Why I'm an Episcopalian
by Dennis Malloy
I didn't start out as an Episcopalian. I was raised in the Roman Catholic tradition, complete with Catholic schools, morning rosaries, the Baltimore Catechism, and nuns who rapped your knuckles with a ruler if they caught you doodling in class. I experienced the transition from Latin to English for the celebration of the Eucharist, guitar masses during the sixties, and the 'shocking' transition of nuns wearing more colorful habits and showing their hair.
You might say that my early years set a pretty firm foundation for a continued leaning in the direction of the Roman Catholic church. I even spent a short time as an altar boy (with no negative experiences other than tripping over the 'gown'), participated in a large inter-parochial choir, married in the church and had my children baptized in the same tradition.
So, you might ask, what happened?
Well, that's why I'm writing this, to tell you why I 'jumped ship' and found what, for me, has become a safe port, a church that I can call "mine."
Not quite right…
The Catholic church never felt quite "right" for me. If you're familiar with the Baltimore Catechism (which can easily be found on the internet), you know that it is a series of basic theological questions with the "correct" answers. In elementary school, the nuns had us memorize the answers, and we were graded on our ability to parrot them back -- word for word as they appeared in the booklets we were given. We weren't allowed to put the answers in our own words. We were discouraged from asking questions that weren't in the books.
I guess I had a predisposition to resist this form of learning. I was raised in a home where parents did not share the same religion. My father was the Catholic, and my mother, a Methodist, had agreed to raise the children as Catholics when they were married. When my parents divorced (when I was about six), my mother kept her word and continued to raise all six of us children in the Catholic faith. That explains the Catholic schools. It explains why we children went to Sunday mass and sat by ourselves, as my mother continued to attend her own church. And, needless to say, we didn't get any help with our religion homework; my mother didn't want to confuse us with anything that would conflict with her task of raising us in a faith that she didn't share.
And I don't like having to use someone else's words to describe something that I'm struggling to believe. Words, I found, were capable of coloring, disguising or totally hiding truths. They could inspire strong emotions, or they could alienate one entirely.
Okay, you might be saying, "Wait a minute! You were in grade school; who gets wrapped around words in grade school?"
Well, I did. My mother was a war bride, a native of England. She met my father during World War II and she immigrated to the United States after the war ended. And, although she chose not to help us with our religion homework, she certainly felt qualified to help us with our other studies, such as English…
The British don't speak the same language that we do, here in the United States. Sure, there are more similarities than differences, but the differences are significant when you're learning to read and write. Words are spelled differently, "colour" vs. "color" and "_ise" vs. "_ize." Some words are just different, such as these parts of a car: "boot" vs. "trunk," and "bonnet" vs. "hood." And, growing up with constant exposure to these differences, I had to learn that answers were sometimes correct only when viewed in a particular context. And the same applied to "wrong" answers.
Latin masses didn't help. If God was the Perfect Being, with infinite knowledge, why couldn't he understand if we prayed in English?
Well, since I already said that I married in the Catholic church and had my children baptized there, you've already guessed that I survived the language barriers of my early exposure to the Roman flavor of Christianity. I might have been a little "less exact" in my recitation of the party line, but I knew what it was. Then again, I was a lot more tolerant of other answers, such as the ones I heard from non-Catholics. After all, context can make a lot of difference.
After my first wife died of cancer, I was left with three small children. To ensure that they were getting proper religious training (I was in the service and couldn't afford Catholic schools), I found that our local church needed volunteer Sunday School teachers to cover all of the age ranges. I was already a lay Eucharistic Minister, assisting on the altar, but I went ahead and volunteered for the teaching as well. As a result, my children and I spent quite a bit of time at church on Sundays.
An Epiphany?
When I bumped into our parish priest in the local grocery store, he didn't recognize me. I had been going to his church for about a year when this happened, and I had spent many, many hours with him on the altar and even more in the classrooms that he visited during the Sunday School hours. But he didn't know who I was, even when I reminded him of where he should have remembered seeing me (the context, right?). No, he didn't know me.
That bothered me. I started watching who he spoke to, by name, at church. A pattern emerged: he knew who the people were who donated a lot of money to the church. If they also donated time, that was great, but if they only donated time, they might just as well have been invisible. Like me. And it didn't seem to make a difference whether they were recent arrivals, like me and others in the mobile professions, or if they had lived there all their lives. His recognition was predicated on their financial support of his parish.
Wow. As I thought about it, I realized I had experienced the same anonymity in other Catholic churches I had attended. I had always chalked it up to being in the military, to only living in one place for a couple of years and being transferred, but, as I thought about it, I realized that my "outsider" status had been shared by others who couldn't afford to donate very much money to the church.
Thinking back on it, I remember that people joked about the anonymous nature of membership in the Catholic church. It was the perfect "safe" place to attend, where you didn't have to worry about being accosted and "forced" to participate in anything you didn't feel naturally inclined to attend.
In short, it was a lot like going to the mall. If you were "just looking," you got the impression that the ones behind the cash registers would have preferred that you looked elsewhere.
