Once again, George, you are "spot on." We are addressing some of these realities in the Diocese of Chicago, but still have a long way to go to respond to your challenges. May many hear...and heed!

Maybe we need to "catch the dream" as articulated by Wes Frensdorff - http://www.acts8moment.org/?p=382

This reply is definitely going off on a tangent but this section of the post caught my attention and it seems like it might be worth exploring:

"If anachronistic technology were the essential problem, congregations that adopted modern technology while retaining traditional liturgy and theology would consistently experience renewal. This does not happen. The problems are much deeper and more basic than a dated form of presentation ... Many post-modern people hunger for a genuine spirituality. They seek a path that will lead them into a deeper relationship with God. They seek, often without realizing it, the treasure – the immanence of God’s loving presence found in the Jesus’ narrative – that the Church’s earthen vessels hold."

Just a thought -- is anyone reflecting on what is in those "vessels" as opposed to their shape or composition? Or whether people still know how to open those vessels and share the contents? Bear with me a little and see if something of the following rings true. I know this is a very long and verbose response, and even then I have to over-generalize to keep it from being longer. I am not suggesting any of the following is absolutely true or insisting that it is all useful, but it might shed some light on the issues people are facing in the Western churches. Take what, if anything, is useful from this reply and leave the rest.

Let us start by considering that some elements of various religious traditions distinguish between everyday ideas and feelings, which are largely bodily responses to a transient physical experience of reality, and an awareness of the transcendent dimension "hidden" within such immanent manifestations of itself. This dimension and its manifestations may be referred to as the Divine, God, Pure Mind, or other terms. Life in its deepest, most hidden sense, underlying its biochemical representation, flows from this source along with the rest of the universe.

Some of these contemplative aspects of religions, whether Abrahamic, Dharmic, or otherwise, hold that such a direct awareness of the transcendent can also generate a response of thoughts and feelings, yet none of these individually should be mistaken for the whole of the transcendent itself. Some teach that our we can find the hidden transcendence within ordinary thoughts and feelings, but here too, there is the same caution. If we try to take that individual thought or feeling and separate it somehow from the rest of our experience, that act of separation cuts off awareness of the transcendent. That is, this transcendent dimension and its appearance in various forms of physicality, conception, and affectation may be omnipresent but cannot be limited or captured by the human imagination. Thus the emphasis on "un-knowing", on the "thought that is nowhere supported", and on the dangers of idolatry when seeking the transcendent.

If we accept this view of reality for the sake of argument, imagine a situation where someone becomes fully immersed in a direct awareness of this transcendent dimension and subsequently can see it flowing through and making up everything and everyone, with "individual" phenomena an illusion of apparent differences in speed of motion or degree of concentration. Imagine being able to simultaneously see everything as "one" yet to also see everything in a stunningly beautiful diversity of forms, and then imagine observing those who are dimly aware of or totally unconnected to this higher view. Imagine seeing them grasping at and suffering over trying to possess and control transient things -- fighting, stealing, worrying, and killing -- rather than sharing and appreciating those fleeting and precious moments, things, individuals.

Jesus of Nazareth and Siddhartha Gautama, a.k.a. the Christ and the Buddha, represent individuals to whom such insight into the nature of reality is attributed. Let's look at both briefly.

Traditionally, the Buddha experienced this awakening after numerous lifetimes over many ages, culminating in his rebirth in a place that is now part of Nepal. In that incarnation, which began about 563 B.C., after witnessing the suffering caused inescapable experiences such as sickness, old age, and death, Siddhartha set out to find a way to eliminate such suffering. After several years of experimenting with conventional methods and wisdom promising spiritual attainment, and having weakened himself immensely thought severe asceticism, Siddhartha accepted the generosity of a meal from a local village girl to break his extreme fast. Having disciplined his body, mind, and heart through austerity, charity, humility, and patience, yet having exhausted all forms of self-driven effort, he sat under a fig tree. There, in the stillness, he awoke to the true nature of all things.

