The recent actions of the Dioceses of New Westminster, of ECUSAs
General Convention, and the subsequent ordination of Gene Robinson to be
the Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire have indeed caused
the earth to move; and those who deny that they are feeling shock waves
live in a world whose physics I fail to understand. The foundations have
indeed been shaken; and consequently, despite the difficulty of the
project, I agreed to comply with your request. For the next few minutes,
I am going to ask us to consider the foundations of our faith.

Before I do that, however, I think it will be helpful to state at the
outset where I am going to end up; namely, with a challenge that is
fearfully difficult to state, hear, and accept. The challenge is that we
seek to overcome among ourselves the forces of individualism and
congregationalism that have shaken the foundations of our common life;
and that we do so by forming a communion of parishes jointly committed
in mutually supportive ways to building a common life upon the
foundations I hope to identify. To put the matter another way, my
challenge is to join (right here in the Diocese of Colorado) as brothers
and sisters in fellowship with Christ and with one another in a common
movement of repentance, reconciliation, reform and renewal whose purpose
is nothing less that the reform of and renewal of the Episcopal Church.
Conversely, my challenge is for us to cease thinking of ourselves as
distressed individuals joined together on the basis of shared
preferences and a sense of affliction into distinct congregations whose
purpose is self-protection, self-promotion, and the pursuit of privately
held religious and moral beliefs.

Both the positive and the negative statement of the telos of this
address are intended to strike at the heart of the individualism and
congregationalism (and so also the sin) that have combined to shake the
foundations not only of ECUSA but also of the Anglican Communion as a
whole. Given this purpose, when writing this address, these questions
posed themselves. If I am to speak of foundations, how do I get from A
to B? More specifically, how do I get from a place where there seems to
be no solid ground to one that is as firm as a rocka rock so firmly
implanted in the earth that it can be called the rock of ages? For
better or worse, in search of an answer, I decided to address three
questions and they are these: What purpose does God ask of those who
search for foundations--who look to the rock from which they were hewn?
How do we recognize and come to rest upon the foundations of our common
belief and practice? What shall we do if we find ourselves standing
together on the foundations God provides his church? Foundations and
Purposes

Let me put the first question in this way. If in a time of turmoil,
uncertainty, and distress, we seek to relocate ourselves on a firm
foundation, what purpose drives us? Why, in such circumstances, does the
question of foundations arise? Do we seek an answer for no greater
reason than to save our own skin? Is our purpose simply to keep the
house from falling in on our own heads? Or are we, perhaps, simply
trying to distinguish ourselves from people with whom we do not wish to
be identified?

Though I do so at some risk of giving offense, I must at this juncture
speak with considerable candor. Too much is at stake to beat around the
bush. I have been involved in the church struggle in which we now find
ourselves for some 30 years, and during that time (particularly in the
last three or four years) I have noted a change in the purpose a search
for foundations serves. The search has less and less been directed to
finding common ground upon which all members of ECUSA, despite their
differences, can stand. Conversely, the search has been directed more
and more toward finding a self-definition that distinguishes my group
that holds to right belief and practice from another group that does
not. In short, the notion of foundations serves less and less to provide
the fundament of a common dwelling place and more and more as a totemic
symbol that distinguishes warring clans engaged in a deadly family feud.

There are several reasons for this shift. The first is self-protective.
The reasoning seems to go something like this. If we can raise the
totemic symbol of foundations high enough, then our people will not seek
membership in another clan. More bluntly, if we can identify our
congregation as clearly orthodox as opposed to heterodox, people will
not (as good Americans though not good Christians do) shop around for
another that better suits them. I must say that despite the many good
things that went on recently in Plano at the conference intended to
establish a network of Anglican Communion Dioceses and Parishes, one
thing troubled me profoundly. Though I support this network and desire
more than I can say to see its tribe increase, I must note that at the
Plano meeting, far too many people wanted to join in large measure
because they were afraid that apart from this option many of their
people would leave. The driving force behind their support of the
movement was self-protective.

