You don't have to be old as the hills to recall the time when the Episcopal Church bore an inverse likeness to the one we're familiar with today - the time, for instance, when people stayed on their knees until the candles were snuffed out. The males of the line had their appointed places: clergy, lay readers, acolytes (altar boys), vestries, ushers (boutonniered), convention delegates, and (men-and-boys) choirs.

The females, duly hatted and, often, gloved, had theirs: altar guilds (with junior versions), rummage sales, Ladies' Auxiliaries, the Girls' Friendly, the Daughters of the King. And the sexes co-mingled mainly at the coffee hour and communion rail. Parish priests were icons of propriety, and bishops - who somehow attained that office without appearing to run for it - came three feet wide and eight feet tall.

Ours was the Church of the Presidents, the Republican Party at Prayer. The church of the gentry - the one you joined if you wanted to get somewhere socially - and amply proud of it. And because ours was also largely a nation at prayer, and one, moreover, in which women were presumedly content to occupy the distaff role, we got away with it.

But then, to the dismay of the revelers, the party ended, and - except for a few steadfast enclaves here and there which still adhere to those folkways - that church has gone the way of ladies' hats. Enticed away by subversive cultural forces, the market it had so graciously served began to dissolve.

Like many another social institution, organized religion began to fall victim to the do-it-yourself craze, which encouraged people to take personal charge of everything from their bathroom drains to their souls' health and salvation. If young people caught that bug, we would try the folk Mass and encounter group to lure them back. And if, forsaking those comfortable pews, their former occupants now seemed to prefer taking in the great outdoors, we would try to recoup the loss by casting our liturgy in a more congenial tongue, one as familiar to those who fetched for a living as to those who ordered them to do so. But although that overhaul was ostensibly undertaken in order to make our church more open, inclusive - in both senses of the term, more "popular" - those still-vacant pews suggest that the problem we faced was far from a linguistic one. Instead, it was a population problem, and the primary challenge remained: not only to keep the church in the world, but to get the world back in church. And whether in terms of revamping our ethics, theology or worship, we would try to recapture our share of the market by becoming what the world might view as more "relevant."

But if you open your windows downwind from a herd of cows, your house will soon smell like a barn. And the fact is, that thanks to attempts of that sort to be timely, our church has come so close to replicating the culture it is called (lest one forget) to save, that its identity has been largely engulfed by that very culture instead. And with that identity, it has also lost its distinctive voice. So tentative, so garbled have its pronouncements become, that those to whom they are addressed commonly tune them out, as if the Wizard of Oz were suddenly to show himself for the bumbler that he was. And if a lot of its members, under the sway of the secular, relativistic mindset of the times, have come to accept only those of its precepts with which they happen to agree, that is a posture which has been further encouraged by its agnostic stance on many pressing issues, suggesting that since the church doesn't have the answers it's up to them to formulate their own.

Not that we lack good company in this plight, but look at the Church of Rome, where in its increasing state of disarry many of its "faithful," once the models of ecclesial obedience, and who once gibed at us Episcopalians for being "Catholics without a pope," have become so freewheeling that in matters of morals they are making do without one, too.

By way of contrast, to learn from some of our more prosperous neighbors: In the same climate, the in-this-world-but-not-of-it fundamentalist churches and sects (which preach hard-line morality loud and clear) and the zaniest of out-of-this-world cults (which tend to pay morality but little heed if any at all) are alike flourishing, perhaps because both, in their wildly different ways, offer a means of escape from a cultural atmosphere which many people find too rank or too stifling to imbibe. All of which suggests that a church which simply echoes the moral confusion of the society around it is felt to be redundant, is dismissed as such, and to gain a hearing must decide to stand for something else, like a higher ethic which can command attention and respect: something on the order of what Moses came down with from Sinai.

That difficulty has been intensified for us by yet another cultural disorder: the me-first syndrome which places personal well being ahead of the common good. Politically speaking, on paper if not in practice, ours is a hierarchical structure: parishioners, parishes and missions, dioceses, provinces, and the national church comprising its working parts. But it is not presently clear, or agreed, which of those components is meant to oblige the rest, and if reciprocity is not evident at every turn, the system can stall.