Born over 500 years after Siddhartha, it is unclear according to Christian tradition when Jesus of Nazareth awoke to such a realization. While affirming that Jesus is both fully human and fully divine, the dogma of hypostatic union concerning the dual-nature of Jesus has never been balanced despite creedal claims. That is to say, people unconsciously tend to think of Jesus either as being an ordinary man who gained insight into the mysteries of the divine, in a fashion similar to that of the Buddha, or as being a fully aware and all-powerful deity hiding inside in a human meat-suit and pretending humbly to be an ordinary person until the right time to reveal his power. A hard to row middle way is to see Jesus needing to grow into his role as the Son of God, in which case the descending of the Spirit during his baptism in the Jordan can be seen as the moment he experienced his own revelation.

There are some interesting and potentially useful comparisons to note here. In some Buddhist traditions, Siddhartha Gautama, also known as Shakyamuni Buddha (the "Sage of the Shakya"), is only one of many Buddhas existing throughout many worlds. Others go further in suggesting that all Buddhas are really just different manifestations of a core, eternal Buddha-nature, which is the same as Pure Mind and also as Emptiness ("Shunyata"). In fact, some schools and sects derived primarily from the teaching of the Lotus Sutra suggest that Shakyamuni Buddha is simply our world's phenomenal manifestation of an Eternal Buddha. Thus he has always existed, and still exists, he just appeared to die for the sake of others. While there may be disagreements over these views of Siddhartha in Buddhism and even vigorous debate or dismissal of competing perspectives as misleading or harmful, in the end, there is a general tolerance of such divergence. The insight and the path to realizing Pure Mind takes precedence over such ontological debates.

Such a relatively benign response to similarly disparate views of the nature of Jesus has not been the norm for Christianity. There are good reasons based on the relevant historical cultures and theological and political prejudices present during the formation of the early Church for not tolerating too much divergence on the nature of Jesus, and some not so good reasons. People can disagree on which way the scales tip on that issues, but we can see that the dogmatic nature of such claims about the nature of Jesus have had a profound impact on how Christian theology and imagination would develop over the following centuries. One of the results has been the bias toward Jesus as divine over Jesus as human, leading to the "God hiding in a human meat-suit" prejudice.

Among the reasons for insisting on Jesus as "the only Son" of God, with everyone else merely being eligible for adoption, is that Jesus was a foil to powers such as Caesar (who symbolically takes the place of the King of Babylon and the Pharaoh of Egypt, among others), who also made claims to being the son of the gods and therefore divine. The Gospel writers, invoking the literary tradition of the Hebrew prophets, paint a different picture of who God would actually have as a son -- a humble day laborer born to poor parents in an impoverished section of an occupied territory. Regardless of what percentage of the Gospels were historical fact, inspired fiction, or a representation of a truth that transcends such distinctions, Jesus of Nazareth as Christ Jesus serves as a religious icon for meditation and reflection upon God and God's relationship to humanity.

The Gospels thus serve as a political, spiritual, religious, and cultural commentary and critique. This is hardly a new observation. Nor is wondering if the Gospel writers weren't trying to work within the expectations of their audience to lead them beyond what was strictly written in their text, to what might be implied if one reflected long enough on the stories and lived their wisdom. For example, if the depiction of Jesus Christ (from birth to death to resurrection and ascension) was intended in part to be a kind of anti-Caesar polemic, with Caesar representing the false pride, barren wisdom, and spiritual materialism of political and religious systems rooted in a lack of true awareness of the divine (that is, lacking the kind of insight attributed earlier to Buddha and Christ), is it possible to take the "Christ the King" imagery too literally and too emphatically? Does taking it too far itself lead to a kind of shallow triumphalism that simply re-creates the very things that the image of Christ the King was supposed to overcome?

