Is faith required?

[doubter]

I have a peculiar question for any knowledgeable Episopalian on this board. I'm essentially a non-believer. I was raised Christian but for a variety of reasons I do not believe the bible to be true (I'd rather not get into why or debate the topic of faith).

I do, however, support the Episcoplian Church and it's many functions (such as helping the poor, community outreach, homeless services, and so on). I also appreciate your churches open mindedness on a variety of issues. I can also relate with many themes depicted in scripture (such as love, forgiveness, etc.).

Would it make sense for me to be Episcoplian (even though I will probably never believe in an unseen god)?

[srigdon]

Well, the Episcopal Church has bent its back over in an effort to minimize the doctrinal sorts of things you are supposed to believe in order to belong.

I struggle with lots of issues, even whether the Bible is the "Word of God," whatever that means.

But there's got to be a minimum. And if you're not going to believe in some sort of god, I'm not sure what the point would be of joining.

Maybe the question that needs to be asked is: if this is where you are and what you believe, why would you even consider it?

You can always just try out a church and participate to the extent that you feel comfortable if you're curious.

[christian]

It is meet, right, and our bounden duty that we should at all times and in all places give thanks to Thee O Lord.

If you cannot honestly say this then you are not an Episcopalian. You can, however, hang out at and give money to most Episcopal churches and you won't really be noticed. Your pecuniary contributions are always welcome.

[Sojourner]

I'm surprised that christian didn't tell you that there is no faith in the Episcopal Church and hasn't been for a good long time. Whether that is the case or not, srigdon's post has the best advice. Ultimately, your answer will be a local answer. There are some places which place high value on intellectual assent to certain propositions. There are others where your description is probably more valid.

My experience leads me to substitute the word Episcopalian in Will Roger's observation: "I belong to no organized political party; I'm a Democrat."

[christian]

I've observed a lot of faith in places Episcopal, sometimes faith in the content of one's own head, sometimes faith in God.

[Canadian Phil]

doubter;

There's been a lot of good point and advice on this thread, so I won't repeat much of what has been said. However, I think the nub of the matter comes down to whether you're prepared to keep an open mind about what you currently believe and whether you're open to the possibility that you, as you learn more, may change your mind about some of the things that make you doubt the Bible or faith. If you can honestly say that you are willing to do these two things, I'd say (and I'm a moderate conservative) that there is no reason why you can't work towards being an Episcopalian or even (*gasp*) a Christian. I think Mark is right in suggesting that you hold back from communion for a time until you can get to a place where you're better connected, but, short of that, I don't think you should hold back.

If, however, you honestly can't say that you're open to changing your mind or if you expect the church to change to accomodate you, then, I suspect that you'll find church very, very uncomfortable.

I hope that helps.

Phil

[doubter]

Thanks all for your input. I come from a Christian background. I was raised Catholic though my dad's side of the family is Episcopalian. In my college years I went from an atheist to a huge fan of John Calvin. So I am familiar with theology (ad nausea). My eventual march away from faith as an adult was based on very logical grounds.

I figure it like this, the god described in scripture has never shown himself in any tangible way to contemporary man. In fact, coincidentally, god has only ever shown himself to ancient men before "the age of reason" (before mankind examined natural phenomena through the prism of science).

The Catholics and certain other groups might claim miraculous healings occurred in places like Lourdes. However, none of those claims can withstand rigorous scrutiny (for instance, in Lourdes there have been 67 confirmed healings out of the hundreds of thousands of visitors to that shrine, which is by any standard a "normal statistical occurrence" -- in other words not all sick people die & sometimes we're not sure why).

Religion has only served to offer an explanation for things man cannot explain. The ancients had no idea why earth quakes and eclipses occurred, so they explained it by imagining some divine force was exacting revenge or punishment on them. These days the relationship between psychology and physical health is well documented, but little understood. Christians (particularly fundamental Christians and Catholics) will define this relationship in supernatural terms (although it occurs among the religious and non-religious alike). I believe, like we eventually learned why earth quakes occur, we will eventually be able to quantify the relationship between psychology and physical health.

So, if I may speak honestly, I do have well ingrained objections to the concept of faith in a supernatural, intelligent force that is omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent.

