A Sound of Sheer Silence

I'm a little late to the party, but in the last week, there has been a robust discussion of the numbers published by the Episcopal Church regarding membership, church attendance, etc.  Like many valuable conversations, it was kicked off by Ben Crosby, who pointed out that these numbers are, um, not good.  This lead to many conversations regarding the causes of, and solutions to, the reality of numeric decline. I cannot begin to summarize all of these conversations, and there is no single answer or solution.  Instead, I'd like to take a small thread of the bigger tapestry and hopefully provide a contribution.  And I would like to start here: If we don’t act like the theological, ethical, and contemplative claims of Christianity are of *utmost* importance and ought to shape every part of people’s lives, we won’t retain kids and we won’t inspire their families. How much do we do or not do out of fear of being Baptists? — K.D. Joyce (@MtrKDJoyce) September 2, 201...

1.  The Spark:   On Saturday afternoon, I got home to find this on my Twitter feed. I suppose that’s why religion in the US is such a mess right now... — Carol Howard Merritt (@CarolHoward) August 10, 2019 Prior to seeing this tweet, I had no idea who Carol Howard Merritt was.  As it turns out, she is a Presbyterian minister and author, but I didn't know that until later.  All I knew from reading this is, according to her (1) everyone who believes that one must affirm the (her terminology) "literal bodily resurrection" are fundamentalists; and (2) those same folks are responsible for what is wrong in American religion. In context, it should also be said that Rev. Howard Merritt certainly seemed to be subtweeting Ben Crosby, an Episcopalian divinity student who has taken the position online that if one doesn't or can't affirm the Nicene Creed, then one should not be ordained, or allowed to be ordained.  Crosby, and others, pushed back. In the inter...

1. Last week, I went on a retreat with the CMMR .  We drove to Nazareth, Kentucky, to the mother-house of the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth.  Nazareth, and that part of Kentucky generally, is a really interesting, and kinda strange, place.  The area was settled soon after the Revolutionary War by English Catholics from Maryland and some French Catholics fleeing Napoleon.  As a result, this area of north-central Kentucky (including the bigger towns of Bardstown and Elizabethtown) has this unusual Catholic through-line permeating what is otherwise the normal, rural American South. Likewise, the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth themselves were formed in the U.S. in 1812 to minister to this population, and other similar pockets of Catholics in the South and Midwest.  Thus, they are a uniquely and exclusively American expression of Catholicism.  Sure, they looked to European models for guidance (their rule is that of Vincent de Paul), but they are products...

Three weeks or so ago, author James Carroll lobbed a grenade into the collective lobby of the Roman Catholic Church with a piece in the Atlantic .  It's title, "Abolish the Priesthood,"  while not an inaccurate description of Carroll's argument, fails to capture the totality and nuance of what he is saying (and it's worth noting that authors generally don't write the headlines or titles of their pieces, and so to the extent your beef is with the title, it's a beef with the Atlantic and not Carroll).  But Carroll is no stranger to chucking incendiaries into Catholic spaces--this is the author of Constantine's Sword , which, among other claims, challenged the narrative that Pope Pius XII was a protector of Jews during the Holocaust.  And he was clearly trying to similarly stir things up with his wide-ranging critique of the Roman Catholic priesthood. And stir things up he did.  Reaction to the piece was wide-ranging and loud.  And it is in this reactio...

If there is anything we probably don't need in the Year of Our Lord 2019, it's a dude pontificating on abortion.  And, yet, we find ourselves, at least in the United States, in a place where the issue has absolutely come to a head, in the form of a serious of extremely severe restrictions on abortions passed in Georgia, Alabama, and my home state of Ohio.  In that light, I think everyone has some sort of obligation to indicate where they stand.  And I think it is particularly incumbent on people of faith, and especially Christians, to talk about where they stand, as the motivating force behind these moves has been explicitly Christian in its framing. A couple of years ago, I wrote a piece that described what I think is a more constructive framework for thinking about the philosophical issues behind abortion.  I stand by what I wrote there, but upon re-reading it I noticed that I never committed to a particular position.  So, here it is--for the reasons set for...

What do you think tap water is? It's a gay bomb, baby. And I'm not saying people didn't naturally have homosexual feelings. I'm not even getting into it, quite frankly. I mean, give me a break. Do you think I'm like, oh, shocked by it, so I'm up here bashing it because I don't like gay people? I don't like 'em putting chemicals in the water that turn the freakin' frogs gay! Do you understand that? I'm sick of being social engineered, it's not funny!           — Alex Jones, October 2015 Shit like “flat earth” and “chemtrails” are metaphorical expressions of alienation from a educational economy that huge chunks of the population have no access to. And that’s the tea. — Matt Christman (@cushbomb) January 18, 2019 There are a group of people On Here who are very, very concerned about "the Discourse."  This tends to be people of a liberal (as distinguished from "the left") bent, but every once in a while moderate ...

" If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer. "--Barack Obama. "I'll tell you what's at the bottom of it. If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you." --Lyndon Johnson. 1. It seems pretty clear to me now that the beginning of the political apocalypse in the United States can be dated to November 4, 2008, in Chicago's Grant Park.  On that night, Barack Obama was elected President of the United States.  It may seem idiotic to have to say, but that evening is significant because Obama was the first non-white person to be elected President, and more specifically the first black person...