wfn.org | Trinity teleconference looks at Episcopal Church report

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99-150

Trinity teleconference looks at the Zacchaeus Report--and beyond

by Kathryn McCormick and Lindsay Hardin Freeman

     (ENS) Episcopalians love their church, but they must work to
 make it grow, flourish and fully use the technology available to it in 
the 21st century, according to five speakers featured during "Roots 
and Wings," Trinity Institute's 30th annual national teleconference 
broadcast during the last week of September.
     The conference, staged before an audience of more than 400 at 
Trinity Church in New York City, and beamed via satellite to about 
10,000 persons at 197 downlink sites across the country, was a 
response to the report of the Zacchaeus Project, a year-long study 
of Episcopal identity.
     Speakers included polling expert George Gallup, Jr., sociologists 
Donald Miller and Robert Wuthnow, publishing industry observer 
Phyllis Tickle and law professor and author Stephen Carter.
     Their remarks were preceded by video portraits of four diverse 
congregations by documentary filmmaker James Ault. The churches,
 in Duluth, Minnesota, Hartford, Connecticut, Oxnard, California, 
and Charlotte, North Carolina, were examples of the creative and 
lively congregations described by many in the Zacchaeus Report.  
     "The Zacchaeus Project Report reveals that we cherish the vitality 
of our congregational life and, at the same time, it challenges us to 
broaden and stretch our vision and to see ourselves part of a larger 
community," said Presiding Bishop Frank T. Griswold, preacher at 
a Eucharist at the beginning of the three-day conference on 
September 27.
     He urged listeners each to rejoice in their congregation's capacity
to good work, but also to "offer your imagination, your passion and 
your gifts to the larger church through your diocese. Such a step 
requires asking what might we give instead of what do we get. It 
means discerning what is best done locally or nationally or in some 
other part of our larger Anglican household; it means being both 
critical and collaborative in every dimension of our ecclesial lifeX."
     Griswold's remarks went to the heart of one of the major 
conclusions arising from the Zacchaeus study of a cross-section of 
Episcopalians: Many saw their church life focused on their own 
lively parish and felt little connection with diocesan or national offices.
     The other speakers during the Trinity conference, all Episcopalians, 
also reacted to that major finding in the report from the project, which 
was funded by the Episcopal Church Foundation and released last June, 
but they offered their own visions of the church's work in the 21st 
century.
Focus on youth
     Several cautioned that the church must focus on, and better 
support, its youth: others recommended an increasing use of small 
groups to foster closeness and support among members, and at 
least one, noting Episcopalians' apparent disenchantment with church 
hierarchy, suggested that they pare the hierarchy.
     George Gallup, Jr., polling expert and chairman of the George H. 
Gallup International Institute in Princeton, New Jersey, strongly urged
"an all-out commitment to youth."
     "Youth programs in mainline churches are, with glorious exceptions, 
faltering or non-existent," he declared. Gallup survey data have confirmed 
a high level of fear, uncertainty and cynicism among teenagers, he said, 
adding "a very telling finding:" Only 13 percent of teens say that people 
their age are influenced 'a great deal' by religion, and that twice as many 
turn to themselves to answer the problems of life as turn to God--yet half 
of teens attend church weekly.
     "Does this inconsistency not suggest how little impact churches are 
really having on the life of their young charges?" he asked.
     He offered a 10-point list of steps, ranging from hiring youth leaders to

allowing more time for youth ministries, that could help churches help their 
teenagers.
     The church as a whole must also help its adult members grow, he 
continued. A powerful way to accomplish that is through small groups 
meeting for prayer and Bible study, which could lead to a needed renewal 
of spiritual discipline.
     In addition, "The church of the next century," Gallup said, should be a 
church fully engaged in  helping the hurting and those in need, not only 
providing a safe haven, but encouraging its members to move out of their 
comfort zones and reach people on the margins of society, as Jesus called
us to do."
     To that end, he continued, Episcopal churches could explore forming 
partnerships with civic organizations to solve community problems.
Double the market share
     Donald Miller, professor of religion and executive director of the Center

