The Questioning Christian

Why I Still Call Myself a Christian and an Episcopalian

Every now and then, a traditionalist Episcopalian will ask me something like the following:

• How can you honestly call yourself a Christian, since there are so many parts of the Nicene Creed that you don’t believe?   (See my essay Shortening the Nicene Creed for some point-by-point ponderings.)
• Given what you don’t believe, shouldn’t your parish priest refuse communion to you until you repent and return to orthodox belief?
• Wouldn’t you really be happier in a different denomination?  (Usually that’s code for “you’re obviously not one of us; please go away.”)
• In view of your beliefs, why don’t you just become a Unitarian Universalist, or even a Jew? [1]

I’ve tried various answers on for size.  I keep coming back to one in particular:  My church is something like an extension of my family.   Once I’ve become part of a family, I can’t stop being part of it without a really good reason. 

Moreover, my life has been changed by finding God — well, sort of — with the aid of the church. 

I’d never lightly “walk apart” from my family, and neither would I do so with my church.   

In particular, disputes about unprovable matters of doctrine don't strike me as nearly a good enough reason to do so.

Liberal? No -- "I'm a Christian Humanist"

An editorial in the May 31 issue of The Christian Century proposes a new term for what some refer to as “liberal” Christians:

Mainline or liberal Protestants need a better term to describe themselves. Mainline implies cultural and social dominance, which is hard to assert given the numerical realities. *  *  *   Liberal has its own problems, beginning with vagueness. Liberal in what way, and compared to what?  Some might specify that liberal refers to self-conscious modernizers of the faith ….  But such modernizers are at the margins, not the heart, of liberal theology, which has been largely engaged in a constructive argument with, not an abandonment of, tradition.

Is there an alternative to the vague liberal and anachronistic mainline? We have a suggestion: Christian humanism.… 

Class and Status

Two articles from the NY Times:

• 'But I Neeeeeed It!' She Suggested: How teen-agers pester their parents for the latest must-have gadget (iPod, cell phone, etc.)

• Class Matters: When the Joneses Wear Jeans:  Now that makers of luxury goods are introducing lower-end models, the quest for status is becoming more characterized by the consumption of personal services — nannies, expensive haircuts, and so on.

A family in our parish is "comfortable" (read: wealthy).   Both parents are Ivy Leaguers, and their children are at, or graduated from, elite schools and colleges.  Yet they live in a very modest, even cramped, townhouse.  They drive very middle-class cars.   They do their part, and then some, in the outreach- and mission work of the parish.  They don't talk about money, but the word on the street is that they give a large portion of their annual income to charity.  Now that's status.

"From Baptist to Jew"

“I was a Baptist from birth, dedicated to my Christian faith, until I fell in love with Judaism.”  Mary Beth Howe, author of A Baptist Among the Jews, describes her journey to conversion in a BeliefNet column.  Here are some excerpts:

… In Judaism, no one ever had the last word, the final answer, on anything Divine, and I loved the endless imagination this evoked in me. Most important, I experienced God's presence more deeply and powerfully than I had in my life. This didn't reflect negatively on Christianity; it merely meant that Judaism spoke most powerfully to me.

"Can You Still Be a Christian if You Don't Believe Jesus was the Son of God?"

Last night the phone rang as my wife and I were getting ready for bed.  I answered; it was the teen-aged daughter of one of our Bible-study group families. 

We see a good bit of “Jane” (not her name).  She’s a wonderful young woman.  Her parents are close friends of ours.  She and our son and some other teens run around together.

Since I never seem to get any calls at the house, I assumed Jane was calling for our son.  But no, she wanted to talk to me.  She said she had questions.  She sounded pretty serious. 

I’ve tried to convey the general tenor of our discussion below, working from memory.  (Damn, why didn’t I make any notes when my memory was fresh?)

Jane:  If you want to be a Christian, do you have to believe Jesus was the Son of God?   

