From the Dean & President - S&H Jan/Feb 2007

What are we up to then? What is our real mission now, under the evolving terms of Anglicanism’s re-alignment in this country and our world? What are we now called to do?

This is the kind of question that lies right in the center of my study desk at Trinity. It is as if our identity, even our core identity as Christians within our tradition, is having to be stated and affirmed and “nailed down” over and over and over again (like the faithful girlfriend’s reply in that same-titled 1965 single by the Dave Clark Five).

Who are we and what are we doing?

The usual answer seems to be this: Trinity School for Ministry is the educational center for orthodox Anglicanism in the United States. We are the institutional anchor of a movement that is both under attack and marginalized (from a “TEC” or Episcopal Church standpoint) and is the majoritarian place of choice in this country for traditional Anglicans from the Global South and their minoritarian friends in the US.  Trinity both represents and is an advocate for a specific tradition and a particular point of view.

I can affirm that. Most of us can. But it’s not enough. It is way not enough.

This is because there just aren’t many people waking up in the middle of the night and crying out, “Oh, for a center for American orthodox Anglicanism!” People wake up with a lot of different things on their minds. But that is seldom one of them.

The problem we face is greater than Anglicanism, although it includes it. What we are really facing is a Christian Church, in its evangelical format, which is turning off the secular culture by its chronic version of the Gospel clothed in Law and imperative.  No one wants an imperative! No one’s heart is changed through an imperative. We can say all we want about “accountability” and “discipline,” but we aren’t going to be listened to when we say it.

The New York Times is not the only agency that is gunning for us. Almost all the “secular progressives” are furious at us in relation to Iraq, the “Christian Right”’s political profile, and a whole host of social issues in relation to which they see us as judges at the Salem Witch Trials. I predict retaliation against traditional Christians, almost across the board, when the current administration finally has to let go.

Part of this is the usual hostility of the “natural man” to the things of God. But not all of it. Part of it stems from the captivity of the Christian Church to versions of the Gospel that major on Law rather than on Grace.

This is how I put it sometimes. Evangelical Christians pride themselves in putting forgiveness at the top of all our values. But they almost never do it. Evangelical Christians are among the least forgiving of all populations. That – this hardness of heart in relation to sin’s fallen victims – is what we have become best known for.

This is why Trinity’s vocation – and maybe yours, God willing – is less about orthodox American Anglicanism than it is about absolution and forgiveness. Why not become known as a center of counter-Pharisaism? Why not proclaim the message of Paul and Augustine, of Cranmer and Wesley, of Sayers and Parr, of Bell and Newton:  that Christ Jesus came into the world to save
sinners, and not just putative sinners but you and me, in particular? And that Christians remain sinners, needing that “break,” that leeway, that Grace, just as much as non-Christians?

That is what I would like Trinity to be known for. Oh, and by the way, if we major on that, then I believe I can guarantee you we will be worthy of the attribution, “Center of orthodox American Anglicanism.”