A Different World!

            How did it come about that a major part of the educated classes

   in Europe and America has lost faith in the theology that for fifteen             centuries gave supernatural sanctions and supports to  

   the precarious and uncongenial moral code upon which Western 

    civilization has been based?

                                                                  Will & Ariel Durant

                                                                  The Story of Civilization, Vol. IX

          

        During the winter months I have coffee every Monday morning with three or four of my former parishioners with whom I also play golf in the summer. We do a lot more talking over coffee than we do while we are trying to strike golf balls. As one might guess - because of our ages - much of the content of these winter conversations has to do with the many changes in American society which we have observed during our lifetimes. It usually involves heads shaken in disbelief. One of my friends has the habit of looking skyward and saying, “Oh, well.”

One thing that never fails to puzzle me is how resigned people have become to change, even change that they really don’t like (and perhaps even know is wrong). I must be naïve. I find myself thinking that we should fight to keep beliefs, practices, and institutions we treasure. Stand up and be counted! Sadly, resistance doesn’t happen often. It’s as if – when you reach a certain age – one is relegated to some kind of a spectator role. You can watch, but don’t protest too loudly. Your opinion now doesn’t matter! I always remember the comment of Mr. Jorkins of the new, vested interests to old traditional (stick in the mud) Mr. Fezziwig in Charles Dicken’s A Christmas Carol: “Time and change wait for no man!”

The Brave New World

Those of us who grew up in the years following WWII do remember a much different world than the one in which we currently find ourselves. It certainly was a different world for the Church. Many are asking the same question as the Durants about losing faith in the theology (doctrinal statements) of Christianity. How did this dramatic loss of trust come about?  My purpose in making some observations about this is not just to catalogue the shifts and changes which have occurred in the past sixty years and then complain about them. That has been and is being adequately done. Instead, my purpose is to ask a simple question from the Reformation side of the house. Why were the mainline Protestant Churches in general and the Episcopal Church in particular so poorly prepared to anticipate and strategize for the great changes & challenges of secularization which they should have known [Emphasis mine] were on the horizon in the post-WWII world?

I suppose that there will be people who will object to the fairness of this question, citing as a defense that it is impossible to know the specifics of coming change. Sorry! That defense will not wash! There was, I believe, adequate warning about the future waiting for Protestant Christianity in the second half of the twentieth century. Unfortunately, the old biblical adage about “stoning the prophets” or at least ignoring them remains a constant.

Prologomena (outline)

The first installment of this essay will be a series of snapshots of the post-WWII period. It will begin with some of my personal memories of growing up in the Episcopal Church in the 1950’s and 1960’s. I will also share some research I did about the early history of St. Barnabas’ Episcopal Church on the occasion of the celebration of the 50^th anniversary of the founding of that parish in 1957. That information will add to the picture of that era. It should be obvious from the examples which I will use that I am writing from a very Midwestern perspective.  In the second installment of this reflection, I will describe the moment when the modern world - proverbial two by four - smacked the Episcopal Church right between the eyes in the person of Bishop James A, Pike. The church seemed to be caught by surprise and did not handle it particularly well.

I will then talk about some of the aforementioned ‘ignored prophets’ who tried to warn the Church about what was coming down the pike (no pun intended) in the aftermath of WWII under the guise of modernism.  If they had, they would have been prepared to deal with Bishop Pike. As a conclusion to this reflection on societal change & the church’s response, I will talk about the importance of the parish church and suggest a possible model that the church could have learned from as it tried to cope with the different world in which it found itself living from the decade of the 1960’s onward. This (with a few diversions) will be the basic outline of my essay. Simply, what I am attempting to do in this the first installment is to give people a sense of what the church & society was like fifty or sixty years ago (as I experienced it). People can judge for themselves about the changes that quickly took place then and whether or not the church should have been better prepared.

A Time of Coherence?

