Some of my favorite courses in business school were valuation. Whether it was book value, enterprise multiples, discounted cash flow, or other methods, I loved the idea of taking something as huge and complex as a business and breaking it down into pieces, pieces small enough to be valued.
One of the most intriguing elements of this deals with the segmenting. According to Stephen Penman, a Columbia professor who has written extensively on the subject, the income from operations has to first be separated from income from financing, since it is the core operation that ultimately counts where the business’s value is concerned. Also, income from non-recurring transactions, like the selling of PP&E or cash flows from subsidiaries, has to be omitted, since those can’t be counted on for future revenue.
I remember how one of my finance professors explained a deal done by Warren Buffett, a trade so complicated that it took this master of valuation to reduce the complexity of the transaction to something that could be understood. The company was large and its subsidiaries numerous—its balance sheet full of PP&E as well as difficult to handle instruments like options and convertible debt—but old Master Buffett, adept as he is at this exercise, separated everything expertly and applied the appropriate value. “Only Uncle Warren,” said my professor. “Nobody else would’ve gotten close to this deal.”
Much can be learned about life through the lens of business valuation.
Consider the Anglican priest Calvin Robinson. The latter has been in the news lately for being first licensed by a Bishop in the Reformed Episcopal Church, then unlicensed when the same Bishop withdrew the license only a few days later. These acts have drawn criticisms from some inside the church, a chief one being that Father Calvin is a denomination switcher.
“This guy has been in six denominations in six years,” said one poster on social media.
“Robinson has been dumped by multiple Archbishops and bishops,” said David Virtue, whose website, VirtueOnline, is a favorite of some Anglicans. “He has no credibility left.”
Others have made similar comments.
These criticisms make the mistake of assuming that all the denominations mentioned above are the same. They are not. To assume so would be akin to valuing a corporation without the necessary due diligence. No finance person would ever do such a thing, and those appraising the situation with Robinson should not do so, either.
Why are they not the same?
Because arguably no denomination has been more fraught with division than the Anglican Communion (or Church of England, to use another name). Beginning with the Continuing Movement of the last century on up to the present, with the Anglican Church in North America being the most recent example, our denomination might rightly be described as a long struggle with the culture, a battle at which, often times, the culture has won. As might be expected, the divisions—at least recently—have some form of heterodox/orthodox slant, with the original departures from the Episcopal Church having to do with the latter’s heterodox views over women’s ordination, while lately they’ve had to do with homosexual marriage.
When the necessary segmenting of denominations is done, a different picture emerges.
To begin with, the Church of England, the first of the denominations that Father Robinson was associated with, has descended into an uber-liberal organization—complete with recognition of same-sex couples as well as gay clergy—so that it is hardly the kind of group an orthodox priest should be ashamed of being excluded from. Second, regarding the Free Church of England—the second of the churches that Reverend Robinson was associated with—it’s my understanding that he wasn’t removed from it at all, but that it was the Father himself who decided to change, due in large part to the fact that the Free Church has a particular evangelical bent, whereas Robinson describes himself as an Anglo-Catholic. In terms of the Nordic Catholic Church, I’m told that Reverend Robinson had to leave it—not because of moral shortcomings—but in order to come to the U.S., since this Church, based as it is in Norway, has no American presence. Finally, regarding the Anglican Catholic and Reformed Episcopal Churches, it’s fair to say that much of what is driving the controversy is the same as the Father’s original difficulties with the COE—i.e., liberalism.
Father Robinson’s travails reveal the difficulties of an orthodox priest struggling to navigate through the complexities of a Church that has failed to live up to the fundamentals as they were set down by the Apostles and Scriptures. This isn’t an easy thing to handle, as my family and I well know, for we drive an hour every Sunday to attend an orthodox, Bible-believing Anglican Church, for the simple reason that there isn’t one any closer. How much more difficult, then, for a Priest from a culturally declining and secular England to come to our country and find that the denominational terrain is much the same in terms of theological and cultural complexity.
A kind of moral valuation must be applied to the recent news of Reverend Calvin Robinson. When this is done, it’s clear that his struggles have largely been due to the complexities of an orthodox believer attempting to find a home in an ever-changing, ever-more liberal denomination.
“Choose you this day who you will serve,” said Joshua.
Father Calvin has chosen. And, I’m afraid, so, too, have his critics.
Along with his father, Allen Keller runs a lumber business in Stevenson, Alabama. He has a Ph.D. in Creative Writing from Florida State University and an MBA from University of Virginia. He can be reached for comment at [email protected].
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