From the Dean & President - S&H Nov/Dec 2005

Trinity started the year very well. The students rolled in and there were more than we had expected: a full house of consecrated men and women. The new faculty have “taken,” and there is hilarity in the ranks. George the poodle – who reminds me of Curious George – is our sixth new member on the faculty floor. There is an electricity to the place, a pumping Holy Spirit energy, which is thrilling.

On some wider fronts, here are a few thoughts:

Hurricane Katrina has revealed the fault line in American life which the columnist David Brooks was the first to spot, at least in the mainstream media. This fault line becomes Christianity’s chance to do some interpreting, for our theology of the Cross always has that famous “preferential option for the poor.” We are surprised neither by the wound revealed, the racial wound, in our society, nor are we taken by surprise in relation to its consequences for everybody. Bishop T.D. Jakes opened my eyes on this one years ago, during a Manpower rally in Birmingham; and Tyler Perry reopened them last February with his movie. The wound discovered by Katrina’s blowing the lid off of superficialities calls for the Gospel’s balm, the absolution from and to “the least of these.” Trinity will be right in the thick of the Christian Church’s resources to make this right.

Whether the Episcopal Church in the USA is going to open its heart to our theological minority is still an open question. With a few conspicuous exceptions, such as Ian Douglas at EDS and one or two bishops who wish to be comprehensive in the old Church of England sense, I am not seeing evidence that the managers of the institution are really open to us. Moreover, there is a “group think” denial among English Anglicans that seems to render them almost wholly unable to see themselves as counter-cultural. Thus the Civil Partnerships bill has caught them off-guard, and they are certainly not able to be much good to orthodox Episcopalians now, given that. So our wider context is not providing much in the way of institutional comfort.

The Gospel is so rich. The human church is so ambivalent. The human need is so plaintive, and actually overwhelming. My own view is that the Good News of God’s Grace has never been more actual, more apt in every case. I feel a little like Gerhard Forde, who died recently, who used to wear a button that drove some people crazy. “I have no ecclesiology,” his button said. Yet Ford’s message of the Gospel was one of the most thrilling of all 20th century achievements in theology.

My point is, God’s Mercy never fails. Calvary did it. The church in human terms requires a definite reserve on our part. Human need, as in the Gulf Coast, is hungry, macro-hungry. We have been given some manna. Let’s get it out there, one way or... t’other.

Devotedly, and ever,

Yours,

Paul