I would make one more important (I think) comment about the post-WWII world which is where my earliest memories of life begin. The period immediately following the war was perhaps the last time in our history that things – the ways of the world - had been so clear and understandable. A writer named Terence Malley (Long Island University) put it this way: “[It] stands as a time of coherence, when things were easier to understand than they could ever be again.” My observations! It was a black & white world then. Evil had appeared under the guise of German National Socialism (the Nazis), Mussolini’s Fascism in Italy, and a fanatic militaristic nationalism in Japan. These forces of evil literally attempted to subjugate the rest of the world. The free world opposed them in Europe and the Pacific and decisively defeated them. Good had defeated evil; the world made sense! I always think of a comment made by the fighter Joe Louis during the war. He said, “We can’t lose because God is on our side!” That is exactly how most people thought in those days.  

Sadly, that world of certainty dissolved very quickly. A catastrophic war which had claimed 100 million human beings as victims had really not settled very much. It had simply rearranged boundaries & set the table for a new and potentially more dangerous conflict. The Cold War had begun, and the stakes were raised. Nuclear war was a real possibility. Bomb shelters were a hot topic in the early 1950’s. A sense of the meaninglessness of human existence began to permeate much of Western culture thanks to the literary skills of existentialist writers/philosophers like Jean Paul Sartre and Albert Camus. Cracks very soon began to appear in the victorious, contented façade of American culture.

Some Background Information

            At the beginning of WWII, the United States had a population of c.130 million people. During the war there were over 14 million American men and women in uniform. After peace had been declared in both the European and Pacific theatres of war in 1945, those individuals came home with one goal in mind, i.e. to get their lives back to normal. They wanted to have a good job, get married, buy a home, and raise a family. Very quickly people decided that they were tired of city living. They wanted a house with a yard in which their children could play. The American move to the suburbs was on. The Episcopal Church would quickly follow. The twenty year period following WWII was a heady time of new church development and building projects. Between 1946 and 1965, 18% of current Episcopal parishes were developed. By comparison, only 6% were founded between 1966 and 1989 and 3% after 1989. Why the dramatic slowdown? Obviously something had changed.

            To introduce a discussion of those changes, I will talk about the personal experience of my own family. Both of my parents were Episcopalians before marrying. On the Tudor side of the family, we can trace our family involvement in the Episcopal Church back to Samuel Tudor IV who served on the Building Committee of Christ Church, Hartford, Connecticut in the early 19^th century. The family in which my father grew up were members of St. Clement’s Episcopal Church in St. Paul, Minnesota. One of my favorite pictures of my father was taken on the occasion of his medical school graduation in 1937. It shows him in a double breasted suit standing outside looking confidently at the world. In the background of the picture is St. Clements’s. That fact was more than symbolic! The church was an important part of his life. It was foundational, a part of his identity!

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            In 1948 after the war, my father moved his own family to Bismarck, North Dakota and we joined our lives to St. George’s Episcopal Church. Very soon after we moved there, the congregation, led by its Rector A.E. “Ted” Smith, constructed a new church building on the NE corner of Fourth & Ave B. St. George’s was ready for a prosperous future. The great majority of people living in Bismarck in the early 1950’s were either Roman Catholic or Lutheran. A small percentage was Presbyterian, Methodist, and Episcopalian. The funny thing about that was that our size didn’t detract from the strong sense of identity we felt as Episcopalians. My father was a life long reader of history and we knew clearly the role that the church had played in the settling and creation of our nation. We were aware of the fact that more Presidents have been members of the Episcopal Church than any other denomination. Our Rector was a Canadian by origin and our connection to the Church of England was always evident. That new church building whose construction he had overseen in the early 1950’s looked very much like an English village church. It even had stained glass windows containing pieces of glass salvaged from bombed English churches during WWII. Finally, the stately English in the Book of Common Prayer Sunday after Sunday testified to our genesis in the Church of England. We knew who we were!

            In those years, the Episcopal Church held a preeminent position among Protestant Churches in this country. I can remember reading stories in Time and Newsweek in the 1950’s about American church life, and the Episcopal Church was always named first in a list of Protestant denominations. This goes to the identity issue which I mentioned earlier. As members, we had a strong sense of the “bridge church” role between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism played by the Episcopal Church for much of the history of our country. One doesn’t hear that mentioned anymore.