Here's another one: what if we were supposed to eventually realize that every one of us has always been a child of God? This is tricky because of the linguistic and cultural baggage of such terms and the baggage handling necessary in translating ideas across cultures and centuries. Surely others are better trained at this than I, and can offer correction as needed. In one sense, to be a child of God or a child of the Enemy takes on the implication of household affiliation in patristic times. This suggests you are either one or the other, you can't play both sides. But on another level, whose child you are also refers to your current mindset and awareness. Those who lack the awareness of Buddha or Christ as described earlier would tend to be worldly people, and they belong to Mara (in Buddhist terms) or the Devil. Thus Biblical prayers and exhortations to bring or keep us into life and rescue us from death do not only refer to keeping our physical bodies alive. The body-soul complex, or in modern parlance, the body-mind complex, itself is produced and guided by the spirit in Judeo-Christian terms. To be truly alive in the Christian tradition, then, is to live in, that is, to be awakened to, spirit. All else is the Enemy, all else is death. Moreover, having a single central figure and practice is an effective mechanism employed by many religions.

Thus in one sense, one can acknowledge we are God's children (we have the same potential to access the Spirit of God as Jesus did) while acknowledging that in our ignorance and selfishness (i.e. sin) we have become children of the Devil. We can use these terms seriously without falling into either the fallacy of improper literalism or the fallacy of improper symbolicism. We can appreciate the value of having a central figure, Jesus Christ, as representing the antithesis of this fall from grace represented by Adam. After all, given certain cultural assumptions and religious attitudes of the day, to have simply said "You are all the sons and daughters of God just like Jesus in the Gospel stories, not just by some kind of spiritual adoption," would have likely cause much confusion and egotism, even anger and resentment, by those not yet disciplined and mature enough for such a message.

Now let's imagine that a religion based on a figure with direct insight into God was to become culturally, socially, and politically ascendant over a massive empire, and that this ascendancy lasted for roughly 1500 years. A triumphalistic vision, based on seeing the founding figure of the religion as both the ultimate King as well as the only way to access God, was established, with the religion's institutions in turn representing the only viable access to this King and thus to God. Let's imagine that over time, except in places such as monasteries and poorer parishes or individual households, the idea of regular discipline of the body and mind (or soul) through letting go of attachment to worldly things, such as wealth and status, became hollow and hypocritical as the power of the religion's institutions increased. More and more influential people begin to follow the religion uncritically, without reflection and with fewer and fewer doing the hard work of translating the meanings of the religion's sacred texts into relevant terms for the changing times. The sacred texts and symbols are instead translated into terms of worldly power and success while at the same time becoming idols and objects of superstition.

What do we expect to happen to this religion when economic, social, political, and cultural forces unseat it as the dominant, unchallenged paradigm for the remnants of that former empire? Without the social pressure to belong to the religion, affiliation and attendance plummets. Having become so complacent, corrupt, superstitious, and idolatrous, the religion's reputation becomes tarnished so that even earnest spiritual seekers decide to look elsewhere. The situation becomes so bad that sizeable segments of multiple generations of people living in the remnants of the empire develop a semantic allergy to anything that sounds vaguely religious, dismissing all non-physical or transcendent aspects of reality as belonging to the realm of superstition and ignorance. But that's not all. In lieu of actual direct experience with the divine, preparation for which often requires much sacrifice, reflection, the cultivation and practice of genuine compassion, and so forth, it has become common in the religion (as it has for people in other religions across time and space) to substitute idols of sentimentality and conceptuality for the divine, idols which stimulate fear and guilt and complimentary experiences such as contingent hope, ecstatic frenzy, cathartic release.

The psychological harm or benefits of these experiences aside, they appear to mimic genuine experiences of awareness of the divine, even though they are ultimately short-lived and hollow. This in turn further tarnishes the reputation of the religion, as already justly skeptical critics can claim that there is little if anything that the religion's adherents demonstrate that can't be explained as a form of psycho-social group dynamics. Of course, those adherents who only know this limited form of religious experience assume that it must reflect a genuine experience of an awareness of God and work to find ways to re-create such experiences and to share them with others. Witnessing the decline of their religion's societal influence and fearing the collapse of their religion's diminishing institutions, the adherents look for a cause outside of their own history, the foundation of said institutions, and how those foundations were, as their own sacred texts warned, built on sinking sand.

