I’ve decided that C. S. Lewis is probably my favorite author, and I’ve been devouring everything by him that I can get my hands on.  I’ve read Mere Christianity a couple of times, bits of the Screwtape Letters, and most of the Chronicles of Narnia.  I think that’s where most people stop with Lewis, and I think that’s sad, because it offers an extremely misleading picture of the man, his ideas, his theology, his philosophy, and how it all fits together.  I think that a great many fans of Lewis would be shocked and surprised by much of what Lewis seems ot have really thought, if they read anything beyond the standard cliched offerings, and I certainly think that Evangelicals and Mormons would be a lot more hesitant to posthumously enlist Lewis as a defender of their faith.  Lewis is anything but an orthodox Evangelical Protestant, and very little of what he says is compatible with Mormonism.

Surprised By Joy and Till We have Faces are two of his more compelling, multilayered, and spiritually textured books, and I cannot overemphasize the massive impact they have had on my personal spiritual development.  But the deeper ideas contained in them are revolutionary and in many ways extremely heterodox.

Right now I’m reading the Space Trilogy, which is science fiction, but also overtly Christian–more so than Narnia because it is set in the real world with real Jesus (called Maleldil in the book’s “Old Solar” language) instead of in a magical world with a lion Jesus.  Many of Lewis’s more complex ideas about religion and theology from other works, especially Miracles, is parroted in dialogue and arguments between characters in the Space Trilogy.

I imagine a Mormon reader, especially one who is attached to the more ”space doctrine” aspects of the religion, would find much to like in the Space Trilogy, but ultimately I think the Mormon reader’s affection would be misplaced and based on a reading of the books that is superficial and divorced from the context of Lewis’s larger corpus.  The Space Trilogy certainly has interplanetary Christianity, and as such there are certain parallels to Mormon doctrines that are basically unavoidable, but in the final analysis I would assert that Lewis’s theology is ultimately incompatible on a very fundamental level with many of Mormonism’s core assumptions.

I’ve just started That Hideous Strength, the final (and longest) of the three, but so far the books are good, the ideas contained in them are compelling, and Perelandra contains what is possibty the most visceral fight scene I have ever read.

Make sure you check out Aquinas’s excellent post about C. S. Lewis on Summa Theologica.

I’m thinking about starting to blog regularly again.  One nice thing about blogging my spiritual journey was that in a way, the blog actually helped propel me forwards.  When I came to a new conclusion, or something stuck in my craw, the blog helped me reify the former and work through the latter (or in some cases, see that it couldn’t actually be worked through).  Since I’ve stopped blogging regularly, I’ve made some decisions and come to some new conclusions, but in some ways they haven’t made much of a difference because I haven’t done much about them.  Blogging would be a way for me to make my experiences real, and commit myself to my decisions by announcing them publicly, if that makes sense.

Also, having a blog is a way to, simply put, make sure things that interest me happen in the blogosphere.  Other people’s blogs are fine, but there’s a give and take, an ongoing conversation that is lost when I don’t blog myself.  The conversation suffers, I think.

On the other hand, I have some moderate concerns.  I’ve come a long way since I stopped blogging regularly, and I’m not sure if I would try to catch up, or just kind of pick up where I am now and fill in important details as I go.  I guess the latter is more realistic.

I also wonder if the public nature of the blog isn’t more than a little narcissistic.  Would my needs be better served by something like a diary or a journal?

In thinking about faith systems like Druidry, Asatru, and (Neo)paganism in general, the issue of Reconstructionism comes up.  It seems to me that there is a kind of dogmatic rift among Neopagans between the Reconstructionists and the whatever-you-call-the-others.  In Druidry the term is usually Revivalists, but that has a specific meaning to Druidry that doesn’t necessarily correspond to other branches of Neopaganism.  For the sake of discussion, I am going to call them Contemporists.

