Sides & splitting

From the Advocate:

For the second time in less than six months, a Montgomery, Ala., Episcopal church has split from the national church over its appointment of an openly gay bishop in New Hampshire. Nearly 80% of the Church of the Ascension's 1,600-member congregation, including two of its three priests, decided Sunday to leave the church and form a new parish in the Anglican Communion called "Christchurch," the Montgomery Advertiser reported Monday. The new parish will meet at a Montgomery Presbyterian church until a permanent location is found. "This is one of the most difficult decisions my family has ever had to make. There is hardly a person in the parish, including those staying behind, who has not touched our lives in some respect," said Mark Wilkerson, who was a senior warden at the Church of the Ascension and is a member of the Christchurch executive committee. . . . "I am looking forward to worshipping without the internal politics of the Episcopal Church, and I suspect that everybody is looking forward to concentrating on the Great Commission," Wilkerson said. "God loves those who feel like in good conscience that they must leave, and God loves those who choose to stay."

It's thoughtful of Mr. Wilkerson to remind us that God loves those on both sides of an ideological split. Too bad the participants in the debate don't seem able to act with the same love. I read a wonderful piece on the Eucharist that said that when you disparage those who share communion with you, you are insulting the Host who invited them as guests. Leaving a worship communion is like storming out of a party because you consider yourself too good to be seen with the other revelers. Although Protestants schism to start new churches, Catholics, who inhabit a "big tent" in rhetoric, are often equally guilty of dissing the company their Host has provided. (Some Catholics worship in Latin and some with guitars, and both types are capable of devaluing the people and ideas that populate others' Masses.) There are even groups of Catholics who have left, as this Alabama church left their communion, to start new worship communities. I'll explore this Catholic phenomenon more fully in another posts: I have serious reservations about the practice.

A sort of petrefaction must have occurred in the Church of the Ascension, that all dialogue and desire for the parish to work together could be choked off by one issue. When you think of all the beliefs members of the same church have in common, many of which are quite preposterous from outside a faith standpoint, disagreement on one issue of church governance ought to be subsumable in joyous belief in the divinity of Christ and trust in God. It's understandable that a churchmember would feel angry when the hierarchy imposes a decision with which she does not agree, but that's what you sign on for in an organized religion. The Anglican Communion tends to be proud of the fact that their bishops vote and that decisions are handled democratically, in contrast with the Catholic model. Parishioners can't be unaware that this means that rules might sometimes change.

When you leave a church, you're not leaving the bishops, officeholders and theologians who instituted the situations you find disagreeable: you're leaving sisters and brothers in the faith, human pastors who work hard in their callings, people who have served side by side with you and watched your family grow old. It's a sad and misguided step to take, and one which cute off all possibility for dialogue between disagreeing sides. Since we are all invited to the Eucharistic feast, God must have planned for us all to talk to one another.