for Religion and Civic Culture at the University of Southern California, 
recalled his exploration some years ago of "new paradigm" churches.
     He grew to admire many of their shared characteristics, he said,
including
constant innovation in programs, an important role for the laity, few 
committee meetings and little hierarchy and a conviction that God is leading 
them--"and that where God leads, God will provide."
     Another point, flying in the face of those who think that religion is a 
rational matter identified more with the head than with the rest of the
senses,
is that new paradigm churches see religion as "a full-bodied experience," 
he said.
     "My current feeling is that we need to balance the scale, acknowledging
the role of reason but also bringing the emotive and non-rational dimension
fully into our understanding of religion," he said. Episcopalians might re-
examine their liturgy and their own experience in it to find the "magic" that 
enables them to move beyond the everyday world into the realm of sacred 
time and space.
     The bad news is that the Episcopal Church will continue to lose market 
share even if its losses are leveling out in terms of absolute numbers of 
members, he stated, pointing to the church's hierarchy, its slowness to 
respond quickly to cultural changes and its inability to hold its youth or 
encourage a new generation of young leaders.
     But the church could grow, could double its market share--from 
1 percent to 2 percent--in the next 25 years, he said.
     In short, the Episcopal Church should stand ready to receive persons
tired of contemporary styles of worship; who are seeking an alternative
to the new-paradigm Christianity, which may seem simplistic; who are 
tired of the legalistic anti-intellectualism found in some churches; who, as 
Roman Catholics, have become alienated by their hierarchy's stand on 
issues ranging from women priests to abortion; or who, as gays and lesbian 
Christians, have found a sanctuary in the Episcopal Church.
     He called on the church to be pro-active in claiming this growth by 
following its commitment to reason--i.e., develop think tanks addressing 
societal issues and exerting moral leadership in our nation; put more 
creative work into worship; and acknowledge that innovation comes at 
the grassroots level, which should prompt the church to decentralize its 
organizational functions.
^From dwelling to seeking
     In nearly a thousand interviews since the early 1990s, Robert 
Wuthnow said, he has learned that the spiritual lives of Americans have 
changed dramatically during the past half-century, from a sense of 
dwelling to a determined seeking.
     Wuthnow, a professor of sociology at Princeton University and 
director of the university's Center for the Study of Religion, noted 
that the 1950s saw the apex of American church-building and church-
going--up to 80 percent surveyed said they were church members. 
The 1960s and early '70s saw an urge for more freedom in society 
as well as church.
     "As we now know, the church's membership declined by a quarter 
between the middle '60s and the 1980s," he said, explaining that some
people rejected the innovation visible in the church, the church did a 
poor job of retaining its young people, and the fact that Episcopalians, 
better educated and more upscale than members of many other 
denominations, married later and had fewer children.
     As the 1980s moved on, there grew an emphasis on spiritual and
moral discipline, he said. Discipline, however, often meant acquiring a 
set of techniques for living a better spiritual life rather than a way of 
life itself.
     Today, people are seeking alternatives to this kind of spiritual 
discipline.
     "This is the spirituality of the 1990's--the spirituality of angel books,

