Group Grope

Well, you can count on the Episcopalians to be on the cutting edge when it comes to Christian doctrine. Now – it turns out after nigh unto 2000 years of regrettable error on the matter – belief in individual salvation is heresy. This, not necessarily an exact quote, is attributed -- by William Murchison, in the December issue of Chronicles -- to Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, speaking at last summer's General Convention. Well, all I can say is, what a relief! And here I thought that my salvation was entirely my own to gain or lose – that it was all on my shoulders. But now I am assured by the high priestess of The Episcopal Church in America that this is not so at all – it's more like group health insurance. All of my many failings – which might seriously threaten my salvation if it were all up to me – can be watered down and counterbalanced by the efforts of my peers in the faith, just as my poor efforts can work to water down and counterbalance theirs, and so on -- the whole being infinitely more than the sum of its parts. Now, I suppose there might be some cause for apprehension in, for example, a case where everyone in the group is equally sinful... or, as it says somewhere in Scripture, “No man does good; no, not one.” How can any group having this level of moral turpitude possibly be saved? Wouldn't I be better off on my own than in the company of these losers? Ah, but the Episcopal Church has an answer to that as well, one that we should all be familiar with by now, and that is that what constitutes “sin” is actually only a matter of opinion, and that, in fact, there may be no such thing as sin after all (except maybe for “sins against Mother Earth”, or against gays, minorities, animals, and so on). And logically, if there is no such thing as sin – or no serious sin – then there is no need for Hell, therefore salvation is not only available to all, but _inevitable_ for all – and therefore, why even worry about it? Even the quaint concept that “my father's house has many mansions” -- why, isn't that discriminatory? What about “equal opportunity” in Heaven? Surely Heaven, if it even exists, would have to be a place where equal opportunity – at last! -- triumphed. Surely any lack of eternal equality would hold the potential for someone's feelings to get hurt... and we certainly can't have that.

There is one curious thing, however, and that's this notion that individual salvation is a heretical idea. But for heresy to exist, you have to have orthodoxy – you know, doctrine... dogma... all of that stuff. So what particular creed, or doctrine, or dogma, does the notion of individual salvation stand against? Nothing in the Christian tradition, I'm sure; she must be talking about Buddhism or something. And if so, it is a most curious thing for the head of... well, not really a large body, but a body nonetheless, of alleged Christian believers (though one wonders, “in what?”) to be contending that an all-important piece of traditional Christian doctrine is “heretical”. But this is just another example of the topsy-turvy world of Episcopalianism, where values, standards, and beliefs are turned upside down on a regular basis, for the amusement of all. When it comes to spiritual life in the Episcopal Church, it's like Strawberry Fields -- "Nothing is real... and nothing to get hung up about."

So the bottom line to all this, according to Murchison's reading of the Episcopal Church of our time, is that at a certain point it was declared – if implicitly – that “Sin was social. We were to repent of perpetuating social injustice. Social justice, it turned out, consisted in affirming and promoting the rights of discrete groups of Americans...” And he then provides a list of the usual suspects, which I won't bore you with here. What it boils down to is that the Episcopal Church is profoundly political in its orientation – maybe entirely political. It is the cause du jour, the victim group of the hour, that receives all their attention, to the detriment of the traditional concerns that, for that matter, justify the existence of a church – any church – in the first place. When it comes to political activism, there are plenty enough organizations out there to more than adequately represent the interests and grievances of any imaginable victim group; I honestly don't think they need the additional help of a handful of L. L. Bean-clad and Birkenstock-shod people with sensible haircuts and overly-long handmade scarves. When I gaze upon a classic Episcopal church – in the hunt country of Northern Virginia, say – with its ancient stone, its wooden beams, its stained glass, its meticulously-maintained organ (no electronics allowed, of course), its charming grounds and courtyards, its parsonage ideally situated for afternoon tea... I don't see an automatic connection to campaigns to legalize GLBT polygamy (or polyandry) (or what is it, when you're talking about that demographic? Who knows?). But as Murchison points out, somewhere along the line justifiable Christian humane-ness morphed into humanism, which became secularized, and now we have a bunch of political radicals in the clothing of the (formerly) faithful. And do the old observances and pieties suffer as a result? One's gaze falls from the ivy-covered bell towers onto scenes that would do justice to an old silent-movie version of Belshazzar's Feast... and blasphemies that might bring a blush to the face of Voltaire. And all for the sake of... what? Of being up to the minute, or – even better – being in the vanguard? Of not only being fully invested in every social movement of the time, but actually helping to define and oversee those movements (although, let's admit, the Quakers seem to be even better at it than the Episcopalians – maybe because they aren't constantly distracted by architecture, décor, and liturgy).

Murchison asks another good question as well: “If the Episcopal Church is so in tune with modern society, why is it shrinking instead of growing?” Well, as I implied above, most people who want to “do” political activism are content to just do that, without having to carry any baggage associated with religion (even if by only the thinnest of threads – as witness all of the “Reverends” associated with the civil rights movement). And he also comments on Schori herself as follows: “... all you have to do is look at our poor presiding bishop, who bleeds melancholy at every pore...” Ayn Rand could not have put it better when describing one of her humanist villains. Yes, the Episcopal Church does indeed seem to be led, and dominated by, a bunch of sad-sacks... no matter how much they smile in that scary way characteristic of utopian dreamers. But hey – if your attitude about life is predicated on how it's working out as a group endeavor, you've got a perfect right to be sad, if not suicidal. If I have to rely on the group – pretty much any group, of any size – for my salvation, I'm going to have a lot of sleepless nights. I guess I would be willing to put my fate into the hands of a group of cloistered Carmelites, but that would be about it; I wouldn't let a liberal Episcopalian take one of my grandkids to the rest room.

The main thing is that the Episcopalians – and groups of similar bent – think of themselves as ground-breaking... as leaders when it comes to social movements, “reform”, “change”, and all that. But the truth is, they are abject followers. They never get involved in anything that's not already popular, or on the verge of becoming so. All of their efforts are directed in not only politically correct, but politically safe in an airtight way, directions. They are forever “preaching to the choir” -- themselves as well as all the other furry activist types dotted across the landscape. But far from being radical or contrarian, they are terminally conformist and passive when it comes to the various fads, crazes, and hysterias of the day. And their ideas, far from being ground-breaking or radical, are as old as the hills... and as the oldest heresies (I mean the real ones, not the ones according to Schori). It is unfortunate that the Episcopal Church, which genuinely has a rich storehouse of tradition (even if most of it was stolen from the Catholic Church during the time of Henry VIII), should be at the epicenter of all the political lunacy of our time. It is a blatant and tragic -- in an ongoing way -- contradiction in terms. Maybe it really is true that the capacity for doing great good is also the capacity for doing great ill – that all it takes is one flawed premise or failure in logic to send a person, or a group, down the wrong path... in this case for generations. It would be nice, as Murchison says, if real reform would break out – reform back to faith, back to doctrine, back to... let's call it “awe” -- you know, that feeling we're all supposed to have in this season, when gazing, even if only in the imagination, upon the Christmas crib. The fads and fancies of the moment will indeed fade away... and when they do, what will become of the people who placed all of their faith (if that is the word) on the things of the world – on politics, social issues, and economics – and forgot what the true origin of faith is, and how it should be rightly directed – namely, to things above?