If you find you can no longer believe

beliefs - behaviors - belonging

In A Taste for Death, P.D. James has detective Adam Dalgliesh say, “My father was a parish priest. When I lost my faith he said, ‘If you find you can no longer believe just act as if you still do. If you feel you can no longer pray just go on saying the words.’ ”

Beliefs - Behaviors - Belonging

I’m picking up on the work of Lauren Jackson a New York Times writer. She has reported on religion at CNN, winning awards from the Religion News Association. Jackson graduated from the University of Virginia and Oxford University, where she was a Rhodes Scholar. For the past year she’s been working on how people have been managing their longing to belong to a community.

America’s secularization was an immense social transformation. Has it left us better off? People are unhappier than they’ve ever been and the country is in an epidemic of loneliness. It’s not just secularism that’s to blame, but those without religious affiliation in particular rank lower on key metrics of well-being. They feel less connected to others, less spiritually at peace and they experience less awe and gratitude regularly. Now, the country seems to be revisiting the role of religion. (Jackson in “Americans Haven’t Found a Satisfying Alternative to Religion”)

Her writing is mostly directed at the generally liberal readers of the Times. These are people who have often struggled with their desire for the benefits that come to those who practice religion — happier, with better mental and physical health, more friends, less depression. Because their religious community offered “higher levels of social support, better health behaviors and greater optimism about the future.” - Americans Haven’t Found a Satisfying Alternative to Religion, NYT.

In the late 1960s, early 70s there was a Lutheran parish in South Philadelphia that changed from being a small declining, with all white members most with German ancestry to an African American Lutheran church of several hundred members. It was partly done by the young white pastor who went door to door in the surrounding projects inviting people to church. As I understand it, they developed a rule that if you moved outside of the neighborhood, you can no longer be in the leadership of the parish. They did that in order to maintain themselves as a truly neighborhood parish church. What they discovered was that as people became members - their life became more stable, their world became bigger, they had a broader range of people they felt connected to, many began to find more stable work, and as their lives improved economically, many would move out of the neighborhood. Going to church - belonging, believing and practicing - improved their lives.

Back then, and now, many of us want all those benefits. Back then going to church was more normative. Over time our society began to develop ways of thinking that separated the benefits from the elements of believing, belonging, and behaviors. In fact, we pulled the elements apart. Some more liberal people sought belonging but without one or both of the other elements. And now in more conservative evangelical churches we see people claiming belief while forgoing belonging and practice.

And as church membership declined over the decades, the more liberal churches frequently responded by asking less and less of potential members. And other traditions sometimes demanding more and more following of the practices. Each producing ​its own liberal or conservative cult-like approach to religious faith. Possibly a mirroring of the larger society’s political polarization in which the extremes demand conformity in belief and practice. Neither approach appears to have had much impact on the membership picture.

Thin Christianity, sharp Christianity and thick Christianity

In a conversation between David French and Jonathan Rauch we hear about three chunks of American Christianity: thin Christianity, sharp Christianity and thick Christianity. Rauch sees thick Christianity a healthy fit with “our democratic republic.”

• “Thin Christianity is my term for when Christianity becomes secularized and it becomes a consumer good, a commodity .. turns out when religion, especially Christianity, when that becomes thin, people go elsewhere for their faith and for their sense of meaning in life.” In other places Rauch makes it clear that he sees the Episcopal Church and the Liberal Protestant churches in this category.

• Sharp Christianity actually “is a kind of Christianity that perceives itself increasingly as being at war with the culture around it.” This is where he sees the evangelical alliance with the Republican Party.

• “Thick Christianity isn’t that people need to be less Christian… they need to dive more into the teachings of Jesus.” He offers a fascinating illustration, using the Latter-Day Saints as his example in how they passed an anti-discrimination bill in Utah — “it passed almost unanimously in the conservative State Legislature, with the L.G.B.T. rights group Equality Utah and the Legislature and the church standing side by side.” He goes on to say, “This is what’s been missing. Christians have a teaching about how individuals should relate to the world around them. If there’s a hurricane in Asheville, the stories of what the church is doing are fantastic. But they don’t have a teaching about how to engage politics as Christians .. a whole civic theology.”

