2008 Woodie Awards
On Faith: Why I Am (Still) an Episcopalian
Kevin Matthews
Issue date: 10/31/06 Section: Life
When I was just twelve years old, my bishop made the evening news on Ash Wednesday. This was not one of those cute, condescending stories about how the quaint Christians begin Lent that you see on television news or read about in the papers these days. The year was 1968, and the service was held outdoors in downtown Baltimore where I lived. The ashes for that day were made from burning draft cards as a protest against the Vietnam war.
That event has always stayed with me for two distinct reasons. The first was its demonstration that the church was not simply a place where people go and pray and hope that something happens. It was also a community concerned about the things that also concerned me. Much of what passes for Christianity today is a great distortion in that it is primarily about individual salvation. Reading the gospels, I have never understood how people can reach that conclusion. Jesus was far more concerned about how you spend your money-fully one third of what he says has to do with it-than he was about some philosophical, out of body spiritual event (or, for that matter, who you were having sex with).
The second reason that Ash Wednesday service stays with me, though, is that the bishop and the diocese paid a consequence for it. Conservative members of the diocese decided not to give their money to this radical bishop. In so doing, they missed the point that the bishop's actions probably did more for keeping young people in the church than all of the various youth programs combined.
What I quickly learned was that the Episcopal Church was going to frustrate me a lot. For each and every positive move-and there have been plenty-there would also be a group dead set against it.
I understood very early on, though, that some of the other more fundamentalist forms of Christianity held very little interest for me. Why? Well, besides the absurd notion of taking the bible literally, they spent way too much time preaching about Hell, quoting the book of Revelation, and coming up with awful slogans like "One way to God" that I just couldn't believe. While these other groups were forcing dogma down people's throats, the Episcopal Church I belonged to was telling me to question, that it was okay to have doubts, and that God was still making new things in the world.
That event has always stayed with me for two distinct reasons. The first was its demonstration that the church was not simply a place where people go and pray and hope that something happens. It was also a community concerned about the things that also concerned me. Much of what passes for Christianity today is a great distortion in that it is primarily about individual salvation. Reading the gospels, I have never understood how people can reach that conclusion. Jesus was far more concerned about how you spend your money-fully one third of what he says has to do with it-than he was about some philosophical, out of body spiritual event (or, for that matter, who you were having sex with).
The second reason that Ash Wednesday service stays with me, though, is that the bishop and the diocese paid a consequence for it. Conservative members of the diocese decided not to give their money to this radical bishop. In so doing, they missed the point that the bishop's actions probably did more for keeping young people in the church than all of the various youth programs combined.
What I quickly learned was that the Episcopal Church was going to frustrate me a lot. For each and every positive move-and there have been plenty-there would also be a group dead set against it.
I understood very early on, though, that some of the other more fundamentalist forms of Christianity held very little interest for me. Why? Well, besides the absurd notion of taking the bible literally, they spent way too much time preaching about Hell, quoting the book of Revelation, and coming up with awful slogans like "One way to God" that I just couldn't believe. While these other groups were forcing dogma down people's throats, the Episcopal Church I belonged to was telling me to question, that it was okay to have doubts, and that God was still making new things in the world.
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