Schisms in the Episcopal Church

This past weekend the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth became the fourth diocese to break with the national church. Many of you asked me on Sunday how I felt about this break. Mostly what I feel, at least initially, is sadness.

I was once connected to a church that eventually broke from the Episcopal Church over the revision of the Book of Common Prayer and the ordination of women. Both of these changes took place in the mid to late 1970s, and my parish priest was adamantly opposed to both of them. When he dropped me off at seminary in September 1980, he said, “I am leaving you here in order to learn how to protect the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic faith that was once delivered to the apostles.” It felt like a heady, heroic charge and I was ready to embrace it with zeal and conviction. Until. Until I began to read the bible. Until I began to reflect upon what it meant to be the church. Until I tried to make sense of how Jesus lived, how he acted, how he dealt with and treated people, how and why he died. I had once believed—and I had certainly been taught this—that God could be captured, or least better and more completely captured, by some particular words in a bible or a prayer book. But then I began to see and understand that all of our language about God is provisional, that all of our concepts about God can at best only point to God, suggest God, give us hints and guesses and whispers about God. I had once believed that only men could stand at the altar because Jesus had only chosen men to be among his apostles. But this understanding began to break down when I read in Genesis that we are all made in God’s image (1:26f), when I read in Romans that all of us fall short of the glory of God (3:9 f), when I read in John that Jesus died to bring all of us to himself (12:32), and when I read in Galatians that “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male or female; for all of [us] are one in Christ Jesus.” (3:28)

Many of the people that I trained with came from and then returned to these dioceses that have left the church. One of the dangers of being a church in schism is that schism leads to schism, which leads to yet more schism. Another danger for churches who are inclined to leave in order to find or make another church, a purer church, is that they tend to define themselves by what they are against rather than what they are for, and that they often move towards a fortress-mentality and embattled-spirituality, rather than a vision-oriented, mission-minded, ministry-shared, and hope-inspired life.

While I do understand how and why some churches, some dioceses, could be upset or even angry about how the Episcopal Church has made some decisions in recent years, I am, finally, distressed about all such schismatic activity. I am distressed for those who leave and I am distressed for those who stay. I am distressed for all of us because I believe that we all need each other. At our best, Anglicanism has had room to disagree, room to see things differently, room to be both Protestant and Catholic, room to believe different things about how Jesus is present in the Eucharist, room to be more pastorally-oriented or more prophetically-edgy, room to stress contemplative spiritually or muscular social action, room to wrestle with different readings of scripture. Now there is less room, it seems, and that make me sad and distressed. I don’t want to be in a church of ghetto like-mindedness or conformity. I like a messy church, a church full of people who are passionate about their ideas, their theologies, their instincts about faith and discipleship, but then a church that can get on its knees together, that can admit our sins and foolishness together, that can receive mercy and grace and love together. I don’t want to be kneeling next to someone who agrees with me—I often don’t even agree with myself—but next to someone who is going to love me, just like I am going to pray to love them, despite our differences and through our disagreements.

I wrote that I am initially sad about Forth Worth and others dioceses leaving the Episcopal Church, but sad is not where I end up. Where I end up is galvanized. I feel galvanized because I am ever clearer about how important our work is and how much we are daily in the business of being used by God to save lives. We have work to do at Palmer and from Palmer, so let us not be distracted by what happens in Forth Worth or wherever else. We need to stay informed, we need to pray about all these matters, but then we need to pray for God’s mission in and with and through us to have energy and faith and enthusiasm and life. Our work, our joy, is to give comfort to the dying, forgiveness to sinners, community to the lonely, hope to the despondent, purpose to the apathetic, strength to the forlorn, and love to all.