Common Prayer

Many years ago, and in what was to become an enduring gift to the Christian Church, as a response to the problem ordinary people had trying to replicate an ordered prayer like akin to the monastic hours of prayer, the Church of England compiled and published the Book of Common Prayer.  In addition to orders for Sunday and pastoral services, the BCP offered an Office of Daily Prayer that included Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer to be said or sung in parish churches before and after the working day so that all could attend.  With it was published a calendar of readings that over the course of the year all of the Old Testament will be read once, the Gospels and Epistles will be read twice and the Psalms will be read 12 times.  This calendar also provided connections to the liturgical seasons and the commemoration of the saints of the church.

I recently discovered, through some internet networking, a new resource for a daily Office that was both refreshing and challenging, so I took the effort to secure a copy.  Published in 2010 by Zondervan, Common Prayer seeks to bring together in Common Prayer, people from diverse Christian traditions, liturgical or not, in order to celebrate a common life in prayer.

A number of principles underpin the structure and content of this resource.  "Liturgy is a workout for the imagination, because we are invited to see the reality of the universe through a new lens."  The creators of this resource firmly believe that our prayer life, through Common Prayer, can not only transform the way we see the world, but also the way we experience time, freeing us from the everyday world views that interfere with our spiritual life.  The calendar of readings, the solidarity of a Common Prayer, and praying with the saints, ancient and modern enable us, in our spiritual lives to transcend our captivity to self-centredness.  A recurring theme in the prayers is a call to radical life-style and a commitment to social justice - hence its appeal to the ordinary radicals among us.

The structure followed for the Office reflects a daily cycle of Evening Prayer, Morning Prayer and Midday Prayer.  But there is also a weekly cycle that acknowledges Sunday as Resurrection Day, the gathering of the Disciples on Thursday, the suffering of Christ in Friday and the preparation for the Feast on Saturday. This weekly cycle happens within an annual rhythm of seasons.  Special Morning Prayer liturgies are created for the moveable feasts of Holy Week and Pentecost.

Each day begins at sunset and the weekly cycle of Evening Prayer liturgies is simple and will become familiar, for it is the same each week.  The aim is to help us retire from the day altogether, but they also ground us in the weekly cycle of our lives.  

Morning Prayer also has a simple structure, but beginning on December 1, Common Prayer provides a unique selection of prayers and readings that reflect the annual cycle of Seasons as well as a celebration of the saints.  Some of your favourites may be omitted, but many more modern saints are acknowledged and for me this is a refreshing element of Common Prayer.  Each day provides a selection of a Psalm, a reading selection from the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, and a pithy quotation from a saint, such as Teresa of Avila, or Jean Vanier.  This latter element reminds us in a tangible way that the Communion of Saints reaches right into our modern time.

There is a single and very simple liturgy for Midday Prayer and its purpose is to carve out a space in the busyness of our days to centre us on Christ.  In addition there are occasional prayers and a short anthology of songs that are referred to each day in Morning Prayer.  Thought-provoking lino-block prints mark the beginning of each month's Morning Prayers, and a website supports the whole book with additional resources.

Two copies now occupy our votive space at home and we are looking forward to the freshness these new liturgies will bring.  Let me finish with a quotation from the Introduction.  "Truth is not simply imparted by a preacher or teacher; it is lived together in the context of community prayer, gathered around Jesus.  Praying in a circle or around a table can help us to be mindful of this fact, enabling us to see each others faces and remember that the centre of our worship is Christ, not a pulpit.  Each day, all across the globe, circles of Christians gather - in basements, living rooms, on street corners and in slums, in prisons and in palaces - holding hands and praying to the God of the universe to be with us.  So let us pray, and let us become the answer to our prayers."

 

A word from Shane Claiborne and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, two of the three editors:

"After several years of working with scores of communities, liturgy experts, artists, and musicians, we’re excited to announce that Common Prayer: Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals will be out in time for Advent. It’s more than a book… it’s a way of life. We’re excited to share it with you.
 
We’re so excited, in fact, that we’ve been working with friends across the country and around the globe to plan nearly 150 release parties. We hope you can find one near you.  But more importantly, we want you to come and see the beautiful art that’s been created for this project.  We want you to have a chance to pray these prayers with a gathering of friends.  We want you to sing these songs and take them home with you, knowing that you’re not alone, but part of an incredible family of fellow travelers that stretches all the way back to Abraham and Sarah."

