Picking and Choosing - the Episcopal Church, Part II

Theo Hobson replied to my post below and said this:

<<I wrote about a visit to a Quaker meeting in the summer for this site. I said they throw out the baby Jesus with the bathwater of dogmatism.

Christianity is, at root, a cult of this mythic personality.>>

I replied with this:

<<A note - Quakers are not a Christian denomination, they are a group of believers who hold in common an approach to religion that cherishes different sources of truth and believes in the importance of personal revelation. They don't necessarily worship the 'mythic personality' of Christ, but they can do, if that is the truth revealed to them.

If you want to have Christ-worship in common with all your fellow believers then I suppose Quakers are not for you, but if you want a radically liberal approach to religion, which I think you do, and are willing to believe in Christ when those around you may not, then it might be what you are looking for.

This is just a thought, otherwise I'm pleased that the Episcopal Church can give you something of what you are looking for although I suspect more of it was to be found in England than you say.>>

I searched out Theo's piece on the Quakers (Thursday 18 March 2010 13.00 GMT) where he writes of his disappointment with the lack of Christian symbolism and structure at a Meeting he went to.

Picking and Choosing - the Episcopal Church, Part I

Theo Hobson's article in the Guardian newspaper (Friday 28 January 2011 12.44 GMT) describes his postive experiences in the Episcopal Church after his frustration with the Church of England (C of E).

Here's my response:

I too have been very impressed by the Episcopal Church's bold, brave and liberal stance on so many important issues, but you do the C of E a disservice. The point about an established church is that it includes a wide variety of voices - some liberal, many less so - and what could be more liberal than that?

There are few denominations which are spread as evenly across race, class, age and gender divides (not that the C of E doesn't have a long way to go on some of these). The Episcopal Church is a far more middle class institution than plenty of innercity C of E churches.

Joining in willingly with a bunch of people who have a load of different beliefs about many things but share a core trust in God is one of the most positive expressions of faith I can think of. Shopping around to find the church that agrees with everything you already think seems lazy and arrogant - challenge and diversity are essential in life as in faith.

Sure you don't get what you want in every way, but you do get to exercise skills of tolerance, argument and community. I'm not suggesting you should feel obliged to go to a mega evangelical homophobic stadium church if that is the antithesis of your belief, but then very, very few C of E churches are like that.

Holding onto liberal beliefs while actively engaging and changing the illiberal beliefs of others is a commission not a chore.

Lastly - one thought, why didn't you try the Quakers? Its not a ritualistic form of faith but there are meetings with clear purpose and format, its disestablished, and exceeds even the Episcopal Church in liberalism. An organised religion where members are called Friends and every book is treated as being as Holy as any other.

Events; coincidences

A few weeks ago I met a woman who had become a doctor and then, after some 15 years, a nun. While in holy orders she met a monk and they fell in love. There was nothing for it but to leave the convent. So, after several years of waiting and thinking she left and they married. Out of the cloister he became, perhaps inevitably, a priest and she took up the full time position of priest's wife.

They grew old together. Eventually it was time for him to retire from parish life and they planned a new life in a pretty, old city. Shortly before they were about to move he died unexpectedly. There was nothing for it but to move there on her own. Suddenly it was hard to go to church, to see someone who was not her husband take the service. Each time it was a disappointment, never quite the way she remembered it, the way it had been when her husband took the service. So she changed denominations and became a Quaker, finding in it something of the convent, quiet, reflective and surrounded by other people. No priests to remind her of her husband. This was when I met her.

Not silent but thinking

To a Friends Meeting House and a service in silence. An hour spent sitting still, in the quiet, surrounded by other people is a challenge. You won't find me plugged into my iPod at all hours, I don't even listen to music much, but silence is a novelty, especially purposeful silence.

I am on a bench by the door, three rows back from the centre and all I can hear is breathing, pages turning, legs crossing, feet shuffling. My face itches like madness. For the first twenty minutes I focus well, discerning the Spirit, or trying to. It is taking, I realise later, all my powers of concentration. I focus, I refocus, I search my body and my head, the sounds near to me, the sounds far away from me, looking for something I don't understand. I close my eyes but that makes the itching worse. I try to sit with my feet on the floor, my hands in my lap, but I can't. My legs need to be crossed, my head supported. I give up.

Around me men and women, mostly in their 40s and 50s have their eyes closed beatifically. I can't copy them. I try and I can't. There is no deepening. My focus oscillates back and forth metronomically between discernment and distraction. Do I feel the Spirit? Do I feel nearer the Spirit? How do I even know?

After 20 minutes my psyche is exhausted and I think <<maybe that's the point>>

Time to not-try, to just exist in the room. I open my eyes and watch the other people. Someone speaks, tells a story, and I listen carefully. One woman hasn't shifted a muscle since I walked in. I feel envious. My head is sometimes filled with white noise, sometimes blank. I sit together with everyone else and enjoy the dawdling, the pleasant large windows, the young guy in a cap who smiles consistently. Are they all discerning the Spirit together? Are <<we>>?

The time passes very quickly and within moments the hour is up and two men in long beards shake hands, there is a sense, I think, of collective release. We smile and nod at each other. There is tea afterwards and one woman suggests to me that this is close to a monastic experience. Communion that isn't filled with action or purpose or function but just - communion. I agree and have a coffee.