I detected also a second (less than optimal) reason for support of this
particular attempt to define foundations. To declare for foundations may
serve the purpose of establishing my obedience and virtue and exposing
the disobedience and vice of someone whom I now hold to be a stranger
rather than a member of my own family. I am sad to say that, in the heat
of our present struggles, I have found this attitude all too common both
in myself and in others. I certainly have found it increasingly common
in the way in which some Episcopalians often refer to other
Episcopalians. Fondations (sadly) have become a means of breaking
communion rather than one upon which it is built.

Now I would be the last to deny that the fundaments of Christian belief
and practice serve to reveal false accounts of these matters. I would
also not like to deny that they might serve to hold people together in
times of division and stress. I am convinced, however, that neither
purpose ought to dominate our search. In searching for foundations, our
purpose under God ought to be to rebuild the house of the Lord; and that
rebuilding cannot be done with the purpose of excluding members of the
family who may have lost track of those beliefs and practices that give
the family identity. The first purpose of a search for foundations, if
it is to be a godly search, is to call everyone, both orthodox and
heterodox, to look to the rock from which they were hewn.

If the search for foundations is intended simply to keep some people in
and keep others out, it will, despite its necessity, prove an ungodly
course of action. If the search for foundations is only a matter of
truth: if that search takes place apart from love and mercy, then the
truth becomes an instrument of war and not a bond of peace. To
paraphrase the psalm, truth and mercy must kiss if God is to be served.

If this is so, then the search for foundations, if it is to be godly,
must begin with a desire to include ones opponent. Its purpose must be
to find a foundation upon which all are called to stand. This desire
must be accompanied by the hope of reconciliation and agreement. To be
godly, the search must be born of hope rather than despair. To be godly,
the search for foundations must be born of eagerness to maintain the
unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace rather than an eagerness to
establish the righteousness of ones own cause. It cannot be godly if it
is in essence an attempt to define one part of the church over against
another. Such an attempt screams not of obedience but of disobedience.

I conclude, therefore, with the observation that a godly search for the
foundations of Christian faith and practice must necessarily be
accompanied negatively by repentance and positively by love and charity
toward the neighbor in Christ who may well have strayed far indeed from
the common foundations upon which Gods temple, the church, rest.

Recognizing Fundaments

If the purpose under God of a search for foundations is to call
everyone, both orthodox and heterodox, to look to the rock from which
both were hewn, then one must ask first not about building foundations
but about recognizing those God has already provided. How shall we find
the foundations upon which the ruined walls of our church can be
rebuilt? The answer to this question is simple to state, but
extraordinarily difficult to put into practice. If we wish to recognize
the foundations God has provided, we can do so only as a people who are
immersed in the Holy Scriptures as read and commonly interpreted within
the context of the prayers, worship, and common life of the church.

In making this statement, I am offering neither a truism nor a bromide.
I am in fact calling for something quite radical; namely, a return to
what I take to be the foundational principle of Anglicanism as set forth
by Thomas Cranmer at the time of the Reformation in England. At the
beginning of the Preface to the Book of Common Prayer adopted in 1549
Cranmer notes that his arrangement for having the whole Bible (or the
greatest part thereof) read through once a year by both clergy and
people has its origins in the ancient practice of the church. In his
essay Of Ceremonies: Why Some Be Abolished and Some Retained, he
grounds his revision of the prayers of the church in Holy Scripture and
the practice of the early fathers rather than in ecclesial authority,
doctrinal propositions, or cannot law. He believed that the way to
foundations lay in the ancient practice of the church. The conviction
led him to believe that the best way to discern the foundations was
neither by reference to the office of bishop, nor to formularies (like a
confession), nor to canon law. The best way to look to the rock from
which the church is hewn is by scriptural exposition within the divine
service of clergy and people.

Cranmer looked to the fathers of the church and in doing so held that
repetition of scriptural exposition within the divine service of clergy
and people promotes communal edification in a way that is more
effective than a focus on right doctrine. He certainly believed in the
importance of right doctrine, but he believed also that what he called
decent order and quiet discipline is a necessary precondition for
the preservation of right doctrine. The reiterative reading of Holy
Scripture within ancient forms of worship produce, as he notes in Of
Ceremonies, unity and concord.

