As Christmas Passes

As Christmas Passes

Commentary on the Christmas 2002 message from the Bishop of New Westminster

A View From The Pew
by Gerry Hunter

It is the 10th day of Christmas. In spite of the efforts of most of the secular world, here in the West, believing Christians have celebrated the Feast of the Nativity. By and large, it has been heartening to see that the efforts to downplay the true meaning of the Christmas season have had a rougher ride than usual. Believers cannot be sorry that the efforts of the Royal Canadian Mint, to change the twelve days of Christmas into the twelve days of "giving" turned into a marketer's nightmare. Also, efforts in Toronto to change the Christmas tree to a "holiday" tree did not fare well, either. As we begin a new calendar year, though, it appears that efforts are being made in the church to achieve a success in secularization which the rest of society failed to.

At one Vancouver workplace, efforts at secularization were indeed intense. Christians there received an e-mail from one of the formations in the workplace which takes a special interest in attacking Christianity. It listed 25 items to celebrate during the "holiday season." Christmas indeed appeared on the list. It was last. It should come as no surprise to a believer that there is much turmoil to be found where I work. It is very interesting to note that the favored recourse in response to the situation is a process known as alternative dispute resolution (ADR). It is every bit as distressing to note from the pews that ADR will be, it appears, the preferred response to the situation here in the Diocese of New Westminster.

That workplace gave people an opportunity, just before the Christmas season, to obtain some insight into what drives the ADR process. As I mentioned, there has been some turmoil.

ADR, being the pop psychology flavor of the month, is being trotted out there as the means to cope with the turmoil. In an effort to soften people up for this processing, they were subjected to an exercise in moral relativism at a gathering of their division. They were presented with a cast of characters. There was a lecherous riverboat captain, who offered to ferry a woman across the river to see a man she loved, if she would go to bed with the captain. She did, and he did. There was a friend of the woman, who flatly refused to become involved in the situation at all. There was the man the woman loved, who on learning of what she had done, rejected her with disdain. And finally, there was a second man, who on hearing of what happened, beat up the man who rejected the woman. Now here is the exercise that was given: People were to rank order the participants in this little drama from most honorable to least honorable. In spite of the fact that there was absolutely no evidence of honorable behavior in this scenario, the room full of people obediently set about trying to do this task. It was very chilling to observe. The exercise was led by the corporate coordinator of the ADR process in that workplace, assisted by the author of the celebration list which placed Christmas dead last.

For years now, Christians have watched while the secular world has attempted to exclude Jesus Christ from Christmas, but still retain a meaningful "holiday." From here in the pews, we could watch this year while the bishop of New Westminster, attuned as always to the culture, made his contribution to this attempt. In fact, he did the culture one better. The culture, of course, sets feeling good as the ultimate goal of existence. The bishop, not to be outdone, has gone one step further. When it comes to the meaning of Christmas, the bishop has set feelings as the measure of its meaning and reality. On a visit to the Church of the Nativity, he relates, he felt nothing. Feeling nothing became for him the criterion for consigning all of the Christian history and tradition around Christmas to the waste bin. Having done so, he moved on to replace Jesus Christ, whose birth Christianity commemorates, and who is alive today interceding for us with his Father, with a "Christ" which somehow occupies the (undefined) space between people. When feelings become the measure of all things, very strange things can result.

The bishop is no doubt very pleased with the way that the ADR process is unfolding[1]. By all indications, he finds himself involved in a process where his psychological "Christ" of feelings has completely displaced the Second Person of the Holy Trinity. Certainly, the bishop could not want a facilitator more amenable to his apparent mindset. After all, a man who can say, "I see this as almost a ritual, sacramental event," when referring to ADR is very unlikely to threaten the predominance of the bishop's "Christ in the gaps." This facilitator, given a stranglehold on communications out of the process, has listed a number of values that the people in the meeting room shared. From here in the pews, we are left to wonder what, if any place, virtue and truth have in that room. One will be left to wonder in the pews what exercises, comparable to the rank ordering of honor among the dishonorable, the participants will undertake. When feelings and values have precedence over truth and virtue, very strange things can result.

From the pews, one need not long wonder about the state of the Anglican Church in Canada, after one glimpses these developments. It is one thing when a culture sees fit to exclude Jesus Christ from Christmas, and sets a high value on a process where everything is reduced to a commodity with a value, like a pork belly. That turn of events is sad. However, when a bishop of the church seeks to remove Jesus Christ from Christmas, and his fellow bishops succeed in placing the fate of believers in that bishop's diocese in the outcome of a "ritual, sacramental event" such as ADR, the turn of events has gone well beyond sad. One can only wonder who is happier at the moment, the Canadian bishops who openly support the bishop of New Westminster, or those who do not, but who went along with this scheme. As for the feelings in the pew about these bishops, there are some feelings that it is best not to get in touch with.

So now, as Christmas ends, we see from the pews a bishop who has long denied the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, and who has most recently endeavored to erase any meaning His historical birth has for the celebration of Christmas, in what for him must be a wonderful position. Thanks to his fellow bishops, those who stand for the faith once delivered to the Saints have been firmly delivered into a process which defines their strengths out of existence.

Meanwhile, the bishop and his minions are free to prepare for the mid-January council of war to consolidate his position[2]. With any news coming from this process firmly in my hands of someone for who, apparently, ADR and the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ can be referred to with the same term, the bishop certainly could not want those who oppose his apostasy in any other position than the one in which they now find themselves. Meanwhile, in the pews, the Christian worth and measure of those responsible for this turn of events in Canada, and those worldwide who keep silence as it is left to unfold and inflict itself upon the believers in the diocese, is becoming, every day, clearer and clearer.

It is ironic indeed that the Christmas which saw non-Christians in the culture react as they did to secularization also sees an erstwhile expression of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church of Jesus Christ acting as it is currently doing to the same process.

First published January 2003 by Classical Anglican Net News
http://www.anglican.tk