Reconstructionism as I understand it means a good faith attempt to actually reconstruct an ancient religious belief system.  In practice it probably isn’t completely possible (since most ancient peoples didn’t leave detailed written records of their theological bliefs and a how-to-manual for their rites and practices).  Therefore, Reconstructionists are generally willing to “fill in the blanks” with contemporary or invented practices or ideas, with the understanding that such a practice or belief is a provisional place-holder and is subject to change as more historical information is uncovered.  Reconstructionist religion tends to go hand-in-hand with a keen interest in history.  Good examples of reconstructionist Neopagan faith systems are Asatru and Ár nDraíocht Féin Druidry.

On the other hand, Contemporist faith systems (like Wicca or Revival Druidry) are those that are inspired by ancient belief, myth, and practice, but that have (relatively) contemporary origins.  Their practices and beliefs seem more likely to be syncretic, and Contemporists seem generally open to innovation in both theology and practice.

Reconstructionists often accuse Contemporists of having a “made-up religion.”  As a teenager, my Neopagan interests were strictly reconstructionist, and I looked with serious disdain on belief systems like Wicca.  The irony of course was that I was raised Mormon, which by any measure other than that of the hardcore true believer is a contemporary “made up” religion as well.  Nevertheless, I was raised to believe that Mormonism was an ancient faith that had een restored, and my preconceived notions about absolute truth precluded me from accepting religious innovation as valid in any way.

Now, I see things differently.  In fact, these days I have no interest in reconstructionism whatsoever.  I understand that it floats some peoples’ boats, but not mine.  Here’s why:

1) I don’t believe that full reconstruction is really possible, and that some things are simply lost to the mists of time.  Thus, a reconstructionist, no matter how zealous, will always be complementing his “authentic” practices with contemporary innovations or borrowed material.  So for practical purposes, only his attitude makes him different from the Contemporist.

2) That attitude means the reconstructionist must be willing to abandon what may be useful and meaningful spiritual practices and belifs when they are later discovered to not be in conformity with ancient religion.  To me this seems a pointless waste: if something works, don’t stop doing it.  A spiritual practice’s validity has nothing to do with age, but with whether or not it works.  Every religion was “made up” at one point or another, and the fact that it was made up a long time ago or its author is anonymous doesn’t make it osmehow more real or more valid.  Granted, if a spiritual practice has been in continuous use for a long period of time, you can infer a high degree of validity because it has stood the test of time.  However, an old practice/belief that is not longer held or is long abandoned may no longer be useful–that may be why it was abandoned in the first place.  Either it was no longer useful, or it was supplanted by something else more useful.

3) I’m not an ancient person.  I don’t live in the Bronze Age.  My life isn’t the same, my concerns may not be the same, and the world I live in may be very different from that of ancient people.  What they practiced and believed may have been relevant to them, but that doesn’t mean it is relevant to all people in all situations, and that means it may very well not be relevant to me.  Although I have no problem with drawing on ancient sources for beliefs and practices, I see no reason at all to assume that the ancient practices will always be better for me than a more contemporary alternative, especially when the study of history means that that ancient practice would itself be provisional, subject to change, revision, and even dismissal as our historical picture is fine-tuned.

4) I personally see no real need to believe in a Reconstructionist religion if I don’t believe that said religion was absolutely, objectively true.  And I don’t believe that any existing religion is absolutely, objectively true, or that it’s even possible for human beings to ever be compeltely sure of what absolute, objective truth is.  I will grant that it probably exists, but it seems to me that the nature of epistemology means that asically everything must be subject to doubt.

5) I feel no personal pull to practice or believe in a Reconstructionist religion.  I haven’t had a mystical experience with ancient deities where they commanded me to take back up the old ways (and as I don’t really believe in literal personal gods anyway, I don’t really think that such a demand on the part of the gods is likely).  I am not a historian who specializes in one particular ancient people to such a degree that it fills my life.  Honestly, if I practiced a reconstructionist religion, I think I’d always feel like I was LARPing.