close encounters and near-death experiences," he said.
     "In contrast with dwelling or seeking," he stated, "we might consider 
a spirituality that emphasizes practice." Wuthnow said he was focusing 
particularly on "devotional practices--the time people spend in prayer, 
meditation or otherwise reflecting on their relationship to God."
     He noted that the Zacchaeus report found a pronounced shift in 
spirituality among Episcopalians, many of whom talked about being on 
spiritual journeys beyond merely being loyal to a religious tradition.
     Spiritual practice can take many forms, he said, but prayer and 
meditation "often seems to spill into the rest of people's lives, especially
in motivating them to be of greater service to others." The Episcopal 
Church would be stronger if more of its members tried this, he added.
The church as chrysalis
     Author and editor Phyllis Tickle brought home to participants the 
vastness of the cultural seachange facing American millennial Christians.
     The author or two dozen books of poetry, meditation, prayer, and 
drama, as well as contributing editor in religion for Publishers Weekly, 
Tickle traced several major events of the past half-century that have 
created the radical democratization of knowledge, talk about God and 
religion, and spirituality; and a culture in which the vast majority of
twenty- 
and thirty-somethings say they care deeply about spirituality but less than 
a third think the church is helpful in that pursuit.
      According to Tickle, the formation of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) in 
1939, and the sale of its  "big book" through retail stores in 1957, marked 
not only the beginning of the self-help movement and the growth of the 
idea that spirituality and religion did not necessarily need to be the same 
thing, but also the beginning of the realization that books could become 
"portable pastors" containing information and wisdom heretofore reserved 
to pastors--with the added advantages of being both private and highly
individualized.
     Furthermore, she cited differences among the four generations--referred 
to by contemporary writers as "builders, boomers, busters, and blasters"--
as marking a dramatic departure from the experience of other generational 
splits.
     "While every generation has been in conflict with those on either side of
it, the disjuncture between these four generations is much more serious" because 
each of them has experienced the world through dramatically different media 
and therefore processes information and develops its world views in different
ways. "By the year 2010 twenty percent of the population will have their whole
spiritual experience on the Internet," she said.
     Also, with the exception of the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer, 
according to Tickle,  American Protestantism has had "very few of the 
accoutrements of the interior religious life."  But that, too, is changing as
other churches begin to rebuild their worship around liturgy as it is found in the
Prayer Book. The BCP "may be our gift to 21st century American Christianity," she 
said, noting the contributions already made by the BCP without most 
Episcopalians realizing it.  
     Which leaves, or presents, the Episcopal Church with an interesting self-
image, that of the butterfly or chrysalis.
     "In all of nature...there is only one creature that moves from the roots
of the plants on which it first feeds, to a gestational period of secure,
well-ordered definition, and finally on into the majesty of free flight... the larva, that
becomes the chrysalis, that becomes the butterfly.... Only the encased chrysalis has 
simultaneously both the memory and consolation of its larval roots, and the
hope and the  obligation of its borning wings...American Anglicanism, on the eve of
the millennium, is a holy organization, a holy organism, emerging from its
chrysalis phase."
Cradle Episcopalian
     The conference's final speaker, Stephen Carter, offered reflections from 
his life as a cradle Episcopalian.
     Carter is a professor of law at Yale University and author of a number of
books, including The Culture of Disbelief. He described his life in the
church, calling his comments "a kind of love letter."
     The son of Episcopalians--"which meant pretty much that they never went
to church"--he nevertheless found a home at an Episcopal church, becoming 
an acolyte, but learning the role by rote, without any sense of history or
Biblical tradition.
      Tradition aside, the young boy whose home life at that time was unhappy,
for whom school was not a life-giving place, the church became "a place of
calm, security, belonging." Later, during high school, he was sent to live with a
Jewish family, which saw that he got to church on Sundays. As a young man, he
recalled, he had trouble explaining to his new wife what made being an Episcopalian
desirable.
     He noted that the Episcopal Church had grown up with America, reflecting
in numbers and practice all the confidence and chaos inherent in each century.
     Suggesting that the activities and identity of the Episcopal Church have
echoed struggles of secular society, Carter urged participants to stop worrying about
membership numbers and to concentrate instead on "doing God's will. 
     "Too many pastors and preachers adjust their preaching in order to fill
seats," he said. "We are called to live Christian lives. As long as we are 
doing what Christ wants, we can stop worrying about the numbers."
     Carter affirmed two of his basic beliefs: that the Bible is the inspired
word of God (everything is in the Bible because God wants it to be) and
that God comes to our door demanding sacrifice while "Satan comes to 
our door giving promises that we don't have to sacrifice."
     Dialogue, preferably skilled and loving and thoughtful is key, said
Carter, but even in the tough issues such as abortion or divorce, God is 
always of one "perfect shining will." In any dispute, both sides aren't right.
It cannot be that God has two rules, but it is essential that the two sides
keep talking, keep debating, keep coming to the altar.
More teleconferences
     Four additional teleconferences have been scheduled to examine the church
at the millennium, beginning with "Exploring the Shifting Spiritual Landscape of
America" on December 4, 1999. The 90-minute teleconference will bring together 
experts in sociology, theology and spiritual practice to take an in-depth look at our
nation's spiritual landscape and its impact on congregational life today.
     This is to be followed by "God at 2000" a two-day teleconference
beginning February 11, 2000. Produced in partnership with Trinity Institute and Oregon
State University, it will feature prominent religious thinkers of diverse faiths
discussing their experience of God.
     On March 15, 2000, Episcopal bishops from around the country will share
their experiences and articulate their visions of the mission and future of the
Episcopal Church in "I Have A Vision."
     Finally, on May 13, 2000, is "Where Do We Go From Here?" A town hall 
gathering and Eucharist celebration, this broadcast will explore the issues
and visions emerging from the nearly year-long study of the Zacchaeus 
Report and offer ideas on what lies ahead for the Episcopal Church.

--Kathryn McCormick is associate director of the Office of News and
Information of the Episcopal Church. The Rev. Lindsay Hardin Freeman 
is priest associate at St. Martin's-by-the-Lake Episcopal Church in 
Minnetonka Beach, Minnesota.