Today is published TURNING AROUND THE MAINLINE; How Renewal Movement are changing the Church (Baker Books) by Thomas Oden, well known writer, Methodist theologian, and retired professor of theology from Drew University. By “mainline” he means Presbyterian (PCUS), United Methodist, ECUSA, United Church of Christ, Lutheran (ELCA), American Baptists (northern not southern!) and United Church of Canada.
His book has the purpose of encouraging those in the mainline Churches, who still confess a basically biblical and orthodox faith (based on the Bible and ecumenical Creeds) to stay therein to confess the Faith and to witness. He thinks that the present, progressive, secularized leadership will in time break up and begin to disappear; and then those who remain will be able to restore these Churches to something like their original vocation and ethos. He is very optimistic about this and sees the various “renewal” movements in these Churches as most important in this regard.
His experience in being a minority within a mainline Church has been gained primarily within the United Methodist Church. So his long discussion of property issues – keeping the local church property for the faithful congregation – is based on Methodist rules and possibilities. Further, he accepts certain modern innovations (e.g. the ordination of women and the relaxed rules for marriage of divorcees in church) as compatible with what he calls orthodoxy, and this makes it easier for him to say what he says about stating and recovering the “faith” for it is a diluted “faith” that will be restored.
What he says about the Episcopal Church is somewhat outdated (for he wrote the book two years or so ago) and seems to be very dependent upon information from his friends in the American Anglican Council – no mention of Forward in Faith or the Prayer Book Society by him – and dependent on the views of people like the Bishop of Dallas. His assessment of the possibilities of restoring this Church to something like its original vocation, doctrine and ethos is in my judgment shallow, and that for several reasons. He does not take sufficiently into account:
(a) the importance of the Anglican Communion as giving or not giving legitimacy to this Church as truly Anglican;
(b) the fact that ECUSA is – though seemingly democratic in structure - usually treated by the courts in property issues as an hierarchal church (diocese before parish) and so parishes cannot keep property;
(c) the fact that the PECUSA officially gave up its historical, received Standards/Formularies in the 1970s and adopted new ones that contradicted those given up and so ceased to be truly Anglican as a confessing Church;
(d) many recent secessions of congregations are from the ECUSA into the arms of an Anglican province or diocese overseas and so are a sideways move not a full departure. So a new kind of schism has developed in the Anglican Family for which thee is no real equivalent in the other mainline Churches.
Thus to stay within ECUSA is not exactly similar to staying within Methodism or Presbyterianism or Lutheranism.
So it appears that the book has little of practical help to Episcopalians facing the June 2006 General Convention and whether or not to secede from the ECUSA before or after this event. Yet it contains all kinds of useful insights, theological and practical, that are worth knowing. And I can see it helping Methodists in particular who will probably be its primary readership.
The Revd Dr Peter Toon February 1, 2006
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