Episcopal boredom

Let me see if I can capture the mood at the 75th General Convention of the Episcopal Church in Columbus, Ohio.

The main thing about it is the generation. It is a gathering, chiefly, of baby boomers on the older end of their cohort. If they preceded the boom, they at least participated in the '60s. I half expected the long hair and dope to flow with the crowds that came yesterday to hear the debates about homosexuality and the consequently precarious relations of the Episcopal Church to the global Anglican Communion. But these are bald and gray heads, most of them.

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It is not exactly the grayness and baldness of Rotary and Kiwanis. It has some resemblance to a university faculty lounge, or a mainstream pressroom, or a bureaucratic social service agency conference. It is at once endowed with the sanity of political correctness and the boredom of disappointed age. One committee report to the convention declares, "The Episcopal Church has the lowest birth rate and highest mean age of any mainline denomination."

Not only do Episcopalians have few children while celebrating abortion (including a prayer for abortion in a proposed liturgy entitled "Liturgy for the Burial of a Child"), children of Episcopalians often leave the church for more exciting things. Thus, youth is a rare thing here at the Episcopal Convention. Where it appears, it is touted for publicity; it is managed by coordinators who must grant permission for a young person to give an interview. Not yet have I been able to acquaint with a member of Episcopal Youth for journalistic purposes.

It's a bit discouraging for a member of the press pool, especially given the extent to which the Episcopal Church has gone to utter the D-word. Actually there are two D-words. The first is "diversity," the second is "dialogue." "Dialogue" appears 82 times in the Report to the 75th General Convention, which contains all of the reports of the Episcopal commissions, committees, agencies and boards, known to the church as CCABs.

Dialogue means lots of meetings. Dialogue has no real objective, but is an objective within itself. It aims at no absolutes, because there are none in the liberal world of the Episcopalian.

The Episcopalians are a unique brand of folk, celebrating their own lack of identity, speaking their own tongue, exchanging their own confusions.

One priest at a hearing of the Special Committee on the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion on Tuesday explained that a proposed covenant establishing something like a purpose for the church would be "a small touchstone of an age gone by that holds little value for today." He said that the church's identity rests in its experience rather than its covenantal beliefs: "We should not surrender that identity to salve the consciences of those who demand our submission to their Puritan mission."

Meanwhile, the Episcopal Church is on the decline.

Episcopalians are the least likely group of Christians to attend church every week, according to a new Gallup survey. Episcopalian in-house statistics confirm the bad news. Only a third of Episcopalians attend church weekly, and according to the Standing Commission on Stewardship and Development, "For many in our church, Sunday worship is the only venue for Christian formation." That leaves only a handful of faithful men and women in the Episcopal Church, and most of them seem to have stayed home from the 75th General Convention.

The Episcopal Church, for all of its progressivism, is a rather wimpy affair. There is a general boredom here about the Bible. Eternity is little spoken of. Episcopalians seem content to dialogue about little sins and worldly things that turn out rather damning by the biblical standard. Equality for homosexuals in the priesthood and in marriage, justice for Cuba, reparations for slavery, anti-racism training, reconciliation training, gender-neutral language, abortion rights – it is political, and politically correct, beyond the appetite of the normal American.

It is the "Puritan mission" that seems to attract Americans to church. Churches that challenge and demand are vibrant and growing. Their members evangelize, have big families, value Christian education, stay in the church.

As for the Episcopalian elite here at the convention, they lord their own corner, littler than their ambitions would suggest. The church politicians gathered here, determined to undo poverty, racism, homophobia, sexism and oppression from the Bible, the church and the world, find as they conspire that they weaken.

See my latest reports on the convention at Virtue Online.

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