I actually mean to talk about the existence of a personal God, and how I think I don’t believe in one, but “Personal Jesus” is the name of a Depeche Mode song, and I like Depeche Mode.  Now watch this, which isn’t about Depeche Mode at all, but is a video by Rob Bell, a prominent emergent Christianity writer/pastor.

The idea of a personal God that loves me is a fantastic, thrilling idea.  I find it incredibly compelling.  Rob Bell’s video makes me cry.  I would like it to be true.  Unfortunately, I just don’t think it is.

In his book, Finding Faith, Brian McLaren (another prominent emergent writer) discusses the choice between belief in a personal God versus an impersonal God and he quite lightly dismisses the latter as a fool’s notion.  It’s interesting, because Finding Faith is otherwise a surprisingly even-handed.  I mean, McLaren is definitely doing his best to help his reader figure out how to believe in Jesus, so he has an agenda, but even so he gives reasonably fair credit and acknowledgement to contrary ideas.

But not to this one.  Why not?  Like I said, he quickly dismisses the idea by saying that since God must be higher than us, and since we have personality and the ability to relate meaningfully to each other, then it doesn’t make sense for God to not be the same, only better.  Like if we have personality he must have some sort of superpersonality.  A similar theme runs through much of C. S. Lewis’s work.  I guess it’s a fine enough idea, but it falls into what I believe is a trap: it acknowledges God’s transcendent nature, and then attempts to define him in comprehensible terms.  Or rather, comprehensible terms plus.  Where we have personality, he has personality like ours, but better in a way we can’t imagine.  In my opinion, it’s an easy cop-out and ultimately reduces the Transcendent into the quasi-transcendent, which is not transcendent at all.  The incomprehensible becomes the almost comprehensible, and thus really just another kind of comprehensible.  Transcendence in quantity only.

Basically, Brian McLaren is saying that he thinks that his transcendent God should be so, and therefore must be so.  I’m not convinced, mostly because I think if God exists, he is probably fairly resistent to our feeble attempts to corral him, measure him, and define him into something much smaller than he actually is.  And I don’t think we really get to weigh in with our notions of “should” on the specifications of the supreme being.  Although we certainly try (myself included).

In the end, I do not believe in a personal God because I don;t have the one piece of evidence that would be convincing: actual interaction with God.  I pray, he doesn’t answer.  I try to have conversations with him, he doesn’t talk back.  I don’t even really have any assurance that he’s listening (other than my impressive array of “shoulds”).  If God exists, he does not seem to interact with me in any way that would imply personality.  And I’ve tried (and will honestly continue to try) from my end.

I guess other people claim to interact with God, and I can’t really refute what they claim, but it has never happened to me, so I’m going to have to move forward with what I’ve got.

I am increasingly suspicious that Christianity isn’t going to do the trick for me.  I have reasons.

First, I really do not think that that Christianity, the Bible, the God of the Bible, and/or Jesus Christ objectively represent absolute truth.  I’m just not convinced, and I think, weighing the evidence in my mind, that it is less likely than otherwise that Jesus is the Son Of God send down to be Sacrificed For Our Sins and representing the One True Way.  Absent some compelling reason to think otherwise, I just don’t believe it’s True.

That, of course, does not end the inquiry, because I’m pretty skeptical in general of the practical reality of objective absolute truth.  I’m willing to accept the possibility that Christianity is Truth even if its foundational and theological truth-claims are questionable.  To that end, I have danced around with Christianity and belief in Jesus for most of the past year.  I’ve prayed.  I’ve read in the gospels.  I’ve attended a handful of churches.  My attitude was that I was willing to set aside the objective truth inquiry and settle for asking if Christianity is meaningful to me.  I had an intuition that there was transofrmational power in Christianity that I was keenly interested in, that Christianity could turn me into a New Man, the way C. S. Lewis talks about it in Mere Christianity.  I even felt the beginnings of some kind of personal transformation in my life as I genuinely tried to live a Christian life.