I don’t see any easy or obvious ways to get the Episcopal Church as a whole to develop a “thick” expression of Anglican Christianity. However, it does exist in some of our parishes. It’s not that our tradition doesn’t have such an approach in its DNA. It’s there but not wide and deep in our life. We are use to be captured by the culture’s politics. Maybe we went from being the Republican Party at prayer to being the progressive Democrats at prayer. In the language of the late pope, we are too politicized and lack a political culture.

In Bari Weiss’s interview of Rauch she brings out “three central pillars” that might illustrate what he is getting at. What does a Christian political culture look like? “First: Don’t be afraid—the most repeated command in the Bible. In politics, that means accept losses without panic, don’t lie or cheat, and resist fear mongering demagogues, as Hamilton and Lincoln warned. Second: Be like Jesus. Imitate him. …The third principle is forgiveness. In Christian doctrine, it means mercy; in politics, it means not trying to destroy your opponents when you win. You share the country.”

I believe that another aspect is the need to replace “the mental models of secular political ideologies with mental models of faith.” We need to develop the capacity to see clearly and to see through the mind of Christ. The usual pathway is a routine of prayer and exposure to a wide range of political and historical thought. Having done that, we may be able to return to our political views and engage them with more humility and wisdom.

Paul Miller provides yet another piece that might be useful, he proposes "a Confessing Church stance in which we are salt and light. If we tilt to the right we are to speak to our own tribe of the poor and powerless and the rule of law. And if on the left we push back on how “they deny transcendent truth one day; the next, they announce a new truth, and their online mob will bully and harass us for failing to jump on their latest cause de jour.” We are “to speak the whole truth and be gracious in our speaking. To avoid those “who peddle fear and anger for clicks” and to practice self examination.

So Moses listened to his father-in-law and did all that he had said, Moses chose able men from all Israel and appointed them as heads over the people, as officers over thousands, hundreds, fifties, and tens. And they judged the people at all times; hard cases they brought to Moses, but any minor case they decided themselves. Then Moses let his father-in-law depart, and he went off to his own country.

More broadly the challenge is about drawing on our Christian faith, as known in the Anglican tradition, to address how that influences our political thinking, conversation, and voting. To better engage the complicated and often tangled relationship among our religious beliefs and public policy debates. How faithful people can both hold and critique their political ideology as we engage the diverse range of views within the Anglican community.

We face two difficulties. First, we are too often engaged in thin Christianity.” The second comes from Malcolm Brown, Director of Mission and Public Affairs for the Church of England, “Whether engaging with government on issues of moral significance or through small acts of kindness and solidarity with people in the parish – or, indeed, at many intermediate levels – the church seeks to live out its Christian vocation, to demonstrate the love of God for all and to hasten the coming of God’s Kingdom on earth. But the church has never been especially good at articulating a theological rationale for this social engagement. As a result, support for much good work by the church has been weakened by an inability to say why such work is a part of a truly Christian vocation.” We simply don't have anything as coherent as can be found in Catholic Social Teaching.

To use Rauch’s term, how might we develop a thick religious culture that effectively serves our political life? And if that’s not currently possible in the wider church, how might it be done in particular parishes?

A healthy dense parish culture

The discussions of believing, belonging and practice alongside that of “thick Christianity” reminded me of the work Sister Michelle and I have done on parish cultural density. I wondered, how might we use those models to understand our efforts in parish development? How might we state the task before us?

Here’s my first try. You might improve upon it.

Our task is: The development and nurturing of a healthy, dense parish culture in which all three elements - beliefs, behaviors, and belonging - are strong and present. The elements in alignment with our Anglican tradition. Brought into being by shaping the parish’s Apostolic core and overall climate.

And because we face the lack of an effective formation process regarding the intersection of faith and political life, we add to the task: And where we better understand how to engage politics as Anglican Christians in our political thinking, conversation, and voting.

The starting place is being clear about the relationship between worship and Christian action.

And one of Anglicanism’s greatest ethicists, Kenneth Kirk wrote in The Vision of God, “the doctrine…has throughout been interpreted by Christian thought at its best as implying in practice that the highest prerogative of the Christian, in this life and the next, is worship; and that nowhere except in this activity will he find the key to his ethical problems.”

