Tag: Episcopal Church

Sanctifying bigotry: why the Episcopal Church is wrong to host Donald Trump’s inaugural prayer service

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The Episcopal Church has been my spiritual home for seven years now. It breathed new life into my faith at a time when I wasn’t sure I wanted any more to do with church.

Its liturgies, its willingness to engage the world, its ability to embrace orthodoxy without rigidity, its commitment to welcoming all people—these are just a few things I love about the Episcopal Church.

Add to this our presiding bishop, Michael Curry, who’s brought renewed passion for a big, robust gospel—for what he likes to call the Jesus Movement.

There is a lot to love about the Episcopal Church.

And yet.

My denomination is about to welcome Donald Trump into the presidency with a prayer service in his honor at the Washington National Cathedral.

We’re about to sanctify a man who exhales hate, arrogance, and greed. Whether we mean to or not, we’re about to legitimize a president whose conduct stands in direct opposition to the final words of our baptismal covenant: “to strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being.”

I’m not OK with that. Here are three reasons why.

1. This will change the church more than it changes Donald Trump.

The Episcopal Church has always had a complicated relationship to power. We’re an offshoot of the Church of England, a state church whose supreme governor is a monarch, not a priest.

While the Episcopal Church enjoys no such formal alliance with the American state, 11 of our nation’s 44 (soon to be 45) presidents have been Episcopalians. We claim George Washington, James Monroe, Teddy Roosevelt, and FDR as our own.

Many ceremonies of national significance have been held at our national cathedral, where the service for Trump will also be held this Saturday. The funerals of Eisenhower and Reagan. Inaugural services for previous presidents including FDR, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama. The 9/11 memorial service.

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So who do you think is changed more by these entanglements of church and power?

Who do you think will be changed more by Saturday’s encounter between the Episcopal Church and Donald Trump? The 1,700-year history of church entanglement with the state doesn’t give much reason to be hopeful.

2. Hosting a prayer service in Trump’s honor will inevitably normalize him—and what he stands for.

The only impact the event will have on Trump himself will be to normalize him. I’m sure that’s not the intent, but it’s the inevitable outcome.

The Episcopal Church should play no part in legitimizing an unrepentant racist who boasts about sexual assault, demeans and threatens his opponents, and uses his rhetoric to incite violence against already marginalized communities.

There will be no sermon at the prayer service—at Trump’s direction. He will allow nothing that might make him the least bit uncomfortable. There will be no speaking truth to power.

There is nothing remotely prophetic about hosting Donald Trump at this gathering.

“The faith community should be a center of resistance against Donald Trump’s vision in America,” as the Rev. Gary Hall, former dean of Washington National Cathedral said. We should not be lining up to kiss his ring.

3. Hosting Trump undermines the Episcopal Church’s commitment to welcome all people.

Donald Trump has attacked and belittled Mexicans, immigrants, Muslims, blacks, women, and others. The Episcopal Church, for all its flaws, has been a prophetic voice for respecting those of other faiths, for empowering women, for welcoming immigrants as the prophets commanded, for acknowledging and addressing systemic racism, and for embracing LGBTQ persons as full members of our community.

All of that is undermined by legitimizing the man who climbed to power on their backs.

Now wait a minute, you might say. “All people” has to include Donald Trump, doesn’t it?

Yes, it does. That’s why many Episcopal churches will begin praying for him weekly, starting this Sunday. And rightly so.

The oppressed and the oppressor are both welcome—but not on the same terms.

God is always on the side of the oppressed, and we must be too. As Diana Butler Bass writes, “Yes, God’s table is open. Good hosts, however, do not allow people to come to the table with the intention to destroy it.”

The oppressor is welcome, but only if he lays down his arms, only if he renounces oppression, only if he repents—something Donald Trump has never been a fan of doing, by his own admission.

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This is not about Donald Trump’s party affiliation or political platform. I would much rather the Episcopal Church got entirely out of the business of rubbing shoulders with presidents and hosting national events like these.

Pursuing power—or even just proximity to power—always ends up compromising the church’s prophetic witness.

Especially when the man in power is the embodiment of every value the church is called to resist—greed, pride, bigotry, exclusion, and authoritarianism.

So which will it be, Episcopal Church? Donald Trump’s puppet or Jesus Movement?

Because it can’t be both.

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UPDATE (1/18):

The dean of the Washington National Cathedral has issued a new response addressing criticism of their decision to host the inaugural prayer service. You can read it here.

I appreciate the spirit of their response—and that of earlier responses from Presiding Bishop Curry and DC Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde. But I disagree with the substance. In his latest response, the Very Rev. Randy Hollerith said:

“I believe our job is to work together to build a country where everyone feels welcome, everyone feels safe, everyone feels at home. We will need all people from across our nation to be a part of that process, and we cannot retreat into our separate quarters if we have any hope of accomplishing this task. We must meet in the middle, and we start through prayer and song.”

The problem is, you don’t make survivors of sexual assault feel safe by hosting an inaugural prayer service for an unrepentant perpetrator of sexual assault. You don’t make immigrants feel safe by holding an inaugural prayer service for someone who wants to deport them. You don’t make people with disabilities feel safe by hosting an inaugural prayer service for someone who mocks them. You don’t make Muslims feel safe by holding an inaugural prayer service for someone who slanders their religion.

