[Note: This series of posts can be found here on this blog, or in a single html document here.]
The Aftermath
The aftermath of my decision was pretty much anticlimactic. Since arriving at the seminary, I had only been to a couple of Episcopal parishes in the area on a few occasions. Despite the prayerbook service I loved, the parishes were so anti-traditional, and so opposite what I'd come to Anglicanism for, that I just couldn't force myself to go. Here I was, at seminary, seeking a vocation to the priesthood, and I couldn't bring myself to even attend the churches I might one day be serving. So, since we'd arrived in Chicago in 2000, my wife and I had essentially not gone to church or had a parish home for those two years at seminary.
Having left the ordination process, I also silently, but resolutely left ECUSA and Anglicanism. Other than a couple more visits to a local non-ECUSA Anglican parish, and to my one-time home parish in central Illinois, I walked away to never set foot in an Episcopal Church again. A year and a half before—just a few months after having started seminary—I had discovered an Orthodox parish, and had visited it a handful of times. I had already been reading and investigating Orthodoxy, and talking to the Orthodox parish priest. I had also already begun my PhD program at Loyola University in Chicago. So I simply turned my attention to Orthodoxy and to my philosophy studies (which are described in the next essay “Journey to Antioch”).
So, for the first six months of 2002, my wife and I had no church involvement whatsoever. We moved into the city—and out of seminary housing. Within about a month of relocating, I began to openly and seriously investigate the Orthodox Church.
My experiences to that point on my spiritual pilgrimage had brought home to me some important truths: 1) Not to trust my own wisdom and experience as an infallible guide to faith; 2) To remember that it isn't about me or my needs or self-fulfillment, it's about what's best for my family and my descendants; and 3) There are only two important questions worth asking when it comes to faith: “What think ye of the Christ? Whose son is he?” and “What is the Church?”
I grew up with a healthy dose of American individualism and personal autonomy. I had huge reservoirs of thought which said essentially “Only you can ultimately determine what's right for you.” Well, that was proven to be untrue. I quite clearly did not determine what's right for me. More to the point, if I am the ultimate criterion on which to base my determinations of right and wrong, good and evil, not only will I never be able to discover what's right for me, the best I will ever be able to do is to determine what it is I prefer—most of the time. This is not to say I did not have good reasons for exploring Anglicanism, nor that I did not have good reasons for being confirmed in the Episcopal Church. Furthermore, it wasn't as though I didn't take other contrary views into account in my decision. But rather, if my own judgment was the be the ultimate criterion of faith, then I am bound to go wrong. Mine, after all, is a very limited viewpoint, untested by the vast centuries of time open to the Church and her Tradition. And I found that weakness only exacerbated by my adopted church who seemed utterly intent on throwing off the inherited life and doctrine of the historic Church.
I remember clearly how easily I acclimated to and how deeply I resonated with liturgical and sacramental worship. I could see the benefits it accorded me, and how those things would benefit my wife and our family. But this was still just my preference. It was hardly grounded in anything more significant. This preference, of course, was tested when it was brought up hard against manifest heresy and the advocation of immorality. There clearly had to be more to worship and my Anglo-Catholic preferences. More to the point, what would I be handing on not only to my own family, but to my grandchildren, and their children? Could I, in all good conscience, promote the Episocpal Church to later generations of my family? I found that I could not.
But the final and concluding resolve came from the awareness of the primary two questions one must ask oneself in investigating the Christian Faith: “What think ye of the Christ? Whose son is he?” and “What is the Church?” If one is a Christian, there is only one answer to that first question: Jesus is the Incarnate God. But already in my experience in the Episcopal Church I not only found those who publicly denied this bedrock Christian dogma, but more to the point, were not held accountable for that heresy. I could not recommend to myself, my family or my descendants a church who failed to call to account those who denied the central tenets of her faith. In my judgment, no matter how many faithful there were in the pews on a given Sunday honestly confessing the Nicene Creed, if the highest levels of clergy and church governance both denied this faith and could not enforce adherence to this simple bedrock of the common Faith, then that church had, in essence, denied the Faith. How could I recommend such a church to my grandchildren's children?
Furthermore, it was clear that the ecclesiology of the Episcopal Church was deteriorating to such a point that it no longer resembled a Christian Church. Bishops were set up as mini-popes over their own dioceses, untouchable by any outside agency. Collegiality—the sine qua non of Church governance since Pentecost—had been gutted as innovating bishops went ahead with their own sociopolitical agendas despite warnings from the greater national church and the worldwide Anglican Communion. Even the very Sacrament itself, which constitutes the Church, was denigrated by those who mocked its essence substituting their own “elements” (in substitution for the bread and wine) and replaced the Traditional and canonical words with political agendas—in effect, making the Holy Eucharist part and parcel of the kingdom of this world, and divorcing it from its rightful King. How could I recommend such a church to my descendants?
I have spoken in ways that some will see as harsh and judgmental. It is not my intent to judge the hearts and thoughts of those whom I've criticized. But it is my place, indeed my responsibility, to speak about public behaviors to my family, to say to them, “What you are seeing is not of the Gospel.”
If my words seem harsh, it is doubtless because I had come to the Anglican tradition with very high hopes. The picture of the church I saw there was winsome and inviting. Unfortunately, that church had ceased to be some decades before I came on board. I filtered all my experiences through this image I had built, until finally, my experiences showed to me that it was nothing more than an image. An image that no longer matched the reality of the church I was in.
With those two questions in my mind, and my resolve to find a Church that answered them rightly, I turned my attention to the Orthodox Church.
Posted by Clifton at August 8, 2004 02:26 PM | TrackBack