I recently posted a reply to a posting on The Episcopal Cafe's Section, "The Daily Episcopalian," in which Adrian Worsfold wrote an essay entitled Anglican No Longer . He describes complicated reasons as to why he no longer feels comfortable calling himself Anglican or Christian for that matter. I oddly felt that I had "been there done that" and that, as one of the few non-theistic Episcopalians that I know, I needed to post some of my own ideas. I suspect that, as I took several days to put my thoughts together for that post, it will not get much notice. I did, however, want to incorporate it into my own blog, as it contains some ideas about what I have recently been thinking about church and the world. I am attracted, I think, to some of the "emergent" Christianity movement's ideas, but I often get the feeling that the persons writing in that area are coming from an Evangelical background and that their foundational assumptions and language "do not go far enough" to move away from that source. Another voice from both a more "catholic" as well as "pluralist" perspective is needed. As I read it over, I think that I "jump" a bit from the metaphor of the sponge to the metaphor of pilgrimage, and I could probably "clean it up," but I think that I will post it as I originally wrote it for now:
As an a-theistic (non-theistic) Christian/Episcopalian, I somehow feel that I should comment. Ultimately, however, paths like that which Adrian has taken cannot be walked by another, no matter how much sympathy I feel for many of his views. I can only wish him well on his journey, and I hope that his pilgrimage will be one of fulfillment and meaning.
I have thought a great deal recently about "what does it mean" to be Episcopalian/Anglican in this time of re-examination of our foundational "truths" and the inevitable anti-explorational reactions that this invokes. Somehow, I feel that, while I applaud our moves for "fuller inclusion" of LGBT persons and women, we are missing the mark. What Christianity and TEC/Anglicanism does not need so much is "inclusivity" (and certainly not more "exclusivity") but more "porosity." We need for the church to be more "porous" in terms of its experience of/with the world and creation, the "numinous" and the stories and perspectives of other religious traditions and how we understand and allow that to meaningfully interact with our own traditions and history. I was thinking recently that, in spite of our attempts to formulate positions/doctrines, Jesus in the Gospels often seemed to resist firm definitions. "What is the Kingdom of heaven like?" was answered mostly in parable and metaphor, not in creed/covenant/doctrine. "Covenant" Anglicans need to appreciate the irony of what they are trying to accomplish.
How about a new parable? "The Kingdom of Heaven is like a sponge. When it is taken out of water, it dries out, hardens, breaks and disintegrates. But when it is put into water, it takes up the water and grows and absorbs it. And when you take it out again, it drenches everything around it. "
The Church, I think, needs to be more sponge-like. It needs to absorb the concerns and needs of those that it encounters. It needs to avoid having firm boundaries and borders. It needs to be drenched in the experience of the world as it is, not as we wish it to be and also the possibility of the numinous that we may find/encounter in ways unlike any that we have known before. Scripture needs to be a springboard for experience/thought, not a wall around our minds and lives to fence them in. We need to break the canon open, not fence it in. The church needs to be immersed in the water of the numinous and the world, not out of the water and drying out on a storage shelf. It needs to "leak" the numinous and its reflections and experience back into the surrounding water and world.
At this point, I am more "optimistic" than Adrian that the churches, Anglican and Episcopal and others, can still possibly do this. It will not be easy, but what real thing is ever easy? In the year 2000, the liturgy for the opening of the Holy Door at St. Peter's in Rome was accompanied by a prayer containing a line that still resonates with me: "The Church is on a pilgrimage through time to eternity." Each of us is journeying in this Pilgrimage for such an infinitesimal time with no end in sight. We walk, yes, but wither none of us really can say nor can we say that there is some "end" at which we will arrive. I hope, though, that while we live and walk together or apart, we may find meaning in the journey itself.
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