On Leaving the Episcopal Church

Fr. Jonathan over at The Conciliar Anglican has made a fine pitch, as fine a pitch as could be imagined, for Anglicans staying in the Episcopal Church.  I recently had a brief discussion with my friend and fellow blogger Jordan Lavender (The Hackney Hub) over this very issue.  (He would agree with Fr. Jonathan.) 

If only I could be persuaded. TEC enjoys the longest Anglican legacy here in America and owns some of the finest Christian edifices around.  But I cannot, and that for essentially the same reasons set forth by a commenter who goes by the handle "With You In Spirit."  I post his comments to Fr. Jonathan's blog article in their entirety:

My wife and I recently left the Episcopal church, during of all things, confirmation. Our departure stemmed from a longstanding clash of personalities with the local vicar, though the clash could also be seen as generational.

I had attended this church for a decade, and it was there I married my wife. My wife and I spent months reading scripture and performing daily devotions using the 1928 prayer book in preparation for confirmation. We lit candles and performed the full morning and evening services on waking and before bed. The routine was tough. During confirmation classes we mentioned our use of the 1928 prayer book and the vicar’s response was dismissive and flippant: “if *I* prayed from the older prayer book *I* would attend another church, probably Methodist”. Immediately afterwards, the vicar issued a patronizing lecture on the importance of women’s rights completely unrelated to anything we had been discussing in class, and my wife, exasparated, told the vicar that as a women what he was saying was both unnecessary and unneeded. What followed was a ten minute lecture on Hooker’s theory that the church rests on three legs, and the leg which we were deficient in was reason. As he spoke I recall his Starbucks coffee cup trembling. With no break in his lecture he ended class early and walked us and the other attendees out of the church, addressing us the whole time, stating how he knew plenty of conservative in the church, and “though he disagreed with everything they stood for”, he supported their freedom of speech.

For clarification, my wife is a member of a teacher’s union and I consider myself a protectionist democrat, though we never bring up our politics at church.

My wife and I attended church the following week and the vicar attacked us in the sermon, portraying us figuratively as “those who would exclude”, darting eyes, and drawing snickers from the pews. In the same sermon he cited me by name in a rhetorical example, “it would be as if went around town behaving as if he wern’t a Christian then said he was a member of our church”. We walked out during the service and have not returned.

And I don’t know why we would. My wife and I read about Spong, Schori, and the other clergy currently held in reverence and we find that we have little in common with either their beliefs or aims. To use women’s rights as an example, as average Generation X-ers with a desk jobs, we have more female supervisors and coworkers than their male counterparts, and thus the ’60s femanist dialectic just doesn’t wash, and certainly doesn’t lead us closer to Jesus. The feminist and gay rights “issues” were solved by Jesus 2000 years ago when he told us to turn the other cheek. Unfortunately, the church appears desparate to magnify and heighten greivences rather than teach others be at peace. Rather than directing people away from their passions the church is mired in the language of social justice and critical theory. The hatred of tradition espoused by the current generation of church leadership is at times bewildering: apparently an Episcopalian worshipping from the 1928 prayer book should leave the church, while in that same church Episcopalians are expected and encouraged to celebrate the Jewish Seder. If one disagrees they can expect to be fillibustered and attacked in sermon, usually through blindingly hypocritical appeals to progress and tolerence.

It just got to be too much for us. As two of the youngest members of the church we hoped that we could “hang in there” until the current generation in power moved on, but of course that didn’t happen. The wife and I are part of a generation that seems destined to endure the Baby Boomer’s tantrum against the past, and we found we just don’t have the patience. The Silent Generation are meekly enduring the politics of their nephews during their final decades, while the Boomers seem to be either in the clergy basking in the limelight or absent altogether. The alphabet generations would rather play their video games than listen to their parents politics on Sunday. The pews are empty, and one must ask what exactly separates the morals of MTV from the morals of the modern Episcopal church? If they are both the same, why show up? And if the church is going to become active in social issues, why not address those which the average person actually comes in contact with daily, such as rampant usury, ever-expanding payday loan rackets, a culture educated to illeteracy by television, a widespread contempt for manners and etiquette, casual defimation of Christianity in the media, education an healthcare treated as a business opportunity, automation and thoughtless “progress” destroying trades faster than they can be learned, and a unquestioned reverence for reductionistic science. Again, why parade out the St. Rosa Parks in 2013? Move on, get over it, or better yet, rise above politics altogther and focus on Jesus, the apostles, and the saints. Teach people how to make prayer a ritual and thereby escape from an increasingly fickle and inhuman world to something that endures.

