Reading Suggestions

The whole idea of the new website design is to be more friendly and accessible to newcomers and outsiders. When I looked at the thing, one whole section that I loved (but didn't fit into that "newcomers" idea) was the "Further Reading" section. I don't want to lose it, so I'm going to put it in the menu on the right on this page.

A Sense of the Holy

The church website is making progress, bit by bit. I think I've got the appearance of the thing tamed, and it really is pretty. (I cannot take much of the credit for that. I'm using a free pre-formatted template from HTML5 UP! and it's beautiful. The artwork is mainly scrounged from the Internet.)

I would really love for it to go live early next week, to try to catch the new arrivals at Ashland University.

Right now, I'm still struggling with the concept of Episcopal DNA. We're an odd bunch.

• In a lot of ways, we are more Celtic than the Church of England, and this leads us to a deep respect for the environment. Prayers for the physical world are part of normal Sunday worship. I think I should stick in something about Bellwether Farm, the new camp and retreat center the Diocese is building. Part of the ethos of Bellwether is that it will be a working, sustainable farm.
• The Three-Legged Stool illustration probably should go in because it emphasizes our focus on tradition and scripture and intellect. Some of the finest minds of the age have been in the Anglican tradition.
• We're willing to laugh at ourselves. Want to hear a good joke about Episcopalians? Ask one of us.
• I have read more than one comment saying that the younger generation is seeking a sense of the holy, a sense of worship. The shallow, all-about-me themes for worship seem to be losing out. (Certainly, this aspect is what drew me to the Episcopal Church). This poster isn't from St. Matthew's, and we don't use incense, but it gives an idea about this return to tradition:

Episcopal DNA

Like most of my projects, the website revision has grown and multiplied to a point where it threatens to become unworkable.

A friend looked at our current home page and said, "Wow! That's really dated!" Well, OK. I never did put myself out there as a designer, and the page's general appearance hasn't changed in years. So I began all over again, this time with a web search for a template that will do well with both desktop computers and phones. I found a really pretty one. The next task is filling it with material that will work for us.

I asked myself what a first-time visitor would like to know about a new church. Here's what I came up with:

1. Where is the church?
2. When do they do things?
3. Will they accept me?
4. What am I getting myself into?

The where part is pretty easy, but previously I depended on a link to a Google map. Now we will have easy written turn-by-turn directions for the person who just wants to get here. The when part is easy too.

Now we get into the accepting part. That's difficult to write. Yes, we do have four or five gay people who attend regularly, but I certainly don't want to put them on display. When a person walks into our sanctuary, the gay people don't just stand out. That's partly because gay teenagers will present themselves differently from gay middle-aged people, and partly because a person 40 or 50 years old has had a lifetime of trying to fit in. We're mainly a congregation of older white people, so you won't see young people, immigrants, or African-Americans. It's not that we would reject them; it's just who we are and who shows up. If you come to our annual Winter Convocation, you'd see a lot more diversity because people from the whole diocese show up. How do I write all that down to emphasize that we really do welcome folk regardless of race, sexual orientation, or wealth? That's a challenge.

A pastor at a church I used to attend would refer to the church's DNA. I like that term. What are the basics that are baked into the mix—not just layered on the top? How do I write about that DNA? That's even more of a challenge than the article on accepting. Do I go all the way back to King Henry VIII and comment that a church started by a guy who had six wives isn't likely to be judgmental? Do I point out that we're really more Scottish than English because we didn't have a bishop of our own after the Revolution, and the English church refused to consecrate one for us, so the Scots did? (Thus beginning a tradition of our being the "loyal opposition.") What about immigrants? What about electing leaders who are not always drawn from he pool of straight white old men? How do I convey, in just a few words, our tradition of thoughtful response to both Scripture and tradition? It's quite a task.