The cathedral still seems to be operating under the assumption that this is all just normal politics—that Trump is a normal politician and that opposition to him is just normal partisan bickering. It’s not. And this assumption is a threat to our prophetic posture.

The bottom line is, we can (and should) meet in the middle with people of different political persuasions and party affiliations. But not all politics are equal. Not every political posture is reconcilable with our baptismal covenant.

And no, we do NOT “meet in the middle” with hate. We do not “meet in the middle” with racism or xenophobia. We do not “meet in the middle” with misogyny.

Some things are just too important.

Photos by Gage Skidmore / CC BY-SA 2.0,  Daniel R. DeCook / public domain

The Episcopal Church, the Anglican Communion, and the real reason we’re having this debate

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So, we’re suspended.

Or not.

Plenty of commentary has already been written about what the primates did, what impact it could have, and what’s in store for the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion. (This is probably one of the more helpful summaries I’ve read, BTW.)

Some have questioned the primates’ selective application of punitive measures—penalizing Episcopalians for their decision to bless same-sex marriages, while neglecting to penalize Anglican church leaders who have promoted state-sanctioned persecution of gays in countries like Uganda—contravening Jesus’ command to love your neighbor. (I’m pretty sure he DIDN’T say, “Unless they’re gay, ’cause gross.”)

But let’s not retread those paths. That ground has been well covered already. Let’s talk about the real reason we’re having this debate. Sometimes it gets obscured in all the bluster, finger-pointing, and Twitter wars.

In his address to fellow primates—moments before the vote was cast—Episcopal Presiding Bishop Michael Curry cut to the heart of things:

Our commitment to be an inclusive church is not based on a social theory or capitulation to the ways of the culture, but on our belief that the outstretched arms of Jesus on the cross are a sign of the very love of God reaching out to us all.

That’s why we’re having this debate. Whatever side you may be on, that’s why this conversation is so important. That’s why some of us feel called to open our arms—and our church doors—to those of other orientations and gender identities.

The question we’re all wrestling with is this: What does it mean to be Jesus to the LGBTQ community? 

It’s not about trying to appease culture.

It’s not about craving public approval.

It’s not about being afraid to take a stand that might be divisive or unpopular. (Have you seen what’s happened to attendance figures since the Episcopal Church began moving in this direction?)

Whenever a church or denomination takes an affirming stance, the response is always the same.

Their motives are questioned.

Someone accuses them of “cultural capitulation.”

They’re labeled “cowards.”

No, really.

The possibility they might have other motives for rethinking long-held convictions isn’t even considered.

And to be fair, at times proponents of the affirming view have opened themselves to this line of criticism—for example, when they frame the debate as a matter of being “on the right side of history.”

History be damned. This is about being on the right side of people.

For Christians, this is about being on the side of Jesus—or rather, being on the same side of people that he is on.

Presiding Bishop Curry’s statement calls us back to the real reason for having this debate. He understands what some on both sides have missed.

Curry went on to say: 

While I understand that many disagree with us, our decision regarding marriage is based on the belief that the words of the Apostle Paul to the Galatians are true for the church today: All who have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male or female, for all are one in Christ.

We may disagree with one another on sexuality. Some will celebrate same-sex marriage, while others see it as an unacceptable compromise. But let’s never forget why we’re having this debate.

It’s not about accommodating cultural whims. It’s not about being afraid to take a stand. It’s not about pleasing the crowd or making the church seem more relevant or palatable. (Again, see the Episcopal Church’s attendance figures.)

This is not about cultural capitulation. It’s about asking, “What does it really mean to love my neighbor?”

The real question for us to wrestle with is whether this might be the 21st-century church’s “Gentile moment,” a moment when God does something new and extraordinary and unexpected in our midst—like he did two thousand years ago when, to everyone’s surprise, he declared “unclean” Gentiles to be “clean,” without requiring them to renounce their Gentile identity first. (It was this last bit that came as a particular shock to first-century Jewish believers.)

The question to ask is not, “Where is the culture moving?”

The question to ask is, “Where is God moving”?

We may not all agree on the answer. Indeed, it can be dangerous to even ask this question. People I know have been lost friends for asking it. They’ve lost jobs. They’ve been estranged from their families. None more so than members of the LGBTQ community.

But whether or not you draw the same conclusions that many in the Episcopal Church (and other Christian traditions) have, please don’t misunderstand what has prompted this line of inquiry.

To say that it’s capitulation or cowardice is to presume authority to judge someone else’s motives—to judge others in precisely the way Jesus forbade.

Worst of all, to write it off as cultural capitulation is to miss the bigger question:

Where is God moving in this?

Image: Lift Every Voice: Freedom Ride 2015

6 ways mainline churches should respond to decline

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Christianity is dying!

No it’s not.

Yes it is.

It’s just a flesh wound!

Anyway, it’s mostly liberal mainline churches that are doomed.

Evangelicals are in trouble too.

All right… we’ll call it a draw.

That basically sums up debate over the Pew study on America’s changing religious landscape.

The rise of the “nones,” those who claim no religious affiliation, can be partly explained by the collapse of cultural Christianity, as Ed Stetzer argues. Mainline churches have been hit the hardest because we had the greatest share of “nominals”—those affiliated with the church for reasons other than a deep-seated commitment to Christ. Our churches once enjoyed disproportionate cultural influence, wealth, and privilege—which is why half of America’s presidents were either Episcopalian, Methodist, or Presbyterian.

