National Student Gathering Becomes Forum for Faith and Diversity
Episcopal News Service. February 24, 1993 [93035]
More than 200 participants at a national gathering of Episcopal college students, chaplains and faculty discovered that the Episcopal Church is big enough to include persons who do not always agree about important issues.
The participants at the recent fifth annual gathering, sponsored by the Episcopal Church's Office of Ministry in Higher Education, at Epworth Center on St. Simon's Island, Georgia, were challenged to share their stories of faith and listen to the witness of others.
In a keynote address to the gathering, the Rev. Tracey Lind, rector of an urban parish in Paterson, New Jersey, urged students to be open to hear God's voice in their own encounter with life. "Knowing the story of Jesus Christ and finding our place in it helps us face the changing world of our own day and find God in it," she said, addressing the theme, "Keeping the Faith: God in a Changing World."
Diversity was reflected at every level of the gathering, including music from Native American, Asian, Hispanic and African-American traditions as well as from the 1982 Hymnal. Liturgies from across the Anglican Communion were used in worship, including forms from the charismatic movement, meditative prayer and the chants of Taize.
Students soon discovered that affirming diversity is not always easy or comfortable. Sharp disagreements among students on how the faith should meet contemporary challenges reflected debates in the wider church. One member of an ad hoc "traditionalist caucus" quipped that the gathering might better have been named "Keeping the World by Changing the Faith."
"The conference revealed the differences in the Episcopal Church, and invited students to explore their feelings about that," said the Rev. Jep Streit, Episcopal chaplain at Boston University and chair of the planning committee for the meeting.
"I think the variety of viewpoints among students at the conference reflected many of the debates in the wider church. It was a microcosm of the church," Streit said. He added that the gathering altered its agenda so that all concerns could be addressed.
Lind asserted that affirming diversity in the church has a built-in tension, but that Christians "cannot afford to excommunicate each other... We must keep recognizing that we're family. Sometimes that means what we have to share at the table is our pain, not our agreement," she said.
Streit said that the gatherings help to inform and empower future leaders of the church. "These gatherings are important because they give Episcopal college students from all over the country a sense of the diversity in the church. It also is an opportunity for the participants to share new ideas and vision for ministry in their own setting when they return home."
"I think many of the students will return to their campuses with a clearer understanding of differences among Episcopalians and how we live together and keep talking in spite of those differences," Streit said.