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            During my “growing up” years, St. George’s on Sunday mornings always seemed to be full of people. Congregational worship in those days was very formal compared to today’s casual standards. Men and boys wore suits and ties; women and girls wore dresses and hats. Women had to wear hats! It was part of the unwritten tradition of the church.

Our rector had a very strong sense of the drama of the Processional at the beginning of the service.  Often we would have as many as eight acolytes involved. There was a crucifer, two torches, the St. George’s banner and four flags: The American, Canadian, North Dakota, and the Church flags. It was quite a show!

The church was a busy place. The women of St. George’s, most of who were house wives, were divided into four guilds which met monthly. The composite of those guilds, the Episcopal Church Women (ECW), also gathered once a month. There was always some kind of event – a bazaar, church dinner, bake sale, etc. – being planned.

The Sunday school filled the Undercroft. What I especially remember are the yearly Christmas pageants. When the narrator read the verse from Luke’s Gospel which said: “And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host,” a multitude of little children always did appear, dressed in white with silver garlands around their heads to simulate halos.

There was a large active Youth Group which did things on the weekends. During the year, there was always a diocesan youth convention somewhere in the state to which St. George’s sent a large delegation. In the summer, we went to the diocesan camp named Holiday House on Pelican Lake near Detroit Lakes, Minnesota. The church provided a lot of activities for us and we responded. Again I have to point out that as young people we felt a strong identity as Episcopalians.

            Ted Smith, our Rector, was at St. George’s for twenty years, from the early 1940’s to the early 1960’s. It is interesting now to remember that he maintained no office at the church. There was no space even set aside for a church office when the new building was constructed. Ted was out every day visiting and seeing people, many of whom were not members of St. George’s. He was the Parson. Everybody knew and respected Rector Smith. He was a walking definition of Christian character.

            Certainly, I am aware as I paint this picture of St. George’s congregational life in the 1950 and 1960’s, that it was a much simpler, less complicated time. There was little else to do in Bismarck on Sundays other than attending church. No stores were open. It was Sunday. Things were closed. Other organizations in town also knew that Wednesday evenings were sacrosanct. That was a church night when choirs met to practice or mid-week services were held. It was a time when church membership was acknowledged as a important part of responsible adult behavior.

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            I need to make one more observation about my early experience in the Episcopal Church. In 1960 I went off to the University of North Dakota and after two years transferred to the University of Kansas. Both places had a Canterbury House with a resident Episcopal campus chaplain. Their names were Eldred Murdoch (UND) and Tom Woodward (Kansas). Both of these men had active ministries on campus with a wide range of students. Canterbury House was a place to go on Sunday evenings and mid-week for some much needed church fellowship. It kept us in touch with the church. Many people of my generation have testified to me about the importance of this Episcopal presence on their college campus and what it meant to them personally. It bolstered their Episcopal identity! In 1969 when upheaval in the church – which will be discussed later - began to affect church giving, the unfortunate decision was made to discontinue funding for staff for these campus ministries.

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            I will now leave this admittedly rather idealistic picture of the Episcopal parish church in which I was nurtured in the 1950’s and relate a statistical story of the founding of another parish church with which I was also intimately connected. That congregation was St. Barnabas’ Episcopal Church in Florissant, Missouri where I was rector for twenty years (1989-2008). This is the parish from which I retired. Its early statistical history provides concrete witness to the great enthusiasm for the church which was a part of American society in the 1950’s and early 1960’s.

 After several planning meetings which began in 1956 to discuss the need for a new parish church in North St. Louis County, 83 people gathered in the basement of a rented house for the new congregation’s inaugural worship service on April 28, 1957. The fledgling congregation quickly outgrew its space and moved to the auditorium of a nearby grade school. By 1959, its average Sunday attendance (ASA) was 111. A parish directory published in that year lists 135 families. There were 236 persons present when the mission congregation moved into its new building in 1960. The growth continued! By the end of its fifth year, it claimed 653 baptized members and 301 communicants. St. Barnabas’ peaked in its tenth year (1967) with 898 baptized members and 543 communicants. It published a pictorial directory in that year showing page after page of young families, many with three or four children. More than 250 children were enrolled in the church’s Sunday school program in the mid-1960’s. St. Barnabas’ was admitted to parish status in the Diocese of Missouri in 1972. By then, however, things had begun to change. This story was probably played out in countless parish churches all across the country but especially in the Midwest. 