Those days are gone. Christianity’s cultural dominance is waning, so there’s little reason left to be part of the church other than a deep-seated commitment to Christ.

This is not a bad thing.

But to suggest, as some conservatives have, that liberalism is to blame—and that conservative evangelicals have nothing to fear—is painfully shortsighted.

For one thing, evangelicalism’s share of the overall population is shrinking too. Attempts to explain away this decline aren’t convincing. If religion were a business—and let’s face it: we treat it like one, which is why we argue over numbers like these—then somebody’s job would be in jeopardy over the drop in evangelical “market share” the last few years.

For another thing—to echo Jonathan Merritt—if liberal drift is responsible for a 3.4% decline among mainline churches, how do we explain a 3.1% decline among Roman Catholics?

In the US, Christianity as a whole is losing influence—evangelical, mainline, Catholic. We’re all in decline.

However, that’s bitter comfort for mainliners who are currently winning the race to the bottom.

The reality is, evangelicals have no business gloating over the decline of mainline Christianity, and faithful mainliners should take no comfort that evangelicals are in the same boat.

We have bigger things to wrestle with—namely, what the future looks like for us.

I’m an evangelical-turned-Episcopalian. I want my newfound spiritual home to have a future—for my kids’ sake and for the world’s sake. I believe we have something profoundly meaningful to offer. But change is coming, and if we fight it, we will die.

Here are six ways I think mainline churches can turn a shifting landscape into an opportunity for renewal…

1. Embrace the decline.

We don’t have the same cultural cache we used to. Good. As I’ve written elsewhere, privilege breeds complacency. The sooner we let go of it, the better.

It’s not the church that’s dying. It’s the edifice we’ve built around it. Let the edifice die. We’ve forgotten what church really looks like. The radically egalitarian movement intent on bringing heaven to earth is sometimes barely recognizable beneath the edifice.

As members of the group Episcopal Resurrection recently wrote:

We have a choice before us. We can continue, valiantly and tragically, to try to save all the rights and privileges we have previously enjoyed. We can continue to watch our church dwindle until it someday becomes an endowed museum to the faith of our forebears. We can continue business as usual until we lose our common life entirely.

Or we can lose our life for Jesus’ sake so that we might save it.

There is no resurrection without death. What are we prepared to let die so we can envision a better way of being the church?

2. Embrace the meaning behind the liturgy, not just liturgy for the sake of liturgy.

I love the sacraments. They’re part of what drew me to the Episcopal Church. I love the way the liturgy soaks into my being, the way it anchors my faith. Big-box Christianity feels like a desperate imitation of the culture; for me the liturgy is transcendent and countercultural.

We Episcopalians can be quite fond of our liturgy. But there’s a danger in becoming too fond of the thing itself, instead of what (or who) it points us to. This was brought home for me when I read Matthew Drake’s heartfelt post on why the sacraments aren’t enough to bring him back to church:

If you’re anything like me, you might view the sacraments and the liturgy as good programs that good people built after Jesus split. Programs whose faithful practice has helped people follow God through the ages. Programs which should be honored and cherished and used to this very day. But man-made programs nonetheless.

I’m cool with those programs until the minute their sacraments become sacred. When people start associating rituals (communion, baptism, the sinner’s prayer), leadership structures (prophets, priests, pastors), organizational structures (denominations, theologies, creeds), and morals (sex, marriage, crime, punishment), as fixed quantities that can be applied in homogeneous fashion… [they] become calcified idols which are now undermining the very deep truths of the even deeper mystery they were originally built to point toward.

For many of us who’ve stumbled into the liturgy, it’s become a lifeline. It’s rejuvenated our faith. But it’s not a magic bullet.

If we’re counting on an influx of disaffected Millennial evangelicals all because we’ve got some liturgy, we’re in for disappointment. It’s going to take more than that.

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3. Dust off our Bibles.

Sometimes I like pointing out to my evangelical friends that we read more scripture in a single church service than most of them do in a month.

If only we picked up our Bibles any other time of the week.

Outside of church, evangelicals are 40% more likely than mainliners to read their Bibles. We mainliners have a complicated relationship with our sacred text. We’ve seen others use it as a weapon to clobber people. We’ve seen the damage a simplistic reading can do. We’ve seen Scripture used to prop up anti-intellectualism and justify all kinds of evil—oppression, exclusion, discrimination…

But to say we should read the Bible more is not to say we necessarily have to read it the same way everyone else does. We don’t have to use it as a weapon. We don’t have to treat it as a flat book. We can read it for what it is: a sacred collection of books with diverse literary styles, themes, and perspectives.

We don’t even have to understand everything in it.

But we should try reading it more. There’s value in knowing where our story comes from.

As Rachel Held Evans shares in Searching for Sunday, it was evangelicalism that gave her a knowledge of—and presumably her love for—the Scriptures.

What if we could do the same for our kids?

4. Recover the Great Commission.

One possible reason why evangelical churches have fared somewhat better/less badly is because they are more evangelistic. (There are other reasons, too, including higher fertility rates.)

For many of us who grew up evangelical, the word “evangelism” conjures memories of a heavy-handed sales pitch, simplistic reasoning, and outright emotional manipulation. As with Bible reading, evangelism is something we should do more. That doesn’t mean we have to do it the same way as others.

But let’s be honest for a moment: We’ve forgotten how to tell the story of Jesus. We’ve become too passive and complacent. The Great Commission does not say, “Wait for people to come into your buildings, then make disciples of them.” It says “Go.”

