November 15, 2008
I sat in catechism class last Sunday and it occurred to me that when I become a Catholic there is one thing I will miss about the Episcopal Church. It has had a long tradition of supporting America's civic culture. Yea, even unto colonial times. Many colonists may have come to America to escape the Church of England's religious hegemony (or rather, its attempt), but many of the Founders were Anglicans. And, mostly, they did not support the church's establishment. James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington all spoke or wrote openly for religious freedom before the Bill of Rights was even an idea.
Our last Episcopalian president, (if elected, Sen. McCain would have been, in all ways, our last president so raised) George H.W. Bush, brought up a Methodist and Catholic son. Many years ago in an editor's Manhattan office, I saw pictures of George and Barbara still in bed one morning as their grandchildren, the white ones and the "brown ones" clambered over them.
The Episcopal Church remains the public face of piety when a president or major American figure dies. It has been called America's "civic religion," although those days are going, perhaps gone. In a pinch, it can still put on a solemn show with a liturgy recognizable to millions across the world. As the church has become more political, more activist, its credibility as a promoter of civic culture in principle declines. It is a church whose pious rituals are neither pious, nor ritually serious.
It is the church that sustained a boyhood conscience that the historic treatment of Black Americans was intolerable. In a southern and Catholic-dominated blue collar neighborhood, I often found myself in the minority. But not on Sunday at St. John's.
A lot can change in forty years. St. John's is now an annex of the Human Rights Campaign. A half-empty, candle-lit PAC. With the exception of Anglicans for Life and the Anglican Communion Network, the American church has abandoned the culture of life. It remains a wealthy church but now scrambles to wrest churches and parish halls and cemetaries from historic congregations across the country. The church that remained civil and epistolarily intact during the Civil War can no longer muster courtesy.
For years I have received the ACN's weekly email. The courageousness of Bishop Minns and Bishop Duncan and Canon Anderson is extraordinary given the, at best, numb reporting in our media. Anchors and reporters and pundits blink in incomprehension a at belief in something greater than social justice or personal development.
I am not naive. I know that the Church of Rome faces grave challenges and rebellions. The National Conference of Catholic Bishops cannot bring itself to offer even faint praise to the most pro-life president in American history (see their even-handed review of Oliver Stone's demogogic night-night story, "W").
As I've mentioned to friends and family, I chose the parish where I attend mass specifically because it vigorously supports the culture of life. Even when mass attendance is trying -- more often than not, the service, the gospel and the sermon are drowned by the cries and shouts of babies and children. What more proof is needed that this is a living, thriving parish? And it is. Even in hard times.
I break no ground here. So many Episcopalians have returned to the Church that there is an approved Anglican Rite liturgy and married priests with families. In England, there are more practicing Catholics than Anglicans. The BBC recently reported on a missionary sent by the Nigerian Anglican Church to proselytize to the English.
I read recently that de Tocqueville predicted that this would happen in America. And it may be one of those Divine Paradoxes that the Catholic Church has thrived in the Protestant English-speaking world. American, England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Canada, Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong. Even in India, despite the recent violence and murders of Dalit Catholics.
People talk of America as the New Rome. It may be that, but not because it disperses carrier groups and F-22s across the world. America is becoming a place hostile to Christian orthodoxy. The world of First Century Rome. The former civic church leads the way.
I am heartened, discouraged. But mostly gripping faith like a stereotype in the pages of the New York Times or Detroit Free Press. And hoping I am given the strength to continue to do so.
Sam Macomb
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