Love Upside Down in a Quirky Kingdom

The latest offering for general readership by Steven Ogden, Love Upside Down, is remarkable for the ease with which it can be read.  Authors, when dealing with topics they have been passionate about for many years, can easily lose sight of the steps necessary to bring readers to the place they have occupied for a long time.  Indeed, such a criticism might have been made of his earlier offering I Met God in Bermuda in which Ogden wrestled with some of the big ideas of Paul Tillich and Karl Rhaner.  Ogden has not failed to bring his readers all the way.

Ogden establishes first that since LOVE is at the heart of this Quirky Kingdom that Jesus established, a fundamental shift is needed in the way we see things.  This is an invitation into a radical way of seeing God's Kingdom on earth in which the eyes are opened to see the frequent failings of church on earth to live up to its claim to be that Kingdom.

Fundamental to this thesis is that in the Church we generally grapple with responding appropriately to difference.  Churches tend towards homogeneity and that when confronted with those from the edges of society the church can be less than welcoming.

At the heart of Ogden's discussion is the current struggle in the Anglican Communion to respond adequately to Gays and Lesbians in their quest for full and open membership of the church as well as their qualification for ministry in the church.  In some sense Ogden uses this very current example to illustrate his thesis, yet I can't help feeling that the example is in some ways the whole motivation for the book.  This is not a criticism, rather an alert to the reader that there are many other fronts on which the Quirky Kingdom calls us to grapple with difference.

His sixth chapter Downside Up unpacks the heart of his thesis.  Step by step he calls into question the usual ramparts that some stand behind in order to exclude.  So often we seek to maintain a Principle at the expense of the People most adversely affected by the Principle.  Underlying the appeal to Principle is the assumption that it is self-evident, and that if you don't get it, it's your fault.  Ogden asserts that too often Principles are grounded in a bundle of our own deeply held feelings which can rarely be discussed with clarity or wisdom.

In the example of the homosexuality issue, the untested Principles at stake seem to be homosexuality is wrong, homosexuality is unnatural and procreation is the definitive measure of human sexuality and identity.  Step by step, Ogden demonstrates that these Principles do not hold the weight that those appealing to them seem to think.  He goes on to call his readers into an understanding of the Quirky Kingdom that Jesus calls us into as a place of subversive love, that undoes all that we think we know about love by calling us, as Jesus did, to love the other - the one who is different, the one who is vulnerable, the one who is forced by society (and too often the church) to the edges.

He calls us to celebrate this difference in what he styles a Queer Banquet.  He challenges us to understand that the PROBLEM is not homosexuality, but the Church and that if we address that problem with the clear teaching of Jesus then we will usher into the church this same Quirky Kingdom that Jesus talks about in which the ground of our being, our humanity, is what unites us all, and that nothing else - no other basis of distinction - can be used as the basis for exclusion, for none of us deserve our place at the Banquet Table.

This call for a radical and inclusive approach to church life is timely.  There is nothing in the Gospel that Jesus taught that invites us to hate others or each other - indeed quite the opposite is called for - and this is what creates the upside down world of Love that Ogden is reminding us of.

Thanks Steven.

If we were creating the Bible today????

When I was in seminary we did a lot of work in both Church History and Systematic Theology exploring the ideas behind the Bible as an expression of God's revelation. All this is good, but it tends to leave one with the idea that God's Inspirational and Revelatory work ceased when the Canon of Biblical Books was decided and closed in various Councils of the Church in and around the 4th Century. In other words, we get the impression that God no longer inspires men and women in the way that they were inspired back then, and that nothing has or can change in our understanding of God.

A few years ago, John Spong offered a challenge - he probably wasn't the first to do so - by asking people to consider what writings they would want to include as equally inspirational in their spiritual lives with a view to creating a contemporary Canon of Scripture.

I would like to take up the challenge but am inviting your input about what examples of literature and art you might include if we were a Virtual Council of the Church. Given our capacity to store written material digitally, the Canon of the 21st Century could be published on a Kindle or iPad and contain a much more comprehensive selection of materials than ancient manuscripts were limited to.

You might want to include the prayers of Bonhoeffer and Henri Nouwen, the cartoons and poems of Michael Leunig, some of the great art works of the last millennium as well as sacred musical works and hymns - Mozart, Handel and Fanny Crosby for example.

What do you think? Please leave a comment.

Where is God? "Out There" or "In Here"

I have always been sensitive to the presence of God in creation. As a child I was fascinated with the natural world – insects, lizards, plants and flowers – and as a teenager took up many opportunities to walk in the ranges and around the coast of my home town at the time –Albany. In these places I sensed God as vast, awesome, inspiring, powerful, beautiful, delicate. God was dynamic in these places – strong and powerful in the wind and the waves – and yet so engaged with that Creation to have cared about the miniscule detail of a flying bee orchid, or to orchestrate the transformation of a swampland into a place of wonder by the chance encounter of a house-block sized area rampant with the flower spikes of the Albany Pitcher Plant.