We may summarize Cranmers position by saying that, in his reform of the
ceremonies of the Church of England, he sought an ordered, communal, and
prayerful process in which the people, joined in worship, heard the
entirety of the Bible in an ordered manner. The purpose of this
reiterative reading and prayer was the formation and strengthening of a
common mind and form of life, and so also peace and unity within the
church. This common scriptural formation was for Cranmer of more
fundamental importance and of greater effect in maintaining the health
of the church than confessional statements or forms of ecclesial
governance, Episcopal ones included. He believed that within the
boundaries of common prayer and ordered communal hearing of Holy
Scripture, one can trust that the Holy Spirit will lead Gods people in
the way of truth and love. Canmer believed that this practice would, if
faithfully carried on, reveal the foundations not simply to a clerical
elite (who are not to be trusted on their own) but to the church as a
whole, composed as it is of both clergy and laity.

I might add parenthetically that William White, ECUSAs first bishop, in
his The Case of the Episcopal Church in the United States Considered,
believed something very similar. He wrote that the Episcopal Church is
defined by ancient habits and stated ordinances that render a church
closest to the form of religion of the Scriptures. It would appear
that for Anglicans, even of an American variety, foundations are
discerned by communal reading of the Holy Scriptures within the context
of ancient forms of prayer and worship.

Here, however, we are presented with the nub of our present problem.
Episcopalians, both lay and clerical, are no longer immersed in the
ordered reading of Holy Scriptures. Our clergy no longer stand under the
mandatory discipline of reading the daily offices, and our laity no
longer are in possession of functioning forms of domestic piety that
focus on daily readings that take them regularly through the entire
sweep of the biblical narrative. The result is that, within ECUSA,
clergy and laity alike are incapable of recognizing a fundament even if
they run headlong into it. We no longer can have a scriptural argument
that amounts to anything because we have not been shaped by
comprehensive reading of the basic witness to the foundations of our
faith and life. So if I am to talk of foundations, it will not do to
state a series of theological propositions and urge you to agree with
me. Apart from communal insight born of common immersion in Holy
Scripture, such talk can only appear subjective, arbitrary, or even
tyrannical.

So if in this time when the earth is moving and the ground under our
feet seems full of cracks and crevices we wish to fix our feet on the
solid ground of foundations, we will have first to find a way to become
a people immersed in Holy Scripture. Apart from such immersion,
foundations will become a source of division rather than unity.
Everyone, friend and foe alike, will fail to recognize them.
Consequently I take the formation of a people immersed in Holy Scripture
to be the first and foremost responsibility of clergy and laity in our
time. Apart from such formation, the search for foundations will fail
and the walls of the church will remain in ruins.

But how can such a reform be brought about? For the moment I shall do no
more than place before you two changes that must come about if we are to
speak of foundations in a way that unites rather than divides. The first
concerns the clergy among us. Our preaching can do much to beckon people
toward the pages of Holy Scripture and display their meaning. It can
also do much to turn them away and occlude its witness to the fundaments
upon which our life together rest. As things stand at present, I have
become convinced that, on the whole, the preaching of ECUSAs clergy
(both orthodox and heterodox) does more to hide the meaning of Holy
Scripture than reveal itmore to chase people away than to attract them.

Why? Because our seminary education has left us in thrall to a form of
interpretation that focuses on single texts and asks only what this or
that particular text meant in its original context. The more
conservative among us will tend to see the original meaning as
applicable to our circumstances. The more liberal will tend to focus on
the differences between our circumstances and those reflected in the
text. Thus one group will say the text is authoritative and the other
will speak of how it is relative to a particular time and place. Neither
conservative nor liberal, however, locates the text within the sweep of
the biblical narrative. Thus, in contradistinction to the fathers of the
church, neither sees each text as a figure that points to others. The
result of this textual myopia, this failure to see the Bible whole, this
failure to link one text with another, is the increasingly common view
that the Bible can yield no perspicuous witness to foundations. One can
hardly be surprised, therefore, that laity and clergy alike turn
increasingly away from Holy Scripture and toward some form of experience
or some doctrinal definition. One can hardly be surprised either by the
increasingly common use of isolated verses in a manner that reminds one
more of a war club than a healing poultice. Either way, the Bible does
not serve as the ether that sustains Gods people in the oxygen-starved
air of their trials and travails.

