As The Shooting Starts

As The Shooting Starts

A View From The Pew
by Gerry Hunter

When first under fire an' you're wishful to duck,
Don't look nor take 'eed at the man that is struck,
Be thankful you're livin', and trust to your luck
And march to your front like a soldier.

Rudyard Kipling, The Young British Soldier

The lesson for the people in the pews from Kipling’s life is that no one will much appreciate a mirror that faithfully reflects what is incident upon it. No knighthood for this accurate reflector; no chance at being poet laureate. His honours, most notably his Nobel Prize in literature, came from outside the society he starkly mirrored in his writings. But his candor led to some worthwhile insights, and now that the shooting has started here in New Westminster, people in the pews can benefit from reflecting on them.

The Bishop of New Westminster has fired the first shot, and George W. Bush would be proud of him. In Iraq, Bush’s generals caused the first shots to be directed at Saddam Hussein, in what was termed a “decapitation strike.” In New Westminster, the Bishop has had his Chancellor direct the first shots at Bishop Terry Buckle. Ironic, indeed, that the Bishop would be so quick to emulate the tactics adopted by the leader of a war in which Diocesan Council minutes indicate he has concluded, “the four criteria for a ’just war’ have not been met.”

The shots were wild shots, though, not precision strikes, by any stretch of the imagination. Mr. Cadman suggests that Bishop Buckle’s action was “a direct violation of Bishop Ingham's desire that people engage in a process of reconciliation as requested by the national House of Bishops.” Quite apart from the difficulty posed by dealing with the concept of the “violation” of a “desire,” one wonders about the strength of a “desire” for something that Bishop Ingham repeatedly identified as going nowhere, on more than one occasion, before it even got started.

Clearly Bishop Ingham has opted to deploy ballistic, rather than precision, weaponry. The Chancellor states that, “He [Bishop Buckle] has made his offer before any blessings have taken place - even before Bishop Ingham has issued a rite.” Now quite apart from the angst this fact must be causing the parishes that want to get on with blessing the unblessable (Is Bishop Ingham out to satisfy anyone but himself, one might wonder?), there is no reference at all to Bishop Ingham’s constant and repeated assertions that he is indeed going to do so. So much, it seems, for precision.

Mind you, the manifested lack of targeting skill in the Chancellor’s statement is so bad that the use of precision weaponry would have been very wasteful indeed. We read about, “The Bishop of Yukon's offer, and its acceptance by the leadership of seven of our parishes,” in the statement. It was, in fact, the congregation members, assembled at special general vestry meetings, who received and (overwhelmingly) accepted Bishop Buckle’s offer. Or perhaps the decision to go ballistic was a necessary one, since no known precision targeting system could lock onto Bishop Buckle, given the signals it was getting from the Canadian House of Bishops (don’t do it), and the legal situation of Bishop Ingham (he has no authority to do it)?

Now that the shooting has started, Kipling’s advice to march forward is especially well taken here in the pews. After all, there may well be hits taken, but not from precision weaponry in the hands of skilled marksmen.

If your officer's dead and the sergeants look white,
Remember it's ruin to run from a fight:
So take open order, lie down, and sit tight,
And wait for supports like a soldier.

In the run-up to the shooting, we in the pews have certainly been subjected to a lot of softening up attacks by the forces of revision. We have had officers as casualties: one priest who left the ministry altogether during the run-up prior to the June 2002 synod, and another who moved to Europe after it, come quickly to mind. And looking around in the pews, it sure hasn’t been difficult to spot a few folks who looked rather pale. But the supports have indeed come.

It has not been easy in the pews to emulate Elisha, who knew all the time that the hosts of the Lord God were at hand to assist in the battle (2 Kings 6: 16-17). As they were then, so they are now. Over time, though, visible “supports” have come. A faithful Bishop has come forward at great risk; six Primates supported him; the Bishop of Saskatchewan, on Ash Wednesday, circulated a letter that absolutely tore Bishop Ingham’s assertions and arguments to shreds (Now THAT was a manifestation of precision, not to mention faithfulness and intellect!); a seventh Primate has joined the first six in support of Bishop Buckle. Indeed, we are, as proclaimed in Hebrews 12, “surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses,” and the cloud is not dissipating. So then, here in the pews, there is every reason to continue to “run with perseverance the race that is set before us.” And we will do so, even if at times in the future, we have to take the same advice as Kipling gave to the British Tommys to lie down, sit tight, and wait for supports, before we can resume running forward.

But the worst o' your foes is the sun over'ead:
You must wear your 'elmet for all that is said:
If 'e finds you uncovered 'e'll knock you down dead,
An' you'll die like a fool of a soldier.

The old sweat in Kipling’s poem commended the recruit’s attention to the dangers he faced, and the equipment with which he had been provided. It’s interesting here that he pointed out the dangers of the environment as “the worst o’ your foes.” In the spiritual war waging in New Westminster, we must not lose sight of the dangers the environment poses to us here in the pews. Those who are shooting at us certainly know the advantages they would gain if we failed to take cognizance of the environment. The Chancellor asserts in his statement:

The vote to proceed with blessing of same sex unions by a clear majority of delegates at the Diocesan Synod last June came after many years of prayerful study. The issue was considered, debated, approved, and consented to, all in accordance with the Canons and Constitution of the Diocese, and of the General Synod.

In addition, he noted:

… Bishop Ingham's desire that people engage in a process of reconciliation as requested by the national House of Bishops.

And he suggests:

It is incongruous that what has been done in such a careful and considerate manner after much thoughtful dialogue and debate is now being attacked by Bishop Buckle making this irregular offer.

