The Problem with The Episcopal Church

I can't say that I enjoyed living and working in Academe all that much.  As a student, everything seemed far too important and I managed to plague myself and those around me with significant moral turmoil bordering on moral outrage on a fairly regular basis.  As faculty, I remember long hours, poor pay, and endless mountains of papers to mark.  But I am still fascinated by the concept of the undergraduate essay- significantly over simplified, somewhat non-sequitor, and filled with a little too much feeling at the expense of clear and factual thinking.  But for all of its shortcomings, the medium has over the years helped a lot of people, myself included, to order our thoughts a bit, and that is an improvement for most of us. 

I've been thinking a good bit over the last few days about the problems (or the problem) which faces my beloved Episcopal Church, and in good undergraduate essay fashon, I humbly offer you my thoughts...

With all due respect to the contention of our Presiding Bishop that the Episcopal Church is healthy, I am compelled by shrinking budgets and shrinking Average Sunday Attendance to disagree.  We will survive, but we are in trouble.  There are priests in my own Diocese of Southern Ohio who maintain that to reverse the trends, we must be more involved in our communities and support movements for justice and human inclusion more vocally.  It seems to me that our Diocese of Southern Ohio is already doing those things.  There are priests in other parts of the church (and I sometimes seem to be among their number) who maintain that a return to traditional values, especially regarding sexual mores, is the only way to recover and to receive God's blessing.  Well, most of those folks do those things as well, and most of their numbers are as disappointing as everyone else's.  It seems to me that the real problem of the Episcopal Church is a problem of authority, particularly as it relates to the Bible.  I would submit that Episcopalians can be categorized in a very oversimplified manner into four primary sub-groups based on their approach to the Bible.  One is well intentioned and devout, but tends to be a bit judgemental at times and can be very hard to get along with.  There are not many people in that group in the American Church.  A second group values Scripture highly and tends to stress the catholicity of our faith as the standard within which the Bible should be understood.  A third group values Scripture highly, but their frame of reference for interpretation seems to be the established canon of enlightenment or scientific scholarship as it is generally understood today in the university community.  Groups two and three are generally nice people who don't like to argue, and hold their (or should I say "our") differences inside and get mad without ever really saying what it is that makes us mad.  Group four has a passing respect for scripture, but their definition of "Gospel" as "Justice," or more specifically as "Civil Rights Movement," leads them to see the Bible as an ancient document which should be carefully considered, but which can and should be set aside if it seems to encourage behaviour which in the opinion of the the group four member fails to "respect the dignity of every human being."  These folks tend to be real crusaders, what in my more curmudgeony moments I would call "damned Whig dictators."

In my experience, many group one members hail from Evangelical churches.  They tend to be pietists and biblical literalists who seek a link to sacrament and historical continuity- one might say catholicism- by attending the Episcopal Church.  There aren't many of those folks any more, although many of us baby boomers were drawn to the denomination through that portal.  Sometimes they are frustrating, but they have good hearts as a rule, and in Bible Studies and Adult Forums they do tend to keep everyone else honest in their consideration of what the Bible says.  Occasionally they can get out of hand and get very defensive, but that generally mellows with time.

Group two members, in my experience, tend to be drawn from group one, from Rome, and from old Episcopal families who are well read in either Anglo-Catholic or Evangelical writers from the UK.  They accept the methodologies of modern scholarship as a rule, but are unwilling to consider a clear break with the past.  They have often flirted with Orthodoxy or Roman Catholicism in their spiritual journey, and speak reverently of Tradition and the Church Fathers.  They are very good at being offended, and often rather enjoy being cast as the persecuted minority of Western Anglicanism.  Often, they are Anglophiles.  Their voice is firmly raised in defense of continuity with the Christian past, but they are willing to explore new ideas if they consider them to be within the parameters of the historic church.

Group three members, in my experience, tend to be well educated, but not necessarily in Historic Theology and Divinity (although there are some notable and distinguished exceptions.)  They value the past, but their orientation is to the future.  They tend to take the latest findings of the scientific community very seriously, and seek to understand the traditional Christian message in light of God's revelation in the natural world.  They can tend to be a bit trendy in a past tense sort of way (remaining permanently ensconsed in 1968 or in the expansive 80's.)   They love resolutions and really do believe that people care what they think.  They often see themselves as the appointed voice of those who cannot or will not speak for themselves.

Groups two and three in my opinion represent the heart and soul of historic Anglicanism.  Both groups say that Scripture trumps and that occasional pastoral consideration should characterize our work among those God has created.  Two tends to look to tradition as they remember it while Three looks to the present and future as they would like to imagine it.  Both groups are so similar that they fight like siblings, which they are.  But at the end of the day, both fit within the framework of Classic Anglicanism, because at the end of the day, they seek to live within the framework of a proper understanding of Scripture (even though they may disagree on what that proper understanding is.)

Group four is in my opinion a real problem for our Communion, because at the end of the day it replaces the authority of Scripture with other sources of authority.  The argument often goes something like this: "I know what the Bible says, but I have a friend who does that or is that, and he is a really good person.  I can't believe that a loving God would exclude him from fellowship in the church.  We must accept and honor my friend and people like him as they are."  Then follows a demand that in the name of justice, the main body of believers must accept the behaviour of the friend as normative and acceptable.  Those who refuse or hesitate are called judgemental  and rigid.  Many in group four are motivated by a high level of evangelistic zeal, and tend to be emotional and coercive.  Their emotional vitality sways many, particularly in group three, with non-sequitor and anecdotal arguments.  They tend to be long on rhetorical skills and perhaps a bit short on logical order.  They are politically astute and tend to flourish on committees and commissions.  They thereby obtain influence far beyond their actual numbers.  While they do call the larger Church to remember the disenfranchised and marginalized, which is a good thing, they also depart from the historic Anglican understanding by removing Scripture from its place of authority and declaring it to be advisory in nature.

Herein lies the problem with the Episcopal Church, in my humble opinion.  A group of folks, group four to be specific, along the way have jettisoned the primacy of Scripture, and have organized and agitated so successfully over the last few decades that large numbers of people have agreed to hear their public message without considering their presuppositions and methodologies.  The result has brought a rot to the heart of Western Anglicanism, (indeed it could be argued to the heart of Protestantism in general,) which transcends any agruments about sex or political endorsements or liturgical and structural reform.  We have replaced the authority of Scripture with the concensus of the culture, or at least of a portion of it.  I believe our problems will only worsen until we correct the heart of the matter and affirm clearly (and submit to regularly) the authority of the Bible as God's revealed will for his church and for all mankind.