Or as Episcopal Resurrection put it, “We can no longer wait inside our sanctuaries to welcome those who want to become Episcopalian.”

5. Flatten our hierarchies.

Note that I didn’t say eliminate our hierarchies. Jesus chose some to be apostles. He gave them the keys to the kingdom—authority to “bind” (forbid) and “loose” (permit) on his behalf.

We need priests, bishops, and maybe even the occasional archbishop. But our hierarchies have grown top-heavy and bloated. We’ve lost sight of the fact that every member of the church is a minister, not just the ordained clergy.

If the post-Christendom church is to “travel lightly” (as the Task Force for Reimaging the Episcopal Church calls for), then we have to take another look at hierarchy. We have to streamline and simplify. We have to make it easier for people to do mission at the local level.

There’s an even bigger reason to flatten our hierarchies. Too much power consolidated into the hands of too few people invites abuse. If we are going to be communities where all are welcome and treated with dignity—where this is more than just an aspiration or a slogan on a church sign—then it’s time we take a paring knife to our power structures.

6. Welcome—really welcome—children in our worship.

One of the things I love about my church is the way my children are welcomed at the table. They can receive before they understand. Belonging precedes believing.

But we can go farther.

Recently I had a chance to participate in worship at another Episcopal church near where I live. The kids present were invited to gather around the altar for the communion liturgy. They helped lead the prayers of the people. They helped serve the bread and the cup.

It was chaos, and it was beautiful.

Children learn by doing, by participating. Children need to know they matter—that their presence in our sanctuaries is a blessing, not a burden.

When we exclude our children from our worship, we teach them that their presence is largely irrelevant, as Tom Fuerst writes. It’s no wonder Millennials are defecting from church in droves when they grow up.

If we want our kids to be part of the church later in life, let’s make sure we welcome them now as fully participating members.

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I’m not under any illusions about the challenges facing the mainline church (and our sisters and brothers in evangelical and Catholic churches too). None of these six ideas are magic bullets that will single-handedly reverse the decline or reset the cultural landscape. There is no going back to the way things were. But that can be good news—if we embrace this opportunity to reimagine what it means to be the body of Christ.

Images: Forsaken Fotos on Flickr / CC BY 2.0; le vent le cri on Flickr / CC BY 2.0

Four things I want for the Episcopal Church

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The Episcopal Church breathed new life into my faith. The Eucharist, the liturgy, the people—I don’t know where I’d be in my journey without them. Most likely untethered, without a spiritual home.

Judging by the reaction to my last post, I’m not alone.

I’ve been part of this community long enough now that I should probably stop thinking of myself as a newbie. It’s been long enough for me to know there are challenges ahead. For all the good there is, we’re an imperfect community.

I don’t have answers to the challenges facing the Episcopal Church. But there are four things I hope will shape our response…

1. Don’t be afraid of the future.

The Episcopal Church is in decline, at least numerically. There’s no point denying or dismissing it. Yes, it’s part of a larger trend affecting all major denominations. No, it doesn’t have as much to do with the church’s position on divisive issues; it’s far more to do with demographic shifts and our failure to keep up.

But the decline is real. It cannot be wished away. My friend and Episcopal priest Nurya Love Parish has plenty of research providing the necessary context.

Decline is painful. We’ll see more churches close in the years ahead. We can either wring our hands about the future, or we can help shape it. Either way, things won’t be as they were before. Episcopalians will no longer enjoy privileged status in American society. And well… good. Privilege has a way of breeding apathy. God, on the other hand, has a way of diminishing the mighty to remind us of our weakness—often (and this is the good news) so he can work through us in new and better ways. We can resist, exhausting our resources to prop up a crumbling edifice, or we can build something new.

Death of one kind or another is coming. It always does. The question, as one of our priests put it, is whether we can “fathom resurrection” on the other side. I think we can.

2. Don’t be afraid to challenge people (as long as you have something worth challenging them with).

One of the things I love about the Episcopal Church is that it gave me space to just be. When I first arrived, there wasn’t a ton of pressure to sign up for this program or volunteer at that event. If you need a place to heal or acclimate or reset your spiritual journey, you can do that here. And you should.

At the same time, some of us have been coming for a while now, and we’re ready to be challenged. There’s a caveat, however: if the challenge you have for us is all about maintenance or survival, then we’re probably not interested. But if you have a vision for the future, a way to be part of what God is doing to renew and remake the world—then sign us up. We’re ready to contribute to something bigger than ourselves.

Just ask. 

3. Don’t be afraid to proclaim the gospel.

OK, I’ll admit… I hate it as much as you do when the subject turns to evangelism. For me, it brings up too many memories of going door to door, handing out tracts and peddling Jesus to strangers. Episcopalians have good reason to be skeptical of much of what passes for evangelism.

We don’t have to manipulate people into the kingdom. We don’t have to be like Sandwich Board Guy outside Westlake Center in Seattle, with just about every doom-laden Bible verse scrawled onto his placard.

But evangelism, whatever else it may be, involves proclamation. Granted, announcing that a Jewish preacher came back from the dead doesn’t carry the same shock or novelty it once did. The proclamation that “Jesus is risen” doesn’t turn heads the way it might have 1,900 years ago.

The real challenge is to demonstrate how resurrection changes things. It’s a challenge that requires us to always move outward, engaging meaningfully with the communities and people around us.

