Can The Episcopal Church Be Saved?

Some friends have emailed me an op-ed by Ross Douthat in last Sunday’s New York Times entitled, “Can Liberal Christianity Be Saved.”  Most of Douthat’s column is about the Episcopal Church, which had just concluded its General Convention, held every three years.  The beginning and end of Douthat’s column sum it up well

In 1998, John Shelby Spong, then the reliably controversial Episcopal bishop of Newark, published a book entitled “Why Christianity Must Change or Die.” Spong was a uniquely radical figure — during his career, he dismissed almost every element of traditional Christian faith as so much superstition — but most recent leaders of the Episcopal Church have shared his premise.  Thus, their church has spent the last several decades changing and then changing some more, from a sedate pillar of the WASP establishment into one of the most self-consciously progressive Christian bodies in the United States…

Today, by contrast, the leaders of the Episcopal Church and similar bodies often don’t seem to be offering anything you can’t already get from a purely secular liberalism. Which suggests that perhaps they should pause, amid their frantic renovations, and consider not just what they would change about historic Christianity, but what they would defend and offer uncompromisingly to the world.

In between those quotes, Douthat makes the same argument that others have made for some time: that mainline Christian churches are declining in numbers because of their embrace of “liberal Christianity.”

I don’t think Douthat is totally off base.  On the last day of the convention, many resolutions were passed that made it seem like the Episcopal Church, once called the Republican Party at prayer, was trying too hard to be the Democratic Party at prayer.  I’m very supportive of “The Gunn Rule” (coined by Episcopal priest and Convention delegate Scott Gunn): “Let us tell the world what we are going to do about political problems, rather than telling the world what they should do about political problems.”

Of course, if Episcopal and other mainline church leaders have risked identifying their denomination with a liberal platform, what have conservatives done with their more evangelical churches?  In their book, unChristian, David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons analyze a survey of young adults by the Barna group.  And to summarize: most young adults perceive that “Christians are primarily motivated by a political agenda and promote right-wing politics.”  Forty seven percent of young adults who call themselves “Born-Again Christians” believe that the involvement of “conservative Christians” in politics is either a “major” or “minor” concern.  When either liberal or conservative Christians give the impression that their political opinions are synonymous with the Good News of Jesus Christ, then their Gospel proclamation has been severely compromised.

But the most serious of Douthat’s charges is the first:  That the Episcopal Church’s leadership has embraced the notion that traditional Christian faith is just superstition, and needs to be thrown off a ship that is sinking in an increasingly secular sea.  I remember Bishop Spong well.  I have friends who only stayed in the church because if Bishop Spong could ask questions, then they could too.  So even John Spong fulfilled God’s purpose that not one of the sheep be lost.  That said, I never bought into Spong’s agenda.  I can say the Nicene Creed every Sunday without crossing my fingers.  I’m glad that my Episcopal Church is not afraid of questions about what we believe.  And I am no one’s doctrine policeman.  But I know what I have inherited from those who came before me in faith.  And I know the One in whom I place my trust and hope for this world and the next.

But I also know faithful Christians who affirm the creeds, and also believe that a monogamous, lifelong relationship between two people of the same sex is no less a reflection of Jesus’ love for the Church than the same union between two people of the opposite sex.  What General Convention did last week was to allow some parts of the Church to test this proposition in the Spirit (1 Thessalonians 5:19-21) by authorizing the blessing (not marriage) of same sex unions where the Bishop allows it.  In God’s good time, we will know if this is the right thing to do.  In the meantime, my Episcopal Church does not reject those whom other Christians call an “abomination,” misusing the words of Leviticus.

The bishops that Douthat thinks are dismissing traditional Christianity reaffirmed last week that Holy Baptism is “the ancient and normative entry point to receiving Holy Communion and that our Lord Jesus Christ calls us to go into the world and baptize all peoples.”  Some Episcopalians have suggested that to be truly hospitable, we should invite all people to receive Jesus Christ in bread and wine, and then baptize them.  Neither I nor any priest I know checks peoples’ baptismal certificates at the communion rail.  But to publicly invite the non-baptized to communion would be a radical change that the Bishops, rightly in my opinion, said “No” to.

Of course, Douthat is right about declining membership and attendance in the Episcopal Church.  I just think the reasons are deeper than politics.  And so is the solution to that problem.  One of the most encouraging things to come out of General Convention was the Acts 8 Moment.  The eighth chapter of Acts describes the scattering of Christians out of Jerusalem after the first Christian martyr, Stephen was stoned to death.  At first, that seemed like a disaster.  The Christians had failed to bring the people of Jerusalem to accept the Good News of Christ Jesus.  But out of that scattering came the conversion of Samaritans, Ethiopians, and eventually, Gentiles.  In other words, what seemed to be a terrible disaster in Jerusalem simply led to greater successes for the Church outside of Jerusalem.

Those who participated in the Acts 8 Moment at General Convention faced the truth of our decline.  They prayed together, read scripture together, and dreamed together.  And they worked to support a resolution, which passed, calling for the restructuring of the Episcopal Church to meet the needs of the 21^st century, rather than the 1950s and 60s.  A commission will be appointed to recommend how this restructuring will take place at the next General Convention in 2015.

On my Twitter page I describe myself as a priest with one foot in the 4^th century, and the other in the 21^st.  What Jesus Christ did and said 2,000 years ago is still Good News today, as fresh now as it was then.  In the Holy Eucharist, when bread and wine are offered, blessed, broken and shared, Jesus is as present with us now as he was with his first disciples.  In him, all that is old is new, and all that is new is old.  My bishop, Kee Sloan, blesses his parishes with these words of Scripture: “Hold fast to what is good; sing a new song to the Lord.”  I believe that the Episcopal Church is doing just that.  Come and see.