{"id":124,"date":"2003-05-06T19:42:00","date_gmt":"2003-05-06T19:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/2003\/05\/06\/124\/"},"modified":"2003-05-06T19:42:00","modified_gmt":"2003-05-06T19:42:00","slug":"124","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=124","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

I was born a Roman Catholic, but back in the 80s and 90s I did some time with the Episcopalians. Yea, I was “received” by one of their bishops, so I was official. I paid my dues to them for many years. But after a decade or so it got old. So me and the Episcopal Church<\/b> have gone our ways (and as to me and the Roman Catholic church — well, as they say, you can’t go home again; “home” ain’t where the heart is any more). <\/p>\n

Actually, I shouldn’t say anything bad about the Anglicans. Most of them are nice people. Some of them are honestly spiritual people. Some Episcopals call their church “the thinking person’s religion”<\/b>. There are indeed a lot of thinking people within the Episcopal Church. Unlike the Roman Catholic institution, there’s a lot of thinking and debate going on amidst concerned Episcopalians — debate about the role of minorities, the place of gays, the rights of women, and the obligations of the “unjustly privileged class” (read well-off white males). <\/p>\n

The Episcopal Church today is kind of a schizoid experience<\/b>. Some parishes are bastions of Anglo-Saxonism; just as the Greek Orthodox Church has a lot of Greek people in it, the Episcopal Church is still a haven for the English. But there are a lot of Episcopal parishes these days where the majority hail not from Britannia (although even then, you still have a handful of blue-bloods who think they represent the parish’s center of gravity). In those places, you are more likely to encounter ethnic minorities like Hispanics and blacks, and psychological minorities such as gays, radical feminists, and people like me, who for other reasons just haven’t found their spiritual homes yet. <\/p>\n

The ethnic minorities pretty much take care of themselves. Once they form a critical mass, they bond into a self-supportive community and introduce singing and liturgical styles more familiar to themselves (which are often a lot more lively and inspiring than the usual Episcopal services). But the psychological minorities are usually a rather needy bunch<\/b>. And today, more and more of the Anglican church’s ministers are being selected from these psychological minorities. In a way this is good; it’s a sign of the church’s openness. But I was rather troubled by the behavioral limitations and weaknesses of the leaders and priests who hailed from these groups. These people often ministered not from their strengths but from their weaknesses, and I often felt that my own weaknesses and spiritual needs could not be served by them. It was like drowning and trying to be rescued by a rowboat that’s so full of water it rides only a half inch above the surface. In some places, the Episcopal church is quite dysfunctional; in other places, quite boring. Take your pick.<\/b> <\/p>\n

The Episcopals are a rather contentious bunch. Their convocations are known for invective and dissention. Some people wonder if the whole thing is going to split up<\/b> along the liberal \/ conservative fault line, or between the evangelistic and Anglo-catholic liturgists. But I don’t think it will. There is something that unites all Episcopalians, including the activist gays, the genteel bluebloods, the southern Biblical fundamentalists, the northern anti-war liberals, the Anglo-catholics, the radical feminists, the urban black communities, etc. Even though none of them will admit it to you, I know what the common thread is: the love of old buildings<\/b>.<\/p>\n

To be an Episcopalian, you’ve got to love classy old stone church buildings. They’ve got them by the bucketful, all over the nation, in the pine belt of Texas and in downtown Boston. Sure, there are some modern Episcopal churches, and yes, there are some simple little white-washed wood frame chapels. But for the most part, an Episcopal church is old and is made of big dark brown stone blocks<\/b> with red-painted wooden doors and stained glass windows and a high, rafter-beamed ceiling. Give it to the English, they didn’t build junk.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

So, if you want to join the Episcopal faith, you’d better be ready to devote yourself to the preservation of an old building. Because that’s where the heart and soul<\/b> of that church is sited. I’ll be the first to admit, those old Episcopal churches are landmarks and deserve to be preserved. And perhaps it is a wonderful ministry to breath communal life and spiritual fire into a grand old edifice (hats off here to the Rev. Tracey Lind<\/b> of Cleveland, who I knew back at St. Pauls in Paterson; despite being from the psychological minority, Tracey does a good job of breathing life into old churches; and a similar tribute should be afforded to Newark Diocese lay activist Louie Crew<\/b>). But for me, I don’t know. I would sit inside those high-ceilinged, dimly lit old monuments and wonder, is this really the way to Yahweh \/ Allah \/ the Great Spirit ? For some people, indeed it is. If so for you, then maybe you’ll find a home in the Episcopal Church. But for me, I had to get back on the road.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was born a Roman Catholic, but back in the 80s and 90s I did some time with the Episcopalians. Yea, I was “received” by one of their bishops, so I was official. I paid my dues to them for many years. But after a decade or so it got old. So me and the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=124"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}