Ides of March: State of the Church

As a follow up to the previous post, I felt I needed to at least say something about the Church, Anglicanism, and that failing institution, TEC. Frankly, at this point TEC is ecclesiologically analogous to a failed state in political terms. The Presiding Bishop has taken on authority never granted to her under the Constitution or Canons, the General Convention is at a point where folks within the church obey or disobey its edicts at a whim (whether on the left or the right), TEC can no longer interact normally with other churches in Christendom or in Anglicanism, and it is failing economically.

Oh, and as to the latest controversy of the Buddhist bishop of Northern Michigan, I’ve been a party to much discussion, solely listening and not saying anything, about Kevin Thew Forrester.

I just haven’t had much to say.

The reason I don’t have much to say is that when I said the church was going in the wrong direction over an openly homosexual bishop or a twice divorced thrice married bishop, the church didn’t heed the warning. Now we are worried about a buddhist bishop?

If TEC is a city, I hate to inform everyone but TEC isn’t burning anymore. It’s burnt.

Sure, I’m going to show up at Standing Committee and vote no on Forrester. But, it just doesn’t matter anymore. Nothing will happen internationally over this, no higher moral or ecclesiastical authority will be able to do anything about it. The House of Bishops will vote yes, a majority of the standing committees will vote yes, there will be much gnashing of the teeth over this, but nothing will ever happen.

Yes, there will be much debate over whether Forrester is a Christian, what is his take on the Trinity, and so on. For me, friends, the debate is over. I’m done with wishful thinking. If a member of TEC clergy couldn’t find enough to do and embrace within the Christian tradition to deepen his relationship with Jesus Christ that he has to embrace Buddhist practices (and forget even theology for a moment), then he doesn’t know the Jesus I know, who continually challenges me. I’m glad Forrester knows how to sit now. Jesus calls us to pick up our cross and follow him. Don’t recall him saying anything about sitting.

Forty years from now, TEC will likely reclaim being a Christian Church in a huge effort to regain its identity. It will affirm the thirty-nine articles, the Nicene Creed, the authority of the Bible, its relationships with other Christian churches. It will affirm Jesus as Lord and Savior. It will have to hit rock bottom in order to do this. Until then, and until all the garbage is out of the system, it won’t have any clue that anything is wrong. Many folks have said lately the TEC has already hit rock bottom. I say they are wrong; there is still dirt flying from the hole, TEC is still digging. When the shovel shatters on a diamond, then TEC might wake up and realize that something might be wrong.

It took the jewish prodigal son feeding pigs and want to eat what the pigs eat to go back to his Father’s house. Jesus knows us pretty well.

Moreover, TEC will be unable to rebuild until it becomes irrelevant to the political left. Hey, it may be burnt, but it belongs to them. Its gay bishop speaks at the Presidential inauguration, its national cathedral calls on the new President to come to church as if he’s someone new in the neighborhood, well, you get the drift.

Much like the economy, things have to get a whole lot worse before they get better.

The question before me is whether I leave the economic ER to go to General Convention this summer. The covenant will not be considered, according to the PB, and so this will largely be a waste of time. I’m seriously thinking not, but feel a serious obligation to the people of Western Louisiana to do what they asked me to do. I’m praying about it.

Ides of March: State of the Economy

After having received a few emails and even verbal inquiries about my ceasing blogging, I decided to take a spare moment to make a post on the blog on the state of things.

My uniform response to those inquiries has been that I am a business bankruptcy lawyer in this economy. What do you think I have been doing?

Over the last two months, my life has been legally what an ER doc’s life would be medically after an atomic bomb goes off. Yes, the economy is precisely that bad. There has been exactly that much need for my services; I have to triage clients on the first phone contact – has anyone filed suit yet, is there a foreclosure pending, is the tax man at the door, has an involuntary bankruptcy petition been filed? Short of that, let’s set our appointment a week or so from now since it appears you won’t “die” between now and then.

As my regular readers know, I have a flair for the overly dramatic. The only thing I have to back up my story is that generally I have been logging the same amount of billable hours each week that I would normally log in a week and a half. There haven’t been any sprints to get ready for long trials, either – with the exception of a short day trial last Thursday out of town, it has been putting out fires, period.

A lot of people ask me where I think all this is going, economically speaking. They ask when we will come out of this, will things get better or worse, and so on. Frankly, things will get worse before they get better, despite stock market rallies, etc. Even when the garbage is taken out of the banking system, credit will not be as available, banks and other institutions will look a lot harder at both old and new deals. It will take two years or better to get all the garbage out of the economic system and get the assets and people back in service, and another three after that to deal with the aftermath of litigation.

In short, my life for the last two months is going to be this way for the next two years, and then will get a little better for the next three, before things return to normal in my law practice.

I’ve now become a keen watcher of the financial news, and I find the latest proclamations of peace and prosperity by talking heads in the economy by talking heads and our President to be interesting. Reminds me of the movie the Killing Fields when Phenom Penh celebrates the end of the war between the government and the Khmer Rouge, yet one trip over to the hospital where the wounded and dying are tells a different story. And then things really get worse, sort of like the economic pogrom against Capitalism Obama and his administration has in store for us.

God created this world of plenty and famine, of economic boom and bust. They are cycles, they are here to teach us something, about faith, about values, and about ourselves. You can study it in the Bible, you can see it in our history. Moreover, socialism is doomed to failure due to human nature. As long as someone else has something someone else wants or needs, you will end up with either capitalism or violence. Rules and regulations will not make people ethical, much less Christian. People are always trying to find a way around the rules, especially where the rules are unjust and deny freedom. Rules are there for those that have no ethics; too many rules makes everyone unethical and corrupt. We get rid of our Christian moorings as a society, and, well, look what happens – we become corrupt, so we make more rules, and ultimately become more corrupt.

In any event, this will be the first week I am not staring at a calendar for the week wherein I’ll be out of town for two or three days. Hopefully, I’ll get caught up. I find myself praying for those who still have the time to fight the good fight for Christianity in these times. For right now, I am tending to the economically wounded and dying. God made me for these times, and I feel his pleasure in what I am doing, despite being exhausted.