Trinity Teleconference Looks at the Zacchaeus Report -- and Beyond
Episcopal News Service. October 6, 1999 [99-150]
Kathryn McCormick, 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 life...."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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