Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2011-12-21/bishop-mariann-edgar-budde
A decade of schism in the American Episcopal Church has taken a toll. New polls show the number of Episcopalians in the U.S. has dipped below two million for the first time in modern history. The church is losing conservatives who say it is too secular and accepting of gays and lesbians. Liberals are leaving to find spirituality not based on a centuries-old theology. The first female bishop of the Washington D.C. diocese -- one of the nation’s largest and home to the National Cathedral -- has a plan. She’s looking for ways to grow the church and bring people together. Diane talks with the Right Reverend Mariann Budde about saving the Episcopal Church.
Guests
Mariann Edgar Budde
Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, D. C.
Program Highlights
The Right Reverend Mariann Budde was consecrated as Bishop of the Washington, D.C. Diocese last month in the National Cathedral which is marred by cracks resulting from an earthquake. She sees a metaphor in those cracks within the Cathedral, cracks in the faith whose foundations are crumbling. But she remains resolute in her hope that that can change.
A Significant Nationwide Decline In The Church
Although the Washington Diocese is healthy and large, according to Budde, the Episcopal Church has been experiencing a significant decline nationwide. Budde believes that a lack of investment, as well as a lack of understanding about what people are looking for today in spiritual communities, are just two of many factors contributing to the Church's erosion. "I think we have failed in addressing those core concerns in a systemic and strategic way - that we have become an institution focused on our own survival," Budde said.
The Role Of Women In The Church
When Budde was a child, women weren't allowed to serve in any of the Church's leadership bodies, and girls weren't allowed to be altar servers. But slowly, through democratic processes, Church leadership was convinced that there was no scriptural, theological or other reasons that women shouldn't be allowed into Church councils or other positions of leadership. The Church's views on divorce also changed; when Budde was a child, her own parents divorced, and at the time the Church's views on divorce were as strict as those of the Catholic Church's. "It wasn't just the role of women, but social changes in general that the Episcopal Church, through our democratic policies and processes, began to change," Budde said.
Diversity and Notions of Acceptance
Some congregation members are not entirely comfortable with the changes those democratic policies brought in. A listener wrote that she felt the Episcopalian Church she was born and raised in had turned its back on traditional values because the rector of her church is a lesbian and the American and Episcopal Church flags outside her church have been replaced by a rainbow banner. Budde said the tension between preserving the past and moving forward is never easy, but that the Church has a new understanding of what it means to welcome gay and lesbian members into the congregation. Budde feels that these members should be welcomed in to the Church and know that they have a place in it if they choose.
Traveling The Country
Budde plans to travel around the Diocese "speaking the word" every Sunday to a new congregation around the counties she serves, trying to help strengthen the community. "I miss the peacefulness of an earlier time," she said. "I don't think we're going to go back there. I think we're going to go through this very painful period to another place. And part of that newness will be letting people who want to leave, leave," Budde said.
You can read the full transcript here.
Comments
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The demise of the Episcopal denomination provides great evidence that holy Scripture is correct. Women have proved themselves wholly incapable of resisting heresies. Mrs. Schories has proved herself the worst leader - spiteful and vindictive. Her espousal of various heresies is easily proved with a five minute google search.
The "faith once delivered to the saints" would be unrecognizable by Episcopalians.
The person who stated that "if we cannot welcome gays and lesbians we should not baptize them" understands neither baptism nor homosexuality. Baptism is not fire insurance. It is not a "get out of hell free:" card. It is not a sign of cheap grace or an excuse for sin. Evangelicals who still remain within the Episcopal Church are watching Bishop Budde very closely. In a sense, because she is - technically - a "born again" Christian, she is one of us. But the cure for the revisionist liberal church is not more liberalism and more revisionism and watering down of the gospel. I appreciate Bishop Budde's life experience - especially as the child of divorced parents, with all the pain that entails. But if she really wants to practice a courageous and radical faith, she'll look at the active and undying faith in the AMIA and ADV congregations who have now left the Episcopal Church. That's where the families are. That's where the young people in DC go to church. They don't have a problem balancing their liturgy and their homilies - and despite the Episcopal Church's desire to expropriate them, they don't have a problem paying the bills.
The other thing I noticed was the Bishop Budde kind of slipped when the question of the three-legged Anglican "stool" - scripture, tradition and reason - came up. The original citation from Richard Hooker's "Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity reads thus: "“What Scripture doth plainly deliver, to that the first place both of credit and obedience are due; the next whereunto, is what any man can necessarily conclude by force of Reason; after this, the voice of the church succeedeth.” (The last being what we generally call 'Tradition"). What Bishop Budde said, stumbling a little bit - she first inserted the Wesleyan fourth leg - Experience - as part of the Anglican stool, then quickly corrected herself to say "Reason", and then gave it to mean that Reason is predominant (NOT what Hooker said) and that - in contrast to a Protestant viewpoint - that individual thought is subsumed under the collective of the Church - which is Hooker's last resort. Now, it is not entirely self-evident that "Scripture doth plainly deliver" in I Timothy 2:12 that women should never teach or hold a teaching office in the church. The teaching office of bishops is central to the Roman Catholic magisterium, the importance of which is one thing (as much as I disagree with him on most questions of moral theology) that Bishop Budde's episcopal neighbor Shannon Johnston does in fact understand pretty well. This question of leading and teaching - and who is able to do so (by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit) is really the central question facing the Church today. If you think that proof-texting is out of bounds, I guess that is just tough, but I've always held Matthew 7:6 as definitive on this question: "You shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles ?"
I am an almost-Episcopalian: my flirtation with church ended in the late seventies, when I attended a service at National Cathedral in honor of women's suffrage. The choir sang a hymn containing the lines "lift from our lives the blanket of convention." After a bit of a struggle, I resumed my belief that women should vote, but I knew enough about what lay beneath the blanket of convention to conclude that the EC was not for me. I subsequently became a Catholic.
Although I do not have a fundamentalist bone in my body, brushing aside the Bible or interpreting in weird ways because it does not fit the Zeitgeist just will not do. The German Christians did just this in the 1930s. And peacemaking strategies that may have worked in 1980 are insufficient now. Nor do I have any reason to believe that the liberals have reached an end point to their attack on what they call "bronze age myths" (such as that human beings, male and female alike, are created in the image of God). And conservative Anglican groups are schisming as well.
The whole business began when Henry VIII decided to subordinate the C of E to his personal agendas, and got away it.
Phil Devine