The point then is this -- even IF one accepts the possibility of some transcendent dimension that manifests as and through our reality, and even IF one accepts that it is possible that individuals such as the Buddha or the Christ represent our capacity to awaken to and appreciate this deeper aspect of our existence, and yes, even IF the Apostles, the early Church, and folks like the Desert Fathers demonstrated a viable Christian path to such an awakening through imitating and calling on the name and person of Jesus, that doesn't necessarily mean that the (symbolic, liturgical, or theological) vessels of any particular Christian communion or congregation contain the spirit or that said groups know how to properly access those vessels. There may or may not be a need to redesign some of the vessels, but if they are empty, or those who handle them don't know how to properly use them, because they themselves are empty, then worrying about how to re-word this or how to re-organize that is akin to shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic.

Many people in the remnants of the old empire and their extended colonies are declaring themselves as "nones" with regard to religious affiliation in part because while Christianity's role as the dominant religious and political force is waning in those places, the impact of Christianity's complacency and arrogance is rising. Christianity's leaders and ruling class having too at pivotal junctures traded a chance to cultivate awareness of the divine for the power of decreeing cultural and political positions regarding morality and social control. Those decrees along with the pseudo-spiritual religious experience already described is what many perceive Christianity to be and it is all some Christians have to offer. Given that the most publicly prominent of these political positions tend to be odious to emerging views about sexuality, gender identity, race as well other aspects of social justice, more and more people are saying "No!" to either Christianity in particular or religion in general.

Those who seek elsewhere look to religions like Buddhism, which has much to offer, but this offers a different cautionary tale. Some Western seekers want to make a completely materialistic Buddhism that denies many of the core teachings of the Buddha. Everything in the sacred myths and narratives are merely symbolic of ideas and insight present in our own minds, and our minds are only just the temporary products of our brains. Beyond this there is nothing. It may be true that our individual minds are produced and sustained in conjunction with our brains, but the Buddha taught that such consciousness was part of the five skandhas, or categories of impermanent things. The Buddha taught that we are to seek the truth of ourselves beyond the skandhas, but for some modern Buddhists, there is nothing beyond them at all. In other words, any (meaningful) idea of a transcendent dimension to reality is denied. Those who might inadvertently take Christianity down the same path should take note.

While as mentioned other religions talk about this transcendent dimension as being the source, substance, and sustainer of all of existence (and non-existence!), and while some even have figures who are supposed to represent iconic or ideal human manifestations of this transcendent dimension, Christianity has spent thousands of years developing and contemplating language and imagery for reflecting on and seeking such a representation in the person of Jesus Christ, and through such seeking offers a potential path to one's own awakening. If properly shared by those who have truly dedicated themselves to such a journey, this path can still be of interest to disaffected seekers who are weary of strict materialism. It's not surprising then that there is a revival of in the contemplative and monastic aspects of Christianity.

However, the not-quite-dead hand of history still threatens to finish throttling the Church as it has come to exist. Who, for example, will navigate old members and new seekers though difficult portions of Isaiah, Jeremiah, or the Psalms, which many non-fundamentalist congregations tend to avoid (and yet are key to understanding the depiction of the life of Jesus)? Who will guide them from the literal to the symbolic, from the contradiction of the literal versus symbolic to the union of opposites, opening the possibility of going beyond even that paradox to a wordless understanding of the heart? Who will call for and accept public and long-term confession and penance by Christian communions and congregations for their past and current offenses "in the name of Christ"? Who will commit to a revival of the values and actions which forsake promises of personal security and comfort in order to seek the face of God and to reveal that image to others?

When people bring up the state of Christianity and its future, these are the kinds of questions that come to my mind. They are not the only ones that need asking, but they cannot be ignored. If Christianity makes no serious effort to answer these kinds of questions, it's communions and congregations in the remnants of the empire face a more serious challenge than their looming fiscal cliffs. Perhaps, though, concerned Christians can take solace in their own theology, realizing that some things need to die in order to be resurrected.

