Yes +Dallas, there is a Via Media

"Grant that we may maintain that middle way, not as a compromise for the sake of peace, but as a comprehension for the sake of truth."

So goes a portion of the Collect for the Feast of Richard Hooker, the foundational theologian of the Anglican Communion and the sixteenth century divine who was chosen by Elizabeth Regina and Archbishop Whitgift "in a day of bitter controversy to defend with sound reasoning and great charity the catholic and reformed religion." He did so with such grace and with such generosity that divines in each of the following centuries drew from his work what we have come to call the Via Media.

For some the Via Media may indeed be like Santa Claus has become for so many, a nice fable with no foundation in reality. Yet we know that both are founded in fact and practice, even though the origins may be obscured. Every Sunday when we invite all baptized Christians to join us in Communion we touch the radical heart of the Via Media. Every time we greet a believer in another denomination as a sister or brother with no twinge of need to whisper that the only hope for salvation is to be Episcopal, we touch the heart of the Via Media. Every time we offer pastoral consolation to people trapped in their particular sort and condition of life, without pronouncing judgment on them, we journey with them in the Via Media. Every time we accept people just as they are on their spiritual journey and walk with them, allowing their own intelligence to help form their desire to consent to God's call to them we evangelize in the spirit of the Via Media.

Those spiritual sensitivities were forged though on the anvil of controversy. Richard Hooker preached a sermon on Justification. In that sermon he asserted that God's mercy was vaster than human sin, and thus the sins of Roman Catholics would not prevent them from being saved. Alone among the magisterial Reformation writers, Hooker believed that salvation was granted to all who claimed Jesus Christ as Lord. For the balance of his life, for this and the creative, charitable and generous positions he will stake out in the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, he will be called heretic and apostate by the Puritans in England.

Perhaps the clearest visual for the Via Media was employed by Mr. Hooker himself in Book IV, Chapter 8, Section 3. In it he refers to Thomas Cartwright's assertion that the way to correct a stick that has been bent too far in one direction is to bend it completely in the other direction. He was referring to the Puritan demand that anything with even a smidgen of Rome in it be eschewed. Mr. Hooker replied that if having the stick bent too far in one direction was a mediocrity, how in the world was bending it completely in the other direction anything else but another mediocrity. The goal, he said, is to have the stick stand straight up, and that can be accomplished without the mediocrity of bending it all the other way.

That is the gift of the Via Media. To seek the deeper truths which unite us, the essentials of the faith, the things necessary for salvation. It still gets those who respect its charity and wisdom the derisive title of heretic and apostate. And the reasons are still the same: We will not accept the authority of the papacy with its claim that the traditions of the church are things necessary for salvation. We will not accept the puritan/protestant claim that scripture is the only source of authority for making Christian decisions. We raise reason higher than either group, trusting it, within the community, to rightly interpret and apply both scripture and tradition to the circumstances of our Christian life as they arise.

The Via Media is found everywhere in the church where acceptance, understanding, and compassion are our first impulse towards people and the heart of our preaching the Gospel. We would dwell in St. Francis's words, "Wherever you go, preach the Gospel. If necessary use words."

Most Episcopalians live on the Via Media, consciously or not, because this is how they have been formed by 400 years of worship and living together. And on that Via Media they disagree about lots of important issues but stay together because they still share the one essential belief: that Jesus is Lord and Savior.

And while it is a struggle to live there, sometimes, it is worth the effort to find the deeper comprehension for the sake of truth, than some compromise no one likes. But we accomplish that by staying together.

The Via Media is right there, in the courageous middle, welcoming you.

Article written by The Reverend Michael B. Russell, rector of All Souls' Episcopal Church, San Diego, CA. Fr. Michael is active in the theological life of the Episcopal Church as one of the leading non-academic interpreters of Richard Hooker, the foundational theologian of our Church. He has written and lectured extensively on Anglican Identity and has published Hooker's works in a paperback edition for seminarians.

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