This book as about the future of the church – the Canadian church, the church in the world, the church of God. It is a hopeful book. It believes in the Christian message and its relevance for our time. It lives in the spirit of the Resurrection, hoping, praying, and working for the realiziation of God’s justice on earth. But it is a critical book. The writers here are not content with the performance of our churches to date. We have sinned and are in need of repentance. We have been unfaithful to our calling. Faced with the cries of the poor and the oppressed, we have turned away and crossed to the other side of the road...

On May 25, 1981, our first child was born to us – a girl, Emily Ruth Musgrove Lind. Her birth was a wonderful, incredible, ecstatic experience. It was also an intensely religious experience for us and we were moved to celebrate. But the event was also a crisis. In order to celebrate we had to confront our different understandings of what celebration is about. We knew that any struggle to understand religious experience is a struggle to understand yourself, the world, and God. With the help of godparents and friends, we chose to engage that struggle by writing our own baptismal service. That process turned out to be more prolonged and more revealing than any of us imagined. This is its story. 

The decision to write a baptismal service for our own child seemed a natural one. Heather and I are very much children of the age in which we live. In many ways our values are traditional but we have affirmed them only after a thorough-going critique. The decisions to have a wedding and to have it in a church were not automatic decisions for us. They were deliberate and carefully thought out. Having made those decisions, we chose to write our own service as a way of struggling with the most profound issues involved. Similarly, church affiliation has not been an automatic affair for us either. As the national statistics on church membership bear witness, most of the people with whom we grew up do not actively participate in church life. During the baptismal service we explained our actions in a talk entitled “For Our Friends Who Ask ’Why Are You Doing This?’ ”. 

There were many ideas that we struggled with in the baptismal preparation but four ideas were key.

The first was Emily’s identification as a child of God. We were clear that, by being baptized, Emily was not paying an admittance fee into God’s family. She was created by God and, therefore, was already a member. In this respect, the baptism was honouring, marking, and celebrating that fact. In more formal terms, this refers to our theological understanding of the universal character of creation and the universal fact of salvation. Because this understanding of baptism expresses, like the Eucharist, a fundamental aspect of the Christian faith, we wanted the baptism to take place within the context of a full eucharistic celebration.

A second key idea has to do with salvation. Just as we felt that Emily was not paying an admittance fee, we did not feel that we were purchasing an insurance policy either. As alluded to earlier, salvation is not an expression of God’s conditional love but rather an expression of God’s unconditional love. Church membership does not guarantee it and it is not, therefore, exclusive to church members. What we were trying to do was to identify the values by which we wanted her to live her life. Through the designation of godparents, we were also trying to put into place some structures that would support her moral development.

In the process of trying to separate institutional church membership from guarantees of salvation, we were forced to confront a third key issue. What did we understand by the church and why did we want church membership to be part of the package? With the help of our friends and Emily’s godparents, it became clear to us that the values with which we wanted Emily to identify were the values of the Bible. While our criticisms of the church as an institution were manifold, our contact with the church was, and continues to be, through a specific congregation and a specific community of people. This is a community which thinks largely, though of course not entirely, as we do. They are the inheritors and interpreters of a tradition and they are the guardians of the record of these same truths and values. Through the actions intended by their faith, like the rest of the Christian church, they enable God’s presence in the world. We counted ourselves as one with them and we decided that we wanted Emily to be included, too. For this reason as well, we wanted the baptism to take place in the context of a full Sunday morning worship service.

While there are other issues with which we struggled, it was the fourth key issue which, to our surprise, proved to be the most controversial. One of the deepest foundations of our relationship, of our identity, and of our world view is equality. It is central to our theology, central to our politics, and central to our life together. Because of this, we have been committed to an equal division of labour in the home (keeping in mind that it’s easier to say than to do), and we have a clear and shared intention to raise our children in a non-sexist manner (however inadequately we may accomplish it). Our parish has been struggling for a long time with the sexist form of common liturgical language. With this concern in mind, we found a lot in the traditional Anglican baptismal service that was less than satisfactory to us and which would be less than satisfactory to the congregation. We wouldn’t dream of urging our daughter to go “manfully” into the world and since one of the great problems in the world is its domination by men and by a male culture, it seemed both unfaithful to God and alienating to ourselves to baptize Emily in the name of a God described in exclusively male language.

