Evangelicals, Episcopalians, & Education

Excerpt from a "journal entry / reflection" required by the Intern Program at the end of this past March.

On the long drive home from DIA in December, my dad and I got to talking about ministry. My priest, Steve, is out in the Berkshires and working in a dying factory town; his congregation is tiny, and they talk through much of the service but love coffee hour afterwards. Dad’s advice: “Tell them to rake the leaves in their neighbor’s yard instead of going to a service!” This wise (and very non-Episcopalian) option prompted me to ask him his thoughts on youth education in the church. I told him that since starting work at the LP, I’ve been accidentally remembering reams of Sunday School songs and activities. What did he think of the churches we’d attended as Rachel and Nolan and I grew up? What did he think of how Christians raised kids in their church?

Dad thought for a moment. “Well,” he said, “by the time they get to junior high, or maybe high school, they know all the stories, they know the verses, all the ideas and the language—but the problem is getting them to keep coming, and getting them interested in applying it to their lives.” I broke out in laughter. Dad was baffled; I explained that to the Episcopal Church, that sounds like a wonderful problem! “We have the opposite one,” I explained.

We have young people (in high school) who attend church without fail, but couldn’t find the book of Amos if it bit them on the nose. We have young people (in college) who are interested in the social activism of the church, or its music, but who are terrified to talk about their thoughts and feelings about God. We’ve got folks who’ve sat through twenty Lents but who couldn’t tell you what it means (aside from “I give up chocolate”), who can’t recount the entirety of the Exodus, and who’ve heard Luke read from a pulpit but can’t tell you what Luke’s Jesus feels about poor people.

Of course, I don’t think all Episcopalians need a post-grad level of theological understanding. But I do think that much of the meaning-making that happens in a religious life starts with a familiarity with texts, traditions, and reasoning (theology). The religious follower then figures out (or decides, or discovers, or falls into) a way of engaging with these three foundations in his or her own life. For Anglicans , the texts are the canonical Scriptures and The Book of Common Prayer; the traditions include the liturgical year and the Anglo-Catholic bells and whistles; and because we are a wide-reading group, the reasoning (theology) starts with Nag Hammadi and ends with whatever new liberation theologian is popular today.

Each of these three areas is like a massive lake, which begins on a wide shallow beach and descends into a sapphire center. And in each lake there are pebbles, shells, fish, crabs, reeds, crustaceans--any number of fascinating things. The disciple decides where she’ll wade in; she decides if she’d like to splash around in one lake, or dive to the bottom of another, or spend most of her days swimming along in one lake and only gazing at the others.

Education in the church, and especially education for children, is like teaching the disciple to swim. And even before that—it’s like getting rid of any fear of water!

At least, that’s how it seems to this particular Anglican. This understanding comes from an Evangelical upbringing, a skeptical and analytical mindset, and a book-loving heart. The branches of Christianity have grown and flourished in such radically different ways, no one understanding of education can be sufficient. Each Christian engages with his/her own tradition and works to interpret it; in the last seven months, I’ve found this is one aspect of my own tradition which I hope to change.

Postscript: There are Episcopalian churches who do a good job; there are also Evangelical churches who do a bad job. But I do think these are acceptable generalizations for these churches in the United States.