Author Archives: Julian O. Long

fry street again

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It’s old news now. The Tomato is no more, gone the way of the old Delta Lodge and burned to the ground with a good deal of the rest of the corner at Hickory and Fry. Last month I spent a long weekend in Denton that included a long sadness over the empty corner close by where I used to live. I’m unable to understand why Denton didn’t value Fry Street enough to protect it, and why the continuing depredations of developer, United Equities, which intend to replace historic Fry Street with a cutesy “Fry Street Village,” aren’t viewed with more skepticism by the Denton City Council than apparently they are.

Meanwhile, Save Fry Street continue to do what can still be done to oppose the excesses of this predatory developer. Good coverage of the current situation can be found at recent posts, complete with links to Denton Record Chronicle and North Texas Daily articles. Save Fry Street also published a good account of the fire that destroyed The Tomato back in June, including this YouTube video.

The comments at Save Fry Street’s coverage almost universally accuse the developer of negligence in advance of the the fire. Certainly the event was fortuitous for United Equities–all that demolition cost gone up in smoke and an insurance settlement to boot.

ain’t done crashing

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It’s good to see that my brother’s story has been picked up around the Net. Katie Sherrod backgrounds it here, and Father Jake picks it up here. Bishop Iker is getting quite a lot of “fan mail,” according to Stand Firm, which also carries a long piece by Fr. Matt Kennedy disputing Jerry Brower’s “conservative” stand against the proposed schism in Pittsburgh.

Meanwhile, as U. S. Catholic Bishops call for a “responsible transition” in Iraq, as noted at TitusOneNine, the Province of Nigeria prays officially in “opposition to all unbiblical acts in the world.” Fr. Mark Harris has the Nigeria story and some good commentary. Looks like the “world” is pretty much the same as yesterday.

Back to Fort Worth, epiScope references this story about Bishop Iker’s response to the Presiding Bishop, noting that “Episcopalians are among several denominations struggling to agree on what the Bible says about gender and sexuality.” Struggling to disagree would say it better.

secession in Fort Worth

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Stand Firm has published a letter from the Episcopal Bishop of Forth Worth, Rt. Rev. Jack Iker, to Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori. Bishop Jefferts Shori had written Bishop Iker last week noting various consequences of his announced intention to lead his diocese out of the Episcopal Church. The full text of Bishop Iker’s letter is available on the Diocese of Forth Worth website, but a couple of passages are particulartly interesting to me. The first is a bit of lawyering, to wit:

I have received your letter of November 8th and am rather surprised by your suggestion that I have somehow abandoned the communion of the church and may be subject to ecclesiastical discipline. Such a charge is baseless. I have abandoned nothing, and I have violated no canons. Every year at our Chrism Mass, I very happily reaffirm my ordination vows, along with all our clergy, that I will be “loyal to the doctrine, discipline, and worship of Christ as this Church has received them.” (BCP, pages 526 and 538)

Of course, Bishop Iker is attempting to invoke a higher law than the constitution and canons of the Episcopal Church. Those who are familiar with Bishop Iker’s language will recall his fondness for the expression: the faith once delivered to the saints. But it is also interesting to note the bloviation that characterizes Bishop Iker’s letter (indeed the letter’s long second paragraph contains nothing but bloviation), in the course of which he styles himself and his diocese aggrieved parties. I think I may not be the only reader to link the good bishop’s sound and fury with this claim:

While I do not wish to meet antagonism with antagonism, I must remind you that 25 years ago this month, the newly formed Diocese of Fort Worth voluntarily voted to enter into union with the General Convention of the Episcopal Church. If circumstances warrant it, we can likewise, by voluntary vote, terminate that relationship.

