Question:

I was raised in the Anglican church but from 16 on, without getting in to detail, some dramatic, life-changing events occured/came to ahead in my life . In my struggle to comprehend these events I drifted away from the church (to make a long story short, my faith was rocked to it's very core). At 21 I moved here to the U.S. and still struggled with these issues, consequently did not attend services. Over the years I moved to a very scientific and logical way of thinking (i.e. concrete) to explain these events which also provided comfort and personal well-being for me.

I'm 35 now, have been married for 4 years (known DH 6 years) and we have our first child (Brandon; 6 mos old). I would very much like DS to grow up with an Anglican foundation as well as attend Sunday School (I really enjoyed this growing up) and of course be baptized. This tells me that the church obviously still has some meaning in my life because baptizing my son and wanting him to have a religious (Anglican) foundation are very important to me. DH has no religious background and has no preference. As a family, we have begun attending services. I very much enjoy it but find I am still struggling with the issues regarding my faith and the events of my life. My thoughts/feelings still rely on logic for answers rather than faith. How can I reconcile these?

Answer:

Hi, Mel, welcome to the board. The beauty of the Anglican church...

lies in its liturgical self-understanding. I mean that at numerous levels. The liturgy is purely, aesthetically lovely. However, the words of the liturgy are also the pointers to "what we believe". We don't have complex or detailed faith statements. As a result, a wide variety of theological understanding can co-exist under the umbrella of "Anglican Thought". And, as a result, we demand a deep and broad theological education in our pastors.

I am a skeptic -- an engineer with a profound respect for physics and mathematics. I believe in causality; in rational explicable mechanisms for the events that comprise our daily experiende. Science is about *mechanism* -- the *how* of events. God/religion is about the *why*, the deeper meaning that embues events with transcendent value. Worship is about connecting *how* with *why* with our hearts and bodies as well as our heads.

In many countries, the Anglican church is "established" -- either legally, or socially. In those countries, a childhood experience of Anglicanism may involve pat answers to many of the theological problems that really have no pat answers. Adults avoid struggling with those questions -- being really more interested in the Women's Auxiliary Quilting Club, or the Mother's Union Tea -- and brush off teens, seekers, and little children who might otherwise ask the uncomfortable questions: can the bible not be a mere human document? Why does an ominpotent God let evil happen to the innocent? How can God, who created our imperfections, subsequently judge us for them?

But in the broader Anglican communion many devout believers are in fact struggling with those questions, challenging God and traditional theology, and still loving and worshipping God even while they question. I do not believe in the common pseudo-magical understanding of "miracle". That shocks many Christians, but it does not make me an infidel. The Anglican episcopacy is tolerant of questions, valuing them even as a sign of a faith that is alive and engaged.

So welcome to the Church of No Easy Answers. On these boards at Parentsplace -- the Liberal Christian Parenting board is the best example -- you will find many Christians who are exploring what they believe and finding it more complex than the cookie-cutter faith they were handed as children. You will probably find also, that modern Episcopalian Sunday Schools are doing a lot better job of helping children explore their questions early on, than was the norm thirty years ago. So Brandon's Sunday School experience will be different from yours -- and perhaps give him a foundation that upholds him even better, in the face of life's difficulties.

Regards, Pamela.

p.s. -- where did you move to the U.S. from?

Hi Pam, thanks for a truly insightful post....(m)

from a fellow engineer. I am very logical by nature and appreciate such explanations. To answer your question I moved here from the UK.

I have to say you hit the nail on the head; I'll go into a little more detail but forgive me for not baring my soul. Yes how could God let evil happen? That's the question I struggle with because evil things did happen to my brother and I. I felt (feel) forsaken. Left wandering alone to manage these events (soaking the keyboard with tears as I give conscious thought to these feelings for the very first time in many, many years). I understand the "how" most definitely, I've spent many years coming to terms, analyzing, logically answering and ultimately accepting. What I have never been able to understand is the "why".

I have no answers in my soul as to why God who loves me let these terrible things take place (not just once or twice, but let's just say in my eyes, piled it on) and not protect my younger brother and I in some small fashion. I can't tell you how many times I've asked "Just what lesson am I not understanding, what didn't I get the first, second, third time....?!". This is not the God I grew up to understand. To add the icing on the cake, when my father died (when I was 16), his memorial service was held at our church, the one my brothers and I were all christened in and attended, the same one all of my aunts, uncles and cousins attended (we're a big family who all lived and grew up in this town). The vicar misprounounced my Dad's (our) last name in the most horrible way. Couldn't even take the time to ensure he had it correct on this most painful day. Sounds like a nothing thing but for me it was the straw that broke the camel's back. I remember thinking "How plastic is this?, you can't even be bothered and neither can I!". The logic told me "a simple human mistake", my heart screamed otherwise.

I've thought about emailing our Vicar (can't manage to talk to him yet one on one because I've only met him twice) to help me sort through this but as I said I've only known him such a short amount of time and feel weird about revealing my conflict and thoughts at this time.

Well I've said more than I should. I'm glad the Church is better now. Please forgive me if this sounds like a huge self-pity party, it's not, I'm just searching for answers. While I was away from the Church it was easy to just think in the concrete, but now that I'm back I'm struggling with the abstract again.

Thanks for listening.

Mel

Coming to a satisfactory understanding of the Why is a life-work...

...no need to rush into it. I wondered if you had come from the U.K., since that is really the ultimate Establishment. There is, in the Anglican church outside the U.K., very much less social and secular power wielded by church office-holders, and thus fewer of the cliched British-comedy "pompous clergymen". Thank goodness -- the very few I have met are more than enough. Because church office inherently confers some degree of power over other people, there will always be a few power-seekers in seminaries; the weaker the church's establishment, the fewer and pettier those power-seekers will be, and the more likely that your pastor will be sincere. And I do not mean to imply that there are no sincere clergy in Britain; only that they have to struggle against the burden of establishment alongside their flock.

Whether the church as a whole is any better than it was thirty years ago, I can't say. Thirty years ago I was still a heathen (I am an adult convert). However as a church education directress I reviewed old Sunday School materials while designing programmes for our children, and materials from that era reflected a rigid and simplistic approach to teaching children. Current materials focus more on social justice and worship than on pietism and bible-stories. Another way the church has changed is in the education available to adults. Your diocese probably has either an Education for Ministry programme, an Adult Inquirers or Alpha programme, a Cursillo programme, or some other way of helping adults with questions explore, broaden, and deepen their faith. You can often start by learning church history and tradition (nice safe knowledge-based subjects) and gradually deepen your studies until they address and engage your true spiritual needs. A request about adult education would be a safe way to make contact with your rector (we don't call them vicar's in America -- I think there is a technical difference between a vicar and a rector in terms of how they are paid and who hires and fires them; but I could be wrong). Another way the church has changed, is that lay-people often take more of a role in determining the style and content of weekly worship: you may have lay-readers, lay ministers of the Eucharist, a prayer-ministry including leaders for the Prayers of the People, and a worship committee that makes decisions regarding these things. Participating in one of these ministries is another way to take the first steps into a deeper engagement with the worshipping community -- and to deepen your theological understanding in the process. The roles that have changed the least are the choir and Altar Guild and the ECW: if you want to feel right back in the 1970's, you can often get the feeling at an Altar Guild meeting. I occasionally wondered if I'd slid all the way back to the 1870's!

Totally off the topic, what discipline of engineering do you work in? I work in high-voltage electrical transmission systems, doing power-system planning and operations. And, obviously, neither of us have anything better to do on a fine Sunday evening than post on the 'Net!

--Pamela