So why then am I afraid to move forward?  What holds me back from asserting, “this is what I believe; this is where I stand?”  What keeps me from diving in and accepting Jesus Christ and Christianity with open arms?  What is it about Christianity that simultaneously attracts and repels me?  I know there are probably some simplistic answers from the Christian perspective.  I’m not interested in those; I don;t really find them convincing.

Am I so scarred from my disentanglement from Mormonism that I am unwilling to embrace any religion, like an abuse victim who has a hard time forming new relationships because of deep-seated trust issues?  Did Mormonism leave me with a lingering sense that I will only be satisfied when I find a religion that I am certain is objectively, absolutely true?  (If so, I’m pretty much screwed, because I’m comfortable saying there ain’t one out there).  If I say No to Christianity, will I be able to say Yes to anything else?

What is it about Christianity that appeals to me?  I like Jesus himself, and his teachings.  I find the general theology of Christianity, the picture of God made man to save fallen humanity, appealing and comforting.  I like Christian liturgy.  I like hymns.  I am comfortable with the Bible (although I have spent my life learining to see it through uniquely Mormon eyes, so in many ways I am still completely new to scripture).  I’m a western person, and Christianity is unquestionably the religion of the West–it’s the religious currency of our society and it is probably the most culturally relevant.  And like I said above, Christianity at least seems to offer something transformational that I feel like I need.  I’m a pretty broken person in a lot of ways, and I think I could certainly use a heapin’ helpin’ of healin’ atonement.

Also, I really like Christmas.  Particularly, I like the religious/sacred message of Christmas.  The juxtaposition of the darkest, coldest time of the year with the birth of Mankind’s salvation.  I love the sacred Christmas hymns.  I love the Christmas story in the gospels.  I eat it up with a spoon.  I’m not sure what I’d make of Christmas if I wasn’t a Christian (watch for a blog post coming up about this), but I am absolutely unwilling to completely give it up.

On the other hand, I have a sneaking, growing suspicion that the Jesus of history really wasn’t the Jesus of Christianity.  If Jesus isn’t actually the one true savior of fallen humanity, then I don’t really need him in any any kind of external, objective, cosmological sense (I may personally need him because of the requirements of my own psyche, but that’s a different issue).  And if I don’t need him, then what is he to me?  Even if there is truth and meaning in the Jesus myth, I don’t know that I am willing to make it my exclusive truth and meaning or even my primary truth and meaning.

I don’t think I believe in a personal god at all, and I also don’t think I belive that Jesus is a unique incarnation of God.  I’m not convinced that the gospels are an accurate depiction of the life of Jesus, or that Paul’s epistles are a univerally and objectively correct interpretation of the life of Jesus, either.  I’m not certain I think I need Jesus to save me from my sins (since I’m not really sure I belive in sin, hell, or the Devil, certainly in the orthodox Christian sense).  I’m also strongly turned off by both fundamentalist/evangelical and liberal Christians, and I have serious reservations about the emerging conversation.

I’m not certain that I want all of my life to be Jesus-flavored.  In other words, I’m not ready to devote myself completely to Jesus, and I don’t know if I’m even interested in doing so–sometimes it seems great, but usually it seems like to make it work for me I’d have to do a lot of self-brainwashing that I am absolutely unwilling to do.

What about the personal transformation that I claimed to have felt beginning?  If that’s the result I want from religion, and my intuition says Christianity offer it, and I’ve even felt its beginnings as I started to practice Christianity, then why did I stop?  They were great, I’ll admit it.  In fact, This is not an easy question to answer.  Maybe personal transofrmation isn’t really what I’m wanting after all.  Or maybe it is, but there’s too much other stuff in the package of Christianity (or even in the package of Jesus), such that I feel the need to look elsewhere for transformation.  Or maybe a part of the transformation I wanted was a connection, a relationoship with God that never seemed to actually happen.  Perhaps the transformation I want is not just into a better person, but a better person that is connected to God.  And I certainly didn’t feel like that was happening.  Not even a little bit.