Dave Stump

Of course fancy liturgy and good music aren't a panacea--especially if no one knows they're there. And they don't, because the Episcopal Church does not show its stuff to outsiders--does not advertise, does not display its wonderful wares in public. And currently Evangelicalism is the visible industry standard so people imagine that that is what church is--some fat gasbag preaching for 45 minutes in what looks like a high school gym, to the tune of Christian rock--without costume, without ceremony, without any of the fun things of religion.

Not everybody wants or needs religion. That's something churches need to recognize. It's a special taste. But many who have that taste want ceremony and fantasy. Just look at the rituals neo-pagans and wiccans make up, or the interest people have in exotic cultures and their rituals. People want that stuff, but don't realize that they can get it at home, ready made, and of a very high quality in the Episcopal Church

Tell them! Send out direct mailings before Christmas and Easter like the Evangelicals to inviting people to church. Process through the streets in fancy dress every week showing what we do. Invest in advertising. If "pastors" can sell the miserable garbage they provide by advertising, the Episcopal Church, which has something wonderful, blissful and yummy to offer, and makes no demands, can go over the top. Advertise!

Ever since I came to the Episcopal Church ten years or so ago, I've been hearing about this exciting, shiny new theology and worship system that's apparently just around the next corner.

Somehow, though, this brand new theology and worship never actually appears. Possibly because, as here, the people who propose it never offer a single idea or suggestion about what this wonderful new thing actually is - or even the tiniest hint about what it might be.

It's rather bizarre, too, I think, to propose that an allegedly dying institution hurry and change to this new, exciting-yet-nonexistent way of faith and worship. But then, surely glorious new theologies are just out there lying around on the sidewalk, waiting for us to pick them up and use them....

(The real issue, I think, is that people don't get much of a chance to see how beautiful - and radical - Christianity actually is. Because when you see the beauty and the radicalness, they will hook into your soul and never let go.

People like Evelyn Underhill, Nicholas Ferrar, Julian of Norwich, St. Francis of Assisi, and St. John of the Cross all saw this. People like that, who clearly see the beauty in it, build the faith; they can communicate it at a much deeper level than most, and in a much more beautiful way.

Or, you could just do beautiful worship, which is a reflection of the love people like that have for it.

Give people who appreciate the theology a chance, and maybe you'll have something.)

Barbara and Harriet, I think you are pointing out something very valuable. There is always this "BIG NEW THING!" that will change everything and solve the problem, when one of the big problems is that we don't "advertise" (formerly known as evangelize).

We expect that by changing something inside the church then everything will be a-ok! If we just find the single thing wrong, then all our problems will be solved! People we've never talked to will beat down our doors and everything will be perfect again.

It's as if we're a business that is perpetually tinkering with the product, waiting until it's perfect to start advertising and telling the world or assuming that it will sell itself. If we just add this one new feature, then it will sell! If we just strip off this feature, then people will think it's better. How long will such a business be operating?

The perpetual tinkering to get it "just right" misses that the Gospel is ready to share as it is. Our worship of God is imperfect, we still have personal and social issues to work out, but the Gospel itself is enough.

Do we actually believe that our Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, truly loves us and unites us to God in perfect love? Do we believe that we can be made free of all that pulls us away from God? If we actually believe that, then we know how freeing and wonderful that is. And that is the same message (yes, message - it is a truth that needs to be told and a truth that needs to be heard) that the world needs.

Are we scared of actually inviting people face-to-face? Are we scared of them seeing the dysfunction inside churches? Do we hold each other and our leadership accountable in a visible and "building-up" sort of way? Are we scared of being seen for the imperfect-yet-still-praying humans we are? Are we ready to admit that being a Christian is a lot of hard work and discipline yet is powerfully transformative? Are we ready to admit that Sunday morning Eucharist looks weird to an outsider and be happy to invite them into the mystery as it is, knowing the depths of the mystery are beyond our words?