Now if Holy Scripture and Christian Tradition don’t support your case, you can always try to process the faithful to death. And heaven knows, that’s been tried. Even as the shooting starts, there is tacit recognition by the revisionists that this weapon could still inflict severe damage to the faithful who stand against Bishop Ingham’s plans. Pop psychology driven process has been one of the dastardliest weapons that has been brought to bear against the faithful, and the time is clearly not yet past when we can ignore the threat from it. It is a part of the environment in which all of these events are taking place, and this secular environment is very fond of it indeed. It’s everywhere. “Thoughtful dialogue and debate” permeates our society, filling the vacuum created by the postmodern assumption that there is no such thing as truth, or right and wrong. Buying into that lie will indeed “knock you down dead” in this spiritual war that is raging. No wonder it is still touted, and presented as being “careful and considerate” when it was anything but. As for asserting that Bishop Buckle was the one attacking it, why, I wonder, does the Chancellor pick on him, when he could have picked on St. Paul?

For the wisdom of this world is folly with God. For it is written, “He catches the wise in their craftiness,” and again, “the Lord knows that the thoughts of the wise are futile.”

1 Cor. 3: 19-20

(Mind you, attacking St. Paul would require the use of precision weaponry, and the choice of the ballistic approach probably precluded that.)

We in the pews also have a helmet, and more. We have the helmet of salvation, a part of the full armour of God that the same St. Paul describes in the 6^th Chapter of Ephesians. And we must trust in the equipment our Lord and Saviour had His Apostle inventory in Holy Scripture for our benefit. Kipling’s old sweat knew the importance of using the equipment the Tommy recruit had been given, too:

When 'arf of your bullets fly wide in the ditch,
Don't call your Martini a cross-eyed old bitch;
She's human as you are -- you treat her as sich,
An' she'll fight for the young British soldier.

We don’t have a Martini rifle, but we do have a sword – “the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God.” Recourse to it in the run-up to the shooting has had little effect on the revisionists. But we dare not set it aside as ineffective for that reason. We can expect efforts to have us do so intensify, not decrease, now that the shooting has started. Notice how the warhead in the Chancellors missile contained no part of it. No, it contained a (somewhat arcane) mixture of worldly ingredients, and the revisionists would dearly love us to fight with the weapons of their choice, rather than those that are a part of the full armour of God. In this spiritual war, though, doing that would be as foolish as the taking off of a soldier’s helmet the old sweat describes. And make no mistake: this is a salvation issue, and we in the pews face eternal death if we succumb to the revisionist temptation, and we know it. But the full armour God has provided will be even more effective against the spiritual poison of secularism that our foes may deploy than the best chemical suit could be against the toxins feared by troops in Iraq.

This could all go on for a while. There will be no quick end to this spiritual battle, we suspect in the pews. I wonder does Bishop Ingham, who has emulated George W. Bush in choosing to attempt decapitation as his first shooting strike, also harbour the thought that he will be able to do us in quickly? Perhaps he should further emulate George W. by losing that thought, since we in the pews never had it to begin with.

And there will be risk. Even as I was writing this, a note from a strident revisionist hit my e-mail in box. It ended:

If you persist in this, you will lose your parish buildings, your priests, and likely your congregations will sharply decline.

All of these things are indeed at risk. We have taken casualties among the ordained; covetous revisionists, in need of capital, will no doubt cast their eyes towards our assets; some people have left our parish, but others have come, and our current growth not withstanding, the dynamics are such that precise numerical predictions would be folly. But here, we part company a bit with Kipling’s Tommy recruit.

The poet, in full candor, painted a very bleak possible ending to a Tommy’s life of service:

When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An' go to your Gawd like a soldier.

No wonder Kipling was never knighted. He knew that the Tommy recruited, trained, and equipped to serve, in the end, the false god of empire, domination, and conquest. We know from twentieth century experience that suicide often accompanies service to these false gods, for, however they are crafted, they always turn out to be bloodthirsty. Kipling knew that the image of the true God had been distorted by his own society, and mirrored that distortion back to the Tommy in the poem, much to the consternation of those who responded by withholding honours from him. Victorian England’s distortion of God was aimed at the glory of the Empire. The revisionist foes we face today in the pews distort God to the erstwhile glory of human beings. But the God who sent His Son to die for us and redeem us has not left us, and never will, though he may indeed call on us to part with some worldly things.

Kipling’s penchant for mirroring accurately the earthly characteristics of the constructs of the society in which he lived was not the only instance of accurate mirroring that brought him into disfavour. He also accurately mirrored that society’s approach to God. To the Victorian Englishman, God was also a Victorian Englishman, and, that Englishman would have argued, for all the right reasons. He has co-opted God into his ventures. Kipling probably never, not even in “The Widow in Windsor,” generated as much venom as he did when he wrote his “Recessional.” Rather than co-opt God for the glory of the Empire, he turned to Him in repentance and humility. The warning he gave to his society is one we would do well to ponder her in the pews today, and the shooting starts in this spiritual war. The opening shot by our foe urges us to fight a worldly, secular battle. But that is not where it will be won. Indeed, there is no victory to be won in the pews. There is only the already won victory of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ to be embraced. I end with the end of Kipling’s warning, in case we ever lose sight of what we have been given, and why we have been given it, and become trapped in the secular snare being so carefully set for us:

For heathen heart that puts her trust
In reeking tube and iron shard--
All valiant dust that builds on dust,
And guarding calls not Thee to guard--
For frantic boast and foolish word,
Thy Mercy on Thy People, Lord!