My attachment to religion is more for practical and altruistic reasons. I don't mean to say this in a demeaning way; but I just don't think any of the supernatural events depicted in the bible ever occurred, or if they did they were not the result of action by any invisible deity.

No doubt a profound event in human history did occur roughly 2,000 years ago. Was it the musings of a man named Paul (for unknown reasons)? Was it trickery (a theory I myself don't assert, though it's possible)? Whatever it was at its root I cannot say for certain, beyond feeling reasonably confident that religion is merely ancient mythology that permeates to modern times because of entrenched interests.

All of that being said, I still find value in liberal protestant Christianity. I do believe forgiveness is a critical virtue, as is loving our neighbor, and of course behaving in a civilized manner. I also find charity important & it seems that religion is an excellent vehicle for delivering these badly needed services to depressed communities. I guess I could be PC and call myself "faith challenged" (though I'm not sure if that's intellectually honest). I obviously know that I could never partake in any sacrament in a Christian church (since faith is generally held as a necessary prerequisite for receiving any sacrament .... and I would never disrespect a faith community by wrongfully participating in their rituals).

Perhaps I'm on the wrong track (I guess I could just as easily contribute to or volunteer with the Red Cross or some other secular charity); but again I do find religious organizations quite effective in delivering services to the poor, and for a variety of reasons I hold the Episcopalian Church in high esteem. I've heard of some Anglican clergymen assert the resurrection is fictitious (sort of a Jeffersonian view); and overall Episcopalians seem to be an enlightened bunch (I guess this is why I feel like it might be possible to join your church). There's always the Unitarians I suppose (who I'm pretty sure do welcome those without faith, and even those of different faiths).

I welcome any additional feedback. Thanks .....

[Canadian Phil]

doubter;

Thanks for telling your story a bit. That is quite helpful because it gives a good indiction of where you've been and where you are now.

What is interesting to in your story is that, despite rejecting the supernatural elements of Christianity, you continue to believe in many of its virtues. Not that this is unusual. I suspect that we can say the same about our respective nations and most people.
I don't think I'm the person to say whether this is enough to join a church, but you wouldn't find it difficult to find any group in society who would agree with these. So, the question bounces back to you, why a Christian church?

As an aside, I'm not entirely sure about what you mean by
" the god described in scripture has never shown himself in any tangible way to contemporary man. In fact, coincidentally, god has only ever shown himself to ancient men before "the age of reason" (before mankind examined natural phenomena through the prism of science)."?

That is, what do you mean by tangible? Is this just physical miracles? Can something be real and not tangible in the scientific sense? Is there a possibility that our senses cannot penetrate everything in the universe, not just because we don't have the right tools now, but because we are simply too limited to? I'm not trying to nit-pick, but my own experience is that God rarely moves this big tangible miracles even in the Bible, so we need to look for him more in the everyday and in prayer. That is how I deal with the problem. I don't expect it to bind you with chains of irrefutable logic .

I come back to my original question in my first post. Are you willing to keep an open mind about your understanding of God/people and the church. Are you willing to be open to the possibility that you might be mistaken in what you think now (I'm not saying you are- just that are you willing to consider the possibility)? Are you willing to come and learn? If you can honestly answer yes to those questions, I think you should come. If you honestly can't, I think you're wasting your time and energy because, while churches do much social justice work, our first efforts go into worship. While social justice can be a form of worship (by doing God's work here on earth), we Christians have to start with God and, then, move to our fellow man.

I should note that none of this would prevent you from volunteering for a church's social justice activities. Anyone can do that and the more the merrier. This only covers church membership which, I'm sure, you recognize is a bit different.

I hope that makes sense and doesn't strike you as too judgemental.

Peace,
Phil

[wtxdaddy]

doubter,

I would say, it is a requirement that you have faith in the one, true God before your become an Episcopalian. Now, you can certainly go to an Episcopal Church, attend Bible studies & participate in the life of the church (to check it out), but I don't think you should receive communion, or get confirmed/received unless & until you do believe in God, that He sent Yeshua to earth to reconcile humanity to Himself. That is, after all, the point of Christianity. Doubting is normal. A lot of what Christians believe defies logic - to the extent humans are capable of logic.