So what am I supposed to make of all of this?  I’m at a loss.  On some level I have an attraction to Jesus and to Christianity, but not such that I would be willing to call myself (or think of myself as) Christian in any meaningful sense.  Does it matter?  On one level, no–I can believe whatever I want, of course.  On another level, if I could self-identify as a Christian, then it would give so much direction to an otherwise extremely difficult (and basically directionless) spiritual journey.  Maybe that’s not enough.  As usual, I just don’t know.

So although I haven’t really been blogging very much, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, and my life has also been changing in a lot of unexpected ways.  I’m reluctant to go into a great amount of detail, but I have something coming up that is big and scary and sort of looming, but also something that I am looking forward to.  In many ways in my life it will be an important threshold, a very real passage from one phase of life into another.

Because of this looming event, I am reluctant to make any kind of spiritual commitment, even a provisional one.  I fear that anything I start will be seriously disrupted by the changes in my life- changes that are going to last months.  At the same time, I am worried that I won’t have any kind of spiritual framework to carry me through what are doubtless going to be some very dark and difficult times.  In the past, in situations as similar as can be expected, my faith in Mormonism helped me a great deal.  This time I’m going through something unlike anything I’ve ever gone through before, but I feel like I’m on really unsteady ground.  I’m not entirely sure what to do.

We have stopped going to church as a family, mostly because I was so unsure of whether I believed in Jesus and whether I was even interested in Christianity, and church attendance felt like the spiritual equivalent of being on a moving train.  It was going somewhere that I wasn’t sure I wanted to go at all, and I felt that it was important to get off the dang train and figure out where I wanted to go, at least in some vague sense, before I got moving again.  This has been a deliberate decision with the understanding that it is temporary–I don’t want to merely get out of the habit of church or spiritual practice and simply become entirely secular by lazy default.

I have inklings and tugs in different directions at the moment that I’m going to blog about, but like I said, I’m reluctant to start anything both because of the chages that are coming in my life and because of a fear of spiritual commitment that is my unfortunate aftermath of a lifetime of faithful Mormonism.

So, the fact that I’m not posting much on here isn’t really indicative of a lack of thinking in the religious/spiritual vein. In fact, I’ve been thinking in overdrive, but not coming to any conclusions and not really going anywhere with it. My brother, Racticas (he comments here somewhat infrequently) is now in a Religious Studies masters program, so that’s added an interesting academic element to both of our searches.

I’m not going to church now, but it’s a deliberate thing. I feel like participation in church gives me a kind of uncomfortable vertigo-like feeling. Like the merry-go-round is going awfully fast for someone like me who’s not even sure he wants to be on the playground. I don’t know if that metaphor makes much sense. I feel like participation in church means moving in a direction, whether or not I know I want to be moving in that direction, or indeed moving at all.

In my head I’m going back and forth and around and around: Christianity-Asatru-Agnosticism-Atheism-Paganism-Christmas-Asatru-Christianity-Agnosticism-Frustration-Druidry-Christianity-Frustration-Anger-Christianity-Asatru, and I like Christmas. I don’t really know what to do with any of it. Every religion in the world is repugnant to me for some reason, but so many of them are attractive to me for so many other reasons. At the same time, I just don’t know if I can, or if I am willing to, simply will myself to believe. I find myself yearning for a catalyzing spiritual experience, but they just don’t seem to happen. Indeed, I don’t know if mysticism has ever really happened for me.

In other words, I’m no better off than I was nine months ago. Look at my archives; you’ll see what I mean. I know some of the Christians out there would say that my problem is that I’m trying to connect to a religion instead of connecting to Jesus, but for all practical purposes that still just sounds like gobbledygook. I have yet to figure out what “being in a relationship with Jesus” even means. But I still really like Christmas, and I am hesitant to even consider giving it up, and the religious significance in particular.