“One’s first duty is adoration, and one’s second duty is awe and only one’s third duty is service. And that for those three things and nothing else, addressed to God and no one else, you and I and all other countless human creatures evolved upon the surface of this planet were created. We observe then that two of the three things for which our souls were made are matters of attitude, of relation: adoration and awe. Unless these two are right, the last of the triad, service, won’t be right. Unless the whole of your...life is a movement of praise and adoration, unless it is instinct with awe, the work which the life produces won’t be much good.” Evelyn Underhill

The starting place is not about Jesus’ teaching, nor is it our analysis of what might be the most effective course of action and it is certainly not some utopian Christian scheme to create a perfect nation. We begin with our sharing in the Divine Life as we participate in the Eucharist, the daily prayers of the church, and reflection. It is in our worship that we come to know something of the mind and heart of God. It is in our worship that we experience God's humility, persistence, patience, prudence, and wisdom.

We may also draw on

​There is an Anglican heritage for a political theology: Richard Hooker, F.D Maurice, Charles Gore​, Kenneth Kirk and William Temple. ​And there are more contemporary thinkers. I'm mentioning a few below.

“Realism over aspiration” is from Miles Smith in a response he makes to Christian nationalism. His view may be especially useful as he comes by way of a conservative and evangelical orientation. He sees realism as characterizing the response of episcopal clergy after the revolution and the disestablishment of the church. we stepped aside from seeking either control of the political life of the nation or a “quietism that denied their ability to change their society or to work for its good.” They sought to better society. This was “a recognition that the church would change society in a churchly way, and not through a Protestant caesaropapism.^”

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Jon Askonas offers “four distinct elements that contribute to a distinctly Anglican mode of statecraft.”

1) It is “realistic about the relationship between faith and the state, and faith and the nation. … takes a high view of the magistrate’s spiritual role…one that may not bring heaven to earth but at least seeks to grow in grace.” 2) “An emphasis on freedom of conscience.” 3) Cooperation, ecumenism, and modesty.” 4) “ A kind of Evangelicalism…I can’t help but think the version under Anglicanism struck a better balance between the need for conversion…and the understanding that faith can’t be forced through violence.'“

Luke Bretherton wrote, “Reflecting its dual nature as Catholic and Reformed, Anglicanism draws on numerous traditions and approaches to social and political reflection. But for all its ecumenical and philosophical bricolage, APT tends to favor practical over theoretical forms of rationality and is orientated to questions of political order in a distinctive way: it is situated within and emerges out of a church for a particular place and history rather than for a gathered people. Anglican churches envisage themselves as serving a place (parish, diocese, and nation-state) and the people who happen to live there, whoever they may be and whatever their commitments. This contrasts with congregational and movement-based ecclesial polities within Protestantism. … Political theology as a form of Christian testimony is thus a way of discerning how to act or conduct oneself appropriately in this time, in both its historical and eschatological registers. Its full realization is not therefore in a set of academic discourses but in a changed way of life.” I want to note that one of the reason’s Sister Michelle and I prefer the word “parish” to “congregation” is directly related to Bretherton’s assumption about “serving a place…and the people who happen to live there.” Our other source is Loren Mead’s, “The parish includes ... the horses and cattle, the dogs and cats, the fields and woods, the schools, and businesses—the whole kit and caboodle. Of course, I’m talking mostly about the people.” See his whole quote and other Anglican’s making the case in “A love story.”

Parish cultural density

We have already written about “Parish cultural density.” I invite you to read that article. What I’d add is that it may help to focus your attention around two arenas. First, nurture the Apostolic core of the parish. Second, shape an apostolic climate that invites people to a richer, more disciplined faith and graciously accepts that most will not do that. Every parish is a wonderful mix of people in all stages of faith and practice. All are invited to go further and all are affirmed and loved as they are.

In Pastoral Theology: A Reorientation, Martin Thornton presented his understanding of the parish church as the Body of Christ, “the complete Body in microcosm,” and his Remnant Concept, “in which power from the center pervades the whole.” The holiness and love of a Remnant at the center of parish life is for Thornton what makes a parish a true parish.

This abides,

Brother Robert, OA

THE MARTYRS OF THE REFORMATION ERA

Almighty and Most Merciful God, give to your Church that peace which the world cannot give, and grant that those who have been divided on earth may be reconciled in heaven, and share together in the vision of your glory; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.