As an adult some of my most memorable moments involve the natural environment and a sense of awe that I have always connected to a sense of the presence of God. I recall stopping my car along the road from Nanutarra to Paraburdoo in the Pilbara. While there were hills around with their rocky outcrops, purplish hue and skeletal trees, the road itself was dead flat, cutting a

swathe through golden spinifex and pindan-red earth and all this was covered over by a flawless blue sky of richest hue, undiminished by the dust and smog of city life that dulls the blue to pale shades. I remember just standing there, turning on the spot slowly, amazed by the beauty and feeling at one with it – I wanted to take all my clothes of so as to feel fully connected with it. This was a timeless moment. Not a sound to interrupt except the screeching calls of the brown kites that circled round on the thermals.

On another occasion I recall walking along the beach at Mullaloo on a summer Sunday morning before the crowds had built up. There was a fisher or two, and a few other walkers. There were three wet-suited boys on boogie boards squealing and whelping like pup-seals. As we walked a bit further on we noticed two dolphins cruising just beyond the wave break. They seemed to be a adult and juvenile. There was no hurry in their movement. There was no anxiety – just the most graceful and liquid movement through the water, with the adult paying careful attention to the progress of the juvenile. Another timeless moment as we were drawn into this interface between aquatic animal life and our own in the intersection of land and sea. When we got home, my wife commented that truly we had worshipped God at Mullaloo Cathedral today.

As a final example of how I experience God in the creation, I recall the occasion when I was invited to celebrate a friend’s 60th birthday by joining her and some others as her guests at the Stirling Range Caravan Park with a view to climbing Bluff Knoll together. A month before, Bluff Knoll had been seriously burnt out by a bush fire. The walking trail had been closed because handrails and steps were no long there, so we decided to climb Mt Toolbranup. Among the party, I was the youngest at 40, there was a couple in their late 70s and a 60-ish bloke had undergone a quadruple by-pass surgery 10 weeks before. We set out early and we walked slowly. I was familiar with the trail, and I don’t think I paid that much attention to it. When we reached the summit we were quite amazed. All members of the party had made this climb before and our common experience was that the wind was a persistent companion to the summit. This time, Mothers’ Day in 1993, there was nothing more than the gentlest zephyr of a breeze, the sun was warm and visibility was so good we could actually see the ocean to the south some 90 kilometres away. We settled gently into positions to eat our lunch and savour this place. We talked a bit, but mostly, we sat still and soaked it in – another timeless moment. We were on the summit for over an hour and the weather conditions didn’t change. We all felt reluctant to leave. There was a sense of holy awe for us all in that place. Later that evening I had the pleasure of leading a real thanksgiving Eucharist for us all, with words that rekindled that awe and our joy in God in the mountains.

In these places, my Spirit has been kindled with life by the God who is there and in me. I may not have had the vocabulary of Teilhard de Chardin and Matthew Fox but my spirituality has been gently and most definitely nurtured in the heart of the Creation. Herein lies, I think, my unwavering conviction that God is present with me no matter what crap life chooses to dish out for me. Troubles do not drive me away from God; rather they drive me deeper into him.

I realise now that while I may had adopted and used the language of dualism for much of my spiritual life, my experience of life has found that a dualistic interpretation of life doesn’t quite fit. I don’t think I ever got to thinking I was odd for this, but as I reflect on my 50 years of Christian life I can’t recognise a time when dualism reigned as my cosmology.

BUT it wasn’t till very recent times that I was introduced to a vocabulary that would make sense of it all, and the work of Teilhard de Chardin, Thomas Berry and Matthew Fox are at the heart of it. I came across this work aurally, not through the written word. Thirty eight MP3 recordings of telephone conversations with a wide range of thought leaders from the worlds of science, theology and ministry from many different traditions of church, made up a series called “The Advent of Evolutionary Christianity: Conversations at the Leading Edge of Faith”. It was these that helped me formulate a vocabulary that made sense of my spirituality.

Religious Education in Secular settings

The current debate is about a couple of things, I think, and Christians need to engage in the debate with the utmost honesty about their arguments.

On the one hand it is argued that there is no place for the religious domain in a public school setting; that secular means free from religion; and that the presence of Christian religious people in public schools, in particular, is evidence of a continuation of the cosy relationship between church and government that was supposed to be dismantled by our Constitution. That discourse is the dominant view of the readers and contributors to this GetUp! page.