Bishop Iker echoes the secessionist rhetoric of Bishop Robert Duncan, a good analysis of which may be found here. And I may not be the only reader who understands this secessionist claim to include reference to a document entitled, How real property is held within the Episcopal Diocese of Forth Worth. As noted by the Episcopal News Service, “Fort Worth’s diocesan convention, meeting November 16-17, is set to consider the first reading of a constitutional amendment that would remove accession to the Constitution and Canons of General Convention, as well as several canonical amendments that eliminate mention of the Episcopal Church.” Bishop Iker’s claim seems to be that his diocese existed prior to its creation by the Episcopal Church, a claim that may be worth about as much as the rest of the confederate money the good bishop is passing around. Time will tell. Fr. Mark Harris has a worthwhile analysis of the Forth Worth porperty claim.

Meanwhile, I’ve just been in Fort Worth and had the singularly distasteful experience of watching my brother accused of impropriety from the pulpit because he attempted to inform his fellow parishioners about views of their diocese and of the Church at large that do not accord with Bishop Iker’s views. In response to a sermon preached in his Fort Worth church a few weeks back that retailed all the current right wing cant about the Episcopal Church (i. e. how the Church teaches a new religion which is somehow also a pagan religion, has abandoned the one true faith, has flauted the authority of scripture, etc); in response to this sermon my brother, who was then editor of the church newsletter, published a newsletter issue containing an essay about Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a letter critical of Bishop Iker, and a couple of other pieces critical of schism. The interim priest of his church ordered my brother to retract the newsletter. When my brother refused, the priest fired him as newsletter editor, attacked him from the pulpit, and ripped his lay ministry license from the church wall. He has followed up these actions by canceling the midweek service at which my brother was accustomed to lead worship.

I don’t know what the fate of my brother’s lay ministry license will be, but I don’t expect Bishop Iker to countermand the action of his priest. I tell the story because I think this series of events comments quite cogently on Bishop Iker’s claim that Bishop Jefferts Schori “would have [him] prevent the clergy and laity” of the diocese of Fort Worth “from openly discussing [their] future place in the life of the wider Anglican Communion.” Bishop Iker’s claim that he favors ecclesiastical democracy in contrast to the presiding bishop’s “aggressive, dictatorial posturing” is just so much confederate money.

More . . .

not joining up

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Phyllis Schlafly has published a rant about English departments, which, she claims, “are the most radicalized of all [university] departments, more so than sociology, psychology, anthropology, or even women’s studies.” I know about this because I get news from the English department at SLU, where Schlafly’s “Advice to College Students: Don’t Major in English” is the topic of discussion on a new departmental listserv. I think this is one more thing I’ll not join. Schlafly, like David Horowitz, isn’t worth answering, and besides, I don’t give a flying fuck what Horowitz, Schlafly, and people who agree with them think.

Tim Burke has a couple of nice academic posts heading up his blog right now. I especially like his use of a quote from Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger:

In America, the political left and political right have conspired to create a culture and politics of victimization, and all the benefits of resentment and cynicism have accrued to the right. That’s because resentment and apocalypse are weapons that can be used only to advance a politics of resentment and apocalypse. They are the weapons of the reactionary and the conservative — of people who fear and resist the future. Just as environmentalists believe they can create a great ecological politics out of apocalypse, liberals believe they can create a great progressive politics out of resentment; they cannot. Grievance and victimization make us smaller and less generous and can thus serve only reactionaries and conservatives.

I rather think Nordhaus and Shellenberger are correct, but I also think there’s no point in answering pundits on the right who preach resentment and apocalypse. It’s preaching to the choir; and besides, statements such as: “That’s why it was no surprise that Cho Seung-Hui, the murderer of 32 students and teachers at Virginia Tech, was an English major,” don’t need to dignified by an answer.

On the other hand, one might be grateful that English departments matter enough to be attacked by Schlafly, though she points out that “only 1.6 percent of America’s 19 million undergraduates major in English, according to Department of Education figures.” The late unlamented culture wars were mostly about what was or was not being taught in English departments. I guess that continues to be true, even though the wench is dead. And I think Shakespeare, whom Schlafly brings up as a casualty of the culture wars, is not about to be buried in the off-campus stacks. Shakespeare belongs, more than ever and as much as he always has, to popular culture, which is now giving us a new and kitschy version of the reign of his queen that I’m dying to see.

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