Tempest in a Teapot

The newspapers and television stations here in the Washington area, as well as many Internet news sources, have been sounding the warning that the sky is falling in, at least as it pertains to Christianity, more specifically the Episcopal Church in Virginia. Eight of the more conservative congregations in northern Virginia have voted not to be Episcopalians anymore. Well, as a cradle Episcopalian myself, let me assure you that these recent events are no big deal.

In reality, The Falls Church in Falls Church Va., and Truro Church in Fairfax, Va., have not been much of a part of the Diocese of Virginia for some time now. They've been withholding their parishes's diocesan assessment payments as a protest, not over events in Virginia or the local bishop, but in other dioceses of the church. Also somewhat out of the mainstream of the church, both of these parishes are very low church and evangelical in their beliefs, with their worship much more resembling Methodist services than Episcopalian. Perhaps most significant, though, I would guess that significantly more than half of the membership of these parishes consists of evangelical and fundamentalist converts to Episcopalianism—people who don't understand the tradition, doctrine, and discipline of the Church—who've joined these two parishes because of their social prestige.

Now, both of these parishes are fairly large, carrying with them the prestige of the Episcopal Church in the northern Virginia Washington suburbs and the history of pre-Revolution America, with Truro having been founded in 1732 and Falls Church in 1734; George Washington himself was a member of the vestry (congregational governing body) at Falls Church. In the grand scheme of things, though, I can not say that I will miss them or that their departure will have much of an impact on the Episcopal Church, and I'm actually rather happy to get rid of Truro and their troublesome minister who wanted a pointy hat so badly he had to go to Nigeria to get it.

Why these events have been national news, I do not know. The Episcopal Church is but a tiny presence in the United States, with just 2.3 million members, or about 0.77% of the national population. Compare that to the Romans Catholics, with 63.1 million members, the Baptists with 90 million members, or even the Methodists with 9 million members, and I just don't see why this has been headlines news around here. I suppose part of it has to do with the unique role and history of the Episcopal Church and Anglicanism in the nation's history.

The Episcopal Church is the remnant of the Church of England in the United States. As most of the early colonists in this country came from England, they were members of the Church of England, where the C of E was the official state religion. In the colonial era, the Church of England was even the official established religion in the colonies of Virginia, Massachusetts, New Jersey, lower New York, Maryland, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Georgia. During the Revolution, the C of E was "disestablished," as new clergy was required to swear allegiance to the British Crown, and the former Anglicans took on the denominational name of the "Episcopal Church."

The bulk of Episcopalians are on the east coast, however, since there was a critical shortage of clergy during and after the Revolution, and there were no Episcopal priests available to go with people moving west,. This critical clergy shortage was the primary motivator for C of E priest John Wesley to begin having ministers and even congregations call new ministers and ordain them to ministry, instead of going through the C of E with official ordination to the priesthood by a bishop. Wesley and his followers in "Methodism" conducted their first irregular ordinations in 1784, thus giving birth to what is today the Methodist Church and its offshoots.

After the Episcopal Church solved its clergy and bishop problems from 1784 to 1789, it began to continue its ministries and to thrive. The big difference, though, is that we began to see a socioeconomic shift, with the Episcopalians becoming the community leaders, professionals, and businessmen, while the working classes and the slaves tended towards more dynamic denominations such as the Methodists and the Anabaptists, and later the Pentecostals. From George Washington on, essentially all of the leaders of our new country were Episcopalians; even presidents George H. W. Bush is Episcopalian and George W. Bush was raised in the church before switching to the Methodism at the urging of his wife.

Even though we have no official state religion in the United States, we still have enough English history and ancestry here that the Episcopal Church has somehow been thrust into the role of being a pseudo-state religion, much as the C of E still is in the United Kingdom. The church across the park from the White House, St. John's Lafayette Square, is Episcopalian, and the Cathedral Church of Saints Peter and Paul, more commonly known as the National Cathedral, is also Episcopalian. Whenever the United States holds a state funeral or a national day of thanksgiving or remembrance, those services take place in the National Cathedral and "in the Episcopal manner." Thus, I suppose, we now can understand the influence, importance, and newsworthiness of happenings in the Episcopal Church both nationally and in Virginia.

