{"id":706,"date":"2004-05-06T01:01:35","date_gmt":"2004-05-06T06:01:35","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=706"},"modified":"2004-05-06T01:01:35","modified_gmt":"2004-05-06T06:01:35","slug":"anglicanism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/grace-filled.net\/?p=706","title":{"rendered":"Anglicanism?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every now and then, I ponder a return to the Episcopal Church<\/a>. It was my first stop when I accepted Christ and one could say that I “imprinted” on it. I love liturgy, organ music, hymns that date back hundreds of years, the fact that I am allowed to have a brain (instead of the “you can be a Christian intellectual if you agree with what we’re talking about” that I get from all other Protestant and Reformed groups), the idea that the Eucharist is an integral part of the service (still getting used to Communion once a month instead of once a week), the reverence that I have yet to find anywhere else…<\/p>\n

I cannot describe the feeling of Episcopal\/Anglican worship any other way than the feeling that I’m home. Jon’s internship parish was the only other place that came close — it’s the idea that the church service isn’t just an hour of listening to people talk about God but a time of communal prayer\/singing\/celebration which is over when it’s over and not subject to a specific time limit. (Well… other than Sunday school.) It’s having worship being a verb and not a noun. It’s letting some things about the Lord remain mysteries and reveling in the fact that there are so many incomprehensible things and yet we serve a God who wants to love us. It’s understanding the traditions of those who have come before us and saying the same creed as people on 6 other continents. It’s being able to enter a church on all 6 of those continents and be completely at home with the worship service. It’s the liturgy which gives my life direction as the church calendar cycles through the seasons in a way that covers the life of Christ and the Church. It’s the tradition of sung worship.<\/p>\n

So what’s stopping me? Well, there’s the fact that the nearest non-mission congregation is an hour away and we have only one car. There’s the fact that me attending an Episcopal church would potentially undermine Jon’s ministry in the ELCA<\/a> and would royally irritate some members of our church who are active in Word Alone<\/a>. (I’ll disclose my thoughts on Word Alone<\/a> another time.) There are the serious issues I have with the consecration of Bishop Gene Robinson. There’s the fact that you have people in the Church who are syncretistic. (Well… you have that in most mainline Protestant denominations.) There’s the fact that any seminary that is as conservative as I am wouldn’t accept me as a student because I have an extra X chromosome.<\/p>\n

Yet, I feel like I need to do something. Jon is a Pietist and that’s great for him if it works for him. I, on the other hand, am very high church and am not being fed by having to worship with people who are allergic to Catholicism as most Protestants are. I *WANT* to sing prayers and psalms. I *WANT* to celebrate the Eucharist weekly. I *WANT* to be part of a body that lets me have a brain. I *WANT* to be part of a body that doesn’t dictate to its members how they should vote. I *WANT* to be part of a church that thinks about the world around them. I *WANT* to be part of a church that isn’t terrified of Latin.<\/p>\n

Guess I’m staying put for awhile. Hopefully, I can find some high church friends in seminary (when the ELCA<\/a> decides that they want to let me start my candidacy) so that I don’t feel like such an anomaly. Otherwise, I’m guessing that I’ll be one of those strange Lutherans who ends up serving an Episcopal church.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every now and then, I ponder a return to the Episcopal Church. It was my first stop when I accepted Christ and one could say that I “imprinted” on it. I love liturgy, organ music, hymns that date back hundreds … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faith"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p38xoO-bo","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/grace-filled.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/grace-filled.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/grace-filled.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grace-filled.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grace-filled.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=706"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/grace-filled.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/706\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/grace-filled.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grace-filled.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grace-filled.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}