I want my tagline back.
When the San Damiano community began to meet at St. Michael’s Episcopal Church in January 2007, we also began to run a weekly ad in the Arkansas Times. Our little ads have been remarkably successful in reaching people who were looking for a church like San Damiano, as well as in getting our name out around the community in general.
The ads are fairly simple. Besides the name of the church, the ECC cross logo, and some contact information, they typically feature a brief tagline intended to catch the attention of readers and communicate something about the nature of our parish.
A few of my favorites:
Priestly presence.
Lay leadership.
The beauty is in the balance.
________
St. Francis saw Christ in all of creation.
We see Christ in you.
Welcome home.
________
Just when you thought
you knew all about
Catholics
I don’t write all of the taglines. Some of them have been borrowed and adapted from other ads or built on ideas contributed by church members. In late 2008, we ran our ad with a tagline written by Guy Lancaster:
Because it’s not about rules.
It’s about relationships.
It is a great tagline. It speaks to those who have been wounded and marginalized by the rules or disciplines or interpretations of scripture that have told people, for example, that they couldn’t remarry without first receiving an annulment, or that if they did remarry outside the church, they could no longer receive communion. These are ways in which people are kept from the sacraments — something we don’t want to happen at San Damiano.
But the tagline is just a tagline, not a new rule in itself! Marketing taglines are almost by definition hyperbolic. They overstate and oversimplify to draw attention and make a point. Their message is often not best discerned through a literal reading. For example:
The Holy Eucharist:
there really is enough
to share with everyone.
The truth is that our altar bread is about six inches in diameter. If we are careful, we can serve about 40 people with one piece. That’s not really everyone. The point of the message is that we have an open communion policy, welcoming non-Catholics to share in the sacrament with us. The real message is not about “how much”, but “who may”.
I’m glad that our ads have been popular and helpful examples to other communities in the ECC. Unfortunately, however, several people have seized on the “rules … relationships” tagline and abused it to the point that I am ready to recant and repent of ever having shared it. It is, ironically, as if they have turned the slogan into a new rule declaring that there are no rules and that, because our relationships are all that matter, everyone may do what they want, when they want, in order to achieve their own purposes. “Are you holding rules over me now??”
Let’s be clear: It’s about rules and relationships.
All relationships are governed by rules, contracts, covenants — however you wish to label them. Some of our contracts are explicit and some are implicit, but they are always present. Spouses are expected to be faithful to one another in their marriage. House guests do not steal from their hosts. If I agree to purchase something from you at a given price, I pay it. I do not get to abrogate any of these agreements and cry, “But it’s not about rules …”
So, in a religious order like the Franciscans of Reconciliation, our rule and form of life describes how we have covenanted to be with one another in relationship as a community. To have a document which describes and reminds us of our agreement about our life together — which we voluntarily enter — is not oppressive but, in fact, life-giving.
Likewise, in the ECC, we have voluntarily agreed to live under a common constitution. Those rules provide us with agreed-upon ways to elect bishops, form dioceses, receive clergy, establish religious orders, financially support the ECC, etc. They are representative of our agreements on how we will be together as a communion. If anyone chooses to ignore and willfully violate those agreements (rules), our relationship is damaged.
We need specific agreements for how we will interact, deal with conflict, and be accountable to one another. St. Francis apparently thought this was important, as well, and most of the Rule of the Franciscans of Reconciliation draws directly upon his words. Any legitimate expression of Franciscan life will do the same.
Is it okay for people not to accept our rule of life? Of course it is. It simply means that they are not in relationship with us as Franciscans. For us, the rule and our relationships go hand in hand.
In the larger context of the ECC, it is the same. Some want to say, “Forget the legalistic technicalities. We are a church and should act like one.” Our canons are not simply “legalistic technicalities” — they are how we agreed we would share our common life. Still, when we cite them, some folks cry out, “But it’s not about rules …”
Yes, it is.
The Latin word for “rule” is regula. Our constitution is the way we have agreed to regulate our relationship. No one forces a person or community to agree to it, but once one does, it binds our behavior. To seek to act contrary to it does violence to that relationship. The constitution should only be changed by mutual agreement through the actions of the Holy Synod, not the clamor of those who want no rules.
Want to be part of the so-called Free Churches and their “creed-free faith”? Knock yourself out. But as the ancient cartographers warned, hic sunt dracones — here be dragons. I have sojourned there, and have no desire to return. Instead, I have cast my lot with intentional communities where the people declare to one another, “This will be our life.”
I’ll be faithful to our agreements. Or I’ll seek to change them by following agreed-upon procedures. Or I’ll leave.
But I will not stand in the midst of the family and do violence to it.
I want my tagline back.