Maybe I’m just afraid to commit, mentally and emotionally. Or maybe I really just want a reason to believe that’s greater than just my preference. I’m not interested in atheism, and I don’t think I could ever be happy with atheism. But I don’t know if I could ever be happy with Christianity, Asatru, Druidry, or anything else. And I sure am never going to be happy with agnosticism. And I’m absolutely sure that I’m never going back to Mormonism.

I feel more desperate about it than I ever did before, partially because of simply being frustrated at how long this has gone on, and partially (mainly) because of major, earthshaking, terrifying life changes that are coming very soon during which I think faith could probably be a great source of strength.

I’ve tried to articulate one particular problem I have with Mormonism, and it never seems to go over very well. The topic came up on one of my favorite blogs, Dando’s Mormon and Evangelical Conversations, and while discussing it (and being accused of spouting ridiculous nonsense), I decided to try explaining it using a strictly Mormon point of view, and I think I did a pretty good job (although nobody has responded to it, so I might be dead wrong):

Mormonism stresses the importance of gaining a testimony of critical principles of the Gospel, right? That testimony is theoretically gained by praying for a manifestation from the Holy Spirit of the truth of something.

Lets say I’ve read the Bible and I want to know if Jesus is really my savior. According to Mormonism, if I pray and ask God, he’ll tell me, and I’ll have a testimony of it, right? Now, that testimony is sufficient to infer the truth of the bible, because history places Jesus squarely in the middle of it. Sure, I could also pray to know that the Bible is true, but I don’t need to. Because if I know that Jesus is the Christ by the power of the Holy Ghost, the that means the New Testament must be true, and since the New Testament affirms the Old Testament on a number of occasions, I can also therefore infer that the Old Testament is true. I certainly don’t need to pray for a specific testimony based on a spiritual witness of each book of the Bible, each apostle, each epistle, and each prophet, do I? Again, I could if I wanted to, but it isn’t critical. If God has witnessed to me the truth of Jesus Christ’s divinity and mission, then the rest can be reasonably inferred.

But my testimony of Jesus Christ alone doesn’t let me reasonably infer the truth of Joseph Smith, the Book of Mormon, or the Latter-Day church.

In order to know those things, I also have to pray to ask if either 1) the Book of Mormon is true or 2) Joseph smith was a prophet of God. Mormonism teaches that once I know either of those things, I can reasonably infer the rest: if I know that the Book of Mormon is true, then I know Joseph Smith was a prophet of God. If I know that, then I also know that the D&C and PoGP are true. I also know that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is true, that the Priesthood was restored, and that the church is still led by a prophet, that the plan of salvation as laid out in the LDS church is true, that the Word of Wisdom is true, etc.

I can get individual spiritual confirmation of each of these if I want or if I’m having a particular struggle, but the standard answer is that I should be able to get a testimony of just the one thing (either the BoM or the First Vision) and reasonably infer the rest. Latter-day prophets have taught that, and the missionaries teach that all the time.

If all I had was a spiritual witness of Jesus Christ, I could in the same way infer the truth of the Bible and the Biblical prophets, and even reasonably infer the truth of the early Christian church, based on their historical connection to Jesus Christ, either before or after. A testimony of Jesus would be enough to let me be a faithful Protestan, Catholic, Orthodox Christian. But a testimony of Jesus alone isn’t enough to convince me of the truth of Mormonism.

To be a Mormon, I would at the very least need to get a separate testimony of The BoM or Joseph Smith. And I find that problematic because to me it places them on the same level as Jesus in terms of where our faith is placed.

What I find more problematic is that many Mormons don;t have a separate testimony of Jesus and BoM/JS, but that instead they begin with a testimony of the Book of Mormon or JS and infer the rest, including inferring the divinity of Jesus, the existence of God, and the truth (or at least general reliability) of the bible.

That means for many Mormons, the lynchpin of their faith is not Jesus Christ, but Joseph Smith or the Book of Mormon. Either that or they have two equal lynchpins, only one of which is Jesus.