The current strife, division, and extremism in the church is a parallel to the strife, division, and extremism that we see in national politics and our country as a whole. Much like we see the increasingly great polarization between Republican and Democrat, conservatives and liberals, we see divisions growing in the Episcopal Church between High Church (lots of ritual) and Low Church (virtually no ritual) and between social activist liberalism and social conservatism, with the hallmark of Anglicanism, the via media, being more and more abandoned. This is unfortunate, because the Anglican church since separating from Rome in 1534 has always accommodated a full range of practices and beliefs under the same umbrella. The Church of England has managed to exist and function with people within the church holding various forms of Anglo-Catholic, Puritan, Evangelical, Presbyterian, Methodist, and Unitarian beliefs, not to mention the vagaries of having everything done by the church approved by Parliament.

So, what's the problem with the handful of Virginia parishes leaving this month? Well, it's a long history that goes back to the 1960s. Back then, the church had a presiding bishop who was a social activist, pushing civil rights at a time when civil rights weren't such a given, especially in southern states like Virginia. He started the implementation of Equal Employment Opportunity and Affirmative Action in the church. A lot of Episcopalians were unhappy with all of this, and there was a small break off from the church that formed what has become today the splinter groups the Anglican Church of America and the Anglican Province of America.

The social turmoil of the '60s and '70s throughout the nation, plus the liturgical revisions coming from Rome as a result of Vatican II, caused the Episcopal Church to become more introspective and to review its operations and liturgies. The biggest change at this time was in 1970, when the church voted to allow women to be ordained as deacons (the first level of ordained clergy) in the church, and then in 1976, when it allowed women to be ordained as priests. There was a brief bubble of re-opposition in 1989, when the first female bishop was elected and consecrated. A lot of traditionalists had a hard time with the idea of female clergy—after all, we'd been raised to believe that the priest represented Jesus at the Last Supper during our communion services—and even more people left the church. Then the church introduced a new Book of Common Prayer in 1979, to replace the 1928 version. For some reason, the traditionalists just went crazy about how "awful" the new book was, which was something I never particularly understood; one would think that the 1928 book (the third book in the United States) had been personally dictated by God or something. The primary changes were moving the time the Gloria was said or sung from after communion to the beginning of the service after the Kyrie (in the Catholic position), and, while keeping liturgies in the traditional thees and thous of Jacobean English, it added a full set of alternative "Rite 2" liturgies in contemporary English. It also encouraged parishes to use the communion service (Holy Eucharist or Mass) as the primary worship service on Sundays instead of Morning Prayer or Matins. More of the anti-female clergy people used the new prayer book as yet another excuse to leave the church. Many of the current dissenting congregations have grumbled ever since.

Before the current "crisis," there were still three out of the 111 Episcopal Church dioceses that do not ordain women to the clergy. I have a lot of familiarity with one, the Diocese of Fort Worth. While Bishop Jack Iker and his "Ikerite" clergy followers are all rabidly and rather obnoxiously conservative, the people I know in the church pews in the Fort Worth area do not agree with their clergy's anti-woman stands. I also understand that one of the "obstinate" dioceses, a tiny diocese out in California, has been posturing itself to withdraw from the Episcopal Church. I suspect that they have the similar problem of the people not agreeing with the orthodoxy and egos of the bishop and clergy.

Do not think that all of these "defections" are major. In fact, they are just a tiny, but vocal percentage of the church as a whole. The vast majority of the over 7,000 Episcopal congregations are electing to stay, partially because they don't care about the theological changes, probably mostly because there is no prestige in being a member of a splinter Anglican church like there is in being an Episcopalian, and to some extent because some people actively believe that women and homosexuals are people and entitled to full rights and participation in the church. Most of the splinter congregations have since died out, with their former members drifting either to Methodism or back into the Episcopal Church, and those congregations still remaining are small and essentially socially insignificant.

The big complaint of the departing congregations is both a High Church vs. Low Church debate and a result of their evangelical-style beliefs denying homosexuals civil rights and the right to be ordained as ministers in the church. The first openly gay priest was ordained in 1989, then the big controversy occurred in 2003 when the Diocese of New Hampshire elected openly gay and gay-partnered Gene Robinson to be their bishop. Then earlier this year, the triennial General Convention of the church made a big surprise move when it elected a dark horse nominee, Katharine Jefferts-Shori, to be presiding bishop—the first female presiding bishop in the United States and the first female national primate in the entire Anglican Communion. She was installed here in Washington last month. Her election was the big spark for the current round of departures.