Four Short, Responsive Prayers Every Episcopalian Should Memorize

A few months ago I posted a brief, general-purpose liturgy for small-group meetings.  It has worked out nicely for a couple of small groups I’m in.  But I’m concluding that shorter, simpler, and easier to recite from memory is better. 

I’m also realizing that for group prayer, I have a very strong bias toward call-and-response versicles.  I'm convinced that when we say a familiar prayer together in that way, it helps promote a sense of community -- and of shared heritage -- far more than when one person prays whatever happens comes to his or her mind, and everyone else just stands around and listens.

Here are four easy-to-remember responsive prayers you can use at meetings, meals, etc.  As you'll see below, you can fit in some extemporaneous prayers if you like, within the structure of the responsive prayers.

Three of these responsive prayers come straight from the Book of Common Prayer.  Two of the four are from Psalms. 

You probably know these prayers by heart already.  If you don’t, you really ought to memorize them.  They’ll help us pray better together.

When Should We Walk Apart? A Proposed Test

My wife and I belong to a Bible-study group.  The group consists of about 10 couples in total.  We meet at the parish two Friday evenings per month. 

We all have kids of varying ages.  The young kids stay with a babysitter in one of the parish classrooms; the older ones help look after the younger ones. 

When the babysitter’s time is up, the kids join the adults for a brief worship service.  We typically wind up with a dozen adults and at least that many kids in the room.  We spread a white cloth napkin on a coffee table to serve as an “altar cloth"; place three candles on the napkin; and a couple of the older kids light the candles.  The “liturgy” is centered on the Prayers of the People Form VI, together with a couple of excerpts from Psalms and the Book of Common Prayer.  We exchange the Peace, and some of the youngest kids blow out the candles (big thrill, of course).  Then we all head out to a nearby family restaurant for dinner.

We've been doing this for years.  We also do the occasional social get-together, and once in a while we’ll participate in a service project of some kind.  We make an effort to go to each others’ baptisms; confirmations; school plays; and eventually, I'm sure, weddings and funerals.  It’s a wonderful bond among our families.

We’ve had our disagreements, certainly.  But on the whole it's been a joyous experience, and amazingly helpful, to participate in each others’ lives as our kids grow up together. 

I submit that there are lessons here for the member churches of the Anglican Communion.

Things We Don't Understand (first in a series)

I’ve subscribed to Scientific American for years.  Much of its content is beyond my ken.  Still, it’s a rich source of reminders that we don’t know everything about God’s creation, let alone fully understand what we do know. 

Here are a few things I noted in the June 2005 issue.

• The constants of nature, for example the velocity of light, may be changing with time.  Research into string theory suggests that the universe may have as many as eleven dimensions, implying that "the constants we observe may not, in fact, be the truly fundamental ones.  Those live in the full higher-dimensional space, and we see only their three-dimensional “shadows.” (p. 57, emphasis added). 

Ed.:  Some speculate that Jesus’s resurrection may have had something to do with other dimensions.  See, for example, this Q&A with the host of the recent ABC News 20/20 special on the resurrection — scroll down to the comment attributed to scholar Paul Maier.

Evolution of Church Doctrine: Four Case Studies

In today’s NY Times, Peter Steinfels, co-director of the Fordham Center on Religion and Culture, offers a review of the book A Church That Can and Cannot Change:  The Development of Catholic Moral Teaching, by John T. Noonan Jr.  The book's author, a law professor and federal appellate judge, examines four issues on which church doctrine has evolved over time:  Slavery, usury, religious freedom, and marriage. 

Some excerpts:

… Noonan drives home the point that some Catholic moral doctrines have changed radically. History, he concludes, does not support the comforting notion that the church simply elaborates on or expands previous teachings without contradicting them.

*  *  *

Why Didn't the Apostles Baptize in the Name of the Trinity?

Today is Trinity Sunday.  The Gospel reading is the very end of Matthew, in which Jesus tells his disciples, “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you” (Matt. 28.19–20). 

The only problem is, the apostles seem not to have followed Jesus’s command:  According to the book of Acts, if they baptized in anyone’s name, it was that of Jesus alone, not of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. 

Something seems amiss here.