Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, December 26, 1993 TAG: 9312230247
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-3 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: FRANCES STEBBINS
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG LENGTH: Long
But Scott, 46, the rector of St. Peter the Apostle Anglican Catholic Church on First Street, said he got so much comment on a Roanoke Times & World-News article about a scholarly group doubting familiar words of Christ that he felt obliged to preach on it last Sunday.
In a 20-minute address, Scott questioned the motives and conclusions of Jesus Seminar members who recently issued a 500-page book that seeks to prove that Jesus did not say many of the things the Bible said he did; followers and other teachers who came later revised his words, the group contends.
Scott said such conclusions are nothing unusual. The Jesus Seminar people remind him, he said, of the Gnostics, an early Christian group branded as heretics because they promoted ideas about Christ that were later judged incorrect.
Such people, then as now, caused doubt among those who have not examined their own faith seriously, Scott said. He told the congregation of about 65 that active church people will take such ideas for what they are - the opinions of people, not the divine word of God.
Scott said he especially dislikes the idea that Jesus was a social activist only and not a divine being who revealed God's truth. That view, which some clergy appeared to embrace 25 years ago, is now outdated, Scott said.
"We do not have a hippie for a Lord," he asserted.
Theologians whom Scott admires, such as the British lay author C.S. Lewis, always maintained that Jesus cannot be seen in purely human terms. If he is made too human, he ceases to have any validity and "comes off as a fraud, a cheat and a liar," the rector said.
Scott's attack on liberal Bible interpretation is consistent with the statement of belief that appears on St. Peter's church bulletin:
"We believe the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the Word of God. The Creeds as the Standard of Faith mean exactly what they say. Christian morality of the New Testament is the sole guide for the Church.
The sacraments convey Grace and through them Christ is known and is present. The Apostolic Ministry of Bishops, Priests and Deacons was instituted by Christ and it is male in character. The worship of the church has as its basis the Book of Common Prayer."
Within that statement is contained not only the firm doctrinal position of the Anglican Catholic denomination, but also its two main reasons for being: male leadership in the church, and retention of the 1928 book of worship.
An estimated 20 percent of the parish now once belonged to the nearby St. Thomas Episcopal Church.
Scott had been rector there for four years, when the Episcopal governing body on the national level permitted the ordination of women to the priesthood and replaced the Reformation-era worship book with an updated version now used in all Episcopal parishes.
Divisions occurred in the Episcopal churches of several Western Virginia communities, among them Christiansburg and Blacksburg; in 1978, Scott withdrew as an Episcopal priest.
Today, St. Peter's is part of the Diocese of the Mid-Atlantic in a denomination that has English roots, like Episcopalians', but is no longer part of that mainstream American church.
In 1980, the Christiansburg group acquired a building that once housed a Pentecostal Holiness church but had been converted to a warehouse. With a seating capacity of about 100, it still had space to spare last Sunday with Advent ending and the true Christmas season at hand.
Scott told me that men of the church made most of the furniture in the holy area around the altar. Paneling brightens the walls, and the unpadded pews are augmented by a necessary article in traditionalist Anglican churches, comfortable green-padded kneelers for the many times when prayers are said on the knees.
It was a long service Sunday, starting at 10 a.m. Besides Scott's sermon on Bible interpretation, there was a five-page litany - penitential prayers - and the Holy Communion, in which everyone participated.
A few children came to the altar rail with their parents, and most received the bread and wine from the common cup, although the youngest were only blessed by the priest.
St. Peter's has other distinctions. Pictures of the suffering Christ are hung for the Good Friday lamentations, the Stations of the Cross.
Small holy pictures reminiscent of the Eastern Orthodox tradition also adorn the walls. The bread and wine of Communion are kept perpetually in the church in a small box beside the altar, so that people who find comfort in silent meditation in the church can have them near.
Scott is known as "Father," one characteristic of a churchman who gives a high value to the power of a church hierarchy and believes his ordination confers special privileges and responsibilities.
During the more solemn parts of the Communion service, bells ring and many worshipers make the sign of the cross. Genuflecting before entering a pew is also part of the ritual at St. Peter's "High Church" actions, which also are carried out in some Episcopal churches, though rarely in Western Virginia.
Scott also chants all the service, with congregational responses sung in many places.
With a choir of seven women and one man with an exceptionally strong voice, Lynda Hartson led the little group in a flowing rendition of a chorus from Handel's "Jeptha."
When Joann Becker played the electronic organ, the congregation joined joyfully in the Advent and Christmas hymns from the "old" Episcopal song book of 1940 - "Creator of the Stars of Night," " Come Thou Long Expected Jesus," " Sing of Mary Pure and Holy" and "The King Shall Come When Morning Dawns."
Everyone knows everyone else at St. Peter's, Scott noted, though the turnover in membership tends to be rapid. During announcement time, the priest noted that a group of jail inmates' children had been given Christmas gifts by people of the parish. Scott himself has long been active in both the Christiansburg Ministerial Association and Montgomery County Emergency Assistance Program.
Sojourner appears monthly in the New River Current. Its purpose is not to promote a particular point of view but to inform readers of a variety of worship styles.
by CNB