Mortal Follies. William Murchison

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СКАЧАТЬ the Christians basics. And that this, in turn, makes them look like retailers not truth.

      Another argument follows from that one. It is that our greatest mistake is in failing to see the Gospel as overriding mere circumstance and condition; conveying at all times and in all places, to all people, on equal terms, the same message of unconditional love and forgiveness. Our mistake, in other words, has been to overvalue cultural reflexes, to underestimate the power of the Christian Gospel to knock flat all divisions, all perspectives, by whomsoever adopted or concocted.

      The Episcopal Church and the culture of the twenty-first century—by which I mean society’s attitudes, tastes, preferences, and the like, as expressed in word and action—do not always by any means stroll hand in hand, whispering confidingly to each other. But their relationship, at least from the Episcopal side, has become intimate, self-reinforcing. The ways of the world have become, in frightening measure, the ways of the chameleon church still calling itself Episcopal.

      The implications of the change in how Episcopalians “do” religion are impossible, at this early date, to understand fully. I argue all the same that we must begin to think about them, to handle and weigh them, holding them to the light, inspecting them up and down. What is this “religion” thing about anyway? Salvation, I believe, is the traditional answer: the merger of discrete human purposes with those of One whom the creeds identify as “Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth.” Hanging around a church of traditional conviction, one gets the idea—at least one is supposed to—that such a God, nice or not, is highly consequential, more so than a television news anchor, a Hollywood studio head, a Nobel Prize laureate, a Fortune 500 executive, a bishop even.

      Commonly, revolutions begin from below. Not the Episcopal revolution—a shake-up encouraged, sometimes imposed, from the top down. The apostles of cultural adaptation knew generally speaking what they wanted, hence what everyone else should want. While unconvinced Episcopaliansm in the ‘60s and afterwards, scratched their heads, wondering what was wrong with things that had so recently seemed right, those bent on effecting change informally, were organizing.

      Again and again, in churchly councils, church “progressives” out-organized and outvoted the stodgy old standpatters—and from repeated successes gained confidence in the rightness of their endeavors. A “modernized” Book of Common Prayer, easily less cognizant of human sin than all its predecessor liturgies, went into the pews. New biblical teachings, sounding from the pulpit and the seminary lectern, raised new questions about the authenticity, hence the authority, of Scripture. Priesthood was bestowed for the first time on women, contrary to historic understandings of the priesthood’s essentially “male” character. Outside the church, new moral attitudes took shape concerning the permanence and sacred nature of marriage. Rather quickly these attitudes made their way inside church walls. It became possible, then fashionable, then—for the aspiring—politically essential to challenge the idea that homosexuality was in the least troublesome or objectionable. Whence the authority for these and like assertions? The authority of the convinced seemed to suffice. They knew; they understood. They asserted no more than the culture asserted.

      Decisive votes that went their way quickly turned the convinced into the arrogant. If an idea or a policy was good for them, it was good for everyone else. Bishops who advanced or supported the revolution either disciplined or ignored those dissenters who asked merely for space to be faithful to an older, and in their eyes holier, way. The tolerance on which Episcopalians once prided themselves had brought forth strange offspring—intolerance of the politically vanquished. This time, there would be no cutting off of heads. The cutting off of careers, and of associations and relationships, would suffice.

      The consecration, in 2003, of Gene Robinson as the Episcopal Church’s first avowed and practicing homosexual bishop focused international attention on conditions in the church and sped up an already steady exodus of laity and clergy. Dramatic (to put it as politely as possible) revision of the prayer book had driven away small numbers; larger numbers followed as the church undertook to ordain women. The increasingly speedy passage to affirmation of homosexuality cost the church many more members than had either of the earlier departures. Though, of course, the question is always open to dispute: How many depart for Reason X or for Reason Y? Or on account of spiritual fatigue? Or due to boredom or some other indefinable personal cause?

      Even the Druids, it seems, are bailing out. While writing these lines, I happened on news that an East Coast Episcopal priest had renounced Christianity in order to become a full-time Druid, whereas before he had been just a part-time one, and mainly under cover. His wife was a Druid as well. I do not suggest such a priest is typical of Episcopal clergy. I suggest that the ability of our ecclesiastical environment to produce Druid priests may exceed like abilities in other, less (shall we say) freewheeling denominations.

      Again I ask: Does it matter?

      How can it not? What goes on in the modern Episcopal Church—what has gone on for the past four or five decades—bears on the affairs of all the mainstream churches, whose members are honorary children of the age in which they live, watching the same television shows and football games, eating the same fast foods, struggling with the same temptations, and constantly aware that the Christian consensus in the United States of America no longer exhibits the old signs of ruddy strength—aware, indeed, that the very need for Christianity seems to many, including some Christians, somehow smaller and more remote than formerly.

      Let non-Episcopalians learn from us. We have been conducting an ecclesiastical estate sale: our godly heritage, our gift for worship and spirituality, priced for quick disposal on the marketplace. We’re all in this thing together, in greater or lesser degree. But what thing is “this” thing? We can scarcely doubt, after the last forty years, the nature of the challenge. It is to present a very old faith to an age bent on reinventing itself—so it might seem—every few years, if not every few months.

      Meanwhile—

       THREE

       We Few, We Happy Few

      A BIT MORE ABOUT US, THEN, AS PREPARATION FOR WHAT follows: who we are, we Episcopalians, and how we got where we are—wherever that may be.

      As the 1950s came and went, there was much to be said for us, that was for sure. Even non-Episcopalians sensed as much. Not that all delighted in contemplation of the Episcopal Church’s vaunted specialness—its reputation for gentility; the richness and roll of the language that Episcopalians used to worship God; masonry churches smelling of history and ritual; social and economic prestige outsized for a membership easily smaller than that of the Methodists, Presbyterians, and Lutherans.

      The Episcopal Church was the Church of England grafted into the American colonies, pruned and trimmed after the Revolution to suit changed circumstances but rooted still in the English Reformation of the sixteenth century. It was Protestant or Catholic—sometimes Protestant and Catholic—just as a parish (meaning a congregation) or a diocese (meaning a regional collection of parishes) desired.

      In the church’s formularies and traditions could be found warrant for biblical proclamation as the high point of Sunday worship, or, alternatively, for the Eucharistic feast of Christ’s body and blood as the preferred emphasis (in which case “Holy Communion,” as the name for the service, sometimes gave way to the Roman Catholic term “Mass”). There were “high” parishes and “low” parishes, terms that pertained to the parish’s preference for preaching or sacramental celebration, sometimes just to a taste or distaste, as the case might be, for ceremonial detail and display. A “broad church” congregation (the term had more purchase in England than in the United States) was likelier to hear a particular СКАЧАТЬ