JUSTICE AS RITUALIZED CRISIS: The Necessity for Lesbian Bishops-Gary L'Hommedieu

[david at virtueonline.org]

JUSTICE AS RITUALIZED CRISIS: The Necessity for Lesbian Bishops

Commentary

By Canon Gary L'Hommedieu 
www.virtueonline.org 
8/05/09

Hot on the heels of GC 2009 comes news of the nomination of The Rev. Bonnie Perry, a partnered Lesbian, as a candidate for Bishop of the Diocese of Minnesota. Immediately after the announcement of Ms. Perry's candidacy came revelations that partnered gay and Lesbian candidates were on the initial list of candidates for election in Los Angeles. There will be more, and soon.

Episcopalians are divided in their reactions to these candidacies, somewhere between urging restraint in honor of Windsor and damning the torpedoes--which really means damn the Windsor process, damn the Anglican Covenant, and (while we're at it) damn the Anglican Communion. The peace and justice crowd in TEC will make no peace with oppression. As we are learning, "peace and justice" is another name for holy war.

Everyone on earth could have predicted this latest TEC foray into the public spotlight, though many are surprised it followed so abruptly on the Archbishop of Canterbury's visit to General Convention where he urged TEC not to give offense to the "weaker brethren" that make up most of the Communion.

Part of the surprise is that this latest action is more in-your-face than usual, even for TEC, but therein lies the point. If TEC had dithered a few months refusing LGBT's as candidates for episcopal election in the name of "restraint", the present moment would have been lost and, to paraphrase the White House Chief of Staff, a good crisis would have been squandered. 

Make no mistake: the present action has meaning only insofar as it constitutes a crisis, even if the crisis is transparently contrived. Political wannabes and "community organizers" have long known how to manipulate the raw emotion of a public confrontation, even one they themselves created. They know how to play the public so that their own scandal converts to moral capital. By some social algorithm or alchemy what was taboo yesterday becomes a mandate today. In the era of political correctness we can expect the people, who have been conditioned to feel guilty about anything and everything, to surrender their capacity for clear thought out of fear of further incrimination.

Our society lives under a spell that believes any defiance of traditional authority is meritorious and self-justifying. It is ironic that Dr. Rowan Williams--the present Archbishop of Canterbury, a liberal by conviction and a pawn of political correctness--should now fulfill the role of keeper of tradition. His historic office, and not his person, gives weight to TEC's sophomoric rant, elevating it to an international confrontation.

The Archbishop's motives in attempting to rein in TEC, which are transparent, play no part in the present drama. His personal motive is to keep the Communion from disintegrating under his watch. But his heart isn't in it, not just because he happens to share the political drift of the Western Provinces, but also because he lacks the moral fiber to discipline those whose way of life threatens both themselves and the body of which they are currently a part. 

In the death throes of Western society tough love is called hate. The Archbishop's willingness to go down with the ecclesiastical ship is hardly a display of courage and self-sacrifice but rather the final conflict avoidance. Leaders of historic institutions can be counted on today for messages of appeasement. Their occasional "strong words" are part of the theatrics of appeasement, as Dr. Williams' most recent missive after General Convention illustrates.

The ritual enacted by the TEC nominations resembles the classic formula of a sacrament with form and matter. The form is the outward appearance of two mutually exclusive positions: the righteous outcast and the oppressive authority. The specific histories of the two parties only count superficially in order to qualify them as symbols, hence "appearances", in the present equation.

The "matter" of this sacrament is the predictable emotional response, namely, the feeling of crisis provoked by confrontation. Homosexuality continues to draw an emotional reaction from both advocates and critics. Add to it the "in-your-face" quality of telling the ABC and the Primates to "stick it" a week after General Convention. The inevitable result is crisis, which can now be converted into capital.

The above formula can be repeated at will--or, more significantly, unconsciously as a reflex action under given circumstances. It is one of the rituals of our politicized society--a structured, repetitive action, with a predictable result. It has a "sacramental" payoff, mediating a sense of moral rightness or "righteousness". 

There is one aspect of the present ritual that is worthy of special mention: its necessity, which is based upon its institutional character and only comes to light when we look beyond the individual psychologies of the players.

Conservatives and liberals have their respective reasons for objecting to the latest TEC maneuver in forcing the issue of homosexual rights. They will criticize the shrewdness or the foolhardiness or the maliciousness of the present action, and their criticisms have a certain validity based on the alleged motives behind the present controversy.

In the present phase of its institutional life TEC is driven by a necessity that is anything but conscious. The Episcopal Church is a different social reality than it was not many years ago. It has a different center of gravity and organic life formed in relationship to the surrounding society--both unconscious. Or rather, even when these social qualities are conscious, they seem irresistible. They are experienced as given, as "things" that have their own mass and identity.

The Episcopal Church is organized around an ideology of "justice". Its life is shaped by a dynamic and mood of reaction to or "rebellion" against selective elements of the culture. This is not the classic rebellion against God as detailed in the Church's own Scriptures. Many Episcopalians are in open rebellion against God, but that is nothing new nor is it the peculiar property of liberal Episcopalians.

The TEC "rebellion" is not really a rebellion at all--that is, a rising power launching an attack against a dominant controlling power. The TEC leadership IS the power. Hence "rebellion" must always be put in quotes. TEC is not rebelling "against" anything. "Rebellion" is the ritual that reinforces its identity as a structure of power. The necessity of waging a constant "uphill" battle against imaginary oppressors reflects the natural inertia of institutional power, where standing still is going backwards. This explains the perpetual need for "urgent" action. It explains why we have ready lists of candidates offensive to the Anglican majority even while returning Convention delegates are getting off their planes.

The "rebellion" ritual is based on a simple formula: that of shaking one's fist at an imaginary authority figure, one who in reality has long been powerless and unable to resist. The "rebels" champion a class of equally imaginary victims whom they habitually liberate in their ritualized confrontations, such as the latest press releases from Minneapolis and Los Angeles.

Homosexuals are perfect for this present class of victims. To declare them victims based upon crude insults from the middle of the last century is laughable. As a group homosexuals are the antithesis of a victim class. They are themselves an economic surplus: they could only exist as a class because the survival of the species is not at issue. Only a society that is glutted with surpluses can spare the luxury of awarding oppressed status to sexual minorities and providing a social backdrop for their theatrics.

The power of the liberation ritual in a surplus economy is linked entirely to a cultivated emotion of moral outrage, which is the signature of the modern Left in an era when no one (not even the Left) takes Marx seriously. Ideology today is all attitude--an alchemy of badgering and name-calling.

But even at this level the ritual has a social function: to sustain the organization. Given the socio-economic profile of the organization in question--the leftward leaning Episcopal Church with its still sizeable investment portfolio--there is a dynamic of necessity and even urgency. TEC and similar mainstream institutions of a bygone era are in an inevitable decline that began long before it was fashionable to be a radical in an aristocratic institution. 

The radical antics are affectations to lend credence to a waning status quo. Hence they must continue and even intensify, a fact that has nothing to do with long-range goals or heartfelt causes. The mandate for Lesbian bishops is the latest attempt to keep the liberal ball rolling. Institutional inertia, like the struggle for justice, is a never-ending uphill battle.

As a postscript: in today's Episcopal Church "justice" is one of those words that should always be put in quotes.


----The Rev. Canon J. Gary L'Hommedieu is Canon for Pastoral Care at the Cathedral Church of St. Luke, Orlando, Florida, and a regular columnist for VirtueOnline.