Our proclamation will look and feel different. Thankfully, it’s not the heavy-handed sales pitch that others have used. (What do I have to do to get you into a relationship with Jesus today?) At its best, it’s an invitation to explore, to journey together.

But let’s not hesitate to share it. Let’s not forget, there are lots of people searching for something transcendent. (Check.) There are plenty of people who long to be part of a community where all are welcome. (Check.)

There aren’t many places that can say they offer both. We can. Let’s invite others to share the ride.

4. Don’t mistake “speaking up about injustice” for “standing with the poor.”

The Episcopal Church is not afraid to speak out on difficult and sometimes contentious issues: Ferguson, climate change, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Syrian refugee crisis, domestic poverty. There’s a whole public affairs office dedicated to addressing concerns like these.

I love that about my church. The kingdom of God is every bit as much about life in this world as it is the life of the world to come. We should speak prophetically to our institutions of power, and we should do so in solidarity with the most vulnerable members of society.

But we should not forget that speaking up about injustice is not the same as cultivating justice. Advocating for the poor is not the same as standing with the poor. As my friend Ian (one of my first guides into the Anglican tradition) shared recently:

The Church is called to stand with the poor, to be with the poor and even (as controversial as this may sound in our suburban bubble) to be poor in solidarity with those in need. Leaders in the Church should be modeling what it is to be with those in need.

This is not always easy when you have a reputation for affluence—or in a denomination where, according to the Episcopal Café, churches “that are truly flourishing are located disproportionately in affluent neighborhoods and have affluent members.”

Our best hope for nurturing justice is (again quoting Ian) by “modeling a better way, a new way of living that turns the conventions and values of the dominant society upside down.”

In the process, we may discover that some of our own conventions and values need turning upside down, too. We should remain open to that possibility.

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I love the Episcopal Church. (But then, if you read the last post, you know that already.) I believe there is a bright future for us. But it depends on us seeing church as a movement first and an institution second. It will challenge us to reimage what it means to be the presence of Jesus in the 21st century—as each generation before us has had to do in their own time—without abandoning the traditions and practices that make our church such a life-giving place for so many.

Again, I think my friend Ian put it well: “The church is at its best when it is open, humble, and sacramental.” May we be all of these things and more as we move into an uncertain future.

Photo by Greg Westfall on Flickr / CC BY 2.0

11 things I love about the Episcopal Church

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My faith was saved in a gutted-out shopping mall.

I had reached a point where I no longer believed in God’s love—or rather, I didn’t believe it was meant for me. I thought it was something reserved for God’s “chosen ones,” and I just couldn’t imagine myself as one of the lucky few.

It was a trendy church with a famous pastor and a hip worship band that helped me reassemble the pieces of my faith. I will always be thankful for that church.

At that time, I had no idea my journey would lead from that gutted-out shopping mall to an old red door. But it did. Today it’s the Eucharist, the stained glass windows, and the liturgies of the Episcopal Church that are breathing new life into my faith.

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I’m not alone, either. Lately I’ve been sifting through the stories of fellow travelers like Rachel Held Evans, Jonathan Martin, and Lindsey Harts. We’ve all found something meaningful in the Episcopal Church, something disorienting and comforting all at once, something that feels vaguely like… home.

That’s not a term disaffected evangelicals like me are quick to use. But that’s what the Episcopal Church has become for me: a new spiritual home. Here are some of the reasons for that…

1.  The way the liturgy soaks into your being.

The first few times I walked through those big red doors, I didn’t know the code. I didn’t know when to sit or stand. I didn’t know how to use the prayer book. I didn’t know how to cross myself.

While others have sought to make Christianity as accessible as possible, the liturgy of the Episcopal Church feels other, like a strange artifact calling us into a different and slightly foreign reality. Learning the liturgy was like learning a new language.

These days, I’m having to rely less on the prayer book. After months (and now years) of repetition, the words and movements come more naturally from within. Rachel Held Evans described it like this:

At first, the liturgy of the Episcopal Church captured me with its novelty… But we’ve been showing up for nearly six months now, and so it is a different sort of beauty I encounter on Sunday mornings these days—the beauty of familiarity, of sweet routine. I know the order of service now. I know it well enough to have favorite parts, to skim ahead when I’m hungry or restless, to get the songs stuck in my head.

We are products of a culture that demands everything is new and fresh. We frown on repetition and ritual. But these ancient patterns have a way of soaking into your bones. The prayers and songs stay with me throughout the week in a way no sermon ever has.

2. The way the liturgy invites me to worship with my whole being, bridging the false divide between body and soul.

Genuflecting in the aisle. Crossing yourself. Kneeling. Episcopalians worship not just with their hearts or their voices but with their bodies.

Not that it didn’t take some getting used to. It was a few years before I could bring myself to make the sign of the cross. Now I appreciate it for what is: a prayer. It just happens to be one you pray with your body.

And why not? God made us whole persons. We are not disembodied souls stuffed into human shells. We should worship with our whole being. Our heart and soul and flesh should cry out together, as the Psalmist wrote.

It should be said we’re not the only ones who embrace the notion of embodied worship, and our way is not the only way to do so. Pentecostals practice embodied worship when they lift their hands in praise or dance in the aisles. Whole-person worship, as I’ve learned from the Episcopal Church, can be faith-deepening. That’s because, as Elisabeth Grunert once commented, “We learn with our bodies.”