Individual Episcopalians and even congregations have the right to leave the church. After all, Anglicanism itself started when the British left the Roman Catholic Church in the 16th century. The Falls Church and Truro Church, and their "seed" churches (those other half dozen congregations that voted to leave), all have the right to leave. However, they should not expect to retain their church buildings and property. Canon law in the Episcopal Church has long been clear that property belongs to the diocese, not the individual parish. My ancestors and I did not make contributions to the Falls Church and Truro Church for them to become splinter groups; we gave our gifts to the churches so they could continue the work and mission of the Episcopal Church in Falls Church and Fairfax. It is that line of thinking that supports the diocesan position of property ownership. Would George Washington have wanted his financial support of the Falls Church to go to support the work of the Church of Nigeria instead of the Episcopal Church? I know I certainly don't.

This brings up another thorn in the process. The Most Rev'd Peter Akinola is a self-described "very low church evangelical" who happens to be archbishop and the primate of the Anglican Church of Nigeria. He has been like a child throwing a tantrum. He threatened to pull the Church of Nigeria out of the Anglican Communion back in 2003 when the Blair Government nominated openly gay priest Jeffrey John to become Bishop of Reading, a nomination Reading subsequently relinquished. He currently opposes American and Canadian participation in the Anglican Consultative Conference because of their positions on women and homosexuals in the church and in the clergy. He is the archbishop who threatened violence against Muslims in Nigeria. He says nothing about the cultural oppression of women in Nigeria. He supports laws in Nigeria that would criminalize same sex marriage, gay groups and organizations, and public gay gatherings or parades, mandating five year prison terms for violations. And, most problematic, he is violating the Anglican tradition of national churches staying out of the affairs of other national churches and not establishing congregations in other countries. He has signed a "concordat" with Episcopal Church splinter groups the Reformed Episcopal Church and the Anglican Province of America, neither of which are recognized by the Anglican Communion. And most recently, he has created the Convocation of Anglicans in North America, or CANA, as a new splinter group designed to siphon off more conservative Episcopal parishes and even to supplant the Episcopal Church in the United States.

To help in his CANA goals, earlier this fall Abp. Akinola consecrated the rector of Truro Church, the overly-ambitious Martyn Minns, as his missionary bishop for North America. The egomaniacal Akinola and the equally egomaniacal Minns are the main promoters of division today. Truro Church, the Falls Church, and their half dozen subsidiary congregations have all placed themselves under the canonical supervision of the Church of Nigeria, which, interestingly enough is not canonical.

What I find particularly amusing and ironic about these two churches wanting to become a part of the Church of Nigeria is their lily white, subtly racist congregations and their historic lack of outreach to the black and minority communities. Further, when the television reporters were at these parishes during the secession votes last Sunday, they took long shots of the congregation in the church, and I practically rolled on the floor laughing during the news when I spotted two people I know to be homosexuals in the congregation.

So, what will come of all of this? Nothing much, I think.

Certainly there will be litigation over the church properties, since the Diocese of Virginia's rightful claim to ownership is being challenged by the parishes. The splinter churches will go off on their own, becoming more and more low church, more and more "Methodist," and I predict that they will soon begin to hemorrhage members. Whether or not they ultimately dissolve into oblivion, I do not know.

The Archbishop of Canterbury and the Anglican Communion as a whole has to deal with its own crisis, as not just the American church, but the Canadian and New Zealand churches, have all taken positions supporting the civil rights of homosexuals and the ordination of women to the clergy. Modern, "western" cultures and countries will continue to join that progressiveness. At the same time, the African churches are becoming more and more conservative and more and more out of the Anglican mainstream. Canterbury is going to have to decide either to pull the Africans back into the fold or to sever ties with them, since their constant attempts to hold the entire worldwide church hostage can no longer be tolerated.

Meanwhile, I just want the Africans to keep their noses out of American church business. Life goes on. And, unfortunately, the politics of Truro, Falls Church, and Abp. Akinola do nothing to advance the work of the Episcopal Church or the Anglican Communion and just serve as yet another reason for "lukewarm Christianity" and agnosticism to grow in North America. Shame on them.