The keepers of the true not-very-strong religious feeling
Some religions are founded on faith, some on fraud, and some purely to allow some guy to get a divorce and marry someone younger and hotter. The latter is of course the origin of the Church of the England. While this founding isn’t really inspiring or even humanly decent in any way, Anglicans and Episcopalians have at least been able to be proud of their church’s claim to form a moderate “middle path” between Catholicism and Protestantism, but it seems more like a middle path between Christianity and a medieval reenactment society.
I’m not saying that they’re all weak in the faith, but last week I went to a friend’s birthday party and had gotten to the point where the Harvard girls had practically turned into the Miss America Pageant before I found out that the guy I was talking to, who was drinking about the same amount that I was, was training to be ordained in the Episcopal Church. I don’t know if he loved Jesus, but at least he seemed very enthusiastic about drinking His blood (and by the way, isn’t it typical that when the Church finally throws a bone to those who like to party, or at least need something to take the edge off their hangovers on Sunday morning, by offering them a drink during the service, they then try to convince them that they’re actually committing cannibalism?). And from the Episcopalians and Anglicans I know (granted not a very large group), it seems that to be in the church you don’t have to be very devoted to Jesus, you just have to kind of like him, or at least not have anything in particular against him. They’re kind of like God’s Facebook friends.
April 13th, 2008 at 8:29 pm
Heavy drinking definitely doesn’t disqualify you from being an Episcopal priest. Two of the binge-drinkingest 30-somethings I’ve ever met were a seminary student and his wife.
And, of course, there’s that old joke: “Wherever there are four Episcopalians, you’ll always find a fifth.”
April 21st, 2008 at 3:34 pm
Or the local Baptists call them Whiskeypalians.