The Episcopal Church is imperfect and will be until Christ returns. But we need to share our message NOW instead of perpetually waiting for the "next big thing!" to save us. We need to take the risk of sharing the Gospel with people we know, taking the risk that we might be identified as Christians in the Episcopal tradition.

Instead of speculating on how to attract new members, has anyone actually asked people why they aren't members?

[Thanks for commenting, Brigid. Please sign your full name next time. ~ed.]

Not a "BIG NEW THING"--a big old thing: the fancy high church liturgy, in Elizabethan English, that the Episcopal Church was famous for, before liturgical revisionists started tinkering. People liked it, but the brass were convinced that monkeying around with it would bring in the prestigious, much coveted Young People and that everyone would be improved by contemporary English and the Peace. And we would have Folk Masses! Relevance! If the mantra sounds familiar it's because the variants are still playing: do the Contemporary Idiom du jour.

Is it working? No. But who's surprised? Who wants a sanitized out of date version of contemporary pop culture?

So face the facts: secularization is inevitable. That is the trend in all affluent countries, including now the US. And the Episcopal Church is particularly vulnerable because its traditional constituency, the educated, urban upper middle class is especially secular. Of course you aren't going to get a lots of people beating down the doors whatever you do.

So recognize that you can't please all, or even most, people. Most people simply don't enjoy religion and, when the social pressure is off--as it now is in many places--they won't bother with it regardless of how churches tinker with their product. And recognize also that the minority of people who like religion have different tastes. I can't fathom what anyone sees in Evangelicalism--but clearly some people enjoy it, and there are churches to suit them. So there's no reason for the Episcopal Church to produce a half-hearted imitation of that style.

But there's a minority of people who like the style of religiosity that the Episcopal Church used to be famous for: fancy churches, elaborate services and an historical costume drama, a high church fantasyland. And liberal theology and ethics. The Episcopal Church has a niche market: mystics, aesthetes and snobs. Yes, we're self-indulgent and pretty awful, but the Church is a refuge for sinners--not a community of saints. There's no place else for us high church junkies. If the Episcopal Church doesn't produce that magical mystery tour we have no place else to go.

Interesting thoughts and comments.

What do surveys and exit interviews say about the reasons for decline?

Reasons for growth and decline - http://hirr.hartsem.edu/leadership/church_growth_articles.html

And more from Kirk Hadaway - who does statistics for the Episcopal Church -http://archive.episcopalchurch.org/documents/2004GrowthReport(1).pdf

And 2012 reports http://archive.episcopalchurch.org/research/109378_ENG_HTM.htm

Thank you, thank you, Joseph Farnes....

George I really appreciate your willingness to keep the church's attention focused on these issues. Also appreciate your calling the church's on its unwillingness to face hard truths.

One is reminded of two adages from the business world:

If you have no goal, you're likely to get there.

Don't confuse actions with results.

As an institution, too often we drift along, tinkering around the edges, but never answering the question, "What do we want to look like 20 years from now? 200 years from now?"

On a more tactical level, how many parishes or dioceses set specific goals. For example, when was the last time your parish said, "I want to hit 300 members by the end of the calender year?" I think answers in the affirmative woulld be few and far between.

My sense, too, is that we should not overlook the power of inclusion. Knowing that our parishes are safe places where persons of every ilk can grow, worship and learn together is tremendously valuable. As we grow in our acceptance of others, it is axiomatic that others will grow in their acceptance of us.

Eric Bonetti

BTW, Brigid: Harriet and I are actually two examples of people who led totally secular lives until we found some wonderful things in the church - things we'd never come across before in our lives, and that don't seem to exist anywhere else.

Things we came to value, in other words - and we're talking about them here.

So this is, I think, some of the very information you're looking for....

Anyway, back to the post, and this part: "Traditional theology and Anglican emphases would have kept a majority of our congregations on a safe, healthy course."

The problem with this statement is that I don't know anybody who's actually doing this. In my diocese - which is dying even faster than most - nobody's remotely interested in "traditional theology and Anglican emphases." It's just about impossible to find the Daily Office anywhere - and by far most parishes totally ignore most of the major feasts of the church. When I talk to people in other parts of the country, they report the situation is exactly the same there.