If your faith is built on anything but Jesus Christ, you have a house built on sand. I think that’s why it seems that most people who leave Mormonism become atheists: their faith was ultimately grounded in the Restoration, not in Jesus, and when they lost faith in the Restoration, they lost faith in everything.

Put in non-Mormon terms, one problem I have with Mormonism is that it requires separate and independent faith in something other than Jesus Christ. As a non-Mormon, I can begin with faith in Jesus Christ and then because of his place in the Biblical text and his context in history, I can infer pretty much the rest of Christianity, without having to exercise actual faith in anything else. But because the Book of Mormon and the latter-day Restoration occur outside of the continuity of Jesus’s historical and theological context, I actually have to at least exercise separate and independent faith in them, from which I can at least reasonably infer the rest of the truth of Mormonism.

Alternately, and this is the unfortunate path taken by all too many Mormons, I can ground my faith in the Restoration or the Book of Mormon and use that faith to infer Jesus’s divinity along with the rest of Mormonism.

Either way is troubling because it elevates something other than Jesus to at least the same level as Jesus, if not to a higher level, in terms of our framework of faith and belief. Essentially, in Sermon-on-the-Mount terms, that is building a house on sand instead of rock, and it’s why Mormons os often lose faith in everything when they lose faith in Mormonism. Their entire belief system was grounded in Joseph Smith and/or the Book of Mormon instead of in Jesus Christ.

“When we come to the Bible with our questions—How shall I think of God and the universe? How arrive at the divine?—it answers us, as it were, “My dear sir. these are your problems: you must not ask me! Whether it is better to hear Mass or hear a sermon, whether the proper form of Christianity is to be discovered in the Salvation Army or in ‘Christian Science.’ whether your religion should be more a religion of the understanding, or of the feelings, you can and must decide for yourself.” The Bible tells us not how we should talk with God but what he says to us; not how we find the way to him. but how he has sought and found the way to us.” -Karl Barth, from this article.

Since I started looking for a church, the one that has appealed to me the most has been the Episcopal church.  I liked the Lutheran church, too- in practice it was very similar, but I wasn;t excited about it having Luther’s name attached to it, and I felt like a British church was slightly more culturally relevant to me than a German church, although the preference is only mild.

Anyway, when I look for a direction to go, a way to follow Christ, Anglicanism (and since I’m in the US, that means the Episcopal church) continues to beckon as an attractive and meaningful path.  In all honesty, the odds are decent that this is the direction that I will eventually go, once I get all of my issues sorted out.

Of all the mainline Protestant denominations I am familiar with, the Episcopal church appealed to me the most for several reasons.  I like the liturgical aspect, and I like the communion/eucharist-centered service.  However, my concerns with Episcopalianism/Anglicanism that I am going to express in this post also apply to the rest of mainline Protestantism  So keep that in mind.  In general, I am more interested in older Protestant denominations, though, i.e., the ones that came more or less directly out of the Reformation.

Anglicanism’s via media is very appealing to me.  In theory, it has the good parts of Catholicism- the meaningful liturgy and ritual, an ordained clergy that can trace apostolic succession, and a lot of tradition, coupled with basic Protestant theology, a lot of tolerance, and (in theory) a tradition of latitudinarianism that allows for a pretty theologically diverse bunch to all be united in one communion.

I also really, really like Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury.  If allAnglicans were like him, I would join the Episcopal church without reservation.  He is intelligent, creative, insightful, and he is able to maintain the same kind of balance between theological orthodoxy and progressive social action and an inclusive attitude that Brian McLaren advocates.  Except where McLaren is kind of adorably fumbling about it, the Archbishop does it all with such elegance.  Unfortunately, it seems that instead of a church of Rowan Williamses, the Anglican communion is more a church of John Shelby Spongs and Peter Akinolas, tearing at each others’ throats, and I want nothing to do with either of those types.