It is theologically traditional to say that God is neither male nor female, or that both these realities are included in the divine reality. The language of standard ecclesiastical documents, though, is in sharp contrast to this traditional understanding. In our struggle to find new language, we realized that our experience of the triune nature of God was characterized by creation, redemption, and sustenance. This is yet another traditional understanding of God and so we felt eminently successful when the celebrant proclaimed,

Emily Ruth Musgrove, I baptize you
in the name of God the Creator,
God the Redeemer and God the Sustainer.
May your life be long and joyful.

After that, the house fell in.

We heard rumours that the priest in charge of the parish, who had not celebrated at the service, was unhappy with the service we had used. In order to avoid a more serious problem and to make sure we weren’t making decisions and forming opinions on the basis of rumours, I called the priest and asked if I could sit down with him and also with the priest who did celebrate and discuss the matter. He refused. I was informed that he had been ordered by the bishop not to discuss it and that the bishop was going to deal with it from now on. I never heard from the bishop. The celebrating priest, Cyril Powles, did. He was summoned to appear before the College of Bishops (there are now six bishops who share responsibility for the Diocese of Toronto).

At that meeting, he was told that the baptismal formula compromised with unitarianism – that is, it didn’t adequately express God’s trinitarian nature. A paper had been prepared reviewing the history of the use of the baptismal formula. In spite of acknowledged evidence that the formula had changed over time to meet different needs (Peter urged people to be baptized “in the name of Jesus Christ” Acts 2:38), it was asserted that “throughout the centuries all branches of the church have sought to emphasize the Holy Trinity by use of a clear and unambiguous formula, reflecting Matthew 28:19” (“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”).

One bishop repeatedly wondered whether he could say that the child had actually been baptized. It was finally agreed that they would accept the baptism as having been done but only on the basis that there was clearly an intention that the child be baptized. When asked if they understood why the baptismal formula had been changed, they replied that they did not. When told that it was changed in order to remove its masculine bias and make it inclusive, they were taken by surprise. That thought had never occurred to them. Within two months after the baptism, the bishops of the diocese circulated a letter specifically restricting the number of Eucharistic and baptismal liturgies authorized for use.

There seem to be two issues here. One has to do with sexism and the exclusion of women and the other has to do with clericalism and the exclusion of the laity. Both issues point to the question of who has the authority to define reality, and both issues raise the question of whose experience will be used as a basis for our reflections on how we understand our reality. In this case, a group of men, because they had not questioned the restricted nature of their experience as men, were unable to penetrate the motivations for changing the baptismal formula, nor to recognize, without direction, its inclusive character.

Similarly, in their role as clerics, this same group assumed no responsibility for dialogue with the lay people who had drafted the service, nor did they acknowledge any responsibility to these same lay people whose faithfulness they presumed to judge. What they were prepared to assume was complete control over the decision-making process. In their desire to faithfully defend the authentic traditions of the church (which is a responsibility of their office), they uncritically assumed that their individual experiences were authoritative. As a result, they initiated a process which emphasized their authority over the only people in the chain of events whom they had the institutional power to control. They ordered the parish priest not to discuss it; they summoned the celebrating priest in order that he might defend his actions; and they considered withholding institutional recognition of the baptism. By those acts are the central problems revealed.

In our North American culture, sexism refers to discrimination against women on the basis of their sex. While it is generally used to refer to specific acts of discrimination, as in the unequal allocation of rights and privileges on the basis of sex, it is also used to refer to attitudes which encourage or tolerate discrimination. But the evaluation of acts and attitudes as sexist arises out of women’s experience of discrimination. Reflection on that experience produces the evaluation ­– but it also produces other insights based on this special experience. For this reason, feminism has two foci in its critique of contemporary society. Not only does it criticize specific acts of discrimination and the cultural attitudes which permit them, but it also criticizes the hierarchical way power is ordered throughout society.

Feminists are reflecting on women’s experience of being excluded from the positions of power in our society. Some feminists are so convinced of the intrinsic connection between a hierarchical society and a male-dominated one that they characterize such a society as “patriarchy.” For myself, I am not convinced of the absoluteness of the connection since it suggests that the participation of women in a hierarchical organization (like the church) will eventually subvert the organization’s hierarchical pattern. I do not see any evidence from the experience of any of the churches which now ordain women to the priesthood to support such a claim, nor do I think that is a burden that women alone should have to bear. I am convinced, though, that women’s experience of exclusion has provided them with unique insights into the social nature of sin and that these insights are true for us all.

