Author: leanderharding

Cathedral of All Saints, Albany

The Priesthood And Revelation

This started out as one of a series of meditations on the priesthood given to the clergy of the Diocese Of Albany. I am rewriting and collecting them as a little book tenatively entitled “To Persevere In Love.” I just gave this as a lecture at Trinity Episcopal School For Ministry. Thanks to the dean, faculty and students for the chance to speak with them about a topic that is important to me.

To Persevere In Love
Meditations On the Priesthood

Our talk about ministry and priesthood is oddly imageless, abstract and generic. We speak of ministry, the ministering community, of facilitating gifts, of empowerment, of spirituality for ministry, of the baptismal covenant, of circles rather than pyramids, of mutuality and mutual ministry, of the Roland Allen model, of mission and the missionary church, of reconciliation, inclusion, justice and peace. Less often we talk about the Body of Christ and very seldom or so it seems to me do we hear of Jesus hanging on the cross, appearing after the Resurrection, breathing upon the disciples, Ascending into heaven and there interceding for us as the Great High Priest. What could it mean for the church and all its ministers, lay and ordained, if this image of the Jesus, The Great High Priest were more clearly before us and more carefully developed in our imaginations. So I invite you in what follows to an exercise in imagination.

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Spong Thesis 2 and 4

BISHOP SPONG AND THE INCARNATION
BY
THE REV. LEANDER S. HARDING, PH.D.

The third of Bishop Spong’s theses that we are taking up in this series includes number 2 and number 4 in his manifesto. His second thesis is:Since God can no longer be conceived in theistic terms, it becomes nonsensical to seek to understand Jesus as the incarnation of the theistic deity. So the Christology of the ages is bankrupt. Thesis number 4 is: The virgin birth, understood as literal biology, makes Christ’s divinity, as traditional understood, impossible.

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Spong Thesis 2

BISHOP SPONG AND THE FALL
BY
THE REV. LEANDER S. HARDING, PH.D.

The second thesis of John Spong we are taking up in this series is the third in his manifesto: The biblical story of the perfect and finished creation from which human beings fell into sin is pre-Darwinian mythology and post-Darwinian nonsense.

Spong treats the concept of the fall and the story of Adam and Eve in a chapter in his book, Why Christianity Must Change or Die, entitled, “Jesus As Rescuer: An Image That Has To Go.” He quite accurately outlines the traditional story of salvation history which begins with a good and loving God freely creating a good creation and as the pinnacle of that creation God creates the man and the woman in his image and likeness. God places the man and the woman in the garden and gives them dominion over the earth. Then the snake appears on the scene and tempts Adam and Eve to break the one commandment that God has given them. Sin enters in and the original relationship with God is broken. From this original sin evil spreads. Traditional theology says that we are all affected by Original Sin and stand in need of an antidote for this sin. God deals with sin and evil by calling Abraham and by giving the law through Moses, by sending the prophets and in the fullness of time, Christ to be the sacrifice for sin. By his death and resurrection Jesus Christ restores our fellowship with God and gives us the gift of eternal life. This basic narrative of salvation Spong calls “Jesus the divine rescuer” which is “dead wood of the past” which “must be cleared out so that new life has a chance to grow.”

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Spong’s Theses

MUST CHRISTIANITY CHANGE OR DIE?
A RESPONSE TO BISHOP SPONG
BY
THE REV. LEANDER S. HARDING, PH.D.

The first of Bishop Spong’s Theses that we will take up is thesis number 1: Theism, as a way of defining God is dead. So most theological God-talk is today meaningless. A new way to speak of God must be found.

Theism is the belief that there is a God who is distinct from and not dependent on the cosmos. Christian Theism is the belief that this God has revealed himself in creation and history and perfectly in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ who has taught us to call this God,” Our Father.” In order to understand more clearly what John Spong means by his theses I have consulted his book, Must Christianity Change or Die? Harper Collins, 1998

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Blessed St. Edwin

Ed Friedman is probably the most comprehensively worshipped authority in the Episcopal Church. Rabbi Friedman was famous for applying the Family Systems Theory of Dr. Murray Bowen to congregational life and leadership. Liberals and Conservatives, Reappraisers and Reasserters may share little else but a reverence for Ed Friedman.

A central concept in Friedman’s opus was “leadership by differentiation of self.” This leadership posture was contrasted by Friedman to leadership by force of personality and persusasion, which he thought produced overdependent followers and a cult like ethos, or leadership through consensus, which he thought empowered the “emotional terrorists” and tended to produce “peace mongers.” (The vintage Friedman terms remind me of the wonderful combination of Sigmund Freud and Henny Youngman that the Rabbi was in person. He wowed his audiences including the House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church.)

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An Open Letter To Bishops Who Support The Decisions Of General Convention 2003

I am trying to understand what you are professing and teaching both explicitly and implicitly by your votes at the General Convention, by your public statements and by your participation in the consecration in New Hampshire.

1. It appears to me that you are teaching more than a strategy of pastoral care of homosexual persons by making exceptions to the church’s received norms. It appears to me that you are teaching that homosexuality is part of God’s original plan and order for the creation on the order of God’s creation of humanity as male and female and that this “gift of God” should be celebrated in the sacraments of the church.

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Revelation vs Mystery

This is a response that I gave at the first Episcopal Church Foundation Fellows Conference at House Of Redeemer in New York in I think December of 2000. All the papers and responses were ultimately published in the ATR. Without too much difficulty you can reconstruct the outlines of the paper to which I am responding. Dr. Pressler is arguing for an inductive definition of communion. That is he is for looking at the churches that claim membership in the communion and asking what are the minimal conditions for communion that can be discerned from this investigation. In this article I identify the reasons that cause first world and two thirds world Anglicans to categorize their opponents as inherently immoral in their approach to theology. I make some suggestions for a theological rationale for a pastoral response by the South to the irregularities in the churches of the North.

A Reply to Titus Presler’s “Old and New In Worship and Community”
by Leander S. Harding

1. Titus Presler and I were colleagues in the Diocese of Massachusetts and I remember being spellbound as he recounted some of his missionary experience. I am very appreciative of Dr. Presler’s capacity to enter deeply into the experience of African Christianity and the art with which he is able to convey that experience to us. I remember many years ago being inspired and challenged by his experience in Zimbabwe. Something vital and refreshing of the Spirit of Christ had touched him and through his talk touched me as well. It is wonderful to have a chance to hear more of that story.

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Christianity And The World Religions

A Reflection On Christianity And The World Religions
By
The Rev. Leander S. Harding, Ph.D.
Lent, 2002

Much of what I have to say in this talk I have learned from the work of the great missionary thinker, Bishop Leslie Newbigin. There is a branch of study called the sociology of knowledge. Sociologists of knowledge, such as Peter Berger, talk about the “plausibility structure” of a society. In every group, in every society, every civilization there are things which “everybody knows” and which are accepted uncritically and in which the rational and conceptional framework of the society are embedded. Recently we have been stunned by polls that show that many people in the Muslim world do not accept that the September 11 terrorists were Muslims but in that world “everybody knows” that Muslims do not do such things. Either they were not really Muslims or they didn’t really do what they are said to have done. It is not that people are being illogical or irrational it is just that they are thinking within the plausibility structure of their own world view. There was a time when everybody knew that the world was flat and that the sun revolved around the earth. From time to time things happen which call into question that which everyone knows. The important thing to understand is that there is not such a thing as a pure and neutral rationality and that all reason is carried by a community of understanding and is rooted in fundamental convictions which must be taken on faith, on premises which can not be established on any other basis.

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