First I want to address my Bishop Spong problem, and it’s really not a problem with Spong per se  so much as it is a problem with theological liberalism in general.  But given how outspoken Spong has been, and the kind of “Christianity” he has advocated, he’s kind of my lightning rod for everything I think is wrong with that side of the theological spectrum.  In my opinion, theological liberalism is dross.  Why be a Christian is you don;t really believe in the empty tomb, the incarnation, the resurrection?  Why bother?

As Rowan Williams put it in his eloquent (if slightly academic) response to Spong’s 12 theses, back when Williams was the Bishop of Monmouth,

For the record: I have never quite managed to see how we can make sense of the sacramental life of the Church without a theology of the risen body; and I have never managed to see how to put together such a theology without belief in the empty tomb. If a corpse clearly marked ‘Jesus of Nazareth’ turned up, I should save myself a lot of trouble and become a Quaker.

If Jesus is just a mortal philosopher, I see no reason to bother with Christianity at all.  I realize that accepting Jesus as God means having to deal with some hard issues and maybe living with some serious paradoxes, but I see it as the only way to be a Christian, and I want to be a Christian.

My point is that mainline Christianity in general and the Episcopal Church in specific are so riddled with theological liberalism that I don’t know if they’re really worth bothering with, or if I’ll just be frustrated all the time.

At the same time, I think religious fundamentalism is equally ridiculous.  Both religious fundamentalism and theological liberalism are the bastard children of modernism, and are in my mind the chief case for why modernism was horribly bad for Christianity.

If the Episcopal church could find a way to be progressive without compromising the essential beliefs of Christianity, it would, in my opinion, be the best of all worlds.  Unfortunately, at least the American Episcopal church seems to be doing a whole lot of compromising.

I have other concerns with the Episcopal church, too.  Chief among them is that so far, I haven’t seen much in the way of authentic community.  Juice and cookies in the undercroft do not a community make.  I imagine that part of this is a matter of finding the right parish, and also of persisting- real community is like a living thing, and living things don’t usually spontaneously spring fully grown into existence.

There’s also a teeny tiny bit of stigma attached, since becoming an Episcopalian would mean pretty much embracing the ultimate expression of WASPishness.  But I guess I can deal with that.

Next, I think the worldwide Anglican Communion’s current shenanigans over homosexuality are shameful.  Don’t get me wrong- I think Christianity’s attitude towards homosexual people has been decidedly un-Christian.  However, I think that by stepping out on its own to ordain gay bishops and bless homosexual unions, the American Episcopal church pretty much pissed all over the idea of unity within the Communion.  It was rash and reckless, and probably (if also unfortunately) too soon.

At the same time, the response of the Northern Virginia parishes has been tantamount to “taking our toys and going home” when the game doesn’t go their way, which is equally disrespectful to unity and togetherness.  And Peter Akinola’s response, to actually promote the schism, has been the crowning deed of the whole affair, completely un-called-for and inappropriate, displaying a kind of scorn and derision to the Anglcian Communion as a whole that completely undermines everything that it is supposed to stand for.

Whatever it turns out that God really wants, I’m pretty sure it’s not recriminations and schism.  The actions of both sides of this debate betray a disregard for Christian unity and brotherhood/sisterhood that makes me very sad.  Kudos to the Archbishop for dis-inviting both sides to the Lambeth conference.

Now, as a non-Anglican, it can be argued that the whole thing is none of my business.  But at the same time, I’m considering becoming an Anglican, and so the situation is important to me.  I’m not excited about the prospect of joining up and then being caught in the ultra-liberal faction of a schism that never should have happened in the first place.

But I have to weigh that concern against the incredible good that I see in Anglicanism.  I feel the sense of authoritative-ness that I’m looking for, both in the clergy and in the institution.  I feel that there is so much room for spirituality and even mysticism (especially with Rowan Williams in the Archbishop’s seat), and also Christlike life and social action.  The churches and the liturgy are beautiful, and they bring a sense of holiness and connection to God.

In any case, this is the situation where I am seriously torn.  I want very badly to go down this road, but I am afraid that the obstacles are simply too great.