CORPORATE BULLYING AND A SCORCHED EARTH

By James Wilson

             I have written about bullying in this space many times – from citing a right of self defense for school students to exhorting the people to stand up to government bullies by non-cooperation on the one hand and advancing a positive alternative on the other.  But governmental tyrants and depraved individuals are not the only bullies on the landscape.  There are corporate bullies out there, and some of them can operate only with the subsidy of the courts.  Take – for example – the Episcopal Church.

            When the Church began ordaining practicing homosexual people to the office of priest and bishop in 2003 hundreds of congregations and many thousands of people saw this as the last slide in an escalating cascade of defiance of the Word of God – the Bible – which is the intellectual foundation stone of any Christian Body.  These communities allied themselves with other legitimate jurisdictions within the worldwide Anglican Communion and sought to go their way, worshipping God as they understood Him and seeking no harm to anyone.  But the Episcopal Church – like an Egyptian Pharoah before them – would not let these people go.

            They invoked a canon – a fancy term for church law – known as the Dennis Canon.  This rule was adopted in 1979 and declares every congregation holds its property in trust for the diocese to which it belongs.  (A diocese would be the church equivalent of a state among states.)  Using this canon as authority the Episcopal Church took church after church to court, demanding surrender of their property to their dioceses, and funding each diocese as it brought the lawsuits.  The Dennis Canon claims authority retroactively, a stunt that would not pass constitutional muster – there is that pesky “full faith and credit clause” – if it were a dog house at stake.  Churches that purchased their property decades before the diocese existed – let alone the Dennis Canon – and all the rest who spent their own money and bought property prior to 1979 were all sued and many lost in courts that refused to make judgment on so-called neutral principles of law.  They reduced the issues to a contest between siding with the establishment or the émigrés – based on which party the judge liked best.  Most of the time the establishment won.

            The Episcopal Church summarily stripped departing priests and deacons of ecclesiastical credentials on the nonsensical charge of “abandoning the communion.”  There is such a basis for this stripping, but it applies only to clergy who leave the Anglican Communion; in nearly every case these clergy simply transferred to another branch of the Communion, a routine administrative function. 

The good news is that few of the clergy stopped performing their duties, but the action of deposition was every bit as much a bit of corporate bullying as the half dozen or so bishops who forbade me to read a protest at the consecration of one of their apostate buddies despite the rules and regs that clearly gave me the right and even the responsibility to do so.  They said my two minute statement was “too long” despite the fact one could only search in vain for a “too long” rule and even though one of their bishop buddies spoke three times as long while protesting another consecration of which this gang did not approve.

            A half dozen priests in the Connecticut diocese were summoned to New York City where national church authorities demanded they recant their public statements of resistance to the Episcopal Church.  We Anglican clergy swear an oath to obey the legitimate orders of our bishops; we owe no such loyalty to national church authorities under our Church’s constitution and canons – not even the obligation to show up for star chamber meetings in New York.  The Connecticut Six told the bullies to shove it.  But the beat goes on.

            Now the Episcopal Church is suing whole dioceses that have seceded, and they have prevailed in their first lawsuit against the Diocese of San Joaquin in California.  They claimed their constitution mandates the same conditional ownership of diocesan property as the Dennis Canon places on congregational properties.  The judge apparently failed to read the Church Constitution and canons; no such language occurs in them.  The case is being appealed – with many others – and the good news is (according to me) that those loyal to our founding documents – the Bible – will win either way.  If we prevail in court we strike a blow for justice and constitutional principles – both church and American constitutions.  If we fail in court we are left “lean and mean” to pursue the mandate Jesus gave the apostles two thousand years ago to go into all the world proclaiming the Kingdom of God unencumbered by material goods.

            But would God have a more direct benefit available to His people who stand against corporate bullying – whether from the Episcopal Church or some secular outfit that wants to destroy the free market through monopoly tactics?  He surely would.

            It is pretty clear if we read Matthew 10, Mark 13, or Luke 21 that part of serving God in His Son is to be persecuted.  These chapters assure believers they will be given what they are to say and do when they need the gifts.  That assurance is for any time or place – not just churchy disputes – but the catch is the promise being only for those who have sold out to Jesus.  We live in a time of more identifiable interventions by God in human affairs (in English – miracles) and decisions to follow Christ than at any previous time in history.  Jesus Christ promised this outpouring of grace when the end draws near.  We also live in a time of unprecedented evil from bullies of all kinds.  Jesus predicted this too when He said there would be war, men calling evil good and good evil, and hatred against His people simply because we are His people.  This confluence is to be wholesale and worldwide, as the end draws closer.  Do I have any idea when He returns to rule?  No way.  But I do know He said when we see these things – the good and the bad and the ugly – to lift our heads because He is on His horse and on His way.  And a little bit – or a large bit – of court subsidized bullying is supposed to ruin my day?  Not.