The Chaplain
During the time that I was realizing how phony my "church family" was, I was working in a battalion headquarters building that housed the unit chaplain. He was a friendly guy, and he always had a cheerful greeting for everyone, of all ranks. I had joked with him a few times, about the peculiar nature of his being a "man of God" while being a paid member of an organization that trained its personnel to do very un-godlike things. I don't remember how it started, but I found myself engaging him in conversations comparing the various denominations of Christian churches.
He was very knowledgeable about a lot of different faiths, and not only the Christian ones. In his role as chaplain, he was obligated to provide "non-denominational" spiritual support, and he took his job seriously. He didn't try to sell me on any one particular approach, but he exposed me to the basic tenets of many faiths. After many months of discussion, I confided in him that I was beginning to feel that, somehow, I was more comfortable in our discussions than I was in the Catholic church that I continued to attend.
He suggested that I "shop around," trying a number of other churches, not making a commitment to any one in particular. If I felt uncomfortable with it, I could conduct my experimental visits on an infrequent basis, say, picking one Sunday (or Saturday) a month to just "sit in" and observe the services. He even suggested leaving my children with a sitter, or taking them with me and using the visits as an additional teaching tool for their religious education.
I sure did like his approach. No pressure. Tolerance for all faiths. Praise for the good that was done by the various creeds, and an ability to identify the strengths and similarities in very diverse dogmas. Even encouragement for finding what was right for me. In a way, it could all be boiled down to "finding the right context" for my own faith. Wow.
Another flavor
He was an Episcopalian. And I had to push him to tell me why he had selected the Episcopal faith. And, although he admitted to going through a lot of searching himself, with some of his reasons being caught up in the intricacies of theological minutia discussed only in the seminaries, he said that the easiest way to explain it was with an analogy.
He said that the Episcopal faith was like a three-legged stool. An extra leg might cause a wobble if all four legs weren't exactly the right length, and one less leg would cause the stool to fall over. He said that the three legs were scripture, tradition, and reason. Scripture, for the Episcopal church, is the Bible, with both Old and New Testaments. The tradition comes from the Roman Catholic church, but was then modified by the establishment of the Church of England. A further change came about through the establishment of the United States, as the colonies elected to no longer be bound by the British church. And, last but not least, reason was defined as the individual's personal beliefs, prayerfully studied and arrived at through knowledge of both scripture and the church traditions.
Then he provided some examples, citing such things as the virgin birth, transubstantiation and creationism. These, he explained, were areas where one's personal faith could neither be wrong nor right, but just was. The Church does not decree, "You have to believe THIS." Every one of us must come to a personal decision, and, even if we all disagree, that's okay. Tolerance and respect of others' beliefs is part of the tradition.
Hmmm. Now THAT was interesting.
Exploration
So I gave the Episcopal service a try. I was greeted as I entered, and the person handed me a bulletin which contained a list of the parts of the service, with the page numbers in the Book of Common Prayer for each reading, and the hymn numbers. I was a bit early, so I had time to look through the Book of Common Prayer prior to the service. Although it wasn't exactly like the missals I had used as a boy, or even like the monthly missalettes a lot of the Catholic churches used, I was able to find my way through it fairly easily. The service wasn't that much different from what I was used to, and I liked the way the priest invited anyone who had been baptized to join him in receiving the host and wine.
The biggest surprise was after the service. Quite a few people came up and introduced themselves, asking if I was new to the area and inviting me to join them for refreshments in the building next door. When I tried to explain that I was just "window shopping," they laughed and still invited me in for refreshments. By the time I left that morning, they had loaned me a copy of the Book of Common Prayer and had me sign their guest book.
I received a couple of phone calls that following week, which was a little annoying, but the callers were merely reminding me of who they were and inviting me to come again. They kept the calls short, without pestering me for any personal information, so they were easy to dismiss. I also received a letter from the priest, telling me of the various ministries and upcoming events, and repeating the invitation to come back. Neither the calls nor the letter mentioned the loaned book.
I went again, and felt very welcome indeed. Several folks remembered me, greeting me by name, and they were happy that I had brought my children. They told me I was welcome to leave the kids with the youth classes, explaining that they would rejoin me in church after the homily, or I was equally welcome to keep them with me in church. Options! And no one seemed to mind that the youngest ones fidgeted during the service.
Discovery
We continued attending that church until I was transferred again. After we settled in to our new quarters, we went looking for a new church. There was an Episcopal church just a couple of miles away; a Roman Catholic church was closer, but we decided to give the Episcopal church a try first. We never had to try the Catholic one. We were welcomed immediately, and the pastor and his wife took an instant liking to my children. We discovered that children were invited to join the priest on the altar during the sermon, and he included them in his homilies. This church even went so far as to change their rules for vestry members, to allow me to participate even though I wouldn't be in the area long enough for their previous "must be a member in good standing for three years" requirement.
And, I'm happy to say, I've felt welcome in every Episcopal church I've attended since then. Some have been large, with attending congregations in the hundreds, while others have had as few as twenty regular attendees. And every one of them has felt like "home" while I've been there.