I am just as uncomfortable as many readers with the cosy relationship between church and state and the not unreasonable perception that the proposal of the NSCP was entirely motivated by a desire to secure political support from a particular constituency as well as creating a pathway into the funding of public schooling in the states, thus influencing policy outside of the national jurisdiction. That is a political discourse which I do not wish to participate in.

I do believe, however, that there are well grounded arguments that create an alternative discourse by which the religious can legitimately occupy a place in our public school system.

Firstly, the presence of the religious in our public school settings is only a threat to the secular nature of those schools when there is coercion involved, when one religious view has structural precedence over others, where the purpose of the presence of the religious is to persuade students to subscribe to a particular religious world-view.

Contributors to these pages have provided sufficient examples to demonstrate that there are situations in which the presence of some Christian religious people and programs is such a threat to the secular nature of our schools. It is not universally the case and it need not be so. My Christian friends need to get used to finding ways to be there that do not pose such a threat.

The Principal of the Separation of Church and State that we believe is somewhat enshrined in out Constitution can be understood or interpreted in several ways. It is clear that for the Americans this means no prayers in school, and that the only way Christians can get close to teaching their "crazy views of creation" in public schools, for example, is to invent something they call "intelligent design", leave any reference to God out of it, as if the God factor is self-evident, and call it science. If you look back at the historical, social and political context in which the American constitution was established, and that the Free World was a place where many marginalised religious groups sought freedom from the religious oppression of the Church-States of Europe, it is no wonder they banned any presence of the religious from schools.

The Australian Constitution was written in a different era, guided by different objectives. The practical outworking of the Constitution on this matter has been to allow the religious to be present without requiring adherence or observance. Even in Victoria and elsewhere, where SRE is compulsory if offered by the church, there is a personal prerogative of withdrawal for parents. I actually believe that public schools should not be bound as they are in Victoria. They are not in WA, and my organisation has much healthier relationships with schools as a result.

As to the legitimate place of the religious/spiritual domain within the syllabus of a public school, it is worth noting that successive Declarations on Education, the latest being the Melbourne Declaration of 2008, all make reference to the need of any comprehensive Curriculum to teach kids, not just about religious diversity and pluralism, as a General Religious Education program would do, but to give them skills to look after their own spiritual welfare. Each state has a Curriculum Framework, and the Commonwealth is trying to overlay a National one at the moment. All these documents make reference in various ways to these matters, providing a way in for schools to address the spiritual and religious world-view. It is interesting to note that in none of the state jurisdictions is a General Religious Education Program delivered by classroom teachers, and at least in WA where the Curriculum Council has created two courses about religion for teaching as a high-school subject - "Beliefs and Values" and "Religion and Life" - these two courses have only ever been taught in faith-based schools. No a single state school has offered them to students.

The absence of the religious domain in the curriculum of public schools makes these schools less than comprehensive schools as there is a major gap in what they offer to students.

If the schools won't offer this dimension, and there is legislative provision for religious groups to do so though volunteer visitors to schools, I see that as an opportunity that should be taken. However, when visiting religious volunteers go into schools, they must remember that they are not in Sunday School. They are in a secular context in which a pluralist approach to world views is prevalent, and that they are there to make a contribution to that in the name of their faith - not to convert students to their particular religion. This is about giving kids information about the religious world-view and some life skills that they may make use of later on in life.

There will be challenges to this discourse, I am sure, but s Christians we need to be able to make a meaningful contribution to the debate. I hope that I am able to do that.

Are Atheists a Persecuted Minority?

In recent days I have been engaging in some of the public forums debating the validity of the Federally funded National School Chaplaincy Program. This has mainly been in relation to a discussion on the Atheist Federation of Australia's forum about School Chaplaincy, and a discussion page on the Get Up web-site.

As a general rule, both of these forums were dominated by opponents of School Chaplaincy and the few supporters who ventured to make a contribution to the discussion were ridiculed, derided and insulted to such an extent that few were willing to contribute for more than a few days - myself included. I concluded that they simply wished to hear from others who reinforced their views of reality rather than inviting them to consider the possibility that there are multiple realities that need to be considered.

I don't like to generalise, because there seemed to be a generalised view that all Christians were on a God-given mission to convert the whole world to Christianity, and even if examples were offered demonstrating this not to be the case, they were dismissed as being fundamentally deceptive - "they really want to, even if they say they don't".

I wondered why these self-appointed advocates of a religion-free public space should feel the need to respond to Christians with such derision. This response is similar to the response of oppressed or marginalised groups in society - they resent the power/influence of the dominant group and the only resort left is insult and an attempt to respond to exclusion with exclusion. We see this on a multi-cultural level, and in the areas of gender and sexuality.