So where did we go? You’d never guess. When the vicar wasn’t incorporating references to the Rolling Stones or sports trivia in his sermons he was slandering Baptists. Sure enough, we took it as an endorsement. While we are still adjusting to the karaoke choir and powerpoint projector screen, we have found levity and laughter …though we still do our daily devotionals and read our scripture from Knox.

Peace be with you, remaining Episcopalians. May you be stronger than us.

In a follow up response to a commenter who objects to Baptists, With You In Spirit wrote,

When we decided to leave our church we weren’t sure where to go. We have no continuing Anglican churches less than three hours away, unfortunately. We would definitely attend if one were local. I had attended a Missouri Synod service in town some years ago and liked the people there, however, the church suffered terribly from modern aesthetics. The LCMS church used plastic communion cups, had stark florescent lighting (~6500K), a drop-tiled ceiling, used banquet chairs in lieu of pews, etc. This was not for want of money either, rather, the church was a larger congregation that just seemed to prefer the efficiency-expert touch. Attending the church felt like worshiping at Wal-Mart. The same can be said for the other churches we’ve visited over the years, whether Methodist or Lutheran: plastic plants and projector screens. We even tried the Catholic church and were surprised by the kitschy 70′s hymns being accompanied by a Casio keyboard replete with a MIDI drum loop. Lord, how we miss the aesthetics of the Episcopal church!

Anyway, the walk to our old church regularly took us past the Baptist church previously mentioned. Based on the “endorsements” of the vicar, we stopped in one Sunday and were amazed by the friendliness. We now regularly visit the pastor and his wife at their home have long talks on the porch. Occasionally we even disagree, but amazingly, the disputes never became bitter as was the case with our vicar.

While I’m no expert on Church history, I have read through Augustine and have spent time with the 39 articles of the BCP and hope to have an understanding of the importance of catholic faith. That being said, I do not believe that the hierarchy of the Church is steered infallibly, or, that God is incapable of abandoning certain churches or even entire denominations if those denominations become corrupt. Paul warned the early churches in his epistles because those warnings served a purpose; churches are fallible and thus perishable. Moreover, at some point even the act of attending an errant church signals an endorsement, and frankly, the insincere and pompous seminary graduates we’ve met seem more deluded than many of the straightforward and humble Baptists we’ve recently become acquainted with. Erasmus’ Praise of Folly critiques “learned fools”, and so too is there something comforting in the laconic honesty of Baptists when set aside the politically correct sophistry which passes for wisdom among the current Episcopal clergy. Such people seem more concerned sounding good rather than actually being so. Anyway, we considered our departure a vote with our feet. If that makes us Donatists, then so be it.

At this point we’re over the branding of the various denominations. Christians are what they do, not what they label themselves, and being a Christian certainly involves more that being “up” on the latest thoughts and opinions that are in fashion. We gave up on television years ago and the last thing we want to be subjected to on Sunday is a return to regularly scheduled programming. I still consider myself an Anglican in spirit in that I worship from the prayer book and prefer the older traditions of the church, but when publicly worshiping I’ll go where I hear laughter, readings from the bible, and common sense. This is likely what my wife thinks as well. We’ll be praying for the Church and hoping for the best.

Peace be with you all.

Having spent several months in PECUSA (now TEC) back in 1983-1984 and watched TEC's devolution since then from afar, I must say that I wholeheartedly track with his and his wife's reasons for leaving.  If I were in his shoes I'd do much the same thing, though I would seek out those individuals living close by who would love to get together to say Morning and/or Evening Prayer with us.  And that, being a place where two or three are gathered, would be the nucleus of an Anglican house church.  We could perhaps attend an area Evangelical church for sermon support and wider fellowship, and receive communion at the local TEC parish without having to make any kind of commitment to it.  Necessity is the mother of invention.

And who knows?  From there we might get episcopal oversight from a bishop in a Continuing or Realignment church and eventually maybe even a priest.  But regardless, we'd be living in community centered around the BCP, a veritable "Little Gidding".  That would be enough, if you ask me.