Fifteen years does not seem like a long time, but between 1957 and 1972, American society changed a great deal. The 1960s began a period in American social history of open rebellion against authority. Violence on college campuses was common. The Civil Rights Movement was gathering momentum. The 1960’s were the years of the beginning of the sexual revolution. (Betty Friedan’s book The Feminine Mystique was published in 1963.) The 60’s were the years of America’s deepening involvement in Viet Naim, an entanglement which seriously shook America’s confidence in itself and its destiny. President John F. Kennedy, his brother Senator Robert Kennedy, and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King were all assassinated in the 1960’s. The Watts’ riots in Los Angeles took place in 1967. As we shall see, there was also turmoil in the church mirroring that in society. The decade of the 60’s began the escalating process of the extreme secularization of American society. A difficult road lay ahead for American mainline Protestant churches and it was only the beginning. The peak membership year for the Episcopal Church was 1965. From that point a steady membership and attendance decline began which has been well documented. It continues to this day. What happened in the late 1960’s was that the days of a kinder, simpler faith had passed away. Americans were more affluent and were living much more complicated lives. For many there was no longer time for active church involvement. Priorities had changed. Why did this development seemingly take us by surprise? It shouldn’t have!

Now is the time to return to a statement made in one of the opening paragraphs of this essay, to the effect that, “there was adequate prophecy about the future waiting for American Protestantism in the twentieth century.” What was meant by that? Let’s be very clear about the changes in American society affecting church membership which have taken place in the past fifty years. Whether it has been done consciously or unconsciously, what we have been seeing is what is described by philosophers and theologians as the completion of the Enlightenment project. What that means will be discussed in the next installment of this essay.

 

Ash Wednesday

From that time, Jesus began to proclaim,

“Repent, for the Kingdom of heaven has come near.”

 

The Struggle

            Today begins the most holy time of the year for Christians.  Since the 6^th century, the faithful in the church have gathered on Ash Wednesday to receive the imposition of ashes on their foreheads and to hear those solemn words spoken: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”  Continuing that ancient tradition, we gather today.

            The real significance of Ash Wednesday is the fact that it signals the beginning of the Season of Lent, a forty day long period of self-examination and preparation for the celebration of Easter. Lent provides a much needed opportunity for serious reflection about the meaning and direction of our lives. It is a time when, symbolically, we are encouraged to trace the footsteps of Jesus who now sets his face toward Jerusalem and the fate that awaits him there.  Ash Wednesday begins your Lenten journey.

  Countless books have been written about the person of Jesus and in particular, about the Passion of Jesus. One of my favorites is the novel The Greek Passion (1954) by Nikos Kazanzakis, one of the giants of modern European literature (Zorba the Greek).  The story told takes place in the 1920’s in a small Greek village named Lycovrissi.  Following Easter one year, the “notables” of the village decide to have a live passion play during Holy Week of the next year.  And so they select villagers for the key roles of Jesus, Mary Magdalene, Pontius Pilate, and the twelve apostles including Judas.  The selected villagers are told that they are to prepare for this honor by living lives during the coming year which will bring them close to their characters.  No one has the vision to foresee just how graphically this is going to happen.  The selected villagers do more than just prepare for their roles; they fully become their characters and the passion of Jesus is played out in painful, bloody detail in the life of the village.

            For example, the central figure in the play, Manolios a shy young shepherd who is cast as Jesus, makes some startling changes in his life.  He abruptly breaks off his engagement to the young woman he has been planning to marry and he becomes instead a reflective loner given to going off by himself for long periods of time.  He starts to espouse, much to the disgust of the village priest, a literal Christian moral code: embrace all people, share your wealth, treat all people equally, and so on. 