The very point we were trying to make on the other thread is that the church as a whole is not doing these things.

I'd also like to point out that the Catholic Church, which is also closing parishes and schools, nevertheless has 80 million American members, in contrast to tiny TEC. They use a liturgy almost identical to ours - and the same theology they always have. So the problem sure doesn't seem to be either one of those things; clearly, the problem is elsewhere.

There weren't any concrete ideas proposed in the article - so we tried to offer some. We had just talked about St. Mark's Seattle and the many people who come to Sunday Compline; far from not "grasping" the problem, we were trying to offer a solution. It's annoying to be scolded for this.

I honestly can't fathom why this is apparently so threatening. I've noticed the second scolding here as well.

If you don't offer ideas, and don't really want to hear ideas from anybody else - what's the actual point of these articles?

Kaze Gadaway reflects on why she was drawn to The Episcopal Church.

I quit church in 1999 in large part because I couldn't stand watching the decline (which accelerated during the Decade of Evangelism) and being unable to do anything about it.

I was on the diocesan evangelism committee and also tried to get people to do something in my parish but it was absolutely futile. First of all, they weren't willing to spend any money on advertising. Response: "What brings people to church isn't advertising but personal invitations--invite your friends and neighbors." Right. Secondly when they spent money it was on expensive cheerleading and gee-whiz pseudo-techology. Hiring church growth gurus to give inspirational talks about stages of church growth and the development of "corporate size" parishes with endless activities. Meanwhile churches were shrinking. But they wouldn't put in newspaper ads (remember: 1990s, before wide internet access) or do direct mail before Christmas or Easter.

I could go on but I suspect y'all know the story. And the fact is that they wouldn't pay the slightest attention to any lay person. To clergy, we are, as one put it "pastoral care objects." They don't seriously believe that any of us have anything to contribute or take anything we say seriously: we are put on committees and given little tasks in order to keep us busy and make us feel useful--part of their pastoral care. And I have credentials, including a PhD and publications in theology--but in church I'm just another little old lady, recruited for bake sale duty. My involvement in the church, with the best of intentions and with, I believe, something to contribute was frustrating, humiliating and pointless.

Ann Fontaine...

Thank you for posting the links to Episcopal membership statistics.

@Harriet: I hope you will consider getting more involved in the church. I remember all too well the alienation that comes from being in a parish that just doesn't get it, and that personifies the stereotype of God's "frozen chosen." But there are parishes out there that are vibrant, passionate, and growing. It seems, too, that we are getting to a point where the church increasingly understands that we can't just rock back on our heels and assume that the world will beat a path to our door.

One person whose views I enjoy tremendously is ++Marianne Budde. Instead of lamenting the challenges facing us, she embraces a clear, passionate view of progressive faith and it not afraid to articulate that view.

Hope you find a parish and others who can support you in life's journey, and vice versa. And if you ever happen to be in Northern VA, please come visit my parish, Grace in Alexandria, where I can assure you you will be warmly welcomed.

Eric Bonetti

The musical commentary above shows a complete ignorance about what's actually in a hymnal or an anthem collection, because there's lots and lots of music from much later than the 17th Century, there's excellent hymn tunes and service music written all the time, and a great many excellent anthems from the last 20 yrs alone that delight musicians and congregations alike. A lack of new music ain't the problem, it's not even A problem. Oh, and much of early Lutheran hymnody was a simplification of plainsong chant hymns from the office and the sequences. These tunes are still around and beloved by our Lutheran brothers and sisters. There seems to be an eye-winking myth about drinking songs in church, some of which is true. Pot smoking folk tunes like "The water is wide" (O Waly Waly) are sung in church too, but not because they are folksy but because they ease right into the great river of musical tradition and continuity. Martin Luther was no liturgist but was however a good musician, and knew which pub tunes could be reworked to fit in church and which were best left on the bar stool.