Secular atheists have a world view. In this world view the scientific method relegates religion to the realm of fairy tails because the religious cannot be validated scientifically. It also challenges the divine as no self-evident logically, so therefore it is non-existent. Logic and the scientific method are the only two realms in which truth and reality can be found.

While this world-view may not be a religion, many who hold it do so with a zeal and fundamentalism that is akin to those associated with various religious traditions. In a sense it is true that for the religious and secular atheists "right" and "truth" are held in their hands alone and all others are living in some form of error or delusion.

The fundamentalists of both the secular and religious domains need to realise that modern society requires them both to have an authentic regard for each other that allows us each to have an equal place in society, not a marginalised one. I know this is hard for the dominant group - the religious - but there is already such plurality within the religious domain that making a place for the irreligious is not conceding much ground.

In the world of ideas there must always be room for alternatives as well as willingness to engage in debate about those ideas without feeling coerced to abandon your own views.

What do you think?

The Lord's Supper in Human Hands

I recently obtained a commentary edited by Peter Bolt, Mark Thompson and +Robert Tong all from the Anglican Diocese of Sydney reflecting on recent opinions of the Anglican Church of Australia's Appellate Tribunal that there are no Canons of the Anglican Church of Australia under which a Diocese could authorise the deaconate or laity to celebrate or preside at the Lord's Supper.

It is a bit of a deadly dull read, and I must admit that I find myself a bit ambivalent about the issues given my long association with Churches of Christ where it is almost the case that only the laity preside at the Lord's Supper.

In some respects I am a pragmatic Anglican rather than one by conviction, but I think that to belong to a particular tradition you must allow for things to be done in ways that are consistent with the particular orders and ecclesiology that marks out that church among the many.

As a result, I have no difficulty pointing to the issue of Orders in the Anglican Communion as a basis for maintaining that Presidency is not an issue that can easily be extended to the Diaconate or Laity if one wishes to remain Anglican.

This has to do with the essence of the relationship between the Bishop and Deacons and Priests. In the catholic tradition the Bishop is the primary minister of the church, and in the history of the development of the three orders of ministry in the church, it was the Deacons who were first appointed, supporting those who were to become the episcopal leaders of the church. So it was that the Deacons took their place at the right hand of the Bishop when he was presiding - their table ministry was assisting the bishop.

Next in the developing orders of ministry were the priests, and the nature of their relationship to Bishops was vicarious - they stood in the place of the Bishop within the plurality of congregations that by then meant that a Bishop could not be present for all for whom he was responsible. So the table ministry of the Priest was the same as the Table Ministry of the Bishop - to preside and the Deacon's place at table is beside the priest. It is interesting to note that in parishes where both a priest and deacon are present, it is the Deacon, not the Priest, who assists the Bishop at table when he or she visits.

The ecclesiology of the Anglican Communion also has bearing on this matter, and it somewhat overlays the issue of Orders. The Anglican Church is Diocesan not Congregational. The Churches of Christ of my earlier Christian life were Congregational and all instruments and authority necessary to constitute the Church were seen to be present in the congregation. The basic unit of church in the Anglican Communion is the Diocese and the primary minister of the Diocese is the Bishop. It is the Bishop and only those who stand vicariously in the Bishop's place that are authorised in the Anglican Communion to preside at the Lord's Supper.

For me, these are sufficient grounds to say that the issue being pressed for by the Anglican Diocese of Sydney is indeed eccentric, despite the protestations. They have argued that their contention for lay presidency is wide-spread and long-standing but they offer evidence of this controversy spanning a mere forty years of debate in Australia and and glimpses of it elsewhere in provinces in Africa, India as well as England over a period of a few more than a hundred years. These are hardly significant in time and scope given the 2000 year history of a global church.

An observer on Facebook recently commented that the Diocese of Sydney has systematically rejected all aspects of "Popishness," for want of a term, from their expression of the Church - no chasuble for priests, affirmation of the 39 Articles as foundational expressions of Anglican Doctrine (including the repudiation of Roman Catholicism) and much more - and that the move towards lay presidency would be the final step.

I would regard it is indeed the final step for once taken this Diocese would no longer be Anglican but rather a new Protestant Church in the Reformed Tradition. I sometimes jokingly refer to such evangelicals a "wannabe Baptists" for if they had their way they would elevate the Ministry of the Word so far about the Ministry of the Sacrament that they would only rarely celebrate the Lord's Supper.

Any thoughts?