Some preliminary thoughts on Anglican responses to Covid-19
What a time to be alive. I recall a conversation between a fellow seminarian and one of our New Testament professors during my time at Providence wherein the student suggested that maybe we should pray to receive more suffering. The professor immediately exclaimed, "NO! We never pray for more suffering, suffering will always come, we pray for the grace to get through it faithfully."
I've thought a lot about that conversation over the years, and especially now, in the middle of a global pandemic. Three weeks ago, my wife and I were still planning on spending her Spring Break in Lisbon. Two days later, I was booking a flight home from the UK in an attempt to get back to Canada before borders and airports started shutting down. Beyond the re-location, my own life hasn't changed much, I continue to sit at a desk reading books all day, except now I get to do that at the family farm instead of a moldy office on the edge of the University of Birmingham. I have a deep appreciation for this privilege, and I'm daily humbled by it. However, very many people are suffering greatly during this time, and I have to say, governments, churches, and businesses have largely responded in quite admirable ways to try to alleviate this suffering.
While there are many things that could be said about the church's response during this 'time of the virus', I wanted to focus on a particular debate unfolding in Anglicanism that I feel my research has at least some relevance to. This debate has been around what to do with the Eucharist in the time of the virus. To provide some background, Ephraim Radner wrote a piece early on in the crisis suggesting that churches should not live-stream our worship, but that we should treat this as a time in the wilderness where we do not break bread together because of the exceptional circumstances of the times. He writes,
While most jurisdictions are going ahead with some sort of digital offerings, where the debate has particularly sharpened is around the Eucharist. There are several dimensions to this. In the UK, the Archbishops closed all church buildings, even to clergy, except in janitorial capacities. Clergy were encouraged, if they so desired, to offer digital access to services from their homes. This provoked reactions from the Bishops of London and Chichester that clarified that clergy could indeed go by themselves, in certain circumstances following appropriate safe-guards, and offer various liturgies, including the Eucharist in the church. Further to this, the Archdeacon of Hastings, in the Diocese of Chichester has questioned if the Archbishops' guidelines do not in fact contravene law, insofar as in many parishes in the CofE, the incumbent is the one in whom the benefice of the parish is vested. There is ambiguity as to whether the bishops have the legal authority to forbid clergy from their buildings, particularly when the UK government has not yet taken this step, leaving provision in their list of essential services for clergy to continue celebrating and recording services in their buildings. The Archdeacon raised questions about the nature of consecrated places, are they consecrated in a single once-for all act of consecration, or are they consecrated precisely because of the presence of our ongoing worship?
But beneath whether a service of any kind can be celebrated in a church building by a small group or a single clergy-person alone, there is a deeper question, one that is more relevant in the Canadian context, about whether certain services should be celebrated at all. The Ontario Bishops have issued a statement that there will be no Eucharistic services in that ecclesial province at this time, as an act of solidarity with those laity who are unable to gather in the sacrament of communion. But what is the basis for this 'solidarity'? I have seen theologians and clergy thinking 'out-loud' on social media suggesting that there are various scriptural examples of leaders going through fasting and suffering with their people for a season, Moses did not see the promised land, Christ fasted for 40 days in the wilderness, etc. There may be a way to scripturally reason one's way to this position from these texts, but the question that should be asked is, is this necessary? Or, put differently, is solidarity best expressed with the laity by clergy abandoning their ordained role in the body as ministers of Word and Sacrament, or by continuing to perform the sacraments on behalf of all of us who are participating in prayer and faith from home?
Fortuitously, the BCP, written at a time in which plague was far more commonplace, has some guidance in the rubrics of the section on Ministry to the Sick (in my 1959 edition, it is on page 584). There, we find the following:
The issue seems to be, can the Eucharist be performed alone by a priest. Protestants generally have said no, and Article XXX suggests that the Eucharist, in both forms, should not be denied to the laity as a matter of general practice. Articles XXV and XXVIII both specify that the sacrament should be 'duly used' and not 'reserved, carried about, lifted up, or worshipped.' Clearly, various aspects of Roman piety are in view in these polemical addendums, with the purpose being that we recognize what kind of symbol the Eucharist is and what is appropriate in its use. Interestingly, there was very little theological debate when Anglican Bishops began banning reception in both kinds at the beginning of this crisis, citing the tradition that to receive in one kind is in fact a full communion, even though the BCP seems much more concerned about restricting access to the cup than it does about getting people to abstain altogether for public health reasons. Fundamentally, then, it seems the emphasis is on the Eucharist as a meal that should be received in faith for it to have any wholesome effect - it is strictly not magic.