In another article in this volume, Mary Rose D’Angelo has eloquently demonstrated the inadequacies of the traditional baptismal formula. The formula was developed in order to express the triune character of God in the language of the day, without subordinating anyone aspect. As D’Angelo points out, on its own terms the formula does so imperfectly.

The concerns of the late twentieth century are different. Today we are less concerned with God’s relationship to God than we are with God’s relationship to us. When our experience of God is foremost in our concerns, we must pay attention to whose experience is included in official descriptions of reality. In this light, the use of exclusively male pronouns to refer to God is not simply an expression of the inadequacy of language, it is concrete support for an attitude judged as sinful and morally corrupt.

But the concern for inclusive descriptions of reality does not stop with the feminist critique of liturgical language. The second focus of the feminist critique, referred to earlier, raises the question of who has access to the decision-making process and why. The story of the baptism and its aftermath illustrates how a particular group of people who have not plumbed the moral depths of the feminist critique could not understand the motivation which drove the process on which they were sitting in judgment. It also illustrates how the people who were primarily responsible for initiating the controversial event were denied access to the decision-making process. Discrimination against women and discrimination against the laity come together at this point. Indeed, it is a very modern idea to even think of considering the issues separately, since for most of the church’s history, discrimination against the laity has been a de facto discrimination against women.

The pattern of relationship between hierarchy and laity in the church was broken at the time of the Reformation. Motivated by the theological proposition that the voice of the people was the voice of God (“Vox populi, vox dei”), the Reformed churches adopted new styles of organization which emphasized their accountability to the laity. It is for this reason, I believe, that the Reformed churches have consistently been at the forefront in opening up positions of leadership to women. These new styles of organization did not eliminate the need for a struggle, but they provided the structures for that struggle to take place earlier and in a more coherent manner.

The Anglican Church describes itself as being both Catholic and Reformed. This is manifested by its combination of an episcopal form of church government along with limited lay participation and control. The episcopal structure is maintained because the Anglican Church continues to rely on the doctrine of apostolic succession.

This doctrine has meant many things over time, most importantly, the maintenance of historical continuity with the early Church. But the doctrine has also been associated with the idea that the power of the Holy Spirit is transmitted through the episcopacy by virtue of the unbroken sequence of episcopal consecration. The association of this doctrine with this idea encourages the belief that the church hierarchy receives its power and its authority directly from God. It also encourages the idea that episcopal authority is held individually rather than corporately. Because the feminist critique does not stop at exclusive language but extends to include a critique of exclusive forms of organization, this foundation for church authority is also being called into question. Feminists are relying on their prophetic authority in order to call us to account for our mistaken understandings of episcopal authority.

Feminism is a moral critique of our society. Sexism is a sin and we are all being called to confess and be transformed. But the critique is as much a call for right relationships as it is for a right expression of those relationships. It is a judgment on church structures which do not promote egalitarian relationships as well as on those which do not operate on the basis of egalitarian relationships. The experience of women which issues in this judgment does not simply provide us with insights into female experience, though it does do that. Rather, because of their special experience of exclusion from the structure and the language of the church they are providing all of us with insights into the nature of human life and human experience. Because the feminist critique points to fundamental truths in human life and not just female life, it will not be answered by the ordination of more women into a hierarchical chain of command. The feminist challenge is also a challenge to structure our relationships as people of God in a way which will do justice to our vision of God’s justice.

The agenda for the church today is not a new one, yet it must be newly understood. The mission of the church has always been justice. Faithful witness to the truth creates its own disciples. The feminist judgment of liturgical language as sinful in its exclusiveness requires that we adopt a flexible attitude to liturgical experimentation. We are not all being called to write new services to meet our own specialized needs. But the struggle to find a suitable alternative expression in a language with a paucity of inclusive pronouns will be a long one, made even longer by resistance to individual efforts at experimentation.

What is potentially more threatening, though barely acknowledged, is that the questioning of language as an adequate expression of women’s experience of God is also a questioning of implicit assumptions about who God is and how we organize our lives in faithful witness to that vision. We are being asked nothing less than to reconsider traditional church structure as well as church language as a question of justice and a question of mission.