Bumper Sticker Church
FROM THE RECTOR
This week, I had the privilege of speaking at two world religions classes at Bentonville High School. Left in a pinch because his usual speaker on Anglicanism is on an extended trip in Hawaii, the teacher asked if I could fill in. I was delighted. I love spending time with students, and I enjoy sharing with others what I love about our church. What I did not expect was how much I would benefit from returning to our roots and rearticulating for my own sake what makes our branch of Christianity distinct.
Although I tend to describe the peculiarities of the Anglican tradition through an historical lens, I decided to start my presentation to those high school students with a less academic approach. A few years ago, I saw a bumper sticker on a colleague’s car that fairly well encapsulates what it means to be an Episcopalian: “Don’t ask me where I stand; ask me where I kneel.” When I asked them what they imagined that said about our church, their responses got pretty close to the truth. “It sounds like your church focuses more on worship than politics,” one student offered. “I’d like to think so,” I replied, “but I’m not sure everyone in the church would agree with you.”
That bumper sticker was a response to twenty-first-century concerns, suggesting that the Episcopal Church provides an alternative to the divisive culture that seems to be taking hold of the world. I doubt that bumper stickers were popular on carriages in the sixteenth century, but the struggle to find (or impose) consensus in the Church of England during the successive reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I, and Elizabeth I led to a religious settlement that, while far more complex than a tagline, essentially expressed the same thing: we won’t ask you where you stand theologically as long as we can kneel together in prayer.
In order to secure enough support from parliament, the church, and other powerful interests to maintain her reign, Elizabeth I and her allies guided the nation through a series of political and theological compromises that resulted in our peculiar way of being the church. In order to keep her own head and satisfy the suspicions of men who could not imagine a woman as the “Head of the Church,” she agreed that the crown would give that title back to Jesus and accept instead the role of “Supreme Governor,” a title that the British monarch retains to this day.
She brought back the thoroughly Protestant version of the Book of Common Prayer that had been ratified during her younger half-brother’s reign, but, to placate those in the church with catholic sympathies, she modified some of its language to allow enough room for their private devotions to persist. For example, when Communion was distributed to the people, instead of using either the Memorialist language of “take and eat this in remembrance that Christ died for thee” or the Catholic language of “The Body of Christ,” which Thomas Cranmer had taken directly from the Latin mass in an earlier version of the prayer book, Elizabeth combined the two in a statement we continue to use in Rite I worship: “The Body of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was given for thee, preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life; take and eat this in remembrance that Christ died for thee and feed on him in thine heart by faith with thanksgiving.” No one said that compromise was succinct.
Her efforts at compromise were more significant than a mere stitching together of religious language. Behind those liturgical changes was an understanding that clergy and people throughout the church would be allowed to remain true to their theological conscience. Whether they believed that the species of Holy Communion were somehow transformed into the real Body and Blood of Jesus or remained a mere symbol of Christ’s self-offering, they would be welcome in the church. Given how central the push for theological unanimity had become during the pendulum-swinging changes that accompanied previous monarchical successions, this was an unexpected breath of fresh air, and the belief that a church could be united in prayer despite maintaining underlying doctrinal conflicts was a radical gift to the future of Christianity.
Is there any gift more important for us to embody in the present age? We are a church that begins with common prayer and that believes that out of that shared worship a new kind of shared theology will evolve. In the centuries since the Elizabethan Religious Settlement, our theology has become more than a midpoint between Catholic and Protestant. We are more than a refusal to take a stand on important issues. We are a community of faith that believes that a commitment to coming together in prayer can teach us something about the nature of God and God’s will for the world. It is, in the end, how we explore what it means for all of us and all of humanity to be loved unconditionally by God.
Nevertheless, our approach to theology comes with important limitations. In the Elizabethan church, there was no room for liturgical innovation. In order both to guarantee compliance and foster deepening unity, the standardization of worship was absolute. Previously, many of the worshipping communities in England had, over the centuries, developed their own subtle linguistic differences, which reflected their unique identities, but the newfound commitment to common prayer eliminated them all.
The same remains true in the Episcopal Church. We cannot decide to tinker with the language of worship even if our congregation were unanimous in supporting those changes. As Dr. Wil Gafney reminded us last weekend, we may recognize the ways in which our liturgy stands in the way of welcoming all people, but our ability to be a church that welcomes all is in no small way a reflection of our commitment to common prayer. Because a change to the prayer book reflects a change in our shared identity, such revisions come slowly, if at all. That the Church of England continues to use a prayer book last revised in 1662 underscores how difficult those changes are, yet our duty in the face of such obstacles is to continue to call on church leaders to make faithful revision a priority. That process is already underway through the work of the General Convention and the interim bodies it appoints, but their progress is moving forward at a painfully yet necessarily slow pace.
When you experience in Episcopal worship language that is theologically out of place, keep in mind what that language represents—not a nimble articulation that can quickly adapt to the Spirit-led insights we gain each day but a foundation upon which our lasting commitment to inclusion is built. Is it perfect? Absolutely not. In fact, in some cases it is woefully deficient. While continuing to advocate for revision, therefore, we must also find other ways to express our commitment to a God who cannot be limited to outdated expressions. A commitment to a God of unequivocal welcome and inclusion is one worth taking a stand on, but for us that is only true because we are equally committed to kneeling together in prayer.
Yours Faithfully,
Evan D. Garner