3. The way it anchors my faith when no act of will on my part can.

I don’t always believe the words of the Nicene Creed. But I say them anyway. Sometimes they’re more a confession of desire than conviction, a statement of what I desperately hope to be true.

When I struggle to believe, the rhythms and patterns and prayers of the liturgy are like an anchor. It’s as if the rest of the community—those around me and those who came before me—are saying, “It’s OK. We’ll carry you through this part.”

Faith is no longer dependent on me willing it into being. As Jonathan Martin writes:

With my own world feeling disordered and untethered, I am quite happy to be told when to kneel and when to sit and when to stand. I love that there is almost no space in the worship experience to spectate, because almost every moment invites (but not demands) participation. I have been in no position to tell my heart what to do. But because the Church told my body what to do in worship, my heart has been able to follow—sometimes. And that is enough for now.

4. The way it embraces orthodoxy without rigidity.

The other day my priest (who takes Scripture and theology about as seriously as anyone I’ve ever heard preach), referred in passing to Adam and Eve as our “mythic forbearers.”

No one broke out the pitchforks. There were no murmurs or protests. No angry blog posts. No one accused him of “getting the gospel wrong.”

For many of us, it’s a refreshing change. As Lindsey Harts wrote after hearing an Episcopal homily on God’s sovereignty in relation to the Big Bang, “It was the first time I hadn’t heard the Big Bang being bashed in a church setting.”

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Anglicanism has long been known as the via media, the “middle way” between two traditions. The Episcopal Church has also helped me navigate the middle way between unbelief and dogmatism. Ours is a faith handed down from the apostles, but not one so fragile that it cannot cope with science, with new findings about the origins of the universe, ourselves, or whatever else we might discover.

Ours is not a fear-filled faith.

5. How it makes room for those who’ve been burned out, worn out, or otherwise cast out.

I love how one of my favorite preachers, Jonathan Martin, describes what drew him to an Episcopal church:

I went out of sheer, bold-faced desperation for someone to preach the gospel to me, someone to lay hands on me, and someone to offer me the Lord’s Supper. There was no motivation more noble than hoping to not starve.

A lot of us have burned out on our faith at some point—or been cast out. Maybe it’s because we grew tired of always having to pretend we have it all together. Or maybe someone’s gender or some other part of their identity excluded them from service. Maybe we were told we had to choose between science and faith. Or maybe we were just beaten down by the relentless drum of condemnation.

The Episcopal Church is a refuge, a respite, a place where we can come as we are and learn to receive grace again.

6. The way you can simply be, if that’s all you can do.

You feel it sometimes when you visit a new church. The hungry looks, sizing you up as another potential cog in the church wheel. The pressure to join this program, sign up for that group, volunteer at this event… all before anyone’s even learned your name.

I’ve been part of two Episcopal churches now, and neither one has been like that. They’ve given me space to just be. They’ve let me move at my own pace. To quote Jonathan Martin again, they’ve been places where “I can love and be loved as a human being, without my gifts or my life being commodified in any way.” Or as Lindsey Harts put it, “It’s the only place I’ve ever stepped foot into that didn’t seem to expect something of you.”

It’s not that the Episcopal Church won’t invite you to become more deeply connected. They will. But they seem to get that each person is different—and, more importantly, that people are not commodities.

(That said, if you hang around long enough, watch out. They might ask you to join the vestry when you least expect it.)

7. The way their worship can be deeply moving without resorting to emotional manipulation.

When a church tells me how I should feel (“Clap if you’re excited about Jesus!”), it smacks of inauthenticity. Sometimes I don’t feel like clapping. Sometimes I need to worship in the midst of my brokenness and confusion—not in spite of it and certainly not in denial of it.

In contrast to the standard worship formula of so many churches, “the liturgy does not try to coerce everyone into the same emotional experience,” as Jonathan Martin writes, “but in its corporate unity strangely creates space for us all to have a very personal experience of God.”

Sometimes when you stop trying to manufacture a particular emotion, you stumble into something even more profound and beautiful than you could have imagined.

8. How the “shared cup” matters more than “shared dogma.”

I have spent a lot of my life trying to get my theology right. I’ve spent years believing all the “right things” in order that I might belong. So it was jarring when a good friend explained to me that the sermon (the meat!) was not the center of Anglican worship. It’s the Eucharist, the common table around which we all gather.

We belong so that we might find a common faith together, not the other way around.

Jonathan Martin writes:

The problem in Protestantism in general, historically but much more profoundly now, is that have we far too much emphasis on getting the beliefs right. No wonder we now have over 40,000 denominations—the search for perfect doctrine is endless… At St. Peter’s, we recite the Nicene creed every week. But the practice of the liturgy… and the shared experience of the Eucharist is what holds us together. Beyond that, there is plenty of room for difference. The emphasis is not on sharing dogma so much as it is sharing the cup.

9. The way everyone is welcome as a full participant, even children.

My 4-year-old is welcome at the table every week. She is able to receive the bread and the cup even before she’s made a profession of faith. This sends a powerful message: God’s grace is for her, too. She is no less a part of the body of Christ just because she doesn’t fully understand yet what that means.

One Sunday shortly after our daughter began receiving communion, we were milling about during coffee hour. (If there was a number 12 on this list, it might be coffee hour.) As we were talking with our priest, our daughter began solemnly placing a goldfish cracker into each of our hands. Our priest picked up on what she was doing, and he played along. She was reenacting what she’d just been part of in the sanctuary.