But the question, 'what kind of symbol is this?' does not have a straightforward answer in its particulars, at least in Anglicanism, according to Jay Zysk's book, Shadow and Substance. Zysk reads the English reformation debates around the sacraments in terms of changing semiotic assumptions of the time. In our own digital age, it is clear that a) we never fully resolved our sacramental semiotics and b) digital mediation has introduced new questions of semiotics that should be addressed in such a resolution. In like manner, Presiding Bishop, Michael Curry of the Episcopal Church, has written a helpful reflection that asks us to consider 'how much' a given act or symbol means, not whether it is permissible.
And so, it is to this question that I now turn, what does it mean to have a digital Eucharist? A word that has been trotted out in derision by many who are skeptical of such a thing is "simulacra," but, if we remember our Baudrillard, perhaps a simulacra is not in fact something that is less real, but perhaps it is the most real thing there is. It is at least a suggestive way to understand the way a sacrament is that which it signifies. Does further digital mediation of an already deeply mediatorial sign-act distort its function as a symbol, or merely highlight its symbolic nature? I'm not sure what the answers to these sorts of questions might be, but I do think they at least open up a way of thinking about the semiotics of the Eucharist in a way that do not prima facie rule out its digital mediation. Though, my instinct is, that we would want to use something like a digital Eucharist as a pastoral extension for times such as these. There would, I think, be something lost if we forsook a material Eucharist as we are accustomed to it as a matter of normative practice.
A further, and related question is, what does it mean to move an action or a symbol, or indeed a symbolic-action, into digital space? What is the nature of digital space? Is 'space' even the right term to be using here? There is no bodily extension in cyber-space, yet if we take space/place to be, as Jeff Malpas does, the necessary structure for meaning and agency to occur. According to Malpas, for intelligible action to occur, it must already be placially located, our ability to narratively describe a given act is predicated on our ability to spatially relate to that act, and thus, give an orderly account of it. This implies that space/place is both a necessary pre-requisite for action and that action fixes/determines a particular place. What do these abstractions have to do with digital space? Simply this, we think that we can indeed perform intelligible actions, be that communications or otherwise, in digital media, so it is not entirely inappropriate to consider cyber-space or digital-space as its own kind of placial reality in which meaningful actions can and are taken by various agents.
Now, the phenomenological account of place and intelligibility that Malpas defends requires that we are embodied - is this where digital-spaces break down? What does embodiment mean in digital space? Embodiment, for all its trendiness in contemporary discourse, is notoriously hard to nail down, can embodiment be extended digitally through an account of human making that takes seriously the way we extend ourselves through our work into digital space? Various trends in transhumanism and posthumanism suggest this may be the case. Can our digital avatars be seen as extensions of our embodied existence in the world, an extension that allows us to occupy the cyber-space that we collectively create and enact?
If cyber-space 'exists', what is the church's role in occupying that space? That probably goes beyond the scope of the present response to how churches should continue as a Eucharistic community in a time of social distancing, but these are questions that aren't going away. Perhaps now is the time to dig into them. I've tried to point to some resources in Anglican tradition and contemporary critical theory that could help us do this. In a time of crisis, the church must respond. It would be inappropriate, I think, if our response amounted to no more than an abandonment of our Eucharistic life and condemnation of the emerging world of cyber space that is accelerating during this crisis. Bishop Geoff Woodcoft, my own diocesan bishop, in a comment to the Winnipeg Free Press, suggested that the death-date of the institutional Anglican Church of Canada had been moved up from 2040 to 2020 due to the extra strain of this crisis. This may prove true as a matter of finances, but it must not, for the sake of the world, be a result of the abandonment by our church of the ministry of word in sacrament in all times and places.
I've thought a lot about that conversation over the years, and especially now, in the middle of a global pandemic. Three weeks ago, my wife and I were still planning on spending her Spring Break in Lisbon. Two days later, I was booking a flight home from the UK in an attempt to get back to Canada before borders and airports started shutting down. Beyond the re-location, my own life hasn't changed much, I continue to sit at a desk reading books all day, except now I get to do that at the family farm instead of a moldy office on the edge of the University of Birmingham. I have a deep appreciation for this privilege, and I'm daily humbled by it. However, very many people are suffering greatly during this time, and I have to say, governments, churches, and businesses have largely responded in quite admirable ways to try to alleviate this suffering.
