The Episcopal Church circa 2016

I am grateful and inspired by The Rev. Tom Buechele's recent email, shared with the retired clergy of the diocese of Hawai’i. In it he took note of the seemingly extreme demand for supply clergy in remote congregations. He had received requests from as far away as Mexico. He wondered about the health of the church where so many Episcopalians were not able to get the sacraments on a Sunday morning. In his lengthy email he said:

“Allowing for really trying to maintain a non-anxious presence in
an anxious world, our institutional religious leadership needs to
“wake up and smell the coffee”. Many are, but not enough! Never mind
the folks not in the pews, the folks in the small congregation pews
are not happy. They are the ones, who if a Bishop Donald or Donna
Trump would come along …would vote for him or her immediately.
I’ve always been a Christian Socialist all my life, so unbridled
capitalism in my moral theological training is sinful. Feeling the
Bern has brought me to a conclusion about our grand and historical
Episcopal Church in the USA. It is part of the inequality quotient
that us older activist clergy and millions of millennials rail
against. Good and faithful worshippers, elder lay folks, new immigrant
communities are struggling and they are angry.” (My name is Rev. Tom
Buechele+ and I am a retired Episcopal priest, age 73, residing in
Oregon.)

I am a retired priest living in South Carolina, the opposite side of the
country from either Oregon or Hawai’i, depending on how you might see
it. The churches around here seem to be pretty occupied with keepin’ on
keepin’ on. Tom’s email strikes me as a wake-up bell to a church that
has gone to sleep, all too often focused and passionate about what is
tangential and too much unable to “smell the coffee” as Tom puts it.
This piece is only tangentially about making the sacraments, i.e.
Eucharist, available to small congregations. That is the presenting
issue of a much larger malaise. Analogous examples from the non-church
world would include: a graduate from college entering the adult world
saddled with debt that will leave them enslaved for life, millions of
Americans who suffer and die for lack of health care, while the
pharmaceutical industry and insurance companies enrich themselves,
oblivious to the human cost. We have become a nation with a few
ultra-wealthy and powerful “rulers” and a vast population of angry but
often compliant followers. Tom suggests, I think, that a similar kind of
misguided priorities exists and has existed in the Episcopal Church, the
church that Tom and I have loved and served.
The church, Tom seems to say, like our nation, has lost its way. As I
recently looked through old papers I had long ago filed away, I found an
article written in the 90’s by a church consultant and priest. The
author lamented that he saw no evidence that the challenge to double the
size of the church by 2020 would actually be met. With great fanfare the
institutional church put forward the “20/20” challenge. The author of
the article observed that he saw no deeper **purpose for doubling in
size** being articulated. There is no deeper driving force other than
keepin’ on doin’ what we’ve always done – just do it twice as hard and
twice as much. You might say it was the voice of a jaded and cynical old
priest who wrote that essay. You may say it of me. But in response I
affirm that I speak from a deep love of the God of the universe and of
the church which his Son passed on to our care and nurture. I have a
sense of the passing of time in one man’s life and of the enduring but
ever-changing seasons of the life of the church.
I have often remembered Bp. Michael Ramsey saying that he could well
imagine a time when the Anglican Communion was no longer a part of God’s
plan and would then pass away. I talked with my millennial son last year
about his thoughts regarding the approaching demise of the “American
Empire.” He accepted the diagnosis and said that he only hopes that the
new world order could be accomplished without war. Generally the passing
of one empire to the next is accompanied by violent upheaval.
We live in such times and Tom seems to me to be saying that the
Episcopal Church has for a long time been a representative of the old
order, “part of the inequality quotient.” Today, in the prayer we use
every day in our household, we observed World Conscientious Objector Day
and read Maximilian the martyr, “I cannot enlist, for I am a Christian.
I cannot serve, I cannot do evil. You can cut off my head, but I will
not be a soldier of this world, for I am a soldier of Christ.” In such
as he we can hear one who has a clear eye on the larger purpose for
leading the church into the new age. Do we as a church offer the kind of
vision that can inspire the world? Or do we offer a vision of an
institution that wants to maintain the status quo? The professional
clergy of our church have a huge stake in defending the financial
benefits the church offers – it offered it to me in retirement. But how
is that not an impediment to risking one’s life on the truth of the
gospel in a way that inspires the world? I emphasize ”inspire” on the
Day of Pentecost when we celebrate and re-member the church as a place
that is filled with the air of the Holy Spirit. We note that it is that
air that sent the church aloft, a red balloon alive and floating through
the streets and alleyways of the empire. It is the whimsy of a red
balloon that I think our church needs in this age. Providing sacraments
isn’t about protocol and it isn’t about financial arrangements. We’re
talking about a little bit of wine and a bit of bread in a small
congregation. Even in the favelas of Brazil one could find a bit of wine
and bread for a small and poor congregation. It’s a question of
“inspiration” not of institutional adjustment.
On “A Prairie Home Companion” last night I heard a re-worked rendition
of Cole Porter’s “Let’s do it, Let’s Fall in Love.” Whether or not the
song intended to be euphemistic in its phraseology or not is an open
question. The nature of the song has meant that many times over the
years it has been re-worked the way Garrison Keillor did last night. His
version said among others things that even Democratic Socialists who
feel the Bern can “do it.” Even people in Spokane, WA (the location of
the broadcast show) “do it.” You have to sing along to really hear it.
But “falling in love” with God is what the red balloon is about.
In-spired with love. That could bring the sacrament to every nook and
crany the whole world over.
Faithfully,
The Rev’s Dale C. Hathaway, Rock Hill, SC