You can sort of look at it from the point of view that God has not proved Himself to me, or any humans recently, therefor, He must not exist. Or you could delve into how people behaved 2,000 years ago, to see if how they acted & reacted lends any credence to the claims of the church. So, we have a rag-tag group of people following this Yeshua person. He gets arrested, tortured & killed by the local & imperial authorities. The followers are frightened and hide. After Yeshua is killed, His followers claim to have seen Him, eaten with Him and interacted with Him. THey claim, He sent them the Holy Spirit and they suddenly become emboldened, going out into the streets and preaching that the one who was killed is alive again and is the Messiah, come into the world to pay for our sins and free us from eternal death. Nice message, huh? Well, the important thing here, if you're trying to discern whether what these people are saying is true, is to look at their behavior. Do they act like they believe it? They started off scared & hid, then they come out & run all over the Roman empire declaring that Yeshua is the Lord. They do so at great peril, knowing that they put themselves at risk of imprisonment, torture & death for doing this. Why would these mostly lower-socio-economic folk do such a thing? If a hoax, they started off wrong - having women as original witnesses. At the time, women were considered so unreliable that they were not permitted to testify in court. Dumb way to start off a big hoax. ANd what would the point of the hoax be? To gain political power? Influence? Money? Odd that the perpetrators of this "hoax" got none of this. They all stayed poor, were periodically tossed into jail, some were killed quickly and some were killed years later - all because of the Yeshua stuff they kept spreading. I would say, how they behaved after the resurrection tells us a lot about what they felt about the accuracy of the account. Their behavior changed tremendously. Looks to me like, at least these people believed it and claim to have witnessed the things they were preaching.

Then another good one to look at is Saul. Pretty effective & well-known persecutor of the off-beat Jewish group, claiming Yeshua was God. On his way to persecute some more of these Yeshua-enthusiasts, Saul encounters the resurrected Yeshua and then becomes the chief proponent of Christianity in the Roman world.

Thomas, who would not believe the resurrection until he saw & touched, went to India and converted folks there. Something he experienced/witnessed caused him to change his mind & behave accordingly.

Also, something about the message they spread caught on with folks all over the world. I suggest, you hang around Christians of some type and inquire. An Episcopal church won't mind inquiries (shouldn't anyway). May I suggest a book? I think the author is Lee Strobel & it's The Case for Christ (if I got the author & title wrong, I apologize). It is a pretty good book, but conversion stories fascinate me. He basically looks into Christianity because his wife becomes a Christian and he doubts it's real, until he sees real changes in her. He then decides to investigate. Through his investigation, he becomes convinced of the truth of the Gospel. Now, the one criticism I make of the book is, you can tell he wrote it AFTER coming to faith. I really would've liked to read his thought during the time, he was convinced it was all a bunch of hooey.

As for doubting God is good, or kind, or loving when the world is such a mess & humans mistreat each other so monstrously, remember that the message is that Christ came into the world & died for us to save us from eternal death. He did not come to save us from each other.

[nini]

wtxdaddy - I think this is the BEST reply I have ever heard to the question of why God allows wars and abuses.

it is right up there with the answer to the question posed in the book "When Bad Things Happen to Good People" - because he has allowed to retain the freedom of choice that we must accept that "stuff happens".

thank you - I enjoyed reading your reply - you make a great deal of sense - nini

[bostonian]

for a variety of reasons I hold the Episcopalian Church in high esteem.

You may want to think about why that is. What is it that makes this set of people the way they are? Don't you want some of that?

If not, you may want to look into Unitarian Universalism.

[Uriel]

Doubter - I have been thinking about your question and trying to formulate my best answer. I'm not sure I'm there, but I'll try.

I think that, in a sense, everyone "believes in God." The question is how we imagine "God," and what we mean when we use the word. Just about everyone, I think, would acknowledge that there is a basic force, a power, which seems to underly and bring about all creation. Or something like that. If we could define it, it would still be greater than our human minds are generally able to grasp. And that, at a basic level, would be God.

Probably just about everyone more or less believes that. Where people disagree - members of various religions, as well as those of no religion - I think, is in the nature of that force.

If all, or nearly all, believe something like what I have said, then the numbers of those who "believe in God" are reduced if God is defined as a person; further reduced if God is defined as a "Father," further reduced when the nature of that Father's "thoughts" and "feelings" are defined as moving in certain ways. Perhaps you take my point.