While there are many things that could be said about the church's response during this 'time of the virus', I wanted to focus on a particular debate unfolding in Anglicanism that I feel my research has at least some relevance to. This debate has been around what to do with the Eucharist in the time of the virus. To provide some background, Ephraim Radner wrote a piece early on in the crisis suggesting that churches should not live-stream our worship, but that we should treat this as a time in the wilderness where we do not break bread together because of the exceptional circumstances of the times. He writes,
"Should we live stream worship at this time? Maybe not. At least we should think about why, to what end, and with what consequences. We cannot, nor should we, seek to give the impression that life “goes on as normal.” It never did, after all."Wise words. These are not normal times, and the church should be cautious about being swept up in the frenetic capitalist speed at which every service in our life is being moved online. Thinking through how and why we might do this is important. Nevertheless, churches have been broadcasting their worship for the better part of a century now, first by radio, then on television, and now via podcast or live-stream. That many Anglicans seem to have a hang-up with using technology in this way is something that needed challenging long before a global pandemic struck. While I love the materiality of Anglican worship, there is something to be said for the charismatic and evangelical adoption and implementation of new technologies in the promulgation of Christian worship that has allowed their movements to thrive and grow while the Anglican Church of Canada ponders a recent self-study showing our institutional demise in the next twenty years. In my own diocese, saint benedict's table has been exploring what it means to occupy the 'digital commons' for some time before Covid-19, and have been willing and able to use that infrastructure to allow the church hierarchy to communicate to the faithful during this time of physical-distancing.
While most jurisdictions are going ahead with some sort of digital offerings, where the debate has particularly sharpened is around the Eucharist. There are several dimensions to this. In the UK, the Archbishops closed all church buildings, even to clergy, except in janitorial capacities. Clergy were encouraged, if they so desired, to offer digital access to services from their homes. This provoked reactions from the Bishops of London and Chichester that clarified that clergy could indeed go by themselves, in certain circumstances following appropriate safe-guards, and offer various liturgies, including the Eucharist in the church. Further to this, the Archdeacon of Hastings, in the Diocese of Chichester has questioned if the Archbishops' guidelines do not in fact contravene law, insofar as in many parishes in the CofE, the incumbent is the one in whom the benefice of the parish is vested. There is ambiguity as to whether the bishops have the legal authority to forbid clergy from their buildings, particularly when the UK government has not yet taken this step, leaving provision in their list of essential services for clergy to continue celebrating and recording services in their buildings. The Archdeacon raised questions about the nature of consecrated places, are they consecrated in a single once-for all act of consecration, or are they consecrated precisely because of the presence of our ongoing worship?
But beneath whether a service of any kind can be celebrated in a church building by a small group or a single clergy-person alone, there is a deeper question, one that is more relevant in the Canadian context, about whether certain services should be celebrated at all. The Ontario Bishops have issued a statement that there will be no Eucharistic services in that ecclesial province at this time, as an act of solidarity with those laity who are unable to gather in the sacrament of communion. But what is the basis for this 'solidarity'? I have seen theologians and clergy thinking 'out-loud' on social media suggesting that there are various scriptural examples of leaders going through fasting and suffering with their people for a season, Moses did not see the promised land, Christ fasted for 40 days in the wilderness, etc. There may be a way to scripturally reason one's way to this position from these texts, but the question that should be asked is, is this necessary? Or, put differently, is solidarity best expressed with the laity by clergy abandoning their ordained role in the body as ministers of Word and Sacrament, or by continuing to perform the sacraments on behalf of all of us who are participating in prayer and faith from home?
Fortuitously, the BCP, written at a time in which plague was far more commonplace, has some guidance in the rubrics of the section on Ministry to the Sick (in my 1959 edition, it is on page 584). There, we find the following:
But if a man, either by reason of extremity of sickness, or for want of warning in due time to the Curate, or by any other just impediment, do not receive the Sacrament of Christ's Body and Blood: he shall be instructed that if he do truly repent him of his sins, and stedfastly believe that Jesus Christ hath suffered death upon the Cross for him, and shed his Blood for his redemption, earnestly remembering the benefits he hath thereby, and giving him hearty thanks therefor; he doth eat and drink the Body and Blood of our Saviour Christ profitably to his soul's health, although he do not receive the Sacrament with his mouth (emphasis mine).This rubric is unchanged from at least 1662 and gives warrant for the practice of a spiritual communion in the face of extreme pastoral situations that cause "just impediment" like we now have with the government mandated social-distancing measures. The issue remains, however, that this measure is intended as an extension of the regular gathering of the body for the sacrament of communion. So, do the conditions of Covid-19 substantially change this? Perhaps.