The first thing necessary for a people immersed in Holy Scripture is for
the public exposition of the reiterative reading of Holy Scripture to
become of the sort that locates given texts within the full sweep of the
Bibles testimony. The second thing necessary for common recognition of
the foundations is the reconstitution of forms of domestic piety that,
within the context of daily life, immerse people in the same narrative
sweep. My grandmother provides a homely example of what I mean. She had
a favorite chair and could be found sitting in it each morning and
evening. On the table beside her chair could be found the novel she was
reading, the Book of Common Prayer, and the Bible. The first books she
reached for morning and evening were the Bible and the Book of Common
Prayer. She was immersed in Holy Scripture, and could comment on the
Sunday sermon with more critical insight than can the vast majority of
seminary-trained clergy in our day.

I do not wish to be a romantic. I am fully aware of the time constraints
modern life places upon both individuals and families. I am also aware,
however, that the search for foundations will certainly go astray if
that search is left to presbyters and bishops who are not in
conversation with a biblically literate laity whose lives are formed by
the prayers of the church and daily immersion in the pages of the books
that display our foundations. Either we find a way to renew domestic
piety and the figural reading of Holy Scripture, or the Holy Scriptures
will remain strange to us and the walls of the church will remain in
ruins. Naming the Foundations

Now I come to the hardest and most controversial part. If we were to
become a people immersed in the Holy Scriptures as read and interpreted
with the context of the common life, prayer, and worship of the church,
what are the foundations that would be revealed to us? I will attempt no
complete answer to this question. I will suggest only those things I
believe would jump out at us. The first thing we would discover is that
the fundaments concern a notion very much out of favor among
Episcopalians--salvation. I do not mean that they are first of all
about bringing relief to some privation experienced within the compass
of what the Bible is fond of calling this present age or the world.
It is not that the witness of Holy Scripture is unconcerned with the
state of the poor, or the suffering of the outcast, or the plight of the
prisoner, or the pain of the infirm. I mean only that these matters are
penultimate to anotherour broken relation with God. At the center of
the witness of the Bible is Christs death for sinners. It is precisely
the ugliness of our state before God that the theology of incarnation
now so popular with Episcopal clergy seeks to cover over with bromides
about Gods accepting love and his affirmation of creation. Indeed, I
will make bold to say that the regnant theology within ECUSA has removed
salvation as a concern. Since God is loving and accepting without
qualification, there is not need for salvation. Within ECUSA
Christianity as popularly preached is no longer a religion of salvation.

This observation leads me to say that once one leaves the language of
the Book of Common Prayer and steps into the pulpit or the rectors
forum, generally speaking, one leaves behind as well the issue of
salvation. With this departure, the foundations of our common belief and
practice lie in ruins. I can only say that a people immersed in Holy
Scripture would know right off that they were being passed a counterfeit
coin. I know of no other way to understand the sweep of Holy Scripture
than as a witness to a good creation gone wrong and to God who will pay
a terrible price to reconcile and redeem that world.