            The young woman chosen to play the part of Mary Magdalene, formerly the village “loose woman”, radically alters her lifestyle and reveals a previously unknown strength and depth of personality and sensitivity. And on it goes.

            All of the major characters in the play make similar transformations in their lives.   The point here is obvious. What Kazankakis has done is to grasp perfectly the significance of ritual in the Church. We are not here merely as spectators, but as participants. The power of the drama of the life of Christ, particularly the drama of his last days - when it hangs meaningfully over our lives - has the power to effect transformation there. This is not just a story but is, as Hollywood once advertised it, “The Greatest Story ever told.” During the forty days of Lent, we need to invest ourselves, in this drama which will be played out in church for us during this deeply emotional and passionate Season of Lent, and we need to tap into its mysterious power in a restorative way for ourselves and our faith. 

So today we begin! The lessons appointed to be read on Ash Wednesday point the way. They set the mood for the penitential Season of Lent. Listen!

Joel 2:13 – “Rend your hearts and not your clothing. Return to the

                    Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful, . . . 

II Cor. 5:10b – “We entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to

                           God.”

Psalm 103:8 – The Lord is full of compassion and mercy, *

                                        slow to anger and of great kindness.

      The key words in Lent are repentance and reconciliation! ( A definition: Repentance means seeking your happiness in a different direction.) When one leave the church following at the conclusion of an Ash Wednesday service, it should be with these words still faintly echoing in one's ears: “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.”

 

Another Lenten Focus

            Would anyone disagree with this statement?  “The principal anguish and the source of much joy and sorrow in our lives from youth onwards has been the incessant, merciless battle between the spirit and the flesh.” (Kazantzakis, The Last Temptation of Christ, p. 1)

            Every person partakes of the divine nature in both spirit and flesh.  We read in the 1^st chapter of Genesis: “And God created humankind in his own image, in his image God created them.” Theologians talk endlessly about what that means.  We can only say that it is a mystery but we can also say that we see this mystery revealed fully in the person of Jesus in the passion of Jesus and that is precisely why we are drawn so strongly to it.  What is so compelling about the last days of Jesus is the struggle between the divine and human – Spirit and flesh – which rages there. That struggle is not confined to the life of Jesus; it breaks out in us all.  It is brought to the surface in Lent with the result hopefully being a longing for reconciliation.

            Struggle between the flesh and the spirit, rebellion and resistance, reconciliation and submission and finally, the supreme pursuit of the struggle – union with God: this was the path taken by Jesus during the days leading up to his passion and this is the path  that we are invited to follow during these forty days as well.

            If we are able to follow him we must have a profound knowledge of his conflict, we must relive his anguish, his sacrifice, his ascent to the summit of martyrdom, the Cross.  There is the goal of a holy Lent, to walk with Jesus the path to the cross.

            As He made His way to Golgotha, the summit of sacrifice, the Christ passed through all the stages which the person who struggles passes through.  That is why his suffering is so familiar to us; that is why we are drawn during Lent to mysterious share it, and why his final victory seems to us so much our victory.  That part of Christ’s nature which was so profoundly human helps us to understand him and to love him and to pursue his Passion as though it were our own.  Jesus is divine and yet so human, if that were not true He would not be able to touch our hearts with such assurance and tenderness, touch us so intimately as He does during Lent and Holy Week.  We struggle. We see him struggle also, and we find strength.  We see that we are not alone in the world.  He is fighting at our side     

What we will see enacted for us during Lent is the meaning of John 3:16: “For God so loves the world that he gave his only begotten son to the end that all that believe in him should not perish but have eternal life.”  Penitence would seem to be the natural response to the suffering and death which Jesus endured in order to show God’s unconditional love for us.  In the arena of human relationships, the love that forgives and the penitence that accepts is what restores relationships.  So this evening as a sign of our penitence, we receive ashes on our foreheads so that we can never forget where we came from and where we would be without the sacrificial love of Jesus.