The release of the report from the Task Force for Reimagining the Episcopal Church yesterday has so far produced a lot of reading and a few initial comments, but it will likely take a couple of days for fuller responses to be framed. One exception is the Crusty Old Dean (the Very Rev Tom Ferguson, Dean of Bexley Hall Seminary), who found time yesterday to pore through the report and offer his reactions.
Crusty gives the task force credit for naming the problems, but it goes downhill from there:
The TREC report is an ungodly, inchoate mishamash of the hyperspecific and the almost incompetently vague. It will end up advancing nothing, it will sink under the weight of its own incomprehensible proposals.
Whilst finding some areas to damn with faint praise, such as its use of biblical imagery in the introduction,
But so far so good: then TREC nailed the biblical metaphor. COD winced at its previous Lazarus metaphor, since Lazarus, theologically speaking, is a metaphor for resuscitation, not resurrection, and Crusty didn’t think it appropriate for revisioning the church. Resurrection follows death, not resuscitation. Jesus is born to a new mode of existence, Lazarus is resuscitated temporarily in the same rotten body that will die again.
COD loved the Luke metaphor here. Movement precedes institution, practice precedes structure. Let’s got out in that world, and be nimble, people!
nevertheless, Crusty’s own choice of scripture for the report is less uplifting:
I come back to the quote which has been at the top of this blog from the very first day I set it up.
Let the dead bury their own dead.
It is not possible, in summary form, to do justice to the work Crusty has put into reading and digesting the meat of the report. Read his whole analysis here, and check back in the next day or so for more reactions and reimaginings of the report.
Posted by Rosalind Hughes
UPDATE 12/16/14 7:30pm
You can find earlier comments on yesterday’s post at https://episcopal.cafe/breaking-trec-releases-final-report-for-consideration-by-general-convention/
Another blog response can be found here: https://gracerector.wordpress.com/2014/12/15/strike-up-nearer-my-god-to-thee-the-titanic-aka-episcopal-church-is-sinking/
And for a slightly different view, see https://draughtingtheology.wordpress.com/2014/12/16/we-asked-for-change-and-they-delivered-thoughts-on-the-trec-report/
This is, of course, just a sampling of the wisdom on the web; the Acts 8 movement is gathering blogposts until Friday, after which they will link to a round-up of opinions:http://www.acts8moment.org/blogforce-scramble-the-final-trec-report/