The first thing a people immersed in Holy Scripture will discover is
that their religion is indeed one of salvation; and that the salvation
in question has to do first of all with their life before God. This
simple discovery would change the subject in most parishes I know in
ways that render what went before, from a Christian perspective,
unrecognizable. They would see much of what went before as but a strange
caricature of Christian truth. The second thing that such a people would
recognize is that the story of Gods agonizing reclamation of his world
is given form, not by the internal dynamics of the world itself, but by
Gods own being as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The biblical narrative
would no longer fall apart into a host of unrelated and time bound
stories and sayings both difficult to understand and infrequently
applicable. Rather that narrative would display the fearful holiness of
the Father who in love begets the Son and sends forth the Spirit to form
a people for his service and to return the world to the right worship of
its creator, redeemer, and sanctifier. A people steeped in the witness
of the Holy Scriptures would come to understand that the doctrine of the
Holy Trinity is not an impossible logical conundrum about three being
one and yet remaining three. It is rather Gods provision of himself as
the way back to himself. A biblically immersed people know that the
fundament of their life is that they may be confident (or bold) to
pray to God as he in fact is. So biblically immersed people know what it
is to pray to the Father through the Son in the power of the Spirit.
They know also to read the story of their own lives and that of the
world through the same prism. The Father, through the death and
resurrection of his Son and through the gift of the Holy Spirit, both
overcomes and reconciles the world in its defection. As Augustine saw so
clearly when he wrote his Confessions and the City of God, both
biography and history receive their intelligibility from this
extraordinary story where in God who has taught us to address him as
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit both creates, reconciles, and redeems the
world. A biblically immersed people would read life through Trinitarian
glasses. The foundation revealed to a biblically immersed people is God;
God who is to be addressed as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; whose nature
is displayed in this name; God whose way of working in the world is made
manifest as the church invokes this name. This statement brings me to
the final point I wish to make about the foundations revealed to a
biblically immersed people. If it is the case that God the Father
effects our salvation by bringing us to himself through the Son in the
power of the Holy Spirit, a certain form of life will become a part of
the foundations for which we search. Those who seek the Father through
the Son in the power of the Holy Spirit will struggle to live a life
that images, reflects, or imitates that of the Son. They will not depend
upon the success of their imitation for salvation, but they will live
before God with adoration, praise, gratitude, and fear. This way of
standing before God will drive them toward a life worthy of a holy God.
The Holy Scriptures contain abundant accounts of the form such a life is
to take. In its lowliness, meekness, patience, forbearance, and
eagerness for unity; in its kindness, tenderheartedness, and mercy; and
finally in its willingness to suffer, the members of Christ body seek in
the power of the Holy Spirit to display Christ as the way to the Father.
When we speak of foundations, we think on the whole of matters of
doctrine rather than conduct. However, a people immersed in the Holy
Scriptures will recognize among the foundations not only doctrine but a
very practical call to a devout and holy life. Once again, despite the
familiarity of such a statement, I must insist that I am not offering
either a truism or a bromide. The fact is that as I survey the parishes
and congregations dotted about the city in which I live, I do not see
bodies of people whose lives are immersed in the Holy Scriptures, whose
understanding of themselves and the world about them is shaped by the
providential action on the part of the Father in the Son and through the
Spirit to reconcile all things to himself; and I certainly do not see a
common struggle to live, after the pattern of the Son, an devout and
holy life. What I see with too few exceptions are voluntary associations
formed to meet the religious, spiritual, moral, and personal needs of
those whose tastes draw them to this group rather than to another. What
I see is in fact example after example of American
denominationalismthat extraordinarily American effort to market
religion on the basis of consumer sentiment. If there were world enough
and time, I could demonstrate the truth of this statement over and over
again. It is enough to say at the moment that, on the whole, the
parishes of the Episcopal Church, like the congregations of most other
American denominations, are organized around the expressed needs to the
congregants rather than the fundaments I have identified ever so briefly
above. When I was the Dean of a Seminary, I used, once a year, to run
conferences for the Rectors of larger parishes. Once I noted that they
were remarkably successful in devising programs that attracted people by
addressing the issues and concerns most on peoples minds. I then asked
them how successful were their efforts to draw people more deeply into
the Christian mysteryinto the beliefs and practices that give identity
to the purposes of God. My question was followed by an embarrassed
silence that I will never forget.