If, for example, parishioners feel themselves to be neglected, exploited, or otherwise abused by that structure, they may balk. If they disapprove of their priest, they can complain, or institute financial sanctions of the sort that the United Nations currently exerts against Iraq, transfer to another congregation, or simply, as frequently happens, pick up their marbles and go home. If they harbor grievances against their bishop, changing dioceses may not be quite so convenient - though, of course, they might come to settle for another in one of the dissident Anglican bodies closer at hand. And if they are irked at their church at large, well, there are a whole lot of other ones out there to choose from where they can get irked all over again.

But what those malcontents can probably not do is to change the system to their liking. For if our church is a body politic, and one roughly patterned on the federal model, it is far less susceptible to the will of its constituents than the latter is. Once elected, its rectors and bishops are not subject to term limits as, increasingly, politicians are. Nor can the rank-and-file take to the polls for recall elections or - as in the Republican sweep of last fall - to turn incumbents out. In the case of rectors, this sort of purge can be accomplished only by "higher" authority, or, in that of bishops, by means of impeachment and trial by their peers.

Barring the most arrant misconduct or outlandish theological tomfoolery, nothing can dislodge them from their posts save decrepitude, death or age. And again, as if the Senate had it in its grant to name the occupant of the White House, our Presiding Bishops are designated, not by popular vote, but by the House of Bishops, whose choice the House of Deputies can but confirm or (what has yet to happen) decline to, by way of a plebiscite.

That phrase "once elected," however, needs to be savored, for it may hold the key to what our church could come to look like if we choose. Such elections are like weddings: Once you say to your prospective spouse, "I do," and once you say to a candidate for church office, "You'll do," you had better brace yourself to live with that commitment, because, short of some calamity, you will be compelled to.

So it makes good sense to heft such weighty decisions carefully beforehand. And that is where local congregations, should they care to flex it, have the muscle; that is where, instead of gurgling down, the power bubbles up. Of candidates for their vestries, who in turn will hire their clergy and determine where the money goes; of would-be delegates to diocesan conventions, who will in turn elect the deputies to General Convention and, sooner or later, their next bishop as well: Of them all, one ought to inquire what they stand for.

If it is true that those we elect should be free to "vote their own consciences," still, before casting our ballots we have every right - more, obligation - to ascertain where, on matters of moment, those consciences happen to lie. Will they faithfully represent us in what we stand for? And will they do so with gusto? - because those conventions, where our church's agendas, both diocesan and national, are set and its top management put in place, are not, as a rule, havens for the faint of heart, but arenas in which, among the more temperate, zealots of all stripes can be found having at it - if ever-so tactfully - in an intramural jihad.

In a setting like that, our next Presiding Bishop is to be named in about two more years, and thanks to that election will become, by two definitions of the term, a bellwether: aptly enough, in our case, one who tries to lead an unruly throng; and one who, like an augury, bespeaks the direction of a trend. That election, then, will constitute both a weather vane, telling us which way the wind is currently blowing, and a barometer, suggesting what sort of weather to expect up ahead. And since that choice could in part be determined by the bishops - and, conceivably, by the deputations - we elect in the meantime, a lot could hinge on the way we manage those ballots when the opportunity to cast them comes along. For they could provide us with a chance, not merely to talk about the weather, but to do something about it. It comes down to the sort of grassroots clout which made such a force of a Ross Perot a few years ago, produced that Republican sweep more recently still, and which could yet dispel the state of gridlock which of late has kept this church of ours from moving in any direction at all.

To be sure, our church may be so bogged down in mire of its own making that no such mandate, emanating from whatever quarter, would be strong enough to budge it off dead center. In that case, an enticing solution presents itself which also would put to rest the question of how long our General Conventions should run: Namely, to emulate the practice of those ancient ecumenical councils which, recognizing that a body at odds with itself cannot act coherently, stayed in session until consensus was achieved - to expedite which happy end (as at Nicaea), dissenters were summarily ejected and deposed.

And if that is too much to hope for, we may well have cause to welcome the present standoff after all, if only because, like a strait-jacket on the deranged, it will keep us from doing much harm until we finally come to our senses. o

The Rev. Harold R. Brumbaum is a retired priest who is a frequent contributor to TLC. He resides in Nicasio, Calif.