What are the factors, in the culture and the church, that have led us to this crisis?

Presentation given by Diane Knippers at the AAC's "A Place to Stand: Declaring, Preparing" conference.

That’s a large question, much larger than I could answer in just a few minutes. Does one start with the Enlightment? Point to the 1960s? Blame it on Bishops Spong or Pike? Blame it on reality television or “Sex in the City”?

Because I have sociological training, I naturally look to cultural factors. So, I want to talk about the cultural captivity of the Episcopal Church. Of course, it’s not a captivity to all of American culture. Television sit-coms, rap music, conservative talk radio are not the relevant cultural components!

The Episcopal Church leadership is captive to a particular type of culture. Our church is governed by upper-middle class American elites, who came of age in the 60s and 70s. Episcopal leaders go to elite universities, not community colleges. They listen to NPR rather than watching Fox News.

Leaders of the Episcopal Church are captive to a culture. One mark of the cultural captivity is the need to put social location about theology.

I had an “aha” moment in which I recognized this tendency when I visited a meeting of the ecumenical commission of my own diocese several months ago. I was there because I serve on the national Standing Commission on Ecumenical Relations. I wanted to report on what the national commission was doing and explore ways my diocese could interact with some new ecumenical initiatives.

At the very beginning of the meeting, the chairman reported on one interfaith development in his own parish. It seemed he had invited a Buddhist monk to lead a quiet day service. Please understand, the monk wasn’t to lecture on Buddhism, but to lead prayers in a Christian church. I’ll admit, I nearly fell off my chair.

Later, I gave my presentation. I told them that on the national church level, I was working to encourage Episcopal dialogue with evangelicals. One way that we might help in the Diocese of Virginia was to establish some grassroots model dialogues with Southern Baptists. My suggestion was met with a very awkward silence. One woman finally blurted out, “But we don’t have much in common with them.”

If I had had my wits about me, I might have suggested that we ought to have Jesus in common.

You see, Episcopalians find it easier to indulge multi-cultural and multi-faith prayer led by a Buddhist than talk to “them” – the Southern Baptists.

As I said, the Episcopal Church is led by upper-middle class elites that came of age in the 60s and 70s. Let me make a couple of brief comments about the generational and the class distinctives.

First, what happens when a church is led by baby boomers? My staff did some research for me. As best we can discern, nearly 90 percent of the diocesan bishops who voted on Gene Robinson’s consecration were in seminary in the 60s and 70s. I can tell you right now, that’s not a good sign.

This generation of church leaders claims the moral authority of the civil rights movement, although most were too young to have been leaders in that moral battle. No, the movements that shaped their formative years were the anti-war movement, women’s liberation and the sexual revolution. Regardless of what you thought of the Vietnam War or the Equal Rights Amendment, these are not the pressing issues of today.

Let’s focus on marriage. Too many boomers think that the problem with marriage is that women are stuck in abusive oppressive relationships. Let me quickly grant that some women are. But if you think that alleged 1950s repression is the big cultural problem we face, I want to know what planet you are living on. The big problem related to marriage is that many young people have no clue how to establish and maintain long-term commitments.

The fact is that upper-middle class elites are largely protected at least from the economic ravages of the sexual revolution. Over half of the children growing up in America today will spend a significant period of their childhood living without the presence of their biological father. That’s a cultural disaster. Episcopal kids face the emotional and spiritual costs of this, but, by and large, they don’t face the poverty that so many children in single parent homes do.

It’s not that the innovative moral teaching regarding sexuality that the Episcopal Church now peddles is cutting edge. It’s that it is depressingly dated. It’s a straight-line development from the 60’s “free love” mentality.

What is cutting edge is the new social science data on marriage, family, and our children. What we aging boomers need to recognize is that love isn’t free.

In early August, the Episcopal Church cut its ties from the doctrine of marriage, from basic Christian teaching about sexuality, from our core sources of authority. It was a stunning display of the prevalent social values of American campuses 40 years ago.

One month later a prestigious groups of behavioral research scientists, pediatric physicians, and mental health professionals released a new paper (see www.americanvalues.org). They outline a genuine social problem in our society – the crisis facing our young people. Here are some excerpts from this new report:

Despite a decade of unprecedented economic growth that resulted in fewer children living in poverty, large and growing numbers of American children and adolescents are suffering from mental health problems. Scholars at the National Research Council in 2002 estimated that at least one of every four adolescents in the U.S. is currently at serious risk of not achieving productive adulthood. Twenty-one percent of U.S. children ages 9 to 17 have a diagnosable mental disorder or addiction, 8 percent of high school students suffer from clinical depression, and 20 percent of students report seriously having considered suicide in the past year. By the 1980s, U.S. children as a group were reporting more anxiety than did children who were psychiatric patients in the 1950s, according to one study.

The Commission is calling upon all U.S. citizens to help strengthen what it calls “authoritative communities” as likely to be the best strategy for improving children's lives, in its report, Hardwired to Connect: The Case for Authoritative Communities. Authoritative communities are groups of people who are committed to one another over time and who exhibit and are able to pass on what it means to be a good person. These groups provide the types of connectedness our children increasingly lack.

Authoritative communities can be families with children and all civic, educational, recreational, community service, business, culture, and religious groups that serve or include persons under the age of 18 that exhibit certain characteristics. These characteristics are: 1) it is a social institution that includes children and youth; 2) it treats children as ends in themselves; 3) it is warm and nurturing; 4) it establishes clear boundaries and limits; 5) it is defined and guided at least partly by non-specialists; 6) it is multi-generational; 7) it has a long-term focus; 8) it encourages spiritual and religious development; 9) it reflects and transmits a shared understanding of what it means to be a good person; 10) it is philosophically oriented to the equal dignity of all persons and to the principle of love of neighbor.

Cutting edge researchers tell his that our children desperately need what the church is supposed to offer! The action of our General Convention is a betrayal on many levels – a betrayal of Christian orthodoxy, of the Anglican Communion, of scriptural authority, of the sexually confused. But it’s a betrayal that’s also very close to home – a betrayal of our own children.

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okay I have to admit a personal bias on this one. On the one hand Dianne has a lot of excellent points and I think they're all worth considering. On the other hand I used to sit next to her husband Ed in choir. Ed is a much better tenor than I will ever be, but he and I generally were known for making puns, intentionally misinterpretting stuff in the music, playing with interesting harmonies (well hey, they were interesting to us) and generally cracking up the tenor section while earning dour looks & comments from the choir director... not that any of this has anything to do with the article - just thought I'd mention it as truth in advertising so to speak.

You last makes it sound as though someone can't be a serious Christian AND have a sense of humor. Dianne's strictness in terms of calling the National Church as apostate and leaving it's children behind doesn't have anything to do with her seriousness or point to a lack of credulity, does it? Please, relax a little.

Have we discussed when you were sitting in the choir at Truro? Because I sang in the choir, when I was in the Country, from 1983 (I actually joined Truro in 1980 but was overseas most of my beginning years) to about 1992.

As a total non-sequitur, the Communion Rail kneelers around that huge chancel are my gift to Truro, in memory of my Mom.

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