Not One of Them

I read recently on Facebook that Christians are the major cause of people becoming atheists. Reading further, the article made the point that Evangelicals preaching hatred, particularly toward the LGBT community, drive younger people away from the faith. That keys into this Religious News Service article about Eugene Peterson, a retired Presbyterian pastor and author who is best known for his Bible paraphrase, The Message. The article discusses the pressure tactics, both financial and personal, deployed by the Evangelical community as a result of his comment that he would probably marry a gay couple if he were a pastor today. Christianity Today reported that Peterson's reported shift in opinion was actually a misrepresentation.

But the damage was done. The Evangelical troops were released and Peterson is now under attack.

In Judges 12, the Bible says that the Israelites used the word "shibboleth" to distinguish friends from enemies. The word itself is actually a very common word, but the point is that the Israelites pronounced it differently from the Ephraimites. You say it wrong, and we kill you.

Down through the ages, American church folk (I can't speak for other countries) have come up with a number of shibboleths to try to distinguish "true believers" from those terrible outsiders:

• "Real" Christians don't read novels.
• "Real" Christians don't play cards.
• "Real" Christians don't smoke.
• "Real" Christians don't go to movies.
• "Real" Christians don't drink alcohol.

You notice that none of these terribly important distinctives are mentioned in the Bible. (And these rules prohibit activity that the good church people didn't feel like doing anyhow.) A few others (like prohibiting all work on Sunday) do get a biblical mention, but mainly in passing, and mainly in the Old Testament.

All this line-drawing has two terrible results.

The first is that it tempts people to say, "Well, I don't drink and I don't smoke, so I must be a Christian." No comment about Jesus, the Bible, or how one deals wit the poor or the rest of one's ethical life. No smoking and no drinking equals entrance into heaven. Or in our age, hatred of sexual minorities and hatred of abortion.

The second is that all this hatred and line-drawing is designed to keep people out of the sanctuary. There's nothing about a loving, welcoming Christ in all this—it's all about identifying and victimizing the outsiders.

No wonder that article said that the christian church (I'm intentionally using lower-case "C" here) is a major force in making atheists.

Reclaiming the language

Maybe the damage is already done and we just need a new word or two.

I miss "Evangelical." Its root is a Greek word that means "good news" (though you'd never guess that from the behavior of modern Evangelicals). In the 1970s, the label was used by a movement to distinguish Fundamentalists from a newer group wanted serious Bible scholarship and a radical devotion to Jesus along with reaching out to the poor and disadvantaged and showing real care for God's earthly creation.

I also miss "Christian" as a term that would unite Baptists, Presbyterians, Catholics and Episcopalians around the core values. Now it's not about core values; it's about who we vote for. And I always feel awkward when I say, "Evangelical Christian is not really the right word for me. I'm an Episcopalian who believes that Jesus loves all of us and invites us into his Kingdom."

On being accepted

Easter always gets me to thinking, and my thinking is not the pious kind. There was a time when I seriously thought monks' robes were appealing, but that era is long in my past. Easter gets me to thinking because, like most other holidays, it is an alone time for me.

I guess I've generally been a loner. At my previous church, I never quite fit in. I was too intellectual, too socially liberal, not Republican enough, and just was a general oddball. I have always had the sort of job in which I am an independent contractor who shows up, does stuff, and then goes away. (That is really the life of the adjunct instructor at most colleges. They go out of their way to say, "You are not really part of us." Ashland University breaks that trend, I am glad to say.) Divorce, of course, is a highly legalized way for people to say, "You are not part of our family any more." So life has been a tale of solitude for me.

I guess there are some advantages to this lifestyle, especially when it comes to holidays. In our culture, holidays are a time when people with families gather for feasts and try to put up with the bizarre political opinions of their relations. I eat something simple and take a walk. (The wild flowers were amazing this Easter.)

We humans were not made to be alone, though, and deep in my heart, I longed for the kind of Christian community that I couldn't find in "a bunch of people who get together to sing Christian songs." That's why I went searching for a new church.

Before coming to St. Matthew's, I had a rather fuzzy idea of who Episcopalians are. I pictured nice ladies who wear a hat and gloves to church—even in the 21st century—and who drive Mercuries.

