln Cathedral (a fantastic English cathedral by the way), criticises the “spiritual but not religous” crowd as selfish:

“To say that ‘I’ am ‘spiritual’ here is on a par with saying that ‘I’ am patient or thoughtful or generous; it is a description that is all about ‘me’.”

In truth this is not an unfair criticism. Think about the two themes already mentioned – the underlying issue in both is a desire to not be accountable, to not be challenged, and to not be expected to do X or Y in conjunction with one’s religious identity and praxis.

I’m aware that I’ve over-taken my usual 300 or so word limit so please bear with me just a few lines more, as I tie this into an OC/IC context. Ihave often heard indie folk, clergy and laity alike insist on being “non-dogmatic” or “non-doctrinal” – in essence “spiritual but not religious” the reasons given are that they endured the abuses of the “institutional church” and its imposition of doctrine through the activity of church officials. But It seems to me that they have run to the exact opposite extreme. The extremes at both ends are heretical as St. Epiphanius says in the Panarion.

“Spiritual but not religious” has had a lasting impact on the shape of the indie community over the past 20 years at least – one effect of this has been the simple fact that indie communities are fickle because people are afraid of committment, and they are afraid to call one another to account – because it might make them unpopular, and thereby shrink the “numbers” within the community. The problem with this model is that there is no integrity in it. Many people who convert – who become OC/IC believers do so because they are seeking a stronger connection between the integrity of the community and the practice of their sacramental Christian faith. “Spiritual but not religous” – non-dogmatic, simply does not cut it.

Have a look at the two articles, and maybe follow the sapling exchange of this thread on Twitter, but certainly add your thoughts to the comments below here.

Maggi Dawn, draws attention to an interesting set of posts from Church Mouse, highlighting some interesting figures from a survey done of 1000 or so men here in the UK asking about their comfort level in church. Apparently men are more comfortable in a lingerie department than they are in church. Fascinating.

But this got me thinking about comfort zones in an Indie (OC/IC) context. There is a general tendancy in indie communities towards stepping outside of the box of the pre-programmed idea of what “church” is or should be. Does this negatively affect how interested new-comers perceive the nature of an indie community? First impressions and all that. . .

Indie communities are often small – very small. This can be a real challenge to someone coming from the “Big Tent” church realm. Accustomed to a standard congregation size of between 50-75, coming into an indie community of between 5 and 20 can be a shock to the system – an impediment to seeing the rest of the experience of that community.

OC/IC communities often meet in unusual environments – unusual for sacramental Christians at least. Homes, rented church basements, public meeting halls, hotels, and out-doors. So once again in our context we find a possible barrier in a new person’s comfort zone. Sacramental liturgy is intimately linked to a building, a fixed consecrated altar, an iconographic plan, etc. Meeting, celebrating, in an unusual environment is occasionally nice but every meeting?

For some indie communities the answer to these questions of comfort zone is to look and feel as much as possible like a big-tent community. Unconsciously believing that to look, feel, and sound like tradition X or Y will overshadow the awkwardness of being indie, of not having those things one has been programmed to expect in a liturgical community. I’ve always thought we loose something in the mix when we do this. Other indie communities swing to the exact opposite extreme, re-shaping, re-designing the liturgy (for example) such that it is un-recognisable as Christian worship.

I wonder though are there not better ways to explore and address the issues of “comfort zone”? For those of us who have spent most of their life in the indie environment we don’t honestly “see” the problems others experience unless something like this survey draws our attention to it. But we do know its there because we’ve seen it in action, we’ve witnessed how individuals who are quite keen to join in, come for a while, but find those un-expected barriers of “comfort zone” overwhelming, and they turn away dejected.

Maybe we should experiment with celebrating vespers in a lingerie department? What do you think?

Thanks to Lyngine for forwarding this rather interesting article from Newsweek to me. Lisa Miller (the article’s author) writes that a recent Pew Forum study shows that 7 percent of Americans worship in small groups in house churches rather than attending larger gatherings/congregational settings.

The article goes on to explore some of the reasons – the era of the mega church is over, one size does not fit all when it comes to worship & spirituality, and the rigid institutionalism of “traditional” denomonations distracts and deterrs the faithful.

What was interesting to me however, from an OC/IC perspective is the analogy between mega-church and micro-church and big brand beer, and micro-breweries. A bit flimsy at first but lets think about the branding ideas, the backround imagery for a moment. When you think micro-brewery, you think small, local producer, you think quality, traditional manufacturing but quirky enough to bend a bit here, and be flexible there.

Hmmm . . . perhaps this is not such a bad analogy aferall. Perhaps this is a decent working image set for an indie community to use to draw up an outreach plan for 2010?