I am a cradle Episcopalian. When I was younger, the Episcopal Church as I came to know it growing up was a place where one's experience of the Holy was basically personal. In that context, my own spirit searched and experienced, and from time to time found sudden insight in the text of the Prayer Book or in passages from the Bible. I am willing to say that these insights would be compatible with insights from other religions, and my own belief is that spiritual truth is to be found, as I think Marcus Borg has said, more often in what religions have in common rather than in what divides them.

I do not use religion to explain what I cannot explain scientifically. I see science and religion as different enterprises. If you can explain that an experience I have of the Holy occurs in the context of the firing of certain synapses in my brain, and that such electrical events have been caused by the effects of caffeine or sleeplessness, and further describe the micro-events involved in the phenomenon - still, you will not have explained how this event fits, or "should" fit, into my life and my experience of it. You can dissect a feeling, but you will not really have said anything about it. You will simply have replaced an emotional experience with a "scientific" experience.

When I was younger, the Episcopal was a place where I could follow my insights - hopefully, toward greater insight. Potentially, it still is such a place. The conflicts of recent decades have, as far as I am concerned, been a distraction, so that I seldom any more experience inspiration in a church setting.

I have no experience of Unitarianism; I know that I have often responded with pleasure to the sermons from All Souls Unitarian in NY on the radio. I suspect it has much to offer.

But I am, at most in that context, as I have been accused of being on such sites as this, "a Unitarian who likes liturgy." Possibly fair comment in a way, but I do love our liturgy - at least, before they started trying to modernize it. It was beautiful. But I digress.

The Anglican tradition at its best does not "make windows into men's souls." I think if you are interested in the Episcopal Church, you should expose yourself to it and see if you find a fit.

Best
Uriel

[doubter]

Hello all & thanks again for your great replies. There's much to respond to here, I'll try to be brief (as I don't have much time at the moment) & respond to all the major points made.

First, with regard to the New Testament story itself, I'm paraphrasing wtxdaddy: (a rag tag bunch whose leader was arrested, tried, and executed, became frightened of the authorities & went into hiding, only to emerge emboldened after allegedly seeing their spiritual leader resurrected). I frankly don't believe any of these events happened as described.

Sagan once said to prove the extraordinary you need extraordinary proof. Yet we're left with manuscripts written centuries after the actual events described in them were alleged to take place. Hardly extraordinary proof (or anything remotely close). So I'm left with a post-hoc examination of "how people acted 2,000 years ago" (which of course we can't know with any great detail) to discern the veracity of an incredible and unbelievable claim.

Counter that with the common thread in all world religions. All religions lay claim to a god who illustrated his power in profound ways. This god split the red sea, turned sticks into snakes, rivers into blood, raised men from death, destroyed cities, flooded the earth, etc. but only thousands of years ago (and not once in modern history). Of course (coincidentally) every religion has a profound explanation for god's absence from contemporary human history. I believe it's no coincidence that god suddenly became absent from human history just at the point mankind began to examine natural phenomena through the prism of science.

Counter all this against intangible claims of spiritual encounters by people, who claim to have "a feeling" of god (when in fact that feeling is merely psychological, and not any other worldly being). The fact is if we were talking about any other subject any reasonable person would say this is nonsense. However, at this point IMO we're so programmed to believe in a god that we've become a superstitious people. To me I see it for what it is .... ancient mythology that's not true (no more than Zeus, Odin, or Allah).

At any rate I don't want to spend too much time explaining why I think as I do (since I'm obviously convinced of my position). However, you guys have been quite a bit of help. I do think the Unitarian church is probably the best option for me (I explored their web site & they openly accept non-believers in their ranks). Unfortunately I see now that I can't reasonably be an Episcopalian (I was sort of hoping I could join a more mainline church, given it's my background, but I also won't be dishonest about it).

[mewg]

Even the demons believe and tremble. That is I think from James and to me it suggests faith is more tham an assent to specific intellectual propositions. its an orientation of the spirit. In the Good Friday liturgy we pray for those whose faith is known to God alone. I think that is where most of us are, despite the grandiose pronouncements of some.
I would disagreewith Phil about taking Communion. Its nourshment. So if you want to-go ahead. Nourish incipient faith with everything you can

[Uriel]

Mewg - perfect!