What Then Shall We Do? This observation brings me to my last question.
If as a biblically immersed people we find ourselves standing on the
foundation of the saving economy of God whom we address as Father, Son,
and Holy Spirit, and upon our calling to a devout and holy life; what is
to be done to rebuild the walls of the church upon this, rather than its
present foundation of consumer sentiment? If those historians and
sociologists who comment on American religion are correct in their
assessment, undertaking such a task can only be compared to turning a
ship the size of a Nimitz class carrier a full 180 degrees when one is
in the midst of a gale force storm. It will require us to revision,
reform, and rebuild the parish as we know it. We may quibble over
details and dispute this or that point, but what Bellah, and others tell
us about American Christianity is basically true. Our religion is highly
personal and acquisitive. We shop for a religious affiliation that
meets our needs and tastes. The denominational system is set up as a
response to this religious consumerism. Within this system, God is
portrayed as a kindly Father anxious to meet the needs of his children.
The Holy Scriptures are viewed rather like a table at a jumble saleone
on which all sorts of things are set out and from which one may choose
according to taste and need. The primary issue is not the purpose of a
Holy and transcendent God who, out of shear mercy, wills the redemption
of the entire creation, but the usefulness of a limitlessly tolerant and
kindly God for addressing our hopes and fears. The foundations are, in
the end, laid by our own desires and tastes rather than by a sovereign
God. Given the real state of the churches in America and that of ECUSA
in particular, I do not find it surprising that all find themselves in
one or another form of crisis. God will not be mocked as we now do. We
must assume, therefore, that our present distress is a sign of divine
judgment rather than divine favor. Further, we dare not assume that we,
unlike others, are righteousfree from that judgment. The judgment of
God, who as the Father comes to us in the Son through The Spirit, is
always accompanied with a promise of forgiveness and a call to
repentance. Repentance is consequently the first step necessary if we
are to rebuild the walls of the church upon the foundation God himself
provides. It is my view that the last thing genuine repentance requires
of us it the arrogant step of founding a pure church set apart from that
of the miserable sinners. What repentance requires is admission of ones
sin and amendment of life. And here is my main point. Repentance and
amendment of life when applied to parishes and congregations requires a
common effort to reconfigure our life together and place it upon the
foundation God himself provides. At this point, I come to the challenge
with which I began. The act of repentance required of us is a corporate
one. Just as YHWH through the prophets called all of Israel to return,
so he calls his church to return as a body. If we are to hear for
ourselves the words God spoke to Francis, rebuild my church, we must
hear these words as a body and not as isolated selves or even as
distinct congregations. The task of rebuilding lies beyond the reach of
individuals and separate congregations. Divided efforts of this sort
will simply reproduce denominationalism in different forms. To rest once
more upon the fundaments of our faith and to live once more as a people
will require us to become a communion, a fellowship. To repent and amend
our lives as a church requires that our parishes give up self-protective
and self-promoting strategies and give themselves to a common struggle
to rebuild the walls of the church. I know that it was the intention of
the people who drew up the theological charter commended by the newly
formed network of Anglican Communion Dioceses and Parishes to begin
exactly this sort of movement of repentance and reform. My challenge to
you is to form within the Diocese of Colorado a part of such a network
and to come together in a movement of repentance, reconciliation,
reform, and renewal intended to rebuild the walls of the entire church
upon the foundations God graciously has provided his people. In line
with this challenge, I would like to conclude these remarks by sharing
with you a dream. Suppose it were the case that the parishes represented
here today in the persons of both clergy and laity were in full
cooperation one with another to undertake to shape the program of each
congregation so as to help its members better fulfill this simple
promise made when each was baptized. Will you continue in the apostles
teaching and fellowship, the breaking of the bread and the prayers? What
would have to happen in a parish to encourage and enable people to
continue in the apostles teaching and fellowship? What would have to
happen to help them continue in the breaking of bread? What would have
to happen to help them continue in the prayers? And what would such a
communion of parishes do jointly to see that together they sought to
fulfill the other promises made at baptism? How jointly, for example,
might they seek to persevere in resisting evil? And how jointly might
they seek to proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in
Christ? How might they jointly attempt to seek and serve Christ in all
persons? Suppose these questions became the basis of common prayer,
discussion, and endeavor? Suppose questions such as these shaped the way
in which the leaders and people in each congregation sought to worship,
honor, and serve the Father through the Son in the Spirit? I believe
that such an effort would not prove to be self-protective and
self-promoting. I believe it would run against the grain of our
individualism, congregatonalism, and sin. I believe it would signal a
repentant heart. I believe that it would prove an effort blessed by God.
I believe finally, that it would reflect a biblically immersed people
whose lives rest upon the foundation of Gods salvation procured by the
Father, in the Son and through the Spirit and whose manner of life
reflects Gods own.

END

For an extended defense of the views that follow see Philip Turner,
Tolerable Diversity and Ecclesial Integrity: Communion or Federation?
JAS, Fall, 2003.
The First and Second Prayer Books of Edward VI, (London: J.M. Dent &
Sons Ltd, 1957), p. 8.
For this summary of the way of the disciple see especially Ephesians 4:
1-3, 32; Mark 8: 31-38; 10: 32- 45.