The past generation saw, via the liturgical movement, the triumph of the more catholic stream of our Church, at least in practice. More chasubles, less morning prayer, more reservation, less “Lord's table,” etc. But was it a triumph for a more catholic theology of the sacraments? I have my doubts. Not that evangelicals should take any comfort here. My fear has been that a more thinly symbolist, more cultural anthropological kind of view prevails. “People need ritual... Or maybe pageantry... .” True enough, but far short of our faith.
We are always pleased when our prejudgments are confirmed! A respected church leader recently reported that a worrisome number of Episcopalian friends, when asked what is happening in baptism, answered “nothing.” It was to them but a human ceremony of the fact that God had already accepted everyone. At least in the bad old days of the 19th Century high and low church parties fought (and even sued) each other over serious theological questions!
Where to begin? With catechesis of course, and we hope to do our bit in this diocese. But what about a rheological first response? First of all, the idea that baptism is a ceremony of we’re-all-ok confuses affirmation, our culture’s good, and forgiveness, deeper, harder.
Secondly, whether in the 19th or the 21st Century, one cannot answer the question about sacraments alone. They are prime actions of the church, whose head is the risen Christ. The problem is ultimately a Christological one, and on this score the old high and low Churchman actually had complementary things to say. (Catholics insisted He actually was personally at work both preparing us and touching us in baptism; evangelicals that we must be wary of our tendency to place these things under our control).
Thirdly we need to see how doctrines interact with one another. Sooner or later a theology of creation which is all “primal blessing,” devoid of an account of sin, without a place for salvific action in the world, of what the Jesuits once called “fides late dicta” (faith broadly understood) will evacuate the cross, will result in what has recently been called our culture’s “therapeutic deism.”
Leaving a confirmation recently in one of our towns I drove by a building with a sign: “Optimists Club.” Surely we as Church are more than that. That poll result is a telling canary in a big mineshaft. And finally, dare I say it _ a reason why doctrinally traditional Episcopalians matter for the welfare of the whole Church.
+GRS