The Episcopal Church is a place that nurtures those first small, occasionally faltering steps of faith—and welcomes the full participation of those who take them.

10. How it reminds me that I’m part of something bigger.

My first real experience of liturgy was in the UK. We lived for a short time in a village an hour north of London, and we began attending the parish church. Every Sunday on our way into the 700-year-old building, we’d walk through the churchyard, past the weatherworn graves of long-dead parishioners who’d prayed in the same pews, whispered the same prayers, and sang the same songs for centuries.

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I need to be reminded that my faith does not begin or end with me—that, to quote a comment from Rachel’s blog, it’s “something that you don’t really own.”

11. How at the altar, we’re all the same.

It’s been said the ground is level at the foot of the cross. I don’t think I’ve appreciated that quite as much anywhere as in the Episcopal Church.

At the altar, we all kneel, as Lindsey Harts put it. We all receive what we cannot do for ourselves. We all confess our weakness—that even the gifts we bring were God’s gifts to us in the first place. We all receive the same body and blood.

We need to do a lot better at cultivating and embracing diversity in our midst…but the altar is as good a place as any to start.

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Many of these things can, of course, be found in other traditions as well. But for me, it’s been the Episcopal Church that has nurtured my faith, breathing new life into me. May you find beauty in whatever tradition you call home. May God breathe new life into your faith—wherever you are.

Related: Four things I want for the Episcopal Church

Rejecting Junia

Over the past several years, my faith journey has taken me away from nondenominational, non-institutional expressions of the church. Since then, I’ve found myself belonging to the mother of all Christian institutions (well, apart from the Catholic Church): the Anglican Communion.

This journey might not have taken place if it weren’t for a wonderful little Church of England parish my wife and I belonged to when we were living in the UK in 2008. Being part of an active worshipping community that had been gathering in the same place since the 1300s has a way of putting my own faith journey into perspective. As I entered the sanctuary every Sunday, walking past tombstones of those who’d been dead for centuries, I was reminded: Christianity doesn’t begin or end with me. I am a tiny part of something so much bigger.

And so I’ve come to appreciate what the institutional church, for all its flaws, has to offer: a vital connection to our past. I think there is something significant, maybe even a bit mystical, in the idea of apostolic succession — in the fact that the bishop who presided over my confirmation is part of an unbroken chain going all the way back to the very first apostles.

Jesus gave those first apostles the authority to “bind and loose” — that is, to permit and forbid on behalf of the church — and I believe that authority is passed down through the church’s apostles, bishops, or leaders today.

Yet a deep connection to the past can either give you the courage to move forward, or it can hold you back. Which is why today, I have no energy to defend the institutional church. Not when my own mother church* tells half the human race, in effect, Your services aren’t required. The Church of England’s vote against women bishops was more than another nail in the coffin of its own irrelevance. It was a slap in the face to women who are tired of fighting for a seat at the table.

It was, I believe, a rejection of the very apostolic authority the institutional church depends on for legitimacy. How can you stand on the shoulders of the apostles when you implicitly reject one of their number? After all, Junia was a woman and an apostle (Romans 16:7). By rejecting women bishops, you are rejecting Junia, a vital part of our apostolic foundation.

This is about more than cultural relevance. It’s about more than making women feel welcome in the church (though that in itself is a worthy enough endeavor). By denying women their rightful place at the table — a place they had in the very beginning — we the institutional church are cutting our legs out from under us. We’re not just hurting women. We’re hurting all of us.

Apparently, God thought women were worth including among the apostles. Today, a minority in the Church of England seems to think otherwise. Sadly, that was enough to carry the day.

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*I’m grateful to be able to say that my own Anglican tribe, the Episcopal Church, welcomes women to serve at every level, even as presiding bishop.

On the imminent demise of the Episcopal Church…

I hate it when the wrecking ball arrives just as I’m settling into a new home.

A little over a year ago, my wife and I joined the Episcopal Church. We were confirmed on a Saturday. Our daughter was baptized the following day, Pentecost Sunday.

Last week, Episcopalians wrapped up their triennial convention, and the big story was our denomination’s impending demise.

Over the last three years, nearly 200,000 people have fled the Episcopal Church. The long-term picture is even more depressing. One in four regular worshippers have disappeared from our pews during the past decade.

You can feel it in our more-than-half-empty churches. If this pace continues (and it probably will), in 20 years the Episcopal Church will be half its already-diminished size.

Episcopalianism has been a part of this country for over 400 years. At this rate, we won’t make it another 400. We won’t even come close.

Enter conservative columnist Ross Douthat, who blames the decline on the extreme liberalism he sees in mainline denominations like mine. In a recent New York Times editorial, he asked whether “liberal Christianity can be saved.”

Despite some of the reaction to his piece, I think Douthat asks some important questions. His article  was thought-provoking and nuanced. We should listen, for example, when he urges liberal Christians to come out of their denial:

Both religious and secular liberals have been loath to recognize this crisis. Leaders of liberal churches have alternated between a Monty Python-esque “it’s just a flesh wound!” bravado and a weird self-righteousness about their looming extinction.

Yet Douthat sees no cause for celebration in the demise of liberal Christianity. He warns conservatives — many of whom left denominations like mine years ago — against triumphalism:

The defining idea of liberal Christianity — that faith should spur social reform as well as personal conversion — has been an immensely positive force in our national life. No one should wish for its extinction, or for a world where Christianity becomes the exclusive property of the political right.

