Or, Correcting the Episcopal Church…again…
The latest is an unofficial—but virally popular—poster some nitwit has made up to tout the chief merits of Anglicanism in our time:

There have been several excellent takedowns of this offensive and absurd poster. I’ll just summarize its main flaws.
First, the tone is totally negative. Two occurrences of “resisting,” for a start. The negative equation of “fundamentalism” and “pharisees.”
The artiste might not realize how much he or she is trifling with history there. Fundamentalist Christianity stands on five “pillars” or principal tenets. With the exception of the phrase “pre-millennial,” and needing serious nuancing on the “plenary verbal inspiration of scripture,” I believe them without the slightest difficulty.
Johnny Spong and Katie Schori and Marky Beckwith don’t. I do.
I guess I’m basically a fundamentalist! Raised Irish Catholic in New York City, doctorate, published author, Mensa member, father a high-church Episcopalian, nary a screeching Baptist in my whole family tree: and apparently also a neanderthal, bible-thumpin’ fundamentalist. Mostly, anyhow.
As far as I’m concerned, with those two concerns noted, if you don’t subscribe to the Five Points of Fundamentalism you’re not a Christian. I think my old monsignor would have agreed instantaneously…albeit while blanching at the maligned word “fundamentalist.”
In other words, the poster is really saying that the Episcopal Church has resisted Christianity since 1784. A bit harsh, but a lot closer to reality.
As to “pharisees,” why pick on them? Jesus was also pointedly opposed to key Sadducee doctrines. And Jesus had Pharisee friends. And Pharisaic Judaism is the form of Judaism that survives to this day. Yes— your Jewish neighbors are, in a historic-theological sense, actual Pharisees. At the very least, the religious heirs of Pharisaic Judaism. There is only one other form of Judaism in the world—Karaitic Judaism—and believe me, friend, you have never met a Karaite unless you have done military service in the Middle East, or missionary work, or something similar. (I’ll throw in Samaritan Judaism, though that phrase is controversial. Non- Talmudic Jews form a tiny minority.)
I worked in the Jewish world for nearly eighteen years. I get instantly uncomfortable when I hear an uninformed Church Type going on “learnedly” about Judaism. Just keeping my ears open, and talking with rabbis and cantors (and congregants) I learned more about Judaism than you can learn at General Seminary.
Fundamentalists and Pharisees. In other words, our neighbors.
The poster is invidious. The poster is self-righteous. The poster is holier-than-thou. The poster is saccharine, sanctimonious, and simply rainbow-slick with self-congratulations. I thank Thee, Lord, that I am not as that (Re)publican there!
The poster is pointedly aligned with a secular messianism: you can be a successful “poster child” for the Episcopal Church if you are a female minister (skinny, goofy hairdo); or a gay couple with non-white children; or a Latino bartender. It’s all about inclusion, with nothing left to be included into. Everybody can have a look inside the Empty Cardboard Box. (Not tomb: box.)
These are the folks who “resist” the Pharisees. In reality: they are the pharisees, and they are the fundamentalists. It is they who are locked into a Special Separateness, it is they who have digested the simplistic tenets of a brave new world. They’re too good for Jesus.
Let’s tell a slightly tougher truth while we’re at it.
The Pharisees resisted Jesus, and still do. Not the other way around. I won’t go into Bar-Kochba, Yochanan ben Zakkai, the Council of Jamnia, the redactions of the Masoretes, or the composing of the Talmud—all of them, every one of them, efforts to resist Jesus, to recast the shattered fragments of an integral national religion into a new plausiblility, perhaps a prosthesis. Today, their descendants yet live, and are right to be proud of their heritage—their sheer pluck and courage and determination— but should be honest about it as well.
It’s OK, friends, you can do it: I’ll cop to the Inquisition. What was that about hukkot ha-goyim?
Modern Judaism is a Pharisaic re-invention after the calamities of the First Century anno Domini.
Yesterday, I read the final seven chapters of Acts carefully and with the liveliest interest. The Jewish people were already shattered; Paul knew that and used it to his own defence, pitting Sadducee against Pharisee when haled before the Sanhedrin. Eventually, he was sent off to Rome: you have appealed to Caesar, to Caesar you shall go. And the Catholic Church took form, as Paul joined Peter in a new Jerusalem.
I read Acts as a prelude to a Solemn High Pontifical Mass.
And the Talmud as a postlude to a sad liturgy of unstitching. Seeds and sticks.
In the Talmud, one can read of the ominous signs that marked the years from 30 to 70. The doors swung open of their own; the lot of the Lord came only to the left hand; the thread turned not white…a litany of omens, showing that the favor of the Lord had departed. Ichabod.
There are those “pharisees,” with a small p, who have resisted Jesus since the First Century as well. Fundamentalists of an alternate creed, whether Manichaean, Gnostic, Arian, Albigensian, Lutheran, Calvinist, Marxist (-liberationist, -feminist, -environmentalist, -liturgist!), Modernist, Americanist. The list of isms goes on and on.
In the present age, a toxic hatred of Western, Christian civilization runs in the veins of many people who really feel that they are good Christians. Nothing pisses them off quite so easily as the neighbor they see every day. They dream of Africans. They dream of Araby. They feel that, surely, somewhere, there are Cool Young People drawn to a Really Relevant Church Experience.
There aren’t.
This stuff is true, or it isn’t.
Heaven isn’t grad school. (And grad school isn’t heaven!!)
Christianity has bred an incredibly high culture. Will we really overthrow it now, and make a Tehran of Chicago?
To the pitiful creator of the above poster; to those who have admired it and passed it round on Facebook; to those who are confused about what they should believe, how they should act—turn to the First Epistle of John, Chapter 4, Verse 20:
Whoever says, “I love God,” but hates his brother is a liar. The one who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love the God whom he has not seen.
Confused or put off by the word “brother”? Perhaps you have some thinking—some studying—some praying to do.