I didn't really see myself that way, though I am more likely than most to wear a tie and jacket to church, but I was very hungry for worship that went beyond repetitively singing the same short songs (with drums, guitars, and PowerPoint words) every Sunday. I wanted substance. I figured I could put up with the little old ladies and their Mercuries if they could put up with my jeans and my Toyota station wagon.

The odd thing is that they didn't care. We have several nice old ladies (who do not drive Mercuries or wear hats and gloves), and they seem just fine with our mixture of firemen, teachers, insurance salesmen, real estate brokers, and farmers. One of the nice old ladies told me that we just don't have enough gay people in our church. We only have about half a dozen.

I'm not looking for sympathy here (or for Easter dinner invitations). Oddly enough, this congregation has turned out to be incredibly welcoming and a real home to me. I don't need the holiday dinners that much because I know that I have a home for the other 362 days a year.

Maundy Thursday

This word, Maundy, seems to be a uniquely high church thing. My childhood church was Presbyterian, but we weren't Ohio Presbyterians—we were the kind of East Coast Presbyterians whose pastor wore a clerical collar even in the middle of the week and on Sunday morning the choir and minister (all properly robed) would solemnly march up the aisle at the beginning of the service. Making the transition to the Episcopal Church was mainly a matter of learning when to kneel and when to cross myself.

Anyhow, I distinctly remember the first time I heard the term Maundy Thursday, thinking someone had foolishly mispronounced "Monday Thursday" (and wondering how those two days got mashed together). It wasn't until much later (in another Presbyterian church) that I learned that the term comes from the Latin "mandatum" ("commandment"), from Christ's words in John 13, "a new commandment I give to you."

As holy days go, this one deserves a lot more recognition. We get excited about Palm Sunday because we get to wave palm fronds around (and some of us craft them into origami crosses during the sermon), but that cannot compare with the intensity of the Last Supper, complete with Jesus's last teaching to his disciples, his object lesson of washing their feet (even the feet of traitor Judas), and the institution of the Eucharist.

At St. Matthew's we will be celebrating Maundy Thursday this year on April 13 at 7 PM, complete with foot-washing (optional, if you are squeamish) and Eucharist.

By the way, I don't expect the Queen of England to show up (she saves those visits for cathedrals in England), but here's a discussion of the roots of Maundy Thursday and the Queen's Royal Maundy. Interesting stuff.

Just how gay are we?

That title for this post is an odd, awkward question, especially in a very conservative community. On the national level, on the Diocese level (north half of Ohio, for us) and locally, we're very welcoming toward gay, lesbian, transgendered, and queer people, but visitors often have trouble seeing it. I wonder why.

Part of the reason, I suspect, has to do with age. People who were born 40+ years ago grew up in a very different environment than today. For just one small example, the popular entertainer Liberace won a libel suit against the British newspaper The Daily Mirror when they ran articles claiming he was gay (homosexuality was illegal in England at the time). There were almost no positive gay role models until recently, and even now, in the American Midwest, it is not too difficult to find ideologues who scream terrible things at the gay community. Little wonder that middle-aged and older gay people try to keep a low profile.

And simple age has something to do with it too. As a college teacher, I know that 18-year-olds in general try out all kinds of self-expressive personal styles, but tend to settle down a bit by the time they are 25. It's not a sexual orientation thing. Everyone does it. That means that a church such as ours that is middle-aged and older just is not very flamboyant. Especially on a Sunday morning.

One speaker at a conference for gay Christians said, "We're just not that interesting. We take out the garbage like everyone else."

I don't know much about the personal lives of very many priests in our diocese, but without much trouble I can name one who is transgender and several more who are gay or lesbian. The interesting thing is that their sexual orientation is not the most interesting thing about any of them. Is Father X a decent preacher? How is Father Y's parish building program going? Is Father Z's partner still struggling with grad school? But to the casual observer, their sexuality is an absolute non-issue.

It's pretty much the same at St. Matthew's. As a relative newcomer to the parish, I listen to the comments people make and I tend to store away the most remarkable ones. About the only comment I can remember anyone making about sexual orientation around here came from one of the older women a couple of years back: "We just don't have enough gay people in this parish."