Douthat encourages liberal Christians to remember why they exist in the first place — and what sets them apart from their secular counterparts. He laments that most “leaders of the Episcopal Church and similar bodies don’t seem to be offering anything you can’t already get from a purely secular liberalism.”

There are days when I worry about that too. In my tradition, we’ve devoted plenty of time and energy to the ways in which Christianity needs to evolve. But at the end of the day, is there anything left of “historic Christianity” which, to quote Douthat again, we would “defend and offer uncompromisingly to the world”?

I think it’s a valid question.

I believe that historic, orthodox Christianity offers a compelling foundation for many of the “progressive” causes taken up by my denomination (and many other Christians as well). But is our engagement consciously rooted in the reality of the resurrected Christ and his kingdom? Would anyone even know if it was?

For example, are we advocating for the Millennium Development Goals (a subject on which our Presiding Bishop has spoken eloquently a number of times) simply because it’s the cause du jour of the industrialized world? Or is it because the resurrected Christ compels us to labor so that everyone can experience life “to the full” now and in the future?

Are we demanding diversity and equality outside the church only? Or do we also practice it in our churches, acting from the conviction that God is making a new, worldwide family — one where the old barriers are rendered meaningless?

Are we just welcoming gays and lesbians into our congregations, or are we also inviting them (and everyone else, for that matter) to make Christ the center of their lives?

These are questions we ought to be asking as we take stock of our diminishment. If what we have to offer the world is indistinguishable from secular liberalism — if it is not at its core a vibrant, Christ-centered faith that compels us to embrace causes like caring for the poor and the planet — then, well, who needs us?

Or as the apostle Paul put it once, if the tomb is not empty, then what’s the point?

That being said, I think there were a few other factors which Douthat didn’t address. (To be fair, Douthat only had about 800 words to work with). Here are some other lessons I think we should take from the Episcopal Church’s decline.

1. All Christians, liberal and conservative, are in the same boat.

Last week, Gallup revealed that public confidence in organized religion has reached an all-time low. Just 4 in 10 Americans have much faith in the church, down from 60 percent as recently as September 2001.

It’s not just liberal Christianity that’s in decline. We may have been hit with it first, but now others are joining the party. The Southern Baptist Convention, a stalwart of evangelical conservatism, has been declining five years in a row. Their rate of decline increased more than 600 percent from 2009 to 2011. (In fairness, they still have a long way to go before they catch up to us.)

Pundits will offer competing theories to explain Christianity’s decline in the West. Whatever you make of it, though, it’s no longer confined to one ideological corner of the church.

2. You can’t have it both ways.

It’s fascinating to hear some Christians interpret the mainline church’s decline as proof of God’s disapproval. Mark Driscoll, for example, is fond of comparing the growth rate at his church with that of other groups with whom he disagrees.

There are, of course, a couple problems with this approach. First, if numbers are the clearest sign of God’s (dis)approval, then we should all drop what we’re doing and start imitating Joel Osteen. (Mark, you’re gonna need a new hairdo.)

Second, let’s be honest. Most of us only apply this logic when it works in our favor. How many Southern Baptists would countenance the notion that their decline is punishment for some doctrinal error or apostasy? When it’s some other group who’s hurting, we tend to assume it’s because they’ve lost their way. Yet when we’re the ones facing decline, either we go into denial (it’s just a fluke!) or we nurse a martyrdom complex (being right has a cost!), as Douthat rightly points out.

Speaking of martyrdom complexes…

3. Sometimes the right course is the unpopular one.

Within two years of ordaining its first openly gay bishop, the Episcopal Church lost 115,000 members. No one questions why they left. And the debate over that decision is a long way from being resolved.

But when was the last time Episcopalians experienced a comparable exodus? 1967 to 1969.

During that two-year period, the church lost an almost identical number of people — in part because it started speaking out against racial discrimination.

Was the fallout from that decision a sign of God’s displeasure? Was the Episcopal Church capitulating to culture, or was it leading prophetically? (Bear in mind it would be another 25 years before Southern Baptists apologized for their support of slavery and segregation.)

Doing the right thing is no guarantee of success. Nor are skyrocketing numbers always proof you’re doing the right thing.

4. Maybe all our fighting is driving people away.

There’s no question many have left the Episcopal Church because of the national body’s more controversial decisions in recent years. Heck, we’ve lost entire dioceses. So in one sense, the commentators are right. This fight is costing us.

But that’s the point. What if it’s the fight (more than the underlying issues) that’s turning people away?

Most people who’ve left the Episcopal Church have done so because their conscience compels them — not because they’re hateful or mean-spiritied. But in the process, both sides have engaged in a knock-down, drag-out fight — including, among other things, taking each other to court. (Didn’t Paul have something to say about that?) I haven’t followed every sordid detail, but it seems likely to me that both sides have escalated this fight in ways it didn’t need to be escalated.

So what if it’s not just the Episcopal Church (or the congregations who’ve left) that people are staying away from, but Christianity as a whole?

Today, most outsiders define the church according to its worst characteristics: anti-gay (91% say this), judgmental (87%), hypocritical (85%), and too political (75%). Meanwhile, most major denominations are experiencing (or are about to experience) some form of decline.

Is it possible these two facts are related?

Perhaps we should consider the possibility that how we — and I mean all of us, liberal and conservative — handle conflict is driving people away.

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