The issue seems to be, can the Eucharist be performed alone by a priest. Protestants generally have said no, and Article XXX suggests that the Eucharist, in both forms, should not be denied to the laity as a matter of general practice. Articles XXV and XXVIII both specify that the sacrament should be 'duly used' and not 'reserved, carried about, lifted up, or worshipped.' Clearly, various aspects of Roman piety are in view in these polemical addendums, with the purpose being that we recognize what kind of symbol the Eucharist is and what is appropriate in its use. Interestingly, there was very little theological debate when Anglican Bishops began banning reception in both kinds at the beginning of this crisis, citing the tradition that to receive in one kind is in fact a full communion, even though the BCP seems much more concerned about restricting access to the cup than it does about getting people to abstain altogether for public health reasons. Fundamentally, then, it seems the emphasis is on the Eucharist as a meal that should be received in faith for it to have any wholesome effect - it is strictly not magic.
But the question, 'what kind of symbol is this?' does not have a straightforward answer in its particulars, at least in Anglicanism, according to Jay Zysk's book, Shadow and Substance. Zysk reads the English reformation debates around the sacraments in terms of changing semiotic assumptions of the time. In our own digital age, it is clear that a) we never fully resolved our sacramental semiotics and b) digital mediation has introduced new questions of semiotics that should be addressed in such a resolution. In like manner, Presiding Bishop, Michael Curry of the Episcopal Church, has written a helpful reflection that asks us to consider 'how much' a given act or symbol means, not whether it is permissible.
And so, it is to this question that I now turn, what does it mean to have a digital Eucharist? A word that has been trotted out in derision by many who are skeptical of such a thing is "simulacra," but, if we remember our Baudrillard, perhaps a simulacra is not in fact something that is less real, but perhaps it is the most real thing there is. It is at least a suggestive way to understand the way a sacrament is that which it signifies. Does further digital mediation of an already deeply mediatorial sign-act distort its function as a symbol, or merely highlight its symbolic nature? I'm not sure what the answers to these sorts of questions might be, but I do think they at least open up a way of thinking about the semiotics of the Eucharist in a way that do not prima facie rule out its digital mediation. Though, my instinct is, that we would want to use something like a digital Eucharist as a pastoral extension for times such as these. There would, I think, be something lost if we forsook a material Eucharist as we are accustomed to it as a matter of normative practice.
A further, and related question is, what does it mean to move an action or a symbol, or indeed a symbolic-action, into digital space? What is the nature of digital space? Is 'space' even the right term to be using here? There is no bodily extension in cyber-space, yet if we take space/place to be, as Jeff Malpas does, the necessary structure for meaning and agency to occur. According to Malpas, for intelligible action to occur, it must already be placially located, our ability to narratively describe a given act is predicated on our ability to spatially relate to that act, and thus, give an orderly account of it. This implies that space/place is both a necessary pre-requisite for action and that action fixes/determines a particular place. What do these abstractions have to do with digital space? Simply this, we think that we can indeed perform intelligible actions, be that communications or otherwise, in digital media, so it is not entirely inappropriate to consider cyber-space or digital-space as its own kind of placial reality in which meaningful actions can and are taken by various agents.
Now, the phenomenological account of place and intelligibility that Malpas defends requires that we are embodied - is this where digital-spaces break down? What does embodiment mean in digital space? Embodiment, for all its trendiness in contemporary discourse, is notoriously hard to nail down, can embodiment be extended digitally through an account of human making that takes seriously the way we extend ourselves through our work into digital space? Various trends in transhumanism and posthumanism suggest this may be the case. Can our digital avatars be seen as extensions of our embodied existence in the world, an extension that allows us to occupy the cyber-space that we collectively create and enact?
If cyber-space 'exists', what is the church's role in occupying that space? That probably goes beyond the scope of the present response to how churches should continue as a Eucharistic community in a time of social distancing, but these are questions that aren't going away. Perhaps now is the time to dig into them. I've tried to point to some resources in Anglican tradition and contemporary critical theory that could help us do this. In a time of crisis, the church must respond. It would be inappropriate, I think, if our response amounted to no more than an abandonment of our Eucharistic life and condemnation of the emerging world of cyber space that is accelerating during this crisis. Bishop Geoff Woodcoft, my own diocesan bishop, in a comment to the Winnipeg Free Press, suggested that the death-date of the institutional Anglican Church of Canada had been moved up from 2040 to 2020 due to the extra strain of this crisis. This may prove true as a matter of finances, but it must not, for the sake of the world, be a result of the abandonment by our church of the ministry of word in sacrament in all times and places.
Comments
Post a Comment